Don't Tread On Paris

WARNING:  This post is about a rock concert and all of the general fun and debauchery that goes along with it.  If you don't want to know, you can stop reading now.  My guess is if you made it this far, you're going to keep going though.  Secretly you are all rock fans.

So the third night in Paris, we went to see Metallica.  For the record, we didn't make the trip to Paris just to see our favorite band--we were already planning the trip to Paris.  The timing just happened to work out.  I like to think of that as fate, or maybe good karma.  We took a detour by the Hard Rock on the way to the concert so I could grab a shot glass for the collection.  As soon as we stepped into the place, I knew we were among friends.  A guy saw our shirts and asked if we were going to the show.  He then proceeded to belt out Nothing Else Matters at the top of his lungs, complete with French accent.  We ate a quick pre-show dinner there, and the entire time they were playing Metallica videos and music.  People were singing and drumming on the bar.  This was a great start to a fantastic evening.  The concert was up in St. Denis at the Stade de France, which is the National Stadium of France.  They play rugby there, as well as football (soccer).  The place holds over 80,000 people.  It was sold out, and it was packed.  There were people everywhere, and it took us a little time to locate the box office.  We had our tickets in hand, but we had to pick up wristbands for the pit.  Tiffany and I had snakepit tickets, which means that we were in a little cut out section of the stage.  Hands down these were the best tickets to have.  We were super close to the band, but we didn't have to fight and push our way around with all of the general admission crowd.  Before we went down into the crowd, we made a couple of other stops.  First, we decided to go ahead and buy T-shirts beforehand.  This was a little bit of a challenge, as the people at the booth spoke very little English.  They certainly weren't mean about it.  There was a lot of pointing and hand gesturing.  I felt a little like I was in a game of charades where nobody was winning.  The hardest part was explaining that I needed an XL shirt.  She kept asking if I wanted small or medium.  I realize they don't have that many fat people in Europe, but there was just no way a small or medium was going to work.  They did have bigger shirts, and we ultimately got it figured out.  The shirts were all updated versions of the Black Album designs from the 90s, which was appropriate since this tour was celebrating that album's 20th (technically 21st) anniversary.  Next we hit the bathroom.  It's always a good idea to go before the show.  One, you don't want to miss anything, and two, you might not ever get back to where you want to be.  The men and women (like many places in France) basically share a bathroom with a small partition separating the two sides.  It's kind of different if that isn't what you are used to.  After we emptied our bladders, we decided to fill them up again with some cold beverages.  Here is an interesting concept that I would love some places in the US to adopt.  They sell you an eco-friendly souvenir cup filled with beer for 8 Euros.  After that, you can refill your cup for 2 Euros.  The initial price seems steep, although not too bad for subsequent fills.  I really just wanted the cup, so I just drank the one.  Also, too much beer requires more trips to the aforementioned bathroom.

There were two opening bands before the main event.  The first was a band called Gojira.  They are a French heavy metal band, even though their name is clearly the Japanese word for Godzilla.  Unfortunately we were still wandering around the stadium when they were playing, so we didn't really see this band.  I have a feeling they were better than the second band, which was The Kills.  We got down into the snakepit just as these guys started playing.  They had about four people banging on these giant drums.  There were two singers--one male, one female.  I don't really know what kind of music this was, but it wasn't the kind of music I wanted to hear.  It didn't really matter.  We got to socialize a little with the people around us, and just take the whole thing in.  We seemed to have quite an international crowd around us.  In addition to the French fans in the snakepit, there were people from England, Germany, and Holland to name a few.  My guess is we weren't the only Americans in the crowd.

It wasn't quite dark when Metallica went on about 9:30.  They have an amazing amount of daylight in France.  The show started as usual with Ennio Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold along with the video footage from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  Then the band came out and put on one of the best shows I have seen in years.  It was a full on rock show with new video, lasers, pyros, and a band that seems to have returned to their glory days.  In what was a stark contrast to the last tour, the setlist consisted entirely of old songs.  They played the entire Black album in reverse order.  Everything else was older than that, with the exception of one song from the current EP.  As I am generally a fan of their earlier stuff, the setlist was great as far as I was concerned.  It was also nice to see some stuff that is rarely played, including three songs that made their debut on this tour.  Being in the snakepit meant that at any given time we had band members on all sides of us.  That may sound distracting or crazy, but there isn't anywhere I would have rather been in the whole stadium.  I don't think they have had the snakepit at any shows since 1993, but I hope they keep it.  This was my 19th Metallica show, and I would probably rank it in my personal Top 3.  I am super excited about seeing them again in June, even though I don't get to fly to Europe this time.

