Rock-a-Thon in Review (Among Other Things)

WLTL's annual fundraiser Rock-a-Thon isn't over yet (it goes for 88.1 hours) but our shift is. If any of you are in the area and are reading this before it's over, try to call in and donate. Now that the shameless plug is over, I think it's time to discuss our shift. It was fun, nerve-wracking, exciting, and exhausting all at the same time. I got involved in a pie fight, cleaned it up, sang Beyonce on the air for money, had a lightsaber duel with Pods, and a bunch of other stuff. A few of the managers and supervisors got annoyed and even mad at us, but all in all it was a great experience. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have done it a week after my first show ever, but whatever. Our music show, "Nerd Talk", is still on Fridays from 7-9, and I can't wait for it because it'll be much less stressful.

Speaking of nerdy things, I am really enjoying the "Rage of the Red Lanterns" arc in Green Lantern. I like how Geoff Johns is making every corps different in their own special way, and I really love the Blue Lantern Corps. My dad got me a pretty sweet Red Lantern sweatshirt; now all I need is a Blue one.

Also, on Friday I gave my "This I Believe" speech (modeled after NPR's contest of the same name) after rewriting it three times. My final version was about comics, and I'm glad I got the chance to mention not only Watchmen but also 100 Bullets and Fables in school. We had a class vote to see who did the best, and I won. Not bad for a nerd.

On Radio, Sweat, and Fugitives

I've got a lot of stuff to talk about, but I'll start with my radio show. That's right, radio show! I wasn't able to get my own show, but Pods did, so me and Boots are DJ Assistants on his show. If you want to listen, it's from 7-9 on Fridays on WLTL 88.1 fm LaGrange. We had our first show last night, and it was epic. Our engineer didn't pass the test she needed to past, so she had to re-take it at the beginning of the show! Me and Boots were stuck in the studio for a few minutes without knowing what to do, so he freaked out a little bit. Once she passed the test and we got back into the groove of the show, though, it was fine. More than fine: it was awesome! It was a lot of fun, and I plan on doing a lot more shows! We did make some mistakes, unfortunately: we had dead air a couple times, and the first 10 minutes of the show was just constant music while our engineer re-took the test.
I've already started my New Year's Resolution by becoming a member of the YMCA; I'm glad I was able to fulfill my promise to myself, and glad I finally started working out.
The second part of "Heroes" season three, "Fugitives", has started out pretty well so far. It's definitely different than the last half. Here are my thoughts on certain characters and what I think should happen to them (SPOILER WARNING):
Peter Petrelli-The man is back! Not only does he have his original ability back, he's also gained powers he didn't have before, namely Tracy's freezing and Mohinder's spidey powers. Unfortunately, some powers are irreplaceable since Ted, DL, Isaac, and Usutu are dead. I hope to see him get back at Nathan and HRG by the end of the season!
Nathan Petrelli- What a douche. If he is not dead by the end of the season (preferably killed by Peter or Sylar), I will be mad and disappointed.
HRG-Another douche. I can't wait to see a fight between him and Claire! He used to be one of my favorite characters, but now that he's sided with Nathan, I'd like to see him dead as well. I don't think there's any more to say about him anyway; the Bennet family drama has kind of played itself out.
Sylar-Oh yeah! At least someone can fight back against the hunters! You just knew when you saw those guys going after him: "None of them are leaving this alive." I'd like to see him collecting more powers, and eventually be a part of taking down Nathan.
That's all for now! Listen to our show if you can!

