Mariner’s Future Night

For anyone who missed it, Brandon Morrow made his Major League debut as a starting pitcher tonight. It was a long time coming. And I mean from the instant they drafted him long time. Two years ago Morrow was drafted fifth overall by the Mariners out of the University of California Berkley as a starting pitcher. After only 16 innings in the minors, he was rushed to the big league club out of spring training because of his electric fastball. The blogosphere, the papers, and the organization were all mass debating whether this was the right thing to do, as they watched Bellevue native and UW alum Tim Lincecum light up the National League. Lincecum was drafted 10th overallby the San Francisco Giants and people were outraged when the M’s passed up on him. This year he is 15-3 with a 2.60 ERA and leads the league in strike outs. I think daily about what it could have been like to have a Felix/Lincecum 1-2 punch. But never again will those thoughts enter my mind.

Tonight no one expected this. No one expected Morrow to get past 5 innings. I personally saw 3 or 4, with several runs given up. But he was lights out. There was so many things about his game he needed to adjust to become a successful starting pitcher and he nailed every single one of them. His fastball was consistantly in the mid 90’s. Hes curveball had such a nasty break it left hitters devastated and looking down right foolish. The mix of his pitches, the abilty to keep hitters off balance, and the ability to not allow the other team even a single hit through 7+ innings. And this was not some watered down Kansas City AAA lineup. This was the New York Yankees. A-Rod went 0-3. Jeter went 0-3. Hell, everyone went ofer until he finally ran out of gas late in the 8th inning. He gave up a pinch hit to some guy I had never heard of and Riggleman took him out as he had already exceeded his 90 pitch limit by sixteen. All of Safeco Field had never been so relieved, yet so disapointed, yet so extatic for the future of baseball in the emerald city.

Feel the Heat


It was just yesterday that Nancy brought up a pilot, starring Jack Black and Owen Wilson, that I swore I’d heard about a few years back. Reading up on the web I found out this pilot was the Ben Stiller directed action/comedy show by the name of “Heat Vision and Jack”. The show stars none other than Jack Black as former astronaut Jack Austin, who’s gained super intelligence after a space voyage, accompanied by his talking motorcycle/former room mate played by Owen Wilson running from Nasa led by the evil Ron Silver, played by Timecop villain Ron Silver.

I bring up this up almost 10 year old pilot after I stumbling upon it on Youtube and I must say I’m disappointed that it never aired. In a show that obviously parodies 80s action shows like Knightrider , Heat Vision and Jack is a purposefully corny and fairly amusing show. Watching it I try to pinpoint why this Fox pilot never got off the ground and I’ve come to a few theories.

1. This pilot was made before Jack Black had his breakout role in High Fidelity thus he didn’t the same name recognition he has today.
2. The Show was probably looked upon as too corny, even if was supposed to be.
3. Because Fox is just a collection of complete douche-bags, I’m sure TBS or Comedy Central would of had this on the air in a heartbeat.

I also read that there’s been plans to someday perhaps make a movie out of this idea and based off of what I’ve seen in this pilot, I approve this venture. So for now I leave you with the original 30 minute pilot, but I’d watch it fast, you never know how long a certain video will last on Youtube.

With or Without U2


So I guess U2 recently announced on their website that their album that was already set to be released in November won’t be coming out until 2009.  According to Bono the band has recorded around 50 to 60 songs for the new album and have “hit a rich songwriting vein” and don’t want to stop.  Well this sounds promising and all, but I thought I had heard that they were already completely finished with the album, couldn’t they have just released another collection of all these songs later?  However, it’s hard for me to complain when there have been so many enjoyable albums to come out this year (including the great new Brian Wilson album that came out this week).  Still, this new U2 album better be pretty damn good.

R.I.P. Don LaFontaine


Don LaFontaine
1940-2008
Cat Fancy would like to give our deepest sympathy towards the passing of voiceover legend Don LaFontaine. A name that I think most, including myself, may not recognize by name but surely by voice. With over 5,000 movie trailer voiceovers under his belt, Don’s delivery of “In a world…” would always send shivers down our spines and resonate in our ears.

