1. I saw this great shirt covered with long rectangular sequins in a swirly pattern. And in order to keep them from getting hooked on things and ripping off, there’s a extremely fine mesh or tulle sewn on top. I likes it. I likes it a lot.
2. Some mornings I come out of my apartment building and Lawrence the cat is there. I love Lawrence. His owner takes him outside on a leash and and lets him sniff around, eat the grass, barf the grass, whatever he wants. And every morning that I see him is a good day. I pet Lawrence, he ignores me, and I go on my merry way.
3. I walk past a Sephora on my way to work most days, and they are selling some kind of makeup airbrush. Unfortunately, this picture makes it look like they’re selling the face-stretching thing from the movie Brazil.
4. Last night I saw Peter Gabriel in concert. And when I say, “in concert”, I mean it. He had a sixty-piece orchestra behind him. I didn’t especially want to go, but Cricket insisted that I have a life for once, so I went. And I totally didn’t regret it. Well, except for the guy sitting on my left. He looked exactly like The Dude from The Big Lebowski, and as soon as he sat down, a down comforter of pot funk encircled my head and muffled my breathing. It was so pungent, and it reeked of herbs and skunks, or maybe burning tires. It must have been phenomenal weed, because The Dude was clearly having a different experience from most everyone else around him. He was doing a great deal of closed-eyed appreciation, with accompanying hand gestures, like he was conducting. It was hard not to giggle at his earnestness. Anyway, Gabriel is promoting his new album, an album of covers called “Scratch My Back”. He did a bunch of the covers for the first half (which was great). He also performed a song that I knew from somewhere and poked me right in the heart and made me tear up, called “The Book of Love”. The first thing I did when I got to work today was try to figure out where I knew the song from, and it’s from the series finale of Scrubs. I loved Scrubs, so when I watched the finale, I cried like a kid whose large and impressive baseball card collection just fell in a creek. It’s a touching song. See for yourself. Then he took a break and Lou Reed came out and played “Solisbury Hill”, and ruined it. It was loud, and in the key of grungy, and tempo wasn’t his primary focus, and Lou kinda just hollered the song (“Boomboomboom!”). At one point, Cricket turned to me and said, “This is terrible, right? It’s not just me, right?” But then Peter came back out and played his hits, and that was killer. He did “Digging In the Dirt” and “Red Rain” and “Solisbury Hill” (CORRECTLY) and “Don’t Give Up”, all of this with this orchestra playing (so, so good) and then the orchestra started up on something that sounded familiar and then Gabriel walked up to the microphone and sang “Love…” and I flipped out. It was super-great. I cannot wait for the DVD of this tour to come out so I can have this version. So, even though I didn’t get home until 12:37 a.m. and had to go to work the next day, it was still worth it. Just a closing note:
Dear Other People In The Audience,
Peter Gabriel has a set list. He’s not gonna go all rogue with a 60-piece orchestra behind him and play whatever you scream out. So please stop shrieking “BIKO!!” between songs, it’s annoying. Thank you.
