That’s where Aimee and I found ourselves Sunday afternoon in Northampton, waiting to cross King Street and head into downtown. I was pleased to stand there and do nothing, as Aimee insisted on faking a phone call in order to distract herself from celebrity-proximity-embarassment. I didn’t do the unthinkable and actually talk to them, but it was fun to have another small-town Wilco sighting, and as Aimee said, nice to see they hang out like they’re on a field trip together when they don’t really have to.

Our Wilco/Wedding Weekend began with a wedding in Newton on Saturday afternoon, with the reception in Cambridge, high above the Charles in the Hyatt Hotel. The view was great, and the reception pleasant; we didn’t know a lot of people (four, total, including the bride and groom), and there wasn’t any dancing, but it was nice to be there. Afterwards, we headed out to Waltham to see Wilco play a somewhat unexpected show at Brandeis, in the Shapiro Gym. Unexpected, because I don’t think it was announced at the same time the rest of the area shows were, and we had already made our decision to see them at the Calvin in Northampton as opposed to the Wang Center here in Boston. But with a small college show a few minutes away, we couldn’t pass it up, so we found ourselves among a few thousand Brandeis students, standing under a retracted basketball hoop, waiting for Wilco at eight o’clock on Saturday night.

Little did we know, we’d have to suffer through the Fiery Furnaces first; an appropriate name, for the way it made us feel halfway through their interminable set. Imagine no song breaks, no melodies, no singing, really, and no personality. The only entertaining thing about them was their amazing drummer, who looked like he was auditioning for Dokken or Europe or Van Halen, with his highly choreographed cymbal-taps, his elaborate facial expressions, and the echt-80s upraised drumstick twirl. Watching him was the only way we got through the set.

The new Wilco, with the addition of Messrs. Cline and Sansone, sounded great, as we know from seeing them at the Newport Folk Festival in August. Seeing them in a smaller venue, indoors, made it clear how great, though. The songs from the new album, almost all of which they played in this show, really flourished live; it just sounded as though it was meant to be played live. They mixed in a few songs from other albums, like “A Shot in the Arm” and a beautiful rendition of “In A Future Age,” and played a one-song encore of “Spiders (Kidsmoke).” The second encore featured more interesting material, but surprisingly, no “California Stars” or “Passenger Side.” Jeff’s demeanor throughout was a lot more animated and engaged than I’ve really seen him before, joking, smiling, and even doing some little dances on stage. He’s no Bono, but for him, it was a big change. They ended the show with an election-season rant, singing “Christ for President” and “Be Not So Fearful,” encouragement as we go to the polls.





Sunday morning, I ran the Somerville Homeless Coalition 5K, my fourth year doing it, and I tried to go into it as a regular three mile run as opposed to an actual race. I ended up doing something in between holding back and letting go, and had a good, harmless race.

The rest of the afternoon we spent in Amherst, checking out the new buildings and the stuff under construction on campus (plus the wacky Pagan festival on the Common), and then on to Northampton. After a nice afternoon wandering Main Street (and running into Wilco), we met Abby and Mark for dinner, fully aware that we should stay as far away from the Fiery Furnaces as we could. We headed in with about five merciful minutes left in their set, just enough time to get a sense of how bad they were, and then enjoyed another great Wilco set.

The sound setup and acoustics were much better this time around, and the setlist was a little more diverse: an incredible “Via Chicago,” second song in the set, as well as “Sunken Treasure.” We could do this every night…

For the first time in my relatively short baseball fandom, there will be a new team, or at least a team in a new location, next year. While I’m not too concerned with visiting RFK Stadium in the next two seasons, I’ll be interested to visit the new park in DC in 2007. Michael Wilbon has a good column in the Post about the potential names for the team (thanks, Twism and Coz, for making sure I can hear it read in his voice after watching him and Kornheiser go at it every night). I like his logic, and share his aversion to the spate of stupid names that have recently plagued pro sports. Senators is a perfectly fine choice, and Grays might be better, though it does have that retro-trendiness to it. Whatever they choose, it can’t be worse than the Wizards, I guess.

So said the guy giving me a massage last night, about my marathon training at this point. We were discussing the aches and pains I am having, and the fact that I haven’t run since Monday, which is more days off in a row than I’ve had in a year. He said that’s what his coach used to tell him, as he tapered before the big day. I’m not really sure why it means what it means, but I take it to mean there’s not a whole lot more I can do. That feeling I have, like I haven’t run in weeks, and might have forgotten how to run period, much less 26 miles, is not to be listened to.

