U2 blues

Today is a sad sad day in my household.

I missed the opportunity to get tickets for one of the U2 Texas concerts this Sept.

The problem being that I didn't even know they'd announced the date, let alone that they'd already put them on sale. Why wasn't someone paying attention to this for me? Huh? Huh?

The first U2 concert I ever attended was the Joshua Tree Tour. Actually, that was my first concert ever. BB King Opened. NOW I know how cool that was, at 13 I spent most of his time on stage going to get some nachos. This is the very concert that they show on Rattle n' Hum.

The lights went dark...a red screen backlit the stage. As the first swell of "Where the Streets Have No Name" came up, you could see the dark silouettes of those Dublin Demigods crossing the stage. I GET it when I see those screeching girls, crying and clutching their hair on old Beatles clips. It felt like my heart was simply too large for my chest.

And I'm not so sure I wouldn't still react that way.

The band has broken my heart a bit over the years. The whole techno thing would have been acceptable music to me, were it some other band. It wasn't BAD music, just hard to reconcile with U2. The fee they charge for "members" to their website...the insanely high ticket prices varying by seat quality (I paid, count 'em $20 for that first concert, and EVERY legally purchased seat in the house cost the same...if you got a great seat, you earned it by standing your happy ass in line for hours upon hours.)

It just wasn't the same when Bono performed his ritualistic beckoning of the audience to sing "I will sing, sing a new song", while wearing ridiculous posturing sun glasses, and 100 foot high screens flashed "POP!" at you.

But I've come to accept that all things must change. I can sing along quite happily to Achtung Baby, though nothing in recent years will ever move me as much as "Bad".

This was the first concert I planned to attend since the early 90's. I was in fact, a little alarmed while watching VH-1's show on their tour, that my heart still fluttered while just watching them on screen. When you get to be an adult, you wonder that you can still feel those stirrings of youth madness. It felt like a whisper of the feeling you got at 16 when the boy-you-torture-yourself-over-night-after-night actually leans in, so close, and you can see the little razor cut on his chin and smell his smell, the whole while disbelieving that it's really, really happening.

How can you not love a band that STILL makes you feel that way after all those years.

They were really my first true love, you know.

Reunion thwarted....sigh...the course of true love....

The electronic revolution

Just as men and women must go through the teen rights of passage to reach adulthood, it follows that we have many smaller but important maturity milestones in our lives.

Though a 21 year old would like to think being able to drink legally (rarely responsibly) is a right of passage, I can say that barfing on your best friends shoes at 2 am the night of your birthday is NOT a milestone.

Being able to buy a car/rent an apartment without a co-signer...milestone.

The first time you stay home on a Friday night b/c there's a show on you want to watch...that is a milestone.

Going to a wedding/birthday/graduation and buying your own gift for the person, b/c you can no longer crowd in under your parents gift, coloring your first gray hair, telling a man you really like to shove it when he really deserves to shove it and not CARING if he cares...those are milestones.

I have finally reached another milestone that I've longed to reach.

Deleting email forwards without reading them.

I am the person who has to read every single comic in the comics section b/c I somehow feel dreadfully guilty that Mary Worth might feel left out. The worst part of this is that I'm not even kidding for comic effect. I really am that messed up.

So you can imagine the feelings of shame I feel if I don't read someones email Even when it's got 20 "fwd:fwd:fwd...." in the subject line...even when it's clearly one I've read before. What if this time Cracker Barrell really is going to send me a coupon? What if that little(now 60) dying boy is thiiis close to reaching his goal. Maybe this time my head won't pop off when I read this forwarded prayer, with the animated flying dove clipart, asking the lord to grant that little Narad is forced to pray en masse to Jesus during Math class that his Govt. teacher go straight to hell for teaching the Bill of Rights. If I delete it, I just might miss that opportunity to go psycho on someones ass for sending me a forward knowing I'm in complete disagreement to start with. (Boy has the internet made passive aggressiveness so much more efficient. How lucky we are to live in a world where you can be pissed off instantly by people living 500 miles away, and all without long distance or postal charges. )

On top of that, I spent years thinking that maybe in THIS forward, they will have first typed a message actually TO me. Can you imagine that? Personalizing an email? How naive I have been that they might actually be interested in me as a person, *Tch, tch*

But now, I'm finding that I can do it....click, delete. No shame! (just a little pinch).

I am willing to suspend my policies for a small few persons, who like me, show discretion when forwarding items to people. Imagine taking into consideration a persons personality and interest before sending them a forward. Imagine thinking specifically of each person one by one, rather then clicking a group list of people who WILL share your same interests by God. Some of us actually do this. It's not just an urban myth you know.

Because of that, I also have my worst offenders list. These people are gifted with an automatic delete function, and I suffer little remorse for it. It's easier to do when you realize you have received 52+ emails from them this year, and not one of them was addressed solely to you.

I feel liberated and free by taking back my email from them. No longer will I be enslaved by their electronic tyranny. Come people, join me on the path to Salvation.

Next step: Christmas cards...merry missive or cultish chain letter ritual?

Hazzard County, USA

My husband has a deeply childhood regressive fascination with the Dukes of Hazzard. Now I'd like to pretend that I have the right to stare down my nose at this taste, but then to do so I'd have to ignore that I still get a little giddy every time Ricky Schroeder comes on television. We don't so much outgrow things from our youth as store them aside to revisit when being an adult particularly sucks.

I certainly remember my own adolescent crush on John Schneider..so this show was, at one time, not such a stinker to me. I won't even deny that at the tender age where Dukes of Hazzard came along, I wanted deeply to be a mesh of Daisy Duke, Solid Gold Dancer and a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader. The curse of most girls born in the 70's was that their idea of grown up glamour involved Glittery spandex, shiney satin and heels with shorts. It could be equally argued that we had a decided lack of liberated female influence OR that we were heralded into a new era where a woman celebrated her own sexuality.

But I digress.

As an adult I can recognize logically that DOH is about as bad as sitcom gets. However, it's somehow easy to forget dialog like "woo-eeee, Cooter" when you find yourself happily singing along to "Just a good ol' boooys" and recalling with pleasure watching stupid cooty-filled boys take face plants into car hoods as they tried to imitate the sliding into car windows bit.

Because I love him so very very much, I have purchased the man the first two seasons of DOH on DVD. I keep trying to explain to him that though I love him enough to support his love of the Dukes, I do not love him enough to watch 21 hours of season one.

And yet here I sit. And I still don't know which one is Bo and which one is Luke. And how the hell can you have three cousins living with one uncle? So there are THREE sets of missing parents?? I'm questioning this whole "uncle" Jesse. I'm thinking more of an "Uncledaddy" situation. They don't call it Hazzard County for nuthin'.

Trivia: Did you know that the actor who played Boss Hogg was a deeply educated man who spoke like a kajillion languages? That he had to wear a fat suit to play BH?

Uh-huh...bet you didn't know that. And now I bet you're wishing to God you could forget.

As I sit here watching, now, season two (kill me...kill me please), one thing grinds into my head ("just one thing?" you're probably asking yourself).

Yaaaa-hooo. Yaaaa--freakin'--hooo.

This is what Bo (Luke?) Duke always says, "yaaa-hooo."

WHO says yaa-hoo? What rightfully sane redneck says yaa-hoo?

J'ACCUSE!!!!

Good ol' boys my ASS!

It's Yee-HAW, thanguverahmush. Someone outta kick that citah' boys ay-uss.

Although to be fair, perhaps it's only Texans that say Yee-haw. In which case, I'm still right b/c we're the definitive answer on gutteral non-verbal communiques of emotion.

Y'know...

Sometimes I overthink things.