Well that was a great evening.
I have to say... Ann Wilson, Nancy Wilson, and the rest of Heart still got it. As does Def Leppard... which made last night's double-bill especially amazing...
As for today? BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS, BABY!
It only got better from there.
It's lunchtime. I can haz veggie burger while blogging?
• Irene. I suppose we should be grateful that New York passed same-sex marriage... obviously God was pleased with this since he reduced the hurricane down to a tropical storm before it struck the state. Oh... wait... you mean it doesn't work that way? Well that's odd. Because you know damn well that dumbass fucktards like Pat Robertson (or ChristWire) would be falling all over themselves to blame same-sex marriage if New York were devastated by a Category 3 storm. I don't know what it says about their followers that they would much rather take glee in God's wrath than His grace, but there you have it. UPDATE: Well, no surprise there.
• Irene Deux. In other hurricane-based commentary... better safe than sorry...
• Levine. It's nice to know that rock stars are starting to act like rock stars again and using their powers for good. Now it's Maroon 5's front-man Adam Levine, using his newfound jump in popularity from The Voice to slam MTV...
From his Twitter feed...
the VMA's. one day a year when MTV pretends to still care about music. I'm drawing a line in the sand. fuck you VMA's.
Spot. On. MTV "Music Television" is a joke. They rarely play music videos anymore... it's all The Jersey Shore and other stupid reality show crap. The only time you see music is when they think a cheap publicity stunts like the Video Music Awards will get them attention. They truly don't give a flying fuck about music and haven't in a very long time. And now people within the industry are starting to call them on their bullshit. Here's hoping it's just a start.
• Endorsement. Stay healthy, ladies!
• Ultimate. I travel. A lot. And I'm really grateful for the opportunity to do so. But when it comes to those "ultimate dream trips" I'd love to take, they're all out of reach. That National Geographic Expedition to the arctic... that Abercrombie & Kent trek to Nepal... that Windjammer cruise in the Indian Ocean... they're just not an option financially. For the cost of just one of those trips, I could take five if I watch my pennies.
So my dreams have to remain dreams. But Abercrombie & Kent have released a beautiful new iPad app that makes those dreams a little more real...
If you've got a lot of empty space on your iPad (the app is huge!) I highly recommend downloading the A&K Travel app to spark your travel dreams.
And that's a wrap! The veggie burger was delicious, by the way.
People can make fun of Amy Winehouse and mock her death as much as they want. It won't change the fact that she was a remarkable artist who created music that a great many people, including myself, really loved. A month ago I was lamenting that she hadn't come out with a new album in five years and was crossing my fingers that something would be released soon. Now, it saddens me greatly that anything we get... if anything at all... will be released posthumously.
I am not going to deny that she had serious problems and did some crazy shit. Amy was a very troubled and tortured person, and dealt with it the best way she knew how. Unfortunately that involved a lot of abusive behavior that would be tough for anybody to survive. But not one bit of it made me enjoy her music any less. Because no matter how out-of-control and batshit crazy she was in her personal life, in her songs she made perfect sense.
I'd say that I will miss her music, but the truth is her music isn't going anywhere. I just wish so badly she would have stuck around to make more of it. And, on that note, my favorite of so many favorites...
The rest of my day was $600 in repair costs for my car's brakes.
Hanging out with my sister on a flawless afternoon.
Meeting up with some remarkable Pacific Northwest bloggers.
Life is the bittersweet joy and hurt of it all. I am so incredibly blessed to have friends and family to make even my worst days good again.
Oh how I wish Amy Winehouse could have found the same.
One thing I've been noticing lately is a lot of cars being pulled over by the police. In an age of labor cuts and dwindling budgets, it seems like even the cops are having to justify their jobs and increase revenue. This means a lot of tickets are probably being issued where they once were not. Because of this, I've been driving a lot more conservatively over the past year or so... but not everybody has gotten the message. When I was driving over to Seattle last week, I was twice passed by cars going way over the speed limit, only to catch up with them down the road after they had been pulled over.
Today it happened again. The police are not playing around. At least not in Washington State.
