Not to make light of a sad situation, but I can't believe over 300 people went to see Great White at a Roadhouse. It's not that I can't believe that they went to a roadhouse to see a show... Roadhouses traditionally have great bands and cheap beer. Jim Morrison sang all about the roadhouse and a good time. Hell yeah.
What I can't believe is that over 300 people went to see Great White.
Worst. Hair. Band. Ever.
Pay your cover to get in, hear the beginning of a song. Don't make it home that night. Whatever went wrong, it's "Not so good, Al. Not so good."
I feel badly for the victims in this situation. I've long been a fan of music in clubs in a live setting, and it's been a bad week for any such kind of event. First in Chicago where hoards are trampled in panic as they try to exit a club that should not have been open, then this one where a cheapassed crappy pyrotechnic display sets fire to a cut-rate cheapassed "soundproofing" curtain behind the stage.
There is a long history of places going up in smoke. Regionally there's the Coconut Grove fire in Boston, and the Happyland Arson in NYC. Doug also brought up the Hartford Circus fire which took the lives of dozens as the paraffin (sp?) soaked big-top.
I'm sworn off live shows and circuses for quite a while.
But when I go back out to see a movie or hear a concert, you better believe I'm checking fire exits and sitting right next to one. I'll even set off the alarm to test the stupid thing just to make sure it works and isn't blocked from the other side or locked or something. I'd rather have the management yell at me and have firetrucks show up than be trapped and dead.
 | We're back, as you can oh-so-plainly see. Our mini-vacation was very nice. The kids were pretty well behaved for ole Grandma, Grampa and Auntie Lee Lee (thank you again folks for taking them off our hands for a spell). As you can see here, we got a little snow. Our grill looks like Kid from Kid 'n Play. It was an amazingly light and fluffy snow, the kind you can brush off with a broom. So getting out and on the road was easy. The snow tried its best to prevent us from going. I wish we had heeded the ominous warning -- "Don't Go! You'll Lose All Your Money! Alllllll yourrrrrrrrr monnnnneeeeeeeeyyyyyy!!" I'm glad we didn't bring the deed to the house. It wasn't that bad, we didn't lose like Nick Cage in that Vegas gambling movie he did with Sarah Jessica Parker and James Caan. |
Driving down we tried to think of all the songs that have ever been featured on "The Simpsons," either with the band/artist performing on the show (in cartoon form) like REM or Aerosmith, or sung by the characters (Homer singing Steve Miller's "The Joker," Apu singing Cheap Trick's "Dream Police).
We may compile a good list and burn a CD. It'd be "excellent." Jessica is aces with remembering who sang/played what, so we had a good time. "The Coast Guard's covering the Dooobs!"
We ditched the kids and made tracks, seeing as it's about 3 hours to AC from my folks and we'd be going during rush hour.
We got trapped like rats going onto the Garden State Parkway at the first tolls. The express lanes to the left of the tolls were closed so everyone was forced to merge right. The snow removal teams were still clearing snow off the sides of the highway in the express lanes...so there were 20 lanes of traffic trying to merge to the right. Some people who were already over to the right figured "Hey, there must be a problem over here in the local lanes, so I'll go to the left and take the express lanes!" So those jerks were fucking things up even worse for those of us already on the right trying to get left.
It was a cluster.
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 | But we made it. We saw a car accident on 440 on Staten Island. We saw a wicked nice sunset, pictured here. And we also saw an amazing moonrise, no picture... but it was totally unbelievably almost crash the car gorgeous. Staying at the casino was fun. The hotel was great except for a few peculiarities (ie: remote control missing from room, no soap/handcream/shampoo in room, which I took as an oversight by the hospitality staff). |
Our Jacuzzi was ghetto, only one of the four jets worked and it worked ferociously... so that was disappointing. We got to take a nice walk on the boardwalk on Wednesday, the weather warmed up enough for us to be out of doors.
Tuesday night there was no one (hardly) at the casino. Wednesday the bodies began to flow in. By our departure time on Thursday the place was mobbed with tons of old smoky men and women, some of whom sat there pumping coins into one-armed bandits while the ash on each cigarette grew and grew.
It was time to go -- and time for some serious fresh air.
We gambled enough to earn comp dollars for our meals, so breakfast, lunch and dinner were gleefully enjoyed in some pretty darn decent restaurants in the building. And, before we left we cashed in the remaining 30 comp dollars and had some beers and sat at the central bar soaking in the atmosphere. It was nice.
