To Tan or Not to Tan?

First of all, whoo! Spring break is almost here! Now that I have that covered, it’s time to discuss spring break preparation. In recent years it has become quite prevalent that in the weeks preceding spring break, it is a requirement to hang out in brightly-lit coffins; or uh, tanning beds.

This year I decided to take part in this tradition mainly because I convinced myself that if I did not do it, I would suffer severe sunburn as I tear down houses in New Orleans. (Hey if I’m doing something good, I might as well look good doing it!) So after dropping fifteen bucks at Island Tan, my journey of skin darkening began.

I have some issues with the whole tanning thing. First of all, how long should I go? If I go for too short of a time, it makes no difference, but if I go too long, I end up looking like a lobster. Me, being smart because I’m in honors, opted for the go too long and get the most for my money route. That was a big mistake.

I go for a good seven minutes, and those seven minutes ended up ruining my life for the next two days. I seriously could not even sleep. I got out of bed like three times to just stand in a cold shower, which felt good but also horrendous because having something striking your skin in that state is not such a great thing. Despite my efforts, I suffered two sleepless nights. I thought tanning was supposed to be relaxing!

While the aftermath of tanning wasn’t relaxing, either is the actual action of tanning. I already feel awkward enough being naked in a public place, but then I have to think about what naked person was in here before me. Yeah, I know they “spray down” the bed, but come on, how clean does it really get?

So after being grossed out thinking about who was in there before me, I have flashbacks to terrible horror films where girls get locked into tanning beds and killed. You have your classic I Still Know What You Did Last Summer scene where the killer chains her in there and turns up the heat, then you have the more recent Final Destination Three where for whatever reason the two girls get trapped in the beds and basically explode. Gross.

After all of this stressing out and uncomfortable sun burns I think I’ve decided that next spring break I’ll skip the tanning and spend the fifteen dollars on beer because hey, I’ll be 21 by then.

The Oscars and Idaho

Ok so last night, the Oscars. It had some props of course but the show in general was a drop.

Highlights:
-Ellen asking Spielberg to take a photo of her and Clint Eastwood for her Myspace...yeah
-Scorsese winning FINALLY
-Jennifer Hudson kicking butt and winning
-Celine Dion singing, ok she has weird facial expressions but the woman can sing!

Not so highlights:
-Peter O'Toole....as my roommate said "he's got one foot in the grave".
-Beyonce and Jennifer Hudson dueling it out on stage in a vocal battle.
-Forest Whitaker winning best lead actor. I cannot stand him. Leonardo Dicaprio deserved to win.
-After Celine sang, the Italian guy going up on stage with a blind-non reading teleprompted Clint Eastwood. The man gave his speech in Italian and Clint Eastwood translated...yeah ok. Even Kate Winslet had the WTF face going on.


Ok I will stop now about the Oscars. Onto other news that is so much more important.

I've been told by Craig that I have a duty to all of you to write a blog about my journey that is coming up. My boyfriend (referred to here after as BW or Boy Wonder) just got a job in Boise, Idaho. YAY BW! Go you. So BW must go to Boise and start his 3 month co-op but he wants his car. So I have been elected co-pilot on our lil trek across the country. Yeah New York to Idaho? Ever glanced at Idaho on a map? It's not close...at all. I decided to help you all out and include a link with a map(http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=rochester+to+boise&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=62.70117,112.851563&ie=UTF8&z=4&om=1)

Far right? Yep. But atleast it is only one way. BW is being a good guy and buying me a plane ticket home. That will be a predicament in itself. I'm flying Boise to Seattle, Seattle to Washington D.C., D.C. to Syracuse and then driving back to Rochester from there Sunday morning. Yeah I have French class at 9am Monday...

I think that just about covers my rants for the day. I wont be updating for a few days unfortunately. I'm going to see my other Boy Wonder, Johnny Mayer :) Tuesday night I will be MIA and quite possibly sneaking backstage.

-K

ps. if you guys read this and like my blogs lemme know! Positive feedback is your friend :)

How to Get a Girl in 10 Days

Okay. I’ve had it. We have tried to clue you in, but it just isn’t working. Boys, you really need to work on your etiquette with the ladies. I mean, come on, do you really think that what you are doing is working? I’ll give you a few rules to live by so we can both breathe a little easier.

