You know, at a time like this, I feel like bursting into song. Tuesday, June 19, 2007. A day that will be marked in my history, even if I forget it. The day I was done with school. Finito. Kapische. Dim dim. Au revoir. All done. I had a final Computing exam (which went better than the one I had on Friday, which was an absolute fucking nightmare), and an Economics exam that went very well too. So, there I am. I am now free to pretty much do as I please. Of course, I will be nagging Tesco for more overtime between now and October, but hey, I’m free in the weeks now humanoids. So, I’m a free man now. No more getting up early to go into school. No frustrating waits in the car in the morning. The more I think about it, the more I think “Ah, I’m glad I don’t have to go there anymore”.
Ah yeah, that reminds me. Since my last, momentous, might I add, entry, I have received many questions regarding a “humanoid”. I would like to thank at this time, all those humanoids who commented my most recent entry and made it, in the words of Borat, a “great success!”. A humanoid is basically, my way of talking to the regular readers of my blog. Now I’ve got that out of the way…sheesh. Get with the program damn it!
So now school’s over, what do I expect to happen? Well, I anticipate that we will spend many wasted nights on MSN, where at around 7 o’clock, we’ll start a multi-convo. Someone will suggest an idea that is debated for about 20 minutes, with the convo going off on many tangents, before we eventually discover that someone’s short of cash, someone hasn’t got transport, and someone else has a different idea. Repeat this process until about 10pm when we realise “Shit, there goes the night. Ah well, there’s always tomorrow”. However, I have heard ramblings of organising day-trips to Longleat (for the brave few who want to take their cars through), Alton Towers and Drayton Manor. There will be plenty of opportunities for the beach(es), trips to Cardiff/Swansea/Bristol etc., many a football game down Newbridge, and plenty more drink-fuelled nights at the Red Dragon.
Quick promo: Alistair and Dylan, yeah you know those two gays? Good. Well, they are performing an all-acoustic set up the Dragon on Tuesday, June 26. I’m sure they won’t mind me mentioning this. Come along and have a listen and a few drinks whilst these two perform some hits and some unheard classics.
Now would probably be an appropriate time to mention my adventure in Bristol last Wednesday. The Gods of Speed Metal, Megadeth were in town, and I had two tickets. Aaron Hill graciously offered me his presence for the second ticket, and he was suitably impressed by the world’s fastest metal band. Gotta say, awesome gig. Hated the Academy venue mind. Far, far, far too small for a band like Megadeth I’m sorry. We got no backdrop and the balcony view was pretty shocking. I couldn’t see the band half the time because the security guy was too obnoxious to move and the searchlights were directly in front of me (in their defence, I was standing right next to the search lights, but it was either that or I wouldn’t be able to see a damn thing). Anyway, Megadeth played a mostly “classics” set, only three songs from their hit (feels great to be able to say that) album, United Abominations. Take No Prisoners was an absolute gem live. The whole balcony shouting the chorus was just awesome. Washington is Next into Hangar 18 was magnificent and the highlight of the set for me. Those two songs have something about them that means they flow quite well off each other. Must give credit to opening act Priestess. For a band I thought I’d never heard of (turns out I had, one of their tracks was on Need for Speed: Carbon), they played a great set and their album reminds me of one of my favourite doom metal bands, Trouble.
I’ve actually been listening to more than my usual dose of power metal lately. Kamelot’s new album dropped this week and is pretty decent (still no Black Halo I’m afraid), Sonata Arctica’s latest album sounds great, as does Nocturnal Rites’ new one. Symphony X’s new record also rips, but Dream Theater’s new record is pretty disappointing. It has it’s moments, but does not live up to previous works. Shame really because over the past couple of days I’ve been listening to Images and Words a lot and man, that album is just magnificent. Metropolis Part 1 is just…wow. What a song. Can’t discount Learning to Live either. Constant Motion is the highlight of Systematic Chaos so far, but I dunno, on the first few rotations, it doesn’t flow quite as well as say…Metropolis Pt. 2 did, ya know? However, Dream Theater/Symphony X at the Newport Centre in November is going to be one hell of a show and I hope to see more of you guys there!
