Radiohead was the headliner for the first night of Lollapalooza this year. I had heard of Radiohead, but I couldn't recall any of their songs right offhand. Terry explained that they were more about albums and not so much about singles that would get radio airplay. So he wasn't sure how many of their songs I would know since I didn't listen to any of their albums.

But once they started playing, I recognized them. True, I didn't recognize many of their songs. But I realized I recognized their songs that probably came out before 1993. I immediately recognized that I first heard them from their song on the "Clueless" soundtrack. I thought it was something like "green rubber trees" but later in the evening and it's actually "fake plastic plants", which was what I meant. . .

And I don't think I ever heard their songs on the radio. But I heard their one song over and over since the "Clueless" soundtrack was my favorite CD for the first few months after I bought it (which is the pattern for most of my CDs. . .). And I think I recall hearing their stuff either at fraternity parties or raves.

In fact, I couldn't help but lament that most of the women at the concert probably had no idea what the shadow of themselves dancing projected 15 feet hight looked like. I think "raves" went out when much of the audience were in elementary school. The music was neither raucus nor had it much of a dance groove. It's kind of mellow and trippy, although danceable in a rave-y sort of way. Which I don't even feel like explaining. Either you've been to a rave like I'm talking about or you haven't. Come to think of it, this reminds me that I considered the Blue Man Group show I saw in NYC several years back was set up to simulate a rave in a very PG sort of way.

Anyway, since this was the only Radiohead show I've seen live, I'm not sure how useful my review is. I enjoyed the first hour, but by the second hour most of their songs were boring since they were so like everything I heard in the first hour. But it's not quite like all the songs sound the same-- they don't really, but they do have a consistent style. Which is not particularly dynamic, but it's easy to listen to.

Much of the concert I spent in a bit of reverie reliving the early 1990s events where I first heard their music. Are things more dull now? I mean the whole lighters-at-concerts thing doesn't happen since the young'uns don't smmoke so much. And kids seem much more lawful than they were in the 1970s and 1980s. I don't know that there's such a big difference from the lawfulness in the 1990s, but there certainly does seem to be less smoking.

Hmm. I guess this is more my impression of the concert than a review. But their music doesn't have much melody, I guess I find it merely evocative of an era. But as far as I'm concerned, the concert was a great success since it brought my thoughts and emotions back to enjoyable days of my life I hadn't thought about in a long time.

The National Geographic channel has a new show about Stonehenge, and they've conducted some intereviews with the character Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap on the subject.

I don't remember how I came across the site, it was late at night. But I didn't watch the videos until this morning. There are five of them, each very short. I didn't laugh out loud during any of them, but I did think they were amusing enough to include a link.

If the videos were intended to promote an interest in Stonehenge in the viewer, they were unsuccessful, at least in my case. Judging from the main page of the National Geographic Stonehenge website, they have all kinds of interactive stuff. None of it looked interesting enough to click on.

I'd much rather play mah jongg on Fandango. C'mon National Geographic, stop being so @#$#@ educational and put some games on your site.

I generally don't buy movie tickets from Fandango, since I try to avoid paying a service charge on top of the ticket price. The only exception is when Terry and I really want to see a particular film in Manhattan on a weekend. Theaters sell out so often there that buying your tickets in advance is the only sure way to get in to see the movie that you want at the theater that you want.

I do however use Fandango to look up showtimes and theater locations. When I was looking up some info today I also discovered that Fandango's site itself is a lot more fun than it used to be ("used to be" meaning prior to June 2003, when I last lived in Manhattan and used the site a lot).

There are now all kinds of games to play (trivia, bowling, mah jongg, sudoku, spider solitaire, and lots more), and you can make a paper-bag puppet avatar. If you check it out, click here to see mine (or search for "MrsThorsen" from the ratings page) and rate it. I'm not sure what happens when my bag gets points, but if it's like the other games if I get enough points I think I win free movie tickets. I played a few of the other games, but didn't score anywhere near high enough to be a weekly ticket winner. Nevertheless, I had some fun playing different games for about an hour. I hadn't planned on spending so long on the site, but the games were fun.

And I admit that I did check out the movie premier celebrity photos and read a few of their fluff articles. Their website designers have done a decent job at making the site "sticky", meaning it gives visitors a lot of different reasons to look around the site. So Fandango makes money now even from people like me who don't like to buy tickets through them, since they charge advertisers for everyone who visits the site to play games or look up info, etc. That's fine with me since I enjoy the content, and their ads aren't horribly distracting. But I use Firefox and so have a pop-up blocker, I can't vouch for the obtrusiveness of ads if you're using an old browser and are subjected to popups, I don't know if Fandango has them or not.

Bottom Line: Fandango still has an irksome service charge that prevents me from buying tickets through them unless there is a good chance that the particular show I want to see will be otherwise sold out. But I'm glad that their site now has fun games and activities in addition to their movie theater and showtime listings.

I hadn't heard of this guy before, but he was a guest of David Letterman tonight. I wasn't expecting much based on his appearance, but he was so witty! What a delightful guest, most are so boring. He was promoting the movie "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" but they didn't show a clip, so I'm still not interested in seeing the film. But I was interested enough to read about him on Wikipedia.