I saw REM at the Hollywood Bowl last night…AWESOME show!! The National and Modest Mouse opened. I was most interested in seeing The National. They went on at 6:30 when it was still light and the place was empty. They sounded great, though they could have dialed the sound up a bit. The National is from Brooklyn: it’s two sets of brothers plus the lead singer. They seemed a bit overwhelmed by the venue “Yeah, we’re used to this..” I only know a few Modest Mouse songs, but I was interested in seeing how the former Smith’s guitarist Johnny Marr would fit in. He played great and contributed on vocals. They are from the Northwest…Seattle, then Portland, now back in Seattle? Highlights for me: Dashboard, Doin’ the Cockroach and Float On. Last time I saw REM was in San Jose ~14 years ago. I wasn’t too impressed, so my expectations were pretty low. Back then Michael Stipe had a teleprompter for the lyrics and overall the band didn’t seem that into performing. They TOTALLY ROCKED last night. Their new album is more like their early stuff. The last few albums haven’t been that great.
Set list: Pretty Persuasion, Living Well’s The Best Revenge, What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?, Sitting Still, Ignoreland, Man-Sized Wreath, Circus Envy, Drive, Accelerate, Hollow Man, Fall On Me, Houston, Electrolite, Final Straw, I’ve Been High, Let Me In, Losing My Religion, Horse to Water, Bad Day, Walk Unafraid, I’m Gonna DJ ENCORE: Supernatural Superserious, The One I Love, Until the Day is Done, Happy Birthday, Man on the Moon. Highlights for me: What’s the Freq, Drive, Fall On Me (amazzzing), Electolite, Supernatural. Janene, my sister who passed away 10 days before her 30th b-day, was an REM fan. Yesterday was her birthday and they actually sang Happy Birthday to “anyone who’s birthday is today”. The final song that followed has the lyric, “see you in heaven if you make the list”. Trust me…she made the list!

Other performances this week: Gavin had a 4th grade Gold Rush show Wednesday night. All the 4th graders had to write a story about a historical figure from the gold rush days, in character, and then recite it in front of the class. Gavin did John Sutter and dressed up as a soldier. They picked the top 10 to perform on the program. Gavin went first and nailed his 3-4 minute memorized monologue. It was fun to hear the “wows” from the crowd. They also sang and danced.

I spent last week in Portland. Since I didn’t get to see Kathleen Edward’s full show at the Troubadour I saw her show at the Aladdin in Portland Thursday night. Loved it!! She has some fun music videos on You Tube.

Our 16th anniversary on May 16th was a busy one…I got tickets to see Kathleen Edwards at the Troubadour in Hollywood months ago. The Father-Son campout was added later and the LA temple is about 5 miles from the Troubadour, so why not go there first since the concert didn’t start until 10 PM. So at 5 PM we dropped the kids off and headed to the LA temple near the UCLA campus. It took ~2 hours to get there and the session was ~30 minutes longer than we are used to, so we got to the Kathleen Edwards show late. The Troubadour is cool and has an amazing history: Neil Young and James Taylor had their debut solo performances there. James Taylor met Carly Simon there. Cheech and Chong were discovered there. Elton John had his US debut there, introduced by Neil Diamond in 1970. Miles Davis recorded a live album there. Metallica made their LA headline debut there in 1982, etc, etc. It’s a tiny club. Kathleen Edwards had taped a show with Jay Leno that was airing that same night, so she had interesting stories about that and a fun story about making a music video with Marty McSorely. She ROCKED!! Great song writer, great guitar player, harmonica player, fun personality, cool voice, even played the violin. Someone shouted “You’re a guitar hero”, she said the game is way harder than playing real guitar, but you can play Radiohead songs. From there we drove to the Father Son campout where Shannon dropped me off at 1:30 AM. A friend drove the boys and Campervan out earlier in the evening.

Gavin had a birthday party at a local game shop called Gameology. After that it was back to the house for In-N-Out and a Mario Kart tournament. Gavin was born on Mother’s Day and next year his birthday is on Mother’s Day for the first time since he was born. Shannon got a free camera and other gifts for giving birth on Mother’s Day.

Shannon and her mom both got a gourmet breakfast (see nearby photo) in bed to start the day off. After that it was church, Jazz game, then over to David’s for a feast. My mother is a HUGE Jazz fan. After slipping on some stairs, which shattered her wrist and gave her a concussion, she went home, watched the end of a regular season Jazz game and THEN went to the ER.

Big THANK YOU to all the mothers in my life!

We went to the Magic Castle last night. The main show we went to see started much later than we expected, so since I’m on the 2 AM shift this week I had to leave early and get some sleep. Getting home was a fun adventure: I took the subway from Hollywood by the Chinese Mann Theater to Union Station, commuter train from Union Station to Claremont, then I walked to Dave’s and borrowed his van to drive the rest of the way. The Magic Castle is a cool place and I look forward to going back and spending more time.

Normally I would have justed manned up and forgone the sleep, but Wednesday night was a late night helping with a church service project I was in charge of. We did an Extreme Makeover Home Edition on a widows house: ten 14-18 year old young men with gas powered weedeaters, a mower and hand tools.

Speaking of Magic, the democrats are trying their best to make Hillary disappear. From a juicy editorial in today’s wsj: (after “sniper fire” story) The same folks who believed her about Whitewater and the rest now claimed she never tells the truth about anything. As the scales suddenly fell from liberal eyes, the most striking statistic was the one in this week’s NC exit poll. Asked if they considered Mrs. Clinton “honest and trustworthy” no fewer than 50% of DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTERS said she was not. The difference between now and the 1990s, however, is that this time foes aren’t the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” This time the conspirators are fellow Democrats. It took 10 years, but you might say that Democrats have finally voted to impeach.

Earlier this week:
The superdelegates are faced with choosing between the Clinton machine’s brutal demographic math and thinking well of themselves. No contest.

Daniel Henninger, wsj 5/8/08

Dreams come true! Papa spent his 70th birthday at Disneyland with most of his children and grandchildren (the Seattle Rennies are in Italy). It was a beautiful day and everyone had a blast. We had dinner at Blue Bayou, the restaurant inside Pirates of the Caribbean. The food was great, the adults chatted and the kids tried to get every passing boat to wave at them. Only downside, Bob’s favorite ride, Small World, was closed for a remodel.