Top 30 Roller Coasters

     Why 30?  Well, because I've been on 30 roller coasters total in my life thus far!  It was pretty convenient that it ended up being a nice even number, not to mention 30 isn't really that many to talk about in one post so I don't mind writing about them all.  I'm going to write about the rides and then even provide my own little score for each one at the end of the paragraph.  The scores will be from 1-10, 10 obviously meaning pure roller coastergasm perfection.  I LOVE amusement parks, I've been to Disney World, Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure (twice), SeaWorld, & Six Flags Great America (4-5 times) in the past year.  I'm a roller coaster junkie, I never met a drop I didn't love.  Heights are a plus for me, the higher the better.  I really want to go on a cross country trip to ride all the greatest roller coasters, that would be a dream of mine that I one day hope to fulfill.  Until then, 30 roller coasters, past & present, ranked up to my all-time favorite, let's go...

Song of the Day

     And just like that Blink-182 pulls of an A Day to Remember accomplishment and gets back to back song of the days.  I stayed up pretty late last night, couldn't sleep, so I decided to listen to my iPod while laying down and this song, Love is Dangerous came bouncing into my ears.  I seriously can't get it out of my head.  This new album from Blink-182 truly is fantastic, I love so many songs on it.  This is one of those songs where Tom just makes it amazing and the message is oh so very true.

Song of the Day Tally:
A Day to Remember - 3 (All I Want, All Signs Point to Lauderdale, It's Complicated)
Blink-182 - 3 (Kaleidoscope, Reckless Abandon, Love is Dangerous)
Four Year Strong - 1 (So Much for the Afterglow)
School Boy Humor - 1 (Camera Shy)
Vegas Wake Up - 1 (Last Friday Night)

Song of the Day

     Look at Blink-182 vying for that number 1 spot in the song of the day tally.  This is Mark, Tom, & Travis' 2nd song of the day and it's Reckless Abandon.  Just one of those songs that I relate to immensely on a personal level.  The lyrics are amazing and the song is fantastic.  The opening line sung by Tom hits me every time.  On and on, reckless abandon, something's wrong, this is gonna shock them.  Nothing to, hold on to, we'll use this song...to lead you on...

Song of the Day Tally:
A Day to Remember - 3 (All I Want, All Signs Point to Lauderdale, It's Complicated)
Blink-182 - 2 (Kaleidoscope, Reckless Abandon)
Four Year Strong - 1 (So Much for the Afterglow)
School Boy Humor - 1 (Camera Shy)
Vegas Wake Up - 1 (Last Friday Night)

Song of the Day

     Insanely catchy pop song covered into an insanely catchy pop punk song = obsession for me.  This song has been stuck in my head all damn day, I've been walking around singing Last Friday Night by Vegas Wake Up everywhere.  I must have listened to this song on my iPod 5+ times today alone.  Needless to say it's the song of the day.  Oh yeah, needs to be said, Katy Perry is fantastically hot.

Song of the Day Tally:
A Day to Remember - 3 (All I Want, All Signs Point to Lauderdale, It's Complicated)
Blink-182 - 1 (Kaleidoscope)
Four Year Strong - 1 (So Much for the Afterglow)
School Boy Humor - 1 (Camera Shy)
Vegas Wake Up - 1 (Last Friday Night)

Song of the Day

     I adore Blink-182's new album, it has definitely lived up to the hype for me.  One of my favorite songs off the new album is Kaleidoscope which is also today's song of the day.  It was only a matter of time before Blink-182 made the list as a song of the day.  The opening lyrics sang by Mark Hoppus in this song are brilliant and I just love the song all together.  My favorite Blink songs are when Mark & Tom both song and this is a prime example of how well it can come together.

Song of the Day Tally:
A Day to Remember - 3 (All I Want, All Signs Point to Lauderdale, It's Complicated)
Blink-182 - 1 (Kaleidoscope)
Four Year Strong - 1 (So Much for the Afterglow)
School Boy Humor - 1 (Camera Shy)

Song of the Day

     It seems as though my summer of A Day to Remember has extended into the autumn of A Day to Remember.  Fine by me, all their songs are amazing to me and their lyrics are far too perfect for my life, to be honest.  I've been in the mindset to listen to songs that I relate to for the past several months and A Day to Remember provides that for me.  It's Complicated is just another example of a song that has hit me on an emotional level while at the same time rocks my socks off.  I've also decided, for shits and giggles, I'm going to keep a tally of how many songs a band gets for song of the day at the bottom of each video.  Obviously, A Day to Remember is running away with it early on.

