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October 29, 2007

2007 PSCG Retreat & #1 Comes to Town

The past couple weekends have both been pretty busy, but for vastly different reasons. Last Saturday (the 20th) was the 2nd annual Fall Retreat for Penn State Christian Grads. The other officers and I had been working for awhile planning out the retreat, and about 20 people from PSCG signed up for it. And like the year before, we held it at the Stone Valley Experimental Forestry Lodge, about 20 miles south of State College, just past McAlevy's Fort. Even though it's "close" to State College, it's in a pretty remote area -- so remote that there's not even cell phone reception down there. It was such a gorgeous drive heading down there on Hwy 26 (and 305), especially as it went up and over Tussey Ridge in Rothrock State Forest. The colors had been a bit muted in town, but once you got outside State College they were absolutely spectacular!

Our guest speakers for the retreat were Bob & Ronda Adgate of the Navigators and Michigan Christian Grads, and the main theme was "Embracing & Igniting Life-Giving Hope Together." They gave three talks which were all good, and touched on many topics, including how we aren't full as individuals unless we give -- of ourselves, our time, our talents -- to others, and how God is a pursuing God. We also had some worship time, some small group and large group discussions, and some personal reflection time, it was good.

In the mid-afternoon we had some free time, which most of us used to go on a hike in the Penn State Experimental Forest just across PA 305 from the lodge. There aren't any real trails in that particular area, so we just made a 2-hr loop on some narrow, unpaved forest roads that are rarely traveled upon. The leaves definitely were coming into their peak color season, it was a great time for a hike! After climbing up to the ridge-top on the road, it took us along the ridge for awhile, and we were wondering if there was ever gonna be a good vista, we finally came along a hillside quarry that afforded some really pretty views of the rest of Stone Valley. After the hike we played some games (including Settlers and Scrabble), made some s'mores, and had some wrap-up small group time. The whole day was a really great time to get out of State College, relax, reflect and get to know some other people from the group a bit better.

This past Saturday was busy for football reasons. As I'd mentioned in my previous posts, #25 Penn State was hosting the #1 team in the country, Ohio State, and because it was such an important game, ESPN College GameDay chose to come to Happy Valley to do their Saturday-morning show. So Ryan, Frame & Grabon all met up here at 8am to head off to the tailgating lots to park, and then we walked over to the BJC where the GameDay set was built. Even though we got there an hour early we still wound up being quite aways back. By the time the show started at 10am there was a HUGE crowd with tons of signs and flags (I didn't think the crowd was quite as loud this time, though). Our signs were usually blocked by the signs in front of us, but there was at least one instance where I know my sign and I got on TV for at least 3 seconds coming out of a commercial at around 10:45. Jeff [Frame] managed to squeeze his way forward enough eventually so that his sign got on pretty frequently in the last 30-45 minutes of the show. It's always fun to be on national TV. :-) And the rainy weather stopped before the show started, and it even cleared out for a bit, turning into a nice, breezy day. The rest of the afternoon was spent tailgating.

There was a lot of anticipation about this game, especially since PSU upset OSU here in 2005, partly due to the tremendously raucous crowd from that, the first White Out game. Fans were expecting to have a similar affect on the outcome of the game this year, and were optimistic about the game itself, particularly since Penn State had won 19 of their last 20 home games coming into the weekend. We left the tailgate shortly after 6pm and got to our seats a full 90 minutes before kickoff (a personal record). The crowd was in a frenzy and deafeningly loud right before kickoff and during the 1st quarter. After the Buckeyes scored a field goal on their opening drive, the Nittany Lions responded by marching right down the field on a long, methodical drive, taking a 7-3 lead. We were all surprised at how effortlessly the Penn State offense moved the ball against the vaunted Buckeye defense, and thought it was a sign of things to come. But Ohio State answered with a long touchdown drive of its own, and scored another after forcing a Penn State punt, to go up 17-7. The defense looked to be on the ropes again in the 2nd quarter, but Dan Connor managed to come up with an interception, reinvigorating the team and the crowd. On the ensuing drive, Penn State had a 4th-and-2 from the OSU 38 yard line with about 2 minutes to go before halftime, and with the crowd imploring the Lions to go for it, what does JoePa do? He orders a punt. Ugh. As soon as I saw the punter trotting out onto the field, I thought the game was over, even though it wasn't even halftime yet. I'd understand the call if we were up by 10, but when we're down by 10 at home late in the half to the #1 team in the country, when our defense had shown no signs of slowing down OSU's offense, you simply cannot play conservatively and have a legitimate hope of winning. The 1st half trends continued in the 2nd half, mainly that the Ohio State offense was operating with cold-blooded, ruthless efficiency, moving the ball at will through the Penn State defense (which was ranked as one of the best defensive units in the nation, yet couldn't put even a hint of pressure on the Buckeyes QB all night), and the Buckeyes bulged their lead to 37-10 late in the 4th quarter, before Penn State scored a meaningless "window-dressing" touchdown on a kickoff return to make the final score 37-17.

