Powderfinger Concert

Pretty darn good show last night at the Mac Hall Ballroom. It must have been a treat for all the Aussies there to see them in such a small venue compared to their usual stadium BDO gigs. My guess about 4-600 people with half of them packed into the 'beer garden' section and at least half of the crowd with an Aussie accent as well.

Mostly played songs from Odyssey #5 as Vulture Street just came out in Canada on Tuesday. I thought he was just the lead singer, but Fanning at times played some guitar, keyboard, and even the harmonica at one point. Some songs sounded more bluesy than the album version, they even tried to start off one of them flamenco-style, and sometimes they'd distort the guitars a la Radiohead.
Forgot to grab the setlist at the end, but here's a few things that I remembered of their hour-long (plus encore) show: Great guitar solo during My Kind Of Scene, dedicated Sunsets to "the sandy beaches of ... Calgary", whipped the crowd into a frenzy at the end of their set with a long rendition of Treat Me Like A Dog and (Baby I've Got You) On My Mind, in their encore they paid tribute to Neil Young (they did after all name themselves after one his songs) by covering Cinnamon Girl (what's a show without a cover song?) and finished everything off with My Happiness.
I snapped a few webcam shots with my mobile, but I gave my email address to a guy that snapped a bunch with his Sony digital camera so I hope I hear back from him.
Update [6/07]: Greg has gotten back to me and is transferring a few pics (& videos!) over as we speak. Will post a link when I have it setup on the webserver.

The Punisher and The Flames Winning the Stanley Cup

Two unrelated topics? How could one Marvel Comic character be associated with our Calgary Flames' Stanley Cup runs in 1989 and 2004?

In 1989, B-movie star Dolph Lungren dyes his hair black to become Frank Castle whose family is murdered by criminals and transforms into the The Punisher. Shortly after this flick disappeared from theatres and into your local Blockbuster, the Flames went on their legendary playoff run with the likes of MacDonald, Gilmour, Nieuwendyk, Pepper, Loob, Hunter, a rookie Fleury, all backstopped by Vernon.

Fast-forward to this year, Marvel has hit the financial & marketing jackpot over the past few years with Spider-man and the X-men, it now begins to spools its other properties onscreen. After the Hulk and Daredevil in 2003, it brings back the white skull and the avenger that wears it with Thomas Jane as The Punisher. The day after it opens in theatres, the modern-day Flames midway through their first round playoff match fall behind 4-0 to the Vancouver Canucks in game 6 and then stage a near-impossible comeback to force the game into TRIPLE overtime. They do end up losing that battle in the Saddledome, but would go on to eventually take game 7 and their first playoff series in fifteen years.

The Flames would follow that up by beating the President's Trophy winner, the Detroit Red Wings, and then the San Jose Sharks, to become the first team to ever beat all three Divisional champs and play in this year's 2004 Stanley Cup Finals. Will history follow its own course? Stay Tuned...

Good news for the 'C of Red', Lion's Gate and Thomas Jane have both been quoted as saying there are plans for at least one Punisher sequel.

Tonight I'm gonna party like it's 19...89!

Last night, the C of Red in the Saddledome spilled onto 17th, turning it in the so-called "Red Mile" (Shouldn't we be using the metric system?). Got to see Vibe 98.5's Chicken-Suit man in person, a lot of people celebrating (even the cops were high-fiving folks as the went by them), a few sets of headlights (not too impressed), a few idiots (climbing up wet traffic signal signs) and finally here's proof that Elvis is alive (and he's a Flames fan)!! Guess his favorite colour is now red not blue.

Oh yeah, the game itself was pretty awesome. It went by really quick, not too many penalties which I think totally favours the Flames' style of play. Wanted to get one of those Western Champ caps after the game to go down 17th with, but the Fanattic only had the t-shirts ready. It was totally loud throughout the game, tons of standing O's, especially in the 3rd period. Had a totally jumpy gal in front of us. Good that she had one of those women's fitted jerseys on, bad that she blocked me from seeing the half the ice.

Three Words: Stanley Cup!!!

Hockey Talk

Going to my fourth Flames playoff game tonight. It's going to be sooo loud In Tha Dome!!! The first playoff game was totally crazy before the start of the 1st game against Vancouver, that the crowd (including myself) didn't even hear the announcement for the start to our national anthem. But I think after the outrageous triple OT game against the Canucks that the fans are now learning to pace themselves so they can cheer for the whole duration of the game. The flames are going to get a huge welcome back tho after taking out the Sharks on their home ice.

I don't agree with everything Don Cherry says on Coach's Corner, but he does discuss a lot of things that should be brought up. Ron is great as his sidekick/referee, can't wait for his next interview/debate with Bettman, but comes up with the worse puns to end the segment. I used to joke that during the regular season, Sat's night's broadcast of CC is the closest I'm going to get to going to church on Sunday and listening to the reverend's sermon.

Blogger 2.0?

Blogger's added a whole bunch of new features on Mother's Day (btw: Happy Mother's Day!). Changed up the template (have to spent to time to actually customize it a bit), created my profile, and enabled comments. Will look into emailing blogs in too, can see it being creatively used by those mobile-enabled folks.

my own gmail

Yeah BABY (3C Go Flames Go 3C)!! Through this very blogger (which is owned by google) account, I got myself onto the beta test! Pretty similiar to most mail websites that I've used except for the fact that I now have 1000 MB of storage! Down with Hotmail... their MX servers have been totally overloaded lately.