BRAWL

One of the presents I got for my birthday this year was Super Smash Bros. Brawl. After I played that game, I never wanted to play any other. One of the most unique things about it is that it allows one to have a good thirty minutes of friendly conversation with a complete stranger. It's an amazing game, so humor me if I have to talk about, you know, the nerd stuff involved. My favorite character is, without a doubt, Kirby. Not only does he have powerful attacks but he also has useful abilities like his ground pound and copy moves, as well as the ability to midair jump five times and a highly effective Final Smash. I think he is worse in Brawl than in Melee, if only for looks, because his strong attack, which used to be a charging fireball, now involves him spinning on his head. Oh, well. I can still win all sorts of tourneys using him. My username is V.B.S which is, of course, lucky, and I always use one of his lucky colors: red, green, or white. Don't ask me why, but if I am one of the other colors, I can't win. I hardly play as any other character, and for that matter, neither does anyone else in my family. That is why, when you look at my Brawl stats, the character who hold all the records is Kirby. In fact, when I've looked at the personal stats of the V.B.S profile, I don't even have a least played character, because there are so many fighters whom I have only played once since March 11th. At least now there are none whom I have not played at all. I love the new features that have been added since Melee, like the Masterpieces collection, the Final Smashes, the All-Star Mode, the Challenges, Subspace Emissary, and, not to be forgotten, the vastly improved Home-Run Contest, on which I have hit over 1800 feet with Captain Olimar, who is one of my least favorite characters, by the way. I could talk for pages upon pages more about what I love about Brawl, but I am sure I would only bore you, if I haven't already.

Music

What I've been listening to of late consists mostly of the following: Abdominal, The Raconteurs, Parliament, Black Mountain, and myself. I am a shallow narcissistic fiend. But I am just so good.

Vanilla Bean Speck album

I've written lyrics for at least ten songs of my album, but without GarageBand, I don't know where to begin on recording. On the upside I guess it gives me more time to work on lyrics. I might try to record one completely freestyle, which would be liberating but extremely difficult. And speaking of title, I was thinking, and I decided on Hi Rider, coupled with a cover image of me wearing my pants up to my chest. Pretty hilarious eh? Anyways, I've been writing a lot (by my standards), not only rap but also blues lyrics, limericks, and an absolutely pitiful attempt at prose, after which I gave up trying to voluntarily write prose ever again.

Vanilla Bean Speck solo

I wrote a pretty sick rap song. Unfortunately I have no way to record it for the time being, and no beat to work on... I can tell you, though, it has one of the best lines ever written: "My verses got the curses to put you in the hearses." Enough said. When I do record it I will be sure to release it on SoundClick, and provide the readers of Yogipie with a link.

NEW YEAR, NEW POST

Let's get to the point. I should have posted on Christmas Day and on New Year's Eve, but today should be good enough. You're wondering what I got for Christmas; I can tell. Revolver(awesome!), Maroon, new drumsticks, new drum head, new drum bag, candies, The Beatles: Illustrated Lyrics, and a cookbook. Cool, huh?
My new year's revolutions (Yes, revolutions): I plan to release a full Vanilla Bean Speck solo album. Yeah. And I'm going to, you know, improve humanity and such... and I'd like to write a rock song about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, or commission such a song, before it's too late. Such an inspirational woman. And yet, I still struggle to write like, anything... Happy 2008!

SoundClick Music

I mentioned a rap song in my last post: it's called "Verbally Busted Skills" and you can find it here on my SoundClick Music page: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=779372&content=music. There might also be a rap of "Take Me Out To the Ball Game," but don't get your hopes up.

September 5... Wow.

