Monthly Archive for April, 2007

Friday 13? Unlucky for Some

… but not for me. Ok, the worst thing that happened to me yesterday (that I’m aware of) is a parking ticket. Annoying, but I will live. Apart from this minor mishap, it was a fantastic day. First of all, it was my best friend’s birthday. If you’re reading this, B – I hope you know how much I love you! With someone that fabulous having their birthday, I just knew that the day would not have any superstitious impact on me – not that I’d be susceptible to that sort of thing, anyway. After a long and occasionally pretty stressful day at work, I picked up a dear colleague/friend for a work-related team meeting/dinner at 7pm. A great time was had by all, and we left at 11pm. I dropped off my friend at home and went to visit another friend – and her cool tomcat. We then left her place at around 1.30am I think, and went to a cool party. The music was ace – lots of excellent remixes and strong beats – actually, pretty much the sort of stuff I have been listening to for the last year or so, when electronic music suddenly started infusing my otherwise very guitar-driven musical preferences. My friend, who had had an even longer day than myself, got tired though and I still had a long drive home ahead of me, so we left at around 3.15am. After some more bonding with my friend’s tomcat, I got home at around 5am.

Now, I would have been very happy with that day already – but it got even better. MacZOT had this great promotional offer yesterday, which allowed you to purchase licenses for 13 Mac applications, worth more than $300, for just $13. Yes, you read that right – 13!! That’s less than €10, and there are some of the best apps for the Mac among them, such as Disco, AppZapper, Rapidweaver and iClip. I have bought really sweet stuff at MacZOT before, but this beats everything else. The offer was available at four different time windows, and due to my shenanigans, the only one left was at 8am CET. So of course I set my alarm clock, and got up again after less than three hours of sleep and yay, success: Software bundle purchased! If you’re a Mac user, I warmly recommend MacZOT to you. It’s everything that makes software for the Mac exciting – so go and sign up!

Now Playing: !!! – Heart of Hearts

Rufus Wainwright E-Card

2007 is a great year for music, or so they say. I don’t really care – all I know is that I can’t wait for Rufus Wainwright’s new album “Release the Stars”, which is out May 15. Geffen Records has an e-card which lets you stream three 90 second-clips of songs from the new album, all of which sound really promising. And how adorable is this picture of Rufus in monogrammed lederhosen?!

Rufus Wainwright in lederhosen

Germany: 5. Netherlands: 1.

Bochum Wattenscheid Football Stadium
My camera phone’s panoramic picture mode could be a lot better, I guess ;)

I drove all the way out to Bochum yesterday along with two other crazy fans to see the German national women’s football team compete against Netherlands in the European Cup qualifying matches – and what a fantastic match it was. Netherlands took an early lead after Germany missed out on a number of (sometimes almost painfully obvious) chances, mainly due to a very impressive player number 9 – who according to the Dutch website is either Manon Melis or Claudia v.d. Heiligenberg. However, the German player number 9, the awesome Birgit Prinz, managed to follow up with a dream goal from a 82 ft. distance, and after that it pretty much went downhill from there for the Dutch team.

The final score was 5:1 for Germany, but what made this so perfect at the end of the day was the wonderful weather and the great mood among the fans. Definitely a match to remember for a long time to come.

Germany vs Netherlands

Germany vs Netherlands

Spreading the Mika Love

If you haven’t heard of Mika or his music yet, you simply must visit his MySpace and do so… NOW! I thought I had eventually become a little jaded as fas as music was concerned, because new albums simply didn’t excite me anymore. Sure, I liked them, but not so much that I would listen to them more than twice in a row. Everything sounded the same, and for every song that did stand out, there were at least two fillers.

On Thursday, I found myself watching Cycle 2 of “Germany’s Next Top Model” (OMG! Could I hate Anja any more?!) and during the trailers for Weeds, I started noticing this catchy song. Thanks to iTunes, it was quickly identified as “Grace Kelly” by Mika, so I bought it. Well, I’m not proud of this fact, but I must have listened to it 50 times since – easily. Since iTunes now has the cool “Complete My Album”-feature, I got the rest of “Life in Cartoon Motion” as well. And I friggin’ love it! It was the perfect companion for the bout of spring-cleaning that I started yesterday. There is not one single mediocre song on this album. Mike has been likened to Freddie Mercury or Elton John, but I say: He’s the prodigal son of Jake Shears and Rufus Wainwright.

Plus, he’s drop dead gorgeous. And this picture? Reminds me of Buster from “Arrested Development”. Doesn’t get any better than this!
Mika