A year ago today (plus one more if you count the time change), I kissed my Mom goodbye at the airport in Phoenix to board a plane bound for Amsterdam.

I had a backpack, a carry-on suitcase, and two other full-size bags checked and packed beneath the plane – and such was the entirety of my life accompanying me across the Atlantic to Holland. Yes, today is my one year anniversary of moving to The Netherlands.

Not to get all “Thoreau on Walden Pond” existential, but living here has had a peculiar affect on the way I view both myself and the world I live in. Being deprived of your family, friends and home – your entire life, in essence – forces you to really get inside yourself and (as corny as it sounds) find yourself.

I feel like I may have found myself by moving to Europe. Well, at least new parts of myself have been uncovered, and in rapid order. I’ve done a lot of growing up and a lot of maturing over the last year, and a lot of who I am has changed or grown. Anyway, let’s not get too serious. Here’s a bulleted, digestible look back on my year abroad.

• Moving to Amsterdam wasn’t just my first time moving to live away from my hometown, it was also my first time living alone. I had lived in apartments before, but always with roommates. I’m a pretty independent person, and I like my space, so living on my own has been a lot of fun, and I’m glad I have an entire space to myself. I’m certainly adapting this policy going forward.
• Amsterdam is a great hub for travelling around Western Europe. In 2003 I took a two-week school trip to Europe that included London, Paris, Venice, and parts of Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Now that I’ve had a year to look around, I’ve been able to get to other, smaller corners of Europe. I went on a trip to the U.K. to see Edinburgh, Scotland, and Newcastle, England. I also was able to venture south in summer and toured Florence and Rome in Italy. In July I spent a night in Brussels, Belgium with a friend, which only required a few hours by train. Technically, since moving, I also visited St. Lucia in the Caribbean, but that was planned well before I moved. I have lots of other places I’d like to get to, namely Barcelona, Dublin, Copenhagen and Athens. We’ll see what 2012 has in store.
• I learned I live without basic television service. I have my ways of keeping up with shows and sports, however.
• I also learned I can function without really needing a phone. I have a phone for emergencies, but I never use it. I did no texting or talking on the phone for a year, in essence. The phone is dead to me.
• As a music lover, Amsterdam has been a great city to see concerts. Any American groups that come to Europe will usually pass through Amsterdam. I’ve seen Broken Social Scene (a group I saw on a whim when a co-worker offered me tickets), The Black Keys, Rush, The Avett Brothers, Brian Wilson and Michael Franti & Spearhead. I also spent a weekend in Rotterdam at the North Sea Jazz Fest where I saw a whole slew of artists, including Paul Simon, Janelle Monáe, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, Sergio Mendes, Seal, Trombone Shorty, Dr. John, Raphael Saadiq, Raul Midón, Snoop Dogg, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. I also attended a few orchestral performances at the local concert hall, which is gorgeous.
• Speaking of music, I’ve also discovered lots of great new music since moving here. Some of the European artists I’ve come to enjoy include Dutch artists like Caro Emerald, Alain Clark and Trijntje Oosterhuis, a Frenchman named Ben l’Oncle Soul, Norway’s Erlend Øye, and Britain’s own Ellie Goulding and Mumford and Sons. As a musician, I love expanding my horizons to international artists such as these.
• Two weeks after I moved here I turned 25, which was interesting. 25 is a nice round number, and I figure I’ll always remember my 25th year because it was my first here in Amsterdam. It was also because of this that I learned that sending and receiving packages overseas is way too expensive.
• When I arrived there was a slight mixup about my apartment. You can read about all the details here, but in short, I had no furniture for a few days. After a week in a hotel, I finally got settled in the place I am now, and I love this place.
• I witnessed several amazing events in the city, including New Years, Queen’s Day and Gay Pride. New Years was obnoxious, and I’m kind of sad I’ll be missing it this year (I’ll be home in Arizona). It seemed as if the blitzkrieg had returned, there were explosions everywhere, nonstop for about an hour in the new year. Queen’s Day was the biggest party I’ve ever been to. I had to walk my bike around because the streets were packed with orange-clad partiers. And Gay Pride was certainly a sight to see here in Amsterdam – so I took lots of pictures at the Canal Parade.
• I watched a lot of TV shows and movies, and I bombarded my brain with information constantly. I read listened to a lot of books, subscribed to dozens of podcasts and fed my insatiable hunger for news and information at every chance I had. Perhaps that contributed to my growth and mutring over the last year. That’s likely. But in short, I became a sponge this year, soaking up as much as I could.
• I witnessed the awesome thrill of European soccer first-hand. What an atmosphere. The hometeam lost, but it was still an exciting place to be for a few hours.
• I realized that the heat-snobs back home in Arizona have it made in terms of weather, and have absolutely no right to complain.
• I snowboarded for the first time. It was on a company outing to an indoor ski facility, and we followed it with a fondue dinner. I fell a lot, but was able to make it down our newbie bunny slope a few times just fine. I was very sore and a little hungover the next day.
• Thankfully riding a bike is just like riding a bike, and I picked it up again this year. For those that don’t know, Amsterdam is synonymous with biking. The bikes have their own system of traffic lights. Seriously. Before moving, I hadn’t ridden a bike in roughly 15 years – they just aren’t as practical in the Phoenix heat. But I got the hang of it again, and I enjoyed the summer on my bike. Now that it’s colder I’m less likely to ride it, but I still use it now and then. I think when/if I move home, I want to ride a bike more often.
• When the city was covered in a foot of snow and the trams stopped running, I trudged through the snow like a little kid for the first time in ages. I used to live in New England, and was immediately reminded of snow boots and playing in mounds of snow there as a kid. I basked in the nostalgia as some friends and I tossed snowballs around as we walked home in the snow one day.
• I celebrated a very special Christmas in Europe when my mother and brother came to visit me. It was special not only because we aren’t always all together on Christmas, but because it was my Mom’s first time out of the U.S. and Canada. So that was, sharing in that experience with her. I also had the most pathetic Christmas tree that would have made Charlie Brown laugh. But it was still a great time.
• I have learned as little Dutch as is likely possible after living in Holland for a year. I can say yes, no, thank you, and a few other phrases that I bust out now and then, but I won’t be having any conversations anytime soon. This is partially intentional. Only people in the Netherlands speak Dutch, so it’s value is limiting. Everyone here speaks English, so you aren’t forced into learning to get by. So in that sense, I’m a snobby American refusing to become cultured.
• I’ve developed a close and deep friendship with a very, very, very old friend. We were family friends since we’ve been born – our mothers were college roommates. Now she lives and studies in the U.K. and I ride her coat tails around Europe. She was my guide to Florence and Rome, and met me in Edinburgh and Newcastle. She’s been here once and is coming back in a few weeks for my birthday. The fact that we’ve been able to reconnect in this way after so much time has forged a close bond between us that is very meaningful and fulfilling. It also helps to know someone on this side of the planet.
• At the same time I’ve spent a year managing a long-distance romantic relationship with my girlfriend in Arizona. We are now in a non-monogamous open relationship (which is redundant, I suppose), and it’s going really well. When I moved, we had no idea how long I would be gone, and with this adventure continuing, opening up our relationship has been a wise move, I believe.
• I made my triumphant return to Phoenix in April for a friend’s wedding. It was strange being the long-gone returning friend, but I had a great time seeing my friends and family and celebrating a special day with them. Those flights between Amsterdam and Phoenix are very, very long. No one should have to spend that much time travelling.
• I managed to keep up with my love of American sports during this year as well. I even won my fantasy football league last season from Amsterdam. Take that, chumps. Granted, it required losing a lot of sleep to watch late night events, but I think it has been worth it. I was awake in the wee hours when the Bruins won the Stanley Cup, and I’ve stayed up way to late just to watch Monday Night Football, or Tuesday Morning Football, as it is here.
• But most importantly, the biggest takeaway from my year in Amsterdam has been a greater appreciation for friends, family and home. I didn’t think I would miss Arizona as much as I did when I moved – it really surprised me. Living in a place for a long time will desensitize you and make you forget all of the reasons you’re there in the first place. Not only did I miss my circle of friends and my family, but I missed the smells, sights and minutiae of home. I haven’t been to Arizona’s Grand Canyon since I was a kid, but suddenly after moving here I really wanted to go back. I also, as you probably know, missed the food a lot too. But being completely removed from my entire life back in the States made me realize how much those people and things meant to me, and makes going home to visit all the more special. I get to go back to Arizona for two weeks at Christmas and New Years, and I can’t wait. I also get to see my East Coast family and friends in DC for Thanksgiving too, so that can’t come soon enough either.

