Monday, February 12, 2007

Sending Out An SOS!

The Police were on The Grammy's last night! This means it's official! The Police are getting back together.

Mrs. Zombie has been exasperated with me since last Thursday about this whole Police reunion tour thing. It's all I've talked about all weekend and she's had about enough.

You see, Sting and the Police are my favorite band. Seriously.

In terms of my favorite bands or artists (and in ascending order), they are:
5) Peter Gabriel
4) Rob Zombie
3) The Sisters of Mercy
2) The Cure
1) Sting and/or The Police

I know - this list shows my age. And I know that it dates me as surely as Carbon-14, but it's hard to let go of those formative musical experiences as you get older. And The Police were probably the first band that can be said to be responsible for much of my later musical life. If not for the Police, I'd have never listened to punk music, which means I would have never listened to alternative music. Without the Police, I would have never gotten an ear for truly well built music that was cutting edge, but mixed with an potent combination of reggae, jazz, blues, classical, and new wave punk. It's because of Sting and several Police songs that I read Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Jung, and Nabokov.

I remember being 12 or 13 and riding my 10 speed bike to my friend's house with a Sony Walkman cassette blasting out The Police: The Singles in all of its scratchy, pre-Dolby audio glory. These friends, two beautiful and fun twin sisters named Kelli and Shelly, were the object of much childhood (and I daresay high school and maybe some college) lust and I can't hear Wrapped Around My Finger without thinking about them. Later, when I went to college (with both Shell and Kell!) we met and made several friends, two of which were Stephen and Kimber (or Ber).

I've mentioned Stephen before - he's my hulking, but gentle friend with an affinity for playing guitar, eating inhumanly hot food, and Doctor Who. The thing is, he and Ber had grown up in Cincinnatti together and we knew we were working with some serious karma when we all discovered that we shared an unconditional LOVE for the Police.

Of course, we were in college when Sting's masterpiece, The Soul Cages came out, and we spent many a night in a darkened room, having serious college conversations while Sting sang about the death of his father. But we spent as equal an amount of time talking pseudo-intellectually while we played Outlandos D'amour, Regatta De Blanc, Zenyatta Mondatta, Ghost in the Machine, Synchronicity, and Brimstone & Treacle.

And now they are getting back together.

I wrote Stephen an email when I first heard the rumors, telling him to get a passport because I was concerned they'd start the tour in Europe and, given their history, there is a serious possibility that they'll only do a few shows before Stewart Copeland and Sting realize how much they still hate one another and the tour implodes. That's how serious my love for the Police is. I would consider the ramifications of ditching everything to jet off to Europe to see The Police in concert. And when I say ramifications, I come to the thing that so irks Mrs. Zombie - - the possibility that I'd risk divorce to see a concert.

'Cause I'd totally do it.

Anyway. As of now, the only thing in terms of dates I've heard is that they are doing stadium shows (two shows per stadium because they know they can make some motherfucking cash by playing TWO sold out stadium shows per town. Gods know I'LL probably try to go both nights if they come to Cleveland. $200-$400 ticket price be damned!). The only dates they've announced are July 5th and 6th at Fenway Park and July 26th and 27th at Wrigley Field. Let's hope they do something closer because I need to make this as painless as possible for Mrs. Zombie and a three or four day road trip is not going to help me maintain the domestic tranquility that I have a hard enough time maintaining with my constant talk of Jeep upgrades and Harley purchases!

So, wish me luck and - if luck decides to turn her fickle back on me - is there anybody out there who'd be willing to put up a homeless, seperated, and downtrodden evil zombie scientist? I'll bring my Messages in a Box Police boxset...

Spam Stock update - as of the close of business today:

QCPC is down 6.67%, which means I've lost $151.50 of my initial $1k investment
AUNI is UP 5.71%, which means I've gained $55.55 of my initial $1k investment (!!!!)
WEXE is down 9.1%, which means I've lost $90.90 of my initial investment.

For those who are interested, I'm using a site called How The Market Works to track my spam stocks. It's a really cool site in that it lets you invest $10,000 in fake money however you want and then tracks your stocks for you. It allows you to sell and buy however you see fit. In addition to my Spam Stocks, I've spent the remaining 10K on various other companies that I thought I might be able to make some money on and/or just really interested me. I've invested in Apple Computer, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Daimler Chrysler, Harley Davidson, Halliburton, Marvel Enterprises, the unnamed company I work for (A fortune 50 Insurance company in which I DO have a stock interest), and Exxon Mobile (who just posted the largest profit ever, something like 600 bazillion, kabillion dollars. Hell, I'd be stupid to not jump on the back of that bloated whale - -the environment be damned!)

So we'll see how this pans out after 30 days.

Good night, dear reader. Unpleasant dreams.

4 comments:

Nölff said...

One of my favorite bass players: sting

Thwacko said...

I never thought I'd see Peter Gabriel and Rob Zombie in the same list S;^(/>

Dr. Zombie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dr. Zombie said...

Nolff - I hear what you're screaming! There's not many things quite so cool as Sting going to school on a fretless bass...

Josh - What can I say? It's one of the benefits of a classical education. I guess I'm what you could call a Renaissance Zombie!!! : )