A two-hour drive brings me and several good friends to Camelback Mountain, where we eagerly disembark after a hearty Chinatown breakfast of steak and eggs. Then we wait on line for our lesson package, then another line for our boards, then another line to actually start the lesson. Total line time was about three hours, which was about as much as you’d spend in three hours at Otakon. The lesson starts, and I’m easily the worst out of our group of four. But I plow on, imagining a soundtrack of awesome 80′s music. I make a good deal of progress, although not enough to actually make it all the way down a very slight slope without falling. Oh well, it’s still fun, and I’ll be back.

Searching around Citysearch, I found a nifty Ham Bar. Run by Mario Batali, it serves cured Spanish meats… from Spain. I’m not much of a Ham or Wine conisseur, so all I can say is that I really liked the Ham and Wine. The ham was subtle, and the wine was… I don’t have the words to describe wine. I’ll say it’s good. The atmosphere was nice too, crowded but not aggressively so.

I requested a custom drink – it consisted of Vanilla Vodka, Bailey’s Irish Cream and Godiva Chocolate Liqueur. I saw it a while ago on Food Network, it was a cocktail serve in Boston meant to evoke the taste of a Boston Creme Pie. While it didn’t do that, it was delicious – even the waiter said so. If Eatery starts serving it, you can thank me for that.

The food was tasty and filling, although it could have used some more salt and pepper. My friends and I ordered a range of foods, so I got to try Chicken Paillard, Atlantic Salmon, French Fries and some other stuff. They were all well-executed if unoriginal, which I suppose describes Eatery rather well.

I’m about 11,000 words into my novel, a Loads and Loads of Characters story written in Third Person Present (which is fairly rebellious as far as writing goes). I don’t quite know what’s going on (I’m not going to plan. I have nothing against outliners, but it’s not for me), but it’s shaping up quite nicely. It seems that I produce about 500 words a day, which is fine – at this rate, I’ll write my desired 100,000 by, say, next June or so. I just got a new toy for writing on the go, an Alphasmart Dana, which is essentially a keyboard with nothing else attached except the tiniest of screens so you can see what you’re writing.

Last Friday, my good buddy Dave was celebrating his 24th. Last Friday was also Halloween. The intersection of these two events proved problematic. Apparently, people enjoy celebrating Halloween in large numbers in bars and clubs, which is exactly the same sort of place that Dave wanted to hang out in. Our first stop, the Crocodile Lounge, a nice place with a roomy (as roomy as you can get around Union Square) back patio. The genius of the bar comes in these little red tickets that you are gifted with every time you purchase a beer. You can then exchange these tickets for a pizza, which you can then eat. The pizza isn’t that great, but come on, it came free with your beer (or your delicious Woodchuck’s Apple Cider Beer substance.) Pizza with beer is essentially a gimmick, much like arcade games with beer. If you know some interesting gimmick bars in NYC (or some interesting non-gimmick bars), please let me know, because I’d really like to check them out.

Eventually, the patio closed and the bar became too crowded for our liking. We took a large cab-van (van-cab?) to the intersection of Delancey and Essex, a place where our dreams would presumably come true. We walked into a club/bar, discovered it was crowded as **** (You all know what that word is, but let’s keep this family-friendly), and promptly left. This process repeated several times, until we landed in a cozy, quiet bar with wooden detailing and the word Whiskey in its name. We hung out, played pool, drank hot apple cider with rum, and chatted about whatever it is you chat about at 1 AM over alcoholic cider.

That was last Friday. This Friday, I did something that I hadn’t done in a while – played videogames with my friends, went out for a quiet dinner, and a quiet glass of bubble tea. There was none of the bustle and excitement of a usual night out, simply enjoying the company of one’s good friends in an environment where you can all hear each other. I read somewhere that a friend is someone who you can have a good time with in an empty room – I can’t find the original quote, so I guess it’s my quote now. The point is, quiet conversation with your friends is a good thing. Also, we designed a Sonic level with a pen and paper – they’re made of curving lines, making it possible for the least artistic of us to contribute. I likened level design to music composition, and I still think the simile holds – individual challenges (such as, say, hitting a spring to jump over a pit) function as phrases in music. A phrase in music is an string of notes, usually pretty short. Creating music involves creating such phrases, then weaving such phrases together in an interesting fashion. I found the experience quite invigorating – multiple sources of creativity always create something unique, with each creator bringing its own perspective to the creation.

I’m writing a novel! I struggled with my natural tendency to write in the present tense, wrangling my words into the “proper” past tense. No more of that, I’m going to write the way I write, which is in the present tense. Here’s a little unedited piece.

She placed her foot into the ropes, heard the satisfying creak as they adjusted to her weight. She pulled herself up the net with weathered hands, feeling the salt spray around her. After a short climb, she stood in the crow’s nest, a turret for her floating castle. It wasn’t high enough to make a difference, but the air somehow felt purer up here, and she loved the sight of the sea from this perch. The waves were no less majestic from this height, and Talara could see an enormous expanse, broken only by the horizon. She reached out to the sea, feeling mentally for a place where she can touch its pure energy, its essence. Finding some, she set to moving it, careful not to strain herself since she had not practiced in some time – it was becoming harder to find time alone. Holding carefully onto the wild energy, she lifts it slowly as a swell forms in the ocean.

