Skype Live Studio - Old 97's

File this under the best thing about living in Downtown Portland!

On a rainy Wednesday afternoon in March, I walked to the Skype Live Studio to see my favorite band, Old 97's, perform a free set.

This was my first visit to the Skype Live Studio. From what I can tell, tickets can usually be reserved in advance on their website. but I didn't find out about the show, until less than twenty-four hours prior, so I was no-longer able to reserve in advance. Instead, I was informed that some stand-by tickets might be available, if I showed up no-later than thirty minutes before showtime.

The Skype Live Studio is less than two blocks from my apartment. I like to be places extra early, so I walked an hour before the show was set to begin. As a California girl, I usually hide from rain, but living in Portland has taught me that living here, avoiding the rain is impossible. I'm slowly getting used to it and besides, screw the rain, I was getting into that show. I felt confident, with only a handful of people in line ahead of me. As I waited, the queue grew and eventually curled around the block.

Just minutes after two-thirty, a friendly blonde woman ( whom everyone else seemed to know), came out with the guest list and a box of tickets. It turned out that everyone in front of me, was already on the list. Internally, I panicked that I had been waiting in the wrong line. Was there a separate stand-by line? She started to explain that she would put me on the standby list, but wasn't sure that there would be room...but then a miracle happened: The man who had been in line in front of me overheard the conversation and asked if he could give me his plus-one ticket, since his friend wasn't able to make it. Not only did I get in, but I got an amazing seat in the second row. A huge THANK YOU to the mystery man and the super nice employee in charge of tickets.

I was over-the-moon with excitement!

Here's my ticket -

We were allowed into the venue immediately and greeted with free beer and wine. It was the Skype Live Studio Happy Hour! The studio is intimate, holding approximately a hundred audience members. The live stream was hosted by a local radio DJ, whom everyone else seemed to know, but I was clueless. She introduced the band and hosted a short interview.

The Old 97's played four songs from their eleventh and most recent studio album, Graveyard Whistling. They played -

1. All Who Wander

2. Jesus Loves You

3. She Hates Everybody

4. Good with God

Missing from the band was drummer Philip Peeples, who had been in an accident in Los Angeles. Without going into detail, Rhett Miller explained that Peeples was expected to recover and might even be well enough to rejoin the band during the west coast leg of their tour. Sitting in for Peeples, was Mark Stepro, who impressively learned a whole concert worth of songs and joined the tour on a few days notice. No tour dates were canceled as a result.

The set was short, but sweet. It was definitely enough to keep me going, as I had to keep working on a writing deadline, causing me to miss out on the Old 97's concert at the Wonder Ballroom that was happening later on the same day. I was "adulting." It's overrated.

After the set, the Old 97's took a picture with the audience for Keep Oregon Well, one of the sponsors of the event. Check on the picture on their Instagram. My head is poking out on the far left.

The band stuck around for a meet & greet. I have a love/hate relationship with meet & greets. I always want to say "hi" and somehow express how much I love whatever artist I'm meeting, but inevitably, it's an incredibly awkward experience. I've met the Old 97's many times, so I opted out. If by chance they are reading this, I love you guys! Thanks for giving me one of the best afternoons I've had since moving to Portland. The sun was shining when I left the Skype Live Studio.

John Cleese at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Dan and I live in the cultural district of downtown Portland, which means we are just feet away from museums and theaters. If you had asked me prior to our move, I would have said that this was my dream environment. Now, I'm not so sure, but that's another post!

We are so close to the action, that our apartment building actually rents out parking spots for people coming to shows.

We've lived here since the end of August 2016, and even though I love attending live theater and did so on a regular basis in Los Angeles, we waited until March to attend our first show in Portland.

Why?

Primarily, it's because the ticket prices are so darn high. But how? Portland has a reputation for being so cheap, especially compared to Los Angeles. This is a myth people! Sure, housing is less expensive in Portland, and there is no sales tax (which rocks), but for live theater, in general, the prices seem to be about double what we would pay for similar seats/show in Los Angeles.

When we moved to Portland, I had big dreams of all of the shows that I would attend living in the cultural district. I've given it a lot of thought and I think it has to do with supply and demand. No big shock, that's a key concept for a lot of things. Portland is not a big city like Los Angeles, although it does gets big name shows and concert tours, the venues are smaller. More people are competing for less seats, which drives up the prices. I think.

We saw that John Cleese was coming and decided to make the splurge. John Cleese is a legend and he's getting up there in age, so it seemed like a "now or never" kind of thing. We went with mid-range tickets (the back of mid-orchestra to the side) and they were eighty dollars each. Gulp. Let me repeat, these were not the most expensive tickets.

