Exclusive interview with D.C.

D.C. (In the photo) above, is influenced by 50 Cent.

Derek Colbert, much better known as D.C. (@DCtheprez),  is an Oklahoma City native that has been rapping for three years! This 23 year old fantastic and talented man, who's birthday is on July 9th, has a very appealing music style to share with the world! His idols in music are: Jay Z, Kanye West , and 50 cent; some of the most successful hip hop / rap stars ever in history. After watching 50 cent on an XXL video, D.C. felt the urge that it was actually the right time to begin his journey. The successful rapper 50 Cent was ultimately the channel D.C. utilized as a primary motivation to continue and never give up on what he wants to achieve within this career. Subsequently, he teamed up with his partner Marco and created: Musikhead. D.C. revealed in this interview also that he is not only a fan of legendary rappers. When he is not listening to rap, he loves to listen to Linkin Park! I have to admit that my favorite performance of D.C. is track #6 (Flashing Lights) of the mixtape he made on Kanye West .So now, let's see what D.C. has to say:

1. Why is 50 cent your biggest influence? What did you really see in 50 cent that motivated you to be who you are today?

50 cent is my biggest influence cause he showed me that no matter where you come from, no matter  what your situations are,  if you want it bad enough you can achieve it. He went through hell for his music and that's how I feel about mine. I believe in myself so much that I can't fail even if I do fail.  I just need to be heard by the right people.

2. Tell us about Musikhead. When did it begin and how was it born?

Musikhead is my heart and soul. It started back in 2007 when me and my partner Marco decided to do this music stuff. We feel that name embodies everything I do in my music cause I tell you how I feel and don't care how you feel about it. I can do many types genres of music and that name is just perfect for me.

3. How far do you wish to go with music?

With this music I'm seriously looking to be a well known singer / rapper that everybody will respect and understand cause I have alot to say in my music. I just need people to listen to me. I literally want to take over the game and be in everybody's top 5 all time list!

4. I see that you are also very interested in the music and talent of Kanye West. What do you think about his new song "Runaway"?

I am a big Kanye West fan and always will be, his song Runaway is like a masterpiece to me cause he's changing the style of music and I think people don't understand him. That's why when they hear his stuff everybody catches feelings; they want him to stick
to the traditional abc rap and that stuff doesn't cut it anymore. I rate the song Runaway with an A++++++++ !

5. What is musikamerica.com comprised of? Do you plan on creating a website dedicated just to yourself as a rapper, as a person?

Musikamerica.com is a site where everybody can come and post there mixtapes and just talk about hip hop in general.  I do plan on making a real website just for me;  havent got to that yet though.  I'm about to start making a bunch of music videos for my songs too and I have to do everything myself so it takes a little longer, but I love what i'm doing and will keep doing it.


These are some direct links to D.C.'s music / mixtapes. Enjoy!

http://bit.ly/kwestmt

http://bit.ly/DCDMMT

http://bit.ly/Waka1017

http://bit.ly/DrakeMT1

http://bit.ly/BanksMT

http://bit.ly/DCD4W1

http://twiturm.com/jr6f4

Exclusive interview with Tawny Heath

Tawny Heath, on the left.

Tawny Heath is indeed an intriguing, beautiful, and multi talented woman with a sweet personality! However, behind those curtains lies a normal girl that loves to play guitar, the football, her pets, spending time with her family, and cooking! She is an actress, a model, a singer, you name it; she has done it all to be who she is today. She has performed in many cities throughout Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, Massachussetts, Virginia, Connecticut, and also in many areas of Southern California. Her first television appearance was in The Power Rangers and she was also featured in the international magazine Supermodels Unlimited.

1. When did you begin singing and what do you think has made you who you are today? 

I started singing very young when I had a big interest in musical theatre.  I love anything to do with singing, dancing, and acting.  I just loved the arts growing up and I still do.  I think it is something you are born with when you love it as much as I do. I recorded my first demo and started writing my own songs when I was 18.

2.Tell us a little about Heath Street. When was it founded? 

I started writing and recording my own music when I was 18, but I grew up in a "music family"  My mom constantly had music on and introduced me to so many artist from when she was younger and I just absorbed it all and so did my brothers. My younger brother Sean plays many instruments and was the drum major in high school his senior year. When I wanted to learn to play the guitar he was definitely my go to guy.  We had so much fun working together and I always knew any music question I had I could ask him and he would know.  We started doing covers together and we are like best friends so we decided to work together on some songs.  We have an absolute blast and I feel really lucky that we get to work together so much.