The massage was terrific – a little painful, but it did wonders for getting me loose, and figuring out some trouble spots I should work on stretching in the next week. It was a (very thoughtful) gift from Aimee, and I chose to redeem it with the folks at Massage Therapy Works in Davis Square, upstairs from Jimmy Tingle (it always comes back to the Tingles, no?). I feel well-prepared for the marathon, and I hope the pains I’m feeling now will fade away in the next week or so. I also hope I take it easy in the Somerville Homeless Coalition Race on Sunday.

Last night, Marty and the Social Club turned the corner, for me, and went from a band I go to see because I know the singer, to a band I’d go to see because the music is so good. They played a short set in front of a small-ish crowd at the Middle East Upstairs (not my favorite place) – a girl with the “I Saved Latin” shirt, a guy I know from work, and some members of the opening bands – and debuted one new song. I got to put my camera through its paces a little, though I still haven’t started using the new memory I got.

The Double Marty:



Classic smart-aleck bathroom graffiti, complete with misspelling.

So it was more like a Taser than a gun, but we did have fun with it at Crate & Barrel this weekend as we started setting up our registry. We had a productive weekend, starting with the great save-the-date mailout on Saturday morning (as Aimee said, thank goodness for self-adhesive stamps).



We started adding items to our registry after my Saturday run, and made some fateful decisions about dishes and silverware, which in the end isn’t I guess all that fateful, but I hope we still like it in a year when we’ll be eating off it every night. I think we will.



I didn’t have the stamina to make it to Macy’s as well, but we did make it to Delux Cafe in the South End, home of Elvis kitsch and a great grilled cheese sandwich (and also apparently restaurant #1 according to the Boston.com link).

On Sunday night, we enjoyed a terrific concert to kick of the Celebrity Series at Symphony Hall, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Dianne Reeves. The first half of the too-short concert featured the orchestra performing original compositions as well as some Ellington numbers. Reeves came out for the second half, and was amazing. I’ve been stuck in Ella / Sarah / Billie mode forever, and it was refreshing to hear someone live with such gifts, tonally, improvisationally, and every other which way. She performed two of my favorite songs, “Lullabye of Birdland” and “Skylark,” to begin her set, and displayed an amazing, rich range. Listening to Reeves and Marsalis call and respond on “You Go to My Head” was a real pleasure.

And what better way to end the evening than admiring the fruit architecture at Whole Foods? And no, I don’t have a permit to take that photo. Sorry.

I had the last of my long weekend runs today, thirteen miles along the Charles River. The distance seemed short, even though before three weeks ago, it was the longest I’d ever run before. I finished right around the time I had for my last half-marathon in February, but I feel pretty good about it because it capped a seven-day period in which I ran 46 miles. I’ve got two weeks to go until marathon day, and I think I’ll be happy I covered all that distance as I get to save up my energy and do a series of short runs until the big day.

My marathon book makes a big deal out of the decision about what to wear on marathon day, how looking good, or feeling good about how you look, can make a difference in your race. They emphasize putting your number on straight, so your finishing photo will be something you’re not annoyed with for the rest of your life. I’ve been running in my moisture-wicking shirt (where’d that word come from?), which has been great, and my shorts with the pockets in pack for my gel packets, and I’ll probably wear those on the race day. I never thought I’d really care what my finishing picture looked like, until I saw this one, from the Brian Honan 5K I ran a few weeks ago. It’s about the most horrific-looking picture of me I’ve ever seen, all sweaty, with matted hair, shifty eyes, pale legs, splayed feet, and a look of intense concentration. I was trying to finish in under 22:00, and was staring at the clock as I came into the finish. Those are not excuses…just an explanation.

According to the Chicago Marathon site at this moment, there are 37556:16:9:53 (days, hours, minutes, seconds) until the start of the marathon. In my world. though, the marathon is three weeks from today, and today I ran the longest distance I’ll run in training before the even itself, 20 miles. I can only compare it to the feeling I had after my thirteen-hour round trip climb on Hvannadalshnúkur in Iceland this spring, that feeling of not being able to lift my legs to climb up stairs, not being able to bend in all the places I was able to before this morning. It was a very different run from my previous 16-mile loop two weeks ago, because for no apparent reason, my legs began cramping about halfway through. The weather was great, Aimee had water and encouragement for me at stops along the way, and everything felt good, but I just couldn’t get my legs to work, for whatever reason. For the last five miles or so, I devised a system that allowed me to run, instead of the shuffle/walk I had been doing up to that point. I would run 50 steps, stretch, then 60 steps, stretch, and so on. 150 steps was my limit, but I felt better having come up with a way to get over the cramps instead of giving in and hoping it didn’t happen again. I’ll still try to make sure it doesn’t, but at least I know what to do if they do return. It’s going to be a long week, nearly thirty more miles on tap between tomorrow and Saturday, but it will all pale in comparison to today. I think that’s the point.

In other news, a good weekend for the Yankees, though it started poorly, as they managed fewer points than most baseball teams usually put up.