Here is the full setlist:

Hit The Lights
Master Of Puppets
No Remorse
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Hell And Back
The Struggle Within
My Friend Of Misery
The God That Failed
Of Wolf And Man
Nothing Else Matters
Through The Never
Don't Tread On Me
Wherever I May Roam
The Unforgiven
Holier Than Thou
Sad But True
Enter Sandman
Battery
One
Seek And Destroy

I didn't get a ton of pictures.  I am a lot more interested in watching the band.  Also, it's hard to get good pictures of people that are moving around so much.  The pictures at the bottom were taken after the show was over.  The band came out and held up some flags that people had brought.  The overhead shot of the snakepit was on Metallica's website.  I stole it because you can see Tiffany (barely).  She is the one wearing the white shirt holding her arms up to take a picture.

Things I Learned In France

1.  Bread, wine, and cheese all taste better in France.

2.  If you attempt to speak French, even poorly, most people will be nice and help you.

3.  Everything is much further than you think it is, especially if you are walking.

4.  Every old building in Paris has at least a couple hundred stairs to the most interesting part.

5.  The public transportation is better and easier to use than any other major city I have ever been to.

6.  Some French people do smell bad, but so do some Americans.

7.  Rock concerts are better in Europe.


We had a fantastic time in Paris.  For starters, any time I can have a few days off is a good time as far as I'm concerned.  After the lengthy flight overseas, we were able to take the train directly from the airport to our hotel.  We spent most of the first afternoon just wandering the streets around the Champs Elysees.  We climbed to the top of the Arc de Triomphe.  We also walked along the river by the Eiffel Tower and basically just enjoyed being in the city.  The weather was wonderful the entire time we were there.  We had a little rain, but it was hardly cold at all.  I didn't wear a jacket for one second of this trip.

Friday, we took the train out to Versailles.  We spent the better part of the day out there.  We took a tour of the main Chateau, which included access to several rooms not open to the public.  It was totally worth taking the tour as opposed to just wandering around aimlessly trying to figure out what stuff is.  We did plenty of aimless wandering when we were temporarily lost in the gardens.  We saw the private quarters of Louis XV, as well as Louix XVI and Marie Antoinette.  We spent nearly the entire day there, and although we were tired from all of the walking, it was probably my favorite thing we did the entire trip.  We spent the evening at the Louvre, mostly hitting the highlights.  I would love to go back and spend some more time there when I have more time and am less exhausted.  The place was crazy packed, especially in rooms with famous pieces.  There was a bigger mosh pit around the Mona Lisa than at any rock concert I have ever been to.

Saturday included a trip to L'Hôtel national des Invalides which houses a military museum.  The highlight here is the tomb of Napoleon.  I have never in my life seen anything quite so elaborate.  His remains are in a giant six layer casket that fills an entire room under a giant dome.  It is quite impressive, if not a little bit strange.  After that, we spent some time at the Paris Opera House before heading up to the Stade de France for the Metallica show.  I will cover that somewhere else to spare those of you who don't care, but it was awesome.

Our last day was spent mostly around Montmartre.  We climbed up the hill to the Sacré-Cœur.  It's a beautiful church, and it was only 300 more steps to the top of the dome, which seemed like a good idea at the time.  There was a nice view of the city from there, but I realized on this trip that I am completely out of shape.  We ate lunch and drank wine outside at a little cafe, which made the trip worth it.  Afterwards, we stopped at every tourist trap along the way so that Tiffany could get her fill of Paris souvenirs.  By the way, souvenir is a French word.

After the long flight home on Monday, I have spent the last two days doing as little as possible.  I have gotten some reading done, and I have caught up on Jimmy Fallon.  Tomorrow I have to go back to work.  I'm not super excited about it, but I guess you have to work occasionally if you want to contunue to make trips to Europe.  Maybe this will be my year to win the lottery.

