Belittling Bale's Batvoice

Ok now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE The Dark Knight and it will definitely find a place of honor in my DVD collection. However, just as many others have been, I was more than a bit distracted by Christian Bale's somewhat silly voice while behind the mask. Fortunately, there are mega-fans out there who create masterful gems like this one that reflect my own opinions perfectly. I hope you laugh as hard as I did.


http://view.break.com/554666 - Watch more free videos

And the saga continues...

Yes, we went back at it again last night on the "Hard" level and actually made it through to the final round! Josh rocked the vocals on the first song:



I had a rather grand rock star moment myself:



Devan took the vocals to town on our second song while Josh cranked out the ending bonus (I love this pic):



For the finals all of the bands had to do the same song, Dani California, by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. We only made it 20% through it before failing out but still got a prize baggie just for participating.



My seven-year-old niece, as it turns out, is brilliant behind a camera. She has the 'eye' as we photogs sometimes say and she was responsible for all of the trigger work last night. This definitely ranks among my favorite pictures of Dave:



I also liked this one that she took. Being on the other side of the shutter most of the time, I rarely end up on film - or on a memory card as the case now is. This pic isn't so much flattering or anything like that, but was just a nice capture of a moment.

SCANDAL at the Davis County Fair!

The Perks (that's us left to right: me, Seth, Josh, Devan) totally rocked their hearts out at the Davis County Fair tonight but sadly, didn't make the cut to the final round of the Rock Band competition.




As it turned out, however, the drummer for Neff (another competitor) had to leave right after their set and their band made it through to finals. They asked me if I would be willing to play with them so they wouldn't have to disqualify out and I am always up for playing. We totally cranked out Boston's "Foreplay". Come on, Boston and a county fair crowd? Wicked awesome. The band immediately following us, however, also gave all to their song and carried away some major points. The last band to play through in the finals pretty much sucked toenails and took home less than half the points that my surrogate band received, but managed still to win the competition. I guess there are more crooked judges out there than just in Beijing. Oh believe me now my dearies...letters will be written...Letters...will...be...WRITTEN. And then sent.

It was actually still a total riot and we might even go back for some more punishment tomorrow for the "Hard" level competition. Tonight's was "medium". So, there may be more to come from the Rock Band saga. We want those iPod Nano's dammit! Whoever braves the "Expert" level on Saturday (heaven help them) has the iPod Touch coming their way. Oo la la.

2nd Annual Movie Night

Movie Night went great this year. We rolled out the red carpet and all.



We had a few paparazzi moments right from the get-go.



And, thank goodness, Dave and I managed to get the back corner finished just in the nick of time. The pea gravel actually ended up providing a surprising amount of entertainment for the kids.



Everybody ate up





There was a fair amount of rocking out, of course.





And then, the feature presentation: the first volume of Pixar Short Films.




Oh, and by the way, if you read this post and didn't get an invite please, please, please send me your address because I either don't have it or am lame and forgot you.

American Idolatry

So I decided to throw my hat into the idol ring once again since this was my last year for eligibility. For those who may not know, I auditioned once previously for the second season. You know, the Reuben who?/Clay Aiken year? The funniest part of the whole surreal and altogether strange experience was that even though they pretty well have the "people processing" now down to an art, I felt much dirtier by the end of the day than after the experience seven years ago. Dirtier in the sense that they now spend ALL morning whoring the crowd out for the cameras. I pretty well expected them to do all of the typical crowd stuff like having us all shout random coin phrases to be used during the promos as well as the run of the show, but they also ask you to scream and cheer after absolutely EVERYTHING they have you do. So, you end up with six thousand people spending the first six hours (no kidding, six) screaming their voices raw before, um, a vocal audition. Don't tell, but I totally faked it. By the early afternoon there were people crashing out everywhere. Before heading into the arena, however, I did manage to get a decent shot of just a few hundred people. Can you find me in the crowd?




Wait, wait, hang on, I think you might be able to find me in this one.




Those two enthusiastic fellas over my shoulder had sat in line with me for three and a half hours outside before they actually let us in the building. Sweet and funny kids. Reminded me of what it was like to be 20 again. After they finally did get auditions up and going for about an hour they stopped them again for about another hour for more crowd crap and because, of course, Ryan Seacrest had to get his promotional and show stuff done.




