Okay, so it’s been nearly three months since we got back from Disney, and nearly three months since I said I would post about our trip.

I’m having a hard time finding the time (and, on occasion, the energy) to get that going.  It’s not that I don’t want to blog any longer, it’s just that between the kids, housework, and now baseball practice, not to mention that bane of human existence, that goddamned Facebook, away from which I can’t seem to pull myself, I just keep putting it off and putting it off.

However, I did feel the need to mention something that, ironically, I discovered on Facebook, that I can’t seem to get out of my head.

Apparently there is a website called bratfree.com, which is a forum where people who obviously do not like children can post their favorite anti-children jokes, stories, and anecdotes.  I went there briefly and read a few posts; there were lots of people complaining about whiny children in line, loud children in movies, things like that.  Understandable, I suppose- to a degree.  But then it changed.  Quickly.

I also discovered that people were posting stories about women who lost their babies due to miscarriages, stillbirths, etc., and the posters went so far as to laugh at and ridicule those women- saying things like “serves the bitch right for getting pregnant in the first place”, for example- not to mention making fun of the dead babies themselves.  Admittedly, I have a rather foul vocabulary, but the language people were using, especially to describe the babies that died, made my blood run cold.   Speaking as someone who has lost a child (and nearly his wife in the process) to an ectopic pregnancy, I find this profoundly appalling.

Hey, I’m all for freedom of speech, and the right to voice one’s opinions, now matter how fucked up they may be.  As much as it disgusts me, I respect the rights of people like the KKK to spew their garbage, for example.  However, recent laws have changed to create an umbrella of “hate crimes” under which certain acts like that fall.  And I’m definitely all for that.

But here’s the thing.  If a forum like bratfree.com were created (and I’m not naive enough to believe that there aren’t already multitudes of them now) that was anti-black, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-Jew, or whatever, it would easily fall under the “hate crime” category.  So, even though no “crime” is technically being committed here, how can this bratfree.com thing NOT be considered hate crime, or at the very least, simply hate, in its rawest and purest form?

Again, I respect the right for anyone to voice their opinions about anything, even if I don’t care to hear them.  And I also respect the fact that there are people out there that simply don’t like children, or at least don’t want to have any.  (And the world is better off because of that.)  But to laugh at women that have lost children, and to make fun of the dead babies, that steps far beyond not just the line of tact or good taste, but also of what is considered “hate”, as it relates to “hate crime”.

Would I be as upset by this website if Dawn and I hadn’t lost a child, and almost her as well?  Probably not to the degree to which I am.  But I would still be appalled.  Look, I’m no angel- I’ve made fun of people before in my almost 42 years on this planet.  But there are some places even I won’t go.  Insulting someone’s children- especially those that have died- is one of those places.  Say what you will about me, but if you speak ill of my children, I will destroy you.  Swiftly, mercilessly, and without any hesitation.  Think that’s an idle threat?  Try me.

I know nothing neither can nor will be done about this forum.  It’s impossible (not to mention very dangerous from a “slippery slope” standpoint) to attempt to censor the internet- nor do I care to.  I’m also not really requesting any “action” from anyone that is reading this.  Again, what can realistically be done?  Besides, it’s bad enough that I’m giving these douchebags any thought at all, let alone space on my blog- I’d hate to think I sent a bunch of web traffic their way, hence why I didn’t link to it.  If you go to their website, it’s not because I told you to.  (That’s my “rational justification”; work with me.)  I guess all I’m really doing is simply alerting people that this shit exists, and that it’s obvious that hate, be it in the form of racism, misogyny, or any other, is alive and well and will not be going away any time soon.

And everybody that knows me wonders why I’m so goddamned cynical and why I hate [most] people.

We got back Saturday from our excursion to Walt Disney World.  Hence, you’re going to get play-by-play of the trip- once I get around to writing it.

I will likely make a post out of each day, rather than have a gargantuan entire-trip-encompassing post that will take 7 hours for you to read, and even longer for me to type.  I’ll even try to see if I can include a picture or two, though I really didn’t take many.  Dawn took several, but we can’t find the USB cable for her camera, so we may not get them uploaded for a while.

None of my castle pictures turned out (stupid camera- what, it’s not like it’s the photographer’s fault!!), and I didn’t take very interesting pictures otherwise, so don’t really expect a whole lot beyond a lot of reading.

Hence the title of this post.

