Devo at the 9:30 Club Washington, DC

A while back my cousin e-mailed me that Devo was coming to the 9:30 Club. Seeing one of those rare opportunities to see an old favorite I never thought I'd get to see live my reply e-mail was two words: "HELLS YEAH!!!"

I arrived late & missed the opening act the way I always do. In fact, I only had a few minutes to wander around before Devo's set started. Or more accurately, they warmed up the crowd by playing two old school videos back to back. They started with "Secret Agent Man", followed by "Jocko Homo". A lot of music videos look cheesy some 25 years after the fact, but seeing these vids reminded me that even for their time these guys took geekdom to a new level. Which of course, explains why I m a fan...

First off, the high quality stage photos you see posted here weren't taken by me, nor are they from this show. These are from a show in Chicago that was posted on concertlivewire.com by Andy Argyrakis. I would have used my own, but my phone doesn't have much of a camera. I'm posting his pics to give a better feel for the show - at least I'm an honest plagiarist. And since these pictures are fake but accurate, I may have a future as a Reuters war correspondent!

The second video ended, and they kicked off the show. As promised, they played their album "Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!" in its entirety. A few folks I was talking with beforehand warned me that the band was not going to play anything aside from the album. It sounded crazy but believable, and it did manage my expectations.

The show launched with a great crowd starter in "Uncontrollable Urge" and went down the line. That album had some great songs - "Mongoloid", "Gut Feeling", "Jocko Homo", some weak ones like "Too much Paranoias", and what I still consider to be an awful remake of "Satisfaction." The couple standing in front of me agreed with my take on "Satisfaction", but it didn't keep any of us from enjoying it any less. We did get a bit of an encore, when Devo wrapped up by playing "Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA" and "Gates of Steel". GOS was probably a bit of a warmup for the next night's show at the 9:30, which would feature Freedom of Choice in its entirety.

The set was way too short, but the band had a lot of energy and looked like they were having the time of their lives. They came out wearing the signature yellow rad suits and slowly tore them off as the show progressed down to their matching black unis. At the end of the show the band left, the lights came up, and then something bizarre happened. I went down to the ground floor mens' room to slip my thermal shirt under my Eagles jersey for the walk back to the Metro, but when I came out the crowd was still there, and shouting for an encore. The roadies were out starting to take the set down, but damned if after ten minutes Devo didn't come back out and take the stage!

We've all been to concerts where bands play the silly cat and mouse game of a few encores, but this is only the second time I've seen a group return after the lights came up. The only other one was seeing Faith No More at the Troc back in the 90's supporting their "King for a Day..." album. That time half of the crowd had left when Mike Patten and the boys came running out to play "Caffeine". Very cool, but that one was their idea.

This time, the persistence of the crowd is what bought them back. This encore was obviously unplanned, as the guys were all changed into their street clothes. Well, they were all out except for Motherbaugh (still back stage), and they launched into "Beautiful World" - Awesome! This version turned out to be an extended jam, and after the first set Mark came out in the Booji Boy costume (I didn't take that pic either - Booji is impossible to describe if you don't know who he is), and sang in falsetto. While he was out he was bouncing some small objects into the crowd - I wound up scoring one and they turned out to be little green super balls with smiley faces on them. And the picture of the encore at the bottom of this page is the one shot posted here that I actually took myself. You can tell it's mine by the low quality - Dammit Jim, I'm a writer not a photographer!

Some folks defended Devo's short set given their age, but I called B.S. on that. Ozzy and Motorhead have been touring and played longer sets despite being older and probably having consumed a lot more drugs in their time. Still, I'll take quality over quantity. The encore turned a good show into a great show, and given how well they played just four or five more songs could have notched this among some of the all time great performances. But given the choice between Ozzy's 90 minute lifeless performance from last year and this too short well performed set by Devo, I'll take the geeks in a heartbeat. So when the smoke cleared would I pay $52 to see this show again? In a heartbeat. And if they're coming to your town and haven't sold out yet you should do the same.

Why I Don't Write on Certain Topics

I sometimes get asked when I'm going to write on certain topics (OK, almost never, but it does happen), and a lot of time I explain that I won't because while I like to think I'm a good writer, I know that I'm not a great writer. I generally don't write about the big topics, as chances are there are much better writers than me who have written better and farther in depth than I could ever hope to. A few postings that I saw this past weekend summed up why.

