Blog Review

This was the first time I had ever blogged and I didn't mind it. I would have enjoyed it much more if it had been a little less. It was a high word count for 3 blogs a week. I really ran out of stuff to write about. I just had nothing to say and couldn't think of anything I wanted to talk about. When I was first told about the blogs I was pretty excited. I was psyched to have my own webpage to do whatever I wanted with. Once the blogs started got going though, I began to dread them from lack of ideas. But the ones that really got going I enjoyed. They just started flowing and the ideas began pouring out of me. I enjoyed letting my thoughts and ideas out on paper... um on screen I guess. I think my favorite blogs I wrote were the ones that I ranted and just vented. Those would include Kids and Creepin' Creeper.

I just realized one of the hardest parts about blogging... It's way to distracting. You get on the internet to look for something, and you get drawn up by browsing the whole web for random stuff. I just got held up for ten minutes because I opened up Yahoo real quick and started reading all of the articles. But maybe that's my own flaw: short attention span.

I think my favorite part of my blog was just setting it up, designing it, adding stuff to it, and making it look tight. I also enjoyed adding pics and videos to posts to make a dull text full page into an interesting display. But my favorite part of the whole blogging assignment as a whole was just reading other peoples blogs. I learned so much about other people, including some stuff I didn't necessarily want to know. But the majority of the stuff was really interesting and worth reading it. I think the one i enjoyed reading most was Spencers, because it was so outrageous and I disagreed with it so much, that I actually found it really interesting and enjoyed it. I don't know maybe that's weird. But anyway as a whole, I thought it was a pretty interesting assignment and I definitely feel I am a better writer because of it.

Talent SSSShow

I reluctantly went to the talent show saturday. I went for two reasons: To see a gorgeous version of "Guy Love", and to see improv. I didn't care much about the other acts, but overall had a pretty good experience.

The improv was easily the highlight, and best part of the show. The games were funny, the kids were great, and it was a great way to pass the time between each act. They were actually more interesting than the acts.

But some of the acts were still really good. Third place was an incredible original guitar composition by stuart something. It really was amazing. Second place was a country song by some freshman. It was pretty good, but I hated the song they did. The winners were Paige and Josh. They did a song from a musical, and it was really really funny. Some other good acts were the scientist by Emily Kipper and Micheal Sepulveda, and guy love which was by Sam Krause and Alex Green. Then there was a scene from an acting class that the teacher of it just inserted in the show. It was AWFUL. It was 20 minutes long, boring, not funny, had bad acting, and would not end. It almost single handedly ruined the whole thing.

Ok now back to the improv. It was awesome. The first game was party quirks, where guests included all of the muppets, sperm, Mr. Yuska, and Britney Spears? The first three were funny, but sperm easily beat them all. It was Evan O'brien and was funny as hell. Then there was the ABC game where it took place at a bank, there was press conference where scooby had killed shaggy, and they did a competition like skit. It just may have been enough to convince MR T IS ON THE CUBS GAME me to do it next year. Sorry about the last comment. It surprised me. Damn now mr T is throwing a pitch. He's a beast. He has all American attire plus a cubs shirt. Hardass.

Hawks

Unlike the title of this blog suggests, I haven't been talking much about the Hawks, but that's mainly because there hasn't been too much to talk about. Spring football is in full swing, basketball is over, and I really don't care about anything else.

But I'll try to fit in some news concerning Iowa athletics. Well.... King got hired as a free agent by someone... Tony Moeaki should be back by fall and a key member of the team.... umm.... Keenan Davis will be on the team next year.... Iowa is ranked no. 2 in the nation.... that last one was a lie.... so yeah not to much to say.

But I just realized I can talk about the cubs. THEY SUCK WHAT THE HELL HOW DID THIS HAPPEN. Those are a few thoughts that go threw my head when the cubs come to mind. Last year, they had the most wins in the MLB at the end of the regular season. This year, they are 21-21, 4th in the central division. They have lost seven in a row. What's going on? seriously.. And now I'm watching a cubs game right now and they have red hats on? I have no idea what is going on. The only good news I can think of is they are winning the game I'm watching right now... yeah not great but it's a start.

Then there's also the vikes. Bad news for them too. The Williams's's are suspended for four games for substance abuse after the williams's's's' brought the case to the supreme court saying that they didn't know they couldn't use it or something like that, and now they're screwed. But in better news, they didn't get Favre since he's remaining retired, and they got some good recruits. Their number one pick was an amazing receiver from florida, who is a bit of a hothead, but they need a receiver. So yeah there's the news

Movie

In AP US History we were assigned to do a project about anything in history. Me and Rog decided to make a Vietnam movie. We decided to make it accurate and went to uncle stan's military surplus to get some supplies. We asked the guy about some fatigues that we could find for our movie. He proceeded to get us fatigues worn by marines in the vietnam war. tight right? Well then we got some vietnam era grenades, and guns. The movie was turning out really legit and we couldn't wait to shoot.

Today we shot the first little bit, and lets just say it didn't turn out very well. It took us about 45 minutes for everyone to get ready, then we went out and shot for about an hour, and got nothing done. It didn't help that the cameraman didn't know how to film anything and any good scenes we would have had, turned out bad cause he did a crappy job of filming.

Besides that people just weren't focused and it was extremely unorganized. We didn't have the part we were filming written out and were just kind of making it up as we went. This seriously hindered the whole experience. I feel like once get a completely clear idea of what we want, it will be much easier to get on camera but until then......

Going out

Last week, going out concert occurred. This is always remembered for the sobbing that occurs during the show, and afterwards. This year was a little different, but not much.

As always, it was a very boring show, with tons of gifts exchanged before each performance and it got a little ridiculous. Ok I can see giving gifts to the directors and so on, but when every parent that helps with the show gets a gift too, it gets a little lengthy. Especially when it's done for an audience that really doesn't give a shit and just wants to see a show. But apart from that, it was a pretty good experience.

Our performance was pretty good except for the ballad which was AWFUL. But for the whole show we were really feeling it, and were making the best of it since we knew this would be the last time we performed together as a group and we would never perform this show again.

After the show, everyone in the group got in a horseshoe to prepare to sing the annual "Forever". It's a song about leaving, and missing everyting etc. It's a pretty emotional song, during a pretty emotional time, but surprisingly not many people were crying or getting emotional. This was a very surprising change, escpecially considering the type of year we had, and how close we all were. We were all just having a good time singing with each other, and as the seniors went up to the front to say their last goodbyes to showchoir, only a few were balling. It wasn't until after the show that everybody broke down into tears.

For the most part, I kept my composure and just supported everyone else, but I knew that next year might be a different story. But i felt bad for several of the people that had showchoir as their life, and that would never experience it again. They felt like they had lost a relative, and they showed it. They stayed onstage for almost an hour after the show was done, just crying over their loss and the memories.

Scrubs

This is a little late, like over a week late, but I still want to talk about it. Scrubs season/series finale aired 2 weeks ago and it was not fun. Not because it was a bad episode, cause it was an awesome episode. But it wasn't fun because scrubs has been my favorite show for a while now and I have greatly enjoyed the new episodes and have been dreading the end of the show.

The final episode and last few episodes of the season involved JD leaving the hospital to work at a hospital closer to his son Sam. The finale was his last day at Sacred Heart and how he pictured the rest of his life.

In the very beginning of the episode they start off by Elliot telling JD not to be too disappointed if his leaving isn't as big as he imagined. As the day goes on, it quickly shows that this will be the case as it seems Turk is the only person really taking notice and trying to make it special.

