some new year’s treats for you…

if you haven’t already seen it, dang this shit is funny, yo! or, get thee to the itunes store while it’s a free download (u.s. store only – you would think in this global economy, people would actually be able to use the same frikken account, but nooooo… i had to set up a separate u.s. account, a source of much frustrated muttering)

build an instasong – it’s soooo worth it. you only get a sample for free, but it will be the funniest minute and a half you’ve had in a long time.

to: armondo from: louie
sometimes it seems that you are too good to be true
i see you at suzie’s leather bar
and can’t believe that i’m with you, armondo
who wouldn’t love
someone who freebases just like you?
someone who wears a hippy dippy long-ass hairdo?
i never dared to dream
that someone who hangs out at jiffy lube
would ever fall in love with me?

it’s an advert for a video game, but fuck, is it funny! pimp my pushchair. ’cause babies swearing is always hilarious.

peace out y’all – see you on the flipside…

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instasong, saturday night live, "lazy sunday" video, "pimp my pushchair", funny videos

Once again the year is drawing to a close and I’m wholly uncertain as to where it went, except by the beautiful blur left on my brain. I’m regretfully forced to concede that the old chestnut about growing older that seems to hold absolutely true is that the less time you have the faster it goes, and though I don’t really feel very much older (with the exception of the increasing number of grey hairs, my one real vanity), I have a newfound appreciation for einstein – time is all relative, baby. it slows to a crawl when you’re waiting to marry the person you can’t wait to spend your life with. it flies by when you’re exploring a lush new country and husband on your honeymoon, or spending time getting acquainted with the miracle of your new niece. it flashes before your eyes when you’re tumbling head over heels down a mountain. it creeps when you’re counting down to the escapist adventure of a lifetime.

so time is relative – yet still we measure the events of our life in months and years. we weigh up each well-used year on the 31st december, and grant ourselves a fresh shiny one each 1st january. the symbollism resonates somewhere within us, and we like being able to tot up the sums. was it a good year? was it a bad year? in truth, no year is good or bad, but only the memories of the days that passed during that elapsed span that we use to define the distance of our planet’s trip around the sun. and by that measurement, there were far more good memories in 2005 than not.

but when you take relativity into consideration, time also measures distance. a year is the distance of the earth’s eliptical orbit within the solar system. that distance stretches differently around each event, each change, each memory. 9 months is the distance from anticipation to motherhood. a long weekend is the distance from fear of falling to utter exhilaration. 365 days is the distance from a first date to an “i do”. one day is the distance from the safety of ignorance to the vulnerable knowledge of fear. 5 months 2 weeks and 6 days is the distance from smoker to non-smoker.

time is elusive. the moments you want to capture slip through your fingers, while others imprint themselves for all the wrong reasons. you wish you could spend forever driving along the garden route as a happy newlywed, while you pray you never experience another day like the tube bombings again. you want to hold tight to the baby you won’t see for another year, and forget the dragging days of nicotine withdrawal that seemed postively endless. the precious time spent with long-distance friends passes far too quickly, but the weeks before a round the world trip take ages to crawl off the calendar.

this past year, time was all this and more. it was my marriage, my family, my travels, my celebrations, my friends, my fears and my daydreams. it was alternately far too slow and way too fast. it was major life changes and biding time.

and all in all, it was a pretty good year.

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a list of the year end lists.

the 25 dumbest quotes of 2005.

funniest:

“I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can’t play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it’s called.” –Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, urging President Bush to make public Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers’s White House records, Oct. 5, 2005

dumbest:

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” –George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

best reviews of the worst tracks of 2005 – fucking hilarious.

