For all who celebrate Easter, hope you have/had a lovely day, whether it be with family or friends, loved ones or pets, or in the peaceful comfort of solitude.  For those who don't, the same.  <3

I had a lovely brunch at this jazz place with my friends today. I had a Peach Bellini and a pesto omelet with a bagel.  It was amazing.  Brunch is by far my favorite meal.  If I weren't in a food coma maybe I'd be able to write something coherent.

I apologize to all my internet friends for being so incredibly absent and busy these past few weeks.  Blame midterms and boyfriends, not me.  Matt is an absolute doll.  He treats me so well.  And he's adorable when he sleeps.  The housing drama is resolved and we've split into three groups.  Matt found his own place with Manizeh and Atanu, and Emma, Lindsey, Philip and I are looking for a 4-bedroom together.  I think it's good that I won't be living with Matt, probably better for our relationship, but it also makes me kinda sad.  I really want to get a place close by.

I went to see The Honorary Title open for Mae on Friday.  They were incredible.  I'm not a big Mae fan, but I adore THT.  Two other bands I hadn't heard before played as well.   I will write a review when I'm not in a food coma.  I'm also going to see Murder By Death with cruelest_month in a couple weeks, and British Sea Power in May.  I wish I could go to shows every week but I can't afford it, especialyl if I insist on buying a tshirt every time. XD

The images of Sasuke in 394...just beautiful.  Well done.

It had been over a month since I'd been to a show, and yeah, I missed it.  So we went to the loveably grungy Paradise Rock Club to see The Bravery -- me, Philip, and his friend Duncan, also British.  Flanked by British lads, I was in good spirits.

 We arrived a tad late and missed about half of the opening set by Your Vegas, but from what we heard they had potential.  However, they were overshadowed by the rocking Switches.  This British quintet had a great sound -- a kind of classic rock throwback thing, with four-part harmony, loud guitars, infectious energy, and awesome hair.  Unfortunately, their lyrics were,in Philip's words, "insipid."  Their formula for a song seems to be choose a two- or three-word phrase for the title ("No Hero," "Every Second Counts," "Lovin' It"), and then repeat it as many times as possible within the chorus.  Once the crowd had figured out this formula, it got old quickly. They were clearly talented musicians with skills and commanding stage presence, however, so I think they could be  quite big if they learned how to diversify their song structure.  They've only got a couple of EPs out so far, so they've got time.  Good stuff.

Waiting for The Bravery was the usual trial of patience, and we fell back into our pattern of making hypocritically snide remarks about the crowd.  In this case, it was the most "mainstream" looking crowd I'd been in for some time.  (To counterbalance the general lack of self-conscious hipness, I suppose, we had to encounter the single ugliest couple I have ever seen in my life.  I shall not even describe the horror, lest it be read by said couple.  This is the internet after all.  We actually didn't see them until midway through the set, when they pushed their way from the bar up to the front for "An Honest Mistake."  Goodness, I've said too much.)  At an ideal Bravery concert, people would jump around.  Their new-wave influenced, synthesizer-infused pop-rock about as close to dance music as legit guitar rock gets.  And some of the people filling the Paradise that night were unhip enough, or tipsy enough, to do that.

The Bravery came onstage with "Split Me Wide Open," which, though a great song, was somewhat disappointing live.  Perhaps it was a poor choice of starters.  Singer Sam Endicott sounded strained, sounding like a pale echo of a young Robert Smith, to whom he is sometimes compared.  However, he sounded much more confident on "No Brakes," and that confidence lasted through the solid set, which was more or less split between 2005's self-titled debut and this year's The Sun and the Moon.  Before playing "This Is Not the End," he announced they would soon release a new album, entitled The Moon, made of of alternate versions of all the songs from The Sun and the Moon.  I'd still rather have an album of new compositions, but the "Moon" versions of familiar tracks they performed were interesting, especially the sped-up takes of Sun's two slow songs.  "Tragedy Bound," the sparsest, bleakest song The Bravery has recorded, benefited from an injection of tempo, while "The Ocean," which is beautifully wistful and dreamy on record, became a more generic Bravery filer track when backed up by a disco drumbeat.  It was decidedly refreshing to hear the variation, which, after all, is part of why we go to shows.