Since it is probable that this is the last episode ever, you can feel the emotion in all of the actors through several points, such as when Carla is telling JD how much she will miss him. But where I felt it the most, and where it could be one of the most emotional points in the episode is when Dr. Cox is defending JD after he leaves when an intern says he wasn't that great. He then goes on to say that he was the best doctor to ever come through their and he was also an exceptional person. He ends it by saying that JD was his friend, all as JD is listening. After this rant, JD gets his dream by giving Cox a hug.

After this occurs, he begins his walk out of the hospital as many old characters make appearances as he imagines them wishing him goodbye. When he leaves is when they kind of resolve everything. A montage begins playing as he watches and it's home video like footage of his future. After the montage gets done playing, you could see Zach Braff (JD) crying since this was his last moment ever on scrubs. JD thinks to himelf as he walks to his car, "maybe this once my fantasies will come true." implying that this montage was indeed the future. After he thinks this, Bill Lawrence, the creator and director, is seen as a janitor saying goodnight to him.



Then the credits got rolling and it was somewhat hard to watch. They played the theme song as they showed them shooting the last episode and they showed everybodies last scene. It was pretty emotional. I liked this finale, but felt like it came a little short since I wanted to know what was going to happen. I wanted JD to propose or something like that, instead of just saying, yeah this could happen.

This was supposed to be the last season of scrubs, since it is definitly Zach's, and without JD, there is no scrubs in my opinion. But I guess now they are saying that they will continue next season, maybe with most of the same characters and cast. I'm not totally sure about how I feel about this because I love scrubs, but the main thing I love about it, is JD. He is the show for me. so I think if he guest starred on it every once in a while, I would enjoy it. But they can't just continue without him and expect it to be great still.

Wolverine

This weekend I saw X-men Origins: Wolverine, the newest X-men movie in the series. What I was expecting was an intense action movie, with a pretty good story to reveal how Wolverine's, or Logan's, previous life went down. And that was exactly what I got.

I'm not going to go into too much detail to prevent giving away the entire movie, but t started off his troubled life by showing some traumatic events that ocurred during his childhood. In these early moments, you learn that Victor Creed AKA Sabertooth, is actually Logan's brother. They had a special relationship and made a pact to always look after the other one, and not to let anyone get in their way.

In the very first scenes, it showed their roles in the civil war fighting for the union, in WW1, WW2, and the Vietnam War. And that's about all I'm going to say to not reveal anything more.

One of the coolest aspects of this movie were all of the references to other mutants, including Gambit, Deadpool, and many others. I was also really surprised when the movie started and I saw all of the people that were in this movies. I knew Ryan Reynolds was deadpool and that Liev Schreiber played Sabertooth, but I didn't know Will I Am and Dominic Monaghan were in it. That was a very pleasant surprise.

Some of the effects weren't great, like his claws at a few points. There were also few really bad/lame parts including the fiery explosion of a helicopter as Wolverine walks away from the wreckage. But I didn't pay much attention to that seeing as the fights kicked a lot of ass.

Vacation

This summer I will be going on three vacations, which is a little more than usual. I will be going to the Dells (for the third time) and staying at the Chula Vista there (for the third time). yay. Then I will be going to California for 10 days right before school starts to visit family and will be seeing many great sights. That should be really fun. But my dad also made an offer to me saying that if I kept my grades descent this year and didn't blow them, he would take me anywhere in the U.S., just us two. This got me very excited and I immediately said Hawaii. He said no, as I expected and I contemplated on where to go for the longest time. I definitely wanted to go somewhere tropical, but I wasn't sure where. When I told him this, he suggested Miami where he has a friend that could show us around and take us deep sea fishing, and then maybe go to the keys. I instantly said yes, and now if I do keep my grades up and we do go, this should be an awesome trip. But after thinking about where I wanted to go, I started mentally making a list of where I want to go in the world, so here is my top 10 list of where I want to visit in my lifetime.

10. Tokyo, Japan- Awesome sights, awesome food, awesome technology awesome girls. What more could you ask for?

9. Amsterdam, Netherlands- Amazing architecture and parties.

8. London, England- Cool historic sights and British accents are sexy.

7. Rome, Italy- Catacombs would be cool, and ancient Rome would be fun to see.

6. Galapagos Islands- Incedibly unusual but beautiful islands with unique animals and landscape.
5. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil- Amazing city on the ocean. While there I would travel inward to the rainforest and chill there awhile

4. Australia's Great Barrier Reef- The miles and miles of coral off the coast of Australia is slowly disappearing from warming waters and pollution. I really want to see this life and color before it disappears forever.

3. Cape Town, South Africa- Gorgeous environment in Africa with plenty to do on this coastal city. Like Rio de Janeiro, I would go inward and tour the savannah.

2. Hawaii- Do I even need an explanation here? One of the most relaxing spots in the world, with many islands, rain forests, beautiful beaches, resorts, and much more.

1. Maldives- This chain of tiny islands is slowly disappearing due to rising waters, and it's beauty will be lost forever, so I want to take advantage of it while it's here. Just take one look at the pictures of it and you will see why it's my number one destination.

Snakes

I'm sitting in the computer lab right now during AP Lang, and Robert is sitting next to me looking up pictures of huge ass snakes, so I think I'll talk about that.

For anyone that doesn't know me that well, I have a phobia of snakes. I'm not sure what that's called so I'll look it up now. Ophidiophobia is what it's called. I don't know why I'm afraid of snakes, but it's almost more of a recent thing. Snakes used to just creep me out and I didn't like them. But as I got older, I watched Indiana Jones more and other action movies filled with snake pits, snake bites, and other scary images. Now,just the thought of them make me cringe, and when snake shows come on, I start squirming in my seat.

One time I stepped on a snake, and yelled ran away. There's my snake story. Very anticlimactic, I know. Here are some sights that scare the shit out of me.

Well that was extremely painful for me so I hope you enjoy it.

You Creepin Creeper

If there is one word that is the most overused word in the English language by teenage girls, it has to be the word creeper. Yes it even surpasses "like". Now this in itself doesn't bother me, and I could easily look past it if it wasn't for the context it was used.

Now here are some definitions from urban dictionary to know what a creeper really is.

A person who does weird things, like stares at you while you sleep, or looks at you for hours through a window. usually a close friend or relative. you know right away if that person is a creeper or does creeper things. it is not hard to spot the creeper.

Someone who views your profile (multiple times) without saying anything.

A person and or creature who stalks/ creeps around/follows/ eavesdrops/ harasses/ lurks/ peeps/slinks/ sneaks/prowls/ hangs about/ skulks etc.

You get the jist. It's a stalker essentially. Now if this word were used in the correct way, it wouldn't even get used a quarter of how much it does today. Want to know the reason? Girls have gradually gotten more naive, and are now trained to perceive flirting as creeping.

Now here is the definition of flirting: a form of human interaction whereby one person subtlety indicates a romantic and/or sexual interest towards another. It can consist of conversation, body language, or brief physical contact. It may be one-sided or reciprocated (encouraged).

Now clearly these are very different and are heading in two completely different directions. But in case that was too dificult to understand, let me try to make this simple for you. When a guy likes you, he talks to you and tries to show his interest and see if you feel the same way. And when he's saying stuff you think is creeperish, it's NOT because he's stalking you and planning on raping you.

This rant wasn't triggered because a girl recently accused me of creeping. It's just been a buildup of annoyance of several girls constantly complaining about a creeper that's bothering them, or naming practically every guy a creeper. It just kind of pisses me off because being a creeper is not a good image, and especially sucks when it's not true.

