Resilient Joy in Mudville

No Beasties. The concert sold out in a fraction of imaginary Hawking time. The ticket website went belly up in about a minute, and the box office sold out soon after. My alum buddy got a ticket (and one for his pal), and this is as it should be. He's a much bigger fan. I want to go. He needs to go.

As I typed that, the buddy called to say there may be an unclaimed ticket that I might snatch after all. It's a friend-of-a-friend thing, and that's as reliable as the breeze. I don't have high hopes. But a simmering back-burner notion of a chance is enough to keep me buzzing along.

Not that I'm in any way bummed. This is fun. Running to the Orange Peel for a ticket and weeding through a half-dozen rumors before I can hop out of the car makes for an adventure. It's something different, and it was all over in a half hour.

Plus, you know, if I don't see the show, I'm at home with my [nickname redacted] on our four-year anniversary. Win-win.

Your Sister decreed that we would begin the papers this weekend. She then announced a delivery from the kingdom of pizza and a command audience from the Netflix ambassador. We saw Taken.

The word for this film is "tidy." It's lean to the bone, giving just enough character development to show that there are real actors at work, and then we're off. It's credible and small and made digestible by Liam Neeson doing more than the script requires. In following the templates of the Bourne series, Ronin, and Casino Royale, this film maintains a small, steady vibration. There's virtually no reason why this film can't be shown on broadcast TV. There's very little blood. The gunshots are practically demure.

ADDED: Oh, right. If you can't remember where you saw the daughter before, she was Shannon on Lost, the blonde who translates Rousseau's map and canoodles with Sayid.

It's a fine, 90-minute diversion, and it allowed us to wolf down the pizza and slack right the hell off before we roll up our sleeves and make with the red ink.

With such background noise options as playoff hockey, playoff basketball, the new Green Day CD (good start, runs out of steam), and horse racing, we can knock out these papers tout suite.

In the News
Reports now say that no wreckage has been conclusively linked to the missing AirFrance flight. What has been spotted and pulled from the sea may only be cargo junk. Also, the humming of terrorism rumors are getting louder, even though this would be a failed attack. The lack of conclusive aggression dilutes the effort to terrorize. Terrorist groups can't aggrandize themselves with the possibility of an attack. They require probability. Or absolutes. That doesn't exist here. We may never know, and that provides no comfort. You can't prevent the unknown.

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The new big story is Obama's speech in Saudi Arabia and the domestic efforts for opposition sound bites. The president either was too hard on Israel or too effusive toward Islam. It also kicked up the deathless rumors that he's secretly Muslim (lookit dat middle name, y'all). I haven't seen word on Michelle or the kids going with him, and I would be greatly interested to see what respect they pay their hosts with culturally modest attire. Of course, Michelle is the piledriver that kills the Muslim Obama rumors. So much has been made of her bare arms that the loudmouths forget that a proper Muslim woman would never bear her arms. We all know what Michelle's hair looks like. End of debate.

Moving Picture of the Day
I'll just leave this here.