First Video from the latest American Idol

It's safe. It's relatively uninspired in terms of the video, but I still kind of like the song. It has a certain level of Counting Crows meets John Meyer vibe going for it. I'm disappointed that his voice has been processed so much, since I thought the rawness and occasional gravelly note was what made his singing appealing. Still, I think this is a good first foray and I'll probably take a listen to the album.

People Search For Very Strange Things

I was looking through the stats for the blog -- something I've never done because I never noticed that tab before -- and despite there being a large amount of pageviews (honestly never would have guessed that many people actually came here, unless of course, it's just one person who really really likes it for some strange reason).  I did notice that there are some very strange things being searched for, such as "latex weather balloon" and "daughter lipstick fuck".  Who are these people?  And moreover, why are they searching for it here?

Oh, and for some other reason the largest contingent of readers that I have come from Russia.  Bizarre, that, but well, "Hi, Russians!" :-)

Unintentionally Funny?

I caught Stuart Gordon's film, Stuck, tonight starring Mena Suvari and Stephen Rea.  I'd seen bits and pieces of it before, but this was the first time I had seen it all the way through.  Basically, it's about a woman who strikes a homeless man with her car while under the influence, and then proceeds to spend the rest of the film figuring out what to do with him while he continues to protrude from her windshield.  I am relatively certain that this was a plot from an episode of one of the CSI shows as well.

The film revels in incredibly bonehead reactions to the different problems in the film, which adds to the dark humour and absurdity that Gordon was likely going for, but I think the scene that stood out for me was when Suvari confronted her boyfriend's booty call, played by Sharlene Royer, and proceeded to beat her, while naked no less and with a frying pan, out of the apartment.

Why Don't You Give Me Some Love?

I caught part of the new video from James Blunt, "Stay the Night", earlier today.  I haven't necessarily been inspired to look it up on YouTube yet -- despite being catching, it felt fairly samey compared to his other work.  It did, however, make me go back an listen to his second album, All the Lost Souls.  Although the songs from his first disc, especially "You're Beautiful", got incredibly overplayed, I still quite like him.  His second disc I thought was better, so, of course it got less notice.

In general, it's fairly straight-forward guitar rock.  Kind of like David Bowie, minus the weird, and dialling the ennui up to eleven.  While listening to the album, though, I did notice that backing riff for "Carry You Home" is essentially Snow Patrol's "Run".

I could live a million years...

On his blog, Mushroom Cloud of Hiss, Chris Allen has recently been posting some rather good reviews of different albums (remasters, a couple new albums, and some classics from Roxy Music).  I`m not sure what inspired the recent spate of posts, but it`s led to a decent amount of reading, as well as a few thoughts on revisting the past myself.  Granted, I would undoubtedly come at things from an entirely different strata (I had the urge to go back and listen to some early REM and NIN discs recently, so I`d probably start there). 

I mean, I`m still waiting for my copy of Rotten Roma Casino to arrive from Germany and the new Ulver disc doesn`t arrive until sometime later this year (weird considering that there really aren`t that many days left and an announcement still hasn`t been made).

Biting off more than you can chew...

I think I've almost perfected it into a new art form.  It's like spinning plates, bowls, glasses, fire hydrants, and otters all at once.

Random Note

Archive.org's practice of actually archiving this is very strange.  Sometimes links will work, sometimes not.  Sometimes the pages that you search for will come up empty, but a link through to that page will work.  And by this, I mean pages wholly with archive.org, not external pages that are now defunct.

The Land of Pretentious Symphonic Metal

A few weeks back, Therion released a new album Sitra Ahra, the conclusion to a four-part epic starting with Lemuria and Sirius B back in 2004.  Now, I generally like Therion, but I am one to admit that there are many times when they go off the musical deep end, landing somewhere in camp show tunes territory, similar to acts like Haggard, Avantasia and Ayreon.  Although there are definitely things to like about the album, this is definitely one of the ones that takes a headlong leap into cheese, layering operatic vocals upon choirs, Thomas Karlsson trying to write some sort of ariosophic musical, and Christofer Johnson trying to ensure that one of every single instrument is used at least once. 

