So before I start, here's my political INCORRECT thought of the day. I've been watching that stupid new NBC show called "Grease--You're the One that I Want", and the whole premise of the show is to find two unknowns who will appear on Broadway in a production of Grease as Danny & Sandy. And as I watch the show, I see there are black people applying for the roles....and I can't help thinking to myself....
Does this mean I can audition for The Color Purple during its next Broadway run??
Cuz, I'm just wonderin.....
Anyway, as some of you may know, Kim & I went back in time to our teenage years and hit 3 concerts in 3 nights a few days back. I gotta tell ya, its not easy getting old and waking up the next day after a concert with your ears ringing and trying to get around on 4 hours of sleep. Here's some thoughts on the shows:
1) Bob Seger--Thursday night, 1/11/07, in Hollywood, Florida at the Hard Rock Casino. Seger is on his first concert run in something like 10 years and he's always been one of those guys who I had never seen in concert that I allows wanted too.
The really funny thing is that my buddy Greg can recall seeing him performing on the back of a flatbed truck at the Swap Shop here in Lauderdale in the early to mid 70's.
We started the evening off by getting to the casino about an hour and a half before showtime, and decided to have some dinner at a place called Renegade's BBQ.
You know me--I'm always up for a little bit of BBQ. So we get there, and they tell us that its about a 30 minute wait for a table--no problem. I go to use the bathroom and can't help but notice on my walks in & out of the facilities that there are, safe to say, maybe 1/3 of the restaurant is empty. So I go to the hostess and ask her why its going to take 30 minutes to seat us when there are tables available. Its because their currently seating everyone and filling those tables---uh, yeah, right. After we finally get seated, I'm looking at the menu which describes its BBQ as "authentic native American style BBQ". Huh? What the hell does that mean? Native American BBQ? Well, perhaps against my better judgement I order some baby back ribs and wait. Another 30 minutes goes by ("their really backed up in the kitchen"--from what? Boredom?)
and our food finally arrives. My ribs were just the way I like them---dried out and lukewarm from all the time under a heatlamp. Just to make things completely miserable, I also managed to drop some of my dinner on my shirt (thank God it was a dark shirt).
Needless to say, I won't be giving a recommendation to Renegade BBQ to any friends.
So we make our way over to the concert hall, lay down some $$ for some shirts and as we're going in, the ticket taker informs me that there's a problem with my seats and that I need to go over and see somebody. Wow, this evening is really starting off bad.
What's next? Seger has laryngitis? Happily, I'm informed that because the seats that I purchased had an obstructed view, that their going to give me better seats! We ended up one entire section closer to the stage (the better to lose your hearing by) and waited for Bob to hit the stage. Finally, we get the big announcement over the P.A. that its only 5 minutes to showtime! The lights go down, and we start hearing "The Boys are back in Town" by Thin Lizzy (great song--odd choice). A single guy walks out to the stage, starts fiddling with the microphone stand (I'm thinking its a roadie or something) and says:
"Uh, hey...how's everybody doing."
Its Bob! Just a very unassuming beginning to a great, kick ass concert. While he played about 7 of the songs from his new CD, he also played about 25 of his old songs, so I'm not going to complain about him pushing his new stuff. I was happy as hell to hear him play my two personal favorites, "Mainstreet" & "Against the Wind".
I waited 25 years to hear him sing the latter......and it was worth the wait. So was Bob.
Great, great concert.
2) The next night we went and saw Rod Stewart. Kim really isn't a huge fan (to say the least), but she was a good wife and went along. Now here's the interesting sociological
observation of the day. The crowd the night before at the Seger concert were old school rock concert fans....maybe a little older than me, but the kind of folks who had been known to occasionally have a beverage--if ya know what I mean and I think ya do. The crowd at Stewart, at least in our section, was between 55-70 and more of a wine-drinking crowd. They would politely applaude Rod's hit songs and act like they were at the theatre---totally different type of crowd. The concert was in 2 parts. The first part--before the intermission--was horrible. I mean, pretty much one of the worst concerts that I had ever been too. After intermission, it was like a different performer.
I mean, it was like night and day--the 2nd half was that good (or maybe it was just that good when compared to the first half of the show). Rod has a new CD of cover songs out, and some of them are good ("I'll Stand By You" by the Pretenders, "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" by Elvin Bishop & "Its a Heartache" by Bonnie Tyler) and some of them are (shudder) realllllly bad ("Still the Same" by Bob Seger & "Lay Down Sally" by Eric Clapton). Some of my favorite songs by Stewart are cover songs--its not that he does a bad job on them---he just needs to be more selective in his material.
First part of the show--horrible, 2nd part--pretty damn good. As far as the people in our section, during intermision I turned to Kim and told her that I felt like I was at an AARP convention. That's not good when your at a rock concert.
3) The final concert we went to was on Saturday night, 1/13/07, we took the kids (and it was their request, lest anyone think I was being really cruel) to see the Notre Dame Symphony, which was performing at Assumption Catholic Church in Lauderdale by the Sea. Now, I'm the first one to say that I'm not a big "symphony guy"....but ya know, for a once in a lifetime event--I gotta tell ya, it was a heck of a performance. There were some absolutely incredible musicianship--and the kids were really amazed. Now, I didn't win the raffle for the Notre Dame tickets....but it was still a good time.
Now...I also finally finished up with my holiday movie viewing....here are some reviews:
1) Talladega Nights---I've heard Will Ferrell on different radio & t.v. shows, and its fairly remarkable how NOT funny he comes off to me. Which is really strange, because when the guy becomes one of his movie characters, he's hilarious. While he's funny in this movie about NASCAR, the real gems in this movie are the two actors who play his incredibly profane and poorly behaved sons, Houston Tomlin & Graylin Russell, and by the always underrated Gary Cole as Ferrell's no-count-redneck daddy. Its tasteless and profane--but its hilarious and there are worse ways to kill a couple of hours. ***3/4
2) An Inconvenient Truth--how about me? First I go to the see the symphony one night and then I'm watching a documentary about global warming the next. Am I Mr. Culture or what? Former vice-president Al Gore presents an incredibly compelling case for the damage we have wrought upon our planet--and are continuing to do. What is really amazing is for all the bad press he received as VP for being "boring" and a monotonous
speaker---here is not only interesting, he is compelling. He is self-deprecating. He is fascinating. And as I watched this important film, one that everyone should see, I couldn't help but think help but think of one of the first comments that Gore said in introducing himself to an audience:
"Hi, I'm Al Gore...I'm the guy that was supposed to be your President."
Indeed. *****
3) Miami Vice--ya know, sometimes when you have absolutely no expectations for a film, other than to kill a couple of hours with popcorn-esque entertainment, you end up being pleasantly surprised. When I first heard they were remaking the Don Johnson mid-80's television show, I had some pretty low expectation---sort of along the line of Bad Boys 1 or 2. Instead, the movie delivered a solid 2 hours plus of gripping, dark police action. The only real difference in the original television plot is that Tubbs, played on the t.v. show by Philip Michael Thomas, has gone from basically being the buddy of the star, to being one of the two stars. Not surprisingly though, an actor as good as Jamie Foxx pulls off the role--I mean, he's not exactly playing Ray Charles here.
Colin Ferrell is okay as Crockett, but the real star of the movie is the location, and the mood--director Michael Mann, much like he did in Collateral, makes what is happening in the background almost as interesting as the foreground. And, as in his classic crime epic "Heat", this film finishes with a gripping and brutal shootout that is filmed with an almost poetic grace. This is good stuff, much better than you'd think. ****
Later,
Jeff
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