T-shirt #335 - KUDL 2007 Mandarin & My Friend Abby

OFFICIAL INCOMPLETE BOILERPLATE TEXT: Thank you for coming to my blog. If you have been here before, you know why I post unfinished blog entries. If you are new to the blog, and came here by an Internet search or some other nefarious means, you may be wondering why someone would post something incomplete to the Internet. The shirt (ha ha.... leaving in that typo: I meant "short") answer is that I must post something every day because of the goal I set for myself when I began 365 T-shirts in March of 2013. And though there is a way to post backwards in time thanks to Blogger's scheduler utility, I would rather post an incomplete entry when the daily chaos of work, family, and the universe prohibits me from completing the blog entry for that day. Sometimes, I need a few days to complete the entry, and readers who check may see a work in progress slowly bloom.

In other words, more tomorrow. Thanks for checking.














T-shirt #335 - KUDL 2007 Mandarin & My Friend Abby + others

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 30 shirts remaining

- chris tower - first published - 1402.19 - 19:23
final publication - date - time

T-shirt #328 - Monty Python and the Holy Grail

HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.

T-shirt #328 - Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I had to post this as incomplete last night. I am now writing to you from the future. It's Thursday for me though this blog shows it is Wednesday.

It's time for some comedy in the form of the greatest comedy of all time: MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL. Since this is supposedly HIATUS time for me, I am presenting again text from T-shirt #271 - SPAMALOT and a short bit from T-shirt #187 as both that shirt and this one were gifted to me by the Lord of Chaos.

But first, I would like to explain Grading Robot's ordeal.

Grading Robot has completed another arduous test of his grading prowess, rendering grades at a record speed though not in a record time. Grades were submitted one hour before the deadline, which I should congratulate myself is at least not one minute before the deadline. The main problem with grades for this school is that every week two sets of assignments (about 120 in all if every student submits which never happens) are due by Friday at 9 a.m. I get one set on Sunday night and the other on Monday night prior to that Friday deadline. Usually this haul is not so bad, especially with later assignments, as many students fail to submit. One week, out of 30 students, I had NINE submit the paper on time. It's easy to give zeroes. It's also easy to give 100/100. It's the grades in between that take time and consideration.

FINAL GRADES, which are what I just finished, are always due one day before the usual Friday deadline, so THURSDAY at 9 a.m. Since I am often up at 5 a.m. and grading feverishly to meet the Friday at 9 a.m. deadline, one can imagine that a deadline 24 hours earlier would send me into a panic. This is further compounded by how many late assignments I have. As students submit late work, I let it pile up until I have time go through it all as the new assignments, the on time assignments, are tied to that deadline that I have to meet each week. This semester I was good, and I dispensed with a big set of late work after week three of the five week term. But more built up since then, despite my cut offs and in some cases refusal to accept late work. So, starting Monday, I had two sets of assignments to grade and LATE WORK plus other classes and responsibilities.

I knew things were not going well when I did not get much accomplished Monday because of class, family, and assorted other obligations. Tuesday was crunch time, but I could see I would need every minute to make that Thursday morning deadline. Wednesday morning I had my programming  class to attend, and then other daily work, and so it was nearly 3 p.m. Wednesday before I could start to crank up Grading Robot to full power. I had dismissed the first two sets of assignments on Tuesday as they were easy. This left final drafts of persuasive essays and all the late work, over a dozen papers, to finish by 9 a.m. Thursday, permitting myself a decent night's sleep. I do not care how much work I have to do, I am not being paid enough to work late into the night. 9 p.m. is the latest I have ever worked for this job and that was too late and due to extenuating circumstances (staying up with Liesel or waiting for Liesel, I forget).

