Well well well, here we are, a month later, and I’m finally deciding to update. Sorry for the delay, but I’ve just been really lazy. So much has happened. Well to start things off, I graduated. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith and Grammy winning jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves spoke at our graduation. Pretty neato. My parents came into town for the ceremony and stayed for a few days. So every night i got to eat out at nice restaurants. It was awesome. One night in particular, we were at The Rockbottom in the theater district and i happened to see a couple of basketball players just hanging out. It was Kenyon Martin and Aaron Williams of the New Jersey Nets, and at the time i guess they were in town playing the Celtics. Huge guys. Oddly, it seemed that nobody really noticed them which must have been nice considering that they’re usually surrounded by fans and the media. And hey, did I mention they’re going to the NBA Finals? Craziness. So yeah, parents were in town, and it was fun. One thing that kinda sucked was the fact that I had conjunctivitis (pink eye) for pretty much the entire graduation week. So during the festivities I had this swollen left eye that looked half closed the whole time. Grad pictures are hilarious, in that i look very ogre-esque. Oh well, at least my eye matched our ultra lame PINK TASSLES. Haha..but i’m healed now so it’s all good. The week following graduation was pretty laid back, as Ethan and Joey went home, and Ben had already left for Nashville. Allen and I got to spend some good chill time, as it finally started to settle in that he wouldn’t be here this summer. Trips to the mall, the breakfast club, and writing bubble-gum pop seemed to take up most of our time, but we realized that we had to have at least one cool trip before we went our seperate ways. Allen and I have been huge fans of Silverchair’s new album, “Diorama” since it came out last year. For those that don’t remember them, they were those grungy kids from Australia that had that hit “Tomorrow” when they were 15 years old. “You gonna wait till fat boy, fat boy, wait till tomorrow…” Anyway, now they’re a lot more mature, as they’re fourth and latest release is a very melodic, emotional, and expressive rock album that is compareable to The Beach Boys Pet Sounds in the way that it experiments with music of its time. It has some rock opera elements, a la Queen, and progressive elements, and it’s all tied together with rich orchestrations, 3 of which were arranged by Van Dyke Parks, who has worked with Brian Wilson before. Ok so ANYWAY, the album is a smash in their native Australia, winning many awards including album, and artist of the year etc…but it hasn’t left a big impression here in the states. Consequently, their “Across the Night Tour” was limited to approximately 4 dates in the US, 2 in Los Angeles, and 2 in New York City. Each venue was to be very intimate, no more than 500 people in attendance, to better suit the music. Naturally, the tickets were sold out, but Allen and I were determined to go to NYC and catch these guys. So that’s where ebay came into play. Joey was arriving back the weekend before the show and so we all managed to secure tickets over ebay a couple days before the show. Joey’s seller was flying in from Texas or something to see the show, and our seller was probably just from around the New York area. We decided to just meet them outside the venue the day of for pickup….so on Monday, May 19…it was off to NYC.. Me, Allen and Joey loaded up into Allen’s volvo, said goodbye to the Raj and the Lehman, and we were off. But it wouldn’t be without problems. About an hour into our trip, Allen’s car overheated and had a coolant leak, and so we had to get it back and take Joey’s car. We lost about 2-3 hours, going back and forth, but it was all good, just less chill time in NYC before the show. We arrived in NYC at around 6pm. Parked the car in some garage, took the metro into the village, and hit up Little Italy for a nice little pre-show dinner. We sat outside at this nice little italian restaurant. The weather was perfect. We got to the show at 8pm and it ROCKED. It was definitely one of the best shows that i’ve seen. Daniel Johns, the frontman is such an outstanding vocalist. And the whole band was soo tight. Refreshing in a sense. We even saw some celebrities in the crowd. John Norris of MTV was there watching from the balcony, Tom DeLonge of Blink 182 was there with who appeared to be his wife, and the guitarist of Good Charlotte was just hanging out in the crowd the whole time. Joey and I were pretty much starstruck, but for everyone