Naturally, it gets bad every year, but was there something special about this one? To choose only 15 was an overwhelming task. Just consider what didn’t make the cut: Goldie Lookin’ Chain, the Bloodhound Gang, 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop”, Bo Bice, Louis XIV, Bowling for Soup, Juelz Santana’s “There It Go (The Whistle Song)”, Kelly Osbourne, CocoRosie, Panic! At the Disco, Ninja High School, Moby’s Hotel, “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk”, Audioslave, the Darkness, the Bravery, Liz Phair, the Mars Volta, and Neil Diamond’s hysterically absurd “Hell Yeah”. That’s not even everything. That’s not even close. But while some will take issue with the 15 selections ultimately chosen, I have no doubt that the shit’s abominable.

offbeat stories of the past year. my fave:

Local lawmakers in the US state of Virginia threw out a bill that would have banned young people from wearing baggy falling-down trousers, which are currently all the rage. “Underwear is called underwear for a reason” said the congressman who sought the measure.

since gofugyourself is on holiday hiatus, here’s people’s “top style moments of 2005″. um, apparently chris martin’s multicoloured plasters pass for “style”…

and finally, the best movies of 2005 as decided by slate and time, the vast majority of which i am unlikely to ever see since they don’t make it across the pond… however i did see “mysterious skin”, which, while good, is one of those films that gets more points for “bravery” than anything else, and i did think “war of the worlds” was a very effective thriller when seen in the theatre. “crash” felt incredibly manipulative, though unlike others, i don’t for a moment doubt the veracity of the social subtext. i’ll be lucky to see “brokeback mountain” or “memoirs of a geisha” before we leave. but it’s fun to tease myself with all the good stuff i’m missing out on.

in contrast, here’s rotten tomatoes list of the worst movie of 2005. sadly, i haven’t seen any of those either, but I *have seen* both “miss congeniality 2: armed and fabulous” (it was on one of my many plane flights) and “the pacifier” kerryn subjected us to the dvd), both of which make the dark horizons worst of 2005 list.

well, at least i’m not completely in the dark…

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whoa – it’s freezing in london. literally freezing (0c and 32f). which is notable, since it rarely ever gets that cold here, even in the middle of winter. it even snowed the other morning, for about 10 minutes. big fluffy feather-flakes for a split second, and by the time you made a cup of hot cocoa, it was gone, leaving only wet pavement behind.

however all of this is conspiring to keep me from accomplishing the one thing i had on the agenda for my entire holiday, which was going to see the dale chihuly exhibit at kew gardens. we’ve been trying to go since summertime, even having to turn back once after spending nearly 2 hours in traffic. every weekend we were free, it rained, and every weekend it was sunny, we had other plans. now here it is, the middle of winter, the exhibit closes on 15th jan, and i cannot get one single free *sunny* day to go. argh.

yesterday was spent cleaning. i mean deep down, elbow grease, bleach and toothbrush cleaning. j spent the day paying bills and getting the car m.o.t. and license, since we’ll have to sell brucie now. anyone know someone who wants to buy a 1996 vauxhall astra estate? good running condition, m.o.t.’d for a whole year, about 90,000 miles on it – we’re hoping to get about £800 for him. sad, because we’ve had so much fun with him, but has to be done sometime in the next month. anyone ever sell a vehicle on ebay? how’d you do it?

we suddenly have an onslaught of pigeons, and though i don’t like the flying rats at the best of times, i *do* feel somewhat bad for them – it’s not their fault that living in the city makes them gross and pitiful and forces them to do disgusting things like eat vomit. however the other night we were sitting in the lounge with the blinds open (one whole wall of our lounge is windows, which is nice for sunlight but bad for warmth) when i looked up just as a pigeon flew face first into the glass with a funny *thonk* sound. as i ran to look at it, it appeared to be stunned but okay, sitting on the balcony for a few moments before taking off – thank goodness, as i didn’t relish having to play good samaritan to a dirty bird in need, but wouldn’t have been able to just *leave* it there. then, the other morning as we were watching the brief snowy interlude, i noticed there was a dead pigeon on our bedroom balcony. ewwww. i was convinced that it was the same one that flew into the window, but j seemed to think it was an unrelated avian death of natural causes. so my immediate thought was to go grab some plastic bags to get rid of it, and was about to go do so, but jonno piped up and basically volunteered to deal with it, so i let him. sometimes husbands some in handy.

