Ten Years Ago and The Time Russell Crowe and I Saw Sting.

September 11 was this weekend, and it got me thinking about what I was up to ten years ago.  What’s crazy, is it doesn’t seem all that long.  And this isn’t really a 9/11 post, though that was the springboard for the whole thought.  I was a sophomore in college, living in the mods at APU with three guys (one of whom I still keep in regular contact with), and pretty stoked for the coming year.  My roommate Andrew ran into our shared bedroom waking me up yelling “They’re bombing us!”  I don’t know who “they” were, but I was out of bed with a shot and, as most of the country (and maybe the world) did, I took up semi-permanent residence in front of the television.

Not taking into account that one even, I remember sophomore year of college to be a great time.  We had awesome neighbors (Liz, Renee, Beth, and Dre), and lots of good times.  We shared high-speed internet with them, stringing an ethernet cable across a sidewalk between our two mods.

The mods were a sort of small community of modular homes on-campus.  We joked quite often that they were made out of cardboard, however it was more Styrofoam.  TOTALLY safe.

I miss those times now and then.  I was away from home, living just outside of Los Angeles.  That was the year Tim bought a $100 car and spray-painted it yellow with engine paint.  In fact the next morning we drove to Burbank in the same car (I didn’t have a car at the time) to see the Jay Leno show with Russell Crowe as the main guest, the Segway scooter guy making them all drive Segways around the stage, and Sting as the musical guest.

I remember that day very clearly.  Roger Ebert was supposed to be the second guest, not the Segway guy.  Tim was excited to see Ebert, I was excited for Sting.  I don’t think either one of us cared much about Russell Crowe.  Oddly enough, we might have been the only people in line who felt like that.  We were surrounded by rabid Crowe fans.  They were awful middle-aged women who tried to dress like slutty 16 year old fans.  Yipes.

There was a trade off for being stuck around them all day.  They help out spot in line while Tim and I wandered into a taping of The Weakest Link.  It was a radio hosts special with awful morning drive DJs from around the country.  None of them were funny.  The host (The guy host, this was after the Brit lady) was very funny.

Once we were in the studio I was shocked by how small the set was.  I don’t know why I was so shocked because I remember how tiny Price is Right was, as well.  But it was still very cool.  We ended up on the floor, second row, over on the musical guest side.  Technically we were second row for Sting.  And I couldn’t have picked a better spot.  It was awesome.

Sting had a HUGE backing band (Seriously, at least 15 people) and played If You Love Somebody (Set Them Free), which is one of my favorite songs.  It was kind of perfect.

This isn’t from that show, but it’s the same song and it’s a great track.  That really was a great day.