Coldplay: Viva la Vida Tour

As many of you know, Coldplay is my favorite band, so you can imagine how excited I've been about the release of their new (long-awaited) album - Viva la Vida. I was on iTunes at midnight the day the album was released (they actually had it available at 11:45 pm the day before) and I have been listening to it ever since.

To kick off their new tour Coldplay decided to give a couple of free "fan appreciation" concerts, and one of them was to be at Madison Square Garden. Of course I signed up to win tickets and actually was chosen as one of the winners! Not only that, but my tickets were floor seats, about thirty rows from the stage. Nice.

Matt and I went last night - it was pretty awesome to be shown to "close to the stage" floor seats, and we settled in for the concert. The opening band was called the Blue Jackets, they were handpicked by Coldplay to open for this concert. They were pretty good, but the next part of the show was even cooler. This DJ named Jon Hopkins came out and spun trancy, new-agey songs for about twenty minutes, accompanied by some trippy, 70s looking cartoons on a big screen. I actually discovered later that Jon Hopkins songs have been used in moments of "Sex and the City", pretty cool.

Finally, it was time for Coldplay! Chris Martin came out in that military jacket that he's been rocking everywhere. And the concert was pretty awesome. From the new album they played "Life in Technicolor", "Lost", "42", and some others. My favorite song from the new album so far is "Viva la Vida" and their energetic rendition was freaking awesome. They mixed up the old stuff too - "In My Place", "Square One", and even "Yellow" from a special mike up in the nosebleeds. The last song of the night was "Lovers in Japan" from the new album, and on a screen they had all these images of Japan and cherry blossoms, etc. And they made it rain confetti butterflies all over the garden, I picked up a few and pasted them into my journal with the concert ticket. Definitely my favorite part of the night.

So thank you Chris Martin and Johnny Buckland and Guy Berryman and Will Champion for coming to NY and letting Jenn come and hear her favorite music for free!

The Sex and the City movie

So I know I'm a little late on this post, and by now all the buzz has died down and maybe nobody cares. But facts are I was in Costa Rica and didn't get to see this movie until two nights ago, so I'm just getting around to commenting on it now.

I had been waiting a long time to see this film. I've always been a fan of Sex and the City, and watch the reruns constantly on HBO on Demand. I'm a fan of the friendship between the girls and their relationship and the homages to New York and single women. The funny thing is - I also have these moments where I completely freaking hate Carrie. I once had a long in-depth conversation with three other women at a party about Carrie Bradshaw and everything that irritated us about her. A short list would contain the obvious:

*Carrie is forever turning the conversation back to her super, self-absorbed self even when her friends are talking about cancer, unplanned pregnancies and infertility.
*Carrie probably makes no more than 50K a year and yet she owns 40 pairs of Manolo Blahniks.
*Carrie's job consists of her researching, writing and turning in one column a week, and yet she's always complaining about how busy she is. To give you an idea of how ludicrous this is, I was a part time newspaper reporter for three years, and generally wrote three articles a week, all while working a full time 9-5 job, and attending night meetings for the articles.

You get the idea. But yet I was desperate to see the movie the moment I heard they were making it. The thing is - I love these women same as everybody else does. Us single New York gals - we gotta stick together. And frankly, we all want to believe that our happy ending is out there somewhere. (Christ, I sound like Carrie right now...). So even though the end of the series left everything tied up in a nice pink bow, when the movie promised us another chapter, like everyone else, I knew I had to know the next part of the story.

So the verdict was that I really enjoyed the film. There was a lot of drama, more than most people bargained for, I think. And some people I talked to were upset about it - sad that the happy ending the series left us with was taken away. And on some level I agree with that, but God knows you couldn't have a movie without conflict. But they did a good job with the movie, I really felt for Carrie. And I was really glad that I got to see this next chapter of her life, because what really floored me about this movie was that I thought she had really matured. She listened to her friends this movie. She was calmer, not all neurotic and squealing and yapping about what Big said and did. There was not one moment in this movie where I disliked Carrie.

So there's no real point to this entry besides to share my thoughts...I can't really recommend that people go see this - most of the men out there don't care and any woman who does has already see it. But bottom line, it was good to see the girls again.

Costa Rica Highlights

Hello blog readers! When I logged into blogger I saw that the last time I did a new post was December 10, 2007. I will ask you to forgive me for staying away so long. I sort of meant to blog about New Year's in January but I got really sick for the whole month (courtesy of Tavern on the Green - see Brian's blog at Mochasteak.com for full details) and just never got back to it. But I am trying to remedy that, so now I'm doing a recap of our recent trip to Costa Rica.

This was an exciting trip for many reasons - it consisted of myself, Roy, Matt, Kim, Ryan, Drapo and Vanessa. Everybody was anxious to get away and relax in the sun for a week. And basically, that's all we did. We swam, we played a ton of pool volleyball, we ate some good food, we drank Miami Vices, and we went ziplining in the rainforest.

Oh and Kim and Ryan got engaged! If any of you still did not know that...

Anyway, without further adieu, here are the funny comments from the trip:

"No more Kylie Minogue! Don't they have another CD?"

"Say cheese! - Cheese-y hat!"

"It's my turn on the crocodile!"

"Oh no, tu grande!"

"Why can't you ever find the waiter when you want to order something gay and delicious?"

"Angry kid is very angry."

"They won't be able to have water aerobics this morning. Vanessa isn't here."

"Do you think they were REALLY missionaries?"

"Where's Wilbur? We need him to deal!"