The Joshua Yoder Blog

  Recently there has been a new artist that has really caught my eye and his name is Jelly Roll. He is a rapper/country music singer. To be perfectly honest with all of you, I thought Jelly Roll was a brand new artist, but as I was doing some research for this blog post, I discovered that he has been at it since the early 2000s. As his first mixtape came out all the back in 2003. In fact, his first studio album wasn't until 2011. Talk about keep working at it. The first time I had ever heard from Jelly Roll was back in 2021 when he came out with the Ballads of The Broken Album. And the song that caught my attention was the song called Dead Man Walking, which is still one of my favorite songs to listen to today. He has also had a few more songs that I have really enjoyed such as Even Angels Cry, Son of A Sinner, Need A Favor and Save Me. His music has really spoken to me, it really brought me hope that no matter how dark the world made seem to be, that there is always hope. I also f

  One of my personal favorite bands to listen to and in my humble opinion, one of the best bands in music history. The Cranberries! The Cranberries were formed in 1989 under the name of The Cranberry Saw Us but they had a different lead singer before Dolores O'Riordan came on board in 1990. Other members include Mike and Neil Hogan as well as Fergal Lawler. They were one of the reasons why I truly enjoyed being a 90s kid. They were also a very important influence on my life and for that I am forever grateful. It is no secret about my battles with mental health and self-harming, but the Cranberries helped me through a lot of those feelings. Even to this very day, when I turn on a song and hear Dolores' voice it makes me feel so safe and that there is beauty even in the more darkest of times. Just to name a few, some of the hits that the Cranberries created were songs like Dreams, Zombie, Salvation and personally my favorite being Linger which was released back in the early 90s.

 Today is a very special day, it is because it is my big brother Cody's birthday. I don't have a lot of money for gifts. So I thought that this blog post could be his present and hopefully he will like it. Mainly because this is one of those things about being scared of opening up about things. Well, here we go. Codeman was born on August 28th, 1986, the same year the Celtics came off winning the NBA title and the same season when Penn State won their last National title. So it is fair to say that big brother was born during a good time lol. Some of my favorite and earliest memories being around my big brother came when we would play pro wrestling games starting with WWF Warzone. Personally, I miss the days where would were apart of the greatest pro wrestling video game faction of all time in D Revolution X which was created during the time of No Mercy. Made those days were a lot of fun 😢. Now, here comes some emotional stuff. But yet again, I must remind myself that I can not

  You know how they say that music can help us through dark times, bring us so many different emotions and even make us feel like we are traveling to another world. Now we can get these feelings through all kinds of amazing music, whether it be heavy metal, rock, pop, r'n'b, rap, hip-hop, country, blues, you name it, it does it. But there are also plenty of music out there that not many people mention them. And one of those I really enjoy listening to is called a Gregorian Chant. Singing has always been apart of church worshiping since the early days of Christianity. What I find beautiful about them are you can sing them with or without music being played. Just something about Gregorian Chants have always been magical to me. They have always been one of my go to music to listen to when I feel the need to relax and stay calm. Hearing the beauty of the melodies just teleports me to another world. Its like I am in the presence of angels and reminds me that God is always there no m

 I just finished watching an NFL Films documentary that was talking about one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL and his name is Roger Staubach. Now obviously, I wasn't alive when Roger the dodger played in the NFL and seeing some of the videos on Youtube of his playing days. Man, it sure makes me wish I was alive during that time period because Staubach was incredible! The film I watched talked about his early days when he burst onto the national scene during the Army-Navy game in front of President John F. Kennedy. He also won the Heisman Trophy during his time at Navy. Once done with his military service he joined the Dallas Cowboys and helped them win two Super Bowls while appearing in five. With all of that being said, it was really cool to watch some of the videos of his playing days. He was truly a sight to see on the field. With some of the runs he did when he needed to scramble and some of the greatest passes in NFL like the Hail Mary to Drew Pearson. That was on the fiel

 In my humble opinion, one of the most underrated race car driver in the history of the sport. And that is Mark Martin. Martin is one of the drivers that got into racing as a kid, although my family were huge fans of such drivers like Bill Elliot as well as Dale Earnhardt, what drew me to become a Mark Martin fan was simply because of how kind and caring of a person he was. Martin always seem to be an honorable person, who raced clearly and even to this very day I have not heard one person say anything bad about Mark which is really cool to see. You can also make the argument that Martin is the greatest driver in Nascar history to have never won a championship in his career as well as never winning the Daytona 500 which sucks. But to be fair, Martin has come close several times throughout his amazing career. In fact, Martin finished second in the point standings a total of five times to along with his 40 wins in Nascar's top league. I recently watched a little documentary on a yout