I did two things to speed up. I re-used grade feedback. If the student did not make any changes to the fourth assignment and basically submitted it again for the final draft fifth assignment, then why rewrite all the same comments? The grades were different, but the comments remained the same. Furthermore, if the student submitted late, essentially the Week Three-Week Five assignments were probably all the same or nearly. Once again, the same comments were warranted but with different grades as the preliminary draft (#3) is not held to the same standard as the final draft (#5). This saved me a lot of time as I was able to re-use grade feedback and clear out two late assignments by looking at and grading just one draft. As a result, Grading Robot graded at must faster pace and managed to get to bed at a decent hour, even sleeping in a little rather than bounding out of bed at 5 a.m.

Thanks for reading. I know that these ruminations on my process are probably much more fascinating to me than to anyone else, though I do like the act of writing down what I have done, how, and why.

But today's entry is dedicated to the very great and quite stupendous comedy: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (As for the picture above, this book is a great item to enjoy the film as, sadly, I cannot locate my DVD.

This LINK takes you to a group of nine movies which may be the entire movie of Monty Python and the Holy Grail broken into parts that You Tube will not remove (with German subtitles).

There is a smart chap who made a modern styled preview with action parts and scary parts of Monty Python and the Holy Grail that sells it as an action film.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail Modern "Trailer"

By the time I started college, I knew Monty Python well and found many, many people who loved it, too. In fact, loving Monty Python seemed to be almost a requirement for admission to Kalamazoo College along with knowing the air velocity of a laden swallow.

Emphasizing this like-mindedness, this shirt was a gift from my best friend and college buddy Tom Meyers, who may love Monty Python more than I do (which is saying something) as he memorized the entire Word Association Football sketch. Though it was not a recent gift, so it does not qualify as a New T-shirt acquired since the blog's inception.

There are many, many subjects worth exploring about Monty Python, and I am not devoting the time and text to all of them at this juncture. There's the brilliant three-sided LP record Matching Tie and Handkerchief; the most ingenious comedy movie ever made: Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Live concerts like Monty Python at the Hollywood Bowl and Secret Policeman's Other Ball;and the TV show that started it all Monty Python's Flying Circus, which wisely burned very bright for 45 episodes and stopped production before they ran it into the ground.

In part, I presented these videos before but I present them all again (plus one) because they are, in my opinion, some of the best (though maybe not definitively the best) bits from this great film.

THE VIDEOS

I am sure that every single person reading my blog has seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail at least once. If you have not seen it, this is something to dedicate yourself to IMMEDIATELY. If you do not have time to go get and watch the movie, then check out these favorite scenes of mine. If you have seen the movie, you will surely enjoy seeing these scenes again. I will try to keep my set of videos here to a minimum, but I would rather post the ENTIRE MOVIE, obviously. heh. "Obviously." Guard scene. But first, the full French Taunting sequence.

French Taunting - Monty Python and the Holy Grail

There's no reason that this scene should have been left out of Spamalot. Very silly. It's one of my very favorite bits in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Classic John Cleese: "She turned me into a newt" following the longest pause in comedy film: "I got better."


She's a witch!

Surely, no collection of videos for my favorite scenes Monty Python and the Holy Grail could leave out this completely hilarious and often quoted scene. LOVE IT!!

Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Guards Scene

Monty Python Holy Grail Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?

Monty Python And The Holy Grail - Help Help I'm Being Repressed

I know, I know. I am leaving out MANY great scenes. Though the KILLER RABBIT never did much for me, so not that one.

Hey, I said I would keep it to a minimum. Four is rather a lot, really. THREE. "Five sir." Five!
Sorry. I get carried away thinking about this movie. :-)

If you want to see more, go SEE THE MOVIE. Again, this LINK may help with that viewing option.

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 37 shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1402.12 - 19:27

T-shirt #319 - Ultimate Centrals Regionals 2001 Orange Shirt

T-shirt #319 - Ultimate Centrals Regionals 2001 Orange Shirt

Yes, another Ultimate shirt. And why not? It's Ultimate Mondays.

I featured the blue version and long sleeved shirt of this design and from this tournament in T-shirt #277.


