When I grow up I want to be............A 12 year old Tony Royster Jr.

I started playing drums when I was 13.
I had no intention or even desire to play, the reason I got into it was my High School Concert Band at GP.
I had played the Clarinet until midway through Grade 8 and after getting braces I couldn't play it anymore.
I still wanted to be in band because I loved the class so the teacher stuck me in the Percussion section.
That move has had a big change on my life.
For my 14th birthday my Dad bought my my first drum kit, which is the one I still play on to this day.
It was(is) a Pearl Export 5 piece drum kit with flecked metallic grey wrappings.
It was literally the first time I fell in love.

I have since bought better hardware and drums skins, different pedal, beaters, cymbal stand and even some high end cymbals
(I have a big crush on my 14" Zildjian A Custom
That cymbal cost me $300!

In short I love playing drums, it's really the biggest stress reliever I can think of. Just sitting behind a big shiny drum kit and beating the hell out stuff that makes noise? Yeah awesome!
When I first got into drums my influences we Neal Peart from RUSH (Obviously) because of how amazing he is, that man can play anything. Then I came upon this video of 12 year old Tony Royster Junior who is now 25 playing one of the most amazing drum solo's I've ever seen, and I'm not even taking into account that he is 12!


Phenomenal!
One day I hope to play as good as he can.

Just one final video because this is my favourite drum battle of all time.
It's Buddy Rich, one of greatest drummers whoever lived and Animal from The Muppets.
The puppeteer on Animal is very impressive.


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JW

What was I thinking?!?! (I'm sorry)

Ok so today I had my first experience with bad personal PR.

The Facts:

- PR class was directly after lunch today, it was a one hour slot.
- While I don't think I want to major in PR I do find it to be a great class for some heated discussions.
- I wasn't taking a very active role in today's class, partly because my mind was in another place, my back hurt and I was just tired overall. (No excuse though for what happened)

The Story:

Ok so about 15 minutes into today's class my instructor Melanie handed out some information on the IABC Code of Ethics and the Canadian Public Relations Society, Inc.
We discussed (and by we I mean almost everyone but me) some of the differences between companies who use a team of in-house PR people who are on the payroll all year round and companies who hire freelance PR people. After that was finished Melanie had us all read the info on the IABC and everyone did (and by everyone, I mean everyone but me). I instead decided to draw things in my notebook and to not read the info. Not because I thought I was better than it, or because I think it's stupid, but because I was being stupid. I pretended to flip through the pages and continued doodling on my page.

It was clear that Melanie knew exactly what I was doing and then asked me what the differences were between the IABC code of ethic and the CPRS code of ethics. I obviously didn't know because I didn't read what they were. I think she expected me to lie and maybe try to make something up on the spot. However what my instinct told me to do was to just tell the truth. So I did and it couldn't have come out anymore rude.

My Exact Words:
"To be perfectly honest I didn't read it" (It was said in a very dismissive and arrogant tone)

I then realized as I was walking to my next class how much of an asshole I came off as. If I was watching myself say that, I would have said "what an asshole".
It wasn't my intent to be that rude I was just telling the truth, but they way I said it made me look like a dick.

Now I owe two apologies here.
The first to Melanie.
I showed a huge amount of disrespect to you today and really made myself look bad. I make no excuses for not reading the papers you handed out. It may not have been my intent to come off so rude, but that's most certainly how it sounded and for that I sincerely apologize.


The second goes to my classmates.
I would like to apologize for making myself look like an asshole and an all around idiot for decide to NOT do what you all had no problem doing. For whatever reason I made a choice to "just not do it" and I was wrong in that.

What I did today was stupid and rude but most of all just plain selfish. I'm not better than anyone else in the class and certainly don't want anyone thinking that that's what I think. I now view myself as being one step below everyone else because of the way I acted today.

To everyone, I'm sorry.


JW

I Got Blisters On Me Fingers!!

First order of business is to post my new drum videos.

The first one is a cover I did for Carly, she really like the song "You know what they do to guys like us in prison?" by My Chemical Romance and as fate would have it it's one of the few songs I can play well by that band so I figured I'd give it a go. The only part of this cover I don't like is closer to the end I start to play almost half a step faster than the song, hopefully it's not as noticeable to you.


The second is another System of a Down song that I've loved playing since their album "Mesmerize" came out, however I've never felt comfortable enough to record myself playing it. There is also some really heavy double bass in it so I figured that if I record me playing the song I'd had to set up another camera to record my pedals on those double bass parts. I really like how this one turned out, it's definitely one of my best covers. The only downside is I recorded this as the last song of a long night of playing and I was tired so I didn't beat on the drums as much as I would have liked, my arms and legs were just too damn tired.