Now, the funny part about having him around was that it made me really realize just how great my seats would have been if I was there for a Jazz game because of how much smaller Seacrest would look if standing next to any of the players. I have about an inch on him and everyone knows I'm not breaking any height records except in my own family. So, all I could think of watching Ryan was that the players would on average tower a full foot and a half above him (and me). If you know the Delta Center at all (I refuse to call it by that other name), my seats were in section 6 third row. That's the first row of stationary seats right behind the folding chairs. Sweetness. All in all though, the nicest moment I had the whole time I was there was feeding bits of my hamburger bun to this bird that was stuck inside.




By the time I was finally able to audition I had already been at the arena for thirteen, count 'em, thirteen hours and had passed apathy several hours earlier. I had gone in with the thought process of it just being any other audition for a specific part that you either fit or don't according to the director, or in this case, the producers' direction for the production. I didn't fit the criteria and that's ok. Salt Lake brought in some amazing talent that the crowd at least had the pleasure of listening to before them also being shooed out the door. It's sad to see those faces walking out who emulated that true disappointment as though this was it for them, their only shot. I put myself through that the first time and was much more satisfied with my performance this time around and knew that a solid audition with a "no" doesn't mean you're not good, just not right for the part. I still hated seeing those who were going through what I put myself through before. I stopped questioning my talents and just enjoyed the ride.

On another note, I live out in the thickets of Davis County and didn't get out of my audition until about 5:45 p.m. I was expecting rush hour. This is what was waiting for me on the freeway:




Fortunately, I heard a traffic report right when I got in my car and took the advice of all of the reporters and headed across the road to Gateway and saw a movie.




Oh yeah! 3D action! Good kid movie. Getting out of the movie put me out to about 8 p.m. when I thought it should be safe to head for home. Wrong! That tanker hadn't moved an inch yet. Once again, however, the traffic report saved my buns and pointed out that people had been texting that highway 89 was actually a good alternative. After some pretty typical rush hour-type traffic on Beck, 89 was a breeze. I heard later on the news that some poor folks never quite got the clue and kept getting on the freeway anyway and getting stuck until well into the night. Bummer.

What living in Farmington means to me, a brief essay

Here is an ailment that befalls all Farmington residents at some point or another. If any landscaping needs to be done in your yard you will soon if not immediately be stopped dead in your tracks by something like this:



A good 18" down and no sign of an end to this beast of a boulder. A commonplace issue among Farmington households. Now, with this in mind it is an unspoken but cardinal sin around these parts to actually pay for and bring rocks into this town. Ridiculous, you say? How many shovels have you broken in your yard trying to plant a mere flower, huh? Yeah, that's what I thought. On the upside, the rock is at least varied in size, shape and colors to the extent that you could build just about anything you wanted out of it. For example:



Rock walls are also pretty commonplace from the ample supply, but we like to toss in something a little more creative than that when possible, such as this:



So, we sometimes manage to squeeze some lemonade out of those bothersome lemons. We actually built all of this stuff a few years ago but have only this weekend started to dig through all of the overgrowth that creeps back in every year. Good stuff.

Aren't you supposed to have kids first, THEN get the minivan?

Well, okay, so I've never been one to hold to convention for too long so I've done it yet again. No babies will be on board this great white beastie for a while yet though. Over the last few years when I would see commercials for minivans I would get so aggravated and say things like, "Why do they put all the cool features and stuff in stupid, dumb, kid-toting, soccer-mom, stupid minivans?!?" Of course, when faced with purchasing a car again for the first time in 10 years it felt like having to go on a first date knowing I had to get married at the end of the day. I finally just had to realize that what I hated about minivans was the stereotype, not the minivan. And hey, what the hell do I care about what other people think (or even what I thought yesterday)? This experience has gotten me saying, "Eh, I'm over it" quite a bit lately. I wouldn't so much say that I'm light on convictions or anything like that. It's simply that I am getting to the age where it's easier for me to see just how ridiculous some of my "stances" can get. So, the bottom line is that I LOVE my new (well, used but new to me :) car and I get to be twinners with Angela.