Man.

I’m *so* close to possibly thinking about the fat chance of me trying out for this.

Maybe you don’t understand how much I enjoy YES’ music.

Maybe you don’t see how an experience as grand as singing with Jon Anderson would be for me.

Maybe you fail to grasp how the weighing of that grand experience against the potential humiliation I would face is a monumental task my brain is struggling to deal with.

Maybe you’re ok with ending a sentence with a preposition, or with one word sentences in general.

Maybe.

(*thinking*)

Update on 4/24: There’s a review posted online, pretty good review. 

Tonight is the RUSH Concert here in Austin!

I blogged before about one of my all-time favorite artists coming to town and the awesome tickets he got for us (don’t forget, I’m Uber Awesome, in front of the “Nearly Cool” section, and envied by the “Sucks to be me” sections), but I have some more news.

First, that same friend happened to see Alex Lifeson playing pool last night down at the Four Seasons, where visiting acts usually stay when in Austin.  I haven’t heard word from him yet this morning, so I can only assume he approached Alex, said he admired his work, asked not to be pushed down the stairs and Alex laughed so hard they immediately hit it off and have stayed up all night jamming and showing him the “tricks” of playing awesomelike.  As far as I know, they jetted to Mexico and are on their way back.

Secondly, while I haven’t heard from my friend yet, Geddy and Neil did contact me early this morning about my recent progress in the Guitar Hero III game.  Evidently they are HUGE fans of the game, but can’t quite get all the notes all the time.  They saw my online ranking going up and up and figured they’d ask me for some tips.  I can’t say as I blame them, because look - I’ve doubled my ranking in a week or so, and I still have dozens of songs to play and submit online.

Geddy was all, “I really respect your diligence and effort towards perfection, eh.  I also see that you’ve only logged half of the game so far and have many songs still yet to register on the site, so we’re ignoring your 14,489th place, eh, knowing that you will achieve in the top 100 once all the scores are registered.  I like playing Bass, of course, so will you Co-op with me, eh?“  I mumbled something about needing to sleep or something, so he quickly added “Wayne, eh, I have Neil with me and we can play Rock Band together, eh?“ 

Then there was a pause and Neil came on.  He started on with “Hello, Wayne, eh.  You know how Rock Band is 4 members? Well, Rush, as you know, eh, is only 3 members, so we need someone to fill in with vocals and guitar/bass, whichever you’d prefer to do, eh.“  I still hemmed and hawed a bit so they offered me a signed copy of the Rush comic book.  I said I already had one.  Then they offered up seats in the first five or six rows, and I said I already had 3rd row.  Then they said they’d put on the next album “brought to you by the letter Wayne” and they actually got my attention.

Seeing as how they were asking so nicely, I couldn’t turn them down.   We ended up jamming in their hotel suite, and once their agent woke up from his stupor and shook the scantily clad women off of him and saw what we were doing, he decided to create this new LOLhero tour, with me and Rush headlining.  We came up with the name WHRUSH, The Great American LOLhero

If this is what happens the day OF a concert, I can’t wait for what could happen the NIGHT OF!

Recently, my life was described online as such:

[…] your perspective is skewed because your life has been a literal fairy tale compared to other lives. And you even admit that. So when I talk to you about my troubles, a lot of times, from your perspective, I get really frustrated at your advice because it’s naive.

I thought I’d take the time to respond to this characterization.  My life is not a fairy tale. I have not been granted servants, magic fairy godmothers, easily summarizable plot and lesson outlines, and I don’t eek out an existance in a fable.  While I may somewhat physically resemble certain fairy tale characters (think Shrek), I’m not super lucky, despite my great well-aspected Mars and Jupiter placement in the 5th house.

Good.  Now that we’ve gotten THAT out of the way, I wanted to blog about this new Microsoft 8GB Zune 2 I won recently.  It’s so awesome! I use it all the..

what?

What do you mean, “see what I mean?!?!?” ?  Doesn’t EVERYone win stuff like this when they go out and live life?  I went to a local Microsoft event on “Get Healthy Stay Healthy” and my name was drawn to win the Zune.  Oh, and I also got a fully licensed copy of Office Ultimate 2007 (the whole box and everything!)  So it’s not like I won a CAR or something.  I did that LAST year, sheesh.

So I’m loving this Zune.  My daughter has a video iPod nano and it’s really cool… I was thinking about getting a big Zune last year but decided against it.  Then I saw the video iPod nano and just about fell in love with it.  Then I won this one and love it EVEN more than I thought I would.

Pretty much, after playing with both of them, the only difference I can tell is that the Zune has wireless and FM Radio.  Everything else is basically the same.  There are more indepth comparisons online but I really only care about what *I* see is different.  I use the FM but so far I don’t use the wireless, but it does allow for wireless sync, and I may start playing with it.

