Hello my neglected blog readers!

Hello my unattended and neglected blog readers! It's been over a month since my last post so I decided to come back and do it with a bang. I will do my best to update last year's "Hey You, Look at These Pictures!" blog but will not continue my posts on "My Flick Reviews". I have not written a post truly about me in a while so here are some (somewhat) new facts about myself right now.

I just earned my license a few days before Christmas!

I am still working at the movie theater.

I recently bought an iPod Touch. Now I am saving up for my own car.

My favorite store, Lighthouse Christian Bookstores,just closed down. On the bright side I was able to get a nice stack of CD's, magazines, and posters and a very low price.

I have started my next semester of college classes while in my Junior year of high school. I am taking Spanish and tennis courses.

My current favorite CD is "Forget and Not Slow Down" by Relient k and favorite song is "Chem 6A" by Switchfoot

"The Lovely Bones" and "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" are my two favorite new movies right now. "Avatar" is definitely not.

It is very cold and raining/hailing here in Southern California. In fact yesterday I had to go chase neighborhood trash cans that were floating down the street in knee-high waters. Kinda fun.

That is all I can think of for now. A lot of changes in my life are about to happen so I will keep this web space occupied with the words translated from my head.

The best Christmas song........

I really thought that this song is touching and is truly makes itself what Christmas is all about. It's not cheesy or funny but serious as it praises Jesus for coming as a baby for the sole purpose to die for us. I am not saying this because it is my favorite band, I would say that this is the best Christmas song if someone else wrote it, but they didn't.

Lyrics to Relient k's "I Celebrate The Day"

And with this Christmas wish is missed
The point I could convey
If only I could find the words to say to let You know how much You've touched my life
Because here is where You're finding me, in the exact same place as New Year's eve
And from a lack of my persistency
We're less than half as close as I want to be

And the first time
That You opened Your eyes did You realize that You would be my Savior
And the first breath that left Your lips
Did You know that it would change this world forever

And so this Christmas I'll compare the things I felt in prior years
To what this midnight made so clear
That You have come to meet me here

To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me
In the hope that what You did
That you were born so I might live
To look back and think that
This baby would one day save me

And I, I celebrate the day
That You were born to die
So I could one day pray for You to save my life

FISH Christmas Concert

The Fish Christmas Concert was a holiday concert sponsored by radio station KFSH 95.9 “The Fish”. The musical artists featured the night of December 1, 2009 included Matthew West , Tenth Avenue North, and also special guest Tim Timmons. This event was located at Calvary Church in the city of Santa Ana.


The music acts started off with worship leader Tim Timmons taking the stage and starting the night with some praise songs that he wrote. From there he moved on to a short set of traditional Christmas songs such as “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”. The music set the tone for night as it gradually got everyone into the Christmas Spirit.


Soon after a short set change, two men from the contemporary band “Tenth Avenue North” came up with acoustic guitars. This was quite a change from Tim’s, who had more of an energetic performance to get the audience ready. Part of the reason that they played solely acoustic for the night was due to the fact that not all of the members of the band were there. The presences of the softer tones were actually better for the mood. It made the atmosphere of the room more thoughtful and really gave more of a holiday feeling than Timmons. The setlist for Tenth Avenue North was a mix of their own chart-topping songs, some new original songs which will be on a new album due out in May 2010, and also some Christmas songs that showed quite a variety of emotions. They also played their own rendition of the song “Go Tell It On The Mountain”, having the crowd do a sort of noise that was meant to copy the tune of trumpets playing in their recorded version. It did not mean to sound like it, but to encourage the participation of the audience and also for some laughs.


As the last performer of the night, Matthew West began his time on stage with some up-beat tunes of his own. During the first half of his time Matthew let the rest of his band play the instruments while he just sung. In the last half he began switching between his acoustic and electric guitars to play along with the rest of his group. To follow suit of the rest of the musical acts he put in some Christmas songs, some being newly made by himself specifically for the occasion as he did previously at FishFest.One example of this is his song "The Day After Christmas".

Before I left I also got to get and autographs and meet both Tenth Avenue North and Matthew West (seen in first picture). Although the only way to get tickets for the event was to win them, the church was still packed, more than it had been for the Creation Fest Tour. If you can get tickets for this next year, I am sure that you will enjoy your time!

Christmas songs!