In my relatively short time of closely following Penn State football, I have never seen the Nittany Lions dismantled and dominated so thoroughly as they were by Ohio State this weekend. OSU both outplayed and outcoached PSU, and it wasn't even close. After getting rattled by the White Out crowd in 2005, Tressel had his players ready this time around. Ohio State is an *excellent* team, and I'd have to say they're the best football team I've ever witnessed in person -- better even than 2005 Penn State.

Unfortunately it was so windy during the game that it blew trash and recycling all over the tailgating fields, even from people like us that had carefully cleaned up and bagged it before heading to the game. What a mess. The traffic trying to get out of the lots was a mess too, and in a one-hour stretch we moved about 20 feet. Ugh. So I didn't get home until almost 1am. I was totally wiped out and without a voice (from cheering so hard during the game), and definitely crashed right away.

The short IM flag football season is now done, almost before it started. Two Thursdays ago we scored a 30-0 win against a really bad team. I caught two balls for 2-point conversions in the 1st half (when we took a 22-0 lead), but then in the 2nd half I dropped a perfect deep pass down the sideline that would've been a sure touchdown. Sigh. It still felt really good to get into the win column finally. This Thursday we played our final game, and since we were down a couple players, I played wide receiver and defensive end basically the whole game, with only short spells. We played that team tough, falling behind 14-0 at halftime, before storming back in the 2nd to take a 20-14 lead. The other team scored again late to tie it at 20-20, but we lost because they had more first downs than we did. The thing is, we honestly should've won, because on the 2-pt conversion attempt after our first touchdown, Moyer scrambled out of the pocket and clearly stretched the ball across the goal line before his flags were tackled. But the ref (who was standing well behind the play, way back at the 10 yard line!) ruled that Moyer dove (which is ridiculous), which is illegal, and that the conversion therefore didn't count. Officiating in IM games is usually a complete joke, but that was probably the worst call I've ever seen in an IM game. If that would've counted, we would've won 22-20. So while our record is "officially" 1-3, we consider ourselves 2-2. In any case, it's time to hang up the cleats until next year.

Posted by Jared at 12:52 AM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2007

My GameDay Signs

Hey everyone, tonight I just made two signs to bring to ESPN College GameDay in the morning:

"DANIEL ESCAPED THE LIONS' DEN... OHIO $TATE WON'T!"

and

"tO$U has TBPPITL: THE BEST-PAID PLAYERS IN THE LAND (outside the SEC)"

Look for them both on TV from 10am-noon Eastern time on ESPN! And be sure to watch the Nittany Lions-Buckeyes game on ABC at 8pm ET! I shan't have a voice once the day is over!

WE ARE... PENN STATE!!
BEAT THE BUCKEYES!!

Posted by Jared at 01:38 AM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2007

10-23

I only have time for a quick little post because I've got some actual work to do (I'll blog about the PSCG retreat and other stuff later). This morning Jacob came into my office to wish me a Happy Mole Day and to wish a Happy 6,010th Birthday to the Universe. To quote Jacob, "whether you're a chemist or a creationist, there's cause for celebration!" Just thought I'd pass those little tidbits along, as well as the informative link.

Also, you might notice a slightly new look to all the pages on my website. Sunday afternoon I finished updating the webpages and then uploaded all of them. Basically there are only a few minor design tweaks (points will be arbitrarily awarded to those who leave a comment and correctly identify what changed!), but now all the pages on my site actually do follow the same template, and the code is *much* cleaner, too (I'm a big fan of clean code). It took more time to get everything looking just how I wanted it (for now), and I'm glad to have that done and out of the way at long last.