Probably the biggest “new” thing due to this acquisition is that I am now VERY much into podcasts, and that’s the biggest thing I’m using it for.  I’m listening to StarPower (Guitar Hero podcast), Bill Maher, Skeptics Guide, a few Microsoft podcasts, Mind of Root, Astronomy podcast and a few others… and it’s inspired me to want to participate in a couple podcasts, probably with technology and astrology.

One thing that caught my eye was the “Hello from Seattle” little signature on the back.  Now that is so cute…

(Note: this is not an Obama post )

Some great things happened this week, and some not-so-great. 

In not-so-great news, our dog Jupiter had knee surgery Tuesday, poor thing, and then Friday he chewed through some of his staples so we had to take him back in.  The wife’s knee also experienced a couple setbacks so we had to get additional xrays and we’re hoping it doesn’t get any worse.

Let’s see, there’s more.  I also failed to complete the video in Absurdist’s contest on time, and am still working on it, having experienced some video issues on Vista (about the only issue I’ve encountered other than Trillian crashing)  I also didn’t survive through the qualifying round of the Guitar Hero Madness tournament.

But there was some GREAT news as well.

My all-time favorite band of all time has started a world tour!

I’ve always been entranced by YES.  One night, probably in the late 80’s, I was driving in my parent’s white Ford E150 van down Anderson Mill road and 93.7 KLBJ FM was doing a special on some band.  I remember hearing Starship Troopers for the first time, followed by And You and I and I literally had to pull over and listen.  I was simply taken by this music.  The voice, the bass, the keyboards… everything just grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.  I think I stayed for 45 minutes on the side of the road, just listening to all this wonderful music.

That week, I purchased as many YES CD’s as I could afford, which wasn’t many - I think I bought two.  But every week when I got my paycheck, I went to the CD shop next to Lone Star Cafe and would pick up Fragile or Going for the One or Tales of Topographic Oceans.  By the end of the year, I had every album/CD they ever made.  It wasn’t long before I had 40+ CD’s of their music from their original discography, solo projects, live albums and special editions.  My YES music purchases represent the largest investment I’ve made in audio, and it’s paid off tremendously.

Thank you so much, Jon, Chris, Rick, Steve, Bill, Trevor, Alan, and Tony.  You have touched my life in ways I cannot express.  And also thank you to Peter, Geoff, Billy, Patrick, the other Trevor (Horn) and Igor for filling in when you did.

First, don’t forget to go leave a comment on Wednesday’s post Guess the Movie and Pay It Forward to win a book!  You don’t have to guess the movies - any comment will be eligible.  You need to post by tonight (Friday, Feb 8th) midnight central.

Now, for today’s post.  RUSH

Recently, I got some great news — Rush, one of my all-time favorite bands, extended their Snakes and Arrows tour!  This is awesome, because I missed them the first time around.

Then, I got even better news!  Rush is actually coming to Austin!  Although the Metro Austin Area is not too small population-wise (over a million), we hardly ever get my favorite acts.  They usually hit Dallas, Houston or San Antonio because those cities are so much bigger and I guess the bands figure Austinites can carpool over or ride their bike or hitchhike.  I’m also sure venue size has something to do with it - we don’t really have places like Reliant Stadium or Verizon Wireless Stadium to host huge acts.

You’d think I’d be a pretty happy camper.  I was.  I was indeed.  That is, I was until a good friend of mine said “oh and by the way, I got us tickets during the presale.”

Señior, you had me at el “oh”.

So how happy do you think I was when he said he scored Row 3 in section 1?  We both were like “oh, so does Frank Erwin center have those demon AA rows or “1A” section where you THINK you’re sitting in a great place but they end up catering to someone else in an even “better” section than 1?” and “pinch me so I know it’s real” and “dude, stop pinching me, I’m not that good of a friend”

Take a look at the arena (updated to correct seating chart - thanx Dave for finding):

Here’s what I’m thinking.  I’m thinking this person and I… we’re pretty good friends, known each other a long time, godfathers of each others kids, etc.   I’d probably not only help him move if he needed me, but I’d probably help him move a body.  I always thought we were pretty close.

But after I saw that he got these for face value and they’re selling like crazy, now I know we’re close.   How close?  Just look how close:

The guy could make a clean $400 per ticket if he wanted to.  (Now that I think about it, maybe he doesn’t know… hmm, probably safer if I don’t tell him until AFTER the tickets come in.) 

If anyone tells me again that the economy is bad, I’m gonna shove this JPEG right up their nose.  There are PLENTY of jobs and money to go around if the market can bear this kind of cash for Rush.  Some of the tickets are $1000!  We’re not talking Hanna Montana, Nickelback, Metallica or a band who has uber multigenerational draw - we’re talking about Rush.    Rush draws geeks, nerds, engineers, and musicians.  Rush has smart people listen to them.  Smart people don’t overpay for tickets.