There was a concert here.
In Spirit: fatigued
Reading: The Fey, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
I know no one cares anymore really, but I drove down to LA last month to see Nobuo Uematsu and the gang in concert. Here's what I wrote down that night:
Holy Shit. No shit, man. Holy shit. Some awesome live performances of newer ff songs, then ff6's intro and the ff theme bringing tears to my eyes, followed by crazy hair metal, ff9 & 10's singles, and a great rearrangement of the ff7 opera? I bought the CD, but no fucking CD can match sitting 30 feet from the stage.
If the Black Mages ever go on tour in the US alone, I'm so buying tickets. (Hell, it'd have to be in cali, I mean, duh.) Thank God japan hasn't outgrown hair metal. Uematsu is fucking metal. And hilarious.
Someone get the man a beer!
Sadly, the CD ended up being a rip-off - it wasn't a recording of the arrangements, just a small collection of OST FF music. Nice enough on its own, but really, no comparison at all. Only one aeris cosplay that I spotted; I expected it to look like some anime con (especially since I saw her as I was driving into the parking lot). Being, y'know, me, I managed to lose my ticket as I was running to put my camera back in the car - but Ticketmaster came through. Nice asian chick and her brother from China next to me. Kinda lame FFX reel played on the video too much though.
The music was so far beyond awesome that I can't even describe it. Great tickets, great seat. Here's the black mages.
The drive was nice though. How often do you get to do over a hundred over a moderately busy mountain pass in thick fog? Might as well spice the trip up a bit. Spent over a hundred miles driving over 100 around bakersfield without overheating and with good mileage. That's why I <3 my car. I do need softer seats though.
That's my impressions of the trip, and I have a few photos, too.
- Oleander lining the freeway.
- Two pretty views of the Grapvine
- A lonely weed growing there.
- That fog I mentioned. (Yes, I took a photo while weaving through people in the fog.)
- A pretty rock outcropping from a wrong turn.
- The sun sets across LA.
- The famous Universal Studios globe and the good ol' Hard Rock Cafe.
- The compliment to the lovely magenta bloom above: A whole groveful.
I'm listening to all of last year's contest music to see what I feel like getting rid of and keeping, so I can make room for this year's, and get it sorta organized. Of 250 songs, only 5 have blown me away. We'll see if this years' fare any better.
I'll update later with some stuff about my current Firefox projects.