Mae back from the ashes!

Not too long ago I was sad to see that two of the members of one of my favorite bands had decided to leave. This band being Mae and the members leaving being Rob Sweitze the keyboardist and Mark Padgett the bassist. This was frustrating because it came on tails of a big CD kickoff as they had barely been signed by a large label, (Capitol Records) and they had just barely came out with an album that seemed to be getting a decent amount of radio play.
I was further disheartened to hear that people who heard them in concert were not very impressed with what they heard or saw. I had never seen a Mae performance that didn't at least make me wish that I could join a band or their band and rock on stage with them because they made it seem so fun and rewarding. I was sad to see an awesome band have to leave before I felt it was their time.
I worried that the nail in the coffin was when in early 2008 they announced that they had decieded to split ways with Capitol Records. I feared that this would leave my band in the type of convoluted uncertainty that I had seen kill so many other good acts out there.
The other day I decided to stroll onto their website to touch a bit of nostalgia and I found the song that you are hopefully enjoying right now. Not only that but they are using their current music to support an awesome charity, (In true Mae fashion.) I hope you enjoy these tunes as much as I do and give to this awesome charity.
So in short, the band has regrouped and become the band that I fell in love with again with a new CD, a new sound, and a new tour. The Salt Lake City date is this May 16th at the Avalon theatre. I can guarantee you that you will be very hard pressed to find a better show for less than $12.00, For the price of two value menu combo’s you can go see an amazing band play their hearts out. A fair-trade if I ever have heard of it. I hope you can make it because I know that I’ll be there, (Nate this means you.) Be sure to bring some extra cash for a CD and a T-shirt at the goodies table.

The Good Ol Days

Man I miss the good ol days, I know you can remember it, the good ol days when you had a little more ownership with the Jazz Franchise. I remember a time when I didn’t care about the teams record, I didn’t care about anything except for the fact that to me they were family. Mike Brown, “The Bear,” Mark Eaton, even though he seemed more like a Viking warrior than a basketball player, Theodore “Blue” Edwards, and of course Karl Malone. But I miss most of all John Stockton.

A time when the Lakers sucked. But like I said I didn't care all I wanted to do was see my boy's playing the game. I was a Junior Jazz man myself which meant that in a small way I was a member of the team. But something happened, maybe it was because the Jazz had those two years when they went to the champoinship Maybe that gave us a taste and maybe that taste was Pandora’s box where we wouldn’t be happy unless we won the championship. Or maybe it’s the fact that the NBA isn’t what it used to be and has just a bunch of punks in it. It wasn’t like I didn’t realize that there were better teams out there, we knew but for a small second those people were family, I remember when the Jazz lost to the Sun’s in the first round of the playoffs. I went out to shoot some hoops right after. I don’t know why, maybe I was just coddling my broken heart maybe I thought I was training for a time when I could grow up and save the Jazz and lead them to the championship. Still the fact was that the Jazz were less than perfect and I knew that but I still loved them because they were family.

Every time I opened up some of my Hoops, or Skybox cards I hoped for a few things, a Michael Jordan card, a rookie card, or a Jazz card, in that order. I remember when the Jazz were in the finals, my dad and I were at a campout (Camp Concentration) where it was against the rules to listen to the game, this didn’t really matter since we were in the mountains and it was impossible to see the game anyway. But my dad and I luckily got reception in our car and we spent the good part of that night listening to the game while running our battery down in the middle of the woods.

Fact is I still consider John Stockton Family. Part of me would still be crushed if he were ever impliccated in something negative which isn't the same thing to say about Karl malone as he lost favor in my eyes after he kinda forsook the team to go to the enemy. And especially since last time I saw him (At Larry Millers Viewing) in any media he looked like he had just come from a prison yard. But even though he fell from grace I still would give any of these gents the shirt off my back. Because they still are family as I grew up with them. And in a very real way they taught me how to play basketball.

But times have changed and the sad reality is I am now a bandwagon fan. And that is the best-case scenario fact is that somewhere between the lockout and now I kinda stopped paying attention. Oh well at least there’s still the memories.

