SaveByRichter35

Or at least revenge nudes of the ex? We don't wanna fuck around with the current gf lol.

So Monday, my wife and I took my 7 year old son and 5 year old daughter to the Linkin Park concert at Barclays. We didn't tell them where we were going until about an hour before we got on the train. I stopped at Ronkonkoma on my way home from work and bought our tickets in advance just to get that out of the way. The kids lost it when we did tell them our adventure for the day. A little bit of background regarding my kids and the band. Chester died a week after my son was born. When he was a baby I would play Linkin Park lullabies for him. I did it with my daughter as well. I would play their music around the kids all the time. I made a playlist on my phone for them and on cards for their Yoto Player clocks that they have in their rooms. For a while I was careful not to play any songs with curses. Now, I really don't care, it’s nothing they don't already hear from my wife and I lol. My son's favorite song is Given Up, QWERTY, and Waiting for the End. I don't let him listen to Given Up around my wife though lol. My daughter's is Shadow of the Day and Iridescent. She also loves Chester's live version of Crawling from the One More Light Live album. They have excellent taste, what can I say? lol. Growing up my son always asked to go to an LP concert and I had to explain to him how Chester died right after you were born and the band no longer makes music or plays concerts so we'll never be able to. All we have are the live albums and YouTube videos of concerts. It broke my heart. We would watch them together all the time. When all of the announcements came out on 9/5 about Emily, a new single, a new album, and a new tour, my kids and I lost our shit. Thankfully I was off that day so that night our family movie night was going to be a family concert night. My wife was thrilled lol. Ok so, I don't know why I heard so many people make a big deal about the train to Barclays, it was just as easy as getting to Citi. One connecting train. The time between connections in Jamaica were tight but perfectly doable both ways. When we got there I bought some jerk chicken and rice from a street vender. I about came in my pants it was so good. I wanted to try the empanada truck that I was told about but the line was really long. We made our way to the arena my son and I were so pumped. I wanted so fucking badly to get a shirt but the line was understandably ridiculously long. I figured lets go to the seats, I'll go back down while the opening act, Grandson played. He fucking sucked by the way. In the elevator up, another couple said how cool it was that we brought the kids. I basically told everyone the story I typed out above about how my son was born a week before Chester died and how they always wanted to go to a show but we couldn't because he died, etc etc. I was getting emotional telling it because here we were finally at a show. A bunch of the other girls in there were crying. One dude said he was so glad he was in this elevator in this moment to hear that story. It was all emotional lol. Anyways, as I mentioned in an earlier post, our seats had an obstructed view and were cheap as fuck. I'm not sure if it was because of the obstruction or because I was able to get them directly from Ticketmaster instead of resale. I assume the later. Regardless, the only obstruction was some wiring that ran up from the floor to a lighting grid above the stage. Barely noticeable. My son and I rocked out together. It was glorious. Took pictures, took lots of video but not all of them were that great because I tried to make a point to watch the show live, not through my phone. Emily. Ugh, Emily. My daughter loves her, probably just because she's a girl. She's 5, its fine. I don't know, I have the same outlook I had from watching the 9/5 YouTube concert. She's not bad. She's just not Chester. I have a feeling that the newer music will be much better since its written with her and her vocal limitations in mind. Not Chester's. She has a bad habit of "giving" the mic to the fans way too often for way too long. I get it, all performers do it. Its a way to include the fans in the show. But she did it way too much, it might have been literally every song. I didn't pay to listen to the fans, I paid to listen to the band. On that subject, there were many moments throughout the show in which it was hard to even hear her at all. Idk if it was mic issues, her not remembering all of her cues for her verses, I don't know. Whatever. We were at a fucking Linkin Park show! They only played the one new single, The Emptiness Machine. Everything else was older songs from their previous albums. Mike took a moment to express how badly they wanted to play more of the new stuff but can't. I don't know why, legality issues since it doesn't release until November maybe? Or simply because they just want to save the new stuff for when they inevitably go on tour for the new album. Which hopefully isn't on a Monday night when they come back to NY. And hopefully its at MSG or UBS lol. Regardless, I will be sure to have the kids with me again. Maybe next time I'll leave my wife home though lol. On our way back down the elevator after the show, the merch stand right next to the elevator only had less than 10 people on line so I jumped on and got a shirt. My son wanted one too but they didn't have any kids sizes unfortunately. So now I am stuck with one pretty much useless shirt because the smallest size they had was an adult small. I will never fit in it and it'll be a 6-7 years before it fits my son lol. I guess it'll be a pj shirt for a while.