 

3. What was your role when you appeared in the tv show "The Power Rangers"?

 I was pretty young when I filmed The Power Rangers.  I think just 8 years old, but I remember being really excited.  When I look back on it now, its just really funny and cute.  I remember everyone at my elementary school was so excited and we all watched it together when it aired. lol

4. How do you prepare before each singing performance?

 I always thought that I would like a lot of energy and a lot of excitement and a lot of people around me having fun before I performed, but from past experience I realized that when I have had my best shows is when I got to sit in absolute silence, everything very calm, and just take a lot of quiet time to my self and be in peace. (I always figured if it was too quiet and peaceful Id get sleepy and have no energy) but it's actually the exact opposite. 

5. What was it like modeling For JLO by Jennifer Lopez and UR-Fragance by Usher? 

A LOT of fun.  I love modeling!! and I got enough free UR Fragrance to practically  last me a life time!! lol  (I gave it away to friends and to my younger brother)

6. What are you currently working on right now?  Things have been a little more quiet for me on the music side of things, but thats because I have been focusing a lot on modeling.  I have some really cool photoshoots coming up that I am excited to tell people about.  No matter what I am working on I really enjoy it, and that is always what matters most.  As long as you are happy and doing what you love then you can have no complaints! :-)  Everyone be sure to check out my Twitter at www.twitter.com/tawnyheath  my blog at  www.tawnyheath.blogspot.com  and my myspace at www.myspace.com/heathstreet!

A TED CORMEY VIDEO

"SACRILEGE" Official Music Video: Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys from Army of Toys on Vimeo.

Exclusive interview with Chip Carter

Chip Carter, on the right.

Chip Carter, of Tampa Bay FOX 13, is not just  the channel's sports director, he's much more beyond that. He has been part of the most sensational sports events in the past two decades ever since he joined the channel in 1988. Chip is a graduate of The University of New Hampshire and he won an Emmy Award for a racing television special.  Surrounded by great sports players, cameras, and fans, Chip Carter takes his job seriously! However, his love for it is so broad that, to him, it's not really a job; it's actually gathering up with friends to talk sports!

1. How did you come to be the sports director for FOX 13?
 I was working in Knoxville and was hired to come down here, whats funny is that on my first year wedding anniversary, my wife and I came to Tampa and I told her then that this would be a nice place to work.
2. How was it like when you won your first Emmy Award? Can you share with us that fascinating story?
The cool thing about winning an Emmy is that your work does not compete against others in the state, the work has to compete against a high standard and if it doesn't meet that standard -- you don't win.  Television is a total team effort to make everything look good takes a lot of communication; the first Emmy I won was for a half hour racing special that a lot of people were involved with so that was really cool to see it all come together.

3. How is your schedule like each time  you are covering the Super Bowl?   

Great schedule -- unbelievable to be there, I think I have covered something like 12 or 13 Super Bowls...long hours though, because we are covering it for every portion of our 8 hours of news a day so that means, morning, noon and night...its not unusual to work 90 to 100 hours during Super Bowl Week.

4. What was one of your most memorable moments out of all the NFL seasons that you have covered?
Has to be the Bucs Super Bowl, to be in San Diego covering the team with Jon Gruden as the coach was a lot of fun -- !

5. What are some of your favorite Tampa Bay Rays baseball players?
I don't really have a favorite player, we spend a lot of time with all of them....its just a really good group of guys to deal with.....they are really personable, know that we have a job to do and just make it fun to do it.  Having Joe Maddon as the manager, I think sets a really good tone and that makes it a lot easier I think.  We are actually really lucky with the coaches we have here in all of the sports USF with Skip Holtz and Guy Boucher with the Lightning and Raheem Morris with the Bucs, they are all very dynamic, good to deal with -- have great personalities...and know how to work with the media.

6. You're evidently a very professional and highly respected sports anchor. How is the dynamic between you and your fans everytime you see them during sports events?
Covering high school football we get a great conversation going with viewers that come up to say hello...I LOVE that -- that is why I am in this job really to share the sports experience with people...if I could invite the entire market into the studio with me, I would -- thats what I feel like I am doing when I am standing in the studio is just telling friends what happened at the game, relating a story and giving them the compelling parts of it.  I don't take anything for granted in this job, you have to work hard to be good at it and you have to work hard to maintain your reputation -- viewers don't have to watch Fox, I know that they have choices so our staff -- we have the largest sports staff in the market, works very hard to make sure that we are their choice when it comes to sports news on anything in Tampa Bay.  Its not a job really, it just doesn't feel like a job....its more of a chance to sit down with friends over a pizza and talk sports....thats what I hope we are creating.  So when viewers come up to say hello or say that they watch us all the time....I always make sure to give them a huge thank you because it really is appreciated.

