TinDefacto

Lately's been fun...

I haven't been to my dad's for a week because I've been at my grandma's (hence my not putting up the videos I was supposed to).  Jimmywa came over and stayed the night for four nights in a row. We had a poi party there. Poi is when someone takes a glowing ball at the end of a rubber band (or something) and does tricks with it in the dark. It didn't come out well on camera, so I and the other 17 kids there (all with parents befriended to my grandma) swam in the pool while watching it. it was awesome.

Also there, this dude made balloon hats. He made a turtle (!) for me and a jester's hat that was HUGE and then some. Jimmy's was pretty dang tall, too. I got that on camera, of course. That'll probably be on YouTube by the end of September.

We've been swimming all week and yesterday I got three albums:

• 21st Century Breakdown by Green Day (the special physical Target edition, too, with a bonus live disc)
• The Open Door EP by Death Cab For Cutie (from iTunes, so it came with the Grapevine Fires video)
• iTunes Live From London Festival '09 by Franz Ferdinand (also from iTunes [duh], so it came with a PDF)

21st Century Breakdown, upon first listen, sucked, but on the second, I loved it. It's a little weird how that works, but I do love it. I'm still only on the second listen, though... Is it just me, or does "Restless Heart Syndrome" sound a whole lot like Garbage's "A Stroke Of Luck" from their eponymous debut? It's a little scary. Also, "Horseshoes And Handgrenades" sounds a lot like "Main Offender" by The Hives. Seriously. They're both awesome, but wow.

The bonus disc, with six songs from the 2004 album American Idiot played live, is very good, too. The singer talking sounds nothing like him singing, though, which is kinda weird. I like live things a lot. My only complaint about these songs, though, is that the tracks are cut in strange places. For instance, one song is cut in the middle of the frontman's words. Oh, well, though.

The Open Door EP was a bit disappointing. "Little Bribes" is by far the best track, but the others are pretty good. I knew that the style would be different from Narrow Stairs, but, eh... I've heard it thrice already.

iTunes Live From London Festival '09 is really good. I'm glad iTunes finally got some live Franz on the US iTunes store. Franz Ferdinand is pretty freakin' good live. I enjoy it immensely on every listen.

Anyways, we went to Dave And Buster's today. After some Ice Hockey (I was pwned terrifically) I decided to play some SkeeBall. Apparently, the one I went to was a little broken. It awarded me points like crazy. My highest score became 1,500 points - and the maximum is supposed to be 900. I mean, 9 balls with 100 points max on each. It didn't even have four digits! It started over from zero after 990.

Apparently, getting over 450 points counts as a jackpot, so I was awarded over 500 tickets! I couldn't believe it. I tried again and again, but I only broke 450 once after that despite the glitch.

After getting over 700 tickets, I decided to stop and do other things. An employee who turned out to have been watching us silently immediately walked up the ramp and got to fixing it. Wow.