I am still in hiatus mode. But I am also still behind schedule and struggling to work ahead.

Is there really anything to say about this shirt? Not really. It's a nice burnt orange color, unlike the blue one I shared in T-shirt #277.

Today, a bit of text to make a post-Super Bowl point and a bunch of pictures. Atop the blog today, a stack of shirts waiting to be photographed (with me in them). Just a little preview of what's to come because this is the 365 T-shirts blog. I like having a lot of pictures in the folder ready to go. I also like choosing a shirt just for that day and getting the photos once the inspiration strikes. But as I close in on the end of the blog year, I suspect I will be a little less motivated by inspiration. In fact, soon, I may have an accurate count of how many shirts I have left. I suspect I have more than the number remaining in my year, which is forty-six.

On winning and attracting and receiving

The Super Bowl from last night was very disappointing, especially since I picked Denver, and Seattle spanked them 43-8. I feel badly for Peyton Manning.

People claim that prayer works. There's actual evidence that focusing positive energy on an outcome affects the outcome. This concept reminds me of a movie called The Secret, which I have seen several times. The film purports to be a documentary about the secret to prosperity, which is the law of attraction. There's some good content in the movie, and I have written about it the times I have written about gratitude (such as here in T-shirt #252).

I am more interested in the way to attract love and positive things rather using this secret to attract money. However, one person interviewed described envisioning checks in the mail rather than bills, and when he did, checks started to arrive, money for him in his mailbox, rather than bills to pay. I always thought this was an  stupid example, especially since the guy is an INVESTMENT BANKER.
So, of course, he's going to get checks in the mail.

Lately, I have been waiting for a check to arrive. I visualized daily, and ever day, for over a month, there were no checks. Then finally, today, there was a check. I think this shows that the mind attracts when it is NOT FOCUSED on the thing desired. Serendipity is much more powerful than visualizing and attracting and receiving consciously. This connects to how I met Liesel. I had been looking for love so much and had received so little. And then, when I did not expect it, when I was not looking, my life totally changed.

There's a power of the Collective Unconscious at work here, but the attraction, the magic, happens as a result of the consciousness turning AWAY from the thing desired and not actively desiring it. Only when the mind is occupied elsewhere can the thing materialize.

This also proves that Denver may win the Super Bowl next year.

And now some pictures.

On the left, a "selfie" from today. This is the shirt I am actually wearing. I am anticipating the release of the Veronica Mars movie, which is March 14.

Below, I have included a picture of my pal Tom Meyers (the Loc or Lord of Chaos), my wife Liesel, and me at Food Dance from Friday night January 31st celebrating good news that Liesel received that day (which may not yet be for public transmission) and Tom's imminent interview with a prospective employer.




Next, because I am a bit obsessive about documentation, I have several pictures of my birthday cards (also Ivan's cards as he is a "grandson"). My family has always been big on cards. I wrote about the card Liesel gave me in T-shirt #302: Green Lantern.

The next two pictures document the upcoming T-shirts to some extent. The first picture shows the stacks in my office and the recent gifts of cool, retro, re-issue toys and a Star Trek game.

There are not enough Satchel pictures on my blog. The last image is one that I found on the Internet to go in my first computer program in my C# programming class.

HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 46 shirts remaining

- chris tower - first published - 1402.03 - 20:11
final publication - 1402.04 - 8:11
(ooooh... weird synchronicity. Blog entry and update published 12 hours apart!)

T-shirt #317 - Cubs - Blue Stripes

T-shirt #317 - Cubs - Blue Stripes


I misnumbered yesterday. Once the URL is set, it cannot be changed.

I need to catch up, so I am leaving this one with very little text.

The next WHY T-SHIRTS is going to be about team sports, but since I have other team shirts, I will write the full explanation of this concept later.

Though I doubt the concept is too strange.

REPRESENT.



















Team love is close to the heart.

Wear the gear, infuse the team with positive energy to overcome adversity and win out against all opponents.

