The 2008 show and Friday’s show were very different experiences. The MGM Arena in Vegas is a killer venue for any concert, and the audio and visuals were perfectly synced. At AT&T Park in San Francisco the video and audio were out of sync, likely due to the technical constraints of being in a stadium designed for baseball, not concerts. There were also three massive towers on the field to house the projection units, which mostly didn’t get in the way but at times obscured action on stage. AT&T Park also had the psychotically stupid notion that people coming to see The Wall would enjoy having guys walking up and down the aisle shouting “HOT chocolate” and “PEAnuts HEEEERE” in the middle of the show. Given the amount of weed people were smoking, I was amazed at the level of vitriol being directed at these buzz killing sales guys. A note to the managers of AT&T: if you do not understand the difference between a ball game and performance art, please do not host performance art at your venue.

Despite the downsides of the venue this weekend, the show itself has been tweaked nicely over the past two years to keep it fresh and relevant. Unlike the performance in Vegas, the wall itself was used to project footage from the stage so that you could see slight facial expressions and more subtle movement along with a more panoramic view.

Truly great art goes through three phases. When it first arrives on the scene, it is terribly, awe-inspiringly shocking because it pushes the envelope with its message and form. Next, it provokes a great amount of discussion and controversy as society disputes whether or not it has a place in this world. Last, the naysayers inevitably lose and works of great art are enshrined in preservation mode. This last phase is bittersweet. When groundbreaking art achieves its goal of providing human beings with a new idea, it renders itself obsolete. It ceases to be inspiring or thought provoking and becomes merely respectable. In some ways this is good as it makes room for new art to step in and push the envelope forward once more, but in other ways it’s sad as the chaotic moment of birth can never be recaptured.

Unfortunately, I think this is what has happened to The Wall. When I was an undergraduate double majoring in history and humanities, I knew I was probably destined to manage a very fine Taco Bell some day, but I harbored distant hopes of being a museum curator. I even managed to land an internship at a museum my junior year. After spending hundreds of hours carefully brushing ancient slabs of marble with an itty bitty toothbrush, I realized that the conservation of art isn’t quite as interesting as the creation of art. The Wall is still relevant and breathtaking. It’s still poignant and meaningful as an eloquent statement against war. But I can’t help but realize that it isn’t surprising. I would have loved to have been at the show’s very first performance in Los Angeles and heard the breath leave every audience member the first time they saw David Gilmour standing atop the wall during “Comfortably Numb.” It’s still impressive to see today, but it isn’t a surprise. It’s expected, the way the “surprise” chord is fully expected in Haydn’s Surprise Symphony.

Speaking of which — most palpable in these modern tours is the absence of David Gilmour. Hearing other people sing and play his part was entertaining, but it was a bit like looking at a museum diorama of George Washington crossing the Delaware. Wooden dummies dressed in the right clothing give you an idea of what it might have been like, but it’s not the same as seeing the real thing. Gilmour’s singing was handled by one guy and his guitar parts by another. Two other dudes weren’t half as good as one Gilmour.

I felt the sincerity and intensity of the performance, but not any sense of urgency. Funnily enough, the closest I got to feeling what it must have been like for Pink Floyd back in the late seventies was when Roger Waters was forced to relive his historic annoyance with obnoxious arena audiences. The rowdiness of stadium crowds first inspired him to do a show where the band would be shielded from the audience by an actual barrier. He got a bit of a reminder of that experience when the giant floating pig came out to drift over the crowd during “Run Like Hell.” The audience got ahold of the pig when it drifted to close to the ground. They ripped one leg to shreds, taking bits of the vinyl home as trophies in the same way that tourists visiting monuments collect stones from the ground to be displayed on dusty shelves at home. In a way it recaptured some of the chaos and tension between performer and audience, and in another it was just kind of sad.

I loved the show. I love the emotion it generates and its unabashedly oversimplified message. But I also feel sadness, since I don’t know if music like that can be written any more. The early eighties signified the death of a lot more than disco. The groundbreaking era of musical exploration heralded by the invention of the electric guitar was over. Probably only Eddie Van Halen continued to carry the torch, pushing the limits of the instrument beyond anything any of us thought was possible. But I have a feeling that to see truly epic bands like those most active around the years 1968 to 1972 we’re going to need another new disruptive musical technology, and I’m not talking about autotune. Beethoven needed the pianoforte. Elvis needed the electric guitar. The artists of the future will need . . . something. I’m just not sure what it is yet. And that’s good, because it means I’ll get to see it when it’s being played and not just being hung up in a Hard Rock Café.

Voting keeps getting easier and easier for me. My default position on ballot initiatives is no. Most of these initiatives are brought up by fringe special interests, or they’re hot-button issues that elected officials don’t want to take responsibility for so they push them off on voters. As long as I’m paying my state senator’s paycheck, they can do their job and make laws. I’ll vote yes on an initiative if it’s something really compelling.

