Went to that Patti Smith concert.

I went to the Patti Smith concert last night. The music wasn't my type of thing, but I enjoyed it. She was very real and was never put-on or lazy and she really enjoyed herself on stage. She was also very kind -- she had three different people up on stage to jam with the band, two unannounced (the one was from the opening act and was announced), and once during her talking between songs when someone sneezed she was like, "God bless you." I don't think I'd want her as a friend, but I'd want her as an aunt.

For her music, she did a fair number of covers, since I guess that's what her last album was about -- the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop", some song that sounded like "Gloria" in the chorus but had different verses and really rocked out, it was the best song of the night, and then "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" as an encore, and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" during her main set. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was compelling in the "hello" part, since she channeled all these complicated emotions and was like "hello/ hello/ hello/ hello/ hello/ hello/ hello/hello/ hello/ hello", but the verse lyrics are pretty awful slowed down, with that shit about being stupid and contagious and then the "here we are now entertain us" part, not to mention the rhymes in the part where the teens aren't sure if it's their mosquito or their libido. It made you realize how insipid that pseudo-poetry was, and how Patti Smith could wring more genuine emotion out of the word "hello".

She also talked a lot about Aqua Teen Hunger Force and how the castle in the opening credits is from southern Jersey where she's from and she knows it, but that the street sign there says "Belle Isle" and so she feels this connection with Detroit and went there because of it.

She also was saying about how her new pet peeve is Bush selling arms to Saudi Arabia. At one point when she was leading up to that and was like, "I have a pet peeve, and when you have a pet peeve, you have to tell it to someone," this black woman sitting way behind me was like, "Mmm-hmmm" really loudly, only when I turned around, there were no black people there, only this one mid-fifties white woman who would go "Whoo!" all the time and would say shit like "Patti, you kick ass!" all evening long at an inappropriate volume and at inappropriate times. I think somehow she managed to channel all the coolness she's never had right at that moment and shot her coolness wad all right then without even knowing she'd done it.

Most everyone was in their fifties and quite respectable looking. Some people brought their autistic teenager and he spent the whole evening standing up and rocking back and forth. He was wearing a turquoise t-shirt. Next to me and my colleague was a middle-aged Italian lawyer who's in Ann Arbor for the summer on some exchange program to learn about American law and loves punk; she says she knows it's weird as a lawyer, but she likes it, and she was appalled that Patti Smith wasn't selling the hall out like she always does in Italy. She had big frizzy hair and was wearing all black and had a nice smile and laugh.