interesting article about the official curling condom!!
there are a few more odd sponsorships as well. i wish i were rich enough to sponsor the US olympic team!
a few nights ago, i saw the VISA commercial where they showcased some russian athlete and ended with the tagline “Go world!” heck no! i’m all about the US of A! none of that “Go world” business! USA needs to beat those commies otherwise, we lose the cold war!! jk
was watching the pairs ice skating… or was it ice dancing? i don’t know. i haven’t cared much for ice skating for awhile now.
in any case, i was liveIMing with julie. basically flooding her with my thoughts and reactions to the olympics (because she had asked if i was going to liveblog.) and we got into a discussion about the music for ice skating. i feel it was kind of lame and cheesy and melodramatic. the subject of costume also came up (“what about those galaxy quest costumes”? nice.) the artistic costumes are so overdone. i want to see an ice skater just show up in whatever.
today i read an article on the washingtonpost about the music choice. my favorite quote is: “Increasingly popular, too, are film scores. ‘Film scores have no rhythm,’ Hurwitz says. ‘It’s just mood music, not meant to be choreographed. But they do it anyway, because they liked the movie [and can] wear a funky costume.’” hahha, i love how he brings up the funky costumes!
i think i should be a choreographer. here are some of my ideas:
i thought it stunk.
i love the olympics! i get so excited every time! i love the parade of athletes even though it’s just a bunch of people walking in. i like guessing how many athletes each country has.
but these opening ceremonies? sucked in my opinion. i always rag on canadia… and these opening ceremonies didn’t do much other than to give me more things to make fun of canada for. i felt like they stole from other countries… with the whole irish jig/tap dancing/clogging bit. batman (guy with the funky hair) playing the fiddle was amusing mostly because they had him fiddling in front of a moon thereby creating a bat signal like silhouette. and then having k.d. lang sing the song from shrek? i didn’t see how it fit into the mood of things. finally… the choices in artists. WHERE WAS CELINE DION?! u had joni mitchell (only heard of her), bryan adams (everything i do… i do it for youuuuuu), and sarah maclachan, but no celine dion?! or barenaked ladies?! and then there was the guy who just stood there on the platform and spoke. at first, i got excited when the announcer said that something about youtube and you saw a single person on a platform… my hopes were high that it might be robin sparkles… instead it was a guy telling me “canada is the what in what’s new”. really???
note: i did think they had the tough task of one-upping beijing’s opening ceremony. which is very unfair, because no one’s ever going to have the same budget as they did and plus, china was ridiculous with their prep (there were stories about people getting hurt from too much practice right?) so i’m partially joking… but also not, because i didn’t find it that entertaining…
so i’ve been watching “the sing off” on hulu. i’ve always enjoyed acapella music and with all the hype with glee, it’s nice to have a show with different acapella groups singing without the drama of glee! i’m always amazed when humans can mimic instrument sounds, like a drum beat. so i was watching episode 2 when the all women’s mormon group is singing a coldplay song that usually has violins so they’re mimicking it with their voices.
now there’s not much musically that i can usually comment on as an expert. but if there’s ONE thing i’ve mastered during my many years of school orchestra… it is faking violin bowing!! in my humble opinion, fake violin bowing requires the same, if not more, skill as actually playing the violin! as when you play the violin for real, you need to make sure your bow is going in the same direction as everyone else. timing wise, you need to make sure that you pull your bow at the correct rate… otherwise, u’ll be on your up stroke when people are still going down! then, the angle at which you bow matters. you can’t be stroking the E string (angled upwards) when everyone else is on the G string (angled downwards)! finally, if you’re faking it, you need to make sure you don’t actually hit the string! otherwise, you might actually make a bad sound (not even joking here… my middle school orchestra teacher complained about the sound coming from my violin. he blamed it on my strings and “cheap” fiberglass bow. no… it was definitely the operator, not the equipment!!)
so when i saw them start their songs by air violin bowing… i was not impressed. their speeds were not matching! they were not in sync! it was terrible!! butchering the art of fake violin playing! i was outraged!
p.s. i feel like all dude acapella sounds better than all girl… and heck, even better than coed. my 2 favorites are the bubs and nota. man, they make every song sound awesome.
I was reading a CNN article about black friday deals, saw one for Thomas the Tank Engine.