Royale with Cheese

I'm sorry.  It's been over a month since my last confesstion.  It's weird too, because this website looks completely different than it did last time.  I guess I will just wing it and see what happens.  Quite often, I upload the pictures first, which usually inspires (reminds) me to write about something.  I'm not going to do that this time, and I'll tell you why.  About a week ago, I came home to a dead computer.  One could argue that a computer was never really alive in the first place, but as a huge fan of the Terminator franchise, I will disagree with you.  I still think Judgment Day is coming.  Before I get too carried away, I didn't lose much from this massive hardware failure, except for a lot of time.  I am a responsible individual who occasionally makes a backup of important things.  All of the pictures I have taken since my last backup are still on my camera.  I am currently typing this from my laptop.  I can't reach the camera from here, and I am pretty comfortable in this chair, so the pictures will have to come later.  Yesterday I came home from work to find that the refrigerator door was open.  It's possible that I didn't close it after I finished with breakfast.  It's also possible that my innocent looking two-year old opened it.  After interviewing all possible suspects, I believe it to be the cat's fault.  The good news here is that we got to clean out the fridge, which should be done once in a while anyway.  The bad news is that we had to make new dinner plans, as well as make a trip to the store to replace a few items.  It wasn't the way I intended to start my vacation, but that's life.  Tiffany and I are leaving tomorrow for Paris.  I am so excited to have a few days off.  Perhaps in a future blog I will discuss whatever it is we actually do, but for now all I can tell you is what we have planned.  Friday morning we booked a tour (en Anglais) of the Palace of Versailles.  I think this is going to be good stuff.  Who doesn't want to see how French royalty lived?  Seriously, I think it is going to be cool.  The only other thing on our agenda is the Metallica concert on Saturday night.  In addition to our front of stage pit tickets, we found out last week that we won Snake Pit passes through the Metallica Club.  I will snag a picture off the internet so you know what I'm talking about, but basically we will be as close as we could possibly get.  They are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Black album on this tour, and the snake pit was a part of the stage back then.  I missed that tour, as I was only 13 and lived under the dictatorship of my parents.  We are super excited to be attending this show.  It is a sold out show at the Stade de France, which is the national football (soccer) stadium.  It holds 80,000 people, which is the second largest concert I have ever been to.  This will be my 19th Metallica show, but my first one on another continent.  Other than that, we have no real plans.  I know are going to spend some time at the Louvre, and probably some other touristy places.  Is it weird that I want to go into a McDonalds and order a Royale with Cheese?  Some of you know what I'm talking about, and the rest of you never will.  My guess is that a McDonalds hamburger tastes like crap no matter what language you order it in.  They do have free wi-fi, so I may abuse that a little.

OK, I just got the pictures uploaded.  The first picture is from Easter.  The rest of them are from the Murray family reunion at Lake Brownwood.  The reunion was fun as always.  We all ate too much.  Ethan spent his time blowing bubbles, flying his toy plane, and throwing rocks into the lake.  Kids are so easily entertained.  Oh, and I found a good picture of the snake pit from Prague.  Enjoy, and I will talk to you when I get back.

Things That Happened in March

As usual when I start writing these things, I am strapped for time.  Fortunately I don't think I have much to put here today.  I just feel kind of bad that I haven't written in a while.  My birthday weekend was a success.  Matt, Lisa, Tiffany, and I had a great time touring the wine country and enjoying our time together.  There has already been some discussion about doing this again.  Over the course of the weekend, we visited a handful of wineries, as well as the Garrison Brothers bourbon distellery.  That place was amazing.  Travel tip: if you want to drink extra boubon, take this tour with people that don't drink bourbon.  As we were leaving that place, we ran into a guy that I went to high school with.  He also worked at HEB back in the day, so he recognized Tiffany and Matt as well.  It was fun to see him, and we all had a good laugh about it.  It's weird to run into people you haven't seen in 15 years.  Matt posted a slideshow of the pictures from this trip on my Facebook page if you haven't seen them.

I have spent much of the last couple of weeks doing research for our upcoming trip to Paris.  I am starting to get pretty excited, even though this wasn't at the top of my list for vacation spots.  I am excited about rocking out to Metallica with 80,000 European fans.  My guess is that we won't be the only Americans in the crowd.  This morning Ethan told me that Metallica was his favorite band.  I promise I am letting him make up his own mind about this.  A couple of weeks ago, we took him to the civic center to see Veggie Tales Live.  He seemed to enjoy that pretty well too, so he doesn't have perfect taste.  We also have tickets to see Elmo Makes Music in a couple of weeks.  I will try to endure that as well as I can.  To make up for that, we are going to see the Toadies next week.  Last weekend, I had to work, so Tiffany took Ethan to the zoo.  His favorite animal was the jaguar, or at least that is what he remembers the best.  I guess that's everything for now.  I told you I was in a hurry.  I have to stop writing so I can find some cute pictures to post.  Have a great weekend.