The funny part, is that most girls that accuse guys of creepin, are the biggest flirts in the world. They draw them in, show them their (fake) interest, then talk about how stalkerish they are. Kind of a bitch thing to do if you ask me.

Draft TIme

The NFL Draft was this weekend and it was pretty interesting. I only really care about Hawkeye players that were drafted, and players the Vikings picked up, so that's all I'm gonna write about.

I was a little surprised about how some of the players went. Shonn was the first pick in the third round to the Jets, and Bradley Fletcher was the pick after him to the Rams. Then Olsen went in the fourth round to the Broncos and Brandon Myers in the sixth I think to the Raiders. That left King and Kroul undrafted. This kind of blew me away. Everything else generally went how I thought exept Myers who definitely surprised me going that high. But I thought King was for sure, and Kroul was a probably. Kroule ended up signing as a free agent with the Jets, but as of now, King is still not signed with anyone which is pretty disappointing.

The Vikings got five players from the draft. Their first round selection was a wide reciever named Percy Harvin from Florida, and is supposed to be a great reciever. They also got an awesome Lineman from Oklahoma to fill the gap at Ritht Tackle, and a speedy corner from Georgia. The last two selections were a Linebacker and Safety, and I don't know anything about them. But seeing as the Vikings have the best Linebacking unit in the League, I'm not sure why they picked up the linebacker.

Vids

I've seen a few videos lately that have shocked the hell out of me. All of them had to do with talents of people. Two of them were from Britains Got Talent, and one was just a random video from Yahoo! that I saw.

The first two were from Britains Got Talent, but YouTube won't let me post them for some reason, so I'll do my best to explain them. The first one I saw is a huge sensation and you have most likely seen it. Her name is Susan Boyle and she is a very intersting character. She looks like the typical crazy cat lady, and looks about sixty even though she's 47. But then she sang and captivated everyone in the audience. She had a very surprising voice for how she looked. Then the next episode a 12 year old kid came on and completely dominated the competition. His first song was a song by Amy Winehouse or however you spell it, but then Simon stopped him and said picked a very bad song and let him sing a Michael Jackson song. The moment he begins singing, everyones jaw dropped, including mine. He is definitely the best singer I have ever seen at 12 years old.


This is the other one. It's a band named Recess and the lead singer is 9 years old, the guitarist is 11, keyboard player is 13, the drummer is 11, and the bass player is 12.

CUBBIES

It is now baseball season and obviously with that, comes the cubs. They happen to be my favorite baseball team, so I will blog about them.

So they're doing pretty good. They are 5-3 and are off to a good start again. They didn't have a good preseason, but that doesn't really matter with baseball.

They went 2-1 against Houston, 2-1 against Milwaukee, and 1-1 against Colorado. Now they have a series against St. Louis which they need to win to pull ahead of them in the central division.

Rated R for Retarded

So Spencer said he was going to blog about this, but I have yet to see it posted. So i will go ahead and do a post about it.

A few weeks ago I went to I Love You Man with a group of friends. It is a very good/funny movie, and I strongly recommend it. I'm even going to go far enough to say it is one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time (which isn't saying much considering I haven't seen many funny movies in a while). But anyway, coming back to the story, one of the people in this group happened to be a 16 year old. We'll just call him..... Sam. And this is a R rated flick. So he just bought a ticket to another movie, then slipped in with us when it was time for us to go in. Well obviously someone noticed that Sam was with us, but had a ticket to a different movie. So they added the two up and came to the realization that he was planning on sneaking in....Genius!

So about a half hour into the movie, two people, one of which was a manager, came up to us and asked to see our ticket. The first four of us all showed her our tickets with no problem, but Sam had no ticket to this movie to show her. So he said that he threw his ticket away, but then she asked for his ID. She saw he was sixteen and he told her that his mom bought him a ticket, and she said that was impossible since she would have had to come in with him. Well as you can probably guess, this led to him getting kicked out, and they forced him to go to the movie that he bought a ticket to. Well Spencer would have none of this and promptly got up to go fetch him. To my surprise, in ten minutes I saw them both reappear, but this time Sam wearing a different shirt. Spencer sat in our section, and Sam went a few rows up from us to remain out of sight. Or so he thought. In about five minutes the same lady came back and made a beeline for him. I don't know how they saw him. I wouldn't have. But somehow psychic psycho lady knew and she escorted him out of the whole theater this time. Sam later texted us saying he was leaving because she had called the cops on him. THE COPS.

This pissed me, and didn't really make sense to me for a few reasons. The first was that while this lady was busy kicking out my sixteen year old friend, she was leaning over a six year old watching the same movie. This just doesn't make much sense to me. I mean this kid is hearing stuff WAY to inappropriate for him, but it's okay for him to watch? Yet Sam who understands all of this stuff and is not being harmed in any way by watching at, needs to be kicked out and have the cops called on him? What also pisses me off is... Why do they care? He's a few months away from being seventeen, so what danger does he cause this theater? Especially this one. I mean I can see some other theaters doing this, but for Wehrenberg to do it is just hypocritical. I mean for a theater who has employees and managers that do drugs while working, it's a little pathetic that they care that much and would go far enough to call the cops on him. So they can do very illegal acts while on the job, but can't turn the other way for a sixteen year old who is just slightly breaking the rules? Hmmmmmm.............

Vids

So I saw a couple of videos lately that I wanted to comment on. Both have to do with music in public and both would be pretty tight to see. This one would definitely be crazy to see. It's obviously pre choreographed and was planned, but if you were a spectator, it would be insane. A bunch of random people breaking out into dance? That's intense. Especially since it was pretty well done.



I want this flight attendent. He can rap, he's fun, and I don't even know what else, but he would obviously make your flight a party.

Basketball Woes

So anyone that's been paying attention to Iowa Basketball knows the problem that has presented itself a few weeks ago. The Iowa basketball team lost four players. And not just any four. Jake Kelly, Jeff Peterson, Jermain Davis, and David Palmer are all transferring to different schools. Thats almost a third of the team, and some of them were key members.

Jeff Peterson and Jake Kelly were key members of the team and led the offense. Both were point gaurds and switched off starting. Toward the end of the season, Jake Kelly became the leading scorer and had several games with twenty points or more. He led the offense to several wins and is a huge loss. Jermain Davis was also a good backup player. Palmer isn't that big of a deal because he didn't play that much, but he also could have been a good backup. Now we need to make up some of our losses and get some good recruits, in good numbers.

Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy

Scenes like the one above are common in Cirque Dreams: Jungle Fantasy. It is a show that was seen on Broadway, and then diffused to other cities around the country, including St. Louis which is where I happened to see it over Spring Break. It's kind of a rip off of Cirque Du Soleil, and not as good. But that doesn't mean it wasn't impressive, because I'm not saying that at all.

It started out with kind a funny beginning, much like Cirque Du Soleil shows do. Two plants went up on stage, and it was kind of obvious to tell they were from their build. The guy looked very athletic, had huge arms, and had an interesting outfit on. The girl that went up just had a perfect body and had to be a dancer or gymnast. Sure enough after the little stint they did, she ran backstage and the guy stayed up there.

The show wasn't as good for a few reasons. One, some of the acts were a little messy, such as the first one which was a jump roping act. They messed up a LOT in it and it didn't look very good at all. Second, the stage they were on was not as good as Cirque Du Soleil stages. Their stages are designed for their show and give you a much better look at it and help the feel. This was just a regular theater, and although it was an amazing theater, it still wasn't a theater for that type of production.

