I thought that these guys were cool:

And these ladies were terrific:

But these guys are awesome:

If only MJ could have seen this.

…and while we’re at it, check this out:

Does all of this not make you think of:

Definitely one of the reasons why this kind of music is popular…

I have been talking with a friend about change lately, and we both agree that, on top of being difficult at any time, change becomes even harder as we get older, get comfortable, and get set in our ways.

Yesterday, I closed another chapter in my life. It has not been easy even thinking about it. I did what everyone thought I should do. I did the practical thing. However, I am still not completely sure that it was and is the right thing for me. That is even more frustrating than the change itself.

The decision is already made, and there is no going back. It is at this point that I have to just accept it, make the best of it, and one last important thing:

⁵Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

⁶In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

I have been thinking about this song a lot this year, even before this big change. I do not know why this song is so catchy to me, but it is. I live Steve’s positive messages. This song deals with none other than “changes.” Hear more of his music on his site http://www.steveburksmusic.com/.

Nevertheless, Atlantic Records wants to help you celebrate black music month with the site iheartblackmusic.com. The site has a black music fact of the day, music conversations, and videos of current artists performing and discussing music. While this is black music month, the plan of the site is to celebrate black music for an entire year. Some of the artists already featured on the site include Janelle Monáe, B.o.B., Lupe Fiasco, and Estelle.

The site seems to be in its early stages at the moment, but it is off to a good start. Check it out frequently for updates.

Because of my bad experience, I spent very little time in the park. I went through the single rider line for The Revenge of the Mummy Ride, which was way too short. At least I got to walk right on it, though. Then I went through the House of Horrors, which was just plain lame. I spent the rest of my time in the area cruising CityWalk. I spent some time at Lush, where they gave me a mini spa treatment for my hands. My hands felt really good afterwards, but that stuff is just too expensive. I watched the Universal Style Brats a few times. I made sure to get a Jamba Juice before I left. Jamba Juice is one thing that I greatly miss about California.

Sometime after 5, my friend picked me up, and I spent the rest of the day with him. This was pretty much the end of my trip since my plane leaves midday tomorrow. All in all, I had a great trip, and I am glad that I took the trip.

Here are photos from both of my days at Universal Studios Hollywood.

I was a reluctant fan of Janet Jackson. Actually, I could not stand her in the beginning. I started to warm up to her a little after Rhythm Nation. Instead of ever buying that, though, I just bought Design of a Decade. It was not until someone let me borrow a copy of janet. that I became somewhat of a fan. I now own copies of those two records, The Velvet Rope, All For You, Damita Jo, and I own songs off of both 20 Y.O. and Discipline. I guess, at this point, I can appreciate her for who she is at least.

There were three concerts during my trip, but i picked the one on my birthday to make it more special. Upon leaving Universal Studios Hollywood after spending only a few hours there and having dinner, I did not really have enough time to get ready. The concert was supposed to start at 8:15, and I did not get back to the hotel until a little after seven. I did not end up leaving my hotel until 8, and it was about twenty more minutes before the shuttle actually came to take me back to Citywalk. I got to the venue at about half past. It did not really matter, though because Miss Janet did not even come out until around 9:30!

The concerts had sold out pretty quickly, so I ended up buying my ticket on StubHub!. I ended up with a pretty good seat, though. It was the first row after the main walkway. Even Katherine and Jermaine passed by me to get to their seats! I could not get my camera out fast enough when they came in or when they left. Oh well. There were only two other people on my row when I got there. When I bought my ticket, there were eight others available. The other six people did eventually show up later. They seemed to all know each other. Three of them introduced themselves and bugged me throughout the show. I do not know why people think you need them to enjoy an event just because you are by yourself. I have been to plenty of concerts by myself, so I know how to enjoy myself. People who try to entertain me at concerts just end up annoying me.

The concert started with the videos for All For You and Together Again. At the end of Together Again, you could tell that Miss Janet had started singing. She came out shortly thereafter. She wore a white wife-beater, black jeans, and black boots. She wore this throughout the entire concert. I was more dressed up than Miss Janet. Although this picture is from a couple of years ago, this is pretty much what I wore. Hopefully I was not making that funny face during the night. LOL. My parents gave me this outfit on my birthday a couple years ago, and it was nice to finally have somewhere where I could wear it. I had never worn it before today.

The track list included Pleasure Principle, Control, What Have You Done for Me Lately, Feedback, You Want This, Alright, Miss You Much, Nasty, Nothing, Come Back to Me, Let’s Wait Awhile, Again, Escapade, Love Will Never Do (Without You), When I Think of You, That’s the Way Love Goes, If, Scream, Rhythm Nation, Diamonds, The Best Things in Life are Free, and Together Again.

