House of the rising Moonglum

Hey all. You may or may not have seen the video that Microsoft put out that gives you tips for hosting your own Windows 7 party.

Suffice it to say, it is horrible. I mean I love technology, and in fact salivate over new operating systems, but the notion of having an operating system party just bothers me. And even worse, with those people. Fortunately “Windows 7″ was just code. With some minor modifications we know what the part is really about.

Oh my.

Just saw this movie and I feel like I need a smoke! It was incredibly hard to watch, but an amazing piece of storytelling. I kept expecting the “other shoe” to drop, but instead we had direct character development, from one step to the next to make a compelling and complete story. Probably the best quote I heard was from the review in the New Yorker: “You don’t feel bamboozled, fooled, or patronized by ‘District 9,’ as you did by most of the summer blockbusters. You feel winded, shaken, and shamed.” It also was filled with references to South African politics and life, from the obvious Apartheid references, to the less obvious ones like naming the gang leader after the president of Nigeria. I’ll have to look around on the net to see what other references I missed because I don’t live in South Africa. In addition to all the allegory though, it had your everyman, who finds redemption (without needing to beat you over the head with it) the aliens who we misunderstand, the evil scientists, and the horrible step dad. I personally could have done without the excessive torture, but it was a really great story.

THe Globe and Mail (among others) is reporting that Obama has canceled the missile defense systems that were going into eastern Europe, while at the same time getting concessions from Russia on the war in Afghanistan. I would love to hear from my more wonkish friends on what they think the repercussions of this will be. I, personally, have never believed that a late-boost/mid-range missile defense system would be viable anyway, but many of my friends have held the opinion that the purpose of the system wasn’t to defend against rogue states with ICBMs, but to cement out relationship to Eastern Europe and require us to come to their aid in the case of Russian aggression. The Globe and Mail article certainly suggests that. The Christian Science Monitor thinks it is just a cost benefit analysis. And while it is nice to see us trying to work with Russia instead of just antagonizing them, it also seems like cutting it off could have been done with a bit more grace. They both noted that picking the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland for the announcement was poor.

Thoughts?

I had a friend recently send me a pajamas media video that was supposedly about Obama’s Iconography and Branding. I have been thinking a lot lately about where the whole Obama as Hitler thing is coming from, and had been leaning towards racism, but couldn’t figure out exactly why. (And no, not just Carter.) Basically I’m trying to figure out what is different between this and the far left saying the same thing about Bush for the past 8 years. This video helped me figure some of it out. “Never seen before” “Perpetual leadership” “Only seen in totalitarian regimes” “I won’t show them because it would be obscene to compare the horror they generated, 150,000,000 dead no less, to what’s going on here today. That was mass murder this is merely advertising. We’ve just never seen that kind of thing before here in america.”

I’m sorry, but if this guy is an ad expert and an iconography expert he knows exactly what he is doing, and it is playing on the base fear of the “other”. He is “different”. He is not like what has gone before _in this country_. He is _not us_. This video has nothing to do with iconography, and is full of misdirections and lies. The W disappeared for four years? Please. The DNC isn’t using the presidential seal? That’s because it is ILLEGAL to use it for anything other than official government business. The eagle is flying away? The eagle is ALWAYS flying, for the same reason that the donkey is kicking, it makes the icon more active and exciting. Heck, it’s flying away in _the presidential seal_ as well!

As for the O icon continuing to be promulgated, every official speech the president has done has had the presidential seal on the podium. His weekly podcasts used to be branded with the O, but the day he became president they were rebranded with the presidential seal. This iconography argument is a thin veneer for trying to brand the president a different from all the others, and different from us. And that is where my fear for the racial thing comes in.

