Whee! Skip the first three paragraphs if you're looking for the concert stuff.
Okay, so I get out of school at 2:30 and my sister picks me up. We head home, I eat lunch, yadda yadda yadda, and we head out to the city by 3:30 in Paul's beat up Mercedes. Traffic was pretty bad the whole way there, and there was a fire, but I slept almost the whole way there because we were in a car, and well, everyone knows how fast I pass out when I'm in a car for any extended period of time. Or any period of time at all, actually. X3 I wake up once we get to the city (traffic sounds change, and I think my body picks up on that, I always wake up right as we exit any freeway/highway) and we drive past the purple gay bar instead of turning like we usually do to get to J-Town. We park a couple blocks from Market and start to walk to Flax, but realize we can't park there, so Julia and I keep walking and Paul goes to park somewhere else. We meet up a block from Flax and realize when we get there that Flax actually has their own parking garage.... Oops. ^^;
Anyhow, Flax is fucking AWESOME. It's huge and has anything and everything an artist could ever want to use by means of supplies, and I would have spent hours in there if not for the fact that we only had half an hour on the meter and the store closed at 6. And then there's the fact that shit gets REALLY expensive there. I was eyeing a 35 dollar brush and two 23 dollar brushes when I finally collected my handful of $10-15 brushes and went to pay. I really can't afford to spend 30+ bucks on a brush for my mural art class. I'm just not willing to invest that much right now. I go to pay and they announce that the store is closing right as I reach the counter. Hee. I spend thirty-one bucks, we walk back to the car, and go to get some KOREAN BARBEQUE! XD
My sister and I have been looking forward to this since we were last in the city and walked past two really neat looking Korean BBQ restaurants across the street from the main J-Town buildings. We go to the one that's up a flight of stairs and has the cool table thingies so you can BBQ your own food. We spend like, fifteen minutes trying to figure out what to get, and then decide on a sort of combo meal, a soup, and a platter of spicy meat. They bring it out and we (well, mostly me...) are highly amused by trying to cook it. By 7:30 we're stuffed, happy, and I'm in love with the Korean family behind us. Korean is such a pretty language... The father had this really soft voice, and the son had a deeper stronger voice, and I was melting in my seat listening to them. I pretty much zoned out for the latter half of the meal when they were seated behind us. Now if only the daughter didn't have such a whiny voice... But still, Korean is really pretty to listen to. :3
On to the concert! We walk over to the Fillmore and there's still a line (but it's pretty short since the doors opened at 7) to get in. We're in the doors by 7:40 and are slightly put out by the fact that there is only one Puffy tour shirt, and it's rather... Pink. Ah well. There's like, five billion Watashi Wa shirts though, so we get more curious about this band who's opening for Puffy and supposedly (according to their website) already disbanded. o.O; Meh. We go and linger in the crowd (the Fillmore is standing room only on the second floor, with a bar and some balcony seats on the third floor--the first floor is not open to the public, probably storage or something) and talk about this Watashi Wa band. Paul says they're a local band, so I'm thinking, okay, maybe they're a Japanese band living in this area, that'd be pretty cool as a Puffy opener... But no, they're also all white. Hmm. My skepticism returns. Before I have any other chance to think about what they'll be like or what kind of music they'll play, I notice that this Goth girl (black dress, black hair, black stockings and boots and ruffles and choker...) standing about 8 feet in front of me and to the left keeps turning around and giving me odd looks.
...okay.....
She's staring at me again when I look back in that direction, so I turn to my sister and cousin and say, "There's this weird girl over there... she keeps staring at me!" and I laugh and fiddle with the ribbon I'm using for a belt. WTF. I catch her glaring at me again and I'm like, "She's doing it again right now!" My sister and my cousin laugh. My first encounter with SF Goths? Yes, yes it is. Why does she keep giving me the eye? Paul says something about them being really elitist and seeing any other girl in black as competition or something silly like that. My sister tells me about how she used to get glared at and ignored at the other concerts she's gone to with Paul because they were goth/industrial/deathmetal concerts and she went in jeans and normal clothes and all the Goth girls would look down on her and shit. I look down at myself. I'm not even wearing really Goth-y clothes! I've got my blue pants on (dark and light blue and very very baggy) and a plain black form-fitting three-quarter sleeve shirt and my usual silver necklace with my ring on it. I'm not even wearing any of my collars or chokers! My hair is pulled back in a ponytail with a blue scrunchie and my bangs are down. I see nothing to mark me as being Goth!
?!?!?!?!?
Why couldn't she have gone and glared at the strange American and Japanese girls in their funky multicolored layered skirts and tall shoes and weird hair? I did not stick out damnit. I actually dressed normally! Meh.
In any case, the lights dim around 8:00 and the cheesy music stops and four white guys come out. My skepticism increases when their first song has 'wasabi' in the first few lines and they're all singing and talking in english. Ah well. They were actually pretty good, though. I liked their music quite a bit, though they're not anything spectacular and don't really stick out in any way, so unfortunately they probably didn't make it big since they sounded too generic. They reminded me of OAR's music, but with an 80s feel instead of the swing feel. Maybe a bit more rock. The singer has pretty good stage presence and a nice enough voice, and they were all dressed in dark collared shirts with the sleeves rolled up to thier elbows, ties, and nice pants. The guy on the left of the stage (left as I saw it) was totally stuck in the 80s. He had the 80s british hairstyle, a pink tie, and kept tweaking out and dancing oddly as he played his guitar or bass or whatever it was. He looked like he was on something. X3 They also did a fairly good cover of Message in a Bottle. That's right, the Police. XDXDXD It was great, and they actually got a good two thirds of the crowd (mostly Japanese fanboys and girls) singing along by the end of the song. I was surprised to notice that at least a tenth of the crowd was there for Watashi Wa and not Puffy; they had quite a following that was singing along to the songs and cheering/yelling. This was apparently their last concert together as a group. They finish their set and exit the stage and the lights go back up. Cheesy music starts up again but this time it's cheesy older Japanese music! It was kind of catchy and me and the group of japanese fans (five fanboys and one girl) in front of me were bobbing along to the tunes. My sister kept saying that she felt a normal height around the asian people and I jsut glared at her. I was still shorter than most of the people there. I think I've stopped growing, too, which really sucks.... but I digress. I really like that phrase for some reason, "But I digress." Im such a freak. X3
Oh yeah, the creepy Goth girl had dissappeared by then, so I was happy about that, too.
