Some people would take the time to do REAL research and figure what what Halloween really is, but that’s not how we roll at WestSideWill Radio.
No sir. Here we do all sorts of wacky stuff that we shouldn’t that some how, some way, seems to workout for us in the end. So, with that in mind, I present to you, “Why Halloween Is Useful” an Essay by The Nooge
What is Halloween? That’s a simple question to answer, it’s a crazy holiday where you dress up like something, to get candy. But that isn’t REALLY what Halloween is, Halloween is the time of year when the world just seems to work better…safety really does come first.
I just want to say that perhaps it should be OK all year round, I mean, if you get sick, what there are 20 to 30 nurses within a square block?
Bet you 100 bucks if nurses dressed like that we’d ALL be fighting for free health care…
Some people may say Halloween is a “DANGEROUS” time of year…dude are you kidding there are TONS of cops around!
Ohhhh, what about all the parties, I mean things get really out of hand. And who is going to control rowdy bars or put out fires? The fire martial:
Ummmmm…I totally lost my train of thought here, I don’t even know where I was going but…
What if we needed magic…what would we do then. Bam – Chick wizards all over the damn place!
Ohhhh, I see, we need someone to eat or drink some crazy colored foods or liquids and chase a rabbit…we are in trouble right?!?! Paris saves us…AGAIN
Look…I can go on, and on, and on, and on about this stuff, but all I’m really trying to say is that Halloween should be every day!
I kid! Halloween is fun times! Get out there and have fun you crazzzzzzzzzzzyyyyyyyyyy kids!
That’s right folks, it’s Sunday evening and it’s time for our Music Video review.
I drew first dibs on it and was given, “Medicaid – a tribute to our healthcare system” by Christina Forrester. In the email, where we asked for a description of the video, we were sent this:
The video is for my song, “Medicaid” and is a sarcastic “tribute” to our healthcare system. The video is funny, silly and illustrative of the song, but also tells a true story – and a seriously sad story for many Americans. So it brings about a big point in a ridiculous and sarcastic way. Keep in mind the video was done on a Kodak Digital Camera with homemade props and NO budget or professional equipment. I created the idea, scripting and props myself and did all the editing in Windows Movie Maker and Nero.
Let me say this, for those of you that already know me you can skip this, I’m not really one for people who try to use music to point out a problem that we all already know. I think we all know the health care system is crap in the United States and it needs a change, but what is a song going to do about it? O.K. with that said I happen to also applaud creativity, and I also applaud effort. And with all of that being said she was making the song to be a wise ass…Being a wise ass my self I kind of dig it.
Here is the video, then we’ll review it:
Ok…so did you watch it? Good. Now let’s do a super happy fun time review of it! The first thing I noticed is that Christina probably doesn’t listen to our show…If she did she’d probably know that Boomer and I are not HUGE fans of musicians, or anyone, trying to put their political views on anyone else. We think it’s a choice, that shouldn’t be influenced by anyone but the candidates. Voting for a president isn’t about being cool, it’s about picking who you agree with most, and if a music video is what you use as one of your reference guides…you shouldn’t vote. (Just a side note here, I don’t care who you vote for, or if you vote. I only would want you to vote only if you are SURE of who you’d like to vote for. If you don’t have any idea…don’t vote…Puffy is wrong you won’t die.) But again, the wiseassism (Not a word, don’t use it on your ACT/SAT) comes through, and I can feel it homie!
That said we can review the video.
I actually kind of liked it! Which I bet you all didn’t see coming. I’m ignoring the message and treating it like a music video! Weird right?
It’s a very cool indie video, you can tell she did all of the work on her own and really seemed to take pride in it. The music video had a story line, it had a point, and wasn’t just a bunch of dancing around with groupies (although if anyone is going to film a video and they need a popular radio DJ to hang out with chicks all around him give me a call!!!) The video starts off with what appears to be some sort of power walk/jog, heck no one can run fast and have a good dialogue asthma or not, I’m lucky if I can run and breathe at the same time. The main character, Christina, talks about having asthma issues and tells about how expensive it is to treat her condition. I can relate to this…I have had my share of medical issues. Well that’s basically the story for the whole video, health care is expensive!!!!
Alright, what about the quality? Well like I said you can tell she did all of this on her own, and it was a pretty good job. I think we all know how hard it is to do videos on your own and make them not suck. In fact if you have seen any of the Date the Intern videos you would know that we aren’t sure how to make a good video that we do on our own. The thing I like about this video is that it doesn’t have any fancy graphics (If you ignore all the Vote Democrat stuff) or lenses and Christina uses what she has around her house. That’s kind of exactly what this video review is about, seeing what people can do with what they have. (I’m not saying it’s wrong to have a high budget, awesome, babes all over music video. But THIS song doesn’t need that.)
