Friday night's Bif Naked concert was reassuringly similar to every other time I've seen her. Except that she's blonde now. I was a lot closer to the stage this time, with only a single row of crushed front-line people in front of me. I think it was the first time I'd seen her at an 18+ show and it was at Nashville's Electric Roadhouse (holy crap, their next show is Vanilla Ice and Maestro Fresh Wes!), which was new to me. Fewer teeny goths and more guys with mullets than at other Bif shows, but still a good crowd. There were four or five opening bands and I liked the second-last one, though obviously not enough to remember their name. Bif went through the standard playlist, closing out with "We're Not Gonna Take It" as expected. She also commented on the aforementioned truck ad featuring "I Love Myself Today", saying she didn't have the heart to tell the advertising people that the song's about masturbation. Nice one, Bif.

Unfortunately, the timing meant that I missed The Plaid Tongued Devils, who I keep meaning to see, even though they were playing at the Sidetrack Cafe just across the street from my apartment.

I went to an Oscar party in Calgary on Sunday. The highlight was playing with a hyperactive collie. I'm not an Oscar person, though I did enjoy Michael Moore's diatribe.

Last night, I managed to buy the last two tickets to The Waifs' show here in Edmonton. Because they were single tickets, we had to wrangle things a bit to find two spots next to each other. Edmonton loves The Waifs and I've wanted to see them again ever since I saw them at the Woodford Folk Festival a couple of years ago. They were great, as expected, but the opening act was a girl named Serena Ryder. When she came out on stage, my first impression was standard folk-hippie type (which is fine), but then she belted out an amazing blues tune of her own composition and floored everyone. No guitar, no accompaniment, just this unassuming girl with a voice that you'd swear came from someone twice her size and age. She played a few more of her songs, alternating between playing her guitar and going a cappella, and finished with "At Last". It took the crowd one word to realize what she was singing, then they went crazy. Not quite Etta James, but damned good. Sadly, the mp3 on her site doesn't do it justice. I picked up her CD after the show. It was recorded live for a CBC show and has plenty of little imperfections to prove it. Somehow, it seems better that way.

I like these new IBM ads.

I got two flat panel displays today. Now my workstation looks high tech. They cleared up so much space on my desk that I was inspired to tidy up the rest of my office.

A haiku posted on a recent Slashdot thread caught my attention.

Internet attracts
nitpickers with no money;
driving you to drink.

That nicely sums up my bad days at work.

Whew. What a trip. So good that it takes me until the end of the week to put together a coherent version of the events.

Being idiots, we let Geoff book our flight to LA. Predictably, he booked it to leave from Calgary, so we had to drive down on Thursday afternoon. This wasn't a big deal, though. It was fun to fly with the Calgarian contigent of the trip and get an early start to the drinking festivities.

We arrived in LA on Thursday evening without a hotel room or a rental car. Geoff thinks everything should be negotiated at the last minute and I'm starting to agree with him. He also thinks he should never have to pay for hotel parking or extra people in his room. "Yes, I'd like a room with two beds. That's right, for one person. I like to spread myself around. Those guys in the car outside? Oh, they're just dropping me off. But I'd like to park their vehicle here." And it works.

We checked out a bit of LA, including Santa Monica and the famous Viper Room where, among other things, River Phoenix overdosed.

Vegas. Wow. I thought nothing could live up to that kind of hype, but I wasn't disappointed. We left LA on Saturday morning and drove the Durango through the desert to Las Vegas, stopping only at the Carl's Jr. in a capitalism oasis for Six Dollar Burgers. Geoff and I sat in the back and enjoyed our Coronas. I'll resist the temptation to quote Fear and Loathing for now. We secured a room at the Flamingo, changed, and hit the town around 4pm. We drank, we played blackjack, we stopped for sandwiches around 10 (I think). After listening to CD2 (see below) on the way out, we ruled that "hundred" should always be pronounced "honey", endearing us to everyone we met. Shubh and I bailed out around 3am, but Bob and Geoff burst into the room only an hour later and kicked my bed until I showered and got back on the party train. We met two girls from New York who may have been named Katie and Julie, and the fun didn't stop until around 2pm on Sunday.

Now, it's illegal to walk around in public with open alcohol, but the police in Vegas have a good philosophy of not biting the hand that feeds them. The casinos also don't seem to care if you walk out with their cocktail glasses, so there we were, chatting to a police officer, getting tips on what shows to see, drinks in hand. I left my empty glass on a news stand. Bob threw his in the Bellagio fountain. I was a little sad to leave, but I'm sure we'll get back there for a dedicated Vegas trip.

We had some good pizza when we got back to LA. We saw Daredevil at the Chinese Theatre, which was a waste of a great theatre. We wanted to see Old School, but we had to wait until we got back to Calgary the next day. Our flight back included a 3 hour stopover in Vancouver (thanks again for booking those tickets, Geoff), so we did what any weary traveller would: we went to the pub and didn't leave until we heard them calling our names for our flight.

Sound track listing