Movie Thoughts: Across The Universe

I thought this was going to be a real chick flick. I picked it up because I know the 5/8 like those kind of films. I figured it would be some sappy love story set with the turbulent 60's as the backdrop, with a killer soundtrack by The Beatles. That's what the previews let onto anyway.

Now, to be fair, it is a sappy love story, but it isn't a story so much as a musical, with a killer soundtrack of songs by The Beatles. To be honest, the imagery was engaging, and it is a lot of fun to watch a musical where you know the words to all the songs.

It is rated PG-13, and while there was inference of some drug use, it wasn't blatant, and it wasn't all "hey let's get stoned because it's good". The 5/8 and I understood when they took drugs, and the kids figured it out when it went into the drug-induced imagery; including a great segment where Eddie Izzard belts out "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" which, if you can believe it, was last performed on the big screen by - get this - George Burns.

There was one scene where a woman's nipple was shown, but it was not in anyway obscene or vulgar. And another scene the bums of several guys were shown as they were swimming. All in all, it was not a movie that I had any problem with any of the kids watching - including Little Sister. And it made me want to listen to more Beatles tunes, and even possibly rent that 1970's hit rock-opera"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (you remember, with Peter Frampton and the Bee-Gees).

And, I have to add, that the drug-induced imagery did not hold a candle to the wild and wacked out imagery we get when viewing "Yellow Submarine". That is some crazy stuff man.

Love the Zune

I love music. All kinds of music. I seriously cannot think of a time or situation, where music would be unwelcome. Sure, certain types of music are better for certain situations, but on the whole, music is always welcome where ever I happen to be. Its a tough question when someone asks me  "What kind of music do you like." My usual reply is "All kinds." From Hank Williams (Sr) to Dire Straits, to Led Zeppelin, to Thelonius Monk to Count Basi, to Christina Aquilera, to Glen Miller to Mozart and Beethoven and their crowd and on and on.

I will admit that usually the radio station in the car is tuned to country music. But not exclusively. Many times I switch on over to the rock station, or the soul station. The problem with radios is, you only get one genre of music at a time. Then you have to go in search of something else if you don't want that particular genre any longer. Albums err, I mean CDs are the same way. They are not only one genre, but mostly one artist. That is what I love about having a media player. I hadn't thought about it before. If I had, I probably would have gotten one a long, long time ago. One great thing about having the media player is I have the ability to quickly and easily load pretty much whatever I want to hear at any particular time. Most decent ones (1GB and up) will hold hours and hours of music. Music that you have ready access too. Sometimes, I like to simply turn on the 'shuffle' mode, and start it to play everything in my collection (that's a ton of songs people). I do get sometimes a bit annoyed at some song I happen to have that isn't one I wanted to listen to at the time, but mostly, I get surprised by songs I may have not listened to for a long time.

And heck, I haven't even really gotten into the whole "podcast" thing yet. But I'm certain I will before too long. It just seems too easy not to do it.

14 years in the making

A little over 14 years ago, the 5/8 and I sat in line for several hours attempting to obtain tickets to the Garth Brooks concert. We were at the Jones Store Ticketmaster outlet. Several things about that ordeal ticked me off. One, is that this outlet didn't start selling tickets until almost 20 minutes after the official start time. Second, the bloke in front of my bought up the last two tickets.

Well, we get another chance to see him in concert. Garth is coming to Kansas City, and the radio station in Kansas City is billing it as 'one city show'. That is, he is not doing a whole tour, just playing Kansas City.

This time around, we had better luck. And we didn't stand in line, and we didn't have to deal with smelly, rude people while not standing in line. This time we went online to the Ticketmaster website and got tickets to see Garth Brooks show in Kansas City next month. The radio on Friday reported that Garth had said he would make tickets available as long as people were buying them. I thought this was a kind of bogus line. I mean, seriously, the Sprint center only holds so many people.

But as we were frantically trying to obtain the tickets - three of us; myself, the 5/8 and No. 1 Son all hitting the Ticketmaster website over and over trying to obtain the tickets, we got a message the original 14 Nov show was sold out, but another show date, 12 Nov, became available. We were able to snag tickets to that one. The last I looked at the Ticketmaster site, there were 9 dates for Garth in the Sprint Arena in Kansas City. I guess he was true to his word.

Along with this, I was impressed with the price at $27/ticket, they were extremely affordable. We paid $60-something a ticket to see Shania Twain about three years ago. And that $27 is for all seats, they all carry the same price. Which is way cool. And Ticketmaster stated the online and phone sales were limited to folks in Kansas, Missouri, SE Nebraska and SW Iowa, based on the credit card billing address. Which was also way cool. This would keep the ticket bots from buying up all the tickets like that Hannah Montana fiasco.