The Bestival of all the Festivals

Every year around the beginning of spring, the Krishna temple hosts the annual Festival of Colors in Spanish Fork. Thousands of people show up each year and throw colored powder at each other.

It is always a blast. I should know. I went in 2008...

2009...

...and I came back this year.

Here are a few pics from this year's fest...

SAVE THE SEMESTER

(FYI: This post is written in movie preview format.)

In a world....where homework has long been forgotten....

where classes are frequently missed....

where the need to have fun and be irresponsible has replaced all things scholastic....

...something is about to change.

A new day has dawned.

A hero will rise to the challenge....

...and he is about to restore order to the chaos and take you on an adventure far beyond your wildest expectations.

SAVE THE SEMESTER

Now Playing

Rated PG-13 For Thematic Elements, Lack of Sleep, Drug Use, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and Some Strong Language

Me vs. The Space Needle

This past week, I spent five days of the Spring Break holiday in beautiful Seattle, Washington. The picture above is me enjoying a cruise around Elliot Bay with the Seattle skyline in the background. Part of our trip itinerary was to make a trip to the top of the Space Needle, Seattle's most famous landmark. My problem with this idea is that I am very, very, very afraid of heights. But, from this distance it looks pretty weak...I thought maybe I could handle it...

...once we got closer, I realized that it was actually pretty tall...

...and from here, I was about ready to wet myself...

...but somehow I got dragged into going. As you can see, the girls were very excited. I was not. The first time we went up, I hid in the corner of the elevator with my hood over my face and my eyes closed. Once we made it to the top, I stayed in the inside lobby and kept my distance from any doors, windows, or other items that could suck me outside into instant death. But the second time we went up...

...I went outside! As you can see, I stayed as far away from the edge as I could get. Have I conquered my fear of heights once and for all?

NOPE.

Not even a little bit.

Double Delight

A favorite pastime of my roommates and I is staying up late to watch a buzz-worthy band perform on one of the late night shows. Last night, our aim was to see the performance of Broken Bells, the collaboration of ex-Shins frontman James Mercer and mega-producer Danger Mouse. While flipping through channels, we stumbled upon Ryan Bingham performing "The Weary Kind", the theme song from the movie "Crazy Heart". Needless to say, both performances impressed me enough to post them here.

wrestling

Without further ado, here is the mustache.....

Pretty gross, no? But kinda cool as well? I allowed this thing to creep on my face as a way of fitting in with the crowd of our planned activity for last Saturday night, a guy's night out to the Road to Wrestlemania!

Here are four of us packed into Spencer's car as we left Logan. Matt and I pretty much dominated this picture. Spencer is the glasses on the left and Mark is the green jacket and half a face on the back left. Matt is the goober and I am the mustache.

We met up with Jake @ the Red Robin and we treated to a private table inside "The Vault"

The Vault featured a giant security door, our own TV, and a bunch of cool posters, including this sexy pose from the Mailman.

But the Mailman wouldn't be the only guy we would be seeing with his shirt off. Not hardly. The excitement began with a tag team match featuring Mark Henry and the high-flying Evan Bourne.

The action had our attention from the very beginning.

One of the highlights of my night came in the form of Chris Masters (the guy not wearing purple pants in the photo above). His signature move, the MasterLock, is unbeatable. Once he gets that locked in, you can't escape. Game Over.

Here is Christian, aka Captain Charisma, celebrating his victory.

I had a lot of clever things to say about this picture, but I really think it speaks for itself.

Spencer and Matt did their best John Cena impersonation...

...while I did my part to bring Diamond Dallas Page back to life.

The fun really got going when my favorite wrestler, Kofi Kingston, came to the ring.

As you can tell, his opponent, the Big Show was quite a bit taller and larger than Kofi. But Kof put up a really good fight. I thought he was going to win after he landed his two signature moves, the Boom Drop and Trouble in Paradise. But the Show was too much for Kofi in the end. I was devastated. I really don't want to talk about it.

The biggest pop (wrestling lingo for cheer) of the night came for the midget sideshow, Hornswoggle.

He introduced the entrance of D-Generation X, at which point half the audience busted out their $10 glow sticks.

For the main event, DX teamed up with fan-favorite John Cena in a three man tag-team match against "bad guys" Randy Orton ("The Viper"), Batista ("The Animal"), and Sheamus ("The Blindingly White Irish Guy").

Orton egged on the crowd by telling them to quiet down during their cheers for Cena.

The good guys won and Mark was very pleased with the final product, and I was very pleased with my final product......

My Face Is Naked

For the first time in over two years, I have removed every visible trace of hair from my face. It was really hard, but it had to be done. My roommates and I attended the WWE wrestling event on Saturday (more on that soon) and I figured that sporting a mustache would be the best way to fit in. (It was) But the mustache could not stay, (it was fun for sure, but really gross) so last night everything came off. The best way I can describe the process would be like shooting your favorite dog right in the head. (Only in this analogy, your dog can miraculously "grow" back to life) It has been a tough morning. I have contemplating a few of the pros and cons of being Baby Face McGee.

