RUSH!!! Now with Strings!

Last night I went to US Airways Center and saw Rush for the eleventh time in my life. While it was not the best concert of theirs that I have seen—nor was it the worst—it was certainly the most unique.

For the uninitiated, Rush (pronounced like it is spelled), is a Canadian rock trio that has been churning out albums since 1974. They reached the height of their popularity in the early 1980s, with hits like “The Spirit of Radio,” “Tom Sawyer,” and “Subdivisions.” But while many people who were only casually aware of them during the Reagan-era think they have faded into obscurity, diehard fans like me know that they never went away—they simply aged gracefully like a fine wine.

Admitting that you’re a Rush fan generally elicits one of three responses: 1) a blank stare from the 99% of people under the age of 36 who have never heard of them; 2) a roll of the eyes from the 99% of women and 92% of men over the age of 36 who immediately stereotype you as a Mountain Dew swigging, Dungeons & Dragons playing, throwback geek who was into computers 15 years before everyone else; or 3) a spontaneous and very enthusiastic air drum display from those unaccounted for above who, like you, knows that Neil Peart is the greatest drummer who ever lived, ever will live, or can ever be created by a group of the world’s top scientists working 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the next 200 years.

While we’re on the topic of Neil, I’ll make my first observation about last night’s concert. To this day I’m always amazed that with the blistering speed at which Neil plays, his hands don’t simply snap off at the wrists and continue feverishly beating upon the drums independent of his arms. I’m pretty sure this is bound to happen one day, and I hope I’m there to witness it. (I don’t think this would faze him, as nothing seems to.)

The other players in the band are Geddy Lee (singer, bassist, and keyboardist) and Alex Lifeson (guitarist, backup vocals, and comedian.) Together, Geddy, Alex, and Neil create a wall of sound at once intense and thought-provoking. They are musical masters who never cease to amaze. And last night, after having seen them on nine previous tours since 1986, they amazed yet again—this time with the inclusion of a string section!

Now in the name of full disclosure I should say that the presence of a string section came as no shock to me. In my role as diehard Rush fan I follow them on Facebook and Twitter, frequently look at their website, and read all the magazine articles about them that I can get my hands on. So I had heard long ago that there would be a string section this time around. But hearing about it and actually experiencing it are two different things. I had no idea what to expect, but in a word—Wow!

And the thing about the “Wow” is that it comes not just from the musical aspect of the string section—though the music was great. The “Wow” comes largely from the off-the-charts energy that these eight musicians brought to the stage.

The string section entered for the second set, which was composed mainly of songs from Rush’s new album, “Clockwork Angels.” (In my opinion their best album in at least 20 years, in case you were wondering.) When they first appeared they were sitting, which is what I would have expected from a string section; but the second the music started they all jumped up and played their instruments standing the entire time. But they didn’t just play—they bopped, and rocked, and head-banged the whole time they were up there. When they didn’t need to play their instruments many of them were passionately thrusting their bows in the air in time with the music. Basically, they were acting like eight rabid fans that were handed violins and cellos and such and told to hang out on the stage with the band. It was an absolute blast to watch, because they were acting exactly as I would act if I were allowed up there. (Well, not exactly as I would act. They were actually playing their instruments well, whereas any effort I made to play a stringed instrument would likely come off sounding like the tortured wails of a dying yak.)

For me, the highlight of the show was the song “Headlong Flight,” from their new album, which is seven minutes of pure adrenaline surging rock. If you can listen to this song without having your pulse rate increase you are, in all likelihood, not actually human. Clearly, the players in the string section are all human, as they were going as ballistic on the stage during this song as the rest of the audience.

The show was not perfect. Yes, I’m a diehard Rush fan, but even within their canon I have likes and dislikes. Of their 165 original songs there are probably about 10 to 15 that I don’t actually like very much. Their set list happened to include five of those. (I mean, what are the odds?)  

