summer song 2010

oh phil, timeless.

against all odds

i remember some stat from when i was a kid that no NHL team has managed to overcome a 3-1 playoff series deficit. i'm not sure whether that record still stands, but alas, the canucks were unable to beat the odds. so much for your dream of an all-canadian final, TS!

vancouver, phil understands your pain.

my brushes with fame

SO...big week for me here in new york, aside from being mauled at work.

anyway, i happened to see oprah-hating jonathan franzen at a book party the other night. which was featured on gawker, no less. i was gonna ask him about spring awakening, but his giant head (tucked away in a corner) intimidated me.

but the WAY more important news is that i went to see genesis last night- in new jersey, no less. hell yes, people. we had bad hair, bad denim and seriously bad dancing. i mean, c'mon, you really just can't dance to "invisible touch" no matter how many pyrotechnical feats are involved (and in case you were wondering, there definitely were pyrotechnics).

before i say anything more about the concert, i just want to assure people that i didn't start liking genesis out of some homage to bret easton ellis. no, i was just a really fucking cheesy kid. "hold on my heart" (which phil performed, seated, and even ridiculed himself thereafter for the song's sentimentality) and most of phil solo (e.g. "separate lives" or "one more night") really spoke to me as a 10 or 11-year-old. i know, i can't explain it either.

my love only deepened when i saw their behind the music. the departure of peter gabriel, the class differences between prep school preppies banks & rutherford vs. hoi polloi collins (which was underscored last night by the prep boys' smart blazers and collins's member's only jacket), collins's melodramatic separation from his first wife, etc. really great stuff.

so about the concert...yeah sure, they looked pretty old, although i loved tony banks. not fazed by anything, this guy. it was as if he put down the ny times crossword puzzle to rock out on the synth. while phil collins was going "crazy" in a very choreographed fashion with the tambourine, banks just played on, unperturbed. i mean, just look at that mug. you can trust your life to that guy.

i was pretty sad they didn't play "don't lose my number", "misunderstanding" or "illegal alien" among their many great hits, but you can check out here what the tour setlist is. what the setlist doesn't tell you is that there was a 15 minute drum solo between phil and that other drummer. so i guess a drum duo?

Land of Confusion II: Music Video of the Day -- Illegal Alien Edition

So, E decided to post on the 2012 Olympics logo--what someone quoted in the Times calls a comical sex act between the Simpsons, and what Jon Stewart more aptly described as (and pardon the prurience here) "a slot machine going down on a stop sign"--but what struck reader Owen's eye was the Genesis motif. With the comprehensive immigration bill getting dragged through the mud on Tuesday during Torturepalooza II: Gay Linguists Need Not Apply, and with it failing to achieve cloture last night in a stunning rebuke of even a pretense of bipartisanship, there is little one can say. Maybe that's okay. Maybe Phil Collins, whose prescience knows no bounds, said it best: "It's no fun, being an illegal ay-lee-un."