a pathetic end to a long night[yet strangely satisfying]

Those of you who know me know how big of a Cubs fan I am. When I was living in Kansas City I never really had many opprotunities to see the Cubs play, as the Royals are in the AL and the Cubs are in the NL. Now that I live in NYC I have the once a year chance to see the Cubs play the Mets for a three game series at Shea Stadium. Needless to say, when I found this out several months ago, I immediately went to the Mets webpage and bought tickets to see the game that took place this past Wednesday night. For the past few weeks I had been anticipating the game, hopefully to see my Cubbies take on the surging Mets.



After a day of rain, I got to the stadium to see this view from my seat, where I sat for three hours waiting for the rain to stop. It was 10pm before the rain stopped, and I was quite depressed at the thought of not getting to see my team play in the one opprotunity I would have all year. At 10:15pm the game finally began in front of a very empty Shea Stadium. I only paid $9 for my ticket, which on a normal day would have allowed me to watch the game from the nosebleed section, but due to the misfortune[or luck] of rain and a delay, I took a chance and ran down to the lower section of the stadium and took my seat 7 rows behind the Cubs dugout! I could not wait to see the Cubs pound the Mets after destroying them 8-1 the night before.



But of course, the game was a typical Cubs disaster. Into the 7th inning they had only one hit and were losing 4-0. Being that it was 12:30am and I had to work the next day, I took my tired and weary Cubs soul and headed for the #7 train, content that I had gotten to see my Cubbies play, but disappointed in their poor performance at my one time this year to see them play. They ended up losing 8-1 with only 2 hits.



Another exciting experience that I had recently was a trip to the NYC Ballet to watch the performance of Romeo and Juliet. Now before anyone makes a smartass comment, my main reason for going was on a date with my girlfriend who loves ballet. Anyways, The show was pretty good and I had a great time. It is always fun dressing up and watching all the people out enjoying a wonderful spring night in New York City.


Structure:

Modesty

A few weekends ago I was fortunate enough to be offered two free tickets to go and see Modest Mouse perform in Harlem. Of course, I took the tickets and embarked on an extensive voyage into the nether regions of New York City, a place that has always been stereotyped as drug ridden and dangerous.

Upon reaching the venue, I was surrounded by a variety of hipsters, some old and some young, some granola and some corporate. While on one hand the crowd was very similar, it was also quite diverse. I guess I would attribute that to the recent popularity of Modest Mouse, starting with their last album and expanding even more so on their most recent, and quite good, album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank.



Sufficed to say, the show was brilliant. They played a mixture of tunes, some old and some new. Early on in the show Issac Brock [lead singer] said that he was sick and had been throwing up for the past three hours and for us to bear with him. After he finished the next song, he put his guitar down and ran backstage. The rest of the band covered for him, jamming out for about five minutes while the crowd restlessly stood awaiting Brock's return. Soon though, a familiar bassline broke out and Brock burst on stage with the most heartwrenching and emotional live performance I have ever seen. He absoulutely blew the crowd away with his passion as he sung Tiny Cities Made of Ashes and gave me goose bumps.



After a successful encore, the curtains closed on stage, leaving an emotionally battered yet elated crowd to find their way home from Harlem at 11:30 on a Sunday night. That's another blog post in itself.