An Ozztastick Zombiefest!!!!

The weather around here has been the poops. Lots of cold and snow followed by both cold and snow with more snow and cold that will most certainly follow. If one day isn't snow filled, it's sure to be deathly cold. Old man winter is getting quite abrasive early in the season.

Then there's the fact that I just got home from Xmas shopping. Figuring what to get who and wondering if they have it already really blows!

But, despite Mother Nature's hatred toward mankind and the huge Xmas dent in my wallet there was one wonderful moment this week.

Thursday afternoon I'm checking my phone messages on my lunch break and there's one from my podcasting buddy, Double A Man. He tells me he has a couple of free tickets to go see Rob Zombie and Ozzy Osborne in concert. Now who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth. It had been about 10 years since I saw Ozzy last (on his first farewell tour) and I've never seen Rob Zombie in concert before and have always heard it's quite the spectacle!

I have to say the show was awesome!!! We got there just a Zombie was about to take the stage. Once we got seated the lights went down and 6 or so video screens started playing the faux movie preview that Rob Zombie produced for the two Grindhouse movies. Then the giant devil's head that was at the center of the stage and doubles as the drum platform opened up and Rob Zombie walked out from it as the band drove into the Zombie tune "American Witch". the show featured a lot of fun schlocky, horror induced multimedia as well as lots of fireball pyro effects, dancing girls and Mr. Zombie strutting and hopping around the stage. The only disappointment was the fact that his set list was exactly the same as his new live album's. So if you have the album, you know exactly what he's going to play and in what order. You'd think he'd surprise us and change it up a bit. In any case it's great to see that showmanship and imagination haven't been totally killed off by the god awful grunge music scene of the 90's.

You'd think that it would take a while for the roadies to change the set up for Ozzy after Zombie. It literally was like 15 minutes, the quickest change over I've ever witnessed in all of my 20 plus years of concert going.

The lights went out once again as a vignette of pop-culture spoofs with Ozzy edited into them played on the giant curtain and two side video screens. Some of the little skits featured were from Pirates of the Caribbean (Ozzy is Capt. jack and bites the head off of a parrot), The Office (Ozzy relieves himself in ????? office) and The Queen (Ozzy.... Ozzy... well, Ozzy has intimate relations with the queen of England). This led to the infamous Ozzy intro music of ???????? Then the Zack Wilde's guitar starts ripping through the speakers and next thing you know the curtain drops and Ozzy and the boys are pluggin' away at his latest single, "Never going to Stop" Ozzy was in fine spirits and many times during the show he sprayed foam out of a fire hose into the first few rows. Of course the giant monitors up and around the stage caught all of the foam covered goofs banging their heads with nary care in the world.

Ozzy stuck to much of his solo repertoire while ending the final song of the last encore with Sabbath's "Paranoid". During the final bow, a plethora of fireworks blew up over the heads of the band as they did a mock fall to the floor schtick. It was the type of big huge rock show that I hadn't seen in a long long time. I enjoyed it throughly!


I've also been doing a lot of video gaming as of late. I recently blew through Medal of Honor: Airborne. This was a fine addition to the line of MOH WWII FPS games! It took me about 9 hours total to get through and much of it was pretty challenging. It could have been slightly longer, but still a good game.

Another one I rented a bit back was TimeShift. This puppy looked darn good and was real challenging! At times it was darn right frustrating. The look took from a sort of not too distant future meshed with a bit of steam punk in an alternate history. A lot of the plot we've seen before (was very reminiscent of Half-Life 2). One of the main features touted for this game was the fact that you can manipulate time by slowing it, traveling back in it and speeding it up. This sounds like it would be awesome, but it kind of falls short as you're only given a few seconds ot time travel capabilities each time you use it. This leads to some frustrating deaths as you'll need to master the time travel techniques to get through many traps and puzzles.

I've also been playing the Shivering Isles add on to Oblivion. It's great to be able to travel in a whole new realm of the massive RPG. There's some pretty creepy and odd quests, areas, creatures and NPC's to deal with. So far it's very cool!


I know what most of you are asking yourselves, "What the frack should I get Zangz this Xmas?" Well, here are a couple of ideas.

- Money towards my new computer.
- Bioshock for the Xbox 360
- Mass Effect for the Xbox 360.

Well, I have a busy week ahead of me (so if I don't get in here before the holidays, here's wishing you and yours a very geeked out Holiday Festivus!

Until next time, Stay Vertical!

Zangz.