…until we invade the Mouse House.

Dawn and I decided back in February that we were going to take Ian to Disney World for his birthday this year.  We got our flight, resort reservations, dinner plans, all that stuff taken care of, and now we’re just counting down these last two weeks.

And so far- to my knowledge, anyway- Ian still doesn’t know.

He has been pitching tales of woe all summer about how we haven’t been anywhere on vacation and we haven’t done anything fun and blah blah blah.  Never mind that Dawn popped for Opening Day tickets in one of the club boxes at Busch Stadium for Ian and me.  Never mind that we joined the Colony West Swim Club (though I’m not real sure why, considering my mom and dad have a perfectly good pool we can use any time for free).  Never mind that just last week Ian went to the Tom Sawyer cave in Hannibal with Dawn’s folks and one of his cousins (in other words, sans little brother).  Never mind that we’ve gone to some Sliders games.  He still hasn’t gotten to have any fun, in his mind.  Of course, it doesn’t help that I have been telling him that, since we got the new flooring, we don’t really have the money to go on a trip anywhere for a while.  Which is somewhat true and somewhat bullshit.  He’s apparently buying it, though, since he still bitches about not getting to have any fun yet this summer and it’s almost time to go back to school.

So we’ll show him- Dawn and I are going to fun the shit out of him for a week.

His birthday is on Saturday the 15th.  That, in and of itself, has gotten to be a bit more ambitious than I really cared for it to be, especially considering it’s two days before we leave for Casa de Mickey.  Dawn’s renting a friggin’ bounce house (we’re hosed if it rains that day), I’m decorating a Sorcerer Mickey cake (though, luckily, that got scaled down a bit after the “practice cake” we made this past Friday), and we’ve got her family, my family, and several neighbors and their kids coming.  Which is perfectly fine, but that also means we’ve got beer, soda, and juice to buy, I’ve got to clean the house, have the grass mowed and the dogshit picked up out of the yard that day (again, screwed if it rains)… though I did knock a big one off the list when I powerwashed the deck this past Saturday.  Just have a lot to do.  Not to mention packing for Ian and me for WDW (Dawn can pack her own damn suitcase!!) and packing for Adam to spend that week with Grandma and Grandpa.  And canceling the newspaper delivery, canceling the Oberweis delivery… SHIT!

So anyhooze, the plan is that we got one of those recordable birthday cards with Mickey Mouse on the front for him to open, and we’re going to record something along the lines of “make sure you get a good night’s sleep tomorrow night because first thing Monday morning, WE’RE LEAVING FOR DISNEY WORLD!!”  I originally wanted to save that for the coupe de ville and have him open that last, but since Dawn’s family is giving him stuff to take on the trip, he’d figure it out by the time he got to the card.  So we’re going to have him open it first.  And he bet us that, since we’re not going to make broom cakes to accompany the Sorcerer Mickey hats, that he’s going to be disappointed at the end of his party.  So Dawn and I each bet him $2.50 that he will not give two shits about those broom cakes by the end of his party.

Sucker.

We’ve got a decent itinerary penciled out, I think.  (Keyword: penciled out…)  Gonna hit Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney Hollywood Studios, Typhoon Lagoon, probably Animal Kingdom, probably Downtown Disney… and we’ve got it worked out to be able to have breaks in the afternoon for rest/naps/barbituate injestion.  We didn’t get all the dinner reservations we wanted, but I think he’ll be all right with what we did get.  And the final night (Friday the 21st) before we leave, we’re going to the Magic Kingdom- extended magic hours go until 1:00am, so we’re going to just go full bore, balls out that final night until I have to carry Ian back to the resort.  And then have to go through trying to wake him up for the 8:00am breakfast Saturday morning before we catch our flight home… but I think it’ll be great.  I just hope we can continue to keep it from him for the next two weeks.  I’ve almost blown it so many times so far.  I’d hate to have the surprise gone this close to his birthday.

Already.

Half of me is thinking, “aww, maaaaan!” and half of me is thinking, “thank the heavenly Father”.  We did not do all that well (win-loss wise) yet at the same time we played a lot of good games.  There were some pretty big issues with attention spans- again, 7- and 8-year-olds not stay focus, to paraphrase Mr. Myagi- but even with our nine losses, at least a few of them were only by a small handful of runs, and in several of them the kids still played well.  That sentence didn’t even make sense to me as I typed it, but hence how went this season.  It was just really hard keeping most of the kids interested for 6 innings, and it just made things hard for (Coach) Gene and me, and was very frustrating at times.  Yet, it was still extremely rewarding, at least from my standpoint.

