The Boss

On Saturday I went and saw Bruce Springsteen (aka "The Boss") play a free acoustic show down on the Parkway. Bruce set up the show in an effort to raise awareness about Barack Obama and the general need to vote. Interspersed with his songs about the American experience were his thoughts on America and voting. During his longest speech he said that the great thing about America is freedom and the symbol of hope that we cast towards the rest of the world. Then he talked about America and the American experience as a "house" for the people, but over the past eight years this house has been faltering. This election, he said, gives the American people an opportunity to rebuild that house.

I immediately identified with The Boss' metaphor depicting America as a house and I thought about all those people getting evicted from their houses and then I thought about this one advert that I saw on the TV telling me how I could make money buying other people's broken mortgages and then I thought about the $700 billion bailout to help the mortgage companies and then I also thought about all those people that own houses in hurricane areas and when their houses get destroyed they always rebuild them only to have them destroyed again. All this thinking made me think that maybe the "house" metaphor wasn't the best metaphor because it gets a little complicated a little too quick. Maybe a better metaphor would be to say that America is like a bed and this election is our chance to remake that bed?

Anyways, the highlight of the show was "Thunder Road" and a rousing rendition of "This Land is Our Land" for the encore. Afterwords we went and ate cheeseburgers and salad, drank a ton of beer, and watched them Phillies.