Hi everyone! New video today, lads and lassies. This one is a collaboration with Jason Urgo of SocialBlade.com, who was kind enough to participate. We had a lot of fun with this one!

Since then, Jason has gotten LASIC eye surgery, so his glasses are no more! You can follow that journey on his YouTube channel. 
But here's a lil bonus video, in case you missed it! My friend John (who's been on PogieJoe several times before) and I were assigned an English assignment about the origins of American literature. Well our first idea was a video about a car ride back in time ala Back to the Future. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and simply went with a simpler option: not giving a darn. See the results below: 

Thankfully, our teacher enjoyed it!

Here it is! I've been planning this one for months with my buddy Will. The timing and the execution had to be at juuust the right time, but we finally performed this 'flash' speech last Friday. Please give it a share with your friends; we want this one to travel around, hopefully. If you do, I'll...er...well I'll buy you an ice cream. You like pistachio? Alright then, let's go...

I'm quite sorry that I've been neglecting you guys here. I was supposed to have a new video coming out tomorrow, but it's probably not going to be up until Saturday now, due to some complications. It will be worth waiting for though, believe me. I've been planning this one for a while. ;)
There is also a collaboration coming up with a new friend of mine, Jason Urgo of socialblade.com, and I promise that one to be entertaining as well. Just don't leave me! I'm still here! I promise. I'm not dead!

As a huge Weird Al fan, I was pumped to hear that my family would be going to see Weird Al in concert in Akron. I had all the reason to: the show was fantastic and enormously funny. However, rumor had it that Al sometimes signs things and take photos with his fans when he's leaving his performing area, about an hour after the show. I knew we had to give it a go.
I even emailed Al's long-time drummer, "Bermuda" Schwartz, to see if Al would have time to create a very short video with me. Silly, I know. Bermuda responded that most of those requests usually go through his manager, that there was probably no time to arrange anything official, and that he was really in no place to ask Al. But he wished me luck in perhaps seeing him after the show!
So, along with a surprising number of about a hundred other fans, I waited after the magnificent concert to execute Plan B, which would take no additional time for Al. See how it went below:

Weird Al is one of my musical heroes. He doesn't just parody songs; he's helped shape an art form. And I love him for that. As I said in the video, it was an honor to meet him...

Hey gang! Sorry it's been so long. My Internet upload speed has slowed to an abominable rate, and YouTube alerted me that this new video was to take a day and a half to upload. And then it failed. And I had to start over again. All in all, I was a bit...um...peeved...
So, it finally finished. I think I'm going to have to work something else out, eh? Because I am not dealing with this every week...
So anyway, here's Saturday's prom tuxedo starring in my first YouTube rant!

Every man, women, and child loves a helium balloon. And if they don't, I don't consider them a person anyway. Please show them the door, thank you.

Balloons are just so...AWESOME. We as humans have always dreamed of flying and here's a mystical presence that, in it's very nature, only can go up. That's wicked cool my friends, and you know it.

Flying lawn chairs, Pixar's Up, "Balloon Boy"...as children we hoped that one day, if we only had enough balloons, we could float away on their ethereal colored strings to bounce around the earth as we're suddenly on Mars. Only select people actually have enough willpower to carry something like that out. 

It's a fantasy that always intrigued me. My little sister Becca and I would always use them to send small stuffed animals up and down the stairway. Which was awesome to behold. Yes. I just used "awesome" again.

You want to see the pinnacle of sadness you can induce in a child? Give them a balloon and make them let go of it five minutes later outside. (I don't care how you do it. Poison darts work well, but that's just personal preference). Make them watch it fly away, never to be seen again, probably to bob about the atmosphere until it pops and goes whizzing back down in some woods. They can't stand it. I can't stand it. It's ruddy miserable. It makes me sadder than the time Bambi's mother got shot. It's like watching your best friend get torn apart by fire ants.

All in all, if I had to choose a presidential candidate to support this year, it would be "The Balloon," because I can just see the country getting so much better as a whole. We could just lay there and watch it float to the top of the debt ceiling on C-SPAN for hours. Wouldn't that be fun?

