It’s pure self-indulgence.

And who cannot tell the difference between Shakespeare and the scribblings of a high school sophomore.

Remember moron Otto in “A Fish Called Wanda”?

I had read about this part of the show and warned the missus, but she was still unprepared. And I was willing to stay to lend my voice to the Bronx cheers (a NY tradition), but she wanted to remember Babs as a great artist (this was the first time she saw her live) — and not as an idiot.

So I missed the fun. I wonder if anyone asked Babs to quote Shakespeare? Or why, with her 3-and-a half years of high school, she imagined herself to be the intellectual superior of our President? Or why she needed to imagine it?

Want my critcal review? Babs is 64 and while she retains and exhibits prodigious talent, she doesn’t have the voice she had. Her phrasing and timing and pitch are all still perfect, but at least early on, she was “singing in her throat”. She has lost some range and I think some of the songs were in a lower key than her recordings. And she avoided the more challenging songs from her repetoire (no comparisons between her and Betty Buckley at this concert, please).

And, she doesn’t appear to have trained anything other than her voice for this concert tour. Now, few of us in our sixties have silouettes similar to ourselves in our twenties — but, BUT, given her wealth and schedule she could have and should have hit the gym and locked the fridge in preparation for these shows. It probably would have helped her singing, too. And her dress(es) were simply terrible (but Omar, the tent maker, has his limits, too).

As for her second act (Il Divo), the boys have marvelous voices, but abysmal phrasing. When they sang in English, it sucked. And they made the unfortunate choice of covering “My Way” as a tribute to the Chairman of the Board. What a mistake!

The poet killed ART when it became so full of self-serving excrement.

Actually, I thought part of the artists role, aside from the continual development of human appreciation of the aesthetic, was to stimulate thought. Anyone can “disturb”, but there’s little purpose to disturbing without inducing rational debate.

Too many believe that their job is done by just agitating and “drawing attention”. That’s the same as believing that being at the Start line is somehow equivalent to actually running the race.

This from a woman who can’t spell her own name.

Only the performer has allowed time to change her, for the worse, apparently. The drool-cup legions of fans remain forever young, or as we might understand it, immature.

Now it remains only for the Dixie Chicks to weigh in. Can’t wait to have them tell me that freedom of speech means keeping your mouth shut when your “concert” dollar gets diverted for juvenile political commentary.

If these are liberated women, hand me my housedress and frilly apron. On my blog I threatened to sue for false advertising if Babs made good on her threat to do this last, ultimate, final, bye-bye, peekaboo I’m really going this time tour. Want to join the class action lawsuit?

Who knew.