What about the song? I mean you can’t have a video with a terrible song, and Christina doesn’t. It’s a solid song, and she is able to stay on point (I may not like songs with political messages, but if you have one you better damn well stay on topic, and she does). The song is perfect for the video, when you watch the video it just sort of feels right. When Christina is outside performing in the “Performance shots” in front of a house, at night, with just a spot light, that feels right. It wouldn’t make sense if she had shots with 1,000′s of fans all bumping to this track, it’s an intimate track with an intimate message, it’s not a party song (But it is a smart alec kinda track, and it plays around with that in the vid).
That’s an important thing to point out; Christina knew what sort of track she had and made a video to it. When you don’t link those two things up you see music videos that just don’t fit the song – Nickleback, I’m looking in your direction.
Did Christina break down any walls and make the greatest music video of all time? Nope, but I’m pretty sure that isn’t what she was going for. She made a music video that fit and she made it with the equipment she had.
When I first was told about the video I had to review I wasn’t thrilled with the message, but that isn’t what I’m reviewing, the song and video combo kind of won me over. The video is good, the quality is good for what she had to work with, and she did it on her own. I love all of those things about the video but with all of that said the video isn’t GREAT. It’s just pretty darn good, I can watch it and not shudder and I understand what is going on…that’s saying something compared to all of the videos that are out there today.
Final Score
***
3 Stars out of 5
(It’s Good)
If you are unsigned and want your music video to be reviewed hit up our media guy Doug D!!!!
So…you know on the show how I said I was going to be reviewing music videos on Saturday?
Well turns out I’m a liar!
Our music video review blog will be posted every Sunday Night. So that means tomorrow night we start with the reviews. I have the first shot at it, and it will be fun fun fun. (Some of the videos we have are hilarious….)
For some reason our show didn’t pop up on time today, we kind of have a feeling it was due to the wicked storms we were having around here. Not to worry the Top 10 Unsigned Artist Countdown presented by www.DigitalDiscDuplication.com is NOW UP! So you can listen, we have some really amazing tunes and of course Dave and Myself keeping it real.
We don’t think this is an error that will happen often, just this one time when we had storms and the show couldn’t upload due to some outages…beautiful Chicago weather!!!!
Stay tuned tomorrow when we review our first Music Video from one of our great artists!
Am I green? No. In fact I don’t think I ever really cared if I was “Green”. For those of you who are a little bit slow and wonder what I mean by “Green”, being green is:
#
- Taking steps to reduce one’s negative effect on the environment.
…So no I am not a “green” person, but it has recently been brought to my attention, by Matt D., that it’s pretty stupid to not want to go a little green. And he’s right, it’s not that I didn’t want to go “green” it’s just that I had no idea how, so I decided to look into it.
You know what I found, you don’t have to take crazy hippie steps to “go green”. In fact all you have to do is take a step in the right direction. And I know I can at least take baby steps at this point to reduce my impact on the environment. For those of you who know me well you know I’m not a hippie, and this normally isn’t the sort of cause that I’d get behind but I’d like to think I’m changing a little bit.
I like driving for cheap, I like saving money, heck I like the fact people can still go outside and sunbathe (really, can you imagine if you couldn’t go outside in the summer and go to the beach and holler at babes??!?!?!?!) This is the exact type of cause that I SHOULD get behind, so I decided that I’m going to do little things to reduce my impact on this planet.
How you ask? Well I checked out my guy Matt’s new website (to be fair Matt D. is kinda like a hippie…that dude is about this stuff, so I checked out his site to be a good guy and to be fair it did change my mind about what I could do to reduce my impact on the environment) and I found some cool stuff I could buy that would save me cash and save the Earth. And honesty, I wouldn’t “go green” at this point if it cost me more in the long run…that isn’t the type of cause that I could get behind…but it saves cash so it’s cool.
Aight, so I hit up www.greenstoreandmore.com (Matt D’s new gig) and decided to do some shopping. Here is what I found, a multi-use batter recharger, that I can use for my Xbox 360, not only will save the Earth, but save me tons of cash at the same time. Dude, if you got a 360 and don’t recharge your stuff you know what I’m talking about, those sticks run through batteries like John Mayer through chicks. And before you say, “well just get one of those USB packs for your 360.” I’m going to say, I want a rechargable pack that I can use for EVERYTHING. The point of trying to go green is to make a small move that saves cash and hopefully makes an impact. I think I found it. The Link: Charge it up son!!! …
And I also found this neat hat:
It’s made of hemp…and it’s recycled…I have no idea what that means, but if it means saving the Earth and looking stylish I’m in.