Probably most recently seen in that Geico commercial, Don was working pretty much up until his death in which he succumbed to complications from pneumothorax yesterday at the age of 68. It’s going to be a much different experience viewing trailers without that classic bass voice gone from theaters, but I hopefully we can all remember what it was like to live “In a world with Don LaFontaine.”

Albummed

Dear God! Another Rock Band post!

As most Rock Band players know by now, Rush’s Moving Pictures did not make it to DLC this week. That’s right, for the first time since the game launched, we didn’t have any new music to download on Tuesday. Kinda makes you realize how spoiled we are on the stuff, doesn’t it?

Harmonix says they’re sorry and that the album will be up in a few weeks. They say there’s some sort of technical issue. I’m guessing the song “YYZ” being instrumental is messing a lot of stuff up, but I can’t say that for sure.

In it’s place, they uploaded three songs by some band called Locksley. They are pretty cheap, but who the hell is Locksley?

In light of this sad week, Harmonix announced the albums that would be made DLC in the coming months. They are Foo Fighters’ The Colour and the Shape, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Jane’s Addiction’s Nothing’s Shocking, Megadeth’s Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying and Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Texas Flood. They also said they would be doing another greatest hits, this time for No Doubt. Sure, I really look forward to playing several of those albums, but my first reaction to learning this?

What happened to Nevermind?

Diggin’ It

It was just yesterday that I attended the sold out first show of the Oasis 2008 “Dig Out Your Soul” tour at WaMu theater, and I got a lot on my mind. Promoting their upcoming album Dig Out Your Soul due out in the U.S. on October 7th, I’m here to give you my play-by-play experience of viewing those infamous bad boys from Manchester for my second time.

Before the Show
Arriving in Seattle to the sound of my Oasis playlist in the car, we arrived at WaMu at about 5:00p, a half hour before doors would open. Just narrowly beating Mariners traffic of which there was very little “Hey-Oh!” you know because no one goes anymore. Anyways, being that the show was reserved seating we decided to screw waiting in a line, and instead went over and got some of those over-sized hot dogs with the caramelized onions on them. The dogs were fine and pretty filling but there was this irritating asian guy yelling “Peanuts!” right in front off us and then birds defecated on my brother and my dad, so we decided to kill some time in line and at 5:30 headed inside.

I usually like to get a shirt or some kind of souvenir before the show, before the crowd gets to big and forced myself into a mob of people buying shirts and posters while Paul and my dad went to go get some Red Bull. I only had two people in front of me, but these two ladies bought over $200 dollars worth of stuff and since Wamu’s credit taking devices were broken, the two had to find an alternate way to pay. By the time it came to my I picked out a very basic red shirt with the Oasis logo at an outrageously overpriced $35 dollars, I was pissed but I didn’t want to walk away empty handed after being suffocated in a mob.

A little later we all met up and decided to head to our seats, we made our way to the left center section and sat down in row 24. Definitely not as good as row 3 the last time I saw Oasis, but still some pretty respectable seats, even if they were like $65 dollars each. At this point there was only about a half hour before the show and now we would play the waiting game.


First Act: Matt Costa
Opening up the show was solo singer/songwriter Matt Costa, whom I knew beforehand for his song Mr. Pitiful which strangely enough he didn’t play. Taking the stage with an acoustic guitar and his guitar bound friend Mitch, he looked to be a nice change of pace after listening to the deafening house music of WaMu. His music for the most part was pleasant pop with a few bluesy numbers in-between accompanied by a very strong voice. I liked a handful of his songs and wouldn’t mind hearing a couple of cuts off of his last album. He didn’t play for very long, but long enough for an opening act. He finished his set with a fun acapella piece took a bow and thanked the audience. I was disappointed that he didn’t play the only song I knew him for, but it was still enjoyable.


Second Act: Ryan Adams and The Cardinals
Next up was Southern alt-country/rock singer Ryan Adams, not to be confused with Canadian superstar Brian Adams. A lot of people seemed to be pretty big fans but I frankly had no idea who he was. I did some research before the show to find out Adams and his band had been on Letterman like a billion times, but I honestly wasn’t looking forward to their rock/country stylings and after watching them I knew why.

