maggied’s blag

For the summer, I am going to be interning at Boston Scientific. Specifically, I will be working in the Cardiac Rhythm Management (CRM) part of the company located in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I’m in Research and Development, working on making pacemakers MRI safe.

My first few days in the mid-west have been interesting. I have never been here before, and all I had to go on was the stereotypes and bias I have heard growing up in New York and time in the Boston area. As it turns out I am enjoying myself. My housemate Jessie has a car and we were able to explore the area a bit on the weekend, and she’s slowly been convincing me that there really is stuff to do here. I’m starting to believe her.

I arrived ridiculously early Friday morning, after a 5:55am flight out of Westchester Airport. Jessie picked me up from the airport and we moved all of our stuff into our new apartment. You can check out photos of the apartment here. A few highlights:

After unpacking and napping, we drove over to Dinkytown, an area just outside Minneapolis, to get some lunch. From there we went to a Super Target, got plenty of food and other goods, and settled in for the evening.

Saturday was so great that my body made my pay for it in the form of a pink face and scalp. Well worth it though. First we went to the Farmer’s Market, which is open daily but most bustling on Saturdays. We didn’t get much from the market itself but had a nice lunch and browsed a bit. All the pictures from the market are here. A few highlights:

After the farmer’s market we decided to visit the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. This was definitely my favorite part of my stay so far. My dad and a few other people had mentioned that we needed to check this place out, and it was definitely worth it. I took a ton of pictures. One neat thing about the garden was that you could call a number and hear commentary about the different pieces. Some of them sounded like nonsense but others seemed interesting.

The cherry was by far my favorite. This sculpture is gigantic and sprays water out of the stem at the top:

Another sculpture worth noting is this one:

Now Jessie and I are both pretty convinced that those blobs are pieces of poop. It sure looks like poop. According to the art commentary, though, they are actually amoeba. What do you think?

There is another sculpture that is just a series of marble benches with bizarre quotes written on them. One of the most applicable and thought provoking ones is this one:

The text reads:

Affluent college bound students
face the real prospect
of downward mobility
feeling of entitlement clash with
the awareness of imminent scarcity
there is resentment at growing up
at the end of an era of plenty
coupled with reassessment of
conventional measures of success

There was also a huge fish by Frank Gehry (with Jessie posing):

And finally, this is a bridge that you can cross to enter a park next to the garden. I really like it for the linear perspective:

After the garden we headed to Best Buy where Jessie shopped for a GPS to help us with driving and I got a web cam to keep in contact with people for the summer. We then picked up Jessie’s dad who took us both out for delicious indian food.

Sunday was time to start getting everything ready for work. We had an early breakfast with Jessie’s dad before he had to leave to head back home. Then we hit up Super Target again for a few other supplies, followed by Rainbow foods for real groceries.

Monday (today) was our first day of work. We arrived at 7:45am and had new employee orientation all morning. In the afternoon I met my supervisor and started getting situated. I’ll be training and reading papers most of the rest of the week, but it’s been fun so far.

All in all, I think I am definitely enjoying it here way more than I would have expected. The weather has been great, everyone is very friendly, and it feels like everything has been going my way lately. I’m excited for the next few weeks, particularly my 21st birthday (June 21st!) and the fourth of July weekend.

No Comments »

Dale and I went to NY Comic Con the first weekend after term started. It was the first convention either of had ever been to, and needless to say it was pretty overwhelming.  When we first got to NYC on Saturday morning (after waking up at 7am; we were pretty dedicated) we walked with a crowd of people over to the Jacob Javits center. It was pretty obvious we were all going to Comic Con. Some people were dressed up but not quite as many as I had expected. Way more people were dressed up as Anime characters than as Comic Book characters and/or Super heroes. I got really excited when we finally arrived because many of the security guards were dressed up as storm troopers! A lot of them looked really awesome, so I got my picture taken:

We had originally made a list of the different booths we wanted to visit, but it was so crowded and awesome that we just wandered around through the booths. There were lots of vendors with everything nerdy. I took a picture with my favorite pal, Yoda, who was on sale for somewhere in the four figure range ($$$).

