quick & healthy lunch

I just made the best smoothie and I feel the need to document its greatness. Let me start off by saying I have an obsession with being healthy and I'd do almost anything to keep my skin looking good/clear after battling acne for too long. (my skins never been this clear, but one can never do enough to keep the clearness going.. ) I googled smoothies to benefit the skin and came across a few decent ideas. So I took the dying fruit and dying baby spinach from my fridge that I've been neglecting, some frozen fruit from my freezer, and a little bit of water and voila! 

Sure it looks revolting, but I swear it tastes delicious!

Here's the specifics of what I added to the mix..

1 dying plum

5 dying strawberries

half a cup of frozen fruit (pineapples, mangoes, strawberries)

a little bit of water

and a large, ginormous handful of baby spinach, which is the key element for skin care. (I swear you don't taste it one bit. )

I crammed all of that into my Magic Bullet. With a little patience.. well, not really any patience.. I forced .. i mean, coaxed the damn thing into cooperating. (i need to invest in a real blender..) 

I must say that was the best lunch I've had in a long time.

Two in one...

My favorite time of year is any time Demi Lovato or Paramore decide to release new things. It could be a single, an album, or just a music video. Within a week I was spoiled by the release of Demi's new video for Skyscraper and Paramore's new video for Monster off of the Transformers soundtrack. 

First up is Demi's Skyscraper video.. 

I'll admit that I was hesitant at first with the title. It didn't make me want to listen to the song.. who sings about buildings? But I was completely wrong. You can feel her passion burn when she sings this song, and the video makes her feelings even more apparent. The girl was in a pretty damn dark place, but she dug herself out of it. Her comeback song is crucial and I think she'll gain the respect and admiration she deserves from those who hear this song. Check out the video posted above. I promise you wont be disappointed. 

Next up is Paramore's Monster video..

Awesome filming. Great editing. with an ending twist. Every time Paramore releases a new video they surpass their last by miles. This band continues to move forward despite all of the drama. Minus two members, Paramore wrote and released their new song for the Transformers soundtrack (which is a damn good album) that came out in June. The meaning behind the song appears to be about the loss of their members (Zach and Josh Farro) with lines like, "Now that you're gone, the world is ours" and "I'm not the villain despite what you're always preaching- call me a traitor, i'm just collecting your victims." The lyrics made me believe their intentions were to stick it to the Farro brothers, but the video threw me off a bit. As you watch the video its clear that the "monster" is the band itself. Check it out and see for yourself the awesomeness that is Paramore :)

Warped Tour '11 Highlights...

Kevin Lyman discussion!

Warped Tour 2011 was different from any Warped I've been to in the past. Instead of attending the Uniondale show I went to the Hartford CT event, which ended up being much easier to deal with. Let me start off by saying that Hartford has a closed arena stage thats split in half to rotate bands. Thats right.. CLOSED.. no sun beating down on you.. SEATS you can relax in and cool off.. what an amazing concept. Dear Uniondale show, please work on this feature. Besides that I got to listen to Kevin Lyman speak about to music industry and how he got his start. He gave the group of 40+ people great advice on how to get yourself more involved if this is an area you wish to pursue.

 Another great thing about Warped is all the new music you can find. People starting bands are always lurking around trying to sell their CDs for five bucks. Hell, I bought the Bad Rabbits CD for $1! Talk about a bargain. PS. those guys put on a great show.

New Music!

30h3!

 One crowd that never disappoints is the 3oh3! crowd. This crowd gets crazy when those two dudes start singing on stage. I got a pretty great picture with my iPhone of the massive crowd doing the 3oh3! hand symbol.. what is that called anyway?.. I've got no idea.

Later on in the day I saw Simple Plan, Relient K, There for Tomorrow, and Dance Gavin Dance. All of which put on great shows. I saw a couple of band I've never heard of before, which is the beauty of Warped Tour. You spend about 70 bucks for a ticket and you can see over 50 bands in a day..if you see one song from each band. The set is broken down so perfectly that its possible to see all your favorites in one day.

Warped's scheduling coordinator is clever in that they make the more popular bands go on last. This makes people come early in the day and stay late to see those final bands. I am one of those people. Paramore played on select tour dates, which was my main reason for choosing CT over NY. They went on at about 8:00 and played for 45 minutes. The Paramore crowd was huge, and so was the energy in the environment. I could feel the vibrations from the music as I sang along to some of my all time favorite songs. (okay.. I'm a nerd but I embrace it) Front woman Hayley Williams spoke about the bands recent drama. She spoke as if their soap opera story was common knowledge, which in this scene it probably was. Fans cheered as Williams proclaimed she and her band mates Taylor York and Jeremy Davis are in it for the long haul. The band recently wrote and recorded a new song for the Transformers soundtrack, which they performed as the penultimate song of their set.

In the end I thought Warped Tour was a great event. During the discussion with Lyman he mentioned this year is the year to go out and see new bands that you've never seen before. He was admin about picking certain bands that deserve to be on the tour. He was passionate about getting old bands to return to the scene. Mr. Lyman, I must say, you have succeeded beautifully.