Cool Concert Tour Update

I guess you could call this three steps forward and one step back: There have been a few changes to the annual Cool Concert Tour, originally announced on this site back in December.

The deletion:
I didn't get to make the Maria Schneider concert last night because my friend I would have been going with (and staying with, for that matter) had to cancel, so I'll just have to save my pennies and catch them the next time IAJE is in New York, I guess.

The additions:
March 18: Bob Mintzer at the Loyola Jazz Festival, New Orleans. I'm planning on heading to the rebuilding Big Easy on the last weekend of my spring break to hang with my good buddy Jordan and catch his band with one of my favorite tenor players. (More info here.)

April 1: Roy Hargrove/The Yellowjackets at the North Texas Jazz Festival in Addison. This festival has been bringing in some great artists since its inception, and this year's double bill should be amazing. After all--mo' Mintzer, mo' Mintzer. (Mo' info here.)

May 20: Kevin Mahogany with the Texas Instruments Jazz Band in the John Anthony Theatre. As hinted by regular commenter Gary P. back in December, the other (and infinitely more famous) Kevin M. of jazz will be gracing the halls of my school for the third time. Is it bad to hope that someone in the band can't make the gig so that I can sub with them? (More info here.)

I'm sure there'll be more Cool Concerts added as the year goes along.

De-fictionalization, part 3: The blogosphere and the real world once again collided in friendly fashion last night. Since I didn't go to the Schneider concert, I had the opportunity to do a completely different cool thing: meet up with Shawn in person for the first time (he was in Denton for his UNT audition this weekend). Just like with J-Guar and Eric previously, I'm happy to say that I'm batting a thousand in terms of having people I've met through blogging turn out to be as cool in real life as they are online. We had a great time getting together, and he said his audition went well today. I know that the mileage of others has varied, but my experience thus far (J-Guar refers to this bloggers-meeting-up process as "de-fictionalization") has been nothing but good; it's proof that, despite the laments of legions of Luddites (heh, alliteration) the world over, this Internet thingy really can be used to bring people together.

"I'm not dead yet!": A Cleveland man is having trouble with his insurance company: they won't pay his hospital bill because Social Security says that he died last September. So far, all his efforts to prove that he's still alive haven't been successful.