This will probably be one of the only times I recommend AOL for anything but it was because of them that I was able to watch the Live 8 concerts today at work. Yup, work was s-l-o-w so I more or less spent the entire day watching performances from the multi-continental concert online. Most of the short sets were good, with Stevie Wonder's funky performance as one of my favs, but Brian Wilson's however was a bit sad. The guy doesn't really have the voice anymore for those Beach Boys tunes and he forgot some lyrics on one of the songs - its almost like this great young backing band he's got is propping up the old guy like a puppet.

Watching the shows did make me feel better about the world and some of the people in it though. It did strike me as sad that Africa has some of the greatest natural resources in the world (oil, diamonds, etc.) yet has some of the poorest conditions. Centuries of foreigners taking the wealth out of there will do that.

After the holiday weekend of bbqs and socializing I was feeling like I wasn't doing enough to make the world a better place. Yeah, I was groggy and grumpy from the lack of rest and that may have contributed to it but towards the end of the weekend I began thinking that these people I was talking to really put importance on trivial things. Really, its not tragic that you cannot find this one particular cashmere top anywhere or that Tom Cruise is in some faux relationship, when there are serious, fixable problems in the world. I'm not saying these people are bad; on the contrary, they are very wonderful people but I would only hope that they would be more conscious of less self-centered issues.

I could go on but I'm tired and not clear headed enough to put together any decent line of discussion.

Live 8

AOL streams the concert