Bingo

Good luck tomorrow, @phillyb

Ahh gotcha. Yea I haven't read any of the books either so its all moot to me lol. I get it though.

No less believable than the MI movies...which I also haven't seen lol

I watched the two Tom Cruise Reacher movies the last two nights. Love the Prime show but never saw the movies until now. First one was solid. Second one was ok, not as good in my opinion.

Did some Netflix binging. 3 fantastic movies: Rebel Ridge, Hitman, and Land of Bad.

Feel better dude!

It says my seats have obstructed view. I hope its not too bad.

Well against my better judgement, I bought tickets to the concert. I really wish it wasn't at Barclay's, I always hear its such a pain in the ass to get to by train from eastern LI. My kids are going to flip the fuck out though.

Huge LP fan here as well. They've been my favorite band since the moment I heard In The End in 2000 on a random mix CD I borrowed from my brother which was made by one of his friends. I've had my moments where I was like WTF when A Thousand Suns and Living Things came out but they grew on me and I love them just as much as I love any of their other albums. My love of the band and Chester's voice in particular turned me onto his other bands, Grey Daze and Dead by Sunrise. Big fan of both of them as well. I've been dreading this day since July 20th, 2017. I heard the new single, The Emptiness Machine, and I will admit it sounds good. Had I not known it was Linkin Park, possibly just a Shinoda collab I'd still enjoy it. I was showing my kids the video on YouTube the day it came out. We all liked it, even though it did make me sad. It was bittersweet. And then YouTube threw me a curveball. It suggested an edited version of The Emptiness Machine in which someone used AI to insert Chester's voice instead of Emily's. Fuuuuuuuuuuuck man, it sounded infinitely better. There was just no comparison. Then, the kids and I watched the band's streamed concert later that night. She. Fucking. Sucked. I tried to give her a chance. I wanted to like it. I just couldn't do it. There were a few songs where she sounded good. But man, her screams, fuck no, that ain't it. I get that Chester had a voice that was very unique and extremely hard to replicate. She didn't come close. She did the leg up on the amp thing that Chester always did and I wanted to throw the remote through my tv lol. This isn't a sexist thing. I like a lot of female singers. Amy Lee of Evanescence, the chick from Spirit Box, hell a big guilty pleasure of mine is Kelly Clarkson. I can even stomach a few Taylor Swift songs thanks to my daughter. But this woman, She. Ain't. It. I would have preferred the rumors been true of Deryck Whibley of Sum41 joining the band. They did a cover of Faint with Shinoda as a guest appearance and I thought he sounded pretty fucking awesome. My fear of Linkin Park going by the wayside just as many of my other favorite bands may be coming to fruition. Staind once Aaron Lewis left the band, Thirty Seconds to Mars once they changed their sound way too extremely for my taste, Three Days Grace once Adam Gontier left...their new vocalist sucks. Don't even get me started on the other shit she was involved in. Honestly, I wouldn't give a shit in most cases. A lot of people have friends who are pieces of shit. I also don't give a shit what religion people are in to. They're all stupid in my opinion. But to have someone join the band with this kind of baggage, considering the turmoil the person went through in which she is replacing. Come on man. A real big fuck you slap to the face, you announce a tour that is starting in two weeks and you book New York fucking City on a fucking MONDAY NIGHT!??!!!?????!!!?!? WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!! The hardest part of ending is starting again...

You guys are wasting your money donating to Wounded Warriors. There are better charities to donate to if that is the type of donation you want to make. They keep way too much money for themselves. Its far from a lost cause. They've shifted towards helping homeless Veterans and paying off the mortgages for NY first responders who were killed. My Veteran hockey team recently played charity fundraiser games for the families of 2 killed cops and a fire fighter, two of which were also Veterans. Both NYPD officers were killed in car accidents, one was on his way to work. The FDNY firefighter was let go while still on probation due to some budget cuts. He ended up dying of a hear attack within a year of being let go. The family got nothing for it. T2T paid off the mortgages and we were able to donate another several thousand dollars to the families from our games. I would imagine they also still help anyone who is dealing with health issues due to working at Ground Zero.

Ohhh man a Dark Side styled doc would be nice. No holds bard