For my Jr. Highers...and everyone else

While we were at summer camp this year a couple of my guys and I made a video. It's called "Where's My Money?"

It's in several parts so you have to download them all. You will also need QuickTime to watch them. I know it's an Apple product, but its the format that I got the videos in off my camera. Not a choice of mine. Quicktime is a free download that won't corrupt all of your system files like iTunes will so feel safe. I promised to get them up so here they are!

Here are the links for the vids!


Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Enjoy

Update : Some of the links are a little funky so right clicking and then picking "Save As" may work better than using the QT web plugin. All of the links do work

Don't Stop Rocking!

Greetings and salavations to you all.

I thought I would write a blog about all of the bands that I have been in over the years. I have listed, every band I've been in, no matter how short we were together, and the band mates, and the style.

We will start from the very beginning, its a very good place to start (Name that movie)

Homeskooled - I was 15 when I started this band with my friends
Style - SkaPunk
Members - Jar Jar - Guitar/Vocals, Claydoh - Guitar, Pineapple/Joelsef (Joel) - Trumpet/Dancing, Lag Morbid - Bass, Jack - Drums, Davey Baby - Vocals
Notable Moments - We only played two shows together. One by my pool and one in my garage. This is the band that I actually wrote the song "Consumed" with. It was originally called "Ember"
Songs we played - Dadgumit, Child of Sod(cover), Dandelions(cover), Handbook for the Sellout(cover), Every New Day(cover), Consumed

xStatx - I was 16 when I was in this band.
Style - Rap-Core. We sounded just like Linkin Park
Members - JJ - Guitars/Singing, Jeff - Rapping/Screaming, Jeremy - Drums, Doug - Bass
Notable Moments - I was in it for like 4 weeks before my band mates moved to LA to record an album. My mom wouldn't let me go. Two and a half months later, they moved back here because their demo sucked and they couldn't get a record deal.

Two for Tuesday - I was about 18. Right before I broke my arm.
Style - Emo
Members - JJ - Guitars/Vocals, Clay - Drums, Dan - Bass
Notable Moments - We started this band in like November and started writing some pretty sweet emo stuff. The problem is that none of us were really good at drums and we couldn't get our friend Jack to play for us. I broke my arm in January and was kicked out of the band. The band then changed it's name to eCapricious and did only acoustic stuff like Tendcious D. Clay left and Josiah joined. They recored a 38 track demo tape of almost all completely random songs that they made up on the fly. It was pretty funny.

Charley's Unlucky Thumb - We formed once I got the use of my arm back.
Style - Punk
Members - Max Power - Guitars/Vocals, Shagy - Guitars, Torg - Bass, Dexter - Drums
Notable Moments - This band actually started as a joke. Me (Max) and Steve(Shagy) were playing a joke on David(Torg), we never thought that we would actually start practicing. But we found a drummer, Soli (Dexter), and started playing. We un-formed and later reformed under another name. We stopped playing punk b/c Dexter couldn't keep up with our blazing fast punk rock.
Songs we played - The Perfect Girlfriend, Frozen Paper Clips, and Eggs Benedict.

Exodus Falling - We formed out of the remains of Charley's Unlucky Thumb
Style - Post Hardcore/Melodic Hardcore or Haremock(Hardcore/Emo/Rock) as we affectionately called it.
Members - JJ Guitar/Vocals(Are you seeing a trend?), Steve - Guitar/Screams, David - Bass, Soli - Drums
Notable Moments - All of them. This was the best band that was ever in. We played shows and went on my first out of city experience with a band. We played Flagstaff, oh yeah! We also played for a crowd of 80 screaming Jr. Highers one night. That was the peak of our career. We actually got paid for it, in hot dogs and soda. We broke up because our drummer joined the military and moved to Germany. Then Steve got married, and Dave and I got lazy. Also, Steve's screams were more like yelps.
Songs we played - Consumed, Numb, 45, Blood Red Stains, Song 11, Chronic, Missionary in My Backyard, Saving Myself a Stamp, The Intertwined Destiny of Unknown Consequences of Things That Don't Really Make Sense, Screaming in Silence, Memoir of Things to Come. We had a couple others, but I can't remember the names. I didn't really like them.

Dependantcy - My most recent failed project
Members - JJ Guitar, Jordan - Drums, Scottie - Vocals, Steve - Guitars, Nate - Bass/Guitar, Robby - Bass/Guitar
Style - It was evolving but it was basically post-hardcore or "Emo-core"
Notable Moments - The revolving door we had on guitar players. We started with Steve, then he quit and Nate moved from Bass to guitar. Enter Robby on bass. Then Nate decided he wanted to get married and he quit so Robby moved from bass to guitar. Enter, no new bassist. Now Scottie quits. Enter Robby on vocals with me planning on singing back up. Enter broken wrist for JJ. Band breaks up. Jordan moves on to join Roger That with Mitchel and Josh. They are cool.

