Maroon 5 at the Vivint Arena

Many years ago I became obsessed, as I am wont to do, with a new song called "Harder to Breathe."  I didn't know who sang it but I turned the radio up every time it came on.  I would sing it at the top of my lungs and I got to be pretty good at spitting out the lyrics.  I remember talking about this song to all of my friends (and students) but no one really knew anything about it or the band Maroon 5.  Then the song, and band, exploded and I got to be the one to say, "I told you so!"  I actually went to a Matchbox Twenty concert just to see Maroon 5 open for them and I thought Adam Levine was a great showman.  He still is!  Saturday night I got to see the band for the first time as a headliner and the concert was so much fun.  Adam Levine is so handsome and he strutted across the runway through the crowd liked he owned the Vivint Arena!  They played "Harder to Breathe" early on in the evening, to my delight, and then just kept playing the hits one after the other:  "Moves Like Jagger," "This Love," "One More Night," "Misery," "Love Somebody," "Animals," "Lucky Strike," "Sunday Morning," "Makes Me Wonder," "Payphone," and a fabulous rendition of "Daylight" to end their set.  I really like it when a band plays all of their biggest singles.  They definitely had the crowd singing along with every word.  For the encore, the band set up on the "V" at the end of their runway for an acoustic performance of "She Will Be Loved" which was amazing!  Levine asked everyone to put their phones away so that we could all have a moment together which I thought was fabulous!  A girl in our section kept hers out to record and we all shamed her into putting it away!  Then they played a rousing rendition of "Sugar" and ended the evening with a great cover of "Let's Go Crazy" complete with purple lights!  It was a fabulous evening!

Note:  The guy sitting next to me mentioned that this was only the second concert he had ever been to so I told him that this was the second concert I had been to this week!

Saturday Ritual

It has quickly become a tradition with my family to watch Sean play football and then go to breakfast every Saturday morning.  I really love this little ritual and, I think I've mentioned this once or twice, I look forward to it all week!  I think my whole family enjoys watching Sean play and I think Sean loves having all of us there!  Yesterday the Braves played the Granger Lancers and, once again, Sean had an excellent showing on both offense and defense!

Sean's coach congratulating him on an awesome play!

The coach pulled him out for just a few seconds to get a drink and then put him right back in!

He has made some really good friends on the team.

A few pictures of Sean and the team in action!

This is the "You are embarrassing me" look!  I get it a lot!

The Girl on the Train

Last year my book club read the best selling juggernaut The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.  I thought it was an intense psychological thriller so I have been looking forward to the movie adaptation for quite a while.  I had the chance to see it last night and, rather unusually, I think it is better than the book!  Emily Blunt gives an incredible performance as Rachel Watson, an alcoholic whose husband has left her and has been fired from her job.  Every day she takes the same commuter train into the city and every day she sees the same couple out on their deck.  Because her life is in such a shambles, she idealizes them as the perfect couple.  One morning, she sees the woman with a man who is not her husband and feels betrayed by her infidelity.  After a night of drinking she gets off the train to confront the woman and wakes up the next morning bloody, bruised, and disheveled with no memory of what happened.  Rachel learns that the woman has gone missing and decides to inform her husband of what she has seen, but as she inserts herself into the investigation, she becomes a suspect herself.  As Rachel searches for the truth, she comes to realize that her perfect couple wasn't so perfect after all and that she is not as damaged as she was led to believe.  Blunt does the impossible by making Rachel seem sympathetic in a highly nuanced portrayal of a complex character with questionable judgement.  There is a particular scene where she confronts everyone who has betrayed her in a mirror that is absolutely brilliant.  Even though she does some despicable things, you understand what has driven her to this point:  Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), married to her ex-husband, has the life that she once had and Megan (Haley Bennett), the perfect woman seen from the train, has the life she wants but is throwing it away.  For me, this movie is less about the murder mystery and more about the journey Rachel takes (maybe because I've read the book and knew the outcome?) and I enjoyed the psychological tension.  There are differences from the book, most notably that it is set in New York City instead of London and there is an addition of a new character (Lisa Kudrow) to advance the plot, but I found the movie to be much more cohesive than the book.  I highly recommend it.

