Great Music

My wife and I went to see Michael Buble perform the other night. His live show is awesome. One of the best concerts I have ever seen. He has one of the best voiced I've ever heard. He's very interactive with the audience. At one point, he noticed in the second or third row a group of young girls singing along with him. He started talking with them, saying how thrilled he was that 12 & 13 year olds were loving the songs he was singing. Then he jumped off stage, went over to where they were sitting and spent about 5 minutes taking pictures with these girls. Every few songs, he'd stop, pick somebody out of the audience and talk to them. If you get the chance to see him live, don't pass up the opportunity.

His opening act was incredible as well. Naturally 7 is a group from New York that performs "vocal play". That's acapella music, but they don't just sing. Every instrument sound that is heard while they perform comes from their own voices. We got to meet them after the show, and they seemed really humble.

Another sign I'm getting older...

I read with some sadness today in the Wall Street Journal Online than Gary Gygax recently passed away. Most people probably don't know who he was; he was one of the creators of the game Dungeons & Dragons. D&D lead the revolution in fantasy role playing games, with hundreds of imitators. Even today, despite the proliferation of computer versions of similar games (PC, Wii, Playstation, etc), thousands of people still get together to roll multi-sided dice and pretend that they were heroes (or villains) out saving the world from evil dragons, vampires and trolls.

I have fond memories of being a teenager, staying awake with some friends for hours on end exploring various dungeons in pursuit of treasure and strength. Some of those guys I still talk to today.

Yes, some people became obsessed with the game, but no more so than University of Memphis basketball or University of Tennessee football fans. None of us sold our souls to the Devil; we didn't actually harm anyone (except ourselves--I drank tons of Mountain Dew and ate waay too many Little Debbie snack cakes during those adventures!) But we had a lot of fun.

RIP, Gary Gygax.

Waaah! I want a do-over..

The Democrats, not satisfied with the way real life is turning out, are crying for a "do-over" in the Michigan and Florida primaries. The states of Michigan and Florida chose to move up their primary dates, and that ticked off the Democratic party officials, so they "voided" their votes. Now that the race is waaaaay closer than anybody thought, some of those same Democrat officials want to allow Michigan and Florida to re-vote. This seems rather juvenile, and quite embarrassing, to me.

By the way, despite what the Democrats in Florida are saying, it was a DEMOCRAT in the state government, not a Republican, who originated the bill to move their primary forward, and the Democrats voted unanimously to do so, knowing full well the consequences. I forgot about that amendment to the Constitution that allows for a Mulligan when things don't go your way...

I memorized Holy Grail really well

Just in case you haven't seen this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw
(Youtube won't let this be embedded, anymore.)

Funniest Man in America

My wife, some friends and I went to see comedian James Gregory last night. If you've never seen him, he's pretty dang funny. I don't know if he's truly the funniest man in America, but he's pretty close. His opening act, Steve Mingolla, was hilarious as well. Both were fairly clean in their act, with only an occasional "damn" being uttered; no sexual jokes or innuendo.

If they come to your area, go see them.

Barack was broke

According to the National Review Online,2/29/08, in a speech given recently in Zanesville, Ohio, by Senator Barack Obama's wife Michelle, she addressed a group of women at a day care center. Apparently, the median household income in this area is only $37,192.00, which I think everyone can agree is not a lot of money. Mrs Obama was encourageing these people and their children to go in to a life of service, and avoid corporate America.

Mrs Obama stated "The salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you’re in your 40s, still paying off your debt at a time when you have to save for your kids." Here's what galls me. She then had the nerve to say, "“Barack and I were in that position. The only reason we’re not in that position is that Barack wrote two best-selling books… It was like Jack and his magic beans. But up until a few years ago,we were struggling to figure out how we would save for our kids.”

What a bunch of crap. Mrs Obama was a high priced lawyer who worked for the University of Chicago hospital system. She was making $121910.00 in 2004. In 2005, her salary jumped to $316962.00, the year after her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate. This is just her salary. That's a 260% raise in one year. How many of those hard working women she was addressing got that kind of raise? And this is not counting her husbands salary.

So if she wants America to believe that she and her hubby were just a poor, struggling family, she gonna have to try a lot harder than that.