1/60,000

It's a good thing Bono didn't ask me to try a little poisoned Kool-Aid tonight, just a sip, because I would have. I'm mesmerized by the guy. He's a poet. He sings about life and love and peace and war and having fun and somehow he took a group of four kids from Dublin and turned them into a band, a band that is still around after so many years. And, oh, it's not just me that's a crazy fan. In Phoenix tonight, over 60,000 others were worshipping right along with me. He said, "We've got some new songs. We've got some old songs. And we've got a spaceship." And he was right. The gorgeous night open air stadium was full of this massive lit-up, flashing, changing colors, smoke coming out of it spaceship. It was supposed to carry them across the globe and also to create "intimacy" which it did somehow. It brought them out almost into the middle of the room with the orbiting walkway and moving bridges, along with some stories tall sometimes spinning screens for the glorious close-ups (for the few moments when I put the binoculars down for my very own close-ups).

 I read that it takes four days to build and four days to break down and that there are three of them "leap-frogging" Europe and the US getting ready for the next show. The first thing we heard as we saw the lights and the smoke was David Bowie's voice singing "this is ground control to Major Tom" and the last, Elton John singing "Rocket Man."

In between was an incredible hours long, nobody ever even sat down rock concert that I'm still processing, taking me through so many great years and loving the new stuff, too. Out of 60,000 people (including Mohammad Ali and the McCain family), Shawn and I ran into four that we knew, but it seemed like the whole place was bound together somehow. Shawn indulges my Bono-obsession and it was good to be steadied by his wrapped around me tight arms as the songs kept coming. I still remember the first time I heard my probably still favorite, definitely still relevant Sunday Bloody Sunday - way back in high school, sitting on the trunk of my car on a sunny day, watching Shawn and his friend wash their cars. The guy still spends a big part of his weekend washing his latest obsession (an M5 that roars like Bono, even kind of looks like him with all the black paint and leather). Maybe this Saturday, I'll sit on the trunk of my car and crank up some U2, just like the old days.