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Games: Pretty much the typical go-tos.
Music: We have seen some great shows. The first was Peaches and, yes. I WANT TO BE MERILL NISKER WHEN I GROW UP. Her creativity, voice, muscle tone, energy...holy crap. This was one of (if not the) first shows for the No Lube, So Rude tour it and it was baller. I've seen Peaches live three times now (previously for the Teaches of Peaches 20th anniversary and Rub tours)) and every time I think, She can't possibly top this. And then she does.
This was a much more stripped down stage set than for the ToP tour, but it worked really well. She only had two dancers (and an occasional third performer/stage hand) with her this time around, but they absolutely owned the stage. Then they owned the lower level when they performed a few songs while crowd surfing to the back of the house, where they continued to own the crowd performing on the sound booth. We were in our typical post on the second level so we had a great view of it all (including of the super stoked guy in the NiN tour shirt from the show we'd seen a few weeks ago--you have stellar taste, dude!) but gah, there were points when I wished I had been on the floor. And also gah, she is just incredibly good at handling the audience, and getting them to do what she needs them to do and keep her safe while she's doing it.
She opened with several tracks of the new album, which I wasn't yet familiar with but very much liked; in fact, I think she performed most of the new album over the course of the set. She performed a bunch of my favorites off of Rub, Impeach My Bush, Fatherfucker, and The Teaches of Peaches (Rub, Dick in the Air, Light in Places, I Mean Something, Boys Wanna Be Her, Slippery Dick, I U She, Fuck the Pain Away, AA XXX), sadly did not play several I wanted to hear (How You Like My Cut?, Hanky Code, Make Me, Bag It, Talk To Me, Mommy Complex), and ended the encore with another acapella torch song. Everything about it: the costumes, the choreography, the energy, was so good. Absolutely phenomenal show. A++ please don't make us wait another three years before you come back again.
The following day we saw Timecop1983 with Bad Dreamers and Brent Michael Woods opening. Woods is very much of the "Richard Marx with an acoustic guitar" mode of mid-80s nostalgia pastiche, which is not my thing per se, but he is very talented at it and thus fun to watch live. Bad Dreamers joined the tour at the last minute when the scheduled opening act was unable to get US visas; I'd been aware of him through his vocals on a bunch of Timecop tracks, and he was just as good live. (And I particularly appreciated his insistence that the venue turn the stage lights off so that he could see the audience despite it's meaning that the audience could not see him.
Timecop1983 was fabulous, as expected. Just a really energetic show that sounded as good or better than the albums live. He was joined by Josh Dally on guitar and vocals as well as a killer live drummer, which really added to the energy (the drummer was clearly having the time of his life), and Dally and Timecop had great onstage chemistry, with Dally providing the garrulous crowd engagement and running commentary, and Timecop the well-timed laconic one-liners. (Dally also graciously handled the very drunk woman in the crowd who kept loudly insisting he go for drinks with her after the show despite the conspicuous wedding band on his hand.)
They played a good selection from their back catalogue as well as some new tracks we weren't familiar with, as well as a few numbers with one or both of Bad Dreamers and Woods on the stage with them. This too was an excellent show and I will certainly see any or all of these acts if they're ever in town again.
Podcasts/Articles: I listened to The Women's Podcast episode The Digital War on Women and How To Fight Back, which was unsurprisingly as horrifying as the title suggests. The panel members were (rightly) so energized about how vile this stuff is that they were unfortunately often not as clear about explaining to the audience what it was they were discussing as one would have wished but they made up for it by explicitly pointing out that the primary solution to all this shit and enshitification is to stop. Just stop. Get off these platforms and go do something else with your time. (That said, how you convince anyone under 15 to do so...)
For long form articles, I read:
Roleplaying: Nothing. The GC is DMing some one shots, but since they're on the days that I am step dancing and I can't be in two places at once, dancing it is 🩰
Television: When the TV's on, pretty much all AEW, all the time. The pendulum is very much swinging back toward Restaurant Quality 😁 these days. Of course, the usual suspects (Hangman, Mox, Young Bucks) are still there with predictable plotlines, but everything going on around them has been great. FTR and Stokely steal the show for every promo and match they're in. You wouldn't necessarily think Brody King vs. Swerve would make sense but it does, and Prince Nana is clearly having the time of his life. The Brawling Birds won me over with the throwback name alone, but they are more than living up to its promise. Jet Speed and Speedball are great. Kyle Fletcher is great. The IInspiration should annoy the living bejeezus out of me but they were hysterical and I wish they'd got five times the screen/ring time, TK please bring them back. Don Callas is as oily and entertaining as ever. The Thunder Rosa vs. Thekla match was fire.
Speaking of wrestling, we also finished out Dimension 20: Titan Takedown group watch, which had a very satisfying (if a bit railroaded, probably due to time constraints) conclusion. Humor, action, lore and iterating in-jokes, and some really affecting emotional character arcs: this is what I want from wrestling and from a D&D game, and this D:20 season had them all in spades. I enjoyed the nostalgia of (most of) The New Day and Bailey, and while I don't watch WWE anymore, it absolutely sold me on Chelsea Green and I hope she makes it over to AEW some day soon.
Video Games: The gaming computer is acting up *sigh* so nothing these past few weeks. We did get Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2, which seems to have inspired divergent takes among the people who've played it, so we'll see.
