Good Music for Jan 2011

I just wrote this whole description for a Ping playlist and it tells me it has to be 2000 characters or less and I don't want to just erase all this so I'm posting it here. Enjoy.

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Paris (Ohhh la la) - Grace Potter & The Nocturnals - Very throwback to the 70s. Her voice is awesome as well. Can't get enough of that song.

House Music - Benny Benassi - Benny Benassi is back with a HUGE house track for the new decade and, in my opinion, its his best yet. The beat is unrelenting.

Gucci Time - I really was reluctant to like this song since I couldn't stand Gucci Mane up to this point but everything about this song is amazing. The beat, the hook, the rapping, everything. Swizz and Gucci just tear this track up.

Written In The Stars - How Tinie Tempah isn't the biggest thing in the US is beyond me. He is the king of every other country on the globe and for good reason. The guy has about 4-5 KILLER tracks on his debut album. Only matter of time people.

I Love College - I was a Freshmen at Hofstra when this song came out. Needless to say this song was EVERYWHERE. Perfectly captures that 1st semester freshmen year where its all partying all the time. Haven't heard much from Asher since but I'm rooting for him he has a ton of talent.

Memories - This song is flawless. Guetta with a SICK beat and Cudi just fits perfectly in here. Going to be a club staple for a very, very long time.

Jimmy Recard - Song is from '06 but just found it a month ago so its new to me. This is probably the best of the recent Aussie rap I just found by checking out the Aussie iTunes store. He just released a new song thats quite good as well so hopefully he'll catch on here one day.

Whoa Is Me - Found these guys in the Canadian store and they sound SICK! This song is a ton of fun and makes for a great pump-up song too. Hope to hear more from these guys.

Teach Me How To Dougie - This song is the first of the "rap dance" crazes that people actually like. Soulja Boy, Stanky Leg and the rest got nothing on this song. Now if I could only actually DO the Dougie then I might have to make it legendary status.

Blind Man - This song came out a few years ago and I recently rediscovered it and I'm glad I did. The opening rift is so epic, as is the rest of the song. Don't really know what these guys have been up to but if its anything like this I'm happy.

Take Over Control - Whoa. Afrojack. Crazyness. Everytime this song comes on in the club the place goes NUTS! That beat. Oh my god.

Blazin' - This song is good but Nicki makes it GREAT with her intro to the song where she rips through her verse so fast as smooth it reminded me of Busta Rhymes or Twista. Cemented her place as a real rapper and not some Remy Ma one-hit wonder.

No Hands - Not the hugest Waka Flake fan but I am a HUGE fan of Roscoe Dash & Wale and this track did not dissapoint. Waka made himself a star when he tore up the chorus and dropped a sick verse and Wale doesn't disappoint on his verse either.

Like a Stone - One of my favorite songs of all time. Chris Cornell sounds like the musical messiah on this track. TIP: Play this song around a bunch of bunch of drunk people and I promise you that at least half of them will sing along. Works 50% of the time, everytime.

Comin' Up - Adams is the king of college rap and this is his hottest track. Listen and if you aren't a fan you will be by the end.

Alors on Danse (Remix) - This song was pretty big in the club scene a few months ago and then Kanye took a turn on this and just tears it up to levels never before seen by man. It never really blew up though, which shocks me since it was a pretty big hit and Kanye was so good on it.

Take Me For a Ride - Bad City. These guys rock. Bringing back 80s rock and they do it sooooo well. Really wish these guys would get some more love since they're so good.

I'll Be In The Sky - B.o.B is amazing but this track, which came about before his debut CD, is my favorite of his. Quite certain its impossible to be upset while listening to this song as its one of the most fun songs of all time.

Saucy - These guys have performed at my club twice and are AMAZING. Only a matter of time until these guys become superstars.

No video but click THIS LINK to hear the audio

Kickstarts - Another example (no pun intended) of an English artist with a huge song all over the globe that gets no love in the US. Absolutely love everything about this song. The beat, the lyrics, everything. Just more evidence that the best music does indeed come from the UK.

