Laughing About the Difference Between Men and Women

I blogged about a pastor/comedian, Mark Gungor, amusingly touching on this subject some time ago. The link to the post is below.

http://sundowndos.blogspot.com/2009/11/nothing-box.html

Mark, in a very positive and funny way, essentially explained how men and women think differently. The hope is in the midst of that explanation, couples would gain insight as to what drives the other. I'll post the video again below. So that you can watch it.



But the reason for this post is how full-on comedians take to the same subject. Below are video performances of Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle on the very same topic.





Too funny. I ended up looking for and downloading Dave Chapelle and Chris Rock's shows. And I'm still laughing until now.


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K-Pop Rocks Out

I'm drunk as hell. But I just wanted to share Taeyon from SNSD's performance of Devil's Cry. It's the rock intro to their song Run Devil Run.



I'm so in love...

\m/


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Jack Versus the Crab at JD Set Long Sets in Casa Nami

I really have to hurry up and get current on my gig blog posts. The longer it takes for me to blog about any one gig, the more chances there is for me to forget what actually happened during that gig. This post is about what essentially was my last experience with the Jack Daniels' JD Set Philippines tour for the year. This one was set in November 11, 2011 (yes, 11-11-11) in Casa Nami.

(All pictures in this post belong to Jack Daniel's Philippines.)

I dragged my good friend Joseph along with me to this gig. He's gotten to be a really good friend this past year. And I can safely say he's my only friend that I look to hang with on any given weekend. We got there relatively early than the rest of my band. My favorite band out of the JD Set 7 bands, Paramita was playing when we arrived. The Jack Daniel's organizers greeted me as I stepped in Casa Nami, and offered to bring in the band's complimentary bottle. I politely refused and said I'd rather wait for the rest of the band to arrive before hitting that bottle. Otherwise, it might very well be half empty by the time my bandmates got there.

So I headed over to the bar and kept ordering Jack Cokes for myself and Joseph. Since we weren't allowed to vote for ourselves for the entire span of the JD Set competitions, I just poured my votes into Paramita instead. That band with its rather large following ironically doesn't do well in terms of event votes. That's probably because the demographic of their fan base really can't afford to spend a lot of money on expensive Jack Daniel's drinks. Knowing this, I wanted to support my friends (since I know these guys from my other band SunDownMuse playing Blaster production events).

My bandmates arrived about an hour or so later. I found out from Waxie that a good number of our horn players couldn't make it to the gig. So we essentially only had 1 trumpet player and 1 sax player. The two horn players just had to adjust.

I do remember seeing a group of guys that were from my batch back in college. They used to be basketball heads and looked down on me for being such a geek. It's just funny because now they're just in Casa Nami to get drunk and I'm actually playing at this event. What sweet revenge without even doing anything. LOL!

Whatever else happened from when I got to Casa Nami and when it was our turn to play was largely a blur. I know I just kept hanging out at the smoking area and kept drinking with Joseph. We were waiting for Fritz, our drummer, to come in from his gig with Snafu at a different venue. And while I was sharing with Waxie in our frustration that Fritz was taking so long to get to Casa Nami, at a certain point I just shrugged it off and just enjoyed drinking.

Fritz finally arrived on a full sprint from downstairs. Below are some videos that Joseph took of our set that night.

"I'm In Love Again"


"The Song I Never Finished"


I was particularly proud of my solo during our last song of the set. I still get uber nervous when it's my turn to solo given the cumulative skill of the band. But I think I did pretty well that night. /gives himself a pat of the back

I also like our guitarist's, JR's, solo. He picked up his wine glass of Jack Daniel's and used it as a slide while playing his guitar. The horn players, particularly Enzo stepped it up a notch that night. It was the first time I saw Enzo really pull out how good he really was. Our drummer Fritz and our sax player Fred were awesome as usual. Derek, our bassist, was a barrel of laughs during his solo because he was amusingly copying JR's George Benson-esque/stecato solo-ing. That was hilarious and the crowd loved it too.

Park that gig in the history books of what's been a rollercoaster ride of music for me so far.

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Awesome Weekend Part 4: Jason Mraz Live in Manila

Continuing to slowly chip away at the ever increasing heap of events to blog about, I finally get to the ender of the weekend. This post is about Jason Mraz and Toca Rivera doing an acoustic show at the Araneta Coliseum last October 30, 2011.

Briggs, Carol, and I bought tickets for this show about a month prior. And even buying tickets that early didn't provide as with front row seats. But regardless, we wanted to see Jason Mraz play so we settled for lower box seats. Compared to when Korn played in the same venue, the Mraz/Toca show was packed to the brim.