A part of me is happy about this, because there are people on the road who are downright dangerous and should be pulled over. But another part of me is concerned at the thought that the police may be going too far. If people are being pulled over for going 65 in a 60, for example, I don't consider this to be ticket-worthy. Even a temporary passing speed of 70 in a 60 should not be a ticketable offense if somebody is passing safely. Hopefully, things are not getting out of hand, because there's a fine line between "To serve and protect" and "To humiliate and harass."
Personally, I'd rather pay more taxes to the police so that they don't have ticket quotas and can focus on public safety and dangerous drivers... like the assholes who are slow-driving in the passing lane AND AREN'T PASSING ANYBODY! It may cost us more money, but at least it's not affecting our insurance rates, so we're saving in the long-run.
In the meanwhile... watch your speed, citizens!
Oh... for those of you who were asking which headphones I ended up with after my rant yesterday...
Blogography's Bose AE2 Audio Headphones Review
Bose is one of those companies that usually gets massacred at review sites because most everybody seems to think they are overpriced and have poor sound. This is kind of surprising because every time I've stopped at a Bose kiosk and given them a listen, I've been relatively impressed. No, they're not going to win in a contest against $1500 studio reference cans (obviously) but, for the most part, I think they're worth the money they charge.
I have four sets of earbuds, with my favorite being the Klipsch S4i. The problem is that earbuds become uncomfortable for me after a while, and I was wanting something that went over my ears like a traditional headset. Unfortunately, the three pairs I tried at the mid-low-end (JVC, Sony, and Skullcandy... each $50 or less) were not at all comfortable. It finally got to the point that I didn't even care about the sound, all I wanted was something that didn't squeeze my brain or dent the top of my head. A Google search for "most comfortable headphones" eventually led me to Bose. Target had a listening station and AE2's in stock for $20 off ($130 total). They were about $60 more than I wanted to spend, but oh well.
My thoughts on my new cans can be found in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Letting go of the past hasn't really been a problem for me because I am not a very sentimental person. Stuff happens (for better or worse), I learn what I can from those events, then try my best to move on. This is not to say that I discard my past completely. Far from it. I just don't dwell on things so long that they take over. Life is too short, and there's so much more out there to learn and experience without the past holding me back.
As a side-benefit, things like "recovering from heartbreak" and "moving past mistakes" a bit easier.
And yet... there's always something there to remind me...
This was made perfectly clear over the past few weeks while I've been cleaning out a storage unit I've been renting for the past 18 years... and haven't opened in 16 years.
A lot of stuff I had thought was dead and buried has suddenly come back to haunt me, figuratively speaking.
Which means I was sentimental at one time to have kept all this crap... but ended up losing my sentimentality sometime in the mid-90's.
Thank heavens.
95% of my stuff in storage is going straight to the dumpster.
Where it probably belongs.
I've been fact-checked!
First thing this morning I got an email from Bad Robert calling "bullshit" on the meme I filled out on Saturday. Question #55 was "WHAT IS YOUR MOST EMBARRASSING CD ON THE SHELF?" I answered with this: "I don't have CDs anymore, they've all been ripped into iTunes. I'm not really embarrassed by any of it."
Bad Robert had this to say...
"Dude! You still listen to the Millionaires! You're not even a little embarrassed by that?"
To which I could only answer "Oh gawd... you're right!"
The Millionaires is a girl-band duo (formerly a trio) that sings mostly about drinking, doing drugs, and having sex with every guy they meet. So... basically they're drunken sluts who kinda sing. And it IS embarrassing that I would be into listening to that crap, but I just can't help myself. I mean, it's pretty much just catchy beats with filthy lyrics, but it's fun. One of their least offensive videos (which is still a little offensive) is Stay The Night...
Yes. Yes, I know.
But if you want to know what the Millionaires are really about, you need to listen to Party Like a Millionaire, which is probably offensive and most definitely not safe for work...
Their parents must be so proud.
And yes, I am embarrassed to have Millionaires in my music collection. So thanks, Bad Robert! Oh well. If you want to experience the full horror, here's their MySpace.
You. Are. Welcome.
Anyway...
Today I had to run to the craft shop to buy some posterboard. Well, they call it posterboard, but it's really just big wimpy sheets of paper now-a-days. It stopped being "board" years ago.
As I was pulling into a parking space, I had to slam on the brakes. A woman in a giant pick-up truck was driving through her parking space to exit through the one I was entering. She waited a second, then honked her horn so I would move. But I just sat there. She can back out of her parking space just like everybody else has to.
