Random Musings... Warning, little to no hockey in this post

1. This blog needs a new name. I'm sick and tired of having a blog with the same name as eleventy kadillion* other blogs. If other people actually read this, I would open up the table for discussion on a new name, but other people don't actually read this, so I'll just have to be creative all on my own.

The teal also bugs me for some reason. Red, white, and blue would look better, but I want the blog to maintain some Sharks pride.

2. Hey, the Winter X Games just concluded pretty recently, eh? Two main ideas to come from this; Louie Vito and the Moore brothers. I don't watch a ton of snowboarding or snowmobiling, but I do enjoy skiing and other snow sports, I love the ski culture, and I always enjoy watching the X Games each winter. It's an atmosphere you don't quite get anywhere else- local competitions aren't that exciting, and the Olympics are more uptight. Basically, the X Games are cool, and this year, I saw a couple of awesome things.

First, I happened to be watching the Snowmobile Best Trick competition. Quite a hoot, if you haven't seen this stuff, it's definitely worth youTubing. Riders get two tries to land the best trick they can. Anyhow, the older of the two (Caleb, I think) throws down this awesome trick that had never before been landed in competition. He doesn't quite get the score he thinks he deserves. His little brother throws down another awesome trick, doesn't get a great score, but it's more expected. For the second round, Caleb does the same trick, but this time lands it no-handed, and still doesn't get the score he would need to win gold. So, it's little brother's second turn, and he rides over to the starting point, hops off his snowmobile and starts to wave his arms around to get the crowd pumped up. His brother rides over. Little brother hops on the back of his big brother's snowmobile. They head off the jump and backflip the snowmobile, with the two of them on it. The technical term for the trick is Tandem Backflip Indian Air. Unfortunately, the judges rules that that run wouldn't count, so they didn't win anything from it, but it was still pretty awesome to see. It's not everyday you see two brothers from Texas backflip a snowmobile.
Next the Men's Superpipe Final came on. For those who don't know, Superpipe means a really big halfpipe (17 feet walls?), and the top 8 or so riders from previous rounds get three runs to try to get the highest score. Since Shaun White started competing in this event about 5 years ago he hasn't lost. Unfortunately he won again.** Also competing were Louie Vito and Scotty Lago. Vito is my favorite rider, not for any particular reason, he just is. I've always kind of rooted for him. He had never medaled at the X Games before this year. Scotty Lago suffered a pretty brutal injury recently (broken jaw, torn jaw muscles, other nasty stuff like that) and was competing with his mouth wired shut. Anyways, Lago threw down an awesome first round, and after the first round, he was actually beating White, but then White brought out the big tricks and of course he wins. Lago got silver, which is awesome for someone competing with their jaw wired shut. Vito got bronze, which made me happy because it was his first X Games medal.

3. It's been a while since we've had a Period 2 Long Chinese Class posting. I will try to fix that this week... I'll work on it... All depends on whether or not we use the computers during that class...

4. This blog needs a fun little gimmick to, well, make the blog more fun. Since I'm studying US History this year, it might be fun to include a USH related fun fact once a week. Sounds not-fun? You clearly haven't hung out in my history class (actually, my class is still pretty boring, but the people in the class are not, and there are a bunch of actually-fun facts from US history, believe it or not).

5. This is a random aside so that I don't have to mention it later... All of the pictures used on this blog (with the exception of the background picture of the Sharks 20th anniversary logo on ice) are my own photographs. If you like them, download them, I don't really care what you do with them as long as you don't try to pretend they're your own. I figure if I'm not going to use others' photos on this blog, people should at least return the favor, eh?

And, as promised above, your US History fun factoid! Back around the beginning of the 20th century, there was a union called the Southern Tenant Farmers Union... STFU... ok. Well, I found it amusing. Especially because my book referred to it as STFU once or twice.


*My brother may be 14 now, but he still watches kids television, and one show used eleventy kadillion as a real number. No wonder my brother has no grasp of language. What happened to kids TV?!?
Ovechkin. He's clearly the best, and he's the only one they ever cover during broadcasts. Think a Versus broadcast of Penguins-Capitals, but even worse.