A beautiful Saturday. For the third day in a row actually. Today feels like spring, definitely. Last night I watched the first DVD from Saturday Night Live’s musical guests. Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, The Blue Brothers, Grateful Dead, Bill Joel, Carly Simon, Peter Tosh and Mick Jagger et al. It was ok. Had it on for the music more than the video though seeing Patti Smith so young with Ivan Kral and Richard Sohl still alive and in the band. Ivan is still alive, Richard passed away.
TV was on the menu again last night, the usual suspects. I neglected to mention how great it was to see Michelle Obama on the Colbert Report the other night. She was well poised and funny. I wouldn’t mind having her as a First Lady. It would definitely be an improvement over who we have now. Watched Futurama which is almost always great and then Bill Maher who had Cornell West on, as well as politician and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, blogger Markos Moulitsas from the Daily Kos. Kos was great and got his point across better than Cornell West, at least what he said struck a chord in me. But right now I forget what it was. I am a fan of Cornell West, and plan to check out his books sometime. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, while easy on the eyes was so soft spoken you can barely hear her.
Yesterday at work I had a very interesting chat with Vivek and Lydia about religion. Lydia, from Estonia, really didn’t have religion in her life. Vivek is Hindu and I covered the Atheist angle. It was due to the Pope being in town. Spoke to Billie in DC. He has bronchitis as well as bad allergies and with his compromised immune system, he’s not having an easy time of it. He was also fed up with the mess of things the Pope made while he was in Washington DC..That darn Pope pissing off people where she goes. At least the six victims of sexual abuse by pedophile priests probably weren’t pissed and the old man in a gown. Same jerk who said that homosexual couples that want to adopt children are intrinsically evil.
After Bill Maher I tuned in to VH1 Classics which had a block of Bruce Springsteen videos on honor of Danny Federici, recently deceased keyboardist/accordionist from the E Street Band. About 2 hours actually of mainly live videos going as far back as 1975. That’s when I would have loved to have seen him. Frank and Elaine as well as Annemarie and Brian were going to see him constantly it seemed. I was too young to go, especially since they wanted to get their freak on and not watch their 13 year old brother.
Bruce was so skinny then, and quite the performer with a four hour show each night. I felt sad at Danny Federici’s passing, though not as much as Harpy and my family. I think the album that he features prominently on is The Wild and the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. That’s the album I heard the most when growing up in 13 Riverview. Four of my favorite Bruce songs are on that. Sandy (Fourth of July, Asbury Park), Kitty’s Back, Incident on 57th Street and Rosalita. One of these days I’ll get the rest of the album. Here’s a clip of Danny Federici’s last appearance with the E Street Band last month.
