Good Things Come In Three

Dartmouth's own Joel Plaskett has just released his latest album entitled "Three". This is no ordinary album though, it is a Three disc album! Very few artists have attempted a three disc album, and even fewer have been a success. The theme of this album is obviously "Three" (three discs, third solo album, and many of the track titles are just three of the same word repeated ex: "Deny, Deny, Deny".) I purchased this album two days ago and have just now listened to it all the way through one or two times. I love it, Joel covers so many genres he is influenced by. Like most albums, there are those few songs that jump out as "singles" but overall it is a solid group of songs. Great driving tunes. I would definitely recommend this album to anyone with ears.

Keep on thinking wishful thoughts,
-Brendan

I Quit My job

I bought a CD this weekend by Old Man Luedecke called Hinterland, and first I have to say that its a great album and it is so different from everything else i listen to (which can be a nice change). The first song on the album is entitled "I Quit My Job" and it talks about this materialistic world we live in. And how when it really comes down to it, we're on this earth for such a short time why waste it making as much money as you can instead of living and appreciating life for what it is. One key line in this song is "Don't Let them take, the joy that you make. On your own." For some reason that line stands out to me especially. Since first hearing this song last summer with Grant at a concert featuring Old Man Luedecke, I have lived by that line. Another great verse is "Don't kill yourself about making it. Just be takin it easy but be takin it. There's enough out there who are fakin it." This verse just emphasises his message even more. In conclusion, I hope you can "take you hearts candle and relight it", "Discard your store bought realities"... and finally

"Don't Let 'em take, the joy that you make"
- Old Man Brendan

The Freewheelin' Thick Food

Hello everyone. Let me explain to you the significance of those three seemingly unrelated pictures. The one on the left is The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, the one in the center is MM..Food by MF Doom and the one on the right is Thickfreakness by the Black Keys. What do these three albums have in common?? Not a lot I can tell you that much but they all share the fact that I found them at my local record store, Taz Records in Halifax. For all you followers of the blog Brendan mentioned in an earlier post that he started getting interested in records and vinyl and such and as you can guess I have too. Any of you who know my musical tastes might know I've been looking for more MF Doom for a long time and you can imagine how excited I was when I found one of his records in Taz. I've listened to it about three times now and I love it. It's got all these old samples from old superhero cartoons that featured Dr. Doom (The character MF Doom based his persona on) from the fantastic four. It's also a double disk so it's a bit of a pain to me being an amateur to turn tables and having to deal with a four sided record but it's well worth it because I can see it becoming one of my favorite Hip Hop records. Now on to the other two. Thickfreakness is already beginning to steal the title of my favorite Black Keys album from Magic Potion and I've only heard it maybe two times through. To tell you the truth I haven't even listened to the Freewheelin' Bob Dylan yet it was more of a "I don't have any Dylan in my collection so I'm just gonna get one to say I have it." I will defiantly listen to it eventually but I am in love with the other two right now so when that dies down I will defiantly give it a good listen.

Keep on keepin' on
-Grant

Didn't WATCH WATCHmen

It's been a while since I've posted something, so i felt i should... the only problem being I don't know what to talk about.
The other day some friends and I drove down to the ol' moving picture show to catch the new Watchmen flick. We were early, so we bought our tickets and then walked over to a near by book store. At the book store I saw some very interesting books, some on music, some on philosophy, starwars, joint rolling, movies, religion, biography's, and comic books. All of which I would read given the time, We got so caught up in literature that we almost forgot that we were there to see a movie. When we got back over to the theater, we walked towards the young man working at the booth. We must have looked pretty stupid, all of us trying to act old enough to get into the 18+ movie. Our friend Ian went first (because we all thought he looked the oldest), he handed the man his ticket. The man looked at the ticket, then looked at Ian, then at the ticket, then looked at Ian. "I.D please?" and that was it.. no movie for us. I felt so young and helpless at that moment. However, whenever you are in a situation like that, you always look back and think to yourself 'oh i should have said that' or 'If only I did this' but when you are in an awkward situation your main goal is to leave that awkward situation.. so that's what we did. Disappointed and hungry we made the walk of shame/victory through the doors of Wendy's. Nothing says I dont need your stupid movie theater like eating a messy and delicious burger. Even though we did not accomplish our goal of the trip, we had a good time, and maybe we just were not meant to see Watchmen at that place and that time.
Anyway, that's all I've got to say.
Stay Golden,
-Brendan

we raise the bar and fly over it

Haldo one and all. It's me Grant back for another round.

As many of you probably know I'm a gymnast... well was a gymnast that's right I have retired. It's almost been ten years of gym and 9 of competitive gymnastics. Now in this blog I'm not going to go over the reasons why I quit or anything like that instead I will be enlightening you about the sport of gymnastics. The reason I'm doing this? Well over the last nine or more years I've been asked a lot of really dumb questions. So today I will help you not look like a complete retard if you have an encounter with a gymnast.
Ok first off is the basics. There are six mens events that the men do they are as follows; floor (the floor everyone flips on) Pommel Horse (the one the guys swing their legs around most only call it pommels) Rings (the two rings the event the iron cross is preformed on) Vault (the big table people run at and flip over) Parallel Bars (commonly referred to as P-Bars it's two bars that are parallel to each other about shoulder width apart and the same height as each other) and High Bar. (the high metal bar guys swing around)
For Women it's almost a differant sport. Women only have four events Floor (same as guys only with music guys don't have floor music) Vault (same as mens) Uneven Bars (almost like P bars but further apart and one is higher then the other) Beam (like floor on a little skinny elevated srip of floor only girls do beam and theres a good reason for that.)
So now that we've covered the basics I'll answer some of the most frequently and the dumbest questions I've ever been asked as a gymnast

1. Can you do a back flip? Yes. I can and chances are if you're asking a competetive gymnast they can too.

2. Can you show me? Now unless you asked a gymnast who just learned it and are excited about it theres a strong chance we won't show you. Why? Cause we get asked that question at least once a day and when you're doing it at the gym almost every day it loses it's novelty fast

3. What's your specialty? Don't ask that question. Just don't. Gymnasts compete every single event untill you get to an olympic level and even then you still compete every event

4. Can you do an Iron Cross? 1st of all even though thats technically it's name no one calls it that. Everyone calls it cross. Most guys learn this skill around 13 or 14 at least at my gym mostly cause of muscle development at that time but not everyone can do it. (Girls don't compete rings so the never do cross)

5. Will I see you at the olympics? I don't know why people think that gymnastics is a shoo into the olympics. It's just as hard as any other sport if not harder to get to the olypics with. Statistically you'd have a better chance with a sport that has a bigger team like soccer or hockey.

Gymnastics is weird in the sence that you have to always be at the gym. At my peak I was at the gym 20 hours a week thats four hours on Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday and Saturday. This is because gym relies on muscle memory so if you stop for like a month or so you're not going to be as good as you were back then so you have to be in the gym as much as possible.

Thats all I can think of for now if you have any questions about the sport go a head and comment I'll do my best to answer it for you.

Yours truely
-Grant Hawkins

P.S. Hate is contagious... but so is love. You decide which one to catch