WHY T-SHIRTS EXPLANATORY BLURB
I am doing a series of snippets that will add up to a larger whole answering the "Why T-shirts?" or "What's with all the T-shirts?" question. I have also decided to include the previous items in an ever growing list, hence the "previous items" section next.

PREVIOUS ITEMS
#1: T-SHIRTS ARE COOL
#2: I BE BRANDED - CHOOSING TO ADVERTISE
#3: It's my tattoo
#4 PRIDE AND STATUS - "It's my thing."
#5 -  "LET ME GEEK FLAG FLY!!"
#6 - UNIFORM SHIRTS ARE COOL
#7. PROOF THAT I DID IT - SHIRTS FOR EVENTS

TODAY'S ITEM - WHY T-SHIRTS #8 - FANDOM - GO TEAM!

REPRESENT!!

More on this subject later.

HIATUS TEXT: I am taking a short hiatus. A "hiatus" for the 365 T-shirts Blog does not mean that there will not be shirts or that I will skip posting on any forthcoming day. There will be shirts. But the shirts will not be exciting or the featured shirts will not require me to write a small novel to properly generate the content I feel is sufficient. I created a category for my hiatus so as to group together those "easy" shirts that I consider to be "hiatus shirts." The goal of the hiatus is to fill in many blog days with easy shirts in order to complete longer love letters to beloved popular culture icons on more special shirts and to write more complex entries AHEAD OF TIME. The daily grind is becoming too much and causing me to fall behind and to be forced to post incomplete entries. I am hoping that a series of hiatus shirts will allow me to catch up, get ahead, and stay ahead. Ideally, I would like to be writing the bulk of each entry three days ahead while always working on at least one other. I have a lot of great shirts to share before the end of my blog year (after all I was just given SIXTEEN shirts for my birthday). Stay tuned. I promise to post the more interesting and longer T-shirt entries as I finish them. Thanks for reading. BTW, this is the standard HIATUS TEXT that I will include in every "hiatus shirt" entry.

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 48 shirts remaining

- chris tower - first published - 1402.01 - 18:57
final publication - 1404.04 - 8:41

T-shirt # 292 - Bruce Springsteen - The Rising Tour 2002

"I will love you with all the madness in my soul..."



T-shirt # 292 - Bruce Springsteen - The Rising Tour 2002

If you have checked the blog recently, you may have discovered that I have been on vacation and enjoying time with my best friend Tom Meyers, better known as the Lord of Chaos, who was visiting. I chose all the t-shirts during his visit with him in mind. As I finish the blog, two days late (first time I have EVER been so late), I add these preface remarks about how I selected this shirt with Tom Meyers in mind.

Bruce Springsteen is one of the greatest American poets, performers, musicians, and artists of the last fifty years. He's up there with Sandberg, Frost, Woody Guthrie, and other great Americana writers/artists.

I was a BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN fan before I met my friend Tom Meyers, but I must confess that Tom's passion for Bruce Springsteen inspired me and increased my interest in "the Boss" ten fold.

My first Springsteen album was Born to Run, which my mother gave me as a gift in late 1980 or early 1981 when we went to a record store in the mall (State Vitamin), and she bought me several albums, which also included Wind and Wuthering by Genesis, Peter Gabriel's first solo album, Alan Parsons Project's Pyramid, and a few others that I no longer recall. I followed shortly thereafter by acquiring The River, Springsteen's current album at the time.

Though I have a special place in my heart for The River because of those days of listening to it in my early years of discovering music (during my college years my exploration expanded exponentially), Born To Run remains my favorite Bruce Springsteen album, and in my humble opinion, I consider it one of the best albums (not just rock music but including all albums in the modern music arena) of all time.

Rolling Stone magazine agrees. The seminal music magazine ranks Born to Run as Number Eighteen on its Top 500 albums of all time list. For me, this is too low.

I am going to indulge a bit in the examination of best albums of all time, according to two sources, before I return to an examination of Springsteen.

