spoiled chinese girl

Alright well this really isn’t THAT much of a music post but I thought I would share it under the subheading anyways.

So for his birthday, I bought my friend Alex one of the Ikea CD towers that’s like 6.5 feet tall and holds something like 90 or so regular CD’s when you use all the shelves (I couldn’t tell with mine because I had a lot of CD singles in the slim cases or in like CD sleeves and not jewel cases… and now the ones I have are missing shelves)  And when I bought 3 of my own I ended up selling him mine that I bought to be the polar opposite of his.

So he has 2 cd towers, and no cd’s in them because he was too lazy to put the CD’s in.

At the same time, I was dropping off two computers for him to frankenstein into one super-computer because he knows more about what he’s doing than I am.  So I traded him.  I would organize his CD collection (alphabetically by band name, or by last name, then by release dates… to the best of my ability) whilst he took apart computer parts galore and put together an awesometastic computer.

Before he began on my computer, he went through all his CD’s and was randomly throwing things out he didn’t want anymore, by looking at the front cover then dumping the contents of the jewel case into the trash can. (Keeping the jewel cases of course)  and I vowed to go through his trash at the end to see what I might be interested in keeping.

So we’re both plugging away one fine Saturday afternoon, and it actually took us the same amount of time to finish our respective tasks, which I think was about 4 or 5 hours.  Anyways, I grabbed all of the CD’s out of the trash that weren’t unlabeled burned CD’s just because if I liked it I could keep it, if not I could dump it.  It’s all about recycling.

But Alex went through my pile of ill-gotten merchendise, and suddenly was confused.  He found a CD that was a singles collection of the band “The Cure” and wondered what it was doing in the trash.  We looked for the CD liner notes but they were nowhere to be found.  We deducted that the CD was in the wrong jewel case.

Of course… this means nothing until he wondered where he got the CD from in the first place.  And realized… it’s a CD he lost five years ago.  Apparently his car was wrecked about that long ago, and it was claimed that this CD was in the car that was taken to the dump.  But it wasn’t.  IT was in a jewel case for the past 5 years collecting non-existant dust.

And better still.  It’s not alex’s CD.  It’s actually his band-mate’s Tynur’s Cure cd.  Tynur, who gave Alex shit for losing said CD because it was one of his favourites at the time of the CD’s inception into the music collection of Alex’s unmanaged CD’s.

And I almost got away with it.  But I didn’t.  The CD is currently at Alex’s waiting to go back to it’s rightful owner, with this story tacked to it.

Awesome.

I went to check out my friends Harlot at Lee’s Palace and I’ll be writing about that shortly.

First I wanted to talk about the band that was on before them.  Harlot was scheduled to play at 11:30 or Midnight (depending on where you saw it online.  And then you tack on an extra half hour since most places just don’t know how to keep a schedule, it’s something about them being musicians.)

So I got there around 11:15 and was able to catch a bit of the previous band, who’s name is The Weather Underground.

I swear I heard them before at another show because I recognized one of the songs they played (although so far everyone is telling me it’s a cover because I recognized it, but I think it’s just that obscure and memorable that I would remember it and have it be an original song) and throughly enjoyed the rest of the set, which included like 3 more songs before they began to pack up.

I’ll support bands I like, whether I know them or not.  Finally got a chance after they had mostly done packing, to get to talk to the lead singer.  Bought a CD off him (they’re $10 but I literally only had 8 bucks on me and they went for it) and let him keep one that was still wrapped, and instead asked to have them sign it.  Only I made fun of the guy for not having a sharpie and being in a band.  Which caused him to prove himself a professional musician by searching to the ends of the earth for a sharpie to sign with.

He got one, it was red.  So is their CD cover, I think the pen worked better anyways.  But I also had the other guitarist, and a bassist sign it as well.  I even made the bassist sign “To eBay” (although he fucked it up and wrote Ebay) because it’s just my running gag I have whether people have seen the Futurama episode or not.  And someone was getting a t-shirt signed, and the girl asked if they could borrow my back for the bassist to have something to lean on.  I obliged, and afterwards made the comment that “Since you signed my CD, the least I could do is bend over for you”  What can I say, my mind’s generally always in the gutter.
Getting the drummer was a bit of an ordeal.  I got to hang out and talk to the guy who did the paintings though, that ended up getting used as album art.  He was throughly impressed since he hadn’t seen the album before that night.  Got the drummer around, right when Harlot was starting.

I basically ended up leaving my CD with the drummer, and the visual artist while I went to go rock out with the band on stage.  After the show I went around thinking maybe the guys put it in my jacket pocket or something, but no.  So I just asked around, apparently the artist’s girlfriend took my copy and went upstairs to Dance Cave to show a bunch of their friends.  So I just had to wait around a bit to get it.  Although I joked with the singer how “That was a great CD I owned for 10 minutes!”  He offered to get me another copy if I couldn’t get mine back but it wasn’t too much of a worry, I didn’t mind at all.

