Pissed Off! "Live Earth" July 9th, 2007 I'm Lazlo & I'm pissed off. And what has me pissed off this week? Live Earth. Hey, I am all for getting bands together for a huge concert, and the parts of it that I saw had some great performances, sadly mixed in with a bunch I could do without. But can I really be angry at a show that manages to reunite Spinal Tap? Well, yes, I can. Many critics have already pointed out that the Live Earth concerts are lacking clear-cut, achievable goals. It's true. The slogan, "answer the call" that was repeated throughout the show didn't make any sense. Answer what call? My phone isn't ringing. It's also been pointed out that the show lauds rock stars whose jet-setting, high-consumption lifestyles can often send a different, less environmentally friendly message. Duh, that's a no-brainer. But what really irks me is were two even bigger idiosyncrasies. First off, there were constant messages of conserve energy, and ways to conserve energy. Well here's one for you guys, when it's the middle of the afternoon on a sunny day, why were you using stage lighting that could barely be seen??? Talk about a waste of electricity. Shows in all the countries I saw were using massive amounts of stage lighting during the day which could only really be picked up on close ups with the cameras. Equally confusing is how Enrique Iglesias can say he's performing to help the environment, but by the end of his short set he was wearing a black t-shirt that said, "Indianapolis 500" on it!!! What the fuck Enrique! Auto racing is a HUGE contributor to air pollution and global warming. The Indy 500's own website says, "...that the fuel mileage of an IRL IndyCar Series car is less than two miles per gallon? A car burns approximately 1.3 gallons of fuel per lap at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway." Christ, a hummer gets better gas mileage than that, and a Hummer is presumably traveling somewhere with a destination in mind for a purpose other than crossing a finish line. Mind you I am not condoning a Hummer, just putting into context how bad auto racing is for the environment. Shame on you Enrique. I think we should all boycott buying his music in protest. I realize this won't be hard for most of us, because his music isn't very good. Two more things I'd like to vent about here with Live Earth. Giants Stadium is in New Jersey, not New York! Why is it New Jersey always gets shortchanged? Every time the coverage on the Sundance channel went back to Giants Stadium, it kept referring to it as New York, this same mistake was made by several performers. Maybe the performers should have learned from Spinal Tap, and written the name of the state they are playing in on the back of their guitars. Yeesch! And the NBC networks that continued to refer to it as New York should be ashamed of themselves. Maybe I should start referring to NBC as CBS, both stations have had fact checking problems in their news division, and NBC seems not to even know what state they are broadcasting in. The other thing that irked me about Live Earth is that Sundance channel was supposed to be doing continuous live coverage from 4am Saturday until 2am Sunday morning. What I saw throughout the day was a song here, a song there, but a gluttony of short films (which were re-aired multiple times throughout the course of the day), and advertisements for the Sundance Channel. For every 5 minutes of music, I was subjected to 5 minutes of ads and short films. Not every song by every artist was broadcast, as the press releases on the televising of the event had me believing, and several times beginnings and endings of songs were cut off for this breaks. This left what could have been a highly entertaining music festival, a luke warm series of ads and short films (many of which didn't have any message of how to help the environment), that we had to sit through in order to be rewarded with the sweet sounds of music performances. A better job could have been done. A better job should have been done. Ultimately, what did I learn from watching Live Earth? That many of the artists didn't care, and just saw it as an opportunity to play to a large audience. The NBC networks didn't care, about factually reporting where the locations were, or about broadcasting the music that people wanted to hear. And that really the people who do care about the environment aren't the ones who are parading themselves on stage or TV, they're the ones out there actually trying to make a difference. There are a lot of little things that cane be done to make the world a better place, but Live Earth was more interested in the slogan, "answer the call", then actually giving us little tips between performers. I won't answer the call. I think they're calling collect. I'm Lazlo, and I've been pissed off! go to http://www.seql.org/100ways.cfm for 100 ways to save the environment