Yay for Christmas time! I just put up a whole different playlist on my blog containing nothing but Christmas songs. 3 WEEKS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!!

Beaker sings "Ode To Joy"

Gotta love the Muppets!

my week

Here is your weekly Ian update! First of all I announced with a speech last Tuesday at my Troop Meeting that I was retiring from Scouting. I will still try to go to some things such as Courts of Honor and Scout-O-Rama but my schedule is too busy for scouts and I have completed all that I have wanted to and gave back also.

On Wednesday I signed papers that stated that I was done with my children's clothing store job. The small hours that I was given from there were conflicting with the movie theater and so I had to drop it. I now have more time to focus on one job and school as well as normal life things.

Also later on Wednesday I started feeling sick, which has continued all through today, which I am feeling better now except for a cough and a stuffy nose.

One last thing......ONLY 47 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!?!?! That is about 6 weeks away!

Creation Fest: The Tour

I LOVE TWITTER! I heard about the Creation Festival Tour coming to a nearby church but the ticket prices were too high with the convenience fees added by the ticket company. Then came Twitter. Thousand Foot Krutch (one of the bands playing at the show) gave out a code for tickets for half the normal price. With this being reasonable for my wallet I went along with dad and Annabel.

The Creation Festival is a huge Christian music festival that happens every year in the Northwest and Northeast. Thinking about all of the places between these two venues in the U.S. , Creation Festival decided to create a tour last year featuring top artists to go around cities in the United States, but they missed Southern California. This year they got a few California dates with Jars of Clay, Thousand Foot Krutch, FM Static, This Beautiful Republic, B. Reith, and Audio A Unplugged.

The opening act of the night was FM Static which it seemed that as everyone was coming in that they were just sitting there. FM Static may not as well known as the others (except B.Reith who is still pretty new) for it is a side project of Trevor Mcnevan who is the lead singer of Thousand Foot Krutch. TFK is a hard rock while FM Static is more of pop-punk type of style.

When the lights went out for the next band to come up, some mysterious recorded music began playing over the speakers, which I recognized as the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Theme Song by Danny Elfman. As the song ended This Beautiful Republic emerged from the fog and played "Surrender Saved My Life". I was hoping that they might play their "Crazy" cover again like at FishFest but they didn't. at the end of the set the band invited anyone who wanted to come up in front of the stage to do so. I went up and stayed there for the rest of the show. I was actually the closest person to the main singer of every band, which is waaaaaay better seating that I payed for considering that my seat was all the way in the back rows.

Next up was B. Reith who has a hip-hop/pop genre in his music. His song include funny references on how people say his name wrong and others who say he looks like Ashton Kutcher. He was a pretty cool guy who tried to connect to the audience.
Things then slowed down for a little bit as Audio A Unplugged came up. As some of you may know, Audio Adrenaline was a great 90's Christian rock band that retired a few years ago due to vocal problems by the singer Mark Stuart. Now 2 of the members, Mark and Will, are travelling around to churches sharing Audio Adrenaline's testimony as well as playing some classic Audio A songs like "Big House". In addition to Mark and Will, they got some of their friends to help them out by playing some instruments and vocals. Mark's vocals did show strain a lot while he tried to sing but it sounded way better than on their last concert on DVD. Mark also assured us that Will was not a homeless guy who came off the street to play, for Will had worn out clothes and a big wild beard that would give David Crowder a run for his money. Their set was not really unplugged and nobody every used an acoustic guitar but the music still gave a coffee house-type feel to it.

Thousand Foot Krutch followed with Trevor in changed clothes as they played songs from their new CD as well as some of their old songs like "Rawkfist". Mcnevan also went around the stage at times of the set and waved a flag with the TFK logo on it and dancing like crazy. They preform a great live show that is compares with Skillet and Family Force 5.

The final band was Jars of Clay who I had seen at FishFest also, but this time it was a much better show. There were more stage effects, longer set, and they seemed to be more into it. There was even an encore of "Two Hands" and "All My Tears".

At the end of the show the merchandise booths had each artist except for Audio A who had already left. I got autographs of B. Reith, TFK, and This Beautiful Republic and also a photo with each one. It was a great experience and you should try to see this tour sometime. Also with each ticket you get an iTunes card that gives a free sampler of 20 free songs of Christian Artists (not necessarily the ones at the show). For $10 a ticket this concert was a great deal for me!