It is a cover of both of them. I had to listen to the Dylan and Zep versions one after the other for my brain to categorize them as the same song, and I still don’t quite believe it. Seriously, I must have listened to the Led Zeppelin version about a thousand times in Jr. High School, and the Dylan version a hundred in High School, and my brain just never connected them before.

Dylan and Zep now are higher up on the iPod playlist. Guess I don’t “know that highway like I know my hand” after all.

So actual attendees were vastly outnumbered by organizers and hangers on. But the alderman was there and the ideas were shared. And it is a reasonably neat idea. Basically the alderman is giving up authority over his capital improvements fund for the ward, and allowing this community based process to drive it. The other neat thing is that the vote when the final budget meeting (open to the entire ward) is actually binding.

The main problem with this is how limited it is. The aldermanic “menu”, the money for capital projects in the ward, is such a small part of the over all city budget, that it is unclear to me how much light this will shed on where the money is really going. Also, there is a difference between saying “we want money spent on X” and actually getting that money spent efficiently. I bet that the breakdown of capital project that we actually get will be very very close to what we would have had under the old system. And finally, even if we did do this on a city wide basis, we would still have the TIF districts. The alderman does a reasonably good job at capital projects and there is pretty good accountability there already. It is the off budget items like TIF spending that really wreck this city.

So, all in all the meeting didn’t really do it for me, but it is an interesting idea. I will certainly be watching this going forward, and if it takes off for more of the city’s budgeting bodies it could actually make a difference.

Oh, and I did get an awesome Joe Moore quote, “I’ve been acting like a benign dictator, if you will.” said in reference to what he is trying to change by switching from the “aldermanic menu” to this “participatory budgeting” system. Hah! You only wish, Joe. There is only one dictator in this town, and it is not you.

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.

Apparently, University of South Carolina’s mascot is the gamecock. This has to be one of the most understated wikipedia entries ever. “While the men have traditionally been the Fighting Gamecocks and the women were previously the Lady Gamecocks, this distinction was discontinued in part to help eliminate gender bias in their athletic department.” Because that really gets rid of any gendered connotation in that name. I am still shaking my head about that one. You have to have more collegiate pride than me to walk around with that shirt on.

I think I may have to start trying NetFlix out. We have a blockbuster one block from us, which we use regularly, but I’m thinking the advantage of the queue is too good to pass up. Anyone have thoughts? Cost/benefit? Do you watch more than the three movies per month that it takes to beat Blockbuster on cost? Or is that missing the point?

This has to be one of the best 80s videos ever. On par with Total Eclipse of the Heart. The 80s were amazing. ly bad.

Talk about blood pressure rising and anger surfacing. I’m not sure what made me, but since I already was heading over to hear what he was saying and maybe chat with him, it just came out. I had to quote some Matthew 19:19 at him, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

His response was very interesting. At first he smiled as he caught bible being quoted, then frowned as he realized what part. Then he went back to “fear the lord” and just ignored me. It probably didn’t do anything, but I like to think that it made him think, even if just for a second.

If I could have done anything different it would have been to remember the Romans quote rather than the Gospel: “Love thy neighbor as thyself. Love does no harm to its neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:9-10) But I only know like three bible verses, so I’m pretty surprised that one came unbidden at all.

This is a hilarious book. It is a “travel diary” describing Sarah Vowells efforts to go and see the sites that relate to the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. In the process you get a good deal of the history surrounding the time of death of the three presidents. Lincoln is by far the most famous and thus has the most assassination memorabilia scattered around the country and thus the most of the book devoted to him. Garfield, being completely unknown (having served for so short a time) gets the shortest chapter, though a lot of introspection on what it means to be remembered. In addition to educating us on the history surrounding the deaths of these three presidents, we also learn the personal histories of the presidents and their assassins.

All of this comes to us, however, in the rambling style of Sarah Vowell. Which is to say distracted storytelling that jumps from one thought to the next without a care or concern in the world. This leads from hilarious notes about the friends and family that she drags with here on these expeditions (she doesn’t drive) to more somber reflections on the people who care for the museums and sites of such macabre topics. Mostly the book ends up being good old fashioned storytelling rather than a history lesson. But there is plenty of history to pick up along the way.

All in all this is an excellent and rather quick read, all the better for me because my knowledge of Lincoln and Garfield was so limited. (Strangely, since I was really interested in the history of Hawaii at one point, I actually knew a bit about McKinley.)

Probably the most interesting bit of history you get out of the book though are the tidbits of Robert Todd Lincoln’s life. What a strange and tragic character.

Also, I love Tom Skilling’s blog. It is totally info-porn with awesome graphics and everything.