So that’s my year in a nutshell. It’s been a great one and one I will never forget. I recently signed an extension on my work contract, so I’ll be here a while longer. And that’s okay with me for now, but I still see myself moving back to Arizona at some point.

But we’ll see.

Giants – Though Arizona began the first half of the season with a 2-7 record against the Giants, including going winless on the road, the Dbacks are currently surging as the Giants flounder. So far in the second half of the season, they’ve turned things around, taking two of three from San Francisco in at AT&T Park. Six games, three in Arizona and three in San Francisco, remain between the teams – the same amount that separates them in the west. The Dbacks have won nine straight and in the time between the Giants’ last nine wins, they lost 13 games. I like Arizona’s chances in the last 6 games of this series.

Rockies – After heading to San Francisco, Arizona drops in at altitude to play their last three games against Colorado. We know the Dbacks have the Rockies’ number at the moment, coming off a sweep at home in which they scored 18 runs. They have largely dominated the season series, going 11-4 including 8 of the last 9 against Colorado dating back to May 24th. There’s not much to suggest that Arizona won’t continue this trend next week.

Padres – Then, by some strange twist of fate, the Diamondbacks host the Padres, another team they just swept at Chase Field while outscoring them 14-2. It’s four of the last seven against the Pads, with the final series in San Diego on the weekend of the 16th. Arizona is 3-3 on the road against San Diego, but with momentum and the opportunity to welcome them back to Chase Field in the meantime, I wouldn’t expect the last three in San Diego to be much of a challenge. The Padres have won just 18 games this season against NL West opponents.

Dodgers – After that the Dbacks head to L.A. for three of the last six against the Dodgers. The season series favors the Dbacks slightly at 7-5, and Arizona has a 5-4 record at Chavez Ravine. This may be Arizona’s toughest series going down the stretch, as the Dodgers are streaking themselves winning 8 of their last 9, including 3 games in St. Louis. At 12 games back, the season looks all but over for the woeful Dodgers, which could help Arizona down the stretch if the Dodgers don’t give 100% effort in the final three games of the season at Chase Field.

Pirates – Kicking off the 9-game homestand that wraps up the season are three games against the 62-74 Pittsburgh Pirates. The Dbacks lost 2 of 3 in the first half of the season when they visited P-town, but I wouldn’t expect similar results this time around. The Pirates had a dreadful August, winning just eight games after starting the month two games above .500. The team’s 22 loses in August killed whatever spirit they had build in the middle of the season, and it’s likely their spirits will continue fading through September as the season ends.

So as you can see, even if the Diamondbacks lose all 6 games to the Giants, they still have 19 games against the Rockies, Padres, Dodgers and Pirates where they can make up for it. The Giants, too, play these bottom-feeding teams (save for the Pirates), so things could come down to that final series at Chase Field in the last week of the season.

