Throwback Thursday: The Rock Boat 1/20/09
Katie Headliner: The Rock Boat
Opener(s): Gaelic Storm, Green River Ordinance, Hanson, Curtis Peoples, The Spring Standards
Venue: The Rock Boat
Cost: a lot!
Hanson at Disney
I finished out October and began November by heading down to Orlando to see Hanson at Eat to the Beat at EPCOT as part of the Food & Wine festival. Each night they played 3 sets for a total of 9 shows over 3 days. The middle day happened to be Halloween – where I was dressed as Snow White and Hanson and crew dressed as The Avengers. Zac was Thor, Isaac Captain America and Taylor Iron Man. Backup musicians were Black Panther and Spiderman with crew dressed as Wolverine, Hulk and Loki.
The first two days seemed to be a bit similar with several repeats over the two days. By the third they seemed to find their groove and varied things up a little bit more! I was hoping for MMMBop at each of the 9 shows since prior to arriving I had heard it live 91 times and it would be nice to hit 100, but instead they did it at 2/3 of the shows each day. 100 will be coming up soon though! (I just have to remember to pay attention)
More details and pictures from my trip to come in the upcoming days. I’ve just had some trouble adjusting back into the real world since I returned.
Carrie Underwood 10/28/16
Friday October 28th Carrie Underwood brought her Storyteller tour to the Mohegan Sun Arena. The show was “in the round” and the stage took up almost the entire arena floor, with 3 different circles – one in the center and one on either end.
Opening for the show was the Swon Brothers who walked out to the stage through the opening right next to our seats! We had hoped Carrie would do the same, but only the openers. Carrie and her band and crew had a tunnel set up on the other side of the circle near us to get to the stage area.
I had never seen The Swon Brothers before and I had never watched their season of The Voice either, but i enjoyed them. The only bummer was that since they were the opener they kind of stayed in one spot on the stage – which happened to be with their backs to us.
Easton Corbin was up next and while he hung out mainly in the center circle, it was spinning around the whole time of his set so that was pretty cool! He walked a bit to the outer circles as well.;
Then it was time for Carrie! It seemed as though everyone loved the circle farthest from us the most, and Carrie was no exception, but she did come to our end of the stage a few times. It was also my first big arena show with the new camera so I was playing around with all the settings and I think I had found a winner! (Which was perfect timing with my leaving for 9 Hanson concerts the next morning!)
Carrie’s stage had a lot of fun tricks with the stage raising, lowering, spinning, etc. which is always so much fun to see! She changed outfits several times as well.
Kris Allen Danbury Fair Mall
Kris Allen recently released a new Christmas album and has been doing some shows to help promote it. Saturday he came to the Danbury Fair Mall in Danbury, CT. The set was a mixture of Christmas and non Christmas songs since he was going to be playing for an hour and didn’t want to play only Christmas music the whole time. He did a mix of songs off the new Christmas album as well as songs off of his previous albums. He did a mashup of one of my favorites, “Monsters” with “Hit the Road Jack” which I had not heard him do before that was a lot of fun. Two of the original Christmas songs that he performed I thought were hilarious and absolutely loved – Baby Won’t You Wait Until the New Year about having your boyfriend or girlfriend waiting until after Christmas to break up with you so the holidays won’t always remind you of the break up and Mommy, Is there More than Just One Santa Claus written from the perspective of a curious child who seems to see Santa everywhere during the holiday season and wonders if there must be more than one of him. He forgot the words – on 2 of the verses – during Alright With Me which was pretty funny. A few fans helped him out and got him back on track 🙂 Since this was at a mall, there was a video game store on the floor above where the show was happening and Mario (from Mario Bros.) was hanging out there and watching the soundcheck when I got there. He mustve also watched part of the set because Kris asked if he was seeing things or if Mario was at his show lol
Kris played for about an hour, met up with VIP M&G winners (which somehow I didn’t manage to win!) and then he came back to sign for the non VIP winners. It was so nice to see him again! (Especially so close to home!)
Book Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Many have been thinking that this is the 8th book in the Harry Potter series. It is not. This is the eighth story involving Harry Potter (and supposedly the last) but it is very different from the other books you may be familiar with. This is for several reasons but one is that it is a SCRIPT, not a book. Some people do not like reading scripts as much as they like reading books. If this is the case, you might want to avoid this book. I actually enjoyed reading it in script form and found it to read much faster that way.
In this book we meet up with Harry and his crew again. As we know from the other books, Harry married Ginny Weasley. They have 3 children and the main focus in this book is about Albus. He is going off to Hogwarts along with his cousin Rose Weasley – the daughter of Hermione and Ron. He ends up being friends with Scorpious Malfoy, Draco’s son.
I liked the first half of the story moreso than the second half and the conclusion. I read it more as a standalone than a piece of the earlier books and I think that helped me enjoy it more. Although I did tend to picture the kids from the movies in the parts and they came across as much younger than they should have. I’m not sure if this is from how they are written or the fact that I was picturing the younger actors that led me to this.
