I am having alot of trouble trying to keep up with my Land lease. I have been leasing this land for the past five years now.

Got home from Thanksgiving in NJ and what was at the foot of my mailbox but Queen's Greatest Video Hits 2!!!

Three hours of bonus footage. And the great thing isn't so much the videos -- although they are restored and in 5.1 sound, all that, better than my bootleg VHS tapes -- it's the bonus stuff. The Hot Space videos never make any bootleg comp, and the audio commentary is priceless -- Brian May at his diplomatic and honest best, and Roger grumpy and honest. He's still a punk rocker at heart.

In the video for Radio Ga Ga, they address the Queen-as-fascists thing I made a trope in GSMQ I -- and addressed it honestly. They dismissed those accusations as trifle -- it's a piece of entertainment, etc. -- and then, presumably looking at the footage of 200-odd people in white outfits raising their arms after doing the signature Ga Ga double-clap, Roger goes, "well that is a bit Nuremberg-ish, I have to admit," or something like that. True enough. And with Ga Ga set as a counterpoint to Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the footage of which they used in the video, was the perfect example to address to debunk the fascist accusation. But what of the rows of miners in the I Want To Break Free? The Freddie Mercury videos in which people are goose-stepping? That's problematic.

It's odd to be thinking of all this, with Roger and Brian playing 46664 an AIDS concert pretty much as we speak in South Africa -- the two active members of Queen have become fine older gentlemen, and my evening with them last night, listening to them speak, made me cry more than a couple times, thinking of those old songs and where I was in my life, where they were. All this honesty from the most vaingloriously pompous bands -- it's great.