Walked 2 miles to Monrose Harbor to take Freddie to Dog Day on the Green today.  I was a little disappointed in the doggie turnout, but it was really hot so Fred wasn’t interested in playing anyway.  In fact, he just wanted to chill in the shade with the hippie from the “Natural Dog Massage” tent.

We listened to Skip Haynes for a while.  For $20 he’ll personalize his hit song with your pet’s name!

Fred did get to go on the agility course, but the lady wouldn’t let me put the jumping bar more than a few of inches off the ground because “my dog has to learn how to jump.”

I think I fixed my site.  Let’s test with some pictures!

Another hot day.  After installing the air conditioner Fred and I took a trip to the doggie beach.  Lot’s of dogs there today!

Everyone keeps calling Clint Dempsey’s goal in the England game lucky.  I’d have to say I disagree.  This just shows that soccer is 11 v 11 and our 11th man is simply better than anything England has to offer.  At first glance it would be easy to dismiss it as a lucky goal, and I’d agree with that line of thinking if this was the first or even second time that this has happened to England.  The reality is that this keeps happening to England over and over and over again, and at some point you have to say our goalies aren’t very good.

You know why England seemed to shoot right into Tim Howard when they were on a breakaway? Because he is a great goalie and puts himself in great positions.  Just like shortstop in baseball or a goalie in hockey, Tim gets his whole body behind the ball so he doesn’t have to reach for the ball.  Green’s mistake on the goal wasn’t that he let the ball slip through his hands.  His big mistake was that he was lazy and didn’t get his body behind the ball for backup.  Look at him reaching to the side in this picture.

And just to show you this is nothing new for England here are some video clips:

England vs Croatia – This goal knocks England out of qualifying in Euro 2008.  Similar goal, same mistake.  Goalie has horrible positioning and tries to reach to the side to catch a bouncing ball. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxefXTqeVi4

Robert Green again being lazy and not paying attention. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTV80j-ZAZ4

Robert Green again!  He  gets hurt here, but still it’s another in the list: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2xqhDat_yw

England v Croatia – Different game, different goalie, but it happens AGAIN  http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=Dmws59X1cNg&feature=related

England’s backup in this tournament, David James, has made so many stupid errors in his career that his nickname is Calamity James.

England’s best goalie is 3rd stringer Joe Hart.  He had a great season with Birmingham, but they’ll never play him because he is “too young.”

Just saw She & Him at a free show in Millennium Park. The sound there is actually pretty good, but holy crap there were a lot of people!

Noticed a few things that would never happen in Detroit:

It was almost 80 when we woke up today so it was definitely a beach day!  Freddie actually went chest deep into the water without me throwing him in!

In our first video here you can see him gingerly taking his first steps in the water.  Freddie isn’t sure if he likes the water yet so he doesn’t like other dogs coming up to him when he is wading out.  This first video ends about a half second before Freddie takes this other dog down.

I took my socks and shoes off and Freddie actually came out into the water with me (note the drool out of his mouth)

Enough of this water business. Fred usually spends most of his time at the beach sniffing the garbage that washes up in the corner.

6 days until the rendezvous with Mr. Ayzenberg for the 2nd annual Chicago Snuggie pub Crawl!  http://www.snuggiepubcrawl.com/

Snuggie Pub Crawl will then be followed by an evening with Mason Jennings

Testing new theme and plugins.

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Fred running at the beach

Fred resting

My girlfriend, my neighbors, and I all went out last weekend and had one of the most unexpected but wonderful experiences in a long time.  Too much awesome happened to write down, but here is a little summary.

I’ve always been a pretty big fan of The Decemberists, but I’ve become especially enamored with their latest effort entitled The Hazards of Love.  Shara of My Brightest Diamond fame is one the guest singers on the album, and while I’ve been aware of her for a little while, I really never listened to her music that much before.

Shara’s voice on The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid is one of my favorite parts of the album so I decided to do a little research on Shara which obviously led me to My Brightest Diamond’s website.  Once on the site I was pleasently suprised to see that Shara was coming to Detroit very soon to play a free show at The Yes Farm!

Shara with the gang

Needless to say I was pretty excited, but I had no idea where The Yes Farm was located.  After a few minutes on Google I found their website.  Oooh boy!  Looks like we’re about to take a trip back to a ’60s style hippie community!

Once there I found that my suspicions were correct.  The Yes Farm is basically an abandoned house that has enough of it’s holes patched up to protect you from the elements.  The show was actually a fundraiser so they could install permament electricity.  To power the house for this night they had run two extension cords across the lot to the house next door!  It was actually kind of scary since it was raining pretty hard and I did see water on the floor around the extension cord.  All was fine though, and no one ended up dead.

We were a little unsure as to what to expect, but everyone there was really nice, and once the show started everyone was glued to Shara on stage.  Shara put on amazing show and then stayed out to drink beers and hang out with the crowd afterwards.  She even signed her setlist for us

Brandi with her new art

After the show we went to Bert’s in Eastern Market to get something to eat.  At this point we were all pretty happy having just experienced something awesome and unique in an area of Detroit that doesn’t have much going for it.  The night was just about to get even better though as Thornetta Davis walked into Bert’s halfway through our dinner.  I don’t think Thornetta intended to sing, but they called her up on stage after she ordered her dinner.  She only sang one song, but man oh man what a song it was.  The whole place came alive.  Everyone was up clapping and dancing.

Pictures from the night here.

]]> http://www.jaylark.com/blog/2009/04/28/detroits-brightest-diamond/feed/ 0 http://www.jaylark.com/blog/2009/02/27/massive-riaa-layoffs/ http://www.jaylark.com/blog/2009/02/27/massive-riaa-layoffs/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:50:05 +0000 Jay http://www.jaylark.com/blog/?p=64

Boo hoo! Massive RIAA Layoffs: I’m feeling lazy, and the write of the article sums it up pretty nicely so I’ll just quote.

“The real issue is that the RIAA has basically managed to run one of the dumbest, most self-defeating strategies over the last decade. Rather than helping major record labels adjust to the changing market, it continually, repeatedly and publicly destroyed its own reputation and the reputation of the labels — each time shrinking their potential market by blaming the very people they should have been working to turn into customers”

“They may claim that they “had” to take this strategy because it’s what the labels wanted (and, indeed, that was Hilary Rosen’s excuse), but that’s ridiculous. It was evident to pretty much anyone who took the time to understand the issues back in the mid- to late-90s, that the internet represented an opportunity to those who embraced it. The RIAA’s decision to fight progress and its own customers at every turn has been nothing short of a complete disaster.”