gold for vonn, white, and davis!
silver for mancuso!
bronze for lago and hedrick!
that’s SIX medals! all in one evening!
and ohno, celski, and US short track relay team qualifying!
i don’t know why i become so patriotic when it comes to the olympics! it’s got to be all the american biased olympic commentary i grew up with!
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…
snowstorms always make me want to do a lot of stuff… i guess because i’ll be stuck for awhile with a lot of free time?
i think like 4 years ago, i did a 101 list… i’m just going to make a list of things i want to do during snowstorms this winter. we’ve already had one, about to have another, and supposedly there’s another one midweek next week so i should have lots of time to get everything done.
1. finish reading books – green revolution, dexter
2. practice more guitar. not guitar hero. real guitar.
3. finish organizing all my files
4. start that nerdy project i’ve been wanting to start for some time now…
5. finish an online project i’ve been putting off… this one’s got a due date of march!
so obama’s budget cuts has constellation amongst the programs being cut. constellation was the program that was supposed to follow up the space shuttle program (ending this year) with the goal of getting man to the moon again by 2020.
supposedly the plan is for NASA to invest in space technology research and pay private companies to develop the technologies instead of doing it themselves. NASA outsourcing!!
i don’t know how much it costs to send a man to the moon. i imagine it’s pretty expensive. so those private companies that millionaires pay to get them into space… they might not be making a profit when they charge millions for the ride. but i wonder if in the future, if NASA is going to end up having to pay a private company a fortune each time (after all, those companies have to be able to make money too so they won’t be charging at just cost) they try to send someone to space. if it’s just going to be spending more money later (to buy private companies), i’d rather NASA just keep its own program and forget funding private companies.
does that make me less capitalist? i think i’m just biased because i’ve always loved space and astronauts and going to the moon, etc. etc.
read an article on usa today that got some very interesting internet comments. for sanity sake, you can’t read too many of them because they start to get ridiculous. but at least in small quantities, they provide entertainment!
usa today article: Do you use more energy than your neighbors?
some amusing comments:
if you read the description in the article, the reports aren’t a means for you to police your neighbors’ usage. but it’s to help you get a gauge of your own usage. cars report their MPG, but for home energy, it’s a lot harder to get a gauge of your usage. you can compare it to your previous year’s bill, but what if last Feb was unseasonably warm and this year is unseasonably cold?
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!
turkey day is my favorite holiday. it’s a holiday entirely devoted to overeating! if there’s anything i’m good at in this world, it’s overeating! so having a holiday where you can do just that? it’s awesome!
i think im going to start marking my calendar by turkey day. so happy new year! only 364 more days until the next turkey day!! oo, i should start a countdown!!
i guess the other part of turkey day is that whole thanks part. i dunno. to me, turkey day has always been about food. yes, the pilgrims were thankful to squanto… but they were thankful because he brought food!! say squanto just came over to say hi to the new neighbors… would the pilgrims really be that thankful? no. (btw, read the wikipedia article on squanto… it is NOTHING like what they taught us in school. in school, squanto comes walking up to the pilgrims holding cornucopias of food…)
but anyways… for this year, i’m turkeyful for
i’m glad my maternal grandparents are still alive and playing old school japanese video games, my parents are healthy and having fun, and for so many healthy baby additions to the family (yay cedy, hugo, and other cousin’s baby who i don’t know its name… don’t even know it’s gender!!)