Jon Stewart & the 500

It's a been a busy month and a half or so and consequently I haven't checked in. Most of our time is wrapped up in planning for the wedding reception back home in a couple weeks, but as of last night that's mostly done on our end.

Last weekend one of my contemporary heroes came to Indy for a night of stand up, Jon Stewart. For the select few who've never heard of him, he hosts the Daily Show on Comedy Central and is one of the quickest, most knowledgeable (not to mention funny) comedians in show business today. On his show he comes off as a liberal, though I'm not sure how much of that is his personal belief and how much is just a normal reaction to some of the ridiculous events of Bush's presidency.

His TV show is 100% political but surprisingly, his live show wasn't. It held at the Murat Theatre downtown, which is an early 20th century version of CY Stephens. He sold out two shows that night at $45/ticket. He made some great observations on Indiana politics and the inability of anyone to pronounce "Murat". Other than politics/religion the show made the rounds from sex, to alcohol, to drugs, to food, to in the Indy 500, etc. Good times.

Speaking of the 500, the race festival kicked off this week. One of my coworkers took the entire week off to celebrate. This will be an interesting phenomon to witness, though I'm not sure how much we'll be involved since I'm spending 5 of the festival days in Iowa & Nebraska. Hopefully, I'll get back in time to participate in “Carburation Day”, apparently an outdated testing & practice day that now is pretty much a party. The Black Crowes are headlining this year.