One of the big problems we had was with one kid [whom, we later found out, is autistic, but still] that virtually never hustled, on every play he would flop enough to make Dennis Rodman proud and “get hurt”, and in one game, he even kicked Gene in the shin and then later purposefully hit Gene in the… um… scrotissimus region.  About the fourth to last game or so, he did start coming around (slowly) and at least occasionally tried to make an effort.  Then after the final game last night, he comes up to me and says, “Thank you for being my coach” and gives me a big hug.

I’m a sucker for that shit, damn it.

Anyway, I really don’t know where I left off with the game results, but suffice it to say we lost the next few.  Some by a rather large margin, some by 4 runs or less.  And then on the second to last game of the season, they finally decided they were ready to play as a team, and they won.  It was close- actually, a bit of a nail-biter- but they won.  And then last night’s final game, against the team we tied the first time we played them, my little Diamondbacks played their asses off and won pretty big.  I think like about 22-13 big.  So there was nothing like ending the season on a high note like that.  Pretty cool.

Next year, Ian, as well as Gene’s boys, will be moving up to the [kid-pitch] minor leagues, so there are a whole new set of rules and fundamentals that will need to be learned and then honed, and at some point soon Gene and I will probably get together and decide for sure which kids we are going to “bring with us”, and then go from there.  We might look into the possibility of a fall-ball league (and maybe even a winter league) as well.  As I write this, Ian is outside with his pitchback net, working on his dexterity and reflexes (though he doesn’t know that’s what he’s doing), and I’m certain we’ll hit the parks and maybe the batting cages on occasion.

Until then, I just want to say to my Diamondback guys and girl, thank you for a… crazy season.  It had its ups and downs, and there were some moments I could just FEEL my hair turning grey, but you guys always made it interesting and fun.  To those coming with us to the next level, we’ll see you next year if not before.  Those that aren’t, best of luck in baseball, school, and whatever else comes your way.

To Gene, I say thank you for giving me the opportunity to coach again, and I look forward to next year and beyond.

To Tara, thank you for keeping Gene and me in line.

To all the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and assorted other fans, thank you for your support and patience, and for the after-game treats for the kids, especially the players’ assorted brothers and sisters.  That was great that you included them.

Ian, Quinn, Justin, Jacob, Gage, Brian, Ken, Brayden, Ethan, Conner, Joe, Sam, and Ben- you all did a great job, you all improved as the season progressed, and it was my privilege to be your coach this year.  I’m proud of each and every one of you.

I love you guys.

Okay, so I sorta just realized I’m about ten days delinquent in reporting baseball scores, especially since I know you’re all just dying to know.  Both of you that still read this blog.

Since a week ago Saturday, there have been four games played, three of them in a four day stretch.  I can give you the results of all of them, but I only know the actual scores of two of them.

Let’s see… we played the Twins back on May 30th, and got shelled pretty hard, as I recall.  So that one was a loss. Maybe I can commandeer Coach’s scorebook briefly and get the scores.

Then last Wednesday we played the A’s, who happen to be coached by one of our neighbors down the street.  His son Matthew and my Ian are among the neighborhood gang of Star Wars geeks that run around together, and we found out that they are on opposing sides in the same baseball league.  So we’ll be playing them twice this year.  Nothing like starting a nice little neighborhood rivalry.  Anyway, that was a pretty good game, but we wound up losing 25-18.  Only real “neighborhood rivalry” that came out of it was me giving the coach’s wife some shit the next day for not recognizing me at the game.

Then we had a game Friday against the Rockies.  That turned out to be a really close, competitive game that we ended up winning 22-17.  Ian played a couple innings at third that game, and wound up doing pretty well.  He stopped a ball that was hit pretty friggin’ hard down there, and he made a couple other decent stops.  I do have to kinda work with him on his tags.  He tagged a kid coming to third (the kid beat the tag) but Ian pushed the kid clean off the base.  But he’s still hitting pretty well, and more or less doing a decent job of controlling the emotions.

