I know I've said this before, but I'm 99% sure this time that I saw The Who for the last time last night in Boston. And oh my god, they were great. They really had no business being that good.

If you want more details, that's here. But here's a little glimpse of the night at Fenway.

Since the T still has cars from the 70s in rotation, you can occasionally catch these glimpses of old Boston. Like when the red line ended at Harvard, or when “Washington” and “Columbia” were still stops.

I don’t know where you live, but it’s probably not as funny as where I live.

It’s hard to describe how miserable the experience of relying on the T here is, but this does an excellent job.

I saw Paul McCartney in Boston this week — twice — and I wrote a very long thing about it if you’re interested. If you want the abstract version of it, it’s basically that this man’s career is absurd and he still sounds great.

Greenwood Station, Wakefield, Mass.

I saw this road warning sign as I was leaving work and heading back to the train, and it was kind of fitting that it’s sitting over a tunnel right in front of the Garden. There are probably going to be a lot of weird, empty games in that building very soon. David Pastrnak might score his 50th goal to nothing but stick taps.

UPDATE: OR, or, maybe nothing happens for a long time.

Yes, I suppose there are traditionally a lot of Italins (sic) in the North End.

Mudhoney was, and remains, a goddamn treasure. Just delightfully trashy and sarcastic and fuzzed out and holy hell they are still tearing through their sets. Their new stuff is right there with the classics, and they have just the right attitude for these current, stupid times.

I also wrote my first real anything in a while, so there’s more about last night’s show in Boston here.

I also really like the bottom shot I took where my hand clearly moved, but it reminded me of a digital ode to their early Charles Peterson shots.

Salem to Boston, as seen from a blurry train window.

Well I made good on my promise/threat to take as much advantage of living this close to Fenway as I can for the next three weeks or so, and it paid off in a 16-4 beat-down over the Angels. On top of that, last-minute tickets had me right along the wall in right field, and if you’re eagle-eyed, you’ll see me making the home-run signal just above the Jordan’s sign as Rafael Devers’ home run falls about three rows behind me.

Top that off with a nice walk down Mass. Ave. back over the river after the game, and it’s like two wins in one night.

Well it wasn’t the best night on the field. Jorge Soler took Andrew Cashner deep — emphasis on deep — twice that basically sealed a 6-2 win for Kansas City over Boston. But otherwise, I can’t complain about a night out at Fenway, especially one where the weather was perfect and I had a view from the left field corner I don’t usually get.

Also: It was both Celtics night (Grant Williams and Carsen Edwards threw out the first pitch) and Jerry Garcia night (evidenced by the t-shirt give-away and all the Dead they played in between innings).

The Velvet Underground - “Some Kinda Love”

A cool side-trip to reading Ryan H. Walsh’s Astral Weeks is picking up on the Boston connection to the Velvet Underground. I knew they’d played at the Boston Tea Party (as did Led Zeppelin and the Who), but I didn’t realize they’d all but set up residency in the place, along with practically walking away from New York.

Anyway, this morning belongs to them and their self-titled third record. It’s not the coolest to admit that my favorite version of the band is the Doug Yule era (Loaded being one of my favorite albums ever), but that’s how it is. So here’s a great one from a great album.

This is really late in the season for me, but I got out to Fenway for the first time this year last night. After a couple of hours of doom as the skies opened up and it just poured, things settled down and the game started after about a 30-minute delay.

I should note that it was sad to hear just before the game started that Pumpsie Green died at 85 — he was a trailblazer and got his chance much later than he should have.


The game moves on. Rafael Devers went deep, Eduardo Rodriguez was solid on the mound and I happened to catch a seagull flying by while I was taking the first picture.

This was one of the cooler things I’ve ever gotten to see: 17,565 people showing up and selling out the Garden to watch the Bruins practice, basically. They weren’t too physical, but you could see a lot of the structure of how they want to play. There was also funny moments, like when the black team took a penalty, and Jake DeBrusk had to switch jerseys from black to white so that he could work with the power play unit.

All that was followed up by Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron thanking the crowd for coming out, who, it should be known, were screaming for most of the night.

All this, and we were back outside just after 8 p.m. I don’t think I’ll be in the building for any of the Stanley Cup games, so getting to be in there for this, with all Bruins fans and lots of kids hanging out and enjoying the run, was fantastic. 

Bring on the finals, man.

S_and clear of the doors, please.

Just awesome. Absolutely awesome.

(Photo by Jae C. Hong/The Associated Press)