Sadly, I’m disappointed by the whole thing – which is quite depressing.  The sound is flat and lifeless, and the direction is just not what I’d like to see in a Beach Boys (or any other) concert.

This is a completely independent complaint from the one regarding the anemic track list.  That’s a rant for a whole other time.

I’m of the belief that most people that direct concert DVDs have never actually heard the music in the first place.  To me, the visuals should compliment the music.  For example, if the bassist has a signature line in a song – show it to me.  As a listener, I’ll pick up on the visual cue and perhaps hear a part of the song I never noticed before.  Show me what I’m missing, not the back of someone’s head or some random 60 year old mouthing the words.

For this concert, I’m not getting that vibe at all.  Sad to say, I’m getting the sense that this was a rushed product for the holiday season.  There has to be something better coming down the pike.  Too many good shows and good songs were performed over the whole tour to let this be the sole representation of the 50th anniversary.

Luckily for fans, this isn’t the only concert out there.  Over in Japan, a concert was broadcast on some pay network and somehow, someone managed to get the audio and release it into the wild.

It is worlds better than the sound on this concert. My biggest regret is not being about to find the video to go along with it, but I can live without it.

Of course, I suppose that it’s going to take something special to impress me after having been in the front row during the Merriweather Post show.  No matter how well a recording is done or how well a video is directed – it’s never going to match up with the experience of being there and singing along with this group that I’ve idolized for so long.

I suppose I was always going to be let down by this disc.  I also suppose I was always going to buy it anyway,

For all intents and purposes, this is like a diary that I never have to worry about someone reading.  Granted, search engines will crawl all over the site and at some point a random Google’r will find this post looking for the phrase “PS3 Vase Speaker” without even knowing why they were searching for it in the first place.

So, that’s a good thing.  I’ve got free reign to ramble away without too much concern of a nosy audience.  At the same time, a nosy audience would be nice once in a while.  Yes, yes…I know – leave me alone but PAY ATTENTION TO ME!

I’d say I can’t help being crazy like that, but that’s insulting to someone who is actually crazy.  I’m not crazy.  I’m just odd enough to set people back on their heels but not nearly odd enough to be interesting.

I’m a big Doctor Who fan, but I don’t cosplay, write fanfic or ship.  I’m a huge Beach Boys fan, but I don’t make my own music.  My professional skillset is a bit niche and only of interest to the general public until I actually start to explain it.

…but that’s ok.  That’s who I am.  “Mostly Harmless” is a good description, kind of like the Earth is described in the Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Yes, posting here is completely sporadic and only sometimes of any interest to anyone else.  Often times I forget the place even exists.  Having a site like this is a relic in the age of the Tumblr, the realm of the Facebook and the brief flash of the Twitter.  If we can’t say it with memes, like buttons or in 140 characters – it must not be worth saying.

Meh.  Says who?

Ok, I’m joking. It’ll just stay as one beer…but I really did have too many snacks at work today. It seems like my willpower for avoiding such things has vanished into the night without a forwarding address and took the urge to exercise with it.

This is where I should write something inspirational about how that’s all going to change – but I don’t have it in me. The more I think about writing those kind of things, the more my internal monologue becomes “Shut up, Shut Up, SHUT UP!”

Of course, it’s also because I just drank a beer on an empty stomach and I’m not feeling so good…

This post is one of them.

Author’s note:  My memory is…not all that great.  What follows is the best I can manage.  While it may not be 100% accurate, I’ll try to make it at least 42% entertaining.

Before the internet - yes, there existed a time before the internet – if you wanted to get online, you didn’t have many choices.  It was sometime in the mid-80′s, and I had a Commodore 64 with a 1200 baud modem.  I never really got into Compuserve, but I did spend time on local BBSs.

Basically it was a place to exchange messages, download programs and play games like Trade Wars 2002.  The one I frequented was called the P & M Flight School, and it was located in (or around) Salisbury, MD.  It even had multiple lines, so more than one user could be on – and those dialed in could hang out in a chat room.

Very high-tech stuff, this online chat. This is where the younger version of me (somewhere around 13 years old) decided it would be fun to be a troll during one particular conversation.

Turns out the two sysops were big fans of Doctor Who. I’d never heard of it, but based on the name alone – it sounded like the dumbest thing ever. So, I did what any good immature troll does in a chat room – I let them explain what it was, then told them just how stupid they were for liking something so stupidly stupid. I’m certain that I did it with class, style and an eloquence beyond my age.

