strangepulse.com

Leaving for Vegas in the next hour or so. And I’m only bringing 10 cameras.

I scored some free tickets to a Cirque show!

So here’s a wordle based on my blog:

Got the idea from Michelle.

Yeah, it’s 2:15 am. Daniel’s out of town and I can’t sleep. Even though I was up all night last night too. I swear without him around I fall all to pieces.

I got an email a few days ago from youtube saying they were removing a live Fu Manchu video I had of the song “Mongoose” due to copyright infringement on the part of Warner Bros. I thought that was weird—Fu Manchu were on Warner Bros?

Then I got another email a couple days ago saying they were removing another live Fu Manchu video.

Both emails warned me if they found too many copyright infrigements on my account they’d delete the whole thing.

Well they just did. I had hundreds of live clips from all sorts of bands posted. I’ve had a few bands contact me asking if I had more footage of them they could have. Sad to see it all go. All that time spent uploading video…just gone.

I’m wondering if they have a three strikes policy—awhile back I had a live video of the Frames covering Van Morrison that was removed.

I feel a little like I did when I lost most of my blog archives. Why bother doing anything if it’s just going to disappear? I still have the video on my hard drive, so it’s not completely gone. But geeze.

Who would have guessed that Fu Manchu would be something to get my account deleted? Honestly, none of the bands I had posted seem like they’d get me deleted.

It’s not like I was posting Metallica or something.

Apparently, I am completely uncoordinated, even to the extent of not being able to high five properly.

Elijah: Mom, how come Catherine can high five, but you can’t?

Catherine: Hey, I’m part Dad, you know!

Van Morrison. Damien Rice. I’m sure you’ve heard of them. Mike Scott of the Waterboys…only my favorite artist of all time.

But do you know these guys?

Luka Bloom.

Very Irish, right? Well wait until you hear Damien Dempsey.

Man, I haven’t had one of those in awhile. Running errands constantly. Best part: w/the boys…

Elijah: Mom, you are so weird.

Me: Me?! I’m weird?

Nathaniel: Where do you think we get all our material from?

Elijah: Yeah!

Nathaniel: Yeah, Mother. Mother from another mother!

The Sea Breeze Pet Cemetery isn’t too far from our house. It’s not something I drive by all the time, though. The first few times I saw it, I was rather disturbed by it. The graves there are decorated with all kinds of things—flowers, banners, pinwheels, etc. Not too different from a human cemetery—just way more of it.

It sort of bothered me that people would do so much for the graves of pets, when human graves aren’t that well tended. But then one day I decided to go take some pictures there, early in the morning. The sun was shining, and the feeling I got there was really something.

People put these banners with dogs on them up near the graves. The grave stones have drawings of dogs on them. And you can just feel the love.

And I’m not talking about the love the owners had for their pets, although that is obvious by the grave decorations.

No, I’m talking about the love the animals had for their owners.

There’s nothing like a dog for unconditional love.

RIP, old buddy, Duke.

Actually, I’m not at all, but I feel like posting some chattiness.

Between me and my boss:

boss: we need to do a conf call
me: k
boss: ext 775
me: I’m there
me: this music kinda sucks
boss: lol
boss: coming

Between me and a blogging buddy, Steve Evans (he lives in the US but is Canadian):

Steve: you have a new president!
me: coolio
Steve: he’s speaking right now. Great great stuff. watching on nytimes.com
just starting.
me: I’ll turn on the tv
Steve: literally starting right now

(…a couple of minutes later…)

me: sometimes I wish I wasn’t so cynical
Steve: you’re cynical about THIS? It’s an incredible moment.
even I am getting touched by it.
me: about what he just said
Steve: Gotta have hope
me: it’s cool we’ve got a black president and all, seriously cool

–

Comments on a contact’s photo on Flickr, who lives in Amsterdam:

me:
Pictures like this make me wonder about things. Where are those people going? Who was inside those houses and what were they doing?

my flickr friend:
Where are those people going? – to the whores.
Who was inside those houses and what were they doing? – Whores, whoring.
I’m not being crass, it’s true, it’s Red Light District!

