Cover Bands

Okay, so now that Osama-mania has calmed down enough for us to return to somewhat normalcy (until tomorrow), I've been meaning to write about my Friday night. I went to a band that's a tribute band for Bruce Springsteen (who else would I possibly see?) The band was covering the Boss' legendary 4 hour show from New Years 1980. Legendary doesn't really describe it. It's epic.

It was at a small bar in Manhattan, I didn't have much expectations besides just trying to enjoy some live music, have some beers, dance in the dark, and enjoy the night.

Overall? Not terrible. Because I'm anal for Bruce? It never had a chance. But, the show was good because I wanted to do something in the city that was affordable (before I saw my bar tab) while enjoying something I love.

The cool part was it was such an intimate show. By that I mean it was one of those small venues where you are literally on top of the stage. Being that close, listening to that kind of music was great. I really enjoyed that aspect of it. I got a little mad because it wasn't exactly the same. But the show was good.

Something you get at Springsteen related shows is the various age ranges. There's the youngin's like me and then there's people old enough to be my parents. Goes to show the guy is cross-generational here in the Land of Hope and Dreams.

The Death of Osama

This post is going to be very scattered. Too many things going on to just focus on one.

Last night was weird. It's one of those nights that you get really excited about, but you don't know why, until it breaks on Twitter, but you don't believe it till you hear it for sure.

Me personally? I was switching to watch MSNBC because they have Sunday night "To Catch a Predator" marathons that are always fun to watch. Instead, I got the "Obama to make announcement at 10:30.

It was like television you couldn't turn away from. Literally, the news staff didn't even know what was going on. They thought it was something else - Libya, gas prices, birth certificates, whatever. Then slowly you hear rumors. NBC had a lead from Pete Williams, but never said it. Then you'd read the other networks saying it. It all sounded so ridiculous. We have his body. Shot in the head.

It reminded me of the Michael Jackson death. Something was happening, but nobody knows what. But everyone's speculating. Low and behold: Twitter was right. And on it blew up. I personally tweeted more than I would during a Lost episode (which is alot, because I would tweet "WTF" every 30 seconds watching Lost.) Some of it is funny hearted (Team America, Jack Bauer) some is the amazement at what's going on via the media, etc.

What's really interesting about this? How long this has gone on. It's really more than just since 2001. Long long before. At least 15 years. 3 administrations. We had no idea. There would be rumors everywhere. South Park would make fun of him endlessly. (My personal favorite was comparing Osama bin Laden to Gandalf the Grey, think that was an SNL skit). We've portrayed this man as living in cave to cave, showing himself on a video, telling us what he's doing next, etc. Yet he's been living in this "compound" for quite a while, while not living the good life, he certainly wasn't stuck in caves all day. There would be rumors about his death previously.

I made a Jack Bauer reference previously, but this really sounds like a episode of 24 or a scene from a movie. Secret operations storming in via helicopter, a firefight, etc. I think I know a little more than the average person, but I don't know much about our secret teams. We must have so many Jack Bauer types. Men in Black almost. The government agency you don't know about, where they make people disappear. Trained assassins. It sounds crazy, but I really believe it all exists. Goes to show how much we really don't know about what's going on behind the scenes. All the data and missed intelligence and the potential opportunities, but it finally worked. None of our forces were killed in the firefight. That to me is extremely impressive about the training we give our soldiers.

From the media standpoint, beyond the confusion, the mad scramble to get their top people on the air. I'm pretty pro-NBC over the other networks, so seeing their top staff rushing to get to the studios was fascinating. Then watching some video from last night, they were still on the air through at least 4AM. I turned on the TV this AM? Same people are online. Talk about stressful. Also - I haven't watched 24 hour news networks in a while. I remember why I stopped - they just literally talk out of their ass with no clue what's going on, just because they need to have something to talk about. They have no idea what's next from Al Qaeda. No clue what the reaction is in the Arab world. At the end of the day, they're Americans in a foreign world. Who knows what they really know.

My favorite thing from last night: Chuck Todd was talking about how all of this came together from the media standpoint, and he got an email from a White House correspondent. The email basically said "get over here. this is big. can't say what, but trust me. BFD." You should remember, BFD is Biden's tagline for "Big Fucking Deal." Who knows if that's a common term for the White House staff, or if they're trying to be funny, but it makes me laugh.

I don't understand the need for celebration yesterday. They couldn't stop showing footage from outside the White House and near Ground Zero. That's a weird concept we have. When something huge like this happens, we gather with strangers and celebrate in a somewhat riot like instance. It looked to me like the DC crowd was just college kids, who I bet were hopped up on Aderral and Red Bull and were looking for any excuse to get out of studying for finals. I thought about going to Ground Zero, but for what? To stand there and chant USA? Makes us look like barbarians.

Some people really suck. This was an exciting moment, and some people wanted to talk about how Osama should have stood trial, how we have focused too much on Osama and not enough on our own country, including gas/jobs/the stupid budget thing. We also jerk around too much talking about Obama's birth certificate. What a waste of time and resources. Putting Osama on trial is a waste of time and would become more of a circus than true justice. Everyone knows he's committed terrible crimes. Not a secret. Putting him on trial would just end up with demonstrations and the security alerts from that would be catastrophic. We put Saddam on trial and what was the verdict? Death. Osama's was going to be any different? And he would milk it and be a martyr and all this garbage. Let it end. While I think it's BS that we say Osama has been "brought to justice," we talk about justice in law and everything. I agree, but let's not act like we're holier than thou.

