Arcade Fire in NYC

My friend C.J. (now the #1 coolest friend I have) emailed me last week to tell me he got us tickets to go see one of our favorite bands, the Arcade Fire, in NYC next weekend. Just how hot are these tickets? The band is playing five straight nights and all five nights sold out online in five minutes. Gothamist has a post about the show.

What is so great about this band? Well, one of the fruits of reading Seeing Through Cynicism is this quote:

In popular culture, modern knowledge has become "postmodern knowingness." Earnestness and seriousness are out. Frank Gannon wrote: "Something in the human mind says it's hopeless: The existence of God is something that human beings can never entirely discount, or entirely prove. Why torture yourself trying to answer a question like that? Get a hobby. Work out regularly. Eat low fat. Forget about what Yeats called "vague immensities"...Yet something deep in your soul says, Go ahead. Seek the ultimate answers. Maybe the human brain can actually "know" some transcendent divinity. Yeah. Good one. Don't hurt yourself, OK?

Keyes elsewhere quotes Robert Wright's The Moral Animal:

What is to be avoided at all costs in the postmodern age is earnestness, which betrays an embarrassing naivete...

University of Memphis head coach John Calipari sums it up well: "It's not cool to care." By postmodern standards, then, The Arcade Fire pulls up their pants to their armpits and LOVES linux. There is no irony. There is no winking "knowingness."

They sing songs about missing their parents.