bound for Seattle!

spaaaaaaace needle!

after a day of battling with a number of travel booking websites (especially you, travelocity), we’ve finally booked and paid for our trip to Seattle!

so what will we do there?

uhhhh… well… hm. stuff?

we know a few folks there and we’ll lean on them for some guidance/direction. we’ve already spotted a few specific places we’ll want to visit (all the normal tourist type of things: zoo, aquarium, Space Needle, Pike Place, etc). the only thing for certain at this point is our last day trip to The Gorge Amphitheater to see Coldplay.

yes, Coldplay, again. but this time, we’ll be ten rows back from the stage, so that’s really freaking exciting.

edit: this is our hotel for the week.

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back to work.

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edit re: Twitter

i’ve turned my twitter profile to “private” after receiving a rapid succession of spam follows from a fairly obscene junk user. the only way to combat this, other than manually blocking spammers, was to turn on the privacy option. i really hate that i had to do it, because i like being “out there,” but it was just getting to be a big pain in my arse.

what this means for you non-tweeters: the tweet feed on my sidebar is now removed, as it only works with a full-on public profile. sorry.

the coldplay show

kinda' close...

this was likely the greatest show i have ever borne witness to. and that’s saying a whole bunch.

and that’s really all i have to say that isn’t going to sound like super-fanboi foaming at the mouth with hyperbole.

g’night.

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[edited to add some additional thoughts now that i'm awake and coherent]

after a good night’s sleep and a long (notsogreat) day at work, yes, i still believe the show last night was the best i’ve ever seen. to the bullet points!

• Howling Bells sounded better live than on the album.
• i did not realize that Pete Yorn was gonna be the second opener. i’m pretty sure i didn’t just miss this in the run up to the show, so he must’ve been a last minute tag on (and yes, he played in Atlanta, too). he was great.
• the crowd at the show was a pretty fair mix of folks. lots of kids, lots of “adults.” very white.
• the experience of a Coldplay show is a very interactive one. Chris Martin (like any good showman) is very adept at keeping the crowd going and with it. he’s a very silly man, especially when he dances.
• this is a band that seems to really, really enjoy each other and they all feed off of Martin’s energy, which seems to know no bounds. he’s constantly moving about the stage and jigging around when he’s not on his piano stool. well, actually…
• i would like to know what sort of space-age materials he’s made use of for his piano stool. that thing shoulda’ broken at least 20 times in the course of the night.
• i really appreciated that this show could’ve been for an audience of 500,000. there was no dumbing down or scaling back of anything. Oak Mtn. is quite a small venue in the grand scheme of arenas and it must be difficult for some bands to come through and realize how much they may have to scale back everything. i never felt Coldplay was playing down to the audience.
• the giant inflatable yellow balls that made an appearance during (of course) ‘Yellow’ were a whole lotta’ fun. it did seem odd that they mostly wound up in the front right of seating. selfish front row people.
• yes, they had mini-stages setup in the seating areas. that’s right, stages. they had one set up near the front, stage left, where they played a montage of songs set to an 80s vibe. that was really cool. the second mini-stage was right below us, stage right, in the walkway between sections 306 and 2(whatever). here, they played ‘Green Eyes’ and ‘I’m A Believer.’
• hearing ‘Fix You’ sung by the crowd was one of the most brilliant, beautiful, and breath taking musical moments in my life. goose bumps and shivers. its one thing to hear it on a CD, another to do it yourself with thousands of other people.
• and we did “the wave,” composed entirely of lit-up cell phones.

