My favorite band, Hanson, has organized a telethon in 2 days, SXSW 4 Japan. It is going on right now and you can check it out at sxsw4japan There are a lot of great performers who have jumped on board. It started at 12pm CST and will be going until 12amCST. If you have some free time be sure to check it out and donate if you can. It is great background music if you are trying to get some computer or housework done and it is all for a great cause 🙂 Please spread the word if you can!

It looks like we are at 100 followers on Google Friend Connect and 100 “likes” on Facebook.  Provided these numbers stay the same (or get larger) for the end of the contest – we will have *3* winners chosen to win $10 to Amazon.com!

If you haven’t already entered, what are you waiting for? Your odds to win just went way up! Please make all entries on the original contest post. Contest ends Monday March 21st at 11:59pm EST.

Good luck everyone 🙂

I visit a lot of websites every day.  Sometimes, I visit a lot of websites at once. Well, not exactly. I can only read one page at at time (which is a bummer, I know) but I do often have many, many tabs open on the top of my browser. Especially when I find a post with a lot of great links – like a blog hop, for instance.. I’ll go through and open them ALL to check out over the course of the next hour or day, depending on what other things I have going on.

And I have to say, one of my biggest pet peeves is when one of these multiple tabs starts talking or singing!  Websites that have auto-play – whether it be a music player, an ad or a video, drive me NUTS!  The worst is when more than one of the tabs you have open have auto-play.  Then you get all sorts of crazy noises going on.  Not to mention, somehow they are always the loudest thing ever playing and sometimes it scares me and I jump a mile out of my computer chair before I scramble to figure out what page it is.

Can someone explain how this is beneficial to your site?  If someone can’t figure out how to turn off the auto-play because you have it buried somewhere or at the very bottom of you page, they might just close out of the page and not check out your site.  Sure you’d have that initial “hit”, but will they bookmark you and come back later? Probably not. I know I don’t!

(And I have to say one of the worst offenders is Hanson.net. Which I visit frequently. Multiple times a day. And if I stay on the home page too long I hear “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” coming from their promo for 5 of 5. I don’t like hearing it at the shows and I certainly don’t like hearing it coming out my computer speakers!)

by J. Moore, who has a degree in social work and enjoys writing about radiology technicians.

Tight Mix’s acclaimed blog reaches out to the music industry with a blend of reviews, up-to-the-minute music news, and stories of interest for the music community at large.

Ah, music – our only universal language. We all have our favorite tunes, tracks, and artists. But how to maintain tabs on your preferred genres? More important still, how to make sure you hear the hottest new tracks and get the lowdown on new discs and concerts before your friends? Take a serious look-see at our selection here of fifteen amazing music industry blogs. They’ll guarantee that your status as the hottest music buzz insider is always a sure thing.

