In memory of John Lennon

Monday December 8^th marks the 28^th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. The music world lost a legend and an icon that day.

John Lennon is best known as one fourth of the popular band from Liverpool, The Beatles. Lennon along side Paul McCartney formed one of the most influential and successful songwriting partnerships known to the world of music. They wrote some of the most popular songs ever to grace rock and roll history.He is also greatly known for his own solo career where he intergraded subjects of politics, war, peace and love into his music.

Lennon’s death is one that took the music world by shock, causing many people to feel like time stood still when they heard the news.

“I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. I was a     first year TV/Radio student at Niagara College in Welland. My clock  radio turned on just as the newscaster delivered the story. I was simply stunned by the news. “ Says Media Studies Professor Peter Maurin.

Most know what happened that tragic night on December 8 1980, but for those of you who don’t, John Lennon was shot by fan Mark David Chapman in the back four times outside the Dakota hotel in New York City where him and Yoko Ono were staying.  That same day, Lennon signed a copy of Double Fantasy for Chapman. When people rushed over to aid Lennon, one person asked Chapman if he knew what he just did. To which Chapman replied Yes, I’ve just shot John Lennon. Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival in the ER at the Roosevelt Hospital at 11:15 pm. Chapman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life. To this day, he still remains in prison.

Lennon has been a great influence on artists of all kind. When you ask any artist to name a band that was an influence on them and their music, most of them will probably say The Beatles; some might even just say John Lennon. As a stand-alone artist, his songs touched people in a way that his songwriting with The Beatles might not have. As a solo artist and Yoko Ono by his side, he stood free to sing about topics he felt like such as war, poverty which gave us songs like Imagine, So this is Christmas, Give Peace a Chance and Working Class Hero. He was no longer just a musician, he was a controversial peace activist and an artist.

“As for his place in music/pop culture history, the myth of John   Lennon is a significant one. He was the social conscience of The   Beatles.  He was the one that was political. He was the one that  built on the advice given to them by Bob Dylan. It’s that spirit of  fighting injustice that has influenced so many over the years; Bob Geldolf and Live Aid, John Mellencamp and Farm Air and perhaps  even some of the social commentary that is a part of hip   hop music.”  Said Maurin.

Millions around the world will have gathered this week to honour the late singer’s life, especially at Strawberry Fields, a memorial garden area in Central Park across the street from the Dakota building. Shortly after Lennon’s death Yoko Ono donated $1 million for the memorial’s maintenance. There are usually plenty of flowers and even fruit around the memorial at any given time in the year.

On October 9 2007 the Imagine Peace Tower was lit for the first time in a city in Iceland. The idea for the tower was originally conceived by Yoko Ono back in 1965 but construction never started until 2006. The tower is now lit annually from October 9, which is Lennon’s birthday till December 8, his date of death. The words “Imagine Peace” are carved into the tower in 24 different languages.

“You can almost hear the sentiments of ”Imagine” as America  elected its first black president. Imagine a ”brotherhood of man”  which might include a black president? Yes we can.” Said Maurin.

No matter what way you choose to mourn the loss of this musical icon, we will always have his music and the plenty memories to remind us of the peace and love he tried to establish in this world.

Canada had its turn: My goodbye to a Punk Legend

With the death of Frankie Venom last week, I wasn’t going to be like every other news outlet and write “At the age of 52 Frankie Venom of the popular ….”  because that is obviously old news by now. So this is my own personal goodbye to the man who was one of my idols.

 

 

This is probably the hardest piece of writing I’ve ever had to write. As I wrote it, I could feel the tears build up in my eyes.  For those of you who don’t know, it is to my displeasure to inform you that Frank Kerr a.k.a Frankie Venom lead singer of Teenage Head died last Wednesday from throat cancer at the age of 51.

This news came as a great shock to me. I didn’t even know that anything was wrong with Frankie, as I’m sure many others did not know either.

I was on Facebook at the time I found out. Robert Gronfors a.k.a Dolph, Road Manager and a good friend of mine, popped up on the Facebook chat and told me he had something to tell me.

