Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Crazy = Watching the Same Movie and Expecting Different Results

I am currently watching Holiday Inn with my family, as we do every year, Emma makes us. I don't know if you have seen this movie, but you've probably seen the more famous (but less good, in my opinion) remake of this movie: White Christmas. Anyway, as we were watching it there is a scene in the movie where Bing Crosby says something that leads Fred Astaire, the antagonist, to formulate the diabolical plot to take Crosby's girl away and right at the moment when he was saying it, I was thinking: don't say that, it'll make your life worse... But, of course, he said it and the rest of the movie progressed. I have seen this movie at least 50 times in my life, and that's on the very safe side, and yet I still thought that the plot would change...

Why do we re-watch movies and shows over and over again? I think it has something to do with wanting to experience the feelings we had while watching it the first time, and, as I learned in one of my psychology classes somewhere, seeing something happen produces the same chemical reactions/feelings as actually doing it. Which is probably why I like to live my life vicariously through Hollywood produced love scenes. But that's possibly not the same as the real thing... Anyway, back to movies: when I was in Jr. High I would watch Newsies over and over, literally finish it, rewind it (remember VHS's?), and then watch it again. I love that movie. I've done that to almost every movie that I love and I've never been able to figure out why. Alas, I still don't know the reason that I keep watching movies even though I know exactly what's going to happen, but I do know that it brings me joy every time, and men are that they might have joy, so I'll continue to do it and love it, for the rest of my life.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Sing Off

I know all my posts recently have been about entertainment things, and I definitely don't want to be one of THOSE blogs, but I found this really cool show that's only on for this week, it's called (you guessed it) "The Sing Off"! I literally just stumbled across it while I was trying to run away from Gordan Ramsey teaching me how to cook the perfect three-course meal. It's about a capella groups singing in a competition and some of them are really good. All the episodes are on Hulu, which is something wonderful that NBC has decided to do: put every episode of their most popular shows online, geniuses! Anyway, check it out and tell me what you think...

P.S.
Can I complain for a sec. about how different SYTYCD has been in the Fall? I do not like it, there are too many scheduling weirdnesses that are throwing me off... Like having six "finalists", making the final performance show only an hour, and not showing intros to the dances. If I weren't such a die hard fan I probably would have stopped watching after this season, but I can't help myself, I'm addicted.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

The World Has Betrayed Us All

For a while now I've been worried about the state of the world, what with universal health care on the verge of ruining our lives and communists as high ranking government officials, but now the betrayal is complete: America (or at least the cross-section that votes on So You Think You Can Dance) has voted Legacy out of the competition. It happened last night, and let me tell you, I literally screamed and cried about it. I just don't understand how the world can think that crazy-eyes/Dobby-look-a-like Ryan is better than Legacy! Ryan cannot move like legacy does, and he makes me uncomfortable almost every week by his sheer creepiness. Legacy has not had a bad dance, he surprised us all every week with how amazingly he was able to conquer dances that were way out of his style (B-Boy, btw). There just really are no words that can adequately describe how upset I am about this, I'm even thinking of not watching the finale next week (ps, why are there six dancers in the finale when every year previous it has only been four? Hatred). Who am I kidding, though, I'll definitely watch the finale, I mean, at least Jakob is still there... sigh... I should have voted more...



Thursday, December 3, 2009

My New Obsession

I was thinking of explaining why I love the following but it's beyond words how excited I am about this:


LXD "Moments" Trailer from Jon M. Chu on Vimeo.


Sorry this one is a bit too big for this page, just click on it if you want to see the whole thing:

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Substitute Teacher

The teacher, Mrs. Stewart, who's classroom I'm an aid for was out sick today (as well as Monday) and I had to aid for a sub. (as you can probably guess from the title). On Monday this meant that the class was awful and it was a day that I just had to get through. But today this substitute was different. She must have decided early in her career that she wanted to be a communist because she was definitely in control of that classroom. She had each kid write their name on a paper and if they did something good then we would put a star on that paper. This would actually be a good idea (some positive reinforcement) but the way she did it seemed to be manipulative and tyrannical. I did not like being in her class today, which is weird, because I love my work. Not to leave out the fact that this woman looked and sounded like Number 1 from Monsters, Inc., you know the secretary lady who was always wanting Mike to turn in his paperwork? If anyone thought she would be cool to hang out with, you were wrong. I am so glad that I was put in Mrs. Stewart's room cause she is an excellent teacher without being too over-bearing. The whole day just felt like this sub. was trying to prove her good teacher-ness to me and her superiority to the kids, a few of them were getting very upset and it just made me want to comfort them, but I couldn't because that lady scared me too.