WARNING: This Blog is a Waste of Your Time!!!!!

I have to leave for the barn in a few minutes, but I suddenly felt the urge to post a blog, even though I have nothing to say. I have considered, however, posting the article I wrote for the equine newsletter at my college, just to see what you guys think about it. And also to tranquilize Cindy and Shawna, who want me to post a blog about my trip to Florida. So here it is:

"On the last day of February this year, I and a few of my fellow students from Intro to Equine Activities went on a wonderful adventure. With Chelsea Olsen and Sarah Arpke as our guides and chaperones, we left the dreary, snow-swept runway of the Cleveland airport and took off for 6 days of warmth, sun, beaches, and horses. Whole bunches of horses.
"I had never been on a plane before, so that was a novel experience for me. But you are not reading this article to hear about the plane trip, so I will sidestep that portion of the trip and get on to the horse parts.
"On Tuesday we had arrangements to meet Betsy Steiner at her barn for some Equilates. For those of you who are not yet familiar with it, Equilates is a Pilates-like workout that emphasizes positions that the average horseback rider would find useful. It promotes both strength and flexibility and is reputed to strengthen that “core” part of one’s body that Professor Olsen is always talking about. The “posting trot” exercise was an especially wonderful one that left us grateful that none of us had to ride the next day. We completed the session with only a minimum amount of groaning.
"We spent some time at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center, which is this HUGE (like, so big that it has its very own road) facility in Palm Beach that dwarfs anything we have in Ohio and features numerous rings, arenas, warm-ups, vendors of all sorts and at least one really nice bathroom. We happened to be there during the FTI Winter Equestrian Festival (January 7 - March 29, 2009), so we were in the midst of an absolute flurry of movement. I had never in my life seen so many horses in one place before. Now, being a strictly Western rider (indeed, I knew less than nothing about any English discipline before coming to Lake Erie), I unfortunately cannot satisfactorily explain what was going on around me at the equestrian center. I can say that we watched jumpers in a massive outdoor arena with gorgeous jumps that we definitely need to think about designing for our own shows.
"Friday saw us at the International Polo Club of Palm Beach, setting the dressage and practice arenas for Saturday’s show and meeting up with Mary Ross, the founder and chairman of the Challenge of the Americas. The Challenge is an annual show, 8 years running, that benefits the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
"The Challenge itself was a surprisingly brief show. Exhibition rider Susan Jacoma started the evening off with a patriotic routine and was followed by Oded Shimoni and John Ingram’s “Dressage v. Reining” face-off. I really wish I’d been able to see more of that, but our first duty was as volunteers at the event, not spectators. Teams USA and International, at 6 members apiece, competed in a sort of equestrian dance-off to a medley of songs. It was difficult to see over the crowds of slightly inebriated socialites, but from the oohs and ahhs of the crowd, I would say it was pretty spectacular. We did see the Purina Mills (USA) team practice the day before the competition, and oh, yeah, it was pretty cool. Six horses performing half passes in opposite directions, through one another’s ranks and lining up in tandem; gaits matching changing music wonderfully; synchronized piaffes and passages that were way cooler than anything I can do on a horse.
"And so I would like to state for the record that I spent a night brushing elbows with the elite of Palm Beach.
"We did eventually have to come back home, however. But next time, I’m thinking about leaving that part out of the plans."

And I haven't heard a single thing from anyone about it. Chelsea, Brittany and Amy all read it and liked it, but Sarah and Karen, the people I sent it to for inclusion into the newsletter, have yet to respond. At all. It worries me a little. I mean, you'd think they'd at least tell me what they think of it, you know? So I'm listening to Bon Jovi on YouTube, and is it just me, or does the acoustic guitar music in "Blaze of Glory" sound a lot like the music from the "Firefly" theme song?And lookie at that! It's only ten after 9... I still have 20 minutes to putter around here... huh...
"I want to laaaaaaaaaaay you dowwwn in a beeeeeed of roooooses...
But toniiiiiiiiight I sleep on a beeeeeeeed of naaaaaaaiiiiiils...!!!!"
Again, I would like to apologize for this.
But hey, the blog title should have warned you well enough.
Maybe I'll post again soon.
TTYL

Gaelic Storm @ the House of Blues Cleveland 2-28-2009

So I started this blog in September of 06 (evidently) because I apparently expected that I would write something beyond that first silly post. I was incorrect. Silly me.

