Iron Maiden

OK, here's a post dedicated to a most horrible oversight. In my wrapup of the 25 things that make me awesome, I listed some of my top concerts of all time. For some reason, and I have no excuse whatsoever, I omitted Iron Maiden. It didn't become fully clear to me that this had happened until Bruce Dickinson visited me in a dream and said "OI! WHAT THE FUCK, MATE, DON'T MAKE ME RIP YOUR BLOODY BOLLOCKS OFF!"

Well, that was enough to scare some sense into me, and forced me to watch Live After Death and write this post. Here's the deal with me and Iron Maiden... At some point during the end of my high school career, I was driving my own ass around and had installed the badass sound system that is still in the Jeep Cherokee that my Mom still has as a secondary vehicle. I may one day regain that Jeep, and if that happened I would be happy. Anyway, shortly after installing said badass sound system, I was in a period of musical expansion. On a whim during a trip to Costco, I purchased a copy of The Number Of The Beast. Iron Maiden had just begun re-issuing their catalog and since I'd heard the name of the band and the album cover looked cool, I bought it.

Without really knowing much about the band at the time, I listened to Number of the Beast and loved the shit out of it. I later learned just how important Iron Maiden is to ALL music... They're fucking gods, and I am proud to be a fan. I had the pleasure of seeing Iron Maiden in 2007 during the tour supporting the A Matter of Life and Death album. It was amazing. My man Big Dave and I rocked out.

Sadly, this past year, Iron Maiden embarked on the Somewhere Back in Time tour. The purpose was to tour and play music from the heydey and the tours of the Powerslave era... which would have been amazing. I missed the shows, and I kick myself ever since. Perhaps this painful situation is what caused me to be completely remiss and exclude Maiden from my list of concerts. I can only hope the band tours again under such a theme. For now, rumors have it they have a new album in the works and will tour to support it - awesome, but man, I would have loved to have seen a show focusing on 'classic' material.

Ah, well, that's the way the metal crumbles. For now, enjoy this video:

Final things

Alright, people, here it is... the post you've all been waiting for. The final seven in my master list of 25 things that make me awesome.  In case you're late to the party, here are a couple links:

25 things that make me awesome - #1-9
25 things that make me awesome - #10-18

Now that I assume you're all caught up and you know all the narrative involved with this project, I'll direct you to one more link if you haven't read it.. It will serve as a de-facto introduction to this site. Other than that, let's get on with it:

19. A bunch of my extended family migrated from Bergen County, NJ to St. Simon's Island - part of the Golden Isles on the Southern coast of Georgia. It's really nice down there. Incidentally, two summers in a row (2002 and 2003) I lived on SSI interning for Sea Island in the IT department. It was great times, and I love the area - it's just weird to work at a resort during the summer. Everyone is there vacationing, and you're there working, wishing you could be on vacation. Now, it'd be great to live the life down there and have an unrelated job, which makes me secretly envious of the family.


20. For a very, very long time I was admittedly OBSESSED with Star Wars. I can't even tell you how many times I've seen the 'original' films. As a matter of fact, (and somehow I'm not quite as embarassed as I should be to admit this...) I have a large number of mint-in-package action figures from the 'new' era of interest in the films from the late '90s. They are displayed on the walls of my old room at my mom's house. ...on second thought, maybe that should be more embarassing than I thought.


21. Speaking of which, my Mom and I are very close. She left my father when I was too young to know anything was going on - and I'd say it was a good decision. Anyway, I don't really talk about it much because there really isn't anything to talk about. I was raised well and I'm awesome enough to have to struggle to fill 25 bullet points. I'd say everything worked out great.


22. I have a pet parrot - a Maroon Bellied Conure. His "real" name is Houdini - named for his true mastery of the art of escape. When I got him as a young bird, I was told to beware the penchant for finding his way out of cages, but I learned the hard way a few times how true the given name is. Though he's officially "Houdini" and I will refer to him as such, most often I just call him "The Bird Man." It makes sense, and his attitude reflects it. Conures aren't known for their talking abilities, but he's able to say some garbled phrases such as "ooo-dee-ni" and "da-burd-man." Shockingly, he doesn't say anything like "asshole" or "shit."


23. I'm a music fiend. I hate listing bands or genres, because I love a billion bands from a billion genres and hate just as many bands and just as many genres. One of the best things in life is seeing a concert from a favorite band/musician, so here's a list of shows I've seen in no particular order:
    -NIN (at least 7 times without thinking too hard)
    -Dave Matthews Band (6+ times easy)
    -Tool (5+ times?)
    -Radiohead (first show in North America just before In Rainbows was released)
    -Aerosmith (my first show ever!)
    -Weird Al (sweet.)
    -Dream Theater (saw them in London)
    -Puddle of Mudd (laugh all you want, but free tickets at a sweet club in Jacksonville, FL is way awesome)
    -Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top dual bill (first concert I ever drove to!)
    -Smashing Pumpkins (reunion tour at Tower Theater in Philly... never thought I'd see them, so a major high point)
    -Other amazing shows: Steve Miller, George Thorogood, Rush, Styx, Night Ranger, Kanye West, A Perfect Circle (opening for NIN), Mindless Self-Indulgence (several shows), Cake, OK Go, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, The Killers, Iggy Pop, Ghostland Observatory, Man Man, Mutemath, Sonic Youth, The Flaming Lips, Ween.... Good lord, I'm going to kick myself when I remember everyone I'm forgetting. Like I said, nothing like live music from a good band.


24. I've got lots of scars - the biggest is a 15-inch scar on my back from the removal of a ginormous weird birthmark when I was like 11. The docs didn't like it, and thus it was gone. Genetics dictate that my body makes serious looking scars, so it kind of looks like I got stabbed. Other scars include one on my middle finger from a botched hard drive installation (nerdiest wound ever), one on my forefinger from being dumb in high school, another on my palm from slipping and falling on a knife while camping, one on my elbow from ditching on a mountain bike, and among many others, my most visible: a five-incher below my left elbow from a freak fourth-of-July accident that occured during one of those previously mentioned summers in Georgia.


25. Most likely one of the coolest things about me would be my SCUBA training. My diving experiences are some of the best times in my life. I wish I had the time and money to get more certifications (like night diving, wreck diving, drysuit diving, deep diving, etc). I spent a week in the British Virgin Islands on a catamaran my family chartered, and my uncle and I would just pick a spot, anchor the dhingy and dive. It was amazing.

Time for some sleeping, but maybe if I get a chance during the weekend I'll add some links and/or photos to make this slightly less boring than it already is.

Windowlicker

I'm thinking about finally finishing that whole "25 things that make me awesome" thing, but first I'm going to watch Hell's Kitchen. In the meantime, if you don't have 10 minutes for Aphex Twin's Windowlicker, then you don't have 10 minutes worth living.

New site

Well, as prompted by my ongoing "25 things that make me awesome" series of columns in ec/dc, I decided to finally re-launch hottes.com. Check here soon for the final set.

Now that I spent the better part of my Saturday doing the hardcore coding and debugging and CSS-ing and ASP-ing, I'm going to see if I can get a little content up. Still a few annoying bugs hanging around out there, hopefully I'll get them squashed soon. I've decided to 100% ignore IE6, so I also need to write some code to give folks a friendly reminder to upgrade their browsers. Finally, I have to still make some adjustments and a template for the "full" blog. Gah, I still hate that word.

Time to throw on one of my favorite 'concert' films of all time: Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii. I've got about an hour before it's time to head out and see Jason do some killing in the new Friday the 13th remake.

Oh, and happy Valentine's Day or something.