It was a special show, one in which the band played the entirety of their classic album, The Soft Bulletin, from beginning to end along with some commentary on their motivation for some songs provided by frontman Wayne Coyne.

After more than an hour of music, special effects, talking, and the infamous inflatable gerbil ball, the boys took a break and came out for two single-song encores, the first being Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" and the second being their own "Do You Realize?"

The show was fantastic as I've come to expect from the Lips. Wayne is the seminal entertainer and he feeds off the crowd's excitement much like those little fish that form a parasitic attachment to sharks. You can feel the genuine appreciation he has for his fans and the more fired up they are, the more excitable he gets.

I think my only complaints with the show had absolutely nothing to do with the acts themselves (the evening was led off by Marnie Stern), but with the acoustics in the Aragon... they suck. You could not make out a word that either Marnie Stern, her bassist, Wayne, or Steven were saying when speaking in the microphone. A word or two made it through semiclearly and we could try to figure out the rest based on context, but it was very rough going. It's no wonder to me that Aragon seems to play host to so many metal bands, the distortion of sound is wholly acceptable in those instances.

Oh, and it was hotter than Hell in there. Not that I know from personal experience what Hell feels like. This is pure conjecture. But it seemed like a safe comparison.

Would I see them again? Damn right! I love The Lips and since I've gotten a taste for their lives shows – three times now – I don't plan to stop. I won't see them every time they're in town, but I'd like to go at least semi-regularly.

I gotta thank my friend, Mike, for picking up the tickets for us. We finally caught up with him and another friend, Larry, after the show and talked through the human Tetris puzzle attempting to make its way out of the Aragon.

Oh, and of course I took some pictures with my iPhone...

     

There are a bunch more in the Flickr set, so check them out.

And here's a video of Wayne Coyne in his human gerbil ball at the beginning of the set...

I've had a pretty productive few days on the web this past week.

As you all know, I uploaded a boatload of photos to Flickr.

I also finally caught up on a couple book reviews over on Goodreads.

Oh, and for the first time in nearly a year, I actually wrote a couple reviews for Yelp! This is the real shocker as I've been a Yelp member for about four years and, up until the other day, had only written 12 reviews.

I'm pretty sad about that. Sometimes I feel like I should just kill my account, but I've received some pretty positive feedback from other users about my reviews, I was awarded Review of the Day at one point last year, and another review helped revive a local pizza place that wasn't having much luck getting word out about themselves (or, at least, that's what the owners like to tell me). Honestly, other than this blog, Yelp seems to be the place where I feel I've done the most good online... and, yet, I hardly use it.

Lastly, I signed up for and am giving a fair shake to the new Google+ social networking app. Not bad so far. As many of you have probably read elsewhere, it's basically Twitter plus Facebook, but powered by Google. I'm sure more will likely come of it as weeks go by, but I am liking it. I just wish I could explain why other than to say "it's Facebook, but it's not Facebook."