Tuesday, August 12, 2008
the view from my balcony
ahhh, the joys of pollution :) Here are a few pictures I took from my balcony - a few days apart - when I was waking up really early for work [both were taken shortly before or after 6:30am on different days in the last week of July '08]
Thursday, August 7, 2008
busy busy busy
I've been so busy the past few weeks that I haven't even had the time to think about writing a blog chronicling the things that have been keeping me busy. But here I am... during a surprising [and very welcome] respite from the constant onslaught at work.
Last night I went to the Weird Al concert with Erlynne and Chris. It was great! During the costume changes they showed videos which were hilarious. :)
The last two concerts I went to before Weird Al were Ours, and Yaz. The 'Ours' show was amazing. Ours was great, but more surprisingly, BOTH of the opening bands were really good. I bought the CDs they had there at the show and fell in love with one of the bands. They're called God or Julie. I haven't gotten this hyped about a new band discovery since Mika. You can get God or Julie's album "This Road Before" on iTunes, and I highly recommend that you do!
The Yaz show was also great. They peformed pretty much their entire catalog. A few of the songs had been re-worked and hopefully they'll release some kind of live versions and/or DVD at some point.
Now the next concert I look forward to is Nine Inch Nails. First, my friend Tony and I will be taking a road trip down to Houston to see them on August 16th. Then my friend Brock will join Tony and I to see them again in Dallas on August 18th. I've been listening to the NIN cds again, getting stoked!
Some of the other things that have been keeping me busy lately are watching movies and going to plays. I finally saw Iron Man at the dollar theater the other day and really liked it. I'd be excited to see what a sequel will present. I also saw "Baby Mama" [with Tina Fey and Amy Pohler] at the dollar theater - if you haven't seen it yet I recommend it. I laughed a lot. A friend brought over some DVDs one night and I finally saw "Lars and the Real Girl." Another one I would highly recommend. It made me cry - like 2 or 3 times...
My friend Chris is currently in a theater class and had to see and review 3 different plays. Since he didn't want to go alone, and of his friends, I'm the only one up for such a thing, I went with him to all of them. We saw Footloose [the musical] a british play called "House" [we didn't see it's companion play "Garden" though] and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." During both "Footloose" and "A Funny Thing..." I felt like I might have seen each of those plays at some time before in my life... but wasn't really sure, as my memory can best be described as "very spotty" now.
Footloose was put on by the Plano Repertory Theater. It was hard to sit through. The singing was sometimes ok - sometimes not. The acting was bad, the direction was bad. You definitely weren't missing anything if you didn't see this production.
In the next play - House - the acting/direction was all good, but the play itself was billed as a comedy and I think I only slightly chuckled at maybe two or three lines the whole time. It was just generally uninteresting and often boring. It had companion piece called Garden, being performed simultaneously by the same cast in the adjacent theater. Each piece was billed as standing on its own, but there were a bunch of things in the play we saw that made absolutely no sense without seeing the other one. Perhaps seeing the other one would have made it better, but I don't think I could have sat through another boring play just to get the other pieces to the bewildering puzzle.
"A funny thing happened..." was put on at the Watertower Theater in Addison. It was at least entertaining, and sometimes actually humourous. The actors certainly brought energy to the show. Overall good.
Last night I went to the Weird Al concert with Erlynne and Chris. It was great! During the costume changes they showed videos which were hilarious. :)
The last two concerts I went to before Weird Al were Ours, and Yaz. The 'Ours' show was amazing. Ours was great, but more surprisingly, BOTH of the opening bands were really good. I bought the CDs they had there at the show and fell in love with one of the bands. They're called God or Julie. I haven't gotten this hyped about a new band discovery since Mika. You can get God or Julie's album "This Road Before" on iTunes, and I highly recommend that you do!
The Yaz show was also great. They peformed pretty much their entire catalog. A few of the songs had been re-worked and hopefully they'll release some kind of live versions and/or DVD at some point.
Now the next concert I look forward to is Nine Inch Nails. First, my friend Tony and I will be taking a road trip down to Houston to see them on August 16th. Then my friend Brock will join Tony and I to see them again in Dallas on August 18th. I've been listening to the NIN cds again, getting stoked!
Some of the other things that have been keeping me busy lately are watching movies and going to plays. I finally saw Iron Man at the dollar theater the other day and really liked it. I'd be excited to see what a sequel will present. I also saw "Baby Mama" [with Tina Fey and Amy Pohler] at the dollar theater - if you haven't seen it yet I recommend it. I laughed a lot. A friend brought over some DVDs one night and I finally saw "Lars and the Real Girl." Another one I would highly recommend. It made me cry - like 2 or 3 times...
My friend Chris is currently in a theater class and had to see and review 3 different plays. Since he didn't want to go alone, and of his friends, I'm the only one up for such a thing, I went with him to all of them. We saw Footloose [the musical] a british play called "House" [we didn't see it's companion play "Garden" though] and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." During both "Footloose" and "A Funny Thing..." I felt like I might have seen each of those plays at some time before in my life... but wasn't really sure, as my memory can best be described as "very spotty" now.
Footloose was put on by the Plano Repertory Theater. It was hard to sit through. The singing was sometimes ok - sometimes not. The acting was bad, the direction was bad. You definitely weren't missing anything if you didn't see this production.
In the next play - House - the acting/direction was all good, but the play itself was billed as a comedy and I think I only slightly chuckled at maybe two or three lines the whole time. It was just generally uninteresting and often boring. It had companion piece called Garden, being performed simultaneously by the same cast in the adjacent theater. Each piece was billed as standing on its own, but there were a bunch of things in the play we saw that made absolutely no sense without seeing the other one. Perhaps seeing the other one would have made it better, but I don't think I could have sat through another boring play just to get the other pieces to the bewildering puzzle.
"A funny thing happened..." was put on at the Watertower Theater in Addison. It was at least entertaining, and sometimes actually humourous. The actors certainly brought energy to the show. Overall good.
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