Whatever I Feel Like

…jiggety jig.

The vacation ended on a much better note than the one I last left. After that post, the music came to town. Thursday night was Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes and they really brought their A game. I’ve never seen a concert where the band played continuously for 2 hours, pausing only to interact with the audience for a few moments at most. Not only were they untiring, but they were also extremely tight – Johnny would hum a bar or two and the rest of the band immediately went into a flawless rendition of each song. If you get a chance to see these guys, take it!

By Friday my neck and shoulders were feeling better and the sun came out! We spent about an hour or so in the ocean and it was beautiful. Of course, 1/2 hour after we got in the water, the clouds started rolling in; we stayed as long as we could and got out just in time. As we were walking up the beach to our condo, the rain started. It was kind of funny to see everyone leaving the beach en masse. After we got back to our apartment and changed, Rob, Connor, and I were playing a game of Uno when Aric told us there was a rainbow over the beach. He wasn’t kidding – this was one of the most amazing rainbows I’ve ever seen in my life. It was a small rainbow – spanning just the width of our condominium building and little more – but that was part of why it was so spectacular. And after a few minutes, a double rainbow appeared.

I took about 20 pictures of this rainbow because I really felt it was signifying a change for the better for us. Maybe I’m a dreamer, but I’ll take what I can get. Here are some more rainbow pics [don't worry, I didn't upload them all].

Friday night was the first night of the Verizon Wireless American Music Festival where a number of bands play in 3-4 different locations all along the beachfront. We chose to see The Influence and The BoDeans. Rob and I both really enjoyed The Influence. They’re a local Virginia Beach band with a heavy Pearl Jam influence. The BoDeans were sharp as anything – I don’t think a single person missed a note or a space in any song. They entertained the heck out of the crowd, but the crowd proved to be too much for us. It was hot – no ocean breeze blowing – and people were getting drunker and stupider by the minute. We decided to leave and walked down to catch the end of Starship’s performance. We were both glad we picked the concert we did because from what we heard of Starship, we weren’t impressed at all.

Saturday night was the Billy Idol concert that we planned on going to, but ended up not getting there. We were just tired and wore out and not in the mood for dealing with a huge, drunken crowd again. We did some last minute shopping for souvenirs and gifts with my mom then listened to a couple of songs from Eddie Money and Warrant. Both were equally bad. Embarrassingly bad. The cool thing was that as we walked down Atlantic Avenue between 24th and 31st street, we heard Billy Idol’s opening song, “Eyes Without a Face” – his stage was all the way down on 5th street! I can’t imagine how loud that concert must have been up close. Rob already blew an ear drum at the Southside Johnny concert, so he would have been in no shape to handle the sheer volume of Billy Idol. I’m still a little bummed that we didn’t make it, though. From what we heard in the distance, he sounded awesome. I need to look for some reviews and pictures of that concert online – I know they must exist.

We came home on Sunday and I think it’s safe to say that everyone – kids included – were ready to be homeward bound. I’ll write more details and post more pics of the trip in the coming days. This post is long enough. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite photos from the trip – view it in large size for complete awesomeness.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Flippin' Sweet, The Fam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.