TOP 500 ALBUMS OF ALL TIME - THE ROLLING STONE LIST

Compare this to the British ranks by Q Magazine:

Q Magazine Top 100 albums of all time list

Rolling Stone  has five Beatles albums in its top twenty and three by Dylan. The Beach Boys Pet Sounds makes number two. And though I agree that The Clash's London Calling and the Rolling Stone's Exile on Main Street belong in the top ten, I am not sure that I would rank three different Beatles albums (Sgt. Pepper, Rubber Soul, and The White Album), two by Dylan (Blonde on Blonde and Highway 51 Revisited) and Marvin Gaye's What's Going On over Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run.


The Q Magazine list makes more sense to me, though with some variations. The Brits rank the Clash's London Calling at Twentieth, with which I disagree, and Springsteen does not appear in the Top Twenty at all. However, instead of the Beatles reigning supreme in the Top Ten, Q Magazine ranks Radiohead's  OK Computer as Number One, Radiohead's The Bends as Number Two, and Radiohead's Kid A as Number Ten. Revolver is the only Beatles in the Top Ten at four, Nirvana's Never Mind at three (Seventeenth on Rolling Stone's list), and other bands in the Top Ten that did not make Rolling Stone's list, such as the Stone Roses, Oasis, REM, and U2. Q Magazine actually ranks Achtung Baby over U2's The Joshua Tree, and I do not know many people who would agree with such an arrangement.

Enough recap. Any list of greatest albums of all time must include Born to Run in the Top Ten. I agree with London Calling and Exile on Main Street being in that group. But there must be other changes. Q Magazine  ranks Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon as Number Fifteen and Rolling Stone has no Pink Floyd in the Top Twenty, which feels like an oversight to me. I might rank The Smiths over Oasis or the Stone Roses.

Furthermore, in discussions with my visiting friend, who has returned to this home on the eastern seaboard as I type this sentence, which is the day after the official first publication of this blog, there are other albums that must be included in a Top Ten Greatest list, such as the Who's Quadrophenia and David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. He also agreed that U2's The Joshua Tree should rank above Achtung Baby. We both agreed that the Beatles deserve one spot as does Radiohead, though not multiple spots. I feel the Jam and Talking Heads deserve spots. We both agreed that Dylan may not deserve a spot. Objectively, though I am not a huge fan, Nirvana's Never Mind probably deserves a spot, but I am not going to give it a spot. Thom Yorke actually based a great deal of OK Computer on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and though this increases its merit, I do not know that album very well, so I am going to add an album I think is seminal and powerful, and one that I have come to love as one of my all-time favorites. And though it did not rank in my top tier in  T-shirt #97, this simply proves that the method of those rankings (which I will discuss in a moment) is not as objective as rating an album as a "best of all time," and so, with a little help from my friend, our combined list goes something like this (not in order):

BEST ALBUMS OF ALL TIME - MY LIST

1. Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen
2. London Calling - The Clash 
3. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars - David Bowie
4. Quadrophenia - The Who
5. OK Computer - Radiohead
6. Joshua Tree- U2
7. Exile on Main Street - Rolling Stones
8. Revolver - The Beatles
9. Déjà Vu - Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
10. Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd

Some other stuff just does not make the cut. I feel strongly about the Jam and Talking Heads. But have these bands produced two of the top ten best albums of all time or would they be among my personal faves? I have many personal faves that if I am to apply some objectivity would not be in a top ten of best albums of all time. I dropped Nirvana, as I claimed. I considered the Beach Boys' album, but I went with this list because there is an effect of my own prejudice. Revolver is not my favorite Beatles album, but then neither is Sgt, Pepper's. I would be more inclined to choose Let it Be, which is my favorite Beatles, but I am trying to synch with some of the best of lists.

