Days of Speed

I'm back from my Weekend of Weller, and it was just about everything I could have hoped for. My ol' college pal and Weller-phile Lappster and I made it to the Wiltshire, a great old theater in LA, nice and early and positioned ourselves squarely in the center of the front standing section. I dug the whole concert, even the extended acoustic mid-section (which underwhelmed LappMan), and I'm really looking forward to the new album coming out in October--the new material sounds really great and much more vibrant than recent albums. (That said, I've been relistening to Heliocentric and Illumination--there's some good songs in there; but they just don't really grab you completely.) The band was tight, and they got in a couple of good Jam tunes (like "That's Entertainment" and "Town Called Malice") and finished with a surprising rendition of Style Council's "Shout to the Top."

Now, I'm back to work trying to get all my freelance stuff done before I take off again on Friday with Mrs. F for the Midwest (visiting my Grandparents and artiste extraordinaire Ward Sutton (along with his lovely wife and daughter) out on the North Dakota farm where they're spending a year. (I'm hoping to catch a pizza burger flying style while I'm in Bismarck.) I'm going to try to stay off the blog as much as possible over the next 10 days. But in the meantime, I'm lining up a guest blogger--details to come.

But one last item before rolling back to work. Mrs. F has been keeping me aprised of a plan she has for clearing a hugely overgrown blackberry patch at the Cooper School community arts and cultural center project that she's helping to manage. She's hoping to hire a herd of goats. That's right--goats! I think that's pretty ingenious. Check out Healing Hooves, the "natural vegetation management" company that she's hoping to contract with.