I understand what you're saying about musical discoveries. I grew up around music -- my dad had a collection of records; my mom, cassettes -- but since I started listening to Beastie Boys (the first of my favorite bands) when I was around 12 years old, I've really been into music, especially alternative music. I don't think I've come across a band that's had the same impact on me as Muse has, though. I just wish I would've started listening to their music sooner, especially because I'm pretty sure one of my guy friends in high school, who was an Ash fan, was also into Muse. But better late than never, I suppose!

Oh that really sucks. So apparently "emo" is anything that involves an electric guitar? And I suppose the Hawaiian singers that incorporate falsetto in their music are "gay" like Matt Bellamy?

New Year's Eve here was like a war zone as usual, but I remember it being a lot worse. I live in the valley right before Waianae Valley, and whatever was going off over there lit up the entire sky. "Apocalypse Please" was playing in my head.

I use a copy of Photoshop CS3 that I got through my Mon.-Fri. job doing websites. I posted a few I made on my LiveJournal page. I need to make more funny ones!

Do you use Photoshop too?

I used to be a Windows person. Not by choice, but because that's what came with the computers I happened to buy. Then I started using Macs at school for video production and page design. I got my first Mac, a PowerBook G4, when I started college. For future reference, college students get a discount. So do friends and family members of employees.

Yeah, someone in Hawaii. I don't listen to much local music, but I knew who she was, and the project that we're working on will potentially put our company's name in the spotlight.

I'm downloading Kasabian's albums right now. I'm sure I will enjoy them, too!

I've started listening to more of FF's first two albums so I don't get too exhausted of their new one. Plus, I'm sort of catching up. I already had their first album from when it first came out, but I never owned their second album until I downloaded it a few weeks ago. Yesterday, in fact, I went out and bought a DualDisc edition of You Could Have It So Much Better. (That's when one side is an audio CD and the other side has DVD bonus content.) I went to Mai Tai with some coworkers yesterday and one of them saw me with the CD and said it was a good album.

I just watched the DVD, which has the "Do You Want To" music video, footage of of them in the studio, an interview, and a video of their first time playing "Walk Away" in Japan. I love watching bonus snippets like that. Then I found myself wishing FF would play a show here. You never know.

Btw, did you go to The Kooks show a few months ago? I don't listen to them, but I knew they had a show at Pipeline and since we're discussing UK bands, I thought I'd ask.

I'm expecting and hoping for the same for Leno tonight. "No You Girls" would especially make for an awesome performance. It's just a catchy track.

Haha yeah I saw your sig. Looped Franz craziness ftw!

I'm sure the store would understand, too. It's happened before -- when the utility poles in Nanakuli went down a few years ago, I missed a couple of my classes at HPU. One class was the day of, the other was the day after because of traffic.

I wouldn't say a fan, but I listen to Franz. I only have their self-titled album.

Oh, and I noticed you changed your avatar. Who's that in your avatar?

I'm sure they will stop in Italy... they usually do, don't they? At least you aren't in Hawaii. We'd be very lucky if they came here!

And I love the "Darts of Pleasure" music video too. It's ridiculously funny.

I've been doing okay. I went to the beach on Monday with my sister and a few friends. I haven't been to the beach in ages. As pathetic as it sounds, I barely know how to swim. I had fun, though. We rented a boogie board so that helped. It came out to $6 for a couple of hours. Afterward we went to another beach to meet up with my sister's friends. There, we just stayed on the beach because the waves were scary. We ate, listened to Muse and Beastie Boys and watched my sister's friends roll in the sand. They came up with this game that involved rolling down a sand dune, then running back up, which is challenging when you're dizzy. It was funny to watch.

I've been working on updating my website, something I haven't done in a couple of years! Check it out. Right now, I'm formatting the text in my blog entries. I haven't updated my blog since I graduated. I haven't felt inspired to write in it lately.

How've you been doing?

In a couple hours, they'll be on Leno! Woot!

In celebration, here's another animated GIF... this cracks me up:

I'll be in town all day tomorrow, but I should be back home to catch the Amoeba stream. Thanks for the heads up!

