the pod bay door

.: My thirteenth visit to NYC is over tomorrow. Yesterday, the rain stopped in the early evening, after continuing non-stop since Wednesday morning. I heard that during this past week, more rain fell in NYC in a seven-day period than in the past ninety years, but I haven’t been able to verify this information. States of emergency and flood alerts were declared in parts of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, and at least eleven people have died in the area since the rain began last Saturday.

Today, however, the sun came out, in time for Jessica‘s wedding. I didn’t get much sleep last night, following my second U2 show in three days. Typical cold symptoms, sore throat, stuffed sinuses, ears hurting, etc. I’ve been gulping down COLD-fX in hopes of fighting it off. Nonetheless, I boarded an NJ Transit train at Penn Station in the morning, and road it to Summit NJ, where Jessica’s wedding ceremony was taking place. Wearing a black long-sleeved shirt with a black linen sports jacket was not a wise move, as the sun was quite warm. It took me a good 45 minutes to cool down inside the church before the wedding. The ceremony was heartfelt and memorable, with Jessica’s fiancé, John Vasilenko, aka Johnny V, overcome with emotion at times as he spoke his vows – these are two people very much in love, and it was a joy to be a part of it. There were a small number of people there with whom I was acquainted, including Jessica’s family, and some of her local friends. The reception was immediately afterwards, and last all afternoon into the early evening. The food was delicious.

.: Last night, I went back to Madison Square Gardens, and watched U2 perform for the second time in three days, their last of six shows in NYC (the first having been one hour on Late Night With Conan O’Brien.) This time around, the band played 24 songs; I’d say we got our money’s worth. This set list was posted on the U2 site, as the official set list for the fifth show; compare the two, and you can see they made some last minute changes, dropping Walk On, a favorite of mine, which I would have loved to hear.

I stayed for both encores, and heard All Because of You, my favorite song on their last album, and the band played Vertigo for a second time that night as a finale. I was sitting at the far end of the Gardens, facing the band directly, a good seat to be sure. I’m glad I went a second time, it was much fun to see this band after listening to them for a quarter century. Here’s a good shot of the curtains of lights used during some of the songs.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2005 at 19:20 and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.