Best Advertisement Ever

Imagine you are walking down the street and you see a button that says "Push To Add Drama". Do you push it? I sure as heck would, I want something cool to happen everyday. I would never imagine how awesome pushing that button could be.

This was the setup for an ad to bring attention to the new TNT channel in Belgium. They placed the button in a quiet downtown square and waited for people to push the button. The video of what happened is on Youtube as "A Dramatic Suprise On a Quiet Square". Boy oh boy is it dramatic. Ambulances, a dead guy, a fight breaks out between the paramedic and a biker. Guess what, the paramedic is a ripped kung-fu master who beats the crap out of the biker. All of a sudden, black SUV's and police cars appear and a gun fight breaks out with people dying. Everyone drives off in a second, when four football players come and carry the dead guy out as a girl in a bikini rides across on a sportsbike.......Awesomeness.

The thing that makes this so awesome is the dumbfounded looks on the face of all the watchers. Realizing that would be my exact face if all this random craziness happened. Then that banner unfurls at the end and everyone is like "Wait! This was all an advertisement for drama TV?" It is absolutely my favorite, funniest advertisement I've seen ever. The music for it is also perfectly suited for this cool idea. I absolutely love clever advertising, especially when it gets people involved. I really hope TNT in Belgium became super popular because of this stunt. It's just such a cool idea, and I really wish that this would happen to me sometime.

I'm not sure whether I like this one or the sequel more. I mean the sequel does have snipers, men in body suits, a zip lining pistol-wielding Elvis in a prison riot, and naked men being shot by a water cannon. However in the sequel they throw whoever presses the button in a black van which is sooooooo weird. I just love them both for their originality and commitement and I wish all ads were as cool as this.

Also, doesn't that guy on the bike who presses the button kinda look like Maury Povich? Just saying. Thanks for reading guys.

Hipsters?

So I was it was late at night, and I was falling asleep in the back of my brother’s car as we drove home when I heard a song and I instantly really liked it. I wasn’t completely mesmerized or struck with complete love for the song, I just really liked it. It sounded beautiful and had some catchy sections. I looked up the song by asking around and googling some keywords and I eventually found it. I listened to and watched the music video for Lorde’s song “Royals” and it was just as I remembered it in the car. A nice beautiful sounding song sung by a surprisingly sixteen year-old singer (Which is the same age as me, and coincidentally makes me feel like a lazy no-talented whoever). I guess it’s the choir nerd in me, but I just love how pretty the chords in the song are, and the harmonization is spot on. That little arpeggio that appears in the chorus is perhaps my favorite part.

As is common when you hear a cool new song, you wanna talk about it to your friends. However, when I talked about it to my classmates I received a lot of criticism for only liking Lorde’s music now that it was on the radio and the fact that I hadn’t (still haven’t) listened to her other songs like “Tennis Court”. Yes, my readers, today we are going to talk about the sensitive, confusing, infuriating subject of hipsters.

I like to define hipsters as people who dislike popular media and prefer to listen to less-known things. I don’t mind hipsters; I do mind aggressive hipsters. What do I mean by aggressive hipsters? I mean the type of people who criticize you for being “so mainstream” or bragging that they “listened to that band before everyone else did”. I’m so sorry that I am not as all-knowing as you when it comes to indie bands or obscure songs and artists. I don’t have an ipod, iphone, itunes, headphones, boombox, cassette player, gramophone or any personal listening device. So I hear most of my music from what is played on the radio. Usually once a song is played on the radio every hipster despises it, and therefore despises my song choices.

I can sorta understand why there is that hipster mentality because I’ve experienced it before. I used to talk about how I had listened to “Party Rock Anthem” about half a year before it got really huge. When I look back now and wonder about why it felt so good to say “I listened to that before everyone else did” I realized that I did it because I felt like the fact I supported a song that then became popular validates my song choice, makes me feel almost responsible for them becoming popular, and actually angered me a little bit that everyone now was obsessed with what I considered sorta “my song”. We live in a time period where being new and next-generation is cool. So it feels kinda great when something you like suddenly is very popular and loved. It’s almost the same reason everybody loves an underdog story. The people you supported finally succeed and you almost feel like you were a part of it.

I honestly have no opinion on the hipster lifestyle with the fake glasses, beards, and irony. I don’t think that’s really what defines a hipster, and I don’t understand why people immediately label the guy with black rimmed glasses and a beard as a total hipster.