I got an email this morning with the subject “congrats,” which immediately made me think it was either lotto scam or Nigerian scam email. Of course, those don’t go in the trash, but into my Nigeria folder, which now has over 300 amazing examples in it, including the two that came in today, from “Barrister Jacklin Gogo” and “MR:James Amah the first son of his Royal Majesty [ CHIEF MATTHEW DEDE Amah ].”

When I read this message, though, I discovered it was actually not spam, but notification that my blog had been picked as the “site of the day” by Coolstop.com, a site which seeks to point out cool, non-commercial creativity on the web. The reviewer took the time to look around a bit, and had some nice things to say about my work in his another blog’s mention of my photo booth section. Maybe the word is beginning to get out.

On the other side of the coin of higher visibility, there’s this mention in the “this ‘n that” section of Boston Common’s blog watch that seems to think I’m a girl. I know I’m slightly anonymous, but that’s because most of my readers know me or are related to me. Do I write like a girl? And how exactly does that sound?

Another good show last night at my favorite venue around, the Paradise. We saw Snow Patrol (with the charming, sibling-stocked Eisley opening) play an energetic, if oddly-constructed set in front of a sold out crowd. The album has grown on me, and the band played a set that, at moments, made me happy to be enjoying a moment or two in the long and storied history of bands, invariably made up of four or five guys with slightly different-length hair, hailing from somewhere in the British Isles. That’s an odd way of explaining it, and I don’t mean the Beatles, but there’s a certain sound the band achieved last night that fits nicely in the timeline with the Stone Roses, Blur, Ride, Supergrass, Doves, Coldplay, and others. It’s a classic sound when you hear it on an album, and it’s got even more pull and power live; last night, Snow Patrol got there a couple of times, and for that I was happy. Another element of seeing a band like that in concert is the dependable and charming culture-clash commentary from the lead singer. Last night, it was bemusement at the Jimmy Buffet fans who clogged the bars the night before. “All these people with parrots on their heads. Is it not true they’re worn on the shoulder, traditionally?”

My new camera arrived yesterday afternoon, as well, so it was a good opportunity to test it out. It’s a lot quicker, more responsive, and has a raft of features I have yet to understand. But it still takes pictures, and fits in my pocket, so I’m happy.

This weekend, tickets for the Pixies’ return to the Bay State after twelve years away went on sale. Having had the opportunity see the Pixies in Iceland in May, one of the few chances for them to play “Caribou” to actual caribou (thanks, Pitchfork), I jumped at the chance to see them perform “U-Mass” at UMass… I was prepared for the normal Ticketmaster disaster scene, but managed to get through on the phone before getting success online, and got four floor tickets for the Mullins Center show in Amherst on November 30th. (Their seating chart only gave two choices: “generic” or “Cosby.” Nice.) It ought to be a momentous night, and when you add a chance for some Antonio’s for the road on the way home, well, you can’t beat that.

As a warmup for the marathon, and to keep me going between my two longest training runs (last weekend and next weekend), I ran the Brian J. Honan 5K in Allston today. It was the first year for the race, celebrating the life and causes of the late Councilor Honan. It was a nice event, and I found it touching to see so many people wearing supporter shirts from Honan’s various campaigns, some from as recent as two years ago, months before he passed away.

Someone ought to do a study on pre-race music; there are some favorites that are always trotted out, but this morning was particularly painful for a few reasons: firstly, because I was there early, I heard a lot of stuff, and secondly, because Honan was a fan of some pretty unique and interesting music, bands like Stiff Little Fingers, the Clash, and the Psychedelic Furs. There’s an entire essay on his charitable fund’s website about his music obsession, which made it seem all the more sad that we got what seemed like an entire Jimmy Buffet album, plus that awful Lee Greenwood song and a bunch of other cliched Rock and Roll. A live version of “I Will Follow” was about as close to what Honan’s taste seemed to be as we got.

Anyway, the race was fun. I went out pretty hard and managed to keep up the pace for the most part. I felt good, and came in 30th place overall, out of 500+, with a new personal best of 22:00 flat. I’d like to improve on that next month at the Somerville Homeless Coalition 5K, but this course was a lot flatter than that one is. Anyway, I felt strong, and with less than a month to the marathon, I’m ready for the home stretch.

I made my yearly pilgrimage to Brimfield today for the annual postcard show that goes along with the much larger (read: totally insane) antique fair there. The postcard dealers set up at buildings on either end of the mile of antique dealers, so I parked at one end and walked the length to the other, checking out some of the stalls along the way. The amount of stuff for sale was just astounding, and the dealer booths seem to just recede into the distance, discouraging all but the heartiest of collectors from discovering the far reaches (check out the aerial shot). Plenty of strange stuff to examine, even in the few stalls I checked out.