We’ll have to wait and see, but things look good for Arizona. As I said, it’s their’s to lose.

Over the last week and a half, I’ve been working on a video for work. Long story short – we’re launching a new product with a specific target audience, so we’re capturing the reactions of these people as we introduce it to them.

For this video – the first of its series – we went to a local event here in Amsterdam called De Parade. The Parade is a strange name for this event, because it’s really more like a carnival. Sort of. There are merry-go-rounds and food, but no rides. Instead, the rides are replaced by tents and stages where various theatrical performances of all kinds are held.

So we went to the Parade to capture the atmosphere, test out our product and share it with people there in our target group. After all the shooting I sat down to cut up the footage and start to piece together the video. I took the sound from a shot of the merry-go-round to lay a bed of background tone to the video. The clip had some music underneath it, so I looped a section to provide not only crowd noises but background music for the video.

I started to run into a few auditory issues with the video as I was cutting up one of our interviews with a girl who worked at the Parade. Unfortunately, we recorded our interview with her near some speaker that was blaring music in the background. When I placed her clips over the bed of sound and music I had created, the competing songs obviously clashed with each other.

Due to the length of the interview, there were actually two different songs heard behind clips of our interview subject that we wanted to use. One was “I Need A Dollar” by Aloe Blacc, and the other was “Sex on Fire” by Kings of Leon. I tried to use some audio filters to pull the voice out against the background noise, but it wasn’t working quite right so I had to work around it.

Later on, as I neared completion of the video, I had second thoughts about the looped crowd and music I had underneath the video and decided to ditch it. I used a different, longer clip for crowd sounds and used some EQ filters to keep out any subtle music that could be heard. I decided I wanted to use a clean track of studio music in combination with the crowd noise as my background, but I needed to find a song.

First I thought about finding the song that was playing in my original loop, so I used Shazam to figure out what it was. Turns out it was “The Clapping Song” by Shirley Ellis – a song that, at this point, had started to drive me nuts because of the loop I had created. I ditched that idea and brainstormed other music ideas. In another clip of the same merry-go-round, there was a different song playing that I liked as well. It sounded like some soul/Motown group from the same era as the Shirley Ellis song, so again I used Shazam to find it.

The song was “King of the Rodeo” by The Bamboos. I had never heard of them, and based on a quick glance at the album art I assumed they were an older group. After listening to the song a few times, I realized it was more modern, and a Wikipedia search turned up the page for the Australian funk band The Bamboos.

I liked the song right away and it worked perfectly with the video, so it made it into the final cut that was eventually shared with a small group of people testing our new product. As it turns out, the song is actually a cover of a tune by Kings of Leon, the same group that plagued one of the interviews with conflicting sound. A strange coincidence.

The Bamboos are mainly an instrumental ensemble who bring in different vocalists from time to time. The singer on this tune was Megan Washington, a fellow Australian artist. The song is from 2008, and since then the group has brought on a more permanent vocalist. At least that’s what I can tell from browsing their Wikipedia page. I’ve had a listen to their most recent album, “4″ and like some of the songs. Some are just instrumental soul/funk grooves, which I appreciate.

So now I’ve discovered an Australian funk/soul group. Wasn’t expecting that. The song “King of the Rodeo” is a good one, but I may be a bit tired of it right now having used it in editing the video, forcing me to listening to it over and over. But I think in the future when I hear this song, I will be reminded of this fun project I am currently involved in at work and the good times had at De Parade in Amsterdam.

Again, after getting home very late and passing out as the sun came up, I rolled out of bed and down to the train station to get back to the festival. My first stop was one of the smaller indoor venues to see a group that seemed interesting from their description. Hidden Orchestra is an electronic jazz group from Edinburgh that combines lots of cool sounds with some heavy guitar, winds, strings and dual drum kits. I wasn’t allowed to photograph their performance, but the image at the top of this post is of the stage before they began.

I’m not real big on electronic music, but like any genre, I have artists I enjoy. In this category, I do enjoy the French group Air, and Hidden Orchestra was sort of like Air but a bit harder and more intense. The pieces were lyric free and sample/riff-driven and seemed to have some deep artistic heartbeat behind them, almost like the group took itself a bit too seriously. But still, I found some of their tunes enjoyable before I took off. A good example of a tune I found myself bobbing my head to is “Dust”.

I skipped out of that room after a half-hour or so to go catch a bit of music from Dr. John & the Lower 911, an amazing group from New Orleans. I’ve largely become familiar with Dr. John by simply watching the HBO series Treme, so it was pretty cool to catch a bit of his set. I snapped some photos while he played, but I was just stopping by before heading into Nile for the first big act of the day.

I can’t say I was that familiar with Raphael Saadiq before the festival, but I knew I wanted to see him. I had heard enough of his stuff to know I wanted to check him out in person, and I say it all came out as a push. I wasn’t blown away and won over by his performance, but he has a few catchy tunes and his general style is pretty cool. However, it seemed like every other song he performed was a heartfelt love ballad that had the ladies swooning. I’d rather hear the stuff with a good beat, so his show was a bit of a wash for me. I did enjoy “Heart Attack” though. Saadiq sounds like a young Stevie Wonder. Just sayin.

Next I switched halls to see Raul Midón and Richard Bona. I first discovered Midón several years ago when he made his TV debut on the Dave Letterman show. That performance, and the song “State of Mind” pretty well summarizes his peculiar style. Midón is a blind man who plays acoustic guitar very unconventionally by slapping his hands around the strings to create new sounds and rhythms. Oh and he sings and imitates trumpet sounds while doing it. He’s an amazing talent.

