Philly's win World Series, West Chester erupts into chaos, (sort of)

It started slowly at first, and built up and up, and now it's a big crowd at the corner of High and Gay Streets, loud cheering and car horns honking.



Thank God I don't work tomorrow, what with the noise and all, although I do have a root canal scheduled, hopefully that will seem more pleasurable in comparison to the craziness at the moment...

Did I mention I'm a curmudgeon?

Blues Traveler in West Chester

I'd write a much longer post, but I wanted to do this while the memories were still fresh, and besides I'm sure the ringing in my ears won't go away for a while.

I'm a big fan of Blues Traveler, not an obsessive fan to the degree I am with Barenaked Ladies or Ben Folds, but I do enjoy their music, and own several albums, so even though it's a school night, and I went by myself, I still wanted to check them out at West Chester's newest venue, "The Note"


I'll give you the briefest of reviews, since it's going to biased because I'm a fan and all, but man were they good! Set started at exactly 9:30, so that meant only standing around for about 20 minutes, and I was right up front! I'd figure there was about 200 people there, very intimate setting for a jam band. They played songs from the new album "North Hollywood Shootout" and they were catchy songs for having never heard them before. They reached into their complete catalogue, and had the obligatory extended improvisation jams. They played until Midnight, so for 25 Bucks for 2.5 hours of music, it was well worth it!

You know I love it when a band plays their hits of course, but I really love it when a band that's well known and yet feels comfortable in their own skin by playing cover songs. The Devil Went Down to Georgia by Charlie Daniels Band, Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes, and I Want You to Want Me, by Cheap Trick. Hearing them played live, sung by John Popper, man it was cool! (Especially since all these songs are already on my iPod) As if some of Blues Traveler's hits like Hook and Runaround aren't sing along enough, those covers were great additions to an evening of loud rocking blues rock music!

Bam Margera was there, and he looked like a very proud papa watching them play at his place, and I don't want to spoil the surprise for my brother Joe who met John Popper when he was assigned to Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar in 2006, but to drop a hint, Oscar says hi, and one of us, (either Joe or I) "rocks", if John Popper is to be believed.

Update: Red Baron Costume Photos Found!

Real quick, my brother Joe who walked off with the family photo albums when he left home at least scanned everything and sent me the only two photos of me in existence looking like a complete dork. (Ok, truth be told, there are tons of photos of me looking like a dork out there, who am I kidding?)

I don't remember being disappointed that I couldn't have a store bought costume, but I did want a more authentic flying helmet than a paper bag over my head and my dad's work goggles, but I have to admit, it worked!

I think in later years my mom would say that when she worked on it, my Dad thought it was a dumb idea, but when I was so happy with it, and that it won the most original prize, he shut up about it.

It's really no wonder I got all into Airplanes, why I got to fly as an Aircrewman in the Army, why I'm perennially getting my pilot's license. I didn't stand a chance...

West Chester Halloween Parade

Clearly, the Angel on this guy's shoulder is nowhere to be found.

Man did I luck out yesterday. I had to help staff a booth at a Job Fair at 30th Street Station yesterday, so I got to go straight home rather than stop by the office at the end of the day. That put me in West Chester long before the street closures associated with the big West Chester Halloween Parade last night. In years past I've been stuck in the office, and then when after a long day, when all I want to do is go home, I'd be flummoxed by detours and the almost impossible traffic and the lack of parking spaces left in the Mosteller Garage, "MY garage!"


The sudden influx of parents escorting their costumed kids, pushing strollers, giant SUV's in the parking garage used to tork me off, but no longer. I signed up for the "Connect CTY" service, a system where the borough can send you a recorded message to your phone, an email, and a Text Message to let you know of events in town and the street closures that go with it. Before I signed up for this, I would have to rely on me noticing those little white signs tied to the lamp posts around town saying that this was going to be a no parking zone on a certain date. Now, I can be completely oblivious to the world around me until I get a message from the Borough Manager himself, Ernie McNeely!


