Brand New Brand New

The next Brand New album is out in a few days but they've got the full CD on Myspace right now. It's a bit of a different sound but I think it'll be a fucking badass addition to their already incredible arsenal of music. If you liked songs like Limousine and Luca then you'll really like this new album. On the other side, the new Taking Back Sunday album is either coming out or is already out. It sounds like good ole TBS, nothing seems really experimental in their sound. I'll get back to it once I give it a solid week's worth of a listen.

I Used To Believe

This is a great website for those of you who haven't lost your inner child. It is a collection of things people used to believe as young children. Most are very funny but some are truly amazing in that I remember believing with all my heart some of the same things. For instance when I was five years old I believed that Disney World was actually up in the clouds because the logo had the castle on clouds and I had to take a plane to get there. The site is full of beliefs like this. It's very cool to see that I wasn't alone in some of my odd beliefs as a child. Check it out, you can even add in your own for others to see.

Some of the front page examples:

"My sisters used to believe that banks were simply where you got money from; if you're out of money, you simply to go the bank and get more. My father would once in a while complain about something being too expensive, and my sisters would tell him not to worry as the bank has plenty of money available for everybody. We told them it was not so... they finally believed us when they were about 12."

"Iused to believe that if people swallowed orange seeds, they would grow in their stomachs and very soon branches would come out of their ears. It happened that one day I accidently swallowed one. I remembered running to my Mom and asking her to take me to a doctor. At that time she told me that we should wait until the branches were visible and then she would hire a gardener to tend me! So I waited patiently for weeks. After some time,I decided that the orange seed I accidently swallowed was a bad seed."

Tomorrow Marks 64 Years Since Hiroshima

It's weird to think Hiroshima was that long ago. Here are some pictures of the before and aftermath of the events on that fateful day. To think that people are capable of inflicting that much destruction on one another is a horrific realization. It was said that around 70,000 people were killed instantly and about that same amount during the aftermath. I'm sure I'll never even meet that many people in my whole life. Yet we were able to kill that many in the blink of an eye. I hope, for the sake of us all, that these types of events never transpire again. Here are some photos from an article on Boston.com

Before
After

Color WWI Photos

I didn't realize this would hit me as hard as it did. For some reason or another, old black and white photos don't seem as real to me so I can easily possess a sort of disconnect from those pictured. With these colored photos however, I find myself looking through the eyes of someone who was there. I think the fact that these photos now look like something I could see actually happening with my own eyes is what stirs up a sort of heavy emotional response to a war that is barely covered in grammar school. The uniforms almost look like costumes for a play when I see them in grainy black and white pictures. Seeing them here, full of life and emotion is a rare spectacle.















More Pictures

South Park Memo to MPAA

I just found a memo from Matt Stone, co-creator of South Park, regarding the MPAA's suggested cuts to the South Park Movie. First off, this was a hysterical memo but secondly it directly shows the double standard of the MPAA and big industry movies. When an independent film like Kirby Dick's This Film is Not Yet Rated, the MPAA gave no notes on how to bring it down to an R rating. I just really liked this memo for it's professionalism regarding the hilariously crude subject matter.

Here is the Actual Memo

Control Room

Wow.... Talk about seeing things from the other side. The documentary Control Room is a point of view from the Arab news station Al Jazeera regarding the start of the war in Iraq. This film shows what these people went through to cover this war and the danger they faced from opposing factions including America. When watching the screaming Iraqi people condemning America for their actions, we get to see the whole picture and not just something that strikes fear in us. We see, in this film, the reason for the anger and frustration and understand why many people have become so anti-American. Seeing the way America was dealing with this situation was saddening. I was never a fan of the Bush administration but now I am even more sickened by their actions. If you still have no idea why so many people in the Middle East despise America, see this film to gain some much needed perspective.

Bobby McFerrin Is Brilliant

This was a very cool exercise I just came across the other day. I had heard of similar happenings with audience participation but this really caught my attention. It just makes me realize that people are very alike in so many ways and if one person can tap into that, then there's a wealth of control over the situation. This was all in good fun but it was funny to see that almost everyone in the audience participated perfectly and it wasn't even a musical convention. Have a look see.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.