Stadium Arcadium Review

Stadium Arcadium is the newest installment in the already talent-prolific collection of Chili Pepper albums. Its strong drum beats and long edgy guitar riffs accents the attitude and collective energy of the band. Their album seems to have an underlying flow that subconsciously draws you to feel closer to the music as it tells you the story. Both of its albums start out strong and end slow with a grand "finish" feel.

Stadium Arcadium is unique in its own right of having two completely separate, yet intertwining LPs. They each tell different stories with their sound. The "Mars" album goes back to the group's origional funk roots while the "Jupiter" album brings forth the band's new alternative sound.

And last but not least the vocal performance for this album sets the bar ten feet higher for a next chili peppers album. With Kiedis five years sober from drugs and alcohol his voice has finally found its place with his melodic rhythms and pitches, his singing has reached new heights.


I would recommend this to anybody who is a fan of contemporary rock music and give it a 5
out of 5

Required Listening Post

In this project we were assigned to listen to a vast veriety of songs from the 50's up to the 70's. I then picked three songs that particularly stood out to me:

Pat Boone's recreation of "Tutti Frutti", originally by Little Richard, was lackluster to say the least. It was clear that Pat's version was directed towards the white middle-aged demographic of America that wanted nothing else but to sit at home with a good glass of wine and enjoy bland music. Well Boone certainly accomplished his goal but ended up massacring the original song by Little Richard that was filled with soul, meaning and energy. The song really struck me as funny in comparison to its original because of its complete lack of character and energy.

The second song that I listened to was "Purple Haze" by Jimi Hendrix. Contradictory to "Tutti Frutti" by Pat Boone, I was really turned on to this song. Purple Haze epitomizes the late 60's and its Woodstock culture. Its rhythmeic and trippy beats were really cool and sort of energized while relaxing at the same time.

Elton John's "Benny and the Jets" is a really great song. John's hard beat piano style really comes out during this performance. The emphasized beats and slight additions of synthesizers made the song a lot better than it was to begin with. This song enduced a strong listening power by captivating your interest with the unique sounds and beats that went along with the chorus very well.

The Kite Runner Responce II

So far I have reached to page 231. I am really enjoying the book still and hope that the ending fills up all of my expectations. The authors style of writing makes the characters seem to come to life. One thing that I noticed about his writing was that the majority of his characters are male and he only seems to show progression of them. The females are put on the shelf and referred back in the story as an item rather than a human. I guess this is fitting though because Afghanistan culture degrades women and treats them in the "shelf" way. Another thing that I noticed was that after Baba's cancer from smoking, the author makes numerous references from Amir's standpoint about smoking and of other characters smoking.

Themes

• Customs - Afghansitan culture is ver focused on predermined customes that dictate their lives.
• Love - Between Amir and many characters including but not limited to: Baba, Kahn, Hassan, and Soraya.
• Guilt - Guilt of what he had done to his friend (and later known, brother) Hassan and of other decisions.

My big question would be why did Baba keep the fact of Hassan's birth a secret from everyone? How come he did not reveal that Amir had a brother and let Hassan live a life of slavery?

"Hassan slumps to the asphalt, his life of unrequited loyalty drifting from him like the windblown kites he used to chase." This quote of indirect guilt on page 219 really showed Amir's thought process of Hassan's reported death. His adjectives like "unrequited loyalty" tells the reader how badly he feels for cheating Hassan after his never-ending faithfulness to the boy that would throw pomegranites at him and watch him get raped.

The Kite Runner

By my second Lit. Circle meeting I had read to page 149 in "The Kite Runner"

So far the book has been very enjoyable in my reading. Amir has just arrived in the US after a brutal Russian reign has overcome his previous country's (Afghanistan) government. He and his father, Baba, have set up shop in a San Jose swap meet to make a few dollars on the side. While running the front, Amir runs into the most beautiful girl he has ever seen before who is protected under her father "The General's" rules.

I predict that in the later parts of the book, Amir will find away to get around The General to some how make off with his daughter and maybe elope. Also, as Baba has been diagnosed with cancer, I believe that he will end up dying soon and that this will greatly transform Amir into the man his father has always wanted him to be. I also predict that Amir will find Hassan at the end some how and that their troubles will be mended.

I can see that later in the book the relationship between Amir and Soraya will most likely cause big problems if they continue on in this relationship in secret. Mainly because Afghan standards say that this is an inappropriate way to conduct themselves and Soraya's father is all into standards.

One of the most interesting things about the writing thus far was how visual the lines seem to be, almost as if it were written for the big screen. One part that particularly stood out to me was the scene where Amir and Hassan are sitting under the pomegranate tree, and suddenly Amir stands up and starts throwing pomegranates at Hassan. Hassan kind of sits there taking it without showing any want to retaliate, once Amir is done, Hassan picks up the remaining ten fruits, smashes them on his face, and walks away. The whole scene was very dramatic and almost cinematic.

While reading I found that I lost track of certain character's names (especially in the first section where they are still in Afghanistan) so what I did was make a list of characters that I thought were or would be important to the story and wrote down some key characteristics of them. This strategy also helps me when I am reading other fiction books with people that have very bland and forgettable names.

So far I have really enjoyed the book despite one of my friend's best efforts to convince me that he disliked it. And I can't wait to get to the end to see what happens.

Will Amir and Hassan be reunited again? Tune in later to find out!

Firestorm '07

Wow, well it sure has been a long time since I was last on here. The fire effected all of us in San Diego, and being one with numerous relatives and friends who were being evacuated or effected by these relentless fires, school was very low on my thought priority list. Over the week off I voluteered seven hours of my time to the evacuees and also worked on my Spanish project. Today I had a bomb dropped on my head when Spencer reminded us that the entire Mexico project was due in less than a week. My group and I are going to have to work like crazy to crank this out. Right now Jessica and Guadalupe are working on the flash, I have not seen it since the beginning and hope that they do a decent job on it. Meanwhile, I am working or the arrangement of the interview in Vegas and hope to start voice recording in the booth tomorrow. We are going to have to schedule some time in to film the main part of the interview.

I think that we will be able to do a good job by the time its due.

Enrique

Yesterday on Wednesday the man who started the human rights group "border angels." He came in and shared his views with us on the border issue and what he thought about it. His group started when he first discovered that illegals were living down in the Carlsbad and he decided to bring them food and water and wanted our government to do something about this. Then later he found out that after 1994 when the border fence was constructed, that illegals were dieing off out in the desert and he felt bad so he put out water and food stations all over the place in an effort to try and bring them safety.

Unfortunatly his arguements for his reasoning were bogus and were full of off the cuff comments that made him seem like "of course he was right" and that anyone who dissagreed was a racist or "mis-guided". I was dissapointed that he brought up such poor points that usually dissagreed with each other. Although I was highly dissapointed with his extremist viewpoints that he tried to persuade his argument with by throwing them in, I was more dissapointed that his other points that he brought up weren't ligit. Our interviewee was against the border as well but luckily she brought up points that were logical and made since.

Overall I think we could have had a better representative of the con side, one that wasn't so extremist. But at the same time it was good that he was able to fully show his opinions unlike the border patrol agent who said that his beliefs didn't matter.

Water Update

Today at the very end of class I managed to find a link that just might save my grade for this project. Up until then I had no idea that we had to have chemical information for everybody's topics. So thank you FAQs for saving my day. Their site talks about how water is a chemical solute for nutrients in your body and how it helps carry different nutrients throughout your body into vital areas. Up until now the information hadn't been very chemically enduced but thanks to the site I am ready to present tomorrow!