“Sam. I hate to tell you this but Frankie died this afternoon.”

I remember reading this over and over again. The shock hit me in the face like a blunt object. The only words I could manage to get out over and over were Tell me it’s not true.

I cried so hard that night, I thought I wouldn’t be able to cry for years to come.

I had the amazing opportunity to have backstage passes to this years Y108 Rock and Roll picnic back in August and meet and hang out with the guys of Teenage Head. This was more than a dream come true. Hanging out with them, talking about their history and their music it was like time stood still that day.

Frankie was a hero to me. To this day he still remains a hero of mine. All of them do.  A punk rock band from Hamilton, forming back in high school, becoming as big as they are, it was always amazing in my eyes.

Frankie has always been an idol to me. I have never seen a man as unpredictable as him. He’s a courageous front man with the most amazing stage presence. He has the most amazing energy. Even in his fifty’s he was such a performer. He always kept us fans in suspense. You never knew what you were going to get when you went to a Teenage Head concert. But that’s what we loved about Frankie because he would always be a surprise. He had this raw attitude like “I don’t take shit from nobody” and he was a great guy. Frankie Venom wasn’t just a stage persona like Ziggy Stardust was to David Bowie. Frankie Venom was the man on and off the stage, who would tell you to Fuck off, spit on you or steal your beer when you went to the bathroom.

At the picnic, I got my picture taken with Frankie and I couldn’t wait to show everyone. As soon as I heard the news, the picture went up as my display picture on Facebook. Every time I look at it I get tears in my eyes. But I also can’t help but smile. In the picture he has his arm around me with a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other, like the true rock star he was. Told me I “seemed” like a good kid, but that’s how all rock stars start out.  

It was just one of the most amazing days of my life.

Last week I suffered from depression because of his death. I was just so miserable. I had Teenage Head songs on all throughout the week at school, I cried at random moments just thinking about him.

Dolph invited myself to attend his visitation this past weekend and it was hard to believe that I was there. It was like reality hit me. All week I could pretend it wasn’t true, that he wasn’t gone. However, once I was there, that’s when it sank in that he had really passed on, that might nightmares were a reality.  But I gave my respect like the fan I am and said my goodbyes.  I also attended a candlelight vigil in Gore Park in his honour. It meant a lot to all of us, just having other fans around who knew the pain you were going through having lost one of your idols.

I really wish Frankie could be here to see Teenage Head get their lifetime achievement award at the Hamilton Music Awards later next month.

“I wish so too. But just think of it this way, Heaven just got a great duet partner for Elvis.” Dolph said.

You’ve done a lot for the music world Frankie. I don’t think you ever realized how much your music affected the world.  Gone but not forgotten, our hearts silently weep for the lost of our punk rock idol.

Rest in Peace old friend.

 

 

Me with Frankie Venom at this year

 

 

Good ol’ Fluffy Journalism!

Entertainment is not Journalism. I’ve heard it plenty of times before, and I’m sure as hell I will hear it a million times over before I leave school in April.

It’s nothing but fluffy journalism that should take a back seat to the hard news that EVERYONE cares about.  The journalism that everybody skips over when it comes to newspapers or TV.

But then again, that’s why show’s like E! and magazines like Rolling Stone are doing so well, right?

I just don’t understand why this particular field of journalism can’t be taken seriously. When I am talking to professional journalists, and they ask me what part of the field I want to get into and I tell them the entertainment/music side, they give me the typical answer. “Oh” then turn away.  As if what they do is much more important than my mind could ever have the capability of understanding.

Entertainment is form of  journalism, whether you believe it or not. Now, there is types of it that are absolutely disgraceful in my mind, and I believe that these are the types that when people here “Entertainment Journalism” they automatically think of. Things like paparazzi, people working for shows like TMZ, while they may be entertainment in one of the lowest forms of the word, that’s not what I mean.

When I talk about wanting to be in the entertainment field, I have the vision of Almost Famous in my head. Small town kid, touring with one of his favourite bands, being on the road, getting a really good story.  When that movie came out, I think my jaw nearly dropped before me when I realized that you could put a love a music and writing into one career.  Ever since then, I was completely sold on the idea. Working at The Satellite under the Entertainment section, gives me the freedom to do a lot of that. Maybe I haven’t interview some of my favourite bands yet, but who knows what waits for me somewhere.