After Friday night’s game, we hit the Taco Bell and then went to the Carillon Festival at Washington Park for some music and to catch the fireworks, which were friggin’ awesome again.  The funny part was that Adam fell asleep during the fireworks.  Anyway, we got home about 10:30 or so and I had to get the uniforms washed for the 9AM game on Saturday.  Especially since we had to be there at 8-friggin’-fifteen for pictures.  Ask around- neither I nor my kids are “morning people”.  So we get the pictures taken and start playing the game, against the Orioles, a team that took about 25 minutes of infield practice, they were doing a little soft-toss against the fence, and various other drills that you really don’t see much of until you get at least more into the 12- to 14-year-olds, if not actual high school ball.  Needless to say, we pretty much got our asses handed to us for that game as well.

But here’s the thing:  it’s not so much that the Orioles were [necessarily] that much better, it’s that none of our kids really seemed to want to be there.  Most everyone was lollygagging, head down, kicking the dirt- and not just your typical lollygagging, head down, kicking the dirt that 7- and 8-year-olds do in baseball games.  I was really starting to get kinda pissed at some of the kids, to be honest.  Even Quinn watched one go by, and she’s always very good about chasing them down.  There was one or two innings during which Ian was literally the only kid moving when the ball was hit, let alone running and trying to get it.  I more or less quit “coaching” after about the 4th inning and just let what happened happen.  We were so far behind at that point that it was basically teaching a pig to sing.  I think 3 games in four days (especially two more or less back-to-back like that) takes a toll on 8-year-olds.  Still makes coaching difficult though.

The problem is that we have some parents that are making things hard for Gene.  We’ve been getting the “my Billy needs to play more” and “my Timmy ought to get to play such-and-such position” pretty hard and heavy from a few parents, so Coach has been trying to appease them as best he can while still trying to put the best possible lineup out there.  I have mixed emotions about it.  Half of me says we can try to get kids in and out as much as possible, but the other half says Gene should just feed those parents a big bowl of sugar frosted, vitamin fortified Shut the F*ck Up cereal and do what he feels is best.  But it’s not “my team”, so I keep my mouth shut.

Most of the parents that are bitching about their kids’ playing time (or lack thereof) are the ones whose kids are almost always drawing in the dirt, watching the butterflies/airplanes/ladybugs etc., and walking towards the general direction of the ball (if not simply watching it go by).  Conversely, however, we’ve also got a kid that will come from right field all the way over to third base to try to field the ball, and usually winds up getting in the way of the kid(s) that should have been making the play, thus fighting over the ball.  We’re roughly halfway through the schedule; if this trend continues, I may risk stepping on toes and have a “team meeting” before a game (making sure the parents can hear) and basically lay down the law as far as what Gene and I expect from the kids (and from their parents).  I imagine I’ll wind up with nothing but pissed off kids and pissed off parents, but if I don’t accomplish what I hope to (kids hustling a little more and parents shutting the hell up), at least I can be “the bad guy” and hopefully take some of the pressure off of Gene.

And in case you’re wondering, no, I don’t think only the “good” kids should get to play.  I think only the kids that want to play and will hustle should get to play.  We’ve got one little guy that’s barely bigger than Adam that literally gets too tired by about the 4th or 5th inning and asks to come out.  But here’s the thing- I am willing to overlook that, because when he’s in there, Joe hustles his ass off, and I think he just simply gets tired due to his size.  We’ve got kids close to twice his size that walk on and off the field, they appear to refuse to move where we tell them to, etc.  I realize the attention span we’re dealing with (trust me), but holy crap, if you don’t really want to play, why are you here?!

So anyway, those are the results of the last four games I’ve missed reporting.  Got games scheduled for Wednesday at 6 and Saturday morning at 9, and we’ll see how the weather treats us this week.

Okay, so yesterday’s game was against the Angels.  I still, to this day, have to stop myself from calling [the actual MLB team] the California Angels- because I’m old school like that- but their current name is ridiculous:  the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Of Orange County of Southern California of the Greater Contiguous United States of North America of planet Earth of the Milky Way galaxy… I could spend a while ranting about how retarded that is, but I won’t.  I think it pretty well speaks for itself.  I mean no offense to any fans of the Angels, or to the Angels themselves, but it’s pretty stupid.