that’s all the excitement so far! “goonies” is on, and i’m off to research trains from singapore to kuala lumpur…

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i’ve spent soooo much time on the computer this year (an embarrassing amount, really), some fruitful, some not-so-much. … here’s my own personal “techie roundup of 2005″. some of these are now so popular as to be ubiquitous, but if they were new to me in the past year, they qualify. that’s the beauty of owning your own site – accountability goes out the window, and everything is at my sole discretion, like it or lump it.

things i found and loved this year:

wordpress - since I made the leap, it’s made me a smarter, better blogger, by far. they’re now starting their own hosting… which annoys me a little, since there was a certain amount of cachet to d.i.y. blogging (as opposed to simple plug-n-play sites), and even earlier this year when this site was completely self-created, without the use of templates or plugins, as awkward as it sometimes was, i was still inordinately proud of it. in any case, i feel like i’ve learned a lot more than i ever anticipated.

firefox and greasemonkey have combined to change my internet life. i suffer advertising, spyware and crashes no longer. three cheers for live bookmarks. hurrah for tabbed browsing.

lifehacker and ask.metafilter – for my money, easily the most useful sites on the web. most people already know about them, but they are the first sites i go to daily.

webjay and pandora - cool places for browsing new music by referencing stuff you already like.

ipod - in the few days i’ve had mine, i’ve put music, podcasts, tube maps, ebooks, photos, and videos on it. i can put whole movies on there. what a revelation.

trends I thought were overrated:

del.icio.us – i have my bookmarks here, and it’s better than google for boredom, but i find that it’s too much information, not enough filtering. when you can have thousands of bookmarks at your fingertips, you tend to become indiscriminate. and really, not everything is worth bookmarking. my *real* bookmarks are a select set of about 100, and many of them are resources i consider too precious to share with just anyone.

also, tags (technorati or otherwise). since everyone applies their own tagging rules, i fail to see how it’s very much different from searching by keyword. they *are* good for drawing site traffic though.

flickr - i am just very wary of entrusting my photos to a service which may or may not be there tomorrow, or decide to start charging/stop hosting/begin tracking. if you want to make sure you keep photos you care about, host them yourself and make sure you back up. and the vast majority of the stuff on there is shit anyway. i’m rarely interested in photos taken by people i know, let alone the horrible snapshots of strangers. not to mention the stupid “tagging” thing again. try looking for photos of the 7th july bombing and you’ll see why it’s just so non-sensical. it’s everyone doing their own thing – just putting the word “tagging” on it doesn’t make it any more user friendly.

itunes – i’m still not crazy about it, and i have a feeling i never will be. but i do enjoy finding new podcasts, so that’s fun.

those are the highs and lows as I see them. i’m sure there’s lots of stuff i’m overlooking – feel free to make recommendations!

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technology, websites, applications, best of 2005, year in review

he genuinely doesn’t care that i am getting ridiculously fat on chocolates and fry-ups and alcohol and potatoes in every form imaginable…

ugh. thank god the holidays only last another week, or i’d need an entirely new wardrobe.

as an aside: i fixed the photo link in the 26th december post below… people really oughtta tell me these things!

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happy birthday to my dear sweet jo

your friendship has saved my sanity more times than you’ll ever know, and i am so lucky to have you in my life. thank you for everything, and may the coming year bring you all the love and joy you so deserve.

always,
jen

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santa did *not* stick to the budget this year…

i never really got the appeal of ipods… but now that i have one? oh. my. god. i can transfer thousands of photos onto it. i can put audiobooks and maps on it. i can actually put whole movies onto it. i can put every disc I own onto it.

goodness – it’s a brave new world!

