Musings on College, hinging on melodrama

Damn, I wish someone actually read this blog.  I haven't updated in quite some time.  I have no good reason for that, it just happened.

I'm writing again because I'm going to college at the end of the summer.  It's more cliched than I'm usually comfortable getting, but I think writing about it will make the adjustment easier.

Only a few days ago at the time of writing this, I sent in my deposit to the Oberlin College and Conservatory.  They sent me a t-shit that says "Oberlin 2018" on it, which is ironic, because I'm doing a five year program, so I'm technically the class of 2019.

The college process has changed a lot since my parents were my age (according to them).  My parents each only applied to three schools.  I applied to eight.  I knew a guy who knew a guy who applied to twenty in 2012.  The worst part of the whole process was that I was very aware that I was being judged as a person.  It was uncomfortable.  The big schools really only cared about my grades, but the smaller ones (like Oberlin) asked really vague personal questions on their application. 

So I was essentially laying my personality on the table, and eight different schools poked and prodded until they felt that I was worthy of joining their class of 2018, or 19.

That's why the best part of the college process is going to admitted students day.  The roles are reversed.  The school is trying to impress you.  My dream for those days was to walk up to an admissions councilor, and demand that they write ME an essay about how their school demonstrates my core values in its daily life.

But I doubt that would be well recived.

What's really been on my mind for the past few days is far less of a joking matter.  I've been accepted to a collage, and high school is winding down.  In many ways, these are the last days of my childhood.  I know how melodramatic that sounds, but its what I'm thinking, so deal.

This post was hastily written and ill-conceived.  I'm currently working on another that's one big extended pee-joke.  Stay tuned for some high class entertainment.

Thank God for the NSA

All I've been hearing about for the past few days is how the NSA has been spying on us, and nothing is private anymore, but has anyone considered the benefits of having the NSA collecting all of your communications?  I have.

First of all: It will put a stop to all those annoying people who criticize the government.  Who will whine about the government when they know that someone who works for the government is listening?  I'll tell you who: terrorists.  Now instead of listening to how politics is becoming too partisan, we can get back to meaningful discussion topics like last week's episode of "Storage Wars," or the best season of "Dr. Who."

Second: It means all that data that you've been trying to find an easy way to store is already being stored for you!  Those emails you were trying to organize by date?  The NSA has them organized by frequency of the words, "jihad," "Obama," and "holy-war,"  which is almost as good.

Third:  It will make politeness and email etiquette the norm.  Now, instead of hastily typing out a request for an email to a friend, every email can be tagged with a polite "thank you" to the agent making sure the two fifteen year old band geeks aren't hiding bombs in their tuba cases.

The miscellaneous applications are also impressive.  Phone conversations submitted as evidence in a court case will always be verified, you have an unbiased third party settle any argument you have over the phone, someone can always proofread your emails, and no snap-chat dick pick will go unappreciated.

What I'm trying to say is: keep an open mind.  Sure, privacy is dead, but at least we're safe from all the couples arguing over who should hang up first.

Ignorence is not bliss

I haven't posted in a long time because I went to the orient to find myself.

Just kidding, I didn't feel like it, but I'm back now, here's why:

I've been interested in pursuing  a career in communications/media for a long time, and if right now you're thinking, "but that's a dying industry," please shut your computer down, turn off all the lights in your house, and jump out of a second story window, I know it's a dying industry.  I don't care.

Anyway, a family friend of mine, Kevin Dupont, invited me to come with him while he recorded some analysis shows with Comcast and Channel 7 News.  I got to see how sports reporting worked, and while I'm not interested in sports, it was still pretty awesome.  If you don't know who Kevin Dupont is, look him up, he's in the hockey hall of fame.

I got to ask some of the anchors how to get started in the industry, and they all told me the same thing: write a lot.  So here I am, writing, about my visit to Comcast and 7 News, in case you hadn't picked up on that.

It was pretty confusing for me, actually.  Mr. Dupont also brought a friend of mine along, Joe, who watches an average of an hour and a half of sports talk shows a day, and does interviews for the school radio station.  I, on the other hand, have been known to call scoring in baseball "points" and have propably watched an average of an hour and a half of sports talk shows in my life.  I'm a comedy guy, my radio show is a classic-rock/comedy hybrid, and when I write for the school newspaper, it's straight journalism.  I was totally out of my element.

