Hang 'Em High

Listening to some Dropkick Murphys today at work, I came to the realization that I really don't listen to enough music. In high school I listening a lot of music, spent my allowance on tons of CDs (of all types too, including classical!), and went to concerts when I could afford it. In fact, some of my best memories from my time in Zurich was going to the Hallenstadion for random bands like the Offspring. Now, I don't even have a working MP3 player that I can call my own.

Sad times indeed.

 I'm a bit unimpressed with some of the apps that have music for my phone. Pandora is like a radio station, which is fine sometimes except when I want a particular song. Spotify is nice for a free music app, but to use it on my phone I would have to pay $9.99 a month for the service (which is too much for a service that doesnt allow you to add songs to you library but into playlists instead). Plus, I haven't figured out how to add songs to my Android Incredible that's easy enough to which I know I would actually use it.

Needless to say, these obstacles (plus my fascination with ESPN Radio with Mike and Mike in the Morning) mean my music tastes are not really expanding with new artists, just sticking to my old favorites (hence Dropkick Murphys)

Oh well, whats a guy to do...

In other news, today I think I'm going to buy a few T-Shirts from this brilliant site called Threadless.com. They have some awesome t-shirt designs. I first noticed the website a while ago, but the shirts were $20 each, which is a joke. I would never get a t-shirt for 20 bleeding dollars. BUT, the last two days they have had a sale that each t-shirt is just $9.99. Now that is something I can take part in. After asking the wife all-cute-types last night, I can look into getting one or two shirts. Pretty stoked about it!

All of the Lights

So I've been interested in soccer player background creation for some time, and I had some time for photoshop play today at work (god, love that) so I decided I would try out some new techniques and so I created this image. Its of exciting Manchester City player David Silva. More to come, but I thought I'd give it a go.  Hope you like it...

I realized after I made it that the actual image that Silva himself is a little blurry, but its because I uploaded in a lower resolution (72 dpi) to make sure that it would fit on here if possible. 

The Scorpion and the Frog

Alas, the end of the weekend comes, and another weekend will soon be gone. Today was rather mellow. The wife and I went out and did a little shopping in the afternoon, and I did some laundry. Nothing fancy.

This evening, before watching The Next Iron Chef, I watched Drive with Ryan Gosling. I must say, I was very pleasantly surprised. It was very cool and the cinematography was excellent. Ryan Gosling exudes cool, and this movie was him in spades. The only negative was Carey Mulligan. I first saw her in the Wallstreet: Money Never Sleeps and i didn't like her there either. Something about her acting style. She has this very always sad looking face, and has a very minimal acting style. I always have issues with actors who think sitting around and pouting is good acting, and the same applies here. However, the movie was so good that Mulligan's iffy performance could not ruin for me. On Netflix, I gave it a 4 out of 5 stars.

As for the Next Iron Chef, its pretty obvious that they want a female iron chef. However, Anne Burrell who I thought they had fast tracked for the job, actually was eliminated tonight. SOOOO we'll see. However, more on that tomorrow...

We Deserve It

I've added my first Photoshop creation. Pretty simple, but it gets the point across

"Jeez": A Reflection

How bad is it that I haven't posted in forever to my blog? At work I see all of these successful blogs where people post all of the time, (including my wife's blog) and it makes me upset. Why do I not have the same urge to post as other people?

Then it hit me, it's because my day to day life is relatively nonblog worthy. Since my last post, I have taken a wonderful vacation with the wife (for details go here:http://say-it-is-so.blogspot.com/) and enjoyed  it very much. Halloween and Thanksgiving came and went, and were also enjoyable. BUT, I need to post not JUST about day to day, but also things that interest me, things that make me angry but I keep to myself in polite conversation, but also things that I'm working on and ideas I have for that work.

As some of you know I work as a Viral Marketing Specialist for a travel company. That means I use social media resources, handle the companies' graphic design needs, create email promos, etc. From now on I will also be posting some of my creations on here as well as some of my graphic design work that I've been playing around with.

The moral of the story is that I don't post on my blog enough, and hopefully with plenty of new things that I'm doing, I'll post quite a bit more. As one can notice on my twitter feed on the side of my blog, I post on that plenty with foursquare etc, so I should really commit to posting more.

As you notice, my blog design has changed (all buttons, headers etc were created by me using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop CS5) and I plan on adding more soon under the title Photoshop/Illustrator creations, so look out for that coming soon as well. I plan on doing quite a bit of added new material here, so look out for it. Thanks!

Well, thats all for now. I'll be posting on here again soon!

...Exactly

This is my entire point on celebrity deaths and Steve Jobs, written much better than I can write it:

Steve Jobs Was Not God via Gawker.com

Read it and pretend I'm writing it.

The Celebrity Death Effect

So, in the wake of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' passing, I had a very interesting discussions with Priyam in regards to how an average, everyday person reacts to celebrities who pass away. Her initial question was why an average person was so broken up about Jobs' passing. In her mind (and I tend to agree with her here) just because someone owns an IPhone doesn't mean they should be so upset about Steve Jobs. Sure, its very sad and he passed away from cancer too young, and he innovated the way that people look at technology but the way that people are acting its like their grandfather passed away. Which is ridiculous. I explained to her that some people are fans of Apple, so they stay up all night waiting in a line for the next IPhone even though its probably pretty similar to the previous IPhone version, with a few minor updates. That passion for the newest tech may also manifest into love for its CEO.

After realizing that its a fan's outpouring of grief which is fueling the fire, this lead to a larger discussion which needs dissection. What is the deal with ridiculous obsession with celebrities passing away? The fact that a celebrity's life may be cut short by different circumstances or that they were influential  is worth noting, but what is the deal with people going so crazy? Let us take Michael Jackson for a example. I am not denying that the King of Pop made an everlasting mark on culture and music. I really enjoy his songs and what he did for pop culture is extremely impressive. However, when he passed away it was like the world was coming to an end for so many people. Crying and moaning the streets, world leaders of all countries holding candlelight vigils, pure uncontrollable sadness. His legacy deserved celebration and his passing was sad and important because the world had lost an music icon. But here are my thoughts. I will probably sound cynical here, but humor me. The man's amazing career had its ups and downs, but his real fame and ability to shape popular culture ended in the early 90s. His legacy from then until his death was primarily marred by legal scandal. So why were people SO upset? The man's contribution to society had already passed. He had given so much, and (as it seems) be rewarded with so much in return. When legendary actor Paul Newman passed away in 2008, people where upset but he had largely been out of the spotlight for years so it was a week long thing. He passed away, people were sad, they showed his movies on TV, then that was pretty much it. Yes MJ was bigger than Newman was in terms of international intrigue, and more influential, but I'm not sure why I see the big difference between the two. As I see it, Jackson left a mark on a lot of people, but that mark is still there after his passing. The music that people love does not magically disappear after he is gone. Anyone who loved his music can turn on the radio or the MP3 player and hear his amazing voice whenever they want.

Don't get me wrong, I AM NOT saying these deaths are not important and worth noting. Anyone who has such influence on culture and other people deserves respect and praise for what they have achieved. I just question people losing their minds of something that, when you think about it, probably doesn't really change their day to day lives all that much. Michael Jackson wasn't going to walk through the front door of their house to sit down to dinner before, and he obviously won't now. Instead of being so sad about it, how about you try to change the world for the better the way Jackson hoped for world peace? Or in the case of Steve Jobs, try to build the next great technological invention by going to college and studying robotics first?

Maybe its the media's fault for blowing up these stories on slow news days, I'm not sure. If you feel differently, or have a good answer to some of the questions I've raised, feel free to comment...