Like I just totally voted yes to add another $1 a pack in taxes on cigarettes. The funds would go toward cancer research. Smoking is grody. It’s bad for smokers and the people who have to breathe in their filthy fumes and deal with the mess it makes. We all have our vices and ways to relax, but unlike having a beer at a restaurant, smoking is a vice that invades the space of non-smokers and creates a drain on our healthcare system in the form of elevated risk. If you’re going to be a smoker, fine. I won’t tell you to stop. But in return you should accept responsibility to chip in for treating the diseases you’re giving yourself.

Candidates are even easier to choose from. I just start by weeding out and vote for whoever is left. Here’s how I do it. I scratch a big X through the name if:

• The candidate doesn’t have a website
• The candidate’s website has malware or pop-up ads
• The candidate did not bother to submit a profile for the state’s voter guide, which is totally free and easy to do.
• The candidate’s profile doesn’t use complete sentences, presents no cohesive platform, talks about other candidates but says nothing about themselves, or consists solely of whining about the status quo

That narrows it down quite a bit, especially in cases like the current race for California’s U.S. Senate seat. There are 24 candidates on the ballot. Yeesh. However, only eleven submitted profiles for the voter guide. If you can’t take ten minutes to type up a paragraph about why I should vote for you, my confidence in your competence is not high. From there, it’s easy to cross out candidates based on red flags that pop out from the text. Here’s examples of candidate fail:

• Orly Tatiz: “[Obama] is an Indonesian citizen.”
• Elizabeth Emken: “I became Vice President of Autism Speaks“
• Robert Lauten: I’d quote him but his broken English offends my grammatical sensibilities.
• Dan Hughes: “proud Reagan conservative.”
• Dirk Allen Konopik: “Will boldly stand for Christ.”
• Marsha Feinland: “The 1%” blah blah blah. Berkeley address.
• Colleen Shea Fernald: “Dear congressionally betrayed voter”
• Rogelio T. Gloria: “I am an experienced U.S. Naval Officer and federal employee.” (That was all he put.)
• Al Ramirez: Second Amendment illegal immigration blah blah blah

Easy peasy! By crossing out people whose statements are irrelevant as to their fitness for office, I was left with only two to choose between. I used to try to vote by comparing all candidates as equals. That was draining and frustrating. It’s so much easier to do it this way now, sifting out the nutters and lazy folks from people who actually seem to understand the importance of representing me and so many other voters.

My first playthrough I didn’t import a character. I wanted to see how the game held up as an individual unit, and it did just that. Lots of people made rageface over the somewhat puzzling ending, and I’m pleased to see that Bioware is going to attempt to make amends through DLC that will expand the ending and make it less confusing/pointless. The ending of the game was puzzlingly flat. The Crucible ends up being just some silly McGuffin, which is out of character for the Mass Effect series. Even worse, the choices I was presented with didn’t seem to make any sense and all had the same end result. For a game that has captivated its fan base with a multiverse setting based on personal choices, Shepard’s actions and choices at the very end of it all were weak. For example: if you find out that the entire galaxy is controlled by a megalomaniac computer, you should blow up the computer. You should not select one of the choices it offers you because it has got to be lying.

My second playthrough has been much more satisfying so far. Seeing all the characters I worked to hard to shepherd (ha ha — get it?) through the first two games has been fun. Bioware really went out of their way to provide fan service to those of us who have followed the series from the beginning and who worked hard to get an ideal story line set up for Mass Effect 3. The experience this time has been rich enough that I will be considerably less annoyed when I reach the end of the game and am forced to choose between dying, dying, and dying.

I have only one complaint about the story, and that is the Mysterious Case of Thane Krios.

In Mass Effect I romanced Liara. I had to romance somebody because there was an achievement involved. Liara was really the only option, as I found Kaidan to be a boring whiner and Ashley to be a catty biznatch with a chip on her shoulder. Plus it just seemed super unprofessional to date a coworker that reported to me.

In Mass Effect 2 I had every intention of staying true to Liara. I’m no skank and since I was apparently her first love I felt I owed it to her. However, two things quickly put me off this plan. Firstly, Liara isn’t the sweet yet spicy nerd girl we knew and loved. After two years working in the information mafia, she’s kind of a bitch. There’s Shepard, back from the dead, and Liara dismissively greets her and then goes on about some other guy she wants to rescue from her mortal enemy. Yeah. I missed you too, baby. The Shadow Broker DLC package added something to their relationship, but it felt too much like Liara had moved on. It definitely felt like she wasn’t as into Shepard as she was into herself. The only reason I hooked up with Liara at the end — against my inclination — was because I felt I had to. There was an achievement at stake.

However, I had also found my real motivation to ditch the blue bitch and move on: Thane Krios, the mysterious, raspy-voiced, terminally-ill assassin with brains, brawn, and an emotional depth that exceeds any other character in the Mass Effect universe thus far. His romance story line was complex and fascinating, and Keythe Farley’s voice work was ably matched by solid character design and artistic execution. I looked forward to seeing what would happen with him in Mass Effect 3. There were so many open questions. How long did he have to live? Would he be able to fight with me? Would there be any time for Shepard and Thane’s love to continue?