That Sick Feeling

About a week ago my Fiance reminded me that I would only be single for about three more weeks. And I wouldn't say I got scared because I really am not scared of being married to Emma 
But I do think that it kind of freaked me out to be reminded that I had a final in about a week and a half. Lately my Fiance reminds me about once a day of how much time we have left until we get married and I can't tell if I am nervous about getting married or nervous about finals and the end of the semester. Oh well either way I'll have to deal with both of them sooner or later, and I'll tell you this much I think that I am deffinately more nervous about my finals than getting married. And that isn't to say that I'm doing bad in my classes, and this blog isn't to say that I'm scared to get married I just thought it would be interesting to bring it up. To be completely honest I think with both instances I'm more excited for the day after the event than for the day of the event.

Please Perez Don't hurt her

Be careful the video has a little language for those who are sensitive. Now I have some very real and very strong opinions about what happened at the Miss USA pageant with regards to the Miss California debacle. But I don’t feel like talking about that right now except to say that I don’t think that it was just a coincidence that Miss California got a question that talked about Gay Marriage, what with the prop 8 situation. And also to say that this was the worst answer to a question is to forget the Miss Teen USA that although was in a different contest, it puts that question to shame.

I think that if we're being honest with ourselves the only thing that miss California was truly guilty of is being a little too upfront with her political opinion in a situation where she couldn’t defend it or give her answers the true credit they deserved. I think a better orator could have pulled it off but seriously this girl isn’t no Obama. But you got to hand it to her. This chick has cajones. I think if you were honest with yourself you’d have to admit that it would be very hard to share your opinion to such a hot question on national television. She probably knew what she had to answer in order to get the make that talking heads and sycophants happy, but she decided to stand for something so good on you. I wish I had that kind of gumption.


With that being said I would just like to say that what this whole situation brought to light was how much I really hate Perez Hilton. Just because you are loud doesn’t mean that people like you, just because you are Gay doesn’t mean that you are the voice of the Gay community, and just because people know who you are, that doesn’t really mean you even famous and it especially doesn’t mean that you are admired.

The saddest thing about the whole situation is that I know that there are a lot of people who knew this douche bag and just were okay with it because they knew that what goes around comes around and that in the world wouldn’t stand to support such an idiot let alone let him thrive, and now they stare in awe because for whatever reason someone decided to let this idiot become famous. I’m sure it just kills people when they realize this. Granted… life is not fair, Michael Bay still gets to make movies, Paris Hilton will spend more money on underwear this year than I’ll probably make in two, and Perez is obviously respected enough to be a judge for the Miss USA pageant (which is a scholarship program BTW.)

Still I don’t understand why people allow idiots to be the voice of their beliefs. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, or Tom Hanks. Fact is they are just people and in my opinion very small and very obtuse people. Let us not forget this. 

I remember as a child thinking of all the people who bullied me. I had a fantasy that the Jazz would draft me when I grew up and I’d lead them to the championships, and at a press conference after I’d say, “Derek ______, Ricky _____, Pete ______, And _______ was always a jerk to me when I was a kid, if you are employing them please fire them.” I thought this would be the sweetest revenge. Now I just think that they are all probably rich and doing well, and I hope they are. At least they aren’t a Gay overrated overpaid blogger who makes it his job to out the whole Gay world and tried to announce Castro’s death even though *spoiler alert* he hasn't actually died. I mean just because you’re Floridian doesn’t mean you don’t have to do real research when you claim a Cuban Dictator is dead. Heck if you claim anyone’s dead they very well should be dead. Cuz if they aren’t they’re probably going to say something, just ask Tony Almeda.

