I saw Blue Man Group tonight.

It was a safe harbor of postpunk pop culture absurdity

to the initial wave of media frenzy that was already washing over

the dead body of Anna Nicole Smith in all its fleeting voluptuous stiffness.

The 21st century now has its candle in the wind

(Cue audience cell phone glow* and clown-headed mourning devil horns**:)

...

Three giant TV screens.

CONSTANT TEXT MESSAGES RUN NING

DI GI TAL READOUT S A CROSS TH E S T A G E .

When the readouts weren't TEXTING,

they were displaying kinetic commentary on the music.

LOUD, PULSING, PERCUSSIONS BEAT

in to

THE AUD I ENCE' S E ARS.

(A video camera obeys

ROCK STAR LESSON # 23:

Get to KNOW Your AUDIENCE

by plunging down a fan's throat all the way

to his sphincter, I guess.

pristine pink innerds lit up under a scope's blaring kleig.)

Then there was the music, and the muscial references. AD-DC. VAN HALEN. the girl from ipanema. OZZY OZOMATLI whiipit good Did I mention Pink Floyd? Great originals, but great covers too and ROCK STAR LESSON # 287: BACK A POPULAR SOCIAL CAUSE

(It chose to protest global warming with BMG in videoscreen masks.)

For their first encore, three-dimensional giant bits of burning paper floated down from the three GIANT TV screens, skittered across the DIGITAL READOUTS while TWOM AN GRO UP (backed up by three percussionists, two guitarists, bass, keyboards/vocals and klaxon-powered female vocal) beat big fluorescent plastic spoons on a black tuba/z apparatus. (I thought of, who was it, Trent Lott?: 'THE INTERNET IS A SERIES OF TUBES ... ") molding in our ears the rythm of BABA O'RILEY ...

...

EXHIBIT 17
(TEXTED THE DIGITAL READOUT:)
THIS PIECE OF PAPER FLOATED

TO EARTH NEAR BLUE MAN'S APARTMENT
IN NEW YORK CITY
...
SEPT. 11, 2001

... Klaxon-powered female vocal:

Out here in the fields

I fought for my ideals

I put my back into my livin'

I don't need to fight

To prove I'm right

I don

I don't need to be forgiven
...

Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah, yeah. ani di franco woulda been proud. Joan Osborne coulda sung harmony.

textmesage powerthroatedchickvocal unDENIABLEEPIPHANYERUPTINGINYOURBRAIN
(choreographed)
Y O U ' R E A L L W A S T E D

Yoko would have fit right in,

Grace Slick's White Rabbit in an electric green and blue maryjane

moby would just need to duck his head in a blue paint can

jerryrubin laurieanderson thediggers
PATTISMITHGROUP
TALKINGHEADS

A N D Y W A R H O L 1 5 M I N U T E SSSS
.................................. hare krishna hare hare krishna

all we are saying is Give Peace a Chance
(I wondered in what parallel universe's Vegas lounge
BMG would be collab-aborting
with George and Giles Martin on "Love"
instead of Cirque do Soleil.
And I can't wait to see "Love" - that's not intended as any slam.)

. . .

...

. . .

It was 40 years ago today,

Ed Sullivan let a Brit band play

on that same stage that

David Letterman reminded us about it from tonight.

40 years later, Blue Man Group's first encore lent new poignancy to a lyric it didn't even have to sing:

Now they know how many 'holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall

("One," might be the answer if, say, Eric Clapton or some other target were the butt of a vicious joke)

( ... it would also be a good name for a song)

...

* These have evidently replaced the salutes that smoky-hazed fans used to signal with flickering lighters, back in the day.