Here's where it gets embarrassing.  I met Lou Merloni, only I had no idea who he was.  For those of you as ignorant as I was, Lou Merloni was the second baseman for the Boston Red Sox from 1998-2003, and he now hosts a radio show, "Mutt and Merloni" on WEEI.  He was hosting a segment about Rondo, who had just torn his ACL.

So I had no idea who this guy was, and Joe was freaking out.  It may have worked in my favor though, I came off pretty cool, or maybe touched in the head.  We'll see if I apply there some day.

The list doesn't stop there, though.  Throughout the course of the evening, I met Cedric Maxwell, Joe Amorosino, Janet Wu, and Jackie MacMullen.  I had no idea.  None.  I just walked up to them, and shook their hands, while Joe stood behind me practically dying.  If you don't know who these people are either, look them up on Wikipedia, and try to imagine the shame I now feel.

This is definitely a hyperbolic perception, but they probably think I'm an ignorant plebeian.

In hindsight, I should have watched a lot of sports shows before I went out with Mr. Dupont.  It would have made it a lot less awkward when I got into a fight with Dan Shaughnessy (that's a joke, I actually fought Maxwell).

The Fretless Bass Reviews: The Dark Knight Rieses

...Wow, time sure got the better of me over the past few months.  If anyone had asked me why I wasn't blogging, I might have said I didn't have time, but that's not true, so I guess I was just lazy.

I wanted to write again, and I couldn't think of a better way to get back into the game than with the new Batman movie.  Now, I know that the Colorado shooting may taint the subject, but I don't want to get into that, if you want to talk about it in person, I do have strong opinions on the subject.  However, for this review, I will criticize the movie the way I saw it, untainted by the horrible events in Colorado, because I saw TDKR at 7:30 on the night before it officially opened, as part of a BU alumni program. (My dad went there.)

Where to start?  I liked the movie a lot, and there are a lot of things they did right, but they also did a few things incredibly wrong, and those are the things I'm going to articulate better.

First of all, TDKR did a very good job at building anxiety, it isn't until about a half hour into the movie that Bruce Wayne dons the cowl and does some serious violence.  During the interlude before, we are introduced to an organized-crime free Gotham, but for some reason, everyone thinks "there's a storm coming."  When I heard that, the first thing I thought was, "how could you tell?"  Phrases like "there's a storm coming" piss me off, because they're a cop-out method of introducing anticipation.  Commissioner Gordon and Selina Kyle seem sure that the $#!^ is going to hit the fan, but looking back, I can't see how they could be so sure, given that there hadn't been a violent crime in Gotham in 8 years.

Next, a guy named Bane shows up and starts raising an army in the Gotham Sewers.  Bane himself is really cool, and about as faithful as cinema can be to the original character, he's strong, evil, and a brilliant strategist.  To top it all off, he has a mysterious background.

Then five minutes after you see him for the first time, Alfred casually mentions that Bane used to be a member of the League of Shadows. (The organization that Ra's Al Gul headed in Batman Begins.)  This upset me, they took an opportunity to make a giant plot twist, and made it about as important as Alfred telling Bruce that Bane's favorite color is Beige.

Then Bane takes over the city and what not, I don't want to go into details, because it's actually pretty awesome.  The Cops, (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman) lead a resistance against the freed criminals while desperately awaiting Batman's return.

That's as far as I want to go with the plot, a lot more happens, but it's too exciting to ruin while reading some guy's blog.

Of the new characters that were introduced, I liked both of them, Anne Hathaway is always good, and her character was layered and interesting, the only problem with Catwoman was that she only did one thing to advance the plot, and then she's just kinda hanging around, showing off her butt, until the end when she does a few more things.  However, Hathaway did a fabulous job with the part.  Overall, very good.

Officer John Blake is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who I like to call, "the franchise expander," and I'm not going to explain that, because it would spoil the movie, just go see it, I hear it's good.

Blake overall does more to advance the plot than Catwoman, and succeeds in being very interesting, this combined with the fact that Joseph Gordon-Levitt could desecrate the Wonder Woman movie franchise's grave and I'd still love him, gives the character Mickey's seal of approval.

Now for the fundamental problems, before I dive into the sea of foaming-mouth-loathing-from-the-bad-side-of-the-river-styx-even-for-Hades, I would like to assure people that I recommend TDKR, and it did more things right than it did wrong.  In fact, the only things keeping it from being the best movie of the summer, are below.

