Friday, January 29, 2010

Volleyballers Victorious with Victory

I played in a volleyball tournament on the weekend of January 22-24 in Riverton, Manitoba.

It was a great time and fun was had by all. Here's a little video I made of the event.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Check out these digs

When I was playing basketball and volleyball throughout high school I always had my favorite shoes on. I stuck out like a sore thumb on both teams because I was the only player that ever wore basketball shoes.

Here are the originals.



Those lasted me throughout my entire high school career. After two years of being out of high school, they have diminished and left me with only memories. It was time that I stepped up and got myself a new pair to rekindle my old ways and hit the hard court one more time.

Here's what I'm wearing now...



Hopefully these bring me luck in my volleyball tournament this weekend.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Off Topic- In the Chamber 2010: Last Men

On Friday night at Rachel Browne Theatre, roughly 125 people, including me, gathered in the small amount of stands to watch In the Chamber 2010.

The play was directed by Sarah Constible and was written and performed by Steven Ratzlaff and Gordon Tanner. The opening act of the play showed a man in bed with his wife/girlfriend as they battled for the covers. Right after that the woman began to relieve the man of his morning wood, which was quite out of place considering the rest of the play.

The first scene, which took place in a hotel room, was a monologue given by a man played by Gordon Tanner, sending a video-taped message to his boss. Tanner portrayed a man who's been working as an agricultural engineer for quite some time and he is upset with the current state of their equipments safety. Basically, he delivered a 45 minute speech on the events surrounding a barn fire that killed 15,000 pigs. The speech lost focus throughout some parts, but it was delivered very convincingly by Tanner. His acting was brilliant as he was able to memorize such a large amount of lines and still deliver them all with passion.

After intermission, Steven Ratzlaff took the stage which was set as a restaurant as he faced a table full of his former co-workers which were represented by white balloons. Like the previous scene, Ratzlaff delivered a 45-50 minute speech on his experience with divorce and losing his child who died of a malformed heart. As his speech went on, the boredom and offensiveness became unbearable for his guests and they left one by one. By the end of the play, he was left having a conversation with the one waiter left in the restaurant(played by Gordan Tanner). The conversation took the scene into a whole new direction which, again, made the scene really lose focus and take the audience into a different state of mind.

The acting in this play was outstanding, but the it relied way too much on dialogue and not enough on action or climatic events. Overall, it was not for me.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Is a Super Bowl win in the Cards?


The NFL regular season has finished and the playoffs are well under way.

Personally, I'm a huge Arizona Cardinals fan. I have been for about four years so I like to consider myself a die-hard, but that's besides the point.


Last year, my hopes and dreams were coming true. The Cardinals made a very long playoff-run and they were surprising skeptics all around North America. Their offense was rivaled only by the likes of Peyton Manning and the Colts and Drew Brees with the Saints. It was that offense that took the Cardinals all the way to the Super Bowl. Not only did they get to the big game, but they only lost by one touchdown in the final minute.



I don't really like to bring up that last section much because it brings up memories of a time when I seriously bruised my knuckles on both hands from punching walls at my friends house. My dreams of the Cardinals winning the championship were shattered.

Their is a thing in the NFL known as the "Super Bowl hangover." What that refers to is when a team makes it to the Super Bowl and then lose, they usually end up finishing somewhere near the bottom of the league in the following season. The Cardinals, once again, surprised all critics and skeptics and avoided the Super Bowl hangover.

Now entering the second round of playoffs against the mighty Saints, the Cardinals will once again make the run to the big show. Or, at least I hope they will, or else I'll be coming to school with a cast on my hand.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

How the term "bake-off" came about

In P.R class, we've been discussing pseudo-events held by companies and celebrities and businesses throughout the ages. One event that caught my eye was the long-running Pillsbury Bake-off.

The contest, whose first official name was the "Grand National Recipe and Baking Contest," was created in 1949 as a way of celebrating the 80th birthday of Pillsbury, but some may see it as a way of getting quick and easy publicity. Basically, the main task for contestants was to come up with a brand new recipe using only Pillsbury ingredients and have the best tasting dish.

Originally, it was meant to be a one-time event, but popularity rose and the advertising team at Pillsbury decided to hold the event for one more year. Gradually, the "Bake-off" grew into an annual event that brings in loads of publicity.

The very first winner of the event was Theodora Smafield of Rockford, IL. She received a grand prize of $50,000, which, in that time was a very large amount, and still is. The most recent winner, Carolyn Gurtz, took home a whopping grand prize of $1 Million.

Needless to say, this contest has come a very long way from a one-time only baking contest, to an internationally known... baking contest.

A true all-star of pseudo-events.