And all seven of the returning 52Eighty members new this would happen. We were just there to have fun and sing. (That and get a free trip to Vegas!) And it was fun! I got to see many old friends from the Central States District including Tim Waurick and Eric Dalbey of Vocal Spectrum, the Jurassic Larks, and many of my old singing buddies from the Sioux City and Des Moines choruses.
There were only a few choruses out of the 19 that competed that have been competing for at least years years. Those choruses were recognized with a trophy, and 52Eighty was one of these choruses. Below is a photo pf that trophy...
Doesn't it look like we won an ice skating competition for elementary schoolers? It does to me. It was a gesture made by the Tri-Star Chorus, which was very thoughtful, but very silly at the same time. This trophy still sits in my kitchen table with no real home. maybe I should give it to Sound of the Rockies?!?
The winners of the contest was the Northwest Vocal Project Chorus which won the contest back in 2009. The scores are posted here. While I'm super glad that NVP won, I'm still very happy that they didn't beat 52Eighty's score from last year in Tampa; they were close, but we still have the highest score! I have to be honest however, if 52Eighty from last year had competed against Northwest Vocal Project this year, I think NVP would have beat us. Northwest Vocal Project was exceptionally clean and accurate and without a doubt deserved the win.
This was a great convention and I'm glad I was able to go again. As far as 52Eighty's future, I hope we go again so I can compete one last time on the youth chorus stage. It will be my last year to compete as a "youth" since I'll be 30 so I'm going to milk it for all it's worth. If Darin Drown decides not to keep it going, then I'll try to make something happen! Until then, I'll prepare for contest in Kansas City this summer with Sound of the Rockies.
Well, not quite! I still have to wait until Friday before I can leave. Work always gets in the way darn it! But I'm not going for all the gambling and booze..I'm going to sing the weekend away with one of my favorite hobbies...Barbershop!!! I'll be singing with 52Eighty, and just like last year, the contest is going to be packed!!!
Yes, this is a trailer for the upcoming International Youth Chorus Contest which will be held in Vegas on Saturday. Like last year, I will be competing with 52Eighty. The difference? 52Eighty is the current International Youth Chorus Champions...So I'm technically coming in as a past International champion.
Last year (exactly one year ago to be precise) 52Eighty won the International Youth Chorus Contest in Tampa Florida, one of the most memorable moments in my Barbershop resume. Not only did we win the crown, but we won with the highest scoring average in the history of the contest, 83.5% , which would have put us in 12th place at the regular, big boy, international chorus contest held last July in Philadelphia. Below is the video from that contest in Tampa. I'm in the front row, all the way to your left.
To qualify to be a youth chorus, no one can sing on stage that is older than 30. I won with 52Eighty at age 28, and now I'm returning with the chorus as a 29 year old, and the oldest member at that. It's been quite a different experience for me this year in comparison from last year. Darin Drown (Baritone of the 2010 International Quartet Champions, Storm Front) has taken over directing responsibilities where last year Chris Vaughn (Lead of the 2004 International Quartet Champions, Gotcha!) and Matt Swann (Baritone of the 2003 Collegiate International Quartet Champions, Heat) led us into the gold medal winning performance in Tampa.
The chorus, even though we hang onto the same name, is virtually a new chorus containing mainly high schoolers and a hand full of college age kids. Only seven people, me included, from the gold medal winning chorus from Tampa have returned to walk out on the International stage again. It's been interesting since most of the kids are new to Barbershop and truly have no idea what it's about. I was asked to be a section leader by Darin and have really been a much more integral part of the chorus in leadership.
The funny part is...we are no where NEAR ready to compete on stage. But to be honest, I'm not sure I really care. Darin is using the chorus this year to simply get his high school choir kids baptized in Barbershop the best way he knows how. And the returning 52Eighty guys from last year are taking the same mentality to this as well. We are all doing what we can to be as good as we can be, but the effort that's being put into this year's chorus doesn't even compare to how it was last year. I'm going into this contest with no expectations and simply to have fun.
