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.