I've been listening to it off and on for the past few weeks, and I'm honestly not sure if I like it.  The music itself is quite good, I'll give it that, and despite the complexity of the instrumentation, you'll find that there are quite a few points that get stuck in your head.  And there's "Hellequin", which is just unintentionally funny.  I can appreciate some of what Karlsson is trying to do with the lyrics, weaving through some of the myth and philosophy that surrounds his own Dragon Rouge and beyond, but taken in pieces, most of it seems silly.  One of these days, I'll probably sit down with the lyric booklets and try to put together the narrative, especially some of the bizarre transposition of different mythological pantheons.

I will commend them for their ambition, at the very least, and it may sound as though I didn't like the album, but really, you have to be in the right mood to listen to it.

I Still Hate Duran Duran

In a recent review, Chris Allen discusses the new remaster of Duran Duran's Rio.  It's a well-written piece that you should probably read, and it almost makes me want to listen to the album, it's that persuasive, however, I don't think anything can get me past one simple fact, I still hate Duran Duran.

How to Destroy Angels

While I've been listening to the work of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on the Social Network soundtrack, I've also gone back to listen to their other project (joined with Reznor's wife, Mariqueen Maandig), How to Destroy Angels.  Their initial offering, a self-titled six-track EP, is a curious beast.  It's not quite female-fronted NIN, but the comparison is not quite incorrect.  I'm reminded of somewhat of Reznor's contribution to Jakalope half a dozen years ago, but harsher and mixed with some bizarre fetishistic dub music.

All the best laid plans

I've been quite enjoying Yoav's latest album, A Foolproof Escape Plan.  It's more upbeat than his debut disc, Charmed and Strange, but it's still strangely intoxicating.  The mix of electronic beats and the sound of classical guitar is still there amidst the labyrinthine rhythms.

I think my favourite track is "We all are dancing" which you can see below:

Gavin Rossdale is looking old...

Random Thought

I'm going out on a limb here, but my thought for why Marvel is keeping their solicitations hush, is that they're going to be announcing something involving Neil Gaiman & Miracleman.  I just kind of wanted to get that out there.

Ditch the Rote Hog

Inspired largely because several of my friends have decided to watch the latest few series of Doctor Who, and by the fact that I've been largely enjoying the new Matt Smith episodes (despite being finished in the UK, the last few are still to air here in Canada), I've decided to go back and watch the previous episodes.  I've also decided to see if I can lay my hands on earlier material, after looking through considerable histories of episodes, radioplays, novels and such and reading up on many of the past incarnations.

I know that I've seen many of the Tom Baker episodes, and at least a handful of the Jon Pertwee episodes, as I can remember watching them early mornings before going to school either on A&E, PBS, or TVO.  Looking at the DVD releases, though, it seems nigh ridiculous what's been released and what hasn't, haphazard and all over the place.  I also remember the TV movie; I know that I watched it, but I can't remember much about it.  I think I may start there, since I can find a copy, and the BBC radioplays with Paul McGann also seem to be available.

Doyle's Blood

"Blood", written by Roddy Doyle, is the first story in the new Stories anthology.  [Side Note: As enchanting as Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind is, this anthology just keeps calling to me.  I think I'm going to alternate between reading a couple chapters of the novel with a story or two in the anthology]  It's a bizarre little tale, with its protagonist dreaming up initially a fairly plausible reason for wanting to drink blood -- anemia -- to just doing it because he wants to. 

I think the most interesting part of the tale is the repeated notion that the man who wants to drink blood -- or bite necks or have sex with most things -- is normal.  It ends with a twist that does make you think "...and then what happened?" as per Gaiman's introduction, my only hope is that with each of these stories, there is some sense of conclusion rather than ambiguous endings.

