What a summer it’s been! First off: my apologies for taking so long to update the site with new material. I’ve been so busy that I just kept putting it off. In any case, I’m still here!

To start off this post, let me just say that this has been probably one of the best summer’s on record for me personally. I went on vacation to another one of my childhood dream destinations: southern Spain. As a child, my parents went to Spain and told me great stories of their travels. Since then I’ve always been fascinated with the country (I speak a little Spanish), and although I’ve been to certain parts of Spain many times, this was the first time I’ve ever been on vacation on the spanish mainland. We were in the city of Torrox Costa, near Málaga, in an apartment 200 meters from the beach. Off the hook!

We visited the Alhambra Palace in Grenada (VERY impressive), the Cathedral in Seville (third largest catholic church in the world and burial site of Christopher Columbus), and the caves of Nerja. However, as impressive as those places were, the most fun I had was walking with my family along the boardwalk in the evenings, or playing games with them in our apartment. One really does take quality time with family for granted.

Here are the top 10 things I learned on my spanish summer vacation:

1. History teaches us that we don’t know nearly as much today as we think we do.
2. Of all the Latin-based languages, I love Spanish the most.
3. It’s amazing how a little sunshine can alter a person’s view of life.
4. Now I know why southern California looks the way it does.
5. Watching my kids fighting in the water was actually hilarious.
6. I love spanish yoga (aka siesta)
7. The difference in mentality between the people of northern and southern Spain is similar to the difference between those in northern and southern Germany.
8. The radio sucks everywhere.
9. Spanish food. ¡Olé!
10. My time in Spain was WAY too short.

Sadly, I had to cut my vacation short by one week. Why, you ask? That’s the other part of my amazing summer vacation. Stay tuned, and I’ll tell you all about it, very soon!

Hey people, I’m baaaack!!

It’s been quite a long time since I’ve written here on my own website, but I’ve also done a lot of things over the past few months, most of which you already know about if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter. I’ve done lots of travelling, training, coaching, eating, recording, and living life. There’s a lot to tell you about, which is exactly what I’ll be doing during the final months of 2010.

So, why is this post called “The Final Countdown”? Simple; I’m in the final stages of completing my forthcoming CD, “Elements”. It’s a project that is actually a long time in the making, and I’m VERY proud of it, because it’s the result of all of my experiences over the last 5 years, packed into 12 songs. It is probably the best album I’ve done to date! I think you will like it.

Look for stories about my experiences in the recording studio, my summer vacation in the USA, and my time as a vocal coach on the german version of the casting show X-Factor, and more La-La Land adventures, all to be posted in the next few weeks. You’l definitely get a kick out of them!

I love America. Seriously, despite all of the horrible, idiotic, racist, arrogant things the U.S. has done since it’s founding, I LOVE America. I love it because of it’s promise; it’s still a work in progress. Most of all I love America because it every once in a while shows the ability to correct itself when it starts to stray off of it’s path. This is evident with the election of Barack Obama. The problem is, many Americans don’t want the pendulum to swing, and they’re pulling out all the stops in their quest to halt the inevitable. 

Admittedly, I’m a leftie. Better said; I’m a progressive / liberal, so it is with great amusement that I watch the current meltdown of the right-wing in America. However, with that amusement also comes a great deal of fear, for it is exactly this kind of ideological meltdown that has lead to some of the most disturbing episodes of U.S. history. It was exactly this kind of ideological meltdown that lead a man named Timothy McVeigh to kill 167 innocent people in Oklahoma City in 1992, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil before the tragedy of 9/11. A terrorist act committed not by a foreigner, but by a U.S. citizen who justified his crime by touting himself as an American patriot with a deep-rooted hatred of the government.

Why is all of this anti-Government, anti-Obama right-wing sentiment being stirred up? I blame the right-wing media outlets such as Fox News, and “conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh. I listened to Rush for a while, mainly out of curiosity about how such a man could have such a following in the U.S. and among our military stationed overseas (his show is broadcast on American Forces Network Europe’s AM stations). I had to stop listening once it became clear to me (rather quickly, I might add) that Rush only cares about Rush at the end of the day, and hearing how his right-wing rhetoric brings out the worst in many people made me literally sick to my stomach.

See, I’m a firm believer that knowledge is power, and ignorance is dangerous. What I see in the American conservative movement right now is a profound level of ignorance, being perpetuated by intelligent, highly manipulative people in politics and the media, whose only REAL interest is self interest. The question for me is: how long is this pocket of American society going to allow themselves to be played like this? Conservatives have for years ridiculed the left for not being able to think for themselves, a stereotype being perpetuated to this day by the likes of Rush Limbaugh , Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, etc. It’s especially ironic in the case of Limbaugh, whose listeners are referred to as “dittoheads”; being a so-called “dittohead” implies that you’re indeed not capable of thinking for yourself, thus being in direct contradiction of what being a conservative is all about.

I really hope that the level of muckracking on the right does not lead to something truly horrible happening to President Obama, his family, or anyone else who doesn’t agree with their ideology, as it did back in 1992 in Oklahoma City. Unfortunately, history shows us that something likely will happen. The question then becomes: will the right-wing in America take responsibility for it, or will they act like cowards, as they so often do?

Here it is: yet another site redesign for this year! Over the past few months, I’ve been learning about the very cool WordPress content management system, and have decided to transform my site into a full-fledged blog.

The advantage of doing this is simple; it will allow me to update the site more frequently, and not have to spend hours messing around in Dreamweaver just to get my thoughts out to you. Furthermore, it will allow me to update the site not only using my laptop, but also using my favorite gadget since July of ’08, my iPhone. how cool is that?!

I’ll be testing the site while I’m busy doing other stuff, so it should be completely done in a few days. In the meantime, give me some feedback on what you’ve seen so far.