Jason Mraz's musical skill goes without question. But I was particularly interested in seeing Toca play given he was a percussionist. Toca's percs playing was simple and straightforward. His skill came in with his vocal blending with Jason's vocals. This in itself was the other half of the duo formula that just works perfectly.

Below are two videos I took from that night.

"The Remedy"


"I'm Yours"


I know I made a mistake in the title screen of the "I'm Yours" video. I'm just too lazy to correct it and re-upload.

Apparently Jason is seen as extremely attractive to females. You could tell from the primarily female crowd singing along with him. This obviously signified hundreds of pairs of panties dropping for the duration of the concert. I wish I could have that effect on hundreds of females too. But alas, I'm no Jason Mraz. LOL!

It was such a pleasant way to end the weekend coming off a string of nights worth of gigs. And to think it was a holiday the following day. So Monday gave me the opportunity to sit down, relax, and ponder on how fun much the weekend was with a big smile on my face.


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Pinoy Couple Jams "Blackened" with Metallica

Deej, percussionist of Julianne, Kalayo, and a whole slew of other bands posted this video on Facebook. Least to say, I was floored to see a Filipino married couple asked by Metallica to jam with them onstage at their 30th Anniversary concert at the Filmore. You just gotta watch this video.



I am so dying with envy. You guys rock! \m/

Oh and their baby, Lightning, is soooooo cute!


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Awesome Weekend Part 3: SunDownMuse at Capone's

On to the third part of the musical weekend. I had a gig with SunDownMuse at the Sari-Sari Sounds event at Capone's Bistro last October 29, 2011.

Drinking and gigging for two nights in a row prior left me in a haze and exhausted. But I still didn't want to pass up a gig. I was surprised that there wasn't a whole lot of people on a Saturday at Capone's. I guess the event wasn't marketed all that well. The number of people there came very close to just the organizers, the bands, and friends. That amounted to a decently sized crowd but nowhere near packed, of course.

Bands of note from that night were Cheeba and Severo. Severo has been lurking around the scene for as long as we have. They also went on haitus for a while and just resurfaced recently like us. It was funny that the vocalist mentioned that he remembers us from the Club SEx days. Club SEx being short for Club Sound Experience, ehem. Those were the days when I first joined SunDownMuse. So the Severo vocalist's memory of us was obviously from eons ago.

Below are a few videos from our set that night. Ela was nice enough to wield my Zoom Q3HD to record our set. Carol surprisingly was taking video of us playing too. The audio gain on my Zoom Q3HD was set to high. So the audio didn't come out so good. So I ended up splicing the audio from Carol's Flip video recording to the video from my Zoom Q3HD.

"Khattamshud"


"The Writer"


I suppose my snowball hangover and exhaustion from two nights of boozing and gigging got to me when we didn't play our last song "Unfuck" so well. I got instantly annoyed and acted a little crabby to my bandmates. Of course, that was uncalled for really even though I did have valid points to make about how badly we played our last song. Our drummer had problems with his kick pedal kept getting dislodged from the kick drum. Our bassist kept negotiating with us on stage on which song to play next. That and a few more other trivial things nabbed at me. Regardless, I apologized to the band. Carol talked to me about what was wrong with me. I guess it came down to exhaustion plus anxiety about my situation at work. It's nice to have bandmates who are your good friends to boot. It allows for some slack to be given to you when you have moments of weakness like that and act immaturely.

 
I was able to shrug off whatever abstract issue(s) I was having and enjoyed the company of my bandmates and some of their +1s for that night. Gigo and I stuck around to watch the jam of the Sari-Sari Sounds organizers. It was not bad at all to be honest. The vocalist was from a band called Out of Body Special that I remember watching back in the day. His melodic rapping/singing rang nicely in my ears. But alas, after a while Gigo and I felt it prudent to head on home as well. I did take video of them jamming. But I just haven't gotten around reviewing it and possibly editing and uploading it on YouTube. Perhaps some day I'll get around to it when I have time to kill.

Third night in a row of gigging and my chick-like tampo-spree at the end of our set left a slightly bad taste in my mouth so to speak. So I knew I had to make it up to my bandmates some time. I was having too much fun I suppose, yet my musical weekend had one more day to go. I got it in my head to at least try to snap out of it and enjoy the rest of that weekend.


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Mario 30th Anniversary Fan Made Music Video

My friend Chris from Japan showed me this video today. For anybody who has been playing every iteration of Mario through the years, this is a must-see.



30 years, damn. I literally grew up with Mario given that I'm just slightly older than him. LOL!