Look, I’m not asking you to go out and buy crazy stuff and spend money none of us have on crap you don’t want. All I’m saying is don’t fight going green just because it sounds like crazy hippie talk, it really is not a bad idea and can save you a lot of money in the long run. The site is for sure worth checking out, if for no other reason than to just get ideas about what you can do to go green. Oh yeah, it will also keep this going on for generations:
Wooooo, we had fun a few weeks ago when I wrote a blog with some of the great international videos that were out at this time, and boy was it fun.
The good news is that I’ve come off that international video kick and am going to focus on songs/videos out now that are neato in the US!
Let’s talk about it:
1) Lady GaGa feat Akon – Just dance
This is an OK song…and I had to post the original version (above) BUT the hot track is the one with Kardinal Offishall (below)
It’s a hot track…and I’m a Kardinal fan.
2) Britney Spears “Womanizer”
I don’t really need to say much…the video isn’t good, and is it just me or does she have the ol’ porn star “I’m here, doing whatever on video…but I don’t care” look in her eyes? (Not that I would know what that looks like…but I mean that’s what Dave was saying…)
3) Cassie ft. Lil’ Wayne “Official Girl”
It has been rumored that Cassie can’t really sing without the Auto Tune…It has also been rumored that I think she’s hot and don’t really care if she can sing (I wouldn’t buy the album anyway…she isn’t popular for her powerful vocals). Anywhooo, I’m just saying, mainstream music isn’t always about talent…Truth time…I don’t really care for this song at all, I just think Cassie is good looking…I’m a shallow blogger, but a deep person!
4) Morningwood “Sugarbaby”
It’s a video…about a puppet. I don’t like puppets, but I don’t not like puppets, I’m a fan of puppets in a music video…
5) Mr. Oizo “Flat Beat”
Because I love puppets in videos…
Enjoy the music videos! They were a random mix of goodness knows what!!!
Check out the Top 10 Show tomorrow at 8pm central time at www.westsidewill.com/radio
If you listen to Thursday’s show, you know that Boom and I are pretty much against all things political that try to bully or demean on party or another.
We had a song on the show for Today (Thursday) that rips on President Bush. We try to stay out of the political spectrum, but this song kind of brought us into it. We do believe in playing all Unisgned Music that gets submitted to us, even the political ones (regardless of how we feel).
For some reason we decided to speak up tonight, it wasn’t because of the song’s musical value (it was actually really good for a rough mix) but it was for the fact we hate bullies (political or otherwise).
On that note, Thursday’s show, turned into one big tangent by Boomtown and myself to state that we hate things like that. It’s a slippery slope, if you record a diss song on someone who will not/cannot defend themselves you better make damn sure it’s a hot track or you should be dissed. Anyone can pick on a target that won’t diss you back (and frankly, that is exactly what a bully is).
So…you guys can cleary see that political songs get under our skin…while I’m sure there are a lot of people who appreciate what they are and what they stand for, we don’t. But we played the song anyway because clearly there is a group that makes, and appreciates, this type of music.
What does this all mean to us? Not a whole lot. We hate it, and liked the musical value, we played it, we respect the musical aspects of it all but hate the message. Everyone should be entitled to their opinion without having some outside force step in and say they are wrong (puff daddy?). It’s with this in mind that I present to you CNN.com’s list of where the different political candidates stand on each issue. (Honestly, it’s hard for us to disrespect a diss song if that’s truely how they feel, even if we feel like that type of music is just wrong, it’s the honest opinion of the artist).
Remember as you are reading this list, it matters who you agree with not who your friends agree with. This isn’t an election based on sex, race, religion, or anything even like that! This should be an election based on what you think, and who fits best with your opinions of the world!
So with that in mind, I present to you CNN.com’s list of where the candidates stand on each issue:
Look it over, and decide. Remember, it’s OK to keep your vote to yourself, heck it’s probably even best. It’s those who are the loudest who are probably the least sure of what they believe!
Appreciate the song for what it is, a good if not great musical track, but don’t let the message influence how you feel about our current president, or next president.
Without supporting either guy, we expect a good race!
With everyone who is anyone throwing their name, their money, and their popularity behind one candidate or another I figured, I the Nooge would tell you who I endorse at this point….
No one.
I don’t know who I’m voting for yet, and it almost seems weird to everyone. ‘You mean you don’t have a side? You mean you don’t have any views on anything? You would still consider Obama/McCain?’
Clearly, I have political views, but I’m more open minded than 99% of the people out there who tell you they are open minded. Let’s be real here, if you were open minded you would make an informed opinion without saying one candidate or the other would “Destroy the economy” or something crazy like that. That’s how idiots talk. It kind of reminds me of during the last election when I was in college and this girl was sitting next to me talking about how she voted for John Kerry and if Bush was re-elected “September 11th would happen every year.” I said, “That’s right.” She clearly thought I was agreeing with her, but I was just proving how dumb she really was. (September 11th has happened every year since Bush has been elected…right after the 10th).