Here was our view. Not bad.

The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall was built in the 1920's and the interior is grand, with chandeliers and reliefs.

Let's back it up for a minute. Prior to entering the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, the tone for the evening was set with a little pre-theater street performance. We found a unicycling knight playing the bagpipes, wheeling around right outside of the theater. Dan took a video.

Street entertainment as we arrived to see John Cleese at The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in downtown Portland on March 15, 2017 Please visit www.alwayspackedforadventure.com for a full review of John Cleese's show in Portland.

So when you have a unicycling-bagpiping-knight as your opener, the bar has been set high. Your turn Mr. Cleese!

Cleese started off strong, providing many laughs as he did a slide-show about his family and growing up in the seaside tourist town of "Weston Super Mare." Dan and I found this hilarious, because Cleese kept mentioning how Weston Super Mare is completely dead as a tourist town and this was our experience when we took the kids a few summers ago. It was summer and nothing was going on; the fun fair and ice cream shops were shuttered. Supposedly, we arrived a week too early for the summer rush, but it was already mid- July.

Cleese continued giving us stories about how he got his start in comedy writing and show business. I found this aspect of his life to be inspiring, as he clearly found joy from writing and simply from making his friends laugh, which miraculous translated into a paid job making the public laugh. David Frost played a huge part in giving Cleese his big break. I enjoyed hearing about the unexpected turns that his career headed, and my main take-away is that Cleese was someone who was open to whatever opportunities came his way. He took bold chances and didn't let opportunity pass him by.

Unfortunately, the show took a huge nose-dive in the second half, when Cleese started playing clips. A few short clips would have been fine, but I estimate that about a third of his show was clips and many of them, clips that I'm positive everyone in the audience had already seen. I wish that he had played the clips as the audience was entering the venue, as a way to get everyone pumped up for his stories, rather than using them as filler. He's had a magnificent career, surely there were more stories to share?

The worst part was the question and answer segment. A few days prior to the show, an email went out to ticket holders, saying to arrive early if you had a question for Cleese, questions would be collected by ushers prior to the show. He answered three questions during Q & A, but it was very clear that they had not come from the audience. They were predetermined with canned responses, one even had a clip that he showed. Why the charade? He could have skipped the pretense of an actual Q &A, and just said that these were some of his favorite questions that he has been asked over the years. We were not the only grumpy audience members leaving the theater.

The show was supposed to run for ninety minutes without an intermission. It started five minutes late and ended ten minutes early = fifteen minutes shaved off. So approximately seventy-five minutes of show, a third of which were video clips, and fifteen minutes was a pretend Q&A = not worthy the eighty dollar price tag.

So disappointed in John Cleese.

Las Vegas, April 2016 : The Signature, Hanging with Truckers, and Australian Bee Gees

Last April, Dan and I spent two whole weeks in Las Vegas, while he was prepping and working the NAB convention. Two weeks is twice as long as I had ever previously spent in Las Vegas. Part of the trade-off for going so early, was we had to drive the rental truck with the show equipment, and check it into the convention center.

I'm not sure that I'd want to do it again, but the experience at the truck marshaling yard was fascinating.

We set off before dawn to start our long day. Of course, we made our customary breakfast stop at Peggy Sue's Diner. I've never seen Peggy Sue's so empty, there were just a couple of guys sitting at the counter.

Here's our truck.

Our truck was just a baby compared to the other trucks at the marshaling yard. The yard was just outside of the strip, and this being our first time, it was a little confusing. Dan took the truck to the scales, while I queued to get our number. Luckily, several of the truckers were very friendly and answered our questions about the process. Basically, it's a whole lot of waiting around for the union workers at the convention center to be ready to unload your truck. They unload in a way that makes sense for stuff entering the convention space based on your booth location.

We were given number 398, which didn't necessarily correspond to the order in which we arrived, as there were probably close to a thousand trucks in the yard ahead of us. We found a spot to park and placed the number on our dash, waiting to be called.

We knew the wait could be long, but we had no idea how long, so we came prepared with books and movies. This is going to sound unbelievable, but I had never seen Top Gun, so we watched it on Dan's iPhone. There was a food truck for coffee and snacks. The most amazing thing was watching the insane parking skills of big rig truckers, who maneuvered their enormous trucks into tight parking spaces. I was impressed!

Several hours later, we were called to head over to the Las Vegas Convention Center. Unfortunately, we arrived just as the union workers were heading on their lunch break, so we had to sit in the truck until they came back to unload everything. There was some good people watching at the convention center, and as someone who has never worked a trade show, it was cool to see the "behind the scenes" flurry.