What did strike me about the show though, was how certain people did much more than one thing. The main guy for instance, was in several acts as a main guy, whether it was jump roping, doing crazy acrobatics, or spinning big wire cubes (which you have to trust me, it was really cool).

What impressed me most though was when three guys that had to weigh 250 pounds each came on stage. They had the same role as the three guys in the picture above did. I saw one of the biggest guys get down into a squatting position, then another big guy stand on his knees. A guy come up from behind the guy standing and grabs his hand over the guys shoulder and lifts himself off the ground, with one hand. He then pulls himself onto the guys shoulder to stand there. That's two, 250 guys standing on one guys knees while doing a squat. It was crazy.

So it wasn't Cirque Du Soleil, but it was still amazing, and if you have the chance, I recommend watching it.

Nashville- Vacation

Okay now on to the actual trip which was a drastic change from the competition. Unlike that rigged, political, biased competition, the trip was great. Yeah the bus ride was long, but it was well worth it. We got to our hotel after a twelve hour ride and my first impression was definitely a good impression. I first saw the hotel and mistook it for a mall. A mall the size of Mall of America. The place is huge. We walked in, and i could see that in the middle of the hotel was a garden/rain forest area and it was so cool. We then visited our room which was also one of the coolest rooms I've been in. It was complete with a comfortable modern looking bed, nice furniture, and a high def T.V. After admiring the room we head out to the main section. We later learned that it was actually three sections. The scenery was incredible with waterfalls, fountains and animals in the place. All three were rain forest sections with different restaurants and stores in them. There were probably 5 or 6 restaurants in the place, including a Jack Daniels, Haagen Daaz, an amazing sushi place, and more.


After the preliminary round, we got to go the mall right next to the Grand Ole Opry. While there we went to the oxygen bar which was a huge waste of twenty dollars, even though it was relaxing. We also went to an extremely impressive Bose demonstration and I got some nice Oakley swim trunks. I was about to buy some expensive glasses since they were all on sale but I figured if I did my parents would castrate me. I also went to forever 21 with some people which I felt gay for going into. That is until I got to the small men's section where they had some really cool shirts, and I ended up buying two. The highlight of the day was definitely going to Dave & Buster's though. We had a descent chicken meal there, and then got going on the games which was a blast. We all had a 10 dollar game card to go crazy with. We started out by playing some shooting and racing games, then got started on trying to get as many tickets as possible. We ended up getting about 1,000, before we realized that we really didn't want or need them. So we began our search through the place looking for the best candidate to give our tickets to. We spotted a young kid of about five or six years old and decided he was worthy of our charity. We asked if he wanted the tickets and his dad very enthusiastically said yes. I think he was more excited than the kid was, but we felt good about our charity none the less. When we got back to the hotel, a kid down the hall decided to have a rave and he set up a strobe light, pumped up the techno, turned the lights off, and we went crazy. This lasted for about a half hour with about 3o kids in a small, hot room, before everyone called it quits for the night.

After finals the next day we went to The Wild Horse Saloon, which I thought would be fun, but maybe a little awkward. But that was before I knew what they had scheduled. They ended up having a local band play for us, and they were nothing short of amazing. They did a bunch of country stuff at first which I wasn't too excited about, but it was still pretty fun for country. That's when they broke into Jessie's girl and the crowd erupted. I was right up at the front of the stage and it was a blast. The lead singer then showed his vocal skills when he went into a few Journey songs, and sounded exactly like Steve Perry. He could even sing as high as him which is very impressive for anyone to do. After a few more country songs, they finished the set with Don't Stop Believing, which was pretty much perfect. I think that was probably the highlight of the trip. The only other thing that could compete with that was just hanging out with everyone else in the group. The trip was really fun mainly because everybody got along and became friends over the trip, and that made for some good times.

Nashville- Show Choir

Over spring break Happiness went to Nashville, Tennessee to compete. I'm going to make this a two part blog, first about the competition, then about the trip. This one, as you could probably guess from the title, this one is going to be about the competition.

So we got there pretty excited and ready to compete. We were all psyched and felt good about competing. The first night we got there we went to the Grand Ole Opry where the competetion was taking place, and watched Buffalo Grove and were pretty impressed. We also watched a middle school that one their division, and were nothing short of amazed. They could have probably beaten our prep groups.

The next day, before we competed we watched about three of four more groups. No one was really that impressed with any of them and that psyched us up even more. Our warm up went okay and the same with our performance. It wasn't anything amazing, but it was still pretty good. We had some intonation problems in the ballad as always, but not that bad. We easily got into finals and then went back to our hotel to learn the scores. When there we got good news, and bad news. The bad news was that we were in fifth. The good news was that if they had judged it the way they were going to in finals, we would be in second. That psyched us up a lot and we learned we were several points behind because of intonation, and there we made a decision. We decided the bass would come in earlier on the ballad, which would almost fix it completely.

The next day, before we headed back Ziegler told us that he listened to the judge tapes, and the biggest complaints, were easy fixes. We got the changes down in the warm up, and everyone felt great. We walked onto the stage and did our show. The best we had ever done it. We nailed it and the bass in the ballad helped dramatically. We felt on top of the world. We went back into the theater to watch the other groups go, and surprisingly they all got worse. Mt. Zion was absolutely terrible and their choregraphy was so off. Buffalo Grove was still really good, but not as good as they had been Thursday. So when awards came around, we were expecting a pretty high placing. Sixth place....... Danville. Fifth place....... Kennedy.



We were all pretty speechless at what had just been announced. We had done a killer show, and at least three of the groups that beat us, we are clearly better than, and they even had a worse show than their preliminary. With that judging system we moved down from second to fifth, after improving and the groups around us getting worse. Make sense to you? Cause it makes none to me.

WATCHMEN

So over the weekend I saw Watchmen. Twice actually. The first time with a couple of friends, including one who works at the theatre and got me and another friend in since we weren't seventeen yet. I haven't read the book, but what I saw Saturday really impressed me. Everything about it was great and there weren't many parts that I disliked.... Actually I can't think of one part. The visuals, the acting, the story, everything. And from what I've heard, the movie followed the comic frame for frame which is really cool and you almost never see.

The movie starts out showing the death of a man named Eddie Blake, later revealed as "The Comedian". He was a member of the Watchmen, a group of costumed crimefighters bent on making the world a better place... At least at one time. They were officialy put out of the job after a law was passed banning their use. That didn't stop all of them though. Rorschach is a crazy, dillusional vigilante bent on fighting crime on his own terms. Then Dr. Manhattan and The Comedian were working for the government to continue fighting for the military.

After The Comedians death, Rorschach begins to investigate in his paranoid, crazy way, and he eventually uncovers a terrible plot to end war. Wait, a terrible plot to end war? How could it be so bad? Well it is. But I don't really feel like telling you so I'll just let you watch it.

The one thing that surprised me most after watching it was how messed up and disturbing it is. I was expecting something along the lines of 300, but ended up getting something along the lines of Seven. It was gruesome, twisted, and pretty sad at parts. But that just added to the movie and showed the true nature of some people, the side that we never want to see.

The guy that played Rorschach was amazing. He had a Heath Ledger like performance (although still not nearly as good) and portrayed the role perfectly. He was the only real stand out actor in the movie, but the other actors didn't bother me. He was just so much better, because his role was so messed up and now I'm rambling so I'll wrap this up. Watchmen is a good movie for people with good stomachs and who aren't easily offended and I recommend it.