Again, who knows what Osama had really been up to. Some people say that he was more of a figurehead than the true leader. Either way, it's a big deal (or a BFD) and it's an exciting thing. But we need to keep treading. There's more people and programs out there to squash.

Now let's solve this budget BS.

Grinds My Gears: Video Game Edition

Yes, I really couldn't come up withe a better title. My creativity is kicked. Terrible. I need a spark in my life to get back into this.

Okay, so I play video games. Mainly the sports games. Definitely get some Call of Duty in there too. Anyways, they come out with a new version of the game every year. I wrote earlier how annoying it is that video games come out every year and expect people to milk it. At the same time, how else can they make money every year?

For me, it's a constant black hole. I give in easily. While I don't buy a new sports game every year, it's easily every few. Gives me and my friends something to do instead of going out and being reckless causing mayhem.

Anyways, long story short, I just bought Tiger Woods 12 since it was on sale. I bought it and found out that it comes with something like 12 courses. That's fine. The problem? They offer another 18 courses online that you pay for, at 4 bucks a pop. 4 x 18 is 72. So if I were to buy all of the courses available, I'd spend 60 bucks on the game, 72 on the courses, for a grand total of 132 bucks.

Hanh? 132 bucks? For a game that comes out once every year? Something where if I were to buy Tiger 13 I'd have to do it again? Greedy bastards.

I think offering additional content is a nice way to increase interest in a game, although I believe companies now purposefully leave things out to sell it later, because they want to milk money out of us. The problem with Tiger? They incorporate the courses into the single player game, effectively not allowing you to play the way they want you to. They're trying to force your hand into sinking more money into it.

Again, is there anything we can do? No. The fleecing of America.

Wrestling

Like I said last post, I still haven't forgotten you. I just have had zero creative things to write. I'm not going to write posts that suck.

Okay, so I think I've half gotten back into wrestling. And by wrestling, I mean the WWF/E Vince McMahon monster that I was obsessed with in like 6th grade. But when I say obsessed, I was obsessed. Not quite Star Wars obsessed, but it was the show I watched. I couldn't wait for Thursday Night Smackdown.

Can you blame me though? Back then, The Rock and Stone Cold were excellent entertainers. It was just enough violence for me to think it was cool. My parents wouldn't let me watch any of the other episodes of it, so I had to settle for that Thursday.

Why'd I fall off? I can't honestly say. I don't remember. My guess? The Rock left. Stone Cold "retired". Episode 1 of Star Wars came out. The Lord of the Rings. I don't really know. It just ended. I'd watch it every now and then and say "good God this is terrible."

What brought me back? Very simple - The Rock. If you watch that clip, and you grew up loving the Rock like I did, then you are guaran-damn-teed to get goosebumps. It's amazing.

Now that I'm somewhere like 12 years older than the 11 year old that watched it and thought it was real, I do have a little more appreciation for the "business" of wrestling. Everything is very calculated and they write the storylines and blah blah. When I was a kid? I thought it was all real. They all hated each other. All the punches were real. The chairs were real etc. They know exactly what they're doing to maintain an audience, keep them interested, build up new superstars, and ultimately grow the brand even further.

Bringing back The Rock got me - and I'm sure many more - half back into it. I'm not going to watch an entire show. I'll read highlights. Watch the YouTube clip, whatever. If I'm channel surfing and see it on, I'll at least check it out. I was also excited for Wrestlemania because the meatball Snooki was wrestling, and thought it'd be great to see her get beat up. Needless to say, she didn't.

The matches are somewhat entertaining sometimes. Trying to decipher the real vs fake is fun. Sometimes the stupidity of the storyline or the way they have to hint at inappropriate content makes me laugh. The corniness of these characters is so stupid it's funny. Seeing Stone Cold give someone the Stunner and pour beer all over them is all I really need to see. The Rock isn't "really" back. He's half back. Which is why I'm half into it. He's out promoting movies and shooting movies, so it's not realistic that he's going to a) be a consistent part of the show or b) fight anytime soon so he doesn't mess up his movie career. Huge insurance pay out on that.

I'm not sure if I'm regressing because I'm watching wrestling. Or is that just because I'm bored with everything else on? The only thing I have looking forward to is Treme, and there isn't a huge amount of entertainment value there. Sure I'm going to enjoy it, but I won't laugh the same way I will like I laugh watching the clowns fake fight each other. Maybe I'm just trying to re-live some of the glory days before I get full-on sucked into being an adult. Who knows. But in the meantime, I am smelling what The Rock is cooking.

I hate politics

No, I haven't forgotten about you. I just haven't had a good idea in months. This isn't a good idea, I'm just pissed. I also have no clue what I'm talking about. Ummmm, thanks for sticking around?

What the hell is going on with our government? This whole "government" shutdown is the biggest crock of sh!t I've ever heard of. We can't agree on a budget. Okay. Who approved the $86 billion budget for the Department of Defense? This is a joke.

The reason why I hate politics is over crap like this. Nothing gets done. They argue over mute points and threaten to shut down - failing the people who elected them into power. Nice going guys.

In school we talked about politics as "the art of compromise." So, elected officials of the government, COMPROMISE DAMMIT.

Again, I really don't know what I'm talking about, but this just makes ZERO sense to me, and it angers the hell out of me. The greatest country in the world and we cant agree on a budget. Maybe if we didn't just spend $126 some million in Libya over two days then we could have an agreement. Or if we weren't still in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. And instead, maybe we could help fix ourselves, our still unstable economy, and our ever-slowly growing unemployment rate.

Seriously, this is outrageous. I want to move to the Bahamas or some Carribbean island once I can. I'm tired of this nonsense.