I listen to music for my enjoyment. While I do understand the reasons for becoming hipsterish, I don’t think you should ever make people feel bad for liking popular music. Thanks for reading

We're all a little bit racist

A few of my readers might be familiar with one of my favorite musicals... Avenue Q. It had a great run on Broadway, was an extremely new-age raunchy humor type of musical. Oh, and it was performed entirely by puppets. There is something just so awesome about how they take some topics that are very risky, and not only perform them through what is mainly considered a childish means, but also to some of the catchiest and most entertaining musical numbers I've ever heard. In one phrase I'd describe it as "Sesame Street all grown up".

My favorite song in the whole musical embodies the strange mishmash of grown-up themes and puppets singing is "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist". I mean, no doubt racism is a huge issue and it definitely was a tragic thing throughout history. However, the point of this song is that every race discriminates against every other race. No one is blameless. It becomes a question of whether it hurts people more to freak out on them for saying something slightly racist or to just relax and realize it is meant lightheartedly.

What I like about the song is how cheery it is. It is happy and fun, while still talking about racism. It's that weird mishmash of childhood and adulthood again. As the song develops, different characters from the musical join in from many different races such as Asian, Black, Polish, and Monster (Monster is the name of a race of the puppets). Until everyone just learns to relax and they join one another in a final grand chorus, joining hands, singing together, and advising people not to be so worried and just relax. As long as everyone accepts one another's differences its ok to notice those difference. Ok sorry I lied earlier when I said the play is performed by puppet characters. There are also some human-played characters like Brian the failed unemployed comic or Gary Coleman the buildings superintendent.

This song just embodies exactly why I enjoy this musical so much. It has a well meaning message, with hilariously off-color topics, performed in a great way. It is such a new age play that uses some of my favorite new elements of entertainment, such as breaking the fourth wall (The actors beg for money from the audience to raise money for the school). Nothing like this would have been accepted even twenty years ago. The entire main opening number is an argument about whose life sucks the most. The fact that we can listen to this play without making immediate judgments on things like "why are there puppets" or "this topic is unacceptable" is kinda the whole point behind "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist".

Thanks so much for listening, and I hope everyone can relax and accept one another.

Universal Joy

There are some things that will make everyone smile. One of these rare but beautiful things is the laughing of a baby. I think the best example of this is the Youtube video "Charlie Bit My Finger". It is just a simple video of one baby biting his slightly older brother and laughing about it. Can you guess how many views it has? FIVE HUNDRED MILLION. To give you some perspective, that is almost twice as much as the total US population. That is about one out of every fourteen people in the world that have seen this video. The percentage is even more impressive when you consider how much of the world doesn't have internet access. It just shows you exactly how powerful the laugh of a baby is. 

I personally think it is impossible to not laugh at this video. It is just so cute and funny. It is such a universally wonderful thing that there are about fifteen other videos of just babies doing cute stuff, and racking up over tens of millions of views. There are several studies out on why babies are so universally cute, and it usually comes down to paternal/maternal care. 

All I really care about is that it makes my day a little bit brighter and I hope it made yours too. Thanks for listening. :-)

I'm a nerd

I admit it, I finally admit it. I am a complete and total nerd. I debated whether or not to put this entry in so I could at least keep up the semblance of not being a nerd, but I just had to do a blog entry on this. It's so freakin cool and I just love the idea behind it. What is that beautiful idea? Two Words...... Zelda Dubstep.

If you need to know more than those two words then I'm not sure I can look at you anymore. When I heard this was a thing I rushed to the nearest computer to look it up. The DJ who made these remixes is called Ephixa, and he is a genius. He took classic Legend of Zelda songs and turned them into hardcore dubstep versions, and it works beautifully.  My personal favorite is probably the Lost Woods Remix, which can be found easily on Youtube.

People who didn't grow up playing the Zelda games might not be as interested and pumped by this as I am, but they need to realize two things. One, Zelda games were family events at my house in which everyone gathered around and enjoyed it together. Two, Zelda games have absolutely gorgeous music in every release. I mean these games were practically revered for their amazing soundtrack, which makes sense, since the creator of Zelda was also the creator of the legendary Mario series. One of the main focuses when creating these two games was the soundtrack. This has led to some iconic songs such as the original Mario theme or the Lost Woods theme.

What I think makes it so effective and cool of a song is that it starts with an almost unaltered Lost Woods theme that is very timid and mystical, which is what makes the heavy dubstep so shocking and cool. If there is one thing I like about dubstep, a music style I've been very cautious to embrace, is the buildup to that one moment when the bass drops.

The history, the style, the execution, the personal meaning, and simply the nerdy awesomeness of it has made this a wonderfully enjoyable song for me. Hope you enjoy it too.

Thanks for listening

United States of Whatever

This is why I love Youtube. It is one of the funniest places in the world, full of untapped humor. You can just look out there and find the craziest, stupidest, yet equally hilarious things; sublimely idiotic videos that are still awesome and rack up hundreds of thousands of views.

