Let’s face it, E. Pluribus Gergely had an especially poor showing in the Halls of Rock this summer. He wasn’t alone, but in past years the anticipation some of us have held toward the man’s summer break and expanded schedule for giving (and taking) shit has paid off in spades. Not this summer, though. EPG, we hardly knew you!
Word is he was tied up fending off competition in his side business to attend to our needs. There’s a new kid cutting in on his turf, and he won’t have it. That’s his business, though. Our business takes place right here. Earlier this week I held his feet to the fire.
I’ll be seeing the man tonight. Before the summer slips into fall he has promised to field questions and concerns from us. Either he will answer directly, in the coming days, or I will summarize his responses for you. You may simply have a few words to say to him, not so much a question or concern. That’s cool, too. Don’t miss your chance to engage with this charming fellow before his summer break is over.
A few words on this sadly missed opportunity. We had a great evening with EPG. It was one of those nights that reminded me of all that’s good about life. We covered a lot of ground – deep stuff, some possibly even too deep for discussion here.
I learned something shocking about the depth of the man’s love for a certain artist – shocking and even troubling, if I didn’t know him so well. His kids caught onto this part of the discussion, then looked into the issue themselves. It was only after seeing the look of disappointment in their faces that I had to come to my man’s defense and help explain this rare chink in his armor. Plus, he probably knows something surprisingly lame regarding my tastes. There are sometimes compelling reasons for preserving secrets.
We talked about the movie 500 Days of Summer, which he and my wife had seen but I had not. Over the weekend I finally saw it. My thoughts:
I thought it was both good, especially in terms of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s “adorable” character, who you just want to hug and redirect during the hundreds of days he’s wasting with this woman, while severely underwritten in terms of Zooey Deschanel’s character. I was fine with the fact that things didn’t work out, but it was hard to understand what her attraction was in the first place, beside being Zooey Deschanel and liking some of the same music.
I guess that was a big point of the movie – how many people did we date in our college years and early 20s who we only fell for because of shallow things like that? I also liked the fact that the movie celebrated the importance of falling in love, even if for the wrong reasons. The thing that was missing, however, was a sense of the intoxication that the guy felt in the first place. I needed something like a second musical number involving him and Zooey.
All in all, I’m glad I finally watched it. The thing I most feared – having to hear a bunch of Smiths songs – was not an issue:)