It'll be great fun because I'm singing tenor in a trio for our third contest song. A great arrangement of Nearer My God To Thee where the chorus sings harmony parts in the background, a soloist takes the melody line, and somewhere in the middle the trio comes out and really accelerates the energy of the song. The trio section will last only for a short while, but it'll still be fun none the less. Look at earlier posts from the Sound of the Rockies Christmas show to hear what our arrangement of Nearer My God To Thee sounds like.
I'm super excited and ready to see old friends and make new ones. What would make this experience even better you ask? Go to the Youth Chorus Webcast page and pay $15 to cheer on 52Eighty! You'll get to hear all of the choruses at that price too. And believe me, with 19 choruses competing this year, many of which are returning from last year, the contest is going to be pretty exciting. I wonder if the winning chorus will beat our score from last year?
So guess what! I'm personally acquainted with many, MANY International quartet gold medalist within the barbershop harmony society. I mean, good grief, I sing in a chorus that has five of them! But if I were to tell you there names, or even simply just tell you this fact, you'd all just roll your eyes and sarcastically say "right Jimmy, that's SSOOOO awesome." And even though I think it's the coolest thing in the world, I recognize not everyone else does.
Back in the early part of 2009 I started my comic book blog, The Heretics Blog, which only had one follower for almost 2 months...me. But as time progressed, I began getting more and more followers. I currently have 37 people following my blog, and according to the Comic Blog Elite, I'm averaging almost 200 hits a day, ranking number 45th out of 300 sites as of 9:20 AM today. When I first started that blog, I paid very little attention to my grammer because I simply wanted to write about what interested me - never really thinking that anyone would actually go visit the site.
What does the 2nd paragraph have to do with the first you ask? Well recently I've had the pleasure of being personally contacted by many different artists and writers within the comic book field. Two in particular would be Anthony Del Col from the incredibly creative comic book series "Kill Shakespeare," and Chandra Free who did both the art and writing for her self made graphic novel "The God Machine." I've had other writers and artist contact me via e-mail or through my blog, but these two excited me the most.
It's almost a monthly occurrence, and rapidly becoming more frequent, where some aspiring comic book creator contacts me in hopes that I will review or post information about the graphic novel. Ryan Colucci wrote me about reviewing his graphic novel, Habor Moon, and Chloe Thulstrup, who I'm not sure what exactly she is the creator of, but contacted me to promote a project titled "The Guardian Project."
The best part about having a blog that gets so many hits is...I get FREE STUFF because of it! Del Col sends out free PDF's to many bloggers of Kill Shakespeare almost a week before it hits the comic book stores! Colucci mailed me his Harbor Moon graphic novel MONTHS in advance! I've also received a few other free graphic novels from independent writers and artists who just want to get their stuff out there. I love every minute of it. I like reading, and being able to get my hands on free literature is fine by me!
I know it's nerdy, but I don't care! I think it's cool that these people contact me personally and send me free books because of it. So, if any other comic writers and artists want to get their stuff reviewed, you are always more than welcome to send it my way! I will be happy to oblige. I want my blog to get even more hits than it has already, so any help from you guys would be helpful too.
For those of you who know me, I'm all about pushing buttons. I like to make my Facebook status updates very "edgy," pushing the boundaries of people's emotions...and I think I've always been that way. But one thing I try so very hard to do is not go too far. And when my "fun" becomes to much, I typically do what I can to apologize to those I may have offended or angered. it's never my intention to make someone mad, I simply like to have meaningful conversations with others about our differences in opinion.
Recently I posted a video of a banned Mormon cartoon on my Facebook wall. It's attempt is to educate those outside the Mormon faith of the "evils" or "misguided" mindset of the Mormon belief. But in doing so, I offended two people, one a fellow Barbershopper, and the other a coworker who were appalled at the fact that I posted such a poor education video, both of whom are Mormon. If you care to watch it, click below. Keep in mind, the animation is very bad and the narration is SUPER boring...
For everyone reading this, please be clear...This cartoon is almost completely false and doesn't represent the Mormon faith in the least. But I'm sure an educated individual will be able to see this right away. But due to my two friend's very adamant and vocal disapproval, I took the video down. It was upsetting them enough that I didn't want to further their frustration for the sake of making fun of the video.