1. Top 40. (Contact: http://top40.about.com/bio/Bill-Lamb-15651.htm) We begin our listing with the best blog we found to keep lovers of popular music well-informed about the latest. This blog was the among the first to break news of Amy Winehouse and Lady Gaga to the masses.
2. Indie Rock Cafe. (Contact: http://www.indierockcafe.com/about/) Indie music lovers, unite in this blog’s ability to place you at the forefront of the latest releases, mixtapes, and more. The writing here will turn you into an indie connoisseur pronto.
3. The Burning Ear. (Contact: http://www.theburningear.com/what/) Find yourself frequently inundated with tons of new music, but none of it gratifying to you? The burning ear works like an auditory salve, delivering only the most prime and most worthwhile tunes to your cochlea.
4. Aurgasm. (Contact: http://aurgasm.us/contact/) Many of us are into a hodgepodge of musical strains and varieties. We pledge allegiance to no one particular genre. This blog made its name on offering a blend of nice assemblage of quality musicianship.
5. Gorilla v. Bear. (Contact: http://www.gorillavsbear.net/about/) This frequently acclaimed music blog has earned its acclaim for distilling the sprawling music scene down to only its most salient sounds. GVB is where the press goes to determine the next big things, while they’re still little.
6. The Smoking Section. (Contact: info@uproxx.com) The hip-hop music scene has been hip to this blog’s fumigatingly fine surveillance of rap, et al, for quite a while now. Despite the hype, the writers maintain an intimate, whispery feel to the site.
7. Stereogum. (Contact: http://stereogum.com/about/) Think of Stereogum as the Time Magazine of indie music blogs. It’s pretty prestigious, yet manages to keep a foothold on being personable and worthwhile to the public.
8. Music for Kids who Can’t Read Good. (Contact: http://musicforants.com/blog/?p=10) Culturally illiterate? This blog guarantees you won’t complete your visit here without a lesson in Hot and Pretty Music Now, 101.
9. Aquarium Drunkard. (Contact: http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/contact/) This Los Angelino blog does it utmost to dirty up an otherwise pretty indie music scene right now. They accomplish this by enlisting the freshest soul, garage, country, R&B;, and like tunes that they can uncover.
10. Nialler9. (Contact: http://www.nialler9.com/contact-nialler9/) Blogger Nialler9’s site is founded on Duke Ellington’s statement of the century: “there’s good music, and the other kind.” The music scene in Ireland has basked in a raised profile due to this site’s coverage.
11. The Hype Machine. (Contact: http://hypem.com/contact) Come to this blog not once, not twice, but A MILLION times a daily. Seriously. A constant stream of new songs and mixtapes selections pours over this page frequently throughout any given day.
12. Pretty Much Amazing. (Contact: pma.editor@gmail.com) Don’t even think about looking at this page if you’re a single-genre purist. PMA points out for its readers the absolute freshest new music first, regardless of category.
13. Live Music Blog. (Contact: http://www.livemusicblog.com/contact/) Gosh darn it, keeping up-to-date on the latest concert news can be a real drag, especially if you hear about your favorite artist’s latest tour just selling out…two minutes ago. Safeguard yourself from that forlorn fate with LMB’s promise of bringing you live music news first.
14. Rap Basement. (Contact: http://www.rapbasement.com/features/features/contact-us.html) The writers of this blog understand that proper aficionados of hip-hip don’t just love their music — they live it. Implement new swagger in your step with this blog’s well-spiced and timely hip-hop reporting.
15. The Boombox. (Contact: http://www.theboombox.com/contact/comments/) Hip-hop, rap, and R&B; fans, get your favorite music news and updates hot and fresh here, all the time. New music here is mixed into steaming-off-the-presses music scene coverage.  

This week the top 12 performed songs from the year of their birth.  The first half of the show was a little bit questionable with performances and song choices (I was going to put “IMO” here, but hey it is my blog isn’t it kind of obvious everything here is “IMO”?) but it seemed to pick up in the second half, with Stefano being the turning point.

Pia and Scotty continue to be strong and consistent – I can definitely see them going a long way and possibly even to the final 2 if they keep it up. A few of the contestants were sick, which showed in some of their singing but most of them tried to over come it.  The downside of everyone living together in an awesome mansion, I guess!

My predictions for the bottom 3… which are probably completely off base (again) – Naima, Paul, Karen.  I think Karen will go home this week.  DialIdol – which I continue to check and freak out over even though I question its reliability with the addition of online voting, have the bottom as Stefano, Paul, Casey and Karen. (Though Thia, Haley and James are also yellow)  The raw numbers tell a bit of a different story, with Casey on the bottom and Haley and Stefano swap places.  Last week Ashthon went home and was ranked #9 in the raw numbers and 11 with the main scores. So really, it means nothing. I think. Maybe. 😉

Also – it was kind of interesting to find out just how young these contestants are.  Usually there are a couple who are older than me – but this year – nope!  Well, we did not hear what month Paul was born in, so he might be older than me by a few months.. but everyone else I am older than!

Naima (1984) – Not a great start for the night. I don’t like how they changed the song to make it for 2011. I want to like her but this performance was just not the best.

Paul (1984) – I think him being sick kind of took him over this week.  He started off a little rocky but you could tell he was not giving it his all. It was kind of blah.

Thia (1995) – I am not a fan of Pocahontas and therefore not a fan of this song.  She has a great voice but I’d like to see her do something more “fun” and not a ballad.

James (1989) – This was probably James’ worst performance so far.  He seemed to never be able to catch his breath which I think showed throughout the song.

