tawmis.com

I love promoting others and the things they do in life – but here’s a piece of Self Promotion. If you’re a fan of Pirates and you’re a fan of double meanings (the double meaning, usually being dirty/sexual in nature) – one of my projects is just dying to be visited by you!

Apparently, my lack of sleep means that I have a lot to ramble about. So this time, I want to help promote my incredibly talented nephew, who is in a band called Tarnished, where he is responsible for lead vocals and guitar shredding. If you have a MySpace page, please stop by the Tarnished MySpace and send them a friend request – and check out the tunes they have available on their page to listen to. Indian Giver is, for example, a great song. A mixture of Creed and Shinedown is what it – and they – remind me of.

They also happen to be playing a live show tomorrow (well officially, tonight, since it is past Midnight on Friday).

So, without a doubt, one of the people who inspired me in life (and perhaps showed me what it’s like to be insane) was Jon Oliva. Most would be like, “Whose Jon Oliva?” And that’s a fair question, because sadly, most don’t know who he is – though, you have probably heard some of his music (even if he wasn’t singing it – he probably wrote a piece you heard before, and never even knew). Jon, along with his brother, Criss formed the band Savatage. I know, I know – most of you are thinking, “Yeah, that doesn’t help any.” Well, after the tragic loss of my musical inspiration, Criss Oliva, the band Savatage would eventually morph into the more popular Trans Siberian Orchestra that most people – of ALL ages know.

Jon Oliva would go on to form Jon Oliva’s Pain and have so far produced three amazing CDs.

Anyway, the folks at TheRightToRock.com did an interview/podcast with Jon Oliva – where they talked about Jon’s new band, as well as the state of Savatage and TSO. It’s a great listen – whether or not you’re a fan. This interview shows how down to earth Jon is. The dude’s amazing. Anyway, you can download the pod cast off the site here (I uploaded it here, because it seems to be faster than the folks at TheRightToRock.com who may be suffering bandwidth!) – so take a listen (Right Click, Save As…)

As I had mentioned in this post, Criss Oliva was a huge inspiration musically – the guy was a god to me when it came to music. If you read the Wiki link I posted for him – you can see he passed quite some time ago. But I still try to do little things to always keep his memory alive (not just for me, but for others). Here’s two examples…

A Criss Oliva Memorial Video #1 – This one has a bunch of pictures of Criss Oliva, from childhood up to adulthood. It’s got all kinds of his music cut into the video, and is nearly 10 minutes long.

Criss Oliva Memorial Video #2 – This one I took a bunch of different Savatage videos and cut them all together to make a memorial for Criss. I wish I could have done a better job with the lip synching – but considering the songs Jon is singing in the videos are not the song I used for the memorial video – it was difficult. But still a challenge I enjoyed, and found myself satisfied with the end result.

Hope you enjoyed.

I have never once, really, considered myself sane. Not even remotely so. My view of reality and the way I deal with things is probably not normal. And while the entire world seems to be blogging their thoughts – whether on their own sites of things like MySpace.com or Facebook (or whatever the newest, coolest, trend might be these days!) – I never did much of it.

If you ever expect anything too serious out of me – to be found here – stop looking/reading now. You’re not going to find it. This is just my corner of the web to ramble about non important things in life – so you won’t find me discussing who our next United States President should be and why – I am not going to be finding a cure for World Hunger, or the political status of the government in Iraq and why we have American Soldiers there.

No, this will be random things. Probably things I enjoy. And when I can, or when I remember, I will try to link it to my forum to discuss on there, if there’s anything worth discussing.