Pros:

1. Heighten sense of smell. (This idea is hypothetical at this point. I just feel like there are a lot more smells entering my nostrils than I am used to. Does facial hair block smells? Who knows. I am also listing this under pros for now, but it could definitely, definitely, be a con.
2. No food, dead skin, toothpaste, or dust particles hanging from my face.
3. Washing my face is exponentially easier.

Cons:

1. I look like a little kid.
2. I miss my beard/friend.
3. Instead of people saying I look like Justin Timberlake (really happened back in the shaved head days, people!) or the guy from Modern Family, I will be told I look like Donny Osmond.
4. Shaving is waaaaaaaaaay worse than trimming
5. Did I mention having some hair on the face really makes me look my own age?
6. Having a shaved face does not make you a part of an elite, super-cool, awesome club. Growing facial hair does just that.
7. What am I going to do the next time I go to a wrestling match? Just walk in without any type of fur going on? I don't think so.
8. I am going to get ID'd a lot more often.
9. I can never get my sideburns even.
10. There is nothing to protect me from mosquitoes, sunburn, blow darts, marker fights, the zit fairy, pinching, or a good smacking.

Cons win 10-3!

The re-growing of facial hair will commence.................NOW!

Living in a Daytime Paradise

Working the day shift at the hotel three days a week has brought many a happy blessing into my life. For example, I have met fabulous individuals from all over the world who have come to spend a few days in Logan, Utah. (Really, I am not even kidding. ALL OVER THE WORLD! It's splendidly weird.) I also have to opportunity to enjoy a some of what the daytime TV world has to offer. I typically begin my morning watching some of this...

followed by some of this (for like five minutes-listening to Regis early in the morning always seems to wake me up)...
and this (definitely not the same but it's still great)...
followed by my new favorite....after that I will look desperately for my old favorite (I can't find this show anywhere! Why!?! It's the best!!!)... then I will switch over to a little of this (I love a little bit of Whoopi in my life)...during lunch, I will try to catch some of this...and this...maybe some of this...but never this...and I cannot miss this one..Not a bad day, right?

Hawaii Recap: Days Seven-Ten: The End

(Cue the collective groans of everyone who reads this blog)

I know, I know, I know. I have been back from this trip for longer than a month and I am still blogging about it. But, I am almost done, I swear. I promise this will be the absolute final blog post about this trip. To make it happen, I have combined the final days of the trip into one comprehensive post. Let's get this over with.

In this picture, you can see my sister Bria flexing in a green top. This is at a cool little pond on the island of Kauai. They had cliffs, a rope swing, and the view was just beautiful.

On the walk back to the car, I decided to add some pictures to my Abercrombie portfolio...

...until Nika couldn't resist the chance to photobomb me...

...she has maneuvered her way into this blog a lot lately...

...finally, we got her out of the way and I was able to get my pose on again.

Our ship traveled right by the spectacular Na Poli coast. Apparently, you can only get close up to this area via helicopter. It's another one of those times where a photo just can't do the beauty justice. At all.

Here I am with my parents in front of the great view.

My cruise ship celebrity status reached an apex when I competed in the Dancing With the Stars competition...

...where my partner and I were an absolute disaster. I can't dance and I REALLY can't dance with a partner. So there's strike one. If you look at the picture you can see that I am also wearing flip-flops. Flappy Wappy Flippy Floppys. Strike two, right there. Strike three came in a big way from an incident in the first round. Take another look at the picture and notice the length of my partner's dress. Pretty short, no? During the song "Sway" from Mikey Bub, I went to the go-to spin your partner move. Her dress blew right up and we gave the audience a view they were definitely not expecting. Yow. After that, my partner was so embarrassed that she wouldn't dance. We were on the express elevator to the top floor of the Building of Suck. The crowd cheered us through the first two rounds until we were eliminated (thank the Lord) after round 3.

We met a lot of cool people on the ship. Here I am with Amanda, Bria, and DJ Hurricane Holt.

Bria, Amanda, me, and Chalis with Jasper. He was one of the crew members in charge of the activities that took a special liking to us crazy Mormons from Utah. He is also a crazy good dancer. Speaking of that, Chalis was also in the DWTS competition and she and her sparkly partner took first place!

Here we are with Chris, who served us our late-night peanut butter and jelly sandwiches almost every night on the ship.

Here I am with all my siblings after eating at Duke's in Kauai. We are a cute bunch of Titmuses.

And here is the whole group! Overall, this ranked as one of my favorite trips of all-time. I had a great time, did somethings I had never done before, made some great friends, aaaaaaaaaaand I was in Hawaii. And Hawaii is awesome.