But that’s okay. Last night was really about hearing them play a bunch of songs from their outstanding, super-stupendous new album; and about watching a rocking string section; and about waiting with bated breath for that elusive moment when Neil’s hands finally declare their total independence from his body. One day, Neil. One day.

Ponyo: A Movie That Made My Neurons Ache

About two months ago I saw the Japanese anime film “My Neighbor Totoro” for the first time. Never having seen a Hayao Miyazaki directed film before, I did not know what to expect. I watched it with my two young sons and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. The film was equal parts strange and charming. I was very pleased that a Netfix suggestion actually paid off. I was also quite stoked by the fact that my kids fell in love with a movie that had zero violence in it. This is no small achievement.

Excited by my discovery of Miyazaki, I put “Ponyo” in my Netflix queue. I debated clicking the dreaded “Move to position #1” button, but decided I didn’t want to leapfrog over “Magilla Gorilla: Complete Series: Disc 3” or “Spider-Man: Attack of the Lizard,” so I bided my time before exerting my power on the queue. When the time was right, I made my move and “Ponyo” arrived today.

As soon as I got home from work the boys and I hunkered down in front of the television with dinner on our trays and began to watch the movie. For the next 103 minutes my jaw was literally agape. You could have thrown a ping pong ball in my mouth from a distance of 20 yards.

Whereas “Totoro” was equal parts strange and charming, “Ponyo” was equal parts perplexing and sappy. While the basic plot of a girl goldfish (Ponyo) who wants to become human was easy enough to follow, the subplot, in which Ponyo’s father is some kind of evil Aquaman and/or medieval sorcerer who wants to destroy all humans by turning the earth into one giant ocean and who may or may not be getting help with his nefarious plans from his 150-foot aquatic goddess wife, was so contrived and convoluted that I began to feel my neurons ache as they attempted to make sense of what was happening on screen.

But maybe I’m just dense. For those of you who have seen this movie, can you help me with the following questions (and if you haven’t seen the movie, I wouldn’t really call these spoilers):

1- Why are Ponyo and her several thousand goldfish siblings living in bubbles? (And are they supposed to be air bubbles or water bubbles?)

2- What exactly are the elixirs in Ponyo’s dad’s extra-special-secret lair supposed to do?

3- Why was there only one human who was freaked out by the fact that Sosuke’s goldfish had a human face and was wearing a red and white onesie?

I can go on all day with my questions about this movie, but I’ll stop here and move on to a different sticking point—the dialogue. I’m not sure if it was the delivery or the screenwriting, or a combination of the two, but for large portions of the movie I felt like I was watching a junior high school play. All the characters were so sickeningly sweet with each other (except for the psychotic Aquaman wannabe and the cranky woman in the senior center) that I wanted to pluck my own eyes out with the nearest spork.

This unique combination of an impenetrable plot and painfully trite dialogue made for one of my more unusual movie-watching experiences. And I should mention that the surreal visuals that made “Ponyo” look like a Ralph Bakshi film on Quaaludes, only added to the strangeness of the experience.

It is for all these reasons that as the credits rolled I thought to myself, “Here’s something I’ll never see again.” So you can imagine my dismay when, as soon as I turned it off, my six-year-old son said, “Let’s watch that again!”

Freezing in Phoenix: Sad but True

When I moved from Brooklyn to Phoenix a little over 17 years ago my main motivation was winter. You see, I’m not a big fan of winter—at least not the stereotypical one with the snow and the ice and the temperatures dipping so low that the snot freezes to your upper lip within seconds of leaving your apartment. I know that moving to get away from the cold is usually thought of as something done by the frail or elderly, not by a healthy young man in his mid-twenties, but the truth is, I don’t have a lot of body fat and I required so many layers of clothing to keep myself warm that I often had to walk sideways just to get through doors. Also, I never had the proper coordination to get my fingers into the right glove holes, so I was forced to wear mittens, which was embarrassing on blind dates.

