So It's Come to This...

Alright, we haven't blogged in a long time, I'm sorry, blah blah blah, alright, enough. Now that we've got that out of the way we can get to the meat of this blog post.

 

There it is. Now onto the topic of this blog post. I (Kyle) am sure you have heard of this "song" called Friday by a 13 year old girl named Rebecca Black. Wait! I know, I know, I'm feeding the fire. But I thought it appropriate to weigh in on it with my opinion, since it seems to be everywhere.

I'm with her on that one.

So, I'm not going to post the video of the song because either you've heard it, or you should continue to live your life as you have been and you will hear it eventually. So anyway, here's my opinion:

The song is terrible. Yes, I think it's probably the worst song that has ever been this popular. But here's the thing that some people don't understand: the fact that it's so bad is the reason it is popular! There are people that seem to think that this song is everywhere because people think it's a good song. Now, I'm sure somewhere out there you could find someone that actually thinks it's a good song, but they would be in the minority.

This is the "So Bad It's Good" idea, and it's been around forever. Friday didn't invent this, it's just following in the footsteps of many other classic "So Bad It's Good" movies, music, television, and even video games. Here are some famous examples:

Troll 2: You probably haven't seen this movie (and neither have I) but you may have seen the most ridiculous clip from it. Just look it up on Youtube and you'll know what I'm talking about.

The 1966 Batman TV Show: Thanks Adam West.

American Idol (She Bangs, You Are My Brother, Pants on the Ground): This show is ripe with "So Bad It's Good" songs, performed by various people that have gotten famous for their terribleness.

"So Bad It's Good" has been around for a while.

That's it. Yeah, I kinda got lazy. There are a lot more, just look it up. So what I'm really trying to say is, stop complaining about Friday and how bad it is. We know. That's why we like it. If you honestly can't stand it, just be patient. It will go away in a couple of weeks, and then she'll release another song, trying to catch the same lightning in the same bottle, but she will most likely fail. Her 15 minutes of fame will be up. And in 30 years or so, we can all watch the video and laugh about it again. The End.

No surprise here. I'm pretty sure every song ever made has ripped off The Beatles in some way or another.

Back To My "Home"

Hello all, it's Ben, first of all, sorry it has been so long since kyle or I have blogged, it was busy right before break, and it will be busy now until the end of the year, so I apologize in advance if there are multiple days before posts. We will try our best to post as much as we can!

First, WE'RE BACK! To me, Dordt is becoming a second home. I love michigan, and everything about it. But there is just something about being here at Dordt that makes me feel like I'm at home as well.

There is one new thing that I have started. To Kyle's disliking, I have decided to learn guitar and I brought my acoustic guitar back to me at Dordt. I have played quite a bit now, for the last two weeks, and improvement is coming, but there is still much that I need to improve.

                            A Taylor Guitar, wish I had one of those!

Today, I didn't have any classes till 11 am because my first class was cancelled!!! I love it when that happens. The only downside of this is that I have to write a 20 page paper within the next 3 weeks for that class. YAY for PAPERS!!

The Bulls play tonight! Hopefully they can take the lead of the Eastern Conference again!

My bracket isn't looking good for March Madness, the only good thing going for it right now is I still have my final two teams--Uconn and Kansas, with Uconn winning the whole thing. Kemba Walker is by far the one of the best player in the NCAA in my opinion, which is why they have a shot, they've got a real tough road ahead of them though with SDSU and potentially Duke and Ohio St.

That is all for now! Have a great week!

May Christ be with you!

Ben

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.