I hated George Bush, but at the end of the day he was my president. (If anything the argument against him was that he was _too much_ like us.) This line of thinking and talking is what is driving the far right to “mobilize for action”. This causes people to yell at the town halls and show up with guns at Obama’s speeches. By painting him as on par with the epitome of evil, the right is slowly building up the idea that ANYTHING is acceptable in opposition to him. This iconography video is just more of the same. Sarah Palin’s death panels and Rush Limbaugh saying he has brown shirts. That crazy Baptist saying it’s OK to kill Obama because he supports abortion. Right wing (birther) blogs say that he actually is hitler and is going to round up and kill 6,000,000 jews. People showing up in town hall meetings, or filling up message boards with Obama and Hitler comparisons when the rest of us are trying to talk about healthcare. This causes me to turn into a knee-jerk liberal.

Which is really frustrating, because there is actual discussion that I would like to be able to have about things like economic reform and healthcare reform. Important questions, like what would a public option mean? How would it operate? And if we don’t have one, how can we guarantee that the health insurance companies can’t go on abusing the middle class like they already have been? And if we decide that everyone should have health care, how are we going to get the 40,000,000 people who aren’t covered, covered without a public option? But when I go to a town hall meeting, or a website, and someone comes out with “Obama is Hitler!” it makes me immediately jump to his defense. Because at the end of the day, even though I may disagree with him on some items, like George Bush, he is my president. And that path leads to the end of social discourse.

And I think that is where the difference lies. It feels (to me) like it was easier to have discussions about the ramifications of Bush actions than it is about Obama actions. I suppose it could just be that he is actively trying to be more accessible, and thus the conversation is similarly louder. For example, there weren’t any town halls on the decision to invade Iraq, but the probably would have been pretty tense if there were. But a final note is that Obama gets four times the death threats than Bush did. It just seems unlikely that that comes from policy differences alone. I find it hard to believe that more people are violently opposed to health care than to torture. And much easier to believe that a general culture of hate and painting the black president as different from us has a lot more to do with it.

Review of the show for those who couldn’t make it. Sorry you couldn’t be there, Ron, but thanks for the ticket!!

The show started by heading out to the remote (31st street) lot to get me some $10 parking instead of the $40 parking next to the stadium. (OUCH!) I’ve used that remote lot before though, and it is no problem. Only U2 spent so much on the stage that I guess they couldn’t afford to run the shuttle bus! So we got all warmed up before the show with a nice walk from 31st to Soldier Field. There was a little girl pulling her dad along. Apparently her older brother got to go to the last tour, but she wasn’t old enough. So she is very excited about going to this one.

Snow Patrol was pretty good (you know “Chasing Cars” at least) and gave me some time to check out the swag. The guy sitting next to me just flew in from DC for the show. The stage was amazing. I took a bunch of pictures, but the Trib’s give you a better sense of just how huge it is. There is a massive movie screen in the middle that they project huge Bono on. (Actually the trib has a full review and some up close pics off that review, but my review is better.

The show opened with “Rocket Man” playing and the space ship taking off. Smoke generators out the top and the bottom! Pretty neat. Then they got some very dark side of the moon clocks going and played Breathe. (The U2 one not the Pink Floyd one.) No line was next with lots of clips from the DVD. The video and the music combined to rock out so much that I was starting to hope that they played the whole album, al la LiveCrime. Continuing with a rocking version of get on your boots (see bono in the pic above) and an absolutely amazing Magnificent. They did some kind of video wizardry to make it look like gold flecks were flying everywhere behind the band on the screen, but the screen was so huge it really did give the illusion that there were these gold flecks flying everywhere. (Couldn’t get a good shot of that one.)

Unfortunately (?) my hopes of getting the entire no line album were shot with Beautiful Day coming up. This did not upset the audience. Bono said “we’re going to give the album a rest for a bit here.” which I thought was pretty funny. Made it sound like he wanted to play the whole thing. After rocking out, he changed gears and sang Blackbird. A little incongruous, but that’s Bono for you. After that he did this really long introduction of all the band members. I’ve never seen that before, and I think he made them a little uncomfortable. Especially when he told the audience that Adam Clayton because he is well endowed. I don’t know if he really meant to say that, but we were all dying. It might have just been a lead into Elevation though. Bono also gave a sideways compliment to the audience claiming that he gets to be arrogant, because we are all so cool. (That was odd.)