Sam Endicott has a long face that makes him look a bit like a cross between a more outgoing Conor Oberst and a less intimidating Trent Reznor.  He's passionate and dynamic on stage, all angular motion.  Emo-haired guitarist Michael Zakarin also loved the crowd, pacing the edge of the barrier and bringing out the fangirls in all of us.  The shy guy and unsung hero was clearly keyboardist  John Conway, who, with bassist Mike Hindert, contributed backing vocals in places I hadn't realized existed. The band made it clear that they were rockers, relying only minimally on synth power and more on the charisma and musical muscle of the Endicott-Zakarin combo.  Drummer Anthony Burulchich's  killer solo almost consciously spat in the face of drum machines everywhere.

The poppy "Public Service Announcement" was a highlight, as were the three biggest hits: "Believe," "Time Won't Let Me Go," and "An Honest Mistake." The last, saved til late in the evening, was the crowd's obvious sentimental favorite and brought the place as close to a dance floor as it could get.  They also played an old song called "The Dandy Rock," which Ellicott assured us had never been recorded.  Featuring Zakarin on vocals, who was hard to hear, it was forgettable but a welcome surprise.

When they left the stage, I was hoping for  "Fearless" and "Bad Sun" as encores.  While I didn't get the latter, I did get the former, as well as the single "Unconditional," for which Endicott pulled out all the stops.  "I just want I just want love," he wailed, and we shook our heads because it was so obvious that we loved him.

Setlist (well out of order):

Split Me Wide Open
No Brakes
This is Not the End (Moon version)
Public Service Anouncement
Tyrant
The Dandy Rock
Believe
Every Word From Your Mouth Is a Knife in My Ear
Time Won't Let Me Go
An Honest Mistake
Tragedy Bound (Moon version)
Swollen Summer

Encore:
Fearless
The Ocean (Moon version)
Unconditional

Okay first things first -- my much delayed review of the AWESOME show I went to last Sunday.
( Jesse Lacey, I will seduce you from your emo yet. )


Other things: It's almost time for winter break! I finished my last test for Origins of Agriculture today, and the museum exhibit I was organizing for my China class is all set up (and looking fantastic if I do say so myself). I still have a short paper to do by Wednesday, but it's almost done. Unfortunately, our semester ends at the end of January, so I will have to spend Christmas break researching my two term papers and have a take-home final when I get back. D: At Yale I was used to having everything finished before Christmas, so this is kind of annoying, but at least it made the last couple weeks much less painful than they would have been and probably enabled me to do NaNoWriMo. Which is my other big project for break: finally digging out Bodies In Flight from its winner-sparkly coffin and EDITING the thing. :D I'm taking the weekend to get ahead on research so I can relax a little over break, but I did some Christmas shopping today and it made me happeh.


Finally, on a manga/anime note:

Spoilers for Naruto 382 and Shippuuden Episode 39

( SPOILERS, I REPEAT, MAJOR MANGA SPOILERS )

The trouble with winter shows is that waiting outside for the doors to open is kind of a pain when it's 30 degrees outside, and you know that when you get inside you are not going to want the twelve layers of fleece, wool, and down you could have been wearing so you opt for a parka, a tee and some armwarmers and realize too late that you did want that hoodie after all.

But I digress.  I arrived at the Middle East, an optional T-stop away, and got in line behind a bunch of semi-obnoxious kids.  Oh, the trials of the all-ages show.  I noticed right away that the crowd was young, but not unusually so; and consisted of not only the typical sce/mo brigade but also some relatively jock/skaterish looking dudes with baseball caps.  I also saw something that I had hitherto not thought possible: a guy in skinny jeans who was sagging.  I kid you not.  I wanted to hand him a belt until I saw he was already wearing one.  Then I just wanted to hand him a sandwich.

The Middle East is a great venue for getting up close and personal, if the acoustics left a little to be desired.  A Day To Remember came on first.  They made it clear from the get go that this is a genuine hardcore band. The floor, which was not yet quite at full capacity, opened into a genuine pit with genuine hardcore dancing. I just love to watch that. It's better than ninja fights in anime. It's what I imagine electrons doing when they randomly pop up in different places at every instant. I have a hard time getting into hardcore musically, but being there live was awesome.  Apparently a sizeable pack of people -- the jockish guys from the line -- had shown up just for ADTR.  The rest of the lineup was too "emotive" and not "hxc" enough for them I guess. I overheard a couple of boys saying, "Dude, let's go. I kinda don't want to see the rest of the show." Good riddance if you ask me. This species of fans are a little too much like a sports team for me to want to be wedged in between them for more than an hour.  ADTM was pretty fun, though, and played a couple songs I liked the sound of and some rousing covers.

