A great night for the black and gold

Continuing on from last night…

Topic #4: I actually was planning on writing about longtime friend of the blog Maggie Walters who has now moved from being my favorite unsigned artist to being the first person signed to a record label that I’ve written a CD review for. The fact that she has been signed and is working on a new album (and finally planning a real tour) is awesome. What is more amazing is that I spent some time a few weeks ago training my Pandora.com account to better understand my musical tastes, which included listing Maggie as one of my favorite artists. This means that while working on spreadsheets at the office I hear an Aimee Mann song segue into one of Maggie’s. It’s really difficult to explain just how awesome that is. So, for those of you who want a risk-free way to hear her music head over to Pandora, set up an account and at some point her songs will enter the rotation.

Though I have to say that training Pandora is a full time job. I finally convinced it to never play Led Zepplin songs, which I hate with a passion. At one point it decided that I needed to hear System of a Down though I can’t imagine why. And I still don’t know how to tell it that while I like female country singers I don’t like popular country singers. Still, have to give it credit as it now occasionally plays an Ani Difranco song. Yeah, I got tickets to another Ani show. The first one I attended was to impress a girl who had broken up with me six months earlier. (It made sense at the time.) The second show was because I really liked her first set. This time I’m going just because me at an Ani show is really, really funny.

Topic #5: I also have to give a tip of the cap to Karyn, a member of the extended blog family, for her appearance on The Big Break VI tonight. Karyn now becomes the first reality show contestant that I have drank with along with being the only Miss America contestant that I have ever drank with. It’s interesting that the show emphasized her being Miss Minnesota much more than her being the MVP of the Minnesota golf team. I’m really bummed that she was eliminated early in the show but it still was a thrill to see her on television.

(Though Erik, I have to admit hearing your sister’s name announced as the winner of Miss Minnesota is one of the most insane moments of my television viewing life. I can’t even imagine what it was like from your perspective.)

Topic #6: If you didn’t get choked up watching the opening of the New Orleans Saints game last night then you don’t have a soul. I’ll admit that this is something very close to my heart (and I had friends at the game) but to see the emotion in the crowd was just staggering. Sometimes you just need to have U2 on stage to prove a point and last night was it.

It’s tough to explain why that game and the reopening of the Superdome was so important. Part is that New Orleans still doesn’t feel right. Even in the Quarter where everything looks fine you just don’t have that crowd and sense of life that made the place great. Add to that wherever you drive in the city you see devastation. Here’s an example, while we were driving to the worksite one day we drove past this boarded up building and Julie went, “Chris, didn’t that used to be a theater?” And I realized that is where my sister saw Dave Matthews play after Jazz Fest and now it is just a shell. And this was right off the Quarter on Canal Street. So when you see that any sense of normalcy, including a football game, means the world.

You can make the argument that rebuilding the Superdome when volunteers are needed to hut houses is a case of misplace priorities. I’d argue that it isn’t. Now we need to rebuild the neighborhoods (or to at least have a plan in place to rebuild them). But New Orleans lives on tourism and by having the Superdome back open it means that a) Saints can play home games, b) the Sugar Bowl will not be in Atlanta this year and c) the SEC and NCAA can start thinking about holding events in the city again. All of that is huge in rebuilding the economy. I’ll say it again, New Orleans hasn’t disappeared nor has it been rebuilt. Don’t forget the people on the Gulf Coast.

Topic #7: One quick line from How I Met Your Mother, which will be a topic for another day. “Being single isn’t like being a kid in a candy store. It’s like living in a lawless, post-apocalyptic wasteland.” Can’t agree more. If I ever figure out what the rules are in being single and forming relationships I’ll let you know. It definitely would be easier if flowcharts were provided.