Right around 9 they play a cheesy Puffy song and my cousin goes, "this would be a really cheesy way to introduce Puffy..." and ...it was. XD The lights dimmed when the song eneded and the Puffy cheering music came on. I don't know what to cal lthe first song except for a cheer, because that's what it was! "Pu-ffy-A-mi-Yu-mi, GO!" X3 It was very cute and when they bounced onstage and started singing the whole crowd went nuts and cheered along with them. Yumi is amazing <3 I like Yumi a lot. I mean, I think she's much cuter than Ami, so I was happy when I found a spot where I could see her over the crowd. If I had been in a place where I could only see Ami I would have shoved around until I could see Yumi, but luckily for me, I didn't have to. I couldn't see Ami, but frankly, I didn't much care. :p Heehee. She was so spunky and adorable in her white Puffy shirt (the one with the black skull) with the sleeves ripped off, and her hair! It was so cute! It was all shaggy like Ue-pon's hair, with the bottom tips dyed light grey and a grey lock in her bangs. Very indies. <3<3<3 Only girls with that face structure can pull off the shaggy hair and make it look cute, and Ue-pon and Yumi both have that face. I love it. Anyways, I don't remember the order of songs, but they seemed much more relaxed than they were two years ago opening for the B52s. It was great because the place was pretty packed and they were almost all Puffy fans in the crowd, unlike before where half the crowd was old fogeys who didn't even know what language Puffy was singing in.
The crowd sang along with all of the songs, getting louder on the ones like the Teen Titans theme. That was a lot of fun, that song. X3 Also, incentive to watch Scooby Doo 2, if you need any, is that Friends Forever is the ending song (one of their English ones, and one of the more understandable ones, too) and it's very catchy and cute. By the time they sang that one song about makng a sober girl so high, I was totally pumped up and cheering and singing with the rest of the crowd. The Japanese fans are very energetic, and the Fanboys in front of me where so funny to watch. I also absolutely LOVED that they sang Boogie Woogie No. 5, because that's my favourite song by them. It's slower, yes, but I love jazz and swing and I was only sad that the Tokyo Ska boys weren't there as guests for the song. T_T;; Ah well. It was amazing that they even played it! <3 Their English, while still not that great, was much improved from the previous concert, and they were still reading off of papers for their talking parts, if not for the songs like they had to last time. It was so cute when they did their second break to talk though!
Yumi: (looking at paper and scanning what she already read the last time they stopped to talk) Hai..hai...hai..hai..hai, hai, hai...
Crowd: ('aww's and laughs)
Ami: (starts to talk)
Yumi: (starts to talk at the same time)
Ami: Ah.. (mumbles something quickly in Japanese, I couldn't catch it)
Yumi: Ah, un!
Ami: Un!
Yumi: Un!
Ami: Un!
Yumi: Un!
Ami: Un!
Yumi: Un!
Ami: Un!
Yumi: Un!
Ami: Un!
Yumi: Un!
Ami: Un!
Crowd: (laughing)
Yumi: Un!
Ami: Un!
Yumi: Un!
Ami: Un!
Crowd: (laughing harder)
Yumi: Un!
Ami: Un!
Yumi: (laughing)
Ami: (laughing)
Yumi: Mmm.
Ami: Mm.
Yumi: Un, gomen, gomen!
Ami: (laughs and reads off her little speech thingy)
Yumi: (picks up where Ami leaves off on the speech part)
Crowd: <3<3<3<3 (cheers)
Anyways, they were adorable, Yumi more energetic than Ami, and very punkishly cute. Ami looked stoned, as usual, and her hair was down and as thick as mine, but much much prettier. Yumi looked like she was sleepy or just woke up, and she was just too freaking cute. She always looks so sexy when she's like that. Mmmm.... I wouldn't mind being next to her when she wakes up in the morning....
*.*
...
...oh, sorry, was I writing about something? :: picks self up out fangirlish heap on ground ::
Yeah, so Yumi was sexy and cute and.... oh wait, I was talking about the concert. Yeah, so the encore took only about two minutes worth of cheering, yells, whistles, stomping, and general loudness to get, and they came out and played two more songs. I think. My memory is a little fuzzy. Okay, no more concert stuffs, so you can stop reading now if that's what you were looking for.
After that they left and we left and headed over to get Desert Fries and dessert from the Bagdad Cafe. You can do the best peoplewatching in SF at the Bagdad Cafe because it's right in the middle of clubbing traffic for the Castro district, and even the waiters are fun to watch. We had the cutest guy as our waiter, and we sat outside at a tiny table on the sidewalk. There was an old guy with a funny grey afro inside, and people kept walking by with weird looking little dogs. Our waiter was very very cute, though. I mean, really cute. He was also flaming gay, like the rest of the waiters there. Le sigh. He had a really cool watch, though. And a really pretty smile. <3 Damn them and their cute gay-ness. I had chocolate cheesecake, paul had a souffle thingy, and Julia got the fries. It was great, and I was absurdly jealous of males in general since all the cute guys turn out to be gay, and now I'm going to finish this post, finally.
The End. :)
