Metalist Concert

Well I've just returned from my trip... actually that's a lie. I returned 13 hours ago... well anyway I returned and it was rather fun in Tel Aviv. I got home every morning at 6 am from chilling with my friends. The first night however was to go to a metal concert... featuring Megadeth as the main band whilst all the other bands were Israeli.

It started out rather exciting because I knew by the end of the night I'd see megadeth. Well there were alot of good bands. There was this band called distorted and well, their singer looked pretty hot so I was pretty excited to see a hot metal chick... even though alot of hte chicks in the audience were also really hot.

So anyway Megadeth came on... this was the moment I'd been waiting for. They began playing the first few notes of this one song and I began feeling a sense that something was going wrong. By the time they started playing "Skin o' My Teeth" I knew something was wrong. After another song Dave told the crowd to step back and that they wouldn't continue until some space was made... and well that led to the end of the show... I was rather disappointed... People spent 50 bucks to get into the show but were left hanging after 4 songs... luckily for me I didn't spend shit cuz I was a tourist... still it wasn't very fun. I did however still enjoy myself mainly because of the gorgeous girls and the great israeli bands.

Pretty good joke...

"The Evils Of Marijuana"

A certain college professor was notorious for getting off the topic of the lecture, and on to his favorite subject: the evils of marijuana. Off he went one day into his inventory of horrors:
"Used regularly, pot can cause psychic disorientation, sterility, cancer and castration!"

"Now wait a minute, Professor," interrupted a student.
"Castration?!? That's absurd!"

"No young man, it's sadly true," replied the Teacher smugly.
"Just suppose your girlfriend gets the munchies!"

Flying comfortably

I had just gotten back from a trip to the Philippines on Monday and I was incredibly jetlagged and tired. It was actually a worthwile trip since I got to play with my band in front of thousands of people and go nuts. I learned alot of things during this trip, mostly about travelling. I realized that there are things that you must always keep in mind, even though the inflight magazines repeatedly tell you this over and over again.
1. Always wear comfortable clothing. Try to avoid wearing high heeled shoes or highcut boots when you're riding a plane and try to dress down as much as possible. I'm not saying that you should show up in your PJ's and just lay around since that wouldn't be a very good idea... mostly because the flight attendants will think you're of low stature and would probably not treat you very well. Dress comfortably but dress respectably.
2. Bring water. Now, this is what I hate about flying. Probably the one thing I hate most. When you're sitting in your seat waiting for the plane to taxi and take off you're probably going to get really really thirsty. The best thing to do is to bring your own bottle of water, preferably a 1 liter bottle. The reason for this is sometimes the flight attendants will tell you that you can't get up for water because the plane is about to taxi or land.
3. Bring small, light bags . This isn't such a big problem as the other too but it is a pretty big hassle to try to find a place to stow your carry-on luggage. So carry small bags. Now, I'm a guitarist and I don't really have a choice about some of my luggage since I can't bear to part with my guitar :P... But otherwise I carry a backpack with only a few things inside and make sure it's not too heavy.

Musicians

Today I was thinking about composing music... (one of the three things that are always on my mind) and I realized that most guitarists and even other instrumentalists don't really know how to play or what they're doing. It's really hard to find other musicians that are within your skill level anywhere in the world to write music with you. If you're lucky you can probably find 1 or 2 people who play at your level out of 400 or 500 people even though probably half of them play and instrument. This is really a shame since those of us who actually have chops down are craving for other people to play with and most of the musicians who do have the skills tend to sing another tune.
I noticed that most of the people who start playing instruments do it for either or all of these things. 1) They want to look cute with the instrument 2) They're trying to attract a girl/guy 3) They think it's cool. Although most musicians start out playing cuz of one of these reasons (I know this personally cuz I started for reason number 2), the majority of them give up after a year or just sort of plateauing with their playing and not going anywhere.
Now out of those few musicians who actually can play, there's probably a much smaller population who are actually competent and would actually get along with your musical preference even though at their skill level they'll play anything. As a true musician you're expected to play anything even though it's not quite to your taste and when you compose together it can work out really well but in most cases you fall flat on your face... Let's say you decide to start a band... what happens is chaos if nobody is on the same level.
At the end of the day it's better to just compose and arrange music by yourself and get a couple of your musician buddies or musicians you've hired to play off the sheet rather than have other input since you may not always agree and there could be some serious physical damage to the studio, the instruments and to the people (notice the order). I personally would prefer to hire musicians rather than get my friends because they would want to "help out" even though I don't want any. Hired musicians would prefer to just play, get paid and get out of there.