Vampire Weekend on a Work Day

Ern did some important feather exploration at school. It's good to know the possible weaknesses of birds. You never know when one might strike.

Lydia and I visited the historic Climate Pledge Arena for the Seattle installment of the Vampire Weekend "Only God Was Above Us" Tour.  

Vampire Weekend is now officially the only musical act that I've seen live twice. What an honor.

Apparently now I'm an old person because the last time I saw them was in 2010! My friend Seago introduced me to them. What a guy.

At the end of the show instead of doing a normal encore they took audience requests for just random songs. Not random Vampire Weekend songs. Literally any random ass song someone could come up with. I've never seen anything like it. Understandably they didn't really know a lot of these songs and did a not great job. I understand that they are probably trying to mix things up but I was a little disappointed they skipped some of their own stuff that I was hoping for. I'm a big fan of "Giving Up the Gun" for example. I'll get over it somehow. It was a great show otherwise. Dare I go for three times?

Can't Stop the Feeling

Justin Timberlake came to town pretty close to Lydia's birthday so that was a done deal.

There was some intro DJ stuff for a while as we waited for the show to begin. I think watching a sign language interpreter do "Baby Got Back" was worth the price of admission alone.

This show went pretty hard. There was a lot of giant JT heads in different stages of... maybe like authoritarianism? Like if Big Brother from 1984 could sing and dance.

This giant video cube thing was a costar of the show.

There was nothing it couldn't do.

At one point it tried to drown JT.

We were on the far end of Climate Pledge BUT this multitalented phenom had a little secondary stage that was right up in our face. 

Then the video cube decided that Justin was an angry god emperor. I don't know what we did to anger him but he brought sexy back very aggressively at this point.

Lastly the video cube transformed into a flying carpet and whisked JT back to Olympus.

Normally this would be the end of my expert coverage of this event. But there's a bit of a prologue on this one. About a month and a half later JT got pulled over for alleged drunk driving. Some reporting on the incident:

"We're also told that the cop who pulled Timberlake over "was so young that he didn't even know" who the 10-time Grammy winner was.

"He didn't recognize him or his name," our insider says.

A second source adds, "Justin said under his breath, 'This is going to ruin the tour.' The cop replied, 'What tour?' Justin said, 'The world tour.''"

So of course anytime anything bad happened to either of us the next couple of weeks we would exclaim "this is going to ruin the tour".

Welcome to the Meat Zone

While I was slaving away at work, Lydia and Zoe took Ernie to play in our apartment complex's pool. Must be nice.

Everyone but me seems to really have had a great and memorable time.

Later we met up with Michael and Miriam for some WNBA Seattle Storm action. We got some more free tickets from the library. If there's one thing everyone should know about me, it's that I like free tickets from the library.

There were lots of big screens, lights, and people for Ernie to stare at so he was happy.

This is a crime against the old gods and the new.

There was a half-court shot contest. It did not go great.

Don't worry buddy. We'll be back just as soon as we get more free tickets.

Living Large with the Seattle Storm

Ernie's last set of grandparents came to town with Uncle Sam in tow. Adding in the fact that Aunt Zozo was already staying with us: there were a lot of new faces for Ernie to learn.

So I recently took my friend Michael along with me for some fun times with Tom Hanks. Being a real one, Michael turned around and gave me an awesome invite to sit in Symetra's Tunnel Club seating at today's Seattle Storm WNBA game. What a guy.

It was a tough situation because on one hand I wanted to make use of the fancy parking pass to park in the same lot that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy uses. On the other hand I wanted to drink my face off with complimentary wine, beer, and spirits. I chose face removal.

The Storm do a unique thing where they have children line the hall and high five the players when they come out of the locker room. Fun for them, hard to see for me. Oh well, I'll get over it. I especially love visiting the Tunnel Clubs as I used to work in them, groveling for rich people.

Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird were in attendance.

The Storm quickly showed that they were here to be just obliterated by the Los Angeles Sparks. This was unfortunate but on the bright side it made our trips back to the club for refreshments feel like less of a betrayal. Like I imagine the team would prefer we not see all of what is happening to them on the court today.

Michael and I were minding our own business, drinking everything that wasn't nailed down back in the lounge and soaking it up with free food, when one of the staff came in, closed the door behind them, and told us we weren't allowed to leave. This lasted the whole damn 4th quarter and was very lame. Apparently some nut job tried to get onto the court or something. I don't know what that had to do with us, and I don't know why it took an entire quarter to arrest said person. It must not have been too big of a threat because they continued the game as if nothing was happening. More likely it was the Climate Pledge Arena staff being the clowns I am certain that they are. On the plus side, the Storm somehow turned it around and ended up winning the game. Hurray!

An even bigger win was coming home to see my boy and give him a bottle.