It was about now that I noticed a helicopter circling the stadium and occasionally flying directly overhead. It was a statement to the speaker system that I never heard it. And on the topic of the speakers, they were amazing. Normally there is tons of distortion and I can barely make out what is being played, let alone what Bono is saying. Here I could hear every word, and it only got distorted when they got really loud.

After that they took it down a notch with bono talking about how long they’ve been doing this for but … he still can’t find what he’s looking for. For old time sake I guess, he segued into stand by me. During the next set of four songs (Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of, Unknown Caller, The Unforgettable Fire, City Of Blinding Lights) the screen exploded! Well expanded anyway. I didn’t actually mean to take a picture of it, but when I was looking at them later I noticed that I got it! So above for your viewing pleasure, you can see the screen getting bigger. It was actually really really cool. Made it be less of a movie screen (though you could still see the pictures) and more of a curtain of lights, like from the tour before last. Really neat stuff.

The pulled it back together and had crazy spinning video of them playing for Vertigo. Then one of my favorite moments in the whole show, they had army of U2 heads bobbing to the beat all next to each other in 360 for I know I’ll go crazy. It was pretty amazing actually, and I couldn’t get a picture of it, and am not sure if I can even describe it. Basically they took each band member’s head shot video and lined them up next to each other on the screen. And they were doing the “walking chicken head” dancing thing to the beat of the music. I think I may have gone crazy, if I didn’t go crazy last night watching that. They also had this disco ball at the top and bottom of the space ship which had me mesmerized for quite a while. The rays of light that came off of it were moving independently from each other! The origin for the rays weren’t moving either, so the incoming light couldn’t have been moving, there must have been some sort of moving lasers on the “disco ball” instead of a normal rotating ball. Pretty cool, and yes I am easily distracted, and yes this is the sort of thing I think about in the middle of a concert.

They closed out the set with a bunch of old stuff and a lot of political activism. They had some really moving video of Iranian protesters for Sunday Bloody Sunday, and some nice arabic radio in the background. It worked really well, for Pride and MLK as well. Then they did this huge and pretty creepy thing on Aung San Suu Kyi for walk on. They took a bunch of people from the audience and had them all walk out on stage with masks of her face. That was pretty darn creepy. Not sure I got it.

Finally they closed the set out with where the streets have no name. For the first encore they had Desmond Tutu come out and tell us how cool we all are for joining the one campaign because we bought 3.5 million africans anti viral medication. He is a funny dude, and that was really great of him to agree to do that. After he finished the band came back out and played One, and Bad with 40. Of course they couldn’t get away with only one encore so they came back out … and Bono was in a FREAKING LASER SUIT!! This is another thing that didn’t photograph well, but his suit was covered in red laser beams that made him look like a spider in the middle of a web because of all the smoke that that space ship was pumping out. (I have to say that thing did pump out a lot of smoke over the course of the show. From the top and bottom they basically had the stadium filled!) But they played Light my way and with or without you. Then they ended on moment of surrender from the new album which I absolutely loved. That’s by far my favorite song on the new album and it was really great to end with it. They did that goofy cell phone light thing, but it looked neat on the screen. That’s that last picture above.

Coming home was actually another adventure in itself. Nobody knew where to go, and there were a ton of people waking down to 31st street who actually wanted to take the bridge over the tracks. Some drummer boys were under McCormick in the tunnel to the remote lot pulling in some good coin, but the coppers came and ran them out. Those guys don’t have anywhere they can play any more. But I was walking with an old couple that was trying to get to 25th and State, and was asking me how to get through. (They wanted to take the bridge too, but it was too late for that.) They thought they were going to go to 31st, but that was pretty far, so I offered to drive them. They were so thankful it was crazy. I tried to get them to not pay, but the guy insisted on covering my parking. Apparently it was their first concert ever! I’m glad I was able to help the end of the evening be a little nicer. The rest of the drive through the south loop was pretty intense. There were U2 fans everywhere! A couple more people hit me up for rides, but no one who was going the right direction.

All in all an excellent evening.