[photos]

so the arcade fire kicked major ass as always... they put on one hell of a show... i'd suggest... no wait.. i'd make anyone who had the opportunity to go see them, to go see them... they opened with a couple verses from dylan's "a hard rain's a-gonna fall" before the auditorium echo'ed into the buzzing intro of "oooooo ooooo oooo" to "Wake Up"....

Other notes in the show (besides the normal banging on helmets, extra drums, each other, and other various pieces on the stage), when they left for the last encore, they made their way into the main entrance area of the riv, and played an acoustic song as people left... it was a good idea in thought, but horrible idea in practice, since we were stuck all the way in back, not knowing what was going on (but i guess it is a treat for those who weren't all the way up front)... also, rick rubin was there in all his hairy-ness and he seemed like he was having a good time (maybe future producer?)...

anyways, we've managed to finally upload the pictures we got from our photographer... these pictures came out beautiful... tara (our photographer) did a great job with these... her website is http://www.alliancephotography.com.

our picture gallery can be found here: http://www.theoptionals.net/spgm
(higher quality resolution pics are available. e-mail me)

[the crew]

damn i want to be them...

so our september ends and october begins with the sound of ringing, heavy in our ears and lactic acid soreness in our muscles... today we picked up arcade fire tickets for tomorrow (at the riv)...

i've never been to the riv, but i can only imagine the carnage that is going to ensue when they army that is arcade fire step onto the stage and start flailing about, and playing helmets and any other odd piece of equipment they may find laying around... i read an interesting article today about one of the members in the band, and how he was just finishing college at Northwestern a couple months ago... the band had an appearance on conan o'brien, and he had told his professor he would need to miss a class because of it... feeling as if the professor didn't believe him, the next day he brought in the rolling stone article with the tv schedule (as if making it on the cover of time magazine in canada wasn't enough)... how damn sweet would that be? They're just a group of kids, recording a hit record in their own apartments and doing the college thing... damn i want to be them...

then on tuesday we head off to the vic theater (where we saw corgan earlier) to see the bravery... that place is like a miniture version of the metro... very small, very intimate... no matter where we stand we'll feel them breathe on us, but we're still going for the first two rows up front... it's going to be a good time..

we finally end our week with a concert that i am looking very forward to.. nine inch nails... this is going to be insane... we got floor tickets and will try to wade our way through the mass of sweaty no shirt bodies, and don-johnsons that just want to beat ass in the pit (even though the tickets say no mosh/no crowd surfing, i think it's more of a legal thing than something enforced..).. this is going to be awesome, and i know they're going to put on one hell of a show... along with queens of the stone age and autolux, me thinks our faces are going to be torn off...

[the optionals]

'tis done. our mix-master brian bell has been kind enough to master and mixdown our final recordings as a band.. it's been years in the making and now it has finally arrived (even before the new GNR album, Ha!) for your downloading pleasure...

I hope you enjoy the tunes that we so much enjoyed the writing of them... this is our first posthumous release (hey if biggie and 2pac can do it, why can't we?) that will hopefully catapult us to superstardom in malaysia (we're number #1 in bangor, mi)...

'Enuff rambling, here are the tracks, we hope you enjoy (please right-click and choose save-target-as):

[the optionals]

1. Broken Picture
2. Ebb Junky's New Meaning
3. Grew Up Fast
4. Up In Space
5. Christina
6. Breath
7. Secret Girl
8. Something More
9. Breakdown
10. My Only Fight

goodies.

so this weekend, we saw the purchasing of many goodies for our own personal pleasure use... thanks to coupons and discounts from work we went on a little shopping spree for some much needed items...

Purchase #1: A paper shredder
we've always wanted one of these things and now it is finally mine... let's just say the weekend was filled with the shredding of many important and not-so-important documents... i'm curious to see how it shred things other than paper (pencils, credit cards, lettuce, etc)... i'll be sure to find out soon...

Purchase #2: A scanner
this should have been purchase way back in the day, but i have just been too lazy to buy one... now that we have one, expect lots of pictures of scanned asses, faces, b-a-n-a-n-a-s (are you a holla-back grrl?), and probably shredded paper (and the other shred experiments i will try)...

Purchase #3: the long awaited TiVo (thanks B'z)
we've always had soo many TV program conflicts come those Sunday nites, where we were stuck in the Family Guy/Desperate Housewives dilemma... with TiVo, this dilemma is solved... these things are great... i thought that we didn't need one, but now that we are using it, we can't imagine watching TV without it... it's like a steroid-pumped VCR (only with lots of bells and gadgets and a cure little TV logo)...

