SleepingPoliceman

As implied in previous postings, one of the central events of the recent England adventure was a trip to the Twickenham Rugby Ground to see a reunited Genesis play a big concert.

This was the 3 man lineup of 1978-1993, despite the rumors that have persisted for a few years that they would get the 5 man lineup with Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett together for a full scale reunion. Nevertheless, this was my first chance to see what has historically been my favorite band of all time play at something close to full strength. (I did win a contest to go see an acoustic show in 1997 when they had their third singer, Ray Wilson…while I loved the show and the experience, that era didn’t last long, so I could scarcely count that as having seen them.) It was pretty phenomenal to go and see a band that I never thought I’d see together again perform a sold-out show in front of a ginormous crowd in their home country.

And now, in less than 45 minutes, I’ll be leaving my apartment to go to Fenway Park to see another of my all time favorite bands, The Police, play another sold out show. (Well, maybe it’s not sold out…they’ve been hawking $225 tickets on Red Sox broadcasts for the past two weeks, so I guess there’s still some spaces available.) This is another band that I never, ever thought I’d be able to see. Sure, they’re older…actually, downright old. There’s a chance that they will be a letdown, sounding horribly and making everyone think they should have just stayed broken up. But I’ll be thankful just for the experience. Just as I did in London three weeks ago to the day, I’ll be hearing some excellent songs played by the three guys (or three of the guys, in Genesis’ case) who wrote and originally performed them.

I know we might not be able to perfect time travel technology anytime soon. Given that fact, I’ll take a few wrinkles and lowered keys and joyful nostalgia trips wherever and whenever I can get them. Rock on.

This has taken a while to get together. Since, you know, we’ve been back for more than two and a half weeks. I’m quite aware there has been an insufficient amount of blogging concerning the recent London jaunt. I’m hoping to get that turned around in the near future. Promises, promises.

To recap, though…a brief bullet point listing of what we did:

• Spent six and a half days in probably the greatest city I’ve ever visited.
• Saw countless museums and art galleries
• Walked so much our feet and legs ached for days when we came back.
• Saw two plays, one work-in-progress one man comedy show, and one concert in a stadium with 65,000 people.
• Traveled across England to spend a day in Liverpool, where we saw toured of the most famous soccer stadiums in the world and wasted two hours venturing out to see a nondescript street.
• Ate food of surprisingly good quality in pubs, restaurants, hotel rooms and park benches.
• Saw famous landmarks and monuments that barely seemed real because we were so used to seeing them in pictures and on the screen.
• Did a relatively decent job of figuring out the intricacies of the Underground and the bus system, never being too lost for too long a period of time.
• Remained able, for the most part, to not be total American tourists and talk in fake British accents all the time. For the most part.

All in all, it was a smashing success. Hopefully more stories will trickle out here as time goes on and I can put together posts of various anecdotes. For now, the pictures will have to suffice. We have two sets for you.

Set 1: P.T.’s album (on Flickr). This is the trimmed down version that I consider best for solo web viewing. And, yes, 134 pictures is the trimmed down amount.

Set 2: Lisa’s album (also on Flickr). This has more photos than mine, and might need a guided slide show voice over by one of the two of us to be entertaining and hold your attention. But…if you want more content, ch-ch-check it out.

And if you want to see the full 600 or so photos…then you’re insane. Don’t ever talk to me again. You’re frightening the children.

Three cheers for London…pip pip, old bean.

Dear Guy Walking Out Of The Fresh Pond Whole Foods Around 6pm Last Night,

What was the first thought you had yesterday morning that led to the conclusion, “Today’s a good day to wear my Michael Vick jersey”?

I’m assuming one of the following things is true of you:

• You are a really, really, really big fan of the Falcons, and will support the team no matter what.
• You firmly believe in due process, and want to show support for someone who has already been convicted in the court of public opinion.
• You hate dogs. Like, really hate them.
• You haven’t paid attention to anything for the past couple of weeks.
• You are Clinton Portis

Whatever it was…godspeed, sir. I hope you’re proud of yourself.

I had planned yesterday to write a quick post to mark the second anniversary of your beloved Sleeping Policeman. But, like a lot of the other posts that are backlogged, I didn’t get to it in time. Alas.

So, give it a +1 and help us blow out a couple of candles. Here’s hoping year 3 will continue to be productive and entertaining…and that, you know, people are still enjoying it. Thanks for joining along with our virtual rambles.

All right, all right…I know that there’s been a marked decrease in content here on the SP. We apologize profusely. Part of the reason, as previously mentioned, was my trip to London. After that, I’ve been settling back in and trying to deal with the mental burden of having to go back to work every day. Man, I need to be one of the idle rich.