I wrote about my personal favorite albums using the ones I have listened to most often as my main point of criterion in T-shirt #97, and though I might defend that King Crimson's Discipline is one of the most amazing
rock albums of all time, it's still an argument I am making based on personal criteria: what I have I listened to the most, what has had the greatest impact on me, which albums have given me the greatest enjoyment? My list for T-shirt #97 contains a Top Ten albums rated with such criteria, but Springsteen does not appear in the list. However, the list above feels like a greater and more objective evaluation of best albums, and yet the selections are obviously driven by my own subjective analysis. Some would cry in frustration: "Where's Led Zep??" "What about Queen?" and so on. The arguments would really never end. So there's the list. I am three days late finishing this blog post, so I have to get a hustle on.

Here's what Rolling Stone wrote about the Boss' "masterpiece":

Bruce Springsteen spent everything he had – patience, energy, studio time, the physical endurance of his E Street Band – to make his masterpiece. There are a dozen guitar overdubs on the title track alone. "The album became a monster," Springsteen recalled. But in making his third album, he was living out the central drama in its gun-the-engine rock & roll: the fight to reconcile big dreams with crushing reality. He found it so hard to re-create the sound in his head – the Jersey-bar dynamite of his live gigs, Phil Spector's grandeur, Roy Orbison's melodrama – that he nearly gave up and put out a live album. But his attention to detail produced a timeless record about the labors and glories of aspiring to greatness.

I asked Tom to choose his favorite albums by Springsteen, as we are old and still album-oriented in how we think about and experience music. Though I am happy to see the LP vinyl record make a resurgence in popularity. I have two cool stores in town in which to purchase albums, and I need to hook up my turntable. Tom could neither rank these albums nor the favorite songs list that follows. Springsteen love is too much a level playing field. It was almost too difficult to choose five albums and a dozen songs.

MY FRIEND TOM'S FAVORITE FIVE BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN ALBUMS
(not ranked)

• Born to Run
• The Ghost of Tom Joad
• Tunnel of Love
• The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle
• Live in New York City

I agree with this list, for the most part. Though I would replace the live album with The River, which may not be one of his greatest, but it's one I am awfully fond of because it was my second Springsteen album. Devil's and Dust, Nebraska, and The Rising would all vie for spots. It's quite difficult to choose actually. Though, I think Tom and I would both agree that Born in the USA is not making this list. I don't even own it.

TOM'S PLAYLIST OF FAVORITE SPRINGSTEEN SONGS  (Not ranked)

• "Blood Brothers"
• "Devil's and Dust"
• "I Wish I Were Blind"
• "Stolen Car"
• "Dead Man Walking"
• "Straight Time"
• "Thunder Road"
• "Incident on 57th Street"
• "Two Faces"
• "Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)"
• "Wild Billy's Circus Story"
• "All that Heaven Will Allow"

I will include some videos of both Tom's favorite songs and my favorite songs to conclude this blog entry.

I have seen Bruce Springsteen in concert four times. The photos in this blog entry feature my one and only Springsteen shirt (unless I buy another) from the Rising tour in 2002. My own playlist, which I will share, is in part dominated by songs from The Rising because I made it to listen to on the way to the concert, which was all the way down in Columbus, Ohio. I am not sure whom I was planning to take with me to the Columbus show, or if I was just planning to find someone who would go with me once I had the tickets. Regardless, I found a student who was a huge Springsteen fan who agreed to go with me. The concert took place after the semester ended, so his grade was already assured. He's a good guy, and we had fun, though I am not sure I remember his name. His first name, I think, was Matt.

In the picture to the left, I believe I had tickets to the Ann Arbor acoustic show for the Ghost of Tom Joad tour when the Battle Creek Enquirer asked me to review the show at Miller Auditorium, so I was able to see two Springsteen shows in the same week. I do not even remember who went with me to the Ann Arbor show. I know I saw the Miller show by myself as the call to go was too last minute to find anyone to go with me, but I remember meeting someone I would date off and on that night while buying sushi at D&W, so the evening is firmly fixed in my memory.

