Joined A Cult

I just purchased a 2007 Harley-Davidson Nightster
When told my riding buddy N8O he called me a "Fat Rat Bastard"
... I can live with that.

More later. Stay Tuned.

What A Load Of Tolkien

I was perusing my audiobooks in iTunes to see what I'd like to listen to or listen to again before the release of the next Harry Potter book.
I have quite a few audiobooks now and as I was scrolling though and I was surprised at just how much Tolkien I had. In total I have 4:15:51:41 of Tolkien. That's 4 days, 15 hours, 51 minutes, and 41 seconds of Middle Earth goodness. I had forgotten that I had Radio Dramatizations of the books as well as the audio versions of the books.

The Silmarillion (unabridged audiobook) : 14 hours, 49 minutes, 53 seconds.
Martin Shaw's reading is grave and resonant, conveying all the powerful events and emotions that shaped elven/men/dwarf history and Middle Earth itself.

The Hobbit (unabridged audiobook) : 11 hours, 4 minutes, 51 seconds.
The Fellowship Of The Ring (unabridged audiobook) : 19 hours, 9 minutes, 54 seconds.
The Two Towers (unabridged audiobook) : 16 hours, 43 minutes, 18 seconds.
The Return Of The King (unabridged audiobook) : 18 hours, 22 minutes, 57 seconds.
All read by Rob Inglis in 1990. Inglis has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and his old-school English voice is a perfect match for the books. He shines with comedy, but he's also good at conveying solemnity, and his reading of the madness of Denethor was genuinely frightening. His voice of Gollum is the most distinctive, and clearly the one he had the most fun with: cackling, gurgling, whining, and hissing, simultaneously hilarious and pathetic. Even if you've read the books many times yourself, hearing them aloud is different. You are forced to listen to passages you might have otherwise skipped or hurried over, and many of them yield up unexpected treasures, a turn of phrase or simile that you never noticed before. We can never again read them for the first time; but this is the next best thing.

American Dramatizations
The Hobbit : 4 hours, 42 minutes, 51 seconds.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy : 10 hours, 26 minutes, 50 seconds.
A 1979 dramatization of The Lord of the Rings was broadcast in the USA. No cast or credits appear on the audio packaging. Each of the actors was apparently recorded separately and then the various parts were edited together. There is an old-school charm to these old analog recordings. This version is chalked full of fun songs. There is a charming renascence style to the instrumentation. The Dwarf songs are catchy and some what hypnotic.

BBC Dramatization
The Hobbit : 3 hours, 42 minutes, 51 seconds.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy : 13 hours, 15 minutes, 13 seconds.
In 1981 the BBC broadcast The Lord of the Rings, a new, ambitious dramatisation in 26 half-hour installments. It stared Ian Holm as Frodo Baggins, who played Bilbo Baggins, his character's cousin/uncle, in the live-action trilogy.

Yes, that's Leonard Nimoy a.k.a. Mr. Spock crooning about Bilbo in the video below.

What's Crackalackin

I recently purchased a new snare off of ebay.
It's a beautiful 5" x 14" 8-play maple Pork Pie with a honey-amber finish.

A little over a decade ago I used to own a 5" x 10" power piccolo snare by Pork Pie.
That was the loudest, highest, ear-drum shattering crack I had ever heard. I loved that thing.
I was really into Tim "Herb" Alexander (Laundry, Attention Deficit, Uberschall, The Blue Man Group, A Perfect Circle) back then, he was mostly known for his insanely wacky and mind-blowing drumming for the band Primus. I was never one of those guys who worshiped the Neil Pearts, the Terry Bozzios, or the Carter Beaufords of the drumming world. Those flashy, showy, bajillion piece drum set, drum stick twirling kind of guys have never been my cup of tea. I was more into the guys like Keith Moon, John Bonham, Chad Smith, and of course Tim Alexander. The thunderous-loud rock drummers who threw down the beats that made you bob your head and throw your rock fist into the air.
Tim Alexander was in Modern Drummer Magazine, back in 1991 when Primus released the album Sailing the Seas of Cheese. In the article Tim mentioned he was playing drums by a company called Pork Pie.
I loved the sounds of Tim's drums and wanted to find out more about the company with the funny name. It wasn't that easy to do back then. It wasn't like now where everyone has access to the Internet. I had to deal with the pot-smoking-neanderthals who worked at Guitar Center.
I also didn't know anybody who was playing them or, for the most part, had heard of them.
I ordered it on blind faith and I could not have been happier. It made buying the new one much easier.

