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Motion City Soundtrack

On April 14th 2011, i went to a concert at Penn State Behrend with a couple of my friends. Now who was playing at this concert you might ask? Well it just happened to be my favorite band; Motion City Soundtrack. Let me paint you a picture, about 500 kids are standing in a gym with a giant stage in front of them and in the front right next to the stage is me. All the students are chanting for the band to come on, then suddenly everyone in the crowd starts screaming like a kid on Christmas. We are all looking and screaming like little school kids at Justin Pierre(vocals/guitar), Josh Cain(vocals/guitar), Matt Taylor(bass/vocals), Jesse Johnson(keyboard) and Tony Thaxton(drums).

As the night goes on people are getting more and more rowdy but the band is getting better and better playing songs like "Hysteria" from their last album My Dino Life all the way back to songs like "My Favorite Accident" from their first album I Am The Movie. Though everyone was yelling, screaming and rocking hard still the band played one of their most famous closing songs "Everything is Alright." As soon as they started playing the crowd became even more rough than it was before. Singing along with the band and jumping around into each other, everyone was having a blast. Then the song ended and the band walked off stage. The crowd instantly calmed down, and became quiet. Then suddenly you heard one person chanting for them to come back on, and it spread like wildfire among the crowd. Not even two minutes later they came back out, picked up there stuff and played the last song of the evening, their most popular song "The Future Freaks Me Out." As soon as the band started playing and before they said a word everyone in the crowd cheered louder than ever before. The band continued playing while the crowd sang along with all the lyrics. The night ended on a high note with the band throwing some of their stuff into the crowd for the fans to keep.

Lets give a little history on the band, Pierre and Cain are both from Minneapolis and graduated high school together. They formed a band in 1999 called Motion City Soundtrack. It was just the two of them, they traveled all over Pennsylvania and West Virgina. In West Virgina they met Tony Thaxton and Matt Taylor. They were later joined by keyboard player Jesse Johnson who relieved Pierre on keyboard. They released their first album I Am The Movie in the summer of 2003, this was the album that started in all. The song "The Future Freaks Me Out" became a big hit and they got signed by Epitaph Records. Later they joined a band called Blink 182 on a tour in Europe and Japan. Blink182 to a liking to Motion City and agreed to produce the next album called Commit This to Memory.

Their third album Even If It Kills Me was their first album to reach the top 20 charts in 2007. They finally got recognized and were sign by Columbia Records. They signed on to Warped Tour and toured around with them and when they were done they went on their own tour. Then finally they teamed up with Blink 182 bassist Mark Hoppus and came out with the most recent album to date My Dino Life in 2009. The band is currently working on their fifth album, but havent released any information on it.

http://www.motioncitysoundtrack.com/content/biography

http://www.starpulse.com/Music/Motion_City_Soundtrack/Biography/

Everyone Scream!

Thats right everyone, the newest and final installment of my favorite "horror" movie franchise Scream was released on Friday the15th. When i first heard Scream 4 was in production i was really nervous. I thought they were going to re cast everyone and not keep the most important characters. When the trailer was released we got to see our favorite characters from the original three being introduced into the fourth. Fun fact, Scream is the only franchise to bring back there main character for the whole series. Anyway, our main character is still Sidney Prescott, who is the main focus of these movies. It seems like every time she comes home something horrible happens to the poor town of Woodsboro. Well, ten years have passed since Sidney as been home since the third movie. She is a very successful writer, and quite famous. She returns home as a "celebrity" to do a book signing back in her hometown. Of course, the first day she gets home someone gets killed by the ghost face killer. The town for some sick reason celebrates the original murders and puts on a festival about them. Well after the first murder takes place Dewey, who is now sheriff, ends up canceling the festival and keeps a close eye on Sidney. We also get introduced to new characters in this movie as well. Emma Roberts plays the part of Jill Roberts, Sidney's cousin. We meet a bunch of Jill's friend and a crazy creepy ex boyfriend of hers. Up to this point i thought things were extremely similar to the first movie. Jill reminds you a lot of Sidney and Jill's friends remind you lot about the ones Sidney use to have. Now i dont want to go on and ruin the rest of the movie so ill stop talking about the plot. The movie was really well done, Wes Craven "The Master of Suspense" was the director for this film, and he definitely didnt let me down. Scream 4 was one of my favorites out of the whole series, it mixed comedy and suspense perfectly. Though if you can handle blood and gore i do not recommend this movie for you, it gets really bad and really bloody. When you see the movie, you can try different things, you can go and just watch the movie, or like i do i try to figure out who the killer or killers are. This movie was just a fantastic way to end the series and i was not disappointed. If you are a Scream fan i promise you, you will not be disappointed.

Go Taylor Go!

