Capitol City Pride

Sunday was Capitol City Pride in Des Moines, and Heidi, Anna and I all trekked down for the event. Heidi and Anna had gone last year -- I was working -- and had a blast. I was so jealous that I missed it we made sure to figure out when it was this year so that we didn't miss it. Miraculously, I didn't have to work and there was nothing else scheduled for that days so we were able to go.

Des Moines Pride probably has nothing on Pride celebrations in say Chicago, New York or L.A. (hell, it's probably not even as good as the one in Iowa City, although having never been to that one, I can't really say) but it's still pretty good. The weather was kind of crappy -- not rainy, but COLD! For June 11th, you would certainly not expect it to top out at 62 degrees. But it did, plus the sun never came out and it was windy. But as we kept saying, at least it didn't rain.

Anna was dressed to the nines in her rainbow sun dress, rainbow tights and ruby red slippers. She even bought face stickers at Target and a new pony tail holder. Originally, she was wearing her tye-dyed rainbow socks, but as it proved to be too cold to go without something on her legs, she opted for her rainbow tights, which techincally clashed with her dress. But it didn't matter to her. She kept on bugging me about when the parade was going to start (we got there about an hour early) and kept on seeing balloons and various floats that were in the parade as they got the parade set up. She met up with a couple little girls there and played with them, giving them each a rainbow lei.

The parade started around 12pm and it was shorter than I expected. But man, could those guys throw candy for the kids. The only reason Pufferbilly Days in Boone (the reigning champion in volume of candy thrown from floats) has more candy is because it's longer -- if the Pride parade had even been 3/4ths as long as Pufferbilly Days, Pufferbilly Days would have been left in the dust.

Here's probably my favorite picture I snapped of the parade (and my current desktop):

After that, it was down to the Simon Estes Amphitheater for entertainment, booths, etc. Amazingly, only one food vendor was there to serve the thousands of people that turned out. We watched as various drag queens lip synched to the usual suspects (Cher, Madonna, Weather Girls) and Anna loved dancing around on the hillside. At one point, one of the drag queens (that Anna refers to as "princesses") was standing chatting with a group of people sitting nearby. Anna (to our amazement) wanted to go say hi to the "princess" and have her picture taken.

In the final analysis, she looks a little freaked out, but she kept on wanting to go up and talk to her. A little bit later, she educated me by saying rather matter-of-factly "Daddy, those princesses are really boys."

It was a fun day, but what I loved the most were the number of straight, young families there as well as the thousands of GLBTs as well. I spotted a straight couple across the street from us with a baby that couldn't have been any older than a few months. What a great way to start life! The atmosphere was so welcoming and accepting and you can pretty much guarantee that anyone there didn't vote for Bush (although Heidi said you might be surprised.) I can't wait for next year.

And here's a YouTube video from the day as well.



Update: I almost forgot to post the link to my Flickr.com photo album of the event. Here it is.

The truth is out there

Today's my birthday! Yay me! I love my 30s so much. I love my graying hair, but what I think I love most about my 30s is I'm not in my 20s anymore. Living in a college town gives me plenty of reminders of why being in my 20s was not the best time in my life. I wouldn't change a thing about my 20s, but as Dolly Parton says in "In The Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)" -- "no amount of money could buy from me/The memories that I have of then/No amount of money could pay me/To go back and live through it again."

Last night, Heidi and Anna gave me my birthday presents, even though I implored Heidi to not buy me anything, satisfied that my trip to Vegas to see Madonna was plenty of birthday present. She (of course) didn't listen to me and bought me a few little things. I got a new shirt from Younkers, a clock for my clockless office wall, and, to my great surprise, action figures of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from The X-Files!!!

(And yes, that is the Queen Alien bearing down on Mulder and Scully. I really love the Alien movies!)

I didn't even know that I wanted these! I have been so into The X-Files recently. I never watched it while it was on TV -- and now, I'm not sure why because it's right up my alley. Plus Gillian Anderson is gorgeous. I'm only just finished with the second season right now, and I hear that Anderson glams out a bit, dropping weight in a bid to be more "sexy" but she's perfect as she is (although she could be just a bit taller.) I've been Netflixing the seasons but borrowed the last season from my neighbor and can't wait to get season 3.

And although Mulder and Scully are super cool, the card I got from Anna was perhaps the most precious.

What I love the most is the backwards "I love you" which she does not because she's dyslexic but because she's left-handed.

Silent Hill

Last night I went to the late (as in 10:10 PM late) show at the budget theater here in Ames. I wanted to see the movie Silent Hill, even though it had been absolutely eviscerated by the critics. I figured it's hard for a horror film to disappoint me because I always go in with low expectations and besides, a lot of horror flicks I've really enjoyed were mauled by critics. But I think that Roger Ebert's critique said it best.

"Not only can I not describe the plot of this movie, but I have a feeling the last scene reverses half of what I thought I knew (or didn't know)."

It was very disappointing on so many levels, but what mostly bothered me was how much it seemed to revel in its own obtuseness. It seemed to love being deliberately confusing -- always putting the viewer in the position that they have to guess what's going on (with pretty much no context to be guessing from) only to get the Info-Dump about 2/3rds of the way through. And even with the Info-Dump, it still didn't make sense.

Add to this that the characters were just plain annoying. The main female lead spent the first 30 minutes of the movie running around in the fog/ash of Silent Hill yelling "Sharon! Sharon!" until you just wanted the kid to answer simply to shut her up. And how Sean Bean ended up in this mess I'm not sure.

That said, the visuals were pretty good, although not what I would call particularly scary. Mostly, they were just freakish and creepy, but I don't think I was scared even once during the movie -- and that isn't just because I'm a jaded horror movie fan. It simply wasn't that scary. And ultimately, it's because the story wasn't that good. You can have all the great visuals in the world but if the story isn't there, there's nothing to hang those cool visuals on (case in point, the Star Wars prequels.)

And every review that begs us to give it a break because it was based on a video game, not Shakespeare, I say, whatever! You still need to write a story that's decent.

Overall, it wasn't so bad that I want my 2 hours and $1.50 back, but people did boo the movie at the end, and that was a first for me.

Time (not) well spent

I've officially decided to bail on On The Road. I decided that life is too short to spend it reading a book you don't like. Apparently I also thought when I decided not to read The Grapes of Wrath in 10th grade -- the first book I never finished for a class. I'm now reading Anderson Cooper's memoir Dispatches From The Edge which makes me feel a little bit cheap, but it's a good book!

I also spent today weeding the driveway (yep, you heard that right, the driveway.) Our driveway is old and cracked and has a lot of weeds growing up through the cracks in the pavement. Well, it'd gotten so bad and overgrown that it was bothering me even to look out the back window, so I spent a good hour this afternoon sitting on the driveway manually pulling up these weeds and chucking them into the wheelbarrow. The task is basically Sisyphean, because they'll all grow back within a couple of weeks until such point that I decide to spray pesticide on them. That, of course, will never happen as I just don't think it's a good idea to spray poison in an area where Anna plays.

While I was doing this, the neighbor boy came over and jokingly gave me a bad time about how bad the grass behind our house looks. And I mean, he's right, I haven't mowed it yet this year. That's mostly because is just pisses me off because it's a large hill that goes down to a railroad track. It's not even my property -- it's owned by the railroad -- but I'm expected to keep it up. Actually, the only expectations are those that I choose to internalize from the fact that everyone on the block keeps theirs mowed, but I still think it's a pain in the ass. Well, no sooner was I done weeding the driveway than I was out back mowing. And it sucked, let me tell you. I'd have been better off buying a sheep or two.

The grass clippings look pretty bad, but now it's done and it won't have to be done for a while.