So it was that I moved to the appropriately named Valley of the Sun back in 1995. I traded in my mittens for sunglasses and I’ve never looked back. But a funny thing happens after years of living in a climate where the high temperatures stay well above 100­-degrees for four straight months—you actually get cold more easily. This is why I woke up shivering this past Sunday morning, staggered out of bed, and found that my thermostat said 71-degrees.  Yes, you read that correctly—it was 71-degrees in my house and I was shivering.

I reached for the controls to turn on the heat for the first time in over seven months but then I stopped myself. The idea of needing it to be warmer than 71-degrees suddenly felt preposterous. When I was living in New York I might well have been walking around in shorts in 71-degree weather. What business did I have turning on the heat when it probably made more sense to be opening up the windows?

I was eventually roused from these thoughts by an incessant knocking sound, which turned out to be coming from my knees. Although I did not want to admit it to myself, I was clearly freezing. Still, I refused to touch that thermostat. Instead, I put on a sweatshirt, sweatpants, and a pair of socks—then I wrapped myself up in the nearest blanket.

While I sat huddled on my couch I tried to direct my attention to warm thoughts. I contemplated fireplaces and hot cocoa and then…suddenly…mittens. “No way that’s happening!” I thought. Then I ran into the hallway and turned the heat on to 73.

 

Little Boys and the Magic of Butt Jokes

I would like to think I’m a pretty funny guy. I’ve contributed many articles to MAD Magazine, I wrote a regular humor column for the Arizona Republic for several years, and when I’m walking around in the mall people often point at me and laugh. True, in high school I lost my bid for “Class Comedian” to Vinny Conenna, but I think that’s largely because his main campaign pitch was, “Vote for me or I’ll beat you to a bloody pulp.” Nonetheless, I think that most people find me somewhat amusing. (Especially at the mall, it seems.)

Yet, despite my finely honed humor skills I have come to learn that nothing can make my 6-year­-old and 3-year-old sons laugh like the word “butt.” In fact, all I have to do is insert the word “butt” randomly into any sentence and I can guarantee uproarious laughter from my kids. If I were particularly ambitious and inserted the word twice into the same sentence, it would result in the two of them rolling around the floor laughing and clutching their sides. I would never even attempt three times in the same sentence for fear of having to take one or both of them to the hospital in respiratory distress.

Why my boys find the word “butt” so hysterically funny I can’t quite say. It’s not as though my wife and I have gone out of our way to raise them on a diet of butt jokes and Cheerios. But I have noticed that this phenomenon is not unique to them. It seems that all boys in this age range are similarly amused by the mere mention of the “B-word.”

A few months back we took my older son to his Kindergarten orientation. While the teacher spoke to the parents about what she would be teaching her students, the kids were in the play area getting to know each other. My son is a bit shy and at first he was playing by himself, but after a little while he was playing with another boy. When it was time to go, I went over to collect my son and he and the other boy were laughing and pointing at a stuffed animal while simultaneously saying, “Look at his butt!” Yes, they bonded over the word “butt.”

The incident above raises another interesting point. Perhaps the only thing funnier to a young boy than the word “butt” is the sight of a butt—on a stuffed animal, an action figure, or especially in a TV show or movie. I’ve noticed that some studios pander to this more than others. DreamWorks, in particular, is not at all shy about getting butt-laughs. In fact, I’ve never sat down and done the math on this, but I’m pretty sure at least 30% of the laughs in the “Shrek” movies come from the title character’s butt. My kids are more into the “Madagascar” movies and nothing makes them laugh harder than when King Julien—the flamboyant lemur voiced by Sacha Baron Cohen—dances around and shakes his butt at the screen. To them it’s comedy gold.

