Who really knows what Mother’s Day is about? I sure didn’t, I was taught in elementary school that Mother’s Day is a day to celebrate the mother in your life. To take a day to spend time with her and revel in being their son or daughter and to thank your mother for all that she did.
Mother’s Day started due to the efforts of Anna Jarvis, a woman who never had any children of her own and was moved by the death of her own mother. So she wanted everyone to send an intimate day/evening/time with their mother where she wouldn’t have a chance to do so herself.
However, as it was for all “special occasion” days, it quickly became commercialized and Anna’s original idea of an intimate Mother’s Day dissipated. How? She felt that the idea of giving your mother a greeting card as opposed to writing a letter or creating a card yourself promoted sloth and idleness.
So when Mother’s Day became more and more commercialized, the woman that originally fought to create Mother’s Day in the first place, now found herself fighting against what it had become.
In the end, Mother’s Day is as it has become today… and I think in a way that Anna couldn’t see over a century ago is that people still spend time with their mothers. The joy of the freedom of choice is a chance to spend time with your mother in the best way that you see fit. For some it may be a few hours. For others it may be just the day… or others still, like myself… it’ll be more of a weekend, if not a week. =)
So happy Mother’s Day for all the mothers out there… and for everyone else, how are you planning to spend Mother’s Day?
This was something I came across years ago… I don’t remember nor know why.
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To “let go” does not mean to stop caring,
it means I can’t do it for someone else.
To “let go” is not to cut myself off,
it’s the realization I can’t control another.
To “let go” is not to enable,
but to allow learning from natural consequences.
To “let go” is to admit powerlessness,
which means the outcome is not in my hands.
To “let go” is not to try to change or blame another,
it’s to make the most of myself.
To “let go” is not to care for,
but to care about.
To “let go” is not to fix,
but to be supportive.
To “let go” is not to judge,
but to allow another to be a human being.
To “let go” is not to be in the middle arranging the outcomes,
but to allow others to affect their own destinies.
To “let go” is not to be protective,
it’s to permit another to face reality.
To “let go” is not to deny,
but to accept.
To “let go” is not to nag, scold or argue,
but instead to search out my own shortcomings, and correct them.
To “let go” is not to adjust everything to my desires
but to take each day as it comes, and cherish myself in it.
To “let go” is not to criticize and regulate anybody
but to try to become what I dream I can be.
To “let go” is not to regret the past,
but to grow and live for the future.
To “let go” is to fear less, and love more.
Remember: The time to love is short
When I first heard about Awake, I was equally one part thrilled and one part apprehensive. Awake appeared to me to be a series that would require a lot of thinking, a lot of analysis, and a lot of patience. Precisely my cup of tea…
ABC’s Lost was much in the same vein… except after the first episode I lost interest, whileas with Awake, I actually wanted to know more. Unfortunately time was not on my side as me free time started to dry up considerably, so I stopped watching with the intent of reading up on the episodes online.
What I dislike about television is that when a show is just getting good, they cancel it due to the overall slide in ratings. A lot of time a show needs more than just one season to find it’s legs, a big example of this would be Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Unfortunately, cancellation is exactly where Awake is headed. *sighs* Depending on how the first season ends will decide on whether I could handle simply owning one season of a television series that I enjoyed, no matter how minor.
If you haven’t heard of the show the premise is this: A detective is a survivor of a car accident that claimed the life of either his wife, or his son. Neither the detective nor the audience knows who had passed, because he is living two totally separate worlds now. The detective could be living in a world where his wife is alive and his son has passed away, but then when he goes to sleep in that world he’ll wake up in another reality where his son is alive while his wife had passed.
Which reality is real? Well, we as the audience don’t know for sure, and part of the joy of the series is discovering bits and pieces of the story as it is told between the two realities.
Jason Issacs portrays the detective, and if anyone is a Harry Potter fan and has seen the movie adaptations… well you should recognize him as the patriarch of the Malfoy family: Lucius.
Personally if this show makes it to DVD, I may actually purchase it just to enjoy the storytelling. In some ways the concept of two parallel realities colliding reminds me a lot of a favorite movie of mine: Sliding Doors starring Gwyneth Paltrow. But that’s another post for another time.
I sincerely hope this show does make it to DVD with a lot of extras explaining what would have happened in future seasons, or even still have an additional episode that helps tie every up in a neat little package. Hell even if a book series would make me happy… but anyway, I’m crying over spilled milk. C’est la vie.
Disney has ruined fairy tales for me, well for all of us really. I mean we grow up thinking that there is a happily ever after, except when we start reading the original fairy tales that the Disney versions are based off of, we end up with a rude awakening. Namely that the fairy tales don’t really have a ‘happily ever after’ in fact they usually have a warning label or a lessons learned disclaimer on the back.
