GlenGreenDotCom > WorldView

Monday, May 20th 2012

Welcome to the legacy home page of Glen Green Dot Com.

This site was started 11 years ago on May 22nd, 2001 and was developed with Adobe GoLive - a program that is no longer supported by either Adobe or Apple. So, the only way that I could 'easily' update the site was to boot my computer to OSX Snow Leopard which requires having an extra drive that I can boot to in the older operating system.

Now, somebody else, who is more interested and more capable in hand coding the website could migrate this older version to a newer web development tool but that isn't really my passion. I'm more interested in developing the content than the mechanics of web development.

However, that doesn't mean that I need to pitch all of those years of writing. These pages will continue to exist here, frozen in carbonite or until I get bored enough to someday migrate them to the new platform.

In the meantime, please checkout the archives and if you want to see to the latest and greatest, just visit www.GlenGreen.com!

I hope you enjoy your visit and as always, thank you for your patronage.

Saturday, April 28th 2012

When I'm on a business trip, I have a hard time relaxing on my off hours. It is almost as if I don't want to lose my focus by relaxing too much.

And so it was, that I found myself touching down in LaGuardia on a somewhat, last minute trip, when it occurred to me that I should call my friend and tell him that I was in his neck of the woods for a night.

He's a busy guy, and I had little expectation that he'd have time free given the last minute notice and he wasn't. - Well, not exactly. He was going to a Springsteen concert that night but he asked if I'd like to join him and his girlfriend.

After some convincing, and a generous offer from him to order the ticket and pick me up, I found myself on an unexpected trip to the East Rutherford New Jersey Izod Center. (A name that Bruce made a rightful jab at when he said, "I opened this building 30 years ago when it was actually named after a human being!")

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band ticket April 3 2012

We had tickets on the floor, in the general admissions area. It was all standing, which was fine since the entire arena was on their feet for the whole show anyway. My only complaint was that it was something of a challenge seeing the stage over the heads of all of those people and I found myself watching the monitors 90% of the time. But the open floor had the advantage of allowing us to move away on the occasion of loudmouths and drunks (and most importantly: loudmouth drunks).

Although the visuals were hampered by the crowd, the sound was not and the whole building rocked with the music.

There were a several touching moments when I found myself choked up, not the least being the homage to Clarence and other fallen band members. During the band intro, Bruce listed off the band members names, as each stood in the spot light until he asked at last, "Are we missing somebody?... Are we missing somebody?... Do I have to say his name?" The crowd, roared, "No!" and Bruce answered softly, "No, I don't."
And the moment that I'd been waiting for, during Tenth Avenue Freeze-out, after the line, "the big man joined the band", Bruce stopped the band and held the mike aloft while the crowd cheered for what must have been three minutes.

And there was also a sweet moment when he brought up a young girl and had her sing the chorus of "Waitin' on a Sunny Day", the whole crowd following her lead. It is most certainly a moment that she'll never forget.

I'd traveled with two coworkers who tried to get tickets at the last moment without luck. But my one colleague (who's politics lean towards, "Nuke 'em all and let god sort them out), was hesitant anyway because he was afraid Springsteen might be political and he 'hated musicians, artists and actors who tried to get all political' and he wished that they'd, "all just shut up".

The album Wrecking Ball is a righteous, angry album, like Born in the USA and for those who only listen to music for a beat to dance to, they'll miss the message of songs such as, "We Take Care of Our Own" and "Easy Money". (As Reagan and others tried to translate the song Born in the USA to be some pat, jinglistic nationalism.)

For me, the artist I respect the most have a message, sometimes personal, sometimes social, sometimes political. I think that too few musicians have much of any kind of message these days. I like a little mindless entertainment as well as the next person, but what really touches me is the art that makes me think and feel something deeper. Singer-songwriters aren't in vogue now, auto-tuned models are and I think we need more artists to stand up and shed some light on the darker aspects of our world - not less. If not them (and us), then who? Politicians? Are those the experts were suppose to rely on for insights?

Photo from www.backstreets.com > Bruce Springsteen April 3 East Rutherford, NJ

Photo from Backstreets.com > Bruce Springsteen, April 3 East Rutherford, NJ

April 3, 2012 Springsteen and E-Street Setlist:
We Take Care of Our Own
Wrecking Ball
Badlands
Death to My Hometown
My City of Ruins
So Young and In Love
E Street Shuffle
Jack of All Trades
Seeds
Prove It All Night
Easy Money
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
The Promised Land
Apollo Medley
American Skin (41 Shots)
Because the Night
The Rising
We Are Alive
Thunder Road
* * *
Rocky Ground (with Michelle Moore)
Out in the Street
Born to Run
Dancing in the Dark
Land of Hope and Dreams
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out

It was great to be with my friends and imbibe the music that goes straight to my soul.

Wednesday, March 28th 2012

I bought these two Belkin "Conserve Power Switches", to, well, - conserve power. A little conservation is good - right? Apparently not. In yet another sad example of over-packaging, I was dismayed when I saw how extremely over-boxed these sturdy plugs were when delivered from Amazon.com.

1) The plugs were each in a box that was about three times bigger than they needed to be to accommodate the actual plugs.

2) These boxes were themselves in slightly larger boxes.

3) And these two boxes were in yet a third, larger box.

Belkin Conserve Power Switch Amazon packaging

They could have been dropped in a padded envelop and they would have been fine.

Monday, February 27th 2012

A lot of things in the world of politics have made me angry or disgusted or angry and disgusted. But I'm home with a cold today and am lacking the requisite pep to vent my great indignation onto the web. I don't know how the internet will get along without my umbrage, but it will have to try.

So, short and short it is... I had a good February, even if it was plagued by not one, but two colds. I haven't had a bug for a while, so if they have to be piled up all at once, I guess that's okay. At least I have plenty of meds on hand that help contain some of the sniffles. Ah, but I do resent spending my personal time off in hazy, cold induced semi-comas.

Shoot, sorry, that's about all I have in me today. Such a shame too, there was certainly no lack of world events worthy of note and comment. Please do me a favor and surf the news for me and periodically shake your fist at the screen in displeasure. Somebody has to do it.

Tuesday, January 24th 2012

I think we need some good, solid holidays in the months of January and February. After the celebrations of December, and given the bleak weather, January and February are a long, grey slog to the fickled month of March.

Sure January has New Year's Day, but let's face it: it feels like the last hurrah of the December festivities.

January has the worthy Martin Luther King day, which could have promise if it was celebrated with the vibrance of Independence Day, but I can't think of one tradition associated with the holiday.

February has Washington's Birthday. - Not many of us in the private sector even get the day off (alas, also true of MLK day for that matter.)

Then there is Valentine's Day - a holiday that feels forced and probably depresses half of the population. The best Valentine's Days I ever had was as a kid when we'd make custom mailboxes that we'd set on our desks to receive cards. Some of these creations were rather fun and clever (no doubt assisted by the parents.)

That leaves Ground Hog's Day. And short of adding a new, showy holiday, I'd like to see GHD get a bump. - It's so absurd and silly, it deserves extra attention not to mention: Ground Hogs are damn cute! We just need some more traditions that include decorations, dinners and giving of some kind - although I'd like to see something different than the commercial smorgasbord of December.

If Ground Hog's Day is going to take off, we need to start anticipating it, so here's an early, "Happy Ground Hog's Day" to you!

Ground Hog munching on a flower