Over the past few years I have done what I can to resist resorting to butt jokes with my kids, but I think they’re slowly breaking me down. After all, you have to give the audience what they want. This morning while playing super heroes with the kids I picked up an Iron Man action figure and said, “Look, the bad guy is going to throw Iron Man into the recycle bin, but that’s the one for paper and plastic only.” No reaction. I went to Plan B. “Look, the bad guy made Iron Man fall on his butt.” Uncontrollable laughter.

Maybe I’ll send in an application to DreamWorks.

The Pointlessness of Political Lawn Signs

I am very much done with this political season—have been for months now. I’m done with the divisive political Facebook posts from friends on both sides of the aisle who clearly need to toss back a glass of wine and lighten up already. I’m done with the endless barrage of political ads on television that tell you nothing about the candidate they want you to vote for, but make the candidate they don’t want you to vote for appear like a less well-adjusted version of Charles Manson. I’m done with the countless Saturday morning robo-calls from my own political party that make me want to vote for candidates from the other party out of spite. But most of all, I’m done with the political lawn signs.

I know of all the things I mentioned, lawn signs probably seem the most innocuous, but for some reason they bother me the most. At least the other forms of political expression I mentioned above attempt to convey some sort of information. Yes, the information is usually biased, skewed, faulty, and otherwise not very helpful, but at least some sort of message is coming across. What information does a lawn sign provide? A name. That’s pretty much it. Just a name.

I don’t mean to offend people with lawn signs, but really, what’s the point?

Now that you’ve shown me the candidate’s name what would you like me to do with that microscopic bit of information? If it’s the candidate that I like do you want me to pull over, ring your bell, and shake your hand? Congratulations, you’re just like 60,000,000 other people who are going to vote for the same dude.

What if your sign has the name of the candidate I don’t like? Are you hoping that seeing the name of the guy I’m not going to vote for as I drive past your house is going to throw me into such a blind rage that I may crash my car into a tree, slip into unconsciousness, and not be able to function until November 7^th when it’s too late to vote?

Ah, I know. You think that I may be an undecided voter. You think that despite the fact that I’ve seen your candidate’s name approximately 3.8 billion times over the past year, this one instance of seeing his name will throw me over the edge and cause me to say, “Okay, this settles it. This person who I’ve never met before and I know absolutely nothing about is going to vote for Candidate X, and since they have such lovely gardenias in front of their house, I guess I’ll vote for him too.”

Not going to happen. I looked it up and found out that in the history of democratic elections not one person has ever attributed their voting choice to seeing someone’s lawn sign. But hey, don’t let that stop you from proudly displaying yours. I mean there’s a first time for everything, right? Maybe if you take extra good care of your sign, and you wax and polish it every night before you go to bed, someone driving by will be so impressed with your lawn sign that it will influence their vote. And maybe that one vote will cause there to be a majority of votes in your state for your candidate! And Maybe Your State Will Be The State That Tilts The Electoral Map To Your Candidate!! AND MAYBE YOU AND YOUR LAWN SIGN WILL BE DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR SENDING YOUR CANDIDATE TO THE WHITE HOUSE!!!

But probably not.

The Annual Halloween Conundrum

With Halloween a scant three weeks away it is time to start thinking about the costume questions. There are three questions to carefully consider:

1) Should I even bother wearing a costume?

2) If I do bother wearing a costume, what kind of costume should I wear?

3) If I gave this much thought to my finances would I own a mansion and a yacht by now?

Let’s ponder these questions one at a time, shall we?

First off—should I bother wearing a costume? It’s the age old question for somebody whose age is getting a bit old. As a kid, wearing a costume on Halloween is a given. Our kids have been discussing what they will be this Halloween since November 1, 2011. They have changed their minds about eight dozen times over the past year. They will likely change their minds several more times between now and when we get to the costume store. In fact, there is a high probability that one of them will change their minds once inside the costume store. This is exactly what happened last year. My five-year-old son was three inches away from the Spiderman costume he said he wanted for the previous two days when out of the corner of his eye he saw a Wolverine costume, which cast some sort of voodoo-like spell on him and caused him to completely forget that he ever wanted a Spiderman costume in the first place.