Meh

I am having a difficult time. My classes are all hard. They are piling up on me. My writing teacher told me I am going to fail her class. I thought I was good in that class. My hard drive dies on my computer and all kinds of shit hit the fan. Essays are late, tests are postponed. Now I'm left to pick up the pieces by doing a ton of work in a very short time. I really want to be back at Hofstra next year but I'm not sure if they will late me.

Fuck

It's The Best Time of the Year to be a Sports Fan

Reason #1: Baseball is back

Reason #2: Championship week has started

Reason #3: March Madness is right around the corner

Somebody pinch me

I Think I Just Read The Stupidest Sentence I've Ever Read

Clippers center Marcus Camby was traded to the Portland Trail Blazers today. He was not happy about this. That is not what is stupid. I don't want to ruin it so just read the story by Yahoo! Sports writer Marcus Spears and find out for yourself what it was:

Los Angeles Clippers center Marcus Camby(notes) may have unknowingly attended his own farewell dinner on Monday night.

The Clippers are on the verge of completing a trade that will send Camby to the Portland Trail Blazers, league sources said, but the veteran center is not happy about the potential deal.

The proposed trade, which was first reported by Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, will send Camby to Portland in exchange for forward Travis Outlaw(notes), guard Steve Blake(notes) and cash.

In town in advance of their Tuesday game against the Trail Blazers, the Clippers were having a team dinner at Portland’s Ringside steakhouse Monday night when Camby received a call on his cell phone from his agent, Rick Kaplan. Kaplan informed Camby that he will likely be traded to Portland – though one league source cautioned that the Blazers’ ownership had yet to sign off on the deal.

After taking the call, Camby immediately walked out of the restaurant. A source close to Camby says that while he recognizes the benefits of playing for a better team, he is upset because his family is comfortably settled in Los Angeles. He had hoped to re-sign with the Clippers this summer.

“He likes the Clippers, he likes the organization, he likes L.A.,” the source said. “His wife is happy in L.A. And he’s not one for change. He’s definitely not happy about this.”

Camby also was similarly upset when the Denver Nuggets traded him to the Clippers.

Camby isn’t the only one angry.

Said one Clipper: “All the guys are upset because our best defensive player got traded basically for a backup point guard and money.”

Outlaw, 25, played in 11 games this season before breaking his left foot, and the Clippers are unsure when he’ll play again. Blake, 29, is averaging 7.6 points and four assists in 51 games.

The Blazers have been searching for some inside help to deflect the blow of losing centers Greg Oden(notes) and Joel Przybilla(notes). Some in the league also believe Pritchard wants to clear the way for Jerryd Bayless(notes) to get more time in the backcourt with Andre Miller(notes).

The Clippers, meanwhile, also have been shopping forward Al Thornton(notes), who was meeting with his agent Monday in Portland.

Camby, 35, is averaging 7.7 points and 12.1 rebounds for the Clippers. He is making $9.1 million this season in the final year of his contract. Just last week, he told Yahoo! Sports he hoped the Clippers wouldn’t trade him.

“It feels good to be a wanted man, but I like it here,” Camby said.

Camby left the restaurant without most of his teammates getting a chance to tell him goodbye. He is not believed to have finished his meal.

Now, is the story itself bad? No. The final sentence of that article was probably the most random, insignificant, irrelevant, not funny, stupid nugget I've ever seen in any article. Whatever was going through Spears' head at the time he wrote this is beyond me. If he was trying to be funny, he failed miserably. If he was trying to throw that in as a cute little nugget, it was stupid. Nobody cares. This article was about one of the better defensive players in the game getting traded and not being all that happy about it. If I ever did that on a paper I would probably lose a full letter grade because it was such an asinine sentence.

I doubt any of you care, which is kind of ironic since I'm mainly ripping on Spears for this irrelevant sentence that drove me up a tree, but its 3 AM. Maybe it won't be so trivial when I wake up. Oh well, nobody reads this anyway.

