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!

my flick reviews

Hey again! Over this last week I posted on my Facebook page that I was working on a special project that did not involve school. I am now unveiling it and it is called "my flick reviews". It is a movie review blog that I am running and updating as new movies are released. You can share it with other people if you would like.You can also leave comments and opinions as much as you please. Each review comes with the background of the film, my review that includes pointing out any questionable content, and also a star rating with 5 being considered "a classic". This project is currently up and running but it is also still under construction as I add more to it. Hope you enjoy it and if you do please let me know so I will continue the work.

Camporee

Last weekend I took a trip to the Santa Fe dam for a camporee with scouting. I am pretty sure that I have explained what a camporee was before on my blog so I wont bother with what it is again but each on is usually themed and this one was Space Exploration themed, as you could earn the merit badge there (which I did). Vince and I only went this time, as Simon went with dad on another camping trip with cub scouts about 30 minutes from where I was. That was actually Simon's first camping trip with scouting.

After going through the days competition, my patrol got together and a few of us started to cook dinner. One of the scouts (I don't think anyone figured who did it) screwed in the hose that attached the camping stove and propane tank together. After seeing that it was hooked up, the propane was turned on as I helped a new scout lite the stove since the built-in ignitor does not work (they never do). As soon as the lighter had its flame close to the stove, FFFWHOOOOSH! Almost instantly a huge geyser of fire appeared from a connection between the hose and stove and probably burnt some of my arm hairs off. Everyone scattered and panicked as I yelled to turn of the gas and I found a fire extinguisher and gave it a little squirt and it was out (I have never had to use one, but apparently I know how.) Everything on the small table was covered in white dust but no damage was done. The connection may have been fine, but there may have been a hole in the hose, so it will be inspected for a problem.

Later that night, the whole camporee regrouped and did some trivia questions as well as watching a movie called "October Sky" on a projector. The substitute would have been "Apollo 13" but in my opinion "October Sky" is a way better movie. Plus I have seen "Apollo 13" quite a few time now but that was my first time seeing "October Sky".

On Sunday we packed up camp quickly and headed to a different part of the dam that had an open space to launch small rockets for part of the merit badge. There were rockets of all different powers, shapes, and sizes. Noticeable ones included an X-Wing and also...... a portable restroom rocket.

Toy Story 3 Trailer

It looks so much different now! The humans are so lifelike! I've seen the first movie like 1 bazillion times and this looks a lot better in animation than the first 2.

Update

I have not mentioned this yet but I got a job!!! I'm not going to post on here exactly what or where it is but I am going to say a few things about the retail job. Today was actually my first working day so I got to stock the sales floor tidy things up, help customers and even use a cash register a few times!

My new excuse for no blog posts of any kind have been directly a problem with my laptop but actually the power cord. Bad cord=no power=no laptop use=no blog posts. I bought a new one about a week ago and received a few days ago and everything seems to be fine now.

In the time gap of my recent blog posts I have also not talked about 2 major recent events. The first one is about Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize. I don't get why in the world they gave him it when there are so many more people that deserve it waaaaaaay more than he does. He can say all the peace loving stuff he wants to do but it does not mean it will happen. If I got to choose who got it I would actually choose the creators of the "Invisible Children" movies. They have done a lot of promoting to stop war and is really a good organization that has a lot of respect from notable figures.


The second major event that has happened is NASA bombing the moon. It sounds like a big waste of money to me but whatever. Before this event happened or was even really known about to the public there was a Christian band called "We Shot The Moon". I just find that a little funny because we now actually did "shoot" the moon! Here is a creative video by the band of their best song "Sway Your Head".If at this point you are starting to wonder if I can relate anything to music, why yes, yes I can.


Tomorrow should be a cloudy cold day followed by the first rain of the season later this week. I am also selling popcorn as a Scout fundraiser tomorrow in front of a store, which I am pretty sure that it was raining last year when I did this. Also on the topic of scouts is the choice of my last two merit badges I will most likley be taking. They will be Photography and Computers, the computer one looks fairly easy as the requirements look pretty much like what I am already doing in my college class. After the 2 badges I can go in for an Eagle Board for a palm, that is not exactly a rank higher but something to add on to the Eagle Rank. After that my time in scouting will be up, although I am not 18 yet. I will still be helping out every now and then and going to Vince's award ceremonies and such but I will not be an active member when I am done.

This week looks like its going to be a good one and I even have a work night in there too! You can expect some more blogging from me soon and also you can check up on http://heyyoulookatthesepictures.blogspot.com for some of my creative updates.