School so far hasn't been as rough as I had thought but I assume that things are going to get much more intense the further we get into it. We've had some homework and a few quizzes and one test for Grammar which I think I bombed but other than that it's been pretty easy to keep up. So much so I've gone back to my old job at Auto Extreme polishing and driving cars, I need to make some extra money because parking downtown is obscene!!!! I'm not taking the bus either, no offense to anyone who takes the bus, but I just HATE it so much. Plus I'm not going to spend $200 a month in insurance for my car to then take the bus to school. The only downside of school so far is I haven't been able to see Carly as much as I would like. People have been calling CreComm the "relationship killer" but I like a challenge and being the exception to the rule so that will NOT be the case.

That's all I have to write about now.
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-JW

Drum Covers Aplenty

Mike is now back at Fanshaw in London and Drumfest 09 is finally done.
Our kits were broken down and mine shuttled home in my car.
I had been thinking of selling it for the longest time, I had taken pictures, got it appraised and was almost ready to put the ad up, but then as Mike, Jackson and I played our few final songs I remembered how much fun it was to play drums. Right then and there I said, screw it, I'm not selling this kit even if I can't play it until I get my own place.

After getting home and unpacking my car, taking everything downstairs into my room and only then realizing how much space I actually had. After planning carefully about how to feng shui my drums around, and after moving some stuff around in my room I found a setup I like.



It's a 4 piece but it's the only way I could get that huge 20' ride cymbal in there. I have plans to buy a rack kit and hang my smallest tom off of the crash cymbal stand and then put my 8' tom in it's place.

It took a while to get used to, having to do fills without a middle tom and have a ride cymbal instead was very different. Especially the big ammount of space my hands have to move to get from my high tom to my low tom, but I'm getting the hang of it.

So these past few weeks I've been playing like crazy, practicing a bunch of songs and starting to play some I've never tried before. I've also started filming covers again and I figured I'd post some here.

This is the first video I recorded since putting my drums back together, it's a cover of Toxicity by System of a Down. Pretty easy song for the most part, made a little more complicated with less toms to work with but I really like how it came together.




I'll be posting more as they come, I've 2 videos in waiting right now so in the next few updates I'll post them. I figure I should get in as much drumming as possible before school starts to really kick into high gear.

Speaking of which school is awesome, I clearly made the right choice by coming to CreCom, I'm finally in a class where everyone is smart, there isn't one dumb person in my class and that's great. Plus there is always great discussions going on and everyone is contributing and it makes coming to school very exciting. Right now the only class I'm not enjoying is "The Writers Craft" because it makes me feel retarded. It's going to be a struggle to maintain a good grade in that class, but hopefully I'll get it. If not there are tons of people in the class who are fantastic at it and I'm sure they'll lend a hand.

That's all for now.

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-JW

End of Summer/Beginning of School

Expect more regular updates now that apparently more people are going to be reading it, well that and I'm now being marked on it.

So summer 09 is pretty much over, school has started and very excited about the prospects that Creative Communications is going to bring me. I knew that I wanted to major in TV Broadcasting in second year, but now after getting into advertising I may want to try that. It for some reason is really fun, but it may just be because of the wackiest of instructors Kenton Larsen.

PR is also a good class too (and NOT just because Melanie is going to be reading this) however sometimes I think that most PR is needlessly complicated and could stand to be much simpler. In everything though the more money involved the more complicated things get.

Quick side note The Bonus Stage just aired it's 15th episode here and we've started filming a new format. I've gotten tired of having to edit 30 minutes of video as a whole and cut episodes to 10 minute segments for YouTube. So what Tom and I have decided to do is film each review as a standalone segment. Think of it as a TV show you'd watch on cable and between each review is a "commercial" that separates the reviews. So technically you don't have to watch the previous part to find out what we were talking about although we hope you watch all three parts anyway. So far since January of 09 we've had almost 10,000 total views and just over 2,000 channel views with 87 subscribers. Please check it out here and you can also follow The Bonus Stage on Twitter and get regular updates on what is coming next for the show.

I just finished reading the brand new compilation issue of The Walking Dead from Image Comics.
This is honestly one of the best graphic novels I've ever read. It's so well written by Robert Kirkman that it feels like you know ever single character like they're in your own family. It's all penciled and shaded and there is no colour, so if you only like to read comics that have colour you may want to stay away.

