on wednesday, i made my way up to the boston area on the megabus with ryall to meet up with m.j. & my bro for the radiohead concert at the venue formerly formerly known as great woods. my trip began in the prospect ave stop on the r train, where after a few minutes, the train entered the station. as i waited for the train to stop & the doors to open, i looked at the torn advertisement behind me, which had the following message scrawled across the bottom of it:

i snapped a quick pic & got on the train. it's safe to say that as the lead singer of belle & sebastian (the band that acted as the jumping-off point for pretty much everything i've listened to since 2001), i'm not sure if i could ever let go of stuart murdoch, no matter how twee he is. regardless of this person's personal struggle with stuart murdoch, musically speaking, i took my random path-crossing with this particular message to be a positive start to radiohead day. usually the subway ads feature no more than crudely drawn penises on them.

the megabus busride was fine overall, other than the non-functioning wifi. the southwest airlines-influenced bus driver even quipped, "there's wifi on board. sometimes it works." they played two dvds during the five-hour drive--benji: off the leash! & shark bait (the reef), which is a budget attempt to cash in on the success of finding nemo. it appears that somebody else has the upper hand in the wifi-inclusive bus service market at this point, megabus...or should i say, megabutt?

radiohead was friggin' amazing, as was expected. as i have probably expressed to everyone & their mother at this point, i can not believe how lovely & clean they sound in a big open amphitheatre. i was in the absolute back of the lawn & it still sounded wondrous. my personal fave...jigsaw falling into place. my personal victory...we were the very last people they sold beer to in our section. they literally gave us our beers & shut the gates to the stand, making lots of people behind us quite sad.

#17 - head.

snack: flaming hot flavored munchies
drink: pomegranate blueberry mash

after the concert, an hour or so in the parking lot & an hour or so drive back to my brother's place in j.p., we went to pretty much the only thing open in the neighborhood after 1pm...7-11, where i, of course, spent in the area of $10 on snacks alone. clearly a smart allocation of my funds.

for this particular night, i decided i needed to eat from a bag of flaming hot flavored munchies. it was after 1pm. i had just been at 7-11. munchies were clearly the right snack for that moment. each munchies flavor features rold gold pretzels, sun chips, cheetos & doritos, with the last three ingredients changing depending on the overall snack mix flavor. you would be correct in assuming that this particular flavor features the flaming hot versions of the sun chips, cheetos & doritos. as my brother informed me, they used to have a kids' version with doritos, cheetos, popcorn, m&ms and captain crunch. if you ask me, that is one hell of a snack & should probably only be available for adults due to its high awesomeness content.

...& seriously, people. pomegranate is not going to save civilization. it is just a fruit. i defer to bevnet for or a link for the pomegranate blueberry mash, as boylan bottling apparently doesn't care enough about this product to have a web page for it. in fact, they care so little about this product that they appear to have even spelled "pomegranate" incorrectly on the label..."pommegranate" ain't correct, mr & mrs boylan. look it up.

so i'm taking today off & heading up to boston/nh for the weekend. originally, my father was scheduled to retire from the usps at the end of may, so i was originally planning to head up to the parents' house in nh for the weekend, where we would celebrate his retirement (& father's day to boot)...two birds with one stone, as they say.

since formulating this original plan, my mother didn't like the idea of inviting a bunch of people to the house, where there is limited parking (meaning room for no more than 8-10 cars, which would have been fine, but whatever), my father pushed his retirement date back to the end of june & my brother's dog got ill & he's having to stay at home with her this weekend anyhow.

the result...i'm heading to boston right now to hang with chris leduc & megan jones et al this eve before heading to nh tomorrow to hang with the family, followed by a sunday afternoon dinner at my grandfather's house for father's day...a fine enough agenda all around. to boot, i'm testing out the bolt bus as we speak & BLOGGING ON THE GO, as bolt bus has wifi on board. suck on that, fung wah.

so that i could get to boston in the afternoon, i needed to catch the 11am bus & last night, with laundry to do, i found myself debating whether to stay up until about 3am (when said laundry would be done) or wake up early & do it before catching the bus. i chose to stay up until 3am...& of course i needed to run to the neighborhood 7-11 in between the wash & dry cycles.

the 7-11 is a fairly recent addition to the neighborhood, one of few chains in the lower park slope area & is only good for one thing: buying extremely unhealthy but extremely yummy snack foods at unreasonable hours..."7-11 foods to go" like asian spring rolls & tubular taco things. during one of my first trips there, i stumbled upon two new flavors of combos, available in 7oz bags...cheeseburger and bacon, egg & cheese. i tried cheeseburger on that visit & they taste like cheeseburger, but they are combos & as such, do not provide the same satisfaction as eating a cheeseburger. this time, as it was 2am, i was in more of a breakfast mood, so i went with...

#2 - 2am bacon, egg & cheese.

snack: combos bacon, egg & cheese cracker
drink: peach mango vitamin water

i like a lot of snack flavors. i've eaten utz crab chips. i've eaten herrs' heinz ketchup flavored chips. bacon, egg & cheese combos makes these chip flavors taste like what (i can only assume) the first glorious sip of breast milk must taste like to a newborn fresh from the womb. technically, it is not as bad as all that, but i believe the flavor of bacon, egg & cheese combos could kill a less experienced snacker.

as for the peach mango vitamin water, well...i drink a lot of vitamin water. we have it in the fridge at work. it is a great hangover cure when necessary. last night, i figured that since i was going to get five hours sleep, pre-sleep i would likely benefit from the rejuvenating effects of vitamin water. since 7-11 was out of yellow flavor, iced tea, red flavor #1, red flavor #2, lemonade & all the other ones i usually pick up, i went with the peach mango. i don't hate these fruits, but there's always something a little disconcerting about having to settle for your 7th or 8th choice. sure it was tasty enough, but the "vitamin" aspect of the water really let me down. i was still dragging tail come morning. endurance my ass.