New AdvisorJoe! I was short on time so I winged every question while sitting in a Macy's. Sorry if it's a little lackluster. Plus YouTube's fun new uploading settings ensured that this video took nearly a DAY to upload instead of a couple hours. You sure do love me, don't you YouTube?

Physics are beautiful.

Yeah, the actual science of physics is awesome too, but I'm talking about appreciating the physics of things from a very basic purely visual level.

Like girls' hair. Just bloody watch a girl's hair move. I suppose that's...creepy at a certain level, but I'm not talking about watching her hair for a couple hours through the window across the street, I simply mean when she leaves...just a second is all you'll need. Wow. Still a creepy tip, but hold with me here. If you thought everyone who appreciates hair for a split second was creepy, then most beauty parlors would have been long out of business for the sheer number of employees being locked up.

Or, hey, look at water. Water is frickin' amazing. Look at it drip down a window! It's gorgeous! I don't even have adjectives for it because it's what I use as a comparison to things.

Watch yourself turn a book page. Just watch it. I could do it all day.

Or the subtlety of movement when a flag is in a gentle breeze.

Or shivering grass.

Alright now I feel like a PBS show that you're skipping over. I literally can't explain why I love why these things move. I can't even think of where to begin. Maybe there's about five other people in the world who feel the same way. It's not that I think people dislike the look of these things; they just don't appreciate it. I mean people were created with a natural interest in beauty. It's not like I should be surprised in any way that I love these things.

I'm such a typical artist. It's so sad.

Just starting driving until finding good places to film!

I think my two favorite human inventions are story and music (although Nutella finishes in a close third). I'll talk about 'story' another day, leaving countless sleepless nights all o'er the world until I do. Music though is undeniably like the totally rad to the max bodacity. It's like eating a marshmallow sundae and still enjoying every bite as much as the first. It's like growing delicious complex fruit in your ears. It's like a baby puppy...not...wetting...the floor? I don't have a puppy. I've just heard rumors that apparently puppies pee or something.

Ah, but I digress. See this is a POGIEJOE blog, not LET'S SIT AROUND AND MAKE REALLY IFFY ANALOGIES. When I was a wee squatter I would listen to nothing but the sweet sound of good ol' rock n roll. Elvis Presley was a personal favorite. I had a CD of his number one hits that I would turn on every night before I went to bed. I memorized the lyrics. I bought the DVDs. I even read hefty biographical material on him. I was an Elvis freak to the end, I was certain.

But I'm going to let you in on a little secret, dear readers. *TASTES CHANGE* Yes! It's true! Did you know that it's possible to not enjoy something as much as you once did? No? Oh ho ho, young one. You will learn...someday! Oh ho ho...
Actually the day I remembered that there were songs outside my dad's oldies compilation disks and the classical music he used to play for us, (which I still am crazy about) was when I finally was brought out of homeschooling and a teacher, through a history lesson, reacquainted me with The Beatles. I actually tried listening to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" without bemoaning that it simply wasn't Elvis Presley and I went mad for it.
I went in as a Beatles fan the entirely wrong way. The first CD of theirs that I got out from the library was the recently-created-for-Cirque-du-Soleil "LOVE" remix album.
BUT OH BOY WAS I IN LOVE.

The time I heard "I Am the Walrus" I was grinning from ear to ear. It's still my favorite of theirs. John Lennon became my creative idol.
I didn't know that pop/rock songs could combine violins, strings, electric guitars, timpani drums, trumpets, trombones and the like in such a marvelous way. These people were...artists! They were...hilarious! They were...my word! Sit down and take something to calm you down, Joseph!
Most of the albums were taken out from the library, so I started listening to "Anthology" which was the rarities/outtakes/reunion collection they made in the 90s, which I didn't know beforehand. Another bad mistake. But I got to hear them slowly create masterpieces I hadn't heard yet, which is neat in its own way.
My world had been opened. I now try any kind of music. I devour it. Alternative rock, folk music, electronic, even some rap. All except...modern pop. There's something drab about most of it. They often have no story to tell, no soul to sing from. Much of it appears to be test stages for auditory torture. There are exceptions though, dear readers.


Music is wonderful. And Elvis still kicks butt.