Rivers Are Damp

I spent a couple of days at the end of the week in Atlantic City. I'm not really an Atlantic City kind of guy, I swear. (I'm a Vegas guy. [Yeah, right. I wish.]) I'm not interested in playing slots, saltwater taffy doesn't do that much for me, and I don't have pleasant childhood memories of the Jersey Shore to draw on (I grew up 1,500 miles away, after all). Plus, when you venture about a block away from the boardwalk, you find yourself in what's really a pretty sleazy, depressing town. If I want to get that I'm-about-to-be-mugged feeling, I can do that a lot closer to home.

So what drew me to Atlantic City? Country singer Gary Allan. I've seen him in concert three times now, and I have to say he's pretty darn amazing.

Now, I'm not at all a fan of what passes for music on modern country stations. My tastes run toward "real" country music: Hank Williams (Sr., of course), Ernest Tubb, Kitty Wells, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, and the like. But in my opinion, Allan—who somehow manages to get radio airplay—is the real deal. He's got the voice. He's got a Johnny Cash-quality swagger. And he's damn good in concert, where he really connects with the fans.

I first paid attention to Allan when I heard his cover of Vertical Horizon's "Best I Ever Had (Grey Sky Morning)." Actually—and this is a little bit embarrassing—I didn't realize for quite some time that Allan's "Best I Ever Had" was the cover. He just owns the song. His version makes it one of the saddest, most heartfelt country songs ever:

So you sailed away into a grey sky morning
Now, I'm here to stay, love can be so boring
Was it what you wanted?
Could it be I'm haunted?

But it's not so bad
You're only the best I ever had
You don't want me back
You're just the best I ever had.

I've grown to like Vertical Horizon's dreamy, alternative "Best I Ever Had," but it doesn't make me feel the heartbreak like Gary Allan's does. And, in fact, that entire album of Allan's, 2003's Tough All Over, has some of the best sad songs I know ("Life Ain't Always Beautiful," "Ring," "He Can't Quit Her," "I Just Got Back from Hell"). If you know the back story, that makes sense because Tough All Over was sort of Allan's musical processing of his wife's suicide. I'm a sucker for a sad song, and Tough All Over has good, quality sad songs aplenty. I'd have to say it's one of my two or three favorite albums ever.

Allan is touring with a new album now. Living Hard isn't quite so thoroughly sad, naturally enough. It rocks some ("Like It's a Bad Thing" and the title track, for instance), but it's got some quality sad songs, too. I'm particularly enjoying "She's So California," "Half of My Mistakes," and "Watching Airplanes."

So, yeah, Gary Allan drew me to Atlantic City and the House of Blues. I sat back, armed with a significant quantity of Jack and Coke, and enjoyed. He fired the place up. He made Atlantic City seem like a good place to be. And for me, that's really saying something.

Bouquets

Especially to mine.

Last night, I was back at Citizens Bank Park—and in my regular section—to watch the Phillies' first game of the season against the Giants. There's no news in the Man Trap Department™ to report, I'm afraid: I went to the game with my best female friend. She pretended to be a tall, athletic, goofily charming stallion, though, and that helped. (If she reads this, there'll be hell to pay for saying that, believe me.)

The Phillies played well. Very well. Super-stud Chase Utley started the game off with a homer in the bottom of the first, and the Phillies were ahead, 4-1, by the bottom of the fourth. Somehow or other, though, things gradually almost got out of hand. In the top of the seventh, former Phillie Aaron Rowand (who, happily enough, got a big ovation from the fans at his first at-bat) hit a three-run homer to tie things up. Meanwhile, what began as a beautiful spring evening was turning into an outright cold night.

And, of all things, my section suffered from what had to be one of the loudest fans in the ballpark. She YELLED out to every batter. She WHISTLED—so loudly that my friend pulled out ear plugs. And Annoying Fan delivered a running, running, running commentary on EVERYTHING. It was like sitting next to Ethel Merman on steroids. Whew. At one point, when she wondered where everyone else in her row had gone, the group of fans around me (we bonded a little bit) lost it. We laughed and laughed, especially after someone yelled back that he envied the missing fans....

Anyway, the game was still tied, 4-4, at the end of nine innings. My friend and I wondered how much of the cold, and the LOUD fan, we could tolerate. And then Rowand hit another homer for the Giants in the top of the 10th, making it seem like the game was headed for the worst possible ending. But hunky Pat Burrell came to our aid—with a bottom-of-the-tenth, game-winning homer. It couldn't have been more exciting. The Phillies had two outs when Burrell launched a fastball over the left field wall. Walk-off home run.

Sweet.

I've blogged before about my fondness for Teitur, the adorable Faroese singer-songwriter. Well, tonight I rented a car and drove down to Wilmington, Delaware, to see him perform at the Grand Opera House—which, by the way, isn't all that grand or operatic. It also wasn't nearly full enough tonight. That's a shame because Teitur has an amazing, strong voice; he's pretty darn charismatic, too.