The story really has very little to do with the zombies as characters, it's more about the human struggle going on where you're never safe. Everyone is at risk at all times and the interactions between people are so realistic to crisis situations that I feel like it's almost a window into what would happen if a zombie outbreak came about. If anyone who is like me and LOVES zombies I recommend picking up the book "The Zombie Survival Guide" by Max Brooks.
He is a comedy writer but he writes this book like it's a completely legitimate survival guide. It's taken on a huge cult following and I highly recomend it for any zombie fan. To that end there is also a great website about surviving a zombie apocalypse with a very helpful forum with discussions about how to survive the worst.

That's all that I can think to write about now.
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Things you should check out.

Starship Amazing
Happy Video Game Nerd
Cinemasacre


- JW

Summer 09 Part Deux.

Wow so I've pretty much neglected writing anything here for almost 2 months, yeah I got kinda lazy / busy with other projects. But here's whats been happening since I last wrote.

The Bonus Stage has been gaining some ground these last few weeks, mostly in part to our Video Games Live coverage with the biggest hit being a Michael Jackson tribute video, gamer style seen here.

Sidebar: How weird is it that he had to die on my birthday! Jeeze way to take my thunder Mike.
In all seriousness I'm a pretty big fan of his music and have now found myself listening to more MJ than I care to admit.

Anyway back to TBS, we've been gaining roughly 5 subscribers a week now and have had almost 5,700 views total with almost 2,000 people looking at our channel. Now it may not seem like much but to be honest I never thought we'd do this good so it's all very surprising we've had this much positive feedback.
Even better being that the show might be picked up by a local production company to be on CCTV sometime in the next year, so we're really jacked about that. We're starting to really bring the show full circle and the quality shows, we now have game footage in HD and are recording on my new camcorder I bought from Mike in full HD so it's pretty great.
You can check out the show here and please subscribe if you like it.

So onward to other things.
While at VGL this year I happened to meet a new girl, her name is Carly.
She is Tom's girlfriends best friend.
She was very quiet when I first met her, she's just one of those people but immediately when I saw her I knew I had to get to know her better. After hanging out a few times we eventually started dating and are now together and to be perfectly honest I don't think I could be any happier. We seem to have a really good balance personality wise and with what we like. Food especially because I'm such a picky eater, anything I don't like she usually likes, so I can give it her and vice versa. For those of you who watch "How I Met Your Mother" it's the "Olive Theory".

I've been filling my time lately with her and I've been seeing a ton of movies, now I don't want to get into detail about all of them but I haven't seen a terrible movie this summer, and yes I did like GI: Joe, it was a fun movie to watch. Dumb as eff though.
This past weekend a movie I had been looking forward to for quite sometime District 9 came out and Carly and myself went to see it friday night.

First impressions: This movie is unbelievable, from start to finish it's captivating and the plot is so thick with undertones of racism and hatred for the "prawns" that it makes you feel like you could be watching stock footage of the jews in concentration camps. This movie has some of the best special effects I've ever seen, and not because they were over the top, but because they were done right. So often in movies today the special effects are cool looking but don't have the same charm as miniatures or the organic special effects of old. This movie however had the perfect blend of organic and CG. Interactions with the prawns are filmed so well that it's hard to tell if they're CG or animatronic. The whole movie has such a grit to it that you may as well be watching the events unfold on CNN or the BBC because everything is so real.

Now that I've had a few nights to think about it and really understand what the film is about, it's even more mind blowing than I could have ever thought, obviously I'll go see it again but not right away. It's a fantastic movie and by far the best movie of the summer hands down.


Ok lastly I wanna talk about my new project. I've been working and writing for about 2 months now and I'm almost ready to start filming. Now I don't wanna give to much away because I kinda want it to be a surprise but at the same time it's one of those things that would probably be alot easier to finish if I had feedback. Anyway the readers digest version is I've planned on doing something called The Jeff Ward Show, basically 3-5 minute videos, Monday, Wednesday, Friday about all the things that I encounter in daily life that piss me off. Things in the news, government, stupid people and anything else that puts me off. I have the YouTube channel already set up and if you want to subscribe go ahead, however there are no videos up yet, but I'm thinking of starting filming possibly Monday August 24th.
Channel

So that's it for now, I'm making a point to update this thing a little more regularly, however I have no idea how many people read this other than Mike sooooooooooooooooooo that happened.

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-JW

Summer 09, Epic Drum Kit, Transformers 2 and The Kings of June!

Ok so it's clearly been a long time since my last update, quick update The Bonus Stage is now at Episode 10!

