nibbler

The turnout was O.K.- made up of a solid base of local envelope 3 fans and a sizeable O-town crew who came out and supported. There were also a few handfuls of moe.rons who took a chance; skipped the "official afterparty"; and wound up HAVING THIER MINDS BLOWN...

Dave was at the top of his game on Saturday- entertaining Toronto with his unique brand of live organic electronica music. The tunes were a mix of original envelope 3 compositions, some groovy extrapolations and dark twists on crowd pleasing 80's tunes, and pretty sure I heard a tease and/or cover of nero's Condor in there somewhere. (let the tapers decide on that one) With only a short break between two long sets people were boogying hard from start to finish!

Chuck and Rob showed up towards the end of the first set and stayed until close to the end of the show- enjoying rocking tunes, good vibes and the Dominion's late night hospitality including a few plates of the famous butter chicken! Seeing Chuck out on the dance floor appreciating Lauzon's talents was cool- hearing Rob explain how the "official afterparty" tried to bribe him into "showing up" to cover Friend of the Devil made my night!

36 tickets reserved through Jambands so far- cutting off PM reservation for advanced cost tickets at 4 p.m.

Interesting RSVPs on the facebook event page in the last few hours

Tonight is gonna ROCK!

In less than 24 hours- 36 tickets have been reserved through jambands! Glad to see all the support piling on for what is going to be another awesome envelope 3 late night afterparty!

Im cutting the PM reservations off in a couple hours as I wont have computer access from this afternoon on- you can always still drop in at the bar anytime before moe. tonight to get an advanced ticket, save yourself the Will Call lineup

p.s. looks like some surprise guests have RSVPed to the afterparty facebook page!

See y'all tonight!

ZERO MORE SLEEPS!

I would buy tickets to see Harper perform I'm the Slime!

I've got 15 skanks on the "advanced price" ticket list so far- If you want to be added to the list then PM me before 4:00 P.M. today as I will not likely have computer access after that time.

Go to Will Call when you arrive to get your tickets!

Doors tonight at 11:00 p.m.

Dave will be soundchecking around midnight, show will start between 12:30 and 1:00

REVISED: Dave's going to be finished his setup and soundcheck before midnight. He'll start playing within minutes of the other show's finish.

"with live guitar from the high plains drifter"

$5.25 service charge doesnt make sense.

I thought ticketweb charged between 2.25 and 2.75 a ticket- least thats been my experience.

Dave will be soundchecking around midnight, show will start between 12:30 and 1:00

Unless they get fucked up by this six wheeler first!

Advanced Tickets are now available at the Dominion on Queen from the bartender. They're available during regular business hours: 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 a.m.

We are also going to have a Will Call setup, if you'd like to have tickets at the advanced cost waiting for you at the venue, then PM me- this option is only being offered to the Jambands.ca community.

Cheers!

where do we get advance tickets?

Tickets should be delivered from the printers today- as soon as we have them; they will be available from the bartender at $10 each NO service charges at the Dominion on Queen. I will post to this thread again when I know the bartender has them at the bar.

I will have some tickets on me the night of, so you could also track me down and get your $10 ticket that way. There may also be one or two of the usual suspects with them for sale at the Opera House. Will keep you posted on the W's.

In the meantime, if you can't wait- tickets via ticketweb work out to $12.24 INCLUDING service charge.

IMPORTANT NOTICES

The door time has moved back to 11PM. If you've got nothing planned then come and drink, schmooze, hear the soundcheck, shoot some pool, try the Dominion's famous beef Vindaloo etc. etc.

The owner of the Dominion on Queen has generously donated $50 worth of prize vouchers redeemable at the bar for food and/or drink. We will raffle these off during the show, so HANG ONTO YOUR TICKET STUBS when you arrive- you could score FREE BOOZE!

Did someone say Roll Call? I'm IN!

extent of my inside knowledge: if you want to learn to fly a chopper- might as well sign up for the army - cause as a civilian it'll cost you tens of thousands in fuel costs alone just to get your training hours.

Great sounding recording- thanks for sharing your efforts for those of us too far behind on firewood chopping to make it out to the show.

Have you read A.J. Jacobs: The Year of Living Biblically

He spent a year following the Bible literally- turns out to be a hilarious read: here's an excerpt from the book:

They shall be stoned with stones, their blood shall be upon them

Leviticus 20:27

Day 64. It’s been more than a month since my mixed fiber adventure. Time for me to tackle the second item on my list of Most Perplexing Laws. Capital Punishment.

