OH EM GEE BOY BANDZZZZZ!!!~~!~ One Direction ft. 5 Seconds of Summer - Friday, August 1st @ The Rogers Center

Dear reader, please forgive me, for I attended a One Direction concert and thoroughly enjoyed it.

That’s right. Out of all the things going on this weekend – out of all the music events that were going on this weekend (VELD, Osheaga, Lollapalooza, just to name a few), I was at a One Direction concert.

I'm not too ashamed though.

Donned the Luongo shirsey, cuz they asked for the crowd to wear red & white. And you can't get more red & white than going with a team Canada shirt, can ya?

To those of you who don’t know, two things:
1. My taste in music is very, very broad. I can deal with nearly any kind of music, so don’t be surprised that I enjoy myself some teen boy band music.
2. I am a sponge. When there is a lot of energy and fun being had, I take it all in and in turn have fun myself. Hence, despite being introverted, I enjoy myself a good dance party once in a while.

A family friend had bought tickets way back near the beginning of the year and had generously given my youngest sister two of them for free, knowing that she was a huuuuuuuuuuge One Direction fan. And since she didn’t have anyone else to go with (read: she didn’t have any friends who were enthusiastic enough about 1D as she is), her default invitee was me. And I couldn’t really say no – first of all, free tix to what I thought would have been an okay show, but also because I dragged her out to a Down With Webster concert back in December when I couldn’t think of anyone to bring with me (a concert for which I have still not blogged about. I’ll do it soon!!!).

We headed downtown at around 3:30, and arrived sometime before 5, but even though the concert wasn’t starting for another two hours or so, there were already hoards of people/girls outside the Rogers Center. We grabbed some street dogs, and headed into the stadium at around 6.

My view. 

Our seats were pretty far away... but, eh, you couldn’t really expect anything more for $50 tickets to a concert like this. However, I was upset that they had set up a light stand which obstructed my view of the stage (and hence all the performers) all night long.

5SOS!

Source: Google.

I learned right before we left that 5 Seconds of Summer was opening the show, and this made me more excited than I was before because it meant I was going to hear one of my current favourite songs LIVE! And Australian boys. Mmm. Okay no, I’m kidding. I mean, yes, Australian boys, but these ones might be a little too uh, young. (Okay I did my research and the oldest of them is the drummer who is three years younger than me. That’s acceptable, right?)

(No but WHERE WERE ALL THE COOL BOY BANDS MY AGE WHEN I WAS A TEEN!?!?!?)

tHAT DAMNED LIGHT POST

Anyhow, they were charming and energetic, and I had to wait ‘til the end of their set to hear She Looks So Perfect, but that was expected and it was worth it. Their voices were just a bit below annoying (except for one of them, I can’t remember who... I think it was Michael? His voice was lovely), but I’d give them a leg up over 1D because INSTRUMENTS!

1D

Source: Google.

Ah, but they’re One Direction; a group of five young lads, who literally started from the bottom and now they here. The screams were deafening for 5SOS, but even more so when they showed up. And I don’t even mean on stage – during a video of an advertisement for their next movie; during a little animation, which did not even show their faces, but had them explain safety instructions and rules; and when their SUVs pulled into the stadium behind the stage.

Luckily, I’ve had no hearing loss, but I probably won’t be able to hear the high frequencies I can hear now at the age of 30.

I don’t remember what song they opened up with, but, let’s be real; I didn't know a lot of the songs off their new album. I thought I would have, seeing as my sister plays it every single time she’s in the shower. A lot of them were familiar, at least.

I think it was Midnight Memories.

LIGHTS!

However, they did perform a lot of their old songs, too, including some of my favourite ones – One Thing, C'mon, C'mon, and ohmigosh MOMENTS. I almost cried, especially when Louis sang.


Yes, Louis is my favourite.


His voice is so. Effin'. Precious. Ughhhhasdl;kfjadslkj I got to hear Louis’ voice live I can die happily now.

THE LIGHTS OMG

The laser show that was happening simultaneously was also very, very impressive (or, it’s just me. I’m very easily amused).

Overall, it was a great concert and a great experience. I danced all night to the best songs ever~~~ (see what I did there?). But seriously, I need to get out to more concerts because the atmosphere is so exhilarating (even if this concert was full of teens and pre-teens and reluctant parents).

Lastly, I’ll leave you with my song recommendations.

5 SECONDS OF SUMMER

3. Amnesia

2. English Love Affair

1. SHE LOOKS SO PERFECT

UP ALL NIGHT

1. One Thing

TAKE ME HOME

3. C'mon, C'mon

2. Kiss You

1. Moments

MIDNIGHT MEMORIES

3. Right Now

2. You & I (even though it's grammatically incorrect, haha! Then again, there are so many songs that just don't give a shit about grammar...)

1. Little Black Dress

Please don't judge me. Stay rad.

I play duh piano

When people ask me what I do for fun, the answer is usually "I play piano." And when they ask, "What else?" I have the hardest time answering that - partly because "oh, you know, I go through the vicious cycle of checking Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and email until I get peeled away from my computer" isn't a really great answer, but mostly because I hardly do anything else for fun.