First, the twist was terrible, I don't want to get into details, (because it's the friggin' twist) but it made Bane seem infinitely less cool.

Then, they killed Bane, oh don't give me that, you could have predicted that the bad guy would die at the end of a gritty super-hero movie, but don't read the next two paragraphs if you don't want some spoilers that couldn't be avoided.

It's not that Bane dies that I hate, it's how they killed him, he died in a bafflingly anti-climactic way, he just gets shot, and they even try to make it comedic, which only made it worse.  Later in the movie, I found myself thinking, "hey, what happened to Bane?.... oh yeah," which is a terrible thought to have during a movie.  Also take in mind that this is after the plot twist made Bane the president of Wussconsin, the wussiest place to ever have a total wuss as a president.

Bane should have died by getting his mask ripped off or getting kicked into a vat of boiling something.

Anyway, if it weren't for those two major flaws, I would have actually rated TDKR above the Avengers, but it made those mistakes.  Also, while i'm on the subject, hey interwebz!  The Avengers and TDKR are both good, so shut up, because you, and the guy you met in a Reddit chat-room are both right.

Also, we know why most people wanted to see the movie anyway,




















Just sayin'

Sneak peaks suck

Today, I watched the sneak peak of the next half of The Walking Dead: season 2. In said clip, two male characters walk into a bar occupied by Rick and Hershel , and say, "Goddamn, you're alive." Rick and Hershel then look at each other like they've seen a ghost.

The obvious implication is that the new guys are from Rick or Hershel's past, and that they are characters we think to be dead. I'm here to argue that this isn't so.

I've read the graphic novels which the series was based on, and new characters are introduced out of nowhere all the time, so my guess is that these two new guys walking into the bar aren't old fan favorites back from the dead, but entirely new characters, and by "goddamn, you're alive," they actually meant, "They're not zombies, but regular people."

This of course means that the sneak peak was intensionally misleading.

Which is why they suck

I'm not saying that the next half of season 2 isn't going to be amazing, I just wish they would be honest with us.

For good measure, here's the link.

....

I couldn't find it...

the fretless bass reviews: El Camino by The Black Keys

Over vacation, my brother gave me the Black Keys album: Attack And Release. It's awesome, but that's a different article. Because I enjoyed my present so much, I bought their latest album, El Camino, and it's review worthy.

El Camino is the Black Keys seventh studio album, and it is alternative at its best. The Black Keys are famous for their blues-rock fusion that they do so well, but I feel like this is the first album where the style reached it's full potential. The first song that serves as evidence for this claim is the first on the album, "Lonely Boy," which starts out with a hard rock guitar riff, and balances itself out with a pop oriented anthem. The next song on the album is "Gold on the Ceiling." This song exhibits the Black Key's classic repeated guitar riff style similar to a previous hit, "Holwin' for You." And finally, one of my personal favorites, "Run Right Back," which has an almost childish guitar anthem to start, but finishes with a great bluesy feel.

Interestingly enough, the car on the cover of the album isn't the "El Camino" Ford model, which sums up the album nicely, it's not what you expect from the Black Keys, it's better. They took their iconic style and milked it for everything it was worth, and it's worth about 10.99 on I-tunes.

Vlog #1 The Lion In winter

So, you just witnessed me, in a bathrobe, yelling about how cool I am for one minute and thirty three seconds. you will undoubtably want to know more than what I was able to sputter out through movie maker, so here's the link to where you buy tickets!

http://www.ccpops.org/tickets.html

Show dates:

12/2/11 7:00 pm at Concord Carlisle High School

12/3/11 7:00 pm

12/9/11 7:00 pm

12/10/11 7:00 pm

12/11/11 2:00 pm

the fretless bass reviews: Skyrim

I did something with Skyrim I have never done with a game before, I went to the midnight release, and then spent the next 24 hours playing it.

Skyrim is incredible, if you played Oblivion, then you know how good Bethesda is at making fantasy RPG's, and I'm happy to say that Skyrim improved on Oblivion in many ways.

