I had an amazing and exhausting weekend. I’ll basically go through it chronologically.
FRIDAY
9-5: During work I was able to watch a few episodes of Friday Night Lights, which I’ve been checking out for the past week or so. It’s really, really good. Good acting, hot chicks, football, a nice cast of characters and it’s all filmed in a pseudo-documentary style, similar to Battlestar Galactica. The show has been sort of quietly building up hype and the howls of protest after it got snubbed by the Emmys (who also snubbed The Wire) motivated me to watch the show. If I could figure out what time it’s on, I’d add it to the few shows I actually watch on TV regularly (which is pretty much limited to BSG, The Office, 30 Rock, House, and It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia).
Friday night: The Simpsons Movie. Wow, good stuff. Essentially, it’s a 90 minute long episode. Thankfully, it’s a 90 minute long good episode, so I didn’t feel gyped out of my 8 bucks. There were even a few pretty solid laugh-out-loud moments, which have been sorely lacking from the show in the past five years or so. As a plus, we went on opening night so the crowd was really into it. If you’re a fan, check it out. If you’re not a fan of The Simpsons then, what the fuck?
Late Friday night: There were naked women at a party which was taking place in my apartment. Of course, I wasn’t in any way involved with this party, instead attempting to sleep before my summer league tournament. The involvement of naked women with the party was your first clue that I was not actually there. Positive: got to see naked chicks. Negative: got 4 hours of sleep before important tournament.
Saturday
Despite getting very little sleep (and having all my Red Bull’s drunk by some drunk), I think I played pretty well. But how I played paled in comparison to how my team as a whole played. After winning decisively in our first two games, we faced the number 1 seed in the tournament, who had gone undefeated all season, Gritty’s. We hung in there the whole game but, after a brief rain delay, we were down 13-12 with the hard cap at 14. Enter Wonder who skies one of the best players in the league to make it 13-13 and then, after a fantastic pull by Ster, records back to back d-blocks on the aforementioned player on the goal line (the first d-block resulted in an utterly bullshit foul call) and we score to take the game. In the semis we blew a 10-3 lead and found ourselves down 16-15 capped at 17. Once again we came up big and won on universe point. However, squandering that lead cost us almost all our legs with our top 3 of Wonder, Emu, and Ster playing about 30 straight points and P-buck and myself having played around 25 of 30. In the finals we faced the juggernaut that was Maine Gym (who had crushed everyone they’d played thus far) and we played them as tough as we could, taking half 8-6 and being up 9-6 at one point. However, we couldn’t hold on when Emu and Wonder (who were our primary defenders) began to fade. That combined with Ster being hurt and P-buck cramping and being unable to breathe correctly caused us to fall 15-11 in the finals. Nevertheless, it was an amazing tournament and I am incredibly proud to have been a part of our amazing run. Playing in front of the hundreds of people watching the finals was like a dream, amazing.
Negatives of Saturday: I couldn’t go to the summer league party because I needed to get back to school and the only thing I ate all day was a hot dog. While missing the party was a bummer, I would trade a million parties for the feeling of taking half in the finals.
Sunday
Woke up at 4:30 am (after 4 hours of sleep, 8hrs in the last 48 if you’re keeping track at home) and drove to NYC for the Rock the Bells concert. Quick review of the concert: holy shit. Amazing, amazing bunch of shows. I’ll try to summarize; We’ll start with the negative:
The Bad
Public Enemy – They seemed really disjointed, plus I don’t know any of their songs and I spent the whole time wishing they were The Roots, who had performed the night before. There was a lot of weirdness near the end of their set where it seemed that Chuck D. just left the stage (it was hard to tell because at that point I was really far away).
The Weather – It poured from 1-4. Since I was wearing a cotton t-shirt and there was no place to go inside, this was miserable. It also really dampened the crowd’s enthusiasm during the Mos Def + Talib Kweli set, which was pretty damn good. Luckily it stopped at around 4:15 and I was able to change into a dry shirt which made all the difference in the universe.
I missed MF Doom – I was watching Public Enemy at the time and had found a pretty good spot so I didn’t want to lose it for the rest of the concert. Bummer.
Getting Out of the Concert - Thousands of people trying to fit in a narrow bus line and not respecting anyones personal space, enough said.
The Great
The Slice of Pizza I had after the concert - Will Mills took me to some pizza place that sold slices that were like two feet long for 3 dollars, since all I had eaten in the past two days was a hot dog and a soft pretzel this was the greatest slice of pizza in history.
The Hosts - Supernatural and Rahzel. Really solid job keeping everyone into it between sets, mixed in with some sweet freestyles by Supernatural.
Pharoe Monche - He just knew how to get the crowd involved. Everyone was going nuts for his whole setand when he started up with “Simon Says” the place went Berserk, definitely the highlight of the earlier acts.
Immortal Technique - See, Pharoe Monche. Replace “Simon Says” with “Bin Laden” dial down the intensity of my praise by 1.
Sage Francis – Performing on the independent stage. I learned that Sage Francis is utterly insane. It’s basically impossible to describe his style on stage as he marches and dances and all sorts of ridiculous things. Just a huge amount of energy, he was great.
Wu Tang - I mean, Wu Tang. Come on, they rule.
Mos Def + Talib - Amazing artists, who are two of my favorites and who performed really well, only hindered by the fact that the rain was really taking people out of it by this point.
Brother Ali – Probably the second best act of the show, he was awesome. I was really amazed by his stage presence which was excellent and got the crowd going nuts. In fact, it was probably the second most raucous crowd of the show (after Rage, more on this soon). I’ll probably go get his album solely based on his performance and I’d love to check him out again as a headliner (or with more of the Rhymesayers guys).
Finally, the best part of the whole show RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE – wow, I have never rocked so hard in my life. Despite 11 hours on my feet, despite the rain, despite rocking for 11 other artists by this point, Rage blew the crowd away. I don’t even know what more to say, they had insane energy especially from Zach and Tom Morello and hit all their best songs (“Bulls on Parade” FTW~!), ending with just an absurdly high energy “Killing in the Name of.” Basically, my favorite group from High/Middle School just killing it. Amazing.
So anyway yeah, best concert of my life. I saw 13 acts in 11 hours. Worth every penny.
Good Weekend