i was sung “happy birthday” at quarter past midnight, a thoughtful touch. chistmas day itself was a bit of a washout. we were up very early, and j and i exchanged gifts, which was lovely. then we headed off to m & a’s for what was meant to be a christmas lunch. Lunch turned into a 7 hour affair, which basically pre-empted our xmas dinner. j was planning to bake a cake for me, but since we didn’t get home until late, that didn’t happen. then we all fell asleep during an evening movie. after phone calls with my family, i crawled into bed.

so today is going to be my alterna-birthday. j attempting to use flour should be funny at least!

will add photos later today… hope everyone is enjoying their holidays!

added: photos are here

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merry christmas to all

(photo courtesy of my very favourite photoblog rion.nu)

and happy birthday to me!

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Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

In short, Santa has left the building

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scared of santa photo gallery

johnny damon’s scary new robot look

it’s the pope! no the grinch! no the pope!

wait, that one is definitely scary…

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hooray! I’m on holidays! the next week is about eating and drinking and being merry. i am a little disappointed that i’ve only received a very few xmas cards – one of my friends said it’s like her family has no sense of object permanence… out of sight is out of mind. considering the amount i invested in postage last year, i would have thought i’d get at least a little bit of a return. ah well.

and i received my mum’s annual birthday flowers today! every year that i’m not home for xmas, my mum sends me b-day flowers, which is lovely. the funny thing is that at some point during my teens, i must have griped about my birthday stuff being christmas themed. yet even though i am long since over that, it’s the one thing she remembers. so she always goes out of her way to make sure my birthday stuff is not christmassy, including one memorable birthday cake featuring a hula dancer, since “it was the most non-Christmassy thing they had.” Since my flower delivery came when no one was home, and the florist was actually only around the corner, i passed by when i got home from work. the woman asked for my address and was looking around through the bouquet address cards, until i pointed out that they were probably the only yellow and white arrangement sitting a sea of red and green… and indeed they were. thanks mum!

went to chris and ton’s for what has become our annual pre-christmas dinner last night. as usual, there was more than enough red wine to go around, but since tracey and i had to go to work today, we wisely volunteered to babysit when the party moved off to the local pub. as the guys were busy getting wasted, we sat around laughing over “tommy lee goes to college” and nick and jessica’s “newlyweds”, yet another candyfloss mtv show which goes down like liquid sugar, completely devoid of brain calories. for a fairly intelligent and informed person, it’s embarrassing that i am such a slave to music television. but put me in front of “pimp my ride” or “cribs” and my eyes glaze over like frosted doughnuts whilst a small stream of drool wends its way down my chin. it’s my secret vice and i try to tell myself that it’s a needed counterpoint to all the heavy political analysis and world news i read all day. but really, i’m just a pop culture junkie, and shows like “the fabulous life” are my heroin chic.

we were supposed to go to my work colleagues xmas drinks this evening, as she only lives down the street, and she’s a pretty cool chick. however, poor j has been sick as a dog all day so we’re going to snuggle up on the couch with some doritos and fajitas instead. (as a funny sidenote, we have taken to calling them faj-eye-tas, in mocking derision of the british mispronunciation of all things spanish [jall-a-pee-nyos anyone?] , but our deliberate mutilation of the word is disconcertingly reminiscent of the *correct* pronunciate of a woman’s body part, and my sis has asked me to stop saying it that way as it unnerves her… but c’mon, that’s half the fun!)

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every 21st december, i thank god the winter solstice has come, and with it, the knowledge that the days will be getting longer from here on out. yesterday, on the shortest day of the year, the sun came up after 7am and by 3:45pm it was dusk.

so tomorrow is the last day before the christmas break. because we get both xmas and boxing day here, we have the following monday and tuesday off, so most people take the subsequent wed-fri and returning to work on the first tuesday of the new year. a nice long break of about 10 days when almost everything stops. you have to love the european holiday ethic.

