Howie D’s Back To Me and A.J. McLean’s Have It All

I pre-ordered Howie D’s album, Back To Me today. It will be released in November. The pre-order price is $12.99. That’s not too bad, but I wish it were cheaper. I’m poor, ok? I have been hooked on the first single off the album which is entitled “100.” When I first listened to that song, it didn’t catch my interest right away. That’s bad! It’s bad because I am a Backstreet Boys fan. As I listened to it more and more, I liked it more and more. It has a good dance beat. It makes me want to get up and dance and I’m not even a dancer. Meaning, I’m not someone who dances for whatever reason. I can’t dance. I’ve tried. My body doesn’t cooperate. Anyways, I am excited about the album! I can’t wait to see what Howie has in store for us! Below is the video for “100.”

I did a review of A.J.’s Have It All album in my entry, A.J. McLean – Have It All album. During that time, I was waiting for his album price to drop. I don’t think it’s going to drop any lower any time soon. So, I figured I’ll buy the album now. I placed an order for it today. The price was $14 something. That’s not that bad, but I would have liked for it to be cheaper. I will finally have a copy of my own. I won’t have to keep going to YouTube to listen to the songs. I like his album. Below is the video for “Teenage Wildlife” which was the first single from the album.

NKOTBSB concert Part 3

Since I had a five day gap of posting, I’m doing another entry today. In my NKOTBSB concert and NKOTBSB concert Part 2 entries, I wrote about my experiences there, what happened, and what songs they sang. Both of those entries were long enough as is, so I didn’t want to add more onto them. That’s why I’m putting the pictures (some of them) in this post. I just wish I were closer! I could have had better pictures. It’s ok though because the pictures came out better than I expected.

NKOTBSB concert Part 2

I first wrote about the NKOTBSB concert in my post NKOTBSB concert on July 3rd. That entry was a long one and I said I was probably going to split it up into a second entry. I’m finally able to do so. (I had been having problems with WordPress. The situation is now resolved). Anyways, I went through my camera footage to see what was there and uploaded the video clips to YouTube. No copyright infringement was intended. I uploaded it to serve as a memento of the concert. Also, to get hits on my page. Wouldn’t you do the same?

What else can I say that I haven’t said in the other post? LED lights were used. There were various colors. There were a few “fire explosions” as well. They sounded loud. They were cool, but they happened during unexpected moments, so they gave me a jolt. Oh, the opening act was Ashlyne Huff. I don’t know who she is. It was supposed to be Jordin Sparks as the opening act. I guess there was a last minute change or something. I at least knew Jordin. As for Ashlyne, I didn’t like her songs, whatever they were. I don’t even remember. The stage is called the “penis stage” but I’d say it’s more of a thermometer or even a reversed stick figure. It had a long runway with a circular platform at the end of it. The beginning platform from what I could see looked circular. It was more of a half circle or an arc. That’s why I said it was like a reversed stick figure. The seats in the venue were small and the stairs and aisles were narrow. There really wasn’t enough room for people to get by. I was afraid people would fall off every time they had to walk past me. My seat was near the end of the aisle. There was a moment when a guy was trying to get to his seat. Apparently, it was some seats down from me. I was going to get up and let him through, but he walked in the row in front of mine to get to his seat instead.

There were these two ladies and two teenage boys who sat to the left of me. I’m thinking they were probably pre-teens. The boys clearly didn’t want to be there. They were on their phones the whole time. The concert was probably three hours or close to it. Their mothers wasted money buying tickets for those boys. At some point, the mothers moved over to the right side of me and my sister because those seats were empty. They were also on the other side of the aisle. Every now and then, they would come back over to try and take pictures of their kids. I thought it was funny because the boys kept hiding their faces and getting angry. It’s like they were embarrassed to be seen at an NKOTBSB concert. At some point one of the mothers came over to me and my sister and offered to take a picture of us together. We were taking pictures of each other. She saw that and thought we’d probably want a picture together. That was nice of her. She was probably thinking “I wish my son would be like this.”

There was a point when Donnie (I think it was him) ripped his shirt off. People went crazy for that. That was probably a highlight for NKOTB fans. Then, there was a part when Nick poured some water on himself. That made Nick’s fans go crazy. He was wearing white. I don’t know if his shirt was see through. I don’t know if he wore another shirt underneath. Oh, it was a good thing that the venue was well air conditioned. I wasn’t expecting it to be. I thought it would be hot because of the number of bodies. If it were hot, there would have been a lot of fainting. Fainting from seeing your favorite group is expected, but fainting from the heat wouldn’t be so great.