Tonight, Teitur mostly did songs from The Singer, his cool new concept album, a collection of "story songs." If you're new to Teitur, his earlier albums may be a more natural starting point. I think you'll be drawn into whatever he's singing, though.

This YouTube video is for one of his earlier songs, "Sleeping with the Lights On," which he did tonight from the piano.

Bobble

Because it was Jamie Moyer Bobblehead Night (really, that's why I went!), I headed to Citizens Bank Park last night to watch the Phillies play the San Diego Padres. The Phils didn't play all that well, first on defense and later on offense. Not a good combination, of course. They lost, 4-2. And, damn, it was a chilly night. I wished I'd brought gloves....

Since last night's game wasn't part of my season package (i.e., it wasn't a part of the Man Trap), I sat in a different location: Section 129, Row 30, Seat 8. What a weird seat! I know it sounds like it's probably smack dab in the middle of some row (it's Seat 8, after all), but it's not. Seat 8 is the only seat in that row! Section 129 is itself a funny little section, wedged between two normal-sized sections along the third base line. And by Row 30, there's only room for a single seat. Row 29, which was right in front of me, had two seats, and Row 31—the final row in the section—also had just a single seat.

I felt like I was in a royal box, sorta. A baseball royal box??? There was no one at all, of course, to crawl all over me. And I had tons of room around me, which I filled with the bobblehead and the remains of crab fries, a hot dog, and a beer. Plus, I had a great, close-up view of home plate.

If you're ever headed to Citizens Bank Park by yourself, well, I'm sorry you couldn't find a date, either. But I highly recommend Section 129, Row 30, Seat 8. It's the perfect place to be alone at the ballpark.

Someday or other, I'm going to write a long post of tips for single travelers to Philly (and maybe another one for Las Vegas).... Seat 8 is going to get high marks, I tell you.

I Listen

...that one of my new Threadless t-shirts was a big, er, hit at the Phillies-Mets game on Saturday. People kept checking out the shirt, trying to figure out what it said/meant, and smirking when they "got" it. But I was still surprised when—while standing in a long, long line for a helmet sundae with sprinkles (shut up!)—a young, handsome, probably (slightly) buzzed dude approached, told me he'd laughed out loud, and did the fist pound with me. Then he offered to buy me a beer!

All because I listen to bands that don't even exist yet.

I have a new favorite t-shirt. And next time, I'm totally saying yes to the beer.

Gosh, it's been awhile since I posted. I need to do better. But I've been busy with the usual things—work [insert eye roll here], Phillies games, beer, rooting my Fly-boys into the next round of the NHL playoffs, and spending way, way, way too many hours working on [dang, this is kind of embarrassing] my fantasy tennis games.

On Tuesday, I caught my second game of the baseball season from my perch in Citizens Bank Park's Section 211, accompanied this time by a different co-worker. Yes, the plan to use my season tickets as a man trap is still a work-in-progress. Instead, I keep inviting colleagues—men, mostly straight, who are sports fans but not a single one who's likely to evolve into the beer-drinking, baseball-addicted boy toy of my dreams. It is good to spend time at the ballpark with a friend, though. And since it's not a date, I don't have to worry too much about how my hair looks.... [That was a joke. Really.]

Anyway, Tuesday night's game was a chilly affair, but the hometown fans who stuck it out were rewarded with an almost unbelievable, come-from-behind victory in the bottom of the ninth. Trailing 3-0 to the Astros, the Phils strung together a comeback with an improbable home run from a just-added player; a hit batsman; a homer from hunky [see, it's always gay when I'm at the ballpark] Pat Burrell; a stolen first base after a strikeout by Geoff Jenkins; and a probably unwise trip home by Jenkins, who missed the third base coach's stop sign after Pedro Feliz's game-winning double. Wow. After all that, the teeth-chattering I'd suffered for the last half of the game suddenly didn't matter so much.

Yesterday afternoon, I was back at the ballpark, catching my first Phillies-Mets game of the season. I met yet another colleague [this one gay, if not at all a likely candidate for the man trap]. It was a gorgeous day for a game, springlike and sunny, and I even broken open the sunscreen for the first time this year. The Phillies' offense was pretty lackluster, though. Half the team, it seems, is injured. And Chase Utley, who went two-for-four and homered, just can't carry the whole team. The Evil Mets won, 4-2. Bummer, huh?

What else did I do this week? Well, there was some beer—not all of it at the ballpark. [<Digression>The beer selection at the ballpark is better than you'd think, but it's not superb. I usually stick to Victory's HopDevil. I normally rail against hops-heavy American craft beers, but HopDevil is good—and it's one of the best things I'm going to find at Citizens Bank Park.</Digression>] On Monday night, I was at another beer-tasting at Tria's Fermentation School. The session was devoted to La Trappe Brewery, one of the seven remaining Trappist breweries in the world and the only one in the Netherlands. [The rest are in Belgium, of course.] In the States, La Trappe beers are sold as Koningshoeven beers for reasons attributable to church politics.... I was smitten with the Koningshoeven Bock, the Koningshoeven Tripel, and the Koningshoeven Quadrupel—which was my favorite of the night, all caramel and goodness. I was also smitten with one of the brewers [not a monk, Mom!], Gijs Swinkels, but even the slightly buzzed me recognized the futility of making a pass at a straight man from another continent.