I am hoping that I get the chance to see this on stage sometime soon – whether it be in a trip to London or if it comes to the US. I’m curious to see how they work in the magical aspects of the book.
I purchased this book because I love me some Harry Potter and wrote a review because that’s just what I do.
About the Book
The Eighth Story. Nineteen Years Later.
Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne, a new play by Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage. The play will receive its world premiere in London’s West End on July 30, 2016.
It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.
While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.
Throwback Thursday: The Rock Boat 1/19/09
Headliner: The Rock Boat
Opener(s): Alternate Routes, Aslyn,Carbon Leaf, Gaelic Storm, SK6ers, Sam Thacker, Michael Tolcher, Francisco Vidal
Venue: The Rock Boat
Cost: a lot!
Try It Tuesday: Multi Color HTV!
I’ve done HTV (heat transfer vinyl) using only one color to make myself and others a few shirts, but for my trip to Disney for Halloween I decided it was time to move on to 2+ colors on a shirt! My friend decided she wanted the witch hat and I opted to go for sorcerer mickey. (Both with a Hanson symbol, for good measure) When I went to purchase the vinyl I realized that I could use GLITTER vinyl. At first I was just going to use it for the stars on the mickey hat, but then decided, what the heck, let’s glitter all of BOTH hats. It looks amazing in person. It wasn’t much different than just doing one color but you do have to be careful because it is not recommended to do glitter vinyl layered on top of glitter vinyl. I had the shapes cut out of the sorcerer’s hat to make sure that the moon and stars would not be a problem.
Virtual Race: Never Say Die 5k
Race Title: Never Say Die
Distance: 5k
Company: Comic Con Run
Charity: N/A?
Several times this year I had declared – NO MORE RACES! But Goonies is one of my all time favorite movies so when I saw this race from Comic Con Run I couldn’t resist. The image they had displayed originally the medal looked a little bit different, but I guess they weren’t able to get the actual medals to look exactly like the mock up, which was a bummer. That one had the nose cut out too and looked more like the one from the movie. But it’s still a really fun medal to add to the collection.
Book Review: Better Than New
Better Than New is a book by Nicole Curtis, who if you watch a lot of HGTV like I do, you will recognize from Rehab Addict. In the book she talks about both her show and her personal life and a little bit of behind the scenes with the show and the houses and how she got them. She seems to have struggled a lot with her personal life, but she continued to stand up for herself and fight for her homes and what she believed in.
Unfortunately I received an early copy of this book so all the photos that will be included in the final copy were not available for me to check out, which is a bummer because I’d love to see some of the before and afters of the homes that she worked on on Rehab Addict! I guess I will just have to get myself an actual copy – it was published on October 18!
I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.
About the Book
For the first time, Nicole Curtis, the star of the megahit HGTV and DIY Network show Rehab Addict, reveals her private struggles, her personal victories, and the inspiring lessons we can all learn from them.
Part celebrity memoir and part self-help book, Better Than New goes behind the scenes with an entrepreneurial single mom who worked her way from waitress/real estate agent to home renovation expert, preservationist, and television star. With eight chapters in the book—eight lessons told through her life story and through several of the homes she has remodeled—readers will get to see another side of Nicole Curtis, including the private and personal struggles that are not seen on TV. Working in Detroit and Minneapolis, Curtis has opened her fans’ eyes to the beauty of older homes and the value of reclaiming and reusing authentic original materials rather than sending dumpster loads to the local landfill. Curtis applies the same principles to her personal life—valuing old friends, rescuing dogs, and advocating for the wounded, the elderly, and the disadvantaged. Readers will find inspiration to apply to their own lives supplemented with never-before-seen photos of Curtis and the homes she renovates.
Book Review: The Girls
The Girls is a book that I had been hearing a lot about. It is about a cult and takes place in the 1960s. I got sucked in to this book immediately, it is really well written. The book is in 4 parts and bounces from the late 60s when all the cult things were going on to whatever the “modern day” is. The book follows Evie whose parents are divorced. She is living with her mother but when she starts hanging out with the cult she begins acting differently and ends up getting sent to live with her father. She ends up running away to be with the cult again because she thinks that is where she belongs.
This was one of those books that I just didn’t want to put down and really enjoyed – until the end. I don’t know what it was specifically but the end of the book was a bit “meh” for me and I wish that it had ended differently. Not to the point that I regret reading the book because I did otherwise enjoy it – I am just weird with book endings, I guess!
I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review, I was not otherwise compensated.
About the Book
Girls—their vulnerability, strength, and passion to belong—are at the heart of this stunning first novel for readers of Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad.
Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling, charged—a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life, and as her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence, and to that moment in a girl’s life when everything can go horribly wrong.
Emma Cline’s remarkable debut novel is gorgeously written and spellbinding, with razor-sharp precision and startling psychological insight. The Girls is a brilliant work of fiction—and an indelible portrait of girls, and of the women they become.