In actual fact, it was more like “Doctor Who? Who? What? Is it an owl? Who gives a whoot? TURDIS?” and other barbs of that nature. I am not proud.

In return, they did what any right thinking person would do and banned me from the BBS. That was like a splash of cold water on my face, because it didn’t make me mad – it upset me! It upset me because I realized what an idiot I had been. My nerves were shot, and I felt horrible for weeks on end.

Throughout my whole life, I’ve discovered that I possess an overactive conscience.

I signed back up for the BBS under a different name and address, and eventually used that new account to apologize. Memory says that they accepted it, and all was well after that.

They might have forgiven me, but apparently the universe hadn’t. Whatever force responsible for dealing with people who are jerks online wasn’t nearly as busy back then as it is now – so it managed to dole out a suitable punishment a few years later.

I became a fan. On DelMarVa, there are two PBS stations – MPT (which covers Maryland) and WHYY (which is located in northern Delaware, but had a transmitter in lower Delaware.) Both carried Doctor Who, and I just happened upon it on MPT one late night.

Where my memory fails me is that I can’t remember if my first episode was Peter Davison or Sylvester McCoy. Yes, I know you’re never supposed to forget your first Doctor – but I’m also the person who forgot how to ride a bike. Whichever one it was doesn’t matter anymore – because I got hooked immediately.

It’s hard to count how many late nights were spent watching – either in the living room or on a small television in my bedroom. As the TV in my bedroom was part of an old boombox, I’d record the episodes to cassette tape for later listening. Sometimes I’d hook an antenna up outside the bedroom to pick up episodes from New Jersey on NJN. Plenty of nights would see me asleep in front of the television, only waking up well after it had gone to static.

I miss static on television. When TV stations power down now (if they do at all,) it’s just black and silence. At work, we only power down once a week and I’m so tempted to set our automation to play a loop of good old static. If I ever do that, I hope I can count on whoever is reading this to be a reference for me as I seek new employment.

There is a stack of VHS tapes up in my attic filled with off-air recordings or CBS/FOX releases. Somewhere in a plastic tub are the old Peter Haining books, like “The Doctor Who File” and others.

There were a few people in school who were also fans, and we’d talk about the show in the cafeteria over lunch. One in particular was a few years older, and I remember thinking he knew all the answers. I distinctly remember asking him just what Lady Peinforte knew about the Doctor and having him just stare at me like I was crazy. At the time, I figured he was stringing me along with some great secret. Now I realize that open enthusiasm at high school about Doctor Who in 1991 wasn’t cool.

Come to think of it, that might contribute to my odd inability to discuss fandom. I’ll address that some other time. Possibly.

Moving on – the show’s seemingly done for good so there’s the Virgin New Adventures books. I have the complete set, collected month by month through whatever means I could. Browseabout Books (a small, local chain) used to order them for me. When that stopped, I used Bookpages – the UK’s version of Amazon.com…until they were purchased by Amazon.com. I continued to collect all the way through the end of the BBC 8th Doctor books.

My old website had the “Save Doctor Who” ribbon on it. I wanted to feel like I was doing something.

When the FOX TV movie aired in Canada, I nearly broke a satellite antenna looking for the coordinates. When it aired on FOX proper, I recorded it twice – once at home (off cable) and once at college (straight off satellite.)

This was back before FOX scrambled their signal, and well before they implemented their @#%@#%% splicer system - but that’s a rant for another time.

Basically, while I wasn’t being an uberfan – I was somewhere above the casual level for the time. Nowadays, I just watch. I don’t blog (current entry notwithstanding,) I don’t podcast, I don’t do fan art or fan fiction and I certainly don’t ship.

Was I excited when the series returned? Damn right I was. That was a good period of time, because Brian Wilson was releasing a completed version of SMiLE – meaning both my fandoms were seeing a resurgence.

I’m stunned (but overjoyed) at the fan base that Doctor Who has now here in America. It would be easy to be upset that all these people have horned in on what was once relegated to a niche – but I’m not. Loads of people are expressing their fandom in different ways, and it’s great to see something that I’ve enjoyed for over 25 years now be enjoyed by everyone else.

Welcome aboard everyone…all of time and space, everything that ever happened or ever will – where do you want to start?