That's my exciting life. Weeding the driveway and mowing knee high grass.

Hey Jack Kerouac

So I'm reading On The Road right now, and I'm about 60 or so pages into it. So far, I'm not seeing what the big deal is about this book. Maybe it speaks to a completely different generation. All I can say is that I'm doing some major skimmage -- it's mostly just a motley collection of his rather uninspired adventures out West with some friends of his. And all these friends are so non-descript that they all blend into each other so there's really very little characterization going on.

It's got this distinct feel of a book that I'm supposed to like, but for some reason or another, just really don't. It's got about another 50 pages and if I'm not really into it, I may just have to bail. I hate bailing on books -- it's really the ultimate offense you can pay to an author (ok, maybe a really bad movie adaptation is the ultimate offense, but I'm never gonna be in a position for that to happen.) And I especially hate bailing on books that I was expecting to like.

I have to admit, one of the biggest reasons I decided to pick the book up this summer is because I'm totally into that 10,000 Maniacs song "Hey Jack Kerouac" which is all about the Beat Generation (although you'd never know it without knowing something about the Beat Generation because I think the lyrics are on the obtuse side.) I do love that Maniacs album -- In My Tribe. It's probably the only one of theirs that I really like. I remember having a copy of 10,000 Maniacs Unplugged when I was in college, and Rick loved the CD so much that he totally overplayed it. I basically never need to hear that CD ever again -- and I'm not kidding when I say that. I'm just to the point now where I can tolerate the song "Because The Night." Plus, I never really got into Natalie Merchant's solo stuff. It just didn't have the same punch that 10,000 Maniacs had which is kind of weird because she was pretty much the voice of the Maniacs, but who knows. I have Blind Man's Zoo on my iTunes, but it gets listened to a whole lot less than In My Tribe does.

So I have this feeling that I will go to my grave not having finished On The Road. Oh well, I guess worse things in life have happened.

Why can't you give me the RESPECT that I'm entitled to!?!?

While perusing Entertainment Weekly a couple weeks back over breakfast, I saw an ad for the new "Hollywood Royalty" Special Edition DVD of Mommie Dearest. Heidi and I about fell over -- finally, after being released as a bare bones DVD (trailer + photo gallery being the only special features on the original) it was getting the Special Edition treatment it deserves. Heidi and I love this movie for many of the same reasons many others do -- it's so bad it's good! It's probably the only reason to really watch that movie.

I can still remember the first time Heidi and I watched it. We were either very recently married or about to be married and we rented it one night on a whim because I remember it being on HBO as a kid and, of course, the scene that stuck with me was the infamous wire hangers scene, in which a mud-masked Joan Crawford beats Christina silly with wire hangers that she found in the closet. After the movie was over, Heidi made the comment that it was one of the most bathetic (no, not pathetic, although some might argue that as well) movie she had probably ever seen.

All that said, the movie itself is a complete and utter riot. Faye Dunaway completely overacts her way to a Razzie in this movie, and we love it completely. One evening we made the decision to watch "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane" based on how much we loved Faye's characterization of Joan, only to be utterly disappointed by the real Joan, who (at least in that movie) didn't even come close to Faye's overdone portrayal. (Although the combination of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis did allow for some unintentionally hilarious scenes nevertheless -- "Hello, is this Johnson's? I'd like to order some liquor this is Jane Hudson.")

This DVD has a full length commentary and three featurettes which follow the film's journey from book to movie and its ultimate veneration as a cult classic. Conspicuously absent from any new interviews or the commentary track is Faye Dunaway, who pretty much doesn't want to discuss the movie in any way or form. This is truly a shame because it would be nothing less than fantastic to have her take on the movie and how it's gone from a movie that the studio thought would be a major Oscar contender the year it was released to unintentional comedy.

Although personally, I wouldn't have called this DVD the "Hollywood Royalty Edition." Everyone in their right mind knows this should have been the "Box Office Poison Edition."

Here's a couple of YouTube videos featuring Joan/Faye. The first one uses a great remix of Yaz's "State Farm" over the top clips of the real Joan Crawford in various movies and TV shows. The original version had clips of Mommie Dearest, but for some reason it was recut and uses only clips of the real Joan.



This one is a video mash-up of sorts. Mommie Dearest meets "Mamma Mia." Not much more needs to be said.

Music meme answers

I know...I know, they're long delayed, but here's the answers to the music lyrics meme from about 10 days ago.

1. "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" by Wang Chung
2. "Reverse" by Casey Stratton
3. "Bluer Than Blue" by Michael Johnson
4. "The Climb" by No Doubt
5. "Naked" by Spice Girls
6. "Silent All These Years" by Tori Amos
7. "Baby You're Mine" by Basia
8. "I'll Be Around" by Michael W. Smith
9. "Everlasting Love" by Howard Jones
10. "Key Largo" by Bertie Higgins
11. "Get Together" by Madonna
12. "This Is Me Leaving You" by Mary Chapin Carpenter
13. "Secret" by Heart
14. "For A While" by Trisha Yearwood
15. "Fine Time" by New Order
16. "I'm Gonna Love You Too" by Blondie
17. "Windy" by Astrud Gilberto
18. "Has To Be" by Madonna
19. "I Found Someone" by Cher (I really can't believe no one got this one!!)
20. "Lead The Way" by Mariah Carey

Thanks to everyone who played! It was a lot of fun.

My Confessions Tour loot

Here's a shot of all the stuff I bought at the Confessions Tour. (click the image for a bigger version)

Confessions Tour: MGM Grand 5/27/2006

Madonna's Confessions Tour stopped at the MGM Grand Garden Arena over Memorial Day weekend -- and I can hardly believe I was there. Way back when the dates for the tour were announced, I was going to be all noble and say "Oh, I don't need to go because I went to the last two tours and going again is just excessive." Well, as Heidi says, what a cold consolation my nobility would be if I had missed the tour. I was already pretty excited because I was really impressed with the set list and the Jean Paul Gaultier costumes for the tour, I thought, were top notch.

We flew out of Des Moines around 7:20AM on Saturday and (via Chicago) arrived in Las Vegas shortly after noon. The plane ride from Chicago to Vegas was exceptionally long -- three + hours -- but it was generally clear and it was so cool to watch the terrain change from 37,000 feet. We started out over the farmland of the Midwest, then got to the Rocky Mountains (which were so cool from an airplane! I was afraid they'd look flat but you could really see the contours of the mountains.) And then you got the western desert. They say that Iowa is desolate, but let me tell you, it's got nothing on western Colorado and Utah. You couldn't see any sign of human life for miles and miles. The descent into Las Vegas was a bit on the rocky side, as the winds were gusting upwards of 40 mph.

Because of the windy conditions, we didn't get to ride the Stratosphere. In all honesty, it's probably better that we didn't as it was one hell of a long way from the MGM Grand and, while we did go about half way up the strip to the Wynn Las Vegas, it felt like we traveled quite a long way and going the rest of the way up the strip really wasn't in the cards.

We got to the MGM Grand and I checked my carry on luggage so I didn't have to lug it all over Vegas. After that we got on the Las Vegas monorail (with the "Monorail!" song from "The Simpsons" stuck in my head!) and ate at the Wynn Buffet which one of Jeff's friends had recommended. It was pretty pricey -- about 37 dollars a piece -- but the food was very good and there was just about anything in the world that you could possibly want to eat on the buffet. They had prime rib that was exceptionally rare in the middle (Christina Crawford would definitely reject it!) but it was yummy as were the carrots and mashed potatoes. Fortunately, Jeff insisted on paying for my lunch as he knew it would be expensive and that he was pretty much dictating where we went. It was good and we both felt like we should have been taken out on Jabba's sail barge after lunch.