It bugs me a little when I watch students here flip over my section that I spent the week slaving over, and then chuck the paper on top of a garbage can. But that’s something that you come to deal with. Not everyone does like Entertainment.

The only thing I want is to be taken seriously as a journalist. Entertainment is my forte. I shouldn’t be considered any less of a journalist for that. 

 

This is Abortion

“I had an abortion at 17 and it was the worst thing I ever did. It was the first time I’d had sex, and that was rotten. I’d always thought it was going to be all violins, and it was just awful. I was two months gone when I realized. I went to my mum and she said, without pausing for breath: ‘You have to get rid of it.’ She told me where the clinic was, then virtually pushed me off. She was so angry. She said I’d got myself in this mess, now she had to get me out. But she didn’t come. I went alone. I was terrified. It was full of other young girls, and we were all terrified and looking at each other and nobody was saying a bloody word. I howled my way through it, and it was horrible. I would never recommend it to anyone because it comes back to haunt you. When I tried to have children, I lost three – I think it was because something had happened to my cervix during the abortion. After three miscarriages, they had to put a stitch in it. In life, whatever it is, you pay somewhere down the line. You have to be accountable.” Sharon Osbourne, wife of rock singer, Ozzy Osbourne.

 

Today, here in Hamilton, an average of four unborn babies were murdered by the means of abortion. Four babies yesterday faced this untimely fate and four tomorrow will never know their parents. Mind you, these are just averages. One day, it could be less than that. One day, it could be more. Since abortion was made restriction free in 1988, over three million children have been aborted. That is about one eighth of our population wiped out due to an inconvenience. One of them could have been a classmate, a future husband or wife or someone who was destined to change this world for the better. Day after day, week after week, year after year, innocent unborn children are quietly destroyed behind clinic doors and no one seems to care. We are leaving millions of women to silently suffer the pain and regret of what was supposed to be a simple “choice”. We sympathize for those who face an unplanned pregnancy. But abortion is not the only answer.

 

Some Pro-Choicers will tell you that abortions should stay legal because most are performed due to rape, incest, to protect the mother’s health or because of fetal abnormalities. 1% are done on rape or incest victims. Another 1% are done on unborn babies with fetal abnormalities. 3% are performed to protect the mother’s health. But 95% are performed as a method of birth control or as an easy solution to a “slip up”.

 

Some Pro-Choicers believe that abortion saves children from poverty. But what about the people who have risen above impoverished roots? What about abortion because the child is handicapped? Don’t they deserve life? You wouldn’t kill a puppy. So why would you kill a living miracle? One of the Ten Commandments that reside in our faith is “Thou Shall not kill.” There is hypocrisy in those who cringe in disgust over the holocaust, while at the same time endorsing and supporting the holocaust of abortion.

 

The Pro-life argument is no longer centrally based on that it isn’t just the woman’s body but also the baby’s during pregnancy. It is no longer centrally based on the response,” But what if the woman was raped?” It can be summed up in the acronym SLED, which stands for size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency.

 

What does size have to do with rights of personhood? The answer is nothing. Size doesn’t matter. It is lawful to kill an insect and not a human, not because the person is bigger but because the person is human. Premature babies are much smaller than fetuses that are still in the womb, close to delivery. Those fetuses may be legally aborted despite the fact that they are bigger than many premature newborns. Size doesn’t determine personhood after birth and it shouldn’t determine personhood before birth.

 

It is a fact that an unborn baby is at a lesser level of development than a newborn is but this has no significance. Children are less developed than adults and people with disabilities may be less developed than some children. It is humanity, not your brain capacity that determines personhood.

 

Your environment or place of residence whether inside the womb or outside, makes no difference. Where someone lives has nothing to do with your personhood. Moving in and out of this classroom won’t make you any less of a person.