More About the Inauguration

I know I already talked about Obama's inauguration, but after reading the last two issues of Time, I found I actually had more to say about it (but not that much). Some people who like focusing on little issues ('little q', as Dr. H would undoubtedly say) lambasted Obama's inaugural address for the supposed lack of historical catchphrases. Since presidential speeches upon inauguration have only yielded timeless quotes twice, both by presidents known by a three letter acronym (FDR's "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" and JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you, etc."), the perceived lack of such a phrase was not as crazy as some people have made it up to be. However, after reading two seperate articles that repeatedly quoted the speech, and after listening to the speech again and grading it with a rubric in IPC, I have found a few memorable quotes. They are:
"The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small but whether it works."
And
"What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them-that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply."
Both of them are lengthy quotes (I shortened the first one to make it more basic and memorable), but I think they underline everything that President Obama is all about. One of my friends, skeptical of Obama, said that Obama's "Change" message is stupid. "Change? What change? You want to be more specific?!" He has asked multiple times. These quotes outline the response to that question, which I know is not limited to my friend: Obama's 'change' is a change on a very basic level, a change on almost every layer of our existence. No more of the old "big gov't vs. small gov't" talk; no more of the focusing on the little q's. We need to change how we view others and how we view ourselves. We need to change our views towards war, science, religion, and politics. We need to come to a decision about our role in the world at large and decide how far we are willing to go, and how much we are willing to sacrifice, to feel secure. We need to change our government and how we view our government. We need a government that respects us and the Constitution from which it derives its power.
As Obama said, perhaps what skeptics like my friend fail to understand is that this change is already beginning.

Impressions

I haven't been able to post for awhile, so here are my impressions of Barack Obama's inauguration and the start of second semester.

I know the inauguration was ten days ago, but I just thought I'd bring up how ridiculous I find the concept of reading prayers at a Presidential inauguration for a country based upon freedom of religion. For some reason, I'm the only person I know who's bugged by this. Don't worry, I go to church a lot and am even a lector at my church, as well as being a huge fan of President Obama, but I believe in the words of Jesus (or was it St. Augustine?): "Give to God what belongs to God, and give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar."

Two weeks ago, I finally delved into the comic book masterpiece that is Hellboy. If your only knowledge of Mike Mignola's fantastic creation comes from the Guillermo del Toro movies, you MUST read the comics. I love them so much; maybe I'll put a real review up one of these days.

My second semester has been interesting so far. My IPC class is fun and exciting, and I really like my teacher. Health is quite possibly the easiest class I've ever taken, but I've learned a lot in the few days I've been there (even though I'm miffed that I can't take the SCUBA class next year). I actually like my new Euro class a lot; even though I was in 10th period for an entire semester, I still know more people in 9th than I did in 10th. I still have Drogos as my teacher, thank God. And I'm grateful I get to end the day with Guitar, another extremely easy class.

Finally, today I auditioned for a music show on WLTL with Boots and Pods. I was really nervous, especially during the interview (my experience as a lector helped the vocal section more than I could have reasonably expected). I should be informed of whether or not I made it tomorrow or Sunday, so expect to hear about it.

That's all for now.

Happy Birthday

It was this weekend, one year ago, that Bizarro World started. Whooo! Made it a year with more frequent updates than most! I'm not sure if this is the exact day, but today is the day after finals ended, and I remember that that's when I started this blog last year. In celebration, here's a pretty long post including New Years' Resolutions and other interesting tidbits.

New Years Resolutions (because I keep forgetting to do them)
-Get active: If I keep laying around doing nothing but reading and posting on this blog, I really will get fat and lazy. I'm going to try to run more this year over the spring, summer, and fall, and maybe work out more.
-Write some stories: As I type this, I am simultaneously typing stories for the school's literary magazine, Menagerie, and have a detailed plan for a story with one of my friends. This is the year I actually start writing my stories down.
-Get straight A's: Unfortunately, with a B in AP Euro first semester, this is not going to happen first semester. But since my second semester seems like it's going to be really easy, I'm going to really throw my full weight behind AP Euro in the attempt to get an A in every class. Let's do it!

That's all for now, folks!