Sometimes I applaud a well placed error

Sometimes for fun I like to listen to the Sean Hannity show. Mostly because he is an ignoramus, sycophant and well like Toby from the office said, “Michael's like a movie on a plane. You know it's not great but it's something to watch. And then when it's over, you're like, how much time is left on this flight. You know, now what?” That’s how I feel about Sean Hannity. I guess I just bring it up because that clown is always complaining about, “The Liberal Press.” Creating one of the greatest SNAFU’s of Irony since well all of those stupid tea partys that keep coming up protesting wasteful spending, because he’s the embodiment of what I consider non-partisan. I realize that there does exist slanted media… I believe it is called Fox News, but other than that I hold true to a theory that was presented to me in a Chuck Klosterman book. There doesn't exist a slanted media because if you have ever worked for a real news outlet you barely have any time to even put out the news period let alone slant it towords your own plitical agenda.

Case in point is what happened at Brigham Young University the other day. A typo heard around the world you might say. I honestly feel a little bad for the poor undergrad who was

unfortunate enough to make this mistake. Now on the video there is a student who claimed that he felt like it was too obvious of a typo for it to be a typo and claimed that it must have been done on purpose. Who does this guy think he is? I’m sure that this poor person spent the good part of the day majorly bummed out. But feelings apart from the issue the fact still remains that the paper went through two more editors before it was released for printing. I know that the Utah Statesman (USU's Student Paper) has its fair share of typos and AP errors in it but luckily *knock on wood* none of their errors have caused so much controversy as this one did at BYU. Although most people just think it is funny as do I, but understandably The Daily Universe didn’t think it was too funny as they went through the pain of pulling all 18,500 published copies of its printed papers from newsstands around the campus. As well as releasing a lengthy story as to what happened and a full apology.
All I can say is this is NOT the semester to be taking a news writing class at BYU. I shudder to think what their final is going to look like. On the other hand I already took a news writing class at USU and Jay Wamsley my professor always made us do our stories in word pad. The reason why, he didn’t want us to use the spell checker on Word. You are wise beyond your years Jay. If only BYU had a Jay Wamsley of their own they’d never have found themselves in this problem.

This one goes out to all the kids of spring

I just don’t know how I would be able to survive in a place that didn’t have at least some flavor of all four seasons. This doesn’t mean that it’s rainy in December, no I mean that there is full on snow and freezing cold and my wife complains when we go to the car and yells at me because I left the door open for too long. And when fall hits it is actually fall, meaning that the leaves are falling and not because some boll weevil infected it no because it is cold and so the tree decides to die for a temporary time.

I love all seasons, and I mean that, I’m not one of those fair weather fans of the seasons. Every time that we are going into a new season I find myself yearning to the last season. Right now part of me wishes that we’d have a huge snowstorm that pours about three feet of that beautiful stuff on the ground. I think that this is because I had such a great childhood. Winter meant snow and snow was like a toy, spring meant I could go outside, summer meant I could go to the pool, and fall meant I could play in the leaves. I think you’ve figured out by now that I didn’t have too many video games when I was a kid.

Few people remind me more of my youth than my nieces. They seem to constantly be a phantasmagoria of fun, they love TV just like any other kid but they remind me how simple life used to be. Especially the youngest, well I use the term youngest loosely she isn't the youngest but she's pody trained which puts her out of the baby catagory and into the child catagory, and she is the youngest child.  She reminds me of those people in that movie, “The God’s Must Be Crazy.” You know the one where they find an old bottle and they find a million uses for the dang thing, well that’s her. She seems to be cool with anything. If there isn't anything going on she can twirl, that's all just twirl, that's fine, it reminds me of when I was a kid I could just keep myself occupied by shifting my weight left to right and watching my arms flop up and down. Her trust is so naked; she’ll do just about anything to be in the group, probably just an unfortunate effect of being a middle child. I say that being the middle child and knowing how it feels to do something knowing you were being picked on but just complying with it so you could remain part of the group. Still but it is this trust and undaunting persuit of joy that makes me so envious of where she is in life.

I really miss those days when everything I did was fun and full of whimsy. I watch my nieces do their karaoke and I get the feeling that for those few seconds they really truly believe that they really are Hannah Montana, even though that is a person who is wholly fictional, even in the fictional television series she is, but for those short three minutes and forty five seconds while my nieces are doing their thing on the karaoke machine they are an aspiration of Hannah Montana.

