Tuesday, April 19, 2011

ra ra ah ah ah, roma, ro ma ma

You might remember that one the items on my lenten check list was to see two live musical performances.  We knocked both of those out on one trip to New Orleans, seeing Kermit Ruffins at the Rock-n-Bowl on Friday night and Lady Gaga at the arena by the Superdome on Saturday night.

Kermit Ruffins was fun times, though the rock-n-bowl had made the dubious decision to put hula hoops out on the dance floor.  There were a couple of girls that LOVED the hula hoops, and so a huge chunk of the floor was unavailable for the general public.  We did not approve, and eventually took care of the problem via stealthy methods. 

Saturday, though, was a whole other category of fun times.  Gates scored us general admission tickets on eBay to see Gaga, and we got there at a respectably early time, so we were about eight feet from the part of the stage that jutted out into the crowd.  We were just to the right of a guy with a mohawk made of Barbie legs, and just to the left of a girl with a hat made from a rotary phone.  Our outfits were quite tame by comparison - I was wearing a red dress, purple leggings, and yellow jewelry.  I also had my bridal veil on, but sideways for a different effect.  Gates wore normal clothes, but did have a bull-fighter hat. 

I could go on for paragraphs as to Gaga's talents and outfits - she really is an amazing performer, and whoever designs her costumes has quite the imagination.  But the thing that was most striking about the concert for me was the time that she spent talking to the audience.  The first short speech she delivered was about body image.  She talked about being bullied in school, about being consider strange-looking, etc.  And she told everyone that the public didn't get to decide whether or not they are attractive.  Pretty interesting.  The second speech ended up being more of a sermon - she talked about how some people say that Jesus only loves some people, but really Jesus loves everybody.  You could have knocked me over with a feather - I expected the show to be strange, but this was outside of my expectations. 

I was immediately struck by two things:
  • Lady Gaga had a captive audience of about 20,000 for her homily
  • I will probably not preach to 20,000 different people during my entire preaching life
Haven't really completely processed what that means...

It was a great show though.

1 comment:

  1. Fascinating! Glad you were there to hear it AND share it!

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