I was going through all my old camcorder tapes today, trying to locate the video of my brother and I almost getting hit by a plane at St. Barths. I didn't find it, but I did encounter a bunch of fun videos I had forgotten. In lieu of the propeller death video, I figured I'd put these up instead. Odds are they won't be amusing to people who weren't actually there at the time, but I figure that's probably most of you anyway.

My Xvid encoder was being obstinate, and would sometimes refuse to encode a video with anything other than the absolute lowest audio quality setting. Ah well, they're not too bad, and it's only one or two of them.

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Ever since I first got into Dream Theater back in 1992, I've longed for them to play a concert in Puerto Rico. I remember writing a letter to the band when I was 14 begging them to come down. Finally last night they granted my wish. I guess maybe my letter fell victim to Puerto Rico's notoriosly slow postal service.

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Dublin was fun, though not as enjoyable for me as the countryside. The high point for me, of course, was the Guinness Storehouse. But that came last.

We got up this morning at 7am (OK, it became more like 8:15am) to eat a quick breakfast and catch the "hop-on, hop-off" tour bus that stopped at our hotel at 9. We got off at the first stop, near the General Post Office where the IRA siezed the building in 1916 and declared independence from Ireland (and were subsequently shelled into submission). It also happened to be the location of the 400' Metal Spike Of Annihilation, to my glee.

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So today is 05/05/05. That's pretty cool, but Jeff pointed out the much cooler date coming up in just over a year, on July 6, 2006. I think that calls for a Party Of Evil. Jeff suggests taking the whole week off and going somewhere evil, like the tundra. He proposes Iceland. I've been wanting to go there anyway. Jeff further suggests having a metal fest on the tundra. That seems more ambitious than an Evil Party. But why not set our sights high? Such a date has not occurred in 1000 years. Jeff also wants bands with lots of severed animal appendages on spikes. I don't know about that. Maybe we can get them to use soy-based severed animal appendage replacements. Or severed vegetable appendages. Green is supposed to be the most evil color, right? I dunno, we'll have to work that part out. But it's settled. Evil Metal Fest on the Iceland tundra on 6/6/06. Start booking your plane tickets.

Edit: Of course, given recent archaeological developments, the metal fest may have to happen a few months sooner than we thought.