On Sunday night I went to see VideoGamesLive, a concert where a live orchestra is playing music from video games. I’ve been wanting to go for a long time, ever since Roxy and Mike told me about it in early 2007. I had tickets for last year’s performance, but I got sick the day before and I was in no condition to go. I had to wait another year and a half for them to come back to NYC, so I got tickets as soon as I could, over 6 months ago.

We ended up going a large group – 12 people. I enjoyed the concert – the crowd, not so much – but I wish they’d played some favorites of mine (that I missed last year) like Civilization or God of War. Still, I have to say I discovered new beautiful music like the theme from Chrono Cross (here’s live in the second half of this video) or the Halo suite.

Other highlights were a pianist who could play blindfolded most of the themes form classic videogames (Mario, Zelda, and the like) and a Guitar Hero performance (on Expert), played on the big screen. Also, during the play of One Winged Angel (the boss fight theme from Final Fantasy VII) they had a nice montage of cosplay.

You can find my pictures in this SmugMug gallery. There’s a ton of videos on YouTube of the event (i.e. this one: part1, part2). For more info, here’s the NY Times coverage of the event.

Now I go back to replay for the hundredth time the Chrono Cross theme, acoustic version.

Last night, on the 5 train:

On Friday night we celebrated Renee’s 27th birthday at her and Bogdi’s place in Astoria. I provided the party food (burgers from Shake Shack), Osalis made the drinks (strawberry margaritas) and Bogdi brought the entertainment: Rock Band 2 and RB: The Beatles. It was a fun night, with lots of playing and singing until way over 2am.

After the party Suzette drove Ethan home, so I joined to keep her company. We were both craving some bubble-tea so we spent half an hour cruising through Flushing trying to find a place open that would sell it. Sadly, at 3am, there wasn’t a single one.

Pictures can be found here. Looks like I’m sticking with SmugMug for now, so love it or hate it, it’s here to stay. Feel free to play with the Style button on the top, especially the Journal mode for a nice viewing experience.