Flour Power

Conan O'Brien just announced via Twitter that he'll be in a 30-city tour around the US, starting April 12th.

The tour is named "The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour", as a clear allusion to the fact that he's barred from having his own TV show until September, according to his severance deal from NBC. The shows are described at the official site - TeamCoco.com - as "a night of music, comedy, hugging, and the occasional awkward silence".

If you're in the US, you should go and buy a ticket now. For those of us in Europe, all we can do is hope Coco comes visit. Well, at least he should come to Ireland, to his ancestor's land. Right?

Last night Dave Matthews Band had their return to Ireland for a concert in The O2, 3 years after their last visit to Guinness-land. The show was opened by Alberta Cross who didn't really manage to warm the crowd up, and got me afraid we would have a below average concert. But slowly the venue got almost full and then Dave and his band, with all their experience in live performances, turned it into an excellent show.

Dave was very energetic as usual, and goofed around and danced throughout the whole gig, stealing some cheers from the crowd. The talk about getting drunk the night before (in a pub with live music and singing even without knowing the lyrics) probably wasn't just talk, and I bet he had a few in him when he stepped on the stage. The leprechaun hat and the pints of Guinness were nice details that made the Irish crowd quite happy.

My favourite song of the night was Ants Marching, with a brilliant violin solo by Boyd Tinsley. Being more of an old-school fan, I thought there were too many songs from the latest album, a total of 8: Funny The Way It Is, Squirm, Shake Me Like a Monkey, Lying In The Hands Of God, Seven, Why I Am, You & Me, Baby Blue. Even so, the band managed to get a few of the classics in, like Stay Or Leave, Gravedigger, The Stone, Crash Into Me and Crush. I was a bit disappointed that some of my own favourites, like #41, Say Goodbye, Jimi Thing or Typical Situation, didn't make it, but it was a great setlist nonetheless. The other problem was the very short, and somewhat lukewarm, single encore. But that seems to be Dublin City Council's fault, with their 11pm curfew... Oh well, I shouldn't be complaining about a great almost-3-hour concert, should I?

I've already mentioned Dave's hectic behaviour that helped ignite the crowd, and the amazing Boyd Tinsley violin solo. Add to that Jeff Coffin's fantastic performance on the saxophone (who seemed to never run out of breath); the less than brilliant but still very good Tim Reynolds on the electric guitar; fan-favourite Carter Beauford on the drums (who threw so many drumsticks to the crowd and I couldn't get my hands on a single one, argh!); Stefan Lessard on the bass; and Rashawn Ross playing trumpet. The result was an awesome concert that started slow but had the crowd roaring for more by the end of the night.

Here's the complete setlist:

Bartender
Stay Or Leave
Funny The Way It Is
Squirm
Shake Me Like A Monkey
Lying In The Hands Of God
Gravedigger
Anyone Seen The Bridge
Ants Marching
#27
Seven
The Stone
Crash Into Me
Crush
Where Are You Going
Why I Am
You & Me
You Might Die Trying
All Along The Watchtower

Encore
Baby Blue
Cornbread

Will be posting some of the videos and photos I was able to take during the show as soon as I have the time to sort through them all. Stay tuned!

Yes! More Futurama episodes!

HitFix is claiming that Futurama will return to Comedy Central in June, with the first episode being aired on the 24th.

I say: "That's about time!". The show aired from 1999 to 2003 when it was cancelled. Despite a huge fan base and numerous petitions to bring it back, all we got was a few "extra-long episodes": Bender's Big Score, The Beast with a Billion Backs, Bender's Game and Into the Wild Green Yonder. Then last year Comedy Central finally announced that the network had ordered 26 new episodes to premiere this year. A few months later, fan enthusiasm was temporarily tempered by reports that the vocal talent might be replaced for the run of new episodes, but eventually the full cast reached new agreements and Philip Fry, Bender, Leela and the rest of the Futurama gang will sound very much like we're used to them sounding.

(via HitFix)

Flight of the Conchords, the New Zealand folk comedy duo, will be coming to Europe for a 15-stop tour with dates in the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, and the UK. Jemaine and Bret will be joined by co-stars Kristen Schall (fan-turned-stalker Mel) and Arj Barker (shop owner Dave).

That's awesome news, right?

Well, kind of. Maybe it's good news for the lucky ones who got tickets, but us mere mortals won't make it.

Here's what happened. Tickets went on sale at 9:00 today. And by... I don't know... 9:00 they were sold out (at least the Dublin and London dates). I know that because I was at the the bloody ticketmaster page refreshing it over and over again, and still all the tickets were gone as soon as the "Find tickets" button showed up. How that happened I don't know, but it's very frustrating that I didn't even get a chance. Kudos for the Conchords for having such loyal fans (maybe the tickets were all bought in the Fan Club pre-sale).

As usual, some tickets are already showing up on eBay and other such sites. For 3 times their original price. I feel like shooting those people...

