If anybody asks you people

Oh lord. I didn't sleep last night and I'm much too tired and jittery to write a decent post about it, but the last two nights with The White Stripes have spoiled me for all other concerts. I think I hit some sort of concert peak tonight in the second row of the Orpheum Theatre, and now there's nowhere to go but down. The closest I've ever been to seeing a show where I was this fanatically familiar with the material was when Marian and I went to see Bright Eyes on their tour for Lifted, and even then I wasn't entirely a geek about it. I really wasn't.

But we were seated (standing) so close to the band - maybe three meters from Meg's drum kit - and we could see Jack mouthing words to her between songs, and they were both so big and real and yet so small and human? I had to put a question mark at the end of that sentence, I absolutely had to, because it's such a pathetic sentence and I asked myself if I should delete it, but now I've gone this far and I won't. Okay. And we could see every individual drop of sweat as it flew from Jack's hair. I know that might not sound alluring, and I really sympathize with you, but it WAS.

And the set list for the Sunday night show was so perfect and surprising. They played a new song for the first time on stage! Nobody had heard it before we did! They chose US!!! And by us I do mean the crowd, because the crowd loved them. It wasn't like the show at the Plaza of Nations, which was huge and impersonal and filled with yelling types in baseball hats. It was welcoming and happy and loud in the right way.

Yes, and tonight, when Jack asked everyone to please join in on the last song of the night, and everyone screamed that they would, he said "I knew you would, Vancouver. You've always been good to us." So that proves it. The White Stripes love Vancouver especially and no, they don't say that to every city they visit. Why would you even suggest that?

Okay, only one last thing, and that is the problem of eye contact. I'm not insane. I realize that famous people on stage aren't at all focused on their giddy fans when they're doing their thing. At least, not talented famous people. So Jack White scanning the crowd as he sings doesn't mean he's looking for a new friend, or even seeing individual faces in all the hopping insanity, but I'm a star-struck crazy CHILD when it comes to this person, and whenever his glance would fall where Marc and I were standing (when the lights over the audience were down, which was for most of the show, only the first three rows of seats were visible at all), I would basically wet myself and feel like I'd touched the hem of Jesus's bloody dress, or whatever people did in the bible that got them so worked up that they'd go home and talk about it.

There. Relax. It's over. I'm done. I'm calm. We're all calm. You may now laugh at me and call me names.