P.S. It will be a very awkward movie to watch with your parents. cough cough silk spectre

Jake Kelly?

So my dad and I went to the Iowa-Penn St. basketball game early saturday afternoon. Neither of us were expecting much because of our history this year. As we crowded into our not so great corner seats, we excitedly waited for the tip off. Penn St. got the tip off and the game got underway. Unexpectedly, Iowa played pretty well and was ahead for most of the half until Penn St. tied it up at 24 before the half was over.

We were really excited for the next half after the game we had been seeing so far. Cyrus Tate and Jaryd Cole or however you spell it were having great games- Tate offensively and Cole defensively. Kelly was also doing good with something like eleven points in the first half. We got the ball again and after two possessions no points had been scored. As Kelly dribbled it back up court slowly, he yelled something over to one of the Iowa coach's and they called a timeout. He then ran off court into the locker rooms, and returned within a minuted.

" Pee break I guess." my dad said laughing.

I laughed along and didn't think much of it. The second half continued on almost exactly like the first half. Hawkeye's did very good for most of the half and were leading by eigth with like three minutes left. That's when they made a series of very costly mistakes and before we knew it, they were down by two with thirty seconds left. I don't remember who scored but someone did to tie it up and send it into overtime 54-54.

Penn St started off with the ball in overtime, but it was dead even between the teams and they tied again at 61 sending it into double overtime. In this overtime they were still all tied up until Jake Kelly hit a three with 55 seconds left to pull ahead three. After that, Penn St. had to begin fouling and we hit the free throws and won the game 75-67.

Jake Kelly finished with 22 points, and 11 assists. That's like the fourth game in a row with over twenty points, and what's even more impressive is what I found out after the game. I read the next day that Kelly was actually sick that game and had a fever of 101 degrees. That one timeout early in the second half, he had told the coach he was going to puke so they called a timeout for him to do so. That's pretty good to score 22 points when you're that sick.

Linn Mar

This weekend our show choir went to urbandale and competed. We didn't do that great for us, but we still managed to pull up a first runner-up, only behind Ankeny 30 points. That's pretty good. Linn-Mar happened to be there and was second in the country. They got fourth. So when the rankings got updated, they were twelfth, and we're sixteenth. Make sense to you? It sure doesn't to me. We have a second, first, and second. They have a first and fourth.

Then to add on to my ill feelings towards Linn Mar, my old school, our basketball team is getting beaten by them by thirty points right now. We are undefeated and second in the state and they are third with a loss. It's a little dissappointing, especially since they've beaten us for the last three years. I'm beginning to develop a hatred towards them.

Why I Blog

Because I was assigned to. But i guess that doesn't really help anyone so I will say what I think about it.

Blogging is great for some people, and not to good for others. It really depends on what type of person you are and if you enjoy writing. With me not being a writing person, I don't like it all that much. But that doesn't mean I don't see the appeal and wonder of it.

The best part is, it can be anything you want. You can review stuff on it, complain about stuff, use it as a diary, or do anything else on it. Yes you can also just have a diary or notebook. But with those, people don't see it unless you show them, and you also don't get comments unless you show someone. Blogs can let anybody in the world see what you're writing and put there own opinions on it or give you advice if needed. And if the privacy thing is an issue for you, you can just set the privacy setting to allow only you to view it.

You also can't put videos into a journal and pictures would be a pain to insert to it. Well blogs solve that problem. Picture's, video's, you name it.

I use mine as a kind of update for Hawkeye fans and to express my opinions about what's going on in the program. I also took about other random tidbits in my life and it's a much better alternative in my opinion then keeping journals.

Kids

After reading one of my friends blog, I saw that he used his blog to vent his anger towards the world on it, so I think I'm going to try that for a post.

I'm sick of kids. It's nothing against them, but there are just too many of them. Maybe I'm just sick of parents. After all it's their ignorance to keep having kids. I'm not talking about all parents and saying that no one should have kids. That would obviously end our species. I'm talking about people having eight or more kids. Why would you do that? Religion. Most people do it because of religion. They read the bible and it says go now and populate the earth. Yeah that was over two thousand years ago. WHEN THE EARTH WAS NOT FREAKEN POPULATED! DAMNIT PEOPLE, NOW IT IS NOW OVERPOPULATED SO USE YOUR BRAINS THAT WERE GIVEN TO YOU AND USE A CONDOM!

The most recent case of ignorance and irresponsibility is from Nadya Suleman, who just had octuplets. Now I'm not mad about this because of the octuplets. You can't really control that. I'm mad because now she has FOURTEEN kids. That means she already had six. Now if this was a normal case, I would have just said fourteen kids? How about you use up some more of the earth's resources and hurt it more. But no. She's going to be using up the earth's, and our governments resources for her kids. Now why would that be? How about because she 33 year old single mother that is unemployed. And before these kids, she was already getting $490 in food stamps. Now taxpayers are only going to have to pay more for her and her kids because she's not intelligent or responsible enough to know when enough is enough. Honestly how do you get that stupid? You're doing good for no one. Not the earth, your species, your government, or your kids. They will grow up in poverty since you now will hardly be able to provide for any of them. Birth is not a miracle when you're kids are brought into a life where they are set up for failure. I'm not saying because you're poor you will fail in life, but statistics do show that people in poverty don't do as well in life.

This situation makes me just about as mad as the Duggar's, but not quite. The Duggar's just had their last kid this past December. Their EIGHTEENTH FRICKIN KID. That's just pathetic. I went to their web site and it's pretty clear their loaded as seen with their huge mansion. But it's also easy to see that their hardcore christian. That's what makes me so mad about this whole situation. They make Christians look bad because these people are too dumb to see that not everything is supposed to be taken literally. It talks about how to treat your slaves in the bible. Does that mean that we should get slavery? These people probably think so. So when it says go populate the earth when it was sparsely populated, it probably meant go ensure the survival of your species by populating it enough for everyone to be safe and live in harmony with the world. Not to start overrunning it and destroying it, and once it's close to it's breaking point, continue to repopulate by having eighteen kids. Do the Duggar's expect us to go to another planet? No. I can almost guarantee you that they say, oh well my kids won't be around long enough to feel the impact. The same people that take the bible so literally and go to the extreme, are the same people that don't give a shit about the environment and don't care about what God gave to us. Oh it's not my problem they say. I'm not saying that is the case with everyone, but I've seen it way too often and I'm willing to bet that that is the Duggar's opinion for it.

MAGIC!!! continued

The next trick he did involved someone from the audience so he pulled up a mom. He then handed her a paintball gun and explained what was going to happen. She had five shots, but had a hard time listening to directions and Tim had to repeat them over and over again. It was funny at first, but then her stupidity started to get annoying. She was supposed to shoot the paintballs at a huge piece of paper with a lifesize sketching of a person on it. When she finally took the shots, she missed her first two and then landed the last three, two pink, one green.... I think. He then went to open a box with a lock on it that had been sitting on the side of the stage the whole time. He took out a key and approached it. After it was opened, a small piece of paper with the same image on it, and it mirraculously had the excact same arrangement of colors and they were in the same spot. As the lady took her seat, the croud applauded loudly.

Tim then announced that the next trick was his favorite to perform, and that caught everybodies attention. He grabbed a table from offstage and set it in the middle of the stage. He also had a cloth in his hands and set that over the table, and put a box on top of that. He picked up two corners of the cloth, braced himself, and the table lifted up off the ground and began floating, with him just holding the cloth out from it. He would take one hand off a corner, lift up the other sides to show there was nothing underneath, and it would keep floating with him only holding onto one corner. After making it float for a bit longer, he set it down and moved to the next trick.