Interestingly enough, I started to really enjoy the original fairy tales and soon started to look for other tales from various other cultures to satiate my thirst. That was when I was introduced to “Fables”.
You see, Fables is a comic series from Vertigo that takes all the beloved fairy tale characters and sends them to live in New York City, far from their Homelands where a singular enemy has turned all these beloved characters into refugees on the Earth or Mundy as they like to all it. Not only is this a witty conglomeration of every beloved fairy tale that you can possibly think of, but the creator of the series: Bill Willingham, has quite intelligently combined fairy tales and nursery rhymes together when necessary.
- Take the Big Bad Wolf for example (also known as Bigby Wolf in the series), he is a singular character in the Fables universe, but he is the same major wolf character in a variety of stories.
- Snow White is widely known as the beloved princess of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, but she is also the sister to Rose Red in the fairy tale of Snow White and Rose Red. In the Fables universe she is also introduced as the uptight, strict deputy mayor of Fabletown.
- Little Boy Blue isn’t quite so “little”, rather he is not only Snow White’s right hand man in the mayor’s office, he also has a hell of a military back story from back in the Homelands
What Bill has done is very creatively and realistically tied together stories to create a richer back story to these beloved characters in such a realistic and natural way that you can’t help but love them even more.
Then Bill did something new, he expanded upon the universe and created a world of Literals beings who were essentially the personification of literary themes and terms. The Editor became Mr Revise, Deus Ex Machina became Dex, and the various fictional categories became The Genres. All of these characters found in the spin-off series: Jack of Fables.
This was posted as a note on my Facebook page probably a few years ago. I’m thinking about 2009-ish. So a lot of people haven’t really seen this from what I can recall.
The “25 Things” is suppose to represent twenty-five things about you that most people wouldn’t know about right off the bat and that you wouldn’t mind letting people know about. So the first time I did it, the list turned out to be very depressing so I deleted it and decided not to do it. Then I tried again and was a little bit happier with what I came up with… so I took it off of my Facebook page and brought here instead.
Ironically, looking at this now, there were some things that were meant for the year of 2009, but in the end also works for 2012. So for those of you that have seen this already, I apologize, but for those that haven’t, well enjoy!
Typically for new shows that have come on the air, I watch for a season and then I lose interest. This happens more often with reality competition shows. Which is odd since I blog for a bunch of them as well, but that’s a different story. Ever since American Idol, there hasn’t really been much competition in the reality singing competition, and even then American Idol had the distinct feel of being very manipulative behind the scenes, which didn’t help me in wanting to like it any more. So I stopped watching after the first season.
So when the premise of The Voice came about, I was skeptical and intrigued. In the end I decided to give it a shot and see what happens. Next thing you know, one show continued to another episode and then another. Then I started downloading some of the music, and eventually I ended up watching the entire first season and anticipating the second season.
Needless to say I did the same with the second season, watching everything from day one and continued onward til the end.
What I really love is that the coaches don’t really bring addition drama, they are all very supportive and they are invested in the vocalists that come onto the show. So let’s look at the track record of the coaches from the only two completed seasons thus far:
Christina Aguilera has had an artist that has placed last in both seasons thus far. Whether that is just the nature of the beast or the artists on her team is anyone’s guess. I really love opera voices – being a huge fan of Il Divo, Josh Groban and Vittorio Grigolo – so to me Chris Mann is just right up my alley. However, I would have loved to have seen him sing a piece that is more out of his comfort zone and really make it his own as opposed to something that is typically tried and true. Still, I can’t wait to see where he goes from here.
Last season’s coach winner: Adam Levine from Maroon 5 ended up 3rd with Tony Lucca, a former Mouseketeer with Christina Aguilera and others. Tony had the most stand out performance in my opinion, he took a risk in taking Britney Spears’ Hit Me Baby One More Time and making it his own.
However, this was also done on another reality singing competition: Marty Casey from Rockstar INXS
Personally I really liked Tony’s rendition more, and honestly the audience wanted Katrina Parker over Tony Lucca when you take a look at the audience score breakdown and compare it with Adam Levine’s. But even then the audience was fairly split as well going for Katrina (52) over Tony (48), but there’s no need to analyse this.
Cee-Lo Green had a very strong performer in Juliet Simms, and she really worked out of the box in several cases. I think over the course of the season, Juliet was the one that I had to grow to enjoy because at first I really didn’t care much for Juliet. Learning to appreciate someone’s talent through a show like this where they are able to grow really helps them in the long run.
Finally, Jermaine Paul, Blake Shelton’s winner for Season 2. Blake did well last season with Dia Frampton placing in 2nd, so with a vocalist like Jermaine Paul, Blake had something special in his hands. In fact I remember in the blind auditions the following interaction.
