Bangerz Tour

If there is one thing I took from the Bangerz Tour, which visited Melbourne for a short stop on Friday night, it’s that Miley Cyrus is 100% certain of every lyric she is singing, every costume she is wearing, every move she makes, and every thing she is says. Oh and she also doesn’t really care what anyone thinks of her. While parents were walking out of her show, I’m positive that wouldn’t of fazed her one bit. She just wants to have a good time, and thats all she wants for her adoring audience as well.

(image credit – mleys.tumblr.com)

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Golden Rule

If there is one thing I have learnt recently, it’s that one should never get their hopes up. Never have high expectations.

There is a great moment in Survivor: Heroes Vs Villains, which was a milestone season for the show. The Villains tribe walk into the reward challenge with everything they had at camp, expecting a merge. Whenever a merge or tripe swap is coming, Jeff Probst, host of the show, will always lead in with “Drop your buffs, you’re merging”. After hearing the villains think they are about to merge, he starts with that exact quote. But along the way “Drop your buffs” turns into Drop your…EXPECTATIONS”. Guess what. They weren’t merging tribes that day. In life there are no certainties, so having high expectations can only leave you with bad aftertaste.

March To War / All Out War

Coming back from a trip around the world, I feel more inspired and determined than ever. It’s only now that I realise that if this is what I want to do, I need to put everything I’ve got into it. It’s been hard, but it will only get harder. At the end of the day there is always someone out there doing something better than you, so to compete with the best, I will need to life my game.

Boyhood

If you have nothing happening this Sunday afternoon, I have one piece of advice. Get yourself to your nearest movie cinema and go watch Boyhood. I don’t want to say to much about the film, but it was amazing watching the process of the story being crafted over twelve years, and the young actor going from a boy to a man. If you don’t believe me, just listen to the parade of critics giving the film a enormous amount of praise. Richard Roeper went as far to say it was “one of the greatest films he had ever seen”.

Life Among Them

Can you imagine getting a coffee with Neil Patrick Harris. Seeing a Broadway show with Lea Michele. Spending hours looking around Barnes and Noble with John Green. Scrolling through tumblr with Tyler Oakley. Sitting in on a recording session with Paul McCartney.

What would it be like, to live your life among them.

Abbey Road

In a review for Rolling Stone, Ed Ward called it “complicated instead of complex”. Over at The New York Times, Nik Cohn said “individually, the album’s songs are nothing special”, while Albert Goldman boldly declared “[it] is not one of The Beatles’ greatest albums” in Life magazine. It was clear Abbey Road obtained mixed reviews, at best, back in 1969, but somewhere along the way, in between the forty-five years since its release, it became one of the most beloved albums of all time, not just in The Beatles back catalogue, but among the other great albums in music history.

Abbey Road was the first full LP from The Beatles that I had ever listened too. My Dad tried to pursued me from going further than their Greatest Hits collection, believing many albums contain to many throwaway tracks. Me on the other hand, for some reason, believed that albums were like books, and only listening to the hit singles, would be like only reading the most exciting chapters. It is astonishing I still think this was to this day in the digital age, when it is so easy to grab select tracks from the iTunes store. Anyway I’m glad Abbey Road was the first of the band’s I got to enjoy. If I had started with say “Please Please Me” or “Beatles For Sale”, I might of really found some fillers. But not here. Not on Abbey Road.

Again Ed Ward said of the album, “complicated instead of complex”. By this point in the bands short time together, the relationship between the four Liverpool lads was already so complicated, and they didn’t need for their music to be complex anymore. All they need to do was to find simplicity. Songs like Come Together, Something, Oh Darling, and Octopus’s Garden are what make the album. There isn’t much to them, other then being really good rock tracks, but because they were made by John, Paul, George, and Ringo they became something more than just songs.

A Larger World

I think a lot of Australian’s live in a bubble. A bubble caused by the fact the country we live in, is basically the sum of our continent, and by the fact that Australia is an island surrounded by water with no countries at our immediate border.

In this bubble, people think the way Australia is, is the end all and be all. They think that if you have a different tradition, you have brought here, to something practiced here in Australia, you should learn to conform or leave.

How is it in a country, whose foundation is built on multi-culturalism, is so afraid of something different being introduced to them?

And why do I here increasingly “our country”, like Australia is a club house, and we can pick who can come in?

Australia is the country you live in. It doesn’t make it yours. It should be for anybody wanting to live in the lucky country.

No Way Out

You can see it as either a blessing or curse that the youth of today are connected to the internet, and use digital technology at such a young age. Which ever way you see things, people my age are so dependant on technology that we can’t live without it.

During my five day stay in Anaheim, California I was deprived (I use this word loosely as I realise I live in a first world country, with a roof above my head, while others around the world are much less fortunate than me) of a wi-fi connection, meaning I would have to utilise the conveniently placed nearby Starbucks and McDonalds to see everyones tweets and trends. Luckily this was only for five days, as if this was for two weeks of internet for 15 minutes in the morning, I would of gone a bit crazy.

I know this sounds absurd, but living in a world where the internet is accessible on your phone anytime you want, you become used to it, and for me there is no way to change my nerd for an internet connection 24/7.