Oh, yeah! Halloween!

I dressed up as...


Karen O. Big surprise, right? I wish I'd been able to go to some killer party, but whatevs. Work was fun. Just being on Broadway was fun, really. People get so crazy on Halloween (especially on Broadway)...it makes me wish we had a dress-up holiday more than just once a year.

Word.

I just got myself a Netflix account. There are too many movies I missed during my sheltered upbringing, and too many current movies and shows I haven't seen for whatever reasons (i.e. no money for the theater, no money for cable). So I've started building up my queue on Netflix, and it's already 35-strong, just with movies I could think of off the top of my head and other related movies Netflix recommended me. I'm not sure I'll ever finish adding to my list, let alone finish watching everything, but at least I'm making progress.

The L Word, season 1, is at the top of my list right now, and I'm already 2 1/2 discs through it. It's so exciting to have new TV friends! (Also, kind of depressing, I know.) Espeically since we've been 2 weeks without a new episode of Glee.

I'm craving a cafe like The Planet to go to and gossip with Dana and Alice and Shane (left, center, and right, respectively). Especially Shane. That girl oozes sex.

But anyway...I hear that after season 1, the show kind of went downhill, which is unfortunate. Hopefully it won't be too bad.

(P.S. Laurel, this show is almost making me reconsider my opinion about L.A. Almost.)

Guh...update.

I've started cooking at work--finally--and I'm slowly but surely getting the hang of it. I miss working night shifts, though. And I hate having Sundays and Mondays off. Annnd...my back hurts. But I got a massage a week or two ago from a coworker who's training to be a massage therapist, and it was intense (in a mostly good way). I've never had a deep tissue massage, or any kind of professional massage, for that matter. I thought it might be a weird experience, since I was practically naked (under the sheet, of course), and we're still at that odd point in a coworker relationship where you know each other well enough to joke comfortably, but you're not close friends, by any means. To my pleasant surprise, he was totally professional (almost opposite his usual demeaner at Pagliacci) and it wasn't strange or awkward or uncomfortable at all. Plus...it was free. And there are few things better than a free massage.

Even though winter quarter doesn't start for another 76 days, I'm so excited that I'm...well...counting the days. Obviously. I went up to the UW campus yesterday to meet up with Rachael (which was an awesome experience in itself, since we haven't hung out in months), and while I still don't enjoy the massive student body, or its composure of thousands of the Those Kind of People [arms flailing], it'll be so good to go somewhere other than Pagliacci. It'll be good to go somewhere other than Broadway, even. Guh.

In the nearer future, Laurel is visiting this weekend, and I'm more excited for her physical presence than I am for the Ani Difranco show we're attending, which was the original reason for her visit. Much adventure will be had!

Everything but the YYYs is lacking enthusiasm

Well...so much for the Metric vs. Yeah Yeah Yeahs thing. I got sick of writing and revising it. So, to wrap that subject up, suffice it to say that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs provided a much more enjoyable show than Metric. I don't know if it was just Karen O's enthusiasm and Emily Haines's lack thereof, but the crowds at each show had notably different attitudes, as well. Color me disappointed.

As for other things (that probably matter more in life), I've finally started to learn how to cook pizza (and yes, it is an important life skill)! I even have a sweet burn on my right forearm from the oven to show for it. Awesome. I'll be sure to report back when I actually have something interesting to say here.

Emily Haines vs. Karen O.

Because, really, they're the only ones anyone cares about in their respective bands.

I mean, when the front-person of the band also happens to be a sexy alt-rock chick with a great set of...vocal chords...why would you bother directing your focus at anyone else on stage?

(An actual review/comparison of Metric's show vs. Yeah Yeah Yeah's show at Bumbershoot to follow, hopefully tomorrow. I've got a tired headache from staring at my screen too much this evening, so I'm calling it quits for right now.)

[Both photos by Sarah Bastin, taken at Bumbershoot last weekend--and a super-dee-duper thanks to Flickr, my humble amateur means of acquiring beautiful, professional photos for all my ridiculous unprofessional needs]

Recovering from Bumbershoot

After a loaded 3 full days at Bumbershoot, I spent yesterday morning/afternoon catching up on internet things and letting my feet rest before work.

I'll try to get into more reviews of the other shows in the next few days, but for the moment I'll just mention one of my favorites of the weekend, which was Raphael Saadiq's performance.

I snagged this beautiful photo from the Three Imaginary Girls blog, who got it from photographer Jason Tang.

If I'd had any misgivings Sunday night about choosing this closing show at the Fisher Green Stage over Jason Mraz at the Mainstage, they were completely vaporized as soon as Raphael walked out, in his suit and horn-rimmed glasses. The band was tight, the singers energetic and sexy, and I experienced an hour and a half of live music-induced euphoria. The crowd loved them so much that we got him to come out for 2 encores! I had just left after the first encore, assuming it was finished, when I heard the crowd start cheering again. I turned around, saw members of the band onstage again with their instruments, and ran back to join the audience, both surprised and elated.

Their set consisted of about 70% songs from their album and 30% covers/jam sessions. It flowed beautifully, and Raphael was a fantastic stage presence. I'm not sure how much of the audience were fans before the show (judging by the lack of singing along to the songs), but I don't think there was a single person who left without having thoroughly enjoyed him/herself.

And there probably wasn't a single man-lover (of the straight or gay variety) who left without silently acquiescing to Raphael's dialogue in the song "Let's Take a Walk". (Which, incidentally, begins with the lines "This place is crowded/Don't know about you/I need some sex/Some sex with you".)

One day, I'll return...but in the meantime...

The other day, I checked my bre.in.rome gmail for the first time since April 2008. There were pages of new emails, most of which telling me that someone new had added me on my bre_in_rome livejournal, which I hadn't updated in almost as long. The last post was notifying my friends and family that I had missed my ferry to Barcelona (this was only a couple of weeks into my quarter abroad in Rome), and was freaking out and trying to figure out if I was going to book a last-minute flight or what.

I never got around to updating that journal the following 2 months I spent in Europe, owing to the fact that I just got too busy and too far behind in my posts.

So, since I'm not currently busy running around Barcelona, London, and various parts of Italy, I've decided to finish documenting my travels. It's been over a year since the trip and since I've recounted my stories to friends and family. But I figure I'll remember more about it now than I will 10 years from now, so I should tell as many stories as possible while I still can. Luckily, I have a good number of photos to help jog my memory.

http://bre-in-rome.livejournal.com/

Of course, this is just going to fuel the constant yearning I have for all things European...and more specifically, all things Italian.