What's Better Than Free?

Ohhh, summer. How I love it. Without the stresses of classes and homework I have been able to spend my time doing the things I do best. Taking naps, playing XBox, ultimate Frisbee, watching PTI and a string of VH1 reality shows, and going to concerts. A lot of concerts. I listened to the classic sounds of the Eagles at the beautiful Rio Tinto Stadium. I endured the darkened confines of the Urban Lounge in the name of The Helio Sequence. I even partied with thousands of teenage girls at the Pussycat Dolls/Britney Spears concerts at ESA. (If you have a problem with this I have three things to say to you: My little sister invited me, I had a great time, and deal with it.) To top all this off, in a week I will be in Chicago for the massive music, beer, and sweat-fest known as Lollapalooza. Aside from being totally awesome and sardine-esque, these concerts had one thing in common: Expensive.

Being a concert junkie and living in a town without concerts can be a pricey habit. Between gas, food, merchandise, and tickets (blast you, service fees!) it is pretty easy to spend between $30 to $100 for a show. That's of you don't care where you sit. (Grand total on the Rihanna concert expenditure of last summer was around $400. Worth it.) Luckily this summer has blessed me with the discovery of the free concert. The Twilight Concert Series (TwiCon, anyone?) at the Gallivan Center has been a revelation. With bands like Bon Iver, Jenny Lewis, Black Keys, and the incomparable M.Ward, the music has been top-notch and the crowds are energetic and entertaining. The outdoor venue provides a great setting as the sun goes down and with the shows wrapping up around ten, it is easy to get back to Logan Land at a decent hour. I've loved it so much I am considering driving to Vermont and performing a commitment ceremony to it. That was a weird thing to say.

Continuing on with my free concert high, my bro Marcus and I drove out to Park City on Tuesday for the MLS All-Star Jam featuring Soulive. Our main purpose was supporting Mar's brother, whose band, Shaky Trade, who opened the festivities. Shaky did great (I will blog about them some other time. I have seen them multiple times and they can really wail.) and after they finished, Mar and I debated on whether we should stay for this unknown (to us) band or get back home. To make a long story short, we stayed and were rewarded ten-fold. Soulive is a jazz/funk trio consisting of a drummer, guitarist, and organist. With very few vocals, the three combined to create a beat that seemed to far exceed the abilities of only three people. The highlight of the night came when a power surge cut power to half the lighting and part of the organ. Instead of waiting around for a fix, the three quickly went into improv mode and continued to tickle our collective jazz bone. To make things even sweeter after the show we joined Shaky Trade backstage for a little meet and greet with the band. I even talked to the organist. It went down like this:

Me: Hey, great show.

Mr. Evans: Thanks, man.

I wish I could have held on to that moment a little bit longer. First of all, if your jazz bone needs tickling, I highly recommend a little Soulive. Second, free concerts are wonderful. Third, have I learned my lesson and stopped spending so much money on concerts? Absolutely not. As I write this, I simultaneously have a few hundred dollars invested in Lolla, Killers, and Elton John/Billy Joel tickets. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think it all evens out somehow. But free is definitely more fun.

Here is a short clip of Soulive to give you an idea of what I got to see:

Anniversary

Thanks to Stacey, the super blogging expert, I think I may have finally solved the comment posting problems that have been plaguing the loyal readers of Paper Badge. So if you have a heart, please please please comment when you read this so I can see that it works. I will reward you by telling a hilarious, moral-driven story that happened to me last night.



This July marks the one-year (12 mo.) anniversary of my horrific, gruesome foot injury of 2008. (You think I made it clear in that sentence when that happened? Haha. I'm not even going to change it. It's 8:15 in the morning. Let's move on.) For those of you who don't know I had the misfortune of a cargo trailer landing on my foot. It was exactly as bad as it sounds. The result was a massive crater the size of a tennis ball in my right foot, which led to about one hundred stitches, crutches, numerous pain pills, and excruciating physical therapy. Bottom line: Worst summer of my life. (Looking back, I learned a lot from this experience but it still really, really sucked.)



Fast forward to last night. I was sitting around my apartment with nothing to do, and three hours to kill before the Charm School Finale. I decided I would take a walk. This is not an abnormal thing for me to do now. I love being able to put in my iPod and just start walking somewhere without an plan to where I will end up. (Logan, UT has got to be the most perfect place in the world to do this. Great scenery. Low crime rate.) Last night, I decided to make a plan. I would walk to the scene of my accident. It would be a nice opportunity to reflect on everything that has happened in the past year. Mostly, I wanted to see if the giant hole the trailer made in the parking lot was still there. It took a little over an hour for me to walk (in a round-about way) to the warehouse where it all happened. I approached the building from the backside and made my way around the corner. When I finally faced the location I had waited so long to see I was met with the most unexpected of scenes. I circle of four police cars surrounding a few officers training their police dogs. Ferocious, drug-sniffing, blood-thirsty dogs. Dogs that looked like this:

So, that might be a slight exaggeration. But I only say slight because they were not attacking a human shoulder. They were still barking, showing their teeth, and tearing into some round padded thing. I didn't want to be that round padded thing so I turned around and walked someplace else.