I didn’t know who Richard Bona was, but he’s apparently a badass bass player who, when teamed with Midón, brews up some funky music. Here’s a video of one the songs they performed, “O Sen Sen,” which has a Latin feel to it. I can’t remember if I heard this tune of if I had left already. One thing I noticed while watching the pair play and taking photos was that by this point in the festival my feet were aching incredibly. Standing for hours at a time three days in a row was not being received well by my feet, and my shoes weren’t helping.

That’s necessary to set up what happened next. Midón and Bona were scheduled to play until 8:15, but I wanted to get a good spot to see the next act on my schedule, which started at 8:45. I know I had to leave early to get a good spot, and so around 7:30 I left and I did pretty well. I was center stage about a dozen people from the front. Not bad, but it was packed pretty tight, so it was pretty uncomfortable, especially with the aching feet. I stood in that spot for about 75 minutes waiting for the next act while Tom Jones played on the next stage over. So I got to see Tom Jones (who performed an awesome rendition of “You Can Leave Your Hat On”), but he wasn’t who I was waiting for.

After what seemed like an eternity, Snoop Dogg took over the stage and proceeded to tear the roof off of the place. It was unreal. It was probably one of the whitest audiences he’d ever played for, but it was a blast. The set featured all of the hits from “Doggystyle” and I managed to get some good shots amongst the mayhem in the crowd.

It was an amazing show. Snoop had a dog mascot with him on stage, lit up a joint, held a moment of silence for Nate Dogg, and of course was joined by dogpound members and his numerous sexy dancers. Like I said, it was amazing. Dare I say, legendary.

Snoop was by far the best act I saw at the entire festival, but that wasn’t the finale of the final day. After Snoop, I scooted out of the then packed hall to go see a separate show for which I had to separately buy tickets. It was a nice way to calm down after the adrenaline of Snoop, and the room had seats. It was the same place I saw the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra two nights earlier, but this time some true jazz legends were taking the stage.

To put a pretty little bow on the festival weekend, I had tickets to see Herbie Hancock & Wayne Shorter pay tribute to Miles Davis with some other great musicians. It’s not everyday something special like this happens, so I felt very fortunate to be able to see it. Hancock on the piano and keyboards, Shorter on the sax and the rest of the group ripped through some straight ahead bop tunes like nobody’s business. It was incredible and a great way to end the festival.

After three days, a pair of sore feet, roughly 20 acts seen and almost 300 miles travelled by train, I can say I had one of the best weekends of my life down in Rotterdam basking in the music of the North Sea Jazz Fest. It was well worth the cost of admission.

When we last left off, I had finally made it back to my bed in Amsterdam around 4am after leaving Rotterdam around 1:30. The first group I wanted to see on Day 2 started at 4:30 in the afternoon, so I pretty much rolled out of bed around noon and went back to Central Station to get down to Rotterdam by then.

The 4:30 act I wanted to see was the Universtiy of Kentucky Jazz Ensemble. Personally, I had no reason to see them other than the fact that a friend of mine was once a music student at UK and recommended I go check them out and try to say hey to the drummer if I could. I checked them out, and they were great. I wasn’t blown away, but they clearly deserved to make the trans-Atlantic trip to play at the festival. Unfortunately the set up was such that I couldn’t flag down a member of the group to say hello, but I had better acts to get to anyhow.

The first big name of the day that I was psyched to see was Sergio Mendes. I can’t honestly say that I was a Sergio Mendes fan before the jazz fest, but I had been familiar with some of his more popular hits with Brasil 66. I even arranged “Mais Que Nada” for steel band back in college (but, like many of my arrangements, it was more for my own practice than to actually perform), and sure enough they played that tune. Unfortunately, Mendes recently collaborated with the Black Eyed Peas on the song (which, in my opinion, butchered the tune with bullshit BEP watermark lyrics and over-simplified rhythms) and this was the version he chose to perform with a substitute hiphop artist. Thankfully, many of the self-refferential BEP lines were removed.

I managed to get another good spot for this concert, which was held (if you remember from my Day 1 post) on one of the two large stages in the Nile hall. I was maybe a dozen people from the stage directly in front of where Mendes was perched at the ivories. To the right were three female vocalists and everything was backed by standard percussion/bass/guitar fare. So, as I admitted before, I didn’t know most of the songs, but I enjoyed for their Brazilian samba grooves and catchy lyric hooks. It’s just the kind of music that’s inherently danceable and easy to pick up quickly. It wasn’t until I passed a booth selling music from the festival and saw the cool artwork on an apparently new Mendes release that inspired me to hunt down the songs I had heard. I think “Emorio” from the Bon Tempo album is a new favorite of mine from Mendes.

There is one other thing I must mention from his performance. I know a friend of mine who practices capoeira enjoys Mendes’ music (he, too, is a percussionist) and knew he was jealous I was seeing him perform. But to pour salt on the wound, during one tune the auxiliary percussionist came to the front of the stage to perform capoeira moves and play pandero. It was great to see yet another musical legend like Mendes still grooving away at his age.

Next I simply shuffled over to the other Nile stage to get a good spot for Ben l’Oncle Soul. In planning my weekend at the festival, I had decided to look into Ben simply because the schedule was a bit dry at this point in the day and he seemed interesting. The Frenchman (whose name means “Uncle Ben’s Soul”) is described as a gospel/soul/funk/blues/hiphop mix who grew up listening to Marvin Gaye and Ray Charles. This is all apparent in his songs, and in his stylistic covers of hit songs like Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” and the Spice Girls’ “Say You’ll Be There”. His debut album of original tunes is pretty good too, and I have to say my favorite tune is “Soulman”.

