Happy Birthday, Gunnar! In honor of your concert tonight, let me regale you with the tale of *my* one and only U2 concert, the Zoo TV tour in St. Louis featuring Big Audio Dynamite II and Public Enemy as opening acts. It was around this time of the year when my friend called me to offer me the extra concert ticket he had since his girlfriend couldn't go. Well, you know by now how much I love free stuff, so, I agreed to go. When we arrived, we encountered a make-shift enclosure (which resembled a portable toilet more than a recording booth) in which you could enter, face a camera, and say your piece to the band. We had time to kill, so we gave it a whirl.

The concert started and the crowd was well-behaved and excited. When the sun set over the stadium, the spotlights came on. As well as any other electronic, electric, blinking, buzzing, sensory-overload device. U2 was on stage along with about every conceivable type of multi-media eye-catcher including, but not limited to, a JUMBO jumbotron screen which alternated displays of the actual concert we were watching live on stage and other pop culture images.

Around the halfway point, the band needed to take a break. It's hard work singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday" while dodging television monitors. Suddenly, the jangly random images on the jumbotron disappeared and they started showing clips of the audience member's "personal messages" taped before the show consisting mostly of lavish praise, a few flashes of cleavage, and some butchered attempts at a capella renditions of the band's songs. I'm sure you can guess where I'm going with this. Without any expectation or warning, there was my 40-foot high face on the screen.

"Well, I don't really care much for U2, but I got a free ticket so . . . *shrug* . . . here I am."

My friend freaked. The people one row ahead of us turned around at all his "OH MY GOD!"s and looked at me. They pointed me out to the people two rows ahead of us. The people one row behind me patted my shoulder. I was mortified. Thankfully, the concert started up again and I was quickly forgotten. Or so I thought. The next day, I was stopped in the classrooms and hallways by people I had never met before who recognized me from the concert. It was surreal. Anyway, I have now been allotted about 2.13 minutes of my 15 minutes of fame. I hope your U2 concert gives you that and more. Rock on.