This is Kyle. Who else would be blogging about the Academy Awards? Ben? Pshaw.

Anyhoo, as many of you know, tonight was The 83rd Academy Awards! So I want to talk about some of the winners and what I think about them. Two things: I haven't really seen a lot of these films, so it's going to limit my commentary a bit. Secondly, that was it, I don't really have a second thing.

Let's get the big one out of the way. Best picture went to The Kings Speech, which also happened to win best actor for Colin Firth, best directing for Tom Hooper, and best original screenplay. So I should probably see this movie. As far as the best picture goes I know that The Social Network was a big contender, and I have seen that...so I'm cool. Also, it shouldn't win, and it would never win but how cool would it be if Toy Story 3 won best picture? That would be so awesome.

...has a sequel won Best Picture.

It did win, however, best animated film. No surprise there. Everyone should check out the other nominee How to Train Your Dragon too. It's surprisingly good for a Dreamworks animation movie, and I didn't mean that to sound like Dreamworks sucks, but they certainly not Pixar. (Dreamworks kinda sucks sometimes.) Toy Story 3 also took an award for Randy Newman's "We Belong Together" for best original song, but we can just pretend it was for "You Got a Friend in Me" since that was nominated in '95, but lost to "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas. Really?

Inception took away all of the awards it should have with best cinematography, best sound editing, best sound mixing, and best visual effects. It could have taken best original screenplay too, because seriously: Inception is way more original than The King's Speech, which is kinda based on, well, actual real events.

And I'm pretty sure this wasn't.

And the Social Network takes best editing (which I will admit that I have no idea why), best original score (done by Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails), and best adapted screenplay written by Aaron Sorkin. Could have gotten more in my opinion, but not bad. The screenplay was very very good.

Well, that be all my friends. There were plenty of other awards, but I don't have the time or patience to talk about all of them, and I bet you don't either. So I shall say farewell, and leave you with this:

My Song

Hey guys, it's Ben

The last two days I have been writing a song and I finished it today. I know it's kinda long, I really want some of you guys to listen to it and tell me what you think. Give me things to improve on. I know the sound quality is bad b/c i just recorded it on my Mac. Please let me know what you think!!! It would mean a lot guys.

There is a delay on the video, I don't know why it is that way, sorry about that, it didn't upload right, the sound should still all be right. It also cuts out a little early, but you still get the gist of most of the song.

It's called Make me a better man. Ill post the lyrics underneath the video.




Lyrics

Verse 1
I've worked all my life to get where I'm at.
I've prayed and I've tried to be more than that.
I've asked for help from all that would give it
But I always revert back to the start.

Chorus
What am I now?
As a college man.
What is my purpose in life
as I strive to be who I am?
What can I do
In times of need?
To where can I go when my struggles lead to the depths of the deceit.

Instrumental

Verse 2
I've tried to become something I'm not
Like all that is life, will soon come to rot.
I try to be me but somehow I'm caught
Throwing away all my beliefs.

Chorus

Verse 3

I've been looking for you nearly all of my life.
I tried to find you in times of strife.
Until I found you it cut like a knife,
But now the scars fade away.

Outro/End

Why do I fall astray?
Why do I give way?
To the monster within x2

Make me a better man x3

The Talent Show Performance

So just today somebody posted a video of our talent show performance. Just to clear something up though, the name of the video is "The Flying Dutchmen", but our team name was actually "The Fly Dutchmen". Kinda ruined that pun, but whatever, enjoy.




Also, for the Prairie Grass Film Challenge, I forgot to mention that the name of my video is "Kelly". Thanks for voting if you did. Peace.

A Sunday

It's Ben

Today, all of the churches in our area were cancelled. I don't like these situations. Obviously it was great to sleep in, but I also really did want to go to church because I was scheduled to sing in church! We ended up going to church at night, it was pretty sweet, we sang one of my favorite hymns, Abide with Me.

Alicia came to visit today, I think she had a good time hanging out to visit in the afternoon. Good luck on the scholarship at NW Alicia!

                Lady Gaga arrived at the Grammy's in an EGG!!! What the!?!?

So, another funny story. Our friend David Spencer, the kids who can't stop laughing at my Orc impression, a couple of our friends bough him goldfish, one of them died right away. The other two he named "what the" and "dude." Today, Dude died, he blames the fish because he says it would never eat. What the is now alone in the tank...haha, what great names, eh?

Also tonight, there was a special praise and worship since we didn't have church this morning. It was pretty cool, I had fun. I played piano again, it was fun. We have 3 weeks until it is spring break, hopefully I will get to see a glimpse of some of you.

