Whoa, at 3pm this afternoon there was a long queue of complete lewsers queuing on the streets of Göteborg to buy an iphone.  I have the pictures to prove it too, and will upload them when I get back to Munich in a couple of weeks. 

Whoa-oa-oa! I feel good, I knew that I would, now at dave bushe dot net

In nine years of blogging, I seem to have only mentioned The Pink Floyd about four times. I have no idea why this is, as they have been one of my (if not the) favourite bands for far longer than the lifetime of DaveWhite.Net.  I never got to see them play, to my great distress. In fact, I had the opportunity to see them on two occasions, but circumstances played against me. 

The first time was for the Division Bell tour in 1994.  There was a Rocky Horror Picture Show convention on in London that we (as cast members of the Irish Rocky) were supposed to go to.  I had quit my job about two weeks before that so I didn't go because I thought it would be a waste of money.  Little did I know that Pink Floyd played their famous Earl's Court gigs that weekend and that there were tickets for us to go to see them.  Those concerts were later immortalised on the P•U•L•S•E album. I found out about it on the Monday when someone came back and told me that the concerts were the best thing they had ever seen.  Typical.  The second time was for the Live 8 gig.  The problem with that one was that Anna came home from a trip to the US early, sick, and in need of care.  That trumps a concert in my eyes.

I have seen David Gilmour play in concert at the Royal Albert Hall for his On An Island tour, and that was awesome.  The particular night we were there was the one where David Bowie sang Arnold Layne and Comfortably Numb, and ranks up there with the best concerts I have ever seen.  I do have the DVDs, but I haven't ever looked at them to see if we can be seen, being usually too concerned with what was happening on the stage.  I think we (Trev, Dennis, Seamus, Duncan, me) should be pretty visible, as we were in a box centred on the left wall.  I must check that out sometime.

I have all of Pink Floyd's albums, and have downloaded some bootlegs and variations I haven't found in physical format.  Most of the albums are in CD format, but I think there's actually a couple of vinyl albums back in Ireland, that I'll have to dig out at some point.  They are all of course digitised and on my MP3 player, and taking up a lot of room as I have them ripped at a high bit rate.  Again, at some point in the future I'm going to make lossless rips of them (and possibly my U2 collection, actually probably most of our CDs, but that's a project for a later time) and to hell with the size implications.  Disks are cheap now days, right? One that I don't have (yet) is the new boxed set Oh By The Way that they just released.  Each of the CDs on it are miniature versions of the original albums and presented inside sleeves that look like the album slip covers.  I also have a couple of their VHS videos - Live at Pompeii and a recorded-from-TV Earls Court concert.

I have also seen the Australian Pink Floyd many many times.  They are perhaps one of the best tribute bands in the world, and have been around for a long time now.  Stumbling across their updated web site yesterday prompted me to write this post, though I can't remember the impetus for looking at their site in the first place.  It might have been something somebody on Twitter mentioned, but it eludes me now. Anyway, your chances of seeing them in concert are far better than seeing the originals, and while nothing will ever match the real thing, they're pretty damn good.  We've also seen them in the Albert Hall, where they performed the 30th anniversary tour of Dark Side of the Moon, which was pretty special.  Oh, I remember now what made me think of them.  There was a track that I was looking for online which is their version of Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which had a sequence of sound before it (effects like the Skippy theme, Neighbours theme etc building into a slight crescendo and then fading rapidly to leave you with the familiar G minor opening sequence. It was in fact a rare moment that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up when I first heard it.  I couldn't find it online, although some of the effects are audible on some sequences of the embedded songs on their site.

I guess its pretty safe to assume that they are my favourite band.  As a general rule I listen to anything from metal to classical, but I have some staples in my taste.  Rock and Roll, a la Pink Floyd, U2 and Bruce Springsteen being my most listened to genre. Those are the bands that I used to go asleep to when I was younger, and the ones that I now have on my MP3 player and routinely play.

Riddick didn't say "Fuckin' disgusting", he actually said "Fuckin' insultin'".  Sometimes the quotes work better in my head than in yours.

"Fuckin' disgusting", to quote Riddick. Having had twenty four hours to digest it, those would be the two words I'd use to describe Iron Man.  This movie had so much potential and so much good about it, that it was disgusting what they did with the storyline. The blatant, offensive, irritating and just fucking disgusting racism in it was shocking to behold.  This is a movie that played ominous music whenever an Arab was shown on screen.  This is a movie where the "good guys" all work for or support the American military.  This is a movie where they showed the American flag and talked in terms of patriotism, winning the war in Iraq, and making better weapons to do so.  This is a movie where they lauded Stark's father, who helped create the atomic bomb.  Now, I have to add to all of this rant that this is how the comics were written originally.  At the time they would have been culturally relevant and not quite so politically incorrect.  Today however, it wouldn't work, and shouldn't have been made as it was.

The reason its such a pity is that taking out the blatant racism and American patriotism (difficult without changing the whole tenet of the story), Iron Man was indeed glorious.  The interplay between Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow was fantastic.  There were moments of pure frisson between the two of them that were just awesome to behold.  The suit was an incredible piece of special effects, being both completely believable and impossible at the same time.  Now, I'm not a great fan of the Iron Man comics, having read my last one about twenty five years ago, but from what I remember it all seems to have been fairly accurate.  If there hadn't been so much racism in it, then I would really have loved this movie.

As is it, I really cannot wait for the next one, so long as they lay off the blatant racism and silly patriotism.  I just can't tell you how much that spoiled it for me.

Riddick didn't say "Fuckin' disgusting", he actually said "Fuckin' insultin'".  Sometimes the quotes work better in my head than in yours.

They're making a sequel to the Lost Boys.  Corey Haim and Corey Feldman are in it and the trailer actually looks fucking awesome!  IMDB Page, and Trailer on MTV.Com.  If nothing else, put some headphones on and watch the trailer with the volume up.  The music is gonna blow you away..

CSI rocked tonight, Grissom got involved with someone finally. Of course, it had to be Lady Heather, just about one of the coolest characters on the show who isn't a part of the team.

Work is completely mad at the moment. Everything for the last fourteen months has led up to the events of the last week - the release and launch of AOL 8.0. I had thought that I would be able to sit back for a while, take stock of where we are and where we're going, but it looks like we're going straight back into the fray with the next version. ::sigh::

There isn't that much else happening really. Too much of my life has been caught up in work lately, so we haven't done much. I have to fix that though, I don't think I really get to spend as much time with Anna as I would like, or she deserves. Weekends won't involve work for a while though, and late nights are going to be rare from now on, which feels real good :-) We're going to Paris in a few weeks, for my birthday. I've never been there before, other than on business, so I think its going to be fun. Anna has been, a few times I think, so she might be a fairly good guide. If nothing else, her French is probably better than mine ;-)