I couldn’t have all the fun, though (after all, this wasn’t a Star Wars convention), so Dale got a nice shot with Batman. Look at the super excited face!

After walking around a bit more I got my picture taken with spidey (even though I like Peter Parker better…)

And then the zombie spidey attacked us! What ever were we to do!

After drooling over the booths for a while, we attended an interesting panel called “Anime for Comic Fans, Comics for Anime Fans.” I thought the talk was really interesting because it defined characteristics about a given Anime or Comic and gave a recommendation of something one might like in a somewhat different medium.

The panel was really exciting, but Dale and I still had a fundamental disagreement about whether Anime or Comics were better. Conveniently, Marvel had just the venue for us to battle it out in (I’m pretty sure I won).

After getting that over with, we went to see a screening of the first few episodes of Gurren Lagann. It was pretty crazy; robots, breasts, and crazy battles. What more could you ask for (this is after I spent a few minutes arguing that robots and breasts aren’t what anime is all about. sigh.)

We left the Con around 4pm to go listen to my little brother play saxophone over at The Bitter End. He was playing with his music school and  he went on last. Every time I hear him he gets a lot better. After listening to music for a while we went out to dinner and caught up with my cousin and her SO. They live really close to Times Square, so we got to walk around there for a while.

The next day at Comic Con was time for shopping. After watching The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (which I highly recommend — it was amazing, even despite the fact that it didn’t feature robots nor breasts), Dale got his Comic on. Meanwhile, I scored some totally sweet Star Wars plushies.

All in all it was a really fun weekend. Now term has started, though, and things are already pretty hectic. Hopefully there will be time to do something exciting for Spring Break!

No Comments »

Looks like my last entry was shortly before term started. Oops. Things have certainly had their ups and downs in that time period. Unfortunately my grandpa died at the age of 77 earlier today, so writing about the past few months is bittersweet as I didn’t get to see him at all during that time. He was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia on Thursday, but the cancer or an infection was so aggressive that he passed away in only a few days. Because of Christmas, a wake and funeral won’t be scheduled until at least Friday, so my Dad, brother and I will be flying down to Florida on Wednesday. We’ll be meeting up with family that I haven’t had a chance to see yet and staying until Sunday. I’ll fly out to Arizona early Monday morning to spend the rest of Winter break with Dale. I think it will be nice to get out of the house for a bit and I’ve been looking forward to visiting anyway.

This IAP the plan is to take a PE and work on a short project related to MRI reconstruction. I’ll be doing a little research into the subject if I have the time over break. Other than work, I hope to have some time to relax, finish up Dr. Who (we’re on the fourth season now!), watch some anime, and play my DS/other video games. This term was very hectic, but as the grades start trickling in (3/5 so far), it has proven to be very rewarding.

I took 5 classes this term. I had never taken 5 before but ironically enough the added pressure seems to have improved my grades. The classes I took were:

• 6.007 - Applied Electromagnetics
• 6.011 - Intro. to Communication, Control and Signal Processing
• 9.01 - Intro. to Neuroscience
• 9.20 - Animal Behavior
• STS.010 - Neuroscience and Society

I liked all of the classes overall, but my favorite was definitely 6.011. I think that 6.011 is the best class I’ve ever taken here: great lectures, recitations, tutorials, helpful p-sets, and fair exams. The staff did a great job at conveying the relevance of the material, which taught from different approaches would probably seem rather abstract.

Other than work during term, I also served as Vice-Chair of the Undergraduate Association (UA) Senate, and am finishing up my responsibilities as EC Rooming Assignment Chair (RAC). A few of us also checked out a few sweet concerts and movies. The most recent concert was In Flames and I really enjoyed seeing them a second time, even though I wasn’t feeling great shortly before they came on stage. Rachel, Betsy, and I regressed to our teenage selves and went and saw Twilight on opening night. I hadn’t read the books, so I wasn’t as into it as some of the other girls there were, but there were certainly lots of hot boys in the movie. The amount of shrieking is unparalleled. I also got a crack blackberry over Thanksgiving, and it’s been really handy.

