hot. damn hot.

Phil was hot. Our apartment, as of today, is not.

An exceptional weekend in Columbus was highlighted by two things: the Phil and Friends show at Lifestyle Communities Pavilion in the Arena District, and a full day of hanging out with our nephews and niece at the original Uncle Crappy homestead.

I’ve said this before: Phil’s band — whoever its members happen to be on any given tour — is one of the best things going, musicwise. He does an excellent job of finding musicians who are solid enough to listen to his on-stage prompts about where a jam should go but open enough to head out there when its time.

The band we saw this time was identical to the November version, with three exceptions: Rob Baracco on keyboards, New York jazz dude Greg Osby on sax and the amazing Joan Osborne on vocals. Larry Campbell continues to shine, and Barry Sless sat at the pedal steel all night, adding sweet country color.

Check this shit:

Set one: Althea, The Other One, Cold Roses, Cryptical, Cold Roses, Candyman Blues, Candyman, Casey Jones.
Set two: Bird Song, Watchtower, Nobody Girl, China Doll, Nobody Girl, Unbroken Chain, The Wheel, China Cat, I Know You Rider.
Encore: A Little Piece For You.

I think I’ve mentioned this before: love Joan. Hearing her sing Althea was priceless. The homestretch, from “Unbroken Chain” on, was staggering. I guess my only gripe is with the encore, a song Phil wrote with Hunter. Not as bad as, say “Wave to the Wind,” but not the encore I would have picked.

After the show the entire group — Uncle Crappy, The Wife, Fred, Juan and HP — headed to our local White Castle to initiate Fred into one of our favorite late-night rituals. He liked them at the time, but I think he suffered a bit the following day.

And a word about Lifestyle Communities Pavilion: I’ve never been to a better-run venue. Anywhere. It’s the perfect size — capacity of about 4,500 for outdoor shows — beer lines move quick, and they sell White Castles on premises, for crying out loud. Security is totally relaxed. Plenty of bathrooms. Excellent sound. No-hassle parking. We’ll make an effort to see shows there again.

Saturday was driven largely by the whims of two young boys and their baby sister. The nephews are nuts and Miss Mollie is still about the happiest kid I’ve ever seen, even though she didn’t take to her scary-looking uncle. We visited Ohio Stadium, played soccer in the front yard, scribbled up Mom and Dad’s pavers with colored chalk and played a kid’s version of Cranium. And then we collapsed, because we were exhausted. The adults. Not so much the kids.

We endured nasty heat all weekend, but we were sleeping in air conditioning as well. That changed on Sunday, when we returned to an apartment that was around 85 degrees on the inside and getting warmer. Yuck. The cat briefly said hello, and then returned to one of the two places he feels are acceptable when it’s that freaking hot — under the couch or sitting on top of a big plastic cooler we keep handy for beer runs. Monday was worse. Ninety five plus outside and, when I left for work at 2:30 p.m., nearly 90 inside. Miles wasn’t even moving, just trying to sleep on his cooler.

We’ve periodically had discussions about the potential benefits of a window air conditioner, but we’ve never quite gotten miserable enough to actually go and buy one. We saw lots of drawbacks: noise, prodigious use of electricity, the cost, air that’s somehow not as fresh, the fact that a window unit would be sticking out on the front porch of one of our neighbors, who might not take kindly to its presence … you get the idea.

But on Monday, with the fur-covered member of our home unwilling to do much of anything because of the heat, I had a change of heart. The Wife, grudgingly, did as well, especially after she took a walk around our building and found that WE WERE THE ONLY TENANTS WITHOUT AIR CONDITIONING.

OK. Enough. She found a 6,000 BTU unit on sale at Home Depot; I picked it up this morning and got it running. Sweet Holy Jesus, is it ever nice. The cat started feeling more perky after it had been running for about an hour. I didn’t start sweating immediately upon completion of my shower.

Life is good.

7 thoughts on “hot. damn hot.”