This was a card trick and he said he would need someone to pick a card for him. He called out to an old woman in the crowd and she replied "The ten of queens!" Apparently she had been asleep and he then asked her to join him on stage. So she did and picked a card. She then held the card as they went back to back and he got his big drawing pad and began to draw the card. He turned to the audience and held up his picture and it was.... the shape of a card with nothing on it. "Smartass" i thought as I laughed along with everyone else. He then transformed that card on the paper into a deck and held the pad up and told the audience to watch. Slowly, a card started to creep up from the deck on the paper and she held up her card to find that they were matching cards. It got even better when he went to rip the paper off the pad and we saw that the card was now drawn onto the paper since we could see the ink had leaken through onto the back of the sheet. It was truly impressive.

Then Tim announced the finally was coming up and he sat down on a stool as a blue light was cast down on him. Music was playing that sounded like it was from the polar express and he began telling a story about how he told a kid he could maked snow. He took out a napkin, folded into quarters and began ripping edges off to make the paper snowflake. He then went on with the story and went on with how he then showed the kid this: and he began a rapid motion with his hands out of our view, as little shreds of paper began flying up from his hands. And I mean flying. Hundreds were shooting up and it lasted for a good thirty seconds. It was a perfect ending to a great show.

MAGIC!!!

Our choir held a fundraiser Tuesday night, but not in the typical fundraiser way. It was a magic show. And not just a lame cheap magic show. It was a legit, Las Vegas magic show, with a legit, Las Vegas magician. Do you know how I know it was legit? Well besides the tricks, he had a panther, and a leopard to help him perform. That ended up being the only flaw with the show: then animals weren't allowed to perform because they didn't get a license front the city in time. Everyone was very bummed out because of that, but it was still great. And it was probably the some of the funniest two hours of my life and I was laughing the entire time. That sounds odd for a magic show, but it was extremely funny.

But the show started with some simple tricks; tricks with doves and ducks. Making them appear, disappear, then change species. This was very impressive but i had seen it all before, and was shown how in movies like the prestige (although in that movie, to do the trick they crush the bird and kill it and I was hoping they weren't doing that with these birds). After the bird stuff he put a cloth over a big ball on a stand in the middle of the stage after a few seconds he took the cloth off and his assistant appeared inside the ball. We were all amazed as she stepped out and walked up next to him. He finally spoke and told us about the himself and the show. He informed us that it was a comedy, magic show and that when his tricks were right, it was magic, but if he messed up, then it was comedy and we should laugh to save him embarrassment.

Now I'm going to do my best to type everything the way it happened, and in the order but I'm not sure how exact it will be since the show was so overwhelming that I can't remember everything. After the whole dove routine, he took out a huge pad of paper and drew a bowling ball on it and wrote around it "Bowling Ball". He closed the pad and started moving it around and all of a sudden a big lump was in it. He moved the lump towards the ground, and a bowling ball fell out of the pad. Our jaws dropped at about the same rate as the ball and when he opened the pad, the words "Bowling Ball" remained but the picture of the ball was missing. Then he called my friend's uncle up to the stage to help him make sure the bowling ball was real. It was and the magician told him to throw the ball up to him and so he did. But then the magician dodged it and scolded him for throwing it at him, bringing in the comedy aspect to the show.

The next trick brought out the star of the show, which happened to be in the audience. He was a four year old named Sam. He was selected when the magician, who i've decided I'm going to call Tim, took a tin can with a stick around the audience hitting the can. He would hand the stick over to a few select audience members to try to repeat the sound he had just made. Four of them failed before he came to Sam who did the noise perfectly. Tim then took a few steps back and held it out for him to hit it again. He did and then Tim took a few more steps back, leading him to the stage little at a time, in the same way a person would lead their dog somewhere using treats. When they finally got on Stage and the following conversation took place.
"Well what's your name?" Tim asked
"Sam"
"How old are you?"
in a tired voice accompanied by a sigh "Four."
" Oh really? Too bad you have to be five to be on stage. Hey Sam how old are you?"
In the same sigh, "Four."
"Oh? Too bad you have to five to be on stage. Hey Sam how old are you?"
Sighing "Four."
It could possibly be one of funniest conversations I've ever seen a little kid have. Tim laughed then pointed at another girl from the audience to come up and join them. She did look about five, maybe four. Her name was Emily. He then said what he wanted them to do was use their imagination, grab a floating (make believe) coin from mid-air and put it in the tin can. He demonstrated and we misteriously heard a clink inside the can. Then Emily tried it. She reached out, closed her fist, and let it go over the can: another clink. Then it was Sam's turn. Tim told Sam to reach out and grab a coin to place it in the can. So what does he do? He reaches his hand inside the can, grabs the coin and drops it back in it. Tim tried to tell him what to do but he kept grabbing the coin from inside and dropping it back in. When he produced a few more laughs, he smiled and kind of spasmed, where he slapped his hands against his legs and shook back and forth which produced a bigger laugh. He was just so cute! I feel gay now but whatever. He did finally get it right, but when he dropped the invisible coin in, no noise was made. Until Tim put the can behind him under his butt and tugged his arm. We misteriously heard a coin drop. After a few more of these tries he sent the kids back to their seats to begin another trick, which I'll get to in the next post.

Sixth?

Today the show choir rankings came out and according to them, we're sixth in the country. When i first saw them I was ecstatic. We were the sixth best showchoir in the country! But when I looked at the rest of the list, my excitement quickly deminished. I looked at who was first, and saw it was a school I've never heard of. Second was Linn Mar and following them in third was Urbandale. Two schools separated us and Urbandale that I also didn't recognize. Now I'm not saying Linn Mar is bad, but Urbandale is definitely better. They've won two competitions, Linn Mar has won one. Urbandale's were both really hard, and Linn Mar's wasn't that difficult.

As I looked down the page I also was amazed at the fact that Washington is 14th and Totino Grace is in the 90's and Bemidji is in the eighties. Washington missed the finals at Linn Mar by a lot and Bemidji and Totino were both in it. Wash did win one competition, but it was against nobody schools. Those other schools are a lot better than Wash and everyone knows it. Wash people will even admit it. Although I do think some of the rankings are accurate like ours, Ankeny's (who is 13th), and a few others. But I feel as the year goes on, they will become much much more accurate. Only two or three competitions in, it's pretty much impossible to even get a close guess at the right rankings. But there is still no possible way that Linn Mar should have ended up in second. All of the numbers point to Urbandale, so I don't know why they would be in front of them.

Super Bowl Commercials

So I was finally really impressed with the Super Bowl Ads and that's good because it makes it a show you never need to stop watching. You're equally excited for the game as you are for the ads. But there were several good ones this year.

I think the funniest one was one for NBC shows and it was about people who were losing their butt's and had to go to the hospital. They were suffering from "LMAO" or laughing my ass off. It was really funny and I laughed for a good time after that.

There were also several movie commercials and really good ones at that. One was a Transformers 2 preview that had every one in the room hushed as soon as it began. Excitment flowed through the room as it played. Also there was a preview for a GI Joe movie starring Dennis Quaid, and it looked really good. The action looked really good for a story like that. And finally there was a preview for Monsters vs. Aliens that was really only good for the 3D.

Along with that preview there were two other 3D commercials. one was a preview for Chuck tomorrow which is going to all 3D. But the real good one was a Sobe one which was really noticeably 3D through the whole ad and it had several instances where it looked as if something was flying towards you.