Life support

Today I realized that what used to be a blog that I wrote a couple of times a week has pretty much become a quarterly newsletter.  It isn't that I don't want to write it.  In fact, there are several times a day where something happens that might be blog-worthy.  I'm just not that good at the follow through.  There is so much social media out there and I just don't know how to use it properly.  Do I tweet it?  Do I Facebook it?  Maybe I should save it for Google Plus.  Maybe this blog is the old fashioned way, and maybe I'm too old for that other stuff anyway.  I did eat lunch today with a friend who is much less tech savvy than I am.  He won't be reading this.





















I am not going to attempt to catch you up on the last couple of months.  Basically, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a couple of lesser holidays have passed us by.  January was a rough month, and I am glad it is over.  We are gearing up the next major holiday, which of course is my birthday.  You don't have to buy me anything nice.  Large boxes of cash left on my doorstep will be perfectly fine.  My birthday plan this year is as follows:  cabin rented outside of Fredricksburg, wine, food, good conversation with my best friend, his wife, and no kids.  I do love my child, but sometimes I love him from a distance.  Here is a cute little story that my wife will love, and my mother will probably roll her eyes at.  I was driving Ethan to daycare this morning.  The radio is on, and when the song changes, he asks me, "Is this Metallica, Dad?"  He was right.  It was Metallica.  Not only is my boy a genius, but he has excellent musical taste.  I can't wait until he is old enough to go to shows with us.  That said, his mother and I have plans to see a couple of shows without him this summer.  Metallica is playing in Paris in May.  We were already talking about going to France anyway, and so we just built a trip around that.  It seems perfectly logical to me.  In June, Metallica is headlining their own music festival in Atlantic City.  We had kind of a Sophie's Choice situation between these shows and the one in France.  In the end, we made the responsible decision to go to both.  For you statistics people, I think this puts me over 20 Metallica shows.  Last month I saw Tool for the 15th time.  It was amazing as always.  The Toadies are coming back to Abilene in April, which is always a good time.  All in all, 2012 started off pretty crappy, but I think it is looking up.  Hopefully it will not be another three months until the next blog.  If it is, just know that I am having a good time, and I will tell you about it when I can.

The one before the holidays

This is the third time I have sat down to write this blog.  I am not a professional writer, and I am easily distracted by other things.  Also, for the last week or so I have been sick.  So I haven't had time to write, but I have been reading quite a bit.  In anticipation of the David Fincher film, I finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  It was a decent book, and I am about halfway through the second one.  I know a lot of people read these books a few years back, but the last couple of years have been super busy for me, and I am just now getting caught up on a few things.  We finally got around to watching the last Harry Potter film this past weekend.  Nothing super exciting is going on around here, but I will catch you up on what has happened since the last blog.  Give me a minute to go back and read it.  Maybe whistle the theme to Jeopardy or something.  OK, you can keep reading now.

We took our annual trip to the DRI pumpkin patch to take some pictures and pick up a couple of pumpkins.  Since we were there only a couple of days before Halloween, there wasn't much to choose from.  Ethan was pretty happy with the choices he made though.  As for the holiday itself, we did make a couple of stops to trick or treat.  I don't think Ethan really understood what was going on, but he was sure glad to have the candy when it was all over.  Even with the limited stops, we had enough candy for three people which worked out nicely.  I didn't mention that Ethan was dressed as Larry the Cucumber from Veggietales.  Although I have come to despise this show, Ethan cannot get enough of it.  Thank you Netflix streaming for allowing my child to have an endless source of cartoons at his disposal.  I guess there are worse things he could be watching.  I'm talking to you Spongebob.  He actually doesn't watch that much, but I will admit that using a smart phone on a two year old often has the same effect as Kirk setting his phaser to stun.  Go ahead.  Soak it all in.

Tiffany and I celebrated our 11th anniversary a couple of weeks ago.  A year ago on our anniversary, we were in the audience at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.  This year, we settled for dinner with my grandmother here in Abilene.  Our actual anniversary trip was a few days later.  We went to Dallas to see Stephen King speak.  As longtime fans of his books, we both thought this would be fun to do.  This was a fundraising event for the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.  The whole thing lasted a little over an hour, but in my opinion it was well worth it.  He discussed politics, conspiracy theories, and talked a little about his new book.  For those not in the loop, his new book is about a guy who goes back in time to stop the JFK assassination.  I will probably read it as soon as I am finished reading about Lisbeth Salander.