For any of you who didn't watch the grammy's should definitely watch some of the performances, they were legit! I enjoyed nearly every performance. My favorite was Mumford and Sons with the Avett Brothers and Bob Dylan. Mumford and the Avett Bros were amazing. To be honest, Dylan kinda ruined it, he just didn't have the energy and his voice was gone because he smoked to much in the 60's. Mick Jagger was also stellar, as well as Cee Lo Green. Hopefully, you guys watch some of those, ill post the one I liked the best.



tootalu my trubadoos,

Ben

The Weekend of Competitions

This was the weekend of competitions. A pretty crazy weekend. But how did we fare in said competitions? Well, my good blog readers, let me tell you.

First of all, I (Kyle) had made a video for the Prairie Grass Film Challenge, and the awards ceremony was on Friday night. Before the ceremony we had screenings to see the movies all around campus. We were able to attend one showing of our video and the response was very positive. Everyone was laughing A LOT. So we were getting pretty excited. Everyone said that it was awesome. We got more excited.

Then it came time for the ceremony. As each award was announced, we sat with anticipation. They then announced the award for best actor, and a member from our team won! Justin Gloudemans, who played Kelly in our movie got the award. Unfortunately, that was all we got for the night.

Justin is the one on the right. He is an ACTOR.

We still can win something, and that is the people's choice award. So here's the deal. Click THIS to go to a page where you can watch all the movies from the competition. Then click THIS to vote for your favorite. In an act of complete selflessness, I want to stress something. DO NOT vote for ours if you think there is one better than us. I don't want to try to sabotage this competition. Vote how you wish.


The next competition was one we had tonight. The Talent Extravaganza we blogged about earlier. We were really nervous, but once we got on stage everything happened exactly like it was supposed to. We had a blast, and the crowd loved it. Unfortunately, we didn't win. Every single act out there was awesome, and I wouldn't be able to tell you what one I thought was the best. They all brought their A-game. The winner was a guy named Cory, who does impressions. And they were CRAZY. He literally sounded like every movie or TV character he impersonated, and improvised most of his act. Congrats Cory.

P.S. Supposedly somebody filmed our performance from the crowd and is going to put it one youtube, so look forward to that. See you later fools.

A week in Review

Hey, it's Ben blogging today.

First things first, pretty amazing weather! Really made my week, went for a run with Austin on Wednesday, it was awesome. I plan on running tomorrow with him again possibly.

Also, I ordered Mumford and Sons Sigh no More on vinyl wednesday....which means it will be coming...TODAY!!! I can't wait for it to get here. We are going to have a party in my room when we listen to it for the first time! It will be epic.

 We had praise and worship tonight. It was awesome. I really like praise and worship as I think I have mentioned before. It truly is my favorite part of the week, thursday's are my favorite day in general because I only have 2 classes and we have praise and worship at night! Awesome.Period.

What else, on friday, we have The Prairie Grass Film challenge results, so that will be interesting to finally watch Kyle's movie and see if it won any awards.

                                      This could be what Kyle wins!

Also on saturday, we have the talent show. Their are posters up everywhere, and we are on some of the pictures, it's pretty sweet. Im already nervous to play piano and sing for it, but it'll be good. Also on saturday we plan to go to someone's house who lives near here and ride quads that she has. I am really looking forward to this. You see, we have tons of fun things to do here at Dordt.

Also this past weekend, Tori came to visit us. It was fun to see her again, a familiar face from home! I hope we didn't bore her too much....haha, get it, i just made a pun because she is from hope...haha. Anyways, she got to see Jeff run and we went to pizza ranch, I hope she had fun!

Crocodile Hunter Died....

that is all!

BEN

50th Blogpost Extravangaza!!!

I know, I know, it's been way to long since our last post. But! The reason for this is because we wanted to have something special for our 50th post. This is a milestone, people.

Unfortunately, we couldn't decide what to do. Every time we thought to blog, we remembered that we needed to make it good and then we said we should wait until the right thing came up. Well, here's the right thing. Below is a video of us practicing our act for the college talent show. It's a medley of popular songs, many of which are on the radio right now. It was filmed on my laptop so I apologize for the sound quality, but I hope you will enjoy it.




So, okay, maybe it wasn't worth the wait. But it's pretty good, right? That's Matt De Jong on the guitar, Ben on piano, Darin on skins and me (Kyle) on the mike. Yo. So we performed this on Wednesday for an audition and...dun dun dun...we made it! We're in the talent show, performing this for the whole college! Kinda scary.

The show is a week from today, next Saturday. So wish us luck. Goodnight.