Expertise

There's a book that claims that if you do something for 10,000 hours you will most likely be an expert at it. As I was pondering this concept I drank some water and in the process spilled some on my shirt. I have since determined that this claim is false.

Gimme Some Sugar

Right now I'm sitting in my room wondering why I am listening to Sugar Ray's new album "Music for Cougars". I'm not exactly sure if that title implies that this music is appealing to wildlife or if they are just trying to reach out to their old fan base - most of whom would now be older women. There's a better chance that it was meant for the former, since I can't honestly believe that even desperate cougars would really enjoy this new attempt to become relevant again in the pop music scene. All one has to do is listen to the painfully bad lyrics and melody of "Girls Were Made To Love" to see why these guys aren't going platinum again anytime soon.

Back in the late 90's, I enjoyed the simple, poppy tunes created by Sugar Ray. I gladly overlooked the verifiable fact that Sugar Ray sold out from their original sound (To verify this, all one must do is listen to their original album "Floored" - which is comprised of one radio-friendly song and twelve mind-numbingly bad songs that couldn't even be considered people friendly - and comparing it with any track off of Sugar Ray's ensuing albums, which astonishingly sound almost exactly like the one good hit). One could argue that as they matured musically their hits became more tolerable. This argument would be flawed, mostly because Sugar Ray never achieved any kind of musical maturity that I am aware of, and that includes their latest attempt.

That said, I never cared much about relevancy in the pop music scene, which is why I still have them in my current playlist.

Man Crush

This morning on a radio morning show they radio personalities were calling their guy friends up and asking them who their non-sexual man-crushes would be if they had to choose. Answers such as Rick Fox, George Clooney, pre-crazy Tom Cruise, etc... were thrown out. With each new selection, I was getting more and more grossed out. Plus, they didn't choose Zach Efron, who would have been my pick.

Easter Fiesta

In America, Easter is typically a pretty mild, traditional holiday. Rather than going out on the town and getting sloppy drunk, people celebrate the resurrection of the Savior of the world with a little more reverence - by dressing up in bunny costumes, hiding colorful eggs, and searching for Easter baskets full of chocolates and nasty marshmallow peeps. Last year, my Easter celebration was much along these lines, except that my basket turned out to be a grocery bag full of veggie chips, health snacks, and women’s socks. It always seemed odd to me that we celebrate with bunnies and eggs – two things with very little correlation beyond the idea that one makes whoopee a lot and the other is the result of a lot of whoopee making.

On my trip to Boston over this Easter weekend, I learned that Mexicans celebrate Easter in a much different manner. I was exposed to my first Mexican Easter egg hunt, consisting of a hunt for egg-shaped mini piñatas filled with confetti that you find and smash over someone’s head. Apparently in Mexico they take the resurrection a little more seriously than us Americans.