I present two versions of my Springsteen reviews from 1996 in their entirety.

REVIEW #1 (SHORTER):  Kyle Shirk of South Bend, Indiana could relate to Bruce Springsteen at the Boss's Tuesday night concert at Miller Auditorium in Kalamazoo because he's been in the big guy's shoes. Eight-year-old Kyle sang "Youngstown" for his first grade class back in May when his turn at show-and-tell rolled around. He has the song, from Springsteen's latest release "The Ghost of Tom Joad," memorized, and unlike the Boss, Kyle sang it in class without a guitar.
The Shirks--Kyle and his parents Wayne and Tammy--attended the Bruce Springsteen concert along with 3400 other Boss fans from far and wide. The Shirks called yesterday to get tickets after listening to a busy signal for hours the day they went on sale. For Wayne Shirk, this is his 30th Springsteen concert. It's number two for Tammy and Kyle.
But they're a Springsteen family through and through even if Wayne has seen the Boss a few extra times. Kyle's full name--Kyle William--comes from "Reason To Believe" of "Nebraska," Springsteen's last foray into the Woody Guthrie inspired folk sound he's returned to with "Tom Joad." The Boss's "If I Shall Fall a Step Behind" from "Tunnel of Love" is featured on the Shirk's wedding video.
Wayne Shirk believes in starting Bruce fans at a tender young age of, well, birth. Kyle has grown up with Springsteen and named each tune Bruce began throughout the concert, including singing along on "Youngstown." Though Kyle sang along on a few other Springsteen tunes Tuesday night, he denies that he's working up anymore songs and has no plans to bring his musical talents to show-and-tell anytime in the near future.
For others the Springsteen concert was less of a family ritual and more of a gift. The Miller usher corps, numbering in the hundreds, competed in a lottery to earn their place at a door, said Helen Goyings, one of the lucky 50 selected in the random drawing. But for Eilene Harrison the concert was worth a little bit more: a fur coat.
Harrison put her name on a waiting list for tickets and received a call yesterday at the Oshtemo Post Office that the tickets were available. She hooted, hollered, and flung postage stamps in the air at the news. She coerced co-worker Randy Barnes to pony up his credit card to redeem himself for breaking a previous date.
"He stood me up for the Allegan County Fair," Harrison said, "so he had to redeem himself. It was either this or a fur coat. I told him that if he takes me to Bruce, it makes up for missing Vince Gill."
Some people might think Harrison settled for something of lesser value, but for the 3400 fans giving Bruce Springsteen three standing ovations Tuesday night, the concert was worth a great deal more than a fur coat

