Thursday, March 18, 2010

Jet -- In Concert

Monday night, March 15, we went to The Village to see the rock band Jet live.  It was a great show.  The Village is a small venue, but Jet came out and did their show like it was Madison Square Garden. 

The opening act was a local Little Rock band called Kingsdown.  They laid the groundwork for a fantastic show with some good, heavy original tunes and were then followed by the touring opener The Crash Kings. 

The Crash Kings were different if nothing else. A three-man band with no lead guitarist ... only a bass guitar, drums and a keyboardist who handled all the other work.  It was, at first, an odd arrangement and I didn't see how it would work.  Turns out they sound like a fusion of The White Stripes and Chicago.  Very interesting, and very good to listen to.

Then came Jet.  They rocked the place, and good.  This band didn't worry that there were only maybe 500-600 people at the show.  Their show was as solid a rock concert as I've seen since Sammy Hagar went back out on his own.  Good music, well presented and sounding almost studio quality.  Just a good show.

And the band did one thing that totally tripped my head.  When they first arrived on stage, they all had 70's and 80's metal band hair.  As that's pretty much what I'm used to seeing at a rock show, I didn't think much of it other than they didn't look like their album cover.  The did the usual stop the show and run off the stage, getting ready for the encore.  And when they came back for the final songs -- the didn't have their hair any more!  They looked like the album cover again!  So they were wearing these hair band wigs to make fun of, or as a salute to, (I'm not sure which) 70's and 80's metal bands. 

It was interesting if nothing else.

Jet and the Crash Kings put on a great show.

Sunday, March 07, 2010

More Examples of the Fall of Our Civilization

Below is a good example of several Fall of Civilization How To's:


How to lower the bar and make it sound like a good thing:
How to discriminate against above average people and make it sound like it's their fault:
How to show the minorities you're looking out for their interests when what you're really doing is removing opportunities for everybody:
How to throw more money at a problem money won't solve:
How to show the lazy underachievers that it's ok to be a burden on society:





In January, the Berkeley (Calif.) School Board began consideration of a near-unanimous recommendation of Berkeley High School's Governance Council to eliminate science labs from its curriculum, reasoning that the classes mostly serve white students, leaving less money for programs for underperforming minorities. Berkeley High's white students do far better academically than the state average; black and Latino students do worse than average. Five science teachers would be dismissed. [East Bay Express, 12-23-09]