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| The view to the east and the west from our window. On the left, you see why it is called the Trump Marina. There's a marina and a yacht club in this little bit of land, and the rest of the AC boardwalk and action are down the shore a little bit. The large gold bouillon which was dropped from heaven and landed in the open fields of south Jersey is a brand new casino hotel which is being built. We couldn't see it at night as we drove in. It was a gigantic ghostly lump of an object in the darkness as we approached the Trump, but in the morning, this is what it looked like. Quite dazzling, and sorta damn ugly and out of place compared to the rest of what AC looks like. | |
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| Doug sits at the bar, I photograph him without his knowledge. | And casinos are chock full of mirrors. So I caught this nice one for a mirror project shot. Of course. |
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| These are two of my favorite pictures I've taken in a long while. I used the macro feature on the camera (now that I know what the hell it does) and I used the moonlight setting for low light exposure. Doug's hand is in a blur in the left picture. But the one on the right is so cool. Our last 3 dollars of the night, floating in the bottom of a beer glass. How poetic. How casino. How "1-800-Gambling." | |
We laughed a lot at people we saw, and noted that there were no totally insane crazy people like there were when we were at the Tropicana in November of 2001. No one cut Doug in the buffet line. We liked the way the sunlight played through the roof of the main level. It was fun to be grown-ups away from kids. I didn't have to break up any disputes between my children, I didn't have to tell someone not to touch something 1000 times (actually, I lie -- I told Doug to stop playing the slots 1000 times... just like I tell Geoff to keep his hands off of things. Now I know where he gets it!)
We missed seeing the Village People by a couple nights. And saints be praised, Tony Danza's coming to perform at one of the casino ballrooms and we missed it! Yay!
The best part of the trip though was the music played over the soundsystem at the Trump Marina. I'm not joking -- best music ever. If you like deep cuts from Album Oriented and Progressive Rock of the 70s and 80s. No lie. We heard things like "No Quarter" by Led Zep (who even knows that song exists!!!???), Doug heard "Guillotine" by Rush (hello?), and I rocked out to "Vahevalla" by Loggins & Messina while we sat at the bar relaxing on Wednesday night. I think I may have been the only one in that building who knew that song.
They played some obvious songs too, not every single song was some sort of obscure deep cut off some album Kansas released long after "Point of No Return." Some Grateful Dead, CSNY, a little Bob Seeger. Pat Benatar declared that Hell is for Children but didn't dare you to Hit Me with Your Best Shot. Heart's Barracuda blared through the sound systems and there was a fair share of Who and Springsteen. (Baba O'Reilly/Won't Get Fooled Again blends right in with the sounds of a casino, in harmony. Beautifully).
They played some dogs too. I never need to hear another Van Halen song as long as I live, especially "Runnin' with the Devil." Puh-lease. Doug and I disagreed on George Thorogood. I don't like him. Doug can't understand what's not to like. Musically I can listen to him, until he starts singing. The music itself is great -- the voice. Eww. Hate him. So we discussed that for a while. He's in that Delaware/South Jersey kind of cult of rock, so it fit in with where we were.
The funniest was when Doug went down to get coffee on Wednesday morning, He found it slightly ironic that they were playing "Big Shot" by Billy Joel at 8am as bleary-eyed gamblers (himself included I guess) dragged themselves around the lobby.
There were no Eminem songs played. No Nelly or Naz. No No Doubt. No Cold Play. And ... no Great White.
Just some amazing songs pulled of some of the powerhouse albums of my childhood. I must have said twenty times "I haven't heard this song since... junior high school. It ROCKS ON FIRE!"
And I felt very old. But. At least I wasn't in the casino where they play Wayne Newton and Sammy Davis, Jr. Fly me to the moon... baddaba boo baddaba deee. That's old. Oldy and moldy.
If you live on the east coast, a mid-week trip to AC in February is really relaxing and nice.
Oh, we took the Outerbridge Crossing from and to Staten Island on our trip, and drove right by the gas storage tanks that blew to high bloody blazes today. All they could talk about on the New York News was how the explosion automatically made "everyone think it was 911 all over again..."
That didn't cross my mind until they said it. Accidents like this happen a lot and I don't automatically turn on my panic response. But once they said it I'm sure that all the people watching who lived through 911 were brickshitting in their seats.
That's pretty much the muppet update over here. Tess, you can rest assured I'll be sending you email. Great to be back all... great to be back
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