Well, it turns out that I don’t like live bands in stores because it gets really loud, really quick! Yet, as I was browsing around the store and the band was playing, I really began to enjoy the music. In fact, at one point I found myself trying to figure out if there were any posters or signs indicating the band’s name because I wanted to look them up and see what the deal was with these guys.

After I left the store, some of the music that the band was singing was stuck in my head. When I got home I Googled some of their lyrics and found out that the band was named Cartel – a group that had some notoriety with some big time hits in the last few years and who had been on some MTV show. After finding that out, I was pretty impressed that a band with a national audience and a clear abundance of talent was playing in the local Best Buy. That’s pretty cool.

After doing some YouTubing to hear some more of the band’s songs, I wound up downloading their new album, Cycles, and I’m glad that I did because it is a great album. First things first with this album – there is something to be said for the lost art of track planning on an album. It used to be that you could pop in an album and listen to the whole thing without coming across a bad song or a poorly produced song. In recent years, I think that art has gone to the wayside and been replaced with poorly produced songs or songs that are essentially “filler” in between the commercial hits.

Cartel’s Cycles doesn’t have that problem at all. It was very enjoyable to listen to the entire album all the way through. In fact, the first four songs are very upbeat in their tempo with lyrics that are easy to understand and performances that are crystal clear and fun for the listener.

Granted, the style of Cartel’s music isn’t for everyone; I understand that people have different tastes. I have a wide variety of tastes, too. Cartel’s style can be defined as part alternative rock and part power pop (I don’t really know what power pop is, but that’s what the interwebs call this style). Take a listen to one of the songs from the album below and I think you’ll get at what type of music these guys sing.

While I enjoy all of the songs on this album, my favorite songs are the first four – Let’s Go, The Perfect Mistake, Faster Ride, and Deep South. In fact, I liked these songs so much that I went and got the two other albums that this band has put out and there’s pretty good, too.

This album, much like Owl City’s Ocean Eyes, are fun for me to listen to while I do web design and while I’m working on my computer for other reasons. Anyway, listen to that song embedded above and maybe some of their other stuff on YouTube and I’m sure that you’ll begin to like their stuff. Cycles by Cartel gets a high recommendation from JerseySmarts.com and yours truly. Check it out!

Maybe it wasn’t 20 hours of action (you have to factor in commercials), but it was ten of their weekly, two-hour shows that I had to push through. I’m not complaining, since I thought it was a pretty entertaining 20 hours. However, I have to do a better job of watching Impact on a more consistent basis. Between a two hour Impact every week and an hour and a half of Cheers every night, my DVR gets clogged up to the point of insanity.

In any event, I thought that the Impact shows were fun to watching and entertaining. There was a lot of focus on the Main Event Mafia, which grew to be tiresome, and only a minimal focus on some of the undercard talent. That’s a shame because there are really some talented folks under contract to TNA. The two best developments that I saw on the ten episodes of the show were 1) the removal of Don West from the color commentator position and having his replaced by Taz and 2) the creation of a tag team championship for the Knockout division. Those are two major steps in the right direction for the company, but adding new tag team titles will probably mean that there will need to be more television time in order to showcase all of the talent.

If I were TNA, I’d try to get a one hour show on one of the Viacom channels (either VH1 or MTV or even staying on Spike). There’s no reason that the promotion couldn’t get a one hour slot on one of those channels and focus on advancing some of the undercard storylines.

Anyway, overall I’m glad I made the switch from being a primarily WWE fan to a primarily TNA fan. Not that TNA doesn’t have a variety of areas that it needs some help with (it’s time to break out of the Impact Zone and have a traveling show already!), but it’s just a better product in my mind.

I wanted to stop by again because, with NJ so close to NYC, I thought that you and your readers would be interested in having their :15 seconds of fame right in the heart of Times Square.

STRIDE® fans, regardless of where they are, can text a message or e-mail a picture for a chance to have it broadcasted in Times Square. Users can then go online to pick up a photo of their live message to keep as a memento of their fame.

All you have to do is text @STRIDE + your message to 87884* or submit a photo at MTVTimesSquare.com .

Then either stop by the MTV billboard in Times Square and/or check out MTVTimesSquare.com to see your big moment and share it with others.

If any of you reading this decide that you want to jump into this promotion, please come back and tell us how the process was and whether others should join in. Thanks!

In the mean time, check out New Jersey Carpet Cleaning for the best carpet cleaning in the Garden State!

The amount of trauma that these men put their bodies through for our enjoyment is unparalled in all of entertainment. There are no performers in the world today like these guys. Yeah, they do some idiotic things, but they are absolutely great at making people laugh…and cringe.

As far as the stunts in the movie, there are so many funny ones that I can’t possibly list them all here. However, you’ll want to look out for the taxi cab stunt and the boxing glove stunt. Highly hilarious stuff right there! If you’re looking to get grossed out then there is ample opportunity for that – the guys got a lot grosser this time around and actual shit is featured throughout the movie. And definitely stick around after the movie ends and watch the closing credits because they show more stunts. Just a ton of hilarious stuff there.

I highly recommend going to see this movie if you have a free afternoon and you want to get a few good laughs in. This is going to be a blockbuster DVD (word is that they’re going to have over two hours of extra stunts not included in the movie). Go see it!