In the end I got it back, my CD player is pretty fitzzed though so I can’t play it just yet.

But they were extremely nice guys.  I even got to flirt a wee bit with the bassist in a joking-ish mannor (or was it?? hmm!) which was more fun still.

Nice guys.  I definitely want to see them play live and watch the whole show.

So Harlot played another amazing show, this time as the headliners of a set at Lee’s Palace.

First things first, the line up outside Lee’s Palace on a Friday night is MASSIVE.  I’ve never been to this venue so I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, especally since I went by myself.  I’m standing, chatting with everyone around me when finally someone was like “Oh you’re here to see the bands?? You can probably just walk in!”  Everyone in line was for the venue upstairs, called Dance Cave.  So the guy was right and I was quite thankful.

Get in and see Annique (the lead singer of Harlot) right away.  We chat a bit while Weather Underground played and I got myself a drink.  Hung out a bit with the rest of Harlot, mostly Mikey S the Bassist, until they had to go warm up.

Caught up with the guys from the Weather Underground to get a CD off them, had the lead singer search high and low for a sharpie marker to sign it with while his sister laughed at his absolute need to please someone he just met moments before.  Met the bassist who I enjoyed a bit of flirting with, the artist who painted the paintings that ended up being used as the album art, and the drummer  and guitarist.  Left my CD with all of them while they continued the search for markers, while Harlot started playing.

Harlot is an amazing band.  For a band that has played 3 shows, they’re tight.  They’re professionals.  They know excatly what to do.  Even their first ever show was awesome and this was even moreso.  I had someone comment “Wow the lead singer really is 3 feet tall” she isn’t really but she is on the short side of normal.   I enjoyed myself a lot.  For once I remembered to bring my recorder to catch the show on tape, but I forgot to charge the batteries on my camera, so I only have 12 pictures of the band.  I love the songs that I recognized and I loved the songs that I didn’t.

The funniest part had to be when Annique was choking a bit on her water, stopped the band, had the guitarist come pat/rub her back, and right when he did, she burped. Loudly.  Into the microphone.  Very ladylike Annique 

Their stage show is just awesome.  Annique plays up to everyone in the band, the crowd, can laugh and joke in between songs but becomes the full on emotional songstress of the music whilst performing.  I’m in absolute awe.

After the show I hung out with Harlot a bit more, found out my Weather Underground CD went missing but was found again, and chatted with Annique outside while she smoked before going home.  Considering I spent 2 years of my highschool life in the same school as her, it’s actually pretty nice to get to know her finally!

Anyways, I drove home, and I’m probably going to miss yoga in the morning.

Pictures when I get them off my camera!

Alright.

So in the news recently there was a story about a jewelry shop in Toronto that was robbed of it’s cash and it’s jewelry.  Which while is a sad story it is almost expected at some point.  Not too big of a problem though normally…

Except for one small problem.  This store apparently did *NOT* have insurance (all insurance? theft insurance) on their property so they have basically lost their entire life.

Story goes that the family run business started out because the husband of the family lost his job after working for many many years (25 or so?) at some automotive plant, and decided to cash in his life savings and start up a jewelry shop.  Thieves targeted this shop, and obviously knew their habits and the store, and maybe even know the owners.  Because how they were able to get away with it is quite ingenious.

Every night the jewelry and cash are put into a big giant safe.  There are cameras pointed at areas inside the shop, and giant bars on the windows, and alarms that will sound if anything inside the store is disturbed in the slightest.

However, the unit next to theirs was empty.  And there is no security there.  And guess what.  These thieves figured out that they could drill through the wall of the vacant lot, through the concrete, and into the safe from the back end.  Spending all the time in the world to remove the (I believe it was) 20 something thousand dollars in cash and 300 thousand something dollars worth of gold and other jewelry pieces from their display cases.  And even having enough time to neatly pile said, now empty, display cases in the vacant lot before making their escape.

Thus they circumvented the video cameras, the alarm system, and the bars on the windows and doors.

I don’t mean to be making fun of something so serious, a family’s lives have been ruined by this one act. But really, what kind of person would open up a jewelry store, and NOT have it insured??

Hey everyone… if you could help me I'd really appreciate it.

If you go to http://bigrockfinish.com, and http://www.bigrockfinish.com …

#1. Does it look like a blog that hasn't started yet, with zero entries and I think the banner should say (something like) “v.2 Slider”?

#2. Or does it say something like “Big Rock Finish (dot) Com will be up shortly… For Now, Please visit us on MySpace. – Brandon, BRF”???

Let me know in the attached forum? (I want it to look like #1. Not #2. Arrgh!!)