Category: Uncategorized

I was two weeks shy of my thirteenth birthday, and in Oregon filming Stand By Me, when Live Aid happened in 1985, and I was a little too young (and focused on making the movie) to fully appreciate it. When I was old enough to understand what I’d missed, I never thought I’d get a chance to experience the show.
Never that is, until the good kids at Rhino released Live Aid on DVD, which Anne gave me for Christmas. For the past two days, I’ve turned off Fred and let the DVD run while I work on various writing projects. I’d heard a little bit of it over the Thanksgiving weekend, when XM played it on the 80s channel, so I expected to enjoy it, but I’m a little surprised at just how much it rocks. The performances really hold up, and one of them even made an impression on Ryan and Nolan.
After listening to Paul Young perform one of my all-time favorite songs, (Come Back And Stay), I moved to the couch to watch U2 perform. In order to fully recreate the concert experience, I cranked up the Onkyo to a million, and bounced a beach ball around my living room.
Ryan walked into the room, and sat down on the couch next to me. He and Nolan have grown up with U2 the way I grew up with The Beatles, so he recognized the song right away.
“Is that U2?” He said.
I told him that it was, and while Bono continued to sing, I gave him a brief history of Live Aid.
“. . . so Bob Geldof decided to —”
“Wait. I’m sorry to interrupt, but what’s up with Bono’s boots?” He pointed to the screen, and for the first time I noticed that Bono was wearing leather pants, tucked into knee-high suede boots. They had an impressive heel.
“Uhh . . .” I began.
“And is that . . . oh my god. It is.” The color drained from his face. “He has a mullet.”
Before I could reply, Nolan walked into the room.
“Hey!” He said. “What are you watching?”
“It’s Live Aid,” I said. “They were raising money for —”
“Woah! That is a sweet mullet!” Nolan pointed at the screen and erupted into peals of laughter.
I paused the DVD, and turned to face them.
“Listen, you guys. It was 1985.”
They looked back at me, blankly.
“Oh, nice.” It’s yet another ‘I’ve-just-become-my-parents’ moment, just replace ‘it was the sixties’ with ‘it was the eighties.'”
“The mullet was the official haircut of rock and roll,” I said.
Before either of them could point out how ludicrous this statement was, even if it was true, I tried to explain: “This concert was a really important event! Not only are these all incredible bands at the height of their popularity, but you can see what happened when a bunch of people came together to make a difference in the . . . in the world . . ” I realized that they weren’t listening to me. Ryan’s face was turning red and Nolan was choking back massive giggles.
“What?” I said.
Ryan’s face cracked, and he howled with laughter as he pointed at the TV. I looked up, and saw that I’d paused the movie on a shot of Bono, his head thrown back, eyes clamped shut, microphone held high . . . and mullet in full-effect.
“I’m sorry, Wil.” Ryan said. “What were you saying?”
I laughed in spite of myself. Bono did look pretty ridiculous. “I’ll tell you another time. For now, just try to enjoy the music.”
“Oh, we can do that,” Nolan said, and made a big production of putting his hands over his eyes.
“Hey, let’s see how well your rock and roll heroes hold up in twenty years,” I said.
“As long as they don’t have mullets, I think we’ll be fine,” Ryan said.
I pressed play and we watched — well, I watched and they listened, to the rest of Sunday Bloody Sunday, followed by Bad.
“See?” I said. “That was during Unforgettable Fire, just before Joshua Tree. Those two songs they just played are the reason you have heard U2 since you were too little to know what music was.”
As the final strains of Bad echoed over an aerial shot of Wembley Stadium, they cut to footage of Phil Collins about to board the Concorde.
“Who’s that?” Nolan asked.
“That’s Phil Collins. He just finished performing in London, and now he’s going to fly to Philly to perform there too,” I said. “It was pretty cool.”
“Phil Collins?!” Ryan said, “The wussy Tarzan guy?!”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Well . . . yeah.”
“He was cool?”
“Phil Collins was . . . ” I cleared my throat. “He was an international superstar.”
Ryan looked at me, genuinely confused. “Why?”
I took a deep breath and gave the only answer I could.
“It . . . it was 1985.” I said, suddenly not that uncomfortable to take another step toward becoming my parents, and silently grateful that the kids hadn’t been in the room when I was rocking out to Adam Ant.

Good news, everyone!
When the press release went out about MacWorld, a lot of WWdN readers asked if there would be a reading or signing for people who were unable to afford admission to the conference.
Well, it turns out that we have a mole at Borders in Union Square. She made an introduction for me, and I am super excited to announce that I’ve been invited to their store for a reading and signing when I’m in town!
It looks like the Borders website hasn’t been updated yet, but I’m scheduled for Friday January 14th at 7pm.
Oh! I just got a Really Big Idea™, that could be a whole bunch of Supercool: I have a short list of stories from Just A Geek that I choose from when I perform at bookstores. Based on comments and e-mail, I know there are a lot of WWdN readers in NorCal. How about, instead of me choosing what to read, I let you guys pick what you’d like to hear? If you’re planning to come out on the 14th, say so in the comments, and leave a brief description, or chapter number, or page number, or whatever, and the majority will rule.

The always hilarious BBspot hits it out of the park again. Today, they give us The Top Eleven Geek Break Up Lines.
My personal favorite is number eleven:

(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? R
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? R
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? F
Relationship failed.

I love that I can look out my office window, and watch a steady curtain of rain fall gently into my backyard. It looks like the powdered milk they used in Singin’ In The Rain.
Occasionally, it knocks a leaf off this old maple tree that is in one corner of my yard.
The opposite corner is flooding.
There are about a dozen finches hopping around on my chinese elm tree. The rain doesn’t seem to bother them.
It’s chilly out, but I opened the window a bit so I can listen to them sing.

A few readers have told me that WWdN is nominated for Best Big Name Blog in the 2004 Best of the Blogs awards, so I headed over there to see who else was nominated, and to perhaps correct the assertion that I’m a Big Name anything.
Holy crap, am I in some good company. Namely, Tony Pierce and Dooce.
So look, here’s the thing: If you’re going to go there and vote, you’d better vote for Tony. Right now he only has 13 votes, and that’s because I can only vote once a day. I’m serious. This isn’t some sort of false humility — it’s a fact. Tony Pierce writes one of the best (and more often than not THE best) blogs on the Internets. Go read his site if you doubt me. Tony is fearless, funny, and talented. And pick up his book How To Blog while you’re there.