I surfed over to the All Points West site this morning to send the link to a friend when I noticed they posted a fresh news announcement yesterday:

“The only metropolitan NY-NJ area appearances for Radiohead and Jack Johnson this year are at All Points West, with each act playing a full 2 hour set!

Radiohead is headlining the festival on both Friday, August 8th & Saturday, August 9th, and will have unique performances each night, much like their past two-night shows over the years in NYC.”

The announcement goes on to note that APW is Underworld’s first announced American performance in the US.

Take the Jack Johnson news however you want. Two hours of Johnson’s brand of surf music is at least one hour, 56 minutes and 30 seconds too long for me.   Four hours of Radiohead over two days is another story altogether. I’ll be bailing early Sunday morning to head back to Boston in order to catch the lads from Oxfordshire again Wednesday the 13th.

August 8th and 9th. Then again the following Wednesday, the 13th.

This is the story of three editors and a vendor. See what happens when writers stop being sober and start being: drunk.

Mark, Jay, Matt and I got an invite from Marilyn Monroe on the Las Vegas Convention Center floor to attend an open bar at the Hooters Hotel and Casino. This screamed class to me. Of course we were going. Marilyn Monroe + Hooters girls + Open bar = Mandatory attendance.

The liquor was provided by a company called ShowRack which Matt kept calling ‘the RackShow.’ Classy AND appropriate.  I started the evening off by ordering a Bud Light then changed my mind to a Jack and Coke. I got both anyway. I’d been at the party 45 seconds and I was already double fisting. Yup. That’s just the way we roll.

Three shots of whiskey and three glasses of Jack and coke later — I was chasing shots of Jim Beam with Jack and coke, which is always wise — the open bar closed an hour early. Daunted, but determined, the four of us wandered downstairs to the Hooters bar to keep imbibing what I like to call ‘adult soda pops.’ Which we did. For a long time.

Eventually, Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ start blaring over the PA. We’d been loudly drunk for a while now, but hadn’t reached abnoxious quite yet. That all changed with one word: Meow. Jay, a non-journalist, but all around great guy had been kind of quiet while we were at the bar. I thought he was just hammered, but I now realize he was simply biding his time. Waiting for the right moment to make his move.

“I see a little silloutte-o of a man/meow meow MEOW/meow meow MEOW/Can you do the fandango?”

You know that surprised look that you sometimes get on your face when someone drops some knowledge on you after drinking for a while? He got it from the three of us in spades. And thus began the long and magnificent decline that lead to the videos you see here.

We must have sat at the bar and meowed for a solid two and a half hours. We drove patrons away. Bartenders tried to ignore us. Hookers looked for easier pray. And still, we meowed. No song was untouchable. Eddie Money? Journey?Alice in Chains? Barry Manillow? Meow.

Finally, Tom Petty slithered down from the speakers to where we sat at the elbow of the bar. I remembered my phone and its video capabilities. I started filming.  I don’t fancy myself much of a documentarian, but had I actually been doing a study of the affect of the word ‘Meow’ on drunk reporters in concert with music that is easily parroted, I’d be booking a flight to Cannes. As it is, cell phone video. 15 second clips. I hope you enjoy.

(I’m writing quickly, so bear with me…)

I’m waiting for my ride to get out of the shower before heading to Logan. I’m heading back to Chicago for a week for my Dad’s 60th birthday. I waited to pack until this morning because I had clothes in the dryer last night, and, at 12:30, I was beat and needed to get to sleep. I woke up before 6am to fish the remnants of my socks and jocks out and to pack.

I usually find packing in the morning before a flight stressful. There’s a preset amount of time you have before you need to be at the airport. Getting up early sucks, and you don’t have a choice about it.

On the plus side, I didn’t spend the night agonizing over whether or not I packed something. I didn’t wake up once and think, ‘Oh shit, did I remember to pack my maroon golf shirt?’ Well, shucks, I don’t have time to think about that because I’ve got to cram everything I have into a bag and rush out the door. And, I don’t have a maroon golf shirt.

It’s going to be a quick spectacles, testicles, watch, wallet and I’ll be out the door in ten minutes.

Maybe this morning packing business isn’t so bad.

Munich19

Originally uploaded by packyourlunch.

People live the right way in Munich. Maybe it was the Beerfest. Maybe it was the post card perfect weather in late September.

Everyone was friendly. And if they weren’t friendly to begin with, after a few beers they were. This snap was shot after a night of hard drinking with some just-made friends. I was walking from the Beerhall back to my hotel.

I don’t remember taking this picture — or the walk home for that matter. I do think I remember speaking perfect German to a Bavarian man while he, in turn, spoke perfect English to me.