Anyway, Ian and Quinn and the rest of the D’Backs played another pretty decent game.  Ian’s really coming along with the glove.  He made some really good defensive plays- not the least of which being on a grounder hit to him while he wasn’t exactly paying attention.  But he recovered well and got the kid out.  Both kids did well with hitting again- Ian went two-for-three (as I believe Quinn did as well) and each scored at least one run.  Actually, the whole team does pretty well with the bat.  It’s the fielding with which we have issues.  But hey, they’re 7 and 8 years old, and they all seem to be having fun.  So it was a pretty good game, and we wound up winning by a run.  I don’t know the final score, but I do know we won by a single run.

Special mention to the little guy Jeremiah on the Angels, that could not have been much older than Quinn’s brother Canon (and certainly no taller) and was swimming in his uniform shirt.  He was up there giving it everything he had, got on base twice, and he scored a run- getting his foot caught underneath the plate performing a textbook slide.  I pulled his little foot out from under the plate and he smiled from ear to ear and said “thank you, mister” and then ran back to his bench with a big “woo0-hoooo!!”

THAT is why I’m a baseball fan.

Sorry… just practicing for the “Write Headlines for the SJ-R Sports Section” contest.  No offense to anyone reading this who happens to work for the SJ-R- especially the sports desk- but come on… y’all really like your cheesy puns and wordplay, don’t you?!!

At any rate, that’s not the subject of this post.  But the lame pun in the title is a good lead-in to that which is the subject of this post.

We had another game last night, the second of 3 games in four days.  We’ve got three weeks like that; last week (all three were rained out), this week, and the first week of June.  Yeesh.  Any-hooze, last night we played the New York Mets.  Great game all the way around.  They were probably as closely matched with our abilities as any team we’ve played, this year or last, and it showed.  I knew it was going to be a tight one, considering each team scored their 5 runs in their respective halves of the first inning.  I said to Coach, “it may come down to the first team that doesn’t score five runs in an inning loses”.  It was pretty close to that.

Both teams essentially played pretty well.  Ian and Quinn both had good games, each going 3-for-3, each scoring at least two runs.  Ian made some good plays at 2B, Quinn was once again like a gazelle.  It’s really kind of impressive watching her run.  She has possibly the longest strides I’ve ever seen in a kid that young.  Easily the fastest on the team.  She sure as hell runs faster than her coach can…

Anyway, this neck-and-neck game finished a 20-20 tie, as we had about 5 minutes left in which we could have started the 6th inning, and both coaches agreed, “nah, let’s call it a tie”, so that’s where it ended.  It was a very good game* and I’m proud of our kids.  Next game tomorrow (Saturday) at 3:00.  Hopefully it won’t be TOO blazin’ hot.

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* In the kids’-sports world, it’s not a big deal, but I gotta get this out of my system:  I hate ties.  Hate ‘em.  Hate ‘em with the fury of a thousand demons.  Absolutely can’t STAND it when games end in ties.  It’s one thing with soccer and hockey games, both of which often end in ties, because they’re not real sports to begin with.  But when a football game or a baseball game ends in a tie, it’s no longer a ‘game’, it can be considered no more than one of three things:  either a “practice”, an “exhibition”, or a “scrimmage”.  Or, in the case of Major League Baseball, they call it the All-Star Game.  But that’s a completely different “not a real game” discussion for another time.  If you’re not going to keep playing until there is a clear winner, then why did you bother?  But again, with 7- and 8-year-old kids, I can appreciate why games end in ties.  Still would rather there have been a winner, but hey, at least it wasn’t a loss, right?

…but for the next month and a half or so, I can make an exception.

Today FINALLY started the new baseball season.  It was supposed to have started last week- Ian had games last Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, but they all got rained out.  This week it has been very nice so far, so we got game #1 (actually game #4) in last night.

I should start out by saying that the three of you left from this time last year may remember that Ian played for the Florida Marlins in his coach-pitch league.  This year, for whatever reason, we became the Arizona Diamondbacks.  If nothing else, Ian and I will wind up with a nice little mini-collection of MLB-endorsed t-shirts and hats.  Anyway, this year, Ian’s cousin Quinn is on his team.  She’s strong and she’s fast.  I told Jeff he needs to get her on the track team when she gets into high school.

So last night we hosted the Cleveland Indians.  Quinn and Ian are partners in crime anyway, and I think they’re going to have the nickname “Gruesome Twosome” or something similar for the baseball season.  Quinn led off the bottom of the first with a legitimate base hit, something that made her daddy (and her coach uncle) extremely proud.  Ian was up next and reached base himself, and it basically became a carousel.  We ended up scoring 5 runs (the maximum) every inning.  The Indians started chipping away a little in the last couple innings, but the final score ended up Diamondbacks 25, Indians 13.

