Super Stoked For the Hangout Music Festival!!

     Well it is Saturday, and it is an extremely nice day outside. I want to do something epic but I promised my girlfriend I would hold off until tomorrow when she is not working so we could do whatever it is together. So today I am stuck inside feeling antsy, and I decided the best way to blow off a little time would be to catch up on some blog-a-nating.
     Yesterday was April Fool's Day. Does it count as a holiday? If it does than it is my second favorite holiday next to Halloween. My one big prank yesterday was putting a pretty convincing Facebook post up stating that Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead had died and wondering what that meant for summer festival season. Man if you ever want to freak hippies out just convince them that one of the Dead's dead. So I got a lot of freaked out responses to this, most people saw the humor in it, but some people seemed genuinely hurt by it. I feel bad, but come on its April Fool's day. If there is one day to have your guard up and not believe anything you hear from anyone, that should be the day to do so. Anyway if someone reading this got upset by this than I am truly sorry to have upset you so badly, all of my jokes are done with the intent of everyone involved getting a laugh out of them in the long run.

     Speaking of summer festival season I am getting really excited for the Hangout Music Festival next month in Gulf Shores Alabama on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. This is the second year they will be putting this on. The Hangout Festival came out of seemingly nowhere last year to put on what people have said was an amazing inaugural event. I have personally heard artists who played there speaking ecstatically about the event, which is not something that happens too often. It is a three day, beach themed music festival located on the beach! I hear that the water there is still thankfully clean, considering what BP did to the tourism industry in this area it is nice to see someone bringing the Awesome back, and I hope they have great success. Check out their website below!
                                                           CLICK HERE TO CHECK-OUT HANGOUT
     So for their second year they have put together a lineup that would make a festie pimp out his grandmother to go see. Some of my all time favorite artists and bands like: Paul Simon, The Foo Fighters, Primus, The Flaming Lips, Ween, Galactic, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Matisyahu, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Medeski Martin And Wood, Umphreys McGee, and Xavier Rudd will be playing as well as some of my favorite recent newcomers: Pretty Lights, Girl Talk, Bassnectar. Cee-Lo Green(I know he's been around a while, but I never really listened to him until Gnarls Barkley), and the quite appropriately named Big Gigantic!
     Unfortunately it seems that events like this can too often happen like a flash in the pan, think about Rothbury, Langerado when it was in the Everglades, or the Echo Project. They have one or two amazing but small shows and by the time everyone hears about how classic they are it is too late because they either gone, or in some cases like Bonnaroo, they do catch on but then they seem to succumb to their own success and become way too big or commercial. Right now Hangout seems to be in that perfect place where they have been able to capitalize on their last amazing show in order to put on what looks to be an even greater second event. Think AllGood!
     The only issue that even kept me from going the first time was that they don't have on site camping. The reason for this is that the venue is on a public beach in a downtown area. Luckily this year we have rented a camp site at a state park only a mile and a half from the festival, and we plan on bringing bicycles to come and go as we please. Because the festival is located in the middle of the town it unfortunately has a noise curfew which requires the music to end at 11 each night. So to try and make the party last as long as possible the promoters have gone and done what most inner city festivals do these days, which is to book several of the top name bands playing to play extra indoor sets at local clubs. A lot of people on message boards seem to be confused about this concept, but to anyone reading this try to understand- Although you have to pay to go to these late night shows, this does not mean you will not be able to see these artists unless you purchase separate tickets. These late night shows are separate from the festival itself. All of these bands will be playing at the Hangout Festival itself, they will simply ALSO be playing additional late night shows at these clubs. I hope this alleviates any confusion or anger that may be present out there.
     To finally take this whole thing full circle, yesterday I had already been having ridiculously awesome April Fool's day. I came home after turning in one of my last school papers for the semester. I got on my computer and logged on to Facebook, and I was treated to the coolest April Fool's day surprise I could imagine. The Facebook page for the Hangout music festival had decided to feature me as their fan of the week, and in honor of the occasion they had changed their Facebook profile picture to a picture of me with an awesome mustache, a big ass beer, and wearing a Ween shirt my friend made! I had to take a screen shot to immortalize the moment!

In fact as I sit here and type this my picture is still up there as their profile pic. Nice! By the way if any of you actually looked at the google search bar I have in this screen shot you will notice I was searching for "Amy Winehouse". I will just leave you now to contemplate that little tidbit.
Rock On.

Radio Shack WTF!!?