In Oblivion, the combat system worked perfectly, If asked, I would have told Bethesda to change nothing, but they did, and it's awesome. In Skyrim, you can duel wield weapons and spells. This comes in handy when you're fighting off three undead Nords in a dungeon, steel sword in one hand, fire spell in the other. You can also do cool combinations like two spells, or duel swords. Throughout my time playing, I experimented with several different combinations. When you wield duel swords, you occasionally get what I call "cutscene kills," which are essentially one hit K.O.'s except really messy. A sword and a spell lets you capitalize on balencing your stamina and magika, when one runs out, you can switch to the other. When you wield a bow and arrow, that takes two hands, which stinks for me because that's my preferred weapon.

The other major difference I noticed was that there was no class system. At first, I was opposed to this change because without having a distinct class to be, the individualism that I value from playing RPG's is lost. However, I was swayed from this opinion when I realized that this let the player enhance any skill they wanted instead of being stuck in one class they may realize they don't like. For instance, in oblivion, I was a bard, this meant that I was predominantly a stealth fighter, and specialized in hand to hand combat and bows. But what if while on a quest, I discovered the sword of amazing penmanship? Well then because I wasn't skilled with a blade, I'd be stuck wielding the bow of two bit poems instead of writing review masterpieces.

Also, in Oblivion, whenever you talked to someone, it would zoom in on their face, and they'd creepily stare at you for the ten minutes you spent seducing them into telling you where they hid the teddy grams? They took that out, now you get a wide view of their body, and you can look around during conversation. The thing about speaking that they changed that I didn't like was getting rid of the conversation wheel. Every now and then in Oblivion, you would encounter a situation in which you had to get someone to tell you personal information, only you're an elf, and everyone in the game is racist, so they don't exactly draw you a map to the sword of amazing penmanship. So you would have to enter into a fun mini-game, where you tell jokes, threaten, coerce, and make small talk with the person until they trusted you enough to leave you alone in their house so you could steal all their sentimental heirlooms.

Instead, Skyrim takes a conversation lesson from Dragon Age, and just gives you options with (threaten), or (persuade) next to them, and you better hope you're character's skill level is high enough, because there's no playable way to control whether they take nicely to that, or introduce you to the business end of a very large axe.

Now for the plot, You're dragon-born, and you need to kill some dragons to save the world. That's really it, the story plot isn't what makes The Elder Scrolls good, it's the freedom. The freedom to rob a palace dry and then sell it back to the court blacksmith, the freedom to chose any side in any confrontation, and the freedom to be a freaking awesome game.

So at the end of the review, Skyrim is the coolest game of the year, and if you don't play it, you're missing out on the adventure of a lifetime.

the fretless bass reviews:Contagion

Alright, this certainly took a while, it's been a few days since I saw contagion, and several since most people who are interested in it will have, so this review might not be timely, but people like to either have a semi-professional agree with them, or have something to argue, so here goes nothing.

Contagion was good, it was like a zombie movie without zombies (which ironically, would have improved it a ton). It followed the outbreak of a deadly flu-like virus worldwide through the eyes of several different people. The closest the movie came to a main character was the dad who's wife was patient zero and who also turned out to be immune. He had to spend the rest of the movie defending his daughter, so all of the societal breakdown was told through his point of view. There was also the high-ranking doctor in the CDC to explain the virology behind it all, and the journalist, to give the perspective of the genius capitalist, making millions off of deaths.

The plot is really simple, disease enters public, and society almost collapses. The aspect in which the movie shines is suspense. You see, the nature of the virus is that you contract it by touching something a sick person touched. So throughout the movie, the camera would pan in on doorknobs and peanut jars, it's a mysophobic's ultimate nightmare.

There are many parts of the movie where the CDC's overreaction to swine-flu is brought up, which leads me to believe that this movie is essentially saying "THIS IS WHAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED!"

The other good point the movie makes is that fear is the most contagious disease. And that's true, there is no force on Earth that moves faster than sheer terror.

At the end of the day, Contagion is terrifying. Not in the same way that most other horror or thrillers are terrifying, but in a totally unique way that makes all other horror movies look like Care Bears. Contagion could happen, and this one, single, all-encompassing truth will rock you to the very core, and keep you up at night wondering about God. It is entirely possible that a disease could be introduced to the population that would wipe out one out of every twelve people on Earth. So don't see contagion if you don't like The Walking Dead (so essentially, if you don't like Contagion, you can't appreciate good suspense films, and should probably culture yourself).

the fretless bass reviews: All you need is love Quannapowitt playhouse

I had an awesome weekend. Three plays in as many days. The most important of which I feel is the original play that I saw in a room that was more suited for storage than theater (That's how you can tell it's indy.... indy? ). Anyway All You Need is Love is an original play written by the director, a Mr. James. J. Girgenti, and Composed, or in this case, rearranged by Mr. Mario Cruz. It is the story of the life of the director, focusing on his relationship with his mother, which as any man will tell you, is a pretty freakin' important relationship.