The snare was hand-made and signed by Bill Detamore, creator of Pork Pie.



In 1987, Bill started making drums as a hobby. This hobby quickly evolved into a full service drum company. Each drum is signed by Bill Detamore with the date it was made. Pork Pie drums are made by hand in Canoga Park California. Bill still is a hands on owner. He still cuts every bearing edge and does all of the paint jobs on the drums.

I stripped the snare down, polished it up, put it back together, gave it some new heads, and tuned it up. The snare has a nice beefy crack. I'm very happy with it!

The Sam Keenan Collaboration

Some exciting news for Crash Effect.
We will be collaborating with Twin Cities local music legend Sam Keenan.

I've known Sam for somewhere in the ballpark of 22/23 years?
When you were a kid, do you remember when you were friends with a someone and you thought their older sibling was the coolest person in the world? For me that was Sam.
He was one of those music prodigy kids who could sing, play guitar, piano, cello, and pretty much anything he got his hands on in a skilled and precise way. He is one of those guys where you are like "you're so talented that you suck!"

I spent my adolescence following Sam like a little puppy through the Twin Cities music scene during the nineties. Sam was always cool. He'd say I was with the band (Liquid Ernie) to the door guy or bartender so I could catch them and other local bands at venues I wasn't old enough to get into at the time. Now that I think about it, in the beginning of Liquid Ernie, Sam probably wasn't old enough to get into some of the venues they'd play either. I lost contact with Sam for quite a few years after they broke up.

A little over a year ago I was introduced to this phenomenon known as myspace.com. During a family get together my sister-in-law mentioned she had a profile on there and that it was a great tool to get into contact with people you've lost contact with. She told me about a bunch of people that we both knew that were on there. So I figured meh... why not look into it. I punched in my sister-in-law's myspace URL and I saw one of her friends was this guy:

Whoa! Sam's gotta myspace page! I saw that he had a show that night at Lee's. (landmark hole-in-the-wall in Minneapolis)
I went his show and was blown away by his music and spent sometime catching up with him. We started corresponding through myspace and I've caught a few of his shows over the last year, fast-forward to now, Sam will be engineering, mixing, and performing on the upcoming Crash Effect album. He may sit in on a few of our shows while we are in the studio with him.

World War Z

This book is really a sister book to the Zombie Survival Guide, not a sequel. They are both written by Max Brooks but have completely different styles of writing. World War Z is a collection of short stories that can stand alone but work well built on each other to create a time line of the Zombie War.
There is a ten episode podcast available for free on iTunes that offers entire short stories extracted out of the book. I listened to them before I listened to the WWZ audiobook. They are very entertaining but there is some stuff in there that just goes sort of in-one-ear-out-the-other since you are listening to the stories out of sequence. As I listened to the stories again in the audiobook I found myself thinking, "ah, that makes more sense or ah, that seems to have more meaning".
I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I was thinking how if you removed the zombie element, kept everything else the same, just exchanged the undead for some kind of lethal virus that was killing everyone on the planet, this would be one of the scariest end-of-the-world books out there. This book sucked me in. It is performed incredibly well by an impressive cast of actors. Whoever cast the readers of this book is a genius. They picked the perfect actors for each of the stories. One of my favorites was none other than Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill. His voice fits his character perfectly. After years of doing characters for animation Hamill is an old pro.
The other familiar voice I enjoyed was Alan Alda. His character, to me, seemed as if Hawkeye Pierce from Mash had gone on to work a government job after the war. The character is played with a been-there-done-that-seen-it-survived-it tone.

WORLD WAR Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a recounting of these apocalyptic and horrifying years that will make sure we never forget how close we came to total annihilation. Told from the perspective of numerous survivors from all over the world, from Denver to South Africa, Sydney to Yonkers, Malibu to India, WORLD WAR Z captures the sacrifices and, toward the end, the ingenuity of our race to defend and save our cities, towns, and villages from a plague that seemed virtually impossible to stop.
Brooks tells a moving story of courage and survival and gives us insight into the key military strategies that helped us take our world back. To this day, controversy and conversation still revolves around some key issues that WORLD WAR Z addresses such as:

- How the Walking Plague was initially covered up by corrupt governments
- Why the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services downplayed the Great Panic
- A zealous American President's mistake in putting his party's needs in an election year ahead of the safety of his people.

