Three-Hundred Dollars to bring John Lennon Back from the Dead

Sufjan Stevens is coming to DC to play a free concert at the Kennedy Center next month and both Janelle and I love Sufjan and his wacky music. The only hitch was that you had to wait in line to get a hold of the free tickets last saturday. We didn't go wait in line because it was cold and because I'm trying to savor my last few months of uninterrupted sleeping in. Our thought was this: "free would be nice, but we could probably just buy the free tickets on ebay or craig's list for 30 bucks, so why be cold."

Well, I guess Janelle and I are not only Sufjan Stevens fans in DC and I guess we weren't suckers for sleeping in either because flocks of crazy people lined up ridiculously early in the morning for those tickets and a ton of line-waiters were turned away emptyhanded. Now those previously free tickets are selling for ridiculous prices on craig's list. This article says $300, but I searched craig's list and found people willing to pay anywhere from $90 to $999 for them. Obviously, I'm not as big a Sufjan fan as I though because I'm not willing to shell out $300 to see the guy in all of his glory.

All this got me thinking: what band would I pay $300 to see? To make my little game more interesting, I decided that I could ressurect dead and/or defunct bands to include in my answers. I was surprised when I could only come up with two - the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. I love U2, and have payed something like $80 to see them before, but I don't think I could pay $300 to see them again.

So my question to you is this: what bands would you pay $300 to see? They can be alive or dead. If you don't like music, then what performer or sporting event is worth that much to you?

Finish reading post.

Eugene England and Chilly Bananas

I have two things to say to you people. One is serious, and the other involves a banana pretending to be a worm.

Which do you want first?

Ok, I'll start with the serious stuff. So, periodically, I get in a church funk, and these funks usually manifest themselves in the form of thoughts, thoughts like this: "church is boring, and there are a lot of wackos who I should probably love as fellow children of God, but who bug the crap out of me; so what's the point?" Anyways, I recently came across this essay called "Why the Church is as True as the Gospel" by Eugene England that gives a spectacular response to my grumblings. For the more mature of you bloggers out there it probably just regurgitates the obvious, but it was pretty helpful for me.

Now on to bananas. After class on Tuesday evening I was walking to the Metro station from school. I saw a banana on a bench. But this was not one of your usual, solitary, bananas; oh no, this banana had a companion. The companion was not a monkey (that would've been cool), nor was it an orange. Instead, resting comfortably next to my chilly yellow friend was a crisp copy of the Book of Mormon. Why a banana and a Book of Mormon would hang out on the dark streets of Washington DC is a question for the ages. My only theory is this: some young and zealous missionary thought that he (or she) could "trick" an unsuspecting homeless person into reading the BoM a la Vincenzo Di Francesca. The banana was the worm, and the Book was the hook. Ha!! That'll teach homless people to pick up uneaten fruit at night.



*sheldon, I'm writing this during the time i've set aside to prepare for that thing you've forced me into....just so you know.

Finish reading post.