For those of you keeping up with Bono’s Celebration of Samuel Beckett, do you think he’s thinking of this Beckett quote in the photo seen here at the launch of the Beckett Centenary Festival at Dublin Castle last night. (Photograph: Alan Betson / The Irish Times).

“Where now? Who now? When now? Unquestioning. I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypotheses, call them that. Keep going, going on, call that going, call that on.” (Beckett’s The Unnamable)

PS: RTE.ie has audio of Bono chatting about Beckett’s work and more on their site here. And…more photos are available from the Dublin Castle festivities on Showbiz Ireland’s website here.

…the Vertigo Tour formally started (give or take a few hours). Can’t believe it’s been a year already.

If you wondered how touring ages a person…check out Bono here from about 1 year ago….and check him out here from just this past weekend (thanks to Showbiz Ireland).

Do you see any difference?

London’s Telegraph newspaper has reported that Bono’s private equity firm, Elevation Partners, is looking at buying a 25% share of Nirvana’s back catalog.

Apparently, Courtney Love owns the publishing rights to Nirvana’s songs and is finding it difficult to manage the catalog by herself.

Bono’s friendship with Kurt Cobain and Courtney go back to the early days of Nirvana. Bono is quoted as saying to Newsweek, “I remember watching Kurt come through and thinking, ‘God, this music is nuclear’,” says Bono. “This is really splitting the atom. They raised the temperature for everybody. Manufactured pop never looked so cold as when that heat was around. Nirvana made everything else look silly.”

The Nirvana Internet Fanclub has reported in July 2002, “U2’s Bono and R.E.M’s Michael Stipe are on a potential witness list for Courtney Love in her current legal battle with Dave Grohl and Krist Noveselic over the control of Nirvana music, merchandising, and marketing. According to a spokesperson for Love, Bono and Stipe are among the people that she’s talked to about Nirvana-related issues. Bono reportedly once offered advice to the late Kurt Cobain on coping with rock stardom and celebrity fame, but was turned away at the time, which Love reportedly regrets.”

The full Telegrah story can be read here.

Madame Tussaud’s in New York City has immortalized Bono in the only way they know how….in wax on March 16. Check it out here.

VH1’s Best Week Ever blog has more photos - I dunno, I think Madame Tussaud’s thought Bono had some botox given the fact that he doesn’t look half as old as he really does.

It’s the first time Bono’s appeared in this form in the United States.

@U2 Podcast hostess Teresa is traveling at the moment, and shared this with us:

The Gap has the RED t-shirts in stock in the UK. They’re made in Lesotho, Africa and the cotton is heavenly soft. The shirts come in 4 colors; off white, sorta red, faded black, and dark blue. Nice to see one of the RED campaign products has made it into the shops so consumers can get on board.

As I was sorting through some of my files, I stumbled upon this from a while ago. The MIT Wolk Gallery of the School of Architecture and Planning held an exhibit in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and the Smart Cities Group called “Rethinking the Car.” What caught my eye in the brochure where there was a car drawn on a cocktail napkin and signed “Edge.”

Come to find out, MIT Professor William Mitchell had involved Edge in some of the concepts of the exhibit. Professor Mitchell said, “We had some early brainstorming sessions on the project in which a variety of people participated, including The Edge. To show something of the process, we included a few of the early napkin sketches.”

I’d have Edge on my Pictionary team anytime!

Some might remember that both Edge and Bono have been involved with the MIT Media Lab in the past, serving on the Board of Directors for the now disbanded Media Lab Europe.

On a lighter note from the rest of the world of U2…

With Bono now giving shoutouts to fictional characters (a la Entourage) and with his politicking ever on the rise, I guess it was only a matter of time before Bono started calling meetings with fictional politicians.

While Bono made no appearance on the program, viewers of this week’s episode of The West Wing (or maybe I’m the only one left?) saw a few female staffers giddy with joy upon hearing that Bono wanted to meet with presidental candidate Matthew Santos, played by Jimmy Smits. By the end of the episode, this somehow “evolved” to a discussion of women trading in their “Santos for President” underwear for some “Bono for President” underwear.

Who’s the first to get this idea to Cafepress?
UPDATE: I should have known it’d be out there already:
http://www.cafepress.com/bono4prez.16989437

…Chilean President Ricardo Lagos.

According to Australia’s The Age (theage.com.au):

Bolivians have found a new reason to grumble about arch rival Chile - the small five-stringed Andean guitar Chilean President Ricardo Lagos gave to U2 frontman Bono when the Irish rock band played in Santiago.

According to Bolivians, the charango is a uniquely Bolivian instrument and Lagos’ gesture has prompted a chorus of nationalistic complaint from government ministers, musicians and newspaper commentators.

“The charango is Bolivian,” read an editorial headline in La Razon, while the vice minister for culture called on President Evo Morales to present Chile’s President-elect, Michelle Bachelet, with a charango when he attends her inauguration this Saturday.

Lagos defended his choice of gift, saying the charango comes from the Andean plateau that extends into Chile.
Resentment toward Chile has been strong in Bolivia since it lost its access to the Pacific in a 19th-century war and the two countries have had no diplomatic ties since 1978.

However, both neighbours have expressed hope of improving relations in recent months. (c) aap.

I’ll wite this carefully because I don’t claim to fully understand what all is involved… but apparently a user(s) of the virtual world system Second Life recently created (and re-created) a U2 concert inside the game/world.

The “concert” involved user-made likenesses of the band, the stage, merchandise stands, etc. — all fairly realistic, with one exception: only 50 other Second Life users showed up for the gig!

There might be some potential legal issues involved since the “concert” involved a replay of U2’s actual show (the audio) from December 4, 2005, in Boston. I don’t post this here to make any statement on that part of the situation, only to point out something that looks pretty cool.

You can see more photos and read about the virtual concert at Brands In Games.