 Well we are getting closer to another season of Notre Dame football. We are heading into year number three under head coach Marcus Freeman who is currently has a record of (19-8) as the head coach of the Fighting Irish. There are several new additions to the Notre Dame staff this coming season with four new members starting with the new offensive coordinator in the form of Mike Denbrock who came over from LSU. However, the 60 year old Denbrock is no stranger to the Fighting Irish as he was once the tight ends/offensive line coach from 2002-2004, he then came back as the tight ends coach from 2010-2011, wide receivers coach from 2012-2013, offensive coordinator in 2014 and finally assistant head coach/wide receiver coach from 2015-2016. So it will be very interesting to see how this veteran coach will do with the offense. Other first year members to the coaching staff are Mike Brown who will be the wide receivers coach after being at Wisconsin the previous year. Max Bullough after bein

 As mentioned in previous blog posts, I am a fan of professional wrestling and it is a whole influence on my life and wanting to become creative when it comes to storytelling and creating characters.  But some people may not realize this and that I am a HUGE fan of japanese wrestling. And one of my personal favorite wrestlers is a wrestler name Masahiro Chono. Chono in my humble opinion is extremely underrated. Now, back in the mid-90s there was a major force happening in the world of professional wrestling and it was the New World Order (NWO). But what many people may not realize from the outside that there was another faction of the group called NWO Japan which Chono was the leader. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the WCW NWO group led by Hogan, Hall and Nash. But again being a fan of japanese wrestling, I really loved watching Chono and Muta along with the other members of NWO Japan. But now that I am older, I discovered more about this group was that it had an album called NWO

In my humble opinion, one of, if not the greatest coach in football history and his name is Vince Lombardi. It has been over 100 years since Lombardi was brought into this world all the way back in June of 1913. Heck my grandparents weren't even born yet! 😄 I recently got to watch a couple documentaries on Lombardi and it has made me love and respect everything about him even more than I already did. Now obviously, I was not around during the Lombardi era but thanks to a lot of the older generation and the power of the internet, I get to catch a glimpse into what made Lombardi tick. One of the things I really enjoyed about watching the documentary was how he used his motivation from past experience when he was looked down upon for simply being Italian. In a way, I can relate to that myself. But I loved how he used those experiences to helped him create a dynasty of a football team in a little town called Green Bay.   What was so impressive about his run with the Packers was that h

 Hello everyone! Today, myself and my twin brother Chad decided to head out to the Mount Union OIP where I managed to get a one on one interview with a buddy of ours named Eric Scott to talk about himself as well as the band he is currently playing with called Mindspell. Eric is the lead guitarist for the band and has been playing music for over thirty years. Get to know the man behind the music and learn what makes him so passionate about the music he creates. First and for most, I would like to personally thank Eric for meeting with me to do this interview with me for my blog post. I also hope you all will enjoy this fun little interview we had. JY: What inspired you to become a musician? ES: My grandfather used to play the guitar. We use to sit on the porch and he would play some old country music like Johnny Cash and I thought to myself, what I could do with this. JY: Who were some of your influences? ES: Slash was my first favorite, Zak Wylde and Dimebag Darrell from Pantera. JY:

 You know, there has been something on my mind recently and I not even sure if this is something that I should be worrying about. And that is it I am too nice? For those who don't know, I was recently in a relationship for the past couple months and earlier this week I was informed that she had been for a lack of a better term, sleeping around on me. Too be perfectly honest, I have been feeling very numb this entire week. What hurts the most about all of this is that she was my first girlfriend in over ten years and the last time I had a relationship it ended with her cheating on me and now I finally worked up the courage to date again and once again I was cheated on. Which begs the question. Is it even worth dating ever again? I mean, it took me forever to overcome the pain of cheating before, but now it just happened again and it was by someone who claimed to understand what I went through and she still just went behind my back. Which also makes me wonder about something else and

 One of the constant themes some of you have read about in my blogs is how much I love pro wrestling. And recently I had finished watching a shoot interview from one of my favorite wrestlers and in my humble opinion, one of the most underrated wrestlers in Mikey Whipwreck. Mikey was so special to me because of the simple fact that he showed me that someone like me who physically shouldn't be inside a wrestling ring. But there Mikey was inside the ring and everything he was doing was believable. Whipwreck first burst onto the scene in the 90s in a little promotion called ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling). His character was a lovable loser type, yet he was totally awesome! Mikey would constantly get beat on a weekly basis and every single time, he would come back out and do it all over again. It is something that I will always find inspirational. For someone like me who physically struggle in some aspects, seeing a guy like Mikey keep coming back despite what he went through the p

 One of the greatest football coaches of all time in my humble opinion is the man in the hat, Tom Landry who coached the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League from 1960 to 1988. What I have found interesting about coach Landry when I was watching some documentaries on him, was that he was a B-17 Pilot during World War II and some of the things that he went through. Of course many people wouldn't have known that because Landry seem so emotionless while standing on the sidelines. After his time fighting in WWII, Landry was drafted by the New York Football Giants during the 1947 NFL Draft in the 20th round. Yes I said 20th round lol. But decided to play for the AAFC for a short while before joining the Giants in 1950. But it was during his time with the Giants that Landry got to showcase his skills as an innovator starting with creating a defense that has become a standard in the game of football called the 4-3 defense. With the 4-3 defense and help from the offense led by an