That pretty much brings us up to date.  Wait.  I just lied.  No, I said pretty much, so I guess I didn't lie.  Nevermind.  Last Tuesday night began the new season of musicals at the civic center.  The first one was Young Frankenstein.  Yes it is based on the Mel Brooks film, and yes it was just as funny.  In fact, I would say that it was probably one of the best plays we have ever seen here in Abilene.  In discussing this play with a few people, I discovered that there are actually people who haven't seen the movie.  I realize Mel Brooks may be an acquired taste to some, but this is definitely among the funniest films ever made.  Of course, I've always been a little strange.

Eternal Flame

It's funny how you can go several weeks with very little excitement, and then all of the sudden you have a million things going on.  Since we returned from the cruise, I feel like we have been going non-stop.  Now that our washing machine is fixed, I also feel like we are doing laundry non-stop.

The 14th of October was Granny's birthday.  The entire family spent the weekend at the MCM Elegante together.  For those of you not familiar with my mom's family, here are the basics.  My mom is one of four girls.  I am one of ten grandkids.  Ethan is one of seventeen great grandchildren.  By the time you add spouses into the mix, it brings our total to well over forty people.  I know that's not the largest family in the world, but with seventeen kids running around it was plenty.  Granny bought all of the little ones matching Halloween pajamas with their names on them.  Ethan has already worn his a couple of times since then.  Granny also made each of the ten grandchildren a quilt.  These are serious birthday favors.  It seems that Granny did most of the gift giving on her birthday, but we did get her something in return.  The grandkids pitched in to buy Granny her own iPad--just what every hip 84 year old needs.  You can laugh now, but she seemed to be enjoying it quite a bit before we ever left the hotel.  She has already figured out how to read her email, check Facebook, and play Words With Friends.  Do you really need it to do anything else?  It was a fun weekend all around, and it is always good to see the family.  I regret that I actually got very few pictures of the whole thing.  Hopefully someone got some good ones.  We did have a professional take pictures of the group, as well as some of the individual families.  I will post those if and when I am able to get my hands on them.

This past weekend, we decided to make a quick trip to the State Fair.  If I were to write a book about things you shouldn't do with a two year old who hasn't had a nap, this would probably fill a whole chapter.  I'm not going to say I didn't have fun, but it sure seemed like a lot more work than usual.  Fortunately, the weather was agreeable.  It took us about fifteen minutes to find something fried to eat.  We started with Fried Buffalo Chicken in a Flapjack and some Deep Fried Queso.  Both of these things were excellent, and probably our favorites from the trip.  I attempted to try fried Frito Pie, only to be told that they were out.  Really?  Buy some more Fritos.  We aren't in the middle of nowhere.  Let me run across the street and just get some for you.  Then you can fry them.  Everyone's happy.  I'm just sayin'.  That seems like a poor way to run your junk food stand.  Over the course of the afternoon, we also ate fried biscuits and gravy, fried pepperoni pizza, fried pineapple upside down cake, and fried Autumn pumpkin pie.  I didn't care for the pizza, but everything else was pretty good.  We also got a barbecue wrap with some fries, and I had a bratwurst for a late night snack.  They seriously ought to hand out Nexium and Lipitor when you walk through the gate.

We did manage to do a few things that didn't involve food.  We endured the Amazing Dobermans, which weren't that amazing.  We wandered through all of the craft booths with people selling all kinds of things that so far I have managed to live without.  We did get Ethan a wooden puzzle of his name.  We walked through the Auto Show, which is always one of my favorite parts.  Once it was dark, we watched the parade.  Ethan really enjoyed it, and probably would have even more had some jackass with a camera not come and stood right in front of him.  Dude, you are too old for parades.  Move over and let the little kids have their fun.  We capped off the evening with a concert on the main stage by The Bangles.  Susanna Hoffs is 52 years old, but she still looks and sounds as good as she did when I was 9.  They played all of the songs that everyone knows, as well as a few that nobody seemed to know.  I thought they were pretty good, and if Ethan hadn't slept through most of it, he would have liked it as well.  He was awake for the encore of Walk Like an Egyptian.  I made the mistake of calling this his first concert.  Tiffany corrected me and said that when he was just a few weeks old we saw local band The Penny Jar.  Now that I think about it, he has seen them at least twice.  My bad.

Bonus Trivia:  The Bangles' hit Manic Monday was actually written by Prince under the pseudonym Christopher.