Category: entertainment

The BBC

kirbyfullyloadedLeave a comment

I have come to realize that the BBC puts forth irrefutably superior television programs.

While I enjoy American television shows like Hawaii Five-0, Lost, Human Target, Life and How I Met Your Mother, I have to admit that the BBC’s series are far better.

I was introduced to the wonderful world of Doctor Who in early January of this year.  After watching one episode (“The Shakespeare Code,” episode 2, series 3), I was hooked.

I appreciate the overall quality of the show.  The actors portraying the Doctor in their respective series are divine.  I first saw David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, but I loved Matt Smith as the Eleventh.  I still cannot figure out which one is my Doctor.

David Tennant (left) as Ten and Matt Smith (right) as Eleven

I also think it is refreshing that the show does not require spectacular special effects to make it wonderful.  While none of the visual effects look shoddy or unprofessional, it doesn’t look like the show is trying to be a multi-million dollar Hollywood film.

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Jo and The Dictator.

yrreskrapLeave a comment

Today, my good friend Jo came from to visit from Boston!

Jo graduated last year and we rarely get to hangout! But today, Jo, another friend of mine, and I hit Main Street in Ventura to watch The Dictator.

Now let me tell you, this movie is the farthest thing from pc and has humor that can be offensive to some.

But I loved it. I love how bold Sacha Baron Cohen is with all of his movies. Despite having faced lawsuits for his previous movies, he still continues to do what he does best…make hilarious, vulgar movies.

And what’s even better was that I watched it with two of my closest friends.

Overall, tonight was a win.

Journalism Competition!

rangerthecatLeave a comment

Last Friday, 8 out of 10 students from our journalism class went to Cal Lutheran University (where I’m going to college!!!) to attend the TCJEA event which is a very competitive and large journalism competition. There were 15 schools at the event in total and we were the smallest school there hands down. Many other schools had around 20 or even 30 writers with them to compete in all different categories. It was intimidating, yes, but the experience was so awesome that it hardly mattered how small our group was.

We had writers enter almost every category available, including photography, sports writing, feature writing, news writing, and editorial writing. I was in the feature category, and we had such an interesting speaker named Cyrus Nowrasteh wrote and produced a many films including a mini-series titled “The Path to 9/11”. We listened to his story about the controversy over his series and the attempted sabotage of his career by people trying to cover up their mistakes. Then, we had about an hour to write an article on him and submit to be scored against all other works in that category.

Now, Mr. Alvarez is the best journalism teacher I could ever ask for. He has taught me so much – I was a terrible writer when I first stepped into his classroom. Regardless of his immense encouragement and preparation, I was still not confident that I could compete with others in programs much bigger and more well-known than our little “On The Hill” paper. But I was sure that we were a small but mighty force and had a great change of winning awards.

There were so many awards handed out. Each category had 1st through 3rd places and 2 honorable mentions. There were also awards for online newspapers, print newspapers, and overall best team called “sweepstakes”.

In the feature category, there were over 30 students that wrote an article for submission. My fellow feature writer Emmy Addison took a 2nd place in the feature category, and I received an honorable mention! I couldn’t believe it. I was recognized as a top 5 writer in my category. I was ecstatic. Another writer Jack Marcus also received 2nd place in the news writing category. Our online publication of the newspaper took 4th place overall, with is astounding considering it had only been officially up and running for less than a month. Overall in the competition, we placed 4th, receiving an honorable mention in the sweepstakes category.

It is just amazing to me how such a small group of students was able to go to that competition and practically dominate. We really proved to the other schools that even though we may not seem like much, we have an amazing, dedicated, and hardworking group of writers. I am so proud to be a part of this team, and the event was more amazing than I could have imagined. Congrats, journalism class!

Festival of Talent

rangerthecatLeave a comment

This Friday was my 3rd and last time performing in the annual Festival of Talent for school. My sophomore and junior years I sang a song with my friend Maddie and this year I sang a song with my friend Serry.

This year, we had a hard time choosing which song to sing, because there were so many good ones that we had in mind. We finally came to the decision of singing a song called “Meant to Be” by Melissa Polinar.