For adults the question of costume wearing on Halloween isn’t as cut and dry. If you’re going to a Halloween party you would definitely wear a costume. If you’re taking your kids trick-o-treating you might wear a costume. And if you’re going to the doctor’s office to have them look at a questionable mole, you might not want to wear a costume. But I’m not going to a Halloween party, my wife is the one who takes the kids trick-o-treating, and I have no questions about any of my moles, so for me there is no clear cut answer. I’ll go with “yes” simply so that I can answer question number two.

Okay, so now that we know I’ll wear a costume, what should I wear? I’m not crazy about traditional Halloween costumes like ghosts, vampires, and devils. I’m not going to do the super hero thing, because I don’t want to steal my kids’ thunder.  And I refuse to wear an Obama or Romney mask because I don’t want to terrify babies and small dogs. No, I prefer more subtle costumes like a math tutor, or an account representative, or a proofreader. You know, the kind of costume that drives people crazy for hours trying to figure out what you’re supposed to be. My other option is to dress up like a Fig Newton—I really like Fig Newtons.

As for the third question, the answer is “no.” No matter how much thought I give to my finances the closest I’ll ever come to owning a mansion and a yacht is to dress up like Warren Buffett. Hmmm...now that’s a pretty subtle costume.

The Mysteries of Cellular Telephonic Devices

Last week, at the height of iPhone 5 mania, I got an iPhone 4s. It wasn’t that I was being a savvy shopper—or a cheap bastard, depending upon your perspective—but rather, I was given this phone at work when they replaced all of our Blackberries.

I’ve had my phone for five days now and I’m still not quite sure how to operate it. Basic things are going wrong. I must have done something early on to turn off the ringer and now I don’t know how to turn it back on. I read the instruction manual cover to cover, but the instruction manual seems to have been written for someone who already has a working knowledge of cellphones. That would not be me.

About a year-and-a-half ago, when I first got my Blackberry, I had similar problems. No clue how to use the thing. A few days after I got that phone I had it in my pants pocket and bent over to pick something up. This motion apparently triggered something on the phone, because I heard a beep followed by a soothing woman’s voice saying, “You may now leave your voicemail greeting.” I quickly took the phone out of my pocket and left my voicemail greeting. I was thankful for this stroke of luck because I had been trying to figure out how to do that since I had gotten the phone.

I have been trying to use this same technique to turn the ringer back on my iPhone 4s. I keep on putting the phone in my pocket, bending in unusual ways, and then calling myself from my landline to see if I reactivated the ringer. So far no luck, but at least the constant bending is making me more limber than usual.

I’m not quite sure what makes me so cellphone-challenged. I was talking to a friend of mine who is similarly challenged and he attributed it to our age. I don’t really buy that argument. At 43, there are plenty of people my age and older who handle a cellphone as efficiently and effectively as Eddie Van Halen handles a guitar. No, I think my ineptitude in this realm must come from something else.

Stupidity perhaps? Perhaps. But I’ve seen those people swerving in and out of lanes on the freeway while using one hand to text and the other to slug back their Starbucks Iced Mocha Strawberry Latte Orange Frappuccino, and I think to myself, “I’ve got to be smarter than that yutz.”

What then? The only thing I can think of is that I have some sort of genetic mutation. I know it would be odd for there to be a gene specific to cellphone usage, but the human genome is a mysterious thing. Some scientists have said that there is lots of “junk DNA” that doesn’t seem to have a specific use. Other scientists have said that there is no “junk DNA,” just DNA that we haven’t figured out what they do yet. So I’m urging geneticists to look into the possibility of a cellphone usage gene. Perhaps if they discover the gene they would be able to develop a technique to activate it for people like myself. That would probably be a lot faster than me figuring out how to activate my ringer.