new Kiss, old Kiss, bad Kiss

Kiss just released a new CD set this week. They released this as a Walmart exclusive which is the first thing that pisses me off but whatever. I went to Walmart on Tuesday morning to wait in line and get my copy like all the other Kiss fans, yes there were lines.. I cleverly avoided the line in electronics when i saw a few of the CDs sitting on a A-Frame and grabbed one along with the new Madonna DVD and walked to the front registers which had no lines. :)

This CD set has two CDs and one DVD. The first CD is a new CD called Sonic Boom, on first listen I loved the first song then it dropped off dramatically till the last few songs. On second listen I was more forgiving perhaps because I found myself liking most of the songs but my favorites are still the first and last. The CD booklet lists who wrote each song but not who sung them, obviously I can tell the Gene and Paul songs but there was one song sung by someone else, I assume it was Tommy Thayer because I've heard Eric Singer's voice before and it was not that bad.. :)

Speaking of bad voice, Eric did sing Black Diamond on the second CD but did it in his best (it was bad) Peter Criss impersonation.. If you hadn't guessed the second CD was a CD of recorded Kiss hits called Kiss Klassics. The did 15 tracks and for some reason felt the need to include Christine Sixteen in that set. For the most part these songs sounded almost identical to their original versions all the way down to the fade out and fade in at the end of I Love it Loud, they did sound better if only for modern day recording studios. A few of the songs were actually different and mostly in good ways, for example I Was Made for Loving You was done more in line with how they play it live and not in the original disco mold. Forever was a stinker, Paul's voice sounded strained and uninspired. All in all I think Do You Love Me was the best of the re-recordings.

But wait, there's more.. This set comes with a 6 song live DVD that was recorded on the last tour in Buenos Aires. Kiss fans are everywhere and one of my co-workers was talking about getting this CD so I let him borrow mine and then we decided to watch the DVD here on one of the projectors. Wow, was it bad.. I gotta think as a marketing decision this was a major screw up, nobody is going to watch that DVD and then think to themselves 'man I gotta go see these guys'. They were out of tune, out of sync and generally had no life on stage. I have to imagine that they could have found a better night to take the recordings from.

All in all, is the new CD set worth it? Yes.. There are enough good tracks on the first CD to make the $12 paid a value not to mention most of the songs on the 2nd CD were well done and sound fuller than the previous versions. The DVD, just throw it out..

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If you live anywhere near Hebron CT you need, need, need to get to the CT Ren Faire this year.. They did an amazing job on the fight sequences this year. The story this year is called 'For the Love of Lancelot' and there are four shows throughout the day, five if you include the show at the gates before the faire opens. By the way, if you can you really want to try and get there before the gates open because that show was really good and really sucks you in.

I mentioned the fight sequences were great this year and that's mostly in part to Taryn Bazinet and Colette Marie Crowley who play two French girls who fight as one, they were like watching intense synchronized swimming combat. The final fight had this holy crap amazing sequence that you really just have to see to believe. No, I'm not going to describe it because you need to go see it live!

I was a little disappointed by some of the cast changes and the fact that the sheriff was not around but all in all it was an amazing time.

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Sunday me and Jessie went to the final Mets game of the year with dad. He bought tickets in the Ceaser's Plaza Club which were right in front of the SNY broadcast booth. Believe it or not the seats were a bit thiner than the seats in the section we want to move to in the Promenade, they were actually thinner than some of the seats on the same level but further away from Home Plate.

When we got to the game they had closed off our normal parking area and let us park in the main lot (usually only for pre-paid parking). Because we were in the main lot we decided to walk over to the Shea Stadium base markers. It was neat standing on the pitchers mound marker and looking around at how small everything looks. Citi-Field was beyond the outfield wall at Shea but yet it looks so close when standing on the mound and even at Home Plate. I guess it looks smaller because now it's all just a parking lot.

It was a really good game. Nelson Figueroa pitched a complete game shutout, first in Citi-Field history. Jessie got a new sweater from Touch and we got a ball autographed by Alyssa Milano. Here is a quote from the label of her sweater.

"to rally for each other

to play fair

to run with abandon

to dance with life

is to Touch"

:)

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Speaking of Monday.. Lynz come over Monday night with Anja and we watched a great episode of Nova regarding the possibility of life on Mars. You can watch the entire episode here on PBS.

This was especially interesting right now because I just finished reading the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson which is all about Terra-Forming Mars.

Speaking of Terra-Forming.. I'm going to be playing Mythical Journeys: Future Imperfect in November, it's a futuristic LARP that takes place on a newly colonized world. Just finished making my character the other day. Going to use a shot gun so it should be fun and at the very least different.. Come check it out with me..

Tuesday dinner was spent working with Kevin on his costume and on my gun. We had to modify the shells so the bullets go further by drilling holes in the bottom to let more air in. Sarah stole the food show with her soup. Hopefully she will post the recipe either here as a comment or on the Tuesday night dinner blog.

Holly came over last night and I re-made my Tomatillo Salsa tilapia dish, but this time with cod because Price Chopper didn't have any tilapia. It came out good but not as good as it does with tilapia. The salsa was just as good but the end product was a little less then I would have liked it to be.

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Yay, Laire is tomorrow... Speaking of yay! Garfunkel and Oates are coming to NYC next week, they will be at the Upright Citizen's Brigade on Monday and at the Gotham Comedy Club on Wednesday. Me and Jessie will be going to the Monday show, care to meet us there?

--Diversion of the Day

http://erim.net/misc/GeneSimmons_TerryGross.mp3