7. Are you and your family still active in the Golden Retriever Rescue of Mid Florida Program? Can you share with us your experience with it? 
We have 3 golden retrievers at home....Fletcher is the one we adopted, when we got him he weighed 55 lbs and wasn't housebroken -- didn't really know how to behave in a house.  We think he might have been chained because he just paced in a circle around the family room. The Golden Retriever Rescue of Mid Florida starts the process of finding these goldens new homes and I know the work the foster homes put into the effort is a key part of that process -- the foster home is the first home the golden has and they use that time to figure out his personality, take care of any medical issues etc...just a key part of the process.....and then when we adopted him...I really think he just feels as if he finally has his permanent home.  We use to do a lot more volunteering in terms of personal effort and time with the group -- but as we continue to live here, we branched out to hook up with the Tampa Humane Society -- (Cathy Bellatin) does a great job with them...as well as other organizations.....I try and push as much as possible the work  GRRMF does....in terms of the yearly calendar and their needed donations.....using the contacts that I have to keep the mission of that group upper most in people's minds, same thing with the Tampa Humane Society as well.

MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (please!)

Exclusive interview with Daniel Quantz and R.J. Ryan

Daniel Quantz and RJ Ryan

RJ Ryan was working for West Coast Writers  when he recruited Daniel Quantz to script the first six issues of Marvel Age-Spider Man. Their collaboration in this Marvel project further expanded their interest in remaining a unit! So they teamed up along with David Marquez and Blake Leibel to develop, polish, and publish: SYNDROME: a graphic novel that transforms and broadens a theory according to Dr. Wolfe, a character in the novel driven by the true nature of serial killers. Is the killing behavior pattern already an instinct  traced by the human brain? You'll have to read the novel to find out!



Art by David Marquez





1. How did both of you, such talented gentlemen, discover that you could do so much more professionally and artistically together than just collaborating for Marvel Age-Spider Man?

Daniel Quantz:  We’ve been friends for a long time and share a certain sensibility so we knew that we’d work well together.  I think we realized we could be more productive together than individually.  Plus we found that the stuff we were writing had a quality that neither of us could come up with alone and that was fun.

RJ Ryan: That's really nice of you to say. We've written and sold other stuff together but SYNDROME was something of a leap of faith for us, spending a year writing something that is a genuine departure from the kind of stories you typically see in mainstream comics. The big bet we made with SYNDROME is that readers would be interested in a story that questions the nature of evil as opposed to taking it for granted. That's the big idea we brought to the table and I fell fairly happy with the way we were able to execute it. I should say that the book would really suck without the amazing work our artist David Marquez did. You can find him at www.davidmarquez.com, and he was really someone we talked to almost every single day for a year as we put the book together and he is as much an author of the piece as we are.



Concept Art: Karen and Wolfe

2. How was the character of Wolfe of SYNDROME born?  Was he inspired by someone else?

Daniel Quantz: Once we came up with the idea of the facility and this wild over-the-top experiment he’d be conducting, then we had to consider what type of person would do something like this, and that filled the character in with his psychology and personality.
RJ Ryan: We've said before in interviews that we looked at a lot of real life giants of psychiatry and psychology and the physical sciences to arrive at how we portray Wolfe. We loved the archetype of a classical mad scientist but because our story is rooted in a lot of real life research into psychiatry the treatment of sociopathy, Wolfe had to be a lot more than just a Frankestein knock-off, and his behavior in the story had to be strongly and believably motivated. What we came up with was that what he perceives as his own failures as a psychiatrist early in his career took a real human toll -- people died on his watch. This part of the story makes for some of the darkest and most violent moments of the book, but they were essential to make the story click.

3. Can you tell us what is the base or foundation of the illustration used for the cover of the novel? Who helped you in the design and why one like that in particular?
Daniel Quantz:  We had the idea of doing a photo cover as a way of trying to merchandise the book more like a "regular" novel than a graphic novel. We needed an image that leaped off the shelf. A good friend of ours, Michael Dahan, is a tremendously talented photographer and we enlisted his help in coming up with the concept and then let him do his thing in the execution.