Summer Reading List

As I'm currently working my way through Carlos Ruiz Zafon's excellent The Shadow of the Wind, I've also been starting a pile of interesting new books to start tackling.  The one that keeps calling me is the new anthology, Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio; I've read the introduction, "Just Four Words" by Gaiman, and it's fairly enticing.  Also sitting on the pile is Justin Cronin's The Passage (although I'm probably going to read his previous novels, Mary & O'Neil and The Summer Guest, first), Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven, Lev Grossman's The Magicians, and finally set down to read Joe Hill's Horns.  I'm also eagerly anticipating China Mieville's new book, which I'm sure he titled just so he could say, "I'm going to realease the Kraken."

Thrilling Tales...

I've only watched the trailer so far and read some of his write up, but check out Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, it looks downright brilliant.  The art and design are gorgeous.

Unthoughts Unknown: Don't Piss On...

"The Edge", the second episode of the new Persons Unknown series, I thought was largely better than the first episode.  The pilot basically set up the situation and gave broad strokes toward the characters, this second episode gave us more showing the characters actually trying to deal a wee bit more with the situation.  It's also nice that we've finally got names for some of them, although I still think most of the relevant information on surface character background should have been related at their first dinner together.  Details and backstory naturally coming later, but it seemed like the usual introductions were only half-delivered.  The "microwave" fence, blinding white light, and driving back into the town after trying to esxape definitely gave off more vibes from The Prisoner, as well as Dark City.  The night manager and the Chinese restaurant waiter are also officially creepy.

Not Wednesday, but...Comics

My copy of the new hardcover collection of Wednesday Comics finally arrived in the post today.  I've not started to dig into it yet, but I will say a couple of things.  Like the original series, the production design is just brilliant.  I love the overall design, but what really stands out to me is the frontispiece with two different variations on the comics themselves arriving to a newsagent/front door delivery. 

The colours also look much more vibrant on this paper than they did in the original run; I think that's one of the overall things that they neglected in the series.  On most of the strips, the colours seemed to be designed for modern paper and not the newsprint that the series was printed on.  As such, some of the beauty of Ben Caldwell's Wonder Woman piece was lost that's regained here. 

What I do have a complaint about, though, is that this collection is smaller than the original series.  Although this book is still oversized, it doesn't match the broadsheet view of the originals, and I think something's lost in making this book smaller.  The original series felt right in the hands, this hardcover feels a little awkward; not necessarily in length, but it feels as though it should be an inch or so wider.

Happy Happy, Joy Joy

It's unsurprising that as the series progresses, Happy Town is indeed getting better.  I thought last week's episode was a little bit like treading water, but this week was certainly firing on all cylinders.  Shame that the show's been cancelled (what possesses them to essentially cancel it after only airing the two parts of the pilot?)

So...is it Alejandro...or Fernando?

I watched the Lady Gaga video for "Alejandro".  I think I liked it.  Overall, I like the song more than "Telephone", with it's ABBA meets Madonna style (which is saying something since I don't like ABBA), but the video...bizarre art piece.  I love the production values, evocative use of black, white and red, but part of me is still left scratching my head thinking, "what?"

Unthoughts Unknown

I caught the pilot episode of NBC's Persons Unknown tonight.  I thought it was a decent entry into The Prisoner/first-season of Lost/Cube vein of storytelling, with a group of strangers waking up in a deserted hotel in an initially deserted town with no recollection of how or why they got there.  I think the cameras themselves are the interesting part, some sort of black market reality television is what I'm thinking right now.

I did, however, catch a continuity error between the episode and the preview for next week.  When we're shown Eleanor's fortune cookie message in the episode, "Kill your neighbor and you will go free", is on one line.  In the preview, it's on two.  I wonder how many months went by between filming the pilot and starting the reason of the series to cause that gaffe?

Costing an Arm and a Leg...

I like the new Broken Bells video for "The Ghost Inside". Granted I'd probably find watching Christina Hendricks watch paint dry interesting, but well...

