My Night seeing Take Me to the Tempo and Going Nowhere

Last night I had the great privilege of attending a Young Single Adult (YSA) event in Edmonton which featured many talented musicians in Edmonton and I thought that I could take some time and write down my thoughts about the event. First and foremost it should be mentioned that I thoroughly enjoyed myself at this event as you can see in the picture below. There is something about going to see live music that just brings a lot more energy out of me. I don't know why I don't see more live shows or things of a similar vein because it's just so much fun! It should also be noted that all of the groups that performed were doing covers exclusively, and while I would have preferred to hear a few original pieces it isn't something one should expect when you know going in that they are cover bands.

That is me drenched in sweat. NO REGRETS

The night began with a group that I never actually got the name of so I will be forced to call them Those Three Guys that did Acoustic Stuff or TTGTDA (Pronounced teh-guh-da if you wondering.) Now there is no doubt in my mind that these guys were quite good, I couldn't help but feel that their set really didn't match up with the rest of the night all that well. Even at YSA dance events were slow dancing is pretty common five songs or so straight of it doesn't really match up as well as one might hope. Their front man for all I could tell was shining though, as much as the slick pants he wore to the event I'd go as far as saying. That's really all there is to say about this group though, very talented, but might have been better suited for another event. Nothing you could really fault them for. 

Cover band Going Nowhere took the stage next and almost immediately made their mark. Fast-paced and high-energy defined most of the set list which I personally felt was the most well chosen of all the groups. Joe Kastendieck shredded the guitar throughout the set in what I thought of as one of the best performances of the night. The bands cover of Fix You by Coldplay showed some great versatility but Beverly Hills would be my personal favorite song of their set. Overall this group was fun, energetic and I hope to see many more performances from them and even though there were times I couldn't really hear the vocals over the rest of the band it didn't really matter since I was too busy having a blast to care. 

Closing out the night was Take me to the Tempo and while they kept with the high energy theme Going Nowhere brought one couldn't help but feel a bit more of a professional sense here. Coregraphed dancing from Front-woman Shawni Tolman and Zachary Ayers displayed a more invested effort and it paid off in spades. I loved the energy this group brought especially from all those they had perform with them that were not part of the core group. Special shout-out to Brother Mandin who made me deeply regret having stopped playing saxophone for a short time before getting back to the dancing. The token slow song Take me to the Tempo was Aerosmith's Don't Want to Miss a Thing, and this song might have shown just how much darn fun this group was as myself and the girl I was dancing with couldn't help but continue to belt along with the song, something that would never had happened back in the awkward days of Junior High that most people remember that song for. If I were to launch a complaint it would be that like Going Nowhere there would be occasional issues with vocals being drowned out, primarily the back up singers seemed to be largely unheard for me. That is an incredibly small smudge on a otherwise brilliant performance. 

Now it's much easier for someone to really shine when they are surrounded by performers that just aren't as talented as those around them. The real test of a performer is to shine even when you are surrounded by people who are also very talented and Kris Strangeland and Shawni Tolman passed this test with flying colours. Kris brought an superb level of play that took several of the bands numbers to the next level. Shawni brought an energy that simply would not be matched. Her presence on stage was one that was totally unafraid of what could happen on stage and that was most noticeable with the bands rendition of Jamiroquai's Canned Heat from Napoleon Dynamite fame. Jamiroquai is a voice that I would under normal circumstances advise people from trying to cover but Ms. Tolman pulled it off without a hitch and even looked like she was having more fun with it than the crowd. 

All the groups that performed gave splendid performances and I want to personally thank them for giving me one of the most fun nights I have had in quite a while. Unfortunately Going Nowhere and Take me to the Tempo do not have Social Media pages for me to link you to, but if you ever hear about these groups giving a performance somewhere make sure to do yourself a favor and check it out! Peace buds. 

Five Easy ways to my Heart

Man it took way longer to get this post together than I wanted to. Freaking school and things getting in the way man. Anyways I'm going to talk about Five different ways to my heart. Now originally I had thought that I would go about this pretty much the same way I have gone about every other post here, with me going a bit more in depth about my reasoning for choosing certain things over others and not just listing a bunch of things. Today I'm going to cut back on the explanations a bit, down to like a sentence or two, but I'll also include some honorable mentions so the post won't be 1/2 a page. So let's get to it!

