Review Me Today!

In case you have been living in a cave somewhere and don’t know. On American Idol this week, Adam Lambert sang Mad World, and got an extremely rare standing ovation from Simon Cowell. People seemed to be going crazy about his performance.  I heard about it on the talk radio show I listen to, people were talking about it at work.  When I looked at Google Trends Adam Lambert and Mad World were HOT! for hours.   Everyo once in awhile I would hear someone say they didn’t think the performance was all that great… but even they were talking about it. American Idol is one of the few shows that you can’t watch for free online, so I usually set my DVR and watch it over the weekend.  However, it looked like this time the plan may have backfired on me. American Idol had run long, and  the DVR  quit recording before Adam Lambert sang.

Not to worry. I knew the folks at Fox would not let me down. I went to the American Idol site and found videos of all the night’s performances. I did miss out on the judges comments, I didn’t get to see Simon Cowell give a standing ovation, but I can live with that.

After watching the video of Adam Lambert singing Mad World I was smitten. Not with Adam, he’s a little young for me, but with the song. I just love the melody. I played it more than a few times, and then like many people, went hunting on YouTube for the original version. I found the 1982 Tears for Fears version sung by Curt Smith. And honestly, I thought Curt Smith did a better job than Adam Lambert.

Then I found the 2003 version done by Gary Jules and Micheal Andrews as a soundtrack for the movie Donnie Darko. (From what I hear the movie is a must see.) All I can say is you need to watch the video, which hopefully is right here in this post. Not only is the singing amazing, but the children in the video are mesmerizing. You’ll just have to watch to see what I mean.

I am still a big fan of Adam Lambert. As far as the American Idol contestants go, he is by far the most creative and entertaining of the group, however, as great as his performance was on Tuesday night, I still think Gary Jules did it better.

See more Mad World Videos .

I have decided that just because it is Monday, I am going to go off topic and tell you about my weekend.

Saturday morning my 16 year old daughter and I met up with 6 other teenagers and 3 other adults and went on an easy backpacking trip. We had a glorious time and it just goes to show that often you don’t even need to leave your own backyard to have an adventure.

We started the trip by taking a short drive to Bridgeport. This is one of the few remaining covered bridges in the US. Of course, no one drives over it any more, but you can walk through it.

After checking in with the ranger station we walked across the bridge and started up the trail to our campsite. The trail winds along the river, and is just a beautiful walk. The river was low, but the flowers were starting to bloom.

Here is a picture of looking back on the trail, that is the covered bridge in the background.

Hiking with teenagers is fun. We have a good group of kids and they knew where they were going, so we didn’t see much of them on the hike. The kids were in a hurry to get there. The adults were happy to stop and look at the flowers and the fish. Or maybe we were just stopping to take a break because those backpacks get heavy really quick!

Every once and awhile the kids would wait for us. They liked to do that on the steep parts of the trail.

I don’t know why. Maybe so they could scramble up quickly and then laugh at the adults while we huffed and puffed our way to the top. But then, like I said, they were good kids. They insisted on taking all the group food and equipment, so the adults only needed to carry their own personal stuff.

The hike was actually quite short as far as backpacking trips go. Just a little over a mile. But like I said in the beginning, this was all about discovering how you don’t really need to go far to get away from it all.

By noon we were at camp, and the kids were ravenous and getting lunch together. We had to remind them to save some for the next day. You never know how the teenagers are going to be. Some trips they hardly eat at all because they are all “getting fat”. And then there are trips like this one where they were all ravenous all the time. That was good because we didn’t need to carry back any leftovers. It was also good because it kept me from eating too much.

After lunch the everyone broke up into groups and went walking along the river. The kids actually went in the river. It was pretty cold so I watched from shore.

The river was the lowest I had ever seen it. The kids decided to amuse themselves by seeing how many old tires they could pull out. They stacked the tires on the shore near a deeper part of the river so park services could come by later and pick them up by boat.

Then it was time to set up tents. Briefly I thought about sleeping under the stars. But it can get cold in April (and it did!) Here is my tent and my view.

When it got dark we did the classic camping rituals. We roasted marshmallows over the campfire and ate Smores. We sang songs and played a couple of silly games. And then we lied on our backs and looked at the stars and tried to find constellations.

When it came time to sleep,my sleeping bag was cozy, but the ground was hard. I didn’t sleep well, but that was OK. I listened to the night sounds. It was pretty noisy. I heard geese and turkeys, and at one point something small rustled through our camp.

In the early morning we watched a bald eagle fish for his breakfast.

After breakfast we took another walk along the river. This time I went barefoot and spent a little time squishing in the mud. That was fun.

Then we put out the campfire, packed up our stuff, and hiked back out. Lots of people were hiking in for the day. We stopped to talk and made a few new friends.

Daughter and I were home by 3pm. Plenty of time to unpack and take a shower.

I didn’t really get any blisters. I just liked the title backpacking and blisters.

Next time I’ll post a blog review!

Cheers!

On this blog I review blogs.  Some blogs review food.  Most food blogs at best are boring.  In the worst cases they are nauseating, with pictures of “food” that I wouldn’t feed my dog.  Of course, I don’t have a dog, but if I did, he wouldn’t eat it even if I would feed it to him.  Tonight, while perusing my Who Should I Review page I see a food critiques blog. I can’t help myself. I just know I will come face to face with a picture of pig slop, but I click anyway, and see this:

Uhh, Ok. I am not sure what to think about this. So instead of looking at the pictures I decide to read the words. And in reading I find that those people in Wisconsin are as strange as I think. Those long cold winters do something to your brain! But I bet they know how to drive in the snow !

So there are these three guys, who live in Wisconsin where the winters are long and cold. Lil’ Greg, Fluffy Jon, and the producer.  They are they are bored.  So being normal Wisconsin guys they start thinking, we like to eat, we like to blog, let’s make a blog about us eating.  So far so boring.  But then they put a little twist on it.  They ask you to send them food.  Any kind of food as long as it is prepackaged.  You send them food, they give a dollar to the food bank. Then they create a funny video of Lil’ Greg and Fluffy Jon eating the food you sent.

The name of the blog is Gimme Something To Eat . I watched a video of the guys eating a can of something called fried dace. It was certainly amateur hour, but it was also pretty funny. Then I watched a video of Lil’ Greg eating Weight Watcher’s Snack Cakes .  The video started slow, but when Greg started calling for a glass of milk it got pretty funny.

There are lots of pictures and some actual written commentary. The blog itself has a nice look.  I like the colors and the layout.  The  videos could use some polish, but what do you expect from a bunch of bored guys in Wisconsin!

The blog is still pretty new, but I think with some time this could end up being a very funny, popular blog.

Now I am on the look out for something really weird to send the guys to eat!