It's been nearly 3 months since I last wrote a blog entry. I've had lots of interesting experiences, and they respectively involve iambic tetrameter, rapping, ancestry, McDonald's, Thanksgiving (duh), Indonesia, college people, getting a new view on an old favorite band, video games, and lots of movies (I know that before I stopped blogging I had made it a habit to review every movie I saw, but right now I don't think I have the endurance [or the proper time window {my dad is oppressive on school nights}] to blog all that, and plus my memory on the last three months is incomplete, so only the most recent events will be the most blogged-about topics). ROSA
Don't you hate it when people say "parenthese?" That is a bit off the topic of this particular historical-type blog post, but I nonetheless consider it important, because it hella bugs me (apparently we only use that slang here in California). So, just for your information, in case you didn't know already, the real singular form of "parenthesis" is simply "parenthesis."
I was assigned to write an Anne Bradstreet-style (what a Puritan!) poem, thirty lines long or more, about a traumatic incident that happened in my life that gave me a profound insight on human nature or life or something of that sort. It was to be in rhyming couplets, in iambic tetrameter, a poetic rhythm with eight syllables per line and the accent on the even syllables. I present my poem to you here, in its original, unedited, as-turned-in version. Enjoy.

I Bizzust Mad Rhizzymes Like a Pizzuritan

Upon a day filled with good cheer,
For being that great time of year,
I started ‘cause I had forgot
The forecasts were less and less hot
That summer was now near its close
Thus gone were all the summer clothes,
And so mid-August drew quite near
I tried to hide away in fear
Of a new year of middle school
That loomed before me calm and cool
Forgot were essays of all manners
Forgotten were those silly planners,
All thoughts of grammar, and the ban
On all deod’rant in a can
My mind eliminated all
Of education great and small:
Circumference, diameter,
And iambic tetrameter
But now I rhyme like Puritans
The words are now all slurred in,
Because the new year has begun,
And though it may not be so fun,
I’ve learned a lot, and so have you,
Like algebra and science too
During the summer (this is why
To middle school returned was I),
I spoke no Spanish, nor read lit,
Nor at my table learned a bit,
So back I went, on a carpool
To Santa Rosa Middle School
To stuff my brain with odds and ends
And in high school begin again

Come on. You know that was cool. I may not have fully fulfilled the requirements of the assignment (i.e. traumatizing), but I immensely enjoyed writing it. The reason for the slight poetic license in word pronunciation is that Anne Bradstreet used similar devices and therefore it is hilarious. The reason I went for thirty-two lines was because it's a power of 2. And really, who can resist such a thing, especially when one finds it just an eensy bit above the minimum requirement.

So, on the topic of Syrup Suicide, no progress has been made whatsoever in the past 3 months... Jujube Jones, it turns out, was only joining as a joke, so we are now five (more efficient). I suppose I did record one short (1:31) song that I had written a while ago, but being the selfish egomaniac that I am, I credited it to Vanilla Bean Speck only.
My ancestry, for some reason, became exceptionally important to me, and I did nothing but go backward and backward in time for quite a while. There were two points where I did reach fifteenth-century England, but one was on step. I can trace my roots to Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Ireland, and England. It's awesome! I went back like 14 generations!

So recently my dad and I went to a McDonald's, and it was awful. You see, the price of our food seemed high, so my dad asked the guy doing the drive-thru about it, and he had no clue. So that guy called in a superior, and they talked about the situation. His superior then turned to us and told us that if we got large drinks instead of medium, it would be cheaper for us. Apparently, under the combo system, the combos are economic, but if the meal is incompatible, such as a large McNuggets and a medium drink, it is less economic than the large combo. We were like, "What the hell?" but we went for the cheaper option. Those nuggets made me puke later; It was obviously a curse.

I ate my Thanksgiving dinner in the remote ghost town of Saratoga, CA. It was delicious. That is not very substantial coverage of something that wasn't very substantial to begin with (unless you're talking about the increase in my weight), but I felt it had to be said so I could use the extreme hypobole of "remote ghost town" to describe a town that is really not such.

On November 16th and 17th, I fasted for thirty hours to raise money for starving people in Indonesia. It was with an organization called World Vision, and it was held in the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Rosa. If you're ever not busy around that time of year, come by and be heroic like me (Did I mention I was a selfish egomaniac?).

My sister Terri and my cousin Kris came to stay here over Thanksgiving Break. I played all sorts of games with them, went to see movies and stuff. It was great fun. Kris turned me on to the greatest Beatles album, which I think brings us to our next topic, doesn't it?