It looks like the marquee of the theater near my hotel was in the background when I took this picture. It is fitting because no one knew who I was in Munich, except that I was the only American around. Valerie grilled me about George Bush. Freddy asked about traveling from state to state. I was on stage.

But if that isn’t a content look, then I’ve never seen one.

It’s snowing in Boston today. Just a dusting, I think. But enough to make me brush off the windshield of my car.

I bet people on the roads are going to be idiots on the drive home.

I made it safely back to Boston. I hope your postcards all showed up and gave you a laugh. I kept a running journal of most everything I was doing, thinking or drinking — including a running mustache tally. I took over 300 pictures between Zurich, Munich, Amsterdam and Dublin. Most are uploaded to my machine at home, but I haven’t posted that many. Mostly because the Flickr upload tool sucks. Keep your eyes on the photos on the right, however, because they’ll be changing over the course of the next day or two. I’ll start excerpting some of the thoughts I had on the trip right here.

Keep your eyes open.

I’m twenty four hours from vacation. Let me restate that: twenty four hours from getting out of Boston and bumming around Europe for two weeks. When I booked the trip, it seemed like it would never get here. Now it’s here and I’m… doing laundry. The backpack that I’m going to be living out of is still empty and I have to change some money.

But it’s time to go on the trip.

I get into Zurich 8am Thursday morning. Then Munich for the Oktoberfest. Then Amsterdam for, well, Amsterdam. I catch a flight to Dublin for Guinness, Jameson and Joyce. Then I fly home.

Two weeks without a phone or reliable internet access. Two week without work. Two weeks without Boston. Just me, a backpack, a passport and a stack of travel information. Here’s hoping to meeting everyone in Europe – hopefully I make a few travel buddies.

I’ve got to get going. I’ve got to finish packing. I’ve got to prep my liver for the liters of beers I’m going to be drinking.

I’ll be back soon. I’ll post an obscene amount of pictures when I get home.

So I was surfing around some travel sites today, willing the work day to finish up. I happened to land on Orbitz.com. This was a good thing. Just for fun, I put in travel dates.

When what to my wondering eyes did appear? A flight to Zurich, Switzerland and a really cheap fare.

I did some quick fact finding. The first Keg of Oktoberfest will be tapped Saturday September 22nd in Munich. Eurail Youth Passes for 6 days of travel in two months to four countries cost $340.

Then things really started to take shape. The countries you travel between have to be touching. What touches Switzerland? Well, Germany of course. What touches Germany? The Netherlands, you say? Isn’t Amsterdam in the Netherlands? Oh, there’s a ferry that will usher me from Amsterdam to Ireland? It won’t cost anymore? Dublin it is.

And there you have it. September 19th to October 1st: Philly to Zurich. Train from Zurich to Munich. Train from Munich to Amsterdam. Boat from Amsterdam to Dublin. Fly from Dublin back to Boston. Not exactly planes, trains and automobiles. But I’ll take planes, trains and…boats?

And that’s how you do a European Vacation.

Before I got into town, my friend Maggie told me that she had landed a batch of tickets to see Andrew Bird put on a VH1-style- storytellers concert at Northwestern and would I be interested in going? Uhm, of course.

I haven’t listened to much of Andrew Bird’s music, so I tracked him down on MySpace and checked out his latest album, Armchair Apocrypha. I thought it was an interesting album. If you asked me about it before the show, I’d recommend it, but I don’t know that I’d go out and spend $12 on it.

After the show, I was read to jump on iTunes and download it.

I used to play at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall while I was in high school. I was constantly amazed at the acoustics and how easy it was to hear other people playing. It only holds 1100 people, so the idea of hearing such intricate music in that venue was half of the draw.

Neither Andrew Bird or the Hall disappointed. I was sitting 11 rows back on the left hand side of the stage. I’m pretty sure that Bird heard the muffled burp that I let out half way through Why. I’m not joking.

His stage set up consisted of a glockenspiel, electric guitar, violin with two looping rigs and two giant victrola looking horns. Each of the victrola horns was hooked up to a separate violin rig and altered the sound not so subtly. One of the horns kept the melody. The other had two horns pointing opposite directions and spun in front of a microphone. The effect was to completely destroy the sound that Andrew Bird had previously looped.

It made the music sound very Phillip Glass-like.

After an hour, Bird took questions. I found out he grew up in my home town. He likes coffee and tries to tour in an environmentally friendly way. After 15 minutes of questions, he played a three song encore and closed with Weather Systems.

In that space, with that sound, it was amazing.