6/30 TGIF Quote!

Happy Friday!!

The reason why we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.

~ Stephen Furtick

Viva Pot Vegas!

           Hope you folks have been having a great week so far!  Summer is here and we’re just a few days away from entering July (almost six months have passed, damn does time fly!).  Either way, it’s just the beginning of another beautiful summer month.  July 1^st is also very special day for the stoners over in Nevada.

On July 1^st, Nevada will open up their recreational cannabis shops.  About 17 shops will be opening on Saturday and almost 40 could be approved to sell as well.  Some outlets are planning a grand midnight opening while one in Las Vegas is having a barbecue with some raffle drawings.  Not only will recreational shops open, but medicinal dispensaries will go recreational as well.  And the best part?  There will be dispensaries around the Las Vegas Strip.

Ok let’s back up for one goddamn second…RECREATIONAL CANNABIS…will become legal to purchase in a few days what’s known as ‘America’s Playground’.  This is the city where you can legally carry your booze around the street while hitting the casinos with your bros.  Not only that, but prostitution is still legal in some Nevada counties (brothels are STILL open in this 21^st century folks!).  All I can say now is that Sin City is about to get a WHOLE lot better!
Let’s recap on what will now be accessible on sin city:

• Gambling
• Booze (carrying it around the strip as well!)
• Prostitution
• CANNABIS

Just…WOW.  What a time to be alive in this progressive 4/20-era!  Las Vegas is about to get a lot more interesting in the years to come (please excuse me while I send hundreds of resumes to PR companies there — #420NevadaLife).

Now that I got my 4/20 mindgasm out of the way, here is what I’m so damn excited about.  Las Vegas receives a majority of profits through tourism/hospitality (it’s known as ‘The Entertainment Capital of the World’, FYI!).  A majority of people travel to Nevada just for Las Vegas to do some gambling, stay at a pampering hotel, and eat some magnificent food on the strip.  Nevada voted to legalize recreational cannabis last year and now the dispensaries are opening up in just THREE DAYS!  More than half of the dispensaries sales are expected to be from the 40 million tourists visiting Sin City.  If you do the math real quick (2-3 dispensaries plus 40 million tourists roaming around the Las Vegas strip) then you’ll know that Nevada will be hitting some MAJOR profits!

So besides the amazing marketing miracle that the dispensaries will be bringing to Las Vegas, The state of Nevada will hit the financial jackpot with the cannabis sales.  Nevada is expecting to hit sales much farther than Colorado or Oregon during the first week (the population is much greater BECAUSE of its bolder reputation!).  It will also be such a great PR move for Nevada being that they’ll receive more profits, attract more tourists, and even extend their branding tools to rejuvenate themselves for the years to come.

There is a whole new gold rush happening in the Wild Wild West folks and the Golden Nugget could be replaced by the Golden Nug (weed pun, hah!).  Seriously though, this is major news for Las Vegas as well as the state of Nevada.  It’ll be interesting to see how Nevada fares with recreational sales for the next six months until California enters the market (when the Golden State legalizes in January 1^st, 2018).  Would Las Vegas be able to hold up against their competitions a year later?

Let’s not jump to far ahead though.  Instead, we should be psyched that Sin City will become much more sinful once cannabis hits the shelves.  We should be all be ecstatic over Las Vegas hitting another jackpot this summer.

In the end, always remember this  — what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!

Roger Waters & CKY Album Drops!

How’s it going folks?  Hope you’re enjoying the first few days of summer so far!  Summer’s been shining hard for me with ice-cold Sam Adams Summer Ale, an amazing strain named Fruity Pebbles (which actually tastes like Fruity Pebbles!), and warm weather.  It’s cloudy out in MA now, but the summer is just beginning.

It’s been so damn great so far that I forgot to mention about two INCREDIBLE albums that came out this month.  Music hasn’t gotten the cream of the crop here at MakeSandcastlesNotWar and it’s about time I showcase some musical GOLD.  Two artists, CKY and Roger Waters, released their newest albums.  Here’s the personal PR scoop on these two magnificent pieces:

Roger Waters, Is This the Life We Really Want?

Pink Floyd was one of those incredible bands I started getting into in high school.  The Wall was what really did it for me and soon discovered the distinct sounds between Roger and David.  I listened to all of the albums by the time I got through high school and still got them locked within my music library.  Roger’s tone followed through with his solo albums (I’m re-listening to The Pros Cons of Hitch-Hiking as I’m writing this out) and his newest one hits home 25 years later.

Recorded between 2010-2017, Is This the Life We Really Want? hit the digital shelves on June 2^nd with hot tracks like Smell the Roses and The Last Refugee.  It’s got the progressive aspect from the Pink Floyd days with the mix of some art rock.  Pink Floyd fanatics should definitely pick out Is This the Life We Really Want? this summer!

CKY, The Phoenix

Before I jumped into being part of the Pink Floyd Animals (band pun intended!), CKY was one of my favorite rock bands of all time.  CKY featured Chad I. Ginsburg, Deron Miller, Matty J, and Jess Margera (older brother of infamous Bam Margera!) playing some gnarly rock tunes.  Released in June 16^th, The Phoenix is their latest album in 8 years.  Some classic CKY tunes include Days of Self Destruction and Replaceable.  While it’s been a while since their golden years in the early ‘00s, the CKY guitar tone is still heard from the sweet sounds of CKY!  It’s definitely a great album to check out if you’re a true CKY fan.

And there you have it, two amazing albums from two incredible artists that are making more musical gold.  It’s not every day I come across exciting new tunes from some of my favorite artists and I’m grateful for discovering them both.  If there’s ever any other new albums that hit the digital shelves, I’ll be sure to spread the news for MakeSandcastlesNotWar!