With lunch out of the way, we started exploring various casinos in Vegas as we still had a good 5 hours to kill before the show. While we were at the Wynn, I came across the slot machine that would eventually steal 4 bucks from me (I know, high roller that I am!) It was the Alien slot machine. You could play it as either a 1 cent, 2 cent or 5 cent slot, and I, of course played it as a penny slot. The aliens were wild, and every time they came up they snarled at you and their secondary jaws came out. Jeff has a picture of me actually playing the machine, but I haven't seen his pictures yet. Needless to say, I had to get a picture of this machine before I left. It was only appropriate that this be the machine that took me for my 4 dollars in Vegas. I was up by a couple dollars at one point, and I should have quit while I was ahead, but that's just not the type of mindset that Vegas propagates.

We also stopped by New York, New York and The Venetian (which Heidi says looks nothing like Venice) -- pictures of which are below.



The thing about Vegas casinos is that while they all look different on the outside, and they're all decorated differently on the inside, they are basically the same damn thing all the way up and down the Vegas strip. After a while, frankly, it gets a little bit boring. Mostly, Vegas is just a den of iniquity, not that that's all bad because if you're looking to be bad, Vegas is the city to do it in. Jeff and I both decided that you could do some pretty bad things in Vegas and people mostly just wouldn't notice.

Anyhow, after getting some Starbucks and sitting in the lobby of New York, New York for a while, we made our way over to the MGM Grand to get set up to go to the show. I checked my camera figuring there was no way in hell that I'd be able to bring it into the concert and we headed for our seats. After passing through the metal detectors (was glad I didn't have my camera at that point) we made our way through a sea of people and I got in line to buy some of the tour souvenirs. I only spent 60 bucks on souvenirs, which isn't too bad because I really thought they had some good merchandise this time around. I ended up buying the tour book (which is an obligatory buy as I have the books from both Drowned World Tour and Re-Invention) I also ended up buying the Confessions Tour coffee mug, which was appropriate because I buy a coffee mug everywhere I go and I bought a 5 dollar key chain as well as a 10 dollar poster. I couldn't believe they only had one poster for sale! Usually they have 5 or 6, but I guess they'd rather sell those online.

Anyway, Madonna was fashionably late (which of course made Jeff and me make jokes about how she had to quick run to Target to get some Lee press-ons.) but when the lights went out and the beginning of "Future Lovers" started playing, the crowd just went wild. I have to say, it was gutsy opening with a relatively unknown album track, but for some reason it really worked. Perhaps it was because Madonna's appearance out of a giant disco ball ranks as one of her best entrances ever. I think that the beginning act of the show, which featured "Future Lovers/I Feel Love," "Get Together," "Like A Virgin," and "Jump" is probably the strongest live set she has ever done. Rarely has Madonna been in better voice than she was during this set. The dancers were spot on and Madonna just seemed to be having a blast which is a far cry from when I saw her on the Drowned World Tour and she looked like she was just going through the motions. Granted, we saw her toward the end of the tour that time, and this was just the beginning of the tour this time around, so I suppose some of that is inevitable. I truly love the version of "Like A Virgin" that she did -- and the crowd loved it too. It was the first time in 13 years she's performed this song, and it was amazing to hear 15,000 Madonna fans all singing the "Woh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh" part along with her.

After a quick change of clothes, she made her now infamous entrance for the second act on the discofied cross to sing "Live To Tell." That sounded pretty good, too. Her performances of ballads like that have always been a little bit hit and miss. It was a powerful performance and I didn't really feel like the use of the cross was out of place. This set was Confessions on a Dance Floor heavy, featuring the songs "Forbidden Love," "Isaac," "Sorry," and "Like It Or Not." "Like It Or Not" is a song Jeff doesn't really care for, and I really love it and Madonna danced with a chair during the performance -- something I haven't seen her do since probably "Bye Bye Baby" on the Girlie Show.

The next set was probably the weakest, as Madonna's guitar playing really does nothing for me. I'd much rather have her dancing as opposed to having her feet planted playing the guitar. But she kicked it off with "I Love New York" which I initially hated but have come to love for the glorious cheese that it is. She changed the lyric (as she did at Coachella) from "Just go to Texas/Isn't that where they golf." to " Just go to Texas/and suck George Bush's dick!" which seemed a little over the top but the crowd (predictably) ate it up. The highlight of this set for me was "Let It Will Be," and album track from Confessions, but Madonna looked absolutely fantastic and her tripping all over the stage was the kind of organic dancing we haven't seen from her on tour in a while. Too bad her vocals were God-awful. That one really needs some work in the vocal department. She was off-key and messing up words, but really, who the hell cares, right? Anyone who goes to a Madonna concert expecting a pitch-perfect vocal performance is really going for all the wrong reasons. Following that, she slowed it down with "Drowned World" and "Paradise (Not For Me)" which really caused the show to drag. She sounded pretty good on both, except the vocoder on "Paradise" really has to go because it just sounds dumb.

After that, we were ready for her crank it back up again, and man, did she ever! When the disco beats of "Disco Inferno" started playing, followed quickly by the tell tale "Boogie woogie/Do you like to?" the crowd went nuts. Not long after, Madonna and her two dancers came out in John Travolta white suits and she performed a great mash-up of "Music" with "Disco Inferno." After this was "Erotica" mixed in with its original demo "You Thrill Me" which was damn difficult to understand because of the acoustics of the arena. I have to say I was a little bit disappointed by it because I was expecting more. However, I've heard a "studio version" of it and I'll admit, it's growing on me. The she sang what must be one of her favorites "La Isla Bonita" which morphed into "Lucky Star." That segued almost seamlessly into "Hung Up" which brought out a huge audience reaction. It was also the audience participation part of the show. Madonna egged us all on to repeat "Time goes by so slowly" and we were all screaming it (especially the girl sitting next to me!) But it was never good enough, and before she launched into the end of the song, she berated us, saying "You guys suck!!" Balloons fell from the ceiling and an electronic "Have you confessed?" scrawled across the screen and it was over. At $4.15 a minute, I got more than my money's worth. I'd say it's probably my favorite tour, even more so than Re-Invention, which was a lot more hit filled. This one just had a great energy from the get go and Madonna just seemed like she was having a great time, even in Vegas which traditionally has tough crowds as most of the good seats go to high rollers.

There's a whole other story about us getting back to Iowa, but that's going to have to wait till later as I'm pooped out and, as a reward for anyone who read this far, here's an mp3 file of "Like A Virgin" from the Confessions Tour.

Madonna - Like A Virgin (Confessions Tour)

(all pictures of the concert courtesy of MadonnaTribe.com)

Back from Madonna

A real post about the concert is going to have to wait a couple days for life to settle down, but just to prove that I was actually there, here's a couple pictures.

Here I am with the obligatory picture in front of the tour poster in the MGM Grand.

And here's a shot of the tour commercial that played periodically on the MGM Grand's sign.

A proper blog post soon, I promise. It was too full of good stuff to not blog about it.

We're off to Vegas!!

So I'm blogging from Ankeny, IA tonight at Jeff's house. His house is just that much closer to the Des Moines airport so we only have to get up at the crack of dawn rather than the middle of the night to make our flight. We leave Des Moines at 7:22 AM and get to Vegas around noon. I'm so excited, especially with all the stuff I've read about the tour. So far I haven't listened to any mp3s from the tour or watched any videos (even though they're all over YouTube.)

