A Weekend of Surprises

My creative juices are just not flowing this week. I have so far done two analyses, one of a movie and one of Friends. I am now going to do a recap of my feelings on this past show choir competition. Wow. Pretty original.

Saturday marked the second of six (including our own) competitions. Supernova is a competition that our show choir traditionally doesn't do too great at. However, the past two years we had gotten second place, which is a miracle for how we could have done.

The day started with our freshman group performing. Then our prep group. Then our varsity. Next came the awards and the finals announcements.

Now, during the during the day rounds at Supernova, there were two truly fantastic prep groups that I watched. Our prep group really had their work cut out for them. There especially was one AMAZING soloist in the one of the other show choirs that I thought was a shoo-in for the Best Female Soloist award. I mean, I had chills throughout the entire solo. At awards, I was proven wrong, a girl from our prep choir (who without a doubt does fantastic at her solo, I just thought the judges would like the other better) won.

After the announcement finalists at Supernova, we found out were were in and tied for fourth place. This was kind of a downer to be tied for such a low place. But then, during finals, while watching two that were ahead of us, it was clear they should have been ahead of us. After our finals performance, everybody thought we had done fantastic, which was mentioned in another post as what truly only matters. Well, I happened to feel not so great about the performance. This has always worked out for the better on my math tests, I ALWAYS feel bad about them and end up getting A's. So I took this to be a good thing that I felt bad about this performance.

We get tot he awards and it is announced that we got third place!! You see, in points, we were in fifth, but in rankings, we tied for 4th. this may be hard to understand unless you see the score sheet. But that means we jumped up 2 places and one of the other groups dropped two! We were all ECSTATIC! My thoughts were correct, because I felt pretty bad about it, we did surprisingly well. The Grand Champion clearly deserved it. They completely swept. Best Vocals and Best Choreography went to them. Supernova is wrapping up to be a great competition for us. I LOVE show choir.

Will you love show choir?

Just as a post-script. I have decided that show choir rankings do not matter whatsoever. We have a great show and just about everybody knows that, even if the results don't show it. We captivate audiences with every show. As our critique judge said at Supernova we are performers, and it shows in our audience's reaction. Even though it doesn't matter, here is a link to the National Show Choir Ranking system.

BE ITALIAN!

For those of you who have not seen Nine yet. Don't. It's not worth it. The music in it was certainly FANTASTIC. But the entire thing was downright boring.

This may sound as if I didn't like the movie, but I did LOVE it! I was bored throughout, it felt like it was going on and on and on and on and on and.... well you get the picture. The opening to Nine was great, Penelope Cruz's number was good, Kate Hudson's number was great, Fergie's number was AMAZING! But those were about the only things that the movie had going for it. Sure, the acting was good as well. But seriously, the writing for the movie just made it drag on and on and on and on and on and on... again, you get the picture.

Nine had a lot of sexual content that was all tastefully done withing the content of which it was presented. Penelope Cruz, for example, had a song all about her being the "other woman" and how she couldn't stand being away from Guido Cantini (Daniel Day-Lewis). She was in a sexy lingerie, but it was all in the context of the music.

Fergie's song, "Be Italian" was my FAVORITE song, by far. It combined a lot of dancing and belting and an overall "chorus line-y" feel. The ending is the best part, when Fergie just belt after belt and it is all done phenomenally.

Just for a random interlude, I am watching the Golden Globes and man is Meryl Streep getting old.

Okay, back to Nine. Who knew Kate Hudson could sing!? She did an awesome job. And just for how small of a world things are, I found out that my voice teacher TAUGHT Kate Hudson in voice lessons! No way right?? Well, WAY! I was texting him and he said that both him and his wife taught her in the 90's and that she had a beautiful voice. I was awestruck by this/I still am. But seriously, I am only on degree removed from knowing Kate Hudson.

Anyway, if you really wanna capture the essence of Nine, just go to YouTube and find all the recordings of the songs.

Will you become bored by Nine?

This is the end of the song with the belting :)

How well do you know your Friends?

Yes, this is yet another blog post about the T.V. show Friends. I am currently watching "The One with the Embryos." This episode is where a competition rises between the boys and the girls about who knows who best. The guys team includes Chandler and Joey, and the girls Monica and Rachel. Ross is made the game leader (Phoebe is busy getting in vitro fertilization).

The bet starts out with whoever the winner is gets $100. It then escalates to the girls betting their apartments and the guys getting rid of their chicken (actually a rooster). Through a heated lightening round and the girls not being able to answer the question "What is Chandler's job?" The guys win and the girls are forced to give up their apartment and accept Joey and Chandler's much smaller so-called "Hell-Hole."

It got me questioning how well I actually know the people in Friends as well. I have a quiz book called "The One with the Trivia" and I'm pretty sure I have over half the book answered, all of which have been checked and are correct. Personally, I consider this an accomplishments. Unfortunately, to others they say I'm "obsessed." I do think it is a bit sad when I know off the top of my head that Chandler Bing's job is statistical analysis and data reconfiguration. But an obsession? No.

Obsessed can best be defined here. That definition obviously says I'm not obsessed. Friends does not "haunt persistently" or "dominate my thoughts." My friend Smooth Like Shea Butter is an addict like me (though she owns ALL ten seasons) and is commonly mistaken as being obsessed. We just know our Friends REALLY well!

Do you know your Friends?

