Movie: 127 Hours

In high school I was involved in Forensics, which is a form of competitive public speaking. I would do the acting events like Humorous Interpretation (HI), Dramatic Interpretation (DI), and Duo Interpretation. DI are 10 minute monologues interpreted from published works. The cliche is that a DI is based on the story on some variety of being a gay, female, minority, junkie raped and now awaiting the electric chair. In fact, my junior year I played a cripple coming out of the closet to his brother over dinner.

But my senior year I did a book, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," a story about nature lover, Aron Ralston, who, while hiking and mountian climbing through Utah, became trapped in a canyon with his right arm trapped under a fallen bolder. 127 Hours refers to how long he was trapped down there before [SPOILER ALERT!!!] he has to cut the arm off with dull utility blade. It greats pretty intense. They don't allude to it very much in the trailer, but, after day 2 when he starts to run out of water, he starts tripping pretty badly.

James Franco is an amazing actor. I kind of really want to see the movie, but at the same time I know Franco is going to kick my ass with his portrayal.

Start of Class

Well I have survived the first couple days of it. Not that bad I think. I'll manage through. It's kind of a boring schedule though. I'm Marketing and Accounting and unfortunately this semester seems to be leaning more to the accounting side of things along with an international econ. class and an information systems class.

I do have one fun class though early on Mondays and Wednesdays; MKTG 112 with Chip Miller. He is hilarious!!! The man lives in like a different era 30 years back and occasionally lets these slightly off-color comments slip out. I love it.

He can't remember names very well, but to be fair how many new sets of names do teachers come across with every semester? Seriously, that's tough. What I get a kick out of though is just how blunt he is about it. The first he just laid out there, "I'm not going to have remembered all of your names. I recognize a number of your face [which is understandable like I said before], but the number of names I remember is just a hand full; like ah... [gesturing to a girl in the back of the room] um... ah.... Well forget about that one."

New Apartment

This new apartment is SO cool! I love all of these high ceilings and tall windows (although it does remind me how short I am). This place is huge! 700 sq ft. The first shot you see is from the sun room - yeah, I have a freakin' sun room. Those next two are the sun room itself. My grandfather collect a bunch of cool furniture in the '70s. So now got all of really great original design furniture for the new place.

Cooking is kind of a new experience. I got scrambled eggs and ground beef down pretty well - you know the essentials. I don't see any souffles coming out for the oven anytime soon, but I'm not going hungry. Besides I can always call upon my good buddy Chef Boyardee to feed me when need be.

Leadership Iowa University

When I was a junior in high school, the Salina chamber of commerce had a program that introduced a group of us to local business leaders and held discussions on leadership theory. Well a few months back a good friend of mine told me about a similar program, Leadership Iowa University, hosted by the local chapter of the Association of Business and Industry (ABI). Now, while I love my home town and deeply value the experience I got from the program in high school, this one was light years of head of it.

The whole thing was just outstandingly beneficial. The speakers were absolutely amazing. We heard from Jim Swift, CEO of Holmes Murhpy, Ambassador Kenneth Quinn, President of the World Food Prize Foundation, Kirk Leeds, CEO of the Iowa Soybean Association, J. Barry Griswell, former CEO of Principal Financial and author of the Adversity Paradox. I flipped when I saw that last gentlemen. Adversity Paradox is an excellent book. Get your hands on it and give it a read.

There was something there for everyone. We had a politics day, an agriculture day, a downtown business day. I got to meet an individual who worked as an economic developer for Fairfield and another who worked as a project manager for an architecture firm. For me personally, even if you took away all the other awesome stuff, that sealed the deal.

This is an excellent program that every Iowa college student would greatly benefit from. Check it out.

Leadership Iowa University Website

Movie: Due Date

Galifianakis is HILARIOUS!!! Just that first scene right there is perfect.

I love this new trend that going on pairing noncomedic people with super funny people. Diddy ended up being freakin' awesome in Get Him to the Greek. "I'm mind f#%&ing you right now." In The Other Guys Mark Wahlberg playing off of Will Ferrell is going to be great. Ferrell can make the moment just so awkward with that character and then Wahlberg just goes off on him.

Robert Downing Jr. next to Galifianakis is going to be excellent. Downing is brilliant and, while he usually does dramatic work, he has always shown this affinity for humor even be it a dry wit and sarcasim. He did pretty well in Tropic Thunder and he played his character in Iron Man pretty funny.

Genius of Brandon Daley AKA "White Licorice"

This is the hotness new video that is blowing up across Youtube. Forget Eminem. My man Brandon Daley and Brock Chart are one their way to dominating the rap world. These guys are going to be freakin' famous as hell! There is no denying the brilliance here. So give it up to another remarkable display of the genius of Daley.

Movie: The Social Network

David Fincher is my favorite director. Fight Club and The Game are two of my top films. It is just that the world he creates in his films. It is all so dark and macabre and yet drenched in the luxury and disgusting wealth of the upper class. He captures that urban juxtaposition of the grime coinciding the elite. It is the utmost of civilization and yet there's a underlying, primal brutality that becomes unleashed some point in the story.

Movie: Farewell

Okay, yes it is a foreign film meaning you would have to - short of learning French - do a lot of reading, and it was probably difficult to pick up the plot from the trailer, but trust me: this is a good one.

It's a Cold War film and based on actual events. So, while dramatized, the film offers the closest moviemakers can provide to showing the actual nitty-gritty of espionage short of a documentary, which would kind of defeat the whole espionage having the spies followed by camera crews.

What is also really interesting about this movie are the two leading. Emir Kusturica, here playing a troubled KGB officer who begins feeding information to the West, and Guillaume Canet, playing a French engineer stationed in Moscow to whom the KGB officer randomly selects to unload his secret knowledge upon, are both major European directors. The drama of that clashing of powerful personalities is all captured upon the screen.

Kusturica, the big, wild haired one, has a compelling brute charisma to him. Juxtapose this with Canet, the mustached fellow, playing his character with a severe professorish quality. An excellent pair up.