But I thought I'd pick it up again, since I regularly blog on MySpace, so that I can have a public forum in which to showcase my writing. As I said in my first post, I know this blog will probably not be seen by anyone, but the possibility remains that someone could find it. And I would be tickled to find out that someone out there, by which I mean someone who is not my sister or my cousin who figuratively bang on my door every other week demanding a new blog, is reading what I write. So if you do read, please, tickle me by leaving a comment.

I'll start this new public blogging process thusly:

Cad e an sceil a buachail?
Oh… what's that?. You don't speak Gaelic? I’m so sorry
WHAT’S THE RUMPUS?!?
Saturday the 28th of February marked my very first official Gaelic Storm concert. And when I say “official”, I mean “the first Gaelic Storm concert wherein we actually had to buy tickets to see just Gaelic Storm in a real venue, and where I knew the words to virtually every song they did”. This is as opposed to seeing them at an Irish festival, where you pay $10 to see a whole slew of Irish bands, and where I was at first like, “Who are we watching again?”, and then like, “Gaelic Storm… let’s watch them again!”, and then like, “What? Gaelic Storm’s not here this year? Now that I can actually sing some of their songs? Well, poop on them, then!”
But enough of my customary ramblings. You probably want to know how the evening went, don’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this blog.
Dad drove us to the venue in his new car, where we had some aggravating trouble with his new iPod, which decided about 15 minutes in that it didn’t like our music and was going to play dumb when we tried to get it to play something. So my Mp3 player was a stand-in, and performed perfectly. So much for the awesomeness of the iPod.
At the House of Blues restaurant, to my major disappointment, I couldn’t find the dish I had the last time I was there (remember the chicken linguini in a tabasco garlic sauce from my Hanson blog?), so I ordered a barbeque chicken pizza. It was good, though if I were to order it again I would have them go easy on the cilantro. Our waitress was awesome. She noted Dad’s Great Big Sea hat and said, “Nice hat. Gotta love those Newfoundlanders!” Near the end of the meal she sat down with us and talked about being involved with the people who helped band break into the American market (or something like that). Dad told her that I love Bob and she said that he has just about the best sense of humor of anyone she’s met, but that it took her a long time to figure out what he was saying when he talked, because of his accent. And his monotone baritone, I guess.
So anyway, we got in line at around 6, and were the first ones there. After a short while we were joined by a group of three, a man, his 16-year old daughter, and another guy that could have been a brother or a friend and who was interesting to look at because he had facial features like Alan Doyle and Sean McCann and Bob Hallett all smushed into one person. Not their best features or their worst, necessarily, but I found it amusing.
We noticed an odd smell and saw smoke in the holding area of the HOB the moment we entered, and wondered what it was from. Half an hour or so into our wait an employee went running past us with a fire extinguisher, toward the exit at the end of the room. Evidently the restaurant next door smokes some of their food and an employee there had discarded some very hot wood in a plastic garbage bin. We were moved into the House of Blues proper while they got rid of the smoke, so they could open the far doors without freezing us. The people we were standing with were friendly, but not really sociable. So I mostly just talked to Dad.
They didn’t open the doors for us until 8 o’clock, which is actually when we were supposed to be let in, but for some reason I had been expecting to be let in at 7, since that’s when the doors opened for the other shows I’ve seen there. I took a position front and center, right where I figured Patrick Murphy’s microphone would be. What followed was what seemed like an eternity of waiting. It was just about almost as bad as a Hanson concert, waiting, waiting, for the band to come out… waiting, waiting, while people fill in behind you who think you enjoy having their bodies constantly bumping into you… waiting, waiting, while your feet and your back start to get stiff and sore before the show even starts… waiting, waiting, while a myriad of future venue dates flash across the giant projector screen in front of you… Oh, there’s an opening act, is there? A pipe and drum band? Cool, okay. Three songs and they’re done? Okay, cool… waiting, waiting, while people who are already drunk whoop and squall and get on your nerves… waiting, waiting, as you yawn, shift your weight and think, “When they come out, it will stop mattering how long it took for them to get here”… waiting, waiting, stuffing you ears with tissue, cotton, or in my case, a leftover dinner napkin, in anticipation of a tremendous amount of noise… waiting, waiting, nibbling on the piece of chocolate Dad gave you… waiting, waiting, resting your head on folded arms atop the no-man’s-land divider between the stage and the audience… waiting, waiting, hoping that the guy next to you won’t smell that bad for the entire show… waiting… waiting… waiting… waiting… waiting… waiting… waiting…
I couldn’t actually tell you what time it was when the band came out, but it was sometime between 9:15 and 9:30, I suppose. I recognized the song they started the show with – an instrumental from the Bring Your Wellies album called "Bare in the Basin". Much fun. Love Peter’s bagpipes.
I’m thinking on writing this blog in a manner similar to the one I used for the Great Big Sea concert last September. Rather than write in strict prose, I’ll bullet some highlights, in no particular order. First, the set list. I believe I have all the songs here, minus two or possibly three instrumentals that I didn’t know the titles to. Also, only the first six songs are actually in order, because as you know I cannot realistically think ahead for the life of me and my phone died in the middle of "Me & the Moon" (but I did get to send Mom a text when they started the song).
*side note* When I first learned the words to "Me & the Moon", I would sing it loudly when I was in the car with my mom, encouraging her to sing the “he brought the light!” part. I eventually got her to sing it with me albeit not always enthusiastically. I totally would have called her during this song if my phone hadn’t died. *end side note*
1) Bare in the Basin
2) Scalliwag
3) Born to Be a Bachelor
4) Punjab Paddy
5) Death Ride to Durango
6) Me & the Moon
7) Slim Jim & the Seven Eleven Girl
8) Beggarman
9) Darcy’s Donkey
10) Johnny Tarr
11) Johhny Jump Up
12) Drink the Night Away
13) Kelly’s Wellies
14) What’s the Rumpus?
15) Don’t Go For the One
16) I miss My Home
17) Courtin’ in the Kitchen
18) Floating the Flambeau
19) The Night I Punched Russell Crowe
20) Kiss Me, I’m Irish
I know the Kiss Me, I’m Irish was the last song, and “What’s the Rumpus? was like, the second-to-last, but as far as order goes, that’s all I’m really sure about. Also, I KNOW we heard them doing "Lover's Wreck" during the soundcheck, but I can't for the life of me remember if they did it during the show. And you'd think I'd remember, since that's, like, probably my favorite song on the new album.

