Concerts, haircuts, and mo-peds (but mostly concerts)

This entry is about 4 blog entries in one. I gotta catch up, here. 

It's been a busy few weeks. Two Three weeks ago, Jacob and two of his sisters and I went and saw Feist in concert in Boise. Then I spent last week painting in West Yellowstone, which was pretty fun except for the horrid cold that I nursed there and which I still haven't recovered from. Then it was Bill Cosby, then a visit from my sister/a friend's wedding. Oh, and I bought myself an awesome graduation present in there too, even though I still have to do student teaching and so technically haven't graduated yet.

But that's neither here nor there.

Wanna hear about seeing Feist?

You may know Feist from the creative and delightful music video of her hit "1-2-3-4" a few years ago. But if that's all you know of this artist, you need to get more into her because she's effing brilliant. Jacob discovered the Canadian star about the same time I did, and because of her, always told people he wanted to serve his mission in Canada. (Incidentally, his second area was her hometown of Amherst--how awesome is that?!) I discovered her summer of 2006 when JD Taylor lent me the album "Let It Die," which I listened to about twice a day for two weeks before he asked for it back.

She just released a new album called "Metals," and we found out that she'd be in Boise on May 29th. And five hours is totally worth it. So we bought tickets, convinced Jacob's parents to let us bring Camilla and Laura, changed the oil in our car, and went.

And it was awesome.

The venue was this awesome outdoor arena, which used to be the playing yard of the Old Idaho State Penitentiary. It was built in 1870 and closed in 1973 after inmate riots about living conditions (way to stick up for yourselves, guys and girls). It's supposed to be all kinds of haunted. The gallows are still standing inside the prison itself.

But before we got to the venue, like, maybe two minutes before, we were totally rear-ended. Yep. A block and a half away from Feist, and we got hit. Jacob swore very loudly, which he didn't realize until we told him about it later. We really weren't hit too hard; we were stopped, and the person behind us was going 20 mph tops, but it still did a good amount of damage.

(Note the rope now holding our trunk closed? We couldn't get it open for a while after the accident, but once we did, we couldn't get it closed again.)

We pulled over, exchanged information with the other driver, and then because we were so close and the car still seemed to be running and we had just driven 5 hours to see this concert, we just ignored the car and went to the concert.

Where we were promptly accused by a drunk man of stealing $30 out of his wife's purse, which we were apparently supposed to be watching. Jacob and the man had words, I finally told the guy to go get a cop to come talk to us if he really had a problem, Jacob had more words, then the wife came over and apologized (equally drunkenly) for the misunderstanding. The people behind us kindly offered to buy Jacob a drink after the altercation, but we declined. 

A group called "Mountain Man" opened for Feist, and they were awesome. Here they are in all their awesomeness:

They were like this Appalachia, hippie version of the Andrews Sisters. They sang this song called "River," and I bought their album "Made the Harbor" mostly because of it. But part of the reason they were awesome was because they were all gorgeous, and they were all gorgeous because they didn't care what society says is gorgeous. None of them wore makeup, none of them shaved their legs or armpits. They didn't wear bras or accessories. None of them did their hair. And they were awesome for it.

They also sang with Feist as backup singers through the whole show, and knocked it out of the park. We know this because, as I mentioned in a previous entry, we were sitting here:

You know. Just...front and center. So that when Feist came on with her big floppy hat and her awesome guitar, we had this view:

See, here's Jacob and I hanging out with Leslie Feist:

(Jacob's hair is sort of silly in this. But we're happy to see Feist.) Here's a picture of the girls:

This picture was taken shortly after Camilla and Laura turned around and said excitedly and in unison, "She talked to us!" Which was totally true. Feist had introduced a song by saying that they wrote it during sound checks, but it was a song from her new album. After the song, she said, "I lied. We didn't write that at sound checks. But you probably knew that. I know you guys knew that; I saw you guys saying to each other that you knew the song." The "you guys" in the last sentence was Laura and Camilla.

So basically, we're best friends with Feist now.

Here's one last picture that I stole from some Boise online newspaper:

There's Mountain Man crooning in the background there. You also can't tell from this picture, but Feist has great legs. Anyway, the concert was amazing, and they played "Undiscovered First" live, which was amazing (and is one of my favorite songs from the new album), and toward the end of the show, we were invited into super-awkward dancing/hugs/swaying by drunken maybe-lesbians, and everyone was barefoot, and the sun set as music filled the air.

So that was fun.

And then Jacob shaved his beard and cut his hair (actually he did that before the concert),

(Isn't he handsome in that last picture? The light is so good.)

and my sister came and visited cut HER hair (to a satisfyingly round-headed buzz),

and I bought a mo-ped.

It's a Kymco People 150, and I bought it with the graduation money I had been given and saved. And I adore it. I named it Eden, because it's the first 2-wheeled vehicle I've ever owned, and Eden was a place full of firsts. And because this bike is fun and funky, just like a baby-sitter named Eden that I had when I was a kid. She had a bead curtain in her bedroom doorway and a pottery wheel in her closet. I feel like this bike has a similarly free spirit. I've put over 250 miles on it already.

Doesn't it make you want to eat ice cream? Or visit Rome? Or both?