Parallel Johnny

This weekend was the Nickel Creek: Farewell {For Now} Concert at Meadowbrook.  We had front row seats (4th row if you count the pit).  It was a good concert but I was a bit irked.  Fiona Apple was their special guest.  Apparently her a Sean are friends who play small gigs together at some venue in LA.  So when Fiona came on stage, she joined the other four and sang some songs from Extraordinary Machine.

Let me first say that I am a fan of Fiona.  Despite her quirkiness beyond measure, I love her music.  If in fact this had been any other concert where the five of them teamed up to play each other’s music, i would have thought it to be awesome.  However, this was the farewell tour.  Nickel Creek is no more.  They split up about a year ago after the last album.  This was their time, my time to hear all my favorite Nickel Creek songs live, with them 20 feet away.  Fiona was on stage for at least an hour of the 2 and a half hours that the show lasted.

It was a good concert nonetheless.  They played just about every instrumental song they had.  Most songs were from Why Should the Fire Die.  Fiona came on twice during the night, the first time was completely her time with the band playing her music.  The second time she came out towards the end of the night was dedicated more to bluegrass with Fiona trying to sing in a bluegrass style.  It was amusing.  They did a great Patsy Cline cover of Walkin’.  And the funniest thing was when they tried turning Criminal into a bluegrass song.

All in all, if they would have billed the concert as Nickel Creek and Fiona Apple rather than Nickel Creek wsg Fiona Apple, I may have been more welcoming to the fact that she took half the concert.

Oh, had my reunion yesterday.  I’ll rant about that later.

I went and saw Order of the Phoenix last night. It was good, but they did what was only expected. The fifth book is the longest of the series and so its natural to cut out parts in the magnitude of chapters. Also, some minor storyline changes had to be made in order to bridge those gaps. I understand that, but still there were some parts that just shouldn’t have been left out including a certain device that is so prominent in the book and books to come, that it was the cover of the fifth book.

A couple new characters were introduced and I thought they were great: “Tonks” and Luna Lovegood. Delores Umbridge was exactly as I pictured her.

For the IMAX version they make the final battle scene all in 3-D. It was very cool and made the Ministry Scenes look even better.

** Possible spoiler if you haven’t read books 5 and 6. scroll down a bit**
In the movie, we finally get to see the Black family-tree tapestry. Unfortunately, its impossible to understand the branch flow showing each generation. You can, however read the names of many of them. In the scene, they show three burned out family members, which threw caution to me since the tree has at least 7 members burned out for being disowned. By making sure there were at least three shows some importance to those members.

One was Sirius, the second I couldn’t make out but was very close to Sirius is assumed Tonk’s mother (married muggle, Ted Tonks) and the third was Alphard Black, the uncle of Sirius and Regulus who helped Sirius after he ran away.

We know Sirius is a good wizard, Alphard showed good and Regulus we learn was a death eater who turned away. This gives some more ground to the RAB theory. Majority claims its Regulus Arcturus Black, but I think he took the name of his uncle Alphard.
** End Spoiler**

Side note: If you look on wikipedia, a Charlus Potter is listed on the tree. He married Dorea Potter and had a son. I wasn’t able to spot it in the movie though.

Go see it. and if you like the movies, go read the books. You’re missing a ton of story.

I just watched Saving Silverman on TV.  I love that movie.  It has everything you need for a perfect movie:

• Jack Black
• R. Lee Ermey
• A better looking version of Tara Reid.
• The Arby’s Big Montana
• and Neil Diamond

And two of the greatest quotes ever:

• “You’ve been pinching loaves on the lawn? I play croquet out there!”
• “Admit it! I’m the assertive man you need, and you’re the hardcore bitch I’ve always dreamed of!”

That, my friends, is cinema gold.

I have a bug every year to do something time-consuming when I really haven’t the time; be it read a book for leisure or get hooked on a video game. So I try to fulfill my need before school starts. I didn’t do much summer reading, but I did decide to buy a game last week. Let me say The Warriors is everything I expected and that is awesome. Rockstar (Grand Theft Auto series) made it, so I knew it would be worth while. Who better to make a game based off a movie about fictional 70’s New York street gangs? Besides the story mode, it has a rumble mode where you can brawl 9 on 9 between gangs. Even better, you can unlock the option to create your own gangs. I’m about halfway though the story mode, so hopefully I can finish it before school. I don’t need to be slacking off once classes start. Who wants to ‘bop’?