Of course there were breaks during this where pictures were shown, the band played, clips of Janet on TV shows and movies were shown, dancers danced, etc. During Together Again pictures of Janet and Michael, primarily as children, were shown. The video for Scream was shown during the performance of Scream. I probably missed listing a couple of interludes and maybe one song, but it is only because the people next to me kept talking to me. I know that there was a song in between The Best Things in Life are Free, and Together Again, but I cannot remember what it was.

I thought that there would be more dancing at this concert, but I guess this concert was meant to be a lot less of a spectacle than her previous concerts. There still was a decent amount of dancing, though. It also seemed like she sang, as opposed to lip synced, more than people say that she sang at past concerts. I really enjoyed myself, and I am glad that I decided to attend the concert.

After the concert, the shuttle was no longer running. I had to make a trek down one hill and up another to get back to my hotel. You see the shoes in the picture. I made it, though.

I only had my phone at the concert. I was especially afraid to get caught with a camera since I had no car to return it to if I got caught with it. Below is what I was able to get with my phone. This was the first time that I had ever used my phone for video since I upgraded to this phone last year. The video actually came out pretty nice, but I had to resize them to embed on this page. The original videos are 1280×720, but I have them displayed here at 480×270. If only the video camera had a good zoom. If you are interested in seeing the videos at full size, just leave a message and I will provide a link. Enjoy.

Note: You need QuickTime to view these videos. Get QuickTime here.

Again

Scream

Together Again, Part I

Together Again, Part II

Now I am not a big fan of Universal Studios Hollywood. You might even think that, with my fascination with all things Disney, I would rather have been at Disneyland on my actual birthday. Universal Studios Hollywood was actually just a side bonus to the real reason that I was in the area on my birthday–Janet Jackson. The concert will be covered in a later post. For now it is back to Universal Studios Hollywood.

It was after noon when I got to the park, and I needed to leave around five to eat and get ready for the concert. The lines were terrible for everything, so I did not have time to do much, not that there is much to do at Universal Studios Hollywood. If I had to describe Universal Studios Hollywood in one word, that word would be “small.”

The first thing that I did was take the Studio Tour, which also incorporates King Kong 3D and Earthquake. It is a long, yet informative tram ride. After that, I headed over to Shrek 4-D. This was about the time that I realized that most of what is at Universal Studios Hollywood is shows and not rides. That makes me wonder why people who hate Disneyland because of the types of rides like this place any better. Anyway, I headed to The Simpsons Ride, which is a simulated roller coaster. I followed that up with Terminator 2:3D.

By that time, it was time for me to leave the park and get ready for Janet Jackson. I almost never eat out at restaurants. I can count on one hand the number of times I ate out last year and this year. When I do eat out, it is usually because someone else insists *and* offers to pay. Maybe I will cover my reasons for not eating out another day.

Nevertheless, I decided to give myself a break from the food I traveled with, and I treated myself to a birthday dinner at Hard Rock Cafe Hollywood at CityWalk. When the host and hostesses saw me walk up and heard me say “table for one,” they acted like they did not know what to do with me. Still, I had an decent meal, and, then, I set off to get ready for Janet Jackson. I will post my pictures from Universal Studios Hollywood in a later post that will chronicle my second day at the park. Next up…Janet!

I had done most of the things that I wanted to do yesterday, so I just eased into whatever suited my fancy while wandering through the parks. I arrived at the park after the morning rush, so I pretty much walked right into the park. I rode the Disneyland Railroad around the park, walked around, took pictures and had pictures taken.

It was a pretty hot day, so I eventually started to look for indoor events. I went to California Adventure to see Aladdin-A Musical Spectacular, which I have seen several times before. It is a pretty entertaining and funny show, but I just went for the air conditioning this time. I had priority seating tickets for this, but I left them with my luggage. Oh well.

After that, I went back to the hotel in the afternoon to do some work. Gasp! Unfortunately, school was in session this week. Next week is Spring Recess for Cuyamaca. Today happened to be the last day to drop, so I had to get some people out of the class that had been inactive for a while. I did not bring my computer on this trip, so I was doing this all from my phone. I feel like I justified the purchase now.

My friend came and got me later in the day and we just hung out for the rest of the evening. It was a pretty chill and relaxing day. I cannot complain about that.

Like I mentioned in the last post, today was Magic Morning Early Entry Day for me. I believe that they were letting us into the park at eight am. Well, there was no way that I could get up early enough to make it there by eight after having arrived so late. I did the best that I could, though, and made it to the park around 8:53 am. LOL. Yes, that was seven minutes before the park was opening for everyone else. People were already lined up to get in, too. Nevertheless, I got into the park before them all and did not have to wait in line. Believe me, those seven minutes made a difference.