A few exciting things coming up:

• IAP - January 5th
• Andrew Bird Concert - January 30th
• EC Retreat - January 31st
• New York Comic Con - February 6-8

I’m sure there are lots of things I’m forgetting, but I figure I’ll leave it at this for now. I don’t really feel in the holiday spirit right now, but being with family and then with Dale before IAP starts should help.

No Comments »

Haven’t posted in a while. These past several weeks have been really busy (in a good way). I stopped working my UROP for the last few weeks of the summer, and dedicated myself to freshman orientation (as EC’s Room Assignment Chair and a DormCon Junior REX chair). Considering the fact that REX and the Friday Night Event were two big things on my mind the past few weeks, it feels pretty weird for them to be over. Both went really well, though, and even though term is going to start of hectic, I’m glad it will start on an up beat.

Other than orientation, there were a few other fun things from over the summer. As I mentioned in my previous post, a few of us went to Six Flags New England. It was really fun (we rode what is arguably the best steel coaster in the country) until rain started coming down in waves around 3pm. Can’t win them all, I guess.

A week or so later, Dale, Sarah, Rachel, Danielle and I went to New York for the weekend. We took the Lucky Star bus down to the Chinatown on a Friday afternoon. Even with a bit of traffic we made reasonable time. After leaving the Bowery, we walked through a fesitival that was going on in Little Italy. Lots of people were out eating late, candle lit dinners, and it was very tempting to get some pastries. After walking around a bit, we headed up to my house in Westchester for the evening.

Saturday morning we went to one of my favorite spots for breakfast (the Patio in Briarcliff Manor). Our early start was cursed, though, because after our brief stop over at Starbucks (damn MIT students and their caffeine), we were stuck in the rain. The storm was ridiculous, and my street flash flooded, preventing the Hudson Metro North line from running, and delaying the Harlem line. After a bit of a wait we made it into the city, which showed little to no sign of the storm. Our first stop in the city was Jamba Juice and the candied-peanut stands (mmmm Jamba Juice). We decided to sit in Central Park and finish our drinks. Next stop was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we met up with Vinayak and Charles, who were looking very hipster indeed. They had crazy modern art that I took a few pictures of. By the time we left the Met we were all pretty hungry, so we headed over to Union Sq. Unable to resist, we spent some time in Forbidden Planet and The Strand, which someone I know seemed to really enjoy. Now starving, we went to an Indian restaurant that Rachel had coincidentally also eaten at with her family before (at the same table!). Our last stop before heading back to Grand Central was Times Square. It was really amazing at night. Although Dale was the only one who hadn’t been there before, we all really enjoyed hitting up the M&M and Hershey’s stores.

Sunday I decided it was time for everyone to experience the awesomeness that is New York Bagels, so we walked into Briarcliff and ate a nice breakfast on the benches in town. Fortunately there was no storm this time, and we headed out to the city. Sarah really likes her Jamba Juice, so we stopped there a second time. Dale decided to try a piece of Junior’s cherry cheesecake, and it was really good. We walked around Central Park for a while, and relaxed on the grass watching puppies and families go by. In the early afternoon we headed back down to Chinatown, grabbed some fruit, and caught the bus back. Overall, a really fun weekend.

Dale and I also decided to hit up a few concerts this summer (and plan to go to several more during term, woo!). The first one (since I’ve last posted) was The Faint. The lead singer wore a lab coat and goggles. It was my first show at The Roxy, and it was amazing. They played a bunch of songs from their newest album, along with some of their great older songs. The next night we decided to switch things up a bit and went to TT The Bear’s Place (right next to the Middle East) for my first post-rock show. We went to see Yndi Halda, who were unable to make it due to a broken axle on their van. But Hadoken and Caspian were still pretty awesome. Even though it was a small venue, the sound was massive and really took over you. The last concert was Nightwish, which I went to with a whole bunch of people. It was at The Palladium again (I saw them last October, too) and put on an amazing show. We all left exhausted and covered in sweat after the show. Totally a great way to get ready for term.

