Plenty of Weirdos

Yesterday night Maureen and I had dinner with a couple friends in downtown Detroit yesterday. Every trip downtown is an experience in its own right. and while nothing particularly exciting happened during yesterday's voyage aside from some nice dinner conversation, I was reminded of the kind of city that Detroit can occasionally be. In particular, Detroit can have that elusive characteristic that the biggest and best cities have - the ability to attract weirdos. Every big city has them, some more than others, but weirdos are the lifeblood of an interesting place.

The weirdos this weekend are being again pulled like moths to the flame downtown because of the Movement Electronic Music Festival (formerly Detroit Electronic Music Festival or DEMF). I've tried but do not understand the allure of electronic music to some normal people and weirdos. Repetitive things (snoring, dripping, dogs barking, that song "If We Ever Meet Again" by Timbaland, etc.) bore into my skull until I inevitably attempt to seek out the source of the repetition and destroy it. To me (and my myopic point of view), electronic music is the pure, filtered embodiment of repetitiveness with the primary intent of slowly evolving one's insanity. But people love it so who am I to judge.

Despite my opinion, the Movement Festival brings people to downtown Detroit who would never, ever find themselves in the city, and that is fantastic. Friday afternoon I was in the lobby of the Guardian Building and there were people who were definitely not speaking English taking pictures of the ornate lobby. I bet you one million billion dollars those people were in Detroit for the music festival. Yesterday at dinner, weirdos who were also not speaking English were walking through the lobby of the Book Cadillac wearing towels and others wearing freaky Euro outfits and I bet you one million billion dollars those people were also in Detroit for the music festival.

It is a culture and music that I don't understand with artists who have names that sound like a word you know but spelled differently than that word you know, but I will embrace it for making Memorial Day Weekend in Detroit a truly international event. As long as you don't try any of your freaky stuff directly on me, weirdos, welcome to Michigan and Detroit.