I am convinced that people are psychotic.  Entertaining, but psychotic.  What possesses people to write a blog from the point of view of a cat?

New King

I got the trade edition of Stephen King's new novella, Blockade Billy, yesterday (still waiting on the limited edition hardcover to arrive) and read the entire thing in maybe an hour.  The title story is only about 80 pages and the bonus short story, "Morality", only runs another forty or so.  There's no supernatural element to either of the stories, although to me that's not a deal breaker.

You may ask why I bothered to buy both, well, I preordered the limited edition before the announcement of the trade edition because I wanted the novella, and then ordered the trade edition because I wanted the bonus short story.  After having read it, I think I may have just stuck with the limited edition (I'm looking forward to reading it again, with the illustrations), but I don't necessarily feel any regret over purchasing the book twice in different formats.  I've done the same thing for previous Stephen King works (like purchasing the hardcover editions of the first four Dark Tower novels, getting the Pocket Books editions of Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, and Pet Sematary for the new introductions, the illustrated edition of Salem's Lot, both the individual serialised Green Mile and the hardcover collection, the new edition of Danse Macabre, and the pop-up version of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon), so I guess it kind of comes down to a collector mentality.

Anyway, with regard to the content, "Blockade Billy" was a good read.  It's not particularly deep, and there's nothing all too shocking, but it's an entertaining story, well told.  I like the backdrop of old school baseball and King does a good job of fleshing it out.  "Morality", on the other hand, isn't bad, although I think I could have waited for it to be collected at a later date with more stories.  It hinges on the main character doing a morally reprehensible act for someone else, but when it comes down to it, the act could have been so much worse.  Maybe it just shows you where my morals happen to be, but it didn't seem to be the thing that would cause the overall moral decay of the character to the extremes presented.

Personally, I think a variation of the idea -- basically living a "good" life but doing a "bad" act in order to choose between the two; leading to the argument between Aristotelian and Modern ethics -- was done much better in Brian Bolland's contribution to Batman: Black & White.

Getting Lost

I'll not go into any spoilers here, but I just wanted to say that the ending itself is kind of what I came to expect over the course of this season.  Back in January, I decided to go back and re-watch all of the previous seasons.  Due to unforseen events, I only ever got through season one and haven't moved on from there, but after tonight, I think I'm going to finish it off.  Maybe write about it.

What I do find funny, though, is the amount of people decrying the ending, saying that it was terrible, and that six years of our collective lives have been...well, um...lost.  I think the ending itself proves that old chestnut; it's not the destination that matters, it's the journey.

A Society For Rent, Not to Own

I find this horrifying, particularly the externsion that "the anti-circumvention rules would criminalize the ordinary behaviour of millions of Canadians, such as copying a CD onto an iPod or recording a television program for later viewing."  This type of possible law especially coming from a country where file-sharing has by and large been legal -- it's one of the reasons why we have a levy on recordable media.  I'm not for downloads of pirated copyrighted material, I'll be among the first to admit that it is indeed illegal, but I'd also defend the idea of "fair use" and I think the extremes of this reform is ultimately harmful. 

Days of the Old

Over the past few days, I've been importing old posts from earlier incarnations of this blog, as well as other projects for your perusal.  I'm still trying to figure out what happened between 2004 & 2009.

Yeah, You Got Me Wrong

I finally got around to really listening to the Broken Bells' album, featuring Danger Mouse and James Mercer.  I'm a big fan of both The Shins and Gnarls Barkley, and my first listen through this back in March kind of left me cold.  It was alright, but there didn't seem to be much to hook me. 

Like the collaboration between Timbaland -- trying to make a rock album -- and Chris Cornell -- trying not to make a rock album -- it seemed like the things that made the individual acts special was missing.  One of the things that I liked about Danger Mouse was the incredible beats and electronic flourishes, while sampling some 60's pop, in Gnarls Barkley and on Beck's Modern Guilt - the choice to primarily use live instruments makes that largely absent here.  What I love about The Shins is the jangly pop, with Mercer's rather endearing high register whine-sing, although I suppose the Smiths-ish influence to Wincing the Night Away might point to the approach to this album.  In any event, the lack of the two things that I loved about the separate groups had me largely shelve the Broken Bells album after a couple of listens.

