Something Creative Once A Day

The past four weeks for me have been absolutely insane to say the least.

1) I became an uncle for the first time
2) The students returned from summer holiday
     a. Hired new staffs
     b. Began training staffs
     c. Publication of Xavierite
     d. Football season/Homecoming/Spoke at a student leadership conference/Riot Fest
3) Assisting my sister and brother in law move into their first house
4) Broke the front drivers side door of my car
5) College Radio Day

Now I'm not saying all of this to complain. I am very grateful to have a job that I love, and the ability to pay my bills. But phew, I need a little bit of a break. There's been a few projects that I've been inching to begin working on, but have found it difficult to find the time to begin working on them. Thus I find myself becoming a little bit more agitated than I usually am.

So today I have decided to re-dedicate myself to being creative, not being so easily agitated, and work on a few of my own projects. Hence I have issued myself a little challenge. Once a day for a week I want to try and do something creative. Whether its take a an interesting photo, or create something audibly. Just to do something to get my creative juices flowing. To meet today's challenge, I edited two interviews. One with Andrew W.K., and the other with Matt Kelly from the Dropkick Murphys. Unfortunately I can't upload the promo yet. It has to make its debut on College Radio Day.

The Universal Monsters' Box Set

I just got this in the mail today, and I can officially say that I am set for Halloween. If I had to pick my favorite old school monster movies it would have to be:

1) The Bride of Frankenstein
2) The Wolfman
3) The Creature From the Black Lagoon
4) Frankenstein
5) Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman

Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman is on my list for sentimental reasons. It was the first monster movie I ever saw. These are always fun movies. Especially on a rainy day with the first chill in the air, and a big bowl of soup.

A Brand New U2 Album That Everyone Has

www.U2.com

Anyone who has an iTunes account got a surprise this afternoon. They all had a free copy of U2's brand new album "Songs of the Innocence". Bono took to the bands website, www.u2.com, with a special announcement about the new album.

I love it when bands find a new and inventive way to get their music to their fans. Radiohead pioneered it 7 years ago with "In Rainbows". I remember that release being so big that the White House Press Secretary was asked to comment on the band's pay what you want model. Think about that for a second. An alternative rock band releasing an album, made it all the way to the Press Secretary of the White House!!

Other bands such as Nine Inch Nails, Kayne West, and Beyonce saw how successful this surprise/inventive release model could be and soon followed suite, to great success.

The only drawback is this release method has only been successful with very well known bands for the most part. For an up and coming band to break through, and gain notoriety with this model isn't impossible but can rather be difficult. Mainly because they are fighting to gain notoriety, while bands like U2, Radiohead, and Kayne West have notoriety.

Nevertheless, it's still really cool to be listening to a new U2 album today, when no one expected. Plus I really like the album thus far...

The Tradition Continues...

imdb.com

Netflix has struck again, and my tradition of getting into a TV show after it has ended, continues. For the past few months, a good number of my friends had recommended to me that I would really enjoy the show "Chuck". I've finally listened to their recommendations, and they were absolutely right!

Man oh man is it excellent. The show is perfectly casted, and  features the perfect amount of action, comedy, romance, and complex storytelling. The best way I can describe the show is that it is perfect escapism. It strikes just the right amount of balance between reality and fantasy, yet keeps all of the characters grounded and relatable. For me, that's the real draw of the show, the characters. No matter what crazy/unrealistic situation the characters find themselves in, you still route for them. Mainly because they are very relatable.

As I've been watching Chuck (and that's pretty much all I've been doing the past few days) I started doing some research on the production of the show, and it's pretty interesting. It seems like the show was almost canceled on three separate occasions, but the fans banded together and should enough support that NBC decided to keep it on. Check Chuck out if you are looking for just a fun show.

Star Wars The Unaltered Trilogy Coming to Blu Ray

comicbookmovie.com

A couple of days ago I saw a rumor on the AV Club's website stating that Disney may be releasing the original unaltered Star Wars Trilogy on Blu Ray. What wonderful news I thought!!! Gone forever would be the awful CGI Jabba the Hut, and other horrendous CGI alternations, leaving us only models, puppets, and mat paintings remaining. The pure joy of it!!

But as the article points out this may not happen since Disney doesn't own the distribution rights, 20th Century Fox does. But I don't understand why these two huge movie companies wouldn't work together on this project and make this happen??

With DVD sales down across the board, this would be a sure fire way to make some money. Wouldn't it? I love the original trilogy and would in a heart beat buy the original version of the films on Blu Ray. If we can get The Wonder Years and the Adam West Batman on DVD, we should be able to get this to happen??

The Ricky Gervais Podcast

For the past two weeks I have been re-listening to one of the greatest podcasts ever...The Ricky Gervais Show. If you not familiar with the Ricky Gervais show, it was the first REALLY popular podcast. It began around 2005 and according to Wikipedia has been download by over 300 million people.

Joining Ricky Gervais is Stephen Merchant, and the now legendary Karl Pilkington. It's Karl and his insane theories on life that make the show. I really can't describe it, you really need to experience it yourself.

Two Cool Things

www.express.co.uk

This week I discovered two really interesting items. The first comes from the street artist Banksy. The name of the piece is called "Mobile Lovers" *Details here. I absolutely love this piece. I think it does an incredible commentary of how much society puts social media presence as the number one priority over physical contact.

The second item involves my cousin Matt. He wrote this really interesting blog post entitled: "The Truth of Seinfeld Can Be Applied to Comic Strips". Matt discusses how most comic strips are self contained, and how they could benefit from a longer narrative. I think this is a really interesting concept, and would love to see comic writers apply this.

I understand why they keep it self-contained but sometimes to grow your readership by creating longer stories that get you invested into the characters.