First off, Food! Surprise I like to eat! Just like all those other humans on the planet. Simple meals  like X with rice and a sauce are going to be the best use of time to get my attention.

Second, be funny. It's pretty cliche since everyone lists this as something they want in the a significant other, but it's because it's important! If nothing else just roll with my sarcasm and we should be just fine.

Third, try to be cool about my weird little obsession with E-sports. It's not for everyone and I know that, I love it though. If you don't automatically dismiss it I promise to not bore you to tears with 4 hour lectures on "Rotations".

I know it's not me, but I don't got time for photo shopping. 

Fourth, Since you are going to be cool with my strange hobbies, I can be cool with your strange hobbies, but first I need you to talk about them. Don't go overboard, but I can promise to never be dismissive of your hobby.

Lastly on this list I ask that you have decent taste in movies/music/TV etc. There are shows beyond One Tree Hill, music beyond Country and Pop, and movies made by companies other than Disney. Some of them are even good!

Alright we got the main portion of this done, so let's go through a few more honorable mentions, and note that most of these will be jokes so don't get offended if I say something you don't agree with.

#1 Honorable mention! Be attractive.
#2 Don't be unattractive.
#3 Read this blog, share it with your friends!
#4 $$$$$
#5 $$$$$ family
#6 Have an uncle that works for Microsoft/Blizzard/Riot/Disney/Marvel/The President
#7 If you hate the character Tauriel because she's not in the books, go home.
#8 Like birds
#9 Know the 157th digit of Pie and not the other ones
#10 Drink Coke, not Pepsi and definitely not diet Pepsi.

I'd do more but I have class to attend now. I'll be streaming some of the new Dragon Age game and giving some of my first impressions tonight, or something along those lines. That will be at http://www.twitch.tv/tripgg and I'll be going up around 9:30 hopefully and going for a couple of hours. Come by and make fun of me! Peace buds!

Favourite Band at the Moment

This post promises to be shorter than the last one, if for nothing else there really isn't a whole lot to be said about this particular question. Onto the question though, and man am I glad that I'm writing this now instead of in April/May. Back then I was in a stint of listening to 50 cent constantly, and that would have been such a pain to write about since in reality it's not that good. Instead I get to write about Keane since I've been listening to them a lot again. This is good since they are probably in the top 3 of my favorite bands ever and you know... they're really good.

One of their many great albums, give em a try if you haven't already

So why do I find myself always coming back to this band? Seriously, I go through these phases of listening where I'll listen to a couple of groups obsessively and then burnout (remember that term?) and find myself back on Keane, I never seem to burnout on these guys though. I think the simplest answer to that is that so many of their songs just connect with me on a very emotional level. More so than any other band I find personal connections in their songs. Not all of these emotion connections are happy ones though, let's get that straight. I think the best word to describe the feelings I have when I listen to Keane would be, "bittersweet."  The main reason would be that I was introduced to Keane by a very dear friend of mine, and one that I have not seen in a long time. I miss them very much and regret that we've somewhat grown apart. The music does remind me of those good times we had though and I appreciate it for that.

Welp. That's not really a happy note to end on now is it? I'm not going to use Corgis to fix it either, just wallow in sadness with me Kappa.

^ = Grey Face with no space

Misconceptions About Me

Before I get on to answering this question, (Yes I am going to just ignore the fact I haven't updated this in months, deal.) I'd just like to quickly mention what a massive mind game writing this actually is. Trying to not only see yourself in the eyes of others, but to then also try to see what people have wrong about you is a very surreal experience to say the least. Now on to the question!

So I think that a lot of people get the impression that I am an apathetic person. I can totally understand why people would get this impression of me since I know there are many times that I will vocally express my lack of care for a particular idea or thing. Even as some people would call it, "inappropriate" to blatantly express such disinterest in a topic but eh, what do I care? Now some people have the particular circumstance of seeing or hearing me express this disinterest of things in a rapid succession and have arrived at the conclusion that I simply don't care about anything at all! While I can understand why a person might have come to this conclusion, since it isn't the biggest jump to make I can assure you that this is far from true!

