What drops to #3, but climbs to #2?

What the heck happened to Linnen?

So where has Linnen been for the past few weeks? Why has this usually red-hot blog been so dark and quiet? Turns out the lad was on his summer vacation!

Seems like a very long time ago, but 2 weeks of work-free fun began on July 31st when Sarah and I traveled to New Jersey with my sister Erin and brother-in-law Mike to see the last night of Bruce Springsteen's three-night run at the Meadowlands. We had a blast! We made the journey with no difficulties whatsoever, so that was good. There was an accident that tied up traffic on the NJ Turnpike for over 24 hours, but it didn't directly affect us.
The concert was great! Bruce's new CD is chock-full of great tunes, and he did four or five of them. Erin was disappointed because he didn't do our official song of the summer, "Girls in Their Summer Clothes", and I'd be lying to say I wasn't disappointed as well. He did sing it the first two nights of the engagement, so I guess he was tired of it. It's one of his best songs though.

He played a ton of old stuff, including almost the entire "Born To Run" album, which is definitely one of my favorites. Someone up front requested an old one called "Incident on 57th Street" which I didn't know, but I really dug it! They also did a smokin' version of "Because the Night", a song that Bruce wrote, but Patti Smith and later Natalie Merchant made famous. They completely rocked through it and Nils, one of the many guitarists that peppered the stage, actually did a sommersault while he wailed on the guitar solo. It was insanely cool!!

The crowd was pretty good considering that there were over 50,000 people in attendence, a huge majority of which were drinking all day long. An annoying woman thought Mike was in her seat even though he showed her his ticket, so she sent security after him - of course, they didn't do anything. The couple next to Sarah were kind of annoying and oversized, so she kept getting skrunched which didn't make her happy. Being a gentleman, I offered to trade seats with her three times, but she refused.

Here's a shot from before the show. Erin and Mike were taking a picture and I did my best impersonation of a great white shark rising out of the ocean depths to get into the frame! Those teeth look sharp!!
We then spent all day Friday and Saturday morning visiting with Erin, Mike, and Grace. We had a great time eating ice cream, swimming, watching TV, and playing. It was an excellent start to our vacation. Saturday afternoon we left for home to start packing for our next journey: westward to Las Vegas!!

Someone's in the kitchen....

I am forming my own version of Queen with small, cold-cast statues! Some company somewhere in the world manufactured collectible statues of both Freddie Mercury and Brian May, and so I picked 'em up at my friendly local comic store, Comix Connection. I love having 2 of my favorite musicians draped across the top of my piano, although in this picture, they were hanging out in my kitchen.

Speaking of Queen, in case you haven't heard their new song "C-lebrity", here it is!