First of all, if you are not my boyfriend, you cannot call me “baby.” Last I checked I’m 20 years old. That makes me a grown woman, so how about you treat me like one.

Speaking of how you refer to women, we are not impressed or really all that flattered when you call us “hot.” All that shows us is that you want to get in our pants, not have a meaningful relationship with us which believe it or not, is something we are kind of looking for. If you must compliment our looks, go with pretty or even beautiful, we are more appreciative of that.

Another thing, do not act surprised when I do not know who Payton Manning is. Not all people care about professional sports. I don’t expect you to know what happened last week on Grey’s Anatomy, so don’t expect me to know what team won the Super Bowl. (Besides, we only watch that for the commercials.)

I have two words for you; video games. I know it’s hard to believe, but we don’t really find amusement out of watching you kill people while you play Doom. I know you feel all manly when you play, but honestly, it is boring and quite gross. Plus if you are going to play videogames when we are with you, don’t refuse to let us play. We are trying to cooperate here, so how about you share?

Don’t make yourself too available. We enjoy a little bit of a challenge. Get us interested, and then make us come to you. If we really want to talk to you, we will IM you or call you, so just be patient.

The balance of effort may be hard to achieve because you can’t expect us to do all the work. A good thing to remember is if you say you are going to call, then call. If you make plans with us, don’t cancel, we set aside that time for you. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. When you do make plans with us, try to make them somewhat decent. Burger King is not a date. Taco Bell is also not a date.

Please don’t act like a child, you are an adult. If we take a little extra time getting ready, you don’t have to whine about it. After all, we are trying to make ourselves presentable for you genius, so maybe you could learn to appreciate the effort.

Finally, if you actually rope us in, there are three things you need to remember: Valentine’s Day, our birthday, and most importantly, our anniversary. Forgetting any of these three things may be detrimental to your health. I’m not kidding. We remember every little detail about our relationship, so asking you to remember these three little dates is not asking for much.

Honestly boys, if you take these things into consideration, you might be able to attract yourself a nice girl. It really isn’t that difficult to do, just be a good guy.

Grammy bologna

The grammys are dead.

I know this might be old news for people given the Grammys happened almost two weeks ago. The Grateful Dead were given a lifetime achievement award and referred to as "the mother of all jambands." The Grammys recognized the j-word but how come there isn't a "jamband" category or how come these bands aren't included in other categories?

The Grammys also blew their chance at honoring the godfather of soul James Brown. Christina Aguilera was the best available to honor him? That blows holes in my universe!

John Mayer in the pop category? What is happening?

They obviously spent all their resources on the Police getting back together considering Mary J. Blige performed like five times and spoke about 55 minutes during her 27 grammy wins. That must be a record.

The Grateful Dead are far from retirement. Why not ask them to play?

Britney...Bald...Oh My!

Hello all,

Sorry for the lack of updates, please forgive me!

OK so how about I get a phone call from my dear roomie this morning :

C: Hey did you know what Britney did?
K: Of course....she shaved her freaking head!
C: How did you know already?
K: Remember...I have an addiction to People.com?

Yeah so how about them apples? Britney goes off the deep end, checks in and out of rehab and ends up with more tattoo's and bald. I don't even know where to begin on that so I'll just refrain entirely. Although it was quite funny to be standing in Haffey tonight and hear someone on their cellphone laughing "she shaved her head...bald....for real!" Endless amusement I tell you.

OK so on to other music like news. Anyone here watch the Grammys last week? I know I'm a little late on that and I take all the blame for that one! Props go out to the Dixie Chicks for rocking the Grammys and stealing the thunder and awards. Drops I am sad to admit involve my dearly beloved imaginary husband John Mayer. The performance with John Legend and Corinne Bailey Ray? Snoozefest. Now I love me some Johnny Mayer, and I'm a new fan of CBR but I've never really understood the buzz with John Legend (if you do please let me know!) but that performance was just terrible, it was like OK you sing, now I'll sing, OK you too now. But MAJOR props are due for Johnny Mayer winning 2 more awards to add to his collection.