Again, I managed a pretty good spot to watch this unique talent perform. In the weeks leading up to the show, I grew to enjoy his music and knew the lyrics (even the French ones) to a few of his songs. He brought a lot of energy to the show, which had him sweating through his shirt as he ran around, and even out into the audience (and right by me). He played lots of the songs I had grown to enjoy, his well-known covers, and even a few new ones that I can’t remember. He seemed to enjoy hyping up the crowd by either running into the audience and dancing, vamping on the end of a tune for several minutes at varying energy levels, or even sitting down at the keyboard. I was surprised at the number of young girls in the crowd who knew all of his lyrics – I’ve never known a soul singer with a Motown flair to have that kind of following. Right on.

After that I hit a lull in my Saturday schedule and decided to take it easy on the risers in the back of the Nile hall. The next artist up in the hall was Chaka Khan – not someone I was terribly psyched to see but watched for a bit anyhow. She blew through some tunes, eventually singing the only one I cared about, “Ain’t Nobody” and after I snapped a few pictures of the screen she was on, I bailed to go walk around the festival grounds for a bit. I perused the food and beer tents, and devoured a traditional Dutch pancake (pannekoeken) filled with chocolate syrup and doused in powdered sugar. Yum.

I made my way back around to Nile in time to, again, get a decent spot to see the next big name on the ticket: Seal. Seal is one of those artists that I am not an avid follower of, but I liked his hits, so when the opportunity came to see him I said, “sure, why not?” Unlike most artists at the show, he actually went to the trouble to assemble a stage set and perform his show full-out. He, thankfully, performed some covers, including “It’s A Man’s World” and “Knock on Wood”, so I wasn’t completely lost. Eventually, of course, he performed “Kiss From A Rose” and “Crazy”, which were cool to see live. I had a lot of fun photographing Seal as he moved around on stage. The lighting was just right to get some pretty cool shots. One thing I found from taking pictures at the Jazz Fest was getting shots of fans as they snap photos and take videos with their phones and cameras with LCDs on them, like this shot of Seal performing.

He was cool to see, but I was actually more excited to see another group I had recently grew to enjoy since finding their name on the show schedule. Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue is a high-energy group that combines New Orleans brass sounds with hiphop, funk and soul sounds to make a really unique blend. It’s mostly instrumental, and has heavy, head-bobbing beats. I got a great spot just a few feet from the stage in the small Congo room where I saw Robert Randolph the night before.

Trombone Shorty is a virtuoso trombone and trumpet player and his band of horns, guitar, bass and percussion was a blast. There’s even a few videos of the group’s performance at NSFJ up on YouTube, so check those out to see just was I was a few feet from. I managed to get some great of shots of Shorty and his band thanks to my close proximity to the stage. They are really entertaining to watch and their music is fun – I highly recommend checking them out if you enjoy good things.

After that, it was 1am so I hurried over to Rotterdam Centraal, caught the train back to Amsterdam and rode the night bus back to my place.

And that was Day 2.

I stumbled upon this post about how if you look at Star Wars IV: A New Hope through the eyes of R2 and Chewie, based on what we learned about them in episodes I, II and III, it actually turns out that they might have been the ones behind the scenes running the whole show. Actually if you google “R2 and Chewie,” that article is the top hit.

Let’s break it down. I’ll try to summarize as much about R2/Chewie as possible.

R2 manages to not have his memory deleted (like C3PO does) at the end of Episode III and becomes the perfect poker-faced spy. When Episode IV starts, Leia doesn’t have the secret plans, R2 does. She just sends along a message to Obi Wan.

Things go awry when the Empire gets in the way, so R2 gets in the escape pod knowing he can get down to Tatooine and Obi Wan. Originally the plan was to pick him up on the way to Alderaan, possibly with Luke in tow, who Obi Wan has been watching over for 20 years – it’s in the book, folks. 3PO is the one hesitating to get into the escape pod, but R2 knows they’ve gotta do it to get to Obi Wan.

They land, and R2 purposefully gets captured by the Jawas and negotiates with them to take them to Obi Wan. The Jawas only agree to take them to the Skywalker farm because there’s Sandpeople near Kenobi. R2/3PO are purchased by Luke & Owen/Beru Lars, and as soon as he can, R2 heads off toward Kenobi’s. Upon discovering R2/3PO/Luke being attacked, Kenobi calls R2 “my little friend”, which he is, they’ve known eachother since Episode I. He says “I don’t seem to remember ever owning any droid” as a signal to R2 to shut up around Luke.

Before bailing to Tatooine, but after being intercepted by the Empire, R2 dispatched a signal to his fellow super spy Chewbacca that said something along the lines of “Uhh, we might need a ride to Alderaan, can you pick us up at Mos Eisley?” Meanwhile, Chewbacca gets the message and makes a “mistake” forcing Han to dump his cargo and high-tail it to Tatooine, which gets them there on time to pickup R2/3PO/ObiWan/Luke.

Chewbacca really runs the whole smuggling thing, not Han. Han’s just a pilot, and in fact the Falcon’s not his ship, it’s really Chewies (that’s why it makes the cameo in Episode III). Chewie sets up the deals and Han haggles the price, giving Chewie free reign to pick where they go, which lets him deliver Rebellion intelligence anywhere in the galaxy at ease under his cover. This is exactly what happens in Mos Eisley, Chewie and R2 and Obi Wan know what’s going on, but Han, Luke and 3PO are along for the ride.

Think about that scene in Mos Eisley. Obi Wan walks right up to Chewbacca before 3PO and R2 are even thrown out of the cantina. That was fast, eh?