–
Between me and my husband:

daniel: is elijah there
me: yeah
daniel: can you tell him something
me: sure
daniel: tell him that pantera is the greatest band ever and if he says anything different i will kill everyone in the world
me: ok
me: Elijah laughed and Nathaniel said “are you sure that wasn’t for me?”
daniel: yea, but i will kill nathaniel also, if he says anything different
me: he loves Pantera
I think.
maybe it’s Exodus

OK, it’s hard to do anything on six hours sleep. I’m too old for this crap.

Last night I took my oldest son Nathaniel, his friend Dillon, my youngest son Elijah, and his friend Tom to see 3 Inches of Blood, Toxic Holocaust, Early Man, 9 Knives, and Witchburn. The show was at Chain Reaction, an all ages venue in Anaheim. There’s nothing more fun than an all ages metal show.

The venue is long and narrow with the stage at one end. There’s a half-wall that divides the stage area from the bar/entrance area (they don’t serve alcohol, though, only snacks and soda). So we staked out a spot against the stage, and I was in the left corner against the half wall. We chose the left side of the stage because we knew Shane, the guitarist for 3 Inches, would be playing on that side.

The first band, Witchburn, I really liked. They were right up my alley—total stoner rock. Not as doomy as I like, but it’s been awhile since I’ve seen a stoner rock band live, so to me, they were awesome. There were five band members, three of them girls, which is always a pleasure to see. One thing I really liked about them was the singer was a girl, and she only sang. It’s rare these days to see a band with a frontman who has stage presence—and she does. She just needs to cut out the air guitar. They’re from Seattle.

I keep calling them Burning Witch, too, which is a completely different band.

Next up were 9 Knives, which my kids kept calling a “scene” band. Which apparently is not a good thing to be. I actually enjoyed them, but I like most metal in a live setting. They must not have been that great, though, because now I can barely remember them. Pretty sure they were local, though, and they did have this very photogenic guy on guitar.

Early Man were on next. This was my third time seeing them, and the first time with four band members. I thought they sounded great with four—guitarist/singer, bassist, drummer, and now another guitar player. They do Iron Maiden-inspired metal. They were just really good. Really fun.

I think they did mostly new stuff. It all sounded great. Here’s video:

Toxic Holocaust were obviously well known by the crowd, although I’ve never heard of them. They’re a three piece. The singer/guitarist looks a little hair-metal to me, which is fine—just kinda funny.

The crowd seriously went nuts during their set. Lots of crowd surfing and a big pit had been going on during earlier bands, but when TH came on everything went up a few knotches. I was getting smashed against the side wall. At first it was no problem—I kept reminding myself I had plenty of room to breathe, even if I couldn’t move around too much. Elijah was next to me and Tom behind me. But then it got much worse—Nathaniel, who was between us and the pit, was getting shoved up against us and I couldn’t move an inch. I was getting really claustrophobic, and worried my insulin pump was going to get ripped off me somehow. I kept hoping their set would be over but they said they had a few more songs to do, and in between one, when the smashing let up a bit, I got Tom to help me over the sidewall. From there I could see just as well, but wasn’t being smashed. Huge sigh of relief.

So because of all that, I don’t really remember much of Toxic Holocaust. But I can tell you the crowd loved them. Here’s video:

Dillon is in the middle of the crowd, you can see him glance backwards at about 0:20. You can see Nathaniel next to me with a big smile right at 0:25.

Then it was time for 3 Inches of Blood. We have a bit of a history with this band—this was my 11th time seeing them. I’ve seen them live more than any other band. I’ve seen the line up in the band change so much that the only original member is the singer, Cam. My husband and I have been known to do things like give them packages of socks when we see them. (What poor touring band doesn’t need new socks?) Daniel’s company made them a couple custom snowboards that they gave away recently on their website. The boys have been going to see them with us for years, too.