      Before reading any further know that this is going to be an angry rant. So if you don't feel like reading it please don't get mad at me because I warned you before hand.........
      Now with that being said, What the fuck is wrong with Radio Shack? More to the point, what the fuck is wrong with everyone who works at Radio Shack? It just doesn't make sense to me! It seems to me that if you are going to have a job at an amateur electronics hobby store, you might know the slightest thing about amateur electronics.
     I go there sometimes for simple things: switches; stereo wiring and connectors; plug outlets. Simple things.  I cannot even count how many times I have gone in to Radio Shack and been given either completely utterly ridiculous wrong information from the person working there, or simply had them not know one bit what I was talking about or trying to buy. 
     Now I know most of you are going to say "Its just a job; its retail; thats what you get for minimum wage" etc. WRONG. Even if it is just a job, wouldn't you think in their dealing with the subject day in and day out they would have learned SOMETHING about the realm of electronics. Besides you wouldn't expect this kind of shenanigans from any other kind of specialty retailer. You wouldn't go into a sporting goods store and have a guy who doesn't know what a shin guard is. You wouldn't walk into a home improvement store and have somebody who doesn't know what a ratchet is. You wouldn't walk into a furniture store and be given strange looks when asking about a duvet. So why the fuck does the person working at Radio Shack not know what a female DC socket is?
     Their prices are outrageous, just look at what they charge for simple batteries sometime, and while they once were the only place you could go for a lot of items the INTERNET now has them beat as far as prices and selection are concerned bar-none. The worst part about it is they have seemingly no competition. Think about it. Walmart has its Target; Staples has its OfficeMax; Lowes has its Home Depot; McDonalds Has their Burger King. But who is there to challenge the mighty Radio Shack? Do you know why nobody steps up to challenge Radio Shack? I bet you can figure out the answer yourself quite easily if you have ever actually gone to a Radio Shack. Did you see anybody else in there? No? Thats because nobody ever goes there! It seems the only way they are even in business anymore is because they got in on the cell phone craze early and now have contracts with all the major carriers who do business, but I feel like they should have a buttload of competition in that market nowadays.  So it seems the only people who go there anymore are people like me, desperately seeking that one or two dollar part that is all we need to complete our project. And in order to get that part we are forced to go through the miracle that is Radio Shack. WTF!!??

Farm to Family Full Moon Gathering and Music Festival

I was fortunate enough this past weekend to attend the Farm To Family Full Moon Gathering just outside High Springs Florida. The concert is put on by a local resident Don Appelbaum. He has been having gatherings at his farm since I was in high school. For several years he had the farm to family concerts at his residence, but his neighbors began to become annoyed with all the traffic it brought in and he was forced to stop having them at his farm. Recently Don found a new place to have these events, and after a few years hiatus the Farm to Family concerts returned last November. Unfortunately I was about to move and begin at a new school that month, so I was unable to make it, but I was certainly glad to be able to make it to this one.

The land the festival is held on seems to be the framework for what will someday be a suburban neighborhood. When you first drive in it is on a road with several roundabouts, but there are no houses anywhere to be spoken of. The trees almost look like they were specifically planted so as to be spaced far enough apart to one day accommodate roads and houses, but right now it is simply Florida land. There is a small barn and a chicken shack scattered amongst the property.

The show was Friday March 18 through Sunday the 20th. My girlfriend's sister and her boyfriend arrived with several of our friends on Friday evening, but my girlfriend and I had guests from back home staying with us on Friday night, one of whom would be playing at the festival the next night. My girlfriend had to work Saturday morning, so we did not arrive until late Saturday afternoon. Since we were only staying one night we decided not to bring a tent, but to instead sleep in our hammock. When we arrived there were probably about 300-500 people camping there. There were lots of kids, people with their babies. Older folks, people with dogs. People hula hooping, blowing bubbles, and spinning poi.

They had a lot of great vendors, and apparently had no problem with anyone who wanted to come in and vend doing so without paying any kind of fee beyond entry.
 One of my perennial favorite festival vendors was there, The Grilled Cheese wagon. This venture is made up of a lot of friends of mine, and they are quite possibly the hardest working crew on the festival circuit. There are times at festivals where I have gotten little or no sleep, only to see these guys up and operating even more than me. So since this was a smaller festival it was quite shocking to actually be able to see and photograph them closing for the night in an exhibition I call "No More Cheese"

There many diverse bands playing, from Bluegrass to Funk, Rocksteady Ska to Psychadelic. The two headlining bands on Saturday night were the Ska band The Duppies

and  the Jam band Cope, who even played a Dead-On cover of the Tool song "Sober"!!