Ian was outstanding.  He got on base four times, scored three runs, made some pretty good defensive plays, including one that wound up getting wiped out because of a rule.  Ian was playing outfield, and the ball was hit toward the second baseman (where Ian usually plays, mind you).  The second baseman missed it, so Ian went for the ball, picked it up, and touched second base and got a force out.  But, the rule for our league states that outfielders MUST throw the ball in to an infielder, so the out didn’t count.  But it was no biggie.  I explained it to Ian after the game, and told him I did not know that rule existed.  (I really should read the rules…)  You may remember that Ian had some anger issues last year.  Well, granted it was only the first game, and granted everyone’s in a better mood when they’re winning, but he did very well with that.  We’ll see how it goes the first time he strikes out, throws a ball away, or the first time we’re on the wrong end of a lopsided game.

But bottom line, I was very proud of Ian, Quinn, and their teammates.  It’d be foolish to think we’re going to play that well every game- especially since we won the first game last year and finished 3-13- but it sure was nice getting that first win and giving the kids some confidence.

I don’t typically go to concerts.

Tickets are crazy expensive.  The music is usually so ridiculously loud and distorted that it comes out sounding like you’re inside a jet engine.  Most bands sound like crap live, basically because they don’t have all the studio tricks (i.e. production techniques that make them sound better than they really are) in a live setting- or else they simply suck anyway…  not to mention all the drunk and/or stoned (or whatever…) bags of douche that comprise the crowds of most concerts.

So when I DO go to a concert, it’s got to have a very strong possibility of being one hell of a damn good show.

I have seen Rush numerous times, the most recent being last year’s Snakes and Arrows tour as it came through Riverport Amphitheater (a crazy-good venue, especially for being outdoors) just outside St. Louis.  They’re probably my favorite band ever, meaning that I don’t just like two or three songs of theirs and nothing else, and that I continue buying their music regardless of any… “new directions” in which they go or, quite frankly, how bad an album of theirs sucked (and they’ve had a couple that have…).  Not to mention they’re all three very talented musicians that I simply never get tired of seeing and hearing.  For me, it’s about the actual music.  I couldn’t care less about lyrics for the most part.  A song (or a performer, for that matter) has to blow my proverbial skirt up with their music for me to take notice.  Most music today sucks, so that’s a big reason why I always say music peaked for me around 1985.  Not that there hasn’t been SOME recent music I’ve liked, just not much.

Because most of it sucks.

However, even if I don’t care for a particular style of music, I still appreciate and respect good musicians, singers, and performers.  Garth Brooks, for example.  As a rule, I am vehemently against country music, for a number of reasons.  However, in 1996, Dawn and I had the occasion to see Garth Brooks at the Kiel Center (or whatever you kids call the hockey stadium nowadays) in St. Louis with Dawn’s sister and her husband.  What an amazing show that was.  He definitely was a performer, not just some yay-hoo up on stage acting like he’d rather be somewhere else or being drunk/drugged out of his mind or anything like that.  He addressed the crowd in such a way that made a 19,000-seat arena feel like an intimate club setting.  Again, not a fan of the country musics at all, but Garth Brooks was simply an amazing performer.  One of the best concerts I’ve ever been to.

Until last night.

Last night, Dawn and I went to St. Louis to the same Kiel Center to see Billy Joel and Elton John, much to the remotely good-natured ribbing of my brother Jeff, who possesses profound disdain for all things “mainstream”, especially music.  But that’s for another post.  Anyway, I’ve always been a HUGE fan of both artists, and to see them both at one [bodaciously expensive] show was something I wouldn’t dare pass up.  It did NOT disappoint.

I’ve pretty well established that I’m no reviewer/critic-type person, so out of respect to Brian Mackey, Nick Rogers, et al, I’m not going to attempt that.  I will simply say that it was easily the best concert I’ve ever attended, far and away, bar none.  Even better than the many Rush shows I’ve seen (sorry, Doug), and Rush puts on amazing concerts.

