Bloody Amazing

Yesterday was great! We started the day with an excursion to Yankee Stadium! We were hoping to get a tour, but the only one that was available was at 2:00 pm and we got there about 11:30 am. Just too long to wait, and tickets were $24 each! Those Yankee bastards just aren't getting that much of my money, dammit! Like Derek Jeter needs anymore money! Plus, the stadium is located in The Bronx, surrounded by some of the toughest neighborhoods in NYC, so we didn't want to be just loitering around the area. We took a few pictures while John moped our wasted trip. We decided that we can make another trip here when the Twins are playing the Stankees and then just catch a whole game :)

After John got over his intial bumminess, we got back on the subway back to Manhattan and decided to find the Museum of Television and Radio. This had to be one of the strangest museums I've ever seen. It was cool, just very bizarre. We caught a few of the listening/viewing rooms exhibits, and and awesome exhibit of The Muppets, which reminded me of little Fiona with her love of Cookie Monster, Big Bird and Elmo. They also had a library of television shows and radio programs where you can reserve any program in their database, and then they bring you to a room where you have two hours to sit and watch whatever you want. So of course, we reserved three season four episodes of News Radio!! The employees, though, were the STRANGEST of all...they all seemed like they should be working in a mortuary or something. But I shant waste time analyzing that ;)

After a slight feeding rampage (I hadn't eaten in 6 hours by this point and was getting the low blood sugar rages), we decided to just chill at the hotel and get a nap in before The Pogues!! At about 7:30 we hopped the shuttle to Times Square to hit the Nokia Theatre. A nice venue, sort of like First Avenue meets the Orpheum, clean, contemporary and AWESOME sound!!!!!! I grabbed a Red Roses For Me t-shirt and some buttons (if you're reading Bill, we got one for you) while we enjoyed some Guiness. We weasled our way to the very front and ended up meeting a couple who'd flown in from Milwaukee for the show. They kept the crowd waiting a good, long time, finally they shined all blue lights at the empty mics and a song sung by the late good friend of theirs, Joe Strummer called "Straight to Hell" was cued while the entire crowd started singing it. They started with "Streams of Whiskey", and after that the set list is a blur. They played a long set plus three encores! Some fun highlights were usual antics by Shane MacGowan--he'd put a glass of water on his head while walking around the stage, try to dance a bit, he'd announce the next song incoherently while the crowd would respond "What???" or "Speak English you drunk!"--Shane would change tempo in the middle of songs, at one point during Irish Rover the whole band was just staring at him, stopped playing and he looked around and said, "Whaaaaaaaaaat?" and they said, "Shane, you're going too fast!". He did that also during their last song, Fiesta, but the band would just wait til he came round to the next verse and start in again. He also screwed up by announcing "Irish Rover" when they were actually playing "The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn". The crowd was more tame than we expected, but even then there were MANY MANY unrulies. I think a lot of people, mistakenly, think that because this is Irish "Folk" music that it will be a mellow show. This has NEVER been the case with this band, as security always seems to be their number one issue, even more so than many other punk bands we've seen. There were a lot of (what I like to call) "dress-up" punks and full-blooded Irish blokes who seemed more into the drinking aspect of the Irish music than the actual music, so that was a disappointment. There were many fights going on, and since we were right up front, our view would get blocked by the mass of security guards dragging people out of the audience. Though unlike shows in Minneapolis where if you're pinched by security you get tossed out of the club completely, here they simply threw them into a different area of the crowd! At one point, one of the security guards seemed to be seriously injured, but after writhing in pain for a bit, he got up and we deduced that he'd probably just been punched in the gut. Loads of people were photographing and bootlegging video, and they'd get warnings. Interestingly, though, there were Nokia employees wandering around with little printers who would print out your digital photos for you. After the show, we had to go out and buy a couple of the Pogues pint glasses for John. We walked home, Pogues booty in hand and crashed right away.

Anyway, I've rambled on quite long enough. We're off for more New York excitement!
Love to you all :)