First let me repeat something I am sure I have shared here before. My wife is the smartest person I have met in my life. She is classy, congenial and fun to be around... most of the time. She has worked for the nations 12th largest newspaper for going on 25 years with very responsible positions in the graphics field. She was recently promoted again.

So after American Idol finished this year something happened. She and a zillion other "middle aged" women have gone wacky over Taylor Hicks the gray haired guy who won the thing. She who has insinuated that I was obsessed with all things Barth was staying up past midnight doing what we do here with all these other.....women.

So then the American Idol oncerts start around the nation.. they start having "celcerts". There is a place called freeconferencecalls.com where you get a phone number and a pin and then one person will go to the concert hold up her cell phone and a hundred others will listen to the concert. To me it sounded like shsshshhhsshhshshh but to them it was Nirvana.

Then the concert came to Milwaukee, Deb and daughter Libby drove there to see the concert and then the concert came to Minneapolis. Now if any of you watch the show on TV you know that one of the finalists was a little 18 girl from Edina (Olroy's home town) named Paris. In the newspaper it was announced that that she would celebrate her 18th birthday at a club in downtown Minneapolis and all were invited. So my wife gets all dressed up and asks if I would drive her down there because she was sure that Taylor would be there.. Listen guys. This place is called "Karma" it is the biggest hip hop night club in town. I say this respectfully but the clientèle is primarily African American. It's a rap place. Now as we drove up the street was full of Escalades, Navigators, cops...lots of cops.. and a line of about 50-75 waiting behind the velvet rope. Now what you have to know is that we have left movies because of profanity, but they were piping the rap stuff out to the street and it was mf this mf thats if you know what I mean...I know you do.

Deb jumped out of the car with her birthday card in hand and get this.... they escorted her right in... she was in there for 2 hours..I sat in the car talking to cops. She came out with autographs from Ace, she talked to Mandisa and took the following video of Taylor..



Now this is all one thing but hold on... the concert is the next night at the Excel center here in St Paul.. what you have to know here (if you are still reading this) is that Taylor's band before he became big time was the Little Mississippi Blues Orchestra (LMBO). LMBO always get a gig in the city where the tour is and many times Taylor will come by after the big concert and jam. So Deb had tickets not only to the big concert but to LMBO's gig at a place called O'Garas. So she did the "celcert" thing holding up here cell phone for hundreds to hear and taking pictures at the same time (by the way she was on her own, I didn't go to any of this, by choice) then she went to the LMBO gig at O'Garas...again my wife has never been in a night club in here life...here is one of the video she got, along with some stills and then the big kahuna at the end.







AND THEN FINALLY



But even more than this, Deb who is not a professional photographer is huge on all of the American Idol site for this one picture of the "man"

Now we know where the brains & look are Dave!

Dave, great post, I know, I know, I know. Jen is totally smitten with this Taylor Hicks guy. Well, I kinda like him also. joe

"Now we know where the brains & look are Dave!"

I've seen Dave's picture, and Deb definitely has the looks; as for brainpower....
Dave has written one of the best, most interesting pieces of "journalism" I've seen in a long time. This is as good, or better, than the classic stuff in the early days of Rolling Stone when the kid Jan W. was fresh - and with pictures, yet! Way to go, DAVE!!!