White Gurl World

Hi all, well things have been getting crazy as I get closer and closer to my departure date - with all the parcing down and the packing up into boxes, I am tired and hadn't realized how much crap I had collected while living here (the stuff going into boxes is not all crap - it's all the shoes I can't bear to part with!!!!). While I am doing all of this, I am also trying to hang out with all the people I won't be seeing for a while and just catching up in general with all the people I love and know I'll miss

To that end, a friend of mine had extra concert tickets to "Weird" Al and I have to admit, I totally wanted to go. I believe my exact words were "No Way! I wanna go, I wanna go, I wanna go" as I jumped up and down when he told me about it (you get the idea). So, last weekend, we drove to Indiana to see the show. After encountering some horrible weekend traffic (courtesy of the Dan Ryan reconstruction and Saturday afternoon driver laissez-faire), we finally hit the open road and had a pretty decent drive to the venue. When we got there, we had some time to grab a quick dinner (or in my case, breakfast - yummy!!!!) and then went to the theater to park and grab our seats.

As you guys could probably have guessed by now, I was about the only ethnic face I could see looking around and I mentioned it to my friend as we were walking in. Hmm, what is new, right? We went in, sat down, and as my friend scanned the crowd for the next ten minutes, he still could not spot anyone else who was ethnic and said as much. It was a decent sized crowd with about a thousand people there and then the show started.....

First off, you could tell it was not a rock concert because it started promptly at eight o'clock. Then there was the fact that there was no opening band and the fact that as much as there was lots of clapping and hooting and various cat-calling between (and even during) songs, everyone pretty much sat down and jammed out. But for all that, it was still a whole lot of fun. I think any concert like that is all about the spectacle and it certainly lived up to that. Between the numerous costume changes to the running video commentary on the giant screens behind the performance, it was fun and funny and all-around feel happy.

And it certainly did its job. There were songs I knew, songs I did not know - parodies and original jingles and a most marvelous extended compliation of slices of some of his most famous songs. It was too much fun and I am not ashamed to mention that a couple of times I was singing every single lyric (especially to my all time favorite song - "Bedrock Anthem"). The show ended after ten (which is quite great considering there was only one band) and as we headed home, I definitely felt more relaxed and high on a happy vibe!!! I believe the ride back was me being a little bit slap happy and may have included a little ditty about a chicken in a car that could not go and how that all related to Chicago (just ask and I'll explain)........

Well, hope I can write more sooon but since things are getting crazy, I can't make any promises