12 Years a Slave: A DJ Josh Review

Let me start off by saying I am in no way a film buff in any big way. I mean, I haven’t even seen Back to The Future (don’t kill me please internet). However, I have seen enough to know when a film is good or bad, and oh boy is 12 Years a Slave good. It is so good that I honestly have no problem with saying that if you have not seen it you need to fix that as soon as you possibly can. However, don’t go rushing in expecting a nice and comfortable experience because you will not find it here. Without spoiling too many of the details (although it’s not like the source material is new), let’s dive in with a plot synopsis.

Top 5 Movie Soundtracks

I’m not much of a movie buff, but one thing I do know is music, more specifically, hip-hop music. There has been some prominent movies released in my lifetime, and their soundtracks did not fail to deliver. Here’s my top 5 movie soundtrack list of all time.

5. Boomerang
This movie was hilarious and one of my personal favorites from Eddie Murphy. The soundtrack was pretty good too. It’s the softest album on my list, due to a large presence of R&B, but it still managed to produce the classic track, “Hot Sex” by A Tribe Called Quest. That song coupled with the classic love ballad “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men did enough to crack the top 5.

Album Review: Vuvuzala – “The Hollow Choir”

Vuvuzela is a New York based band that warms my black heart. They rose from the ashes of a chaotic indie band I adored called Kiss Kiss and thankfully retain the weirdness that the former band carried.

Over a year ago I contributed my first $10 to a fund-raising effort on KickStarter. This project was the attempt to fund the recording of Vuvuzela’s EP, “The Hollow Choir.” The band succeeded and in the time since then, I bugged the hell out of the band about the recording and kept an eye on their progress. I was often given vague responses which made it almost frustrating to read things like “Recording percussion today for our almost finished album! Cabasa, Guiro and Vibraphone Oh My!” and ” One of the most unfulfilling things you can do is record an entire album, listen to it 30x in your car, and then not release it for months!!” on the band’s twitter over that year. I wanted to hear whatever this beautiful monster was going to be as time went on, so being so secretive certainly helped to build hype and excitement in me.

The Pessimist’s Guide to the 2012 NFL Season

The NFL preseason has mercifully come to an end.  However, this preseason was different from many others, in that the football wasn’t the worst part.  Yes, you heard that right.  Watching Charlie Whitehurst flounder around against the 49ers third string defense wasn’t the worst part of the preseason.

Not surprisingly, Twitter and the blogosphere found a way to make this preseason worse than any other.  If the crappy football wasn’t bad enough for you, the obnoxiously optimistic fans were enough to make you want to take Batman’s place the first time he fought Bane.

So, to all those fans brimming with optimism because your third string brought home a win against another team’s third string…here’s why your team is going to suck this year.

NL East Preview

The NL East looks to once again have some good luck in the postseason with the Phillies looking to win the division like it has been for the past couple years. The Phillies, led by slugger Ryan Howard and pitcher Roy Halladay, won 102 games last season, leading the braves by 13 games at the end of the regular season. The Phillies pitching staff looks to, once again, dominate the MLB with ace Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hammels and Roy Oswalt on the hill in 4 consecutive games. The Phillies have picked up Dontrelle Willis that may give them an advantage, depending on how Dontrelle decides to play this year. If he comes to Philadelphia and has another 1-6 season with a 5.00 era, then his career as a Phillies pitcher won’t last too long.

A Sports Fan’s Guide to MMA – Chapter 1 “What is MMA?”

Intro / Chapter 1 “what is mma” / Chapter 2 “Names” / Chapter 3 “History” /Chapter 4 “Judging” / Chapter 5 “Grappling”

Chapter 1: What is Mixed Martial Arts?

            Before we go into detail about the legal or literal definition of what constitutes MMA, let us examine some common misconceptions about MMA:

1)      MMA is “no holds, barred, unregulated, street fighting”.

This view is ironically the sports own fault. Early UFC events were in fact advertised as “no holds barred”, “no rules” fighting. This was of course a lie, but it was still marketed as such, which led a number of prominent politicans such as former presidental nominee John McCain to rally against the sport as “human cockfighting”.