"If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin'?"

True Blood Post Mortem, Episode 3.

Sooo, what did y'all think? Here it is, in a nutshell:

The Good:

1. Eric calling Ms. Stackhouse "Snookie" (hee hee)

2. Eric giggling when Sookie was cleaning his feet off because "it tickles"

3. This conversation:

Eric: You live... in my house? Are you - mine?

Sookie: No!

Eric (considering this): Would you like to be mine?

(Us: Yes, please!)

4. Also this conversation:

Sookie: You just killed my faery godmother!

Eric: Sorry! {sheepish grin}

5. Jessica calling Bill "My liege" (doesn't this make her like a princess now, or something?)

6. Sookie reading a Charlaine Harris novel.

7. Seeing Alcide again! Hooray, werewolves!

8. Sam seems to be in a better mood. That's always good....

9. Jason's voicemail message. "If this is an emergency, dial 911 and ask for me..."

10. Oh, just watch this...

Ep. 39 - Recap

11. And finally: our meal: we've been having themed dinners at our little viewing parties - for the first two episodes (which we watched together - thanks again OnDemand!) we had fried chicken, hush puppies and french fries. This time, it was a Swedish feast, courtesy of IKEA and in honor of our favorite Viking Vampire: Swedish meatballs, pasta in the shape of elk (?), a sparkling peach beverage, salad and princess cake for dessert, that was approved by the King of Sweden himself, and that also came with helpful eating instructions on the box.

But back to the episode:

The Bad

1. All that godawful were-panther shit. Blah blah blah blah earth daddy blah. Not a fan of this plotline. Ugh. Ever since they turned Calvin all skanky meth dealer (and now, if I recall correctly, dead skanky meth dealer) I've found that I've rather turned against the panthers. Poor Jason. He did not deserve this. None of us deserved this.

2. Andy's v-fueled rant at Sam about his trees (although that was also kind of funny). But seriously here, can we get Andy off of the v now please?

3. What is happening with Tommy and Maxine? Is he scamming her or sleeping with her (ew. But with this show, you never know.) Is he just a substitute Hoyt or is she teaching him to read or what? His little forray as "Max Fortenberry" reminded me of a line from 30 Rock - "What's the past tense of scam? Is it scrumped? Because, Mz. Fortenberry, I think you about to get scrumped!")

4. Jessica glamouring Hoyt to forget her indiscretion. Why can't we have one sweet and happy couple??? Arrghhh......

5. The tray of "refreshments" Debbie offers Sookie. I can totally imagine it. Alcide hangs up the phone with Sookie and goes "Hey Debs! Great news, Sookie's not dead! And she's comin' over to ask me a favor!" "What? Sookie's not dead? Damn, I mean, what a shame, no, wait, I mean, that's real good. Uh... why don't I go fix up some food for when she comes? You think she likes sausages?" That's what you get when you put a former v-addicted junkie werewolf in charge of snacks.

6. Nobody listening to Lafayette when he outlines the best plan to deal with Eric. Let's just forget about it. Lay low. LaLa, you've got brains AND power! Use it wisely, my son!

7. Marnie and her coven getting all uppity about Eric entering (duh, it's a public shop, he doesn't need an invitation) and getting all up in their business. Well, excuse me, but it's not like you were sitting around peacefully mixing up potions. You wanted to raise the dead! That's not okay, missy! Not okay!

8. Marnie then channeling the Power (or whoever?) asking her to come and use her as her servant on this plane. Be careful what you wish for, Marnie. Because something wicked is definitely on its way up in here.

The Ugly

1. The Hotshot werepanther stud farm (oh, poor, poor Jason).

2. Bill and Portia. Dude. You're her great-great-great (etc) grandfather. NO. Wrong. Stop. (please?) Maybe Andy will find out and join in, to get his v-fix? Urggh, now I've grossed myself out. Sorry.

3. The creepy doll Jessica gives Arlene and Terry's baby (mercifully the only time we see those two crazies in the entire episode). Why do I have a feeling that we'll be seeing more of that thing?

4. Bill doling out justice. "Ah am sennucning yew to the truew deayuth" Arrrghhh. Why are you king? Why? Why?

5. The Marie Osmond belle halloween doll thing that Maxine orders. Why all the creepy dolls?

6. Those idiots that made the "vamps-kill.com" PSA. Why do I have the feeling we'll be seeing more of that thing?

So, yeah. The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. The Eric. Sigh. I'm out, Trubies. Until next week. Do bad things.

simple pleasures

So, yesterday I went to the Morton Grove Farmers' market. I love me a good farmers' market. I try to pass through the one downtown in Daley Plaza every Thursday (I have discovered that I can catch a 29 bus to Navy Pier on State Street and get some exercise and fresh produce in the bargain!). Now, that is a farmers' market. There's a huge selection of stands selling produce of all kinds, fresh cheese, flowers, and baked goods. Lots and lots of baked goods (including Amish baked goods).

