We topped off the year by doing a couple of big shows on the home turf. The first of the two was a New Years eve show at the Fleet Center in Boston, which we named the Fire Ball. We like the idea of this becoming a tradition and each time we do it, we like to go overboard on the production side of it. We decided this year to transform the entire hall. We brought in hundreds of extra lights and put them out over the audience so the entire place was bathed in color. Then we hung huge "planets" filled with confetti and balloons in strategic places over the seats.

When it was time to go on, we all got dressed in Fire fighting suits and came up to the front of the stage after walking through the audience. We were surrounded by twenty other "firemen" to keep ourselves hidden as we strolled up the aisles. You know those big openings that lead out onto the floor of big arenas? They're actually called Vomitories. I'm not kidding, that's the technical term. Well we ejected out of the vomitories in our yellow (how appropriate) uniforms and marched to the stage. The best part was that we all had fire extinguishers which we randomly blasted toward the ceiling. It was all we could do to not aim them at each other. I can still see our keyboard tech hunched over his gear like a soldier on a grenade with a "Don't even think about it" look on his face. We doffed (there's a word we all use in conversation) our outfits and played the rest of the show naked. Not really. Actually it was a relief to get that hat off of my head. It's really heavy and does nothing for the coif. We did a false beginning for Nine Lives and then went into Toys.

A while later we were in the breakdown part of "Draw the Line" when we got the "one minute to midnight " warning. With thirty seconds to go we blasted a tape of the shuttle launch and then at the stroke of the new year we set off concussion bombs and remotely popped all the planets, releasing their contents all over the audience. We must have a thing about spewing. Fire extinguishers, belching balloons, fireworks, and, oh yeah, confetti cannons. We do those every year and every year we vow to blast more of it. This year there wasn't a square inch of the stage that wasn't buried in it. Thank God we spared the audience. They would have been coughing up colored paper for days.

The show ended about one o'clock but we were only half finished. We did a food drive for the Boston Food Bank and promised to shake hands with anybody who basically brought a hundred items of food to the show. About a thousand people responded and we wound up with 90,000 pounds of vittles. It was amazing. People not only brought food but also stood outside in the cold, waiting in line while it was collected. A couple of heroic people from our office nearly got frostbite trudging back and forth in the snow and ice, keeping things organized.

We started shaking hands at around two o'clock and finished at about three-twenty. What a vibe. I couldn't believe the enthusiasm! There was this one woman who had hurt her leg during the show and was told to go to hospital. She would not let them take her until after the post show meet & greet. It felt good to see people going the extra mile.

I want to thank all the people who said "Happy Birthday" to me. It was mixed in with all the "Happy new Years and the Thank yous so people kept wishing me happy birthday and I kept saying "Same to you". A little happy delirium is always appropriate.

More coming,

TH