While the highlight of the trip is definitely the Confessions Tour, I'm also planning on hitting the Stratosphere Big Shot which, now that I look at it, is not just the 8 bucks I thought it was, but 16 bucks because you have to pay to get into the tower. Nonetheless, I'd still love to do it because I have to do it before I'm so old that if I were to do it, I'd have a heart attack or something. One of my co-workers told me today that she was planning on doing that when she was in Vegas, but chickened out at the last minute. I guess time will tell whether or not I really do it, but I sure would like to!

Other than that, I can't say that I'm exceptionally excited about Las Vegas -- not like I would be by New York City, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., even Phoenix (mostly because that would have been the best date to go but a myriad of factors made that not remotely feasible.) But it'll be fun and I'm sure we'll have plenty of good pictures once we're done. Obviously not of the show, but we'll see.

This'll be my third Madonna concert in 5 years, which blows my mind because I think it's just about the most frequently she's toured ever in her career. And to think Anna wasn't even born when I went to the first one!

I'll miss my girls, but it'll be fun.

The tour opens!

I knew the Drudge Report wouldn't be able to resist a sensational headline featuring Madonna on her jewel encrusted cross. And I'm so pleased they lived up to my (admittedly low) expectations. While I'm not entirely sure that her use of the cross, complete with her "crucifixion" while she sings "Live To Tell" as statistics of poverty played on the screen behind her is entirely necessary (it's always bothered me a bit when Madonna forgets that she is, first and foremost, a pop star) I'll have to wait until I actually see the show on Saturday to decide for certain. You have to admit though, it's a stunning visual and once again, the controversy is not entirely unexpected.

However, it's not the first time she's been condemned by the church. By now, I'm sure she's used to it.

I'm trying really hard not to watch any videos or listen to any more audio of the tour than I already have listened to. I'm telling myself -- "It's only a few more days and then you can look at all the spoilers you want!!" It's bad enough that I know the set list, but I think, in the long run, that's not all bad. I'm pretty pleased with it because it mixes the stuff from Confessions in with just the right amount of oldies. What kills me is that "Ray Of Light" probably qualifies as an oldie now! But as far as Immaculate Collection era songs, there aren't many, but this isn't Re-Invention and she's never claimed that it would be. Here's the set list:

Future Lovers
Get Together
Like A Virgin
Jump
Live To Tell
Forbidden Love
Isaac
Sorry
Like It Or Not
I Love New York
Ray Of Light
Let It Will Be
Drowned World (Substitute For Love)
Paradise (Not For Me)
Music
Erotica
La Isla Bonita
Lucky Star
Hung Up

The only song I really wish had made the set list is "Borderline." It's probably one of my all time favorite Madonna songs, and she hasn't sung it on any of the tours I've been to! But it's a good mix of old and new (ok, mostly new) but I don't think it has Drowned World Tour potential. Of course, it helps that Confessions is so dang good that I won't mind hearing most of the album live.

Saturday night can't get here fast enough

I'm soooooooooo excited for the tour if this is 23 second clip is indicative of the entire show!!

The Music Lyrics Meme

a/k/a Everyone else is doing it, so why can't I?

Probably because I don't have anywhere near enough readers to support something like this, but I'm going to do it anyway. So this is your chance, all you lurkers out there -- I wanna hear from you! If you haven't heard about the music lyrics meme, here's a simple summary of the rules:

Step 1: Put your iPod/MP3 player or iTunes on random.

Step 2: Post the first line(s) from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song. (I took out any instrumental songs, natch, as well as any song where the title is uttered in the first line, so it's not entirely the first 20 songs that came up.)

Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from. Those guessing the songs should post in the comments or shoot me an e-mail.

Step 4: Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly and post the title in bold after the stricken song when it is guessed.

Step 5: (for those guessing the songs) If you look up the lyrics on Google or any other search engine, that's called cheating, so don't do it!

So here are the songs --

Song #1: I'd drive a million miles / To be with you tonight "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" by Wang Chung (Comrade Cherry/Cherry On Ice)

Song #2: Somehow I let it slip / My hands were tired / Please turn the car around / I just saw home

Song #3: After you go, I can catch up on my reading "Bluer Than Blue" by Michael Johnson (Cherry On Ice)

Song #4: Step by step, I've come closer to reaching the top "The Climb" by No Doubt (Cherry Red)

Song #5: Naivete and childhood left behind deprived of the goodness of mankind

Song #6: Excuse me, but can I be you for a while? "Silent All These Years" by Tori Amos (Elizabeth)

Song #7: Sitting here and feeling lonely / Had my blue eyes for you only

Song #8: Hey boy - did you find out / What you had to know and what it's all about

Song #9: He wasn't looking for a pretty face / She wasn't searching for the latest style "Everlasting Love" by Howard Jones (Cherry Red)

Song #10: Wrapped around each other / Trying so hard to stay warm "Key Largo" by Bertie Higgins (Cherry On Ice)

Song #11: Down, down down in your heart / Find, find, find the secret "Get Together" by Madonna (Christina)

Song #12: This is your voice of reason / This is your voice of calm

Song #13: We lead two different lives / Just like two lines that never cross

Song #14: Saturday, slept through the morning / Just let the phone ring, now isn't that strange? "For A While" by Trisha Yearwood (Erica)

Song #15: You're much too young to be a part of me / Too young to get a hold on me "Fine Time" by New Order (Scott-O-Rama)

Song #16: You're gonna say you miss me / You're gonna say you'll kiss me

Song #17: Who's peekin' out from under a stairway / Calling a name that's lighter than air "Windy" (the version I have is by Astrud Gilberto, but The Association made it famous) (Rox/Cherry On Ice)

Song #18: Breathe in, breathe out / I say a a little prayer / How the gods above / Could be so unfair "Has To Be" by Madonna (Plantgirl)

Song #19: Don't you know / So many things, they come and go

Song #20: Who would've believed / That you and me would fall and land together

Some of these are easy, some not so much. Have fun! I'll post the answers probably mid-week next week.

Big ship taking on water fast

Now, I haven't seen either Mission Impossible III or Poseidon, but the fact that both of these so-called "summer blockbusters" opened far below expectations does not bode well for the summer movie season, which usually has a lot of good eye candy. Apparently Poseidon only took in around $20 million on its opening weekend, losing out to last weeks loser, MI:3. And while one would be tempted to think that MI:3 actually has legs, unlike most summer movies that blow their wad in the first weekend and then end up on DVD in 3 months, the gross for MI:3 was off the requisite 50% of the previous weekend.

I'm sure that The Da Vinci Code will change this -- you'd think all that controversy being stirred up would do something for the grosses on that movie.

I don't completely chalk this up to bad movies coming out of Hollywood these days, although that's certainly a factor. I think fewer people are actually going to movies -- I know that we can barely afford it any more, and we used to go to everything that came out. Now, we're content to wait until it comes to the local budget theater or wait for DVD.

Jeez, Hollywood, get your heads out of your butts.

Humdrum

So much for keeping up with blogging -- I've gone a whole week without blogging about anything! I've spent the afternoon varnishing a portion of the hardwood floor where Blair continually urinated in his attempt to communicate to any cats who might come to the door that he was the number one cat. I'm actually quite proud of myself because I sanded the part of the floor down (with some help from my dad) and got it all prepped to varnish (I'm not going to bother with staining it for now because it'll be way too hard to match the stain with the rest of the floor.) And today, I put the first coat on. We'll see what it looks like in a little while. And I've also gotten rid of almost all of the cat pee smell from my office -- it had an outside door, so once again, Blair decided he needed to assert himself all over the floor and door. I've ripped up a good section of the carpet (it was crap carpet anyway) and sealed the concrete floor. It's taken several coats, but I think I'm on the right track.