In the wee hours of the morning today, I decided to give it a spin again as background music.  Like many albums that have grown on me over time, I found it worked considerably better when I wasn't thinking about it.  Especially the second half of the album, which settles into a nice laid back groove.  That groove, in a way, is very similar to some of the more acoustic beats from the Gorillaz' Demon Days and the musical backbone of the Gnarls Barkley tracks.  There's also an odd old-school pop feel to some of the music, almost like something out of a David Lynch film, that adds a different flavour to some of the tracks.

Stand out tracks to me include; "The Ghost Inside" --which I think has the most similarity in terms of bass beat to a Gnarls Barkley song, although it's fronted by Mercer singing falsetto--, "October" -- which features a great opening of guitar and piano, as well as some of the best lyrics on the album--, and "Mongrel Heart" --which highlights a great 70's disco groove as well as a refrain featuring Morricone-esque trumpet work.

The River

I always wonder about nostalgia. 

It's a strange emotion; longing combined with reflection, wistfulness and a mix of happiness and sadness.  I guess conceptually I can understand people who think that high school, university, their 20s, their 30s, whatever, were the best times of their lives -- how there are memories of good times, memories of things being simpler, certain people being around.  Missing someone or something can be difficult, debilitating even, but you can never go back.  Only forward.  One step at a time.

Cherish the memories of the good times, but don't become trapped by the past.  While certain elements may be "better" than "now", those times certainly weren't necessarily simpler than things now.  I've thought about different times myself, wondering where I got different ideas, how I did different things when I was younger, and where certain passions or abilities went.  Treading water, maybe? 

This Too Will Pass Away

When it comes to personal mnemonics, I tend to code most things to music.  As such, just thinking of an individual song can allow me to recall complex, lengthy information, scenes and such.  I used the technique regularly when studying in university; code a book to a CD, keep it in my short-term memory, and then "read" the book, along with the accompanying soundtrack, during an exam.  The ability to remember the entire contents of a textbook fades, but fragments remain whenever I listen to a particular song from any of the albums.  I also tend to encode memories to listening to songs, just as a certain scent, taste, or touch might trigger something.

As such, I've not been able to listen to Puscifer's "C" is for [Please Insert Sophmoric Genitalia Reference HERE] for the past few months, since it would elicit an emotional response of either tears or illness.  Overcome, I usually turn it off.  Which is sad in itself, considering that the EP is just that damn good.  I was listening to the album during the months of November and December while I was working on a short story ["22"] which I've posted an excerpt of elsewhere and the songs "Potions" and "Polar Bear" both highly influenced pieces of the text.  It would almost be funny that the lyrics to "Potions" are relevant both to the story, the roots of the story, and the resulting events following writing the story.

Reading this week's issue of Fables (#95), with the second part of its story focusing on Rose Red, also provided a contribution to a kind of perfect storm regarding memories that I'd rather not keep.  It utilizes what looks like part of the direct text from Grimm's version of Snow White & Rose Red; something that I used as a springboard for part of the aforementioned story, after one of the primary characters related a truncated narration of the fairy tale.  Roses...

I decided to listen to the EP again tonight...

Tired Starlings

I'm still conflicted about the season finale to Supernatural.  I think I liked it.  I also think I hated it.

So, until I watch it again, I'm just going to post the video to a live performance of "White Room" by Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, and others. The really good part starts around 4:09 if you want to skip ahead, but I'd just sit back and listen.