"What a boring person..." Yes, yes reader, I am.

But, in all seriousness, it is my most favourite thing to do for fun, especially now, in between studying. I would describe myself as a creative person, or at least a person who needs to create (and hence I am not really all for dat medical/optometry school life, but, eh, you gotta make a living...) so it is a huge break away from reading about Newton's laws and other physics formulas.

A lot of what I do is sit at my piano, and figure out covers to top 40 songs (this gets really boring because it gets pretty redundant, repeating the same four chords over and over) or whatever else I hear, by ear (and sometimes with the help of sheet music I manage to find). I've been riding the How To Train Your Dragon 2 wave most recently and have set myself the task of covering some of the songs from the soundtrack. I posted my cover of For The Dancing And Dreaming not too long ago:

The whistling part was my favourite to do. As for the piano playing, I'll admit it was really rough... like, unclean. But that's how all of my piano playing has been. I have never really been able to really nail down a song - except, maybe, for Fur Elise back in grade 5 piano and I'd have to say, I did a damned good job on it. I guess if I spent a year on it, it'd get better. Sucks that I'm not a piano-playing robot-Asian...

Anyhow, I just wanted to post that I'm working on two more pieces from the soundtrack, and both are so close to being done; I just need to work on some details, and be able to... play the entire thing (because I work on my covers in chunks, and transitioning from one to the other is my kryptonite). Posting this makes it a commitment now, so if you don't see any videos being posted here, you can, uh, throw tomatoes at me or something.

(unless of course, no one sees this. It's like the whole tree-falling-in-the-forest thing. If no one's here to read this, was a commitment really made?)

The dull life and dragons?

It is official. I will be writing the OAT on August 28th! This, of course, is assuming that I won't chicken out and cancel, or nothing happens along the way that prevents me from writing it. Studying officially started... on Tuesday, so I have a little less than two months to prepare for it all, which is a little alarming. I would have liked to write it later, but a certain school *cough cough* wants OAT test marks from before August 31st, 2014, which prevents me from writing it any later.

I just have to remember that I spent a little less than two months to cram for the MCAT last year (even though our course was four months long, I procrastinated a bit too much) but I was still able to manage a less than shitty grade, so anything is possible!

Other than that, life has been dull. I mean, not literally, as summer officially began a few weeks ago and the sun has been out in full force since then (on most days).  But I haven't done anything too exciting.

Okay, there were three things, I guess:

1) My youngest sister graduated high school! This isn't really exciting until you hear how each student was given only two tickets because the graduating class was huge (the largest in York Region!); and so, my other siblings and I had to be smuggled into the venue. And we did just that by being in the band...

Yup, it's like I never left at all.

Unfortunately, I found out right after putting my oboe together and trying to play a few notes that my oboe was way out of commission (my brother probably did something to it... he's been trying to learn, but yeah, fragile things and twelve-year-old boys don't mix) and so I ended up having to fake everything (this isn't to say that I would have been able to play everything even if my oboe was working). And now I have to get it fixed...

2) Going to the movies is not my favourite thing to do because it's expensive, and sometimes it feels like a chore or work, since you have to commit two or three hours to it. But I make a few exceptions for movies that I genuinely want to see. For example, when The Incredibles 2 comes out, you know I'll be there opening night. In costume.

I watched two movies! First was the new X-Men movie, which I went to see my brother. It wasn't a movie I really wanted to watch in theatres, but since my brother wanted to see it, he needed adult supervision, and it was a Tuesday (half price admission!), I went.

I'm not too critical of it - it wasn't too boring, but it was that great either. It was entertaining seeing Peter Dinklage as Trask because, if you don't know, he's in Game of Thrones as Tyrion, and if you didn't know, I've been watching me some Game of Thrones and I always get excited when I see actors from shows I watch in other shows or movies.

The next movie I got to see was..... *drumroll* How to Train Your Dragon 2!

Yes, this was indeed a movie I had been waiting for ever since watching the first one about four years ago at a friend's house; and man, did it deliver. Everything was amazing, but the music is my absolute favourite part of the movie. The soundtrack for the first movie was beautiful; and despite re-using the main themes and melodies, the soundtrack for this movie was STILL epic and beautiful. Here's one of the songs off the soundtrack. I won't spoil it for you... but this was at a very sad part of the movie.

That transition from the sad music to the stoic (haha) main theme gets me every time (3:15). Damn it, that theme just gets me every time. Here, listen to this song and tell me that transition from the singing part to the instrumental main theme does not make you cry.

So... beautiful...

But if you ask me for my favourite part of the story, I'd have to say when ****SPOILER ALERT!**** Toothless breaks out of the ice and has essentially digivolved into ultimate-mega-cool-glowing Toothless.

3) My sister took me out to watch a musical that one of her teachers was in called MUTE. And it wasn't that bad. There were moments that were a bit cheesy, but the cast was very talented, and the story had a good message and moral too. After that, we all went out to watch HTTYD2. Again. But hey, if we didn't go, I wouldn't have ever won my first ever game of TimePlay.

Anyhow, writing this took longer than expected. Back to studying!