The farmers' market in the MG, which started last year, is, shall we say, on a bit of a smaller scale. There are a handful of produce vendors and a few stalls selling baked goods. Sometimes the Lifeway company, based here in the MG, comes and sets up a booth so people can try (and sometimes purchase) Kefir. There was a guy with a meat wagon, selling different cuts of meat. There's a lady who sells delicious pretzels dipped in chocolate, and some ladies who sell healthy granola kinds of things. Then, because that would be about 6 stalls in a very large parking lot, the creators of the market got, well, creative. At the farmers' market, you can visit the MG Chamber of Commerce (to which I exclaimed "We have a chamber of commerce?"), make charming hand crafted corn husk dolls at the table belonging to the Historical Society, visit the PTA of Park View school (warriors!) and do... something... at the table set up by the MG Public Library. Yesterday, there was also the chance to enter a drawing - the winner would receive a basket of produce from every vendor at the market. Why not? So I did it and then we left, heading about our business.

Well, several hours later, I get a call - I had won a special drawing and could I come collect my basket right now? So we made tracks back to the market to get my winnings.

Can I say? The basket was a thing of beauty. It included a bunch of gorgeously ripe tomatoes, some beets, a few carrots, a zucchini and a yellow squash, some packets of seeds, a head of broccoli and some lettuce, a gardening trowel, a pair of gardening gloves and a little decorated tile thing that bears a cheery phrase (I don't remember what it is now, and my dad has already put it out in the garden.). I was so excited because I never win anything, and suddenly, here I'd gotten a spectacularly beautiful collection of produce. And that stuff's expensive, you know?

The other highlight of my weekend was when I went to visit the art fair in Skokie. We'd gone to the library, and I saw a small collection of tents set up and I exclaimed "OOOoohh! Art fair!! Can we goooo?" in a kind of excited, high pitched voice that only dogs can hear. So we went. It was really hot. And most of the stuff was just kind of OK. I like looking at jewelry, but at these things it can really go either way. It's either really expensive or really kind of cheap looking. And as for the art, it's not like I'm really in the market for big paintings or large photographic prints, however lovely, so I don't spend a lot of time at those booths.

But then - I saw it. The most extraordinary bracelet, made of copper wire, beads and semi-precious stones. It was easily the most unique (in a good way) stand I'd seen. These pieces were unique, distinctive, and totally different from anything I'd seen before. The bracelet that caught my eye was copper wire and blue stones. It was gorgeous. But it was over 50 bucks. We walked around a little more, and I decided I wanted to get the bracelet. So I DID, and I do not regret it. It's one of the only pieces I own that has a name "Cooler by the lake" which is SO perfect, because I work on the lake (pretty much IN the lake) so it was like a sign. The designer is local and I cannot say enough about her work, so go and check it out here: www.shelionstore.com

So yeah. That's my weekend in a nutshell. I got a new bracelet and won some vegetables, and I was happy as a clam. It's the little things, you know? And just to keep up with the breakneck pace of my whirlwind life, tonight, we watch the True Blood and have a Swedish feast (in honor of Eric, brought to us by IKEA). So watch out for a recap/Post Mortem as well as a detailed description of our dinner.

When Soldier Field's A Rockin, Don't Come a Knockin'

U2's set list from last night - about 2 and a half hours of amazing rock & roll. (Got this from the Chicago Tribune's website - there are pictures and stuff as well.)

1 Even Better Than the Real Thing
2 The Fly
3 Mysterious Ways
4 Until the End of the World
5 Out of Control
6 Get on Your Boots
7 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For/The Promised Land (Bruce Springsteen snippet)
8 Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
9 Beautiful Day/Space Oddity (David Bowie snippet)
10 Elevation
11 Pride (In The Name of Love)
12 Miss Sarajevo
13 Zooropa
14 City of Blinding Lights
15 Vertigo/Miss You (Rolling Stones snippet)
16 I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight/Discothèque (snippet)/Psycho Killer (Talking Heads snippet)

17 Sunday Bloody Sunday
18 Scarlet
19 Walk On

Encore
20 One/Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow (Shirelles snippet)

21 Where the Streets Have No Name

Encore 2
22 Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me/My Kind of Town (Frank Sinatra snippet)
23 With or Without You
24 Moment of Surrender

25 One Tree Hill

the city of blinding lights....

Our long awaited return to the U2 360 tour, last night at Soldier Field. More to come...