Haley (1990) – I’m not sure she should have moved around so much, that seemed to affect her breathing and singing. She also got  lipstick all over her chin and cheek from the mic during that performance!  But I wasn’t really into that and I think Haley needs to find who she is because she is a good singer provided she picks the right songs.

Stefano (1989) – He lost points by making fun of NKOTB, that’s for sure 😉 But it was one of the better performances of the night.

Pia (1988) – She is good. And she is consistent and if she keeps it up she will go far.

Scotty (1993) – He is good but I’m still not that into him (or country) but I can definitely see a Pia vs Scotty final 2.

Karen (1989) – I think she put her all into it this week after her bottom 3 scare last week.  But the whole singing in Spanish and English is a bit old. We get it.

Casey (1991) – I like that he is taking risks and that he is the first one to play an instrument this year. The faces he made during the performance were downright scary though…

Lauren (1994) –  I think this was a great choice for her, but the fact that she has a cold definitely came through at some points. But I think she tried to overcome it well and gave a decent performance.

Jacob (1987) – Once he started with the screeching he kind of lost himself a bit and seemed to be all over the place. Not really a fan of the performance.

I saw a post over at A Professors Wife to share your handwriting.  I have my own handwriting font – so this is Part 1 – my handwriting from my font.  Once I get a chance to sit down and write this out on paper I’ll do it again with my *actual* handwriting and then we can compare 🙂

1. Your name and blog name
2. Your blog URL
3. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
4. Favorite quote
5. Favorite song
6. Favorite band/singer
7. Anything else you might want to add
8. Tag/invite your fellow blogging buds to participate!

The Shape of Mercy is three stories all intertwined in to one.  We first meet Lauren Durough, who is the only child to a man who wanted a son to carry on the family legacy.  Desperate to break from her family’s expectations, she takes a part-time job although she does not need one.
Her boss is Abigail Boyles, an eighty-three year old retired Librarian.  Abigail has a Diary that was passed down through her family for many years that was written by Mercy Hayworth who lived in Salem during the witch trials.
Lauren’s job is to transcribe the diary from the hundreds of year old diary of Mercy.  She goes to Abigail’s several nights a week to work on it and quickly becomes consumed with the story. (read more about transcribe anywhere here)
I, like Lauren, also became consumed with the story.  At the beginning of each chapter there are several excerpts of the Diary written which tell Mercy’s personal account of the Salem Witch Trials.  It was very hard to put this book down once I started it, which made for a couple of late nights for me over the past few days!  I was just so into the story – all of the stories! and I wanted to know what happened right away, even if it meant staying up all night.
You might assume that you know what is going to happen if you had read or heard anything about the Salem Witch Trials, but Mercy’s story, as well as Abigail’s and Lauren’s all have many surprising twists and turns that you most likely won’t see coming. (At least, I didn’t see a lot of them coming!)
Now that the book has ended I find myself wanting to know more! I definitely recommend this book if you are into Contemporary Fiction and/or Historical Fiction.  It is a pretty quick & easy read and is a great story (or three).

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review. I was not told what to write and I was not monetarily compensated for my review.

What was your favorite class in college?


My favorite class had to be The History of Rock N Roll.  I took it in the summer and it met twice a week in the morning.  I don’t think it was all that early in the morning, but I did often show up half asleep after going to concerts the night before and the professor thought that was awesome so he was never mad at me about it. Plus, at least I showed up! (Funnily enough, the one class I did end up missing – he missed too! Apparently he just never showed up so the class waited like 10 minutes and left. Talk about lucky!) I could have stayed home in bed.  And one week we were talking about Little Richard and Hanson had just started covering “Rip It Up” around that time so I asked him about it and he played it for the class and then asked me if Hanson changed any of the lyrics.  They didn’t.  He was impressed.

The class had nothing to do with my major or minor, but it counted towards the general electives that I needed to take.  I believe it was for History, which is a subject I am not that great with since it is basically all memorization of dates and names. (Although, the one actual History class I took was all essays and not multiple choice “what year did this happen?” and I did really well in it)  We even had to write out certain notes on our midterm and final which surprisingly I did pretty well with, though I don’t know if I actually retained any of that information.

For Monday I joined up with the I Love My Online Friends Monday Hop!  Check it out 🙂

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