これで以上です。
Music: We have seen some great shows. The first was Peaches and, yes. I WANT TO BE MERILL NISKER WHEN I GROW UP. Her creativity, voice, muscle tone, energy...holy crap. This was one of (if not the) first shows for the No Lube, So Rude tour it and it was baller. I've seen Peaches live three times now (previously for the Teaches of Peaches 20th anniversary and Rub tours)) and every time I think, She can't possibly top this. And then she does.
This was a much more stripped down stage set than for the ToP tour, but it worked really well. She only had two dancers (and an occasional third performer/stage hand) with her this time around, but they absolutely owned the stage. Then they owned the lower level when they performed a few songs while crowd surfing to the back of the house, where they continued to own the crowd performing on the sound booth. We were in our typical post on the second level so we had a great view of it all (including of the super stoked guy in the NiN tour shirt from the show we'd seen a few weeks ago--you have stellar taste, dude!) but gah, there were points when I wished I had been on the floor. And also gah, she is just incredibly good at handling the audience, and getting them to do what she needs them to do and keep her safe while she's doing it.
She opened with several tracks of the new album, which I wasn't yet familiar with but very much liked; in fact, I think she performed most of the new album over the course of the set. She performed a bunch of my favorites off of Rub, Impeach My Bush, Fatherfucker, and The Teaches of Peaches (Rub, Dick in the Air, Light in Places, I Mean Something, Boys Wanna Be Her, Slippery Dick, I U She, Fuck the Pain Away, AA XXX), sadly did not play several I wanted to hear (How You Like My Cut?, Hanky Code, Make Me, Bag It, Talk To Me, Mommy Complex), and ended the encore with another acapella torch song. Everything about it: the costumes, the choreography, the energy, was so good. Absolutely phenomenal show. A++ please don't make us wait another three years before you come back again.
The following day we saw Timecop1983 with Bad Dreamers and Brent Michael Woods opening. Woods is very much of the "Richard Marx with an acoustic guitar" mode of mid-80s nostalgia pastiche, which is not my thing per se, but he is very talented at it and thus fun to watch live. Bad Dreamers joined the tour at the last minute when the scheduled opening act was unable to get US visas; I'd been aware of him through his vocals on a bunch of Timecop tracks, and he was just as good live. (And I particularly appreciated his insistence that the venue turn the stage lights off so that he could see the audience despite it's meaning that the audience could not see him.
Timecop1983 was fabulous, as expected. Just a really energetic show that sounded as good or better than the albums live. He was joined by Josh Dally on guitar and vocals as well as a killer live drummer, which really added to the energy (the drummer was clearly having the time of his life), and Dally and Timecop had great onstage chemistry, with Dally providing the garrulous crowd engagement and running commentary, and Timecop the well-timed laconic one-liners. (Dally also graciously handled the very drunk woman in the crowd who kept loudly insisting he go for drinks with her after the show despite the conspicuous wedding band on his hand.)
They played a good selection from their back catalogue as well as some new tracks we weren't familiar with, as well as a few numbers with one or both of Bad Dreamers and Woods on the stage with them. This too was an excellent show and I will certainly see any or all of these acts if they're ever in town again.
Podcasts/Articles: I listened to The Women's Podcast episode The Digital War on Women and How To Fight Back, which was unsurprisingly as horrifying as the title suggests. The panel members were (rightly) so energized about how vile this stuff is that they were unfortunately often not as clear about explaining to the audience what it was they were discussing as one would have wished but they made up for it by explicitly pointing out that the primary solution to all this shit and enshitification is to stop. Just stop. Get off these platforms and go do something else with your time. (That said, how you convince anyone under 15 to do so...)
For long form articles, I read:
- Gisèle Pelicot on rape, courage and her ex-husband: ‘He was loved by everyone. That’s what is so terrifying’
- Inside voice: what can our thoughts reveal about the nature of consciousness
- The new science of death: brain activity, consciousness, and near death experience
- They pushed so many lies about recycling: the fight to stop big oil pumping billions more into plastics
Roleplaying: Nothing. The GC is DMing some one shots, but since they're on the days that I am step dancing and I can't be in two places at once, dancing it is 🩰
Television: When the TV's on, pretty much all AEW, all the time. The pendulum is very much swinging back toward Restaurant Quality 😁 these days. Of course, the usual suspects (Hangman, Mox, Young Bucks) are still there with predictable plotlines, but everything going on around them has been great. FTR and Stokely steal the show for every promo and match they're in. You wouldn't necessarily think Brody King vs. Swerve would make sense but it does, and Prince Nana is clearly having the time of his life. The Brawling Birds won me over with the throwback name alone, but they are more than living up to its promise. Jet Speed and Speedball are great. Kyle Fletcher is great. The IInspiration should annoy the living bejeezus out of me but they were hysterical and I wish they'd got five times the screen/ring time, TK please bring them back. Don Callas is as oily and entertaining as ever. The Thunder Rosa vs. Thekla match was fire.
Speaking of wrestling, we also finished out Dimension 20: Titan Takedown group watch, which had a very satisfying (if a bit railroaded, probably due to time constraints) conclusion. Humor, action, lore and iterating in-jokes, and some really affecting emotional character arcs: this is what I want from wrestling and from a D&D game, and this D:20 season had them all in spades. I enjoyed the nostalgia of (most of) The New Day and Bailey, and while I don't watch WWE anymore, it absolutely sold me on Chelsea Green and I hope she makes it over to AEW some day soon.
Video Games: The gaming computer is acting up *sigh* so nothing these past few weeks. We did get Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2, which seems to have inspired divergent takes among the people who've played it, so we'll see.
これで以上です。
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