REVIEW #2 (LONGER):  The crowd sizzled with the equivalent of heat lightning in excitement as Bruce--the Boss--Springsteen kept them waiting an extra twenty minutes. The 3400 people packing Kalamazoo's Miller Auditorium to capacity Tuesday night had one thing on their mind: the Boss. No opening act. No frills. No fancy set. Just the Boss man and his guitar.
If you wandered by Miller Auditorium Tuesday night, you might have heard what sounds like BOOs but was really people yelling "BRUCE" enthusiastically between each song.
Springsteen wanted them quiet during the songs though, and he set this tone from the start. Without hype or fanfare, he strolled out on stage in the darkness, and as the lights bathed him for the first time, he held his guitar at shoulder-height, briefly, before launching into the opening chords and harmonica wails of "The Ghost of Tom Joad," his latest release.
For each tune, Springsteen tells a story either of the song's theme, such as "trying something new," or longer tales of mexican migrants, Vietnam veterans, Texan shrimp fishers, and the epic hero of Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," Tom Joad, for whom Springsteen named his album.
Though most of the songs from the new album are quiet, somber, dark songs of pain, loss, and emptiness, Springsteen varied the evening with resonant and powerful acoustic versions of some of his older hits, like "Darkness on the Edge of Town," "Born in The USA," and "Promised Land."
But fans who expected the driving electric-powered guitar force of "Born To Run" settled for the "Tom Joad" songs which comprised most of Springsteen's 18 song set and two encores of six more songs. Though Springsteen returned to some of the songs of "Nebraska," the album with which many have compared "Tom Joad," he performed a suite of "Joad" songs from the southwest: "The Line," "Balboa Park," and "Across the Border" as well as "Sinaloa Cowboys," "Galveston Bay," and "Dry Lightning" among others.
Though many fans hooted and cheered at the beginning of the concert, soon Springsteen won them over with his pleas for quiet and his ability to mesmerize a crowd with a combination of stories and music (and musical stories). His talks between songs were often as quiet as the songs themselves and sometimes just as revealing and emotionally intense. The crowd was soon spellbound.
But Springsteen delivered some humor to break the somber mood. He joked about the state of Michigan with a song dedicated for that purpose and warned against the evils of late night television and infomercials with a happy-go-lucky "Sell It and They Will Come" song.
The Boss ended his main concert after only ninety minutes and the two encores brought the entire evening to a little over two hours, well short of the marathon three and four hour concerts he's been known to do, as recently as this last January in Detroit at the beginning of the first part of the "Joad" tour.
Though "Tom Joad" has turned gold since its release almost a year ago, Springsteen joked about low record sales. Regardless of its sales, the album has earned Springsteen much recognition not only for tipping his hat to Guthrie and Steinbeck but for his gritty portrait of the dispossessed of America and his brave social commentary.
The fans in Kalamazoo's Miller Auditorium would agree. After two hours of the "World According to Bruce Springsteen," they all drove home with a great deal to think about.

I also saw the 2005 acoustic tour promoting Devil's and Dust. As I mentioned earlier, my playlist was made for the tour for The Rising, but I must have remade it prior to Devil's and Dust  as that song appears on it.

• "Thunder Road"
• "Born To Run"
• "Jungleland"
• "Into The Fire"
• "The Ghost Of Tom Joad"
• "Devils & Dust"
• "Independence Day"
• "The River"
• "Tunnel Of Love"
• "Nebraska"
• "The E Street Shuffle"
• "Growin' Up"
• "Human Touch"
• "The Rising"
• "Streets Of Philadelphia"
• "Adam Raised a Cain"
• "Straight Time"
• "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)"

I have listened to Springsteen for years and could relate many experiences and impacts with and of his music. "Thunder Road" is a personal anthem. It is by far one of my favorite things in life. I have read many articles and reviews and things about Bruce, but this blog entry is already late and it would be five times larger if I tried to capture everything. Instead, I would like to share one moment.

I saw an interview with Springsteen a few years ago on CBS' 60 Minutes television program. One thing Bruce said struck with me. I cannot remember the quote verbatim, but essentially he said that his whole life (up until then, which may have been about 2005), he had been waiting to become the man he thought he should be, when he realized that it was time to start living as the man he was, the man he had become. This comment resonated with me as I felt I had the same experience, and so I started living as the man I had become rather than the man I thought I should be, was expected to be, had hoped to be. Of course, as soon as I did that, my life changed 1000000% and now I am that man that I had been waiting for. Funny that.

THE VIDEOS - SOME OF TOM'S/ SOME OF MINE

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Bruce Springsteen - Blood Brothers (NYC, 1/07/2000)

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Bruce Springsteen - Dead Man Walking

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Bruce Springsteen - All That Heaven Will Allow (acoustic) (live, Oslo, April 29th 2013)

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Bruce Springsteen w.Tom Morello - Ghost of Tom Joad - Madison Square Garden

25th anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert 10/29/2009

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Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Jungleland (PROSHOT)

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Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road Live in NYC *********************************************************************************

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Long Live The Boss. Thank you, Bruce Springsteen. Thank you for the memories.

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  COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 73 shirts remaining - chris tower - first published - 1401.07 - 21:11
Final publication - 1401.10 - 12:51