Post Speech/Pre Dance

Welcome world, to October 21st. This is not a typical entry, this is just to let you know what is going on with me today.

Yesterday was the Willamette Speech Tournament and I gave two speeches. Both speeches were impromptu, but the first one went much better than the other. The first topic I got yesterday was a blue collar comedy quote from Ron White:

It's not that the wind's blowin, it's what the wind's blowin! -- Ron White

That was a beautiful topic because I have blue collar comedy practically memorized and new exactly what context the quote was in. I just spoke about big things being blown through the air and hitting people. My favorite was when I narrated a chase scene between an Amish girl and her house (which a hurricane had lifted off its foundation). The Amish girl lost.


A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. -- Chinese Proverb

This topic sucked. I did NOT want to take the philosophical route, so I went with the literal. I discussed different reasons why a bird would sing. I talked about finding worms, finding a new bird house, and having baby birds. At one point I flapped my arms and made bird noises. . .it was quite pitiful, but I have high hopes.

I went home after that second speech and crashed. It's now 8:22 and I'm calling the tournament ever 15 minutes to see if I made it to finals, at which point I would have to drive into Willamette and give a speech at 11:00. That'd be nice, it really would. I would be one of 6 out of 39, crazy odds.

The plan for the rest of the day involves homecoming. I'm driving to Beaverton this evening to go to the Southridge homecoming, which I am really looking forward to quite a lot. It should be a very good time, what with the music, dancing, and girlfriend :)

So yeah, that's a quick recap of what's been happening, I'll keep you posted on other stuff as it happens, ciao!

Live Blogging from Speech Tournament

Hello blog readers. It is Friday at about 9 in the morning. I am blogging from the Willamette speech tournament. I'm missing school to speech. The sad part about all of this is that my first speech isn't until 2:30, therefore I just sit and bum time off of other peoples' laptops. This is Brent Jones's laptop, I will be finding more later. I'll make sure to let you know whose laptop I'm on.

I'm doing Imptomptu today, hopefully it will be as exciting as last time. Bye bye for now!!!!!!1!

College Writing battle of the sexes

lol!!!

Over at the College Writing blog (http://spraguewriting.blogspot.com) there is a huge battle between the Men and Women for superiority. It's getting quite amusing, because here it is 11 at night and half the class is on attacking each other. There have been 40 posts in about 30 minutes! This is wonderful, the comments are worth a read, especially Nick Wales's. Enjoy!

College Application Essays

I found this neat little GIF on an MIT media lab PhD's blog. I think it is an accurate depiction of the college application essay process.

WARNING: Graphic!

Tea Party

So here's the story. On Wednesday after school I was bombarded by the girls in my section, practically begging me to come to their tea party. Call me crazy/male, but I was hesitant, but after I got home and talked to my parents they decided that I should definitely go, so I did. Today at noon I arrived at my first "Tea Party". Little did I know, it was a big deal.

It was hosted by Jessica Gamez, shown here on the left:

Note: This picture was obviously not taken at the party. . . but all three were in attendance. That's Molly there in the center and Hannah on the right.

There were going to be like 15 people there. . . and I was the only guy! Well, that just wasn't going to work, so I made a couple of decisions.

Decision 1: Get Greg (that guy that always comments in my blog, pictures to come).
Apparently he lived close to the tea location, so I grabbed a navigator, hopped into my car, and drove to what we thought was Greg's house. We weren't sure, so I grabbed my phone and called him. Here's the transcript:

RIIIIING. . . .
Me: Hello, is Greg there?
Some Person: Yeah, just a second.
Me: Greg? This is Michael.
Greg: Hello.
Me: What color is your house?
Greg: Um, tannish?
(I look at the color of the house who's driveway I'm parked in. Tannish.)
(I notice a basketball hoop)
Me: Do you have a basketball hoop in your backyard?
Greg: Um, kinda.
Me: Right, can you please come out front?
Greg: Um, ok.
(Greg walks to the car. Before he knows it, he is kidnapped and taken to the tea party)


Task 1: Mission Accomplished!

Decision 2: Get Truman.
This was easier, I just called him and told him I needed his backup. He agreed and came right over. BTW, you can read about Truman in an earlier post, I believe it's in October of last year, check the links on the right.

Task 2: Mission Accomplished!

So, now there were more guys, which made it better. Overall, the quality of the tea and tea goodies was very good. Apparently it was a real English high tea thing, with authentic food (mmmm, food). So, we wined and dined for a while and then started taking pictures. Paige (some girl there) and Truman needed pictures for a project in Creative Writing, pictures of a Soap Opera Truman wrote. This is when things got funny. There was a scene that I was supposed to attack Greg with a knife. Here's me plotting my attack:

I'm evil looking, eh? Here's me being chased by Greg because he discovered me.

