Hmmmm….decisions, decisions. I have tickets to the U2 show at the Rose Bowl in LA Sunday night, have been looking forward to the show for quite some time. Off the top of my head, this will be my thirteenth U2 gig, starting with being 9th row center at the LA Coliseum for the Joshua Tree tour and culminating with my attendance for their performance at the premiere of SNL last month (not exactly a proper concert per se, but let’s count it).

With the announcement today that Youtube will be streaming Sunday’s show live, I have a tinge of doubt, however. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still geeked about going, but I went to the UCLA/Cal game at the Rose Bowl on Saturday and I find it unfathomable that the second largest media market in the US (world?) would hold a large gathering of people in such a preposterously inconvenient mausoleum. What a F*@%ing quagmire. I went to the game with my buddy Mike who works out in Pasadena and knows some good short cuts to getting to the stadium, regardless traffic is unavoidable and the last couple miles of the drive probably took us 30 minutes alone. The parking lot at the stadium was designed in the 1950’s to hold, I’m guessing, 20,000 cars- for a 100,000 capacity venue!!! So you are sent to park on the adjacent golf course. It took us a solid 20 minutes to walk from the car to the venue. I think it was a mile walk. Then we got in, and had to walk about half way around the venue to get to our tunnel. By then we were exhausted and sweating like Patrick Ewing in the 4th quarter, and as we trudged up to our seats the only thing on our mind was getting something in a frozen dessert treat. At halftime you are welcomed by preposterously long lines for all food and beverage items, again it was like they designed the concessions to serve 40,000 people while the venue holds 100k. I won’t have to deal with the heat on Sunday night, but still- the entire experience would’ve taken us 6 hours if we didn’t get there late and leave early. Ridiculous!! The politics of stadium construction futility in LA is well documented, but there’s gotta be a billionaire out there who will make serious money by building a state of the art sports complex in LA that can handle UCLA football, USC football, an NFL team, and major concerts like the one I’m about to attend Sunday.

Clearly, even with my high quality computer speakers and large monitor, the youtube experience is not going to hold a candle to experiencing the show live. But it does give me pause. Here’s to hoping for a wardrobe malfunction for show opener Black Eyed Peas’ Fergie to make it all worth my while.