01.31.04

after years of talking about seeing henry rollins do his spoken word thing, i finally made magic happen at the town hall last night - quite capably, i thought, as i wangled fifth row comp seats for a sold-out show from the harried but receptive ticket booth guy. rollins's boxed life, a disc about layovers in phoenix and wayne newton and whitesnake, was my soothing bedtime headphone disc for awhile - he does bellow now and again, but his voice is very soothing at conversational levels.

in person, at ten paces, he's predictably huge, but he also looks a bit like george bush or my cousin tom. i still love the anecdotes about eating scallops in memphis with william shatner and the like, but his political stuff falls a bit flat. relatively well-researched and painfully earnest, sure, but all i'd really wanted was to know his pick in the democratic primaries.

me, i'm liking john kerry - not for his wins, but for his domestic moratorium on the death penalty. also the dean rants - not dean's, but his followers' - are questionable. maybe joe trippi's successor can tone down their hate a little - i mean, if rollins can be civil nay suave, given his history, i think we all need to have a talk with the man in the mirror.

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