Happy Blogday to You

It's my blog's fourth birthday! Or anniversary. Whichever way you choose to look at it. It's been through some ups and downs, including lack of posts for months at a time. And looking ahead to my move to Chicago and unknown access to the interweb, it may go into hibernation for a while. But for now, it's alive and kicking.

I forgot to mention about the Radiohead show (which was fantastic, by the way) that I saw them literally a few days after I moved to St. Louis, at the same venue where I just saw them last night. So seeing them again right before I leave town sort of made for some nice closure. The circle of life.

Yeah, it was a great show. Unlike last time (when I had seats), I was on the lawn. It made for a different experience. I wasn't as close to the stage, so sometimes it felt harder to connect to the show, but the lawn provided a great view of the sky. And we happened to get the one good day sandwiched in between all kinds of gross weather. So that was lucky. And being on the lawn, in the middle, pretty far in the back, also gave a great view of everyone else who was there. You look out, and it's just a sea of people in all directions. When Radiohead was on stage and it got darker, you could look out and see probably hundreds of cell phones being held up in the air, their little screens lit up. Kind of a more modern version of the cigarette lighter in the air thing. Also, they were undoubtedly taking all sorts of pictures, audio, and video.

Speaking of which - one of the best parts of the show was the video. Each of the guys in the band had a video camera that pointed at them, pretty close up, so even way in the back you could see what each of them was doing. And each shot was displayed in its own box next to the others and projected on a screen on stage, so if you were far enough back you could kind of take them all in at once. It was a great effect. Thom Yorke spent some time looking directly into the camera in a creepy way. The lights also made the show. They had these big vertical tubes on stage that must have had lights inside them, and during different songs they lit up in different ways and in different colors. During a song that talked about rain, it really looked like rain was coming down. At some points the lights even tracked the vocals, going up and down.

I think I also failed to fully grasp that I'm seeing two of my desert island top 5 (or 3) favorite bands in a span of 4 days. What are the chances? How great is this?? Can't wait to see Wilco.

In other news, here is one of the people who Wash U is giving an honorary degree to tomorrow at Commencement. I hadn't heard of her before, but apparently she is awful. Very conservative, anti-feminist, bigoted, you name it. She actively worked against the Equal Rights movement.

And the best part? She called her critics "a bunch of losers" and told them to "get a life."

Apparently when you reach a certain age, your idea of an insult reverts back to the level of a 7th-grader. I'm probably not going to be at Commencement tomorrow, which is too bad because I'd really like to see what happens.

More on the story here.