Since I first discovered it, it has been one of my favorite songs and thankfully it fit both of our voices well. We only had a few practices, but it came together really quickly. Music teacher Mr. Boyd was amazing at figuring out the guitar on such short notice and with no tabs (THANK YOU!!).

I usually get extremely nervous about singing in front of a crowd, and I was nervous when I went on stage, but for some reason when I started singing this time my nerves died down. I think it’s just the fact that it was such a bittersweet moment, my last talent show and probably the last time I will be singing in front of people.

There were SO MANY other awesome acts in this show. To start us off we had an amazing robot-like dance by Jack Liu that was just phenomenal. It was so entertaining and it was obvious he spent a lot of time perfecting every move and that he has such a natural talent for dancing. There were a lot of other singing acts and a really awesome piano battle with 2 extremely talented pianists. The acting group the Spud Factory had 2 very cute short films, one that was dedicated to the senior class that was very sweet and thoughtful of them. It was so entertaining and I think that everyone there had an awesome time.

I will definitely miss performing in front of people and seeing all the other talent that the school has to offer. Thankfully, I get to perform one last time at the concert before graduation, my very last hurrah at OVS. I can’t wait to sing with chorus and the most amazing voice coach Mrs. Boyd one last time.

Somebody That I Used to Know

kirbyfullyloadedLeave a comment

“But you didn’t have to cut me off

Make it like it never happened and that we were nothing

I don’t even need your love, but you treat me like a stranger

And that feels so rough

No, you didn’t have to stoop so low

Have your friends collect your records

And then change your numberGuess that

I don’t need that though

Now you’re just somebody that I used to know.”

-“Somebody That I Used to Know“, Gotye

This song stuck in anyone else’s head?

Yeah.  I thought so.  For the longest time I could NOT figure out what this song was or who it was by.  But finally I did and I love it.

The music video is surprisingly good.  Very artistic and mellow, but not enough to be considered hipster.

And I suppose Wally de Backer is alright cute.

Gotta admit though… the reason I wrote this post was to show you this picture:

That shared, I’m done.

Concerts.

YourcupateaLeave a comment

Emeli Sande
Booking concert tickets is always exciting. Selecting a seat to view the person or band you hear every day on your iPod, and having the opportunity to look them in the face. I love pressing the find tickets icon on ticketmaster knowing that you have the potential to watch a favorite artist perform on stage.

Today I am booking Emeli Sande tickets and I am very excited to go in a couple of weeks. A Scottish singer/ songwriter she has a strong, powerful, and beautiful voice. She began writing for singers such as Susan Boyle, Tinie Tempah and Leona Lewis and then went on to collaborate with U.K rapper Chipmunk with their song Diamond Rings coming in the top ten in the U.K charts.

This year she released her first album Our Version of Events, showing off all the dynamics of her voice. Although she is not on my top 10 artists she is a superb talent. I’m excited for the concert and it’s always nice to see a fellow Brit in America

The Avengers: Review

kirbyfullyloadedLeave a comment

I haven’t written in two weeks because my mind is so completely and utterly BLOWN.

I expected The Avengers to be funny, action-packed and epic.

I was wrong.

So very, very wrong.

I FOUND MY NEW FAVORITE MOVIE!

Three.

I saw it 3 times in 24 hours.

Is that too much?  Probably.

Do I think it’s too much?

OH HECK NO!

I went once with my sisters, once with my friend, theycallmedame,  and once with my parents.

It was HILARIOUS.

EXPLODING with action.

BEYOND epic.

And over all, just MARVELous and absolutely MAGNIFICENT. 

As each second passed, I died a little with happiness.

I saw it again last Saturday for theycallmedame’s birthday.

Bringing my views up to a grand total of 4.  I’m very proud.

I am exceedingly happy about how well it has done critically and in the box office.

Rotten Tomatoes is famously picky.  Despite the pickiness,The Avengers earned a 93% approval rating from critics and a 96% approval rating from viewers, dubbing the film “fresh.”

The box office reflected its success even better.