Top 10 #1 Songs of The 2000s

Its late/early. I can't sleep. Here is a list

10. Shaggy - It Wasn't Me (2001)



9. Gym Class Heroes- Cupid's Chokehold (2007)



8. 50 Cent - In Da Club (2003)



7. Nickleback - How You Remind Me (2002)



6. Outkast - Hey Ya! (2003-2004)



5. Kanye West - Stronger (2007)




4. Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc. (2005)



3. Lady Gaga - Poker Face (2009)



2. Santana Feat. Rob Thomas - Smooth (1999-2000)



1. Eminem - Lose Yourself (2003-2004)

"It's 4:18 AM. Go To Bed."

I am literally telling that to myself right now. Unfortunately for me, I don't really listen to myself so I decided stay up about two hours too many tonight and counting. I'm incredibly bored right now and the alcohol is wearing off so ripping on past co-workers for playing Farmville isn't really doing it for me anymore so I've decided to attempt to write this intro for my blog. I have often been told I have done my best work under the influence, such as every A paper I ever had last year (I was also kinda drunk for most of my C papers too, so maybe that doesn't count), so I thought I might as well give kind-of-drunk blogging a shot:

I have a rather interesting history with blogging. Its kind of interesting, at least to me it is. Then again, I find the highlight film of the 1946 World Series interesting, so maybe you should take that statement with a grain of salt.

Back when I was 15, the now incredibly popular MetsBlog.com, the #1 New York Mets blog on the internet, offered me a spot writing for them, which I found incredibly odd since I sucked at writing and I had absolutely no tryout to speak of. That was my first foray into blogging. After a few months the head writer there realized I basically was as good at writing as Lindsay Lohan is at not taking cocaine, which isn't a very good job. He then for whatever reason brought me back in a few months later only to fire me again a few months later.

At that point I thought since I was somewhat of a name I could start a blog of my own with a few friends and that it'd be somewhat successful. We started a blog called Nyjer Please, named after then Pirates outfielder Nyjer Morgan. Nyjer was basically a blog similar to other big named sports blogs where we would not only tackle the things a lot of the mainstream media covered but we also went into some of the stuff they wouldn't cover, such a a story I remember running about former Bears QB Cade McNown getting banned from the Playboy Mansion because he stole one of Hugh Heffner's girlfriends at the time. Sure, stuff like that is kind of tabloidy, but I tried going to route of actually breaking news and that COMPLETELY backfired on me. To kick the site off, I wanted to get the word out about Nyjer so I wrote an article about how I had a source very close to the Mets tell me that the players on the team were going through sort of a "racial divide", that the ringleader of the whole thing was Julio Franco, someone who was brought in in part because of his reputation as a great clubhouse presence, and that Paul Lo Duca felt he would not be back with the team the following season because he did not "fit the profile" of what the team wanted. My source told me that many of the non-latino ballplayers on the team felt that the team's hispanic general manager, Omar Minaya, wanted his team to mostly consist of latino ballplayers. Did I realize this would cause a huge stir and that many people would think this was complete bullshit? Yes, but at the time all I could think was, "Wow, this is a huge bombshell. If I drop this I not only make a name for myself in the sports world but I will forever have credibility and a successful blog". In hindsight, not the best idea. Now, I still stand behind my source on the story. He is around the team literally every single day and he is not someone to just make something like this up. The thing is when you have a source in the "journalistic world" you can't really let anyone know your source since thats "bad journalism". If you do you look like a dunce. After the post went up I sent it out to a bunch of the bigger blogs out there such as Deadspin and The Big Lead just to name a few. To my surprise, pretty much all of them picked it up. I remember I had a final that day and when I got back the post had almost 10,000 views. It had taken of pretty much a life of its own. It even got to the point that the head writer at MetsBlog had to refute my article. I was taking a beating pretty much everywhere. I'm sure of you goggle my name you'll find a handful of articles ripping me. Anyway, as time went on I kind of got vindicated. Lo Duca made a semi-racial comment (eh) and Franco was released and the entire team basically ripped him, something that was NEVER brought up before my article. I'm not defending my actions in any way, because I think I did a pretty shitty job with the whole thing, but as a seventeen year-old kid, I'm not really in a place where I can check with other sources on stuff. I had what I had from someone I considered a very credibly source and it didn't work out as I hoped. Oh well. Not a good start. Good thing for me though I didn't stop there since Nyjer had a lot more juice left in the tank.