I wish there was an unabridged version of the audiobook.

The Zombie Survival Guide

I LOVE any and all things ZOMBIE!
I love the campiness, the impending apocalyptic doom, the sucker-punch scares, the mythology, the volumes upon volumes of crappy and cheaply indie made "B" films.
I love all the spin-offs of George A. Romero's films. I love the makeup and gore effects. I love the twisted visual gages and jokes. I love the badly-written story lines and the over-blown special effects budgets. I love everything from 28 Days Later to Shaun of the Dead and Bubba Ho-Tep (what's better than a geriatric Elvis in a nursing home battling an Egyptian Mummy) and everything in between. I love other people who love the Zombie stuff. There is an affinity for the undead floating amongst people that crosses gender and cultural lines. Like Trekkies only it's a little more underground and less organized. For me there is a sense of a guilty pleasure in my affection to the Zombie world. It's fun to come across other fans. You either love it or you don't get it. You can rent the cheesiest titled B-rated Zombie flick with a super over the top cover and you wonder what kind of reaction you are going to get from the person at the counter. Are they some teenager who looks at you weird as they read the title and tell you when it's due back? Or are they the kind of person who says "I've seen this five times and if you like this you should check out..." There seems to be an instant camaraderie that springs up in meeting a fellow Zombie lover. The Zombie world is huge from Zombie related television shows, to Zombie films, to Zombie comics, to Zombie books, to Zombie art, to Zombie video games, to my personal favorite the Zombie Pub Crawl (playing a show that is apart of that is a goal of mine) and then there's even Rob Zombie.

I think I'd be equally excited and scared to meet him.

So all of that is an intro to The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, son of the comedy genius Mel Brooks, a Saturday Night Live alumni writer, and fellow Zombie enthusiast. This book is great! I will say that I think you have to have some interest in the Zombie world to get this book. It is brilliantly read, strait and dead pan. No pun intended. Ironically this book could be useful if the world was faced with a real world-wide pandemic.

Below is a description of the book.
The Zombie Survival Guide is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now. Exhaustively comprehensive, this book covers everything you need to know, including how to understand Zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain.

Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack:
1. Organize before they rise!
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head: cut off theirs.
4. Blades don't need reloading.
5. Ideal protection: tight clothes, short hair.
6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The Zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.

Don't be carefree and foolish with your most precious asset: life. The Zombie Survival Guide offers complete protection through trusted, proven tips for safeguarding yourself and your loved ones against the living dead. It is an audiobook that can save your life.

I'm excited to listen to and review World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.

Kudos Magazine Sampler

Very excited about this one folks! Still not sure how they came across us but I'm ecstatically happy that they did! Kudos Magazine, the very stylish and hip lifestyle magazine has included the track "Bomb" on their first volume of their Rising Stars music compilation. I'm excited about the exposure Bomb will receive across Europe and the digital world we live in. I'm also very excited about being on a compilation with some heavy hitters in the indie music world. You're probably familiar with Walkie Talkie Man by Steriogram via the iPod commercials. This compilation is available for free when you download Issue 6 from Kudos.

Giant Robot Monkeys!

I'm not real big on political humor. Most of the time I don't get it because I don't follow politics too closely. However this one I get a laugh out of.

Crash Effect Podcasts

Over the coarse of the last few weeks I had gone back
into our podcast archives. I used the handy dandy
Garage Band program to add chapter markers,
artwork, and tags.
If you have not subscribed to our podcast
you can do so by clicking here.
I look forward to contributing to the podcasts each week.
Michael does the audio side of them and I get to do the visual.
Below is a random assortment of art you will find
embedded into the podcasts.

