Blog Action Day 2009-Climate Change

Today is BLOG ACTION DAY!

I heard about this and knew that I had to participate. What is Blog Action Day?

"Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be one of the largest-ever social change events on the web."

Thank you all for reading and I hope you enjoy today's post!

Meredith
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MISS ALIVE

Last week, I attended my very first KISS concert. As a kid, I was not a KISS fan, though I knew many boys who were. On Halloween night, you were guaranteed to see at least a dozen Gene Simmons demons, several Paul Stanley star childs, and one or two Ace Frehley space-aces. Never a Peter Criss cat man.

However, I was familiar with "Beth," "Shout It Out Loud" and a few others, and I admit, their over-the-top, theatrical stage show has always fascinated me. John saw them ten years ago and had been hyping them every since. So when they came to the Garden for their Alive 35 tour, curiosity got the best of me and I decided to see the spectacle.

A spectacle it was. But what is the old saying? Curiosity killed the cat man?

The show started off great. Classic songs, big explosions, cool effects -- breathing fire and spitting blood, band members flying through the air. Doing the most talking was Paul Stanley, who, in addition to being the rhythm guitar player and main vocalist, is also the band’s MC. He pumps up the crowd and introduces the songs. However, his intros became long, drawn-out speeches.

Despite the length of the speeches, I was actually touched by his rhetoric throughout the show. At one point he told how KISS used to rehearse at 23rd and 5th (10 blocks from the Garden), and how as a cab driver, he once drove people to see Elvis Presley. He told himself that one day, he, too, would play the Garden.

But my soft spot for him quickly hardened about ¾ of the way into the show, when he made yet another speech: "There are a lot of troubles in the world. But if you came to hear about troubles, you came to the wrong fuckin' place." So far, so good. Didn't need to curse, but I got the idea.

Then he dropped the big one. "All we hear about is Save the Nukes, Save the Whales, Save the Porpoises. You don't want to hear about that! You want to escape!"

Cannons placed all over the arena blasted tons of confetti everywhere. All to the tune of “Rock and Roll All Nite.” And then, as if the paper wasn't bad enough, the people in back of me started chanting, “Fuck the porpoises!"

It was more like a rock and roll all nitemare. They weren’t driving me wild, but they were driving me crazy. Paper? The poor trees. Fuck the porpoises? What did they do? And what exactly did "Save the Nukes" mean?

I understood what Paul Stanley was trying to say but using the environment as his examples was too much.

I seriously think we need to ban the confetti thing. Did anyone stop to think how many trees were chopped down to produce even one machine full of confetti? Probably not. Paul McCartney used it in his concert as well. PAUL! Maybe it's a "Paul" thing?

To that I ask the questions: Why do we, the audience, get excited about little bits of paper falling all over us? Do you take it home as a souvenir?

Ironically, Paul Stanley’s statement about “escape” helped me do anything but. All I could think about for the rest of the show was waste, whales and porpoises.

At this point, I couldn't get back on board with the concert which bummed me out because it was the encore and those were all the songs I knew. I would've loved to rock n roll all night but my mind was off in Detroit Rock City being pissed off over the whole porpoise/nuke/paper fiasco.

I guess I wasn't made for loving you, KISS.