I only have one comment to make toward Christina Aguilera's performance: James would be like a proud daddy hearing that.

With all that said I'm now off to continue educating myself,

K

PS: Congrats to all that participated in Teddi!!!

Riding the Pine - Dunk-o-Rama edition

One of the best things about NBA All-Star weekend is the dunk contest.

It's true that recent editions of this contest has lacked the excitement and buzz that it used to when the likes of Air Jordan, Dominique Wilkins and Spud Webb were throwing down jams. The contest was revived a little thanks to another true dunk master: Vince Carter. But since Carter there hasn't been many memorable dunk contests. Which is a shame because these young competitors are raising the bar for creative and challenging dunks with each passing year. But still, who can name one of these players? That's the main problem, there aren't any big stars competing any more.

But with All-Star weekend in Vegas this year, the dunk contest was primed to be one of the best ever. And while some of the dunks in the championship round failed to be great, this year's battle of the dunk artists was still one of the more entertaining events in a while.

The actually dunkers may not have been household names, but a star-studded cast of judges made up for that. Jordan, Dr. J, Carter and Kobe were just a hand full of dunking maestros that were now judging their successors.

The dunkers that stood out the most for me were: defending champion Nate Robinson (who still needs to grow a few inches to be able to ride a roller coaster), Dwight Howard (who was by far, the biggest star in this year's contest) and high-flying Celtic Gerald Green.

For time considerations, I'll skip ahead to the top dunks of the night. First off, there was Dwight Howard's "sticker" dunk where he leaped up and tagged the top of the backboard with an ingenious sticker that depicted his smiling mug. At the same time he layed down a furious dunk. Now, I want to know two things: how do you get a sticker of your own face (because I would like to purchase several Scott Pukos stickers) and why did the judges give this dunk such a low score. You would think it was Dwight Schrute dunking not Howard with that low score.

Next there was Nate Robinson's cadre of dunks. He one last year, but to me it was tainted by the fact that his cool dunk took about 50 tries and an hour to finally get down. He should have got marked down for boring an entire arena and National Audience. Still, Robinson's a crowd favorite because of his small stature and epic leaping ability. Seriously, if I could jump as high as this man than I would jump or skip everywhere I went instead of walking. I would jump over little children in the street just for fun. Leaping ability like this is usually only scene in video games like NBA Jam and Super Mario (and if Robinson is Mario than that would make Gerald Green Luigi). Unfortunately, Robinson's downfall was that he took too many tries to produce his final dunk. Which opened the door for the 2007 dunking king.....

Gerald Green. Green had several jaw-dropping slams including the leaping over a table to receive a perfect score of 50 from the judges. The funniest moment of the night came on one his better dunks. Green's teammate Paul Pierce brought out a card-board cutout of Robinson for Green to dunk over. But instead Robinson stormed on the court and demanded that Green dunk over his real self instead of his cardboard counterpart. Green successfully hurdled Robinson and completed the dunk to a mixed reaction from a crowd that was both exhilarated by the dunk and also secretly disappointed that Green didn't end up kicking Robinson in the face (which he almost did).

Green was a deserving winner and he helped bring back the buzz for what is really a cool and unique event. But on another, more disturbing note, what was up with the Spurs mascot? I have no idea why there mascot is a giant coyote wearing a Tim Duncan jersey, but his bulbous and bulging green eyes are creepy. How does this mascot not frighten children and single handily bring down the Spurs home attendance. Or maybe their mascot isn't just a normal coyote, but a rabies-infested creature that resides in Texas. Yeah, maybe that's it.

On another note, be sure to check out the new edition of the Courier on Wednesday and check out my column Riding the Pine, it's all about the Buffalo Sabres and judging by the number of slug hats I've seen on campus, pretty much everyone should be interested in reading about hockey's finest.

Wait, it's snowing outside?

How about that.

St. John Fisher College actually had a snow day today. The last snow day the school had came my freshman year (I'm a senior now), and it wasn't because of snow at all. That day afternoon classes were cancelled due to overwhelming wind gusts. I found out the hard way that day because I walked across the sidewalk to Basil (you remember this sidewalk right? Before it turned it to a pile of dirt) to my class only to find out that classes that day were cancelled. And let me tell you, it was definitely windy, I couldn't even walk in a straight line.

