Honestly, I’ve never quite understood the High School Musical phenomenon. My friends have watched it, even my sister finally broke down and took the DVD to college with her. It’s ridiculous! Very few self-imitating movies are good, and this one premiered on Disney Channel with teenage actors… Really, now. There must be some better entertainment that you guys can find.

Also, this whole thing about Zac Efron being gay… Yes, just because he’s dating a girl doesn’t make him straight, but I don’t think having really nice, highlighted hair makes you gay, either.

*smacks himself for actually talking about Zac Efron in a blog post*

Speaking of better entertainment you can find online, take a look at this clip from the Teen Choice Awards from last night (no, I didn’t watch them):

So I’ve got a fairly busy year ahead of me.

I stopped by the NBC29 studios today to finalize things with my internship there for this year. I worked out my schedule (I’ll be working there every Thursday from 3-11PM…yeah.), and they gave me a quick tour of the place, during which I repeatedly mistaken for a Senior at UVA (I never thought I looked that old…). *sigh* I love television studios, even though I’d never been in one before (taking the NBC studio tour in New York six times doesn’t really count). It looks like I’ll be doing a lot of different things there, too - news writing, editing, production assistance… Yay! I’ve always wanted to work at a TV station, so this is kind of a dream come true for me.

I’ll be talking to the manager at the Martin Luther King Jr. Performing Arts Center of Charlottesville (or the “Milk Pack”, as us CHS students call it) in the next few days to talk about doing a semi-unofficial internship with him as well. If I can find him, that is - he tends to wander around school during the day. Wow, this is going to be a busy year…

But, I must remember that I still have almost 2 hours in the middle of every day to get my homework done (thanks to the wonderfully dear Senior Release), so it’s not too bad.

As many of my friends will attest to, I’ve spent the better part of the past month on web design work (even spending 35 hours straight working on my school’s theatre website). Yesterday, Sean Tubbs and I released the new design for the Charlottesville Podcasting Network, which is an incredible site Sean started a few years ago which audio content from local radio stations, audio producers, and podcasters. I guess I spent about two weeks on this one, but I’m learning so much about PHP by fiddling around with WordPress templates. A few weeks ago, I tried working a few other CMSs, Joomla and PHPNuke, but I hated both of them. They’re both bloated and way too complex for even the simple things. WP has a very simple frame that’s easy to understand, but you can do really intricate things if you know what you’re doing (I’m wearing my WordPress shirt right now, so I’m feeling very loyal).

Anyway, you can check out the new site at http://www.cvillepodcast.com/, or take a look at the pictures below. I’d love to hear what you guys think - any critiques would be greatly appreciated .

Like every other student lucky enough to be zoned into the Charlottesville City School system, I started school today (there was only a hint of sarcasm there…). Unlike every other student, I was actually pretty excited to get back to school. I guess maybe this summer’s just been so productive, I don’t feel like I need any more time with it; knowing that I’ll be doing an Internship at NBC29 this year is also a plus. And thanks to that internship, I get 5th and 6th period off, which means that I get about two hours in the middle of every day to do whatever I want - an extended lunch, hang out in the Black Box, visit a teacher…

There were a few things I didn’t expect about this year, though. For example, apparently I’m on chummy terms with the administrators, who laugh and joke with me (using my full name) - I don’t even know all of their names (I’ve never really spoken to many of them, you see)! I also never expected the Principal to start up a student advisory committee for him. Considering that our student council wastes their time with things like dances and completely abdicates their responsibility of serving as a line of communication between the students and administrators, this is exactly what CHS needs. He’s even going to have lunch with students every two weeks so he can get a feel for student opinions.

Wow. This is so different from the administrator-student relationship I’ve grown used to in high school. Maybe things are finally changing for the better?

Speaking of high school students, whatever happened to all the high schoolers that used to blog? I used to have a good half-dozen or so friends that had a blog, and now the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Kenton Ngo… Then again, I’m glad that blogs are starting to lose their association with the topics normally discussed on LiveJournal posts
from a horny 15-year-old, so it might be good that the average blogger is now 20+.

So I was planning on writing about a CD that came out today by Darren Hayes (formerly of 90s pop band Savage Garden - don’t you dare laugh): “This Delicate Thing We’ve Made”. I’ve been waiting for it to come out for months now - I have kind of an emotional attachment to his music, since I discovered it pretty much at the same time that I came out to myself last year (and he’s gay too). I actually went to four different stores today before I found one that had it.

But in a classic example of how the involvement of a celebrity blows everything out of proportion, Hayes has been arrested on charges of racially abusing a waiter at a Thai restaurant. So naturally, the press is all over it, ironically overshadowing the release of his album (which is incredibly, may I add) tenfold. This is so ridiculous. Does anyone think a misunderstanding like this would have resulted in an arrest if he hadn’t been the “former celebrity” every news outlet is quoting him as? So now an [at least in my opinion] innocent man gets pegged as a racist because probably rubbed the waiter the wrong way. And it sticks to everyone’s memory because he’s famous.

This wasn’t very coherent, but seriously people - the media has better things to cover and the public has better things to worry about than a minor incident like this. All that comes out of it is pain.

(I don’t really consider myself a “fan” of anyone except Darren Hayes, so obviously I’m a bit biased here)