Ryan Adams and The Cardinals were boring, boring, boring, I had absolutely no fun. In what seemed to be a neverending performance I couldn’t find a single song I liked except maybe this song that kind of sounded like that “Who Do You Love?” song from those Sam Addams commercials. They did a lot of unique harmonizing but I got to say Ryan Adam’s probably has the worst voice in the group and I found his laid back “I’m so cool disposition” to be annoying. They were getting a pretty positive reaction but not from myself, my dad or my brother, I just couldn’t wait for it end which thankfully about 45 something minutes later it did.

They ended their set somewhere at about 8:30 and after the house lights came on a whole crew of guys rushed the stage to set up Oasis stuff, who would soon take the stage.


Final Act: Oasis
Finally at 9:00p the lights dimmed and the anticipation started to set in. People were trying to chant “Oa-sis! Oa-sis!” but it just sounded bad, too difficult a name to chant I guess. Soon enough a sweet light show hit the stage with four large screens flashing imagery to the tune of Oasis’ “Fuckin’ in The Bushes” playing on the house speakers (which is usually how they’ve started their shows since about 2000) and not long after; Liam, Noel, Andy, Gem and new drummer Chris Sharrock took the stage to roaring applause and opened the show with “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star.”

The energy was high as Oasis banged through a collection of both new and old songs. The last time I saw them their top priority was playing all the tracks off their new album, but with Dig Out Your Soul not coming out until October, they only played about four new songs which was fine for me, cause I got to see a lot of songs I didn’t see last time.

They seemed to play a lot off of Definitely Maybe but after I wrote down the whole set list later I’d say it was pretty diverse. There were four songs from Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, three from Don’t Believe the Truth, two from the B-side compilation album The Masterplan. one from Standing On the Shoulder of Giants, one from Heathen Chemistry, none from Be Here Now and four new songs, so it was definitely mixed up. I rather enjoyed all the new stuff and couldn’t be more excited for the new album, but I could talk about that kinda stuff all day.

The audience was pretty enthusiastic and not too annoying from my vantage point, except this one guy who after every song would yell “Fuck Off!” I couldn’t tell why he was doing that but his friends thought he was pretty funny, some people I’ll never understand. One hilarious highlight was during Noel and Gem’s acoustic rendition of “Don’t Look Back In Anger”” when the audience, who sang quite poorly, sang the end of the song during an extended guitar break. Noel laughed and said something about Australians maybe but fun was had by all.

The show ended with an epic performance of “I Am the Walrus” which was damn heavy and a fitting end to a truly epic rock show. After our hearing returned, my dad, Paul and myself took to the rain drenched streets of Seattle filled with fans singing loudly and homeless people trying to sell their homemade inventions. We were quick to leave and after a half hour of muddling through stormy Seattle picked up some McDonald’s chow, as is our tradition after concerts, and headed home.

Set List
(Intro) Fuckin’ in the Bushes
Rock ‘n’ Roll Star
Lyla
The Shock of Lightning (New Song and First Single) “
Cigarettes and Alcohol
The Meaning of Soul
To Be Where There’s Life (New Song)
The Masterplan
Songbird
Slide Away
Morning Glory
Ain’t Got Nothin’ (New Song)
The Importance of Being Idle
Wonderwall
Supersonic

Encore
Don’t Look Back In Anger (Acoustic)
Falling Down (New Song)
Champagne Supernova
I Am The Walrus

Decidin’ On Biden


It was just earlier today that Barack Obama revealed his running mate for the 08′ Election, and it’s none other than senior U.S. Senator Joeseph R. Biden Jr. Selected for his experience in foreign policy, national security and appeal to the common hard working american. Were all excited here at Cat Fancy, for what should prove to be one of the most important and exciting elections in years and hope for the best. I suppose you could of got far more information from just about any other source, but we like you to know that were aware of the world around us… Like can you believe their planning on making a David Beckham Musical? These are the issues that we face in our day to day lives.