CeeLo: I want you on my team and the people seem to love you too. Jermaine: You say you want me on your team. And ‘want’ is a cool word, ‘need’ is an even better word. But I want to hear that word ‘keep’. I want to be ‘kept’. CeeLo: I tell you what man, I won’t make it anymore complicated than it already is man. Yo I need you on my team, you very very strong. Jermaine: See ‘need’ is better than ‘want’. Blake: Man, I think the word ‘keep’ is up to you. You blew us away. You still got a lot of work to do. [...] I’m not going to sit here and say the word ‘keep’ to you because that’s a lie and I’ll never lie to you.
Blake is right, being ‘kept’ is really up to Jermaine, if he really wants to be ‘kept’ he is going to have to earn it, and he did. Blake’s straight shooting mentality won Jermaine over and it became a partnership that no one really expected to happen to the very end.
Looking at the semi-finals point scoring system I realized something interesting:
If you look at the public points given to each of the four finalists it would appear that the public already made their decision as to whom they preferred more, the finalists placements being similar in the semi-finals as in the finals.
However, when I tried to do the same with Season 1, Dia Frampton placed last in the public points in the semi-finals only to come in 2nd overall. Then again, Dia took the most risks in her song choices and making them her own, particularly when it came to her version of Heartless by Kanye West (YouTube embedding disabled).
What I really enjoyed about Season 2′s finale episode is how the finalists brought back some of the eliminated favorites from the show and sang with them. I would love to see more of this in future episodes with probably the addition of the final four singing together.
Also seeing all the other behind the scenes bits made it for a very enjoyable show. I for one can’t wait to see what will happen in Season 3 of The Voice. =) And I hope that you take the time to see this gem of a show, because I can assure you, it’s going to be worth it.
Since this has been a subject that has popped up on occasion between myself and a few friends from various quarters, I figured I might as well write about it here… Or rather at least some of my thoughts on the matter. But first a story:
Growing up I knew quite a few people that decided to go down the medical path, after several years in medical school, one such acquaintance talked about their experiences. Originally when they entered medical school they did so with the desire to work with babies and children, but as time went on they started changing their tune and decided that they wanted to work with the elderly.
When pressed upon why the change of heart, they said: “Well doctors are humans too, and they make mistakes. So if I am diagnosing a baby or a child and it’s wrong it becomes a very complicated and messy situation, but if I work with the elderly and I am wrong, it wouldn’t matter as much because they are old and will die soon anyway.”
A friend of mine has been recommending this series (Parasol Protectorate) to me for months now. I finally checked the book out from my local library, only for life to get in the way and I never touched the book that was in my possession for almost a month and a half. So I sent the book back to the library and continued onward, meanwhile my friend recommended getting the audio book instead and listening to it while I worked.
Well, considering that I have borrowed audio lectures from The Teaching Company via the local library, one would have thought that I could have made the leap myself. Unfortunately, I did not… primarily due to my desire and love to sitting down and curling to a good book. However, as my time is fairly limited nowadays it became increasingly clear that I am better off listening to lectures and audiobooks as opposed to trying to find time to just sit down and read. *sighs*
In any case, I decided to begin listening to audiobooks by going for the series that has been recommended by my friend: The Parasol Protectorate by Gail Carriger… and the first of the series, Soulless.
Recently Broadway.com had a poll asking their readers to decide which boy band should get their own jukebox musical? Number One: N’Sync, Number Two: Backstreet Boys. Since I am more likely to listen to the Backstreet Boys over N’Sync this post is going to be about BSB… well that and the fact that it was recently announced that Kevin Richardson will be rejoining the group for their upcoming studio album. Thank goodness for that, because Kevin was the bass in the group and I personally felt that when he chose to leave the group, it just didn’t feel just right.
In any case… so a jukebox musical featuring the music of the Backstreet Boys? I don’t know… looking at some of the songs that they have over the years, they all have a similar theme… some kind of love song about heartbreak, loneliness, deception, etc. There isn’t much variety beyond that.
Some of the more known jukebox musicals that have graced the Great White Way over the years include:
- Mamma Mia!
- The Boy From Oz
- Jersey Boys
- Million Dollar Quartet
- American Idiot
- Rock of Ages
Thinking about this further, some of their music videos did have somewhat simplistic storylines within them, some of my personal favorites include (in my opinion): continue reading…
Mathematics is in my blood… so I happen to enjoy things like the following…
This just proves the Beauty of Mathematics.
1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987
1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321
1 x 9 + 2 = 11
12 x 9 + 3 = 111
123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
123456789 x 9 + 10 = 1111111111
9 x 9 + 7 = 88
98 x 9 + 6 = 888
987 x 9 + 5 = 8888
9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888
98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888
987654 x 9 + 2 = 8888888
9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888
98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888
Brilliant, isn’t it? And look at this symmetry:
1 x 1 = 1
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
11111 x 11111 = 123454321
111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321
Mind Boggling. Now, take a look at this…
101%
From a strictly mathematical viewpoint: What Equals 100%?