Cowgirls and Cowboys, tonight is the 46th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards! Reba McEntire and Blake Shelton will be your host for this prestigious event. With two country giants hosting nothing could possibly go wrong. I dont know about everyone else, but ive been voting all week long for Entertainer of the Year. That award is one of the biggest awards a country singer can get. Now this may come as a shock to all of you, but i voted for Taylor Swift to win Entertain of the Year. Now its not a biased vote or anything, she really deserves it. It wont be an easy win for Swift as she goes up against industry giants like Jason Aldean, Tobey Keith, Miranda Lambert, Brad Paisley and Keith Urban but with some hope and hopefully all of your votes she can bring home the award. Top male vocalist will probably go to Brad Paisley or Blake Shelton this year, and I like both of them so its a win win situation. Top Female Vocalist was a tough choice for me to make, Swift is up for this award but she is up against some of the best in the business. For this award I am going to have to say the very gorgeous Carrie Underwood or the outstanding Miranda Lambert will take home the prize. The Top Vocal group of the year will be between The Zac Brown Band and Lady Antebellum. Both bands had a fantastic year and released many great songs, but i would give the award to The Zac Brown Band. Album of the Year is to hard for someone like me to call, so i will just be extremely biased and say Taylor Swifts album Speak Now is going to win because i love her and she deserves it because shes so gorgeous. There are a lot more awards that are going to be given out tonight, but i suggest you tune in at 8pm on CBS and enjoy the great show that will take place. I promise they never disappoint, unless you dont like country music that is. 

For the Complete list of Awards and Nominees go to http://www.acmcountry.com/awards/nominees.php

The fall of a giant?

Early in the week i found out that my favorite company in the world, Apple, was being investigated by the government. Now at first I was really confused as to what the could have done to be investigated so i had to do some research. Apple is being investigated for possibly being a digital music monopoly. The proof they have against Apple is since Ipods are the biggest and most selling MP3 players on the market they should be able to work with any music player. Well Ipods only work with Itunes, there use to be a program that would allow you to change stuff over and make it Itunes compatible but, that program got shut down because Jobs wouldnt work with it. Apple's Ipods have almost taken over the MP3 player industry, shutting down names like the Zune and the Zen. Since Itunes is really the only thing we have to choose from for downloading music and Itunes only works properly with Ipods can this mean trouble for Apple and Steve Jobs? All the consumers want is for Apple to allow WMA format to work on the Ipods, this wouldnt cost them much money since WMA format is what you get with Windows Media which is the 2nd biggest music player. Apple doesnt seem like they are going to give in to any demands and allow the music to be switched from player to player to please the consumers. Apple sells music from the Itunes store that is protected with "FairPlay." FairPlay is a program that protects all the music on your Itunes and backs them up but, it also doesnt allow you to copy them and put them on any other music player, only onto your Ipod. This could cause a problem for Apple and maybe lose them some customers, but i dont really see it hurting them in the long run.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/03/apple-ceo-steve-jobs-has-been-ordered-to-answer-questions-from-lawyers-representing-consumers-who-in-a-class-action-lawsui.html

http://www.pcworld.com/article/141009/apple_music_monopoly_lawsuit_seeks_classaction_status.html

And the winner is....

Being a techno geek and loving all things technology, ive decided that i would compare the Apple Ipad 2 vs. The Motorola Xoom.  To start things off im going to look at every aspect of the Motorola Xoom.

The Motorola Xoom is the biggest threat to Apples throne, but how big of threat is it? Well, the Xoom has a 10.1 inch screen with 1280x800 screen resolution. It runs the Android Honeycomb 3.0 which is highly customizable which makes it highly valued. It has two 1 GHz Daul processors, and a rear facing and front facing camera. Now the Xoom only comes in one color and that is black. Also, it only comes in 32 GB with an SD slot to allow it to have more memory. The price for this fun little gadget is set at $800. We all know that everything has a downfall though, since the android software is a bit new it doesnt have that many apps and who knows when the apps would be developed, if they would ever be developed. For all the specs of the Xoom and can see them here http://www.androidtablets.net/forum/motorola-tablets/5267-motorola-xoom-specs.html

Now this pretty little thing on the left is the current holder of the throne in the tablet market. The Ipad 2 was just recently released on March 11 of this year is the biggest pad on the market. Though tons of people are skeptical to buy it not knowing what the difference is from the first Ipad to the newer one. Well, the newest Ipad has a 1GHz dual-core A5 CPU, it has 512 MB of RAM and is thinner than the first Ipad. Now thats not all thats different, the new Ipad also has a front and rear facing camera and has HD capability. The screen is smaller than the Xoom's with a 9.7 LED screen, it runs the IOS  4.3 which isnt as customizable as the android honeycomb is but its more developed. The Ipad 2 can come in two colors black, which was the color of the original or white, which is a new color they have added. Also Apple decided to stick with the 16, 32 and 64 GB for the size of the Ipads. So the price range can be less or more than the Xoom. For all the specs of the Ipad you can view them here http://osxdaily.com/2011/03/02/ipad-2-specs/