Last week the people who rent the apartment that my parents have downstairs had their grandchildren over for, whatever reason. They went into my backyard and were playing. I think that our tenant was actually a little worried that they annoyed me, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It was nice to have kids in that old backyard playing. Glasses are meant to be broken, milk is meant to be spilt, and kids need to play. So to all you kids that are excited to see the snow melt, so that your parents can take out the trampoline and you can play outside for extended periods of time… this ones for you!

Goodbye... My sweet Lady.

There is no secret about it, the economy is bad… really bad. Still you gotta live your day to day. I have slowly yet surely lost one of the loves of my life. In 2001 I purchased my first vehicle. It was a beautiful ride a 2004 Honda Accord EX. I called her, “The Lady” and I loved her hopelessly for the longest time. A year ago my girlfriend got a new New Honda Accord which basically beats up on my car and makes it feel bad. Not to say that my car literally has depression issues but truth be told the car is 15 years old and well let’s face it anything that is 15 years old be it your child, your clothes, a CD, your car isn’t as cool as it was 15 years ago when you brought it home for the first time.
I have come to realize that as soon as I can afford it, (Code for when I graduate and get a decent job) I am going to have to get a new car. Where once I thought that, “The Lady” Would be my one car ride for the rest of her life I must realize that she’s got to go. So what to trade her with? I have thought of three vehicles that might make life better.

1. The Toyota Prius:

It never ceases to amaze me how a car that starts at $22,000 can bring the wow factor of vehicles that cost twice or three times as much. I could get into this ride quite easily and be king of the road. I even read that many of the Oscar nominees are going to be escorted to the ceremony via Prius.
But one needs to really wonder if they are buying it because they like the car or because they want to feel like Leonardo Dicaprio while they are driving their car.

2. The Tesla Roadster

The beautiful synchronization of form and function. I first saw this car years ago, it is pretty well known to the public although unknown to the public at large, if that makes any sense. It supposedly gets about 360 miles on a single charge and does it for about 36 cents a gallon. Obviously this is an equivalent comparison since it doesn’t run on gas and I don’t know where they got that figure but it does sound cool to me. It blows my mind, but let’s face it… I just don’t have $110,000 to spend on a car yet. Or if I’m honest ever… maybe someday but I doubt it.

3. The Chevy Volt

So this car should be called Superman because it is supposed to save the world. It’s a Chevy… enough said about that but one should think about it. Now this is saying that GM will be around by 2010 some might say of course, others might say that it isn’t crazy to think that they might not. Like I said assuming GM can pull things together enough to pull this car out of production. It is supposed to go 40 miles without the need for gas and the will kick in a gas motor that can take you another 300 miles. Sounds good to me. It is priced at $40,000ish. Granted that, “ish” can be very important, but let’s face it when you hear that your car won’t take any gasoline the only thing you think is that this car might as well cost $0.

Oh well until then I’ll just be content with my Lady, after thinking what’d cost to replace her I might have her longer than I realize.

Sometimes I wish I could appreciate High School Musical 3 as a great movie

I live in a college town that happens to barely have over 100,000 people in the surrounding area. This isn’t a blog about how lame it is and how I wish I had moved to New York to find my soul. Logan is a quaint city that is in many ways quite perfect. I’m not the only one to say this as most of the people who go to Utah State agree that Logan really is small enough for you to appreciate a smallish town feeling and large enough so you aren’t hating life. Now this is quickly becoming a large town vs small town blog and this is not my intention I have very strong feelings and views either way but what I’m trying to say is that I’m a college student and I watch a ton of movies.

In reality I really hate that fact, I really wish I wasted all my time with a computer playing video games but I have somehow gone without a computer and I just barely got an Xbox 360 and well… I don’t really have the coin to waste on the games. Worse than that I also realize that it is in college that a vast majority of people watch horrible movies… Movies that should have never been made, and when I say movies that should have never been made I don’t mean movies that are so bad that they gain an intrinsic coolness, that is they are so bad that they are cool to some people who like to watch the worst movies ever made (these would be such titles as Battlefield Earth, Gigli, Cool as Ice [starring Vanilla Ice], and Caligula.)