christmas here is a very relaxed affair, in comparison to the frenzy it always seems to be in the u.s., although most of that is probably due to the fact that i have no where to go and no one to see. mostly it means eating chocolates and drinking all day long, having a little movie marathon, and just basically lounging the entire day. *everything* is closed, the tube isn’t running and all taxis are double fare if you can find one, so essentially you’re forced to spend quality time with the family (or in our case, the neighbours). boxing day is usually more of the same, with perhaps a visit to the pub. i’d like to go to a midnight mass somewhere, but with no public transport after 12, that’s a no go. shame, as there is something about hearing carols and bells peal through the uncharacteristically quiet darkness of a city that touches the spirit.

the next two days the shops will be a madhouse, so today, j and i went and stocked up for the weekend. our christmas dinner will be a brown-sugar baked gammon (ham) and roasted potatoes, which is a bit of a break with tradition for me, but after pre-thanksgiving at home and thanksgiving here, i’m all turkeyed out. things feel a bit half-hearted for me, and i think most of that is because we’ve been on such a strict budget for the past 10 months, that we’re both just sick of it. there’s nothing glamourous about stretching pennies and nothing fun about being skint at christmas. i’m just burnt out with making do, and i think j is too – we’ve been bitchy with each other the past day or so, and it’s not very cheery. don’t get me wrong: i am absolutely aware that we’re incredibly lucky, as this self-enforced deprivation is entirely voluntary – we have enough to eat, a roof over our heads, good jobs. but it does wear your nerves thin, and when you start carping at the only other person who can identify with how you’re feeling, it doesn’t exactly engender tidings of comfort and joy.

but. this too will pass, and i just have to keep in mind that when i’m climbing the great wall of china, or looking out over machu picchu, or kayaking in fiji it will be worth every cranky moment and “woe is me” wallow i’m having now. the lack of presents under the tree, turning down holiday invitations, begrudging myself all the festive touches which make the season special but add up on the wallet… it sucks. i am the veruca salt of yuletide. it makes me grumpy and grinchy and cross. i’m just so completely impatient that the idea of delayed gratification is a thoroughly abstract concept.

maybe kris kringle will leave some valium in my stocking.

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ahhh, it’s the holidays. a few tunes:

MP3 playlist (M3U)

here’s the podcast link

featuring the kinks, pedro the lion, the dandy warhols, deathcab for cutie and others

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i feel a whole lot better about turning 33, now that i’ve read pitchfork’s top 50 albums of 2005 and realise i actually know more than a few of these bands.

i may be old, but my taste in music isn’t.

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filching links from elsewhere…

google doodles – the collection of google holiday logos over the years.

time magazines photos of the year 2005. stunning visual depictions of the events of the year.

the national priorities project tallys the cost of the iraq war. compare it to world hunger, aids funding, and the cost to your local community. and the figures keep climbing.

finally, for when you’ve just spent too many hours in front of the computer…

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oh my life. I’m in shock. maybe because I haven’t been following the trade rumours closely enough. but my heart momentarily stopped when i read about johnny damon going to the yankees this morning. this just blows my mind. my poor little battered heart can’t take much more.

and we will speak of johnny no more in this household. a pox upon him and a curse upon his family. feh. good riddance.

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sorry things have been so quiet, but the server issues seem to be sorted now, so hopefully all will remain healthy.

First of all, to all my peeps in NYC – you have my complete sympathy. I can only imagine trying to get to work, do errands, etc. for more than one day with no public transportation. Even during a blizzard, the subways are operating – they truly are the lifeblood of the city. You can pick up groceries, etc. locally. But getting to work? I imagine most people don’t even bother, since if you dont own a bike, there’s nothing much that can be done if you’re not walking distance. Hopefully it will all be resolved shortly. I shudder to think about the people trying to get to the airports in a day or two.

secondly, thank god people are coming to their senses. “intelligent design” is just a pretext for promoting religion, which has no place in the public schools. you don’t like it? send your kid to private. really, this just says volumes about the current climate in the u.s. today, that an idea this farcical had to be struck down by the courts.

