Beardo

Last weekend (as many of you know since I have been talking about it pretty much non-stop) I went to visit my friend who attends the University of Pittsburgh.  She is one of my best friends from high school and we have often spoke of visiting one another since we only get to see each other sporadically on school breaks or the random weekend when we can coordinate to be home at the same time.  I had planned to visit her last semester, but our plans were delayed due to schedule conflicts. However, things worked in our favor for when both her schedule and my schedule allowed a visit was the same weekend as Pittsburgh’s annual carnival.

Every year the city of Pittsburgh shuts down a few of its major streets for a weekend for the city residents (and especially the college students) to enjoy food, games, rides, and free musical entertainment.  The musicians or bands who take the stage are not just locals either, but well-known performers.  This year the performer was Ke$sha.

Ke$sha’s opening act was an interesting fellow who went by the name of Beardo. (Pronounced Beard-O)  He sported a multi-colored mullet and was in his late 30s or early 40s.  Halfway through his performance he shed his shirt to reveal haphazardly placed tattoo with emphasis placed on a large rifle tattoo on his chest.  Being from a small rural community (and yes this is a nice way of saying hick town), I know many people who have gun pride and quite a few of my hometown friends have gun tattoos ( I did  mentioned I’m from a “small rural community” right). Anyway, when the people around where I was standing saw Beardo’s gun tattoo, being mainly city-kids, they were like Dude’s got a gun tattooed on his chest!!!!

Based on how the crowd responded to that, his age, and more importantly to his music, I don’t think Beardo was a good choice in opening act for Ke$sha.  He didn’t relate to the crowd (an audience full of screaming college kids) and when it comes down to it, being able to relate to something or someone is what really matters.

presentations

            Watching the presentations, I realized (like most of my other blog posts) the topics would not have been relevant ten or twenty years ago.  The multimedia project truly was taking advantage of kairtic situations. Lets look at the Adderall or illegal downloading projects.

            Adderall is a relatively newly developed prescription drug intended to help those who have ADHD and ADD. It is now being abused in high schools and colleges for students who need to cram for test or just have focus problems. In the past, students would have crammed the old-fashion way…and by this I mean becoming hermits at the local coffee shops.  Now students would rather drink coffee when it is fashionable instead of just for the caffeine and instead pop some pills and pull and all-nighter.

            I really enjoyed the illegal downloading project.  I honestly did not know that if you burnt a CD and gave it to your friend that was considered “stolen” music.  Why this is questionable to me is my parents have so many CDs that I downloaded into my library, now is that considered stealing too because I was not the original purchaser? Anyway, why this takes advantage of a kairotic moment is back to the whole advances of technology debate. Yes, the conveniences that technology has provided us with are so so nice, but when you get into arguments like this, it kind of makes you wonder, would it be easier to be back in a day when it wasn’t just a click away.