When they were setting up, I noticed they had a new drummer since I’d seen them last—it’s been awhile, but they seem to go through drummers pretty regularly. I also noticed only a guitar and a bass being set up. What happened to the second guitarist? Wait, I thought Justin was the second guitarist, why is he playing bass? Well it turns out the bassist had to fly home for a family emergency, so Justin was filling in on bass. It changed their sound to only have one guitar, instead of two dueling guitars, but they still rocked.

They opened with “Deadly Sinners.”

They used to have two singers. Cam, who does the high parts, and Jamie, who did the growling cookie monster vocals. Jamie damaged his voice, though, and had to drop out of the band, so the guitarist, Justin, took over singing the cookie monster voice. It’s not the same as when Jamie did it, but then Jamie did it so intensely that he wrecked his voice. Jamie was also good about sharing the mic with kids who jumped on stage, so it was kind of funny to see Cam pushing them all off the stage and back into the crowd.

Tom and Elijah during the show:

After the show:

Sweaty Dillon after the show:

Jamie was the guy we’d talked to the most in the band, so without him around, I wasn’t sure anyone else would remember me. Elijah has talked to Shane, the guitarist, a few times, and really wanted to hang around after the show to say hi. So we did. But he didn’t come out for a long time, so when I saw Cam come out of the venue, I told him who I was—he didn’t recognize me, but when I mentioned snowboards he remembered who we were. I told him Elijah really wanted to talk to Shane, so he went back in and let Shane know. Shane came out a few minutes later so I grabbed him and told him who I was. He said he remembered me, but I wasn’t sure if he was just being polite. He said he remembered Elijah and Nathaniel, too, and commented on how much they’d grown. (They’ve grown a ton since we last saw them.) He commented on how long their hair had gotten. He said next time they’d be towering over him asking for an autograph (Nathaniel’s already taller than he his). I got a picture of everyone with him, except for Dillon, who had gone to sit in the car. Dillon came out a minute later, though.

I should’ve gotten another picture with Dillon but didn’t think about it till later. As in, today.

More videos by all the bands can be seen here. (Still uploading 3 Inches footage right now.)

Shazbraz featured an Ultravox video for her Friday Flashback post awhile back, which made me want to hear my favorite song by them, “Lament.” So I looked up the video on youtube. It so does NOT match the song.

The song is sad and well, lamenting. The video is cute, with all the band members hooking up with their girls after being away.

It’s so…odd.

What other music videos totally don’t match the music? It’s always been a pet peeve of mine.

Awhile back Dillon sent me a youtube link. It was a video of a guy demonstrating a guitar effects pedal. He’s turning knobs and playing notes, demonstrating how the pedal makes the guitar sound. Then at the end he plays for a good solid minute, and I was amazed at what a great guitarist he is.

What struck me the most, though, was how he doesn’t look like a musician at all. You could pass this guy on the street and never suspect he is a fantastic guitar player. He looks more like he’d be a videogamer or someone who works at Best Buy. Not that there’s anything wrong or uncool with being a videogamer or someone who works at Best Buy. But, well, look at him:

It makes me think: What amazing talents do the people I encounter everyday have that I have no clue about? That crazy cashier at the grocery store—maybe he plays banjo. The surfer dude bank teller—maybe he’s a rad artist. The woman who rides her bike past our apts everyday wearing glitzy sunglasses—maybe she’s a national Scrabble champion.

Do you ever wonder if you have undiscovered talents? Things you’d be brilliant at that you just have never had the occasion to do?

Like, what if I have the ability to be an amazing, um….ice skater? Yeah, I don’t think so, either. It seems like if you have the ability to do something brilliantly you’d also be drawn towards doing it, right?

But sometimes I think about the wasted potential out there. Think about people who live in grinding poverty in third world countries. How much potential for greatness is just wasted because they can only survive, and not thrive?

There’s a scripture that says:

For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face:
now I know in part;
but then shall I know even as also I am known.

There’s so much we don’t know about ourselves and everyone around us.