A Very Special Cuatro de Cinco with Bono

Cinco de Mayo falls on a Saturday this year so at the office we were forced to celebrate Cinco de Cuatro. There was a ton of Mexican food in the break room for lunch but for me that was all a distraction from the real reason for the season.

I knew there was a case of brand new Pine-Apple-Ritas in the freezer getting nice and cold for me.

The beer case also had ritas for days.

They were a hit with my neighbor.

After work we volunteered at St. Louis Microfest in Forest Park. I wanted to volunteer because the fest was raising money for a good cause. The unlimited free beer had nothing to do with it, I can assure you.

Each tasting area had a bucket where patrons could dump out unwanted beer or wash out their glass. We volunteered to carry the full buckets to the dumping area. You might think it strange that I didn't volunteer to be a beer pouring person. Well... 

A situation had developed. We came across a couple free tickets to the U2 show that night and so... we needed to sneak out of the fest a teensie bit early. So on one of our walks to the beer dumping area we just kept walking to our cars. We're naughty.

There was a massive screen smack in the middle of the Scottrade Center.

I was impressed with the level of city-specific visuals they went to the trouble of producing. This is a map of St. Louis.

Bono crushed it. He did not however sing my favorite U2 song which I'm pretty salty about. A Bono fun fact that I learned leading up to this show is the reason he's always wearing crazy sunglasses is that he suffers from glaucoma.

Things got a little weird towards the end.

A Night With Coldplay

Lydia and I walked over to Union Station for the hell of it and to get some exercise. The place looks real bad, almost deserted. Luckily I looked into it and they are going to really reinvent the place with a big aquarium and a Ferris wheel. I've heard it will compare to Chicago's Navy Pier. 

Fun fact: the famous "Dewey Defeats Truman" pictures were taken at St. Louis' Union Station when Truman was traveling to his home in Independence, Missouri.

So yeah, Coldplay. We were walking back from Union Station and I saw my buddy Matt driving by. He immediately pulled over and asked us if we wanted to go to today's Coldplay show at the Scottrade Center. They had some friends cancel and their sweet sweet tickets were up for grabs. Yes please! Lydia and I jogged home, took showers, changed clothes, and then jogged back to meet Matt and his wife Allison for dinner. Then we popped over to see the show.

Unfortunate souls at the merch table. Someone's going to be crying into their $30 Coldplay coffee mug tomorrow when the drugs wear off.

Alessia Cara was the opening act. She was fine but man that girl is a talker. She insisted on explaining every song before singing it. Blah.

Then it was time for some cold, cold play.

A very cool part of Coldplay's A Head Full of Dreams Tour was the little bracelets that each of us were handed at the door. They are called Xylobands, and they contain a lot of color-changing lights and some sort of receiver.

The effect was something incredible. The lights would blink and change colors and be generally awesome in sync with each other.

My favorite song of theirs is "Viva la Vida". Lucky for them they played it.

The band seems pretty cool. At one point they walked across to the opposite end of the building and hopped onto a tiny little stage right below us. They sang a few songs for the people who couldn't buy the most expensive seats. I thought that was a nice gesture.

Great Hockey Seats

Lydia received a letter from the St. Louis Blues welcoming her to St. Louis and inviting her to sign up for a free game via a website link. I figured I'm newer here than her plus "free" is one of my very dearly held interests so I signed up too. Sure enough we got two sets of tickets!

I invited my buddy Jim of Kentucky Derby fame to come along. The seats were fifth row and probably the best seats I will ever have.

When guys got smashed against the glass you could almost smell the maple syrup on their breath.

There weren't any real duke-outs but there were a couple of group pile ups that were amusing.

At one of the intermissions two kids' teams faced off. It's pretty glorious.

The Scottrade Center goes into Super Mario mode when the Blues had someone put in the penalty box.