A Day to Remember - 3 (All I Want, All Signs Point to Lauderdale, It's Complicated)
Four Year Strong - 1 (So Much for the Afterglow)
School Boy Humor - 1 (Camera Shy)

Song(s) of the Day(s)

     Got home somewhat late last night and just crashed, didn't have time to post a song of the day.  Been at work all day today, just got done doing some homework and finally have time to relax.  Busy busy days, all work, no play.  Gets kind of overwhelming, but whatever.  Song yesterday was All Signs Point to Lauderdale by A Day to Remember.  I got a new Android Charge phone and made the opening 15 seconds of the song my ringtone so I figure that's enough to earn song of the day.  Today's song of the day is Camera Shy by School Boy Humor.  Had the song hit me during work today and it's been stuck in my head ever since.

2011 MLB Awards

     Just like with my NFL Predictions post, I am going to make my predictions for a sport.  This time it will be for the MLB and I will try and determine who I think should win all of the major awards.  From the league MVP down to the Rookie of the year, I'll toss out who I believe should win the award.  I've really been looking forward to doing this post, but knew I should wait until September was close to ending, to coincide with the ending of the MLB regular season.  I'll start with the American League winners and then the National League's.  I'll even post who I think will win the American & National League and also ultimately, the World Series.  The stats that I post with the selections are accurate as of today (September 24th) while they probably won't change drastically between now and the end of the season, it's worth noting.  I finally get to make my predictions and here they are...

Song of the Day

     Today's song of the day is All I Want by A Day to Remember.  A song that's been featured on this blog a ton of times and it's the song of the day because the best caster on Twitch going right now, Eddie Ruckus played it in his endless set-list for his 2k follower celebration.  He asked 50 people to send him song requests and he graciously asked me to contribute, so this was the song I requested.  He rocked it out on Rock Band, as usual.

Song of the Day

     So I figure every day I'll do my song of the day.  The song that's stuck in my head, the song that I'm really feeling the lyrics to, or just a song that I've been listening to since morning until night.  I always have a song that I consider to be my song of the day and I thought it would be fun to honor them every day here on the blog.  It'll keep this silly thing updated every day rather than going a month or so without a post.  Hopefully I'll keep up with this.

     Today's song of the day is So Much for the Afterglow by Four Year Strong off the album Explains It All.  It's a cover of the song by Everclear.  I much prefer the cover and this song is kick-ass.  Was stuck in my head the minute I woke up this morning for some reason.

The Madden Effect

               All my life I've been a sports gamer.  Back in the days of Super Nintendo I was playing NBA Jam, then moved on to Triple Play 2000 for the PS1, all the way to NBA 2K11 (soon to have 2K12) on PS3.  I have my favorite franchises, I've given a fair shot to pretty much all of them out there.  I am an avid supporter of the MLB The Show series on PS3.  It is far and away better than the MLB 2K series that is available.  In fact, because for one year I only had an XBOX 360, I was forced to play MLB 2K9 and realized just how much better The Show was.  Due to this fact, I bought myself a PS3 so I could go back to the true baseball franchise (which is PS3 exclusive).  I've also collected the NBA 2K games for the past several years and they are some of the best games I have ever played.  NBA 2K11 may be my favorite game ever made.  Like The Show, the NBA 2K series has an opponent that is so inferior to it, it's embarrassing.  If you buy NBA Live over NBA 2K, you enjoy torturing yourself.  Of course, that's also impossible because the 2K series has driven the NBA Live series into extinction.  I'm one of those people who maintains that ESPN NFL 2K5 was quite possibly the best football game ever made, but unfortunately, Madden bought the exclusive rights to the NFL gaming market, so we'll never know what could have been.  Madden has been great some years and awful other years.  This past year's Madden (12) is phenomenal if you ask me.  I'm not so much an NHL gamer, but I've played them.  NHL 10 was a great game with my boy Patrick Kane on the cover.  While I don't consider wrestling to be a true sport, I did partake in playing some of the WWE SmackDown vs. Raw video games, which were a lot of fun but I've since stopped playing them.  This list will even include some songs featured on the insanely fun & popular Tony Hawk series.  This is not strictly NFL, MLB, NHL, & NBA games.

               The reason I bring all of this up is because I just recently put all the songs off of the Madden NFL 12 soundtrack on to my iPod and it made me realize the effect a video game can have on music.  There have been plenty of songs & artists I have been introduced to because of video games that I otherwise would not have known about.  Maybe it's the association with a badass game that I enjoy that makes the songs better, but I'd like to believe I genuinely enjoy these songs.  In this post, I'm going to share some of my favorite songs from video games I've played over the course of my lifetime.  Going off what I included, I would think it's safe to say that Madden NFL 12, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, Madden NFL 09, & MLB 07: The Show have my favorite soundtracks.