"Well," I said to myself "I am definitely not going there today."

I told you there would be a moral and here it is. Sometimes we are faced with obstacles we don't think we can overcome. For example, recovering from a bizarre foot accident, or posting on my blog. But, with faith, perseverance, and hard work, we can move past these obstacles. Other times, police dogs are fighting exactly where you wanted to be and it is probably better for you to forget about your goal and do something else that day.

R.I.P. Seasame Street (Template)

The search for the Holy Grail of Blogger Templates continues....Let's be real the Seasame Street Template was a good time and we all enjoyed it. But it couldn't possibly last. Also, for some reason it wasn't allowing anyone to comment on my posts. That will not do. With my computer still on the DL until I can get it fixed I am left to choose from the stand-by templates Blogger provides until I can download a great, new one. Do any of you need to know this? Nope, not really.....Have you seen the infomercial for the Slap Chop? Gosh, that has got to be the greatest most useless item I have seen in a long time. Speaking of infomercials, I have seen way more Billy Mays-hosted infomercials in the past three weeks then I saw in the last year. I know that MJ's music made his family a lot of money after he died, but it just doesn't seem right to me.

Creepy Amazing Music Video #3

Back by popular demand, (by me) it's the Creepy Amazing Music Video! Today's installment is The Sound by Human Highway. It's a few months old, but it is all new to me. We discovered this band on Thursday as the opening act for Black Keys at the Twilight Concert Series. Being late, we only heard their last few songs, but what we heard was great. I didn't realize it at the time, but the two main guys in this band were/are part of the band Islands. Cool! As you watch this you are probably thinking to yourself: Cody, are you always on acid when you blog? The answer: No, not always. Alright, never. But I love good music and I am in to Pink Floyd too, so all this stuff just kind of works for me. Enjoy!

DEAD

About a week ago my "beloved" Mac kicked the bucket. I was happily eating my Life cereal while checking NBA rumors when my computer froze. No big deal right? So I restarted it. Dead. I tried again. Dead. Again. Dead. Again. Dead. Again. Dead. Yeah, I tried it a lot of times and it was always dead. So I gave it to my computer nerd and "Mac missionary" friend who alerted me that my hard drive was fried. Great. Ok. I understand. Computers die. But, hear me out a little bit, compadre. This now makes the third time my computer has died in the two years I have owned it. Two bad hard drives and one operating system meltdown. Also, my CD-ROM and four or five random keys said good-bye to me in February. I know Macs are great and beautiful and whatever, but mine is (was) a LE-MON! With my warranty expired, I am not sure where this leaves me. I am worried about fixing my computer because it will only be a matter of time before she dies again. I literally cannot buy a new one. I also don't want to rely on my work computer to blog, e-mail, look at funny sites, etc. Also, music. I don't think I need to say anything else.

Not My Thing

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Let me explain myself. I had to put that diagram up there to see what kind of rise I could get out of the four people who read my blog. (thanks guys) It is completely factual but comes with a slight disclaimer. I am not a fan of firework SHOWS. Not my kind of thing. To me, they are boring, repetitive, and boring. I feel like after a minute and a half I have already seen the same thing eight times. Being put through this for an hour leads me to distracting myself by watching ants or coming up with any story I can to annoy the person next to me. I haven't always been like this, it just happened. That being said, there are a few exceptions. (Yes, I can be impressed.) (a) I am befuddled at how in the world a firework even does it's own job and what sorcery is behind all of that. (b) doing fireworks in your own driveway, parking lot, etc. is an entirely different beast. Knowing that your freinds or family may spontaneously combust at any second makes more an interesting evening. (c) Evanston fireworks receive a pass. My family and I watched a show there where every citizen contributed by launching fireworks from their own homes. That, I must say, was awesome and finally (d) music factor. Most times I see firework shows I am well out of range of the musical accompaniment. This may/may not effect how I feel about a firework show.

Now, I understand that I am the only person in America and maybe the world that feels this way. But, like I said, they just aren't my thing. That's why I get to have a blog. So I can say crazy stuff like this.

Creepy Amazing Music Video #2

I heart Dirty Projectors and this music video is just fun. Anyone up for a llama hike?