Did you like that? I found it very unusual to write magic, but I quite like the way this turned out. That’s the end of this post – if you’ve got something to say, please post a comment – I love reading them.

The plan – eat some food, then go bar hopping. We ate at a delightful Sushi place on 1st avenue that I wish I could name, because it’s one of my favorite places ever. All of the rolls are half price (salmon roll for 2.50? I’ll take 3), and you can get a pitcher of Sapporo for nine dollars. Nine Dollars. My friends and I ate extremely well and split two big pitchers of tasty Japanese beer. The best part of the experience, even though the meal was no slouch, was the fried ice cream at the end. This is by far the best fried ice cream I have ever eaten, and I’ve had… let’s say 3. In most other servings, the ice cream is coated in a thin, crunchy coating and fried. Here, we have a core of soft ice cream coated by a layer of cake coated again by a crunchy layer, and fried. It has one of my favorite dessert elements, the play of warm cake against cold ice cream. The overall effect is not unlike ambrosia, and I ate it wondering when Apollo would come down with new robes befitting a god.

As we got up from our seats, we all received a simultaneous revelation; walking is hard when you’re full of sushi, Sapporo and fried ice cream. We walked from 1st avenue to 2nd, merrily singing Jam Project tunes to nobody in particular. We popped into a fairly generic bar with three beers on tap and a Big Buck Hunter machine, and promptly popped out. As we left, we noticed a sign across the street. It was… well, you can see for yourself. It had a mystic quality, compelling us to enter. We had to climb a long staircase to enter the bar, like pilgrims on a holy quest.

The bar was very, very crowded when we entered, and there were no fans anywhere on the ceiling. It was hard to breathe. I had Baltika 3, a lager bottled in St. Petersburg (Dave, a Guinness drinker, had Baltika 4). My friend Leon told us that there were 8 Baltikas, each darker and heavier than the last.I’m wondering where I can get the secret 9th Baltika that will teach me the meaning of life.

Eventually, we made it to the end of the space and had a seat. There were windows here, allowing the tiniest bits of air into the bar. The place was festooned (that’s right, festooned) with Russian paraphenelia, such as a faux-Soviet flag and Russian Winnie-the-Pooh. Leon (who is Russian) saw objects from his childhood on the walls, so it seems the decorator has succeeded in giving the place a Russian feel. It’s also very red.

Satisfied, we walked onward into the night. We entered a loud club, and promptly left – I was fine with the noise, but some of my friends weren’t and it wouldn’t be very nice of me to subject them to loud, obnoxious techno. After several blocks, we arrived at a charming Irish Pub. I had Smithwick’s, a dark amber beer that seemed legitimately Irish. We got comfortable booth seats and got to look at a large-screen TV showing awesome commercials (online degrees for cheap!) and a basketball game. The atmosphere was warm, rich, heavy with dark wood, and very friendly.

We walked south, and noticed that we were walking across Mott St. “Mott St?” we said to ourselves, “isn’t that where our teahouse and Chinatown Fair is?”. Arthur and I turned left and walked down Mott, while Leon and Dave went home. After some time, we arrived at the comfortable old teahouse with its charming tan bricks, quiet atmosphere and delicious bubble tea. It’s a great final stop on a bar crawl, a quiet place to catch your breath before heading home. We met up with our friends who didn’t go Bar Hopping with us, and we all left sometime after 1. A great night.

Can someone help me remember the name of that awesome sushi place? If you’ve been to any of the bars we’ve been to, let me know what you thought of them (reader participation!). I’m going to write something like this every Friday, since Fridays are great days for adventure. I might even go back in time someday and describe my trip to Barcade, or the night I couldn’t handle the spiciness of Jambalaya, if anyone wants to read about that.

Next was Into Eternity, a band that I sort-of-like. They do put out an impressive amount of energy live (although they’re no Edguy), and they’ve got the most versatile singer I’ve ever seen. This singer (who’s name I do not know) has about a million different styles he can work in, and they all sound good. He can do death metal, black metal, low clean, high clean, squeaky falsetto, and I think I detected a hint of screamo. The really amazing thing is when he blends them in one phrase, beginning a line with a sung note and ending it with a harsh scream, or transitioning from a growl into a clear high note in the same breath. This is an ability that makes this band very interesting, and I wonder why I haven’t seen it elsewhere.

At one point, the guitarist had the stage to himself, and used that time to play a masturbatory solo, reminding me again why I hate shred for shred’s sake. Shred is music community shorthand for playing the guitar incredibly fast. A lot of the time, speed is the only thing these solos have – otherwise, they’re boring runs up and down a scale, or they’re the guitarist’s old practice exercises sped up. For example, see all of Dragonforce’s guitar solos. I like that you can play notes really fast and really precisely, but I wish you would use that talent to make music. The singer called attention to this, calling it wankery, which drawn-out shred solos usually turn into. Bad shred solos are mindless expressions of technical skill and dexterity, with nothing musically interesting in that flurry of notes. There is nothing more masturbatory than playing a ton of notes and not doing anything with them.

