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Well the Olympics are now officially underway. I don’t really support that they’re being held in China, due to both human rights issues and the pollution issue. Then again, I’m really enjoying this new TV that definitely says Made in China. I guess beggers can’t be choosers.

Of course China’s hope for a violence free games has already been shattered. I’m not sure much more could go wrong. Several athletes pulled out prior to the games from around the world and more have done so since arriving to Beijing, including German hopeful Stefan Schumacher. And was their any doubt that China would quickly grab medals from day one? Their athletes have all had a chance to train under these conditions. I don’t know - just seems odd.

And finally we have a whole other international issue - with Georgie and Russia on the brink of war. Some would say Georgia provoked attacks and Russia was just playing peacekeeper after Georgia’s escalated military issues with South Ossetia became more intense. Others would say that Russia is just using it as an excuse to grab some extra land.

Who fucking knows. It’s just not that simple. . .

As I mentioned in the last post, Sunday we hit up Warped Tour in Minnesota and, while it was an amazing show, I was a little disappointed that Say Anything was unable to perform. Max was sick. Max was also sick for the Chicago show, but they got a little something we didn’t. Like Justin from Motion City Soundtrack singing Alive with the Glory of Love. Check out the video below and look around on youtube for other guest appearances from singers from Reliant K, Norma Jean, Every Time I Die & more.

So hear this please
And watch as your heart speeds up endlessly
And look for the stars as the sun goes down
Each breathe that you take has a thunderous sound
Everything, everything’s magic

Late Sunday night/early Monday morning we finally got back from the Shakopee, Minnesota Warped Tour show and I’m not sure it’s completely sunk in.

Warped is an amazing place not just because you have the oppertunity to see so many up and coming bands, as well as more mainstream bands, but because of the awesome people there. Whether it’s just the random people you see walking by in their strange attire or the people trying to get people interested in a cause. I don’t like pushy people, but they don’t come across as that and it’s always nice to see people movitated for something they believe in.

Oddly enough, the guys from Adventures of Brad and Jordan spotted me prior to the Anberlin set. It’s always nice to actually meet the people behind the writing you enjoy - if you’re reading this, sorry I disappeared. I had to get some air. Catch you at another show sometime maybe?

This year’s Minnesota date was somewhat different from the last time I went in that the sun was practically non-existent for the majority of the day. It wasn’t cold though and the breeze made everything just about perfect.

When we first got their we almost immediately headed towards the Van’s merchandise tent so one of us could get some actual shoes (flip flops are the worst thing you can wear to something like this) and while over there someone affiliated with Motion City Soundtrack asked me if we’d like to get some stuff signed. I think my response was pretty much “Uh yeah, are you kidding?”. I grabbed passes for the three of us so we could head back to the merch tent later for the signings. Three hundred total passes were handed out so I think we were pretty lucky.

At somepoint between waiting for bands we ended up walking by the ModLife bus when none other than Tom DeLonge walks out of it and starts hugging kids by the fence. Unfortunately we missed out on hugs/hand shakes as we were just a bit late but Tom was nice enough to give us some nice photo ops from the top of the bus and . . . well, we were just feet away from Tom DeLonge. What else can be said?

I wasn’t sure how Angels and Airwaves would be received at Warped. I guess these days that some of the bands at Warped are considerably softer than they would have been ten years ago, but AvA is in a whole new realm, vastly different from the likes of blink-182. Any hesitations I had about the energy of the crowd vanished as I saw the people filling in the area in front of both mainstages.

AvA put on an awesome thirty-minute set and the crowd was very, very into it. The atmosphere was amazing even without the lightshow from the last Angels concert I went to and the energy was intense.

And the last big set for me? Motion City Soundtrack in their home state. Things had drastically changed since 2005 when they played one of the smaller stages. Nope, that wasn’t happening this year. Mainstage Left in all it’s glory. Again, a ton of people swarmed in front of both stages to get as close as they could. MCS played a nice variety of stuff from all three of their full lengths and had people singing back the lyrics. It was an amazing show and I can’t wait to see them on one of their tours sometime.

Overall it was an excellent show this year and I’m looking forward to next year’s stop. Now I’ve gotta go finish catching up on sleep. G’night.

Did you hire a bunch of shitties for this horrible design concept? Why did you invest time and resources into this? Why are you trying to fix something that isn’t broken?

There was only one flaw with Facebook and that was the introduction of applications. While at least that concept had promise and had actual useful functions, it was a destroyer of bandwidth. Between rotting zombies, fucking vampires, and pointless additional walls, you just couldn’t escape it. And then on top of all the random ass images from those shitty apps, someone went and made an application to display random ass images without a purpose. Yeah, even I have the bumper sticker application. Everyone does and that’s why it takes full minutes to view someones page sometimes. Whatever, it’s been implemented and I understand that. Great. Whatever. Let’s use it.

But then you pull this horrible three-column design out of no where. I undestand you needed to get applications off of the front page of people’s profiles. I’m completely for that, but why did you have to completely remove any originality Facebook had in doing so? I liked the old layout. I’m pretty sure most people liked the old layout.

So here’s a better option. Let’s go back to the old page but rip out the ability to put apps on your front page. Instead, we basically do what you had started doing with extended profiles, but make it mandatory. Put a giant ass button at the top that would load a second page dedicated to an user’s application. If someone wanted to view them, they then could. That’s basically what you’ve done here. . . You didn’t need to include the new eye-raping design feature.

I didn’t need that. If I wanted it, someone could have written an application. . .

Blow! But I’m done on the 29TH so that’s okay.

I’ll be hitting up the August 3RD Minnesota stop of the Warped Tour - just ordered tickets. I’ll have more news soon.