1 Comment »

I’ve had a lot of down time after work and on weekends over the summer, and have spent a lot of it watching movies, reading, and getting out on the town. I’m sure I have forgotten about some things but this is as comprehensive as I can remember. I’ll try to avoid any serious spoilers.

Let’s start with movies. In no particular order:

• The Incredible Hulk - I had low expectations (other than Edward Norton), but this turned out to be pretty good. They didn’t focus on the back story as much which I think was a good thing.
• Wall-e - Most.Adorable.Movie.Ever. I love Pixar movies but I still think this one takes the cake. When I saw the trailer I thought it looked dumb but I could hardly control my giggles during much of it.
• Hellboy II: The Golden Army - Vinayak and I had an argument about how good this movie would be. Vinayak loses (sorry Vinayak). I really enjoyed it; definitely way better than the first one.
• Requiem for a Dream - A lot of people told me I shouldn’t watch this movie or I would be super depressed afterwards. It was definitely a bit of a downer, but I wasn’t particularly upset. I thought many of the scenes were kind of ridiculous, but really enjoyed the cinematography.
• Wanted - I read the graphic novel (which is nothing like the movie), and didn’t have particularly high expectations. The movie was ridiculous, and if you had any hope for it, you probably hated it because it was pretty silly.
• Equilibrium - To get us pumped up for The Dark Knight, we decided to watch a bunch of Christian Bale movies. I had seen a few of the scenes from the movie. It had similar crazy-action moments to Wanted or the Matrix, but I thought it actually had a reasonably decent plot.
• Batman Begins - Had already seen this one, but it was part of our Christian Bale stunt. Still enjoyable the second time around.
• The Dark Knight - We waited 3 hours to see this at midnight Thursday Night/Friday Morning. Totally worth it. Heath Ledger was impeccable. I loved his performance, and the rest of the cast also did a terrific job. Definitely intend to see this again at some point.
• Pink Floyd The Wall - Believe it or not, I had never seen this movie before. It was pretty crazy and took me until the end to figure out what was going on. Even then I was a bit confused.
• Persepolis - Second time seeing this one as well. Enjoyable in a sort of dark way, Persepolis is one of those movies that puts you in the shoes of something that you otherwise might not understand.

So that’s a lot of movies. Now books:

• Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez- I finished this early on in the summer. It took me a long time to get through with term and all, but I wound up enjoying it. Despite being different from the books I tend to enjoy, I thought it was a worth while read. Didn’t really like the ending all that much, though. I would like to see the movie at some point, but have not gotten around to it yet.
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely - I started this on the train to New York before my trip to the Caribbean; I finished it 3 days later. Loved it. The book felt highly relevant and had a lot of room for introspection.
• Wanted by Mark Millar - Crazy. Adrenaline filled ridiculousness. No wonder the movie was nothing like this.
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson - Stereotypical cyberpunk. I started the book and there were a few things about it that I thought were completely nuts and over the top. People had hyped the book a lot so I didn’t really know what to expect. Overall, it turned out to be fun, and Raven really is a total bad ass.
• Neuromancer by William Gibson - Haven’t finished this one yet. Just started it a few days ago; it’s been hard to get through (I don’t really know what’s going on…) but I’m trying to persevere, for now at least.

