Phil Keaggy Concert

I’ve had a pretty good last few days, I’d say, even if they were a tad busy. My 24th birthday was on Thursday, and I got to my office in the morning to discover that it’d been decorated by Caren, Kerrie & Anke — they had a pile of 40 blue & white balloons stacked in by my desk and chair, confetti sprinkled all over everything on my desk, a birthday card signed by just about every grad student in the department (thanks everyone!! that was really cool!!), a foil “birthday king” sash and a bag of “testamints,” which are basically just dinner mints with a Bible verse on the wrapper, haha. It was all really cool, thanks for taking the time to do all that! Walter commented that he should maybe just make a copy of his key for them, since this is not the first time they’ve “decorated” my office (remember the foil incident for April Fools Day? haha). In the afternoon after Turbulence class, Steph & Petters brought down some birthday brownies they’d made too, thanks! And then in the evening a few people came out for a couple drinks with me at The Darkhorse downtown, so it was a pretty enjoyable birthday, all in all. Thanks for making it a good day, everyone! 🙂
After Walker time on Friday and before trivia, Frame, Andrew & I decided to get a beer at the Sports Cafe. We hadn’t been there in a really long time because the place had become such an absolute dump, but in the last 6 weeks they’ve been working on remodeling the place, so we wanted to check it out. And I must say, it doesn’t even look half-bad. They’ve got more than a dozen flat-screen LCD TVs all around, a new paint job, new flooring tiles/laminate, and a lot of corrugated metal roofing around the bottom 3 feet of the walls to tie it together. Sports Cafe got shut down by the health department a few weeks back for several violations (including non-operational utilities in the men’s restroom); they blamed it on the remodeling, even though that stuff had been broken for many months, long before they ever started remodeling. Anyway, it’s a reasonably pleasant atmosphere in there now (still too much R&B/hip-hop being played over the speakers though, ugh). They fixed the bathrooms too, but they “fixed” the broken urinal by just removing it entirely, haha. And it still didn’t have paper towels. And the soap was out. The more things change, the more they stay the same (right, Daniel?).
I tried to stay up to listen to the 2007 AFL Grand Final on internet radio late Friday night, but just couldn’t make it even to the 12:30am opening bounce. So when I woke up Saturday morning and checked the score online, I had to do a double-take: Geelong 163 – 44 Port Adelaide! Talk about total and utter domination! The Cats’ 119-point victory was the largest margin ever in a Grand Final, obliterating the previous mark held by Hawthorn when they destroyed Melbourne by 90 points in the 1998 premiership. And the Power’s paltry 44 points was one of the lowest totals in Grand Final history, too. So the juggernaut Geelong team captured their first flag since 1963, and capped off a magnificent season in which they won 19 of their final 20 games. Car’n the Cats!! It’d be cool to see a Cats footy game in person next season with my cousin Jonathan, that’s for sure!!
The rest of Saturday was rather full. At noon, Grabon, Shawn, Frame, Vic & Bob came over to watch the Penn State-Illinois football game. Ugh. Penn State showed promise with some reasonably aggressive play-calling (where was that against Michigan?!?!?), but were killed by turnovers by QB Anthony Morelli in the second half. We had five possessions in Illinois territory in the 2nd half, four of them inside the Illini 30 yard line, and came away with 1 field goal, three interceptions and a Morelli fumble. ARGH. Penn State’s 27-20 loss can be pinned solely on Morelli’s shoulders. He’s really not a very smart or good quarterback, but there’s no way JoePa will let someone else get playing time. Sigh.
After worship band practice, I went downtown to the State Theatre downtown for the Phil Keaggy concert. I’d gotten tickets with Kerrie, Isaac, Caren, Tim, Ethan, Noelle and her friend Rebecca. I’d never heard of Phil Keaggy before, but the concert was sponsored primarily by my church, and was talked up a lot, so I figured I’d give it a go. That was one of the better decisions I’ve made recently, for sure. 🙂 Phil Keaggy’s opening song, “Shades of Green,” was absolutely amazing, and well worth the price of admission by itself! I was totally in awe of his skills on the guitar — he was without a doubt the best guitarist I have EVER seen or heard, by far! There were so many sounds I’d never heard come from an acoustic guitar before too, it was amazing! Simply put, I was blown away. Here are a couple YouTube videos from other performances by Phil Keaggy, first up is a clip from “Shades of Green” (for full version, click here):

And then here’s a clip from “Salvation Army Band,” another cool song he did last night (for the full version, click here):

Phil Keaggy was clearly having tons of fun on stage too, and very humble, mild-mannered, laid back and funny. The fun he was having on stage was totally infectious too, and I definitely had a smile on my face just about the entire concert, I was loving it! He also presented the Gospel message in a very artsy way, through the lyrics of some of his songs and in conversation he’d have between songs. He had a good mix of instrumental and vocal pieces, both secular and Christian. His sound is definitely its own, but is somewhat similar to Paul McCartney and the Beatles, I’d say. It was one of the best concerts I’d ever been too, well worth every penny of the $27 admission fee!
And then after that concert Kerrie, Isaac, Caren, Ethan & I joined the rest of the meteo crew up at Bar Bleu to see Jacob play again with Cootie Brown, their first concert in State College since early summer. I always love listening to Cootie Brown too, they were enjoyable as always. It was a very fun and music-filled Saturday, for sure!
Alright, time for bed. Lots to do this week!