April 2012 – Final Four and Easter
It’s been a busy April, and Jazz Fest hasn’t even started yet!
March ended and April began with a visit to NOLA by Ken Jeong/Dr. Kuni/Mr. Chow/Senor Chang. He was in town to host the Coke Zero “Big Dance” Concert Series on Saturday of the Final Four. Luckily (and awesomely) he was able to get me a ticket!
Friday we walked from the hotel to the quarter, because Ken wanted to bring his manager and agent to Pat O’Brien’s. It started to lightly rain on our walk there (or as I called it, normal NOLA humidity). No biggie. Ken kept apologizing like it was his fault, but it didn’t bother any of us. We eventually got to Pat O’s. Small world, one of the guys there graduated from my high school 2 years after I did. Because of the rain, I suppose, no one really bothered us on the walk to Pat O’s. But after hanging out on the balcony for a while, people started recognizing him and a crowd gathered.
(As always, click to enlarge any picture!)
Soon we made our way back to the hotel.That was really the end of that night, because we had to be up early to do the concert stuff. Which was also awesome. Here are my various weekend credentials:
And here’s Ken interviewing Blondie:
Ken on stage:
The Black Keys:
Our friend Bryan from Bikeus, who is also the tour manager for Better Than Ezra. Ken did a bit about all songs using the same chords (which you can see on the video), and that starts out with BTE’s song, Good. He just happened to be there.
Jimmy Buffet performed Sunday, but he was hanging out early and wanted a picture with Ken. Before getting his picture, he took a picture of Ken and his crew. Hilarious.
After we were done there, we had an escort to our car, which was waiting on the corner across from Harrah’s. Since trying to drive down canal street would’ve been madness, we had a police escort…no, not down Canal Street, but down the Canal Street street car neutral ground. Sweeeeet.
Ticket, please! I didn’t want to get thrown out of the zeppelin by Harrison Ford, so when asked, I presented these:
Our seats were in the third row, behind all the espn, stats, official twitterers, media, etc. EXCELLENT seats. The first night our seats were behind The Black Keys. Two rows behind us was Shaq, who leaned over and tapped Ken on the shoulder to tell him he’s a fan. 😀 Here’s tip-off. #23 for Kentucky, Davis, was a freaking monster. Watch out for him.
Halfway back to the parking lot after the game, Ken realized he didn’t have Monday’s ticket. Luckily Sam, his agent, was leaving on Sunday so didn’t need his ticket, but Ken had already promised that ticket to our friend Chris Lee. Sam made a dash back to the dome while the rest of us went to the car and waited. Silently. In an inhumanly fast amount of time, Sam was back… with the ticket. It had fallen out of Ken’s pocket under the seats, and luckily was still there.
We didn’t do anything during the day Sunday. I met Ken and Bret for dinner, then went home for a bit, then back out that night to meet up with Ken and Bret, and now Chris Lee, to go to the Sammy Hagar show Coke Zero was putting on at the House of Blues.
Monday we were thinking of going to see Better Than Ezra right before the game, but that got super-rained out.
Here’s one of the lounges we had access to, that was all free food and drink. (Alcoholic drinks only before, halftime, and after the game tho, silly NCAA).
Apparently there were mother f’in snakes in the mother f’in dome. Or at least in the row in front of us.
We also had access to a suite that night, but it was exactly on the other side of the dome from our seats, so we only spent a little time there before the game.
After the game, we headed back to the Coke VIP room at the hotel where we stayed for a few hours just drinking, hanging out, talking, etc. Everyone was impressed and amazed with how awesome and nice and opposite-of-his-characters Ken is. 🙂
Ok, so now let’s do what the toilet in the hotel lobby is telling us to do and “WAVE” goodbye to the Final Four, and hello to Gainesville!
After making sure St. Pat’s was ready for Easter on Tuesday and part of Wednesday, I headed to Gainesville for about a week and a half. My parents joined us from Friday – Tuesday.
Rose brought the dogs to work with her, so Elsworth took over their bed.
Saturday we tried to go to the beach in St. Augustine with 3 of our neighbors, but it was unusually cold and EXTREMELY windy, so we ended up sight-seeing and tailgating in the parking garage with the food and drink that was meant for the beach. We also went to the Pirate Museum. 😀
Sunday we went to 9:30 Mass, then the dogs got their Easter baskets. 🙂
Here’s the 4 of us outside of our house:
And being lazy on the patio with the pets:
There was a brush fire (?) near the Florida/Georgia border, which is roughly 85 miles away. But that didn’t stop the smoke from getting to us!
Here’s some of the work I did while I was there. I painted the knobs for the kitchen (all kinds of colors. basically everything we have in the house), and (finally) painted the extra bathroom. For these morphs, you should be able to right-click and click on “play” after they’re already playing. That will stop them wherever they are. Or you can just view them here (knobs) and here (bathroom) full size.
Well that’s about all for now. Stay tuned for my Jazz Fest posts!