The play is told through Beatles songs that have been rearranged to suit the mood of the number. Now normally, when I hear a musical has been constructed by pre-written music, my first reaction is to start making hurtful jokes about the songs for my review. Because that usually doesn't work very well. When you have to base a plot around pre-existing songs that often have little or no relationship in content, it tends to get pretty haywire and out of control. AYNiL is an exception, a glorious, angelic exception that has re-defined the style for me.

You see, AYNiL was good, not just kinda good, like the infrequent SNL, but really good, as in I would buy you a ticket if I had the funds.

First of all, it's impressive, they rearranged almost every song they used to fit moods perfectly in ways I never would have done. "I Want to Hold Your Hand," for instance, it's a happy song, about a guy who is excited to be in love. In the play, they slowed it down and made it about a man comforting his dying mother.

Second, it was really entertaining, it was fun to watch, and probably fun to be in. One of my favorite parts of the show was "When I'm Sixty Four." That was just the young main character playing with his friends while the parents interjected lines like, "Play nice!"

Finally, it made me cry. I'm not ashamed of it, take any man that had a good relationship with his mother and stick 'em in that room for the last ten minutes, and you'll have an ocean in his lap before long. Not in a very long time have my emotions been so thoroughly manipulated.

You may notice that the picture in the upper left hand corner is not of the subject matter as it usually is, but of Anne Hathaway in a tuxedo, that's because this play is not heavily publicized, and may well not run again in a very long time, so see it, Google "Quannapowitt Playhouse" before 10/16 or you'll miss out on the play of a lifetime.

Let's start the platinum age!

There's no denying it, Thor was a good movie.

Now that my opinion is out of the way, I'm going to tell you why, and relate it to all superhero movies. I can guarantee you that you didn't think I would think of this.

Because I didn't, I'm basing this review off of something that a guy named Moviebob said, except he related Thor to Transformers, but I said, "Why not relate Thor to its genre?" So that's what you're getting. I also encourage you to check out Moviebob's "The Big Picture" on The Escapist.

Thor was campy, maybe not Adam West/Batman-campy, but it was certainly more lighthearted than any movie Wolverine has been in. Thor wasn't trying to be gritty and real, it was just about some super-powered dudes having a punch-out in New Mexico, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Recently, there's been some kind of idea going around the super hero genre that movies need to have some level of what most would call "grit." Not real grit, otherwise they would need to sell toothpaste at my local AMC, but grit as in the hero can't go five minutes without saying "shit," or having a shot of Dack Janiels.

Thor was something else entirely, it was just a bunch of super-powered dudes, having a punch out in New Mexico. This is what the comics industry got started on, when the Silver Age started booming, all comics were just like the Thor movie was, except all the super-powered dudes were having thier punch-outs in New York. But then the 90's came and went (thank God), and now the children of the Silver Age are my Dad. Now that comics are more or less on their feet again, I believe that the writers of the comics and movies think they still need to play to the same audience, and thus, the comics have grown up with the readers. (See above image.) I don't think this is right.

Instead of making every superhero movie a chronicle of the human struggle, or about a middle aged man battling alcoholism, or having comics be overly violent and gory, they should be targeted towards the youth of today.

Marketing to a new generation would get said generation into comics, and perhaps even start another great age, all they need to do is relaunch all the series like DC just did, and make the comics less about Wolverine's lovers, and more about a bunch of super-powered dudes having a punch-out in New Mexico.

I'm not saying gritty realism is bad, I just think that there needs to be a balance, and right now, the scales are tipped. Thor exposed us to what we've been missing, and I say we run into that light full force.

So to sum up, Thor was awesome because it showed us what super heroes once were and hopefully will be again.

The Fretless Bass Reviews: Game of Thrones season one

Game of Thrones is fabulous, not for a long time has TV seen a fantasy show so vivid, real, and most of all, believable.