Just over 3 days to go until the #1 team in the nation, the Ohio State Buckeyes, come to Happy Valley to take on the #25-ranked Penn State Nittany Lions. The game's gonna have an 8pm ET kickoff and be nationally televised on ABC. A student White Out has been declared for the game, and ESPN College GameDay has also announced that the show will be originating from Penn State this Saturday morning (10am-noon ET on ESPN)! The weather forecast is looking lousy as usual, but I'll be there for both, rain or shine, so y'all should definitely tune in! If you have any good sign ideas, I'm taking those too. Some possibilities that I've seen (or remember seeing in '05 when GameDay was last here) include:

--OS who?
--Ohio is a fake state
--Our drum major could beat up your tuba player
--The only good thing about Ohio State is they hate Michigan too
--AJ Hawk still plays with My Little Ponies
--Maurice Clarett delivers my pizza (or pumps my gas)
--Ohio is for poor people
--The Buck$ stop here
--I want my sweater vest back
--O-H! N-O! (or O-H! UH-OH!)
--Another Buckeye Collapse in Happy Valley
--Win in Happy Valley? OSU must be nuts!
--Ohio State cheats
--Mark May wears Penn State pajamas
--Buckeye QBs: Official flowers of PSU (the SEC). Often planted in Beaver Stadium (the desert).
--We decide when OSU hears the snap count
--Hate Ohio State? 110,000 can't be wrong!

If you have any additional suggestions, just let me know! I'll post what sign I'll be going with (if any) sometime on Friday, if not earlier.

Posted by Jared at 10:23 PM | Comments (3)

October 16, 2007

Tailgate of the Garbage Plate

What a beautiful autumn weekend! The weather has been absolutely wonderful here in Happy Valley the last few days. It was a bit crisp in the early going on Saturday morning when we were setting up our tailgate with a healthy breeze, but the ample sunshine warmed things up comfortably. It was breezy enough to give our hurricane flags/pole a good test, too! We thought it would've been humorous if the hurricane flags would've been blown down, except for the fact that the pole cost a hundred bucks.

The tailgate food du jour that Shawn prepared this time was the garbage plate. For those of you not familiar with the garbage plate, a "delicacy" that originated in Rochester, New York, here's what it is. First off, you start with a base of sides, choosing two from the set of home fries, french fries, macaroni salad and baked beans, and fill your plate up with those. Second, you dump on a bunch of somewhat spicy ground beef and onion chili (almost like a sloppy joe consistency). Third, you put two hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, or any combination thereof on top. Fourth, you top it off with however much ketchup, mustard, onions and Frank's hot sauce you want. Finally, you mix it all together, and you have the culinary masterpiece known as the garbage plate. It's a lot of food, and doesn't exactly look all that appetizing, but it's actually pretty good -- as long as you don't want to have one more than a couple times a year (it might take your body that long to get over the shock of the garbage plate, haha!). ;-) I think Shawn's probably gonna have jambalaya on tap for the Ohio State tailgate on Oct 27th, mmmmmm...

As for the Penn State-Wisconsin game, the Nittany Lions routed the Badgers 38-7. The tone was set early, with Penn State forcing and recovering a Wisconsin fumble on the first play from scrimmage, and the Lions capitalizing with a touchdown three plays later to take an early 7-0 lead. The Badgers narrowed it to 10-7 by the end of the 1st quarter, but after that it was all Penn State, stretching the lead to 24-7 at halftime and 31-7 after three quarters. The defense was stellar, shutting down Wisconsin's powerful running game. PSU's running game was dominating. Anthony Morelli played the best game of his career at QB for PSU, throwing the ball effectively downfield, accurately on the short swing passes, and not throwing any interceptions. Now if he can just play like that consistently (especially on the road), Penn State's gonna be tough to stop. In short, it was a fun game to be at, and probably the most complete game I've seen the Nittany Lions play on both sides of the ball since their 44-14 dismantling of Minnesota in 2005. Next up is a dangerous trap game on the road at Indiana. If we can get by the Hoosiers and their spread offense, Penn State will really come into the big showdown with Ohio State, the #1 team in the country, with a lot of momentum!