Acadia Café Show • March '07

This was a fun show. It was a little rough around the edges and not quite polished at moments but hey that's our style. Gritty, greasy, acoustic rock is what we market ourselves as and that's what we put out there. Paul Chamberlain (of Cousin Dad) opened the night. He is a folk-blues-bluegrass rooted musician who was joined by Ken Sherman (also of Cousin Dad) on fiddle. These two were seasoned musicians who were able to play a great set. They both had a wonderful sense of humor. It was a real shame that there weren't more people to see them. If you ever have the chance you should check them out. The second act was Jon Jacobsen (of Johari's Window) performing solo.
Last up was us. Michael and I played a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants performance. We had briefly rehearsed as a two piece and didn't have time to thoroughly rearrange the songs to better suit a two piece act. This was supposed to have been the last show for Crash Effect with former members Kris Norberg (bass) and James Zirbes (guitar). After failing to join us for rehearsals for the show Michael and I decided to be the crash that we are and attack the show without them. As I mentioned earlier it wasn't the most polished show but our music and message was heard. We sold a few copies of Bomb and enjoyed some Rogue on tap.
It was a good show, not our strongest, but a good show still. I'm looking forward to playing the Acadia again in May when we are a little more polished and arranged.

Summer Flash-Back

Today I took some time to update and clean up the
Crash Effect Myspace.
I created a "master" blog entry that will hopefully drive some traffic to the Crash Effect site. Going back through the blog entries I came across a review I wrote last summer about the Flaming Lips show at the Minnesota State Fair. I'll paste it below. Ah Memories...

The Greatest Rock Show EVER!
Last Night was one of those nights I will remember
and cherish for a long time!
Anxiety and anticipation bubbled and churned in my stomach as I was looking for a place to park at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. Rain poured in sheets so thick you could not see five feet in front of you. Water ran down streets like rivers a foot deep.
Was this going to be worth it? Is this even going to happen? I call my buddy who was supposed to be running camera for the event. Have they called the show yet? Do I even want to get out of the car? Or do I go find a coffee shop to stay warm and dry?
He replies with, "Well I'm literally standing in front of the stage in knee-deep water but they still think the show is going to happen..." Well then there is nothing for it. Tickets for the show and admission to the Fair have already be paid. Suck it up and get out of the car!
What... Am... I... Doing?!!! Lightnings though my brain as I step out of the car and into ankle deep waters. My shoes fill with cold dirty rainwater. Rain stings my face. Still I trudge on.
I resemble a Salmon swimming up-stream against the crowd of people desperately rushing for an escape to their vehicles. As I feel common sense beginning to creep into my mind it is violently flushed out by the sounds of fanatical Flaming Lips fans making war-cry like yells as they charge head down like rhinos into the Fairgrounds. My spirit lifted a rush of emotion overtakes me. My heart begins to pound. A beast within me begins to take over...
and that beast wants a cheese on a stick! Satisfying the beast with fried cheesy goodness I begin to subside back to myself and the rain begins to die down. All is good in the universe once again. I make my way into the Grand Stand after some roasted corn on the cob and park myself in front of the stage. Sonic Youth takes the stage and puts on a solid show. As I'm standing bobbing my head in proper rock show educate. The thought drifts though my mind... Sonic Youth looks kind of old now. They are more like Sonic Middle Age. They can still make a symphony of feedback like nobody's business. Than the moment I've been waiting for, as confetti cannons explode across the sky and Giant balloons bounce merrily above the crowd, a man in a giant bubble begins to crowd surf. The crowd goes nuts as a dozen Santa Clauses rush onto stage left and dance around in an excited group of monkeys sort of way. Meanwhile a dozen martian women go-go dancers shimmy and shake stage right. The music is euphorically explosive as the bubble crowd surfing man gets back to the stage just in time to leap out of the bubble and hit the microphone for the first verse.
More confetti and streamers blast into the crowd as the enormous screen behind the band lights up with the mouth camera of the frontman. Flat out, Hands Down, No Contest, this was the greatest rock spectacle these two eyes have ever seen. I've been to hundreds of shows large and small. This show blew them all out of the water both musically, visually, and with crowd participation. This was the biggest party in Minnesota! If you could harness the exuberant energy of a week of Mardi Gras, boil it down, bottle it, let if ferment, filter it, and harness it in pure raw form, and then release it in one location for two hours, you would then have the chemical makeup for this show. If you have ever attended a Flaming Lips show that you can give me an amen. If you have never had the privilege of attending a Flaming Lips show you need to! HaleFAlujia!

Well there you have it. My summer flash-back to last year. After reading over the entry above I'm finding myself in the mood for some fried cheese.

