Monday was the time of my dad’s funeral, which went a lot better than I had imagined. With the worst time being over and having had a couple of tiresome weeks, it was nice to meet up with Tina again on Thursday. It felt so nice to see her and get a hug from her again after so long. We watched Ratatouille together, then headed out to a friend of mine’s place. I had been invited (so to speak) to a concert, so I asked if Tina wanted to come with me. We were going to see Jim White, someone I hadn’t really heard anything about/of before, but it had been so long since I’ve been to a concert so I figured I’d check it out. The Bone Thugs-N-Harmony concert I was going to before got cancelled, so I figured I’d spend the money from that ticket to cover Tina and me for Jim White instead. I had downloaded a couple of his albums to see what the hell it was, and it sounded quite alright, so I had some idea about what we were going to see.

Nothing particularly wrong with his music, but I think we both were slightly too tired/sleepy for the whole thing, so after an hour or so we went back to my place which is close by the concert venue, put on a movie (Spider-man I believe?) and cuddled in bed instead. We were sort of supposed to take it slow and get to know each other more without all the sexuality, but no such luck that day. As happy and content as I was with just spending time together with her, I must admit it was awfully nice to be able to touch her again in that way.

On Friday we took a little walk down to the city, both for the walk itself, along with some window shopping. On the way back home we stopped by the store and bought some candy to enjoy while cuddling together in bed in front of the TV. I got the lovely pleasure of having Tina sleeping over yet another day. I had really missed the warmth and comfort of her next to me in bed. We watched The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Borrowed my mom’s laptop and tried installing WoW on it again, and lo and behold, it worked. Finally we got to play WoW together next to each other, which was cozy. Went to bed later on and put on some Donald Duck to fall asleep to.

On Saturday morning (A.K.A. afternoon) we did basically the same before Tina had to leave. These last few days helped me get some much needed joy back in my life, I really cherish all the time I get to spend with her. On Thursday when we first met, she gave me this incredible painting she had done for me, which left me quite speechless, it was so touching. Easily the best gift I’ve ever received (sorry mom and dad, all the G.I. Joes and Transformers toys you got me were all very nice, but…).

I haven’t been to a concert forever, so I went browsing around for future concerts to see if anything would catch my interest. Lo and behold, I noticed Bone Thugs-N-Harmony were playing here the 15th of October. I just rediscovered my previous love for them a few weeks ago when I heard their newest album by accident. I remember I used to listen to their E 1999 Eternal album way back when I liked hip-hop in my younger teen years. Strange how your music taste changes over the years. I remember when I got into metal after my hip-hop period, and I had the whole attitude of “damn I gotta get rid of my horrible hip-hop listening past now that I like metal” etc.. I think it took me a good few years to realize that it was pointless to try and block out certain genres for no reason, and that you should just listen to whatever you fancy without worrying about that sort of stuff. Ah, the teenage years…

Well anyway. So even though the tickets were ridiculously priced (~50 euro), I couldn’t help myself, and bought one for myself. It’ll be nice to get out for a night and enjoy some music, it’s been way too long since the last time.

Started watching Traveler yesterday, quite alright first impression. Feels a bit too much like Prison Break (without the prison), not sure if it’s a good thing or not. I tend to get disinterested when the protagonists keep getting into more and more trouble, and the plot evolves into some crazy conspiracy thing that ends up with the government being behind everything and blah blah, you know the deal. Anyway, watched the current 5 episodes, and still interested enough to keep watching, will see how it develops.

Downloaded Need for Speed: Underground 2, which I didn’t have time to try before. Quite enjoyable. Also tried the newest in the NFS series, Need for Speed: Carbon. Somewhat enjoyable as well. I loved NFS Most Wanted, and it seems Carbon is a sort of mix between that and Underground 2, the only problem is that it’s sort of missing the most fun parts of both of them. In other words, it could have been a lot better if they had combined the best of both worlds.

Tried Tomb Raider: Anniversary as well, which was quite entertaining. Felt a bit more like the classic Tomb Raider instead of all these new crap versions in the series.

Been listening to these songs quite a lot lately, mix of old and new:
Daft Punk - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
Snoop Dogg ft. The Doors - Riders on the Storm
Teuvo Loman - Kari
Hazza’ah Al Minhali - Naamat 3yoonik (?, no idea if right name)
Sting & The Police - Some “Best of” Album
Jay-Z - The Blueprint (album)
Journey - Don’t Stop Believin’ \o

Over and out!