  1. UC –

    Good to hear the show was good – I’ll let you in on a little secret – evan as a Columbus native, I’ve never eaten at Whities. Can’t start now – the streak is too long.

    As for window unit ACs – we have an older house – and window units reside here – I’ve done my part the past couple of days helping set the new single day record of elecricity consumption – sure, they are not very pretty – but I also don’t like breaking a sweat trying to get the girls ready for school either.

    Jimmy Buffett sold out in about 2 minutes – I guess I need to get on the preferred lists (Amex pre-sale, etc.) – I’ll look into some resales – the floor seats were selling for $176! Wow – not really the price point I was looking for.

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  2. You’ve NEVER HAD A WHITE CASTLE? Crap. I thought I had converted all my friends a long time ago. It’s not too late though — last time I checked, they were abundant in the NY/NJ area. I know because I personally stopped at a White Castle in West Orange once while on the way to visiting Juan when he lived in Brooklyn.

    And I’m not surprised by the rapid Buffett ticket sales. His annual Pittsburgh show always sells out in minutes; the only time I’ve managed to see him here was when I scored tix after writing a nice story about Star Lake, back in the pre-Clear Channel days.

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  3. Oh, and all those misgivings about joining the World of Air Conditioning? Hah. Gone. What the hell were we thinking?

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  5. If the subject would have come up, I would have imparted my AC wisdom to you: When I lived at the Ranch with the rest of the dd69 crew, we were all very righteous about not getting any air conditioners. I wasn’t quite as militant, but the general idea was along the lines of your reasoning: extra electricity cost, spending money, environmental issues (inside and out), etc. After four years of enduring ‘surface of the sun’ temperatures during the summer, when I couldn’t sleep at night because the bed had turned into a humid, scorching sweatbox, I caved. I bought a huge AC unit for my bedroom. A couple things happened immediately – (1)I smacked myself in the head and thought, “Why the @#$% didn’t you do this years ago?”, and (2)My room suddenly became the place everyone wanted to be. From that point on I decided that, despite my Catholic upbringing, I really didn’t need to suffer when comfort was just a few bucks away.

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  6. Kewyson…..never had a “slider”!!! Man, I used to use the WC for cutting weight in UAHS dayz. 4 castles, fries and some H20 and the weight would come off! You might want to try’em but make sure the “facilities” are close.

    UC-welcome to cool air world! After 17 consecutive days of 100+ back in 1985, AC has been my friend. You can only get so acclimated to being hot, sweaty and smelly until it reaches the breaking point.

    The wife and I were fortunate enough to see Jimmy B (Fingerless at the time) in Charlotte. He has not lost it even though the band has come and gone. Lawn seats = $39 times 2 plus mail turned out to be $90 something. Of course, it had not rained in weeks except for the 2 1/2 hours during the show. Still a great time. Mama Sal and the younger bro saw him in Cincy (Fingers showed up!). They were on the VIP list or something. Mama Sal calls me at work the next morning, screaming, yelling and hooting about the show. I believe that was number 25 for her since 1991!!

    Enjoy your new toy and the power bill that comes to the door in about a month!

    CarolinaBoy – forgot my password!

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  7. Carolina Boy! Great to hear from you, my friend…

    Sounds like you and Mrs. MRS did well at your Buffett show. As I said before, it’s nearly impossible to get hooked up with tix in Pittsburgh, unless you write a nice newspaper story about the venue … which is what I did in 1998. As thanks, their PR guy called and asked if I knew anyone who could use a pair of tickets to that summer’s Parrothead deal … I said I might be able to use them. So he tells me to show up at this booth in the VIP lot; my name, he said, would be on the proverbial “list.” I was skeptical, but sure enough, the dude in the booth hands us a pair of freaking gold circle tickets — that’s Star Lake code for 10th row and up.

    How close were we? Close enough that when Jimmy started tossing guitar picks out into the audience during his encore, one of them hit The Wife squarely in the the forehead. As Sal apparently knows, VIP is the only way to go…

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