The Hebrew scriptures prescribe a tremendous amount of capital punishment. Think Saudi Arabia, multiply by Texas, then triple that. It wasn’t just for murder. You could also be executed for adultery, blasphemy, breaking the Sabbath, perjury, incest, bestiality and witchcraft, among others. A rebellious son could be sentenced to death. As could a gluttonous or a drunkardly son.

The most commonly mentioned punishment method in the Hebrew Bible is stoning. So I figure, at the very least, I should try to stone. But how?

I can’t tell you how many people have suggested I get adulterers and blasphemers stoned in the cannabis sense. Which is an interesting idea. But I haven’t smoked pot since I was at Brown University and I wrote a paper for my anthropology class on the hidden symbolism of bong hits. (Brown was the type of college where this paper actually earned a B+).

Instead, I figured my loophole would be this: the bible doesn’t specify the size of the stones. So…pebbles.

A few days ago, I gathered a handful of small white pebbles from Central Park, which I stuffed in my back pants pocket. Now all I needed were some victims. I decide to start with Sabbath breakers. That’s easy enough to find in this workaholic city. I noticed a pot-bellied guy at the Avis down our block had worked on both Saturday and Sunday. So no matter what, he’s a Sabbath-breaker.

Here’s the thing, though: Even with pebbles, it is surprisingly hard to stone people.

My plan had been to walk nonchalantly past him and chuck the pebbles at the small of his back. But after a couple of failed passes, I realized it was a bad idea. A chucked pebble, no matter how small, does not go unnoticed.

My revised plan: I would pretend to be clumsy and drop the pebble on his shoe. So I did.

And in this way I stoned. But it was probably the most polite stoning in history – I said ‘I’m sorry,’ and then leaned down to pick up the pebble. And he leaned down at the same time, and we almost butted heads, and then he apologized, then I apologized again.

Highly unsatisfying.

Today, I get another chance. I am resting in a small public park on the Upper West Side, the kind where you see retirees eating tuna sandwiches on benches.

“Hey, you’re dressed queer.â€

I look over. The speaker is an elderly man, mid-70s I’d guess. He is tall and thin and is wearing of those caps that cabbies wore in movies from the Forties.

“You’re dressed queer,†he snarls. “Why you dressed so queer.†I have on my usual fringes, and, for good measure, have worn some sandals and am carrying a knotty maple walking stick I’d bought on the Internet for $25.

“I’m trying to live by the rules of the Bible. The 10 commandments, stoning adulterers…â€

“You’re stoning adulterers?â€

“Yeah, I’m stoning adulterers.â€

“I’m an adulterer.â€

“You’re currently an adulterer?â€

“Yeah. Tonight, tomorrow, yesterday, two weeks from now. You gonna stone me?â€

“If I could, yes, that’d be great.â€

“I’ll punch you in the face. I’ll send you to the cemetery.â€

He is serious. This isn’t a cutesy grumpy old man. This is an angry old man. This is a man with seven decades of hostility behind him.

I fish out my pebbles from my back pocket.

“I wouldn’t stone you with big stones,†I say. “Just these little guys.â€

I open my palm to show him the pebbles. He lunges at me, grabbing one out of my hand, then chucking it at my face. It whizzes by my cheek.

I am stunned for a second. I hadn’t expected this elderly man to make the first move. But now there is nothing stopping me from retaliating. An eye for an eye.

I take one of the remaining pebbles and whip it at his chest. It bounces off.

“I’ll punch you right in the kisser,†he say.

“Well, you really shouldn’t commit adultery,†I say.

We stare at each other. My heart is racing.

Yes, he is a septuagenarian. Yes, he had just threatened me using corny Honeymooners dialogue. But you could tell: This man has a strong dark side.

Our glaring contest lasts ten seconds, then he walks away, brushing by me as he leaves.

When I was a kid, I saw an episode of All in the Family in which Meathead -- Rob Reiner’s wussy peacenik character -- socked some guy in the jaw. Meathead was very upset about this. But he wasn’t upset that he committed violence; he was upset because it felt so good to commit violence.

I can relate. Even though mine was a Stoning Lite, barely fulfilling the letter of the law, I can’t deny: It felt good to chuck a rock at this nasty old man. It felt primal. It felt like I was getting vengeance on him. This guy wasn’t just an adulterer, he was a bully. I wanted him to feel the pain he’d inflicted on others, even if that pain was a tap on the chest.

