REM @ United Center, 6/7/08

Openers:
The National - couldn't hear him, but good.
Modest Mouse - couldn't hear him, not good.

REM - Awesome. Songs I can't really believe they played:

Pilgrimage
Let Me In (acoustic, gathered around a piano off to one side of the stage, Stipe's back to the audience - picture above is them doing that, and it also shows you how far back we were, mrf)
Find The River
Pretty Persuasion on a whim during the encore (described as a "change of plan")

Oh and Johnny Marr joined them for "Fall On Me."

A lot of Around the Sun, which I should have known going in and gotten ready for. I also didn't recognize "The Great Beyond" at all until the chorus. And I call myself a fan. I don't think I'm going to get a month's worth of sore throat (sole honor for that still goes to Daft Punk @ Lolla), but it definitely feels raw.

Other observation is that REM fans are the most sedate / cerebral out there. They had a video-camera backdrop that blew up BMS' faces, which was helpful, but occasionally they would turn the cameras on the crowd, and you could not imagine an arena full of people less excited to see themselves on TV. Most of them had that polite "when is this going to be over" look that you get when you have to say something nice to a videographer at a wedding. Also, I was in the nosebleed seats and a lot of us felt no inclination to stand for any of it, not even the ovation. Dudes couldn't see us anyway.

Lots of old tour shirts (all the way back to Murmur), lots of irritating other artists represented via shirt (Bright Eyes, er...North Face) and one awesome gray-haired man with an Effigies tee. I wanted to go up and ask if he was there, but I don't know how he would have reacted.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Cristal Skull (2008) and Sex & the City (2008)

[Incredulous] "You're named after the dog?"

I could say the real "aha" moment in this installment of I. Jones comes early on, when the aforementioned hero jumps into a lead-lined refrigerator to survive a nuclear blast. "So they really did unfreeze him for this movie," I would tell myself as he struggles out of the battered fridge.

But that's too easy. The fun of the film is in making Jones into a family man. I suppose that's like the last one, putting him in the "son" role, but it works. The lead woman is light, as is the kid, and pretty much everyone, gophers, attack monkeys, aliens and commies included. It keeps a sense of humor and doesn't go on too long, like the other film I saw last weekend, Sex & the City.

Yeah, Sex is stuffed with references and undeveloped characters, so watch the series first. Or don't, and don't. But it is generally a good time and more dramatically interesting than, say, the giant jungle car battle scene in I. Jones.

So go for the killer ants in Jones and the killer fashion in Sex, and stay for the laughs. Or go for a walk instead.

SPOILER ALERT Both of these films end in white weddings, er, weddings of whites.