All Out of Happy

Yes, I realise that the series has been cancelled and I'm a little saddened by it.  I can't say that I'm surprised, though, since the series is rather quirky, which doesn't necessarily seem to go over well with typical American audiences.  This week's episode continues on with more of the same, plus random sex and an out-of-left-field appearance by David Cronenberg.  That kind of elevates the show to awesome, which is of course why it needs to be cancelled.

Here's to You, Frank

You will be missed.

Always Deny Everything

Leading on from the Jack Parow stuff, I've also been turned on to Fokofpolisiekar, an Afrikaans alterna-punk band out of Belville, South Africa. I've only had the chance to listen to Lugsteuring so far, but it's pretty damn good.  I don't have a bloody clue what they're singing about -- some of Afrikaans sounds like German words I recognise, but I don't want to necessarily translate them the same way -- but the music is entertaining.  I'd say it sounds like a cross between DC-era punk, Iron Maiden, and stoner rock.  Wikipedia compares them to Alkaline Trio and I'd say that's kind of apt, but I'd argue that their guitar sound is more open and prone to solos and more interesting recursive riffs.  Francois van Coke's scratchy vocals also add a different edge to the music.

"Dance, Dance, Dance. You can fucking, fucking dance."

Due to the fact that I have very strange friends (actually kind of goes without saying), I now have the chorus from a South African rap song stuck in my head.



It's like taking Ali G seriously and having him rap in an unintelligble mash-up of English and Afrikaans. The ginormous hat, bizarre clothes, dancing mummies, automated cat statues and overall song just makes this priceless. I think everyone needs a little more Jack Parow in their lives.

The New Doctor

Up until the David Tennant run on Doctor Who, there had always been an odd quirk, something that I just couldn't take seriously, that would keep me away from regularly watching any run of the series.  I enjoyed watching the old Tom Baker reruns when I was a kid on the CBC, much in the same way I enjoyed watching the black and white sci-fi movies, but there was always something hokey about them that kept me from really being a fan.  The Christopher Eccleston series started to change a lot of that, and then with Tennant, I was watching as soon as they aired.

Unfortunately, that hokey quality seems to be creeping back in to this new run with Matt Smith.  Now, I like Smith as the Doctor.  He's not as good as Tennant, Eccleston or Baker, but he's still rather endearing, and Karen Gillan is quickly becoming my favourite companion since Billie Piper, but...Daleks in WWII facing off against Winston Churchill?  Part of me liked the absurdity, part of me wanted to change the station.  This week's episode, with the weeping angels, however, seemed to appeal to me more.  I'm still watching, but it may turn out to just be an occasional thing if nothing else is on and I'm home.

So Happy You Could Cry

Well, I hate to say it, but I don't think that Happy Town is going to last much longer than its initial batch of episodes.  Despite having its strongest character (MC Gainey's Sheriff) unconscious for the episode, I still kind of liked it, but I do think that it's being too quirky for its own good.  The mystery of the intial murderer is solved in a fairly unusual fashion, so it gets points there, but at this stage in the game, everything's still so fresh that we don't necessarily have any baseline to be shocked by any events.  Everything in Haplin seems off kilter, so there isn't any sort of "normal" grounding.

Random Funny Thing

I've been looking for a release date/pre-sale for the new Spiritual Front album, and in doing so went to the Canadian, American and German Amazon sites and came across something I found endlessly funny.  On both the Canadian and American sites, Amazon is highly featuring the Kindle.  On the German site, the main feature is a washing machine.



I did, however, manage to find that the video for the first single from the new album has been posted, "Darkroom Friendship".  It seems much more accessible compared to how dark some of Armageddon Gigolo was, nevertheless I quite like it.  It still continues with the Morricone-inspired guitar feel and I like the trumpet and accordion.

Be afraid, be very...something or other

I'm working on another project that I'm going to unveil in the not too distant future, but in doing research and background for it, I discovered that there are, not including last year's made-for-TV-remake, seven films for Children of the Corn.  Doesn't that seem a wee bit excessive to anyone else?  It was originally a thirty page short story about children going nuts a la Lord of the Flies and some creepy dark thing instituting some of that "old time" religion in the youngins.  Seven films.