Like Meathead, I also knew that this was a morally stunted way to feel. Stoning is about as indefensible as you can get. It comes back to the old question: How can the Bible be so wise in some places and so barbaric in others? And why should we put any faith in a book that includes such brutality? Later that week, I ask my spiritual adviser Yossi about stoning. Yossi was born in the Midwest, and calls himself a “Jewtheran†– Jewish guilt and Lutheran repression mesh nicely, he told me. He’s an ordained Orthodox rabbi, but never practiced, instead opting for the shmatta trade – he sold scarves to, among others, the Amish. He’s tall and broad-shouldered with a neatly-trimmed beard. In his spare time, writes wry essays about Jewish life, including a lament about how his favorite snack, Twinkies, recently became non-kosher. I met him through Aish HaTorah, an Orthodox outreach group. He isn’t fazed by my question at all.

We don’t stone people today because you need a Biblical theocracy to enforce the stoning. No such society exists today. But even in ancient times, stoning wasn’t barbaric.

“First of all, you didn’t just heave stones,†says Yossi. “The idea was to minimize the suffering. What we call ‘stoning’ was actually pushing the person off the cliff so they would die immediately upon impact. The Talmud actually has specifications on how high the cliff must be. Also, the person getting executed was given strong drink to dull the pain.â€

Plus, the stonings were a rare thing. Some rabbis say executions only occurred once every seven years, others say even less often. There had to be two witnesses to the crime. And the adulterer had to be tried by a council of 70 elders. And weirdly, the verdict of those 70 elders could not be unanimous– that might be a sign of corruption or brainwashing. And so on.

I half-expected Yossi to say they gave the adulterer a massage and a gift bag. He made a compelling case. And yet, I’m not totally sold. Were ancient times really so merciful? I suspect there might be some whitewashing going on. As my year progresses, I’ll need to delve deeper.

My ex flew choppers for awhile- according to her, the simple takeoff and landing of a small one costs about $50 in fuel. She reckons its $100-$200 extra for one of these military sized birds to make a quick stop. Did we the taxpayer buy the burgers too- or are we the suckers just footing the gas and maintenance bills for these guys to fly out for fast food?

Guess we owe these cavalrymen thanks for pointing out what a bloated military industrial complex Canada is building. Thanks Harper!

Anything going on after??

*non officially speaking* the envelope 3 NON official afterparty will be the place to get your late night groove on!

feeling the momentum building, less than a week to go!

I'm stoked for next weekend. I'll catch my zzzz's while moe is playing and be first on the scene at the after-party...

Good sleep optimization schedule!

Nope its a win- the body heals quicker than the ego at 30. Congrats AD!

The one word review: intimate.

That applies to the show- and the room.

The kind of room where you really could hear a pin drop- where if a cel phone rings during the show- everyone knows who's phone it is. (I'm thinking whomevers phone rang last night was a just wee bit embarassed when Bela beamed a jokingly disapproving stare in their direction)

Its rare to see Bela perform without the Flecktones north of the 49th- and its a musical treat to do so. IMO More room for improvisation and musical communication. If you've ever been to a flecktones show and really enjoyed the part where everyone but Bela exits the stage and the ego factor subsides- then youda liked this one a lot.

The stage setup was zen. Less gear for all 3 of them onstage than Dave Lauzon lugs around for envelope 3 shows.

There was a lot of material covered that was unfamiliar to me- newer stuff from the Trio's recent album. I noticed at least one song during which Bela was reading form sheet music- a first for my eyes. Along with selections from The Melody of Rythym each of them offered up a tune or two from their own solo composition. Towards the end of the second set they threw in an awesome version of the Flecktones' Sunset Road and closed the show with a blazing instrumental version of John Hardy.

Throughout the show they clowned around and bantered with the audience between songs, drawing out many laughs, masters at not just playing music, but as entertainers too.

What a show! What a room! Good score Toronto!

if this passes it brings us one step closer to the united states cruel, horrible, penal system.

So what can we do to stop it? asides from writing my senator, I truly do not know and am looking for ideas.

resistance is fertile

The book Bud Inc. deals with Emery in great detail, as well as the entire B.C. bud industry. It`s a great read and highly recommended.

I second this notion- written: not by a pothead- but by an economist if I remember right. If only I wasnt such a burnout and could remember who I loaned it to...