Are Blogs On The Way Out?

During the past few months I've noticed not much going on in the way of blogs, more specifically, not many new posts being written. Not that there's a lot going on here at RLO Today.

Several blogs that I regularly read, or used to read, have become more inactive or just completely dead. A number of my friends in the Jaycees had blogs. None of them write for them anymore it seems. Other local blogs appear to be waning as well.

I wonder if blogs were just a fad that lasted a few years, or is it other social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter slowly taking bloggers out of action. I'm on Facebook regularly. And the thing with Facebook is you can leave brief comments on any of your friends or your profile. Others can respond as well to your comments. And so the same can happen on blogs.

But Facebook I think is set up in a way that makes it more entertaining and convenient. You can write some short one-liner as opposed to preparing a manifesto on a blog. The same can be said about Twitter. Though I don't have a Twitter account, I just don't get the fascination of Twitter. At least Facebook allows you to post pictures and videos as well as a few other things. Twitter just allows you 140 characters of text. What can you actually say with that?

And how about MySpace? Does anyone use it still? I have always thought that it was easier to use than Facebook, but Facebook offered some different features that MySpace didn't. MySpace does now, but its probably too late and perhaps the damage is done. MySpace lasted about a year or so in popularity and now its done. Very fickle users.

I don't know if readers of blogs have declined any over time. I still wonder if blogs are facing the same problem with MySpace. Knowing society today and its short attention span, I also suspect that Twitter and Facebook too will suffer a demise such as MySpace.

The Russians Are Coming

The other night I had a dream that the Russians were after my convertible. The reason being was that they wanted to reverse engineer it and learn new technology. At one point in the dream, I was walking back to my car to get something out of it and to check on it. As I was walking to it, I was thinking to myself that if the Russians wanted this car so bad, why don't they just buy one for themselves. I mean, there no real classified technology in it. In fact, there's a car just like this sitting on the used car lot at Greene Chevrolet.

When I woke up, I realized I had yet another odd dream. "What made me dream that?" I asked myself. It occurred to me that I might be watching too many episodes of The A-Team. Hulu.com has episodes available of the A-Team. But seasons 3-5 are going down the first week of September, so I need to get them in when I can. So I guess I more or less have overdosed on The A-Team. But I love it when a plan comes together!

The weird dreams still continue and probably always will. Last night I was on an outpost on the planet Pluto, complete with warm temperatures, trees, grass and atmosphere. Who know where or what I'll be doing tonight.

Review: Green Day

I'm probably a bit late in getting this review in, but I checked out Green Day at the United Center in Chicago on July 13, 2009. (At left, Jack with the Green Day tour bus in the backdrop)

Green Day is Jack's favorite band. When I saw they were on tour promoting their new album, 21st Century Breakdown, and that they were stopping in Chicago, I thought to see if Jack would like to go see them. He wasn't sure at first. I then asked if Buffy's nephew and niece, Max and Sara, would want to go. Turned out Max was up for it, but Sara had horse camp that week. Jack as well as Dennis finally decided to go. So I bought 4 tickets. As the date got closer, Shari and her niece got tickets for the same show, only 1 section over.

So we all headed up to Chicago on Sunday, July 12 and got a couple of rooms at a hotel on Michigan Ave so we could spend some time there. That night we went up the John Hancock building to its observation deck... and at night. Cool. After that we wondered aimlessly on Chicago streets. Jack was worried about all the homeless individuals we saw after he witnessed a homeless man in his underwear. He showed concern about them and wanted to give them money. We tried to explain that many of the homeless people only appear that way and instead are scam artists trying to get money from other people. "Why would they do that?" asked Jack. Good question.

The next day, we had breakfast at a local Greek restaurant at a total bargain price of nearly $90. I could have made a better breakfast. We then wanted to check out the new skydeck at the Sears Tower. After a bus ride and witnessing a argument between an older and younger woman, we arrived at the Sears Tower, only to learn it was at least an hour and a half wait to get to the skydeck. Therefore we switched to Plan B... Navy Pier.

We spent the late morning and most the afternoon at Navy Pier, looking around, going through fun houses, feeding birds, etc. In the late afternoon we went back to the hotel, where I got a quick nap and got cleaned up for the big show.

Getting ready to leave for the United Center, you could tell Jack was getting excited about seeing Green Day. This was really his first rock concert. He had seen the Blue Man Group and the Trans Siberian Orchestra, but he was about to see a real rock group.

We arrived at the United Center to find a group of people demonstrating something. They held up tabloids to help promote their cause. Dennis walked to an older gentleman who was demonstrating and asked for one of their tabloids. It cost $1 for one of them. Turns out they were demonstrating for Communism. If they were trying to advance their cause, would they not want to offer these pamphlets for free. And charging $1, sounds like capitalism to me. When Denni' returned, he said that he'd rather argue with the old guy all night then go to the show.

We were finally seated and waited for the show to start. I pointed out to Jack all the usual concert things; warm up band, backdrop and the mosh pit. Once Green Day started playing, we all stood up to see the band. Jack was really excited now. At times he would sing along with the band and have his hands in the air.

Green Day started the show with the first few songs from their new album. They also played plenty of songs from American Idiot and older songs from the 90's such as Basket Case, Hitchin' A Ride and Time of Your Life. The coolest thing they did during the show was they picked a 12 year old out of the audience to come up to the stage and play guitar with them. This was prompted when Billie Joe Armstrong, the frontman, asked for someone who can play guitar. We were sitting in section 120, row 17, the very far right of the stage. I was too far away. But Jack insisted I raise my hand. He even tried holding my arm up.

The kid they eventually picked held a sign that said "I can play and I'm 12" along with pictures of guitars. Billie Joe brought him up, briefly tested his guitar playing skills without the guitar amped up and then gave him the go. He got to play Billie Joe's guitar and the strap was so long that he had to sit on a floor monitor to play. They went into Jesus of Suburbia off the American Idiot album, and this kid knew it and played it perfectly. At times, Billie Joe would hold the microphone up to him and let him sing a few lines... at the same time he was playing. The vocal wasn't great because he still had a 12 year old kid voice. But I was still impressed. And this kid's name was Jack. He was invited to play on the next song, but he didn't fully know it.

There were many times that Billie Joe would try to get the audience fired up by more or less chanting at them and getting them to chant back. That's ok once or twice, but after a dozen times or so, it gets old. Then they played an extended medley of Sweet Home Chicago, Shout and a few other older cover songs. They could have played a couple more of their own songs in that time.

Towards the end of the show, you could tell Jack was getting tired. It was a long day for him. Overall, I enjoyed the show, but it had a few weak points. On a scale of 10, I'd probably give it a 7 to 8. But Jack really like it and will probably always remember going to his first rock concert with his Uncle Rick.