LIVE a little! Vänskä commands it.

by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet • 9/27/08 • My life isn't perfect, but I never feared that I was somehow failing to live it fully...until, that is, yesterday morning at 10 a.m., when I received an e-mail from the Minnesota Orchestra. "LIVE a little!" commanded the subject line. Yes, Maestro! But how? Where have I failed?

Arts Orbit is a multisource blog about the local arts scene, featuring both original contributions by Daily Planet writers and entries reprinted from partner blogs and online publications.

The answer is provided in a video linked from the e-mail: to really grab life by the cojones, it seems, I need to take that $125 to $221 I'd budgeted for skydiving, bungee jumping, and hard drugs and instead spend it on a subscription package to the Saturday Pops. "The crazy work week is over," notes the e-mail (a few hours pre-emptively), "and this is your time." Yeah, that's right! It's my time! Screw you, cruel Daily Planet taskmasters, I'm getting the hell out of here and going to hear the smooth horn sound of Chris Botti! And next month, I'm going to hear the Puppini Sisters swish their way through some tight jazz-vocal arrangements of Santana classics! And you are sniffing Reddi-Wip if you think I'm going to let that comment moderation queue stand between me and Jim frickin' Brickman! Not to mention the Queen tribute by the Finnish a capella sextet Rajaton, or Bill Cosby—who the video promises is "EVEN FUNNIER TODAY" than in a clip from 1983. "Think of it as setting your iPod on shuffle," suggests the video's narrator, "except this is live!" If only it were like setting my iPod on shuffle. I would totally pay $221 to see Pete Doherty piss into a tuba.