Near as I can tell, this was called the Billy Joel-Elton John Face to Face tour, since they started and ended the concert on grand pianos that were positioned on stage so that they were facing each other, or- wait for it- face to face.  From the moment it began until it ended some three and a half hours or more later, I had this overwhelming sense of being in the presence of musical greatness.  They opened with Elton’s “Your Song”, each taking a verse, and proceeded through four or five songs (alternating between a song of Elton’s and a song of Billy’s), and then Billy left the stage for Elton to perform solo for 90 minutes or so.  He played many of the songs for which he is known, including, among others, “Daniel”, “Rocket Man”, “I’m Still Standing”, “Tiny Dancer”, “Madman Across the Water”, and even “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding”, which was outstanding.

Then he left the stage and Billy Joel came back out and went through a stack of his big hits- “Allentown”, “Uptown Girl”, “Don’t Ask Me Why”, “Zanzibar”, and even “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, among others.  The big difference I noticed between the two was that Elton John is a great performer, where Billy Joel is a great entertainer.  Not that Elton wasn’t entertaining, or that Billy didn’t give a great performance, but Billy was cracking jokes between songs, mugging during songs, and just did a great job of bringing the crowd onstage, at least figuratively.  He’d introduce a band member before each song, something that I thought was great, since when you play behind someone like Billy Joel or Elton John, you tend to be severely anonymous.  Both bands were comprised of extremely talented musicians.

After Billy’s set wrapped up, Elton came back out and the electricity in the arena absolutely red-lined.  They sang the Beatles’ “Birthday” and “Back in the U.S.S.R.” and bounced back and forth between Billy and Elton songs before rocking the place with “The Bitch Is Back” and “Bennie and the Jets”.

And then, it finally happened.

Billy put the harmonica holder thingie (pardon the technical jargon) around his neck and you just knew what was coming.  They launched into “Piano Man”, and it was everything I imagined it to be, times infinity squared.  Whether you like either musician (or their songs) or not- even you, Jeff- being one of nearly 20,000 people swaying in unison and singing “Piano Man”- especially a capella on the last verse- was quite possibly the most amazing musical experience in which I’ve ever participated.  The goosebumps are returning even as I type this.

I wish I would have [been a dork and] made a list of all the songs that were played, as there were far more than the ones I listed, but I simply can’t remember all of them, especially when during the show each was played.  There were a couple I wish they would have done, but obviously they could still be playing if they were to do everything people wanted to hear.  Which would be fine with me.  It was an outstanding show, one which a true music lover like myself would be extremely fortunate to have seen.

Long after the [brutally expensive] t-shirt I bought fades and disintegrates into cotton dust, I will forever possess the memories and the knowledge that, regardless of whether you classify them as “pop”, “rock”, or otherwise, I had the fortune of seeing two musical icons- legends- together in concert.

And there is almost nothing more satisfying than that.  It’s still rock and roll to me, indeed.

A few months back, I somehow discovered the “microblog” realm known as Twitter.  The best description I can come up with for Twitter is a public blog for those with ADD.  Members of Twitter, known as “tweeps” (more on that in a minute), can publish their thoughts, shout-outs, and what not (pertinent or not, related or totally random)- said what nots are known as “tweets”- as long as they do it in 140 characters or less.

If I remember correctly, I think I joined basically because Dawn joined to follow my cousin’s wife.  (Parts of my family are closer to Dawn than to me, but that’s another issue.)  To “follow” a tweep is to make yourself able to view their tweets; unlike Facebook, where you have to send a request to be someone’s FB friend and they have to confirm it before you can interact with them, on Twitter, you can follow a tweep without their prior consent.  It sounds a little like stalking to me.  A tweep can “lock” their tweets, which then requires their approval of your follow request, but apparently it is considered rude, or uppity, or snobbish, or stupid, or whatever, to lock your tweets.

Twitter seems to have all sorts of “useful” functions, most of which go way beyond my limited comprehension.  Tweeps can post links to pictures, web sites, even music tracks, using various services like TwitPic, TinyURL, and blip.fm respectively, just to name a couple of examples.  There is also an ever-expanding Twitter jargon dictionary full of all sorts of little buzzwords, many of which require removal of a word’s first consonant and substituting “tw” in its stead.  It’s like Starbucks- you have to learn a whole new language to be able to function properly in that world.