I don’t know who to vote for yet because I think both candidates would make fine presidents, they have seen the mistakes and success of all the other administrations that have come before them and they can learn from all of that. It’s silly to sit here and say that one would be better than the other, while one would keep the world from being destroyed while the other would destroy the world.
If that’s the type of argument you make, maybe you need to take a step back and look at what you have become? I think both candidates are brilliant men who happen to know that there is an economic crisis that may or may not be on it’s way to being cleared up by the time they take office. (As an aside, I have a B.S. in Economics and I happen to think that this new 2 part recovery plan should work IF the banks are given the money with the “wink-wink” loan. The “wink-wink” part being, we’ll be cool if you lose this money, but give it out to people to spend OK…and don’t give it to your ass clown CEO either. I understand that was an extreme over simplification of it all, but that’s the quick version. Why tell you I have a B.S. in Economics? Because I think it’s fair that you know where my opinions were based, I do have SOME knowledge of how things work here, now if I was a coms major you could’ve taken what I said and thrown it in the trash…)
So why am I writing this? I’m writing this to tell you not to be bullied by the “cool kids”, race, or any other factor out there that someone will try to put on you. Picking a president is on you, you can vote how you’d like.
Remember if you are trying to decide on a President and you can find NO FAULTS in the candidate you are voting for, then perhaps you shouldn’t be voting. No candidate is, or ever will be, perfect – it’s up to you to decide whose flaws do and do not matter.
So when election day comes vote for what YOU THINK!
I don’t think people like Charlie Sheen’s dad should be someone you take advice from anyway (although Emilio turned out OK). Really, have you seen the people who have come out in support of both candidates? It really makes me feel like I shouldn’t vote for either guy because they both have such ass clowns backing them. Or how bout a guy who prints Vote or Die T-Shirts and thinks that Dylan and Da Band were going to be great musical acts. Look, if you couldn’t see that Dylan was gonna go crazy, then Puff I don’t think you should be qualified to pick a President (or in the very least if you have a candidate don’t talk, because it will turn other voters off to your guy).
Good news, I’m here to help everyone learn a little bit about Columbus day!
The first Columbus Day celebration was held in 1792, when New York City celebrated the 300th anniversary of his landing in the New World. In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison called upon the people of the United States to celebrate Columbus Day on the 400th anniversary of the event.
Some Italian-Americans observe Columbus Day as a celebration of their heritage, the first occasion being in New York City on October 12, 1866.[1][2] Columbus Day was popularized as a holiday in the United States by a lawyer, a son of Genoese immigrants who came to California. During the 1850s, Genoese immigrants settled and built ranches along the Sierra Nevada foothills. As the gold ran out, these skilled “Cal-Italians”, from the Apennines, were able to prosper as self-sufficient farmers in the Mediterranean climate of Northern California. San Francisco has the second oldest Columbus Day celebration, with Italians having commemorated it there since 1869.
This lawyer then moved to Colorado, which had a population of Genoese miners, and where, in 1907, the first state-wide celebration was held. In 1934, at the behest of the Knights of Columbus (a Catholic fraternal service organization named for the voyager), Congress and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt set aside Columbus Day, October 12, as a Federal holiday (36 USC 107, ch. 184, 48 Stat. 657).
Since 1971, the holiday has been commemorated in the U.S. on the second Monday in October, the same day as Thanksgiving in neighboring Canada. It is generally observed today by banks, the bond market, the U.S. Postal Service and other federal agencies, most state government offices, and many school districts; however, most businesses and stock exchanges remain open.
I hope everyone learned a little bit about Columbus Day – And oddly enough I learned that the Canadian Thanksgiving is the same day. Let’s pretend that there is no show tomorrow to show our support for our Canadian listeners and bands!
Does Canadian Thanksgiving involve Canadian bacon? If so I’m in!
That should be the real title for the Max Payne movie, but it’s not. Anywhooo, here is why I’m writing about this, it’s probably the only movie of the year that I am actually interested in going to see.
Why? It’s pretty simple really, I love video games, and while I have never played Max Payne I have read the Wikipedia on the game and I have to say the story is one that intrigues me. And let’s just get this out of the way right now Mila Kunis is hot:
Yep, she plays some sort of assassin, that’s awesome.
But back to Max Payne, who is payed by the brother of some NKOTB guy, he is a cop whose family is killed by some druggies. Big mistake. But if you think that this is going to be some random action movie…you may be right I don’t know…but the video game was deeper than that.
That’s why I’m excited to see this movie, it seems that for once there was a game that got it right and actually had some good depth to it (not just blow stuff up and run). Our hero was dead inside because of the death of his family, but if you made him dead inside he’s just going to make you dead all over.
I dig it.
Here is the trailer:
Looks awesome, I’m gonna see it at Midnight next week, I have to…Well I don’t have to, but I think I’m gonna.
