Every Day Is Halloween
Now is the time to turn in your hymnbooks to page http://keeferman.net/tunestuff/halloween.html -if you haven't already done so.
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Now is the time to turn in your hymnbooks to page http://keeferman.net/tunestuff/halloween.html -if you haven't already done so.
Cat Power is actually a singer. Her real name is Chan Marshall, but that's not the point. The point is i had a dream about her last night.
We were down in some shantytown outside Mexico City helping poor people. Digging wells, building stable housing, that kind of thing. Why/how i dunno. You tell me. And i don't know where my wife was, but I'm pretty sure Cat Power would make me forget my wife anyway. That's not the point. The point is we were introduced by Matt Damon.
Matt Damon? What the heck does THAT mean? Am i alright or...
"Does he act on his words of the campaign: aka increase Afghan presence / Iraq is a diversion from the true battlefront on the Afghan/Pakistan border. Does he act in accordance with the dovish Left and isolationist Right's wishes to come home (does their reasoning matter?) Does he find some middling waffling way that displeases everyone and drags the issue out longer to more consternation?I'll select the last one."
Like i said earlier, we've been getting a lot of that.
Please allow me a moment to put it in other terms if i may.
YEARS of incompetance and neglect have brought Middle Earth to a sorry state. You are the newest/hottest wizard on The Council though and you are just itCHing to jump into the fray. Saruman the White (and other Establishment sorcerers) are already whispering behind your back that you aren't experienced enough to understand the issues -much less address all of them. Economic downtimes and budget cuts at the Department of the Interior have led to sightings of dire wolves in the Shire. Crime is up and goblins are scribbling graffitti on the walls of Moria with impunity. We're on the verge of ecological catastrophe because Mount Doom has become volcanically active again. Worse yet, people are pooping their pants every time someone mentions the word "Voldesauronbinladen".
POPQUIZ!
What
do
you
do?
a. Resolve everything at once with a wave of your all-powerful arm. Or...
b. Join the Steward of Gondor in a desperate orgy of wine, women, and denial. Or...
c. Blow all your political capital by making a public spectacle of attempting everything simultaneously, kill everybody's esprit de corps by not getting instantaneous results, and eventually become a one-session member of the Wizards Council (like infamous Carter the Grey). Or...
d. Plod away behind the scenes, tirelessly marshalling your forces, relentlessly matching up each interminable problem with an actually-appropriate response -knowing full well that millions of men, women, hobbits, elves, and dwarves may have NO IDEA what was going on until years later after it's over.
Gosh, i wonder...
If you select c. though, tell me now so that i can euthanize my defenseless/delicious cats before one of those greasy orcs gets ahold of them.
Baseball season is over and suddenly football's not looking so great either. The good news is it's raining.
ZOMBIELAND. If you haven't seen it yet, you have to see it.
"The deadline for Nobel prize nominations is in February. Within a month Barack Obama earned a Nobel prize? Not that I think highly of the prize mind you. With the exception of the sciences, the winners lately are generally ___clowns, tyrants, bureaucrats or disgruntled members of an official global aggrieved class. -Still, a month?"
There's a lot of that going around.
Obama didn't start his life's work on January 20th when he became president. He worked on community service and nuclear non-proliferation for YEARS before that. 2008, however, was The Year of Change (or The Year of Hope depending on how you look at it) and THAT'S what they had in mind when they considered his nomination (amongst the hundreds they'd received before the February deadline). You can be wary of foreigners and you can doubt politicians, but it would seem that your cynicism has clouded your judgment in this case. I challenge you to deny that Barack Hussein Obama has been inspirational, even beyond our own borders. Go ahead and tell America that you want their president to politely decline an international accolade because (and this based in no small part upon your expertise regarding the workings of the Norwegian Nobel Committee) he just hasn't earned it yet. Good luck with that. (Keep despair alive.)
It crouched menacingly over them like it was the biggest stage monster ever. According to the record keepers, it WAS the biggest stage monster ever. Over sixteen stories tall. A sprawling, four legged, space-crab alien-spider thing. Instead of venom-drippers, it had speaker fangs framing it's mandibles. The giant 360° video web hanging under it's abdomen not only flashed shockingly bright colors, it also expanded and contracted like it was trying to snatch and eat the bandmembers beneath it. It was just...
Astounding.
As huge as that monster was, The Dome was to prove a perhaps overly-adequate containment vessel. Having scouted it out, i anticipated that my midfield, top-level seats would place me eye-to-eye with the monster. i was wrong. i misunderestimated The Dome. The 270 feet tall, 100,000 square feet wide Dome. I found myself with a helicopter's-eye-view of the foursome who, except for the projections on the 360° web screen, seemed very very small. Far Away, So Close? Not exactly. Only eveNtually did the music and the crowd fill that cavernous space between. That "U2 me too" intimacy is something I'd gotten so used to in other arena tours that it was alittle disconcerting this time. This experience, as cool as it ended up being, served as a critical reminder. IT IS TOTALLY WORTH IT to pay more for better position. (Don't even get me started about the wonders of Close Enough to Touch the Stage.)
They've obviously still got it though. It's been 25 years since i first saw U2 myself on an inspired Unforgetable Fire tour and they don't seem to be rusting or fading yet. Bono is still passionate about making a connection with us. The Edge and Adam still look like they're enjoying themselves entirely when they stretch out on the catwalk. (The funny thing is that Larry still looks as uncomfortably shy as ever when he steps out from behind the drumkit.) It's no surprise then, after three decades together, that they're a confident unit. What is surprising is that neither they nor their performances seem to get old. (Is it just me or did 22 songs seem kinda short?)
And i still get goosebumps at the opening strains of "Where the Streets Have No Name".
Setlist, fanfotos, etc.: http://www.u2tours.com/detail.src?ID=20091006