Not all of the park is open early on Magic Mornings. Only certain areas are open, and Tomorrowland was open this time around. That meant that probably the most popular ride in the park, Space Mountain, was open early. Woo hoo! I headed straight to Space Mountain to get that out of the way. I did not want to wait in long lines to ride it later. There was still a wait. That was understandable considering the fact that I was running late. It was still a much shorter wait than other times that I had been there. All that, I have to say about the indoor, pitch black roller coaster is, “Yay! I missed you.”

After leaving Space Mountain, I saw a poster for Captain EO! I had no idea that this had returned to the parks, likely in response to Michael Jackson‘s untimely death. Despite the sadness that one must associate with the whole thing, I was glad that I could view the film at the park. While I had seen it before, I did not see it at a park. I was the first one waiting to see the film. I had to wait fifteen minutes, but I figured that I might as well get it done while I was in Tomorrowland. Plus, I was excited. Two of my favorite non-relative guys were in one place–Mickey Mouse and Michael Jackson!

I am not sure if it was because it was early, and on a weekday, but there were only a couple of rows of people in the theater. Still, it was awesome! We are here to change the world…

The first thing that I usually do when entering Disneyland is take my picture with Mickey Mouse. You can see a slide show of a selection of my Mickey and Me pictures by clicking here. If I do nothing else while in the park, I take my picture with Mickey Mouse and ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which is my favorite ride  (for reasons unbeknownst to me). Understandably, because of the early opening, I neglected to get my picture taken first, but I left Captain EO and strolled over to Mickey’s Toontown to get my picture taken. Then I headed over to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I then took advantage of the single rider line for the Indiana Jones Adventure. Single Rider lines are better than having a Fast Pass! I got done with all of this before noon, too.

Since it was still early, I decided to take my chances and head over to California Adventure to ride the Tower of Terror. Since California Adventure still has not really caught on despite all the attempts to move in demand rides and shows over there, the wait for the Tower of Terror was just a few minutes. Since it has opened, I do not think that I have waited any longer than ten to fifteen minutes, if that, to get on the Tower of Terror.

After Tower of Terror, I took a break and went through the stores. Aside from the World of Disney Store in Downtown Disney, the store at the front of California Adventure has the best merchandise to me. I took a break and spent time there looking at merchandise and sending pictures of items to my sister to see what she might want me to buy for her and bring back in exchange for money later. See some of the items from the store below.

After that, it was time to eat lunch. Regardless of where I go, I travel with food. I either do that or go to a grocery store when I get to a place. I did not eat one meal at Disneyland this time around. However, I did not get a chance to get water since I got into California so late last night. Thus, I did waste a considerable amount of money on water at the parks. It was still nothing in comparison to what meals would have cost, though. I brought a Sunbeam Hot Shot with me on this trip and various foods that I could eat using it. It worked like a charm.

After lunch, I went back to Disneyland and rode the Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion rides. I forgot that the Haunted Mansion is at its best during Christmas when The Nightmare Before Christmas is incorporated into it. There are a bunch of Jack Sparrows sprinkled throughout the Pirates of the Caribbean ride now.  Yeah, it has been that long since I have been there.

I guess that the slow rides got me nostalgic for more such rides, so I left the Haunted Mansion to ride It’s a Small World. I believe that they had started the cleaning up process of this ride when I left California, but it seems complete now. Everything looks freshly painted, much brighter, and cleaner than before. Characters from Disney movies are included in scenes related to their movie locations, too. It was a very nice refurbishment.

After It’s a Small World, I went back to California Adventure to ride Mickey’s Fun Wheel and the California Screamin’ roller coaster. I never understood why, but the wait for Mickey’s Fun Wheel is always very long. This is so despite that fact that they combine groups smaller than four people. It is just a ferris wheel with some gondolas that swing back and forth while going around. You have the option to get on a swinging gondola or a mounted one, but what would be the fun of not riding a swinging one? I ended up in a gondola with a lady and her young son and daughter. They looked to be over five, but under ten. Surprisingly, the little boy was the one screaming when the ride started swinging. LOL

The line for California Screamin’ roller coaster was long, but it moved quickly. I did not time it, but I did not feel like I waited there as long as I waited at Mickey’s Fun Wheel. For people who hate Disneyland because they think the rides are all for kids, they need to get on the California Screamin’ roller coaster. It is a pretty decent roller coaster with a lot of twists and turns and a 360 loop. It is a real rush. It was dinner time after that, so I headed back to my room to eat after stopping at the stores.

After getting so little sleep and walking around the parks all day, I was pretty tired. I refused to go back to the park for the fireworks. My room location came in handy for that. Despite the big tree blocking my view of Downtown Disney, I could see the fireworks from my room. They showed up above ESPN Zone, so I could see the show while I ate and rested. The room had redeemed itself.

