Sunday, September 30, 2007

The Pink Floyd Experience


Generations of writers have struggled to describe the magic of watching a live Pink Floyd performance. Likewise, generations of bands have struggled even more to reproduce that magic playing Pink Floyd covers. Thursday night at the Peoria Civic Center, another eclectic band of artists went down trying to achieve this heroic feat.

But this isn't a music review. It's a recollection of the 'experience' - of how I spent my college days listening to so much of this band, never thinking I'd even come close to a live performance, and then suddenly it comes upon me. Albeit second hand. Albeit in a sit down theater. Albeit in the midst of Americans come together to watch the works of a British band, raising their Bud Lites every so often to ask for an encore.

A day after the concert, I pardoned myself for going in with visions of 'grand', 'phenomenal', 'cosmic'. The experience wasn't that. The screen responsible for spinning out psychedelia was the size of a quarter. It was almost heartening that it was pushed way back on the stage, so you didn't have to bother with it after some initial enthusiasm. The vocals and stringwork was the work of true disciples, but the sound wasn't up to scratch. And for the priciest ticket, we had to satisfy ourselves with a very crappy angle.

So, I do sound like I hated the experience. No. I just had to get those regulation complaints out of the way. You tend to cut people a lot of slack who say they 'perform' Pink Floyd. And this band on Thursday wasn't a ragtag bunch of mafioso pulled together to rip people off. Maybe the riverfront was a better venue for the event, and you believe this until you visit the Experience website when you realize that a sit-down event was planned for "intimacy".

I'm grateful to the Civic Center that it brought this experience to town while I was still here. I'm grateful to this band because they performed like devotees. They played Brain Damage too. I feel like calling a college buddy and telling him, "Now, listen you f*&%face, I've been to a Pink Floyd show, OK." That'll take care of those bastards. Or, at least, it would have once upon a time.

I can't close this piece without a word of praise for Siddhant. At the start of the show, I was prepared to forfeit it all if he felt uneasy. I was prepared to walk out with him, and let him have his brand of entertainment - running from one end of the corridor to the other, and running back. But this boy stayed. For the full two hours. He clapped too when he felt like it.

Maybe it was the experience.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Zeitgeist America - Fall 07 I

These days "small planes" can't seem to stay in the air. Last week, three of them fell out of the sky - one into a parking lot, one rammed a restaurant, and another mistook an Interstate for the landing strip.

Since all pilots were male, was it appropriate to sing, "It's raining men"?

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Bad design can make you go without a shower for 2 days

I have been reading Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things on my morning and evening commutes for a few days now. And reading it I realized quite suddenly that I have been a victim of bad tap (faucet) design recently.

I moved to an apartment here a few days before my wife and son, thinking I'd set it up as much as I could. Arrived late morning on a sunny, sweaty Saturday, having checked out of the hotel without a shower.

Back at the apartment, the shower tap was the regular one you see in hotel bathrooms. Turn left and you get hot water, turn right and you get cold. Point it dead center, and you've turned it off. Tried, tested. I turned a little to the left, and nothing. Turned all the way left, still nothing.

Maybe its disuse all these months (we were renters in 3 months) was causing start-up trouble. I turned the tap all the way to the right. No response.

I decided to come back in about a half hour and try again. Half an hour later, the tap and I played out the same scene again. Boy, I was sweating and here was a tap that just refused to talk. I was pretty frustrated with myself at not having checked this nuance during the walkthrough before moving in.

There was no other way the tap would go, I concluded after some more examination - only left and right. Maybe the property managers hadn't started the water supply to our apartment yet. And the earliest now I could get to them was Monday. Crap!

The rest of the weekend, I slipped into 'bachelor living' mode - no shower, no problem.

On Monday morning when the maintenance guy showed, I must confess I was pretty miserable. I explained to him my story of the waterless shower, making sure I didn't leave out any detail. "Did you pull it?" he asked.

"Pull?"

"Yeah, pull and turn. There you go!" Water was now coming out in torrents from the previously barren tap.

"Oh, well...I...just..."

"That's awright. You have a good one, bud."

Don Norman now tells me it wasn't me, after all. The affordance, the system image of the tap, and the natural mapping were all screwed up. Take that.

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Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Zeitgeist America - End of Summer 07

Unsurprisingly, Osama bin Laden released a video message a few days before the 9/11 anniversary this year. Apparently, it was his first video appearance here in 4 years, and many people mistook him to be a returning CNN correspondent.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Iraq, where's my beer?

This is a very exciting time to be in America. As the chill begins to take hold, and opportunities for after-hours recreation dwindle, I like to kick back with a beer or two and watch real reality TV - the president, the media, the 2008 presidential hopefuls, and, of course, the Iraq war.

Prez Bush gets skewered by the media everyday, CNN usually the destroyer-in-chief. Last night, he addressed the nation on topics of war and got skewered a little more by the Democratic candidates. It's an extravaganza of opinion, opposition, and often a public admonishment of this very tired president. But then his long stay in office has given him enough experience to handle it. No big bother in his last days.

Of course, there was absolutely nothing new in last night's address to the nation. The supreme commander spoke of Iraq's leaders' desire to "enter into a long-term partnership with the United States", and that it will extend "well beyond" his presidency. Zealous CNN reporters had already leaked it as predictions, as they stood by for well over an hour before the national broadcast. Ho hum.

Some 2008 presidential candidates then appeared on Larry King Live and did what they had to, depending on whether they were Ds or Rs.

As I watch CNN's "best team of political analysts" bloody the president's face, get war veterans to square off against each other, and have the 2008 clowns do a little jig here or a little hop there, my beer finishes up pretty quick. And ever since Gen. Petraeus appeared on television, man! I've been downing them real fast.

This is reality TV. It's fun. It's free. It's almost gladiatorial. And for someone watching from the gallery, it's time to fill up.

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Sunday, September 02, 2007

Zeitgeist America - Summer 07 1

Right now in America, it can creep the hell out of your dog if he heard you saying, "Hey Mike, do you mind walking my dog tonight?"

It's going to bother the cops a bit if you walked into an airport restroom and shook hands with a senator.

And don't get me started on how fateful it sounds if you were in a bar deep south waiting for friends Dean and Felix.
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