We had a special visitor at church on Sunday morning -- Mrs. Lee from Slidell, Louisiana! She was the woman whose roof we fixed on our Hurricane Katrina relief mission back in March (read about it here, in Part 1 and Part 2 of my original post about that trip). I found out about her planned visit last weekend, but was told to keep quiet about it so that Max (the 12-year old kid that came down with us) could be totally surprised when he saw Mrs. Lee at church. :-) She spoke for a few minutes during the second service, and I thought it was a really amazing testimony and encouragement to everyone from our church who had gone down on Katrina trips in the past, as well as anyone who's thinking about going down there in the future. It was touching to hear her tell the whole church that she had kind of drifted away from God, but was brought back to Him when we came, and say that while Katrina brought much destruction, without it she would never have been able to be ministered to by us (and I would add that none of us would've been able to be ministered to by her!). After the service we had a Katrina team reunion lunch with Mrs. Lee and those of us that hadn't moved away (Katie to college in Rochester, NY, Mike to a nursing job in Mansfield, Ohio, and Matt to seminary in Philadelphia). Mrs. Lee told us that she's doing well, that all the big things (like her roof) on her house are finished, and that she made it out of the trailer and back into her house by her target date of June 1st, so that's great news! It was just great to see her again, we were all very glad she was able to make the trip up to Pennsylvania to visit us. She even gave us all little gifts; for me it was a couple containers of very tasty creole seasoning, one of which she reminded me that I had forgotten down there after she told me to take it when we left. :-) If any of us ever go down to New Orleans again, we'll definitely have a place to stay!

Right after the lunch with Mrs Lee, it was time to head out to Rothrock State Forest with some people from PSCG for a hike. I went with John, Daniel, Shane, Tracy, Pei-Jou and one of her friends, and we started at Little Flat Tower, and hiked along the ridge from there on the Mid-State Trail. There were a couple of nice vistas along the way, and a lot of really pretty, rocky forest. I had hoped the fall foliage would be a bit closer to peak, but the colors are a bit slower in coming than they were the last couple years, so there wasn't much color out in the woods at all, really. It was still quite pretty, though. About two and a half miles down the Mid-State Trail we came to a really sweet overlook of Bear Meadows, where we could look way down the axis of the valley, all the way to the town of Centre Hall in the distance. Very cool. It was good to take a break from everything and just go enjoy nature for five miles and three hours!

Posted by Jared at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2007

Bring a Towel, Scare a Badger

While the autumnal equinox and the start of fall happened back in late September, the weather around here was certainly not indicating that. It was all warm (mid-80s) and a bit muggy too, just very summer-like with persistent ridging over the eastern US. Quite frankly, I was getting tired of all this "nice" weather, especially over a week into October. I mean, it's not fun to go to football games when it's 85 and muggy, but maybe that's just me. Anyway, summer ended with a bit of a bang back on Tuesday afternoon, with a nice little frontal squall line rolling through central Pennsylvania. We even spied some pea-sized and nearly dime-sized hail at Walker Building. It got dark really suddenly, so Walter & I went outside to enjoy the last few minutes of summer before the rain started in and autumn arrived. A second cold front came through on Wednesday, so the daytime temps went from 85 and sunny on Tuesday to 48 and drizzle on Thursday. Now that's more like the autumn weather in Happy Valley that I know! This typical "StratoCu U" weather feels great for a change too, though I might get tired of not seeing the sun for the next six months, haha. ;-)

We had our second intramural flag football game of the season on Thursday night in the persistent drizzle, but it was the first one I played in (last Thursday night I had tickets to the Guster concert, so went to that instead; our team lost that one something like 38-8). We stopped Panda Motion on their first drive, forcing a punt, and then we drove right down the field (my only catch of the game came on this drive, I caught a quick hitch and spun back to the outside, shedding a defender, but stumbling for another ten yards down to the 10-yard line; if I wouldn't have lost my balance while spinning away from the defender I might've been able to find my way to the end zone, possibly), but one of Moyer's passes was tipped and picked off at the 1-yard line. They marched down and scored, then we came right back to take an 8-6 lead, but Panda Motion got another score right before halftime to take a 12-8 lead. Our offense got a bit out of sync in the second half though, and we wound up falling 18-8. It was definitely a winnable game, though. We'll try to put Mid-Life Crisis in the win column next Thursday night.

For various reasons I haven't been to the 20-somethings Life Group at E-Free since early fall 2005, when I went once shortly after I started attending the church. But I decided to go back tonight (now they usually meet every other Friday evening), and I think I'm gonna try to keep going to that at least somewhat frequently. It's a good group of people, and I think I can really grow a lot there potentially. There's nothin' like keeping my calendar full with several different friend groups, hopefully I can juggle everything! :-)

It's Homecoming weekend here in Happy Valley, and the town's definitely a bit fuller than usual. In addition to all the Wisconsin fans who've made the trip out here, there are of course even more Penn State alumni than usual. I didn't go to the homecoming parade downtown this evening, but there were definitely students camped out on the curb along College Ave early this morning, as is usually the case. Silly frat and sorority freshmen!