BOMB available on iTunes

Crash Effect is now available on iTunes Music Store.
Check out BOMB : the Radio Singles and while you are there subscribe to our podcast.
It's a wonderful feeling to be on iTunes. There's not much to it to get on there. Virtually anybody can do it, but there seems to be another level of legitimacy for Crash Effect having our music available there. There's something about having your music available to everyone on the planet that feels good.
As Michael mentioned in a blog entry on the Crash Effect Site through the month of April (2007) we will donate 20% of all sales on iTunes to our ongoing partnership with UNICEF. This is something that I am VERY excited about.

BOMB on CDBaby.com

Yeah baby! BOMB available on CD Baby, baby!
...um... maybe...one too many babies...
Bomb: The Radio Singles is now available to purchase online at cdbaby.com. After being on there for less than a week we have already sold a copy to a gentleman in Spain. Thanks to the wonders of digital distribution, and promotional monsters like myspace, Crash Effect's music can be introduced and purchased by anyone around the world.
Sometime in the next thirty to sixty days Bomb will also be available on iTunes, Rhapsody, Real-Player, Napster, Tower Records (online), Best Buy (online indie section), MSN music, Buymusic, Verizon Wireless and a few small odd ball online shops.

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

I'm beginning to appreciate old school fiction more and more. After listening to Frankenstein and now the Time Machine my interest in this genera has been highly piqued.
Here is a very brief run down of the plot without spoiling anything.
The main character is never mentioned by name. He is simply called "the Time Traveller". The story opens with the Time Traveler sitting in a tavern demonstrating to colleges and peers, using a fully functioning model, that time is a dimension. They are familiar with three dimensional space since they live in it. The fourth dimension, being time, is hard for them to grasp. When the miniature model time machine disappears from the table in front of them they pass it off as a magic trick, an illusion of sorts. His frustration with their disbelief is the push he needs to get inside the full sized machine he built and take it for a joyride. He then immediately sets off on a journey into the future. H.G. Wells does a wonderful job of describing what it looks like to travel through time, his machine allows the Time Traveller to observe the changes of the outside world in fast motion. The sun and moon spin around the sky forming a band of blurry light. He also goes into some detail of the changes to the buildings and landscape around him as he travels through time. His journey takes him to the year 802,701 A.D. where he finds an apparently peaceful and primitive future filled with a simple race called the Eloi. They appear to be quite unintelligent and child-like and live without quarrels or conflict. The story follows the Time Traveller's interaction and relationship building with them.
One evening the Time Traveller returns to his usual place to sleep and he suddenly realises that the time machine is missing. He soon discovers that the Eloi are not the only race to inhabit the Earth. He discovers that the human race has diverged into two branches. He learns of the race of Morlocks, large, nocturnal, cannibals who resemble albino apes and who dwell underground. They are the ones who have taken the time machine. The story then follows the Time Traveller as he battles the Morlocks to recover and reactivate the Time Machine.

Much like Frankenstein, I was surprised at how long ago the book was published. The Time Machine was first published in 1895.

Dropping Bombs

The BOMB EP has arrived! Our first studio project is completed and ready for your listening pleasure. It has 6 tracks:
1. Beauty Queen
2. Bomb
3. You
4. May Day
5. Do You Know
6. Bomb - war room remix
The CD also contains bonus media content.
There are extra tunes from our rehearsals, video from our first show (scary), and much more.
We are very proud of the hard work we poured into this project.
The project is a bitter-sweet for us. The day Michael brought BOMB to our rehearsal for us to see, Kris and James had a bomb of their own to drop.
Both Kris (bass) and James (guitar) have decided to formally leave Crash Effect due to "musical differences". It was a bit of an odd conversation at the time because the EPs had arrived and were sitting on the coffee table in front of us in their shiny-new reflective cellophane wrapping and you could still smell the ink. After talking it through with them, and coming to a general consensus that it was for the best for all parties, Michael and I went over to Caribou to talk about the departure and figure out what to do next. It was kind of poetic sitting in the exact same Caribou where Michael, Jamison, and I had conceived the concepts that would become Crash Effect. It felt like square one, back to the drawing board. I have come to know this to be true; If you spend enough time at a Caribou with a Wireless-Internet connection eventually you will come up with a brilliant concept. That was exactly what happened for Michael and I as we formed the band, came up with foundation for the band, and what direction to go with the band from here. It seemed to be one of those blinding flash of the obvious moments now in hind site. The foundations had already been laid. We didn't need to reinvent the wheel. Crash Effect is about community. It always has been with our work with charitable organizations. We are now going to take it one step farther. We are going to push on as a two piece incorporating the musical community around us. We want to collaborate with fellow musicians who can add to the music and join us in the humanitarian aspects of the band on a project-to-project basis. This enables the musical community to be apart of Crash Effect, add their contribution, and leave their fingerprints on the music and community so-to-speak. It is likely that we will continue to work with Kris and James on a project-to-project basis in the future. I'm sure you will see them on stage with us or their name in a CD insert from time-to-time. Michael and I will operate as principals as we work with musicians to make a mosaic of music. Although Crash Effect has always been community based we now are kicking open the floodgates to a larger community to be apart of. We are excited for what the future holds and the amazing opportunities we will have. Kris and James leaving may be the closing of a chapter but there is now a blank page before us. We have already been hard at work with a new look, sound, and vision. As we are so appropriately named, the Crash is not stopping or even slowing down but changing course and picking up speed and more rhinos!