Than what is true one might ask? Simply that while there are many things that I really don't care about there are some that I truly and honestly do care about, and believe me I care quite deeply about these things. My family and friends stick out as people I care quite a bit about, but that much should be obvious though? I also have a deep appreciation for music, movies, games, E-sports, comedy, and funnily enough, freedom. These are just a handful of things that I care about, but are probably some of the things I care the most about. So the next time you are thinking about me (come on you do it all the time!) and your mind turns to apathy try to steer away from that line of thought. If you think I'm lying right now just be sure to try and cause some sort of outburst of emotion from me by saying really silly things like, "Attack of the Clones is actually a pretty good movie." or "Wouldn't it just be better if the government was in control of the internet?" I'm sure I'll have some sort of emotionally charged statement to give about that. Peace out buds.

Seriously, this movie is such garbage and don't you dare try to defend it. 

Confession Time!

I bet you all thought that since I started falling behind on these posts that the challenge was for all intents and purposes over? Wrong! I'm still going to get through this, and we're even going to get back on schedule, just not immediately. Something about having the majority of my finals in the next two days makes it harder to sit down and spend a considerable amount of time thinking about these blogs. So the plan for the next two weeks is to write a post for today, then write posts Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to get back on track. Simple right? So now that that is out of the way let's get into the fun part. Me confessing things, which I thought might be a bit difficult since I try to not have things to confess, not like I don't have bad habits or embarrassing stories, just that I'm pretty willing to tell people about them which leaves not so much to confess to people.  I think I've got three for today which should be good.

#1. I don't actually hate puns that much. I mean when I first started saying that I hated puns I really did hate them, just couldn't stand them, but I suppose I got desensitized to them because once people heard about this particular hatred they seemed compelled to tell me all the puns they could think of. So I've gotten used to them, and I even laugh at some of them from time to time. They are cheap laughs and I will never sway from that opinion, but they are laughs none the less and who am I to get in the way of a laugh?

#2. Birds are really just ok. I think my family will be the only ones that actually get a laugh out of this one, because I know that the easiest way to drive my mother bonkers is to say the simple line, "I like birds" The truth of it is that the line comes from a song by the Eels with the unsurprising title of "I like birds." Birds are still pretty cool cause they FREAKING FLY, but they are not the end all be all of creatures.

So at this point, most of you are probably thinking that this post is just a joke now, so I'll hit you with a real confession now so you don't feel like I was just messing around the whole time, cause it was really only like 84% of the time that I was. Anyways, this last confession is going to sound kinda sad, but I`ll try to explain my thinking of how it`s kind of ok. Ok?

#3. I generally put the blame for anything that doesn't go my way on myself. Even things that seem like really obviously not my fault like walking down a hallway and some runs into me I'll think to myself, "Well I could have been paying more attention to where I was going." Something like that. This is probably why I get really frustrated playing games like League of Legends, because you have to coordinate with a team in order to win in that game, but if I lose I will certainly blame it on my own personal play. This thinking works out ok for me right now because I use it as a drive to constantly improve at anything I do. I also don't particularly like blaming people. I just feel bad about it after, even if it's totally justified. It seems so much simpler if it's just my fault cause it's easy to legitimately criticize myself since I know all myself pretty well. In short, if something I'm involved with goes downhill I'll probably blame myself, but not in a dopey self-destructive kind of way, more along the lines of "That sucks and I suck, but I know how to do better now at least."

Right, so I'm pretty darn far behind right now, I think I need two more plus one on Thursday to catch back up. I probably won't do another one till Thursday though, so Thursday, Friday, Saturday and maybe Sunday to catch up? Who knows. The next one will be

My bald head cause why not?

State of Mainstream Music.

Let's see if I can rattle some more people like I did with my last post. Today we're talking mainstream music, and when I think of mainstream my mind immediately drifts towards pop music so I'll be pretty much be focused around that genre, although I'm sure some of these ideas will apply to other genres as well.