You ever hear that expression "there is no such thing as bad publicity"? I guess that expression would work when it came to Nyjer. While it wasn't the best foot to get off on, the word was out and we got off to a great start. I hired a few more writers and we were actually becoming a pretty successful blog. We joined the YardBarker network, which gave us a partnership with FoxSports.com, two of the writers, one of them your's truly, were offered a spot writing for Epic Carnival, at the time (im not really sure what it is for sure now i just know it has tits everywhere) a blog that brought together a bunch of the writers of some of the most popular sports blogs on the internet and we were ranked in the top 20 of the BallHype.com Sports Blog rankings. Even though a lot of us were pretty young we had a great fanbase and we were pretty sure if we kept this up that I could be locked into a full salary by year's end. All was well till the end of August hit. It was then when I remembered what I did during my first stint at MetsBlog. I was a lame ass writer. I remember my last post wasn't even a real last post. I just said I was taking a week off and I'd be back next week. Thing was I never wrote again. We did try to bring Nyjer back a few months later but it never amounted to anything. We couldn't get enough of the original writers to write for us again and we were basically forced to close house. The sad thing is we don't even have anything to look back on in remembrance. Our domain name was bought out by some online ad sales company, so the only remains of our work is when we are cited on other websites.

So yeah, kind of a lame ending after the epic start. I just kind of didn't feel like doing it anymore at the end. In all it was a great experience and it really helped me learn a lot about journalism ethics and stuff. I'm pretty sure I could ace that class after what I went through.

Ok, that was boring. Sorry for that. Here's something to make it up:



And yeah, its 5:28 AM. I have to get up in five hours. This will not end well.

I Can't Sleep So Learn About Me

So yeah, for those of you who don't know me:

* I'm Luke Halpert.
* I'm a sophmore that kind of crapped the bed last year so that explains why I'm in this class
* I am conflicted on what I want to major in (communications or marketing)
* I grew up in Stony Brook, NY, which is only 45 or so minutes east of Hofstra
* I am a successful entrepreneur as I co-founded Edge Life, a nightlife promotion company which at the moment is currently involved in four nights a week at four of the best parties in Nassau County. We have 40+ employees and we have accomplished all of this in a little less then six months
* I am a huge sports fan as well. The teams I follow the most are the New York Mets, Atlanta Falcons, Notre Dame & Rutgers football and Texas basketball. I also root for the Oklahoma City Thunder, San Francisco Giants, New York Giants, New York Knicks and New York Rangers but not on the same level as my big favorite teams
* My drinking the milk from the cereal bowl when I'm done
* I don't really care for reading novels since I, for whatever reason, cannot maintain focus when reading in a book format. If there are pictures involved I am ok so magazines and comic books are great but novels are NOT FOR ME
* Speaking of comic books, I just recently got into them again after a long, long hiatus. I read pretty much anything in the Batman-family and Captain America
* I went to Super Bowl 42 (Giants/Patriots). Best experience of my life.
* I'm a huge movie guy. My favorites are Back To The Future, Taken, The Sandlot and Batman Begins
* I have a very eclectic taste in music. The only thing I don't think I care for is Enya-esque New Age stuff. I listen to pretty much everything from every era. I got 12000+ songs in my library. My top ten favorite artists, according to my Last.FM, are The Beatles, The Offspring, Young Jeezy, Johnny Cash, Beastie Boys, Sum 41, T.I., Chamillionaire, Murs and Frank Sinatra
* I'm a big video game guy although I don't play many games. I mainly stick to rhythm games (Rock Band, Guitar Hero) and sports games (Madden, MLB : The Show, NBA Live)
* I am a huge history buff, especially when it comes to things I am interested in. I know more about the history of and old time baseball then most people will ever know in their lifetime and I can name where pretty much any skill position player in the NFL and NBA player went to college
* I'm a big comedy guy since I like laughing (and who doesn't)
* My dream job is to either be on TV or host a radio talk show of some kind
* I had Tim Tebow's phone number but my phone broke and I lost it