This did not make her happy.
She started slamming her fists on her steering wheel and laying on the horn.
I just sat there. Fuck her.
She finally realized I wasn't going to move, so she started screaming at me with crap I couldn't hear because my stereo was on. After a minute went by she finally backed up, then went screeching out of the parking lot.
I guess she was in a hurry to go off and party like a Millionaire.
But seriously. What IS it with people?
All I wanted to do was park in an empty parking spot... none of this situation was my fault, and yet there she was acting like an asshole and blaming me for it. Well kiss my ass, I'm sick of this shit. Be a bitch on your own time and leave me out of it.
People suck.
But the world is ending in five days, so there's that.
Last night I saw an amazing show by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark at The Music Box L.A.
All the expense and trouble of getting here melted away as the band slammed through a sensational set list of their incredible music. And, because I had bought a "VIP Package," I got to attend a soundcheck and meet the band before the show even started. This was an incredible experience, and made a great thing even better...
The soundcheck ended up being fantastic, but the concert itself was amazing. One of my favorite new bands, Mackintosh Braun, opened up for them, which was like extra frosting on your cake.
I thought it would be impossible for any band to even get close to the energy from the Matt & Kim show I attended last week in London, but Andy, Paul, and Co. played their guts out for an enthusiastic crowd that absolutely loved their performance...
When I met the band, I gave them crap for not playing Seattle. They said that they had been asked to tour the States again, and Seattle would definitely be included next time. Which is like chocolate pudding on top of your extra frosting on top of your cake. I can hardly wait!
Since this was the final show on their tour, Andy took a minute to send out some thank you's. One of them was to their record label, Bright Antenna, for sponsoring this tour in the first place. Apparently no concert promoter would back OMD because they didn't think people would show up. Of course, the band went on to not only sell-out every single show, but they even added an extra one. Which also sold out...
Congrats to Andy, Paul, Martin, and Malcolm on a great album, a great tour, and for having such great fans.
And now it's time for how I got here...
Along with Depeche Mode and the Thompson Twins, the holy trinity of my favorite 80's bands is completed by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (more often known as "OMD"). Other bands like a-ha, Pet Shop Boys, and Duran Duran came along to snag my attention, but my DM, TT, and OMD came first.
As a massively huge fan of their work, I was thrilled when OMD released a new album last year, History of Modern, that was as good as anything they've ever done. It ended up being my pick for "Album of the Year," so you can imagine my delight when I found out that they were touring the USA in March.
Except there was no stop in Seattle, and I was gone for a big chunk of the shows because I was in London and Venice. A part of me was gutted that I'd miss the tour, but a part of me was also relieved because I'd be flat-broke when I got back from Europe.
And then they added an extra Los Angeles date six days after I returned from London.
I was sorely tempted but, the cost of the flight, hotel, food, and tickets was more than I could spend, and I've already seen OMD live several times.
But then Mackintosh Braun announced they would be the opening act.
Keep in mind, THIS is what my favorite albums list looks like for 2010...
With Mackintosh Braun added to the ticket, there was no way I could miss this show. I had just seen Matt & Kim. I had flown to New York for a-ha's farewell tour. The chance to see tracks from four out of five of my favorite albums of 2010 performed live was too much.
And so I decided to throw responsibility to the wind, spend a chunk of money I don't have, and fly to L.A. for one night only for an opportunity to listen to some great music. And since I was already going for broke, I went ahead and got the VIP deal. In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.
What was especially cool was that Ian and Ben (Mackintock Braun) hung around in the lobby after the show so I could tell them that they were the reason I flew to the show. They were genuinely grateful, and a couple of really nice guys. If you haven't listened to their stuff, I highly recommend it.
And so now I fly home. Poor, but happy.
Which is as it really should be, I suppose.
Best.
Birthday.
Present.
Ever...
I'm covered in sweat and hoarse from screaming... that's how you know it was a great show!
Yes. That's me. Drinking Champaign with MATT AND KIM!
When I arrived at London's Restless Garage, I though my biggest surprise of the night would be when my friend and fellow Hard Rock Cafe aficionado Perry showed up with his girlfriend Sarah to the concert.
That was just the beginning.