I remember watching the show before and liking Percy… but i forgot most of the other trains. so I read the wikipedia article on them. There’s apparently a Emily train! only female train… so what’s up with that? how come so many children’s cartoons only have a token female? (i.e. Smurfette) how does that work with the storyline? all the male trains (or smurfs) will be trying to woo the female (remember handy smurf and his crush on smurfette??)… it’s just encouraging little kids to start enjoying love dramas- unrequited love… love triangles… terrible!
how do you balance showing people God’s love and being a pushover? if you try to imitate God and try to treat people nicely, even if they’ve wronged you, and try to forgive them… how do you avoid getting walked all over?
isn’t that what the simpsons are exaggerating with ned flanders?
Dwight Schrute: It appears that the website has become alive. This happens to computers and robots sometimes. Am I scared of a stupid computer? Please. The computer should be scared of me. I have been salesman of the month for 13 of the last 12 months. You heard me right. I did so well last February that Corporate gave me two plaques in lieu of a pay raise.
hilarious. too bad it’s realistic too.
i now own my own electric guitar! 
and it’s not a wii guitar!! it’s the real deal!
so on tuesday…
i drove from DC to Columbia/Jessup MD – ~30 miles, 45 minutes
purchased an used line6 floor pod for $100… $110 (grr… after the seller marked up this price once i got there. ghetto!! thing was… i was going to actually give him an extra $20 because i specifically asked him to hold it for me. earlier in the day he said he had multiple inquiries and he was going to sell it to the first person who get up there. but since i had to tutor… and he was all the way up in columbia MD, i asked him to hold it for me and told him that i would definitely be there if he could guarantee it. well… i saved money in the end. because he was so annoying about it being $110 now… i wasn’t going to give him that extra $20 i was thinking of giving him. psh!)
then, from columbia/jessup MD, i drove to falls church VA – ~40 miles, 50 minutes
purchased an used electric guitar for $50. this dude? much cooler than ghetto amp seller. he actually lived in ashburn but was nice enough to arrange the sale to me while he was in falls church practicing with his band. furthermore, he had gone with a first contact, first serve sale. i had contacted him the day before, but because someone else emailed him first… he said he was trying to work out the deal with that guy. when that guy flaked out on him, he contacted me the next day… which is when i purchased it
but bah!! as he explained how everything worked… turns out i need some hex keys to unscrew some screws at the end of my fretboard which keeps the guitar in tune if i whammy too hard… and neither guitar nor amp came with any cables! so during my lunch break, i went to a guitar shop near my office (actually stumbling upon it after not being able to find the radio shack) and purchased the cable. and then after tutoring, with guitar in hand so i could test out the various sized hex keys, i went to the home depot and bought a 7/64th (yeah… that cost me an extra $2 because the 7/64th hex key didn’t come in the smaller set) hex key.
so far, the first 2 days have been awesome it’s not quite as easy as guitar hero 
but still quite fun!
i finally got to see the movie! it was great! very funny, i laughed outloud every few minutes. i liked the music. the story was also very good. i felt like i could relate to juno (and bleeker even!). for example,
sunny d – my mom got all into sunny d when i was in middle (? maybe early high school) school so i had 2 little bottles of sunny d every day for lunch!
blue slurpees – clearly juno has great taste in slurpee flavors… and a knowledge of just how great those slurpees are. they’re a magical, magical elixir… capable of making any stomach ache or stressful problem go away.
tic tacs – i also like to inhale tic tacs like they’re air… tho i prefer the light green ones over the orange ones.
wow… in one movie, 3 of my high school addictions were hit. pretty accurate movie if you ask me! all that was missing was shocktarts…
bring it on: in it to win it.
two thumbs down.
talida and i both fell asleep in the middle of it. and it was unbearably bad while we were awake. i woke up just in time to see their final routine which honestly, wasn’t that awesome. i feel like the movie has started taking itself too seriously and actually tries to come up with serious routines… and that basically makes them BAD routines. there was something quite amusing about the spirit fingers routine. but yeah… with (not to give away too much!) this movie’s routine inspired by roller coaster rides and last movie’s (bring it on: all or nothing) krumping? it’s not amusing anymore. it’s just sad.
oo also… if anyone else watched the movie… let me know, where did the spirit stick go?! we missed the resolution of that plotline….
