The Joshua Yoder Blog

In my humble opinion, the most underrated genre in the history of music is the blues. With that being said, I recently finished watching a documentary on a blues musician named Stevie Ray Vaughn. Not obviously he was before my time as he tragically passed away the same year that me and my twin brother Chad were born 1990. Rest In Peace! I was checking out one of my personal favorite channels on TV AXS TV and I saw that they were going to air this documentary and me being a fan of the blues and wanting to know more about the history of the blues as well as music in general, I decided to sit back and watch it. Thank you God! I enjoyed every single second of it. Getting to see how Stevie was coming up and what he went through growing up and how he used his struggles to create such amazing art really was inspiring to me.  I also loved about they talked about the rise of the "Texas Blues" and working his way through small clubs which honestly I think it be cool to have a blues clu...

 My twin brother Chad and I got to rewatch an old documentary on Tubi and it is called The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story. This was a film that made its way into the world back in 2018 and it discusses the origin of a small, humble network leaning into the SNICK years. This documentary was written and directed by Scott Barber and Adam Sweeney. And features some of biggest stars that appeared on their programs as well as some of the executives and talented writers who made them. People like Melissa Joan Hart, Kel Mitchell, Josh Server and great shows such as Doug, Clarissa Explains All, Rugrats, and so forth. With all of that being said, I absolutely loved this documentary. Me and Chad were just completely in awe of it. This brought us back to our childhood getting to see how Nickelodeon became what it was. Getting to listen to all of the people in the know and hear them tell these incredible stories really makes me wish that I could be apart of that. Especially being a writer ...

 Well, I finally did it! I recently finished playing the original Mass Effect game that came out back in 2007. It was created by Casey Hudson and developed by Bioware while being published by Microsoft Game Studios. The game takes place within the Milky Way galaxy in the year 2183 where civilization is being attacked by the return of an highly advanced machine race better known as the Reapers. First and foremost, I wanted to say Thank you to my dear friend Stephon who surprised me with this incredible gift of getting me Mass Effect Legendary Edition. I was completely shocked when he sent it to me, I mean to be fair, I was constantly talking about the Mass Effect series and how it shaped me writing wise as well as fun memories of gaming. But still, I am extremely grateful for the gift and am going to make the most of it. Just seeing the intro to the first game was enough to make my heart smile. I was grinning from ear to ear as I made my character, or at least my version of Shepard....

 One of my personal heroes in the world of sports is former professional boxer "Irish" Micky Ward who competed from 1985 to 2003. Ward has held the IBF light welterweight championship in 1997 and then later the WBU light welterweight championship in 2000. I was first introduced to Ward in large part thanks to his legendary trilogy of fights between himself and another one of my personal favorite boxers in Arturo "Thunder" Gatti (RIP), two of those three fights won Fight of the Year awards courtesy of the Ring magazine. Another reason why I became such a fan of Ward is because of his style of fighting. Known as a pressure fighter, no matter what happens to him in the ring, just know that Ward was going to keep pushing forward. Ward was always consider the underdog in most of his bouts, but it sure didn't look like at it at times. His nonstop action is something that admire about him even to this very day. Especially getting to learn more about him since his retir...

 You want to talk about making a cultural impact on the lives of many, look no further than the lovable cartoon known as Smokey the Bear. For nearly 100 years now, this protector of the forest has been helping all of us understand the importance of fire safety and putting a stop to wildfires. And has Smokey done such an incredible job in doing so having appeared in numerous posters, ads, clothes, commercials, etc. Making this the longest running public service announcement campaign in United States history. Smokey made his debut due to the many experienced firefighters or able bodied males were out fighting World War 2 and so Smokey was created to help reduce unplanned wildfires caused by human errors. Although he began as a cartoon, Smokey soon became a living breathing creature. An unfortunate accident which caused a wildfire in New Mexico where a small three month old black bear who was sadly burnt in multiple places. Originally, they called the bear Hotfoot Teddy, but soon was ...

 You know, the month of February will officially be 90 years since the debut of the Phantom when it hit the comic strips back 1936 by Lee Falk. The main story follows the Phantom a costume wearing crime-fighter who lives in a fictional African county of Bangalla and is still running as of 2026 being written and drawn by many others since Falk's death in 1999 (RIP). In the comic strip, the Phantom is the 21st in a line of crime fighters which had began in 1536. The first Phantom was Christopher Walker after his father was killed during a pirate attack and swore an oath on the skull of his father's murderer to fight evil. This oath started a legacy that has been past down from Father to Son for multiple generations, hence why the Phantom appears to be immortal. Unlike many other superheroes, the Phantom does not have any kind of superpowers. He must rely on his strength, his wits and his skills with his two hand pistols (a revolver and a 1911 .45 auto pistol) and is an expert wit...

Many of you may be a little bit surprised by this, but one of my personal favorite genres to listen to is the Blues. And in today's blog post, I want to talk about the man who introduced me to the Blues and his name is Eric Clapton. Clapton is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential guitarist in music. He ranks second in Rolling Stone's Top 100 Greatest Guitarist of All Time, fourth in Gibson's Top 50's list and fifth in Time Magazine's 10 Best Electric Guitarists. The man has won numerous awards whether it be from the Grammy's, the Brit Awards, Ivor Novello Awards and is the only artist to be a three-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One time as a member of the Yardbirds, the other as a part of the group called Cream and as a solo artist. In fact, as a solo artist, Clapton has sold over 100 million records worldwide which makes him one of the greatest selling musicians of all time. Mr. Clapton has been a part of such incre...

 This one might be a little late in reporting, but I recently found out that the 80s classic the Goonies, has a sequel in the works. I honestly not really sure how I feel about that personally. But nonetheless, this news has inspired me to look back on the original movie that made its debut on the silver screen back in 1985. The Goonies is an adventure comedy directed by Richard Donner from a screenplay by Christopher Columbus based on a story from Steven Spielberg. The film stars Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen, Corey Feldman, Kerri Green, Martha Plimpton and Ke Huy Quan who play members of the Goonies. This group of young adventurers live in the "Goon Docks" neighborhood of Astoria, Oregon and they discover a treasure map which they believe can help them save their homes from being foreclosed. However, along the way, the gang quickly discovers that they are being chased after by a family of criminals. First of all, the Goonies is an incredible film. Second, it carried a...

 In my humble opinion, this show is incredibly underrated. With a lot of people going to these concerts that have become these major productions, it is nice to see something so small and so simple which is what MTV's Unplugged was to me. Unplugged is the brainchild of the dynamic duo of Jim Burns (RIP) and Robert Smalls and launched in 1989. Like the title of the show, it was basically about bands who would "Unplugged" their instruments and play an acoustic versions of some their favorite songs. Although the show was initially about new, up and coming artists but ultimately, some of the biggest names in music got to be a part of this incredible show. The 1990s was probably one of the biggest successful decades in the shows history because many of the artists during the decade released their Unplugged sessions as album and became big hits. Such artists like Mariah Carey (1992), Nirvana (1994), Rod Stewart (1993), 10,000 Maniacs (1993), Alice N Chains (1996) had found major...