Yes, that is a wrought-iron gazebo, decorated with a set of steer horns, flanked by an accordionist and a Statue of Liberty lamp.



Kind of spooky.

I came across this clock, which immediately caught my eye because we have one just like it, only in a darker shade, at home in Anchorage. The lamp on the table in front of it is similar to something we had on the wall, too – did they raid our house?



I managed to find a few new postcards, even after six or seven years of buying every new one I came across. The same dealers who never had anything still don’t have anything, and the same dealers who managed to have a little something new each time came through again. I chatted with one dealer who recognized me – “Hey, Mr. Amherst…” – looking a little older each time I see him. I still want to make a documentary about postcard dealers and collectors; I wonder when I’ll ever have a chance, before the generation of dealers I know has passed on.

Almost as interesting and numerous as the antique stalls are the food choices available at Brimfield. Ben & Jerry’s, Del’s Water Ice, Herrell’s Ice Cream, every kind of fried dough, dough ball, flan, and slush concotion known to man. I decided against those, and instead enjoyed some locally-brewed “dark bottle” root beer and a kielbasa from the Mr. Kielbaska cart from Worcester, but I passed on the delicious treats these folks were advertising.

I finally took the plunge and ordered a new digital camera last night. It will replace my first digital camera, the workhorse Canon PowerShot S100 that I got on eBay in August, 2001.



I’m pleased with the three years of service I got, and figured it was high time to move on from the 2.1 megapixel world. In a few years, it’ll probably seem like upgrading from a Model T to a Model A, but I think it’ll be a nice step. It’ll probably speed up the timeline for getting a new laptop, since the images will be four or five times as big, but I’m looking forward to a faster, better, snappier (and even smaller!) camera, especially one with a functioning flash.



After much contemplation, I chose the Canon PowerShot S410 over the newer, pricier S500, and decided to spend the money I saved on a bigger memory card for the new camera. The old one will now be the glove compartment camera I wish I had but always forget; hopefully I can keep it charged and useful.

The new sound system recently installed at work was being tested today, so we went in to listen as they ran some recent trailers in order to test the Dolby Digital part of the equipment that doesn’t get utilized when you’re playing 40 year-old movies. There was nothing spectacular about the selection: For [the] Love of the Game followed by Anna and the King, two clunkers from the class of ’99. But despite the fact that I knew first-hand how bad one of the movies was, and could imagine the other, these trailers made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Watching them made me realize I’m in the right line of work – the one where I get to watch bright things on a big screen with loud music and sound effects – and that a good trailer for a bad movie can still give me a thrill.

I can’t say wedding planning has been a painful experience, but it has its ups and downs, what with choosing the right band and trying to figure out which photographer‘s eye or style will be better. It’s rewarding, but it’s a challenge, too. Choosing a honeymoon destination, on the other hand, has been all great, all the time.

When we were in Alaska last month, Aimee and I spent some quality time at Title Wave looking at travel guides to possible destinations, from Europe to South America to Oceania. The winner had to meet all of our criteria: somewhere neither of us had been, somewhere that wasn’t too beachy/resorty, but was also not too full of things to do that we’d feel the need to take in sights and museums all the time. We were looking for that delicate balance between relaxation and boredom, between stimulation and overload. Our final answer? It was the dark horse of the bunch, beating out Greece, Tuscany, France, the Swiss Alps, and the rest of the Caribbean: the tiny, pun–prone land of Belize! In the past few weeks, we’ve gone from wondering exactly where Belize was to knowing the sightseeing highlights, the best-sounding beachfront caba?as and riverside villas, and even keeping track of the exchange rate (ok, so that’s an easy one, as it’s permanently tied at $2Bz to the dollar).

The beaches, jungles, caves, and ruins all look tempting, and if that wasn’t enough, the choice was a fortuitous one for other reasons. We found out that USAir flies from Boston to Belize City with a stopover in Charlotte, and USAir happens to be the airline Aimee has been racking up frequent flier miles with for the past few years, with nowhere to spend them. So, our airfare is covered, and we spent the past weekend making some decisions about where we want to go in our nine days in the country. Our Rough Guide was very helpful as we chose our destinations, and we came up with a nice complementary pair of locations: four nights on the beach at Mata Chica in Ambergris Caye, and four nights at Five Sisters Lodge in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Preserve. I anticipate fun water taxi and muddy road adventures getting from place to place, as well – in fact, I’ve never been further south than Ft. Myers, Florida when I went to Red Sox Spring Training with George in 2003, so I really have no idea what to expect. I’ve got a soup of film-inspired pre-conceived notions, a bad mix of Romancing the Stone, Fitzcarraldo, The Mission, and Moon over Parador, so I look forward to going somewhere truly new, ten months from this week.