While all that’s happening, jz is busy with his fancy book learnin’. He’s so busy he hasn’t even blogged about his iPhone. That will come soon enough, I’m sure.

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Everyone got to London safely and came back just as well. The trip was great. Sleeping (with or without a policeman present) has been almost as good.

Stories to come, he said, hopefully not blog teasing you all. Enjoy the weekend, everybody.

Apologies for the interruption in our NC series…the last part (it shrunk down to four) will have to wait until the end of next week. For in a scant five-plus hours, I’ll be departing from Logan in the general direction of Heathrow. After many museums, parks, shops, shows and trains, we will be returning next Wednesday. And sleeping a lot.

That is, of course, assuming that everyone over there is over this whole “medical professionals trying to make car bombs” fad. If that rears it’s head again, you might see us back sooner. Or later. Or…well, no, there’s no other or. Hopefully.

Have a great week here in the States, or wherever you are. If you have any last second recommendations, leave them below. I likely won’t get them until I get back…but, hey, there’s always next time, right?

Indeed.

Or, “Where we face a fundamental disagreement on the meaning of the word ‘value’.”

As hinted at in Part 1 and Part 2, the hotel we stayed in that Saturday night was…interesting. And by interesting, I mean awful. And also interesting in the “I can’t believe you successfully have stayed in business as long as you have” way. Here’s how this song goes:

Before heading down, Lisa called to see how we could get from the hotel to the downtown/riverfront area. We were considering renting a car and we were doing some pricing of options. So she calls and talks to someone who works there. They say, “Well, it’s a $10-$13 cab ride to downtown, and there’s a shuttle bus that leaves ever half hour from the hotel.” A hotel shuttle bus? Sweet, we’re in. No rental car needed. Good times.

So we land, eventually get a cab, and end up at America’s Best Value Inn around 9am. We ask the young, Rogen-esque dude behind the counter if we can check in early. He says, “No, the room isn’t ready yet.” Fair enough…we are really early. Then we ask him when the shuttle bus leaves. He says, “Uhhh…what?” Lisa explains the phone conversation she had earlier, ending with, “so we were told there was a shuttle bus here.” He shakes his head and opens his eyes wide like he’s trying to shake cobwebs out of his brain, and exclaims, “I don’t know WHO told you that!” So…no shuttle bus. No, what there is is the bus. As in a regular public transportation bus that goes to downtown from the street outside the hotel. Fine, whatever. We can handle that. So we head out to sit on the bench and wait for the bus that comes by every half hour. And we wait. Finally around 9:45, after no signs of any buses anywhere, we check back with the guy at the front desk. “How often do the buses come?” The reply: “Oh, they don’t start until 11am on Saturdays.” Wow…thanks, bro.

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So after the events detailed in Part 1, we headed down the Boardwalk past the band of Marines playing Christian rock (testifying via sub-Creed songs with sub-sub-Bono rambling in the middle of them) and to this place:

Though not quite what I thought it was going to be (there was no day-glo/black light ink twirling in the driers during the show), the Soapbox was a pretty kickass establishment. The main floor had a bar, a tiny DJ stage, some pool tables, a few dart boards, some awesome old school arcade machines, couches, tables with books and comics and magazines…and a full service laundromat. I don’t know why anyone in downtown Wilmington would go anywhere else to get their whites white again. Downstairs was a dance club. Upstairs was a rock club. Genius.

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Sorry for the delay. Let’s get down to business.

As I may have mentioned, Lisa took me to Wilmington, NC for my birthday this year. Why Wilmington? Well, why not Wilmington?

(Seriously, though, it’s because she wanted to take me to see an all-girl Led Zeppelin cover band, and this happened to be where they were playing that weekend. Hooray for randomness.)

So last Saturday (or I guess the Saturday before last, at this point), we woke up at quarter of three in the morning to get to the airport in time for our 5am flight. We flew to Charlotte and then took a small Tylenol shuttle flight to Wilmington. (These details will be important later.) Upon arrival, we were greeted by a quaint six gate airport, southern airport hospitality (i.e., rocking chairs throughout the terminal), and smack-you-in-the-face humidity. Lisa also found out the hard way that small town mini-airports don’t have a lot of taxis rolling through at 8:30am on a Saturday, no matter how many times you flick the taxi call switch.

We took a taxi to our hotel, which had been booked as part of an Orbitz package deal. And you know what? I’m not going to tell you anything about the hotel here. That’s going to become another post. So we’re skipping right to our first stop of the day, which was the Cape Fear Museum of History and Science.

More after the jump.

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