America unveiled her first wing coaster last month with the introduction of Wild Eagle at Dollywood. This new type of coaster places riders immediately to the left and right of the track instead of being on top of or suspended below the track.
Here is some video I got at Dollywood, including footage of Wild Eagle in flight.
You can also check out the photos I got in the park on Facebook.
A handful of years ago I didn’t watch TV. I thought it was a waste of time. Boy was I an idiot.
Then 2007 happened. More precisely, my friend Kayla happened.
I remember the evening when that ‘waste of time’ turned into a budding obsession. Kayla and I grabbed some Taco Bell (one of our very favorite past-times), watched an episode of American Idol, and then kicked back to watch the pilot episode of the TV show Psych. And I was hooked.
Don’t turn against me now, but the pilot episode isn’t the best Psych has to offer. But it established the show. And I loved the show. I remember coming home and then devouring all of the episodes as fast as I could right after I found that first episode. Seriously, I was watching 5 or 6 episodes a day and I was in college full time. I’d fall asleep in the middle of an episode and wake up in the middle of the night thinking “I HAVE TO FINISH IT BEFORE I CAN GO BACK TO SLEEP.” Insert your own ‘that’s what she said’ joke as needed. There’s nothing quite like finding love in a new TV show. It’s happened a LOT since that first episode of Psych. (PHOTO: Credit goes to Kayla. It was taken on the day season 3 of Psych was released. We got both copies that Target had.)
Kayla had been telling me how awesome the show was before she and I watched it together, and I didn’t think much of it. After we watched it I remember thinking “I can never doubt her judgment again.” And I haven’t.
She’s introduced me to pretty much every one of my favorite TV series: Bones, Chuck, Firefly, House, Pushing Daisies, and Ugly Betty to name just a few. Very few, in fact.
Recently, she even started her own blog about TV. Be sure to check her out at http://www.tv-muse.com/. I’ll go ahead and tell you that you can trust her judgment on this. Trust me, she’s a pro.
I’ll close with an audio clip that makes me smile. Here’s a voicemail I got from her when she decided on her TV blog’s name- my nickname for her. Enjoy. (Click here if the player is having trouble.)
Happy TVing.
May the odds be ever in your favor.
Happy Hunger Games.
My first car was a Toyota RAV4. I probably remember it being a little more blue than it actually was; I probably remember the windows being bigger than they really were; I remember this giant banana that I won from a local gaming pub staying in the back end of the car for longer than was really necessary. I loved that car though.
I’m using past tense because my car has been gone for a while now.
The story starts at roughly 4:30 in the morning on the side of interstate 64 heading toward Charleston. I was heading to the airport in Charleston to fly to Chicago with some family members. Allow me to back-track to include a very important detail too: I had just filled my gas tank.
The first two miles or so were just fine. Those of you that are good with distance know that it’s much further than 2 miles to get to Charleston though. My car started acting funny.
Even though I was hitting the gas, my car stopped stopped responding to me. I could still steer but my car decided that it just wasn’t going any further, so I coasted off the side of the road. I thought it was just an annoying malfunction in the car that we’d have to get fixed but my car seemed to be settled in a cloud of dust of some kind. I chalked it up to kicking up unsettled debris on the side of the road. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Turns out it was my engine smoking. That became apparent a few seconds later.
Then I saw a flame come up through the hood of my car. I grabbed my keys, got out of the car, threw the back door open, grabbed my backpack filled with clothes, and got away from the car. Oh, and called 911. My grandma grabbed her luggage and that giant banana sitting in the back of the car. We both missed the fact that my digital camera had rolled out of my luggage and into the back seat of the car. Oh, and tons of CDs in one of those books that you can buy to hold huge numbers of them for you.
My car went up in flames. It was a really quick process that was helped out by the fact that I was sitting on a full tank of gas. I remember several things very clearly: the tires all blowing at almost the same time, the glass windows exploding outward when the fire reached the gas tank, and the white sparks that shot out from my car right as a cop car drove by to pull over and see what was going on (That almost gave me a heart attack!). I jokingly said it looked like the fake sparks you see on cheesy Kids Action TV shows like “Power Rangers,” but honestly, that was the closest thing I’ve ever seen to it. My camera was apparently in there somewhere too.