RJ Ryan: You kind find more of Michael's work at his website, www.studiodahan.com. He is a brilliant guy with a strong design vision that I think goes far beyond what you typically see on comic book covers. Everyone involved with this book knew doing a cover like that was going to be risky, not to mention expensive. But the overwhelming reaction to it was incredibly positive, especially when we debuted the book in San Diego Comic-Con this past summer, and it's continued as we've gotten the book into stores this fall. Almost every time we talk to someone about the book, the subject of the cover comes up and we're really proud of it, as well as the design work our partners at Archaia and Fantasy Prone did to pull it off.

4. What is next for RJ Ryan and Daniel Quantz?

Daniel Quantz:  I’m writing another comic now which has not yet been announced.  The two of us will probably work together again sometime in the future, but for now we’re both taking the time after SYNDROME to explore other projects we’ve been sitting on.

RJ Ryan: We both love the format of SYNDROME: the longform, serious comic book story cued to a more mature readership, and hopefully something that can be re-read a couple of times and really enjoyed on a deeper level than, say, a $2.99 comic book about super-heroes. We both intend to work in that space again, as soon as we can. But the big challenge, of course, is that producing a thick, substantial graphic novel can take almost two years, especially when you're like us and like to be very detail oriented about the artwork and presentation. It should go without saying that both of us are very excited about working with our publisher Archaia (www.archaia.com) again. I love that they see comic books as more than the rather limited superhero genre; they love to tell all kinds of stories, and make beautiful books, and I think that gives them an edge in the marketplace.



 Watch another interview made by Comic Vine Videos:



Exclusive interview with Steve Jerve

Steve Jerve, the chief meteorologist of Tampa Bay's Newschannel 8, is a book full of fascinating and captivating life chapters. This Minnesota native played basketball while he was majoring in Speech. After graduating, he decided to begin a new journey: this time, in meteorology. His first job as a weather anchor was in Minnesota, where as at one point, he simultaneously also worked as a reporter, photographer, producer, and editor. Subsequently , he kept growing within this competitive field throughout Orlando and St. Louis, where he won an Emmy Award in 1996 for weathercasting in the Mid American region. Steve is a full member of the American Meteorological Society.  The AMS was founded in 1919 and has over 14,00 members. He is also proud to be a Certified Boadcast Meteorologist. The program in charge of certifying candidates do not make this mission an easy one for them. Aplicants need to go through very extensive and rigurous testing. In addition to that, they have to prove that they have already a Bachelor's Degree in Meteorology while all their current work is reviewed to assess their level of competence.

1. How did you go from speech communication to meteorology and when did your interest for this fascinating career begin? It was largely a job opportunity that led me into weather.  I was working as a news reporter/anchor at my first station in Austin , MN (Home of Spam, the canned meat) and I used to fill in for the weather person…and the sports person…etc.  I had some meteorology for my core course in a liberal arts degree and they were pretty good courses, so I did know something about the science.  The guy that hired me in the business moved to Jackson MS and offered me a full time job in weather and I took it because it paid more and was a good opportunity to learn something new and see if I liked it.  I went back to school at Jackson State U. for meteorology and continued my education at Mississippi State University . Plus, forecasting weather for 25 plus years, you pick up a few things.

2. I was actually living in Puerto Rico when the island got hit by Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and I still remember that it was one of the most destructive hurricanes to ever hit us. Where were you at at the time and how was your experience covering this hurricane?  I was working at WFTV in Orlando and was at the National Hurricane Center in Miami reporting on Hugo for my station.  I was one of many members of the media there covering the storm.  So, I watched it from afar.  I also did the same thing for category 5 Andrew in 1992 and got stuck in the storm as it came through South Florida.

3. Standing in front of the cameras to talk about the weather requires a lot of confidence, skills, and knowledge. What are all the tools that you use when you get prepared for  each weathercast segment?

All of above in your question.  This job requires a unique blend of science, communication and knowledge and skill with graphics.  I’m not saying I do any of it well, but I try.  We use computer models to forecast the weather, then work on putting that forecast into graphics that you see on air to explain to viewers the weather situation.  I love this job because it is so challenging in so many areas.
More below the video...

4. What did it take for you to become a certified broadcast meteorologist?

Ive been an AMS seal holder since 1992, and that required a lot of college credit coursework.  The CBM seal was added in the mid 2000s and it requires a 100 question test administered by the AMS.  It was a tough test and I’m proud to have earned it.  I got it in 2006.

5. How do you describe the dynamic that exists between you and your colleagues in the studio?

It’s an excellent dynamic.  We’re a big professional family, those behind and in front of the camera.  We all work together to try and do the best newscast possible, there are some real professionals here.  My on air colleagues are my friends and it works best that way.  People can detect if youre not genuine on camera.  Just be yourself, it’s not that hard.