My birthday present from Christopher this year was a trip to Chicago to see the Pixies in concert performing their album Doolittle. I bought the tickets — and Christopher agreed to come along and to not act too embarrassed about the whole thing.

As it turns out, we both thoroughly enjoyed the concert. Every song from the album was accompanied by a video of some sort projected on the back drop, which actually worked quite well to provide a visual supplement or interpretation of each song.

Christopher made his debut performance today with the Carmel High School marching band in the city’s Fourth of July parade. The weather was hot and humid, but the band sounded really good. And Christopher said marching in the parade wasn’t as bad as he thought it’d be. They apparently do a good job of toughening the kids up in practice.

Before the parade the saxophone section had a breakfast at the section leader’s house. On the drive over Christopher was a bit apprehensive about his first social event in high school, but he says he had a good time watching videos of past band performances and getting excited about playing in one of the top high school marching bands in the country.

Here’s a short video of the band playing a pretty good-sounding Stars and Stripes Forever several times at different parts of the parade route. You can spot Christopher by looking for the tenor saxophone player wearing the black shoes:

Last Friday Melinda marched for the last time with the Cathedral High School “Pride of the Irish” marching band. Cathedral closes down every St. Patrick’s Day so everyone can participate in the festivities — and the band is always in the parade downtown.

This year the Cathedral band even lead the parade, so I videoed them along the entire route and even managed to take a few still photos. It was bitter-cold, but crisp and sunny, and all the big limestone monuments and government buildings downtown had a nice bright glow to them.

Although I think Melinda was a somewhat glad to have this year’s band season come to an end, being part of the band was an important part of her four years at Cathedral. And I have to admit that I really enjoy listening to and watching high school marching bands perform more than I ever thought I would (even when they’re just marching straight down the street and playing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” and the Cathedral fight song over and over and over).  I really hope Christopher follows through on his current intention to be in the Carmel High School band next year — it’ll be fun.

More photos are available in our photo gallery. And here’s a video compilation of some of the parade’s highlights:

Overall, it was a good parade, with — as usual — all the drivers in the race, a few B- or C-grade TV celebrities, a lot of marching bands, and floats and balloons.

Here’s a video that’s kind of a melange of photos and a few short movie clips:

(Wasn’t Danica Patrick sweet? When her car had to wait for the parade to get going again, she just gamely signed autographs for anyone who came up to her car, for as long as they were stopped.)

Here’s a relatively high-quality streaming version of the movie in Flash 8 format:

Or, if you’re having any kind of difficulties with the above, a QuickTime version of the same movie is here.

And just for comparison, here’s the same video at Google video:

Tags: California 2005, Irvine, iMovie, slideshow, The OC

This year’s dad-and-the-kids concert was Green Day on September 12 at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. The concert was really fun, but the audience was also quite interesting to me — a more diverse a group, with a lot of kids with dads or moms, than any other rock concert I’ve been to recently.

When they performed “Wake Me Up When September Ends” I was reminded that I had used that song for an iMovie slideshow I put together back in February, showing photos of Melinda and Christopher taken over the course of several years on their first day of school.

It’s probably not a conventional interpretation of that song, but it works for me. Here’s a relatively high-quality version of the slideshow movie in Flash 8 format:

(If the video doesn’t work for you, you might need to upgrade your browser plugin to Flash Player 8, available for free download here.) Or a QuickTime version of the slideshow movie is also available on my Apple .Mac account here.

Tags: concerts, Green Day

After meeting Colleen’s family in Frankenmuth, we headed out east towards Canada, for a family trip to Stratford, Ontario.

While in Stratford we communed with the swans along the river, took a tour backstage at the Stratford Festival Theater, paddled kayaks and canoes on the Avon, saw a wonderful production of “As You Like It,” met and talked with Sara Topham (who played Rosalind) after the show, and then headed home.

The full gallery of photos is at: 200507-stratford-ontario

I’ve also put together an iMovie slideshow of our photos, set to music composed and performed by the Canadian group Barenaked Ladies (words by Wm. Shakespeare) for the “As You Like It” production that we saw. Here’s the movie in Flash format:

And a QuickTime version of the same slideshow movie is here.

Tags: As You Like It, Barenaked Ladies, Sara Topham, Shakespeare, Stratford

Here we are just before we left the house (while Mommy waited patiently at home, all alone, clad in her Darth Vader boot and wheeling herself around silently in her iron carriage):

The bill consisted of Linkin Park, Korn, Snoop Dog, and an opening act we didn’t get there in time to see and have therefore already forgotten. And here are some pix from the show (taken on Mark’s crummy cellphone camera):

That last one is Linkin Park. I think. I am certain, though, that a really good time was had by all (though the kids found it somewhat tedious to have to try and plug their ears every single time some of the acts uttered a somewhat objectionable word or two). It was Christopher’s third concert at “Verizon” — the first and second being Incubus and then the Who last summer, while it was Melinda’s first concert at this particular venue.