a seeming week of foolishness...

Starting off with my stellar move on Monday crashing on the ice rink and bashing my shoulder into the ice (which, it appears was not just going to hurt for a day - I'm grumpy in multiple little sessions every day this week when I do something that makes it hurt)... all the way to today when I showed up for the friday MatSE colloquium when it wasn't even scheduled for this week. (in my defense, it only took a couple of minutes, after being uncharacteristically early, of sitting in an empty hall to realize that no one else was coming). Oh yeah, and earlier today? What was I thinking... I went to a seminar in the physics department because it was titled "LHC Physics". You know, the LHC - that nifty thing at CERN. Uhm, I love Big Science, but post-graduate level high-energy particle physics? I was pretty much out of my depth by the second slide. Amazing how difficult some of those problems are by the sheer numbers - trying to detect one event in 10,000,000,000,000.

In between those events I'll include admitting to picking some stinkers at the Blow Out in Hamtramck on Thursday. The results of wanderings:
Harwell - uh, we were 2 people in an audience of 4 in this tiny bar. The other two were the sound guy and a girlfriend of band member. Seemed like a good idea when I was shopping for bands. The singer had issues though, and the music just wasn't as interesting as I originally thought.
Johnny No Stars - timing is everything... they're only doing 45 minute sets, so by the time we left Harwell and got to the other bar, they were done. Whoops.
The Red Shift - thought it would be some straight-ahead punk, but they were far more concerned with their punk cred and having the right punk/ska accessories (ties, spikey belts, Vans, etc.)
Broken Sunday - I wouldn't buy an album of theirs, but would probably see them live again. Their frontman had presence and charisma on stage, even though he was just this tiny little dude. Band had it together and the sound didn't suck, so the show was good, but the music could stand to be more interesting.
Heroic Villian - ah... this would be the straight-ahead punk I was looking for. Not something I can listen to for hours, but fun show. Lack of pretense on the band's part, and they seemed to be having a whole lot of fun. Bassist dude was pretty much over-the-top on his stage antic jumping around, so fun to watch too. Poorly-quoted Quote of the Evening would be from G: "so, how do you dance to this?" ... this, of course, is what you get when you take a jam-band-loving hippie to a punk rock show. :)
Wildcatting - Sort of a heavy rock version of an instrumental jam band...think of it as early-Rush/Yes meets Phish/Dead. Might have listened longer, but put getting tired with the smokiest bar, and it's a recipe for "hey, you want to get going?"