It's a long video, 18+ minutes. But I loved watching every minute of it. Kudos to the 40-some people from Japan who put this together. It warmed my geeky heart.


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Awesome Weekend Part 2: Jack Versus the Crab at JD Set Fright Night

On to part deux of this weekend. This night was my gig with Jack Versus the Crab at the Jack Daniel's Fright Night event at Eastwood Central Plaza last October 28, 2011. I was so stoked to do this gig coming off a hectic work week.

My crafty suki cab driver, Bert, actually got me to Eastwood earlier than my band's meet up time. So I actually over-estimated the amount of time I needed to get there because I was afraid traffic would delay me significantly. So by the time I showed up near Blue Onion at Eastwood, none of my bandmates were there yet. Luckily our band PA was already there. So Waxie instructed him to come over to where I was to help me carry my gear. Phew!

(All pictures were taken by Maritoni unless otherwise noted.)

The backstage area was just as awesome as the last time we had a Jack Daniel's gig at Eastwood. Each band had their usual designated tables. It was cool that our table was actually right beside Urbandub's table. So I was quietly fanboying over Urbandub the entire night.

One by one my bandmates started trickling in and of course the boozing started soon after that. As always with these Jack Daniel's gigs, there was an inordinate amount of alcohol on our table. There are a lot of us in the band. So the amount of Jack Daniel's required for the night had to be multiplied equal to the number of people wanting to drink. That's not even counting the +1s, like Maritoni, Windi, etc.

Instead of the usual host Roanna, I was amusingly surprised that Hank was hosting the event. Hank was donning his full-on Jack Sparrow costume coupled with his Jack Sparrow antics. It was a Halloween party after all. And Hank was definitely a good choice to host that particular event.

Awesome Weekend Part 1: SunDownMuse at the Keg

This is a long overdue series of blog posts. To be honest, the gigs keep coming week after week. And while each gig is uniquely fun, it's starting to become a blur. So I'll probably end up not blogging about a gig or two if it wasn't all that memorable.

This post is the start of the 4 night musical weekend I had starting from October 27 to October 30. This was one of those very tiring weekends where I pushed it once again because I know if I didn't, I will regret it for the rest of my life.

I played with SunDownMuse at the Keg, Fort Strip, for an H2Rock event. The first time I played at the Keg was when I jammed with my bandmate Gigo during his acoustic gig back in September 29, 2011. We were just a duo back then. So we were definitely in for a treat this time around since we are playing with a full band.

(All pictures and videos on this post belong to the management of the Keg)

Reklamo

Out of all the bands that played before us that night, I'm a fan of two of them. Although not part of the original band line-up for the event, Reklamo was invited to play. Like I've mentioned before, I've known these guys for quite some time now. I continue to be a fan of their music. Their gigil/loud/rock-out vibe has always been entertaining.

Turbogoth

Admittedly, I started paying attention to this duo because of Sarah Gaugler. Half of the reason why I'm a fan is because Sarah is really attractive. But of course, the other half leans towards my taste of industrial/electronica beats much like groups like Drip, etc.  It was a shame though that the sound techs didn't really know what they were doing. So either the beats, guitar, or vocals would be drowned out. It took 2-3 full songs before they could figure it all out. But by then, Turbogoth was already down to their last song. I still enjoyed their set. But the regular listeners that night probably didn't appreciate it as much as they should've.

SunDownMuse

It finally came around to our turn to play. Now, the Keg has a weird floor area that doesn't really lend well to full band set-ups. It's really just a long curved corridor with a "cul de sac" of sorts at the end. Normally they would try to cram a full band set up right before that "cul de sac". But for that night, they actually moved the band set up back. This gave the bands more room. But also kind of cut off the vision of the crowd to be able to see the bands. This means only the people in front can really see the bands play. The people at the tables near the bar, couldn't.

Despite how the venue's area is structured, I was relieved that the band set up was further back, and that there was actually space. As always, finding myself a chair to sit on while I set up my stuff has proved to be difficult regardless of venue. So I decided to plant myself on the banister/bench on the side. Now that made me more hidden than the rest of the band. But I didn't really care at that point. I just wanted to play.

Below is a video that the owner of the Keg took of us playing. You'll notice there how tucked away I was that night. LOL!



The set was so short-lived given that the production had a lot of bands in it. But it was a lot of fun, nonetheless.

Briggs used to be neighbors with Sarah Gaugler and her boyfriend. So we hung out with them and even treated them to a few drinks. Yes, drinking on a Thursday night. This was really the start of a very boozy, yet musical weekend.


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