One More Day

By this time tomorrow I will be in the air on my way to LA, and from there I will be heading for Japan. I am so excited that I literally feel sick to my stomach. But its worth it. As I was telling the girls last night, by the time I finally get off work today I'm going to be certifiably crazy excited. I can't wait!

But 4:30 is going to come awful early tomorrow morning... groan...

Hopefully I will be able to make a blog entry while in Japan. If not, you'll be hearing from me when I get back with all kinds of news and pictures!

One Week and Counting

Exactly one week from today, I will be in the air on my way to Japan. And I will be grinning like an idiot. Oh, wait. I'm already doing that just thinking about it.

Blue Angels

The Downtown Air Show is this weekend, and when I went on a walk with my coworker over lunch we got to watch the Blue Angels practicing over the city. It was pretty awesome. In fact, we can even see them from the window of our office every so often. This is the way to watch an airshow. No heat of the tarmac, no long lines for parking, no uncomfortable lawn chairs. And it's a pleasant diversion from work.

User Name Karaoke

I keep forgetting to post this, though I've had it figured out for awhile. Lizalou had this posted in her blog (and actually did it twice, the silly girl--one for general music and one for V6 alone).

Here's how it works: Open your playlist, pick songs that start with each letter of your username, but, the songs have to mean something to you. Don't just pick a song because it starts with a letter in your username.

Y Yoru wo Kakeru - Spitz

This is one of my favorites. Don't know why. Something about the angsty sound of it, Kusano Masamune's voice and the way it was used in Honey & Clover--which is where I first discovered it, of course.

E Endless Rain - X Japan

This song brings back some memories from Life Drawing class. Lizalou and I would sit through the long, four-hour class twice a week drawing naked people with charcoal and listening to music. At the time, I had only recently discovered X Japan, and I recall that this was one of the songs in particular that I enjoyed listening to and turning to look at lizalou with weepy eyes. X Japan always makes me weepy. Unless I'm listening to Desperate Angel.

L Libera Me - Fauré

Well, this is the namesake of my fanfiction... We sang Fauré's Requiem Mass at St. Lawrence when I was in college and I fell in love with it. This is one of my favorite movements. MPOD sang the solo, though I think we did this requiem the year before he was our director. Either way, I have good memories of it. I love the contrast of flowing haunting melodies against powerful themes in this piece in particular.

L Look Up! - Michael Bradley

Ah, good old Michael Bradley. His rendition of We Will Win almost made it into the "W" category. This one has to do with my screen name itself--how many of you can find a song really associated with your screen name, huh? That's right. I don't believe that this is a song Yellow Dancer actually sings (though it's been too long since I've seen Robotech all the way through if I can't remember) but I remember it was somehow associated with him. It's a great, overtly environmentally friendly song.

O Outpost 3J - Unreal Tournament & Overworld Jerky - Chrono Trigger

I was torn between two nice video game songs on this one. I decided to label them by game rather than composer for some reason. Anyway, Outpost 3J was one of my favorite levels in Unreal because of the music alone. It's a lot of fun. I have fond memories of decapitating aliens in this game while trying to ignore my crappy roommates, so this song is significant for me. The other song is not actually titled "Overworld Jerky," but I occasionally like to title the songs on my playlist that are unknown or in Japanese so that I can recognize them. This is the theme that plays in the 600 A.D. overworld in Chrono Trigger. I really love it. It's got a little bit of that happy angst I love so much. If you must know, I titled it after the jerky that fed a whole army.

W Werewolves of London - Warren Zevon

This song was my first encounter with Warren Zevon. That man writes some crazy lyrics, but I love them. They're so conversational and bizarre. I believe I discovered this song with Brandi, didn't I? I think my favorite line is, "I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's... and his hair was perfect." Or maybe it's actually, "A little old lady got mutilated late last night," which despite the gore is a lot of fun to say.

D Do I Have to do Another Eulogy? - Alias Soundtrack - Michael Giacchino

Michael Giacchino is an awesome composer, but I especially love the titles of the tracks on the Alias soundtrack. This one is right up there among my favorites for some unexplainable reason. I think it's mostly because of the first thirty seconds. I can never listen to it just once. There's something about the notes repeated in octaves through the orchestra with the beat behind it that I absolutely love. Plus, the title cracks me up and brings me back to when I was watching this series the first time with thecallowqueen and her roommate. Poor Emily. Like a number of people in that show, she had to die twice.

A Amazing - Poe

The House of Leaves is one awesomely scary book, and Poe's Haunted album is equally awesome and haunting. This is one of my favorite tracks because the lyrics really captured me. It's hard for me to pick a favorite from this CD though because I love them all! The subtlety of Poe's lyrics blows my mind.

N Nonstop to Tokyo - Rip Slyme (Pizzicato Five cover)

This song is so much fun! And soon (less than two weeks!) I will be on my way to Tokyo myself!!! I discovered Pizzicato Five on my last trip to Japan, and though I hadn't heard this song, I really enjoy Rip Slyme's remake. I picked up P5's CD at random, mostly because I've always liked the term pizzicato and because the packaging was a lot of fun. And the Rip Slyme boys are just so much fun.