After dragging his feet and trying to pretend he’s *not* an asshole for protesting something so morally right, bush finally agreed to mccain’s anti-torture amendment. However, as this article points out, what no one is talking about is the fact that this was even a discussion at all is alarming in the extreme (thanks for the link, a):

So, why would democratically elected leaders of the United States ever want to legalize what a succession of Russian monarchs strove to abolish? Why run the risk of unleashing a fury that even Stalin had problems controlling? … if Vice President Cheney is right and that some “cruel, inhumane or degrading” (CID) treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already.

in the same return-to-cold-war vein, the u.s. is trying to build a wall to keep out mexico. the sheer inanity of such a move is just stunning. there are lots of people who die trying to come to the u.s., or sacrifice anything they have. the far more effective (and less ineffectually simplistic) thing to do is to prosecute the corporations that hire people illegally. Until they stop making shitloads of money off of an already disadvantaged labour force, this despicable practice will continue to be perpetuated. And as long as demand continues, it will also artificially prop up the economy. Building a wall?? C’mon – how unrealistic can you get? Where people already risk life and limb to come to this country, a *wall* is unlikely to do much. Where the reasons and motivation for illegal immigration are so complex, simple bricks and mortar is hardly the answer. A physical barrier is easily circumvented when you’re willing to risk it all. Therefore, it’s not only a waste of money, but also detrimental to US/Mexican relations. We already profit greatly from Mexico not only through immigrant labour (legal or illegal) but also through NAFTA. We exploit that agreement to the fullest and economically, it’s in our best interests to play nice. So why are we trying to re-enact east v. west berlin??

the rest of my vitriol will have to wait for another time, since I have to head off to face the chaos of the christmas crowds… wish me luck!

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nyc transit strike, intelligent design, mexico wall, mccain torture bill

faithful reader -

ugh. web server problems. so this is a test email, to see if the cronjob I set up will actually run and post this email. either way, my site may be fucked, so who knows if anyone will even get to see it.

Been very busy at work lately. And last night was my Christmas work drinks gig. Manage to polish off a whole bottle of wine for self, and *still* make it into work an hour before my boss (who looked a bit worse for the wear. she drank red, i drank white. you make the call.) the pressure to do work gatherings is such a big thing around here – it’s impossible to say no gracefully. and as much as i like the people i work with, there are only a few i’d elect to hang out with socially. and the drinking culture is so pervasive, there’s no way to escape it, really. most of the time i enjoy a
friendly after work do. but around christmas it’s just so draining.

anyway, sorry this isn’t more exciting, but hopefully things will be back on line soon, and i’ll update then.

ciao for now,
jen

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my face hurts this morning, because I’ve spent the past 12 hours grinning. you’ll have to forgive the obsequiously sycophantic tone of this post, but i feel like a kid who just got a bike for christmas.

kim, andy, j and i went to see the foo fighters play at earl’s court last night (the tickets were an incredibly thoughtful birthday present from k & a.) we met up at the tube station at 7:15ish. the show was to start at 7:30, but with two opening acts (the futureheads and eagles of death metal), it seemed reasonable to assume that the foos would not actually grace the stage until at least 9:00, so we popped into a pub for a few pre-show pints.

ambling back up the road after a couple of beers, we suddenly heard the recognisable strains of a foo song… we were missing them!! as i used to say in 8th grade, we booked it. flew through the gates and security, raced towards the floor, charged through the crowd as they broke into “my hero”. finally stopped to catch our breath.

and there he was. sweaty and goofy and gorgeous beyond belief. swoon.

i started jumping up and down screaming, and didn’t stop for the next two hours. they ripped into hit after hit as we sang along at the top of our lungs. j kept lifting me up so i could see above people’s heads. it was definitely amazing arena rock, with strobe lights, screens, and a blanket of lasers that sliced the place in half. the set list had all my personal favourites: “generator”, “the one”, “times like these”. better than i could have ever hoped. dave was disarming and affable with a crowd of nearly 20,000, at one point dedicating a song to “the 6,000 people 6,000 feet away from me”. he belched, he threw beer into the crowd, he tried to get a 45 year old virgin laid. is it any wonder i love him so? and then…

