05.16.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 12:12 pm by shawnz
A study by Autovantage puts Los Angeles in the top 5 for “Worst Road Rage,” and puts St. Louis as #3 for “Most Friendly.” Thats exactly my experience, in moving from the latter to the former. My first few months in LA, I let drivers merge ahead of me, even stopped to let them make left turns in front of me in slow moving traffic! That, sadly, is all in the past. I’m still not as bad as a Los Angelino, but I’m certainly not a ‘most friendly’ driver any longer.
Norwalk, Conn.-based AutoVantage, an automobile membership club offering travel services and roadside assistance, also listed Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles and Boston among the top five cities for rude driving in its first “In the Driver’s Seat Road Rage Survey.”
“The advent of road rage is part of every day life,” said Todd Smith, director of corporate communications for AutoVantage’s parent company, Affinion Group, which has offices in Nashville. “It’s just a fact of life.”
On the other side of the spectrum, Minneapolis, Nashville, St. Louis, Seattle and Atlanta rated as the cities with the most courteous drivers who were less likely to change lanes without signaling or swear at other motorists.
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05.14.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:50 pm by shawnz
Due to a surplus of vacation hours, plus the longing need to see the new Busch Stadium, and not to mention all the people i gotta see, I’ll be swinging through Chicago and St. Louis in mid june. June 9th through the 18th to be exact.
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05.04.06
Posted in muzak at 11:31 am by shawnz
Last weekend I attended the 7th annual Coachella festival in the desert. It was completely incredible, mainly because I saw so much high quality live music. I didn’t really take any notes during the sets, and I was running in between the stages to see as many acts as I could, so I didn’t always stay for the entirety, but here are some rambling notes about some of the artists I saw:
Depeche Mode - awesome show (2nd time I’ve seen them). Strange stage production that involved a giant UFO looking ball with morose words in LEDs (ANGST, REMORSE, also ANGEL). Their keyboards also looked like UFOs. It looked kind of stupid.
Franz Ferdinand - Sounded good, I was really far away from the stage but it looked like a good performance.
Sigur Ros - kind of awkward listening to them in the direct sunlight that their stage and timeslot afforded them.
Damian Marley - One of my favorite sets. The son, or second cousin, or whatever of Marley was rocking hard. Had a guy waving a Jamaican flag on stage that was really kind of cool.
Murs - Amazing MC who i had heard was part of living legends, but had never seen before. I was cracking up the entire time - his lyrics are awesome.
And now I will switch to listing one phrase per act, because I am getting bored of this: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (crowded tent), Imogen Heap (amazing solo show!), White Rose Movement (kind of boring post-Orgy music), Platinum Pied Pipers (forgettable), Hybrid feat. Perry Farrell (cool), Section Quartet (muzak quartet covers of pop songs…eh), Massive Attack (incredible!! they brought back all their old singers, and have an awesome stage set-up. Very political, too), Tool (solid), Madonna (crowded), Bloc Party (boring), Oakenfold (4 pm in the desert is not the best time), James Blunt (boring), Matisyahu (actually put on a good live show), Sleater Kinney (awesome!), Gnarles Barkley (surprisingly kind of boring. “crazy” was pretty much the highlight), Amadou and Miriam (beautiful Mali music), Seu George (cool, but not as cool as his stuff in The Life Aquatic), Ted Leo (boring), Jamie Lidell (good show, not as good as his show last week at the Trobadour, and had an annoying guy on stage with him that didn’t contribute to the music and was just annoying with his ‘act’.)
*phew* I need a nap.
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