Of course this is the Farm to Family Full Moon Celebration, and of course this happened to be on the weekend of the perigee-an moon. If you are not familiar, the moon orbits the earth in kind of an elliptical shape, when it is furthest away from the earth it is at its apogee, when it is closest it is at its perigee. The moons orbit does not directly coincide with its cycles, so the last time the moon was full at its perigee was in 18 years ago in 1993. Because of this event the moon appears much larger and brighter, almost as if it were a white sun.

After the music was over Saturday night there were people having small bonfires throughout the camping area. There was a small drum circle, and there was a guitar and banjo picking circle behind the stage as well. Everyone enjoyed themselves into the morning, and we fell asleep just before the sun rose. Right when the sun did rise they began a bluegrass set on the main stage, it was loud enough to enjoy as I drifted in and out of consciousness, but not so loud as to be disturbing.

We awoke around noon and enjoyed a few more hours of bluegrass before we packed up and drove back to Tallahassee for some much needed rest. It was great to get to go to one of these after 2 years, and this one was by far the best one yet! I can not wait for the next one, hope to see everyone there!

An Alligator Free Wakulla River.

      One of the first things I wanted to check out when I moved to Tallahassee was the springs and rivers. Gainesville is pretty renowned for having awesome outdoor activities, and I had been hearing Tallahassee actually rivaled the Gainesville area for natural attractions, so I have been excited to find out for myself. One of the places I was most intrigued to seek out was Wakulla Springs. Wakulla is one of the highest magnitude springs in the world, over 200 million gallons a day flows through Wakulla, or about 15,000 gallons a minute! All of this empties out into a clear river called the Wakulla river, which eventually meets up with the St Marks river, and then the gulf of Mexico. Wakulla is so deep that there are Mammoth, Mastodon, Ice Age Camel, American Lion, and Giant Sloth bones still found regularly at the bottom by divers. Wakulla was the site of several Tarzan films, as well as the Creature from The Black Lagoon. Despite all this history Wakulla is more well known in its recent history for an infamous event. Back in 1987 the Wakulla river was the scene of one of the most gruesome and graphic killings of a human by and alligator ever. An FSU student had been seen traveling up river while snorkeling. Serveral minutes later a glass bottom boat filled with tourists passed over an 11 foot alligator when people on the boat realized the alligator had something in its mouth. They immediately recognized the legs and flippers of a human being were being dragged along the bottom by this enormous alligator. The park was temporarily closed, the alligator was eventually trapped and killed. But to this day even a quarter of a decade later all I hear when asking about Wakulla is "There are gators everywhere there" and "people get killed by alligators there". Well let me tell you about my adventures on the Wakulla river, and rest assured I did not see a single alligator in my five hours spent on nearly the entire length of the river.

     I left my house around 12:30. I would have left much earlier, but it was in the 40's out and the forecast had it in the mid 70s by 2, so I decided to try and time my arrival with the arrival of warmth. It only took me around 30 minutes to reach Highway 98 where the last bridge over the Wakulla is. There is a small canoe and kayak outfitter located right next to the bridge, but I brought my own so I just parked underneath the bridge, took my boat off, and prepared to launch.

Perhaps it was because it was a Saturday. Perhaps it was because it was the first warm Saturday of the year. Perhaps it was because it was the last Saturday of spring break. Perhaps it was because of the proximity of a reasonably priced outfitter. Whatever the reason I have never seen so many Kayakers on a single stretch of water before in my life! I think I saw at least 100 different boats on my time on this river. Now I usually like to find a little alone time on the water to enjoy a couple of beers or a left handed cigarette, but unfortunately the amount of people on the water made it difficult for me to do so discretely. I did take advantage of the company. Seeing as how I rarely have a paddling companion I do not have a lot of pictures of me on the water, so I asked a nice couple to take a few pictures of me for my archives, and they were happy to oblige. As well I realized I did not have a bottle opener with me that day, and one fellow was more than eager to help open my beers in exchange for one of his own.

The river itself was so beautiful. Because it is exclusively spring fed the water is almost perfectly clear. It reminded me of the Itchetucknee river, only much wider like the Santa Fe. Also like the Santa Fe there are many houses along it with docks and boats along the side. On this particular day I saw many people sitting out drinking on their docks, using their boats as sun decks, and I even saw one man in waist deep water building a new dock, obviously unafraid of deadly river gators.