… in the middle of a guitar solo (during an extended version of “stacked actors” i think it was), people around me suddenly started shifting to the right. in a brief moment, i understood what was happening and ran. dave magically appeared at a podium in the middle of the arena floor, and there he was – about 4 meters away from me. i screamed. i jumped around. i actually shouted the words “i love you dave!” i finally understood how girls at concerts faint with excitement. he was right there. I could see his 3-day-growth beard. i practically got hit with the sweat flying off his drenched hair. it was incredible. i can die happy now.

the rest of the concert was a thrashing hazy blur. during the encore (”cold day in the sun”), dave and taylor swapped places and dave took up behind the drums – so good to see him back there. (incidentally, apparently he also made a surprise appearance for warmup band eagles of death metal, drumming as “diablo”, which we missed. guess the early bird does get the worm.)

the full set list was:

In Your Honor
No Way Back
My Hero
Best Of You
Up In Arms
Learn To Fly
Times Like These
The One
Stacked Actors
Big Me
Breakout
Generator
Have It All
Everlong
Monkeywrench

(encore)
This Is A Call
Cold Day In The Sun
All My Life

highlights included… well, everything. screaming myself into a throat hernia during “breakout”, acoustic “everlong”, and seeing dave up close.

sidenote: dave is apparently enamoured of coldplay, and wouldn’t shut up about them the whole night. towards the end of the show, kim pointed out a few vips on the podium dave appeared at and said they looked very familiar, particularly a ginger bloke in a hat. watching telly this morning, i realised it was, in fact, chris martin.

after the show, we unwound with a few more pints at a gay bar somewhere on brompton road. so in total, my alcohol intake was 4 pints over the course of the evening. felt absolutely fine going to bed. woke up this morning with the worst headache (a low-grade migraine which i have been staving off with copious quantities of ibuprofen and coffee). I am turning into an embarrassing lightweight in my old age.

here’s some pics I stole from someone else of last night’s show:

this calls for a tribute playlist. here’s a bunch of acoustic bits (”everlong” and “times like these”) along with some hilarious spoof stuff (for j – thanks for being so tall!) and a couple officially unreleased/bootleg songs (”butterflies” and “friend of a friend”) . the sound quality isn’t great on some of these, but still a fun listen.

MP3 playlist (M3U)

and here’s the podcast feed

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podcast, mp3, , foo fighters, dave grohl

Tuning out the news today, because it’s finally here! As you will notice from the ticker below, in just 24 short hours, I will be slavering in front of my dream lover, the wierd and wonderful dave grohl, and let’s be honest – how can I possibly concentrate on world politics when I’m so busy trying not to wet myself with excitement? A strange object of obsession, I admit – he’s not characteristically handsome. In fact, he’s a bit scrawny, buck-toothed, and bug-eyed. Even during the grunge era, when unkempt hygiene and deliberate fashion faux pas were de rigeur, he wasn’t your typical rock icon. but there is something so endearingly charming, so wacky and witty, so little-boy-mischevious about him, that i just go all melty inside every time. what’s a girl to do? he makes me want to dress up in restrictive-yet-alluring outfits and impractical shoes, and offer to do dirty things to him. I am helpless to resist his powerful charisma, or the impulse to throw lacy naughties at his feet.

not to mention, the foos just rock the house. combine wild sexual fantasies with a kick-ass soundtrack, and I think you’ll begin to understand why I might need to be physically restrained from rushing the stage. I only hope i am sufficiently recovered from my swooning to report back before the end of the weekend.

in the meantime here’s a link to my very very very fave Foos songs:

MP3 playlist (M3U)

here’s the podcast link

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podcast, mp3, foo fighters, dave grohl