…actually, I have 4. Tickets for the US leg of the tour went on sale today for fan club members, so I scooped up 4 tickets to the show in Los Angeles. I’m not too keen on a trip to CA, but seeing three of my favorite metal bands at a single show makes traveling behind enemy lines worthwhile. My buddy and I had been talking about a Maiden trip for years, though we had talked about catching one of the epic South American shows where a million people all come out. Seeing Iron Maiden in Rio de Janeiro would be the ultimate experience – those South Americans go absolutely bonkers for Maiden.
Years ago (1989 I think?) I was on a trip to Venezuela and Brazil and on a bus I met a kid who was wearing a bootleg Iron Maiden tshirt – light blue with Cyborg Eddie on it. We started chatting (as best we could with my broken Spanish and Portuguese) and I ended up trading a cassette tape I had copied of some metal bands for it (Megadeth I think because I had already traded my Metallica tape to some guards at a border crossing… but that’s another story). I still have that shirt, boxed up with other keepsakes and mementos.
Frankly, I still have most of my old rock t-shirts – I just can’t seem to let go of them, even though most don’t fit me any longer. The last time I saw Maiden, we were still living in Idaho and went over the border to Washington to see them play the Spokane Arena. This was my wife’s first time seeing them live and so of course I dug out my old shirts. Ultimately, I wore a shirt from 1991 (the “Ten Years of Maiden” one) and my wife wore one of mine that is older than her (the “Aces High Pilot Eddie” one). There was a guy in the merch line next to us who saw the 1991 date and commented that the shirt was older than him… then my wife showed him the shirt she was wearing.
I also have my 1988 poster for the Hammersmith Odeon shows from their Seventh Son tour – that is currently hanging in my office where I practice, right next to my official Royal Mail Iron Maiden stamp collection… and right next to where I’ll be displaying those Iron Maiden Magic cards I recently ordered.
Interesting Tidbits
Song of the day: Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus
The Decline of Deviance: Where has all the weirdness gone? – “People are less weird than they used to be. That might sound odd, but data from every sector of society is pointing strongly in the same direction: we’re in a recession of mischief, a crisis of conventionality, and an epidemic of the mundane. Deviance is on the decline.”
New life forms found in the human body described by scientists as ‘insane’ – “Scientists just spotted something unexpected inside those communities: tiny circular RNAs that don’t match any known virus or bacterium.”
Buying a burner phone: “It’s not that simple,” say internet sleuths – “Ever dreamed of a $20 burner phone that makes you invisible? A few Redditors tried it and discovered that going off-grid is messier than you might think – and far less private than the movies make it look.”
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