Yes, I know, we're good actors. It practically looks like we froze in mid-stride, AMAZING! This is when I injured myself. You see, we were all kinda hanging out behind my car when the hostess's mom came out with a camera. This was the cue for the guys to run and hide. Well, Greg and Truman were smart and ran. I attempted to dive into the trunk of my car. Now, this is not a seemingly complicated thing to accomplish. It requires opening the trunk and leaping in. Well, somewhere between opening the trunk and leaping in, I somehow screwed up. You see, the back of the car wasn't exactly open all the way when I dove in. . .to the edge of the door . . . with my head. *Crunch* (Molly starts laughing and can't breathe). It hurt, a lot, so I had to sit down for a little bit. Here's me in my injured state:

Yeah, I'm pathetic, I know. We discovered that I had actually broken skin and was bleeding out of my head. Oh, and I had a bump on my head that was incredibly amazingly abnormally big. Yes, it was bad. Well, we eventually ventured back inside to take more pictures. Many of the pictures were nice, my favorite is this one:

Yes, I am about to assassinate Greg, poor Greg. That pretty much concluded the Tea Party, because we had to leave to go to marching band. If I remember any more good details about it, I'll update, but that's pretty much the gist of it: Truman, Greg, knives, Bump on head, Molly hyperventilating, Greg getting stabbed, and the Marching Band. Mmmmm, senior year, yes, definitely full of memories. . . and tea parties.

U of O: Festival of Bands

I'm not normally a philosophical person, but I've decided to give it a try. I'm tired of competing in marching band, I just like being in marching band and having the audience love us. Screw the scores, I want to have fun. So, that being said, I won't be griping about the scoring at U of O this year, I'll just be talking about the good stuff. . .

So, without further adeu, FOB!

Call was at 8 am and we rehearsed until about 10:00. We got a lot done, definitely cleaned some stuff in the closer that we needed to, and then we went to change into uniform.

We loaded the busses by seniority (w00t, seniority!) and I sat next to Greg, behind Jake and Hannah, and near some other people. It was during this bus ride that I discovered the absolute crazy-cool song "White and Nerdy". White and Nerdy is my official theme song now, just a heads up. The music video, is a little extreme, but most of the lyrics apply to me (because anybody that actually wants to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special is just weird). Anyway, we listened to Weird Al all the way up and had a good time.

Once we got to U of O we unloaded and changed, went to warm up, and got ready for our prelims performance. Here's me leading our sectional, giving my "inspirational" "pep" "talk" before we hit the field.

After that we marched prelims and it went very well. It was one of our better run-throughs. The drum break that I talk about in a previous post was a huge crowd pleaser, they went absolutely wild! We had our picture taken, and for the goofy one I stole all the plumes from my section and pretended to eat them, that was exciting. Then we changed and went to watch some bands. After that we ate dinner and got ready for our Finals performance. The finals performance went even better than the prelims performance, and I was very satisfied, a good final performance at U of O, because I won't get to play there again :( We changed back into street clothes and headed back to the stadium to watch more bands. On the way I bought a new OMB CD (2002). We saw a bunch of good bands, but my favorite was Grants Pass because they had UMBRELLAS! They all pulled out a blue umbrella from a holster on their uniforms and had an AMAZING visual!

After finals, the green garter band played and we all danced/moshed/pretended to know how to dance. Then we all went down a bunch of levels to the front couple of rows and pretty much just went out of control, jumping, crowd surfing, screaming, dancing, yelling. . . it was a blast!

That's me in the beanie. Notice that in the first picture I seem to be plotting something, and that in the second picture I've jumped on to the person in front of me and we're falling forward onto the kid in the black jacket. That kid in the front row of the second picture is in my section. He is screaming. He actually comments on this blog, so if you ever see a comment by "Patrick", just remember the screaming kid, ok?

Yeah, basically, that was a blast. We sang the fight song, danced the robot, and generally had fun.

The bus ride back was subdued because certain chaperones refused to believe that they had signed up on the party bus (even though it was CLEARLY labeled), so we pretty much just talked and discussed strange religions. We only had one "rave" before we got yelled at.

We got back to school at midnight and I made it home by 1 o'clock, at which point I slept. . . . . . .

That was U of O, an exciting day, with some judging issues that you can look up on OregonLive.com if you care, but I'd rather focus on the fact that it was fun and we pleased the audience, because that's what marching band is truly about.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Blog!

My blog is 1 year old today! For the last year he (I've decided it's a he) has experienced many exciting adventures and many scary problems, but he has pulled through like the best of them. He's heard about football games, defective forks, rain, fire, Truman, MIT, and countless other things, all in an attempt to help me better explain myself. And so, I raise my glass to you, Mr. Blog, and I toast you on this your 1st birthday, and I have this to say.

DID YOU KNOW THAT THIS IS YOUR 100th POST TOO?!?!?!?!?

OMG BLOG! You're growing up right before my very eyes. I want to thank everybody that has taken the time to comment on my posts, read my posts, or lie to me and say that you've read my posts. You are the folks that make this blog still thrive and the folks that have pushed it to 1 year and 100 entries. My blog is now going to relax and enjoy the rest of his birthday with a little music and some cake. Regular posting to begin again soon. So long, good night, and good luck!