Gotta Go My Own Way

I've watched High School Musical 2 three times now. This time though, I try to tap out the melody of some songs on the piano ... had luck with the chorus parts only.

One song I'd really like to be able to play is "Gotta Go My Own Way". Really love the piano work on that one (and I think there's a guitar in there too). Probably will be on the look-out for a lyric sheet with chords. Why not music sheet with notes? I only reached around 2nd grade in my piano studies (my piano teacher died and I didn't want to change teachers because it meant repeating from grade 1). When I did decide to learn further on my own, I focused on the chords. Ergo, I got used to just knowing the chords and improvising on the fingerwork that's why. You would think I won't have a problem learning the guitar ... wrong ... I had more luck figuring out the ukelele chords on my own (but I play rock songs on the ukelele not hawaiian songs, hahahah!).

Below is Nikki Gil's version of the song. Had a hard time finding a clean video on the net.

Hey There Delilah

Feel like playing this song ... it's been raining all night and we've got cloudy skies this morning. The guitar play echoes my mood today.



Plain White Ts: Hey There Delilah music video
This single is from their album Every Second Counts on Hollywood Records.

Still Ok: Zac and Vanessa

After rumors of a break up caused by the stress of the Vanessa Hudgens nude picture scandal, HSM's famous couple have been seen and photographed together this week (now I believe Kai, hehehe!):
http://justjared.buzznet.com/2007/09/27/zanessa-truly-outrageous

Which makes this song more appropriate for the Zanessa ship, don't you think?:


This is the music video for Vanessa Hudgens' "Say Ok REMIX", which features Zac Efron. Released by Hollywood Records.

Betcha they weren't thinking of the scandal when they released this video last May.

Crazy but Incredible

Crazy But Incredible, Brian Josef's carrier single, and also the title of his debut album released under Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

Words and music of all 12 songs in the album are by Brian.



I like ;-)

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His Friendster account: http://profiles.friendster.com/3391201

He said She said

Ashley Tisdale's latest video on YouTube.

She plays my favorite character on the High School Musical TV-movies: Sharpay Evans. I love the fact that she's way too nice compared to the Sharpay character.

And below is Lucas Grabeel's take on the "He Said She Said" routine (he plays her brother Ryan in the movies):

Laughed really hard when Lucas asked: "I was wondering though, did you name each hip 'He Said' and 'She Said'?"

Frozen Life : An actual movie

Was looking up Yam Laranas' blog - the director of "Sigaw" and its American remake "The Echo", which has a link to "Grudge" screenwriter Stephen Susco's blog, which in turn has a link to a movie website that has this byline: What links them are the frozen sperm and loneliness.

This is the link to the movie's website: Frozen Life

It's actually some sort of drama. If you click "story", it's even weirder than what the byline suggests.

Commercials unfit for regular TV

Alicia Silverstone bares all for PETA:

Dunno why they pulled it out of regular TV (Houston?) when it's actually done in good taste. Some music videos are more suggestive compared to this.

Sean Combs/P. Diddly/Sean John has a series of commercials for his Unforgiveable fragrance. His official YouTube channel is currently featuring this commercial:


However, I think the version that sparked controversy is this:

Zelle the Band on the radio

I've been hearing "Sabihin" sung by the Zelle band on the radio for about a week now. That must be good news to Ian, whose company, Talentfolio, manages them. I think they launched the band last June. The song is from their album, "Search for Warmth".

In case you haven't noticed, clicking the Song title brings you to the music video on YouTube.

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Added on 22-Sep/2007:

Was browsing record shops in Makati last night: didn't find any CD of Zelle displayed anywhere. Lots of DVD movies on sale though... almost bought some but decided not to.

Blogging about Lucas

I have to admit I enjoy High School Musical. I almost didn't see it ... simply because I hated being told by a huge disney marketing campaign to watch it. anyway ... I caught it the second time it was shown and understood why kids love it.

Which is why I watched the sequel the first time it was shown in Asia.

I love the Evans twins. I love them both in High School Musical, and love Ashley's Sharpay in the second one even more. It was Clueless meets Legally Blonde. Favorite scene? "Drummer, give me a beat" ... then Sharpay sashays out of the rehearsal room. Favorite song? Fabulous.