The fun part was driving a now empty truck to our hotel, The Signature at MGM Grand. It's a bizarre thing to drive up to the valet with an UHaul. We got funny looks, but the valet staff was awesome. They found an out of the way place to park the truck, and they were very kind and helpful during our stay. In fact, all of the employees at The Signature, were rock stars.

The rooms are fabulous, especially for an extended stay, as they included a small kitchen. Two weeks is a long time to eat out every day, so we stocked up with groceries, and ate about half of our meals in the room. We loved staying at The Signature and would definitely stay here on future trips. It's entirely non-smoking and does not have a casino, yet it's a quick walk through a series of hallways, to reach the MGM Grand. The Signature has its own entrance and valet, which were a lot less crowded and easier to navigate than the MGM Grand.

Our view-

The Signature towers at night.

While Dan was hard at work over at the convention center, I was working on our travel business ( Easy as Pie Travel) in the hotel room. We even brought our Mac, so that I could have a proper office. In the afternoons, I took a break and went swimming. Each of the three Signature towers, has its own pool and spa, but guests at The Signature also have access to the main pool at the MGM Grand. The towers also have a deli, Starbucks, and a gift shop.

There was only one negative about our stay: Our first week was at the same time as a big Arbonne Conference that was being held at the MGM Grand. Our hotel had several conference attendees, and the room across the hall was being used as a hospitality suite, with door kept wide open during parties. It was mostly women attending and they were LOUD! It was hard for me to get work done, because they were so incredibly loud, as if they were the only ones on the floor. It was inconsiderate. They were also very pushy; pretty much every time I got into the elevator or went to the pool, I was approached with a sales pitch for Arbonne products. This even happened while I was trying to work out in the gym! I complained to the front desk and they apologized, explaining that they had fielded a lot of complaints, including staff who were being harassed to buy Arbonne! I can tell you this much, Arbonne could be the best product on earth, but after dealing with the rude convention goers, there is no way that I'd ever buy it. When the convention ended, The Signature was peaceful and the perfect hotel.

We had a little bit of downtime for Vegas adventures. Since the truck was too huge to drive around, we had an additional rental car, and we took a drive to Mount Charleston, a mountain just a short distance from the strip. It reminded me of Big Bear, minus the lake.

Speaking of our travel agency, we found this very appropriate sign.

Vegas meals are always amazing and Fiamma is delicious.

Foxy and I are on our way to a cocktail party.

It was Dan's co-worker, Amanda's first trip to Vegas. We took her to Fremont Street for Jello shots, yard drinks, and cheap steak (not to be included in my declaration of amazing Vegas meals). Then we showed her the pretty side of Vegas, with a stop at the Bellagio Conservatory. The conservatory is beautiful in spring, bursting with pink cherry blossoms.

Dan's best mate, Paul, was also here for business, visiting from England. We spent a few days with him, which included The Pinball Hall of Fame and the Bass Pro Shop. Dan and I love the Bass Pro Shop, but every time we take someone there from Europe, they don't exactly share in the excitement. They always seem a tad horrified. Luckily, Paul has a great sense of humor. He's horrified and smiling.

Paul got us back by taking us to the worst show in Las Vegas - The Australian Bee Gees Show.

I'm not a fan of the Bee Gees, but I was quite surprised by how many songs I recognized -"Oh, that's a Bee Gees song? I never knew." The Australian Bee Gees Show has been at the Excalibur for years, and it's performed in the same small theater as the Thunder From Down Under show.

I'm unashamed to admit that on a girl's weekend in Vegas, I went with friends to see Thunder From Down Under, and although it wasn't sexy, it was hilarious and entertaining. The Australian Bee Gees Show wasn't sexy or very entertaining, however, it was hilarious due to the people watching. It was a bizarre thing, because although the performers lacked energy (I felt the thousands of shows that preceded this one: the same thing, every night), the audience had plenty of enthusiasm. Drunken, rowdy, middle-age/middle-America, enthusiasm. One guy in front of us stood up on a table to dance, and tried to get his mortified wife to join him, before security intervened. It was an awesome spectacle, far more entertaining than what was happening on the stage. Towards the end of the set, they shine a spotlight on a small dance floor. get a disco ball spinning, and invite everyone to join the disco. You can just imagine what that looked like, again, it was awesome. The performers can sing, and they do a fair job at recreating the sound and look of the Bee Gees, but they are clearly tired of their gimmick. Their boredom is infectious.

The show was lackluster, but we continued the fun with gambling and chicken wings at Hooters. A great way to end our final evening in Las Vegas.