Fantasy is a popular genre, as a result, a lot of people write it, so it's hard to be better than everyone else when all anyone's really doing is ripping off The Lord of The Rings anyway. So George RR Martin decides that he's going to rip off Lord of The Rings like thousands of other writers of fantasy worlds, but he does it better. What he does is he tells each chapter through the eyes of one of a few characters, and as a result, they become real people, real believable people.

The TV show is good for the same reason the books are, there's nothing special or interesting about the world Martin has created, nothing at all, it's not nearly as interesting as Middle Earth, or Dune, but the characters are fiercely developed and I feel like I know most of them personally.

The show follows the Family Stark of Winterfell, wardens of the north and keepers of the great wall that protects the seven kingdoms from the snow zombies beyond. When the old "hand" of the king dies under mysterious circumstances, Eddard Stark is called upon to replace him. Thus the family is thrown into the middle of a massive conspiracy, and they must fight to protect each other, and the king's peace. There's also a couple of scenes that would be classified by a bible group as porn, so don't watch it with your mum like I did.

The show is much more complicated then that, but if I went into detail, then this article would be so long your goldfish attention span would short-circuit.

To close off, Game of Thrones impressed me, both the book and the TV series, and I believe with all my heart that everyone should read and watch, also the theme rules, here it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yydcG9woWA

The Fretless Bass Reviews: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Real fans just call it Rise. As you can see by the poster on the left, This is the planet of the apes, Earth, and in a way, it always has been. Planet of the Apes has had five movies, a reboot, a live action TV series, a cartoon series, several comic book series, some novels, and now we have Rise. If I do say so myself, it is a worthy addition to a series that has defined sci-fi over the last forty years.

Rise depicts an alternate beginning to the rise of the apes and downfall of the humans. If you go on the first five movies, then the human society fell after an ape slave uprising. This movie comes at the rise and fall of the two species differently.

In a nutshell, the plot follows a scientist who is developing the cure to Alzheimer's disease, and tests his virus on a chimp he names Caesar. This chimp starts a revolution and enhances every ape in San Francisco and brings them to the redwood forrest. However, in their haste to make enough money to buy a fleet of private yachts, the corporate executives fail to realize that when humans are exposed to the virus, they die.

This is different from the fall of the humans as depicted in the original movies, in those, humanity wiped itself out via World War III, this movie would replace the latter with a deadly plague that makes humans die and apes as smart as humans.

This movie is not a remake, if anything, it's one big memorial to a series as ground-breaking as Planet of the Apes. The sheer amount of quotes and references to the original is staggering. They gave the big one to Tom Felton, (guess what it was in the comments, you get it right, you're a true fan) who appears to have been type cast, because many of his lines could have come right out of the mouth of his more famous persona. They also paid homage to the big man himself, Charlton Heston, by having clips from some of his other movies like, "The Agony and the Ecstasy."

The plot of the movie is very well laid out. Caesar lives with the humans for a while, then in a primate home and sees humanity's capacity for good and evil. He uses his smarts to break out and show the law enforcement what for, and has a cathartic moment with his human father figure. At the very end of the movie, we see a pilot who was infected with the virus that made Caesar smart deliver the disease to Great Britain, where it spreads to the rest of the world. At the end of the film, the camera is circling a globe that is not longer controlled by humanity, at the end of this film, all you can see is the Planet of the Apes.

The Fretless Bass Reviews: The best of Foreigner

I've always been interested in Foreigner, but only just recently have I maned up and bought a five dollar best of album, and my mind got blown.

Hands down Cold as Ice and Jukebox Hero are the two best songs. I admire the band's ability to fuse rhythmic piano parts with hard rock guitar lines. unlike bands like Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones, who base their songs off of one guitar or bass riff, Foreigner bases their songs off of a piano riff, and it's good to hear the keyboard getting it's due awesome in a world currently dominated by bass beats.

The band is obviously influenced by blues music, as heard very plainly in "Women." If I had to guess, I would say the Doors also impacted the band's sound, because like the doors, they often use a quickly repeating guitar line during the refrain.

Foreigner also makes good use of the rhythm guitar, see "Hot Blooded." Two guitars has never hurt a band.

All this banter is just making the article longer so I feel like I've looked into the origins of the band deeper than I have, Essentially, if you don't know what Foreigner is, you should buy an album right away, because they rock.

Why Planet of the apes is horrifying and excellent.