The concert, as expected, was amazing. Matt & Kim so clearly love music and love their fans. They give absolutely everything they have to their performance, and this lets you appreciate their songs on an entirely new level...
Hello London!
Matt takes it down a notch...
Balloon Armageddon!
That's Kim dancing ON the crowd!
And there's Matt crowd-surfing!
After trying to catch them in concert for literally years across the USA, I finally managed it by accident while on a Layover in London. How fucking crazy is life?
Apparently not crazy enough.
Because Matt & Kim's manager stumbled across my blog and sympathized with my numerous failed efforts to see the band live. Being the incredibly kind and generous human being he is, he arranged for a back-stage pass, for which I will be forever grateful. Because meeting Matt & Kim is kind of one of those life-defining moments...
My musical tastes are firmly planted in the 1980's. But when I first heard Matt & Kim's stuff, I fell in love with music all over again. They have a passion that you just don't see much anymore, and it comes across in every song they make. Seeing them perform those songs live lets you feel it.
After the show, Matt & Kim jumped into the audience and made their way around the show floor, saying hello to everybody. Kim stayed and signed autographs and had pictures taken until they literally kicked everybody out of the club. They just love their fans.
But the icing on the cake is that they are truly grateful for their success. They love what they do, and realize that it's their fans that make it all possible. When I was back-stage waiting to say hello, Matt & Kim were talking with various people that were there. And the topic of their conversation wasn't what a great show they gave... or how hard they rock... or how awesome they are... it was all about their fans. They went on and on with how thrilled they were that the London audience was so welcoming and so hyped to see them. They loved that everybody was having a great time. They were genuinely humbled that people showed up to watch them play. They said again and again how great it was to have such enthusiastic fans. If I wasn't already a massive fan of the band, I would have become one right there just listening to them... even if I hated their music.
And then I got to meet them, which is about the greatest thing ever.
Then the night was over, and Matt & Kim were off to Paris so they could thrill their fans in the City of Lights.
I wanted so badly to hop on a train and meet them there.
But, alas, I am flying back home today, so I had to pull myself away... content knowing that I had just met one of my favorite bands of all time.
Thanks to Matt, Kim, Kevin, Perry, and Sarah for the best birthday ever!
For a day that had so many things going oh so terribly wrong, something unexpected happened to make all the suffering worthwhile.
But, alas, it has not yet come to pass. Every time they've played in Seattle, I'm away. Any time I'm in a city other than Seattle, it seems as though I've just missed them. And any time I've made plans to see them, life gets in the way. I've purchased tickets to see them perform three times (once in Seattle, once in Austin, and again in New York)... but every time I was diverted and couldn't make it.
Either somebody up there really doesn't want me to see Matt & Kim, or I'm just horribly unlucky.
Or both...
Lil' Whall PC has no sympathy for Lil' Dave Mac's pain. And people wonder why I hate Windows!
So you can imagine my non-surprise when I went through their brand new Sidewalks tour schedule and saw that no dates for Seattle were listed. But then something caught my eye. There were still some dates left in their current European tour. Including March 23 in London...
Which happens to be the day I have an overnight layover at London's Heathrow Airport on my way back home.
And so now, after years of chasing them all over the USA trying to catch them live, I have a ticket to see Matt & Kim in the UK because I just happen to be in the neighborhood.
Bloody hell.
I wonder what's going to go wrong this time?
Show canceled? Trip canceled? Weather delay? Public transportation strike? Venue closing? AIRPLANE EXPLODING?
I guess we'll see. Maybe this is finally my moment. But if something does go wrong, I'm pretty sure I'll be blaming Matt & Kim. Surely after years of effort on my part, it can't be my fault that things are going so terribly wrong.
Can it?
At 2:30am I ended up playing chauffeur to the hospital ER. While I was waiting, I saw a guy walk in holding one of his fingers that had gotten cut off. Holy crap. I could so not work the reception desk at an ER. I do not do well when people show up holding body parts. Or The bubonic plague.
• Debloggered. I've been noticing for quite a while now the long, slow, steady decline in blogging. It's a little depressing, but I didn't know how depressing until I was bored in the hospital waiting room and decided to edit my feed reader. It turns out twenty-eight of my feeds ended up getting deleted because they haven't been updated in over six months. Twenty-eight! I can't be sure, but I probably deleted close to that many a year ago. A few of the deleted bloggers I keep in touch with via Twitter or Facebook, so I guess that's okay. But there are others who apparently dropped off the face of the earth. A few left with a sad "this is my last entry" post, whereas others just... stopped.