But how many times do you see people on Facebook getting into argument threads? It's a fairly consistent characteristic of Facebook dialog of which I'm a culprit of as well. But I've always considered myself someone who doesn't throw others argument out the window simply because I disagree with them. I try to remain as civil as I can when in a disagreement with someone over Facebook or in person. But most of the Facebook population who thrives on drama through Facebook threads tend to revert to name calling or unintelligible remarks that lend nothing to the conversation...except to make them feel like they've accomplished something.
Recently, the chorus I sing with had a major splitting of membership, mainly with the younger crowd of 20 - 28 year olds. Some changes have been made in Sound of the Rockies and a lot of these young men left for those reasons, forming a new chorus. They will all tell you that's not the case, but from the conversations I've had with the head honcho's in charge of the new chorus I feel there's a lot of negativity that went into forming this chorus. The first few meetings this "new chorus" had involved mostly dialog and conversation...and after all that was done, bad mouthing began. Many of the guys decided that it would be beneficial to constantly say what they don't like about SOR and talk shit about certain individuals as well.
In response to the question "what would you like to see happen in this new chorus?" I stated that I would like to start seeing everyone stop bad mouthing everyone in SOR and become a mature chorus. This, of course didn't stick for very long and I still hear the same things from the same people when conversations star Darin Drown, Mike Davidson, Chris Vaughn, etc. Everyone in this new chorus just don't have it in them to move on with their lives. I'm not trying to say you can't be bitter for things that may or may not have gone wrong from your perspective, but bad mouthing others really isn't beneficial for anyone.
We are a society of people that are willing to talk about people behind their backs, or talk immaturely to them as long as we don't have to be in the presence. This is one of the downfalls of social networking; people feel like they are justified in calling people names, belittling their past and life choices as long as it's done through Facebook. Let's call people an Idiot, a feeble minded human being, stupid, sheepish, etc etc...as long as we don't do it right to their face. It's even worse because it's happening between two people who've never met before more and more often.
Maybe I should just leave it alone when these kinds of things happen. It's really hard to do that however, especially when I some how get caught in the middle of it all. What do you guys think about this? Does it bother you? Does it make you angry or do you enjoy this type of mentality? I would very much like to hear opinions.
So here I sit, having recently come back from Christmas vacation and watching Toy Story 3, thanks to the Christmas money sent to me by granny. You'd think I'd be rested and feeling all happy and stress free...but as it turns out, I've come home to a very stressful and irritating situation.
The first day back at work showed that all of the assurances given to me were never actually put into play. No one was closing out tickets for my duplexer swapping partner, nor was ANY inventory taken care of. In addition, the old duplexers that were suppose to be shipped out while I was gone were never transferred over to another truck and still sit on 10 different pallets in the warehouse. I've submitted the form twice, why are they still here? Now I'm having to waste time doing inventory that should have been taken care of during my two week absence and figure out why no one came to pick up the old duplexers.
My fish, Neil and Alan don't seem to be doing well either. When they don't get their water changed out regularly, they get a little stressed out and don't eat. I tried to get some salt for my tank but both Target and Wal-Mart were fresh out, and Petsmart wont have any until tomorrow. So I'm having to wait til the morning to mix a new batch of water for my fish, which means a whole day of swimming around in poop infested waters. I hope they'll be alright until Wednesday. It's frustrating when you can't take care of your pets.
To top it all off, Clarissa is still in Iowa with her friends, which is fine, it just sucks not to have her around for four days. I was hoping she would be back Wednesday evening, but she sent me a text saying she wouldn't be home til Thursday night. Which means I wont see her until Friday since I have chorus rehearsal on Thursday. It's completely fine that she's getting to see friends she hasn't seen in over a year, I just miss her is all and wish I could hold her all night long. I love my wife so much and, as much as we like to bicker and poke fun at each other, she is the most loving person in my life. She gives all of herself to me, even when she doesn't think she does. Our relationship is very independent of each other; we do our laundry separately, we have our own separate possessions, we have our own weekly activities that are separate from one another, we even sometimes go as far as only making our own side of the bed. But to be honest, I don't think I've ever felt so connected and emotionally invested in anyone in my life. I love being with Clarissa - she's my best friend and my most supportive friend as well. I'm the luckiest man on Earth and she's the reason for that.
Ok, enough mush and gush, time for more movie watching....
