Sunday, February 24, 2008

What I Missed this Week



How annoying that the one week that I am sick flat out in bed, struggling to go and teach, we have two fascinating speakers visit our university. In one week I have missed both author/educator Frank McCourt and poet/ex-Black Flag member and hardcore pioneer/ all around angry guy Henry Rollins! What an unlikely coupling. Of course, they did not speak on the same night, and probably don't know each other. But I think they probably both have some pretty,um, interesting things to say. I am curious to know if any of you have ever heard Rollins, in particular, do his krazy "spoken word" thang.
Here are some vids of each of them, just to remind me of what I missed!


Interestingly, the McCourt lecture was free, whereas Henry Rollins' gig cost a ridiculous 20 bucks. Real punk rawk, Henry. Interesting that he rants and raves about the dumb downed products of corporate America, yet you have to practically be a yuppy yourself to afford to go see the guy. At that price, not even sure I would have gone if I was well.
Just for fun, here is a clip of Rollins on Drew Carey--one of those exciting little YouTube gyms.

4 comments:

Mike Hardie said...

I don't think $20 is bad for tickets for Henry. He ROCKS.

Mary said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mary said...

I know, I know--I am cheap. But cheap comes with poor--and poor comes with teaching! I guess I had just hoped that someone speaking at the university would make it easy for students(and poor profs) to attend by making it free or really cheap.

Trent said...

I saw Henry Rollins doing the spoken word thing at GaTech, sometime around 1998...
I was pretty impressed, actually, and of course offended occasionally too. His absolute conviction about everything he said was pretty remarkable, and he managed to stay interesting for almost 3 hours.