Last week Steve called me up, talked about latest happenings and such. It must have been a few months since the last time we got together, so when he asked me about joining him to a concert I immediately agreed to do so. The bands in question were Celestial Bloodshed, Mare (who replaced Sarath) and Urfaust. I had never even heard about any of these bands, but I was looking forward to a night of black metal, drunkenness and catching up with my friend, so I didn’t really care too much about it.

Last night I procured a couple of beers, then proceeded to head out to catch the appropriate subway. Spent a good 5 minutes outside Steve’s place ringing the door bell over and over (deaf drunken bastard), until finally being let in to be greeted by Steve and some guy whose name I don’t remember, rocking out to some music. Drank beer, talked, and were joined by a whole mish mash of random idiotic people later on. The annoying thing about 90% of these metal people is that they’re all the same type of brash loudmouthed macho guys. They constantly need to reassure themselves that they are indeed manly men who doesn’t wear leather because they’re gay. They’ll use pretty much every opportunity to show this, be it with shooting down bottles of straight liqour or pushing and shoving each other as they play air guitar to “the best song in the world” (which seems to change for every track being played). They’ll produce their manliest hand shake, squeezing their muscles as hard as they can to show you that yes, they are in fact strong and confident, stronger than you. Well I could go on and on, but I’ll leave it at that. The short version is that my friend knows a lot of idiots.

Despite being miserable in the company of idiots, time passed on and we eventually headed out around 21:00 to catch the first band playing some 30-60 minutes later. Quite annoying to have to go all the way up to Steve’s place and back again when I live 100 metres from the concert venue, but then again I don’t exactly have a party heaven here in my room. When we arrived at the venue (Betong, Chateau Neuf) the mood was good, just the right kind of drunk. Went up to the front row when Mare started playing — pretty much just messing around with Steve and making faces at each other trying to mimic the ridiculously serious frown the singer had made with his corpse paint. As for the music itself, they were so-so, nothing special. They did give us a lot of laughs though, I’ll give them that, even if it wasn’t intentional. More beers, better mood and the night was great.

Urfaust was playing next, so up to the front row again. They were the only band that I had found any downloadable stuff from before the concert, they’re a Dutch band and this was supposedly their first concert outside their own country. I was a bit skeptical at first when I heard their songs, but a few of them grew on me, they’re certainly a bit different from the norm. They started playing and they were really awesome live. They played some of the songs I liked from before, so that was a big plus. Sung along together with Steve, arms around each other’s shoulders, waving our horns around and enjoying the music thoroughly. Fun, fun, fun!

I believe I got to the point of drunkenness where your body automatically tries to find its way home, as I think I left before Celestial Bloodshed started playing, some time around 1:00 or so. Maybe I missed something great, but who cares, the night was a success either way. Of course I completely forgot to drink any non-alcoholic fluid while drinking last night, so I woke up pretty groggy this morning with a nasty head ache. 500mg ibuprofene, a bottle of water and an hour or two of sleep later I woke up again feeling a bit better.

When you don’t have access to your own computer, along with all your media files, Pandora and the Last.fm player are lifesavers. I have never really fully appreciated them until these last few days. Discovered some great new songs and artists, hence I should probably remind myself to keep using these when I get back to my own computer.

Best part about Christmas? Wham - Last Christmas, of course

What’s been listened to lately:

• Jay-Z - Kingdom Come
  This new album is pretty sweet, at least a few of the songs. What’s mostly been playing though, is the Kingdom Come song itself, damn it is awesome.
• Bruce Springsteen - Lost Masters
  A 21 (!) disc set with various (you guessed it) lost master tracks, i.e. outtakes and different versions of his songs. It’s really mesmerizing to listen to him when he’s a bit “off”, making mistakes and talking during the songs, training riffs and stuff like that.
• Jon Moskowitz presents: DJ Cappel & Smitty - Notorious B.I.G. vs. Frank Sinatra: “Blue Eyes Meets Bed Stuy”
  A mash-up/mixtape of Notorious B.I.G. and Frank Sinatra songs, fucking incredible. I’ve been listening to this one A LOT.
• Justin Timberlake - My Love (Paul Oakenfold Radio Edit)
  Haha, hell yes. Thanks to Fihlvein for this, it has been on repeat for days on end now. Totally awesome remix of a normally somewhat crappy song.