The most common ads were either Dorito's ads, Coke ads, or Budweiser ads. The Dorito's and Coke ones were all extremely funny, but not very memorable. I only remember that they were funny. The Budweiser ones on the other hand, were all very memorable. There were all the Clydesdale horse ones, which were funny, but I just don't really like those commercials cause I don't like those horses. But the Bud Light ones are hilarious. There was one with an office guy suggesting they don't have bud light at their meetings, then proceeded to get thrown out the building. There was also another with Conan O Brien that I don't want to even try to describe. Lets just say he decided to do an ad, in the ad, that was a little risky.

There were several others that you can find here and you will enjoy pretty much every single one. http://video.yahoo.com/network/100076996

Pittsburgh

Superbowl 43 was won by Pittsburgh. yay... Bear with me because this post my be a little angry since i HATE pittsburgh. I didn't really realize i hated them so much until this game when i started despising them more and more. Watching it as I type, I think the only player I truly like on the team is Hines Ward. That's it. But that's not to say it wasn't a good game. It was a great game. An amazing game. Maybe one of the best in Superbowl history. There were hard hits, long plays, a great comeback, and a few broken records.

The only score in the first quarter was a field goal by Pittsburgh. In the second quarter is when they started to pull away. They scored on a one yard run to bring it to 10-0. Then the Cardinals scored on a short pass play to bring it to 10-7. It was looking for bright for the Cards when they were in the redzone with a few seconds left in the half. That's when Pittsburgh's Harrison intercepted Warner and ran it back 100 yards for a touchdown. That was the longest play in superbowl history. It was not a good ending to the half and the score at the end was 17-7.

The third quarter made it only worse with Pittsburgh kicking a field goal to widen the lead to 20-7. Then in the fourth quarter, the Cardinals got another touchdown from a pass from Warner to Fitzgerald. Then after a penalty on the goal line, Pittsburgh was given a safety to bring the score 20-16. Then with two minutes left, Fitzgerald caught a long ball for a touchdown, 20-23. If they won, it would be the biggest comeback in superbowl history. Too bad that then the Steelers drove down the ball in a minute and a half to score again with a pass to Santonio Holmes in triple coverage. When Cardinals tried to pull off one more drive, the ball was hit from Warner's hand for a fumble and the end of the game

Super Ad

The Superbowl is one of the most if not the most watched program in the United States annually. But most Americans don't tune in for the game. Most watch for the little breaks from the game : the commercials. Over the years they have gotten better and better and they have also gotten that much more expensive.

This year some companies have taken that to their advantage. Miller is doing a one second add. Yup that's right. One second. They're hoping this generates publicity and becomes an extremely efficient ad while only spending a little bit of money. It consists of a worker in Miller talking about how expensive the commercials are, then saying he's going to make a one second commercial. Do you know what, i'll just post it.



Now the beer commercial won't necessarily be funny, but I do think it will be effective. The dog adoption one was pretty funny. It was the actors and actresses that made it though. It wasn't a funny commercial in itself, but their performances made it funny. I didn't think the career one was that funny until the end with the small animals bit. The Koala Bears "oh my" did make me laugh.

Last year I was really disappointed with the commercials and didn't find hardly any of them funny. But this intro does give me some hope and I'm thinking I may be laughing a little more this year.

Respect

So one of the things I like about being in Happiness Inc. is the respect. Sure Showchoir doesn't get that much respect from other kids in the school, but among other showchoirs, Happiness Inc. is the most respected. We have a reputation for having some of the best sportsmanship and being the kindest people at competitions. We are also starting to get a reputation for being the most fun.

We always respect other groups and don't talk bad about anyone. That's what started our reputation and has helped it continue for 20 years. Our director constantly gets emails and phone calls about our good sportsmanship and we always hear kids say they wish they were in our group, not only because we're fun, but also because we're nice. Recently a kid told me that that was gay. Not even being the rebel among showchoirs, but being the goody goods. But I don't see it that way. If you were that type of rebel, you'd have to be a dick and then everyone would hate you and look down on you. Now I don't know but that doesn't sound too fun to me. I'd much rather be liked and looked up to.

And we are kind of rebels and that's where the fun comes in. When in awards or before a performance of another group, we randomly break into cheers or chants. Sure it annoys people, but most people like to get involved and just have fun with it. Also when not watching a group or getting ready, we go back to our room and use my speakers to play (blast) music through the halls. With the subs turned up all the way kids from other groups eagerly would come over and stand and listen with us and a few would dance even. But if we were dicks to everyone, noone would want to over to us, and the competitions would be much less entertaining.

Now when i look back on the person that said that, I feel bad for them. If they think being rude and obnoxious will get them liked, or will help them have fun, their life will not be a great one. Having fun and being nice go hand in hand. If you treat people crappy, their not going to want anything to do with you and that's what this reputation is about. We don't want to be the group that wins, but is despised because of our attitudes.

Hawkeye update

So this weekend was a great weekend for the Hawks. They picked up four more recruits, all two stars. Included are two tight ends, a quarterback, and an offensive lineman. There isn't much information about them, but this brings the total of Iowa commits up to 16 which is a good start. We should hopefully add about three or four more to get a real good class. We have two four stars: RB Brandon Wengher, and WR Keenan Davis. Both are great athletes and should fit into the team very nicely.

Basketball isn't going that good though. We're 12-8 and 10th in Big Ten play. That's out of 11. It's not like they're getting blown out every game though. They've come close to beating a few really good teams, but then blown it in the end to lose. They lost to 24th ranked Ohio State by three. They lost to 22nd ranked Minnesota by three. I'm starting to see a pattern. They have good players, and a good team, but they are just way too inconsistent. But it's still a turn around from last year when they had a losing record.

Wrestling on the other hand has continued it's dominance from last year. From what I know they have won every meet and are undefeated. They are ranked number one in the country and they have two wrestlers that are nunber one in the country for their weight class-Brent Metcalf and Ales Tsirtsis. Their are also five others in the top five. That's good.

So all of my teams are good and are where i want them to be. Todd Lickliter is in the process of rebuilding the basketball program, so I'm not to worried about that. The football team should be great next year, and Stanzi is even projected as a sleeper Heisman candidate. I don't know what that means but it sounds good. Also the wrestling team is dominating.

Vikings are going to be okay I think. Once they figure out the quarterback situation I think they are going to be a big Superbowl candidate. The defense is set, the RB is awesome, and the line is descent if not better than that.

Kennedy teams are doing pretty good. At least the ones i follow which is Basketball and Football. The basketball team is ranked 2nd in the state and is undefeated. The football team has the sophomores coming up, which their team has dominated everyone in the league for the past two years.

And finally Show Choir. If you read the last post you know how our season is going. Great, and rankings come out February second so i'll post about that and give the results

Show Choir

Now that the football season is over, there's going to be a huge shortage of material to write about. So I'm going to transfer over for a few posts and talk about something else that's a big part of my life: Show Choir. Sure some people think it's a little "gay" with all of the dancing and singing that's occurring. But it's not for everybody. Some guys that call it gay also like touching sweaty guys in skin tight clothes and trying to pin them to the ground to get on top of them. And that's cool. I'm not calling them gay. But anyways back to Show Choir. I'm in the varsity Show Choir, Happiness Inc. We have a great show and so far have had a great season with a surprising lack of fighting amongst others in the group. But the season is already well under the way so let me try to catch up real quick.

Our show is consists of five songs: Starting here/ Can you feel it, Transylvania Mania, Fix You, Abracadabra/ Magic Man, and Hung Up/ Please Don't stop the music. Now our show is very aerobic and we've had a hard time keeping a high energy throughout the whole show. But obviously not as hard as some other groups have.