Along the journey I saw lots of wildlife. There were numerous herons that would sit on the water and when you got within 10 feet of them they would take off, quickly skipping across the water for a few seconds before taking flight in a magnificent display right in front of you. There were countless turtles. The smaller ones seemed to jump the second you approached them, but the larger ones would sit patiently up until the moment you pulled out a camera, then they too would make a swim for it. There were a rare few turtles who bothered to hang out and listen to my inane prodding while I took their pictures and made like Austin Power's was their photographer. Yeah Baby!!

So after about two hours of paddling upstream I made it to the next bridge. Just past this bridge was Wakulla state park, and they had put up a fence across the entire river to keep boaters out of the park. There was a hole in the fence big enough to kayak through, but I did not want to contend with glass bottom boats or angry park rangers, so I just turned around. This fence would officially mark the half point to countless boaters journeys.

On my way back I encountered many of the same wildlife I had on the way up, save for one spectacular out-lier. As I drifted back I noticed a group of about 4 boats floating with all the occupants staring directly down. Of course the group curiousity was too much for me to ignore, so I paddled up to inquire as to the spectacle. Now if you recall even though it was in the mid seventies that day, it had actually been below freezing the night before. As such several warm blooded water creatures had found the 72 degree spring water up river much more inviting than the freezing cold gulf water 10 miles down stream. So there in the middle of the river were two gigantic manatees, one much larger than the other. My boat is 9 feet exactly, the smallest of the two was about the same size so I would estimate he as about 9 feet as well. The larger of the two was nearly twice that size, probably about 14 feet in total! Seeing these gigantic creatures swim underneat my small craft was amazing, although I feared if either of them tried to surface that I would be joining them in their swim, along with my cell phone, camera, and expensive left handed cigarettes. So I snapped a quick picture and took my distance to avoid any aquatic mammal complications.

I returned to my car just in time to realize I was sunburned. It is always the worst when you start to see the burn while you are still out in the sun, because you know that it is just going to get worse later. It is like when you stop drinking right when you start to feel sick, if you already feel it it is too late, because it is only going to get worse from that point even if you stop right then and there. And that, my friends, was my adventure of the week. No alligators to speak of, just turtles, birds, and gigantic aquatic mammals. The stuff that groovy is made of. Until next time.

Rally.

         Last week I attended the "Awake The State" rally. The idea was to mobilize as many people as possible to protest against Florida Gov. Rick Scott's proposed budget, as well as the cuts to essential services that budget would entail. Across the state in 31 cities more than 15,000 people protested.

Only about 300 people counter protested, and those were mostly the ones bussed in by Gov Scott for his makeshift press conference for the start of the legislative session. I find it rather discouraging that so many people could mobilize and yet the governor would not only ignore their presence, but that he would cleverly bus in supporters and choose rather to address their presence and use it to try and show that people were on his side.Here is a shining example of a Rick Scott supporter.                                                                    
I believe that it is time for us to do more than just wave signs and yell at cameras. This state does not have a method of accountability in place at the state level for our representatives. I propose that we the citizens begin to circulate a petition for the State constitution to allow for a mechanism with which to enact a recall election. It is time for real political action, not just rhetoric.

Bait and Switch.