As promised, here are the highlights:

~I was front-and-center… and in my “I Love Irish Boys” t-shirt.
~During the customary “Me & the Moon” audience shout-a-thon, Patrick’s side evidently “won” The Steve side, otherwise known as the “awesome” side, was gracious about their/our “defeat”.
~What’s the Rumpus? spent a good long while at the top of the World Billboard music charts, edging out Celtic Women. Patrick expressed great joy at this, as though he had been avenged for years of lagging behind them. He symbolically drop-kicked Celtic Women right there onstage.
~Post-Johnny Tarr, Patrick usurped the cowboy hat of someone in the 4th or 5th row so that he might do the popular Kenny Chesney version of the song. I had been thinking, as I drove home on Friday, that I should have been bringing my cowgirl hat with me, just in case. Alas, I did not, but I’m positive that it would have made its way onstage if I had remembered to bring it.
~Ryan Lacey is evidently both a Steelers fan and a Bears fan. Patrick was probably trying to get a rise out of the audience, and had chosen poor Ryan as the recipient of a wave of anti-Steelers sentiment.
~This show attracted the biggest crowd Gaelic Storm has ever seen at the Cleveland HOB.
~Since Jessie was a less-than-stationary fiddler, Patrick helped himself to her whiskey on two occasions while she was off gallivanting on another part of the stage. The first gulp merited him with a verbal reprimand, the second with a boot to the rear.
~The girls behind me began irritating me before the show even started, mostly because they were constantly bumping into me, but also because the girl that decided to wedge herself in behing me just before intermission was moving around enough that, many times, I feared she was going to dump her beer on me. And this wasn’t like Great Big Sea concert-style vertical movement – it was constant turning, hair whipping and holding her cup at a dangerous angle with one hand while she fiddled with her phone with the other (I know this because I turned around during intermission to see the crowd and to look for Carrie, who had texted me at the beginning of the show to tell me she was there.) I wanted to kill these girls before the second half of the show started, as they were also screaming insults at other people and tossing around some particularly loud profanity.
~It doesn’t sound like the band will be playing the Berea Irish Festival this year (again…), but they will be at the Dublin Irish Festival.
~A lunchbox in Ireland consists of a six pack of beer and a potato. Patrick has a backlog of potatoes sitting at his house from the 21 years he spent in 4th grade. His mother packed him a lunch every day.
~During one of the instrumentals, Peter and Jessie ‘battled’ one another at the center of the stage, each giving the other the boot when their time was up (I think that’s grammatically incorrect, but I don’t care).
~I noticed a small Spiderman action figure seated at the edge of the stage during intermission, which Patrick proceeded to pick up and put in his pocket later in the show. He left it there, peeking from his front jean pocket, for several songs before tossing it to someone in the front row.