               (Sometimes you can be, "Too cool for School")

I mean these are movies that really should have never been made like they have no business ever being placed on earth they join in the ranks of things like Celine Dion, furby, Or that stupid paper clip help icon that used to be on all of Microsoft’s office products. These would be titles like, Monkey trouble anything that has National Lampoons on it that doesn’t star Chevy Chase, the deluge of titles that are just repeating the same old tired formula made with the scary movie titles, which was a copy of the hot shots movies, which was a copy of the naked gun movies, which was a copy of the Mel Brooks movies, and well anything starring Jason Biggs. The hardest thing is the realization that the latter two would not have been made were it not for the fact that people my age go and see enough of these movies so that they somehow make a profit

That being said I don’t go and see these movies, I like to think that I try hard to only see movies that are awesome, and if not it is only because it only cost a dollar to get into it. Sure every once in awhile a crappy movie will sneak into the mix (Don’t even ask about the Thanksgiving Alexander disaster of 2004)
                                    

(Sadly Angelina wasn't hot enough to save this movie.)

but overall I mostly see good movies but what are you supposed to do when there is absolutely nothing out there. I mean seriously… Nothing.

Last year I freaked out because everyone was talking up Juno so much and acting like it was going to be the movie of the year and blah blah blah, Diablo Cody’s better than sliced bread. I contended that although Juno was a great if not amazing movie it was just that. It did not move anybody and it did not make some new precedent for which all new movies up until that point would be judged… I said the same thing the previous year with Little Miss Sunshine. It was just a good movie and thus it didn’t deserve such a title. No country for old men won the oscar and all was right with the world (Kinda, I still don't think that movie was all that hot either) I looked forward to 2009 to see another list of great nominations that I agreed should make the list, But then the Oscar nominations for this year came out and the only thing that we know for a surety is that the ceremony this year will be in a phrase…
                                          

                            (A big crap Sandwich)

What happened to The Dark Night, or Wall-E? (Just to name a few.) Now I’m sure that the nominations were at least okay and I’m not saying that they don’t deserve to be nominated but it is a smack in the face reminding me of just how crummy a movie year we have actually had. For my money the winner should be Benjamin Button but that’s because it’s the only movie I have seen on the list. Unless you live in an art theatre or LA or NY or steal movies off the net there is no way you could have seen all of the nominees. Which for me begs the question is it really just that true that there was such a small amount of good movies released that they had to go the whole… You didn’t see it but trust us it was awesome route? I dare anyone who reads this to try and find 10 people in the general population who have even heard a plot summery of The Reader... let alone 10 people who have seen the movie. I dare you to try it, you know why because it can't be done... yet this movie is nominated for best picture by some act of fate!

Every November there is magic in the air I am happy because after a 3-month drought there are movies that I want to see. Sadly that isn’t exactly what happened this year. Everyone freaked about Twilight, Harry Potter was put on hold and I was forced to watch a Keanu Reeves movie… Yes it got so bad I got mildly excited to see a Keanu Reeves movie! (don't even get me started on HSM3 or Beverly Hills Chihuahua) There was literally nothing I wanted to watch until Christmas… Not December, literaly there was nothing to watch until December 25th. I just say this because I saw a television spot where people were talking about how the economy is affecting the ticket sales at the box office… I say get real man, how about Hollywood come out with a decent movie and than I’ll pay the five to ten bucks it costs to go see it. Let’s not forget that Gone With the Wind was released in the depression.

I guess the list of nominations could have been worse though...(Chevy Chase has deffinately seen better times not to mention Jon Voight who should be ashamed of himself he's got an oscar, although it probably is Jamie Pressly's best performance)

Oh well I guess there’s always next year to look forward to. Till then I’ll continue trying to rent West Bank Story
                   

                         (West Bank Story, 2007 Best live action short film)