This concert had been a long time in coming - I had originally bought the tickets in November 2009 (I found the receipt in my ticket envelope). It had been scheduled for the summer of 2010, but then the tour was canceled due to Bono's back injury. So I'd been looking forward to this one for a very long time, basically because (and I cannot overstate this) U2 concerts are awesome. It is, seriously, like no other concert experience I have ever had.

I remember one concert that took place shortly following the events of September 11, 2001. There we all were, packed into the United Center, and Bono, like some kind of rock prophet, was up there, in his flag-lined jacket, singing Walk On, and telling us that everything was going to be okay. And we're all there, me and several thousand of my closest friends, in the dark, singing along, and being uplifted by this strangely profound shared experience. It was, and I am being totally serious here, like a religious experience. Every time a concert is announced, I am there, at the computer, finger on the button, poised to buy tickets as soon as Ticketmaster will let me. (I remember once I actually left work a little early so Heidi and I could go stand on line at a Ticketmaster outlet so we could get tickets right away. Those were the days!) So yeah, anyway, whenever they come to town, I go.

Solider Field is a massive, immense place. They packed 63,000 people into the stadium (and on the field) for the concert. How much would the Bears kill to get that kind of an audience into one of their Sunday suckfests? We were in section 332, if that means anything to anyone out there, not quite in the scary realm of section 407, that sort of hangs out into outer space. We were just sort of around the corner from the end zone. So good seats, with a good view of the stage.

We bought the requisite water bottles (because it was exactly 200 degrees and humid) without bottle caps (which I still don't really understand, but I was told that people had taken to lobbing full water bottles onto the field during Bears games - who could blame them? and that it hurts a little bit less if you throw a bottle without a cap. You probably drench your neighbors in the process, but whatever.) and went down a set of steep, cement steps to our seats, which were, of course, a row behind the requisite drunk, dancing morons. One of the guys was constantly draping himself on his wife/girlfriend/concubine. I don't know how she stood it. It was, as I mentioned, about a million degrees and sticky. If anyone draped themselves on me, I would have thrown them off so hard, they would have fallen over the side of our section, onto the field below. Hope you like to bodysurf, bub.

Anyway, whatever. Even the drunks and the hot weather could not dampen my spirits! We didn't have to wait too long before the guys hit the stage. This time, they pretty much ignored No Line on the Horizon, their most recent studio album (they only ended up playing three songs from it) and stuck to their better-known and beloved catalogue. We sang along to "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" and "One" and "Pride (in the Name of Love)" and all the rest. I don't know if this crowd was just better behaved, or if we were all old or hot or tired or what, but this is the first U2 show I've been to where the people in my section were mainly sitting down. The last show I was at, we were on our feet at the opening strains of "Ground Control to Major Tom" and we stayed there pretty much until it was over. This time, people stood up when the band was playing a really great song, and then they calmly sat back down. I have to say, that was okay with me.

I loved every last minute of it, but my particular favorites were "City of Blinding Lights" (where I sprang up out of my seat and cheered my face off. LOVE this song. LOVE it.) "Stay (faraway so close!)" and "Miss Sarajevo". I had originally heard that song because it was on the Diana, Princess of Wales tribute album. It blew my mind because the band were listed as "Passengers" and for years I was so confused because it sounded exactly like U2. Yes. This is because it was U2. Anyway, the song also includes a little, sort of strange, Italian interlude sung, naturally, by Luciano Pavarotti. They start the song, like you do, and it goes on for a bit and then this big, Italian tenor busts out with a verse, and then he stops and it picks back up again, like nothing strange has occurred. I have always loved that song. I had read that they were including it in the set list, and wondered vaguely how they were going to handle the Pavarotti bit. Well, Bono sang the Italian part himself. It sounded really good.

Other things - watching Bono made me melt into a big puddle of goo - and not just because I lurve him. It was mainly because he was running around the stage wearing a (possibly leather) jacket. Dude. I know it's kind of your thing, right, but I think we all would have been cool if you had decided to wear, like, a t-shirt or something. I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts and was pretty much just sitting still and drinking from my (capless) water bottle. I was roasting. I didn't even care when it started raining a little. Bono, on the other hand, was singing, strutting and working the stage. For about 2 and a half hours. He must have been ROASTING, but he never showed any sign of it. And he didn't pass out from the heat, or anything, so he must have been fine, but still. Sheesh. For the encores, he came out in what totally looked like leather pants. The Edge was also wearing his trademark knit cap. Which was still probably really hot, but I think if he'd gone without it, we'd all be like, hey! Where's the Edge?? He'd be unrecognizeable.

U2 shows are BIG, large scale productions. There's light, there's visuals, there's amazing, throbbing, pulsing music. They do this every time, and they do it well. I cannot wait for them to come back. Except next time, I'm buying TWO bottles of water (and smuggling in my own bottle caps! Yeah, I said it!)