Below is the list of songs they sung. This is not in the order that they sang them. My video clips weren’t exactly in order mainly because the cliips were filmed on my camera and on my sister’s iPhone. Also, because I didn’t film much of NKOTB. I tried to get all of BSB. It’s possible I may have missed something though due to batteries running low and my sister not recording stuff if she didn’t know it. For the NKOTB list, I wrote down what I remembered hearing. Since I didn’t record their performances, I don’t know what their other songs were. I didn’t look for them on YouTube either.

The songs list:

Backstreet Boys’ songs:

I’ll Be The One
The Call
Shape of My Heart
As Long As You Love Me
All I Have To Give
If You Stay
Quit Playing Games With My Heart
I Want It That Way
Everybody Backstreet’s Back
I’ll Never Break Your Heart
Get Down (You’re The One For Me)
Show Me The Meaning of Being Lonely
10,000 Promises
Drowning
Incomplete
Larger Than Life

New Kids on the Block’s songs:

Step By Step
Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)
You’ve Got It (The Right Stuff)
Please Don’t Go Girl
Summertime
Hangin’ Tough
I’ll Be Loving You (Forever)
Cover Girl

Mash up/Collaboration songs:

BSB – I’ll Be The One and NKOTB – Single
Don’t Turn Out The Lights
Larger Than Life (mash up)
Everybody (mash up)

To the NKOTBSB concert!

Recorded on July 2, 2011 with Motorola Cliq and Casio Exilim EX-Z80.

These were some clips I’ve compiled regarding my trip to San Jose to see the NKOTBSB concert. We left around 2:45 PM or closer to 3 PM for San Jose. We arrived sometime around 4 PM. I took a lot of clips on the way because I’ve never been to San Jose before. At least, I don’t think I have. I’m sure I haven’t. Anyways, I created two video clips with the clips that I had. I would’ve combined them into one video, but each of the videos were over one minute. It would have been fine to me to combine them, but usually people don’t like watching long videos. I don’t either at times. When I recorded stuff on my Motorola Cliq, the memory on my SD card ran out. That was when I switched to my Casio Exilim.

Anime Expo 2011

Anime Expo site: Anime Expo

I forgot to write about this sooner. I wrote about this on another site yesterday. Anyways, the Anime Expo for 2011 is from July 1-4 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. That means, it’s almost over already since today is the 4th. I know I wrote this late, but at least I’m mentioning it now. Better late than never, I suppose. At least now we all know about it. You can check out their site for more info. Gosh, I keep finding out about these conventions late! I guess it’s because I don’t really hang around Anime fans. Even if I did, I wouldn’t have money to go anyways. The flaw of not having money is that you don’t get to have the kind of fun you want. Maybe one day I’ll be able to go to some kind of convention. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Happy 4th of July 2011!

I hope you all have a safe and fun day. I think more people are into the 4th of July this year than last year. I’ve been hearing fireworks going off the past new days. At least, they sounded like fireworks. I’m not really sure. Let’s hope that what I heard was fireworks. I wonder how it will be tonight. Last year, there were some fireworks lighted in my neighborhood, but there were only a few families. I think there were maybe three families who were celebrating it. Maybe it’ll be different this year. Maybe more people will join in. I didn’t participate in the celebration last year. I don’t know if I will this year. It’s too hot! Being around fireworks will make things hotter! Like last year, I didn’t see very many fireworks booths. It has been hot lately, close to triple digits or maybe already triple digits. I wouldn’t want to work at a fireworks booth in that kind of weather. I’m sure the people who work in those booths don’t want to either. I think that they only have a fan to cool them off. I’m sure it only helps a little. I remember going to the baseball stadium here when I was younger to see the fireworks show. It would be nice to see that again, but the heat is getting to me. If it gets cooler by night time, I might go. After all, the 4th of July only comes once a year!

NKOTBSB concert

I went to the NKOTBSB (New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys) concert in San Jose yesterday with my sister and her friends. We got there early and waited about 2 hours or so in line for them to open the doors. I think we got there around 4 P.M. The doors didn’t open until 6:30 P.M. Sound check started at 3:45 P.M. That would’ve been cool if we had V.I.P. passes. That way, we would’ve been able to be at the sound check. While we were outside, there was a guy out there with a picket sign who was saying we’d go to hell. He was one of those religious protesters. There were some people from a few radio stations who were outside as well. They had music playing and people in line were singing the songs to drown out the protester. It was just one guy. Every time they tried to drown him out, he’d try to sound louder. He kept walking up and down the line yelling stuff at people. I’m no expert when it comes to the bible (I’m a fallen Christian), but doesn’t it say that people should “love thy neighbor” somewhere in there? It was hilarious to see that because no one gave a damn about him. No one cared what he had to say. They just wanted him to go away. He was there for a while. He was quiet most of the time after yelling at everyone. He gave one of the guys in line a card that had his YouTube information on it. The guy took the card, but he didn’t really care for it. He even said, “You’re hilarious” to the protester at some point.

