Recap

ACL was a lot of fun, albeit exhausting and allergy-ridden.

On Friday, Taylor, Andy, Kelcey, and I arrived at the park around 12 and we were there until about 9:50PM. Friday was the worst day for my allergies, and I went through three packets of pocket kleenex. I ended up seeing the following bands, with asterisks next to my top picks of the weekend.

• GIVERS
• The Soft Pack
• Blues Traveler
• Miike Snow*
• The Black Keys*
• Spoon
• Vampire Weekend*
• The Strokes
• Phish

On Saturday morning, I rode on my bike to the motorcycle gear shop and picked up a couple cable locks so that we could lock up our helmets and jackets at ACL. We rode to ACL and got there around 12:00 again and the motorcycle lot was conveniently close. Typically you are looking at a 30 minute walk to your car but it was only about 10 at the most. My allergies were still acting up but were a little less evil. However I was very loopy, because I took a Claritin in the morning, a Zyrtec in the early afternoon, and 2 Sudafed every 3 hours from morning until night. And it didn't even really help!

• The Very Best*
• Pete Yorn
• Two Door Cinema Club
• Beats Antique* (only saw them for the briefest time but they were good)
• Broken Bells*
• The Temper Trap
• The xx
• LCD Soundsystem
• Muse*******************

By Sunday morning I was very beat. Combined with the intense allergies, hours in the sun, and exhaustion from walking, I didn't want to get to ACL until much later in the day. Taylor and I finally left at 3, even though I still didn't want to leave yet, and we got there around 3:40ish.

• Yeasayer
• Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
• The Flaming Lips
• Band of Horses
• The National*
• Eagles

Sunday was a mostly disappointing day for me, because of my fatigue and the music that I wasn't very hyped up about. Band of Horses and Flaming Lips were both good, but neither were as good as I was hoping. The National stole the whole day, in my opinion. Eagles were good, but I'm not a big enough fan and their music is too chill for me by that point in the festival. We stayed until about 9 and then left early.

$50 tickets go on sale at a random time this week. Will I be lucky enough to snatch another pair? Let's hope so.

ACL 2010!

I'll be gone to ACL 2010 from Friday-Sunday, see you guys later!

In the meantime, here are the songs I'm looking forward to hearing live:

Firefighters refuse to help man who didn't pay his fee

This has to be the most ridiculous story I've read recently.

Let me set up the story for you. Every year, residents living in the rural area of Obion County must pay a $75 fee for fire fighter service from South Fulton. As you'd expect, this family did not pay the fee that year, for reasons I don't know.

Well, as you can probably assume at this point, their house caught fire and they called 911. "Didn't pay your fee? Whoops, talk to you later!" That's basically the response he got.

This fire went on for hours because garden hoses just wouldn't put it out. It wasn't until that fire spread to a neighbor's property, that anyone would respond.

Turns out, the neighbor had paid the fee.

"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick.

...

It was only when a neighbor's field caught fire, a neighbor who had paid the county fire service fee, that the department responded. Gene Cranick asked the fire chief to make an exception and save his home, the chief wouldn't. 

So, let's get this straight. They denied coming to help him because he didn't pay the fee. Harsh. A short while later, the fire spread to the neighbors house. Then they came to the neighbors house to put out the fire, and continued to ignore the Cranicks' burning house.

Their response seems so ridiculously morally incorrect that it honestly upsets me. Over $75 measly dollars, they refused to come and save a man's residence from burning down. Then, even after they arrived on the scene to help the neighbors' houses, they still refused to help him. Are you shitting me? What happened to civic duty? How about instead of making it optional, you just tax them $75 a year so we don't have these situations? How about instead of refusing to put out a fire, you fine someone $300 if they didn't pay the $75 fee? How about instead of letting a family's residence and possessions get destroyed in a fire over $75, you just help them out because it's the right thing to do? How important is $75 to you that you are willing to risk the obvious media, community, and political backlash? It's so stupid that I can't fathom their thought process.

To give you an idea of just how intense the feelings got in this situation, soon after the fire department returned to the station, the Obion County Sheriff's Department said someone went there and assaulted one of the firefighters.

Good for you.

[Full story via WPSD]

Man oh man

Writing these blog entries can be kind of a chore sometimes. That's the price you pay for becoming a world-famous blog writer, right?

Last week was good, mostly because I can't remember anything. Since I can't remember anything bad, I'll assume it was good. Friday morning I went with Andy to the skate park to take some pictures. Not only have I not used my camera in a long time, but it's hard to take pictures of live action. Trying to focus on him while he's skating around doing tricks was sometimes an exercise in futility. Luckily, I remembered that a high aperture yields me a much bigger depth of field, which helps remedy that situation a bit.

Here are some of Andy's favorites, but check the links above for the full album:

Friday night, we went to see Daniel Tosh, who does live stand-up comedy. He and his two openers were both funnier than I expected. It was also the first time I've seen stand-up live. All-in-all, it was a good night.

