Behind Sister Hazel's Eyes

This past weekend, Gina, Colleen, and I Celebrated Fairfax much like Gina and I did last summer. This year, though, I had a much different perspective. When we were strolling around the Government Center last time, I hadn't moved to Fairfax yet, and Josh and I were just getting around to signing our lease. This year, I got us to the festival almost flawlessly, except that I didn't get the girls' food from Subway in time (sorry, ladies!).

Our mission this time around was fairly simple: see the Sister Hazel and Sugar Ray shows, and in between them, obtain as much free crap as possible. The weather started out cool but warmed up enough later on to be absolutely perfect, which suited me better than last year's sweltering heat. To get the most free crap, we discovered that the various government booths were the way to go. Anything with a wheel to spin was a good target, since many of the employees manning the wheels didn't care too much about whether you got the answer right or wrong. Heck, one of them even mistook Gina for a 15-year old lawyer with a daughter Colleen's age. Go figure. I think this part of our mission was definitely successful. At Gina's urging, we all even entered a raffle for a free postal scale at the county's IT booth, and as luck would have it, Colleen won later that day. The luck just kept following us!

The concerts were a mixed bag. It was great seeing Sister Hazel. I bought ...Somewhere More Familiar back in high school, when "All For You" was all over the airwaves. I couldn't get enough of that album for a while. It was the kind of rock that I was deeply into at the time, and I found the rocking guitar work over Ken Block's acoustic to be very interesting. These guys are definitely the real deal still, and they're still churning out some good songs. It's a shame that they've been spun out of the public spotlight recently, but they're still worth checking out live. The bassist, Jett Beres, is superb.

Sugar Ray was another remnant of high school music. I'm not totally ashamed to say I bought 14:59 after it had been out and "Every Morning" had catapulted their career. It remains a great song. However, their live show left a lot to be desired. They played all their hits, but they still had to stretch to fill an hour set, plugging the gaps with Mark McGrath getting screamed at by the ladies, cover songs being blasted by the DJ, and karaoke toward the end. They like to have fun, that much is obvious, but it doesn't look like we should expect anything new from Sugar Ray anytime soon, if ever.

All in all, though, I think we celebrated my home for the past year quite well, as you can see on the Flickr gallery.

One final note, kids: be careful what you wish for, kids, because this guy might be following right behind you. Right. Behind. You!