So obviously I'm not a huge fan of mainstream music right now, if you were to ask me what kind of music I listen to I would tell you anything but pop and country. I don't particularly like the fact that to get big in music, and therefore be considered "good" by the masses you basically have to follow a simple formula and then promote the absolute crap out of the song. Step one: have a chorus that anyone can sing along with. Step two: Put it to a beat that would fit well at a party/dance/club/whatever. Step three: Make sure that stuff isn't too heavy, subject matter should always be about things like your swag, your money, your girl/guy, a party you are going to, or just having fun in general. Don't you dare write about struggles unless you are insanely confident in the song. That's it, three easy steps to create the next big hit, easy stuff. Now obviously there are exceptions to this guideline, but seriously just take some time and listen to the radio and see what's playing, these things are the three uniting factors for nearly every song on the radio.

Is there a solution? I guess hypothetically it would be really cool if people just formed their own taste in music and bought (BOUGHT, not downloaded.) music according to that and then who ever made good music would then succeed while the terrible artists would never leave their bedroom, but that's just not how it works. All I can say is that I think you should be looking to purchase your music legitimately if you really do like the artist. Vote with your dollars man.

Man, that's really all I have to say? How short and boring, oh well next time is confessions so that should surely produce something interesting to write/read about. Peace buds.

Here's a really cool song so there's something beyond the text here. 

Ten People Who Influenced Me?

 Alright so I didn't get this done on Thursday, but I'm going to say I have a good excuse so it goes up on today instead. So I'm supposed to go over ten people who have influence me today. Thinking of ten people who have influenced me and how they influenced me might be a bit difficult, none the less I will give it a shot. Let us remember that the number on the list does not indicate level of influence just which ones I wrote first. The exception being #1/2 since that's just true.

#1/2. My Parents. I'm going to put the two of them together unless I really can't think of ten specific examples, then I'll cheat and count them as two. Beyond that I couldn't imagine having a list like this and not mentioning them. They raised me for crying out loud! Like how much more influential can you be on a person's life? Like seriously, they gave me all the basic foundations that would later lead into pretty much any good characteristics I've developed in my life. My negative ones are likely a result of me not listening to them either so there's that.

#3. Bishop Boyes. I can't think of any particular characteristics about Clay Boyes that really made him so influential to me, I know that if I'm ever in a lost in the wilderness type of situation that he's the person I want with me though. I think though it was his humility that always stuck out to me though, despite being a pretty great man you would've never guessed it from his mannerisms, he seems the perfect example of someone who is leading a regular life and is then thrust into the spotlight. After being pushed that far though, he never faltered, simple grew at his own pace and flourished because of it.

#4/5. John Spencer/Brad Smith. I'm only lumping these two together cause they've both influenced me in the exact same way. They both seem to completely lack social inhibitions that would normally keep a person from expressing themselves 100%. This leads to both of these individuals being completely themselves at any given time and that level of drive to be yourself is something I can truly appreciative and seek after myself. Here's to becoming less #Filtered.

#6. Keane. There had to be a band in here somewhere right? Keane wins my personal award for having the most influence on my thinking out of any musical group and therefore I award them this prestigious spot on this arbitrary list.

#7. Duncan "Thoorin" Shields. This guy is probably a tool, but he does incredible journalistic work in E-sports and I hope that one day I can give this kind of quality content out in whatever field I work in. I'll lump in Slasher in here as well cause that guy doesn't give a care in the world if people hate him, so long as they still let their players take interviews from him.

#8. Alysa Lybbert. This crazy freaking girl will without a doubt in my mind stick to her guns no matter the situation so long as there is a chance that she's still correct. It's not even out of stubbornness (Usually) but a sincere idea that she's correct. Wait a minute. Yeah it's just stubbornness. Oh well, I said she influenced me, not that I intend to copy her methods. Still good.

This is where the list actually gets a bit harder, because I can think of several people that influenced me, but now I have to decide who I put on the list. I'd probably just be safer putting whoever might actually read this so they can feel good about themselves/not feel snubbed by me. So I'll do that regardless if they would've made this list of ten. I'm not ranking who is the most influential just ten people who are/were influential on me.