Rah-Rah-ah-ah-ah Roma-roma-ma GaGa Ooh la la Want your bad romance

Thank you SO much Lady Gaga for having Bad Romance stuck in my head for the past week. I mean literally, I can not stop singing it. I will give you credit that it is a fantastic song and you are a fantastic artist, but my gosh, I can't stop singing Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah Roma-roma-ma GaGa Ooh lala Want your bad romance.

People criticize Lady Gaga for all of her crazy ways and her unique performances, but you have to give her credit, her music is soooooo good. Her hits include: Just Dance, Bad Romance, and Love Game, to name a few. Her MTV VMA's performance of Paparazzi caught the attention of many people. Her end picture was of her hanging with fake blood EVERYWHERE (including her eye). Some people may have been disgusted but I thought it was one of the best performances of my life. The main reason I think it was, was because she actually sang AND performed, most singers just lip sing. I just really like that she is genuine about the entire thing.

As mentioned before, I cannot stop listening to Bad Romance, so here is her music video for you to watch/listen to.

I know that it is a pretty whacked out video, but you have to admit that she is REALLY good. Her video truly shows her individuality and her just wanting to be her. Sure, her outfits and out there, but like I said, Lady GaGa is her own person.

Even if you are someone who doesn't like Lady GaGa, at least realize that she is a fantastic singer and is a true performer.

Will you be an individual?

What did you say?

I would like to add this to my list of things that annoy me.

People who mumble.

First off, here are some tips to stop mumbling.

My sister is one of those people, and not only does she mumble, but if I say, "What did you say?" She will respond with anger. And I'm thinkin, What did I do to make you yell at me? You mumbled in the first place! I just frustrates me a lot.

There are also some teachers that do this very thing and it really does not help when you have loud, obnoxious students that talk the entire class and you truly have no idea what the teacher just said. These mumbling teachers are frustrating because a lot of times they don't understand why you have questions because they are thoroughly explaining the idea.

What is especially annoying about the mumblers is that on the phone, you really cannot hear what they are saying. Especially when they are in a car or outside, and then (my sister) they get angry when you say, "WHAT??"

To conclude, if you are a mumbler, you should seriously try to stop. Those of us "Loud-Speakers" are getting annoyed.

Will you be a mumbler?

Boredom is Self Inflicted

To self inflict pain is completely idiotic. To self inflict anything is completely idiotic. All of this you have self control of. Why would you make yourself do something that is completely unnecessary? Why would you want to be bored? But do you realize, you are bored because you made yourself that way?

You always have something to do, no matter if it wastes time. If you are bored, you can resolve that by texting, playing a game, getting on the internet, watching tv, doing homework, hanging out with friends, doing a puzzle, eating (though it's not recommended, it can lead to repercussions), and the list goes on. You constantly see people's tweets/Facebook statuses that say "I'm bored, t/c," (t/c = text/call). Well if you want people to text or call, why don't you just initiate it?

My brother-in-law once told me, "You are never bored, you are just a boring person," or something like that. So think about that next time you tweet/update your status, you are just announcing to the world you are a boring person. That doesn't sound that great does it? I will admit that I have said that I was bored numerous times, but I am trying to change that. It kind of hit me that I don't want to be considered a boring person. I like to think I'm a pretty entertaining person, why tarnish that by calling myself a boring person?

All in all, if you ever state that you are bored, just remember that someone out there could be thinking, wow, I don't want to hang out with a boring person...

Will you be bored?

Photo from iplot.typepad.com

Here We Go Again

It's 3 o'clock in the morning and my alarm goes off. Yep, you read that, 3 A.M. We started our journey to LaCrosse, Wisconsin at 4:30.
Yesterday marked the first day that our hard work as a show choir would pay off. Viterbo is one of, if not THE first show choir competition of the year and we were there. We had two cross-town rivals also competing and for them (most likely), winning is everything. Our director has given us speech upon speech about how we cannot go to a competition in the hopes/expectations of winning, we must go into the competition to give our best show and the results may or may not reflect that.

My personal feeling is that I just love to perform. I am completely non-competitive. I "play" tennis. Or at least I used to. I had played since I was four and I was pretty decent. But what happened was that everybody I played with began to have to competition of who was better and such, and I'm really not into that. I wasn't the best by any means, but like I said, I was pretty good. I would do okay at tournaments, but would definitely never win. And at tournaments I usually just cared about getting past the first round and anything after that was great but didn't really matter. So when things got more competitive, and I found out I was better at singing and show choir, naturally I took that over tennis.

As my director says, I do not take show choir as a competition. But every time I go onstage, I do my best and leave my heart out there. That I think is the most wonderful thing, knowing you did your best and that whatever happens, you will always win in your heart.

This was incredibly essential at Viterbo. With these cross-town rivals, we couldn't let ourselves think that because we had done better than them last year, that the same would happen this year.

After day rounds, we were tied for third behind our cross-town rivals. After last year, I thought this was a good thing. You see, last year, we had a reputation for starting out on top, and then dropping after finals. So maybe this would be our time to start down and move up. After finals, we did move up, but only by a half a place. When we were tied for third, that means we were between 3rd and 4th. So we beat out who we tied with, and took third for our own.

Sure it was kind of a bummer to lose to our cross-town rivals, but who cares? We had a HUGE improvement from our day rounds and 2 of our judges told us we had the best ballad by far. So I take that as a win in its own. Congratulations show choir!

Will you let it be a competition?