A Digression: Night One Of Ecstasy

I adhere to a steadfast belief that every great thing which happens in life must be immediately counteracted by a bad thing. Back in May on the exact same day I purchased my tickets to the Kylie Minogue show I became as gruesomely ill as I had been since my appendix ruptured. This happened to occur at the time of the whole supposed swine flu "pandemic" and so I am convinced - and no one for the rest of my time on this earth can ever convince me otherwise - I got swine flu to counteract the Kylie tickets. In 2005 I saw Bruce Springsteen at the Rosemont Theater...and the next morning my car got hit. 2007 was the greatest year for movies I'd ever experienced...while also being the worst year for Nebraska Football I'd ever experienced. Believe me, the list is long.

Thus, I was not one bit surprised when on the eve of my live music tour of a lifetime I felt myself getting sick as the work day wound down. And then when I awoke in the middle of the night in a horrific sweat, my head pounding, my throat throbbing, do you know what I did? I laughed out loud. Honest to God. Well played, universe. Well played.

You should not presume, however, that this development would keep me from the Ra Ra Riot show. Not a chance in hell. As I told my concertgoing companions, you could shoot me in the face and I'd still go. So there I was, right down front, cheering and singing and dancing and feeling the groove. Living life, baby, illness be damned. Maybe I didn't need the vodka tonic and Stella except that I totally did. (The following are the cellphone pictures I took from my vantage point. They are quite terrible when you consider how close I was to them but you're just gonna have to deal with it. I gotta get me one of them digital cameras.)


The band in all its bounding about the stage endlessly glory.


Rebecca Zeller, violinst. The only person (male or female) to have captured the sound of my own heartbeat on record.

I could rave about the show and advise you how it was such a mind boggling marvel it felt like the whole thing happened in 32 seconds or claim the band is better than Yosemite National Park (they are) or report we were privileged enough to hear a few new songs (the one that opened the encore seems to offer ample evidence they will be much more than a one-album wonder) but I'll spare you. Instead I'll put it this way: I'm back at work and while my sore throat has dissipated slightly my head cold has become infinitely worse, my voice is pretty much gone, and my stomach is shot. I should be wishing for death. I should be miserable.

Yet I couldn't be happier.