People from the radio stations asked to take our pictures. Then they gave us their cards and told us the pictures will be up the next day. I checked out two sites. One of the sites had our pictures up. The other one didn’t have it yet. I guess they’ll put it up later. That was pretty cool that our pictures were on the site. I don’t like how I looked in the pictures though. I don’t look excited enough. I can’t ever really give a genuine smile either. I tried, but it didn’t look natural.

There seemed to be more NKOTB fans there than BSB fans. Of course, the NKOTB fans were all older. They looked at us BSB fans and gave that “Ugh you’re a BSB fan” kind of look. So what? At least my generation knows BSB. People in my generation barely know about NKOTB because they’ve been gone so long… Also, they didn’t make a really good comeback a few years ago. I couldn’t ever get into their songs. They really weren’t that catchy to me, except for maybe “Step by Step” and “You’ve Got It (The Right Stuff)” since those are the only two that makes me repeat the chorus or at least part of it.

The concert was great! That was my first concert ever! I’m not really the type of person who can dance, so during times when I stood up, I tried to move my body. The movement wasn’t very fluid. I actually did have a good time despite how my appearance may have been. I don’t usually get excited much even if it’s something I like. That’s just a problem that I have. I couldn’t hear the singing most of the time. I don’t know if that was just me or not. I mainly heard a lot of bass coming out from the speakers. That, and all the cheering from the fans. It was hard to hear the actual singing and talking. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the speakers. I didn’t really care for NKOTB. I was there just for BSB as were the people I went with. I didn’t know any of NKOTB’s songs even though I listened to their songs in preparation. I had a coworker who bought me the CD of their greatest hits. That was very sweet of her. I think they pretty much did sing all those songs and a song or two from their comeback album.

I took pictures and filmed stuff. My seat was so far away that it was hard to see. That was mainly why I filmed stuff. That way, I can take still shots of what I’ve filmed. My camera didn’t zoom very far for pictures. It did zoom up close, but the pictures didn’t turn out great. A lot of times they were blurry. I was sitting up high. I believe it was called the second level. It was far away. Even the jumbo screens didn’t help me much. Either that or my camera isn’t that great. I’ve had it for a few years. Technology keeps moving forward after all.

Now, the thing with NKOTB, especially Donnie, is that they did a lot of pelvic thrusts (the really sexual kind) and crotch grabbing. I may be a heterosexual girl, but even that didn’t turn me on. Maybe because they were all much older. It was weird for me to watch guys who were old enough to be my father do that. I guess that’s why I wasn’t excited by it. I thought to myself, “So that’s how they got girls to like them?” They did keep getting a lot of (loud) cheers every time they did that. The females and the gay guys were surely happy to see that. It was annoying to me. It’s like, can you not touch yourself and just perform the song? I’m there to see you sing and dance, not grab your crotch. The sad thing was that there were kids there too. I don’t think it was appropriate for them to see that. BSB did some pelvic thrusts too, but they weren’t as sexual as NKOTB. They kept it clean. They also didn’t “try too hard” to please their fans. Just seeing them was good enough. Seeing them dance and hearing them sing was amazing. With NKOTB, I felt they were going a bit over the top.

The costumes they had were actually good. They weren’t too over the top or crappy. I love when BSB sang “I’ll Never Break Your Heart” because they brought up females on the stage. That was sweet. I think they always do that for that song. Brian brought up a little girl. I don’t know how old she was. I’d say about 10 or so. A.J. brought up a middle aged woman. I’m guessing she was middle aged. Nick and Howie brought up girls who were maybe 20-30 years old. I like that they do that kind of age range. They have always said that their music is for everyone of all age groups and this proves it. The funny thing though was that when they were figuring out who to bring on stage, there was a guy with a sign that said, “Don’t be sexist. Pick me.” I was hoping they would pick him. That would have been cool.

Everything that I’ve written is what I remember. I’ll have to go through my camera footage to see what I’ve missed. I may have to put it in another post since this one is already long enough. I tend to have a short memory span. There were so many people there, it was overwhelming. It was also crowded.