My God I Love U2!

Is it a testament to my perseverence or a testament to the prolific catalog of Saturday Night Live episodes that it's taken me six freakin years to finally see the Val Kilmer hosted SNL special from December 2000. The curiousity and drought ended this morning - thanks and praise be to TiVo.

While I shan't dwell on the particulars of how I missed this the first time around, I will sum up. I was in Zurich? New York? London? the weekend of that SNL special (I suspect Zurich because I don't remember many weekends in NYC or London that year). I knew U2 would be on so I begged my sister to videotape (YES, videotape) that SNL show. I figured it'd be pretty painless for her since she likes Val Kilmer. She taped it and even let me know that U2 were very good on it. Before I flew home, I heard that it was the best live music performance on SNL and for the first time in SNL history, a musical act received a standing ovation during and after the performance. I was so excited to see it!

Now the thing to understand here is that my sister tapes TV shows and movies the way my mother took photos: Something important is going to get chopped off. Somehow, the tape fiascoed in a way I don't particularly remember but I got to see the first performance and the brilliant Horatio Sanz/Jimmy Fallon/Chris Kattan/Tracey Morgan red sweater Christmas song. So the actual performance of "Elevation" that made the normally unimpressionable NY SNL crowd rise to their feet was lost.

The show had been on Comedy Central before but like a sinister tease, it also lopped off/condensed the show to an hour rather than its normal 90 minutes and "Elevation" was a casualty of that.

But tonight I finally saw it! And at the risk of sounding like a crying, silly, panty-throwing, Bono-marry-me type girl, it was worth the wait of years. And even having seen Elevation itself performed live up close and personal a few times, this was an amazing performance. The best part was when Mr. Bono marched through the crowd, interspersing the words of Lennon: We all shine on, like the moon and the stars and the sun!

I managed to actually scream (and omg, here I am 34 years old) when Bono threw his arm around Val Kilmer standing offstage and totally in key and beautifully integrated, threw his voice down and sang, "Baby come on and light my fire" and returned seamlessly to Elevation.

Yes, I'm MIA on blog for weeks/days more or less and I come back with paragraphs on U2. But I'm very much involved right now in getting my offline life in order. Things are going GREAT at work and socially but I need right now to get my physical home in full order. I've made a lot of changes - thanks to a gift card given to me by my employer for our retails stores in thanks for the work and vacation I've had to give up. Though I will say, it hardly pays the debt to a life ignored for so long but it's better than nothing. I'll try to take pictures soon.

I need to dye my hair. I don't have any greys but I want darker hair.

Rightio, off to make home a better home.