Is it lunch yet? I forgot about this time last year at work. With a little more than a week left here, I’ve pretty much finished my work. There’s no time to start anything new, so what do I do? I basically go over what I’ve done and try to improve it…every day. I wish I could just space out or kill hours at a time online, but I’d feel too guilty. I managed to listen to two audio books — Harry Potter, Books 5 and 6 — and I’m about to move on to the H2G2 series, or maybe the BBC radio episodes. I’ve been on a comedy binge this week. Lewis Black, Dane Cook and my newest favorite, Daniel Tosh. I heard him a while back, guest hosting Loveline. The guy is hilarious, so I found his album True Stories I Made Up.

The Detroit Pistons verses the Pacers, the big brawl. If you could promise me that every game would end like that, I would be a season ticket holder in a heartbeat. “Are you serious? I’m gonna have to fight at the end of the game? Lets go, sounds awesome.”

This is actually just the beginning of a very long post I wrote out of boredom, but since I know the attention span of most readers is 10 seconds, I’ll break it up.

A while ago I talked about using 30Boxes.com for my public calendar.  Now Google has finally released their calendar web app.  I find it to be a great tool.  If all my friends had one, it would be even cooler.  If you want access to my calendars and reveive notifications of cool events (like the upcoming Tone and Niche show) sign up.

Do it.

…Now

I started using 30Boxes.com a while ago. I must say, I’m impressed. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, its an online calendar. It uses the ajax that people have come to expect from web2.0 applications.

There are some great features with this calendar.

The One Box. Its a single text field that you use to input your events. Is very smart in guessing what you want. For example I can type in “Beers with Adam at Club FT 9pm next tuesday”. I hit enter and BAM! Next tuedsay has an eventfor next Tuesday at 7 pm called ‘Beers With Adam’ with location set to Club FT.

Buddies. It just so happens, I share my calendar with Adam and vise versa. He planned a Beer Run with his cousin and wants me to come along so he threw my name in the invitees list. The event now comes up in my calendar.

Syndication. You can’t have a web2.0 app without some xml goodness. 30Boxes does both: Imports feeds to add to the calendar and exports a feed to use elsewhere. They even simplified the import process by just asking for your username for Livejournal, Flickr, Upcoming.Org, etc.

Sign up at 30Boxes.com and subscribe to my calendar. All you need is my email (hint: its the gmail account).

Went to see George Carlin last night at the Detroit Opera House. It was pretty disappointing. I freakin’ love Carlin and his humor. I have his cds, read Napalm and Sillyputty, but he’s off his rocker. About 1 hour performance broke down as so:

5 minutes shameless self promotion to buy his stuff.
15 minutes of funny toliet humor.
10 minues of politics and why he hates Americans.
15 minutes on people comiting suicide (his new book is entitled A Life Worth Losing)
15 minutes of explaining his joy in natural disasters like Katrina.

Yeah, there wasn’t a lot to laugh at. He’s always done distasteful humor, but this just went too far and the house’s lack of laughter let him know it.

I haven’t talked too much about my latest site here. Since I bought the domain name, I guess its now considered public.

A long while ago, I started the Unofficial Big Sonic Heaven Website. Well, Ive taken the concept and ran with it into a new site. PhonicRaptue.com is much better suited for the community of BSH fans, plus it doesn’t exclude people that never heard the program. The site caters to all fans of Dreampop, Synthpop, Trip-Hop, Electronica and so on. The song database has been revamped a bit, there is an event calendar that anyone can contribute to and forums for discussion.

Last week I started the Phonic Rapture podcast. Only two people listen so far, but it could grow. With the new site, I’ve been trying to push things in a new direction. I would love if artists came to the site to post their events in the calendar, or requested their song to be in the next podcast. MySpace kind of overshadows all of this, but I think I can do more, because I want to make it more personal — something MySpace could never do.

So, do me a favor and check out the new site. Sign up and help it grow.
www.PhonicRapture.com

The last two nights I have gone to see some local music. Last night at the Double Olive, I saw Tone and Niche with Dan Minard. The night before was Thornetta Davis, you can read my post on that at Metroblogging Detroit.

Dan Minard opened the night. Its a solo act, pairing his amazing vocals with his bluesy acoustic guitar. Think of an Ani DiFranco male counterpart. I’m not sure where you can listen to his stuff online, but if he joins myspace, I’ll post about it.

Next up was Tone and Niche, a guitar and violin duo with backing drums and bass. This band is really on the rise. Pick up the latest Jamrag Magazine, there is a two-page article and interview with them. After their set, Brian and I went up and talked with Niche. She is an incredibly nice and down-to-earth person, not to mention an extraordinary vviolinist.

For samples and more info on the band go to toneandniche.com or myspace.com/toneandniche.