Mitzy and I had a rare outing last night and it turned out be to be a capitol excursion. I’ve made no mystery to the fact that I’m quite the fan of Glen Hansard and the movie Once, so when I saw that both he and Marketa Irglova would be coming to Dallas to perform under the name The Swell Season I could not resist taking advantage of that.
The venue was the Palladium Ballroom and I have to admit that I was quite disappointed to find that it’s a no seat venue, with standing room only. I’ve lately taken on the mantra that I like to be comfortable and the idea of standing for four hours was depressing, not only that but Mitzy has problems with her feet and standing was not an option. Fortunately we found, while not seats, places to sit near the back of the, I guess you’d call it a theater. This wasn’t the best vantage point, but it was good enough and the relative smallness of the theater meant that you could really hear the music. Besides, I didn’t expect that lively of a show anyway, I figured it’d be more about the music than the prancing about and what-not. I was a bit wrong in that regard.
The first act was a fellow who’s name I didn’t quite catch, but I believe his band or moniker or whatever was Iron and Wine. He did have a righteous beard, and I commented to Mitzy about this. She agreed. Iron and Wine, he had a very folksy earthy tone and while we both enjoyed it I found that most of his songs sounded the same. I don’t know if it was our distance from the stage, or maybe something else, but it was hard to hear the lyrics. I suspect he mumbled a lot.
First off I have to say that I was impressed with the crowd, there were a lot of people there and their enthusiasm for Glen and Marketa was markedly enthusiastic. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a slim crowd there, but that was most certainly the case and it’s nice to see that music like this attracts a substantial crowd. When they got up on the stage they started right of with “Falling Slowly”, and then moved between other songs and the Once soundtrack pretty evenly. As I stated earlier I thought it would be a pretty dry show, but dang I couldn’t have been more wrong about that. Glen really is quite the showman and was very animated on stage. I knew the kind of emotion he brought to his vocals, but I hadn’t considered how that would carry over into a live show. It was unexpected, but a delightful surprise.
They pretty much ran through the whole Once soundtrack and that was appreciated, but we were treated to a lot of their other work. The only hitch to this, and I have been to other shows were the artist tells what the song is about, or what inspired it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen two such artists do it quite as verbosely as Glen and Marketa did. And while that was a little tiresome, both of them are so charming that I didn’t mind at all. Of course after the regular set they came back out for the encore and it’s been awhile since I’ve seen a really enthusiastic encore, but they really brought the energy back out and it turned into a little bit of a goof when Glen did a rendition of “Cry Me a River”. It was absolutely hilarious, especially when he threatened the crowd with death if he saw in on YoutTube afterwards.
Overall it was a great evening and throughly enjoyable evening, a wonderful little bit of entertainment.

I think the best thing about this whole economic fiasco is all the yahoo’s out there admitting that they have no idea what the hell is going on, and I can’t help but imagine that this goes for pretty much everyone involved. All the way up the chain. It really makes me wonder if the economy, both our local one and the wider world one, are so complicated at this point that it really is beyond anyone’s full understanding. I think there are a lot of folks who think they know what’s going on, or feel that they have a grasp of the situation, but not real understanding.
So our esteemed government is asking us to have Faith in it one more time, because that’s worked out so well in the past. They want us to ostensibly write them a blank check, because believe you me they just pulled that $700 billion bullshit out of their ass. Hell, if the government does bail this thing out they’ll have to hire the people that created the problem in the first place to show them how to fix it. Seriously!?
I say let the ship sink, let all those rich fuckers choke on their own bile and vomit, and once they all die off maybe the next ones to come along will be a little more careful.

I missed Biden’s speech and I’ve been to lazy to go back and look it up. I take that back, not too lazy, too busy reforming the Byzantine Empire, which may be the same thing, or not.
Obama really brought it home, gone were the warm and fuzzies and instead he took out the baseball bat and asked us to call him batman. Here’s hoping anyway. At the time I felt really good about the prospect of the Dems getting some cahones from somewhere and actually standing up to the Repubs, but now I’m not so sure. I still hope though.
I missed Palin’s speech, but did go back and watch a bit of it on your tube. Meh. I get the distinct feeling that they told her what to say, patted her on the fanny and sent her out into the crowd. She gave a good speech, and she did what she was supposed to. She really go the Repubs excited, though I’m not 100% sure why as I have to think that most of them were still going, ” Huh, who?” I want to root for her, but she comes off as such a gimmick pick for McCain, much more so than a pick that would balance him out or provide a…wait, what does the VP do again?
McCain’s speech really got me going, which it was suppose to, but afterwards it left me feeling a little hungover. Now I don’t know if just don’t remember it correctly, but it seemed he didn’t have much to say, ‘cept that he’s now the change candidate too. Can you do that? Shouldn’t there be a penalty like switching alignments in the middle of a D&D campaign? I do remember that he spent twenty minutes about his time as a POW, and having now read his wikipedia profile, I’d say he nailed it pretty well. I don’t want to belittle the man’s service to our country, or mock the terrible experience of a POW, but you know how you say word too many times and it starts to sound funny…
Since all of this went down I haven’t been paying a lot of attention, though Mitzy and I have had some hearty discussions. Seems we don’t see eye-to-eye, and that’s for the best as it’s made me think a bit more critically than I might have otherwise. Still, as of now, I’m still leaning pretty solid towards Obama/Biden, but looking forward to the debates.