So they all head to Alderaan, it’s not there, they sneak onto the Death Star, and when R2 finds out Leia is there Chewie helps convince Han to go along with Luke’s rescue plan. Then, as they escape, Obi Wan is forced to sacrifice himself as a distraction, leaving Chewie and R2 (and Yoda) as the only characters alive that know about Luke, Leia and Vader’s family tree. Chewie sees Luke and Leia feel drawn to each other, and realizes that’s just wrong, so he plays incest-cop and shoves Han at Leia.

When they get to Yavin, Chewie agrees to bail with Han because if Yavin is destroyed he’d be the only one who could try to salvage the Rebellion and find Yoda. Apparently Yoda has been communicating with Obi Wan through the ghost of Qui Gon Jin, but since Obi Wan is dead now, their only link to Yoda is Luke (who Ben can ghost-chat with). And since Bail Organa got blown up by the Death Star on Alderaan, things are looking pretty grim. R2 has the Death Star plans they need to take thing down, not Leia. Then Han changes his mind, Chewie is thrilled to go back and fight, and they save the day.

If you notice in the medal scene, Chewie is not medaled. He turned it down because he got one from Yoda like 20 years ago, but he can’t really mention that, now can he? So now the leaders are all gone or out of contact (Yoda) and Leia, the daughter of Vader, is in charge.

Pretty cool huh?

Who knew R2 and Chewie were such BAMFs. And that was the short version. Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: After digging around on the Internet some more on this subject, I have discovered that if you include the canonical Star Wars books, the Chewbacca theory doesn’t hold up. According to a novel in the Star Wars canon, in the 20 years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, Chewie was enslaved with other Wookies, only to be saved by then Imperial Lieutenant Han Solo (yeah, HAN was in the Empire! He flew Tie Fighters!). Thats the origin of his Wookie life debt to Han, which was eventually passed on to Leia when Han was frozen, hence the “You have to take care of the Princess now,” line in Empire Strikes Back.

BUT, the R2 hypothesis could still be true. And the Chewie stuff COULD be if you only include info from the actual movies. Chewie was a close personal friend of Yoda, as seen in Episode III, so its not hard to believe he could become Yoda’s eyes and ears while Yoda hides in the Degobah swamps. You can read more about all of this stuff at the Star Wars Wiki.

Scroll reversal.

You see, in Lion, Apple is trying to bring the style of scrolling found on its touch screen devices (the iPhone and iPad) to its desktop OS. So when using your Macbook’s trackpad, or the mouse’s scroll wheel, the direction stuff moves on your screen has been reversed.

Previously we pulled our fingers down to scroll down a webpage, for example. But if you were using an iPhone or iPad, you would actually drag your finger up to scroll, because the touchscreen technology gives you the sensation of actually grabbing and moving the page.

You can switch the scroll direction back to normal, but I’ve decided to give it a chance and after a weekend of Lion usage I’ve gotten fairly used to where my stuff is going when I scroll. But when I go to work, I get messed up because you can’t reverse the scrolling in Snow Leopard – at least not without some help.

That’s where this gem comes in. It’s a lightweight menu bar item that lets you reverse your scrolling and quickly switch between the two if you wish. It’s perfect for me right now as I try to retrain my brain to reversed (or “natural” as Apple is either rightfully or wrongfully calling it) scrolling.

So go download it if you’re trying to learn to reverse your scrolling habits on a non-Lion Mac machine.

Google has brand recognition. It’s the same reason why the people in the audience of Jimmy Fallon went bonkers when Josh Topolsky said they were all leaving with a new Google Chromebook! Google made it? It must be special!

I think there are something like 1 billion Google Accounts, and it’s so easy for them to simply notice Google+ and go check it out or get an invite. It’s a different structure for growth, so the numbers shouldn’t really be comparable yet. It’s also the very beginning of a new service, so it’s bound to be more popular now as people come to see what it’s all about.

I bet most of those invitations were shared via Facebook or Twitter anyhow.

Either the growth will plateau or if it’s good enough people will keep using it, but based on my own experience thus far, I don’t see Google+ rocketing into competition with Facebook. Even at this pace of 10 million people in 16 days, it would take between 3 and 4 years to equal where Facebook is at right now. And by then Facebook will have long since passed 1 billion users.

I’d rather see data like posts/day to compare to, though I bet Facebook/Twitter are getting way more out of 10 million users than Google+ is. Kevin Rose did an interesting experiment where he posted two different Bit.ly links to the same content on Twitter and Google+ to see which link was clicked more. The volume of engagement was nearly identical despite the fact that he has more than a million Twitter followers and something like ~30k Google+ followers.

But then again, it’s Kevin Rose, so he’s not the most accurate barometer of engagement for the average user.

I hopped on a train from Amsterdam Centraal after work on Friday and made it down to Rotterdam and to the Ahoy (an arena and conference center) in time to snag a pretty decent spot for the first act I wanted to see: Paul Simon. I’ve never been a really strong fan of Paul Simon, but over the years I’ve enjoyed his hits and I can appreciate the place he holds in music history. The man is a legend, and an amazing songwriter. My intrest in his music piqued when I fell in love with The Obvious Child, a song which I performed as a member of the ASU Pan Devils Steel Band in college. Simon was the perfect way to kick off the weekend for me. He was just one of many legendary musicians I would get the chance to see perform from just a few feet away.

The entire festival was held in a series of rooms and halls, and simon played in “Nile,” the largest of the rooms. Nile was basically a giant hangar like structure featuring two large stages. One stage would tear down and set up the next act while an artist played on the other stage, so there was hardly any time without music in Nile. Seating lined the sides and far back of the space and in the middle was open standing room. I managed to get there early enough to be fairly close to the stage, maybe 30 people back, and to the right. Watching Paul Simon perform from maybe 20 yards away was amazing, and he played familiar songs: Graceland, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, The Boy in the Bubble, etc. But my night would not be complete without hearing The Obvious Child, and sure enough, he played it. It was a great thrill to hear such an amazing song from a living musical legend. And that was the first concert of the entire weekend. Like I said, an amazing way to get started.