Our first competition was held at Linn Mar High School and was the hardest competition of the year. Maybe even the hardest of the last several years. So we went in not sure if we would even be able to make finals. But we did get in and we were all ecstatic. That's when we got to our room. Our Director, Mr. Storm Zeigler, informed us that we not only made finals, we were in first place. First. Ahead of Urbandale and Ankeny, which were the number one and two show choirs in the country last year. You can probably guess our reaction. So we eagerly waited 4 hours to perform, since we were last in finals. When it was time to get back to business, everyone was focused, concentrating on what they needed to do to bring home the trophy. We performed and killed it. It was the best show we have ever done and it felt great. When time for awards, they gave away 7th through 4th place and we weren't in there. Then the MC informed us that the top three choirs were separated by three points. Three. That meant anything could happen and nothing was secure at all. Third place was Ankeny, second was us, and first was Urbandale. I was a little disappointed, just because i knew what could have been, but i was still extremely excited with our placement.

The next competition was good, but not nearly as exciting. Besides the fact that we came out Grand Champions. It was amazing and we beat LaCrosse Central which is a very good school by 17 points. It felt great.

Now we have a little break. We perform Saturday but it's not a competition, it's just a performance in Fab Five. Then we have nothing the following Saturday, but the Saturday after that we travel to Urbandale to face Ankeny, Linn-Mar, Johnston, and Jefferson. This will be tough.

Super Bowl XLIII

So Super Bowl forty three is going to be hosted in Tampa Bay and will be played between the Cardinals and Steelers in a very unlikely matchup. The Cardinals took their Cinderella season all the way led by veteran quarterback, and Cedar Rapids native Kurt Warner. He has had several off years since he won the Super Bowl with the Rams and got MVP in the game. Now he earned the starting position for the Cadinals over former Heisman winner Matt Leinart and led them to a 9-7 season. He was also a possible candidate for the league's MVP award.

Because of Kurt, I'm pulling for the Cardinals this year. I've never been a huge Pittsburg fan and my team, the Vikings, beat the Cardinals earlier this year so it would look better for them. Also they have a lot of players I like: Kurt Warner, Kenny Iwebema (a former Iowa defensive end), Anquan Boldin, Edgerrin James, and Larry Fitzgerald. On the Steelers I like Mike Humpal and Mewelde Moore and I pretty much despise everyone else. Especially Ben Roethlisberger. But even on top of all that, I've always been an NFC fan and always will be.

As for the game it could go either way. It's going to be the league's best defense, Pittsburg, against one of the league's best offenses, The Cardinals. On the other side it's one of that it's one of the league's worst defenses, Cardinals, against one of the worst offenses, Steelers. So it should turn out to be a good interesting game.

Rankage!

So as any Iowa fan now knows, we are ranked. 19th to be exact. This happened after the blowout win against South Carolina. But more than that, its the players we go into the 2009 season with.

That includes one of the nations top defenses, a very experienced O-line, good recievers and backs, and Ricki Stanzi who has proved himself in the end of the season. This is the first time they've been ranked in two years, and are ranked above great teams such as Notre Dame and Oregon State.

They managed to get this preseason rank despite losing Shonn Greene to the NFL draft. Jewel Hampton is there to step in for him and he has done a great job stepping in for Shonn in past games. We also have four star recruit Brandon Wengher coming in who is supposed to be a stud.

We're also losing Andy Brodell but DJK has stepped up and there are also some great backup receivers. But more than that, we get Keenan Davis, the four star recruit from Washington High School, so we will be set there.

The O-line took some hits losing Rob Bruggeman and Seth Olsen. But they also have three returning starters and the players replacing them should do a nice job. The o-line is actually projected to be the second best line in the big ten next year.

The defense lost great players such as Bradley Fletcher, Harold Dalton, Mitch King, and Matt Kroul. But the entire linebacker crew is back and will be better than ever. Also the d-line has both ends returning, Adrian Clayborn and Christian Ballard. THe people replacing King and Kroul are pretty good too, but I can't think of their names right now. Amari Spievey is coming back and will lead the cornerbacks, and Brent Greenwood will lead the deep backs.

I feel like next year will a truly great season for the Hawks. All the cards are right for them. They didn't lose many players and though some they did lose can't be replaced (King, Greene) I think the replacements will still do a good job. Also the returning players have that much more experience now and are starting to really play good ball. Especially Stanzi. He has always had the talent, and now he has the experience to go along with it. They're starting out ranked which is also good and will let them advance in the league that much faster.

NFL

Well if you're reading this, you probably know that Shonn Greene decided to go pro minutes after the Outback Bowl. He said that he had done his damage in the NCAA and there wasn't much more to do. Although i wish he would have decided differently, he made the right decision. He's already 24 and if he stayed, he would be 25 going into the NFL which is really old for a rookie. Also there's the issue of injury. If he stayed, he could get injured and never play football again. Sure he could also get next year, but at least he would have made money and could say that he was in the NFL. He's doing what's best for his life, and is making sure he gets his shot at pro football.

Also there was recent talk of Ferentz going to the Browns as head coach but the speculation was shut down as they just picked a coach. It was really a no brainer to me and it was obvious he wasn't going to leave. I know that he started out on the Browns and that's his team, but he still wouldn't have left for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that his son will be a freshman next season on the team and he's going to want to coach his son. He also just signed a contract lasting to 2012 and I think he's going to honor that. Also more than anything, he gets played plenty (getting paid three million dollars this year alone) and he has a sure job. NFL jobs are not a sure thing and they're always switching up coaches. But there's pretty much no chance to him getting fired at Iowa.

Greene is a loss we can deal with since he would be leaving next year anyway and Running Backs are always being replaced by new players coming up. But Kirk Ferentz is one loss we can't deal with. He's one of the greatest coaches in Iowa history and is one of the greatest College Football coaches coaching right now.

Outback Bowl

So, the Hawks did it but it was a little dissapointing. It wasn't the game everybody was hoping for. Yes they did win/kill them. But it wasn't really a game. It was too bad that they couldn't have a decent opponent and not one that turned it over five times. This was said to be one of the least interesting Bowl games of the year, and it turned out to be true.

Also for as bad of an opponent as they were, Shonn Greene didn't do great. He had 121yards and three touchdowns. Those numbers are very good, and were good enough to give him the Outback Bowl MVP award. But compared to the rest of the season and his season highs, those numbers aren't all that amazing. Three touchdowns is good but 2 were one yard gains and the other was 11 yards. Oh and that 11 yards was his longest run of the day. He had an average of 4.2 yards a carry. That is not good for Shonn Greene against an opponent like this.

The defense on the other hand demolished the Gamecocks only allowing them 43 rushing yards and giving them five turnovers.

Maybe I'm just getting spoiled because of their past bowl games. In 2002 they played in the orange bowl and lost to USC. In 2003 they killed FLORIDA. In 2004 they beat LSU with the miracle catch and one of the greatest plays in Hawkeye history. In 2005 they lost to FLORIDA by one touchdown because of some of the worst officiating college football has ever seen. And I'm not just being biased. They were fired after the game. But then in 2006 we lost to TEXAS in a very close game. And then this year, we kill south carolina. The gamecocks. In the past few years, almost every game was close, and even the ones that weren't, we were either killing, or being killed by an extremely good team. I guess this year was just sort of a letdown.

The final score was 31-10 but bigger news followed the game. I'll get back to that later.