When the fireworks were done, I was still very tired, though. I started toying with the idea of forgoing Fantasmic! Now, I mentioned that, if I do nothing else, I take my picture with Mickey Mouse and ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Well, if I am there at night, I do not miss Fantasmic!. It is a truly awesome show. There is a great story backed by fireworks, a water show, pyrotechnics, live actors and dancers, video highlights of Disney movies and characters projected on water, great music and dialogue (Yes, I own the soundtrack with and without dialogue!), a dragon, the Mark Twain Riverboat, and the Sailing Ship Columbia. If someone goes to Disneyland with me and we are there late enough, I always drag them to Fantasmic!.

They usually have two showings. There is one around 9:00 pm and another around 10:30 pm or 11:00 pm. FYI, never go to the 9:00 pm show. It is always packed. Family’s typically go to the early show and then leave the park afterwards. The later show is much less packed.

Eventually, I reminded myself that this would be my only night here during this trip. Plus, I have no idea when I will be returning to California, not to mention Disneyland. I would regret it if I missed Fantasmic!, so, I dragged myself out of the hotel and went to the show. I am so glad that I did. I love Fantasmic!. It was a great end to first day of my birthday celebration trip!

See a version of Fantasmic! below:

Selected Pictures from Day 1

As a result of last year’s birthday experience, I vowed that I would never have another birthday like that again. Thus, this year I decided to do things with a bang and take a trip.

I planned a trip to the LA area. I intended on visiting Disneyland, visiting Universal Studios Hollywood, and seeing Janet Jackson in concert.

After 12am in the morning…

Today was the first day of my birthday trip. I was not able to find an early flight so my flight tonight landed in California at around midnight. I had not been on a plane in a few years, but it was not big deal. I got to sit by the window like I prefer, and there was no one bulging over into my seat and personal space. The ride was a little bumpier than I would have liked, but I arrived tired, safe, and sound. After all, it was three am my time!

One of my friends was kind enough to offer to pick me up from the airport and take me to the Disneyland hotel, even though he had to go to work early the next morning. Thanks FVC!

When I checked into the hotel, they said that they have been waiting for me and had a room with a great view. They said that the room looked right out onto Downtown Disney.

There are room itself was great. There were all kinds of little hidden Mickey’s everywhere and things that just reminded you that you were at Disneyland. You can see the room in the pictures below.  The backboard of the bed had a switch activated, animated, fiber optic fireworks display that plays When You Wish Upon a Star while it flashes. Pretty cool. However, the view from the room was not what I was told that it would be.

While the windows technically did overlook Downtown Disney, there was a huge tree in front of the windows.  I could see almost nothing from my window, and that was quite disappointing.  I still made the best of it and was happy to be in the hotel. I had never stayed in the Disneyland Hotel before, so this was an experience. I stayed in the Dreams Tower, which is the closest one to the park.  I wanted to go all out this time.

Since I got here so late I really did not have much time to do anything but go to bed. There are a lot of perks to staying in one of the park hotels. You get priority seating for shows among other things, and, on Magic Morning Early Entry Days, you get to enter the park earlier than everyone else. Of course, the Magic Morning Day for my trip is tomorrow (today) morning! I need to go to bed as soon as possible because I do want to take advantage of that. With that, I bid you goodnight.

The Room

When I think about my Aunt Rett, a couple of things come to mind. She loved dominoes. If you ask anyone about her, they will probably tell you that at some point in the conversation. She also enjoyed bowling and music. I remember when my Aunt Elaine bought her a tape player and she wore it around the house playing her tunes all day. There is one memory that always comes to mind for me, though when I think of Aunt Rett.

When I was in high school, I came home from school one day, and my dad told me to dress up for something. However, he would not tell me what that something was. Now there are two things that I do not like. One is dressing up for the most part, and the other is surprises. I am most comfortable in a pair of jeans. As far as surprises go, I like to know what is going on at all times. Surprises put too much of my life in the control of others. Plus, I always feel bad that I am incapable of pretending that the “great” surprise that a person thinks they have for me is not something I wanted to do in the first place, which is often the case.

Anyway, I was in a real funk about the whole thing considering that those two dislikes were involved. The only other thing that my father eventually told me was that we were going to see Aunt Rett. Now, I had to wonder why we were going to see Aunt Rett and why I had to dress up for that. I usually just saw Aunt Rett when she came to the house. When my father visited her, he usually went alone.

It was not until we picked up Aunt Rett and got to where we were going that I realized that my father was taking us to see Al Green! I do not think that he had told my aunt ahead of time either, since she seemed surprised herself. Like everyone else with a brain, I loved Al Green. After I got past the whole dressing up and surprises issues, that night was magical. I got to spend time by myself with my dad, which is rare when you have five siblings, and my aunt. We all laughed, sang, and just had a good time.

That memory always comes to mind for me when thinking about Aunt Rett not only because it was such a good time but because I realize that most others, including her kids and grandkids, had never had an experience like this with her. I always have to smile when I think about it. So, with that here is a smile for Aunt Rett. You are truly missed.

Obituary