A classic example is an expatriate who decided to move to Korea for a year so he could experience life in another country before getting his PhD. I found his blog during my third trip to Korea when I was Googling for... something... and kept reading because he was an interesting guy living an interesting life who had similar thoughts and hobbies (comic books!) to mine. Eventually he fell in love with a Korean girl, got married, ended up staying in Korea five years, got accepted at a school back in the USA, moved into a new apartment here with his wife, and then the entries just... stopped. It's so strange to have been a part of somebody's life for years and then =BLAM!= you have no idea what happened to them or how they're doing. I ended up doing some Google-stalking, found the guy on Twitter, then sent a request... but since I never commented on his blog, he doesn't know me and will probably ignore it.
It's the same story for a few other blogs I once followed. You get caught up in somebody's life, feel like you know them, then one day they're gone and you're left wondering. Now, granted, it's not like a blogger owes anybody anything. If they decide that blogging is no longer something they want to do, then that's all there is to it. But, even so, it's a little bit cruel. And a little bit curious. I wonder how many people would notice (or even care) if tomorrow I just... stopped?
• Fosterized. Last summer a song called Pumped Up Kicks by an unknown band called "Foster The People" was creeping through the blogosphere, infecting people wherever it landed. The song was contagious in a way that's truly rare... slamming through a catchy beat and even catchier nonsense lyrics that still haunt me months later. The odd thing being that the band was practically invisible, and finding any new material past their one song was nigh impossible. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that not only did they finally release a video for Pumped Up Kicks, they also unleashed an EP with three songs on iTunes (including Houdini, which has become permanently implanted in my head). Apparently an album is on the way. I'm hoping it sucks, because I don't know how I will be able to function with more than three awesome Foster The People songs constantly looping through my head...
• Branded. And so Russell Brand hosted Saturday Night Live last night. Compared to most recent episodes, it wasn't bad. But with the exception of Brand's monologue, Jay Pharoah's flawless Eminem impersonation, and a faux ad-spot for an offensively British movie called Don' You Go Rounin' Roun to Re Ro, it just wasn't that funny to me. By the time we got to the heinous A Spot of Tea sketch, I wanted to impale myself on my remote just to end the suffering. Surely even the people involved can't think this crap is in any way funny? Here's hoping Miley Cyrus manages to somehow have a good show in two weeks despite all evidence pointing to doom. Wow. If Hannah Montana can't make for a good episode of SNL they might as well hang it up.
• Weathered. Well, poop...
• Microsofnokia. Nokia, once the final word in mobile phones, has been sliding into irrelevance for years. First Blackberry skewered them in the business market. Then iPhone and Android served them their head in the personal smartphone market. In every way that matters Nokia was dying a slow death, never to be heard of again.
And then... Stephen Elop, a former Microsof employee (and Microsoft's eight largest shareholder), became CEO of Nokia. After a brutally honest critique of Nokia's complete lack of ability to compete in the market, Elop announced that Nokia was dumping pretty much everything and hitching its wagon to the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 train. It was spectacularly brilliant and evil. For all intents and purposes, Nokia was now a hardware division of Microsoft. For which Microsoft paid nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero dollars. When I first mentioned this, people called me a wingnut Microsoft-hating conspiracy theorist. And now another former Microsoft employee of sixteen years, Chris Weber, has just been installed as CEO of Nokia USA.
Get out your tinfoil hat!
I'd congratulate Microsoft for dropping to an entirely new level of evil, but I don't think this is going to make much difference. All they've done is ensure that what few manufacturers were making Windows Phone 7 handsets will now be embracing Android 100%. Good thing Microsoft has a lot of money, because that's about the only thing that's keeping them in the smartphone game. Alas, the same can't be said for Nokia. Since Microsoft has no financial interest in the company, they also have no risk. If this massive gamble doesn't pay off, Nokia is done for.
And let's not fool ourselves here, Nokia is done for.
UPDATE: Or billions. Whatever... this doesn't end well.
And on that sad note, I suppose I should try to get some work done before this weekend is over.
If only I could wake up...
Atom Entries Feed Comments Feed