Neil Young at USANA

I have a thing for Neil Young!  I saw him in 2000 during the CSNY2K Tour with Crosby, Stills, and Nash and when they sang "Old Man" it just about blew my mind.  Last year I learned that Neil Young would be performing at Red Rocks Amphitheater during the summer and I got really excited and decided to go (It is not unusual for me to go to Denver to see a concert).  Then I realized that the concert would be at the same time as the Leadership Conference for my officers and, no matter how I tried, I just couldn't make it work.  I was devastated.  I was devastated for months because I really wanted to see him!  Imagine my supreme happiness when I found out that he would be performing the same concert at the USANA Amphitheatre!  I found out about it after I got home from Australia and bought a ticket that same day!  The concert was billed as containing both old and new material with most of it coming from the album Earth which is very much informed by Young's environmental activism.  He came out, alone with just a spotlight, wearing exactly what you would expect: faded jeans, a fringed leather coat, and a black fedora.  He sat at a battered piano and sang "After the Gold Rush," then moved to center stage with a guitar and harmonica and sang "Heart of Gold" and "Long May You Run," and then moved to a fabulous church organ and performed "Mother Earth (Natural Anthem)."  After that acoustic set, he was joined by Promise of the Real (who sounded a lot like Crazy Horse) and let's just say that they rocked the free world!  It was an amazing show and I especially loved "Harvest Moon," an epic 20 minute rendition of "Down By The River," "Cowgirl in the Sand," and, of course, "Rockin' in the Free World."  I heard a rumor that he sometimes plays "Cinnamon Girl" during the encore and I really hoped he would at USANA but, alas, he didn't.  I forgive him, though, because of his performance of "Heart of Gold."  That will keep me on a high for days!  It was extremely cold, and I will definitely think twice about seeing an outdoor concert in Utah in October again, but it was worth it to see such an icon perform!

Note:  He was so funny and personable with the crowd.  At one point, he apologized for how long it was taking for him to tune his guitar and told us we didn't have to pay for this portion of the concert!

The Dressmaker

The movie The Dressmaker had already been released in Australia when I was there.  In fact, the woman sitting next to me on the plane watched it during the flight from Auckland to San Francisco.  I kept sneaking peaks at her screen and was very intrigued.  When I saw that it was going to be released at my favorite art house theater I got really excited and I ended up seeing it Sunday afternoon.  I loved this movie so much!  Tilly Dunnage (Kate Winslet) returns to the Australian outback town of Dungatar 25 years after being sent away hoping to remember the events surrounding the death of a boy which prompted her exile and vowing revenge of those in the town who mistreated her.  Having worked in a salon in Paris, she is now an accomplished dressmaker and, while the townspeople initially shun her, they all request her services after a dress made for Gertrude (Sarah Snook), the town ugly duckling, is a great success.  There are some absolutely hilarious situations with the eccentric characters in the town, especially when Tilly's crazy mother (Judy Davis) refuses to take a bath, when the cross dressing police chief (Hugo Weaving) gives up a confidential police statement when tempted by a feather boa, and when Gertrude tries on her wedding dress (created by the rival seamstress in town) and literally escapes out the window and runs down the street to hire Tilly.  Eventually, Tilly learns the truth about what happened that fateful day and gets her revenge on the townspeople in a great scene.  Kate Winslet is brilliant in this role and the clothes she wears are to die for!  My favorite scene is when she literally brings a football game to a standstill by wearing a bright red couture gown.  Judy Davis had me laughing every time she opened her mouth in a hilarious performance.  I loved the Australian scenery and I found the flashback scenes, filmed in an almost sepia tone, to be incredibly effective at conveying a mood.  It has won just about every film award there is to win in Australia and I highly recommend it!

Note:  Did I mention that Liam Hemsworth plays Tilly's love interest?  He takes off his shirt several times!