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now for the down sides (not really Coldplay related)

• smokers. now, its an outdoor arena and there aren’t really any enforceable rules about smoking in such a place, but at some point i’d like to think folks have a bit more common sense or decency to leave their seat and go somewhere else to smoke. seriously, this was headache inducing, especially the constant waft of cloves [and seriously, cloves?].
• the douchebags in front of us. they made a very visibly 7-month pregnant Cassie move to a different seat. you stay classy, a*holes, and we’ll pretend the two of you weren’t totally secret gay lovers . [in all fairness, Jacob & Cassie's original seats were way down away from us, so they just grabbed the empty ones in front of us. but by the time the douchebags showed up, J&C's original seats had been snagged by someone else. still... a total douche move.]
• the seemingly disappointing turnout. i’ve no idea what happened here. by the time Coldplay took the stage, there were still large swaths of seats that didn’t have either butts in them or folks standing in front of them. my theory is that the show was a victim online scalping (tickets were technically sold out a couple hours after they officially went on sale) and the jacked up prices at StubHub and elsewhere scared folks away from buying tickets. it was obvious (to me) this is what happened as the empty seats were all clumped together in groups and rows. this, of course, is not a good thing. i imagine the following scenario: concert promoter/publicist (who handles other large bands) looks out at the seats, notices the empty spots, and passes along this news to his other buddies who handle other bands. this, in turn, rots away our chances at getting other big bands to come through the area. my memory is bad, but didn’t Congress (or someone else) just rule that LiveNation/TicketMaster was going to have to increase their measures to counteract these shenanigans? i hope so.

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so… there are my final thoughts on the show. if Coldplay came back tomorrow, i would be there, and i would buy better seats. i’ve never really felt the desire to go all out and try to get “the best seats” at a show, but this was definitely one that would’ve been worth it.

el fin.

lots of lil’ bits

i’ve been thinking about the blog lately, and i realized i was starting to miss when there were topics thrown into the air for discussion and there would be lengthy debates about (insert whatever here).

oh well.

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i tweeted this earlier tonight…

i just had an epiphany: i’m ok if certain elements of #LOST aren’t explained away by science, like an episode of ‘House’ or something.

it came to me after reading the latest entry on lostpedia about who Jacob’s nemesis is and what that’s all about. i was reminded that way, way back that Darlton stated that everything in the show could/would be explained (at the very least) by pseudo-science, and i thought how cool that was. but the latest kink they’ve thrown here (Esau, Mr. X, whatever) seems to really, truly border on going anywhere past science.

and i really am cool with that. it seems that they’ve been sliding towards some sort of religious element in the course of this past season. now, whether that’s an attempt to sort of cover for the science and dress it up as religion/mythology/whatever, i dunno. but if Jacob and whoever his un-friend is are some sort of supernatural, omnipresent beings… that’s cool. it would actually annoy me a little bit if they felt this intense need to explain it away like some super stupid ridiculous disease on House.

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tomorrow night is Coldplay night!

we’ll be traveling with the Mielkes to B’ham to meet up with Cassie, Jacob, Jenna, & Kevin. i’m really excited about it and cannot wait to see the show they put on.

[btw, if you haven't grabbed the free live EP from them, hop on over here to grab it. it is excellent.]

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last week, i wrote that i had come across (eh hem) a whole load of new music and that i would write about it.

so, in short form, here it is…

• The Boy Least Likely To, The Law of the Playground- this is an odd one. its incredibly shiny and sounds like sparkly pop plastic toy (along the same lines as Apples In Stereo), but the lyrics have some really dark undertones. but its really entertaining and makes for good summer time blasting. just, you know… ignore the lyrics.
• Green Day, 21st Century Breakdown- i’m still working on this one, kinda’ like i’m still working on the last U2 album (No Line on the Horizon).  American Idiot was such an incredible album and a brilliant, watershed moment for the band that anything deemed “less” will have a hard time impacting anyone. there are some good moments throughout, but… i dunno. its hard for me to not think, “i want American Idiot part 2,” and in a way, 21st Century Breakdown is. there’s a story, there are characters, disaffected youth, yada yada yada… but at times it seems they’re not so much reinventing as they are rehashing. more listening required.
• Manic Street Preachers, Journal for Plague Lovers- i am completely new to this band, so i’ve nothing to really base this album off of (as far as comparisons go). judging by what’s available on iTunes right now, it seems they’ve been sorta’ out of the game for awhile. anywho, i’ve really enjoyed this album. its just rock. a little bit… weird… at times, but its good rock. so i like it.
• Howling Bells, Radio Wars- this is the band opening for Coldplay tomorrow night. meh. they’ve a good sound and i can see why the boys picked ‘em, but… meh.
• Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix- yes, they’re French. yes, the album title is a bit self-aggrandizing. but its fun, in a Nada Surf pop sort of way. its fun pop rock, and seriously: is there anything the world needs now, more than ever, than some good, fun pop rock? yeah, i didn’t think so.
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It’s Blitz!- i’ve never been a big fan of Y(3). don’t get me wrong: i loved “Maps.” but i’ve never made the effort to jump in on their bandwagon. however, i felt compelled to after seeing them on SNL earlier this season and also because the cover for the album is of someone breaking an egg in their hand and its kinda’ cool looking. its very 80s, very discotheque, very dancy. therefore, i thoroughly enjoyed it. check it out.