As if to perfectly contrast a living legend, I left Nile and headed inside into the arena space to see a relatively new artist: Janelle Monáe. The arena space was smaller than Nile, featuring just one stage and having rings of seating around a main stranding room floor space. I left Paul Simon a bit early to grab a good spot and was maybe 5 people back from the stage and to the left for Janelle Monáe. She did something that very few artists did all weekend: she put on an entire stage show. Most simply came out and played their set, but she insisted on maintaining her stage production. Everything on stage was black and white, including costumes for the backup singers and small 4-person orchestra. A man in a large top hat came on stage to welcome us to the “Emotion Picture,” and soon three cloaked figures were on stage as the musicians began Suite II Overture, the opening track on her album “Archandroid”. The album plays like a concept album, as songs blend from one to the other in a continuous stream of music – and that’s exactly how she performed them.

She went straight through Dance or Die, Faster, Locked Inside and Sir Greendown before mixing things up. Her babyface looks, spiraling beehive hairdo, unique style and energetic performance had the audience grooving, and she took us all along with her as she suddenly swooped into covers. She slyly transitioned into Stevie Wonder’s Cherie Amour and then picked up the pace with The Jackson 5′s I Want You Back before getting her girl power on with No Doubt’s Just a Girl. She made her way back to “Archandroid”, performing Cold War and her hit Tight Rope back to back. At this point I headed out of the arena as she began Come Alive, during which she apparently crowd surfed. Perhaps I missed my chance to grab me some Janelle Monáe. Oh well.

I quickly shuffled over Amazon, a smaller stage with seating in a tent outside between the arena and hangar area. In this case, the fact that I was venturing out to the festival on my own came in handy as I was able to snag a single empty seat in the front row. This was a great stroke of luck because I was now seated front-row and nearly center for an act I was highly anticipating: Robert Randolph and the Family Band. I first discovered Robert Randolph when I saw him perform with Dave Matthews Band at one of their shows in Phoenix some years back. Randolph plays the pedal steel and his group throws down on a mix of funk, soul, blues, gospel and jam music. It’s an absolutely amazing sound, and I highly recommend him if you enjoy those genres.

He played some songs I’m familiar with off his most recent album, “Walk This Road,” including Travelling Shoes, Back to the Wall and Shot of Love. I’m fairly certain he played some covers as well, but they are escaping me at this point. There’s a video from the festival of Robert Randolph’s performance of Voodoo Chile online, as well as this video of the same song shot by a fan in the audience. In that last one you can see me bobbing my head in the front row (I’m directly to the right of the shiny-domed bald guy next to me.) As you can see, eventually people started filtering infront of the first row of seats to dance and jam out. It was a great time.

I stayed until the end of Robert Randolph’s performance, mostly because he was tearing the roof off of the small tent they put him in, but also because I wasn’t terribly invested in the next act I saw: Alain Clark. There was a lull in the overall event schedule, so I decided to see Clark, who is a Dutch pop vocalist. I looked into his music and found a handful of his songs to be pretty catchy, but such is pop music – it’s designed that way. I mentioned to a co-worker that I was going to catch part of his set and she seemed disgusted by the notion, and she was probably justified to feel that way.

Clark may be one of the few artists who I enjoy more on an album that I do live in concert. He seemed to be going page-by-page through the pop concert checklist and repeating it ten-fold. Maybe he was trying to fill time, but every song went on too long with call-and-response chants with the audience, long instrumental breakdowns, clapping and encouraging the audience to sing large chunks of the chorus. It was getting kind of old. I swear, if he pointed that mic toward the audience one more time I was going to strangle him with it. I would have rather he filled that time with covers if he didn’t have enough songs to fill the space (which seems ridiculous since he has two full length albums out). Songs I remember hearing include This Ain’t Gonna Work, Fell in Love and Father & Friend, a sappy duet with his dad, who he brought on stage at the show. Not being very well-versed in Dutch music culture, I assumed that father Clark was a well known singer who’s son had followed in his footsteps. Nope, his claim to fame is being Alain Clark’s dad. And singing a super sappy duet with him. Ultimately, it was okay, but like I said, it felt like he was trying to hard to get the audience involved. We don’t have that kind of energy for every song, especially at a three-day festival.

After that let down, I moved on into the indoor conference hall area to finish out the first day with some real jazz: The Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. This was an old school classic jazz orchestra, complete with the custom music stands in front the saxophones. This was a more tame performance hall, complete with chairs and a rear grandstand. I, again, managed to nab a seat in the front because I was a single. They played mostly tunes I hadn’t heard before, but most of the older folks in the hall seemed to recognize them.

At one point a popular Dutch jazz singer, Trijntje Oosterhuis, took the stage and blew us away with Night and Day and Oh What a Beautiful Morning from “Oklahoma!” Later, guitarist and vocalist John Pizzarelli came out to do some Sinatra tunes, including Nice ‘N’ Easy and How About You. To wrap the whole thing up, Oosterhuis and Pizzarelli performed a rousing closing tune: Jimmy Buffet’s Another Saturday Night, which you can hear on Oosterhuis’ album that she recorded with the Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. Or just listen right here on YouTube.

This all ended around 1:30 am, at which point I hopped back on a train thar arrived back in Amsterdam around 3am. I grabbed my bike and pedaled home to finally get some sleep around 4am (right around when the sun starts coming up at this longitude).