~I squealed with glee (quite loudly as well) when they announced that they were going to play “Darcy’s Donkey”, a song about a drunken donkey who wins a horse race in Donegal. Patrick said that there really is a stuffed donkey carcass hanging on the wall at Jamesy’s Pub in Donegal, Ireland, and that he was inspired to write the song to explain how the donkey ended up there. When I squealed, he looked at me and said, “Oh, are you from Donegal?” I am sad to say I had no clever comeback until it was just a moment too late. You know how that is.
~Steve sat on Peter while he was trying to play his pipes. I have picture of this as well. Poor guy! There's Peter, playing his pipes, trying to be professional, when out of nowhere he gets gang-jumped by Patrick, Jessie and especially Steve!

~When he was introducing “Courtin’ in the Kitchen”, Patrick sent the song out to all the naughty girls in the audience, then proceeded to point us all out. (“You, and you, and you, and you, and you. Wait… is that all we have? *scream from someone in the back* Oh, you’re a naughty girl too? Okay, that makes six then. That’s pretty good. This song is for all of you.”)
~Yes I did just say “us”. I was Naughty Girl # 4.
~Once during “Kiss Me, I’m Irish”, Patrick came to the edge of the stage and I blew him a kiss. He blew one back, though with some difficulty, as the harmonica and the microphone were both in the way.

~Seeing Steve Twigger play the bodhrán was an odd thing. At one point he was onstage with just Patrick and Ryan, Patrick on the other bodhrán and Ryan on one of those wooden boxy things that you sit on and play. I don’t know what they’re called, but like I said, there’s a picture. Ryan is one wild, energetic drummer.
I also noticed that Ryan is a devout flip-flop wearer. He had small red marks on the insides of his feet that chronic flip-flop wearers get when their shoes don't fit perfectly and the straps rub. I've gotten them myself. They suck.

~For those of you who haven’t heard the story, and might be wondering, “The Night I Punched Russell Crowe” is about the time when Patrick Murphy was working as a bartender in California (shortly before the band was discovered by filmmaker James Cameron and given a spot in a little movie he made called “Titanic”) and Russell Crowe walked in with a cigarette. Patrick told him twice that he would have to get rid of it, but Crowe and his two bodyguards challenged him. Patrick told us that it wasn’t a fair fight… they should have at least 4 Australians to have a chance against an Irishman. He also said that his mother had always told him that if he ever got into a skirmish, the way to fight was to hit hard, hit fast, then run away as fast as you can. Which is exactly what he did. And that’s what the song is about.

The band had plans to meet fans in the lobby after the show for pictures and autographs, but Dad and I knew that the lobby was bound to be downright crazy and sardine-like in its packed-ness. As would Flannery’s Pub, where the band was also going to head for a few pints (as if they hadn’t had enough during the show itself). So we just hit the swag table and booted out of there, though I did talk Dad into taking a jaunt down to the parking lot where the GBS tour bus had been parked. We saw a van with a hitch. The Gaelic Storm Tour… Van?
Possibly..
“Let me tell you a little story about a man named Johnny Tarr
He was a hard-drinking son-of-a-preacher, always at the bar
Lager from the tap or shots of Paddy from the shelf
He could open his throttle and throw back a bottle as quick as the Devil himself
Johnny Tarr…”