In other news, I went and saw the new Fantastic Four film yesterday evening. I thought it was a very entertaining movie. I’m no comic book nerd, but, I understood the plot of the film. I haven’t seen the “first” Fantastic Four film (the 2005 edition), from start to finish, but I thought you could follow the plot nicely. Personally, I thought it was quite funny to hear Ioan Gruffudd, as I haven’t seen any of his works in a long time. He’s from my part of the world (strange but true: his father was headteacher/principal at my brother’s high school and knows my brother quite well. I’ll shut up with my ego now), but pulls off a great performance. In fact, so do all of the main characters. Michael Chiklis provides some great humour, Chris Evans fills his role nicely, and let’s face it, Jessica Alba is incredibly beautiful, so just admire that. There is also a great appearance by an actual comic book nerd, Brian Posehn, he of “Metal by Numbers” fame, in the picture that I thought was hilarious. None of my friends with me got it, but, it amused me at least. The action sequences worked nicely as well, and there was no inappropriate intermissions in this one like with Pirates. Like I said, I enjoyed it a lot. They also showed a trailer for Transformers: The Movie in the previews and man, I am psyched for that one!
I will actually make this a sport paragraph this time: the Red Wings will need to tie up Bertuzzi’s contract if we’re gonna be any good next season and we need to sign Gigure if Hasek doesn’t come back. Christ, if I said that three years ago, I would have shot myself! How times change!……Great signings by United in Hargraves (the kind of player we need in the midfield that we have lacked since Keano left), and Nani has looked very promising in the Euro U21 games. Great goal against Isreal the other day. I haven’t seen much of Anderson, but the reviews are good, and on my Football Manager games, he is one of the highest rated players in both my “cheat” and “non-cheat” games (that’s my Man United with us and Vauxhall Motors without us games for those who don’t know what I’m on about)…… Congratulations for Lewis Hamilton on his outstanding F1 victories. It must alarm Alonso to be upstaged twice by a rookie on tracks he’s never been to before. I am not jumping on the bandwagon here, I have followed Hamilton’s career closely since I first heard his name on a McLaren Stars of the Future program back in 1998, and I was immediately drawn the fact both our heroes are Ayrton Senna. I’m also glad the next race in France will be the last at Magny Cours. Hate that track with a passion. Glad to see F1 is considering a return to Paul Ricard.
Oh yeah, before I forget, although I pretty much did, seeing as this is tagged on right at the end of the blog…but, I’d like to send my best wishes on to Mr. Tim Lovejoy, who has decided to leave Soccer AM after 11 years of waking me up on Saturday mornings. I watched Soccer AM back in the early days, with the Fat Cat, the “bish-bash Bundesliga”, the Soccer Locker and “Ala-la-la-la-Zola” always on top of the OPTA Indexes every week. Admittedly, in recent years, it has lost some of it’s sparkle, but Lovejoy did a great job. I still piss myself when he gets it in the nuts talking to that Soccerette last season. That was quality. Anyway, cheers Lovejoy. He’s got a lot of stick from fans, but after so long, he’s allowed to go on and do something new for crying out loud.
I should now offer a cheap plug to the new forum I’m a part of. TheGabLab.com. At the moment, it’s just a forum, but my old buddies Kyle and Jeremy assure me that they will actually get around to sorting a website out soon with news, reviews and all that jazz for music of all kinds. It sounds like an exciting project, and it’s great that it’s four People’s Forum originals have re-united to kick it all off. Just like old times. Bare with the guys, but if you wanna join up before the forum gets so huge it’s impossible to ignore, direct your non-sucky browser (that’s Firefox/Opera to the educated types) over to TheGabLab.com.
I think that’s all I can mention for the time being humanoids. Until the next time I get bored and feel compelled to write another blog to keep you entertained…have a good one.