Red Sea Show

Despite snow storms that covered the Twin Cities in over thirty inches of snow and nasty, wet, bone chilling winds, we had a good turn-out!
We had fans, friends, and family show up to watch us.
They were real Minnesotans!
We played the Red Sea Bar in Minneapolis (Not Egypt, just in case you were confused) with Lazy Red and Burning Chrome. It was a great show. A lot of fun. The venue itself is a little small but that seemed to help the place feel cozy and intimate. We sold a hand full of EPs. Had some laughs. Made some new friends AND had our first fan to know and sing the lyrics along with us. She was even sporting a Crash Effect t-shirt. It was good times had by all.

MinneSNOWta

We haven't had snow storms like this since I was a kid.
Which has been a large determining factor as to why I have never invested in a snow blower. The sissy winters we've had for the last decade haven't been enough to justify the garage real estate. That property has be reserved for my motorcycles.

Two weekends in a row of getting a butt whoopin' from Old Man Winter.
My wrists, shoulders, and back will be soar for a week after all the shoveling I've had to do.
We received somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 inches of snow with the two weekend white-outs. The snow was so deep that my last round of shoveling consisted of scooping and throwing chest high. Of course, in true Minnesota fashion, the moment you clear your driveway the snow plow comes by and puts a nice three foot bank at the end of your driveway for you to shovel. D'oh!

I enjoy the illusion that I'm bending the shovel. Not planned.

The other item that goes hand-in-hand with Minnesota snow storms is the road salt.
The images on the right are the normal color of our car. The images on the left are what our car looks like after ONE commute to work and back. Yuck.

Invisible Children • part 3

The videos below highlight some of the campaigns that have happened and are happening through Invisible Children Inc.
The TRI Campaign.

The BRACELET Campaign

The Global Night Commute part 1

The Global Night Commute part 2

There are many more powerful and inspiring videos about the Invisible Children Inc. That can be found on youtube. Including the videos that correspond to each of the different colored bracelets for the Bracelet Campaign. I encourage you to check them out. Just go to www.youtube.com and type in Invisible Children in the search and off you go. There are also some wonderful videos that were made by individuals who were at various events and made their own short documentaries. There are also videos that follow the Invisible Children cross-country tour(s). For more information about Invisible Children Inc. Stop by their website and spent a few minutes. There is a lot of information about how to get involved in campaigns, screening parties, and more. They also have great downloadable .pdf files for information about donations with breakdowns of how monies are spent, where exactly donated dollars are going, and how they are being distributed.
Get educated. Get involved.
www.invisiblechildren.com

Invisible Children • part 2

The video below is a brief snippet of a back story
to the invisible children of Uganda.
It is a very tame CNN piece that help bring you up to speed.

The hard-to-swallow sad truth is that there are invisible children of sorts in every country.
Fortunately, thanks to the Invisible Children film,
some of these invisible children have been seen.
I'm sure the CNN video you saw above would have never been shot, edited, and aired if not for this film. The wonderful and beautiful thing is the stone dropped in the puddle has begun a ripple effect and the ripples are growing.

