Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players with Corn Mo @ The Gypsy Tearoom

...and eggs!

Wow what a crazy show! This was the second time Amy and I had seen the Tractenburgs and their innovative show which features music set to 35mm slides projected onto a screen. The father plays guitar, the daughter plays drums and the mother runs the slide projector. The slides are all obtained from garage sales and vary from images of family vacations and holiday gatherings to slides used in Drivers Ed and military training sessions. It's nuts!

Opening for the Slideshow Payers was Corn Mo, formerly of Denton and now living the high life in New York City. Corn Mo failed to dissapoint with his stream of conciousness banter between his selection of whimsical songs accompanied by piano and accordian.

The Rentals and Ozma @ The Gypsy Ballroom

Awesome show tonight at Gypsy! Probably one of the most fun shows I have been to, made even better by dinner with Amy at the Angry Dog beforehand. Mmmm good!

It's not often that one goes to a show where one is interested in every band. Usually there is some unknown band opening that does their best to try and win you over. Tonight, however, Ozma opened, which is everybody's favorite band from Pasadena, California. Amy and I love this band and this was our fifth time seeing them. They actually broke up about two years ago but reunited earlier this year and are working on material for a new album. The lineup is the same with the exception of the drummer who is new but seemed to fit in perfectly with the rest. The Ozma set was solid but too-short (as it always is for the opener) though the new songs seemed pretty good.

Headlining was The Rentals, fronted by former Weezer bassist Matt Sharp. The Rentals started as Matt's side-project back in the mid-90s just as Weezer was gaining massive widespread popularity, and became his full time gig when he left Weezer in 1997. The Rentals didn't last much longer after that, however, and Matt went on to do some solo work and various other projects before reforming The Rentals earlier this year. The current lineup is vastly different, though the original band had rotating members depending on which of Matt's friends were available for studio work or touring at the time.

Though they didn't have any new material, The Rentals rocked the crowd as if everybody had been transported back to the late 90s in a Moog-powered time machine. Their rendition of "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams" was amazing and the closing combo of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" leading into "Friends of P" had the whole place going nuts. Awesome!

National Transportation Conference in Phoenix

I just spent the past few days in Phoenix, Arizona, well technically Scottsdale, at my employer's national transportation conference. Every two years all of the engineers involved in transportation design get otgether for a massive conference which entails a couple of days of endless presentations and ample networking opportunities. Typically the conference is held at a hotel that is isolated from anythign remotely interesting and they schedle your activities from 7AM to 11PM so there is no time for sightseeing, golf, or any sort of fun. Not exactly relaxing but a nice change of pace from the office.

I gave a presentation on Industrial Rail Clients that described what types of industrial rail cients HDR can look to serve, how to go about getting work from them and how working with an industriual client can be different than working for a major Class I railroad. It went very well and was well received by those in attendance.

Bizzarely, it rained on one of my days in Phoenix. I haven't seen rain in months. Figures I'd see it in the middle of the desert.

The other notable event on this trip was in the departure lounge before my flight home from Phoenix. An older gentleman pulled a large hunting knife out of his cooler and started peeling an orange with it. Within about 30 seconds two TSA officers came up to him and excorted him back to security. I have no idea how he got that thing through security in the first place, but luckily they didn't evacuate the terminal and send everybody back though. Also lucky that he didn't take it out on the plane next to a trigger happy air marshall.