In the meantime, Blair is currently kenneled in a box that my dad made for him. It's all part of a behavior modification program the vet came up with -- he basically needs to learn to use the litter box again. Hopefully, it works. I really don't like the other options we have, so for now, I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

Taylor Dayne

I'm totally into Taylor Dayne right now -- and I'm not even sure what prompted it. But I'm loving it right now. Especially her song from The Shadow, "Original Sin." It's a Jim Steinman song so it's totally over the top and bombastic and I just love the hell out of it.

I'm also listening to the only entire Taylor Dayne CD I have imported to iTunes -- Can't Fight Fate -- which was released in 1989. I bought the CD completely and utterly on the strength of her Tell It To My Heart CD (which, in retrospect, is ultra-cheesy, but I say that like it's a bad thing, no?) I remember not liking the first single, "With Every Beat Of My Heart" all that much, but like all good pop music, it grew on me until I couldn't get it out of my head. The total highlight on the CD is the song "Up All Night" which Jeff and I love and we still trot it out every now and again for mix CDs and what not. At the rate it's going right now, it's likely to make my Summer Upbeat CDs, although it's way too early to tell as it's not even remotely summer yet.

And much like I bought Can't Fight Fate, I purchased Soul Dancing in 1993 (almost) sight unseen (or is it sound unheard.) The first single was a cover of the Barry White classic "Can't Get Enough of Your Love" which I immediately loved (and oddly enough, I'd never heard the original, but I'll chalk that up to youthful innocence and naivete.) Unfortunately, I wasn't as impressed with the rest of the album -- it seemed dreadfully overproduced and it was a shift away from dance to more R&B/soul which I've never really gotten into as much. The musical landscape had changed a lot too and, consequently, Taylor didn't have as much success with this album. Wendy and I always said that the reason the CD was a relative flop was because she didn't have a song where she said "The thrill is gone..." as both TITMH and CFF had songs where she sang that lyric. I ripped a few of the songs on it -- "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love," "Say A Prayer," and "Send Me A Lover" -- but ended up either selling the CD or giving it to the library.

Funny thing is now I wish I had it back because I'd love to give it another chance. Sadly, the Ames Library doesn't have it (they seem to fail me more often than not on those types of things) so I may be forced into re-purchasing select songs from iTunes. Or not. We'll see.

In the meantime, I'm just loving rediscovering this music.

Friday night videos

I've stayed up way too late watching old 80's videos on You Tube. It kind of reminds me of the Friday nights I spent in high school flipping back and forth between Night Tracks, Friday Night Videos and MTV -- watching videos all night. I always forget how good the videos were back then. Not that all of them have aged incredibly well, but it just seems like the videos were so much more original back then. Not that we even see videos any longer, but I digress.

This video of Rhonda from USA's Up All Night was what started it all -- it got me to thinking about the time that late night TV was filled with B-movies and music videos rather than informercials.



What a hoot, huh? So I got searching for all the music videos I would have seen had this been say, 1987 and I was watching Friday Night Videos. Here's a couple that I found.

Kansas City trip -- with a dash of Mormonism

Like I said in my last post, we just got back from Kansas City today. I figure by the end of the month, I'll have been in six different states -- counting Iowa -- which include Missouri and Kansas from this weekend and Illinois, Nevada and Texas when I go to Madonna, so I'm quite the Midwest traveler, I guess. Anyway, we stopped at the official Iowa welcome center on the way out of Iowa and I managed to snap this picture of a sign erected to honor the Mormon travelers who passed through southern Iowa on their way to Utah.

The story of the Mormon trek westward is a fascinating one -- one I read about after I met my friend Kevin who is LDS. Perhaps the best book I've ever read about Mormon history is Nightfall at Nauvoo which was loaned to me by my Lutheran pastor stepfather-in-law and it was a great read. Sadly, it's out of print and expensive as all get out to purchase. The coolest part is that the Mormons actually left Iowa City on my birthday! (granted about a hundred or so years before I was born, but y'know!)

Anyway, we get to the hotel in KC and I'm dead tired and barely able to keep my eyes open. I laid down on the bed to rest a little bit and my daughter comes out of the bathroom where she'd just taken a bath. Suddenly I hear this "Here Daddy, let me tell you a story!" I open my eyes and she has nothing less than The Book of Mormon in her hand! I had to laugh. So I made her pose for a picture.

Mowing

Well, we're back from a whirlwind trip to Kansas City to see some friends of Heidi's and go to the last Jennifer Crusie/Bob Mayer signing at Rainy Day Books in Fairway, KS. It was the last stop on the book tour and it was fun to see Jenny and Bob at the end of the tour. Heidi gave her an altered book of Don't Look Down which Jenny just seemed to love. (You can see pictures of it by clicking here.)

So we get back this afternoon and my yard is just in a complete state of disaster. Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not one of those guys that is completely anal about how his lawn looks, spending every spare minute weed-wacking and fertilizing and pesticide-ing and what not. Mostly, for all I care it can rot as I really despise exerting the energy it takes to keep it looking even halfway presentable. So the fact that I'm noticing how bad the yard looks is really saying something.

Fortunately, it's only like 60 something degrees out today so it's a perfect day to do it. This yard is a particularly aggravating yard to mow as the backyard defies a simple and repeatable mowing pattern. It seems like every time I mow, I have a different approach. Add into this the fact that Anna has both a swing set and a sand box in the back yard so it's like running an obstacle course as well. And don't even ask me about the front yard. Trying to grow grass out there is nigh onto impossible as it is (due to a magnificently grand old oak tree) and I could spend an eternity picking up the twigs and sticks that fall from the trees. So consequently, I can never tell where I've been or what still needs to be mowed.

As you can imagine, I only mow when I absolutely have to and fortunately today, I did it without even working up a sweat -- no small feat as usually whenever I mow I'm dripping with sweat and completely revolting to anyone with a half-way developed sense of smell. It's not often you can do it and not have to immediately head for the shower.

So that's what I did today. Not terribly exciting, but it's something.

Dan, Anna & Sue

Breaking my own rule of no pictures of me on the blog, but this one's too cute to not post.

Back from Chicago

So much for blogging during the trip. We're back now and after a long & rainy drive yesterday, I'm safe in the confines of my house. We're still one cat short (at the vet, we have to basically put him in solitary confinement for the next several months -- long story but the other option is putting him to sleep which is so not an option.)

Those expecting a trip report will have to wait though. I work tonight and then again at 7AM tomorrow, 8AM on Wednesday, and then we're off to Kansas City for a couple days. Nothing like doing all your summer vacationing all at once before summer even starts.

Oh and then there's Madonna in *gasp* 26 days!!

And I was going to post a picture of Anna and me in our matching Sue the T. rex shirts, but Blogger is being dunderheaded and not letting me. So probably later.

Heading for the Windy City

I'm off for a week long trip to Chicago tomorrow (after a one night stop over at my father-in-law's which is on the way.) Heidi's going to the Chicago North RWA Spring Fling Writers' Conference next weekend, and we decided, what the heck, let's make a week out of it since we didn't make it to Europe like we'd originally wanted to this year. I'm excited to go even though it's one hell of a long drive from here. I'm most excited to take my daughter to all the museums because she's old enough now to appreciate them. We're also going to go to the John Hancock observatory -- I asked Anna if she wanted to go to the top of a tall building and she said "But Daddy, I don't want to climb that building like King Kong!!" Kids.

I'm also excited because we're going to go see Jennifer Crusie at the book signing for Don't Look Down on Thursday night. I can't wait to tell her how great her book is.

I'll probably blog some from Chicago this week as the hotel has free wireless, so I might as well take advantage of it.