other things i haven’t gotten around to listening through:

• Sparklehorse, Dark Night of the Soul
• Pet Shop Boys, Yes
• Depeche Mode, Sounds of the Universe
• Conor Oberst, Outer South

more on those at some later date.

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hopefully you caught the season finale of SNL this week with Will Ferrell hosting. it wasn’t the best episode of the season (that award collectively goes to everything pre-election in one lump sum), but it was fan-freaking-tastic to see reprisals of old roles. not only did we get Harry Caray on “Weekend Update,” and not only did we get Celebrity Jeopardy… we also got the return of the brilliant Norm Macdonald as Burt Reynolds (for all of 30 seconds). and of course, we also got Artie Lange in the last sketch (which was brilliant, btw).

[quick aside: the return of Artie Lange was fantastic. i never knew the guy's history until he popped up one day on 'Fresh Air' on NPR. dude has seen/been through alot.]

catch some of the stuff on Hulu if you can.

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that’s about all. g’night.

a big day

nothing huge to post tonight. its been a big day, though.

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the Giffords & Taylors all came down today to visit. i finally got my new grill all pieced together and we cooked chicken on it for a nice, big Chicken Salad. very happy with the final product.

Brooke and Justin had to leave, though, which was sad. the Taylors and we wound up over at the Mielke’s house later on. we did Sinclair’s for dinner and watched SNL. now we’re at home. Jacob and Cassie are spending the night (our first overnight guests in the house!) and tomorrow, Jackie’s gonna try and do some shooting for them. unfortunately, the weather is not cooperating, which is exceedingly frustrating.

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big things from today:

• Jackie’s new camera came in this morning. she has yet to throw a lens on it and play, though. i think in a couple of  ways, i’m more excited about it than she is. i’ve been chomping at the bit for her to shoot something with it today, but she just didn’t want to make it a priority. oh well. more time to read the manual and get things right the first time. it truly is a beast. its bigger than her current XTi, has more modes, and doesn’t provide for more than one fully automagic mode (which is a plus).
• while we were over at the Mielke’s, i decided to go ahead and sign up for a livenation.com account, in preparation for the Monday morning Coldplay ticket sale. as i am wont to do, i started to poke around the “presale” area of the B’ham show ticket page. there were a couple of options: Radio Promo code and Ticket Rush. a quick Google search turned up the codes for the Radio promo codes, but nothing for B’ham. so i Googled for the Ticket Rush thing, and BAM, i found the code. apparently, that section of the livenation website is under  maintenance, so they posted the monthly code on the front page since no one had access to it. on a whim, i tried it out… and at the end of it all, i had purchased tickets for us, the Mielkes, the Taylors, and Kevin & Jenna.

for a minute, i felt kind of bad about it. but then… i realized it was livenation/ticket master. they have no feelings. they just want my money (and lord knows they got it). and they suck. and we deserve to go to a big rock show; its been a good, long while, at least since April of 2003 (Pearl Jam @ Oak Mtn.)

so i don’t feel bad. at all. in the least.

so that’s now two big shows this year already: Dave Matthews Band on April 20th and Coldplay on May 16th.

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and now its bed time. good night.

new Coldplay video? yes, please!