For reference (not that you'll be able to get tickets...) all of the Flight of the Conchords 2010 Tour Dates are:

3rd May- Amsterdam, NL at Melkweg Max
4th May- Amsterdam, NL at Melkweg Max
5th May- Dublin, Ireland at Olympia
6th May- Dublin, Ireland at Olympia
10th May- Birmingham, UK at NIA
11th May- Manchester, UK at Apollo
12th May- Manchester, UK at Apollo
14th May- Glasgow, UK at SECC
15th May- Glasgow, UK at SECC
16th May- London, UK at HMV Hammersmith Apollo
17th May- London, UK at HMV Hammersmith Apollo
20th May- Bergen, Norway at Grieghallen
22nd May- Oslo, Norway at Folkteatern
23rd May- Copenhagen, Denmark at Vega
24th May- Stockholm, Sweden at Cirkus

It's now more than a month late, but I need to get this one out of the way: on the 15th of January, my Guinness counter hit number 500. It has come a long way since number one, when I first arrived to Ireland.

And since this was more than just another pint, I made sure I drank it in the same pub I had the first one in. And more: I was sitting at the same table. And this took place exactly (give or take a couple of hours) one year after Guinness Pint Number One. Historic, eh?!

"And now what?", you might ask. Well, now I stop counting. It was fun as a topic of conversation, but the fun was gone when people insisted on telling me how much money I had spent on Guinness.

Now that I'm done with the counting, I also got rid of the counter in the sidebar. I just felt the need to point this out, otherwise people might think I stopped drinking Guinness altogether, which is not the case at all. Rest assured, Guinness people, I'll keep sending money your way...

The sixth, and final, season of ABC's Lost starts today, and I'm pretty excited about it. Both because I'm curious to see what the creators of the show have in store for this season and because I'm sick of new mysteries and questions being introduced and hardly any of them ever being answered. At least this time it has to come to an end. Somehow...

I don't know exactly when it started but at some point during the last 5 years the show has been running I kind of started hating it. Every single episode added new complexity to the already intricate plot. The amount of unanswered questions, of unsolved mysteries, of downright weird stuff is now so big that I'm sure it's impossible to sort it all out in just one season. The fact that they introduced time-travel in season 5 doesn't make it any easier.

On the other hand, I just love the weirdness and complexity of the whole thing. I love to read the theories of people (with way too much free time) about the events of the latest episode, theories sometimes derived from the analysis of screenshots from a bunch of different episodes. I enjoy wondering about what will happen next, and then be surprised with something completely unpredictable. I even like the fact that some of the things are not explained right away and remain a mystery episode after episode after episode...

Weird, uh?

This "love-hate relationship" lasted for more than 5 years. And it's finally coming to an end! I just hope I won't be too disappointed.

If you think you need a very quick summary of what happened in the last 5 seasons, check out this video (it doesn't even scratch the surface...):

And here's the trailer for the final season:

Ominous...

In case you forgot, The Smashing Pumpkins are releasing their new album for free. Teargarden By Kaleidyscope will have 44 songs, which will be freely available for download from their website. So far 3 songs have been released:

1. A Song For A Son
2. Widow Wake My Mind
3. A Stitch In Time

I'll be updating this post when a new song comes out, so be sure to check back every once in a while.

And just a few hours after my rant about Christmas, I'm gonna do the unthinkable: I'll post a video of a Xmas song!

Now, there are a few good reasons for that:

1. This song is not too bad;
2. It's a cover by a very talented Portuguese singer/songwriter;
3. The video is cool.

Here it is, "Last Christmas", performed by David Fonseca:

(image from Times Online)

Ahh, what would be of an important football game without some controversy? And to make it even more disgusting, it had to involve, and be in favor of, France…

The Irish team had lost 0-1 at Croke Park and travelled to France in a very difficult position. After 33 minutes at the Stade de France, Robbie Keane got the goal (and qualification equalizer) for Ireland , which they kept until the 90 minutes were over. And then, 14 minutes into extra time, Gallas scored the goal that got France in the World Cup, after an assist from Thierry Henry. Small detail: Henry controlled the ball with his hand. Wait, there’s more. Henry controlled the ball with his hand… twice!

I'm not even going to comment on the game itself, because that's of little importance and there's plenty of sites discussing it. The real issue here is that it was proven again that soccer desperately needs to adopt what today's technology has to offer. It's outrageous that a game of such importance gets decided in a clearly illegal play, one that would be easily detected by watching a replay. And any replay would be enough, as it was so obvious that you could almost see it from the other side of the pitch…

Tennis has Hawk-Eye. Quite a lot of sports use instant-replay to help decide on controversial situations. But football remains in the dark ages, leading to situations like this one over and over again. Maradona’s “God’s Hand” was 23 years ago, I think we should have evolved enough avoid these mistakes…

I’m not blaming Henry, because most players would do the same. Although he’s still a sneaky bastard.

I’m not blaming the referees, because it is possible that they really didn’t see the (did I say it was double?) handball. Although this was France.

But things like these make me sick.

In related news, Portugal got the qualification after defeating Bosnia and Herzegovina by 1 goal in Zenica (aggregate 2-0).