 

A favourite abortion advocate is to strip unborn babies of their personhood based on their dependency. Since a fetus can’t survive on it’s own, it has no right to life, right? As teenagers, we still, to some degree, depend on our parents. Do we not deserve life? People who rely on kidney machines or pacemakers or insulin shots for survival, do they not deserve life?

 

We need to let woman know that there are more choices, because there isn’t just one victim in this malovent mayhem of murder. There are two. Women are carrying this burden like a weight on their shoulders. More and more reports show that women are suffering from feelings of depression, guilt, self-hatred and anger. They are suffering in their mind, body and soul. They have suicidal thoughts and have slipping into drug and alcohol problems to numb the pain. Abortion creates long-term health risks such as breast, cervical and ovarian cancer, becoming sterile, infections and even death. It also compromises who we are as women. We are designed to give life and nurture it. When we abort children, we interfere with the natural process of pro-creation and it leaves an imprint on our heart that never goes away but is often denied being there.

 

But you ask, “What do we do about it?” We are today’s youth. We are the future. We are the ones who are going to put an end to this killing spree. We need to let women know that abortion isn’t the “simple choice” that everyone makes it out to be. Abortion had and continues to kill off Canada’s future. The unborn have no voice, so we need to be the voice for the unborn.

 

What are you willing to do about it?

Abortion Law Map

I’m Back!

I took a summer break, as you all might have noticed. I also deleted a lot of my old posts, as you might have noticed as well. 

With the start of the new school year, lots of changes are being brought upon me. So I figured I would start fresh with brand new posts, because I am dealing with a brand new me. This year, I am the Entertainment Editor of the Satellite, which is Mohawk College’s newspaper. 

I am excited to learn more advance blogging, vlogging, and all of that this year in my Advance Social Journalism course. 

So I invite you to take the trip with me, you’re in for one hell of a ride.

Rathergate

In all honesty, I tried putting off writing on this subject for class for as long as possible. Because no matter how many times I try and wrap my mind around this, I know what I want to say, but writing it out is a whole different story. But here it goes…

Last week when we discussed Dan Rather, one of the most respected television reporters for nearly 25 years, it really hit me how powerful bloggers can be. For those of you who don’t know the story, here is a short synopsis. 

Himself and his team put together a report about President George Bush II. In this report they showed documents that they had obtained from an anonymous source,  that claimed that Bush dodged the draft and that he obtained special treatment in the National Guard because of his family. Immediately after the report aired, viewers began to question the credibility of these documents. And who wouldn’t. They were from an anonymous source after all.  And that’s when bloggers began to.. well, blog. Blog about how the forms were false and uploading pictures on how easily the documents could have been forged. 

That ladies and gentlemen, is how powerful blogs can be. The fact that a few people, jumped onto their blogs and began ranting about how the documents were fake. It was powerful enough to get Rather in big trouble, and forced him to resign not much later. This “blogosphere” we now have, has opened up doors for bloggers to speak out more freely and be heard.

It is quite unfortunate that Rather resigned, but he made one of the biggest mistakes as a Journalist. I don’t care how real those documents looked, I would have found more proof behind it, found out if anyone could identify the documents as been authentic. He made a big mistake about trusting this anonymous source. And that’s what we learn as Journalists, don’t use anonymous sources, because you never know whether or not, what they are feeding you, is accurate.

With bloggers out there like the ones in this story, it kind of helps give out a bit of a guarantee that the media is trying their very best to be honest. Because you know as soon as something smells fishy to them, they will be on your ass so fast, your head will spin. 

As a new blogger and a young Journalist, it will be interesting to see how I manage to balance the two when it comes to writing. As a blogger, I am being trained to see the questionable in stories, and as a Journalist, I can never let my stories cross the line of truth and questionable. 

That was his life, he was gonna play in the Big League…

As a final project in my Online Journalism class, I stuck with the theme of my blog, which is music. With that being said, I did a tribute to my dad, a true rock star in my eyes.

 

Things haven’t always been the greatest between us over the years, but he has been a big influence on the young women I am today. Without him, I wouldn’t appreciate music as much or be the musician I am.

 

And with that said, this is for you dad. 

 

I love you very much.