After Into Eternity, I saw something that amazed me. The sound guys came on to check the drums, the guitars, making sure that everything worked and was connected properly. But then they did the amazing thing – they began to play. The drummer played some bouncy rhythms on the toms, and the guitarist gave us some generic-yet-nice electric riffage. These were the sound guys! I wish every club would have somebody come on stage and entertain us between the major acts. We’re here to see live music, and some of your technicians must be musicians, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken a job at a music club. All you have to do is throw these guys on stage and let them do what comes naturally. The fans will thank you.

For me, Iced Earth is a lot like Edguy. I don’t listen to them often, because they’re not that interesting for the most part. However, their music is pumped with energy and make me really want to headbang, dance and generally move. This is why I love live music, it’s an energy that surrounds you and fills you. It comes from the performers, it comes from the crowd, and it comes from immense waves of sound bombarding your body, making its presence known in the rattling of your bones (you should wear earplugs to metal shows.) It’s hard to get this particular experience anywhere else, so I recommend you go to a good live music show if you never have.

Overall, the show was fun and forgettable, and pales in comparison to the glorious concert I attended yesterday. Unless something awesome comes up, this will be my last concert for 2008. I‘ve seen plenty of great bands this year, and I‘m really looking forward to what I‘ll see in ‘09. By the way, I don’t hate fast guitar playing. I love fast, interesting solos that take the listener for a ride or tell a good story. I just hate fast guitar playing that has nothing else going for it but speed.

Edguy’s my favorite band that I don’t listen to. They always put on an awesome show, and it’s because of this energy that everyone in that band positively reeks of. They’ve all got such joyous expressions on, and they’re all so happy to be there that you have no choice but to be happy with them. I’m not an Edguy fan, but they played all the songs I like. I don’t find any of their songs memorable, but they’re all action packed and really solid – a great band to see live. Their front man Tobias Sammet dances, jives, and expends his boundless energy getting the crowd moving. He did a few audience participation games, and there’s one that I especially remember, because he did it before.

He divides the crowd into left and right, and tells each half to make some noise when he points at them. He sets up a rivalry between left and right, making each side want to out-loud the other. Right then, I thought that this was pretty silly, doesn’t the audience know that he’s playing with them? I answered my own question, as people have a tendency to do – people want to be taken on rides, if the driver is skilled enough. We love charisma, which explains lots of world events, and I’ll stop here before I invoke Godwin’s Law on my concert review. If there’s one thing that heavy metal crowds are good at, it’s making noise. Tobias points left, then right, then left, moving faster and faster as the stereo sounds get more frenzied. Soon, the game is over, the audience had a great time, and we’re all ready for the next song. I can’t think of a more apt description for an Edguy show than that.

Have a listen, I think you’ll find why I like this band’s live show so much.

I listen to Kamelot quite a lot. I’d place them in the top five metal acts of all time, and a large part of the metal fandom would agree with me. Their works are rich, textured and emotional, and usually quite a bit melancholy. Everyone is a master of whatever instrument they play, and they have an ear for great composition. Even considering all this, the best part of the band is by far their singer, Roy Khan.

There was a part of the concert where Khan steps backstage, and the other musicians do a group instrumental. This was eye-opening for me. If the other members of Kamelot didn’t have Khan, they’d be – dare I say – boring. Thankfully, they do, and Kamelot gets to be a marvelously interesting band. His is a supremely expressive voice, full of warmth and range and texture. When he breaks into a tearful high note from one of his resonant bottom tones, it’s enough to make the coldest of us weep.

I’m training to be a lead singer, and I look at frontmen with a careful eye when I go to shows, eager to absorb a lesson or two. The Kamelot/Edguy show was a master class, showcasing two radically different styles of lead that are both very effective. Where Tobias Sammet is bright, grinning and in-your-face, Roy Khan is dark, reserved and pulled-in. You can tell this from the amount of motion – Sammet is constantly moving, dancing and jumping, while Khan is much more still, rooting himself to a spot for long stretches. When Khan does move, he has a beguilingly liquid quality, and his whole performance has an intriguing undertone. Khan’s audience participation games are, of course, different from Sammet’s. He sings a musical phrase, and points the microphone to the audience, bidding them follow. Sammet did this as well, of course – it’s a staple of good frontmanning. Of course, when Sammet’s phrases are short and energetic, Khan’s phrases are drawn-out and subdued. I find it immensely interesting that both of these approaches resonate with the audience, as the two couldn’t be any more different.

Here’s a clip of a live Kamelot performance. In the middle, you’ll notice the “call and response” audience participation game.

All in all, it was a killer show, and a great study in contrast. Tomorrow, I’ll be seeing Iced Earth.