Next up was June,  the only act that didn't enthrall me completely.  It is too bad, because I think I might really enjoy their style if I had been able to hear the vocals (which were clearly meant to be heard) over the guitars. They played a kind of generic punky pop, sung by a guy who looked like a taller, manlier version of Elijah Wood, and the lead guitarist was bouncy and flaily and vaguely seemed to wish it were the 1970s.  He was the best thing about the set, exploding all over the stage and all but hacking into the crowd with his guitar like a hatchet.  The sound mixing just killed any personality the songs themselves might have had, but I'll probably check them out online anyway.

My loyalties are forever with Bayside, but I really must say that The Sleeping stole the show. Their brand of progressive screamo was made for live performance. The singer, Doug Robinson, looked like the deranged love child (as if there would be any other kind) of Jack Black and King Kong himself. This is not to say he was bad looking, just something about his large face, shaggy hair, beady wild eyes, and primal energy said cave-man on speed. He stared out at the audience with an intesely manic gaze, standing up on the barrier and practically swinging from the pipe attached to the low-hanging ceiling. The music was pretty rocking too (a song called "The Climb" was particularly memorable), and I made a note to add them to my ever-growing list of watched bands.  The crowed went wild for these guys, and since there was not enough room for dancing anymore, we had kind of a static overstuffed mosh-pit that most closely resembled the garbage compactor from that scene in Star Wars. I had never gotten so pushed around, not even at MCR, or at the O.A.R. Spring Fling show. I probably should have left my headband at home, as I almost lost it several times. At one point I literally imagined I was underwater. But it was great fun. Doug crowd surfed over us and I touched his arm.  They're on the way to being much bigger.

Bayside came on at last, blasting into the froward-surging crowd with "They're Not Horses, They're Unicorns." They were a very chatty and grateful band onstage, which is almost mandatory in a venue that small.  Singer Anthony Raneri mentioned that they had played in Boston every time they toured, and that they had played the Middle East a few times, but only on the small auxiliary stage "Upstairs."  They had always wanted to play Downstairs, and now they finally were.  They played a mix of tracks from their past three albums, especially this year's The Walking Wounded.   "Duality," the hit single, and "Carry On," which they announced to be the next single, maintained the energetic vibe that had built during The Sleeping's set.  Lead guitarist Jack O'Shea is skillful in a way that sets Bayside apart from some of the clone army of similar bands, and fortunately the mics were better coordinated so that both his parts and Anthony's spot-on vocals were clear.  They played two or three songs from their first album which I don't own, and they sounded so young and fresh and punktastic. The maturity in the new tracks is audible, though.  "Landing Feet First" was introduced as a heartfelt love song, and everyone swayed and sang along.  The classics "Blame It On Bad Luck" and "Montauk" were injected with new life, and Anthony dedicated the triumphant "I and I" to all the other bands that had played before them. The finale was "The Walking Wounded," my favorite Bayside song, and to top it all off, they returned for an encore that included "Devotion and Desire," the signature hit from their self-titled sophomore disk. It was a fantastic crowd-rousing, almost shiver-inducing moment, when he let the crowd sing the buildup "You're not ready / you're not ready /Please, stop acting like you are."  During the last round of chorus, the singers from ADTR and The Sleeeping sat on the top of the crowd, facing outward, and joined in the singing. It was a fantastic end to what truly seemed to be a label tour made of friends.  Bayside is tight and approachable live, and I was glad they played such a  chronologically diverse set.  The only other song I really missed was "Dear Your Holiness," but you can't win them all.  What a deal of a show night.  Victory indeed.

Tomorrow I'm off to Lowell to see Brand New, Thrice, and mewithoutyou.  Super whoot!  I'm trying to work hard today because have SO MUCH work to do this week and I can't make myself do it.  I have presentations on Wednesday and Thursday, a paper due Wednesday, and an exam Friday.  After that though, I'm basically free of deadlines until mid January.  Just keep breathing.

Which Naruto ninja are you most like? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Sasuke You're Sasuke, the angsty popular kid. Good-looking, cool and smart , you're admired by many. However, you don't care about people that much. You have one ambition, one goal in your life, and when it comes to that, people are just in your way. Try to give up the hatred you might feel because of your past and learn to show your caring side. Sasuke 88% Neji 75% Iruka 69% Rock Lee 69% TenTen 63% Hinata 63% Genma 56% Shikamaru 44% Naruto 44% Kakashi 44%

I'm not sure that the stated reasons are the real reasons why am I like Sasuke, which I've spent way too much time rambling about, but alright.  Angsty and popular (finally) is probably true.  And apparently I'm good looking?  News to me.

