Bono

July 2011

Happy Birthday Bono!

I've been on a U2 diet. And with his birthday, I've dived right into the forbidden sweetness of my favorite band. Diet? How can one do that for their favorite band?! Well, it's been a ride since they released No Line on the Horizon a couple of years ago. First, I had the heady task of working through the record to find its groove. Then the tour. Then the second round ... oh, what's that? Bono hurt his back and postponed the tour? Oh dear, another tortuous year added to what was already an excruciating wait. Ah, but it was worth it, and as I see them each night that they are in my town, for the first time, I saw them in several towns. Oh, it was a wonderful summer of U2. Each crowd different than the next. The company I kept different too.

Surfing YouTube, I found the video of the boys when they released How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and rode through the streets of Manhattan on the back of a flat bed truck. The next day, a DJ here announced that they were doing the same in my town. I got calls from several people ... ahhhhhh, do you know that U2 is on a flat bed truck at the ball park?!  The ball park? Hey, that's right down the street from where I work ... oh shit, I have students! But being fan, I figured it out. I found the Bruce Springsteen fan in the building and appealed to just that ... baby, if you could go, wouldn't you?

She covered my class. And I raced my car the 5 or 6 blocks to the stadium, threw it against the curb, and nearly wet my pants when I heard what sounded like, the boys. I have never ran, cried, spazzed out quite like it as I found my way to the source of the music. And there was a band there on the other side, but it wasn't U2. It was a tribute band. I was punked. Punked bad.

But I didn't care. Because I made the effort. And if I hadn't, I would always wonder ... maybe it was them? Who knows?! Friends kid me, even mock me, that I love them so ... to distraction at times, but I don't mind. Bono, Larry, Adam, and the Edge have given me so many hours of blissful experience that I can take any ridicule.

Isn't that what a band is meant to do? I wrap U2 around me like a favorite blanket ... it's warm, snugly and sometimes, I even need to kick it off. But it's still there at the end of the piece furniture that I left it on. An old friend. Lover.  Brother.

Happy Birthday Bono. Fellow Taurean. I got you. And ... I'm off of the diet. You can come back. I've fasted long enough.