you'll wind up in some factory

Yesterday I had lunch with J.Chu in a town immortalized in an R.E.M. song. After lunch we wandered over to the public library, which took us past the new temporary ice skating rink she'd mentioned.

I was watching people clump around on it and thought, there's something wrong with that ice.

See that plastic with the crenellated edge? That's the ice. So, it's not so much "ice" as it is "plastic." People were skating on it with real skates and everything. Totally weird. I think this supports the arguments for not going back to Rockville, at least not if you're interested in skating on ice.

old music

I spent all day today at the Christmas Show office - Ogram, two teens, and I moved several car- and minivan-loads of boxes out of the office and into storage. I wore my new t-shirt. Here, I'll show it to you.


Actual conversation with 16-year-old girl:

Teen: [Towwas], why does it say "rem" on your shirt?
Me: It says "R.E.M."
Teen: What does that mean?
Me: It's a band.

oh, I only talked about the audience before

Michael Stipe was happy. The band rocked. The first song they played was Finest Worksong, which was a pretty awesome declaration: "We are going to play old music and it is going to rock." And it did. It was great! I'm just going to keep repeating this. It was great! Yay R.E.M.! Yay! Great!

They were so great that I very briefly toyed with trying to see them on Long Island on Saturday. There are good tickets available...if it were Manhattan, I might go for it, but I don't really want to get involved with multiple trains and buses. (The Manhattan show is on a weeknight.) Anyway, anyone who lives anywhere else they're going should consider going. All the reviews I've seen have been good, and they're playing lots of old stuff.

Yay! Great!

rocking awesome concert awesomeness

That's Mike Mills singing "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville." I think they're contractually obligated to do that every time they sing around here. (Excellent essay on the genesis of Rockville and the nature of memory and truth and whatnot.)

Setlist.

My review: Awesome. This was definitely the best of the three times I've seen them (Minneapolis 1995, around here in 2003). I had the best seats of the three times, and the crowd was super energetic and fun, other than the loser guys next to Spice who kept leaving and coming back while we were getting our dance on.

what's good for GM is good for R.E.M.

I assume it won't be long before this gets taken off youtube, so watch it now: R.E.M. on Colbert. Totally hilarious. Everybody's a winner.

everybody here is from somewhere

As I was driving home from church choir practice tonight, I was listening to the radio. First they played a Maroon Five song, which was lame (despite any feelings I may have about Adam Levine), then they played "Another One Bites the Dust," which was pretty awesome - I hadn't heard it in years - and then! THEN! they played the new R.E.M. song! My first time hearing it. I like! The radio dude said the album is out April 1st, but you can buy it online next week. I kind of want the actual CD for this one, though.