If it hadn’t been my car on fire, I probably would have enjoyed watching it go up in flames, but I was kind of in shock and still partly not awake yet. By the time we got to the airport (and we still made our flight!) it had had time to sink in. I really wasn’t in a good mood, and kind of had a moment during the security screening at the airport. I didn’t check any baggage, so everything was in the backpack I just sent through the scanner; apparently my tooth paste was a terrorist weapon of some kind because I didn’t have the tiny travel size. Just the normal size from home that I threw in my bag as we left the house. The guy checking the bags told me that he couldn’t let it go with me, so he tossed it in a trash can near the scanner. I said, “Here, you can have these too” and threw my keys in the garbage since I knew the car was a total loss. I didn’t mean for it to be as dramatic as I later realized it came out to be, but I think I proved my point. At that moment, I feel that he thought I was a total bad-ass.
Honestly, I don’t even remember most of the trip. Chicago was apparently a flop.
When I came back from Chicago, my grandma and I went to look at the car in the salvage yard. I didn’t even recognize it as we approached the car. It was kind of a blur because I remember being really upset about the loss as a whole.
I’ll always miss my RAV4. I still have that banana though. It’s kind of a good luck symbol for me now.
I dislike having my picture taken. I also dislike the sound of my own voice. I also dislike appearing in video of any kind.
I’ll be honest here. I haven’t used Facetime on my iPhone, but the concept is really cool to me. It reminds me of those tablets they used in the Zenon movies on the Disney channel to talk to each other.
As a kid, I really thought those things were awesome and there’s no way we’d actually be able to see other people when talking to them on a phone of any kind. Or a device of any kind.
Boy was I wrong.
Avoid a run-on sentence. Use punctuation.
NEWSIES is a Disney movie. Arguably the only Disney movie I had never heard of before, oh, yesterday.
Here’s how this process of me finding NEWSIES eventually unfolded: I saw ‘Joyful Noise’ with Jeremy Jordan in it and thought he really had an amazing singing voice. I see a clip of Jeremy on ‘The View’ yesterday talking about being in the show and transferring it to Broadway. I YouTube the show to find the full performance the show did on ‘The View’ last September and just loved the music. Then I broaden out to Wikipedia, other YouTube videos, and the show’s official website. Much to my dismay, you can’t order the cast recording yet. (You can sign up to be notified about it though. Done!)
The plot for the show is based on the 1899 strike by the newspaper sellers. And it’s not the plot that sold me on the show- it was the music. I’m a big Alan Menken fan. If you don’t think you’ve heard his music before, I can bet you’re wrong; he’s also written for the scores to Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Little Shop of Horrors. I really would have to see the show to decide whether the plot is something the audience can connect with, but it sounds like it can be pulled off since the show went from being a regional production to having a limited engagement on Broadway.
Here. Watch a video of the cast and orchestra first coming together to hear how the two mesh. It’s pretty awesome to watch. (If you’re watching ‘Smash,’ this should look pretty familiar.)
Jeremy Jordan absolutely kills me in this video. I know I don’t have a great singing voice, but would love to be able to get in front of an audience and recreate what he does here at 2 minutes into the video.
I bought some songs from the original soundtrack and have been listening to them on repeat for a while now. Christian Bale (from the movie soundtrack) is an okay singer, I guess, but I really want to listen to Jeremy Jordan’s rendition of “Santa Fe.”
NEWSIES begins previews on Broadway tomorrow, March 15th.
I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who loves her.
Just thought you all might enjoy a picture my favorite inverted roller coaster. Here’s Afterburn at Carowinds amusement park.
Yes. I did steal Raptor’s tagline for this blog’s title.
I’m 24 years old and I still live at home.
It’s really past the time that I should have moved out by now, but my fear of failure has moved me to lead a very careful life; a meticulously planned existence. I’m overly cautious about nearly everything and I really don’t want to have to move back in once I leave. I need to get to the point where I have full confidence in myself.
Okay, that’s enough of my excuses.
I’ve been preparing to move out on my own lately though. It’s a slow process but I’m getting my act together. Basically, if my life were a movie, right now I’d be in the section that would be cut together into a montage because I feel like my life is in a transitional state. The scary part is that I don’t know what it’s transitioning to as of right now.
I have a lot of boxes in my room at home now. It’s mostly furniture that’s staying in flat-packed boxes until I get a place of my own. Some people have pushed me to move out on my own and then buy everything, but I’m not comfortable doing that. I’m the kind of guy that plans out things in advance and then makes adjustments as needed. Spontaneous people confuse me; and kind of intimidate me. I have a list of things that I need (make that ‘have to’) to buy before I consider the full move to independence.
I’ve also been a very deliberate person so I’m used to getting to things later than other people my age. I don’t live on accident though. The thought of living on my own scares the hell out of me, but I’m really excited about the possibilities.
Hey, I even own a kitchen table!