Other outings:

• Laser Dark Side of the Moon - The Museum of Science Planetarium has Laser Light Shows. A few of us decided to to one a few Saturdays ago. Holy crap. It was totally incredible. Definitely planning on going to another one some time.
• ArtBeat 2008 - Freezepop played this year! They played a fun set and even gave everyone lots of freezepops. Very tasty. We also saw Rota Temporis and Akrobatik. I took a few pictures.
• New England Sand Sculpting Festival - The Sand Sculpting Festival happened at Revere Beach again this year. This year the center piece had a bunch of comic book characters including the Hulk and Batman. I took pictures of most of the competing pieces. Sarah Hopp and I decided it would be a terrific idea to submerge ourselves in the freezing cold water, which didn’t work out so hot. Unfortunately it started to storm when we had only been there for a little while, so we came back to hall early.
• New England Aquarium - We went because I wanted to see the Sharks and Rays exhibit, the advertisements for which are all over Boston. Also Sharks3D. The aquarium turned out to be small and underwhelming compared to Monterey (I’m spoiled now, I think), but we saw a gigantic sea turtle get fed a head of lettuce and pet some sharks and rays. The IMAX 3D show was unlike any 3D film I had seen before (no more red and blue glasses). It made my head spin but was also pretty neat.

And I think that’s it. Things to look forward to:

• Six Flags, July 27th
• NYC trip, August 1-3
• REX planning (for EC and Dorm Con)
• The rest of the summer

1 Comment »

It’s finally time to write about my trip to Sint Maarten, Dutch West Indies. You can find more pictures here. I went with 5 friends from home (Emma, Erica, Jillian, Meredith and Michael). We departed from JFK on July 1st, and arrived in Sint Maarten in the early afternoon. The island is known for having a crazy airport. As we were landing, all I could see was ocean out the window, until all of the sudden we were touching down on the island:

Emma reserved us two nice rooms at The Atrium in Simpson Bay. There was a very nice view up the hill, and the beach was probably the best I’ve ever been to.

We spent our first afternoon relaxing on the beach, and went to a restaurant recommended by the hotel for dinner. Things were very different for us on the island (one can gamble and drink at 18), so we all tried our luck at Black Jack for the first time. It went well for me this first time, but we all quickly learned that we weren’t cut out to be gamblers.

Our second day consisted of lots of lounging around on the beach: I spent time finishing Predictably Irrational (which was great, btw) and took a few more pictures of the beach. I was particularly fascinated by the crests of the waves on the sand so I took several pictures of them.

In the evening we went to what is (arguably) Sint Maarten’s best night club on the Island: Bliss. I enjoyed myself even though I’m not really big into the night club scene. There was a lot of dancing and the music was really fun.

The third day I finished Predictably Irrational and started on Snow Crash. Keeping with the tradition of the past two days, we spent most of the early afternoon on the beach, and we took some pictures of the sunset.

On our fourth day we finally went to the French Side of the island (they spell it St. Martin there). The city of choice is Marigot. We took the local bus service (which is actually a bunch of privately owned vans that seat 12 people) over to the Marina and had a great experience with conversion factors to the Euro. There were a whole bunch of fancy shops, but as was pointed out by several of my friends, you could just shop at those places in the city and it would probably be cheaper.

After our evening in Marigot we went to a fancy club called Mansion. The club was so “nice” that they gave Mike a hard time about entering in his shorts. It turns out that Mansion is basically a place for people with a lot of money to schmooze and buy handles of expensive alcohol. Not really my thing; there wasn’t even any dancing, but the music was so loud you could hardly hear your neighbor.

The next day we resumed the beach-bum tradition, and made dinner in our awesome kitchen. Fully equipped, we prepared a nice meal that was much more affordable than eating out all the time. We took more pictures in nice outfits, and headed over to Mansion again.

Day 6 graced us with a wonderful rendition of Yes’s Owner of Lonely Heart over lunch. I was very tempted to text someone the lyrics, but alas, I didn’t have my phone on me. We spent more time hanging on the beach and I read more and more Snow Crash. For dinner we went to Topper’s where the waiter was very friendly. They had fish on all the tables and ours was named Dick:

I don’t have any pictures for day 7, but it was totally awesome. We decided to go snorkeling on Creole Rock, which is one of the best spots on the island to do so. We took the scenic route; over the water from Simpson Bay on speed boats called Rhinos. I had no idea how much of a need for speed I had until I got behind the wheel of that boat. Sooooo much fun! Unfortunately being on the water for so long resulted in a fabulously streaky sun burn that lasted the rest of the trip and into the following week.