The movement has begun. Are you going to be apart of it? There are many many levels and degrees in which to get involved. All will help. The smallest of actions to create change is still action. It's a step forward as apposed to no step at all.

Invisible Children • part 1

When I started to blog I made the decision to not blog about films. Watching movies is one of my favorite things to do. I watch somewhere between four and six movies a week on average.
Sometimes way more. I've been known to have marathon Saturdays where I'll watch six movies in a day. I didn't want to blog about films because that would be all that I do and it would rob time from watching more films. Besides, there are already a ton of blogs that already do that. There is nothing I can say about films that AICN hasn't already covered.

So why make an exception? Why blog about this film?
Because this is more than a film. This is a movement. I sat down with Michael to watch the film that many people had told me I needed to see. For those who don't know me real well, the way I'm wired is to be completely counter-cultural. I have no idea why I am this way. I just always have been. So the more people told me I needed to see this film the more uninterested I became. It was all over myspace and youtube for the last year. Another contributing factor to not seeing this film was I didn't know how to get a hold of it other than purchasing it from their website or tracking down a screening and crashing it. Recently my friend Ben purchased the film and had a screening party. I was bummed because I had a previous engagement. He lent me a copy after the party. Now I had the film in my possession and no more excuses. I wanted to watch the film with Michael since I know it would encourage and inspire both of us to dig in and push on with the band's drive for global change.

The first 25 to 30 minutes could definitely be chopped down. It almost seems like a homemade version of Jackass. They could lose the whole puking montage, the shot of the chicken getting it's head cut off in a sawing motion, and the snake killing sequence. The introduction to the characters is so disconnected from the rest of the entire film. I almost didn't want to continue to watch save for the fact that my friend Ben recommended it and said it was powerful. He was right. After getting though the first chapter or so the story that the filmmakers stumbled upon is incredibly moving and heart wrenching (in a good way) There were things I have never seen before that would never make the nightly news because of their graphic nature. However that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist in the world that we live in.

Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearls & Rooibos Tropica

After enjoying this tea for a few weeks I decided I should finally write a blog about it. When I went to make some I realized that I didn't have enough. D'oh! I had to make a trip out to the Mall of America to pick up more of this delicious tea.

Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearls
A Flavored/Scented Green Tea
Contains 5-10% of caffeine content in relation to an average cup of coffee.
The leaves are hand rolled into the shape of a pearl.
According to Teavana: may help to prevent cancer, lower cholesterol, regulate blood sugar level, good for digestion, prevent cavities and aging.
While some of that my be true and some wishful thinking, the smell of this tea seams to bring a sense of relaxation and kind of calm healing.
The stresses of life seem to melt away when you smell this tea.

Rooibos Tropica
A Rooibos | Red Tea
Contains 0% of caffeine content in relation to an average cup of coffee.
Rooibos Tropica is a blend of green rooibos, strawberry, peach, sunflower, cornflower petals, and orange peel.
According to Teavanna: improves digestion, good for skin and allergies, high in vitamins and minerals, high antioxidants.

Review:
This tea has a tendency to go fast. I probably drink this tea more often than the other teas I have. When infused, the Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearls unfold, slowly releasing a rich and smooth fragrance and flavor of fresh jasmine. The smell reminds me of the day in India when the ladies made strands of fresh jasmine and put them in their hair. There is something very calming and soothing about this tea's aroma. I wish I could have my entire house smell like this tea all the time. The smell translates to the taste as well. This is a smooth fruit and flowery tea that goes down easy and warms and relaxes you from the inside out. This is a wonderful stress reliever. The other thing I enjoy about this tea is watching it during the steeping process. The Pearls float at the top when the water is introduced. As they soak the water in they slowly open and sink to the bottom. It's like watching a time lapse of a flower opening. When the tea is ready they leaves look like a small patch of grass.

Frankenstein

I just finished listening to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein on audiobook.
I have a hard time reading books for several reasons.
Some of the heavy hitters are I'm slightly dyslexic, after a page or two my eyes wig out with astigmatism, I'm a little A.D.D. and I have a hard time finding time to sit down to read.
Solution: Audiobooks. Love 'em! I can put on an audiobook while I'm at work doing low brain activity stuff like Photoshop and simple After Effects projects.
I can let my imagination go nuts for a few hours at a time and I can plow through an audiobook in a couple days. I think it took me almost a year to read through the Lord of the Rings books and a week and a half to listen to the audiobooks.

