Time To Get The Led Out

This Friday and Saturday, Celebration Day returns to the Pageant for two nights of Led Zeppelin. The band (most of whose members also comprise the Pink Floyd tribute band El Monstero) sells out the venue for two nights of LZ cathexis.

If you have ever had a period in your life where you dug Led Zeppelin, catching this show at some point is a must. This isn't just another tribute act. This band puts everything into the show, playing for over 3 hours straight each night. They do their best to recreate a real Zeppelin show, too: double-necked Gibson guitars, an acoustic set in the middle of the show at the front of the stage, the violin bow during Dazed and Confused, the rest of the band leaves the stage while the drummer does his best Bonham during "Moby Dick", and Jimmy even plays a theremin solo during Whole Lotta Love (who the heck has a theremin just laying around?).

I was a geek enough that last year I actually noted the setlist:


Celebration Day
Heartbreaker
Black Dog
Rock 'n Roll
Trampled Under Foot
Thank You
Immigrant Song
The Lemon Song
Tangerine
No Quarter
Dancing Days
The Ocean
Dazed and Confused
Since I Been Lovin' You
Moby Dick
Going To California
That's The Way
The Battle Of Evermore
The Song Remains the Same
Over The Hills And Far Away
All of my Love
In The Light
The Rain Song
Whole Lotta Love ->
Bring It On Home ->
Whole Lotta Love ->
How Many More Times ->
Whole Lotta Love

Encore:
Kashmir
Stairway To Heaven

A Day In Pictures

Dawson is devastated.

Dwight is delirious.

Doogie is distraught.

Dennis is distressed.

Dana is disheartened.

And McCain is mad.

Why?

They're all Cardinal fans, of course. The Cards and Pujols failed to reach agreement before Camp Pujols' deadline. This all but ensures Albert Pujols will be wearing the uniform of another team in 2012. Yes, the Cards will have the opportunity to compete with other teams when Pujols becomes a free agent after the 2011 season. But the failure to reach an agreement now indicates that the Cards are not willing to spend the money (estimated to be in the neighborhood of 10 years / $300 million) that at least one team will pitch him in November. It's hard to blame the Cards for not wanting to spend that kind of dough, but I'd always had a boyish dream that Pujols would retire as one of the greatest to ever play the game, and as a career Cardinal.

Oh well.

I suppose not everyone feels this is bad news.

I heart Egypt!

The American people demand information about Egypt, so why not let them eat cake?

The brief discussion, started in another post, has flooded over the banks of the Nile and is now threatening Cairo. As we at TLATL constantly meet the needs of our Dear Reader, we stand ready to provide. It is always hard to speak broadly, for example of the "media". Exceptions abound. It may be even harder to speak usefully of events in foreign cultures. For as much as Egypt is a neighbor in this global village, it is perhaps more important to point out that Americans seem more enamored with our interest in Egypt than in the actual country or people of Egypt. Whatever questions have been raised, they are usually with the devilish smirk of how to frame our position, our involvement. Buyer beware.

The Ben Bernanke

In a coincidence of events today, I came across the issue of "Quantitative Easing." This fancy term was a hot topic for awhile, but now apparently plays second fiddle to the chaos in Egypt. Is anyone following what is going on in Egypt? I personally find it rather uninteresting, and as the name of this blog references two fine cities in the great Midwest, I find it more interesting to talk about stuff that affects us more directly.

The mainstream media is a constant dismay for me. I know, I know, that's now an overused and cliched term, but upon finding this article on the NYT website, not only was I saddened by the level of reporting on a really important topic, I was further dismayed to view the home page and find it listed in the second row, behind Egyptanistan. I revisited the NYT Home page just moments ago to reference it, however it is not a static link. Now the reference to Bernanke is totally gone (as is the Egypt story) and there's just a picture of a shirtless doofus politician from NY.

A good friend of mine is a highly accomplished and respected journalist, and he has mentioned to me in conversation how he is not happy with the attacks on "mainstream media" and that bloggers are not professional journalists. This is true, and the attacks are indeed sad. But when videos like the one below contain more information (and are more entertaining) than a NYT reporter can scrap together, I am not surprised to see the Super Bowl ad for TheDaily.com, the first tablet-oriented, virtual news"paper" I know of. Happy viewing, dear Reader.