I have no intention of writing about the murders at Fort Hood, since Mark Steyn summed up perfectly how our soldiers died because of political correctness.

Steyn also did a great job of skewering the mainstream media's continued obsession with Sarah Palin. OK, I lied - I do have one point to add. Wouldn't it be nice if the mainstream press launched similar fact checks into every silly propaganda piece that Al Gore or Michael Moore published? Rhetorical question...

And on the subject of Palin, Jay Tea over at Wizbang wrote a great piece on liberals' disdain for average Americans, and then goes on to explain the most logical rationale for holding KSM's trial in New York City. If you disagree with the KSM post the Kossacks seem to agree as well.

So thank you gentlemen for setting a bar to strive for. And if I do find a good angle on one of these subjects, I'll be including links to your postings.

Some Random Football Musings on Yesterday's Games

Yesterday's loss to the the Chargers hurt given how close we came, but the way our linebackers & secondary are banged up I wasn't surprised that we lost. A few things did surprise me though:

• I never know which team is going to show up - the fools that lost to the Raiders or the team that completely dominated the Giants. Sloppy play is becoming way too common, though.
• McNabb had the Eye of the Tiger in the second half. He refused to let our offense give up and damned near pulled out the win. (Thanks for mentioning this, Z)
• How is it that with our depleted secondary two of the game's biggest play makers in Vincent Jackson and Antonio Gates combine for a total of 16 fantasy points? If y'all were going to beat my birds you could have at least given me the reach around of some fantasy points!
• Thankfully my fantasy team was the beneficiary of one great and one horrible coaching decision. Maurice Jones-Drew's decision to stop at the one rather than give the Jets time to score cost my opponent a much needed score. And Belicheck's "I'm Keith Hernandez!" moment on 4th and 2 allowed Peyton to fire the final score for the win, giving the Colts a victory, and more importantly, giving the Cunning Stunts a much needed win over the Ron Mexicans, snapping their two game losing streak. There's nothing like winning on the final play of the final Sunday night game!
• Next Sunday the Eagles will be in Chicago to meet the Bears in the Sunday night game. The eagles will be bringing the house - pray for Cutler
  

Politicians and our Economy

Tom Foreman of CNN gave us this gem:

"Politicians taking credit from what they’ve done for the economy are like little kids working the controls of video games without putting any money in. There’s all kinds of stuff happening on the screen of the video game and they think that it’s all due to the frantic work of their fingers."

h/t Cafe Hayek

Uncle Milty takes Donahue to School

Old video, but relevant now more than ever

h/t to Dave-O

Daniel Snyder, President Obama, and lack of leadership in DC

In Washington DC there are three passions that rule this town - politics, football, and politics. Living here has given me front row seats to a pair of leadership trainwrecks in Daniel Snyder and Barack Obama. As both have been experiencing difficult times lately, it seemed like a good time to write about the similarities I've noticed between the two.

First off, I moved to the DC area in 1999, the same year that Dan Snyder bought the Washington Redskins. Interestingly enough, the job that brought me here was working for Snyder's old company, Snyder Communications. Also, I never met the man during my time working there, and from the stories I've heard about him that's not a complaint.

For those of you unfamiliar, Snyder immediately became a big news item from the beginning. He was brash, energetic, and has had no problems making bold moves as owner. Whether it was interrupting summer camp by arriving in his helicopter during practices, expanding Fedex Field's seating while raising ticket prices, and charging admission to summer camp for one season. Also, despite having no background in football, he became heavily involved in the team. Snyder held post-game meetings with his head coaches, brought in a big name personnel man from the 49ers Super Bowl Dynasty (Vinny Cerrato), has chased down and overpaid big name coaches, and has even micro managed to the point of firing several kickers over the course of a season for blown kicks.

And what has Snyder accomplished as owner? From a financial perspective, he's done quite well. He's made the Redskins the second most valuable team in football. But outside of financials, the team has been a disaster. That's not quite accurate - it's been a picture of consistent mediocrity, never great, and until this season, never truly bad. Cerrato never proved to be the great personnel man he was hoped to be. Along with Snyder, he helped to bring in overpriced and overrated or over the hill players like Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, Brandon Lloyd, and most recently, Albert Haynesworth. Snyder has also gone through a carousel of head coaches, and given his heavy handedness over operations, no competent Head Coach wants to lead the Redskins. This has come to a head this season with the team being led by a man who has no business being a Head Coach in Jim Zorn. As of the writing of this article the Redskins are 2-5, and the fans are in open revolt.