#9. Samara Dewey. This woman ( I think I have to say woman now that she's married) taught me an awful lot of things, but the biggest one I think is simple loyalty. She's a fiercely loyal person and I hope that I can one day reach that level of commitment to those I care about.

#10. Kim Passey. So maybe she's here cause I think she'll tear me a new one if I included Samara and not her, but regardless I have learned quite a bit from her. The biggest lesson I learned from her though was that thinking objectively doesn't mean that you can hold grudges/not forgive a person. No matter how far you think a person can fall don't be shocked when they not only get back up, but are even taller than they were before.

Wow didn't that get a little heavy right at the end there, but I unfortunately don't have time to dwell on that because I have to get a whole new post done today in order to keep on track with this challenge. So I hope you enjoyed or at least didn't hate what I had to say. Peace buds.

New Blog Challenges. For Artificial Motivation of Course!

Alright so I'm going to be starting up another one of these old blog challenge things. It will be slightly different than other ones though, mostly because I'm not specifically using an already set one. So no link to a flowery little tumblr page that will neatly (or sloppily depending on the list) line out what I'll be doing. Rather I went through five to ten different lists and nit-picked the topics I could actually write posts about. So you hopefully won't have to endure through any posts that have absolutely nothing to offer in terms of anything interesting. No questions like, "Would you date someone with plains looks and an amazing personality, or someone with amazing looks and a plain personality."  Which could be better worded as, "Are you shallow? Yes or no?" Now I don't want this to feel to heavy, so I've set it up in a manner that will be something like two more light hearted topics and then we'll have a more serious thoughts. With this I'll be presenting a "schedule" that should accompany this challenge. If you read this blog at all you know why the quotations are around schedule. So enough nonsense let's lay out this schedule and challenge topic list!

Tentative Schedule: Posts on Tuesday, Thursday, and over the weekend. Simple as that.

The glorious list of great topics that will grant you ghastly amounts of knowledge about myself!
#1. Ten People who Influenced Me.
#2. Celebrity Crushes V2.0! Who will stay and who will go! Link for Lazy.
#3. A Big "What If" I've Thought About..
#4. My Favorite Place to Eat.
#5. My Thoughts on Main Stream Music.
#6. Three Confessions.
#7. Something I Miss.
#8. A Guilty Pleasure.
#9. A Misunderstanding People Have About Me.
#10. My Dream Job.
#11. My Favorite Band Right Now.
#12. An Embarrassing Moment.
#13. What I Would do With Lottery Winnings.
#14. Five ways to my Heart.
#15. A Popular Notion I Think Society has Wrong.
#16. Where my Blog/Gamer Name came from.
#17. My Favorite Movie.
#18. What I Would say to my Sixteen Year Old Self.
#19. My Death Row Meal.
#20. My City.
#21. Three Legitimate Fears.
#22. Nicknames I've had.
#23. Favorite Pizza.
#24. What Makes me Unique?
#25. My Perfect 1st Date.
#26. Ten Random Songs From my Phone.
#27. Thoughts on Drugs/Alcohol.
#28. The Process of Writing one of These Cringe Shows.
#29. How is my Relationship (LOL!) or How is Being Single.
#30. How'd the Challenge Go?

There's a few more food ones than I remember putting initially, but whatever, I like food sue me. Looking forward to Getting this one going. See you on Thursday after when I'll talk about Influential people to me.

What Some of you are Thinking. 

Lots of Small Rants and Birthdays

               Well it’s been a bit of time since I really sat down to write something, mostly because I haven’t; felt like I really had anything worth saying on the blog, but a good friend of mine in Chrissy Williams asked about it today and since it is her bloody birthday after all I guess I can muster enough motivation to put at least one post together.

               So what to talk about? This is kind of the problem eh? I usually want to write about just one thing but I suppose writing on several things isn’t that bad right?

               So let’s start here. This is the going to be the computer I build later this summer. It`s almost entirely based on this build. I excited to build it. There were a couple of parts I thought about changing up, but ultimately this would be the best bang for my buck. I like my laptop and all, but let’s get serious; you need a desktop to get the performance I want without paying like $2500 or so. This build is about $1000 and should be able to play any game I want and record/stream it with at least passable quality.  So yeah, building a computer like this is like way way way worth it because I’ll save hundreds of dollars that would have had to be spent on a pre-made computer. The only real downside to this is that when it’s done, everyone that I’m related to will think I’m some sort of expert that can fix any of their computer problems for them. Which might be true, but only because I know how to use this site.