So I'm excited for Rise, if you're a true Planet of the Apes fan, that's all you call it, Rise. This movie will fall in the continuity of the other five movies and depict the initial beginning of the super intelligent apes.

A friend of my father's said that Planet of the Apes was popular when he was a kid because it was one of the only sci-fi things they had, but I beg to differ. Planet of the Apes was and is popular because it horrifies and intrigues due to cultural establishments.

To understand why Planet of the Apes is popular, we need to go back to the late 1400's. Why are the late 1400's important to Planet of the Apes? I'm getting to it. The grinding stone and the printing press were both invented in that period, and that's important because then serfs didn't have to work as hard, because the grinding stone did their work for them, so many of them ran away and eventually became the middle class. With the printing press, they could formulate and spread their ideas. In other words, a group of people was created that had nothing better to do than learn about and criticize the world around them. This is what the layman calls the Renaissance.

During the Renaissance, four values arose among western civilization, the most important one was humanism. Humanism, put simply is the belief that humans are the cat's pajama's and the bee's knees and anything that says otherwise gets made into coats and furniture.

Whether you know it or not, humanism and the other Renaissance values still have an astronomical effect on modern culture, so people still think that nothing can beat them. A perfect example of humanism in culture is Independence Day.

So when Planet of the Apes came out, suddenly people were exposed to humans being turned in to slaves and pets, and apes, a species we thought we had mastered, dominate them. People, thinking this was impossible, were intrigued by the concept, went to the movie, then were horrified by the startling possibility.

So there you have it, we have Guttenburg and Martin Luther to thank for Planet of the Apes.

The Fretless Bass Reviews: Captain America: The First Avenger

Let's start this review by saying this is my 50th post on my blog! (party horn noise) This is exciting, but there's really no way to make the review more exciting except mentioning that in the beginning.

Captain America is the last Marvel installment before the Avengers movie in 2012 (appocageddon can wait until after that and the Dark Knight Rises.) Needless to say, it had to be darn good to build up psych. It pulled it off fabulously.

The story is set in the final years of World War Two, Democracy was on the way up, Hitler had a fire under his ass, and more Americans were enlisting than ever; except Steve Rogers, who's five feet tall, and has breathing issues. A German-American doctor gives him a chance to enlist and makes him the first test subject of the super soldier serum, which grants him peak physical and mental ability.

As far as story goes, it's above par for the super hero course. After his injection of the serum, you would think they would send Cap right to Adolph Hitler's front door to roundhouse kick his face with the power of democracy. Instead, they make him a show-boy that sells war bonds, until he disobeys orders so that he might free P.O.W's. The best thing I have to say for this movie is that it pulls off a full blown musical number in the war bond selling scene. That's right, a superhero movie had a musical number.

The real gem in the movie is all the easter eggs they throw in to appease the fans like me and my dad. It would be too difficult to name them all, but if you read Cap's wiki before watching, it would make watching more entertaining.

The other interesting thing they did was how they handled Buckey. In the comics, he was Cap's pre-teen sidekick, but that wouldn't fly in the gritty realism of spandex/leather clad World War Two, so they made him Rogers' best friend who was, until the experiment, always tougher and stronger than Steve. Throughout the movie, an envious dynamic develops between the characters, which I'm sure will come back to haunt Cap when Buckey returns as Winter Soldier (LOOK IT UP!).

I would like to take this time to talk about how the movie is in 3D. You will recall from previous posts that I think 3D is unnecessary to make movies good, and Captain America proves it. This movie would have been unaffected by being in 2D, I stopped noticing the 3D after a while, and it added nothing to the experience. Maybe 3D draws in a specific crowd, but if I were marketing movies, that's the crowd I would want to keep as far away from my movies as possible, mostly because of the smell and noise because that crowd is made up of ten year old children, and Avatar fans.

At the end of the day, (literally, I'm writing this at 9:40) Captain America is worth seeing, and worth buying on DVD, and that's just about the highest praise you can give a movie.

the fretless bass reviews:Assassin's creed

I just got Assassin's creed, so I'm a little behind, but I want to get my opinion out there.

Assassin's creed is an overall good game. It has excellent mechanics that are fun to execute (pun intended). If it has any slip anywhere it's that it's as repetitive as a power rangers show. Sneak into the city, climb up some churches, interrogate people by punching or pick-pocketing them, plan your attack, kill target, run for you life. This is the step by step plan you will follow for every mission.