It was exciting to see them on American TV for once! Alex's feathery hair was cute. Now for Craig Ferguson. I'm looking forward to the interview and hoping for a performance of "No You Girls." Don't know if they would play "Ulysses" again, since they just performed it on Leno.

I'm bummed I missed the Amoeba webcast, though. I was hoping to be home from our video shoot in town in time for the performance, but that along with traffic dashed all hopes for that. It looks like Amoeba archives their performances, though, so hopefully FF's will be up sometime soon.

It's a shame your friends are so put off by Matt's voice -- there's so much more to Muse than vocals. I suppose mainstream audiences are accustomed to relying a lot on vocals to enjoy a song, and usually have a hard time accepting falsetto vocals. Especially the American mainstream audience because Muse seems to be extremely popular everywhere else! I'm thinking it's because Americans are so absorbed in having the most masculine of males and the most feminine of females dominate its pop culture.

But anyway, before this turns into a sociology discussion... maybe try playing a Muse song that doesn't have as much falsetto in it and see what your friends say? For some reason, "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" comes to mind. He sounds pretty sexy in that song, and it's a familiar tune as well.

Yeah, I found that iMac/iTunes visualizer ad not too long ago on YouTube! I vaguely remember seeing that ad when it originally aired... I guess that's why "Sunburn" sounded familiar.

I live out in Waianae, so spot-on with the rural area guess! The unexpected fireworks last night was thoroughly annoying. I yelled out my window, like that would've done any good! I'm a bit far from the road for them to hear me! And I can't believe people would have a surplus of fireworks, especially illegal ones. Shouldn't they be saving their money for more important things? That's another thing that annoys me.

I asked my sister about her ex singing along with Muse in the car and she said he was a Muse listener. So turns out it wasn't out of dislike of the band.

It's been okay. I woke up earlier than usual because I'm getting into the morning workout routine. That was rough. Until today, I went to the gym after work. But after working out, I get this feeling of "taking on the day," which sucks when you're gonna go to bed in a few hours. Plus, my "workout buddy" started class today, so she had to get into that routine too.

I spent about an hour chatting with one of our graphic designers, who's on break from art school in San Francisco. I've been there a few times and love it there, so we were talking about everything from things to do there to graphic design and college stuff. I asked if she listens to Muse. She's heard of them, but for some reason thought they had screaming in their music. But we talked about the concerts she went to, like Warped Tour, Academy Is..., Cute is What We Aim For, etc. I don't listen to any of those guys, but I've heard of them, haha.

Kylee! I can't remember if I asked you this, but what's your shirt size?

I'm flying to Phoenix tomorrow afternoon! Wooo!

LOL at the below post!

Because I wasn't invited/included in their plans as usual. Well they're mainly shooting video there so as a web person I would have no need to go. But at the same time, our office manager is going to do the catering.

The funny part is that the only people out of the entire company who aren't going are the same people who hate working there: me and another intern. (And it's a small company.) I think it's a conspiracy. But whatev, I wouldn't want to spend time with those guys who went anyways.

LOL you replied to me on your own profile! I almost did that a couple of times too!

I showed one of our video production interns the videos for "Ulysses" and "Leave Before the Lights Come On." He liked the film grain and cinematic qualities of both and got thrown off with the ending of the latter video.

We need to change the state of local music videos, if that's what they can even be called. I never watch OC16, but from the very little that I've seen of it, it's an embarrassment to local video production. It's like the musicians got their cousin's camcorder and slapped something together just 'cause. But I guess it's tough to produce cool music videos when a lot of the music isn't very inspiring to begin with.

I've heard of Arctic Monkeys. I'm downloading their albums right now.

I've been trying to figure out which Muse songs to burn for our intern that showed me the Arctic Monkeys and Strokes videos yesterday. She already has BHaR but she's having a hard time getting into it, though she asked me today which song was used in the Watchmen trailer and she didn't realize she had it. I think I'm just gonna burn all their other albums and some b-sides on a CD.

LOL. Yeah, I never post on Muselive but I've downloaded a bunch of stuff from there.

Sorry to hear you're sick. Hope it passes quickly. And stay safe during the storm. Day off tomorrow, yay!

