Monday, January 19, 2009

Time To PAR-TAY!

What are you doing to celebrate today and tomorrow? Stagg has taken tomorrow off work. I LOVED the concerts yesterday...I was a wreck.

In the following video I immediately got chills you can recognize his posture...and I started feeling chills up and down my spine. How profound to compare when this song was written in the week of 9/11 and to compare the context to today.

Basically, I just had a box of tissue next to me. (Stagg was teasing me) When these guys came out to sing their homage to Martin Luther King...I had this incredible feeling that so many things I believed in as a kid and young adult were coming to pass. When this song first came out this is the feeling we dreamed of...These guys just killed it with this performance.


But they weren't alone...the entire concert was awesome. Herbie Hancock, Will.i.am and Cheryl Crow were so cool singing Bob Marley's "One Love". I am not a fan of the style of singing of Josh Groban...but I have to admit the combination of his voice with Headley was incredible. Beyonce killed, Usher...it was a just an overwhelming event. The people in the audience were so happy looking. We have a bottle of champagne for tomorrows ceremony.


Check out the boss and Pete Seeger....(is that George Lucas?) Don Mischer directed this HBO concert and if you check out some of these videos you can see what great job was done. Mischer has directed superbowl halftime shows and several Emmy winning music specials. There were some impressive camera moves and set ups. You know, in Canada we just don't have this kind of spectacle or the kind of monuments. The U.S. really knows how to make monuments. Adding more significance to this ceremony is the history that some of these monuments were built by slaves. Candians don't really have any politician or philosopher that would be recognized by most of the population. The camera went into the Lincoln Memorial and then several "Ken Burns treatments" of stills with Lincoln were montaged into the big screens behind Tom Hanks speaking. In Canada...we'd have Mike Myers trying to explain who Tommy Douglas was and it just wouldn't have the gravity. I love the deeply rooted emotional bond Americans have with their history. So much of the United States story has a post-international resonance.


You know two years ago I went to Dealey Plaza. My hostess said she didn't understand why a Canadian would be interested in seeing the area and the 6th Floor Museum. When we got into the museum, it became clear to her...there was a display of all the places in the world that had named a monument or natural area after President Kennedy. There were newspaper articles of him from around the world. The thing is...it's kind of like if "daddy isn't happy, no body is" for us in the rest of the word. If the United States is up to no good we all suffer. And when the United States might be rising from the ashes...that is hopeful for us all. On a bookclub, a partcipant pointed out how America can pull itself back from the brink when things look the worst. Her examples:

---- Fugitive Slave Act to Emancipation Proclamation
---- Great Depression to New Deal
---- Bush years to the Audacity of Hope

Are you doing anything special to celebrate?

4 comments:

S.M. Elliott said...

Hell yes, I'm celebratin'. I've got a bottle of champagne saved too long for something special, and if this isn't it, what is?!

I'll technically be celebrating alone, as everyone in this neck of the woods is all pessimistic about Obama, or at least not very hopeful. But I'll know that all around the world, there is some serious happy going on.

Candy Minx said...

Good for you! Alone huh?

Let me guess you must be In Alberta or some small town in B.C, right?

Now we just need to boot that sham artist Harper out of office.

pjazzypar said...

I did not see any of the concert, but I hear it was quite a blast. It's nice to know that our neighbors to the are enjoying the festivities as much as we are. This is all so bittersweet because with today being the celebration of Dr. King's birthday I am thinking about all the people I wish could be here (Dr. & Mrs. King, Rosa Parks, JFK, and so on). Anyway have a ball tomorrow!

Candy Minx said...

Hi Pjazzypar, yeah, it is bittersweet isn't it? I can think of people in my family who I wish had seen this come around.

Apparently there is a store selling Obama paraphrenilia and that includes galoshes. It's funny you mention the neighbours to the north...because I figured the galoshes are or those probable southern visitors from the south in the coming years who get to D.C. and didn't know they needed boots.

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