On Saturday, we watched the Red River Rivalry — which I still think sounds inferior to its old name, the Red River Shootout — and it was disappointing. Our defense is good, but not good enough to win games by themselves. Our offense and special teams are a joke this year. I can't believe we started the most important and boisterous game of the year with two horizontal passes that netted us -2 yards each. Did you notice how, on third downs, our routes were always well-shy of the first down? What the hell is wrong with our team? Here are some fun stats, courtesy of Burnt Orange Nation:

• 8 -- number of times Texas faced a third down of eight or more yards.
• 6 -- number of times that Garrett Gilbert completed passes short of the first down marker on third down.

What does that say about our team? What about the fact that after DJ Monroe scored a 60+ yard touchdown, he only had 3 more touches the rest of the game? It's really beyond me what's going on.

That's enough about the game. Saturday night we went to see Justin's show at Dizzy Rooster. Show was both good and expectedly loud, so I brought my ear plugs. Much to my surprise, after the show the music blaring out of the bar's sound system was even louder. No wonder today's youth are going deaf.

Sunday was filled with errands, chores, and football.

This week is another, even busier week. I have class on Tuesday, kickball on Wednesday, a makeup class on Thursday, followed by three days of ACL! I'm excited about ACL, but I have to get to the weekend first.

I found my restaurant receipt from New York

I remember now why that trip cost me so much.

*This receipt not to be mistaken for Dez Bryant's recent receipt

It's already Sunday?!

This weekend wasn't quite long enough.

In my last blog entry, I said that the week was going to be slightly busy. Well it turned out to be very busy, because my workload increased 10x because I misunderstood a chart and thought I was almost done when I wasn't. Luckily I finished everything on time, but not without some serious effort.

Despite the scattered rain, we still had our kickball game late Wednesday night around 9 PM, and we lost 2-9. It was still fun though, so that's good, right?

Taylor got back into town yesterday about an hour into our Texas football game. All I'm going to say about our football game is that there is something seriously wrong with our offense. Is it the coaches, the players, the schemes, or what? I don't know but something is obviously wrong. Some people claim that it is our coaches, and the only reason they haven't been exposed earlier is because we've had players like Vince Young and Colt McCoy who can put the team on their shoulders and do what has to be done. However, right now we don't have a play-maker. Not on offense, that's for sure. Who is our go-to guy? Who is the guy we can lean on if we're down 3 touchdowns in the fourth quarter? Since we don't have that player, they say that our problems at coaching are going to start coming to light now. I'm not smart enough to be able to agree with certainty, but I do feel that our players aren't being coached as well as they probably could be. My evidence lies in the penalties, the countless mistakes, and the fact that they seemed to give up on their last drive. Do you blame mistakes on the players or the coaches? I don't have enough information to answer that question. Either way, it's going to be a long season if our offense continues this shit play.

So it's Sunday already, huh? My plans are as follows: go visit my mom and grandma for lunch, go to the mall and get some "work" clothes, and get some groceries. I've decided that when I turn 25, I will be mostly ditching the jeans at work. I've been riding the jeans since I started, and at some point I'm going to have to start looking a bit more professional. Well, I've made an executive decision: that point is when I turn 25. Jeans will be reserved for the last day of the week. I've got some shopping to do now!

Oh, and because I'm so proud of myself, here is my Sunday morning breakfast:

Leftover pizza, eggs, and salsa - quite the masterpiece

ACL 2010 schedule!

I've finally completed my schedule. On Friday and Sunday, I've mostly decided who I'm going to go see during each time slot (exception being early on Sunday). On Saturday, though, there are a lot of bands I want to see. I'm going to have to make a ton of game-time decisions. Alternatively, I can go see parts of all of them, but it might be hard to tear myself away from one good band to see another. Sunday is not a great day, I wish they would have spaced out some of the Saturday bands on Sunday instead.

Here is my 2010 ACL Schedule. Use the little drop down box to switch between the different days.

Here is a list of all the bands I'm going to try to see, so you can get an idea for the sheer amount of music I will be listening to over three days:

Friday

• GIVERS
• Vonnegut
• Charlie Mars
• The Soft Pack
• Blues Traveler
• Carolyn Wonderland
• Miike Snow
• The Black Keys
• The Sword
• Spoon
• Vampire Weekend
• The Strokes
• Phish

Saturday

• Balmorhea
• Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
• The Very Best
• Pete Yorn
• Two Door Cinema Club
• The Gaslight Anthem
• Mayer Hawthorne & the County
• Beats Antique
• Broken Bells
• Dan Black
• The Temper Trap
• The xx
• Monsters of Folk
• Gogol Bordello
• LCD Soundsystem
• Deadmau5
• Muse

Sunday

• Ruby Jane
• Shearwater
• Warpaint
• White Rabbits
• SPEAK
• Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
• Frank Turner
• Blind Pilot
• Portugal. The Man
• Gayngs
• Yeasayer
• Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
• The Flaming Lips
• The National
• The Eagles

All that for only $50! I'm still thrilled that I snatched those super-cheap early bird tickets. ACL: two weeks and counting.