London for spring break, really?! I'll be in Miami for work-related stuff during the first week of spring break (not really break for non-students lol), but I was hoping (dreaming?) to fly either to London or New York City afterward. NYC or Disney World sound more realistic, though. London's probably gonna be a longer-term travel goal or summer vacation kind of deal. And yeah, I was totally thinking of Muse when I was considering London too! What's the reason for the trip? Hope the trip pans out and you'll have loads of fun (and more Muse merch lol)!

Ugh, I'm sorry the Hullabaloo DVD didn't work for you! I was afraid that might happen. Hopefully it'll be able to play on your other DVD player. If not, I can try compressing Hullabaloo to fit on a regular DVD, but you'd lose quite a bit of quality. The other thing I could do is get another brand of blank DVDs, since certain DVD players are picky about that sort of thing. Stupid, I know. Do you want me to give any of these a try?

Man I really hope they come here next tour! Those BAMP guys better get on it and beg on their knees for Muse! Speaking of which BAMP haven't gotten back to me yet about Franz...

I was gonna make the heart pink but I'm not a pink kinda gal. Purple's a nice color, though right when you said "purple heart" I thought, "oh crap like the military medal!"

Yay, the after photo looks sex-ay! That NME photo cracks me up! Good job on finding the same steps on GIMP! Was that difficult at all to find the tools since they're in different places?

Man, seriously! Every weekend between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve, there's usually one or two aerials that would go off. So irritating. Aerials are ridiculous because you can pretty much tell where they're coming from. You might as well hold up a big-ass sign that says, "Arrest me officer!" Of course, that would require the HPD to do more, um, arresting. =P

We ended up watching HAARP because my sister wanted to see the whole thing. (Yes, I'm spreading the Muse virus! Even copied all my Muse songs to her laptop!) I also have Hullabaloo, the Absolution Tour (Glasto) and the making of Absolution, all of them downloaded and burnt. (shhhh...) I don't have an all-region DVD player so even if I bought them off eBay, I wouldn't be able to watch them. Do you have all of their DVDs too?

Muse in wizard outfits, even better!

I actually torrented the RAH DVD a few months ago because of what I've heard about it. From what I saw I wasn't really that impressed by it. I don't know, I don't usually watch bootlegged concerts because I get irritated when something isn't shot professionally. I'm so picky.

My sister also wants to major in psychology. I think I would've majored or minored in it as well if I had a better idea of what I wanted. You could apply it to any walk of life!

GEICO ads in general are just . There were a few good ones, and the cavemen thing worked maybe the first year they were airing, but after a while, it got old for me. Plus, having both cavemen and a gecko as your mascots makes things a bit confusing.

I'll check out Lucid Dreams, as well. I'll listen to both versions for good measure.

Btw, who's that with you in your profile picture?

No prob! I'll burn them for you in the next few days so you should be getting them in the mail sometime next week.

I wish more people drove the extra two miles to go to one of the other Apple Stores so at least things would be more balanced. I like being kept busy in a store like ours, but we just need a bigger one to move around in!

No, I graduated May of last year. Sometimes I miss being a student, but I'm glad to be rid of homework!

I noticed there was a bit of a buzz on the message board about the leaked album! I'd love to hear it. Do you have their second one, as well? How's that one?

Oh, Flight of the Conchords! My ex was (is?) a fan. I don't have HBO, but I've seen some of their stuff on YouTube and I have their "Robots" song in my iTunes, but I should check out the rest of their stuff. Looking forward to the show starting up again soon?

Not for too long, admittedly—since the beginning of this year. It started with a conversation a couple of people I was job training with in Cali were having about which was the best Muse album. (If I remember right, they went with Absolution.) Not too long after, I got HAARP—it says a lot when a live album can get you really psyched about a band. Then I went out and got all their albums. Muse was one of those bands I had always been meaning to get into... and now I'm glad I did. =)

How about you? What's your Muse story?

Oh no, that sucks! Hope your friend is all right! Are you still grounded?

The interview was funny; see for yourself! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoN8_GBGE9Q&feature=channel_page

And they ended up performing "Ulysses": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd7ersrc8Dc