We went to Hurricane for our annual summer vacation with the in-laws, and we had our usual MO of crap tons of board games and quiplash. Oh and this thing almost killed us. 
Well, not really but the story is that we heard a loud noise, and looked over and saw a dust cloud billowing up from the wall of the yard. We come to find out that a man had lost control of his boat that he was pulling, and it came careening into the sidewalk and almost into the wall, but it missed, nobody was hurt, and it all turned out amazingly well except for some bushes and a flat tire or two. Needless to say, it could have been a lot worse. Welp, that’s the only thing exciting that happened this month. Ha! Just kidding, we went to a Smashing Pumpkins concert. You know Smashing Pumpkins right? Voldemort looking guy? This is the last picture I’m going to take and before I let the monkeys with their glowing rectangles take pictures for me so I can snag them from Facebook and I can actually enjoy the moment. 
The show deserves full review treatment, so here ya go: The concert featured all the original Smashing Pumpkins members back together, minus D’arcy, who seems to still be harboring some acrimony towards Corgan, a first since the falling out and breakup in 2000. The openers were the band Metric who I think have had some radio hits, but we missed most of their set because we forgot earplugs, so we had to pay a visit to Wally-World, then we had the bright idea to take an Uber from there to the show to avoid paying the crazy 35 dollar parking (that’s arena shows for you). The show started with a video montage of Billy Corgan’s childhood photographs with lyrics being drawn on top, along with various cover art images from their classic albums from the 90’s. (I have major 90’s nostalgia even though I wasn’t really old enough to fully appreciate that era). After the video, Corgan came out by himself wearing a silver skirt and a black robe with the inscription ZERO on the back, which was a pretty on-the-nose throwback to his original 90’s era Pumpkins garb. He stepped to the microphone with an acoustic guitar and played Disarm, which is an incredibly personal song about his childhood and his abusive parents. It was an unexpected opener for me, because usually I expect rock bands to come out swinging with three bangin’ songs in a row, then they stop and say hi, then get back to the rocking. This bucked that precedent in an interesting way, and it worked. This show had a lot of “moments”. The David Bowie Space Oddity cover was one of them. He donned a silver robe (a different robe) and a hood and stood on a platform with a space montage playing on a screen behind him, singing David Bowie’s Space Oddity. It worked quite well. 
What didn’t work out so well was their cover of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. It started off cool enough with some piano, but by the last third of the song when it came time to shred some guitar and belt out the lyrics Robert Plant style, it became evident - trying to be Robert Plant is a dangerous affair. He just doesn’t have the register for it, just like the rest of the world’s population. Jimmy Page shredding was pretty close but was still just a bit off. Needless to say it kind of fell flat towards the end, but I do commend them for tackling such an iconic and difficult song. As far as the show goes I don’t have a lot of comparisons I can draw from, because I can count on one hand the number of arena shows I’ve gone to, but the overall production blew me away. Usually, I find the screen backdrops to be kind of a lazy way to try and add something interesting to the show, and is often distracting more often than not. However, with the Smashing Pumpkins, it seemed like it was part of one big art project that they had a lot of fun putting together, and flowed seamlessly with the music. It also helped that it wasn’t just screen backdrop the whole time. They were constantly moving things around on stage: platforms, lighting pillars, screens. The video playing on the screens were often featured dancers, several which were almost ballet. One video featured a paranoid, near skitzophrenic Billy Corgan stumbling around, looking generally out of his mind. About halfway through the show, we started noticing common elements and people in what appeared to be some sort of abstract narrative that seemed to flow together somehow. It was without a doubt Emily’s favorite part of the show, which might be the Humanities major in her showing. The other beef I had with the show besides the lackluster Led Zeppelin cover, which I’m going to knock off a star in my non-existent rating system for, is just..the middle of the show. They played for a good three hours, and the show started off with a bang in the first hour. Some Siamese Dream bangers here, some Mellon Collie bangers there, including the best Pumpkins song ever: Zero. But towards the middle, the tempo downshifted in a big way. At one point Corgan changed outfits (he changed outfits 4 or 5 times throughout the show), put on a crown, climbed a platform that was made to look like a Rapunzel-esque tower, on which sat a piano, and proceeded to play every friggin’ slow song he’s ever written. That lasted at least an hour and I think Emily fell asleep and I was slipping fast. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it, so it’s probably just me. Billy Boy has a gift for rock music and he can melt your face off with his guitar shred, and Chamberlain is one of the best drummers around so I hate to see them waste their talents on things like piano. It picked up in the last hour though, the rock and roll commenced and recovered nicely. During the encore they played a new song, and then a song from..Dumbo? It was an excellent show overall. 
Speaking of things no one cares about, I was informed at work that the previous tenants left a box full of records and that I could take whatever I wanted. You don’t have to ask me twice. To be honest though I wasn’t really expecting much, maybe some Barbra Streisand, maybe some Bing Crosby, but there was actually some really cool stuff in there. Included in the spoils were some Clash, Bowie, Adam and the Ants, Blondie, and Bob Marley, among others. Oh yeah, I’m not working from home anymore. *Queue tear drops*. I decided to jump on board a bit more of an interesting opportunity, not to mention a bit of a pay raise. I guarantee that I’m going to work from home again at some point in the future, because office life is really not for me. 
And now for your weather update. (It’s a slow news month, ok?) It rained. It usually doesn’t rain. 
When it rains, it really rains. And the winds blow. The winds really blow. 
When it’s not raining, the sun is melting things in your car. 
And this is why we’ve been traveling to the White Mountains of Arizona every weekend we can spare, because I just can’t take it this summer. 
We figured we have been married for a few years and we haven’t ever taken pictures with just us, and what better time than when I look like a hippie and/or Jesus? Here’s some of my favorites. Brace yourself 
This is what I look like now. Get used to the new me! 
