Tour

if i wrote my tour in setlist-speak, it would look something like this (actual shows in bold):

I: new york>buffalo, delaware park, albright-knox museum, niagara falls, ft. niagara state park, darien lake>syracuse
II: syracuse>hartford>albany
III: albany>saratoga, boat on the lake, house party, saratoga racetrack, SPAC
E: 5 am wake-up, amtrak to new york

show thoughts
darien: lovely day. great venue. weird crowd. allow me to explain. first of all, i had a great spot surrounded by some great people, including a group i had spotted at niagara falls earlier in the day. that was typical phish: random interactions with random people that somehow work out. but the other people...the rest of the crowd was so weird. no one could stay in their place. the ENTIRE show people were walking back and forth through my spot. never before in my show going life have i EVER experienced anything like this before. normally after two or three songs people will settle down into their spot and their will be minimal movement, but that was not the case in darien. totally weird. the show itself was good. my first dinner & movie. the gin was kind of a wasted gin (tough to say, i know)....it didn't really go anywhere. "how high the moon" was a very nice tribute to les paul. the second set rift was spot-on. good show.

hartford: musically, i think this was the best of the bunch i saw. had AMAZING seats dead center in the second to last row of the shed. plenty of room to dance, great neighbors, and met up with a great group of old-school friends. first set was great, of course highlighted by my first forbin>mockingbird (was slightly upset about no narration, but beggars can't be choosers!). the musical highlight for me, aside from the aforementioned forbin>mockingbird, was the DWD>reba jam. just sublime. a mid-set slave is always a good time and rare treat. and, of course the closing ghost>psycho killer (is this the first time that a song played on the pre-show PA has been played during the same show?)>catapult>icculus>YEM was AWESOME. this was classic phish at its best. the 4 guys on stage having a great time, not taking themselves too seriously, and playing some killer music. the entire show felt like a 2009 version of a 8/93 show. the stash in the first set was monumental and the ensuing craziness was quintessential phish.

SPAC: another great show, right up there with hartford. probably the most smoking CTB i have ever heard. and, again, the second set was outstanding. my first FULL harpua! the "i kissed a girl" was another moment of crazy, wacky, zany phish. it was one of those "champagne supernova/gettin' jiggy with it/shine" moments. just perfect. the new songs were excellent and highway to hell was a great way to close it out.

one more thought about the tour. this is the first time that i have ever thought phish sounded like the grateful dead. i heard a little of it during the june shows, but this leg really cemented it for me. there is just something more jerry-like about trey's playing, not in his tone per se, but in his phrasing and in some of the setlist construction. gordo also sounded a lot like phil this tour, with his bass really cutting through the mix. excellent sounds. the repeats were also a little odd, but you will never see me complain about 2 bowies, antelopes, and possums in 3 shows. i guess in their attempt to be unpredictable, they have decided to play songs in back-to-back shows or closer together than ever before.

fantastic weekend. boating on the lake and going to the racetrack were also great. great weekend, great weekend, great weekend.

Truckin, Up To Buffalo

this is what makes the road fun. All day in the car with generally decent weather. Even the bad weather was cool. Roll into buffalo with only a vague idea of where you want to go. Find the perfect spot using your jedi skills. Roll into the bar with a sick beer selection and watch the phillies. And we haven't even seen a single show yet.

They Just Don't Want to Listen

claire mccaskill seems like a very smart lady. she is clear in her explanations and very direct with her constituents. but the people in the room don't seem to want to listen. she explains that there is no government funding for abortions in the bill. they boo. she strikes down their argument that there should be no government interferance in health care by following their argument to its logical conclusion: if that is true then we must get rid of the VA and medicare. they boo. they have some nonsense argument about congress' special health plan...i'm not exactly sure what this argument is all about...the government negotiated a health care plan for federal employees just like any company would, so i don't really get their point of contention. regardless, they don't seem to care. no single payer plan...they can't get over it.