Until then, check out these fantastic new albums Is This the Life We Really Want? and The Phoenix.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System…Classic Edition!

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was my favorite console as a kid.  I was so fortunate to play some of the greatest games Nintendo ever created during the 90s.  Games like Super Mario Bros. All Stars Edition, Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario Kart, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Mega Man X were what made the SNES such a timeless console.  Some of these games are so good that they are even better than some of the new titles out now (I’d bring out my SNES over playing games on the PS4 ANY day!).

Lately Nintendo has been riding the wave of success with the Nintendo Switch released in March.  The Nintendo Switch has been selling out like crazy and they’re expecting to hit major sales during the holiday season.  As an added bonus, that’s just one of many surprises Nintendo has up their sleeves for this year.

Nintendo recently announced that a SNES Classic Edition is coming out this fall!  The SNES Classic Edition, similar to the NES version, will feature over 21 titles pre-installed inside the console.  Some of the nostalgic titles being pre-installed include EarthBound, Donkey Kong Country, Star Fox, Super Punch-Out, Yoshi’s Island, and much more.  90s gamers will have to be patient because the SNES classic edition hits the shelves on September 29^th at $79.99.

As an added bonus, Nintendo will include the unreleased title Star Fox 2 to the mix.  Star Fox 2 was the sequel to Star Fox that was created for the console, but was never released to the public.  So not only will 90s gamers get to replay the nostalgic title on the SNES, but they’ll FINALLY get to play Star Fox 2 this fall!

What’s intriguing is that this isn’t the first time Nintendo pushed this branding strategy out to their audience.  Nintendo saw major success with their NES Classic Edition (read more about that here) during the holiday season last year.  80s/90s nostalgic gamers rushed to the stores to snag their NES Mini console.  It was a brilliant strategy to keep Millennial/Gen X gamers back into the mix.

This was so exciting to hear!  I loved playing games on the SNES and it’s going to be so great to be able to play them again.  It’s been hard to pencil in time to play some video games (what with my busy schedule and all!), but I would definitely go back to playing the system again.  The SNES console was what made Nintendo take off as an amazing video game brand.  Sure, the Nintendo Switch has been doing fantastic so far this year, but I always think back to the golden years with the SNES.

I consider myself a 90s gamer and am really looking forward to seeing the SNES Classic Edition in stores this fall.  Hopefully I’ll find the time and money to get the console to relive the golden years of video gaming.  The Nintendo Switch may be out now, but I’m holding off for the Super Mario Odyssey game coming out in the winter (it’s pretty much one of the ONLY reasons for why I’d get the Nintendo Switch!).  Either way, we can all look forward to playing the nostalgic 90s titles once the SNES Classic Edition hits stores everywhere.

Be sure to look out for the SNES Classic Edition when it releases on September 29^th!

Graduation(1 Year Later)

This past weekend I attended my friend’s graduation party in Dracut.  I took the long drive from work to reunite with my old PRSSA friends.  It was going to be interesting to see how everyone was doing now that their all done with college. Some of my friends already snagged jobs while others are still working on their career path.

Overall the party was amazing.  Great summer food, cold craft beers, and timeless conversations with the graduated crew.  This was the time for us to reflect on the amazing adventures life had to offer us.  We all may done with most of our education, but this was when the real lessons started.

While heading home from a night of fun with my amazing PRSSA crew, I started pondering about how much has happened in over a year.  It’s been over a YEAR since I walked those steps and received my diploma, igniting what would be the start of the Real World.  I entered college in 2010 and officially finished my schooling by winter 2015.  What’s even more shocking is that it will be almost SEVEN years (more than HALF a decade!) since I packed my bags up to Burlington for Champlain College.

It was a long and strange journey folks – a roller-coaster of emotions, events, thoughts, and actions.  The silver lining is that I’m on another journey that’s just as better as the college era.  While my Friday nights have been replaced with Netflix and cannabis rather than going hunting for house parties (HOUSE PARTY HUNTER ON THE LOOSE!), I’m still going out to Boston every week for adventures.

So at this point, it’s time to ask those burning questions.  Where are we now?  What has happened a year after graduating college?  Have I become the entertainment PR superstar I was destined to be?  Has MakeSandcastlesNotWar transformed into the golden path of my dream career path?

At this point, things have gotten more…interesting to say the least.  I haven’t picked up my dream PR job yet, but I shifted around with a few jobs here and there.  If you’ve been keeping tabs on MakeSandcastlesNotWar, you would see that the blog has grown significantly (25-30 views a day compared to 5-10 views!).  Even with my part-time job in place, I continue to generate that amazing PR juice for this blog.  The blog has really been branching out its brand identity, what with the addition of the ‘4/20’ category and ever-growing ideas popping out.  Sure, there isn’t as much leisure time in my life, but there will never be roadblocks when it comes to creativity!

Personally, I knew that this journey wouldn’t become so easy; but in actuality, I’ve discovered that there’s much more steps in the system that I imagined.  I’ve learned the hard way that you have to get your name/face out there in the world before any major PR work can happen.  Everyone starts at the bottom and goes up in the ladder (like Oliver Queen’s salmon ladder!).  Yes it can be complicated at times, but colleges never said that it will get simpler.

To my PRSSA friends at the graduation party (as well as all of the graduates having their party as well) – congratulations.  Congrats to all of your hard work during the most amazing years of your college lives.  Now is the time to pool in all of your experience, knowledge, tricks, and ideas into what your set out to do.  You’ve learned all that you can in the courses and now it’s time to push your own twist to it.

In short, I’ve been grateful for the ones I went on the past year.  From my experiences, life has gotten a LOT more interesting now that school’s out forever!

I used this quote last year and I’m bringing it back again…I know we’ll be just fine when we learn to love the ride.