Nuclear nightmares

No, I'm not having dreams of nuclear war again, but I found an absolutely amazing set of photos via Metafilter. It's called Nuclear Nightmares: 20 Years Since Chernobyl and words can't really describe how the photos made me feel. They are incredible photos, but they are also disturbing photos. Chernoby occurred during a time that I wasn't really conscious of a lot of the news going on in the world (I was an early teenager and just wasn't paying attention.) But this makes you sit up and take notice.

Dolly and her leg

I know, laziest blog post ever. But does Dolly even have control of that leg of hers?

Worst. Winter. Ever.

For being sick, that is. I'm on the tail end of yet another plague of unknown origin -- and I can't even pin this one on my daughter! It all started on Saturday morning when I woke up and was sneezing and coughing. I figured it was my allergies because we were in Washington and when you go just that much farther south, there's just that much more in blood vs. here in Ames. So I resigned myself to a little bit of misery until we went back home that night. Trouble was, I didn't get any better by the time we got back. And what was worse, it had been raining all evening, which usually takes all the pollen out of the air so I started to wonder.

Sunday we ended up going down to Petsmart in Ankeny, and I tell ya, that about wiped me out. And by the time the afternoon got here, I had all the classic flu signs -- coughing, low grade temp, myalgias, shivers. It really wasn't fair because I've already done the flu once this winter and I really didn't think I needed a second helping. I started watching Jarhead later that night, but had to go to bed when there was only half an hour left because I was just feeling that crappy.

So I had Monday off because I'd taken a vacation day, but it was the worst sick I've been in a long time. When I first woke up, I thought I was feeling better -- so much so that I got up and took Anna to preschool, but after that, I came back and crashed. Watched the last little bit of Jarhead and then watch War of the Worlds. Seriously, sitting on the couch was all I could do. I was alternately cold and hot, my eyes burned, I was seriously uncomfortable. Midafternoon I took my temperature and it was almost 103! I can't tell you the last time I ran a fever like that. I knew even then that there was no way I'd be able to work today.

And sure enough, I woke up this morning around 5 AM and called in because all the myalgias and coughing and crap were still there. But as of now, I'm starting to feel a little better, but I'm still trying to take it easy. We're off to Chicago next week, and like I want to be sick for that!!

But after all this, you'd think I'd be immune to avian flu. Oh and mumps too. Definitely don't want that either.

Tornado Flickr photo set

I've uploaded my photos that I took of the tornado destruction in Iowa City. They're certainly not as good as the ones that you can get from the media outlets here in Iowa, but let's just say it was something to be in it.

Dan's Flickr Photo Set of the tornado.

More tornado pictures

Heidi and I went up to Iowa City this afternoon -- mostly because we'd been planning on it, but also, admittedly, to gawk.

My brother-in-law has put up some tornado stuff. Click here to access it. In the meantime, here's some pictures of storm damage and other storm related stuff (none of it, unfortunately, was taken by me, I gakked it from around the web, especially the Iowa City Press-Citizen, KCRG and University of Iowa's web site.)

Egads!

This is the sight over Iowa City last night. And apparently, the downtown looks like a war zone. We were traveling from Ames to Washington last night and had to go by Iowa City to get there, and it's a good thing we left late or we'd have driven right into that.

More stuff here.

Las Vegas, here were come

Well, we booked our flight to Las Vegas to see the Confessions Tour last night. Despite what many people at work told me, I could find neither outrageously inexpensive airfare to Las Vegas nor a direct flight from Des Moines. So we ended up paying about $300 a piece for airfare. We're leaving Des Moines at 7:22 AM on Saturday morning, May 27th with a connecting flight in Chicago. We'll get to Vegas around noon on Saturday. The concert isn't until 8PM, so we'll have plenty of time to take in the Vegas strip, and since the MGM Grand is on the strip, we'll be right there so no worries. And rather than book a hotel, Jeff and I will be hopping a 12:40 AM flight from Las Vegas to Dallas-Ft. Worth early Sunday morning -- getting back to Des Moines around 8:30AM on Sunday. So we'll spend a grand total of 12 hours or so in Vegas, but I'm not really a gambler so who really cares. We're going to see the concert, not gamble.

I'm not sure how my nearly 34 year old body will take that kind of abuse, but I think it's better than spending the night in a hotel -- certainly cheaper and plus as I've looked around for hotels, there really aren't any available that weekend that are anywhere remotely close to the strip. Plus, with it being a holiday weekend, price gouging is definitely the rule -- although I was surprised to find that on non-holiday weekdays, the MGM Grand is actually reasonably priced! However, for Memorial Day weekend, it's 400+ dollars a night, and there aren't any rooms anyhow, so there ya go.

Only six weeks away! And I figured it out, if Madonna performs for 2 hours, we'll be paying roughly $4.50 a minute for the privilege of seeing her live. While I have mixed feelings about that -- I mean, does she really need the money at this point in her career? (and if she does, shame on her for not investing more wisely) -- I'm mostly just happy to be going. I know there's not one single artist besides her that I'd shell out that kind of cash to see, and consequently, I shook off the nearly immediate buyer's remorse that hit me yesterday.

Oh well, it's not like someone held a gun to my head and made me buy the tickets. I guess she charges that much for tickets because she can. Although Jeff and I were laughing last night because $265 seats at Drowned World Tour probably would have been front row seats!

Fours

I stumbled across this quick and easy Enneagram test online, and I'm posting it because I'm a four through and through, and whenever I refer to my inner four, this is what I'm referring to, for those readers (the few that I actually have) that may not know.

ENNEAGRAM TYPE 4

How to Get Along with Me

• Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
  

• Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.


• Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.


• Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy,
  I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.


• Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being a Four

• my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level


• my ability to establish warm connections with people


• admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life


• my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor


• being unique and being seen as unique by others


• having aesthetic sensibilities


• being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being a Four

• experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair


• feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
  


• feeling guilty when I disappoint people


• feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me


• expecting too much from myself and life


• fearing being abandoned


• obsessing over resentments


• longing for what I don't have

Fours as Children Often

• have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games


• are very sensitive


• feel that they don't fit in


• believe they are missing something that other people have


• attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.


• become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
  


• feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

Fours as Parents

• help their children become who they really are


• support their children's creativity and originality


• are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings


• are sometimes overly critical or overly protective


• are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed

We're going!!!

Oh. My. God. I can't believe it. I actually got tickets to Madonna's Confessions Tour in Las Vegas for Memorial Day weekend. They were ungodly expensive -- 265 dollars a seat, but you know what? I don't do anything else -- I don't go out for beers every other night with the guys, we don't have cable, we own one car, I walk to work. I deserve it -- most definitely. And I have a back up plan if Memorial Day weekend ends up being my weekend to work, so there!

Now it's time to find airfare and hotel. Jeff's going to pay the airfare -- will likely be comparable to the ticket price. And then trying to find a hotel.

I'm so excited!!! The seats aren't spectacular -- better than our Drowned World Tour seats (nothing above us but ceiling) and not quite as good as our Re-Invention Tour seats, but we're in the arena!!

Confessions Tour

It's that time again. Madonna's hitting the road and even though I told myself that I probably wouldn't be able to go, I got one look at the rumoured set list and now I want to go like nothing else. Ticket prices are, as expected, astronomical. And any hope I had of going to see her in Phoenix and stay at my brother's is history as it doesn't work for Jeff and I can't get the day off work anyway. Chicago, the closest she's coming around here is out as well as I can't get the day off work and, truth be told, I wasn't that crazy about the United Center anyway.

