Fall-ish

Cy-Hawk Saturday!

College football teams in the midwest have a fondness for playing games against geographical rivals for the privilege of possessing ugly trophies. Indiana and Purdue,
for instance, play for the Old Oaken Bucket, while Minnesota and Wisconsin play for Paul Bunyan's Axe, and Illinois and Ohio State play for the Illibuck Trophy.

Of course, all of those schools are in the same conference together. Part of what adds spice to the annual clash between the Iowa State Cyclones and the Iowa Hawkeyes is that they are not just fighting for in-state bragging rights, but for the honor of their conferences (Big XII and Big Ten, respectively).

As for "ugly trophy," it is tough to beat the new design they rolled out for 2011...

Yes, they really did.

This design was, unsurprisingly, mocked into retirement before ever being awarded at a game. There was an "interim" replacement (missing the bizarre family of corn farmers) given at the 2011 game, which was replaced the following year by a more conventional design:

The Cyclones claimed the trophy in 2012

The two rivals will square off this afternoon at Iowa State's Jack Trice Stadium.
A Cyclone victory would please me enormously...

Say "Hello" to Amanda

As I have mentioned previously, sometimes the way to find something you've been seeking is to STOP looking for it. That turned out to be the case with Amanda, the newest member of my guitar family. She is an Alvarez Yairi WY1TS, and I found her entirely by chance. For about a year, I had been keeping my eye out for a version of the Alvarez Yairi WY1 model in figured koa wood (see the "Until Next Time..." section for more details) by using an automated search feature on eBay, but the ones I was finding were either too expensive or too beaten up to suit me, so for the most part I had been ignoring the results eBay kept sending me.

Last December, though, they sent me a notice from a music store that was letting a WY1TS go for basically their own cost (it has been a tough economy). One of the few upsides of the single life is that if I want to do so I can splurge on a Christmas gift for myself, and so I did...

Alvarez Yairi WY1 guitar with Tobacco Sunburst finish

For a long time this image of my hero Joe Bonamassa playing his WY1TS was the desktop background on my laptop computer...

...and I was thrilled to add such a gorgeous instrument to my own collection.

Amanda is one of those guitars about whom it can truly be said that she is more beautiful in person than in any photograph. I am hopeful of getting Joe to sign her someday...

One Reason I'm Not Rich

From the wonderful comic strip Dilbert, by Scott Adams, which you should join me in reading every day.

Until Next Time...

The first three times I saw my hero Joe Bonamassa live in concert, one of the highlights of the show was his performance of his song "Woke Up Dreaming" on a gorgeous Alvarez Yairi WY1K guitar..

Des Moines Civic Center, 2012 (taken from my seat)

By the time he toured through my neck of the woods again in the spring of 2014, his show consisted of an entire acoustic set, followed by an electric set. For the acoustic set he used a variety of vintage instruments, but the WY1K had been replaced with a different Yairi, a WY1TS (second front the right in the photo below)...

Orpheum Theatre, Sioux City 2014 (taken from my seat)

Today's send-off is Joe playing Amanda's sibling at the Hammersmith Apollo theater on his Tour de Force concert series back in 2013. Enjoy...