No one played Rock You Like a Hurricane - but they did play Purple Rain

There’s something woefully decadent about sitting out under a big tent during a Midwest version of a hurricane, listening to cover bands playing MTV Hits of the 80s as kids dangle from large rubber bands in the rain.

Never mind that people in the Chicago area were having their belongings float away as we partied. You would have thought it was New Orleans, but for the tunes.
 
Why can’t I get just one kiss? You give love a bad name, so I may as well jump  - or be sedated. The words all blurred together as I traded in my orange tickets for brew. And it all was innocent fun until a cigar just about did me in Saturday night. Booze I can handle. The culprit was a thick stogie: Try taking a drag on one in 100 percent humidity. See where it gets you. Wuss that I am, it sent my head spinning. I needed air, on a night when the air was made of water.
 
I may have been suffering from fest fatigue brought on by two nights at the same event, the Heritage Fest in West Dundee. With the remnants of Hurricane Ivan mixing it up with other funky fronts, there wasn’t much else to do but stay close to home and hope the river didn’t spill out of its banks like so much wasted Bud Light.
 
At all these fests there now seems to be a food version of the carnie set, a group of vendors with similar signage working the circuit offering up 10-inch sausages, Chinese chicken on a stick and other delicacies that go well with alcohol served in plastic cups.  Alas, there’s less local even at local festivals – but more teeth and better hygiene.
 
And since people who are in their 30s and 40s are the core audience for this sort of suburban fling, the music typically is from their youth – meaning less Beatles and some Beastie Boys and maybe Brown Eyed Girl - and in one case a band fronted by a guy who looks like Beck on a bender, playing these Video Killed the Radio Star oldies. I call this White People Wedding Reception Music. I should put out the box set or whatever that would be called in download world.
 
Hell, one band covered Madonna’s Like a Virgin and George Michael’s Faith – so, naturally, being the American Idiot I am, I had to semi-drunk dial a friend who likes both and hold the phone up so he could hear them in Chicago. I am that kind of pal.

Since you can't really hear the people whom your with - and since I was in no mood to leave my cake out or stand in the rain, lest my T-shirt get wet and my nipples hard, as when I was in my Flash Dance phase - it became almost Zen like to be under the tent. That could have been the tobacco talking, but I went into that scary place where you think all your thoughts are deep ones.

My mantra (or movie poster tag line): In a corrupt world, ruled by the inane, and you might as well make up your own rules.

Was that inspired by hearing Billie Jean, the song that launched the psycho superstar phase of the smooth (as in he removed his body hair) criminal, Michael Jackson? Or was it due to another weird week at a company where the former owner is serving time for absconding with millions of dollars?

That's a mere pittance, a drop in the billions buckets involved in the ponzi schemes being "uncovered" on Wall Street. Now everybody is coming out of the woodwork saying, "I told you so." But everyone wanted in on the ridiculous mortgages being given to people no one thought would be paid back, but no big deal, we'll just bundle 'em sell 'em and make 'em someone else's problem. No when to fold 'em, indeed. The government will be there with welfare checks for the wealthy.

It happened with the Dot-Com days and it will probably happen again with the impending Alt-Energy craze. No one wants to really make anything anymore, they just want to win the lottery and move into a house they still can't afford. Money makes you drunk and you wind up putting lipstick on a pig and you're so out of it you still wind up kissing its ass.

I hope the "I don't believe in evolution or dinosaurs friend" of Sarah Palin don't see this.

So much for the high road this time, eh? So much with a campaign that focuses on the issues. So much for two guys who seemed like good guys succumbing to the id of politics.I just wish they would get right to the meat of it with the ads: McCain - he's old. Obama - he's black.

No wonder the poor little guy with the crewcut I saw by the beer table was having trouble deciding whom to vote for. He's just an American kid doing the best he can.

Yeah, all this was going through my Bon Jovi- addled brain, my John Cougar Melon Head. And yes, the one band ended its set with Purple Rain.

Flash forward to late Tuesday afternoon - I noticed someone dented the front bumper on the passenger's side of my car. It probably happened over the weekend, and I, being oh-so-observant, didn't notice because I don't usually look at the front of my car, approaching it from the rear most times.

I bring this up because I left out an essential part of my mantra: You can make up your own rules as long as you don't hurt anyone else. With the music playing so loud these days, it's pretty damn easy for all of us to change them up and to sing along - "as long as you don't get caught."