Anyhow, I occasionally participate in the Twitterama, but I still don’t “get” it.  Even the whole followers thing.  I follow several family members- my dad, my brother Jeff, my SoCal cousins Kristen, Lauren, and Amanda, etc.- and they follow me in return, and we occasionally tweet witty comments back and forth.  I have a few friends that follow me and I them, although several of them have yet to tweet anything.  I also follow and am followed by several “acquaintances”- some I’ve met once or twice, some I haven’t- such as fellow area bloggers and SJ-R reporters, among others, some of whom follow me because I started following them first, some the other way around.

I also follow some tweeps I’ll call “info-tweeps”- things like SJ-R’s Breaking News, SpfldBloggers.com, Birds in the Busch (all things Cardinals baseball), City Museum (the indoor/outdoor made-exclusively-of-materials-recycled-from-St.-Louis-buildings mega playground), among others.  These tweeps are kinda cool to follow in that they provide little snippets of information, many of which contain links to news stories, blog posts, etc.  I have also discovered, and started following, some fictional characters, odd as it sounds.  I now receive musings from Spongebob Squarepants, Darth Vader, and the entire Simpson clan as well as several of their friends.  Weird, I know.  But hey, who knew Lord Vader was so frickin’ funny?!  Even weirder is that Marge Simpson and Ralph Wiggum follow ME now.  Talk about bizarre.

Here’s the thing, though:  I have gotten notifications that I am being stalked followed by people I don’t even know.  At all.  Never heard of them.  Some of them are from here in Springfield, some of them aren’t.  I am not saying at all that I don’t want them to follow me- in fact I’m rather flattered (I guess)- I’m just kind of wondering how they came to follow me.  Perhaps more specifically, why they came to follow me.  I’m guessing that at least some of them must have done keyword searches (for heaven knows what), saw that I mentioned said keyword in one or more tweets, and decided I was follow-worthy.  That’s kinda cool.  Though I don’t follow all of them in return, it’s still sort of… neat… that complete strangers decided I’m “interesting” enough to want to follow my 140-character ramblings.

One other notable thing to mention is the concept of celebritweets (not sure if that’s my word or an already-coined term).  There seem to be more “fake” celebrities on Twitter- losers people posing as celebrities than actual celebrities, but none the less, A-listers down to H-listers are on Twitter, sharing their thoughts, plugging movies and appearances, and basically injecting the Twitterverse with shameless self-promotion.  Shaquille O’Neal, Britney Spears, hottie NBC Today Show anchor Ann Curry, singer John Mayer, numerous comedians, and countless other well- and not so well-known celebrities tweet with varying degrees of regularity and pertinence.

I follow a few celebs (those that I am reasonably certain are authentic), such as Kevin Pollak (great actor and underappreciated stand-up comic), the aforementioned hot news babe Ann Curry, the insanely funny Jim Gaffigan, and super wise ass Sarah Silverman.  I don’t bother following Ashton Kutcher, mainly because I wasn’t impressed with his “get me a million followers” campaign, but also because he’s married to Demi Moore.  I’ll NEVER understand that one.  WEIRD IRONY ALERT: I actually used to follow Demi Moore, but I stopped following her because she only tweeted about books she was reading and to spew diabetic-coma-inducing internet PDA’s to her husband.  It got a little hard to take.  I still think Demi Moore is one of the most beautiful celebrities in the world, but I grew tired of reading about her little fuzzy wumpums.

The thing about following celebrities, though, is that, because of the literally tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of followers they have, it is impossible for them to follow everyone.  There have been several times I wanted to say something [I felt was] funny to Kevin Pollak, but since he doesn’t follow me, he’d never see it.  That’s a big Twitter drawback- to fully orbit the Twitterverse, you have to follow not just your followers, but also your followers’ followers, their followers, their followers’ followers, etc.  Basically, if you don’t follow everyone that is on Twitter, you really are only privvy to about 7% of any given chain of conversation.  Which means if you try to interject something that someone you follow said to someone THEY follow that you don’t, you may well come off looking like an idiot, or at least putting your foot in your mouth.  Not that I’ve ever done that, I’m just sayin’.

Still, I can’t seem to stay away from Twitter.  If I go longer than about 15-20 minutes without seeing what “my tweeps” have to say, I get the shakes, I go into a cold sweat, and I get afflicted with everything from dry mouth to bunions to charlie horses to chlamydia.  Well, all right, maybe not that last one, but you get my point.  What fills me with this need to so frequently check people’s every 140-character thought?

And I thought Facebook took up a lot of my time and attention.