WTF is wrong with these people? well, they just said it. they don't trust her. why don't they just vote for rush for president? that seems like who they believe. i just don't get it.

i can't wait until this bill passes and the mass euthonizing can start. that is the obama plan to electoral victory: (1) kill all the old people because they don't support him which would skew the demographics of the country younger and therefore make more of the population likely to vote for obama. (2) steal people's money out of their bank account which will make them poor and dependent on the government and therefore more likely to vote for obama.

and, yes, some fuckwad just gave mcckaskill the finger on national TV. way to go. grow up you fucking little baby. thats all these people are: spoiled little brats. they want it their way or they are going to take their ball and go home. i give mcckaskill tons of credit for the way she has handeled herself in front of these dipshits.

Outlaw ALL Supermax Prisions!

according to this fellow from the specter town hall "What about this Guantanamo closure? I don't want these criminals to come over here into our area and escape, and we find that a bunch of innocent people are murdered. And that's what's gonna happen (emphasis mine)."

if this is the case, then i want to take every criminal in the US, violent or non-violent, from bernie madoff on down to a street thug, and ship them off to exile on some island in the south pacific because i have zero faith in the ability of our prisons to hold anybody!

i remember the good old days when republicans went crazy over building prisons. it was their answer to everything, but, alas, those glory days are behind us. think about all the wasted money spent on building prisons that can't even hold a single prisoner from guantanamo.

The Republican Plan for Health Insurance Reform

What Is More Dangerous...

indefinite detention or universal health care?

i'm done with these people. i say "fuck 'em". you lost the fucking election, so don't go on with this whinny-ass, spoiled brat behavior. george w. bush took this country in some radical directions after an election that he barely (questionably) won, but you know what...HE WON THE FUCKING ELECTION! obama won with a significantly larger margin and larger mandate than bush and he is doing exactly what bush did: he is trying to enact the policies he ran on. what is the problem here? you don't agree, fine, but quit this bullshit and start acting like grownups.

maybe in 2012 obama can run on his true platform, "kill the seniors".

Will Robot Insurance Be Included in the Public Option?

since the congress has already made their anti-senior agenda clear, i ask you this, member of congress: will the new health care bill cancel my existing robot insurance?

WTF Is She Talking About?

palin claims that if obamacare passes "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."

really? well, in honor of abraham lincoln, the de facto founder of the republican party, i hereby challenge you to a "spot resolution challenge". what is a "spot resolution challenge"? the "spot resolutions" were a series of bills authored by lincoln that challenged president polk to point to the spot on american soil where blood was spilled, the alleged justification for the mexican-american war (here is the wikipedia entry).

in my version of the challenge, i challenge the former governor to point to the spot in the president's health care bill where it specifically authors "death panels" and/or where it calls for eliminating health care for down syndrome babies. point to the spot. show me where because a) i don't think i support a bill that authorizes "death panels" but b) my BS meter got up when reading her claim. so, in fairness, point to the spot. my BS meter goes down and you win the day.

on a side note, it seems like the parents of down syndrome children would WANT some form of government health care that protects parents' ability to get the necessary medical coverage for their children without the fear of rising premiums or cancellation of coverage. but thats just me, you know, here in the land of reality.

It Sounds So Sweet Played in the Right Key

for the first time since coventry, phish busted out "the curtain with". i've seen a few "curtains" but never a "curtain with". its the "with" that makes "the curtain" so super-sweet. my favorite "with" is from 5/25/88. other songs i would desperately like to cross off my list:

• forbin>mockingbird
• harpua (full version, with narration)
  
• peaches en regalia (a cover song, i know, but its part of the rotation)
• landlady (stand alone, not part of PYITE)
• BBFCFM
• dinner & movie
• esther

Soylent Green is People!

sometimes i feel a little like charlton heston at the end of soylent green. watch the clip below. you could replace his words with "medicare is government run health insurance!"