Remembering 2008

Like Harrison, I'm afraid that I'm often too busy or tired to update this blog. Unlike Boots, that is not a good enough reason for me to quit; Bizarro World is going to remain intact despite erratic updates. Anyway, 2008 is coming to a close, and many magazines like dedicating issues to remembering important events from the previous year. Henceforth I will share with you things that happened in 2008 that I thought were important, and things that I've learned.
Let it be known that 2008 was the year...
-Bizarro World started: Yes, the first year of this blog is drawing to a close. I started it the day finals were finished, after many of my friends had started blogs in the wake of Mr. Maffey creating a blog for his English Honors class.
-I discovered surrealism: Interesting to note that a post from earlier this year was entitled "No Boots, I've Never Seen the Painting 'Son of Man' Before" (because Boots had been bugging me about it all day). The statement was quite true; at that point, I had never seen the aforementioned painting, or any other painting by Renee Magritte. However, this year we studied impressionism and surrealism in French class, which led me to look up Magritte's paintings online, which led me to develop a fanatic love for them, which led to me putting one of Magritte's painitngs as the header pic on this blog.
-I read many new comics: I got caught up on Bill Willingham's Fables series and read three-fourths of Grant Morrison's epic Seven Soldiers, both of which I highly recommend. I also started Preacher and 100 Bullets; while I enjoy both of those, they are both genre comics (western and urban noir, respectively), and you have to be able to stomach excessive swearing and gratuitous violence. I'll talk about them in depth another time.
-Batman became cool: Before 2008, it was impossible to have someone make a Two-Face reference in Chemistry class and have everyone else not only get it, but laugh (this happened in my class, though I wasn't the one that made the reference). "The Dark Knight" was one of the most successful films of recent years, and almost everyone at my school loved it. References are made to that film almost daily

Things I Learned in 2008:
-Satire is not always funny: Although Voltaire's masterpiece Candide, a satire of almost everything, is one of the funniest things I've ever read, satire does not always have to be funny. Exhibit A: George Orwell's Animal Farm, a satire of the Russian Revolution that is downright scary. Not scary in the vein of Saw, but haunting.

2008 in comics:
-Marvel's Secret Invasion, which saw a Marvel Universe overcome by invading Skrull shapeshifters, came and went. It was nothing short of disappointing; the replaced heroes were discovered to be a-okay, and the Skrulls never really posed a threat. The lead-up to Secret Invasion was far more intriguing than the actual miniseries. On the bright side, the "Dark Reign" storyline, involving Norman Osborn's takeover of SHIELD, came from it, and promises to be interesting.
-DC's Final Crisis began, and is now halfway finished. Although I had my doubts on my first readthrough, a few subsequent rereads of the first four issues have made me a devoted fan of the series, which is truly living up to Grant Morrison's claim to be the "Lord of the Rings" for the DCU. I hope it ends well.

That's all for now!

Some Thoughts

Last weekend, I went to see "Quantum of Solace", the new James Bond movie that serves as a sequel to "Casino Royale". It was pretty short; an hour and a half I think, but nevertheless weighs in as the shortest Bond movie yet. Also, it's even shorter compared to "Casino Royale", which if I remember correctly was actually pretty long. It was okay; the action scenes were good, but the plot was kind of hard to understand. Also, in this movie Bond really seems like an British version of Jason Bourne without the memory loss. Because of the hard-to-understand plot, which as far as I can tell involves a huge company's attempt to control the water supply in third-world countries in South America while Bond deals with the emotional aftereffects of lover Vesper Lynd's suicide, I didn't like it as much as "Casino Royale". I've heard that "Quantum" is only the second part of a trilogy, which makes sense since the movie has no real ending. Also, having not seen "Casino Royale" for awhile, I had forgotten some of the loose plot threads that were resolved in this movie.
Also, a new "Watchmen" trailer has surfaced. I heard that it was supposed to debut before "Quantum of Solace", but I didn't see it and was forced to search for it online. It's currently on the superblog right now, but it may appear on this blog as well to protect it from overeager deleters. It's really amazing; however, unlike the first trailer, this one shows evidence of subtle differences between the movie and comic. The main one is that the movie seems to imply the existence of a team of superheroes called the Watchmen that has disbanded by the time of the movie, consisting of Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Dr. Manhattan, the Comedian, Rorschach, and Ozymandias. Let's hope that the movie is still just as awesome as the comic, just with good special effects (have you SEEN the trailer scene where Dr. Manhattan levitates the giant watch out of the ground on Mars?). For those of you who have never read the Watchmen comic (I pity you), I'll probably put up a comprehensive review soon, with the material fresh in my mind after what I think is my third re-read of the comic.