Day 8 was totally great. My good friend Jesstess also happened to be on the island, staying on the French Side with her family! We decided to meet up in Philipsburg (on the Dutch side; cruise ships frequently stop there). The beach was so picturesque, and it was nice to meet Jess’ family. We had lunch and wandered around Philipsburg for a while before I headed home for the evening.

I spent our final morning packing up while the others headed over to Philipsburg. We took a few pictures before going to the airport and waiting around (they kicked us out at noon and our flight wasn’t until 3pm). I had a great vacation, but I was also pretty eager to get back to MIT. Overall, a good decision I’d say

1 Comment »

Rachel and I decided to head over to Harvard’s Arboretum today. Neither of us had been before, and both had free time in the early afternoon. We took the scenic route to the Arboretum and back, to say the least. The directions we got off the internet were meant for cars and not bikes, and we got lost on the first turn. After stopping for directions, we eventually found our way over to Jamaica Pond. We didn’t know which way the Arboretum was, but we rode around the whole pond, and took a few pictures.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous out.

We ran into a gigantic family of ducklings, and took a few pictures. More ducklings can be found here.

After hanging out on the Pond for a while, we decided to give it one more shot. Fortunately for us, the turn we needed just involved taking a different fork in the bike path. We arrived at the Arnold Arboretum about 5 minutes later. On bike, we decided to stick to the main trails. We went up Bussey Hill to the Overlook, hung around for a while, and took a nice nap. Coming down the hill was really fun. Some pictures:

I had a SLOPE meeting at 5:30pm, so we didn’t stay very long. Definitely would love to come back another time and take more pictures. On the way home, we got lost again, and wound up over by the Church of Scientology. With Mass. Ave as our reference, we managed to make it home alright.

As a side note, I decided to start playing around with collections on Flickr, so all the photos from today are in one here.

No Comments »

Rachel, Dale, Drew and I went to see Iron Maiden on Friday. The concert was at the Tweeter Comcast Center in Mansfield, so we drove down in Rachel’s car. While seeing concerts at gigantic venues like the Comcast Center doesn’t feel quite as personal as smaller concert halls, in this case it allowed Maiden to do some absolutely crazy stuff. The crowd was really excited for the whole show, and the display Iron Maiden put on was absolutely ridiculous. Lots of backdrops, effects, and special guests (the beast, Eddie, etc.). Overall, this concert was probably one of my favorites. Pictures of the concert can be found here.

Not only was yesterday my birthday, it was also really great weather outside. I slept in a little late and wound up heading over to Porter Square with a bunch of people for cheap (but delicious) sushi. I’ve only had sushi a handful of times or so, but I’m starting to really like it, particularly if it’s affordable. The sushi place was in the Porter Exchange.  After sushi we visited a Chinese super market and I got some chocolate koala bears. Mmm. We arrived back in EC in time to go to a Rush meeting. Besides the usual wankery, we picked a name for the East Side party this year: Xanadu. The blurb includes excessive references to Kubla Khan and is pretty awesome.

We also made important decisions over at the Cambridge Galleria, where Vinayak spent quite some time deciding on an iPod to purchase. (He went with the 80gb.) For dinner, 12 of us headed over to Helmand, which was absolutely amazing. In the mid to upper price range ($15-23 for an entree), Helmand had a variety of dishes with Lamb, Beef, Chicken and vegetables. There was also copious amounts of bread and rice, which I was very excited about. Stuffed from dinner, we headed back to Porter Square again for Sarah, Vlad and Marty’s housewarming. The turn out was great, and it was a nice close to the evening. Pictures for the day can be found here.

No Comments »

Finally have  a bit more time, so I’ll give a run down of all the bands I went to see.

Thursday:

We first arrived on Thursday around 12pm. Shows started later in the evening, around 8pm or so. There were not many shows this day, but we hit up MGMT, Battles, and Vampire Weekend. MGMT and Battles were both pretty out of control; I really loved the lighting for both of the shows. Vampire Weekend was also really great; the singer was a lot of fun, and made the crowd really pumped about the rest of the weekend.