C Curse of the Bloody Puppets - Devil May Cry - Masami Ueda

This one's just to pay homage to my Devil May Cry obsession. This track is from early in the first game and I love it's eerie ambience. The track is mostly echoey repititions of bass chords and howling sorts of noises over top, but at certain spots snatches of what sound like ghostly organ music break through. It has a perfect creepy feel for the castle on Mallet island where the game takes place.

E Eternal - Evanescence

This is an instrumental track I came across when I was looking up Evanescence music a long time ago. As is often the way with music found online, I can't be certain that it is attributed to the correct person, but it certainly sounds like Evanescene's stuff. It's pretty cool and dark, but my favorite part is the thunderstorm in the middle. I love thunderstorms! And the way it changes tones completely in the middle is pretty cool too.

R Red Hair is Better - Michael Giacchino

I wasn't going to put another track from the Alias soundtrack on here but I couldn't not use this one. I totally agree here; red hair isbetter. This is from the pilot episode and has a fun wildcat sounding thing in the middle (that's when she's stealing the car). She has the most fun awful red wig in this episode and it reminds me so much of Leeloo from Fifth Element.

2 25 or 6 to 4 - Chicago

These numbers were a bugger. I've always liked this song, even if it is all about doing drugs. We used to play it in pep band in high school and I remember I was always so impressed that the guy who played guitar could play the solo from this song exactly. It's a pretty fun solo, by the way, and my favorite part of the song.

1 1812 Overture

This number was super hard. But this is a great piece of music and it's significant to me because we would always play it during the week of the Midwestern Music Camp that fell on the 4th of July. I remember that they had bass drums (instead of cannons) and huge bells (instead of church bells) up in the balconies of the Lied Center during the part at the end.

Curse of Sephiroth

I was kind of in a hurry to finish Kingdom Hearts II when I did it the first time, but I wasn't too worried about missing anything because I knew I was going to go back and replay most of it to import videos for lizalou. But it bugged me that there wasn't much resolution to Cloud's story and he didn't make an appearance in the closing credits. I figured I had just overlooked something, and a quick check online confirmed my theory. You have to fight Sephiroth in order to get more Cloud goodies. Well, I never did beat Sephiroth in the first game. Never really even gave it a good try. But I thought I would make my best effort this time.

So, I started leveling up and gathering materials to synthesize all the ultimate weapons. I spent several hours on this, figuring that beating the game again to import the ending videos would be a breeze because of it (which it was, in fact). Then I headed down through the Great Maw (don't know why that name cracks me up) toward Sephiroth. I didn't know if I could beat him, but I figured I had a fighting chance at least at this point. I didn't look up any strategy because I wanted to see how well I could do on my own. I really had leveled up quite a bit, so surely I could last through a few lifebars (though Sephiroth has fifteen!).

I step up to him. He says something snotty. I get ready. There's an immediate reaction command. I thought I hit it in time. I didn't. Wham, bam, slash! I'm dead. Dirty bastard!!!!! I tried it again. I lasted half a minute and barely dented his lifebars. My best effort sucks. But so does Sephiroth. Asshole...

Air Dream Reset

It seems like I occasionally have periods of dreamless sleep, and then other times when I dream all night long and wake up remembering half of them. I am currently in the dreamhappy phase and I had loads of crazy dreams last night. I'll recount the one here that I remember the best.

I was at work, but we weren't actually in the place I work. The building was much taller and the walls were all windows so we had nearly a 180 degree view of downtown. Our office was on the top floor of the building and we were all busy at work when this bi-plane flies by doing aerial tricks within yards of our building. I think this part of the dream came from the stories my coworker, T, told us about the air show at their old office. Her company does the PR for the air show at the downtown airport and she said that sometime before the show the Blue Angels practice during the day and they used to be on the top floor of their office. She said it was pretty spooky because the planes would fly low and she'd always feel as if they were going to hit her when they flew over.

Anyway, in the dream, all of the planes in the air show were flying over and really close to the building. I got out my camera and was taking pictures, but then I saw one of the planes heading straight for us. I just knew it was going to hit. It was a small plane luckily, and we were already running by the time it hit, so we managed to make it to the stairs. I remember the entire trip out of the building fairly clearly, including pulling the fire alarm on the way down to alert everyone to evacuate.

Then, we were all standing outside watching the destruction and I remembered that I had left my laptop in our office. It had the only copy of probably two hundred pages of writing I had done and a whole bunch of other stuff that was irreplaceable. I couldn't believe I had left it up there. I was about ready to go back in when my coworker D dragged me back, reminding me that the place was probably an inferno by that point and unstable to walk through. (In real life, I do have most of my files from my laptop backed up, though this dream encouraged me to make sure.)

This is where the dream got cool. I was standing outside watching the building burn and kicking myself for not grabbing my laptop. I wasn't really upset about the expense of it, but I was devastated by all the hard work that I had put into the files on it. Then, suddenly, I was back in the office. The first biplane had just flown by. I had the chance to do it all over again. This time, when the plane that was going to crash was on its way I grabbed my laptop. I ran down the stairs and outside. Then, my parents showed up and I told them that I had used my special powers.

I mean, I've had dreams where you're half awake and you change the outcome because your conscious mind is influencing the dream, but this wasn't like that. And I even acknoledged the whole thing within the dream. It was awesome. Almost as cool as the dream I had where I was a telekinetic.