Remembering the Times

So before we get started on this little post, I must put out there that you only have till Wednesday to get in the running for a FREE poster print at my friend's blog over here.

I know you guys like free stuff, so sign up. I'm especially looking at you, you, you and you. I would put more, but I think you guys like a free poster thingy and you have to be in the US.

Now, let's get down to business.

It's starting to hit me that I am mere months away from graduation. While I am ecstatic to close this chapter in my life and begin a new one, the time has come that a person like is me starts to reflect on all the details of these last 5 years. So every now and again I will post a blog telling a story about what happened during my time as a "college kid." I hope you enjoy reflecting with me.

This one goes back to my freshman year, as a lot of these things do. I had just gotten my camera before I graduated high school and used it a lot my first two years, then it gave out on me and I just got a new one a few months ago. But here is as much of a back story as I can remember.

Don't ask me why, but for some reason when we moved in we put a loaf of bread in a drawer of an extra dresser we had in the living room. After a couple months in, Hedman and I discovered it and realized what happened if you leave bread sitting there for that long. So of course we couldn't eat it, so what did we do? Naturally, get out brooms and play a modified version of hockey using the bread as the puck.

We set up chairs as the "goals" and I'm not kidding, for about 15 minutes we tried to score on each other but to no avail. We got pretty loud at one point to where our fourth roommate, who lasted all from August to November, actually came out and said something to us. But it was more curiousity so when he went back in, we continued. But this time, we got Frisco involved.

We explained the situation and asked him to be the cameraman. We even came up with a mini story -- Hedman would be sitting at the table eating his dinner when I would "challenge" him to a match. He would accept and our match would be under way. However, after that we freestyled it because as I said, we were playing for like 15 minutes with no one making a shot. That's why the following video is so magical.







Hope you enjoyed that and don't forget to enter the contest!

Videos Of Us Playin In The Snow

Pretty self explanatory, right?









Hope everyone is having a good time these holidays!

Well The Weather Outside Is Frightful

I think this is the first Christmas I can actually say the above statement.

I arrived in South Dakota Sunday night and saw the snow on the ground and wondered if I would see some actually fall. Well, a couple days of waiting, I got my wish. Though, that whole "be careful what you wish for" phrase might come true as it is expected to be a pretty bad storm coming through (we have been hearing the wind slam against the house all day).

It started getting really bad in the evening. I went to the commissary with my brother in law to get all the essentials on the chance the power goes out and the wind literally almost knocked me over. We joked that it was like the snow was bitchslapping us in the face.

Is it bad that I am actually kind of excited for a storm? I guess it's just that for me being from the south, we go through hurricanes every year. Sure, I've only gone through two major ones, but I have still gone through them. I guess it would just be kind of cool to experience what the other side of the country goes through.

Before it got too too bad, we took some pics and videos. Pretty soon I wanna do a post with the pics and some more videos, as well as an update to what this blog will be shaping up like in 2010, but for now, I will leave you with this.




Couple explanations:

*We kinda just put some clothes on (I had woke up not too much earlier) and I didn't grab a belt, so that was kinda difficult.

*At one point, my sister saw a rabbit and that's what she was trying to get me to see

*I know I need warmer clothes. It's just for the amount of time that I am actually outside I am being cheap right now.

Random lyric of the day:

There's a little red bridge with a view of the sun
with a lake, I recommend such a setting site.
And the thousands of stars, come out thousands of times.
And we can go only if you believe, only if you believe.

Music Sunday: 2009 Concerts I Attended

The Sounds/Paramore/No Doubt
June 5, Atlanta

On our way to the concert
The Sounds and their awesome performance

Paramore (fun fact: heard "Ignorance" before it was released and thought "I really like this song")

With the lead singer of The Sounds, missing the beginning of No Doubt but it was worth it...

Because I asked her to sign the ticket like that (that's what she kept saying on stage) and she laughed and actually did it

No Doubt doing their thing

And this is apparently me rocking out to No Doubt doing their thing

Not to overstate, but they were amazing

And when we got home, we could NOT stop laughing about this:




Envy On The Coast/Anberlin/Taking Back Sunday
June 17, Atlanta

Envy On The Coast opening up (and doing a damn good job of it)

Anberlin getting us to the main event

The band we all came to see

And the man we all came to see (Adam Lazarra)

The following is a video I didn't take, just found it on youtube. I was probably in the back trying to catch my breath:




Warped Tour 2009
July 28, Atlanta

Warped Tour is always so much fun

Underoath

Me w/ Saosin

Bayside

Senses Fail

The Devil Wears Prada

A Day To Remember and their insanely huge crowd for not being on a main stage

w/ the lead singer of Senses Fail

Chiodos closing out the day

The following is the craziness of seeing Underoath live:

Incubus
August 14, Atlanta

I only got two good pics, which is a shame really

because that concert was absolutely amazing

And the following is one of the sickest intros to a concert I have ever seen:

Carolina Liar/Taking Back Sunday
September 18, Tuscaloosa

Now this one hurt, because I had to attend my rival school's campus in order to watch this show. And when we were there, the coliseum was not even half full so that was disappointing. But what wasn't disappointing was their performance. However, there was one more thing that was disappointing: no pictures. But I did a quick youtube search and found the following video from that concert that displays just why I love this band so much:

The Swellers/Paper Route/Paramore
October 27, Atlanta

The Swellers

A cool collage my friend made of Paper Route and their 27 instruments

Paramore owning the place

And Hayley owning my heart

These pics were taken from a friend's camera, and I had to search youtube once again for a video from that show. Everybody's (and my) favorite song from the new album seems to be Misguided Ghosts, and this their performance, complete with the crowd (that would include myself) joining in



Minus the Bear
November 10, Birmingham

A show we bought tickets for at the last minute, I also did not have a camera for this one and relied on the tube to bring the greatness to this blog post. It turned out to be our last show of the year after failing to see Anberlin/All American Rejects/Taking Back Sunday at the end of November and Saosin at the beginning of December (I also missed Blink-182 in September and still kick myself for it). But if this is a band you haven't heard of, you need to know. Show was epic.



So ends the look back at 2009. I already have Muse in February and Warped Tour (possibly in Chicago -- WHAT) to look forward to, but here's hoping that some of my favorite bands hit the road and here's really hoping I have my own camera this time.

Music Sunday: Brick by Boring Brick

Today's post is the latest music video from Paramore. I am really liking it for a number of reasons, including:

*visually, it looks amazing

*Hayley pulls off being a blonde really well

*they are using images and themes from their album instead of what they did with their first video for this album, which had a decent concept, but sometimes just felt like people crunched in a room, and honestly came off a little lazy, just in my opinion

Here is the video for "Brick by Boring Brick":



Here is the thing about this video though. As much as I like what they did, I'm not exactly sure what they are saying/doing at the end. If you know for sure, or have a creative guess, let me know.

Happy Blog Vacation To All

At least, I'm assuming that's what Thanksgiving is going to be for most of us. I'm already assuming the posts and comments are going to slow down over the next few days. Mine for sure. Because Thanksgiving is going to be action packed enough. But the very next day is the Iron Bowl.

I was actually going to go into quite a bit of detail about the Iron Bowl and what it means to the state of Alabama, but time has slipped away from me. Maybe next year?

For now, I will let this video explain:



(editor's note: The video is a little outdated. Sadly, we lost last year, bringing a 6 year winning streak to a halt)

And to give you some insight, here are a couple pics from my first Iron Bowl in 2005




Now, I won't be attending the actual game because I sold my ticket (big game = big money) but I will be in the city. And I can only hope we get as excited as when I took this:






So, with this said, if you happen to check some college football scores and see that Auburn beat Alabama, then you will know I had a GREAT Thanksgiving. If it's the other way around, you may want to cheer me up cuz I may be in a deep dark depression. (just kidding... kind of)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Calibama Road Trip Videos: Part 12 - Two Part Check In

*The following are videos we took from our road trip back in May. It consisted of traveling from Alabama to California and back, hitting various cities in between. Some of these videos may be "documentary style" and some may be just random videos along the way. Most will not have an explanation because the video should speak for itself, but for the random ones a lil explanation will be included. I know on the surface these are kind of lame, but hopefully you will enjoy them and feel like you were a part of a cross country road trip. If you just feel like you are watching some random kids in random videos, well I hope you enjoy that too.

**I know most of you check blogs at work and can't see videos, but please try to watch these later as the videos speak for themselves. The first one is actually at a good angle and you can see and hear us clearly, and while the second one is dark, it gets the story across. If you can't see the videos or don't understand what happened, I will explain on Friday's post.




And the results...

Calibama Road Trip Videos: Part 11 - Santa Fe

*The following are videos we took from our road trip back in May. It consisted of traveling from Alabama to California and back, hitting various cities in between. Some of these videos may be "documentary style" and some may be just random videos along the way. Most will not have an explanation because the video should speak for itself, but for the random ones a lil explanation will be included. I know on the surface these are kind of lame, but hopefully you will enjoy them and feel like you were a part of a cross country road trip. If you just feel like you are watching some random kids in random videos, well I hope you enjoy that too.

**This is going to be a picture heavy post because Santa Fe was a beautiful place. Before we went on our trip, a co-worker of Frisco's said to go there and they turned out to give some of the best advice ever. Seriously, if you are driving though New Mexico, do yourself a favor. Stop for a couple hours and just walk around Santa Fe. It is truly an experience. For those who probably never will, here are some pictures (and a video of when we first arrived there) for you to enjoy. As the video goes, I'm sorry it was really windy but the point of it was that we were in this nice place and we were wearing gym shorts and DC clothes. But it worked. Enjoy.

The first piece of art we saw when we arrived

Two more random pieces of art

Just a guy and some balloons

Money Fence

The most expensive cat I have ever touched

Indian on bingo cards

It was hard to follow directions...

Cool painting

They mean business in New Mexico

Street Life

Bronze Bears

Tom Sawyer???

Pointing to the Heavens

Running with the wolves

This Chapel contained a famous staircase

Seen here

But it also had some cool art as well

We just really liked this picture

My biggest catch of the trip

So while he is chllin at this moment, the next minute he was gettin bit up by the ants that were also on that tree