S'March of Springsteen

Is there anybody alive out there?

Youtube and Blogger are still having issues so again, apologies for the lack of Metal vids. Hopefully I'll be able to get some stuff posted by the end of the week.

Off to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band tonight in beautiful Value City Arena. Parking should be fun as the OSU basketball team has a game tonight at St. John Arena. I'm looking forward to tonight's show considering the mixed reviews I read on Saturday nights show in Cincinnati. Backstreets.com, which seems to have their lips firmly planted on the Boss's posterior, slammed the show. Long time Springsteen concertgoers say the pacing of the show was so fast it appeared he had a plane to catch. I'm sure even the Boss would have cringed at this one word review "perfunctory." The man is 58 years old and its unreasonable to expect him to ever play 3 to 4 hour marathons again but to play a show that came in at under two hours causes the mind to boggle. Posts from first time Springsteen concertgoers were nearly all favorable.

If history is any guide, tonight's show could be something sensational. When Springsteen has played a bad show (there haven't been many in his long history), he usually comes out and rips the roof off the joint the next night. Maybe he was just in a hurry to get home for Easter. If so, he probably shouldn't have scheduled a show the night before the holiday. The Cleveland show I saw in November at the beginning of the tour was the best E Street Band performance I've ever seen. The band is getting on in years and at this point, I treat each Springsteen show as if it could be my last. Clarence Clemons is 66 years old, has had two knees and a hip replaced and struggles to get down the stairs after the show. Organist Danny Federici has been missing from this leg due to treatment for skin cancer (tho he did make a surprise appearance last week in Indy and is expected to rejoin the band on the West Coast later this week). With the band off until Friday after tonight, I expect a MONSTER show tonight. I'll be satisfied with anything that can't be described as "perfunctory."

Its stuff like the miniseries of John Adams that keep me from cancelling HBO. The Tom Hanks production of the David McCullough book is one of the most brilliant pieces of television I've ever seen. Paul Giamatti is one of our finest living actors (so what if his Dad was responsible for suspending Pete Rose?). The entire cast dazzles. As rough as our current time is, under no circumstance would I have traded places with those American colonists. Some seriously brutal living conditions. My 8 year old is now traumatized after seeing some scenes depicting an outbreak of small pox in the Adams miniseries.

The Chinese are threatening to ban live broadcasts from the Olympics this summer. Wouldn't break my heart at all if the Olympics weren't held at all any more. Why in the world would the IOC award the Olympics to such an oppressive nation is beyond me. I guess they figured "Well, we let Hitler play host in 1936, why not Beijing?" You'd think the IOC would learn their lesson. I intend to boycott Chinese food until the Chinese Army pulls out of Tibet....that protest should last about a week or so. Then I'll cave. I love me some General Tso.

Congrats everyone...we've lived to see gasoline hit a new record price...the national average is now $3.26 a gallon. In a year we'll be remembering $3.26 as the good ol' days.

The History Channel is no more. No, it hasn't stopped broadcasting its now going to be known only as "History." That network used to be one of my faves but over the past couple years they've moved away from "All Hitler All the Time" to showing some really crappy fare. These days you're more likely to see programming about UFO's then you are about WWII or the Civil War. UFO's on the History Channel would sorta be like if the Food Network started running Ultimate Fighting. Of course, that would sort of take Iron Chef to a whole new level tho.

Thanks to a roadside bomb, the U.S. death toll in Iraq finally hit 4,000 over the Easter weekend. We've now been in Iraq longer than we were involved in WWII and its gone on longer than the Civil War. Sadly, you would be hard pressed some days to even know we were in a war. Seems like the tv networks just don't want to talk about it. The presidential candidates certainly aren't talking about it all that much. Then again, why would they?

I nearly crapped my pants yesterday when flipping thru the Best Buy and Circuit City ads in the Sunday paper. Both ads made mention that the stores would be closed Easter Sunday. As godless as corporate America is I thought they'd both be open hoping to sell some big tv's during the NCAA tourney.

Have a great Monday........BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!!!!!!!!!