    I am very angry today. I am angry at music promoters. I am very angry today at the music promoters behind Langerado. For those of you that don't know what Langerado is, let me fill you in.
    Langerado is a regional South Florida music festival. Langerado happened for many years during the 2000's in Markham Park in downtown Sunrise, near Ft Lauderdale. In 2008 Langerado had its most epic year when it relocated to Big Cypress, in the Everglades, and added camping to the festival. You would think the promoters would have followed it up with an even more epic event, yet something went wrong. The next year Langerado was relocated to downtown Miami! The ticket prices skyrocketed, camping was eliminated from the event, it was shortened to 2 days instead of three, and they ended up booking a bunch of bands like Gym Class Heroes, Dashboard Confessional, Snoop Dogg, and Zac Brown Band. Less than spectacular. It certainly did not help much that Phish decided to end their near decade long hiatus to reunite in Virginia that exact same weekend.
      So as one might imagine they did not sell a lot of tickets. They ended up canceling the event, and blamed sluggish ticket sales on the poor economy, instead of on their poor choice of lineup and location. Those of us who had enjoyed Langerado for what it once was lamented its demise. So how surprised were some of us yesterday when out of nowhere news began to spread that Langerado was returning! The excitement, however, would be short lived.
   The first clues that it would simply not be as epic as it once had been came in the form of it being moved back to the public park it was founded at. While the shows at Markham park were fun, there was still the logistics of finding a place to stay for two days, and driving back and forth along with 15,000 people every day to park and get in and out of the venue, a feat that could eat up HOURS. As well as once again not having camping the event was back down to 2 days.
     Another clue that something was fishy came in the announcement that the old promoters were no longer involved in the production of the festival, and that it had been sold to the people who put on Lollapalooza, one of the MOST CORPORATE music events in the world. For those of you unfamiliar with Lollapalooza, it was a touring festival that buckled in 2003, but was then bought out by the large music promoter C3. It introduced non-compete clauses for the artists that performed at it, so that they could not perform at any other location within 100 miles of Lollapalooza for 9 months before and after their festival appearance. This practice effectively screwed a lot of regional venues and promoters from being able to have top name acts perform in their clubs, and is currently the focus of a pending antitrust suit with the Illinois Attorney General. It is also the wonderful event that brought us the likes of Lady Gaga!
  Yet I digress. In order to try and build excitement for the launch of Langerado the promoters were offering early bird tickets today at 11am for 75 dollars, and anyone who wanted to purchase tickets for the festival had a chance to do so at half the regular asking price with one catch, the lineup would not be announced for several months still.
    So the nostalgia of Langerado crept up on me, and sure enough this morning I was up at 10:30 eagerly awaiting the window of purchase opportunity. I kept refreshing my browser every five seconds and then sure enough at 11 on the dot tickets become available. I quickly add one ticket to my cart, speedily release my credit card information to a sleazy promoter for a ticket to a concert with an unknown lineup and when I go to checkout, "There are not enough tickets available to complete this transaction". Not enough tickets? So less than the 1 I want to purchase?! It wasn't even 11:02 when I got this message. I don't know how many presale tickets they had available, but they all sold in less than 2 minutes. It does not even seem feasible considering the fact that I proceeded to checkout the second it was possible and was still not fast enough to get one ticket.
      Therefore I am calling Shenanigans on the producers. This was an obvious bait and switch. It is the same kind of shadiness one would expect on Black Friday. Get 1000 people to lineup all night to try and get the 100 dollar laptops you have advertised, but don't make any announcements to the fact that you only have 5 of them in stock, then when everyone is ready to buy say "Oh, they are all sold out, but we have more at regular price if you want". I expect these kind of tactics from Best Buy, but not from Langerado, a festival which still has a LOT of making up to do with the fans.
   A quick glimpse of the message boards on Facebook will easily mirror the feelings I am expressing right now, and it leaves one to question whether it is a good thing when your marketing gimmick produces more negative responses than positive. All I do know is I am a stubborn and prideful person, and I do not take kindly to being taken advantage of for marketing purposes. There are a lot of good festivals happening this year, too bad for Langerado they had to pull this crap, because my money spends just as well at Bear Creek and Blackwater.

                 Today was an interesting day. Not above ordinary extra interesting day. Just averagely interesting. I woke up fairly early and I was excited that I might actually make it to school on time without it being an ordeal. I put a hot pocket in the toaster oven, watched a little bit of TV, walked the dog, and then headed out to the bus stop. If you were using critical analysis skills on that last statement than you probably noticed one task missing from that sequence, namely taking the hot pocket OUT of the toaster oven. So I'm on the bus on the way to school and I start thinking about going to the gym. Here is my thought process "If I am going to work out I need to eat something. Wait, didn't I already eat? What happened to that hot pocket? Oh Crap!" Luckily I was not far from my house so I got off and headed back. Sure enough the toaster oven was still on, and my hot pocket looked like a child's volcano science experiment. I ended up eating the thing while I road my bike to school, a task that earned me the cheesiest beard of the week award.
        Class was mundane, next week is spring break so the teachers are seemingly calling it in just as much as the students at this point. I pushed myself way too hard in the gym and ended up feeling nauseous, luckily my girlfriend happened to be in the area so I left my bike locked up and caught a ride home with her.
              When I got home I found the new camera I ordered off ebay monday( day before yesterday) had already arrived. Joy!
So I am going to go test this thing out, and hopefully get some awesome pictures which I will share for the world to criticize.
Rock On!