Thane was given a very honorable sendoff. Although he’s been dying in a hospital and is no longer battle-worthy, at an hour of great need he springs into action and holds his own against a younger, healthier assassin who’s come to topple the government. He’s fatally wounded, and Shepard goes to his side in time to watch him slip away. That scene was remarkably touching — by far the most emotion I’ve felt from a video game since hearing Cortana tell Master Chief that it was an honor to serve with him. Later Shepard receives a posthumous e-mail from Thane full of the sort of love and depth that he always radiated as a character. And then Shepard can move right along to a “real” Paramour achievement.

Wait — what? How is Thane not achievement-worthy? How is it that his death just causes him to vanish from Shepard’s emotional spectrum? At the risk of straying into writing fan fiction, here’s how Thane should have been handled.

1. Thane should have counted as a Paramour achievement if he had been romanced in ME2
   Shepard shouldn’t have been able to hook up with anyone else once she’d locked in with Thane. Allowing Shepard to hook up with Thane and then move on is just . . . wrong. You don’t use a terminally ill dude for a booty call. You just don’t, especially when that dude is madly in love with you. Once Shepard locked in by passionately kissing him and then bedding him for the last time, that should have locked out other options.
2. Shepard should have been more into Thane
   After Thane is stabbed, it would have been nice to hear some alternate audio from a Shepard that was romancing him. Something with a little more concern and fear. As it is, there’s just one reaction, and it’s perfunctory. This poor guy is bleeding out, and Shepard doesn’t betray a flicker of concern.
3. A tiny bit more development time and this romance could have been epic, not just good
   Thane’s death scene was beautiful and touching. It felt odd that after the fact Shepard only gets an e-mail from him. Of course when a company is trying to ship a game they’ve got to prioritize what they are going to bother to develop in terms of cutscenes, but it would have been much nicer for Shepard to receive this message in the form of a vid, alone in her cabin on the eve of the final battle, a single tear going down her cheek as he tells her he loves her and will see her on the other side. Mass Effect 3 addressed the trouble of moving on from a departed loved one in the character of Steve Cortez, and that was a great plot line. It would have been nice to see how Shepard dealt with a personal loss she couldn’t ignore.

There. I’m done kvetching. I have fulfilled my duty as a fangirl. Where was I? Oh yes. Plugging Cerberus operatives with headshots.

TMI ALERT

TMI ALERT

There. You have been properly warned. This post is hilariously grody and discusses baby squirrel genitals. If that’s not your thing please click here for pictures of adorable clean well-behaved kittens.

Yesterday at the Wildlife Nursery I learned something . . . special about baby squirrels.

The nursery has a couple of big whiteboards where we track each animal. It keeps information on diet, medication, and habitat cleaning very well organized as there are a lot of people moving around the facility and staying on top of hundreds of hungry critters can get tricky. I kept noticing in the notes section by nearly every male squirrel that there were, well, penis issues. Yes, itty bitty baby squirrel penises. I said it. Please remember I DID give you a TMI warning. In the notes section of the whiteboard it was a penispalooza. Swollen penis. Don’t forget penis meds. Watch penis. Eew. Gross. No thanks.

I went to the squirrel cages with that morning’s set of tiny baby bottles filled with formula, and try as I might to focus on the adorable slurping sound, my eyes were inevitably drawn to their junk. As the whiteboard promised, lots of the males had seriously swollen, red, irritated squirrel schlongs. I asked one of the more senior volunteers what was up with that. She suppressed a laugh and told me. At first I was so grossed out that I almost dropped the baby bottle I was holding for a very hungry squirrel. It squealed in protest and I pushed the nipple back to its mouth. It went back to slurping and gazing at me contentedly with those velvety dark eyes. And then, as I watched it continue to eat, I laughed in spite of myself.

So here’s where I’m going with this. Like babies of any mammal species, they’ll suck on anything. Like . . . anything. Critters like to continue to suck on things even if their bellies are full, whether it be fingers, a pacifier, or their mother. It’s comforting to them. Human babies are drool factories that unceasingly seek out anything to slurp on. Now imagine that baby with enormous buck teeth on about nine shots of espresso and you’ve got an idea of what a baby squirrel is like.

Now you know where I’m going with this. Yes. Exactly. Male baby squirrels are, er, endowed with an item that is pretty much the same size and shape as a momma squirrel nipple. And their siblings, in the absence of an itty bitty squirrel pacifier, will go to town on their poor little squirrel schlongs, leaving bite marks, inflammation, and infection. There isn’t much that can be done about this, since it happens in nature and it’s much better for the squirrels to live in nests together where they can socialize. All the SPCA can do is offer a little ointment if their junk gets too much funk.

Happy Tuesday Everybody!