               Quick note on my thoughts about Yeezus and Magna Carta Holy Grail. Yeezus not that good. Magna Carta quite an enjoyable listen. It seems to me that Kayne feels like he still needs to prove himself, which he totally doesn’t. Jay-Z though just makes stuff he likes and it sounds like that. Thus fun to listen to. Magna Carta is not a very deep album in all honesty, buts I like listening to it. Don’t take these criticisms to seriously though, cause you know. I’m not really qualified in any way. (Pseudo-intellectualism at its finest!)

               As a final note let’s just briefly mention that the United States government recently recognized players of the League of Legends Championship Series as professional athletes with the same visa privileges as players of the NFL, NBA, NHL and other organizations. This is huge. It means that E-sports is really here to stay. Huge numbers at the Evolution championships this weekend are also another great sign for the community. All in all, I’m super excited for this fall so I can watch The International Three (Dota 2) Season 3 Worlds (League of Legends) and WCS finals at Blizzcon (SC2) Gonna be a huge time for E-sports this fall. One can only hope to see my boys Dignitas make it to Worlds for League. If your intrested in reading more about the whole League players getting recognized as pro athletes you can read the article here. 

So Good!

               

Let the Heckling Begin!

            So I haven’t written here in like forever, but I’m not even going to go into that, because I’m here now to start getting a schedule together. That’s all this post is going to be about, me putting together a few goals before I head back off to post-secondary education.  

            Firstly I want to become consistent with this blog, to help with that I’m going to give this blog a clear definition. I will talk about things that are interesting to me. That means that there are going to be E-sports posts, there will be ones where I rant about stupid things people do, I will talk about my personal thoughts on a variety of subjects. I will occasionally rant about what a dork I am. I will talk about cute girls; I will talk about a good restaurant I might go to. I will post pictures that are related to all these topics.  There will be many Calvin and Hobbes references. I am definitely going to talk about music in games and movies, as well as games and movies. I will probably say things that people will subsequently call me out on. It’ll be a good time. I will criticize almost everything.

           - I’m going to read 3 full books by the end of the summer. Any suggestions?

          -  I’m going to reach Diamond rank on Starcraft 2, and complete a play through of Pikmin and The Legend of Zelda: Wink Waker and Ocarina of Time.

           - I’m going to learn to cook 4 new dishes.      

         -   I am going to find a steady exercise schedule and be consistent with it.

          -  I will go on at least 2 dates.  

          -  I will discover one new band that no one else knows about (Hipster cred inc!)

            We’ll cut if off there for the sake of being realistic. I think Starcraft, exercise, and dates will be the hard ones on this list. Ok blogging consistently will be the toughest, but that’s a given.  Still, dates will be difficult just because of what a recluse I am and breaking out of that shell. Exercise because well because I’m pretty freaking lazy. Starcraft because it’s a really difficult game to get good at, and I’m prone to getting really really frustrated at myself when I play it. I think if I accomplish the other two difficult tasks though I should just become a happier person which will make it easier to tolerate the rage inducing nightmare that is the battle.net ladder.  

            Why blog this though? Because the biggest lesson I’ve learned in my life knows when you are beyond your own capabilities. Not that I can’t do these things. Just that I know that I won’t on my own. So I humbly ask whoever reads this, to please pester and bother me about accomplishing these things. Pick the ones you want me to do and hassle me. I think that’s manageable. Another excuse to get on my case? Gladly. That’s what I imagine most of you are thinking about this. That’s all for now, happy pestering!

            Don't think I forgot about that 30 topic thing though, nice and quick. Something little that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. The ending to Rudy. Goodness me I love that movie and I hate how it can just play with my emotions like that, but it can. If you haven't seen it, let me know. I have a copy and will gladly loan it to you. Heck I could even watch it with you if you want to see me nearly break into tears. 

So good.....