Last night I went and saw [ Bear McCreary ] play at The Roxy. Words can not explain how cool it was…. so here are some pictures.

These were taken with my iPhone so I apologize for the less then perfect quality.

Here is Brendan’s Band rocking out for the opening act..

James Callis MC’d the event and smiled at me when I asked him to bless my baby…

Bear ended up right in front of me working his mixer board and orchestrating the band… he got this look of sheer enjoyment on his face when the music would rise and fall at his command.. it was so cool watching him.

Here is some of the band…
Starting from the left
Paul Cartwright on the violin
Steve Bartek on lead guitar
The guy on the irish pipes, I didn’t catch his name…
Brendan McCreary on vocals and rhythm guitar.

Bear on Keyboards

James Callis sing “Spooky” a song he wrote…

Another of James

Another of the band

And finally …

Here is a pic of the beautiful Raya Yarbrough who sing the Sanskrit lyrics in several of the songs… She sang barefoot, and danced beautifully, and was just simply amazing…

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I got a nice little note from the DMV indicating that my plates have arrived, and can be picked up at my convenience at my local DMV office.  YAY!

Of course, I was foolish enough to think that I could walk in this afternoon and just pick them up. … Ugh.. 1 hour wait, which I didn’t have time to wait for, so I left … empty handed.

So close, yet so far away.

So I  made an appointment for next Thursday (soonest possible) and will post some pics up for everyone to be jealous over.

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Ahhh… the premier… first new content for Battlestar Galactica in over a year. AMAZING…

Words just don’t seem to do this episode justice.  However, 2 and a half hours worth of words, replete with the Awesome GWC crew, as well we as the extremely cool set of geeks from the GWC forums, and to top off the awesome cake… A collection of Writers from BSG, 4400, Star Trek, and several other scifi shows, including Chase Masterson…

Check it out here : [ GWC live cast ]

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One word to describe meeting Chuck and Audra from the GWC crew. Woot!

Last Friday, after work, I cruised down to San Diego and met up with Chuck and Audra and a few others from the GWC forum.  We had a blast.  A few beers at the poolside rooftop bar at the hotel they were staying at, then off to the Tin Fish for dinner, and to cap it all off, desert at Mary Jane’s coffee house, where we hung out until 1 AM talking SciFi and other geek topics..

So much FUN!

Here is pic taken by Barb (bkitty)..

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woot!

I am not usually excited about prequels… lucas ruined that for me… LOL   but I think that I will be definitely interested in this one…

A couple of articles about it…

[ CinemaBlend ]

[ Galactica Watercooler ]

and you can discuss here  …. [ GWC Forum ]

At any rate it is nice to know that the show will continue in some form after BSG wraps up this year…

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In recent months there have been buzz around Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor putting his music online and allowing it to be freely downloaded. As it turns out, and pay attention to this RIAA, he made a TON of money doing it. How you ask? He allowed the music to be downloaded for free and then offered premiums with the purchase of hard copies and other mediums for the album. Turns out, that if you allow people to download the music, they actually also want to pay the artist, and get extras..

Now, I am personally not a NIN fan, but I have to give props for the online stuff. Radiohead has also done this in the past and they have also made a grip of money doing it.

Now, R.E.M. is providing the newest single “Supernatural Superserious” as a free stream from [ remhq.com ] . They also are encouraging their listener to mash the video and make their own music video… very cool.

Unlike Reznor and Radiohead, R.E.M. is still under contract with their label Warner Bros. and therefore are limited in what they can offer, but it is exciting to see that they are being backed by the label to do this. Maybe they [the labels] have been paying attention and are learning that they are way behind and have been on the wrong side of the DRM war. Well, that may be wishful thinking, but one can hope.

In the end, props to you R.E.M. for pushing the limits with Accelerate, and you have earned a sale here.

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OK, so as you know I recently bought a guitar and obviously it has not been long enough for me to be rocking out with my new “real” guitar… BUT… we did buy Rockband this weekend… OMG…

My living room, which is normally a serene place that allows me enjoy my favorite SciFi show in peace, has become a den of rockers… Sometime late Saturday night I looked around at all the empty beer bottles and empty pizza boxes (literally about 15 empty boxes , and more beer bottles then I will admit too) while we were rocking out in the Virtual Snake Pit venue located in Los Angeles.

We got the complete Rockband set (drums, guitar, and mic) and a friend brought over a guitar hero guitar so we could do the bass as well.  It was beyond AWESOME!

Currently, our band has 260,000+ fans, and we have been invited to play large venues in multiple continents…

If you have kids that are interested in playing music, especially the drums, or if you are interested, or just want to have a really great time with the family and friends… go out NOW and buy rockband.  It is TOTALLY worth it.

As a side note, they claim that on expert levels you are actually playing the drums….

AWESOME!!!

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Today, after listening to the guys at [ TWIT ], I signed up with Audible.  I have been wanting to do that for awhile and after listening to the TWIT crew go on and on, I figured now would be a good time.

Back when the Will Smith movie “I am Legend” was being advertised, I was REALLY excited, since I had read the book years ago when I was in Junior High School, and since I am a Will Smith fan, I thought that was the greatest thing in the world to think that he would be playing Robert Neville.

The movie lived up to my expectations, at least from the standpoint that it was a great movie.  It seemed quite a bit different from what I remember from the book though, so I wanted to grab a copy and re-read it.  Plus, my favorite group of online geeks were also going to be doing a [ re-read of the book ], so I was looking forward to getting a copy and revisiting the story.  Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to pick up a copy, and actual reading seems like a distant memory these days, so the Audible thing sounded like a good solution.

So, I downloaded the book today and loaded up my iPhone with it, and have gotten through chapter three.   So very good.  I think I may be spending quite a bit of money on Audible.com…

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Tomorrow we get our first new content from the Stargate SG-1 series.  It has been a long time since we have see the Jaffa and the SG-1 team take on the Ori.

Tomorrow the Ark of Truth is released straight to DVD, a little disappointing that I have to purchase the DVD to see it, I was hoping that SciFi would just show the movies on TV as they planned originally, but in the end I guess that it is just nice to have new elements of the story to watch.

Also, being released tomorrow is season 3 of BSG. Woot!  I am happy for my fellow BSG fans who do not have the 3rd season yet.  I downloaded all three seasons off iTunes before NBC and Apple started their little drama fest and split off.

Tomorrow, when you get your copy you can join in with the fun times over at GWC as we start this weeks [ re-watch of The Maelstrom ].  Quite possibly the best episode of the entire season…

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Last night we celebrated our 15 wedding anniversary … yep 15 years ago this geek moved out of his parents basement, sold off his star wars toys and got hitched…

Since then, I have been trying to reclaim all my star wars toys…

We had the party in our newly finished backyard… grilling, bonfire,  good friends and good food and drink.

Here are some pics for your enjoyment.

The beautiful cake… it was very nice, until the party degenerated into a cake fight at about 2 in the morning… we were sober…. sort of.. LOL

Us cutting the cake… apparently you have to do that at your wedding and any anniversary divisible by five.

My lovely wife , and my sister … respectively.   Behind them is the bar… see the part about the cake fight.. LOL

This is Jen… without Jen, the party would have consisted of alot of beer… and some hot dogs… Thanks to Jen, the party actually had a theme, and people actually had a good time… Of course, Jen is the one that started the cake fight… but that is why we love her.

Here is a really bad picture of the fire… but it was all I had.. and it was starting to die down…

It was a fun night…

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