So that's pretty much what I've been spending my time on. Baseball and beer. And, well, perfecting my entries in Tennis Channel and ATP fantasy games. [Hmmm, this could explain why I'm still single.] My picks for this week's U.S. Men's Clay Court Championship were, I thought, stunningly good. I even correctly put the way unheralded Marcel Granollers Pujol into the final on my bracket. [I did not have him upsetting James Blake to take the title, however.] And despite this prescience, I still only barely finished in the Top 200 [190th out of 1733 entries]. How good do I have to be, anyway?

And do I have to be that good to get a date, too?

Show us a t-shirt.
Submitted by Connie.

Funkalicious

It's from Threadless.  And I've already written an entire blog post about it.  Actually, I'm beginning to think I've already blogged pretty much everything I know—and more.  All the interesting stuff, anyway.  So, well, I still love this t-shirt.  It's currently on sale for $5, but it looks like it's pretty much sold out in the guys' sizes, unless you're a small or an XXL (I'm not).

On Saturday, three friends and I went to Philly's Kimmel Center for the last installment of this season's Fresh Ink series, which features crazy weird strange "new" music. I've been a subscriber of the series for several years because, well, I like to experience, er, "new" things. Saturday night's concert was my favorite of the season.

The program featured works of contemporary composer-guitarist Phil Kline. I was particularly looking forward to Fear and Loathing, a song cycle built around the writings of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. (Remind me to explain sometime how/why HST's Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 changed my life.) But it was a different piece, Zippo Songs, that really captured my attention.

Zippo Songs is a song cycle of poems written by Vietnam-era American GIs and engraved on their Zippo lighters. The texts are shrewd, funny, profound, imaginative, crisp. As an example, here's a snippet from one poem that seems to summarize, in an incredibly cogent way, the American experience in Vietnam:

We are the unwilling
Led by the unqualified
Doing the unnecessary
For the ungrateful

An amazing vocalist, Theo Bleckmann, sang the Zippo Songs. At once ethereal and soldierly, Bleckmann's vocal performance was the talk of the theater at intermission. And it's what my friends and I talked about during an after-concert debriefing over beer, wine, and Italian food. I've been checking Bleckmann's website out tonight, and I'll be investigating his CDs soon. In a single night, I developed a real music-crush on him....

If you're interested in Zippo Songs, and you ought to be, check out this NPR story from 2004. On that same page, you can listen to three of the songs, performed by Bleckmann. Highly recommended.

Box Office

A few months ago, I hatched a plan to, well, trap myself a man. The plan was to buy season tickets to Something or Other—and invite dashing, eligible men to go with me. That way, I'd have an "excuse" to ask them out ("hey, I have this extra ticket that's going to waste"), and I'd be hanging out with guys with similar interests.

I didn't get my act together early enough to buy more than a handful of Flyers tickets, but I'm now the proud owner of a pair of tickets to 17 Phillies games this year. Actually, I'm now the owner of tickets to 16 games, as I used the first pair last Thursday (for an exciting, if chilly, come-from-behind victory over the Nationals). If you're looking for me, that's me in Section 211, hoping, desperately, that no one too tall will be sitting in Row 5, Seat 6, directly in my line of sight.

So now comes the hard part. How do I actually use this Man Trap? To meet men, I mean. I really don't have a clue.

So far, I've been inviting dashing, eligible—but presumptively straight—men to hang out with me. I'm asking friends, or acquaintances, and that's really not the point of the Man Trap. For Friday night's Flyers game, for instance, I asked a former colleague. True, I've had a crush on him since about 15 minutes after we met, but surely I'd know by now if he might be interested in me. And for my first Phillies game of the season, I asked an absolutely cool current colleague. (P.S. If either of these men is not 100% straight, please let me know. ASAP.)

Now, of course, I had fun hanging out with these guys. They're friends, after all. And I suppose I should just be happy to have good friends to hang out with. It's better than sitting home alone. Or going everywhere by myself.

I just haven't figured out how to meet dashing, eligible, gay men who might be interested in Flyers or Phillies games, or avant garde music, or bluegrass music, or any of the other events I'm likely carrying tickets for these days. Do I take out a personals ad, highlighting my Phillies fandom? I'm already on all the usual gay dating sites, and that hasn't gotten me anywhere. My friends aren't any help, either. Doesn't anybody fix their friends up anymore? Because, God knows, I obviously need the help.

Now that I have the bait, I don't know where to set the Man Trap.

Aargh.