And that, folks, was day one.

The earliest memories I have of the 4th are from growing up in Westwood, MA, and watching fireworks from our house. We lived near a lake that was large enough to serve as the town’s fireworks launching pad. In our house, the upstairs attic had been converted into a master bedroom with a triangular shape, the floor being the bottom of the triangle and the walls meeting in a point. You get the idea. One of the angled walls had sky lights which could be opened. Each 4th of July, we would get stools or ladders and open the windows and peer out into the sky, watching the fireworks over the lake as we leaned on the roof of our house. This is how I celebrated my first Independence Days. It wasn’t as likely to happen on New Years because snow would be covering the roof, so I think we watched the ball drop in New York on TV.

But half of my child was spent in the nearby town of Needham, MA, and during the humid day I can remember watching 4th of July parades down the towns main drag. Firetrucks, marching bands, shriners, those little white party popper things, and of course the candy being tossed from the various parade members. One year we skipped peering out from our roof in Westwood to watch fireworks somewhere near City Hall in Needham. It probably wasn’t that big of a celebration, but as a small kid I thought it was a huge event. I can remember just feeling like a tiny spot in a giant crowd, but my clearest memory is of those loopy glow-in-the-dark bands they sold which could be worn in any of a number of ways.

I don’t remember if I cared enough to ask for one, but I do know that my brother did. And it should also be noted that my brother was notorious for sticking things in his mouth in his youth (there’s a whole other story along those lines worth telling). Well you can guess what happened next. Driving home from the fireworks, my brother chewed through one of the glowing bands, and the thing leaked not only all over the backseat of my dad’s car, but into my brother’s mouth as well. Minor emergency. My dad had a small freakout, not knowing whether the glowing liquid in the bands was toxic or not. He was probably less than thrilled that the stuff also wound up on the interior of his car.

During this period we also would take the occasional summer trip to Maine where family friends of ours owned a cottage on a lake. We were there for at least one 4th, because there’s photographic evidence. But I also vaguely remember it too. The memory I have from Maine is lighting sparklers down by the lake and holding them as far away from my body as possible to avoid burns. This memory came rushing back to me not long ago at a friend’s wedding where everyone held sparklers to send the happy couple off on their honeymoon. I think those may be the only two times I’ve held a sparkler.

Also during this early time of my life (before the age of ten), we would spend some summers by a lake in New Hampshire. I don’t remember if there were fireworks there on the lake or not. Probably just random people setting stuff off. But I do have several summer memories there. It was always the time of year when Wimbledon and the baseball All-Star game were on TV, and I know we watched the Boston 4th of July celebration with the Boston Pops there as well. A lot of times when I think back on the 4th of July, I just think of summers on the lake in New Hampshire.

In ’95 I moved across the country to Arizona, but still my memories stayed on the east coast. During summer break I normally went back east to see my dad, who eventually moved from Boston down to the Washington, D.C., area. I have a pair of DC 4th memories from this time. One hot and humid summer, we managed to perch ourselves on the steps of the US Capitol building for the giant celebration that took place there. There was a big concert on the mall infront of the Capitol, and I’m pretty sure Kenny G played. But more memorable than that was how exhaustingly hot it was and how magnificent the fireworks appeared as we looked down the National Mall passed the Washington Monument down to the Lincoln Memorial. The other DC 4th memory was a bit different. We went down to the mall again, but this time it wasn’t hot, it was pouring rain. We took the Metro into the city and we were able to camp in the rain at the foot of the Washington Monument. It eventually cleared up and we had a fairly decent spot for watching fireworks over the mall.

As I progressed through high school, summer activities made it harder for me to go back east, so I began making a few 4th of July memories in Arizona. I was part of a drum and bugle corps which marched in a few parades, which I can only remember as being way too hot and painfully long. But despite that, it was fun march in a parade dedicated to our country, and to play the various military anthems for the spectators. The parades were usually the last thing we did in a town called Eagar (more recently known as the epicenter of record-setting Arizona wildfires) where we went to “escape the heat” of the Phoenix area. One year after the Eagar parade we high-tailed it back to Phoenix and I was able to go to the large fireworks and concert celebration at the lake in Tempe. It’s the only time during my tenure in Phoenix that I ever watched those fireworks live, and it was fun. Parking was not.

For the sake of inclusion, I have a vague memory involving fireworks, a back yard, a giant trampoline and my friends Anthony and Laura. That may have been a New Years thing, however.

A few years ago, after my drum corps days were over, I went back out to the east coast to spend a week on the Delaware beach. I flew out on the 4th, actually, and after landing I hopped in a car with my sister and we caught a minor league baseball game in rural Virginia. That was a lot of fun, and the week in Delaware was great too. We’ve spent a few of those weeks in Lewes and Rohoboth over the years, and they’ve become the more modern incarnation of the beach house in New Hampshire.

The year after I stayed in Phoenix for the 4th because I was working through the summer as part of my grad school studies. It was another memorable 4th, however, as my grad school friends and I had our pick of the litter of fireworks displays as we scaled a closet shelf through an attic opening to reach the roof of my friend’s flat. We hung out on top of the roof for an hour or so, drinking, listening to music, watching fireworks, and – oh yeah – lighting sparklers. So it’s three times, I guess.

That brings us to this summer. I thought it might be hard to celebrate America’s birthday from abroad while living in Amsterdam, but things worked out okay. A friend of mine from Arizona decided to take a spontaneous trip to Europe. She was in Paris to start, and so we met up in Brussels the day before the 4th. My European July 4th consisted to seeing the sights of Brussels and enjoying Belgian beer and waffles.

Beer and waffles? What’s more American than that?