rock, roll, bounce, and doves (part 1)

and the Dove candy wrapper said: a helping hand is sometimes the best present of all... yes, I am decadent tonight... Taco Bell for dinner, a great concert where I hopped and head banged and danced (which was basically bouncing and or running in place) for most of four hours and then stopped for a 32 ounce Code Red and then drove home and stopped for Dove Milk Chocolate Hazel Nut Praline ice cream and some 50% off Halloween candy bags (hence, the Dove chocolates) and another 32 ounce Code Red and guess who is bouncy bouncy tonight...

it is actually 2am Saturday, but I'm date stamping this for Friday just because I can and Friday didn't have an entry and Friday deserves an entry as much as any day... I mean, just to keep us in RealTime™ in case you are paying attention and want to buy into the illusion (of RealTime™, that is, not me, I’m real, really)... you can consider this a special late edition for my friends on the west coast...

and then the next Dove wrapper said: warmth on the inside can melt cold on the outside... Dove must have hired Confucius... and I say that in the most respectful way, even though I am amused... I am also impressed (and not just with the chocolate or the ice cream)... but I didn’t get the pizza I was craving... I think it was because I was making some effort to be somewhat sensible as I am still on the weight loss goal path and don’t want to waste all those salads I’ve been eating for lunch at work and the veggie meals I’ve been eating for dinner at least several nights a week... and also, knowing I really should get some sleep because tomorrow is a looooong day... maybe even longer...

tomorrow is the music festival and the 30 Seconds to Mars concert, dangit... just when I feel like partying all night tonight, I’ve got eighteen hours of partying to do tomorrow and since I’ve been awake for seventeen hours already, well, you’ve taken basic biology, right?... and if I was really crazy I’d head up to the festival at sunrise to help Phil set it up because he’d like that and I’d like that and it would make up for my disappearing to head to the other concert just as the festival kicks into high gear, but I am also pondering making some odd pizza concoction out of whatever ingredients I can find in the house because I have this craving that is probably my body telling me I need salt since I was dripping and could ring out my clothes when I left the concert...

and then the next Dove wrapper said: happiness is celebrating the little things... wow, if we all lived our lives by the words inside Dove candy, we’d be enjoying life and living in a better world... see?... chocolate is the way, the path, the new found glory... and that was the segue into the concert since New Found Glory were the headliners and though, as often is the case, I went to see another band, I totally enjoyed all four bands tonight...

Hit the Lights opened the show and they were better than the last time we saw them... bigger space, bigger movements, bigger music, though the intimacy of getting dripped on was lost as I didn’t head to the front of the stage... I cleared an area for myself by making a one man mosh pit on the steps where the view is great and the quieter people usually congregate... tonight several people joined me and expanded the bouncing space, which was cool cuz even though I am there primarily for the music and the energy of the crowd, it’s better when the energy is high right around me and not just on the floor...

and the next Dove candy wrapper said: holiday magic stars from within... yay for Dove... Cartel was the second band and actually the reason I got tickets for this show... and they didn’t disappoint, except that being the second band, they didn’t play long enough... I heard a bit of them (yes, just heard) at the Warped Tour this summer and a bit more on CD and wanted to see them and yay for music... and for some reason the crowd was alive (well, more alive than other Orlando crowds I’ve been in, though the Thursday – Rise Against crowd was pretty good too, at least down on the floor)... this crowd was alive even off the floor, louder and more into it (singing and bouncing and clapping to the music and not chatting as much, except during the slower softer songs, much alas)...

The Early November was the third band and they were surprisingly good even though the crowd got too talkative during their ballads... it’s been a very long time since I’ve been to a concert where you could hear a pin drop during a ballad... the closest was when The Spill Canvas played as the second to the lead act Mae, but even then it seems ADD (the serious kind, not the fun kind I play with in my head) is an epidemic in our culture as a substantial number of people pay money to go to a concert and then don’t listen to the music... but tonight a lot more people actually paid attention (and knew the words) than the average crowds...

and the next Dove candy wrappers said: a smile is the perfect gift, personal and encouraging... and also economical... there’s a theme in these wrappers as the next one said: friendship is a gift in itself... and also economical, though sometimes not so economical now that I ponder my own relationship with friends in this life... of course, having friends who have kids that I adopted as my own (or at least as an uncle-type guy, though not as in the Tommy can you hear me kind of Uncle Ernie), I end up spending a whole lot of money on friends most of the time... for example, six figures went poof in the nineties, all for friends... lots of water under the bridge (and I almost drowned a few times, but we won’t remember standing on the international bridge over the frozen Niagara River and pondering what jumping off would be like just now cuz we’re way too happy bouncy for such wound inspections just now...

time for making some odd pizza... I’ll be back with part two of this ramble later... I hope you had as much fun as I did and continue making life even funner from now on cuz it’s much better that way, really it is, and you can do it, really you can, no matter what your brain tells you... believe me, I wouldn’t lie... be right back, sort of...