else, they seemed to be so relaxed about it. We don’t get many celebs here in Boston. Maybe it’s a New Yorker thing.. After the show, we caught up with John Norris and I even took a picture of him and Joey. Then, it was off to my friend’s place of whom i called earlier that day for a place to crash. We got a little lost on the way, but eventually we made it to Gina’s place. It’s a really small studio, but it has a great view that overlooks the river. Really cozy. After careful debate, we decided that we just wanted to drive back that night. Gina had an exam in the morning so we didn’t want to be an inconvenience. So at around 2:30am we left her place to go pick up the car at the garage, only to find that it was CLOSED! Apparently it wasn’t a 24 hour garage and it didn’t open again until 6am. So, instead of just wandering around the streets for hours, we ended up going back to Gina’s to crash. She was really cool about everything. Me, Allen and Joey were sort of forced to share the same bed, while Gina took the couch, but it was funny regardless. Even busted out a bottle of wine, and had some interesting conversations about um…star wars. ;-) We left Gina’s place around 9 or 10am, following a little boxing match between allen and gina’s dog. And that was that… On Tuesday we were back at Imrie, and on Wednesday, Joey and I cleared out a portion of our unfinished basement and setup a rehearsal/chill area. We built a drum platform from scratch and setup rugs, a pool table, a dart board, among other things. It’s really starting to shape up, and makes me wonder why we never took advantage of that free space down there before. Oh well, 3 months left to enjoy. Later, before crashing, Allen and I said our goodbyes, but didn’t really make a big deal about it. It’s crazy though, b/c he was the first friend i made up in boston (4 years ago) and since then we’ve been great friends, so it’s sad to see him go. We’re all gonna miss him. But we’ll be in touch. I caught a flight the following day to DC for my mom’s 50th birthday. My mom had never thrown a birthday party for herself, but for her 50th she wanted to change that. All she wanted was for all her close friends that she’s made over the years, from around the globe, to come for her 50th. And indeed, they all came. Friends from London, Europe, Hong Kong, Philippines etc., and all over the United States were at our house on the evening of the 24th of May. I was really glad to see my mom as happy as she was. It was a blast. While I was home, I also got to hang out a lot with Majeed. It was a awesome, we went to an Irish pub in Old Town the first night, and then spent what seemed to be every night at his sister’s new house. Definitely a really cool place to hang out. Amadeus is cool…(vg) Alex was back from boot camp so it was cool to see him again. Ah yes, and I can still hear the chanting from the Irish pub…”Who the f#c* is alex?!?” Hehe. Got to hang out with Bruce and Mary also. Saw Maricel as well, she was really cool to let me borrow her “junior”. A little bummed that I won’t be around the DC area this summer, but hopefully they’ll be able to come up and visit. In fact, I just moved into my new room (allen’s old room) and it’s sweeet. I’ve got so much space now. Nate arrived in town yesterday, and he has just officially moved into my old room. We all went out last night actually to celebrate his return, and it was off the hook. Me, Shwin, Nate, Ethan and Jesse started out going to Mike’s party, which was okay, but we really wanted to go to a bar. So, minus Ethan and Jesse, we embarked to “Tonic”. It was pretty freakin cool. Saw a LOT of cute girls actually. Shots and bottles of beer for shwin and joey, gin and tonic for me, and beer for nate. There was a group of girls that we ended up following to another bar, where we finally got to talk. There was this really attractive girl in particular, her name was Veronica…really cool, and somehow i managed to get her number…and put it in my CELL PHONE! Holla! That’s right..haha i have a cell phone. Still need to figure out how to use all these features. Anyway, so like when that bar closed @ 2am, we all moved on to Quan’s Kitchen, with our new beer mugs, for a little late night chinese cuisine. The night was definitely good, all i can say is…very goooood. Haha, alright this has definitely been my longest entry ever, and I’m sure there’s a lot of things that i’ve missed, but I’m just blabbing on now, so i’ll cut it here. But, enjoy these pics that chronicle our journey to NYC. Rock and Roll. Picture Credits: Eric: Pictures 1-5, 10-17 Allen: Picture 6 Joey: Pictures 7, 8, 18 Gina: Pictures 19, 20 :: Eric 9:53 PM [+] ::