Friday:

Umphrey’s McGee was this awesome band that combined Jazz and Prog-Rock; they were a lot of fun to just chill on the grass and bob your head to. Definitely a band I’m buying more music of. Stephen Marley (as you can probably guess from the name) gave a performance that was just like Bob Marley; he both looked and sounded like him. Next up was The Swell Season. For those of you who have seen the movie Once, it’s the band from that. They were really great live, although towards the end I got a little bored because all their songs seemed to have a very similar sound. We saw State Radio on a smaller and somewhat intimate stage, and they were really great.

Now for the show I was super excited about today: M.I.A. “I fly like paper, get high like planes” (M.I.A. in Paper Planes). I have never heard anything like her before. She had a great stage presence, and the crowd went nuts when she played songs from her second album. She finished the set with Paper Planes, and some people even threw planes at the stage! After M.I.A. we listed to some of Chris Rock, who was making a joke about how fat girls can diss skinny girls, but skinny girls can’t diss fat girls. It was alright. Up next was Metallica. Yes, Metallica was at Bonnaroo. This seemed to confuse everyone, and it showed as the crowd just wasn’t really into their concert until they played Sandman at the very end. Ending the night we saw My Morning Jacket, who were a lot of fun, even though we left early due to rain. Every time they hit an awesome guitar riff, someone would throw fifty or so glow sticks up in the air, and it looked really neat.

Saturday:

We started Saturday off with Soul Rebels Brass Band. It was early in the day and the crowd was small, so we were right up near the front of the stage. These guys rocked. It was a nice, intimate setting, so all of the crowd was really into it. They really got everyone dancing by the end of the show, and it was a lot of fun. We chilled in the shade for part of Gogol Bordello; I liked the “gypsy-punk” thing they had going on. Up next was B.B. King, who made a lot of jokes about how old he was (82) and got a little over-sentimental on stage. Still, his performance was solid.

In the evening, Jack Johnson was the first one up. I am not really a big fan of Jack Johnson, honestly, but he brought out Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam which was kinda cool. Then came Pearl Jam who played for an extra hour over their allotted one and a half. They were really great, although Eddie Vedder was so bombed out of his mind he could hardly form sentences when he spoke to us.

Finally, ending the night was Kanye West. You may have heard about this controversy. Because Pearl Jam ran late, Kanye’s crew didn’t get the stage set up until 3:30am, but despite this fact the show didn’t start until 4:25am. By this time, Kanye’s Glow in the Dark tour didn’t seem like it was working out so hot. The show itself was great, even despite the lighting; there were craters on stage, and a hot female robot narrated you through the show. The show ended at 5:25, 2/3rds of how long it should have been, which was lame. Even though it was late and short, I still really liked the show. It was probably the best put together performance I’ve seen, so I still give him credit.

Sunday:

The last day at Bonnaroo (sad ) began with Rogue Wave. They seemed pretty fun, but I was tired and wound up taking a nap under a tree for most of their set. Up next was the Yonder Mountain String Band, who are absolutely awesome! The crowd was going nuts, and they even covered Crazy Train. Come on! After Yonder Mountain we caught the end of Solomon Burke, who at that point had 50 women on stage. He gave them all roses and sang “What a Wonderful World.” Despite being too old to stand through the whole show, this guy sure sounded great.

After Solomon Burke, we caught a bit of O.A.R. I’ve always sort of liked them but don’t know them that well, and they seemed pretty good live. On the way out of Bonnaroo, we heard a bit of Robert Plant, who was in a duet with Alison Krauss. He sounded great, but most of us weren’t a fan of his slower covers of Led Zeppelin songs.

And that’s about it! Overall, Bonnaroo was a total blast. If you want to hear more about anything in particular, feel free to talk to me

No Comments »

Just got back from Bonnaroo around 2pm today. Am too tired to post a formal review of the bands, but have some photos for now.

Headed back up to Boston tomorrow morning, and then working the rest of the week. Good times.

No Comments »