So, with plenty of time to get out of the my costume (a suit), I got to walk around the staging areas for the parade. I got to tell you, in a nutshell, the homemade costumes, will always be cooler than the store bought ones. Admittedly, there have been great advancements in store bought costumes since the ones that were available when I was a kid in the 1970's, you remember, a Batman costume would have a PICTURE of Batman on the front, and a plastic mask with the slits cut out for the eyes and mouth which if you'll ask Hank Venture, you couldn't stop yourself from sticking your tongue out of it, only to cut it, which of course was maddening.....

Something else that hasn't changed, little girls are usually very cute as princesses and fairies, while little boys continue to choose gore and violence as themes for costumes. Pirates, Cowboys, Horror characters, anything with blood, a gun, sword, or light saber. I was the Red Baron once, if I can find a photo of it I'll have to scan it and post it somewhere, my mom built an entire Fokker Dr.1 Triplane out of Chicken wire that I could actually put on to make it look like actually in the cockpit of the airplane while I walked around. I think I won a prize as "Most Original" at a Halloween parade in Canoga Park, California circa 1973. (Thanks Mom!)


All in all, it was a great evening, kids, families, the weather cooperated by not being too cold or any rain, just another reason why living in West Chester is so great. Next up, John Young's final Guerrilla Drive In for the season, Blues Traveler playing at Bam Margera's "The Note", the Veteran's Day Parade, and then the Christmas Parade.


Did I mention I like living here!

You see, this is why we can't have nice things

Dead Tree Down
Originally uploaded by arod138

You know, the tree was already dead, I'm pretty sure it died shortly after being planted when they replaced the sidewalk with the ubiquitous and quaint red bricks we have around town, but still....come on, someone's got to come along and prove their manhood by splitting the tree in half?

Sheesh....I remember my first beer.....

RotorFest!

Did you here the distinctive "Whop Whop Whop" of those Huey's big ,thick rotor blades slapping their way through the air over West Chester this weekend?


I love the smell of fried dough and Turkey legs in the afternoon....

No, it was not Lt. Colonel Kilgore with the Ride of the Valkyries blaring out of speakers coming to take over downtown because let's face it, "Charlie don't surf", (Or in the case of West Chester, skateboard.) It was the sounds of RotorFest! The annual October celebration of everything whirlybird at our hometown airport, Brandywine Airport OQN.

I went last year with my brother Joe, in fact right after getting to ride in a Hughes 500 a la T.C. from Magnum P.I., I took him to the Philly Airport so he could get to Europe on his way to Afghanistan for 6 months via Norway and Oberamergau, Germany to get up to speed on how NATO troops make their coffee or some such training...

This year was just as nice as last year, perfect blue skies, absolutely still air, sunny and neither hot nor cold, just absolutely perfect. It seems like I just went last year RotorFest as if it was yesterday, I tell you I'm not happy with the rate of speed life is moving these days. I think someone needs to check the planet's Tachometer, I'm sure we're doing more RPM's lately then we were back in the 70's and 80's. To hell with Global Warming, I say Global Speeding is more of a threat! At least to me anyway.

I took a lot of photos on my little Nikon Coolpix, you know I'm pretty happy with it, and it seems to be robust enough with features that I will be able to do some cool things with it, if I can have the attention span longer than that of a gnat to read the instruction manual. I'll put a lot of the stuff either on my Flickr account or on my You Tube account.

Which brings me to the nerd factor at airshows. You know there are comic book nerds, sci fi nerds, Renaissance fair nerds, D and D nerds, (if you don't know what that is, you're not a nerd), but I think one of the more obscure kind of nerds is the war nerds, and their various subsets. The Civil War reinactor carries a great deal of respect among the mainstream population, but less so the others that obsess over the minutia of military details. Again it's absolutely true that there are a lot of non nerds out there that know the difference between a P-51 Mustang and a B-17, and I attribute that to the fact that there are a lot of people who's grandpa flew them during the war, but fewer people who know the difference between a B-17F and a B-17G (answer: Chin Turret) DOH!