Snyder has always been prickly about criticism. Early on, while most of the local media could not stop fawning over him, one local paper, The Washington Times, wasn't playing ball. They wrote critical pieces on Snyder, and as a result their reporter was banished to covering the games via a TV set below Fedex Field. As things have gotten worse, Snyder has even taken to censoring fans coming to the games. Now, the man who was once hailed as a bright, fresh face has been exposed as a vain, petty individual who has taken on a job for which he had no qualifications.

Which brings us to President Obama. Everyone knows about his meteoric rise since impressing America at the 2004 Democratic Convention with his amazing ability to read aloud. And in 2008, despite having no real accomplishments nor ever having won an election without relying on underhanded tactics, we elected him as our 44th president.

I don't need to go into every detail over the train wreck that the Obama presidency has been so far, but to quickly review a few major points:

• Building on the irresponsible spending of the Bush administration that will send our federal budget deficit into the trillions
• Backing a health care bill that will succeed in both ruining the quality of health care while sending costs skyrocketing
• Becoming a laughingstock in his foreign policy to the point where even the Prime Minister of France basically called him a naive twit
• Reread that last one. I never thought I'd see that in my lifetime
• Running historically discredited fiscal policy that will soon send unemployment into the double digit range as America endured under FDR

Obviously there is a lot more, but those are the main points for now. And like Snyder, Obama has had some successes so far. Ironically, both are for things that the people who voted for him were not looking for. First off, Obama has baldly broken his promise to not take national security seriously. Obama is already backing off of an immediate, unconditional surrender in Iraq. If you disagree with this last statement look at it from another angle. If Bin Laden issued a decree for all Al-Queda fighters to leave Iraq by next year how would that be interpreted? Now that Obama is postponing the end of tracking and prosecuting terrorists, he is working to make it up to his base by vacillating on Afghanistan.

The only other major accomplishment of the Obama administration sprang from the law of unintended consequences. Having become so used to the fawning coverage of the press and his own self absorption, it probably never entered Obama's mind that he could ever face real public opposition to his policies. However, he made the mistake of misinterpreting his lofty "post-partisanship" ideal to mean "shut up and follow my radical left wing agenda". The Republican party may have been left for dead on the sidelines, but the American people weren't.

They came out in droves to for the team party protests, and to confront the elected officials at the town hall meetings. And Obama and the media had no idea how to deal with it. With no figurehead to apply the Alinsky demonization tactic, the liberals showed their true contempt for the average American citizen. The left dubbed them "angry mobs", "unruly" and "astroturfers", while whining about the level of discourse as they conveniently forgot their own behavior for the last eight years. And of course, the arrogant journalists who condescendingly decry Fox News for its bias (and yes, I know they're biased.At least they're honest about their perspective) are oblivious to their own unprofessionalism when they gleefully label the protesters "Tea Baggers".

To top everything else off, The White House has declared war on Fox News for the crime of being the only major TV news outlet that does not diligently promote the administration's talking points. This goes hand in hand with Obama attacking Rush Limbaugh earlier this year. The administration probably thought it would help discredit a perceived enemy, when all that it accomplished was giving the opposition some cheap publicity while making themselves look like shallow crybabies. We've even gotten to the point where the Attorney General is trying to pressure a DC official to pull an ad critical of Obama's anti-school choice position.

So here we are today, with two leaders in Washington who came in ready to change the world. Instead, their arrogance and inability to adapt when reality did not meet their rosy visions have left both reeling and looking like two men struggling to do jobs they were never even remotely qualified to take on.

As an Eagles fan I've been thoroughly enjoying watching Snyder so ineptly run his franchise. As an American, President Obama's performance has just been painful to watch.

As Chris Griffin would say, "I need an adult! I need an adult!"

Update: Cross Posted at Flopping Aces!

Brick Top's Take on today's Eagles / Giants

Brandon Jacob's Numbers Today:

20 Rushes, 86 Yards.

The Giants must have stopped the Eagles again whilst they were walking, 'cause we cut their f***ing Jacobs off!