I've had Frankenstein in my to-listen-to list for a while. I've just been working on some projects that I wouldn't be able to multitask very well.

As a kid I was familiar with the pop culture Frankenstein from television and movies. There was everything from Mel Brook's Young Frankenstein to Fred Gwynn's Herman Munster to Franken-Berry cereal. I had seen the film Mary Shelly's Frankenstein directed by Kenneth Branagh back in 1994 and the classic Boris Karloff Frankenstein (1931) directed by James Whale on television when I was a kid. I think it was one of those Sunday afternoon scare-a-thons hosted by Elvira around Halloween.

I really enjoyed this book. It is a dark and tragic tale that sucked me in.
There are some wonderful themes that were never quite captured in film format.
(or breakfast cereal format either)
I enjoyed the dramatic roller coaster of Victor and the Monster.
I enjoyed how themes crisscrossed. You meet Victor when he's creating the monster. You are scared of his character. He's truly a mad scientist bent on his experiments to unlock the mysteries of life itself.
By the end of the story you are very sympathetic for the hell he has created for himself.
When you are introduced to the Monster you are sympathetic towards his character. Before he becomes self aware and educated he is a selfless kind creature who's first act is to do anonymous charity work for a family who is living in poverty. After he is rejected, hurt, and educated of what he is and how ugly and cruel the society of man is, his second act is to have revenge on his creator. He begins killing those who are loved ones of his creator.
There are a lot of elements and themes that you can pull out and compare to life today which goes to show how great of a writer Mary Shelly was since it was written way back in 1817.

Music Rising

The Edge (of U2 fame), Gibson Guitar Chairman and CEO Henry Juszkiewicz and producer Bob Ezrin have created a great organization to get instruments back into the hands of professional musicians, whom have lost their livelihood in the wakes of Hurricane Katrina. When the campaign was first launched in November 2005 the focus was to replace lost or destroyed instruments to professional musicians so that they could regain their livelihood. Music Rising Phase II will concentrate on rebuilding music programs in churches and schools and will be administered by The Gibson Foundation with assistance from Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation and All Congregations Together. I could tell you more but I'll let The Edge do it.


So yeah, you could help by purchasing a guitar
and how cool would that be?
But I know I don't have an extra $599.99 just laying around. I did however find a way to help out and get something cool. If you look at the photos on the bonus content of our Bomb EP you can see me sporting a Music Rising T-shirt. They only run about $30 plus shipping. You can order one at the U2 shop. All proceeds will go to Music Rising.



In the music video below U2 and Green Day joined forces and coved the song "The Saints Are Coming" by The Skids. The video depicts some powerful imagery of what they think should have happened after Hurricane Katrina. Enjoy.

Forgotten Communities

The videos say it best. I'll stop typing and let you watch them.

Oxfam America part 3

World Trade could be a powerful force for reducing poverty if poor people could sell their products at a decent price. What's stopping them? The gross injustice of the World Trade System. I experienced this first had last year when I traveled to Chennai, India. You'd see a farmer selling his fruit in the market with his family. Two feet from him would be a vendor selling fruit out of a crate with Dole and Chaquita stamped on the side. I took the image below in Chetpet, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India.

The video below continues to follow Chris Martin on his video diary through Ghana, Africa.

Crash Effect my not yet have the success of Coldplay but we do share the same values when it comes to social justice, indigenous and minority rights, and global trade.
I realize the gravity of the following statement and also want to declare that Crash Effect has the vision, motivation, and drive to come alongside bands like Coldplay and U2 and hopefully pick up where they leave off and carry the torch even farther. As I mentioned in Oxfam America part 1, 10% of all income right off the top is donated to charity. This is really what drives us as a band. The music is almost secondary. Almost. We use our music as a platform to help educate and donate. Our big goal is to eventually increase the percentage of giving to charity. We also do our best to create products that are organic and sweatshop free. If you purchase a shirt you are supporting the band and good causes as well.
I encourage you to look before you purchase when it comes to clothing. I am as guilty as the next person when it comes to owning clothes that were made and sold unfairly. What I can tell you is that now that I have been educated I will investigate what is behind that name on the tag.