Today's snow day was a pleasant surprise though. I got to sleep in, which is always great. This snow day was a long time coming too. For the past few weeks we've had some frigid days and people having to walk from Founders (like me) or the Murph have walked 10-15 minutes everywhere they go. Add it all the trips to class/meals/work together and that's the equivalent of spending anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour outside in sub-zero degree temperatures. No wonder seemingly everyone on campus is sick.

Hopefully, people take it easy today and try to avoid the roads and enjoy the snow. And here's to hoping that Fisher's next snow day isn't another 3 years away.

Football, Ads and Frozen Tundra

Ok so it is now Monday and the madness has been had. The Colts won, go Peyton Manning. Good game.

Now that is over with, I am proud to say that I did not watch the Superbowl for more than 5 minutes. Yes call it sacrilegious and sinful but its true. The only reason I did watch was to catch a few commercials between the actual game. Sad. I know. Speaking of commercials did anyone catch the Doritos one? Good advertising there, Prof. Baron would be proud I think. I however cannot believe the one Coca-Cola spot. It was old! Here these companies are paying millions of dollars for a 30 second spot of prime advertisement and they use a old commercial. Now granted its not the worst commercial they've done (I'm partial to the Polar Bears during the holidays) but the Grand Theft Auto styled LOVE ad was just a little too blah for me.

On to other news, who else froze their butts off on campus this frigid morning? I live in Murphy and refused to make the trek this morning. God Bless S&S. I heart all of you! My motherly words of wisdom, do not wear shorts when there is a wind chill advisory (yes I saw it!).

Stay warm and cozy till next time!

-K

Riding the Pine - Super Bowl forecast

"We're not here to cause any trouble, we're just here to do the Super Bowl Shuffle." - 1985 Chicago Bears


Get ready for an upset on Sunday.

From talking to people on campus and from what I've read, the general consensus seems to be that Peyton Manning's laser rocket arm will guide the Indianapolis Colts to their first title since their Baltimore days. This will lead to dozens of columns praising good guys (like Manning and Tony Dungy) finally getting their ring and Manning doing commercials for every product from cell phones to RepHresh gel.

But I just don't see it happening. I'm actually rooting for the Colts. They remind me of the Super Bowl Bills team (they were both built by the genius of Bill Polian). But unfortunately for both myself and the Colts, those Bills teams never won the Super Bowl and the Colts may face a similar upset as the infamous Bills-Giants game (I know it's painful to bring up). The parallels are there and history has been known to repeat itself.

Not only that but this game also reminds me of the recent World Series and BCS Championship. The Cardinals and Gators weren't given much of a chance to win, yet they both came out on top - in relatively dominating fashion too.

I don't think the Bears will dominate , I think it will be close, but the Bears are better than they are perceived. The weak NFC is partially to blame for that, people just assume that because the rest of the conference is weak that it's champion must also be an also-ran. Not true. The Bears have an impress one-two punch of defense and special teams that has one several games single handily a few times already.

Against the Colts they'll need some offense too. This is the Colts biggest advantage. Especially at Quarterback where Manning is far superior to Rex Grossman (by the way, is that his real name or a nickname? His parents thought it was a good idea to name him Rex?). One thing that Grossman does real well though, is to throw the deep ball. And I think he'll connect on a few of these again Sunday. This will open up things enough for the Bears to pound the ball and control the clock and more importantly keeping Manning off the field.

This brings me to the quote at the top of the post. That, of course is a line from the hit song "The Super Bowl Shuffle." That was sung (and danced to) the last time the Bears made the big game. It was also the Bears only appearance in the Super Bowl until now. That team was one of the best and fun teams the NFL has ever seen. It even spawned the great "Super Fans" sketch on SNL that launched the always entertaining phrase: "Da Bears."

So if that was the Super Bowl shuffle, let's call this the Upset Shuffle. It will be especially painful for Manning (went to school at Tennessee) to lose to a Florida product like Grossman. But I guess that's the way of life for one of the game's greatest players - having to bare the pain of another championship-less year.

Score:
Bears- 27
Colts- 22