So I talked to Jeff tonight and we're thinking about trying to get tickets to her show in Las Vegas on Memorial Day weekend. However, I looked for flights and hotel combos and they're all rather pricey, which doesn't surprise me too much because all those hotels on the Vegas strip are going to be expensive. It stinks because I don't want to stay so far out that I have to rely on a cab to get back after the show (we learned our lesson at the DWT when my very pregnant wife came and picked us up in a cab she got from the hotel as there wasn't a cab to be found after the show was over.) However, I also don't want to spend a fortune because tickets are probably going to be around 200 bucks by the time it's all said and done. Besides, Memorial Day may end up being my weekend to work -- a baby has to be born a bit early for it to happen, but theoretically it could happen.

I've been looking into the Philadephia show which is July 12th. Airfare isn't too bad and the hotels are a little more reasonable. Only trouble is I don't know Philadelphia at all so I don't know where a good place to stay is -- as in, I don't want to stay in the ghetto (cue Dolly's back up singers -- sorry, inside joke) or have to risk life and limb to get to the concert. Sorry Madonna, you're not worth that.

In the end, I have to say that I'm a bit torked that she thinks she has to charge so dang much money for her concerts. But that's another post entirely.

But in talking to Jeff tonight, we're both on the same page. We've seen her twice, which is more than a lot of my Madonna fan friends I know have seen her, and if we have to wait for the DVD on this one, well, I guess it'll have to be that way. Truth be told, I wish the tour started in Europe and finished in the States as August is a much better month for me to get time off work!!

Oh well, if it's meant to be, it'll happen. Never in a million years would I have dreamt that we would be going to Washington, D.C. to see the Re-Invention Tour a couple years ago. Time will tell.

Is it too late to hope for a last minute add of the Wells Fargo Arena? :)

Get the point? Good, now wash.

This was taken in the men's room of a family restaurant that we were at last weekend for my grandparents' 65th wedding anniversary. (whoa! 65 years!) If I hadn't already been planning to wash my hands after using the bathroom, I don't think I could have withstood the guilt I would have felt thanks to that sign.

I guess in a few years it'll say "Dirty hands spread H5N1. WASH HANDS!"

Death

I've been (rather inadvertantly) reading quite a few books about death these days. I finished Stephen King's Cell a while back (his take on the zombie genre) and quite unwittingly followed it up with Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man -- although actually it's the fact that Reaper Man is a de facto zombie book as well, but more about that later. And finally, as if on cue, I run across Christopher Moore's latest novel A Dirty Job at Borders this weekend when we were out looking for the new Jennifer Crusie novel Don't Look Down (hits stores April 4th but Heidi's been hearing that it's been available early in some places.)

In A Dirty Job, a nice Beta-male finds out that he's basically, well, Death. With a capital D.

I've only read one of Moore's novels -- and that was The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror. I mean, how could I refuse it? It was Christmas AND zombies!!! And it was a really good book, even though it got off to a slow start, it ended up being well worth the read. I've never gotten around to reading Lamb, but it's on my to-be-read pile.

The unfortunate thing is that I'm having to resort to the library in order to read A Dirty Job, which means there are 7 people in front of me waiting to read it. I guess as soon as I'm done with Reaper Man (and what a hoot it is!) I'm going to read that James Frey's A Million Little Pieces just to see what all the commotion is about. Someone at work loaned it to me so it's not like I went out and bought it or anything.

Radioactive dreams

Another in my recent slew of intensely vivid dreams occurred the other night. I'm not sure what brought it about, but I dreamt that there was a nuclear war. The plot of my dream played very closely to that of the 1980s TV movie The Day After -- which I remember watching as a kid and being alternately petrified of and fascinated by (something that I think pretty much sums up a key component of my personality.) Anyway, I remember that we were at Heidi's grandparents' house and I distinctly remember the mushroom clouds -- they looked just like they did in The Day After. Windows broke, the blast wave came across the town and then it was over. After that, the sun was shining and cars were driving and it looked just fine, but I knew that the radiation level was too high -- it was all a ruse.

I looked up what it meant to dream of a nuclear bomb and according to the dream interpretations site that I frequently go to in cases like this. This is what it said:

• To dream of a nuclear bomb, suggests feelings of helplessness, being threatened and loss of control. You may be experiencing great hostility and rage to the point of being destructive.
• Alternatively, you may be expressing a desire to wipe out some aspect of yourself.
• It may also be an indication that something crucial and precious to you has ended and important changes are about to occur.

I'm not sure what to make of that -- I'd like to chalk it up to my deeply embedded fear of nuclear war. It's one I don't consciously think of much anymore, but the thought of nuclear war just petrified me as a kid. During the 80s, before the Cold War started to thaw a little bit, I lived in fear that I'd wake up in the middle of the night with the air raid sirens going off, ICBMs inbound from the Soviet Union. Saying that makes it sound like I thought of nothing else, which isn't true, of course, but it was a very real fear that I had. I remember being in college and waking up in the middle of the night to the sounds of the civil defense sirens and all that same 10 year old boy fear welled right back up, even though by then, the Berlin Wall had fallen and the Cold War was pretty much over. I didn't even think of tornadoes, which would be a really common reason for civil defense sirens to be going off in Iowa, I thought of nuclear annihalation.

When I was in the 8th grade, I did a research paper on the effects of an atomic blast. There was a book that I got from the library from which I did a lot of my research called Nuclear War in the 1980s? Of course, completely dated now, but how I'd like to get my hands on a copy of that book for my late 20th century history library that I've managed to accrue.

(image courtesy Wikipedia)

An evening with Anne Murray

Well, I got back from the Anne Murray concert about an hour ago, and it was a really fun show! It was at C.Y. Stephens Auditorium here in Ames which is the mid-sized venue at the Iowa State Center. It's where a lot of the touring Broadway musicals end up playing, Anna has her dance recital there. It probably seats around 2500 people, so it's not like a big arena where major draws are going to play. Consequently, it's really a fun place to see concerts because there isn't a bad seat in the house. The performers don't look like tiny bugs running around on a stage and it's a pretty intimate setting.

Anne was pretty much sold out -- there were only isolated seats empty. As I suspected, she played a lot of her late 70s-early 80s crossover hits. "Shadows In The Moonlight," "I Just Fall In Love Again," "You Needed Me," & "Could I Have This Dance" (complete with audience sing-a-long) were all featured rather prominently. She also played a lot of standards as that's apparently what she's been recording these days. Her latest album is all songs written before 1940 and she sang a lot of those songs.

She pretty much knew that she was a nostalgia act, and played it for all it was worth. Her self-depracating humor was great -- that's one of the things I love about going to these shows where the artists are a little bit past their prime. They aren't afraid to make fun of themselves because they have absolutely nothing to lose. She's not exactly a spring chicken anymore (she's 60 years old) so there were a lot of age jokes. She talked about how she had glasses in every room in her house and still can't find a pair when she needs one. And she looked pretty good for being my mom's age. I mean, she reminded me a lot of Katherine Chancellor from "The Young & The Restless" only without all the bangles and baubles. But that frosted hair! What was that all about?

The crowd was very much a geriatric crowd. I'd say that the average age was probably 55 or so, putting me well in the tail end of the bell curve. But having said that, it seemed appropriate that I was seeing her perform, and in Ames, the place where I walked around the Iowa State campus listening to her music on my Walkman 16 years ago.

And for those of you who may not have ever heard Anne Murray, here's an MP3, available for a limited time. It's her cover of the Monkees' "Daydream Believer."

Anne Murray -- Daydream Believer

Buy Anne Murray CDs.

Guiltiest of guilty

Pleasures, that is. Tonight I'm going to see Anne Murray here in Ames with my folks. And that's no April Fools joke either. My wife wasn't interested and my daughter's just a little bit too young to take to something like that, although I have no doubt that she'd like the music. I have no idea what Anne Murray is going to sing in concert -- whether it'll be a collection of her hits from the 70s and 80s or if it'll be all standards or what. Hopefully, she'll do just like Olivia Newton-John did at her concert that we saw last fall -- know she's a nostalgia act and play it for every penny it's worth.