Abbey Road is totally the best Beatles album. I've listened to the entire thing probably ten times now. I got it on the 25th, and it's been in heavy rotation on my iPod since. Favorite songs include "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," "Here Comes the Sun," "Polythene Pam," and "Her Majesty." But the entire album is amazing; it's like they're just continuously playing as opposed to separately recording each track. AWESOME.

My brother and I have spent a lot of time playing 1080 Avalanche for GameCube. That game is really amazing. The levels are incredibly well-designed, with multiple tiers and clever shortcuts. I bet no one reading this could beat the times of 48.61 s for Tenderfoot Pass and 50.83 for Frosty Shadows... Huh? Yeah, I didn't think so.

I saw lots of movies. So, how did you like that summary of the last 85 days? I'd say they were pretty good.

No-Nose

Syrup Suicide are releasing their first single tomorrow. It's called "No-Nose." Jujube Jones wrote the rhymes a while ago and I started really liking it, so I recorded it myself on my sister's computer at the expense of Jujube's rights. It costs a dollar. I don't know if I'll have time tonight to burn enough CD's to fit the demand.

New Names

Three new rap names: Niko is Jujube Jones; Caleb is Delta Flya, and Ben is Jeevz. This three-day weekend I'll be going to Point Reyes with Delta Flya and possibly also go to my aunt's house in Saratoga to harvest grapes. The point (get it, Point?) is that I am going to the Sandcastle-Building competition on Sunday and that I'll have lots of time to write rhymes with Delta Flya this weekend. That's two Points.

Syrup Suicide

The rap group now is known as Syrup Suicide, featuring Raviavioli, Caleb Foote, Niko Lecoeuche, Sgt. Pepa, Ben Hughes and Vanilla Bean Speck (me). Niko and I have material written, but so far no one else has lyrics to go on. I hope to have at least a partial- if not a full-crew meeting in the future. As you saw, only half of the members have rap names, but that will change. I'm not sure how well Avi and Caleb will get along, but whatever.

I'm Back from my Poconos trip

Yesterday I returned from Pennsylvania and the annual Hoberg family reunion. First I flew to Philadelphia, then drove to my aunt and uncle's house, where I spent two nights before driving to my great-uncle's lodge in the Poconos, where I stayed for a week with some of my extended family, whom I'm sure you would love to hear about, so I'll give you a quick rundown of the tree. ROSA Present at the Poconos were: Jan and Mark Gingold with identical twin daughters Sara and Beth and son Daniel (Beth brought her boyfriend Jeremy and Dan brought his girlfriend Janelle), Rick and Jeanne Hoberg with son Matthew and daughter Mellissa (Mellissa brought her friend Kim), Peter Hoberg with son William (me) and daughter Becca, Chris and Ron Bizer with sons Stephen and Tim and daughter Kate, my father's parents Shirley and George Hoberg, Shirley's brother, Bill Kieser, his daughter Valerie, and Don and Jane, whom I don't really know. ROSA Not present were: bunches of other Hobergs, Areharts, and Harrisons.

The lodge overlooks Silver Lake, of which a picture can be found in the upper right corner of this post. The lake is great for swimming and for catching fish. This year I landed three rather large fish, of which I am very proud, a pickerel and two bass. It has long been tradition for the entire family to converge on this site and cause havoc from sheer numbers. This year had a relatively small crowd compared to other years, but there was still lots of havoc. What was really awesome was that all week long there was a chance of thunderstorms, but it didn't so much as rain until the one night our cookout was planned.

There was a dilapidated pool table there, and I played just about everyone on it. I'm not very good at pool. I was introduced to a new game called Pictionary-Telephone, which is exceedingly fun. I visited two waterfall parks, which were both fun, and managed to skip a rock 4 times. I found out that the fish in Silver Lake are attracted to sunscreen the hard way (they chased me out of the water). And I joined The Woodbumz, my cousins' white-rap group. Their names? Ginga Snapz, Bredd Loaf, 20-Inch D, Ju-C Juice, and Vanilla Bean Speck (Matthew, Tim, Daniel, Stephen, and me). They featured me on the track "Damn, it Feels Good to Be a Woodbum," which I believe will be on their album of the same name. Stick around for rhymes to be published on this blog.