the tragically hip... a good time was had by all... especially those of us in the orchestra seats :) much much more than in the show I saw in GM Place it was apparent that not only does Gordon Downie work seamlessly with the band, he also controls the audience. He did an amazing thing with the last verse of At The Hundredth Meridian, sang the first few verses really straight through with most of the crowd singing along, then improvised for a while in the middle, kept sounding like he was going to do the last verse but didn't. (If I die of vanity, promise me, promise me, they bury me someplace I don't want to be, you'll dig me up and transport me, unceremoniously, away from the swollen city breeze, the garbage bag trees, whispers of disease and the acts of enormity, and lower me slowly and sadly and properly, get Ry Cooder to sing my eulogy...) Somehow when he started finally singing the last verse, he was going too fast, daring the audience to keep up, and then when he got to the last word, he stopped short, "sing my..." and the crowd was left to shout "eulogy" without him. Like a massive performance art pun... At times, and I've noticed this before, at the other show I managed to see and on the live album, he changes words, but not just names of towns, all sorts of words and the combinations are surprising. If the audience is singing along and getting out of hand, he starts speeding up and slowing down, or just repeating the same word over and over, so they can't keep up and are forced to just let him get on with it. It's like you're not just seeing a concert, there's a communication thing going on. Everyone's there for the music, everyone's in the music, part of Gord's little world for a while. It's a strange world, too. He lies on the floor, he makes awkward gestures and faces, he dances in ways that invite comparison (like... Mr. Rogers watching pornography, but that's ok) I could see a lot more, and the sound was clearer, with it being in the theatre, and while it wasn't quite as loud as the arena, it was still well worth the money. At GM Place I had my back against a cement wall and I stood on my chair, but the echo from the wall was right in my ear and I was deaf for a week. I woke up this morning with the tail-end of Grace, too reverberating in my head and a killer nicotine withdrawal from all the smoke, and had to fight the urge to smoke all day, but I don't mind. And despite all predictions to the contrary, I didn't get mugged or even so much as looked at sideways walking around Vancouver at 1 in the morning to get back to Mum and Dad's.

And I went to SFU and there were some grownups there, and I'm going to get a nice lot of credit for all the first-year type courses I took in my first degree, so real soon I'll be able to take 300/400 level courses. All in all a pretty productive day. Spent the afternoon in the SFU library, looking up stuff, which was fun too.