I went shopping with Peter today.  I haven't been spending enough time with him and I had forgotten how fun he was.  He gets so excited about going to Abercrombie (they don't have it in England), which makes me roll my eyes but he's too adorable about it to hold it against him.  I got some little things for my parents as well as the most recent Bayside CD for myself.  They're coming to Cambridge next week and I'd like to go, but I might not just because the week is already so loaded down with shows.  On Tuesday I'm probably going to see Cold War Kids, Spoon, and Against Me! with Chris and Giorgio, and on Sunday Guy and I are driving to Lowell to see Brand New.  Phew.  I'm excited, but also getting a little stressed. 

In school I'm starting a new project!  I'm going to be doing stable isotope analysis on a collection of Native American bones from Florida, to see how they compare with an earlier population from a nearby site.  We're looking at diet and subsistence patterns over time. I've never done this type of analysis before, since I've only worked with ceramics, not bones, but this project is kind of a race against time, since our museum will probably have to return all our Native American skeletal material when the new NAGRPA amendment goes through January 14.  I'm the only one in lab without a project now, and its straightforward nature should make it a good training project for me.  The idea of learning lab skills finally has gotten me a little more excited about school.

But damn, is it cold.

This is who I wish I could be:

So my concert was NOT canceled! Well, half of it was -- Muse didn't end up opening, and we still don't really know why. We were really upset when we first found out, but once My Chemical Romance came on, all was forgiven.  They were AMAZING live, and totally worth it. (I'm convinced that everyone who hates on MCR hasn't listened to them properly, and therefore just doesn't get it. Despite first impressions, this band is not your typical "emo" band. In fact, their latest record is really a mid '70s rock opera, more Queen than Hawthorne Heights. That takes some balls. And it is both life-affirming and incredibly fun. If you like dark fun.)

But I also love Muse, and someone was out to make sure I didn't get to see them last night. Planning for a spur-of the moment concert in the middle of finals week was not easy, and there were several times when I wasn't sure we'd get to go at all. Top it all off with the horrible suspense of food poisoning incident, and the fates seemed against us. So when the three of us hopped in the PT Cruiser (a good-for-nothing car if ever there was), proceeded to miss our exit on the Mass Pike of Doom, got ripped off on parking ,and stuffed down some takeout deep dish with crust like quiche (disconcerting), we arrived, thinking we had defeated all obstacles! And there was a little sign on the door: "Muse will not be performing tonight. Circa Survive will open instead."  We were crushed, furious, then saddened, and finally resigned. Apparently I would've known last night if I'd friended them on MySpace, which I never use. Luckily we had a rather long line to wait in while the disappointment stopped stinging. We were still really excited to see MCR, but Muse was half the reason we were there. I wouldn't have gone so far out of my way, at such a bad time of the year, to see either of the bands on their own, as much as I love them.

But I'm glad I did. Because MCR was 100% worth it.
( Full-length concert review if you actually care. )

It was an awesome show, one of the best I've seen.  I knew I loved MCR, but I didn't expect them to be quite this great live. Sometimes punkish songs can get muddied in mediocre venues, and something like The Black Parade, with its generous portions of pomp and circumstance, seemed like a polished studio creation. But in fact, the night revealed, this is what the album was made for. The theatrics and effects were not there to mask sloppy musicianship in the least: these guys are drama queens, but they can play. And darling Gerard, looking not the least bit menacing in his ghoulish getup, was a rock star in the fullest sense of the word. The world needs more of those.

Also, I'm two days and 15 pages away from summer.  ^_^  Time to catch up on FANFIC!!

*cough*

I now have tickets to see Muse open for My Chemical Romance in Worcester, Mass on May 8.

3-2-1 make some noise!!  :D

I'm actually even more excited for Muse than MCR, though I love both of them shamelessly.  Muse takes me to a higher realm.  MCR will be awesome for the theatrics, though.  Wheeeeee!  My term paper is due the 9th.  Guess I'll have to get it in early?  Heeheehee.

Got a decent deal too.  Score and DOUBLE score!  *dances*

EDIT:  And ONE OF MY MOST FAVORITEST FRIENDS can come with me!!!!  Amaaaaaaaazing.