Critical Exponent

Cumulative advantage, a.k.a positive feedback.

An interesting read from Salon. I don’t follow Oprah or her reading list, but a lot of the facile self-help, intellectual laziness, and emotional insularity described in this article jibes with anecdotal observations of prominent aspects of popular culture. Whether this is a new trend is debatable; self-improvement has always been a part of the national ethos, and is often made to sound easier or more effortless than it truly is.

She wanted to turn the world into a giant dance floor, and that she did. Madonna had everyone rocking as she packed the Garden on the first Boston show of her Confessions Tour. “C’mon, Boston, let me see you dance!”

The show included everything from riding crops to disco-ball-style crosses, from parkour to roller skates. She mixed some old favorites with new hits, and threw some social messages into the mix: celebration of gay love, impatience with demagogues, a call for help with the AIDS crisis in Africa. Our seats were great: up in the first balcony, we had a commanding view of the entire stage, but could see quite a lot of detail thanks to the powerful birding binoculars we made sure to bring. There are few things as frustrating as not being able to make out the performer’s face in your line of sight and having to rely on the Jumbotrons…

Madonna is as energetic as ever, though the most extreme stunts were carried out by her oh-so-fit backup dancers. Knox and I decided that would be a perfectly suitable second career choice for us, but perhaps we have further to go than we like to admit. You see, there was nary a teenager in sight. The audience were all people who had grown up with Madge, folks ranging from their late twenties into (gulp!) middle age. Though we may not all have three nannies, an assistant, and a driver and a jet, we did our best to keep up with the dancing dervish.

Disappointed as we were that the Garden was not playing warm-up Madonna music as we waited for the show to begin, all was made right when we left and walked along Canal Street: all the bars had her hits blaring to lure in the concert-goers. “What the hell!” we said, and went in to one. As Knox downed a beer, I danced and vogued and boogied-woogied to end my fabulous Madonna evening. She, I’m sure, was well on her way back to New York by then.

UPDATE: This is the second Madonna concert I’ve attended; the first was the Reinvention Tour. Rebecca Traister at Salon does a good job of describing what it feels like to see Madge in concert for the first time as an adult.

Listen to Pink’s new song, Dear Mr. President.

Willie Nelson does Brokeback. (audio, lyrics, Reuters story)

Knox was sweet enough to get me the new Madonna CD last night. So far, Confessions on a Dance Floor strikes me as, well, disappointing. The first track, “Hung Up”, is catchy and danceable. But the other tracks? They’re just not getting me.

It pains me to admit this, since I am a big Madonna fan and have been since I first heard “Like a prayer.” I’ve consistently liked her albums, even if some songs here and there took a while to become familiar and likable.

Maybe this album will grow on me, too.

I finally went to see a Madonna concert!

I’ve never really cared to keep up much with popular music, but I do remember the summer of ‘89, when Like a Prayer was playing on the radio. I loved it! As I learned more about this provocative singer who irritated the straitlaced, I liked what I saw and what I heard. “One day,” I promised myself, “I will see her in concert.”

I tried to get tickets to the Drowned World Tour in 2001, but I couldn’t get through to TicketMaster on the phone nor on the web. And boy, did I try.

This year, though, when I heard she was touring again, I was able to snag tickets. My first rock concert, ever! (Yes, I’ve had a sheltered life.)

I have to say, it was fun. I’d never been inside Madison Square Garden before, and Madonna did put on a wonderful show, with a bunch of her old and new hits and dazzling visuals that borrowed heavily from her recent Kabbalistic inclinations. I was in the middle of the floor section, which would normally mean a good seat, but I thought I was too far away to really see her clearly. I just saw a body dancing on the stage most of the time. What was nice was that at two points during the show a platform descended from the ceiling and hooked onto the stage, extending partway into the floor seating section, just over the audience’s heads. During those two numbers, she was pretty close to me. That was exciting, I will admit.

Nah, I’m not star struck. Well, maybe a little. I like her music and her shows, and I’ve always wanted to tell her “Thank you.”