At least I had a few days of warning that things might not be quite what I had imagined. A crawfish festival for charity with a five-dollar donation—surely, there wouldn't be a lot of publicity for this? After all, when I bought that John Mayer CD a couple of months ago, nobody had heard of him…although I'd gotten hints that his (small) fanbase was (extremely) devoted…

Kat finally found her roll of film from our trip to New Orleans earlier this year. It contains some pictures that I referenced in a previous entry, The Jester of Jackson Square. They’re linked in that entry now, if you’re curious to see photos of the balloon artist (Checkers) I was describing.

There are also a few other pictures from that trip which don’t fit in with the theme of that entry. Full photoset here.

Ok...more snapshots of life going on its merry way. View and be appropriately amused.

How strange, to actually meet the person that is Jonatha Brooke. How strange, to encounter for the first time a fan's mentality—to realize that the person who is standing in front of you and laughing at a joke is someone who is called by a single name by her friends—and not the full name that's on her albums.

CDNow's article about the Juno awards had a snippet in it that made me laugh. It rattled off a string of artists up for awards, but then mentioned "national heroes Tragically Hip…" which left me a bit dumbfounded.

Y'know, Brad's been trying to tell me this for years, but I think it took a two-word sobriquet on a music site to really understand the difference between there and here.

(Taken from an email to Andy.)

So here's the deal on last night's Sting concert. Smooth and polished and practiced, exactly as we expected. I predicted the concert almost exactly—1¾ hours, two encores, didn't do any Police tunes until the encores.

(I actually predicted an hour and a half, two encores, and Police tunes only during the encores. Pretty close, eh?)I would've liked a bit more interaction with the audience, but it was a good show. He featured a lot more material from Blue Turtles than I would've expected—the entire show actually had a strong jazz feel to it. Lots of soloing—he had a fab trumpeter and keyboardist and used them both well.

It was unbelievably hot. It was 103 in B'ham yesterday. Luckily we only caught the tail end of the day, but it was muggy and hot and everyone was absolutely sweat-drenched.