The Avengers broke the record for biggest of opening weekend of all time, domestically earning  $207,438,708 million dollars in three days.  The record was previously held last year’s summer blockbuster, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II, which earned $169.2 million.

After just 19 days in theaters (only 10 days in the U.S.) it passed the $1 billion dollar mark, making it one of only 12 movies in the history of cinema to reach that enormous sum.

It also claimed the record for biggest opening week ($270,019,373 million) of any film ever and biggest second week ($103,052,274 million), beating Avatar‘s second week ($75.6 million) by a landslide.

I have to admit, I got a Tumblr just so I could look at Avengers-related photosets and gifs.

Bottom line:

GO SEE IT!!!! YOU WON’T BE SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reika at CIF Preliminaries!!!

r3t5nom2 Comments

I want to start off by saying this, Reika Kijima who is a student at my school is one of the most amazing athletes I have ever had the chance to meet personally. Aside from being an impressive athlete she is also an amazing person and someone im proud to call my friend.

Saturday May 12th I had the opportunity to tag along to the CIF preliminaries with Reika, our friend Serry, and lets not forget to mention the great track&field coach and history teacher Mr. Alvarez. In my head I never expected to see the level of running that I ended up witnessing throughout the day. I saw a high school runner run the 100 meters in 10.73 seconds… that is insanity.

But truth be told we were there for one person only, we were there to support our runner girl Reika Kijima!!!

Reika left me in awe when I got to watch her drop her personal best time in the 1600M from 5 minutes 20 seconds to 5 minutes 9 seconds. It was amazing to see her do such great work, hard work which played off in the end when she placed second in her heat and earned a spot in CIF finals next coming saturday!!!!!!

Intensity and concentration are always awesome elements to witness in an athlete.

This next image to me captures everything there is between a runner and her coach, a beautiful bond that will last forever.

I’ll be there next Saturday cheering you on runner girl!!

Congrats again on such a great job, YOU’RE AWESOME!!!:)

Espionage

therightliberalLeave a comment

I just finished watching the fantastic movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It is a mind bending movie but one that works the brain in the best way possible.

I must say, I have a weakness for spy movies, the realistic type (not like Mission Impossible crap). They are just so scintillating and exciting.

Although I was a tad confused at the end of the movie, I still enjoyed it and its fun to have a movie that keeps you thinking even once it is over.

But beyond the world of spy movies, there is the world of actual “intelligence” work.

I think it is such an interesting field, one that holds so much power and importance. We have no idea what goes on behind the closed doors and yet we are all aware that it is extremely important.

The amount of work that goes into behind a step ahead of everyone else, from enemies to allies, is absolutely incredible, and yet we have no idea what it is, only that it exists.

I think the people that work for groups like the CIA should be saluted for doing such unselfish work that aims to always keep ‘Merica on top.

Sweet Sting Sunday.

Yourcupatea1 Comment

Bee
I had my first bee sting of the year today, and man it hurt a lot more than I remembered.

So I was casually reading my book as you do on a Sunday afternoon, admiring the view from my porch chair and relaxing in the shade of the huge oaks over head. The birds chirped away singing sweet songs as they played and splashed in the water of the bird bath unaware of the dangers that accompanied them in their play.

Yes, it turns out bees like water too. In fact one may say it is the typical hang out or meeting spot during the spring/ summer months. Little did I know reading my book sweetly would I become a target for their fun.

Now I’m no wimp, and if a bee were to buzz around me I would remain calm and still but when one lodges itself in your finger it’s not that easy to do either of these things.

It was well and truly stuck, chained down by the sting that was embedded in the tip of my middle finger and you know what I was scared to pull it out incase it stung me. Obviously it had done that already but in a moment of panic I just let it stay there wiping it off carefully, after a few minutes, with a pair of tweezers afraid of its next move.

Little did I know its next joke was to leave the sting in me, how cleaver, leaving me deal with the pain for a little longer. I’m sure it sought amusement from that.

I eventually managed to get it out after a refusal for help from my father “because he didn’t have his glasses,” but luckily my Mum came to hand proving her skills on Mother’s Day.

So now I have the biggest swollen middle finger ever. I may just have to go and use it swearing at the rest of the bees.