{"id":569,"date":"2005-05-22T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-23T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2005\/05\/22\/\/"},"modified":"2005-10-16T01:47:48","modified_gmt":"2005-10-16T05:47:48","slug":"revenge-of-the-fanboys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/2005\/05\/22\/revenge-of-the-fanboys\/","title":{"rendered":"Revenge of the fanboys"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As E has already written about<\/a>, Friday was the most local concert on the “Dear Friends” Final Fantasy concert tour sponsored by Squeenix. We’d purchased tickets some time ago, because tickets to the theatre and the symphony are about the only kind of tickets one can get these days.<\/p>\n

After an inauspicious start to the day (Bob overslept), the remainder went fairly smoothly. We departed only 20 minutes later than anticipated and travelled down 495 in light traffic until we approached the Pike at Worcester. Normally we would get off at 290 and thus connect up with I-90 further on, but it was rush hour on a Friday and I decided that would be risky, since in my experience, 290 is perpetually under construction. I’ve no way of knowing if this was a good decision or not; we did hit traffic as we came close to the tollbooth and we lost a good chunk of time as a result. But there might have been more had we gone the other way. It’s hard to say.<\/p>\n

In any case we had ample time even with the brief interruption of traffic and soon we cruised into Hartford. A brief interlude followed where Bob was uncertain that the lot we were parking in was okay for us to use, but we put those concerns aside and, rather than wander up and down the main street in search of a fast food place, we claimed a table in the lobby of the Bushnell and paid the penalty of convenience by eating some of their overpriced food.<\/p>\n

The concertgoers were an eclectic bunch. The majority were normal geeks like ourselves: people in regular street clothes that varied from casual to business and were probably between 20 and 35. A small group were clearly Bushnell regulars, who were nonplussed by the remaining group, the abnormal geeks, who had decided that a symphony concert was an excellent chance to trot out their cosplay wardrobe.<\/p>\n

Sigh.<\/p>\n

I really don’t have anything against cosplayers per se. But I resent the encroachment of fan culture into all arenas of life. A convention. Fine. Excellent place to display your costuming prowess. They even have a contest for it! The movie theatre. Not so much. You’re a fan, great. But I’m here to watch the movie, not to gawk at your generic cloak and stupid elf wig. The sideshow isn’t really appreciated. The regular theatre. Yes, we’re going to see Phantom. What a clever idea to dress up as the Phantom yourself. Ha ha. Stop it.<\/p>\n

It gets wearing after a while, and it encourages behavior that is simply not acceptable at certain events. When people applaud in the middle of a movie just because their favorite character has done something cool, it pisses me off. Because half the time their noise means I’ve just missed a line, or at the very least I’ve been jarred out of concentrating on the story.<\/p>\n

In any case, the concert here was case in point. It was not helped by having a random DJ sent out to emcee the thing. The symphony does not equal a rock concert; you should not make whooping noises, you should not clap on the beat, you should not yell the names of the performers. You should sit quietly while the orchestra is playing and listen to the music. That was irritation number one.<\/p>\n

Irritations numbers two through four were the giant video screens at the front of the hall. They hung down over the top half of the stage, no doubt changing the acoustics of the hall, but at the very least, drawing the eye to them and making it difficult to concentrate on the sound. And what did these video screens display 90% of the time? A giant advertisement (The Square Enix logo alternating with the Dear Friends logo) and super closeups of individuals in the orchestra. It was bizarre and stupid and very poorly done.<\/p>\n

The other 10% of the time the screens were used to display bits of FMVs from the games, generally those that went with the music that was being played at the time. It’s unfortunate that the video was mishandled the way it was, and I don’t understand it at all. They needn’t have restricted themselves to FMVs that played during the game with that music; they could have put together a montage for each piece, even including the non-FMV scenes. It was clear that some editing had occurred in any case, since several bits were chopped out of some of the scenes. If they were going to bother with the video accompaniment at all, this is what they should have done.<\/p>\n

Instead, they gave an average of about 10 seconds of video for most pieces, followed by the distracting and strange closeups of the musicians. I did not really need to see the piccolo player’s head 25 feet wide, thanks.<\/p>\n

However, in spite of these issues, I think the concert was pretty good. My main complaint (ha, did you think I was done complaining?) is that it was too darn short. Only 90 minutes long, not counting the 15 minute break in the middle. There should have been a third section after a second break.<\/p>\n

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As E has already written about, Friday was the most local concert on the “Dear Friends” Final Fantasy concert tour sponsored by Squeenix. We’d purchased tickets some time ago, because tickets to the theatre and the symphony are about the only kind of tickets one can get these days. After an inauspicious start to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,5,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}