...because I can't sleep...

I've been clicking the "Next Blog" link at the top blogger bar for about an hour now, just seeing what people have decided to post.  Most are about as interesting as watching paint dry, especially the preponderance of Christian blogs proselytizing at me while playing midi hymns (I thought midi files on pages were banned back in the 90's?), but then I guess the same is true if you just randomly came across this page in your travels.  It only ever really matters to the person writing it, so well...

What I did kind of find interesting was the sheer amount of people, all with the same basic template, who are "Bringing home..." whomever; the adoption blogs.  Maybe I'm just overly cynical, but most of the adoption sites just seem like so much a scam, even to the point where I swear that some of the blogs themselves are made up since several of them seem to duplicate the same material.

C'Mon Get Happy

I watched the first episode of Happy Town.  It's too early to really say much, this episode really was just an introduction of characters, basic premise and setting, but it did a decent job.  MC Gainey is great as Sherriff Conroy, but he's really the only one whose individual performance stands out.  The group of catty widows and their landlady were interesting, emphasizing the oddball characters bit.  At some points, it feels like it's trying too hard for the Twin Peaks by way of Stephen-King-made-for-TV-mini-series tone, but we'll see how it turns out.

No Matter How...

The new Coheed and Cambria album, Year of the Black Rainbow has grown on me considerably over the past couple weeks, particularly the song "Far". Below is an acoustic version that I think is even better than the album track -- albeit the video and audio is kind of poor, cell phone recording likely.

We've got armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

A little while ago I picked up Avantasia's two new discs, The Wicked Symphony and Angel of Babylon. I'm an uabashed fan of what you could call over-the-top, pretentious metal, and have a certain fondness for projects like Tobias Sammet's Avantasia and Arjen Anthony Lucassen's Ayreon. Due to the cheese and power metal aspect of Avantasia, I've not been able to get past track five, "Blizzard on a Broken Mirror", from the first disc, but I'll probably eventually put the two discs on as background noise while I'm cleaning or something and let it diffuse.

I do, however, quite like the first single, "Dying for an Angel", which has to feature the biggest, catchiest butt rock chorus this side of 1980's Bon Jovi. Check out the video above. Turn it up to eleven.

You Won't Know

After finally catching the latest episode of Stargate Universe, "Divided", I must say I'm really enjoying this show. I was never a fan of SG1 or Atlantis, both shows just seemed to focus more on the humour and seemed to lose the plot half the time, that I just tended to leave them alone. This placement in that universe, however, has enthralled me since the beginning. It's still early in the series development, but the characters seem more engaging, the writers are actually contributing to regularised serial story, and although the overaching plot seems borrowed from Star Trek: Voyager and -- along with its shooting style -- Battlestar Galactica, it seems like something different.

I think it could partially just be the outstanding performances from all of the actors, specifically Robert Carlyle, Louis Ferreira and David Blue, maybe it's just because Blue's character of Eli Wallace just lands so close to home, maybe it's Elyse Levesque spending most of the season in yoga pants, or maybe it's because the rest of the rabid Stargate fans seem to hate it, but I'm quite enjoying this.

Birds flying high...

The Muse concert last night at the Pacific Coliseum was quite good. I've been impressed with their albums for quite some time, but they are indeed better live. I was slightly disappointed that they didn't play "MK Ultra", but it was more or less made up by playing "Map of the Problematique" and causing me to realise just how good is Dom Howard a drummer.

First Impressions of a Rainbow

I've been privileged to have a first listen of Coheed and Cambria's new album out April 13, Year of the Black Rainbow, and I have to say I quite like it. It doesn't come off as nearly pretentious as their previous releases, and seems to focus more on standard song structure and less on the overarching concept of the whole Armory Wars nonsense. It also features what's probably Claudio Sanchez's best work in "Pearl of the Stars". I'll definitely be picking this up when it comes out.