You can find it at this link- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viaTT859Yk0 or just look up “United States of Whatever” up on Youtube.

 This clip came from a show called “The Sifl and Olly Show” after the names of the two main characters. It was actually once a show on MTV-UK and eventually transferred to MTV-US for three seasons before it was cancelled. The show was started by two childhood friends named Liam Lynch and Matt Crocco. They started performing songs and humor sketches to amuse themselves. Even when they grew up and went to different colleges, they still sent songs and scenes to one another. They even recorded a comedy album together. While at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts Liam found some songs and scenes they had recorded for their incomplete second album. Liam decided to act the songs and scenes out with sock puppets and send the video to Mark. Lynch also sent the videos to MTV-UK, who loved it, and that was the beginning of “The Sifl and Olly Show”.

It’s just so awesome to me that these two friends who were young kids found something they loved to do. They kept doing it just for the fun of creating something and making a friend laugh. Finally they succeeded and actually created and performed in their own show for three years on national television. They usually wrote only loose scripts for the show and improvised most of it. They just had fun joking around with sock puppets and lots of people loved it. It’s amazing and kind of inspiring how far these two people succeeded just by being good friends and genuinely funny people.

 “United States of Whatever” actually was written and performed entirely by Liam Lynch. He said that the song was completely improvised and recorded in a single take. The song itself is a punk style rock that consists of exactly two chords and two basic lines of dialogue. It is so simple, but still gets stuck inside my head often. This song was actually praised and lauded by quite a few people. It was named a “Song of the Week” by a NME, a prominent British music publication. It also hit number ten on the UK Singles Chart. It was the shortest song, at the original song time of 1:26, to ever be on the UK Singles Chart. Its position for five years as the shortest song would be uprooted in 2007 by the world renowned classic “Spider Pig”. “United States of Whatever” also hit top single charts in Belgium, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. An amazing amount of success for what probably came to Liam as a joke to tell his friend Mark. 

The whole song just reminds me of a joke you would tell your friend in class. It’s just so dang funny to me every single time Olly (Liam) says YEAH WHATEVER. He just keeps interrupting them more and more until that last one where the music just cuts out and they both just nod at the camera and say “that’s nice”. It’s a classic misleading of the audience and it made me bust out laughing the first time. The reactions from Sifl are just perfect as it reflects how weird and surreal the whole song is. I have to admit though that the chorus sections can become a little weird and trippy. It’s just a really fun song and when that hard guitar chords hit, I wanna headbang alongside Olly.

Also something a little unexpected from a music video performed completely by sock puppets is that it actually contains some social and moral value. I mean the whole point of the song and the attached skit is to illustrate how apathetic and uncaring American teens have become and why they become so detached. I think Sifl said it best when he said “Olly you can say whatever the whole show and you may think you look cool, but it looks really dumb.” It’s this whole idea that not caring about stuff makes you cool. This sort of reflects how in popular media the cool characters are the ones who disrespect authority and stay detached and aloof (see the “cool guys don’t look at explosions” group). I think this is a serious problem as it has become almost the status quo now that cool people can’t overtly care about stuff or they are “tryhards”. This creates a sense that to be cool you have to not succeed at what authority wants you to and completely not care about it. I think this is what causes a lot of high schoolers to make unwise decisions. They don’t care about school and their future because that’s “cool”.

Well I fervently stand by those kids who take the extra effort to try hard and to succeed through caring about themselves, their future, and helping others. I think it is a major problem in this country, one that many leaders and teachers have been trying to solve. Kids should want to try their hardest in school; they should want to be the best they can be. I mean one of the things parents of this country are most worried about is that are uncaring attitude of “whatever” could cause the US to lose ground economically, politically, and educationally to foreign countries. My history teacher, Mr. Anderson, made an interesting point when he said that humans in America today look for much more shortcuts and easy ways then they would have even twenty years ago. Even looking at this blog project I know for a fact that at least a quarter to half of the students doing this will just barely go over the word limit. Some don’t even care enough to do the assignment. I know this is true because I am guilty of it myself. I know that last year in LA we had to do forum posts in which seven hundred words would get you an A grade. So most of my forum posts were in between seven hundred and eight hundred. I guess you could blame on how busy everyone is nowadays or the distractions from technology, but I think it is also a severe issue in the mindset of teenagers in the country. At the same time, I probably will finish my blog word count this week with about 1300 words. Another person comes up and asks me “why would you say that teens being lazy is a major problem and then take the easy route yourself” and I’m just like YEAH WHATEVER. Thanks for reading, don’t forget to subscribe, and peace out.