Ok so Summer 09, as you know my Bro Mike is back from Fanshaw for the summer and we've been broing out quite a bit and it's mostly been good times. Every once in a while we've found ourselves in situations that were less than favourable. For the most part it's be Legen...... wait for it......Dary!

So far a big part of our summer has been drumming. Mike and I each have our own kits and as you've read from my last update we've been rocking out in his basement. Now however we've combined our drum kits with the help of The Jackson Valdeze to become an EPIC 10 piece drum kit with 8 cymbals and 2 sets of Hi-Hats.




It's a blast to play but I prefer my 5 piece because it's much easier to move around the kit. All 3 of us are still brainstorming on how to create different configurations with less drums and different ways to have both kits separate. Believe me I will post pics of any kits we come up with.



So Transformers is well Awesome!
I was a huge fan of the cartoon growing up and had the toys and everything like I'm sure alot of you did. When the first movie was announced I, along with many others were very skeptical of how well they would transcribe this to cinema. When people realized it was live action we got even more nervous. However what we got was probably one of the best action movies of the past few years, and my top movie of that year. When the sequel Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen was announced pretty much right after the first one came out I was jacked! The first movie did a great job of fleshing out the most important part of the Transformers universe........the Transformers, even down to how Megatron is always getting mad at Starscream. The special effects were great and the voices were amazing but my favourite part was the SFX when they transform. The first scene in Qatar with Blackout is one of my favourite movie scenes ever. The Sound of him transforming is just incredible!
Anyway I was having a hard time figuring out what to get Mike for his birthday so I figured midnight premier of T2.
So last night we went and saw it.
I was the most excited I've been for a movie in a long time.
This movie was amazing, it had EVERYTHING you could want in an action movie.
Explosions, car chases, destruction, fire, guns, hot girls and some of best looking sets I've seen in a long time.
Now as a piece of cinema this is a terrible movie, the plot although deep, is very thin at times and can drag for too long while things are being explained. A big problem I had with it was that at some points where everything is happening a mile a minute and your on the edge of your seat and then they stop dead and explain what happening in a scene that could have been cut down by quite a bit. There were a few problems with how many Decepticons were absent in the movie and how many nameless robots were in it, my biggest disappointment was with a Decepticon that I've wanted to see for a while being in the movie for only a few scenes. But no spoilers yet because I don't wanna ruin for you.
The best parts about this movie.

A. Michael Bay, this guy knows action and knows how to make a summer blockbuster movie.
The Rock
Armageddon
Bad Boys 1 and 2
The Island.
Explosions are all this guy has on his resume and he does them right.

B. The cast was kept the same and that helps with continuity and makes the movie very enjoyable, I'm a big Shia LeBouf fan ever since watching him on "Even Stevens" on the family channel when I was younger, I thought he was hilarious. He's definitely someone I would want to work with if I ever become a director.

C. The Transformers are even more amazing this time, their in it the whole way through and I swear you can see so much detail on everyone these artists should be getting paid top dollar. Sidebar, why is that Optimus Prime can look all shiny and look like he was just polished but his windows always have streaked mud on them?
Anyway they are all awesome and there are a few new ones that are Gargantuan and really and quite amazing. Along with the best special effects I've seen in a movie, it's amazing. Another thing this is one of those movies where you go in wanting to see good effects and their put together so seamlessly with everything else it's hard to tell sometimes, at points you think is it so insane to believe their actually a 80 foot robot standing on set?

D. The writers clearly watched alot of Transformers because you can tell they put alot of thought into how to make this an authentic experience and keep it engaging for non cartoon fans. The squabbles between Megatron and Starscream, Bumblebee's voice not working, Primes epic way of speaking.

All in all this movie needs to be seen and if you can, go to IMAX because that would be a wicked experience. Hopefully it comes to IMAX here along with Star Trek so I can go again.

Lastly The Kings of June.
Grade 12 year at Grant Park Mike and I became the good friends we are now, and because we have so much in common.
1. Moms have the same name.
2. His middle name is my first name.
3. I was born on the same day as his Dad.
4. He was born just a few days before me.
5. We're awesome.

We decided to create something called the Kings of June.
Which basically is the month of June being literally the best month ever.
First off its' summer, last month of school, and our birthdays are in it, what else could you want.
If you want to apply to be an honorary King of June please send your full resume and awesome quotient to kingsofjune@gmail.com

The Kings of June uphold the highest if Brocations and being a Bro. It takes many years to become KoJ Bros or have your birthday in June and read The Bro Code once.
Corollary: Jackson Miller is such an awesome bro that it feels like he was born in June.

Anyway that's all I want to talk about for now, I'll try to update more frequently.

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WU


- JW