I'm not saying the repetitiveness is bad, it's still fun, it's just that the game hardly throws you a curve ball. So what if your character is a master assassin, if every mission went perfectly, (and they do) it would get boring.

Combat is not the game's strong suit. Thankfully, you can almost always avoid it. you get four weapons, but I found myself only using the assassin blade, and only the sword when I absolutely needed to fight. Most of the combat time is spent waiting for your enemy to attack so you can counter and insta-kill him. This gets old fast, so I tried to run from every fight, and you can. It's good to see a game give you options on how you want to handle things.

However, when you do choose to run away, it's fairly easy to lose guards, you have the ability to turn invisible whenever you sit on a bench, or jump in a pile of hay.

this review was rushed, so I'm sorry if it was terrible, at the end of the day, you should by Assassin's creed because it has fabulous mechanics, and you will sincerely enjoy stabbing beggars.

the fretless bass reviews:Thor

I want to start this review by saying that i just got a score of 420 on snake.

Now to Thor. For those deprived individuals among you who don't know, Thor is the bad*** Norse god of thunder, Thursday is named after him. In the 60's, Stan Lee decided to give him his own comic book, which was a good idea, because it turns out that gods make awesome super heros.

The movie is set up my explaining that the Norse gods are not deities as we think of them, rather, they are immortal, highly developed aliens that ancient peoples worshiped as gods. Thor decides to get into a punch up with a bunch of Ice giants agains Oden's specific orders, and he gets banished to Midgard, or Earth. There, the get taken in by some lovably comic scientists and attempts to get his Hammer of power back. Meanwhile in Asgard, Loki, has set everything up, and it's a ploy to start, and end a war between the frost giants to get his father's attention, couldn't he have just gotten into a fight at school? anyway, he goes to lengths to ensure Thor never returns to Asgard.

What I liked about Thor was the accessibility. You by no means had to know anything about the comic book history to understand every part of the movie. they did throw in some clever allusions to the comic series though, the ones that only the hard core fans like myself and a handful of others would get, and that just heightened the experience for us, without taking away from the layman's.

Some reviews I've read say that it "Re-invents" the super hero genre, but I would argue otherwise. I would say Thor has just wised up and done the thing i've always wanted to see super hero movies do, make the movie a sci-fy action move, about a super hero, not a super hero movie with sci-fi and action between the comic references. Thor has successfully built a big, beautiful rainbow bridge across the gap between sci-fi lovers, action lovers, and comic book nerd, and for that, I give Thor an 8/10.

I just feel like writing

today, I'm going to see Thor

I like dogs, and cats more

I went to a pre-dance party, and the hosts had dogs, I got my all black suit covered in hair.

I've learned how to fold a pocket square

I don't think Bin Laden being dead is going to change much.

I think anyone who likes pink is dumb

that is all.

Four problems that I can solve with toys.

#1 Teenage pregnacy.

The problem is that girls are shown from a young age that parenthood is awesomesauce and the younger they raise a kid, the better by products like this. So my idea is to make a baby doll that spews vomit and turds whenever you touch it and also make the kid play with it 24 seven, also, add in a cry factor that deprives your child of sleep! It will make your little girl stay un-pregnent until her hormones overpower her devastated psychological state.

#2 Murder

The problem is that kids see murdering in video games with no consequence, so the answer is to just make a game that makes murdering people un-fun by putting you in jail for ten minutes whenever you look at anyone funny. This will make the entire experience of being able to kill anyone you want incredibly un-fun, but that game already exists, so just buy your son Oblivion.

#3 Teenage insecurity in girls

The problem is that everything young girls play with makes them believe that they NEED to be pretty in order to be wanted, and that getting a man trumps your family, culture, heritage, and untainted criminal record. (Disney princess movies, i'm serious, these are the values our beloved classics are teaching.)

This one is simple, make your daughter play with transformers.

#4 Young girls dressing like tramps and young boys dressing like jerks

A&F and other fashion stores are constantly feeding our girls that in order to get anywhere in life, you need to be under 100 LBS. and be looser than knot tied by a drunk four year old. They tell our boys that they need to drink, abuse women, and act like jersey shore. Unfortunately, there is really no way to prevent this, because these ads are everywhere. My suggestion, keep you kid locked up in the basement until they turn 18, it's for their own good.