The key here is, at least for me, is to avoid the temptation to put on a T-shirt with some airplane on it and perhaps worse, in addition to maybe having a telephoto zoom lens camera dangling around my neck, a handheld aviation band scanner sticking out of the pocket of a pair of size 46 cargo shorts. (Don't be that guy, Don't be that guy, I mutter to myself)

When I was in the Army Reserves, I got to fly only one time with our aircraft to an airshow in Fort Meyers. We didn't normally do the airshow circuit because of the clandestine nature of our work, so we did our missions in obscurity. This time though, it was right after Desert Storm, so I had a lot of people thanking me for my service. It was sort of awkward because I sat out the war at the Presidio of Monterey, California. (If you are going to miss a war, that's the place to do it) Still it was cool, because I had been that nerdy kid who knew what every airplane on the ramp was, and then later as a Teenager, the pimply faced kid in a Civil Air Patrol uniform standing some sort of guard duty next to some warbird while the millionaire pilot/owner hung out eating hot dogs in the VIP tent hobnobbing with the Blue Angels.

I finally got to see an airshow from the other side of the rope, and I didn't feel like a tool wannabe walking around in a flight suit. I also got to see the kind of kids I was, not the ADD kid spinning himself around and babbling incoherently running up and down the length of the airplane shouting "eheheheheheh, take that mom, ehehehehehe, take that dad, send me to a psychiatrist will you? Take that Doctor Sally Wexler!!" (Get the reference?)

No I was the kid that silently observed everything in quiet awe. I would wait my turn to talk to the pilot to ask some clever question, mainly so I could get the compliment of being such a smart kid.

God I was and still am a nerd.....

WC Chili Cook Off vs Philly Sports teams

Maybe I got there late, but it seemed like a light turn out for West Chester's 6th Annual Chili Cook off. Don't get me wrong, the air was filled with spices and aromas, plenty of people about, and my salivary glands were working overtime as I walked down the street, but I began to think about it and wondered if West Chester was suffering from some kind of Street Festival Burnout Syndrome? (Hereby to be known from now on as SFBS, terminology copyright 2008 Arod138 Heavy Industries, all rights reserved)

In the last month we've had a Swinging Thursday street festival and the West Chester Restaurant Festival, so did the Chili Cook off suffer because we've kind of been overdoing the whole festival thing lately, or what? You can only do a few of these things before people start to take them for granted, right?

Then I thought about what might have been a factor, which was while all this ground beef, beans, onions, tomatoes were simmering along, there was an Eagles-Redskins game going on, and the 4th game of the National League Championship Series being played, the Phillies vs the Brewers.

Having moved here to S.E. Pennsylvania from parts unnamed with a, let's just say, a less ingrained sports culture, it didn't take me long to figure out that people here like their local sports teams. That, and the fact that people here, especially in West Chester, and especially after the bars close at 2 in the morning, that people here have absolutely no problem spelling the word "Eagles"....at the top of their lungs, while drunk...jerks....

Again, I'm absolutely supportive of any event the town throws that allows me the gluttonous opportunity to stand in line eating a funnel cake while waiting in line to order a hot dog, but come on what is the answer to this dilemma?

Because in the fall, between High School Football on Friday nights, Penn State Football on Saturday afternoons, (I actually had someone at work tell me that they could never work Saturdays like I have to sometimes because of College Football, and from the looks of the kid, it's not like he was a key player or anything, but I digest, er, digress) NFL football on Sunday afternoons, who the heck is going to show up to these things? Do we need to cram more of these festivals in during the summer?

At least it didn't rain today, it was a really nice day to intake far more calories in a few hours than I will have burned....in a week. Oh, and Phillies won, Eagles lost.