Ryan had an interesting "arc" ... but at the end of HSM2, he has stepped too far away from the Ryan that I found hilarious in the first movie, that I couldn't say he's still a favorite character.

I still love Lucas Grabeel though. Ha ha ha! Three reasons why: he can sing/dance/act (all around guy - that's impressive), he's played a spectrum of characters from villain to heartthrob to effeminate drama king (he can switch roles easily - brands him a real actor to me), and he's not as hugely popular as Zac Efron (makes him an underdog, which means it would be interesting to watch how much farther his career will go until he becomes really famous). Let's add two more reasons: He's cute and funny.

A gauge to measure a celebrity's popularity is seeing how much people are talking about him on messageboards and blogs. This morning, I decided to look up people blogging about Grabeel.

So why am I blogging now?

Lucas' best friend Marc Blackwell keeps a blog. He has mentioned sometime last April about getting prank messages or calls on his cellphone. Guess what I found this morning? Someone blogging about a friend knowing some girls who managed to get hold of Lucas's roommate's number and leaving messages but not having the guts to answer the return calls.

Freaking hilarious! I just found out where some of those prank callers are. Ofcourse, the blogger was writing last August 2006 and it may not be Marc's number they were calling.

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Added on 22-Sep-2007:

Checked out Smallville bloggers talking about the "Reunion" episode of the said TV show where Grabeel plays young Lex Luthor. They seem to agree that it was good casting as Grabeel acted/moved like the older Luthor as portrayed by Rosenbaum. It's actually refreshing to read someone blogging about Lucas without the "OMG he is hot!!!" phrase typed all over the page.

Below is someone's clip on YouTube on the flashback part:


Comments on the video were mostly from disney fans who I just realized live in a totally different world because 1) they found the clip hard to watch and 2) they can't get over Lucas cursing and being violent. Crazies, at some level.

TV Movie: High School Musical 2

Distributor:	Walt Disney Pictures
Release:	August 17, 2007
Genre:	Musical, Drama, Comedy
MPAA Rating:	Not Rated

My Yahoo! Movies Rating:
B-

Overall Grade:	B-
Story:	C+
Acting	B
Direction:	B
Visuals:

The East High Wildcats looked forward to summer fun but got drama instead.

Troy and Gabriella's relationship gets the romance/drama treatment in this movie, with Troy acting a bigger jerk than he was in the first movie. And the two characters have gone past "sweet".

Sharpay is at the root of everything as usual, and her attempts to steal Troy from Gabriella and the wildcats cause her twin brother to break away from her. The Evans twins still provide a lot of laughs in this movie.

The story centers more on Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay and Ryan, that we see less of the rest of the cast ... and yet they are more involved in the singing here.

The dance numbers have become a bit more complicated here, and the music as a whole isn't as memorable as that in the first movie. There are a couple of gems that are better than any of the music from High School Musical 1 like "You are the Music in Me" and "Gotta Go My Own Way".

TV Movie: High School Musical

Production Cos.:	Salty Pictures/Walt Disney
Release:	January 20, 2006
Genre:	Drama, Musical & Performing Arts, Comedy
MPAA Rating:	G

My Yahoo! Movies Rating:

Overall Grade:	B-
Story:	C+
Acting	B-
Direction:	B
Visuals:	B-

I didn't watch this movie during the first few months it was shown on Disney channel, which is why I couldn't understand its popularity. When I finally decided to watch it, I found it very entertaining despite my being way too old for its target audience.

The story is actually run of the mill boy meets girl with the "can't be together because we come from different worlds" kind of situation. This one is even a bubble-cotton-candy-pop version of high school that the angst is toned down.

Perhaps what helped it stand out from other high school movies is that it's a musical. It's obviously aimed at kids, as the music is easy to sing along to, and it's fun to imitate the dance steps. It's also managed to put in the right amount of comedy so that people won't gag from too much sweetness.

This movie has a very good looking, poster perfect cast. Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens look very good together and play well against each other. Hudgens has the tendency to overact at times, which is something I've observed her do also whenever she guests in "The Suite Life".

Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Grabeel play over the top characters and obviously had fun doing it. Sharpay and Ryan Evans are actually my favorites.

What I truly admire about the kids in this movie is that they are able to sing and dance. Let's say they lip-synched a lot ... they still get credit for the dancing.

Fall Out Boy

About two weeks ago, Rey mentioned that his son Tryke had asked him to buy a ticket for the September 21 concert of Fall Out Boy (FOB) at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City. In fact, Tryke had been dropping hints about Fall Out Boy ever since he made the first request. Back then, Rey was not inclined to pay for such a ticket.

With Tryke's birthday coming up, Rey decided to finally give in and buy the ticket. Problem is, the Sept. 21 concert is fully booked and the only tickets available are for the Sept. 20 concert ... which Rey wouldn't want Tryke to attend because it is on a Thursday night and Tryke would still go to class Friday.

Rhoda, on the other hand, bought her son Raphael his ticket early August. Rey remembers that both of them planned to buy the FOB tickets at the same time... so now he's annoyed with himself for not buying the ticket when she did. After browsing around the net, I told him that tickets were sold as early as last half of July, so it's no wonder they're sold out. He told me pointing that out does not help him feel good about himself. Ha ha ha! Anyway, if Rey never gets hold of a ticket, he plans to buy Tryke a cellphone instead as the kid had been using an old model ever since he lost his new cellphone (Tryke's already lost 2 or 3 others, so Rey wasn't keen on buying him a replacement immediately).

Now, with all this talk about FOB, I got curious ... the band's obviously hot amongst the high school kids but the name is not familiar to me at all. After browsing on the net ... I realized why I'm not familiar with them - they're a pop punk rock band bordering on "emo". That's one genre where I only like about a quarter or less of the songs. A number of pop punk bands love "noise" ... and I'm not a fan of music where "noise" is prevalent and I can't find a bit of "melody" or "harmony". With pop punk songs, sometimes all I could hear are just noise. Some pop punk music have okay melodies, but the lyrics are juvenile ... and I don't mind the juvenile lyrics only if the sound accompanying it goes beyond "okay" (nice guitar work, or awesome beat on the drums is always a plus).

To give you an idea, here's a few songs of the genre I like: Simple Plan's "Perfect" does not have that great a music but I like/remember it because it has nice lyrics... and the accompaniment allowed the lyrics to stand out. Blink 182's "All the Small Things" has juvenile (okay, maybe not that juvenile) lyrics, but its combination of beat and chord work works for me. Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends" has nice, even poetic, lyrics accompanied by guitar and drum work that start out slow and simple then adds more chords/beats with each round as the song crescendoes (and gets faster and louder as well) to an "instrumental" segment then pauses before going into the denouement of the final stanza that repeats the simple to "ornamented" progression of the guitar and drum work.

Back to FOB. After listening to some of their songs from their official website, I find that their music isn't that "noisy". It's something I could nod my head to. However, based on the selected clips available for listening, none of them would be something I'd really hum afterwards. "This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race" definitely stood out as it is one of the songs that do not conform to their generic sound. I say generic because after a few minutes of checking out their audio files, I've realized half of them sound the same. After I've checked all the music on that site, I still haven't heard anything that I remember hearing before.

Next stop on that site? Looking up their photos. Bingo ... the faces are familiar and yes, I've seen their music videos before! I guess I'm not really into their music because I find their faces more memorable than their songs.

I'm thinking that what makes them one of the hottest bands today are the lyrics. The lyrics, and even the titles are actually well thought out. Their words will indeed resonate with teenagers and young adults ... people that are in the phase of actively questioning the social, political and whatever structure they see around them ... which is what rock is mostly about, actually.

Linking YouTube videos to Multiply

Dennis told me yesterday he could not play the videos on my Multiply site. Checked it last night and apparently, the feature that linked my YouTube account to Multiply did not work.

Removed all those videos in Multiply and decided to re-post the videos link by link. This time it worked. Did not post the videos made before 2007 though. Figured if someone wants to see them all, they might as well visit my YouTube channel.