Purchase #4: Shrimp-Galore
we then headed off to Red Lobster for their all-you-can-eat-shrimp deal, which is always worth it, cause anyone can eat like 1,298,482,328,232 shrimp... i don't see how all you can eat seafood places can ever make money off that deal (but i'm sure they somehow do)... hmm.. i wonder if i can scan/shred some left over shrimp...

Purchase #5: Hero DVD and Dawn of the Dead Director's Cut DVD
saw a gamestop and had to stop in to browse... lucky us they had a deal on some dvd's (2 for $10), so as i was perusing through them we found 2 pretty decent dvds... i'm a pretty big DVD snob now, in that i won't buy any dvd if it's not in widescreen format... i need to know that there is a guy on the far left pouring coffee, otherwise the movie just doesn't make sense... once i get bored of these movies, i'll be sure to see how sturdy this shredder is...

Purchase #6: let's dance with the Bravery
the bravery tickets at the small-ass Vic Theater... this is gunna be awesome, that place is tiny, and it's going to be like one big dance party...

Almost purchase #7: new digital camera
we found 2 that we really like, but we can't quite decide which we like better... it boils down to do we want better lookin' pictures or do we want a thin stylin' camera with so-so pictures... i'm always for the newest gadgets, so i'm all for the 4-credit card thin sony camera at 5.1 MP, but deep down inside, i know i should be going for the 7.2 MP a little bigger camera with better picture quality... i dunno, but we'll probably be getting something in the next week...

Purchase #8: new warcraft 3 cd
i've relapsed into starcraft, and now i am relapsing into warcraft 3... let's just say i was less than happy to find out my warcraft 3 cd is broken... withdraw symptoms quickly occured only to be cured by meaningless shredding...

Purchase #9 (sort of): wedding pictures
we got our wedding pictures from our photographer and they are awesome... they are the exactly what we wanted and they look great... our photographer Tara McKinney (www.alliancephotography.com) did a beautiful job... once we get the pictures re-sized i'll post a link up with them...

So, that was our weekend and as a new week begins, so does our new list of much needed items... hmmm giant foam cowboy hat? - check.

For you...

From this moment on, I, Alex Yue, devote my eternal life and soul to you, Janelle L. Birch. Who knew, that the sweet girl i crossed paths with in the ninth grade, was to become my ever beautiful wife. All I want is waiting for me right here, and for the first time, i need no reason. You're all the need and I wouldn't change a thing. You are, all that I dream.

I promise to you, that I'll always be there for you in your time of need. I'll always be there to take care of you, to grow old with you, to never give up, be faithful, strong, loving, and forgiving. I pledge to you that in sickness, I'll be you're nurse, in sadness, I'll be your shoulder, in happiness, I'll be there to make and share memories with you, in poverty, I'll do what I can to make our love rich, in wealth, I'll never let our love grow poor, and I, Alex Yue, will promise to always be truely yours.

I've done enough by myself, and as I close that chapter in my life, i'll start this new one. Together, we can accomplish anything.
Together, we can take over the world.
Together, our love will grow into something that can't be broken
And together, we'll devote our entire lives to each other.

with this ring i wed thee true...

well, it has been about a week since being married, and i'm just starting to get over the exhaustion from last week... i'm finally regaining all that energy that was spent in preparing for and doing the wedding... i'm slowly trying to creep my way back into my starcraft/warcraft3/world of warcraft routine, but just have been too damn tired lately...

it was great to be able to see friends from far and near again and it meant a great deal to us, that they had even considered traveling so far in order to share this moment with us... (now our asses live better than we do!)... Thank you to our families and really... everyone that was there to help create this occasion with us...

the wedding was beautiful... in an eden-esque set garden, with crisp elegant blue skies reflecting off the lush green grass and hazy water and my magnificient "to be" standing next to me... the second i saw her in her wispy veil, and her white dress offset with intricate light rosy pink beadings, i almost started to cry... she was a reflection of beauty at its best, and now she is mine...

once i get less lazy and tired, i'll be sure to put up all the pictures somewhere accessible to everyone... there's also a dvd video that we'll be getting in late November that i'll try to put up along with some other goodies...

thank you all again, and thank you janelle for making me the luckiest person alive.