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July 07, 2007

Live Earth: Saving planet, WAC? duck-walks soulfully in Chicago Marriott; hotel staff upset.

Hull McGuire is torn. We love people, animals, plants and the outdoors. Yet with one notable exception, we are mostly Republican types with several longstanding industrial clients; for money, the more the better, we represent and defend entities which "spill and/or emit things" into the environment. We think it's challenging and interesting work. We don't care what you think about it.

You just never know these days what humans who are lawyers will do. But no matter what your politics are on the environment, do tune into Live Earth tonight or on encore nights on Sundance or Bravo! or any number of cable channels. Concerts are in New York (well, Giants Stadium in NJ, where Al Gore appeared), London, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hamburg, Johannesburg and Rio de Janeiro.

At the London event, Madonna in a semi-formal black dress jumped up and down with an electric guitar. In New York, and even better, Sting and The Police did "Roxanne", which for a while (under-35 Americans need to know this) replaced the "Star Spangled Banner" as the national anthem ("You don't have to put on a red light..."). I understand that WAC?, while working on a Clean Air Act permit, and very moved, duck-walked for a good 20 minutes in his hotel room until asked to stop.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Just bulls, religion and middle-age angst

Fiesta de San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain, or the running of the bulls, dates back to 1591. But Hemingway made it way cool in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. I've never been to it, but people I really like swear by the week-long festival and the steady intake of Rioja and beer coupled with mystique.

Despite the hype, I am intrigued. Folks from all over the world--the kind, like WAC?'s Holden Oliver, who've given up all hope of ever behaving normally in public--go there every year to be menaced and chased by mean, fast and heavy semi-feral animals through the streets. Or to see a possible goring. It is, they say, the Spanish version of the Kentucky Derby, or the Hells' Angels Labor Day Picnic.

Anyway, it began today and continues until July 14. Only 13 people have been killed since records were first kept starting in 1924. Just 13. Sign me up for 2008. Another milestone birthday that year. WAC? may just go to Spain and do himself in.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)