Old vs New

Being a 2nd degree black belt and placing winning several karate tournaments i really enjoyed watching the Karate Kid movies. I was such a huge fan of the old ones. I recently watched the new one, and i figured for my blog i would compare the two. So to compare a movie i figure ill start off by comparing the two main characters. In the original movie Daniel is a high school kid who had to move because of his mother. He has a tough time fitting in at his new school and get picked on by a group of karate students called Cobra Ki. He does a great job portraying what it would be like to be in a new school and not know anyone. Hes not a wimp and doesn't back down from a fight, but he knows when he should be focused. Now when we talk about Dre the main character of the new Karate Kid he has to move from one country to an new country. Yes, Dre probably had the harder time fitting in then Daniel did. Dre gets beat up by a group of kids but he also never backs down and always focuses when he needs to focus. Even though no one wants to see a little kid like Dre get beat up i would have to say Daniel wins this battle for the better main character. He shows us what its like to be a new high school student and how much harder it is for him to fit in. Dre gets beat up quite a bit, but hes only like 10 years old so its not as big of a deal. Next we would have to compare the teachers in the movie, Mr. Miyagi vs Mr. Han. This one wasnt that hard for me to judge actually. Mr. Han played by Jackie Chan wins hands down. Besides actually knowing kung fu his character was much better developed. Mr. Miyagi didnt have his character developed until at least the second movie. I do agree that Mr. Miyagi was awesome and did some pretty cool teaching and everything he did was to teach discipline, Mr. Han was just a better character and a better teacher. Now we can compare the villains of the movie.  In the first one Johnny Lawrence was a huge jerk and just beat him up because he wanted to. His character was developed much better and he had a reason to beat up Daniel. Then we look at the new villain who beat up Dre on a regular basis. I felt like the guy who taught him was more evil than he was. Cheng was crazy, and at times i felt like he was going to kill Dre. Though i felt like the teachers had more of a hatred than then two students did.  In the end id have to give the win to the old movie. For the main reason being Daniel was taught Karate, while Dre was taught Kung Fu. Two completely different styles of martial arts, with the same name. It just didnt work for me. Also The old one had a better support cast and better villains. The only good thing to me for the new one was Mr. Han.

If you want someone elses opinion on the subject check out that guy with the glasses review.

http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/30107-old-vs-new-karate-kid


This gives a good side by side comparison.
http://www.cinema.com.my/news/features.aspx?search=2010.F_new_vs_old_karate_kid_4024

From good to outstanding to possibly terrifying.

Released on June 15, 2005 Batman Begins, directed by Christopher Nolan, was a movie that was highly anticipated by everyone. The movie hit big, with Christan Bale acting as the best Batman we have seen to date. Now we can all agree that Katie Holmes was the worst thing to happen to this movie. She was horrible, her character was terrible and her acting was just bad. It was however brought up by Bale and Liam Neeson who ruled the entire movie. Bale being Batman and Neeson being Ra's Al Ghul the two together made the entire movie. When the movie was completed we found ourselves wanting more and more they gave. On July 18 2008 The Dark Knight was released. Returning with Christan Bale as Batman but giving us Maggie Gyllenhaal instead of Katie Holmes. This is the best upgrade you can possibly imagine right?
Wrong, the movie gets even better, as we introduce Heath Ledger as the Joker and Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent.
Heath Ledger was by far the most outstanding actor in this movie. He brought the Joker to a whole no level of
insanity. The movie focuses on building the Jokers character and showing you how disgustingly evil he really is. 
Near the end of the movie Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face. Two-face had a chance to become a great villain
but i think they realized nothing was going to over shin the Joker in this movie, so they killed Two-Face off pretty 
quick. Every fan of these movies have been wondering the same question: "Whose the next villian going to be." 
Set to release in July 2012 The Dark Knight Rises will feature two new villains, great right? Once again, wrong,
horribly horribly wrong. In the new movie we will have Tom Hardy from Inception as Bane. Also we will be seeing 
Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. Now we added two more great stars to the cast, but im not sure how good
Hathaway will be. We all know shes a talented actress and can handle her own on the big screen, but is she able
to pull of the delicious, sexy, evil Catwomen we all know and love? I think not. All we can hope for is that Bane 
will be the main villain of this movie. Im not saying Tom Hardy is a better actor, i dont even like him for Bane but 
i think he'll be able to do an ok job. It wont be anything comparable to The Dark Knight but we can always
hope for the best.