So there's my musical musing for the past almost 10 years. I'm actually working on a side project atm. Writing some stuff, we shall see what I do with it.

I noticed that I only have clips of songs from Exodus Falling on the download page atm. Getting to fix that.

For those of you who are not convinced of the absurdity of the ECM

I found this article about Rob Bell, the teaching pastor of Mars Hill of Michigan and leader within the ECM.

http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/billygraham.htm

This just demonstrates to me that once again, the ECM is not based on a scriptural desire to see the lost come to know Christ. It is simply sensationalism and seeker sensitivism repackaged for our coffee cup culture.

My favorite line from this article,

"As with most emergent and contemplative leaders, the Christianity of the Bible is not enough for them, and there is one main reason it isn't ... meditation. Since the Bible lacks any instruction on a self- induced mystical trance, other than condemning it in the Old Testament, contemplatives must turn to Eastern religious techniques adopted by Catholic mystics such as Thomas Merton or Basil Pennington, who have grasped onto Hindu style meditation or latched onto New Age mystics."

Great, just great.

I say to the emergent, no

Things I have learned from living on my own

Hey all you l33t people out there in internet land. How's it going?

That's super-fantastic. Anyways, since it seems to be the trend at them moment I'm going to write some things I miss/have learned about living on my own. By living on my own I mean without my parents.

1. Living is expensive. I mean I knew this before I moved out. Everything costs money, gas, food, movies, everything you need to survive. I am lucky that first, I have a job that pays me well and that I have learned some great budgeting and forecasting skills from my accounting classses and Crown. My Dad taught me some stuff too. So while its expensive to do the things I want to, I can budget my money and plan for expenses.

2. If left to myself, I would probably just play games all day. Well, maybe not all day, but a lot. There are just so many cool games out there. I mean, I would probably get bored eventually, but that would take a while. WoW is just so addictive!

3. I don't sleep enough. Not much else you can say about this. I like to be awake and interacting with people. Like last night. I was tired and wanted to go to bed at like 10:30. But instead a had a good convo withe some good friends. So it was worth it, but I really should sleep more.

4. Making food is more work than buying prepackaged meals, but is often very worth it.

5. Your roomates are often very interested in helping you eat your food, but not interested in cleaning the bathroom.

6. New carpet gets lots of fuzzies that stick to everything. You have to vacuum a lot.

7 . At night, I like to sleep cold, but my house is already cold, and I have the fan on. So its really cold. So I put a blanket on, but its too hot, so I wake up all sweaty and gross. Where is my 14 x 12 room when I need it.

8. Playing guitar really loud in the theater when no one is home is way more fun than having to turn it down b/c your dad can't hear the TV.

9. Having a movie theater in my house makes me cooler than you. As if I needed that.

10. Non-Wow-ites do not and cannot understand why you play WoW. Don't bother explaining it to them. Just find some other game that they can get addicted to and play for 9 and a half hours last saturday (Guitar Hero and Brent for example)

11. Carpooling is great, except when the person you normally carpool with is in Philly with his wife. Then it sucks b/c you have to drive to work by yourself.

12. Being frugal is better than being cheap. Both frugal and cheap people live at my house. (The question is, which one am I?)

13. If it weren't for the Internet, life would not exist. In fact I believe that the internet is actually what created life in the first place. God used the internet to put the spark of life in Adam. The internet then went into hiding for about 6000 years, thinking its purpose was complete, only to be dug up by Al Gore and exploited for awesomeness.

Updates Updates Updates

Well,

It has been a little bit since I blogged so I thought I hit you all with some awesomeness.

Pretty much everything has been just same old same old. Working hard and getting paid all for the glory of God. He really blessed me last month with the numbers. I finished at 105%. That's an unofficial number, but it can only go up from there. My success was because of a lot of hard work and staying the course. Its a great way to start out a new quarter with over 100% attainment. We are making some more changes to things at work so we shall see how the rest of the quarter pans out.

As far as living goes, just hanging and chilling a lot. I'm still loving having a place with Brent and Brian. We have people over all the time to chillax and watch movies and stuff. It's great.

I haven't really been doing much recently and haven't had a ton to blog about except me being awesome. My new PC is running great and I'm able to max out the resolution on almost all my games. Quake 4 still jumps a little at max everything. But I'm finding that its getting too hot. Both the GFX card and the CPU. So I bought some better coolers and some thermal grease, we shall see if it helps.

I'm sorry my life is boring atm. I'll find something to blog about and deliver a real one this weekend probably.