But anyway, tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon it's a HUGE football game in Beaver Stadium for both teams, as Penn State welcomes the #19 Wisconsin Badgers. A Nittany Lions win would give them a mark of credibility with a win over a good (if flawed), ranked team finally. A Badgers win would be a real statement in one of the toughest places to play in college football, and would keep them in the Big Ten title race. Even though both teams will be missing some players due to injury and/or suspension -- Penn State's former starting RB Austin Scott was formally charged with rape, assault and two other felonies today, but he'd been suspended indefinitely by coach Joe Paterno previously, since the day before the Iowa game last week when the rumors started swirling about the fumbling idiot Scott -- I think Penn State's offense, which seemed to find its stride a bit last week against Iowa, will turn in a very good game, especially on the ground, against a surprisingly poor Wisconsin defense. My prediction is Penn State 34 - 20 Wisconsin.

The game's a 3:30 ET start on ABC/ESPN, and while two years ago the theme was "White Out Wisconsin!", there won't be a white out this time. Instead, the theme is "Bring a Towel, Scare a Badger!" So expect to see a sea of white towels waving in the 110,000-strong throng at Beaver Stadium, it should still be pretty cool! Well, I should probably get to bed, we'll be heading out to set up our tailgate in a little over 8 hours!

WE ARE... PENN STATE!
BEAT WISCONSIN!

Posted by Jared at 01:17 AM | Comments (0)

October 07, 2007

Guster Concert

And the semester just keeps marching on, we're already through the first week of October. That means midterms aren't far off [shudder]. Even though I only have the one class (Atmospheric Turbulence), I'm still not looking forward to it.

I'm finally getting really close to having my first journal article finished. This paper is basically a condensed (and much better!) version of my Master's thesis, and I've been working on it since late July. Now that I've gotten one or more sets of edits from all the other co-authors (Joel, Sue, John, Dave & AJ), it's finally ready to go, except for a little tweaking of the figures. I spent some time over at ARL late last week figuring out how to alter some of those figures, so I should hopefully be able to finish all that early this week. I'm really hoping that we can submit the paper this week to the journal Atmospheric Environment for review as well. It'd be great to get that out of my hair so that I can start focusing a little more on my future research.

I went to my second concert in a week back on Thursday evening, when the band Guster came to town and performed at the BJC. Student tickets were only $20, so I went with David, Ethan, Lindsay ('Scotland'), Aviva & Justin. It was a really fun concert, I enjoy their music quite a bit. We were on the floor right in front of the stage, and I would've taken a couple pictures except my camera's batteries decided to crap out on me. Lame!

After losing a couple games on the road, the Nittany Lions football team came back home for a game with the struggling Iowa Hawkeyes. So we got another meteo tailgate together, and then went to the game. First off, it was unseasonably warm for October around here, as it was 84 degrees with full sun. Standing in the sun for hours really sapped my energy, and by the time the sun went down behind the stands midway through the 4th quarter I was quite tired of it! But as for the game, PSU started out very slowly (again, ugh), and the fans were booing Morelli mercilessly with every bad throw in the 1st quarter. But then Penn State's offense (including Morelli!) came alive in the 2nd quarter, and they went up 13-0 at halftime (with Kevin Kelly kicking a career-long 53-yd field goal as time expired). By the end of the 3rd quarter it was 20-0, with Penn State having held Iowa to a measly 54 yards of offense and 2 first downs! Iowa was able to put one drive together in the 4th (off of one of Morelli's 2 4th-quarter picks, grr), but Penn State held on for a solid 27-7 victory. At least now we've got some momentum heading into the homecoming game next weekend against Wisconsin.

Time to get ready for another week. Hopefully I'll be able to find a little time here and there to re-do my website in Dreamweaver (I originally made it in GoLive). I was planning to make some minor changes, but for whatever reason that's proving difficult (maybe partly because I'm very new to Dreamweaver and am just learning how to do a few things in that program). Oh well, I guess I have another fun little project vying for my time. :-)

Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (1)

October 01, 2007

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!

Posted by Jared at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)