I have a rather odd history with Anne Murray. It all started when we were on vacation one summer and my mom and dad played Anne Murray's Greatest Hits in the van over and over again. I remember liking the song "Broken Hearted Me' -- most likely because it was a bit on the dramatic side and appealed to the four in me. So anyway, I was away at college, my freshman year at Iowa State right here in Ames, and I venture to say that I was the only 18 year old male on the campus listening to Anne Murray on my Walkman. I would dare anyone to out-geek that. I do remember how my friend Kelly always used to ask me if "A Little Good News" was on that tape, which sadly, it was not.

I'll be sure to write a full report of the concert here later tonight.

Now I'm off to see if any of Madonna's tour dates are leaking this weekend -- they're set to be announced on Monday!!

The Sun Is Burning

I'm really into the latest project Casey Stratton has put out on his web site -- a collection of traditional folk songs called The Sun Is Burning. He released it last week on St. Patrick's Day -- which is fitting because the bulk of it is Irish folk songs (although there is a French one thrown in for good measure.)

Funny thing is I wouldn't have suspected that I would like it as much as I do, traditional Irish folk music is not something that I normally listen to. It helps a lot that Casey does a fantastic job interpreting these songs -- the production isn't fancy at all, but that actually helps a lot. These are folk songs after all, they don't really fit fancy arrangements or state-of-the-art production.

I had to laugh when I started listening to the song "The Ash Grove" because I swore that I knew the tune from somewhere, but just couldn't place it. As it turns out, it's the tune to the old Lutheran hymn "Sent Forth By God's Blessing" -- the lyrics of which you can't find anywhere on the web because apparently us Lutherans are sticklers for copyright. But it's a great interpretation of the song. It's been fun investigating the origins of these songs that I previously hadn't been exposed to.

And on the other end of the Casey spectrum, I found his techno-ambient cover of New Order's "Regret" on iTunes. Yay--because I was about to spring for the whole Blue Order: A Tribute To New Order CD just to get that one track. Glad I didn't have to. "Regret" is probably my favorite New Order track, and I just love Casey's version of it.

Buy: The Sun Is Burning by Casey Stratton
Buy: "Regret" by Casey Stratton from Blue Order: A Tribute To New Order

Finally kicked the ... skunk?

Well, I think I've finally coughed up the last of the crud that infected all of us last week. I still have this dry, hacky cough, but I feel so much better. There's nothing like being sick to remind you of how good you feel the rest of the time! Anna's on day 8 of her antibiotic for her ear infection, and I asked her if her ear still hurt, to which she replied, "it's still kind of loud" which I assume means that it's full of fluid, but she says it doesn't hurt anymore.

In completely unrelated news, the other night I dreamt that I was walking down the street with Anna and someone we were about to meet was walking a skunk on a leash. Now, I figured this had to mean something, and sure enough it does. And sure enough, it's something bad. To see a skunk in your dream means either 1) you're driving people away or turning people off or 2) all is calm with the situation an you don't particularly like it or agree with it. Not sure what to make of that, but obviously hope it's not the former!

I've never actually seen a wild skunk, which is something else because they're not exactly uncommon in Iowa. However, I've sure smelled them while driving at night in the country. But I guess they are nocturnal, and plus, who really wants to meet up with a skunk? It's one of the animals that the CDC automatically considers rabid in the case of a bite and therefore you get to have the series of not entirely fun (but not as bad as popular urban folklore would have you believe) rabies shots. And besides, they stink anyway.

Down with the sickness

Ugh...we've got plague at our house. And Anna was definitely Patient Zero in this infestation. She ran almost frighteningly high fevers on Thursday and Friday -- so much so that we ended up taking her into the clinic just to make sure there wasn't something worse going on than what we could see. Then Friday afternoon, I came home from work with all-over body aches and by the time I went to bed at 9pm, I was so achy and chilled that I pretty much would rather have been dead (dramatic, I know!) And then last night, it hit Heidi just about the same way.

Anna's pretty much recovered, although she still hacks a lot ("Daddy, I don't wanna cough forever!") I have lovely junk in my lungs and my chest hurts from coughing. And what's better is my sister moved back to my parents' house this weekend, but not before being infected with whatever this is. And then add into the picture the fact that my brother and his wife are here from Arizona and will likely get infected as well. Happy spring break!

But I haven't been able to get that Richard Cheese version of "Down With The Sickness" out of my head since this all started -- you know the one that was in the remake of Dawn of the Dead a couple years back. Something about "you fucker get up, come on get down with the sickness" done in a lounge lizard version just tickles my funny bone.

Obligatory Oscar post

So I stayed up and watched the Oscars last night like we've done every year since whatever year it was that Braveheart won Best Picture and I can't help but feel like someone pulled the rug out from underneath me while I wasn't looking. I have to say that I was stunned when Brokeback Mountain didn't win Best Picture. Wait -- that's not entirely true. I did watch Crash last week because I knew it had a chance of sneaking in and taking Best Picture, so it didn't come as a complete shock when Jack Nicholson read that film's name at the end of the Oscar telecast last night. It's a good film -- and after I got done watching it, I said to myself, "Now, if that wins Best Picture instead of Brokeback, I won't feel too bad." And truthfully, it was a good film. Not the best movie I've ever seen in my life, but still very capable.

But for some reason, I still can't get over Brokeback Mountain not winning. A lot of the blogs this morning and screaming "homophobia!" which I'm not sure I entirely agree with. While the case could be made that even members of the generally liberal AMPAS were turned off by the subject matter of Brokeback, I'm more inclined to think that Brokeback Mountain suffered from the split-the-difference factor that seems to have become more common in recent Oscar years. What I think happened is that a lot of Academy members decided to vote for Brokeback by voting for Ang Lee's direction, and then to recognize Crash's Paul Haggis by voting for Crash for Best Picture. At least that's what I'd like to believe anyway, and for the most part, I don't think there was some conspiracy to cheat Brokeback out of the Best Picture Oscar. There's certainly plenty of precedence for splitting the Best Director/Best Picture Oscar.

But a part of me just can't get the bad taste out of my mouth. Perhaps it's because Brokeback affected me much more deeply than Crash did and on that alone, I feel it was the best film of the year. I know that Heidi will disagree with me, and Jeff will too. It's silly to admit, but every time I heard that Brokeback theme "The Wings" during the Oscars, I just started to tear up a little bit. I'm not sure why, but I just did. I'm very glad that the score won the Oscar, because it is by far the most original score I've heard in a while and it fit the movie just perfectly. And besides, even though John Williams has lost 40 Oscars, he's won five which is probably more than this guy will ever win in his lifetime.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the night for me was reserved for the usually uneventfuly Best Original Song. I so wanted Dolly Parton to win and it seemed like she was poised to win, but then that utterly ridiculous rap song from Hustle & Flow beat her out in the end. To her credit, Dolly seemed genuinely happy for them, but I couldn't help but think about the relatively few opportunities Dolly Parton is going to have to win an Oscar. Not that it matters to her, I'm sure. She has a closet full of awards I'm sure, but I just felt like an Oscar would be a good way to reward her 40+ year career of songwriting. But I suppose that's not what the Oscars are about, really. And as Heidi pointed out, how many more chances are the guys who won going to get at Oscar? Valid point.

So overall, it was kind of a disappointing Oscar year because the one big upset was half-predicted and then everything else fell right into the place where all the Oscar prognositcators said. And in the end, it's just the fucking Oscars.