This is my second time at trying to post this. I’m at my parents’ for Mother’s Day and his computer is rather twitchy.

What I was trying to say is that over the last couple of weeks I’ve been having Kiwi experiences.

Two weeks ago, I saw Crowded House at the Fillmore (Irving Plaza). It was general admission, so I was close enough to see Neil Finn clearly. He invited the PS 22 Chorus, an elementary school group from Staten Island to open the show. He’d apparently seen a video of them singing one of his songs and he liked it so much that he had them come on stage for the show.

They performed three songs, including Private Universe. Then the band came on stage and did the song with them. YouTube has a video of it.

Because YouTube embedding seems to completely throw off the formatting of my site, here is the link, if you’re interested:

Crowded House and PS 22

It was great. Say what you will, but there is nothing wrong about kids singing. It was a great start to the show.The rest of the show was great as well. I’ve come to like and respect Crowded House over the last year and Neil Finn’s voice is still incredible. They are definitely seasoned veterans on stage, but they also have a bit of a casual approach, ad libbing and playing songs that weren’t on the list. They even invited one of the audience members from the front row up to sing and play with them on one song, a song he apparently performed with them back in August in California.It was a great show.Then, this past week, I went to see Flight of the Conchords. Twice. The New Zealand comedy duo, stars of their own HBO show, winner of the Grammy for best comedy album, Bret and Jemaine, two of my favorite people in the world. Both shows were great and slightly different. On the second night, I helped my brother dispose of his tickets, ending up 8th row center at the Town Theatre. They played almost every song I wanted them to play. With the exception of Leggy Blonde, which I will forgive them for since it’s more a Murray song than anything. I was happy that my seats were better than Susan Sarandon’s and Tim Robbins’ seats, which were about 8 rows behind me.

Both shows were incredible and made me a very happy individual.

Only one way to top this, and that’s a trip to New Zealand. Maybe next year…

P.S. I was in Park Slope yesterday looking at apartments and I saw Mel from the Flight of the Conchords on the street. I had to stop myself from making a noise of excitement.

I thought I should mention that for those in the NY area, I will be appearing with the rest of my writing group, Altered Fluid, on the Hour of the Wolf radio show with host Jim Freund.

This will be the second appearance of the group, but my first. It should be interesting. We will do a critique on the air of one of Matt Kressel’s stories.

The show is from 5 to 7 AM (I know – I need to get there earlier than that) and is broadcast on WBAI 99.5 FM in the New York area.

I am currently at a work meeting, staying in a hotel, and I am continually confounded by the state of internet access in major hotels in major cities. We live in an era where internet access is often vital, where wifi access in portable devices is commonplace and yet I am astounded that the quality of that access is often worse than the rural areas I’ve visited. Not only is wifi still a rarity, but the wired access, in addition to being costly, is just plain awful. Web pages take a minute or more to load. Downloads aren’t even feasible. These are hotels that cater to business crowds. I just don’t understand it. My company is currently paying ridiculous amounts for internet access that is less reliable than the internet I had ten years ago.

And that there is probably the problem. Companies will expense out shitty internet, while the local, non-chain coffee shop in my neighborhood provides decent wifi for free. There’s no need for it in this world.

Is it me or is that backwards?

Last year was the year of attending cons for me. I was at five, all told: New York Comicon, Wiscon, Readercon, Wizardworld Chicago, and World Fantasy.

This year, however, I will be attending only one, my usual, World Fantasy. I will be a Clarion West during Readercon and San Diego Comicon, both cons I was considering attending, and I will miss NY Comicon this year.

But World Fantasy is my favorite, and the one I feel most comfortable at, and maybe, by then, I’ll have another sale under my belt. I can only hope.

If you’re going, I will probably see you there.

While watching the Donner Cut of Superman II for the first time, and doing a little web research on the film, I came across the fact that the director brought in to direct Superman II after Donner was removed from the project, and the director of Superman III, Richard Lester, was also the director of A Hard Day’s Night. The Beatles film. For some reason that absolutely blows my mind. I’m sure many out there already knew this, but it was a discovery for me.