Look what you've done, Taylor Lautner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q77sJT8O56E

I admit, I am a cynical person. There are a few things that anger me that probably shouldn't anger most people. HOWEVER, if this doesn't anger you, I don't know what will. I mean, is it funny? Of course it is. 16 year old kids think they're werewolves and wear fake tails! Did you hear the girl say that gangs are just posers?! Their stupidity is hysterical! I was laughing right up until the part where they said the kid cut the head off of his neighbor's dog and carried it around with him. How is that acceptable?!?! That's not a "kids will be kids" kind of thing. Killing small animals is the first sign of a serial killer! And how is that mom like "it takes courage to be this way"? That's not courage! It takes a clear set of issues to be that way! With a little dose of Twilight. God I hate Twilight...

The World Cup: A Guide To The World's Largest Sporting Event

On June 11th the world will stop what its doing for a month and turn its attention to South Africa as the World Cup kicks off with a match between South Africa and Mexico.
Here at The Common Room, we love the beautiful game. We love everything it represents, especially on the national level. However, we do realize that in the US, it is much harder to follow than baseball, football, or basketball. Since soccer doesn't get much attention from the sports media here in the states, we are here to help you, our loyal readers with a guide to the World Cup. Today we are going to start with a little background on the 32 countries in the tournament.

Group A

South Africa
Fun Fact - Host Nation
Colors - Green and Yellow
Nickname - Bafana Bafana (The Boys)
FIFA Ranking - 90th
Coach - Carlos Alberto Parreira


Mexico
Colors - Red, Green, White, and Black
Nickname - El Tri
FIFA Ranking - 17
Coach - Javier Aguirre

France
Colors - Blue, White, and Red
Nickname - Les Bleus
FIFA Ranking - 10
Coach - Raymond Domenech
1998 World Cup Champions

Uruguay
Colors - Light Blue, Black, and White
Nickname - Charruas (Indigenous People of Uruguay)
FIFA Ranking - 18
Coach - Oscar Tabarez
1930 and 1950 World Cup Champions

Group B

Korea Republic
Colors - Red, Blue, and White
Nickname - Taegeuk Warriors (Taegeuk is the Korean equivalent of Yin and Yang)
FIFA Ranking - 47
Coach - Huh Jung Moo (really.)

Greece
Colors - Blue and White
Nickname - The Pirate Ship
FIFA Ranking - 12
Coach - Otto Rehhagel

Argentina
Colors - Blue and White
Nickname - La Albiceleste (White and Sky Blue)
FIFA Ranking - 7
Coach - Diego Maradona
1978 and 1986 World Cup Champions

Nigeria
Colors - Green and White
Nickname - The Super Eagles
FIFA Ranking - 20
Coach - Lars Lagerback

Group C

England
Colors - Red and White
Nickname - The Three Lions
FIFA Ranking - 8
Coach - Fabio Capello
1966 World Cup Champions

United States
Colors - Red, White, and Blue
Nickname - The Yanks
FIFA Ranking - 14
Coach - Bob Bradley

Slovenia
Colors - Green, Yellow, and White
Nickname - Zmajecki (Dragon)
FIFA Ranking - 23
Coach - Matjaz Kek

Algeria
Colors - Red, White, and Green
Nickname - Les Fennecs (The Desert Foxes)
FIFA Ranking - 31
Coach - Rabah Saadane

Group D

Serbia
Colors - Red, White, and Blue
Nickname - The White Eagles
FIFA Ranking - 16
Coach - Radomir Antic

Ghana
Colors - Red, White, and Yellow
Nickname - The Black Stars
FIFA Ranking - 32
Coach - Milovan Rajevac

Australia
Colors - Green, Yellow, and Blue
Nickname - The Socceroos
FIFA Ranking - 20
Coach - Pim Verbeek

Germany
Colors - White, Black, and Red
Nickname - Die Mannschaft (The Team)
FIFA Ranking - 6
Coach -Joachim Low
1954, 1974, 1990 World Cup Champions

Group E

Netherlands
Colors - Orange, Blue, and White
Nickname - The Oranje
FIFA Ranking - 4
Coach -Bert van Merwijk

Denmark
Colors - Red and White
Nickname - Olsen's Eleven
FIFA Ranking - 35
Coach -Morten Olsen

Japan
Colors - Red, White, and Blue
Nickname - Samurai Blue
FIFA Ranking - 45
Coach -Takeshi Okada

Cameroon
Colors - Yellow, Green, and Red
Nickname - The Indomitable Lions
FIFA Ranking - 19
Coach - Paul Le Guen

Group F

Italy
Colors - Blue and White
Nickname - The Azzurri
FIFA Ranking - 5
Coach - Marcello Lippi
1934, 1938, 1982, 2006 World Cup Champions

Paraguay
Colors - Red, White, and Blue
Nickname - Guaranies (Indigenous People of Paraguay)
FIFA Ranking - 30
Coach - Gerardo Martino

New Zealand
Colors - White and Black
Nickname - The All Whites
FIFA Ranking - 78
Coach - Ricki Herbert

Slovakia
Colors - Blue and White
Nickname - Repre
FIFA Ranking - 38
Coach - Vladimir Weiss

Group G

Brazil
Colors - Blue and Yellow
Nickname - The Samba Kings
FIFA Ranking - 1
Coach -Dunga
1958, 1962, 1970, 1994, 2002 World Cup Champions

Cote d'Ivoire
Colors - Orange, Green, and White
Nickname - The Elephants
FIFA Ranking - 27
Coach -Sven-Goran Eriksson

Portugal
Colors - Red, Green, and White
Nickname - Seleccao de Quinas
FIFA Ranking - 3
Coach - Carlos Queiroz

North Korea
Colors - Red and White
Nickname - Chollina
FIFA Ranking - 106
Coach - Kim Jong-Hun

Group H

Honduras
Colors - Blue and White
Nickname - Los Catrachos
FIFA Ranking - 40
Coach - Reinaldo Rueda

Chile
Colors - Red, White, and Blue
Nickname - La Roja
FIFA Ranking - 15
Coach -Marcello Bielsa

Spain
Colors - Red, Blue, and Gold
Nickname - La Furia Roja
FIFA Ranking - 2
Coach - Vincente del Bosque

Switzerland
Colors - Red and White
Nickname - Schweizer Nati
FIFA Ranking - 21
Coach - Ottmar Hitzfeld


Thus concludes the first part of our World Cup coverage. We leave you with the Official Theme Song for World Cup 2010.

Twas The Night Before The Lost Series Finale

There is going to be a huge hole to fill in my life at 11:30 PM tomorrow night. More on this in the upcoming week. For now, sit back and enjoy the last few hours we get to spend with Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, Ben, and everyone else. It has been a wild ride.

Zoinks!

The London 2012 Olympic Mascots. Maybe its a good thing the world is ending shortly after.

Goosebumps Alert!

The 90's: A Television Love Affair

The nineties were a great time to grow up as a child, period. Television became a pseudo babysitter during this time, and almost another member of the family whose sole purpose was to entertain children to the point where they became hypnotized into mindless drones watching their favorite shows. The nineties gave rise to all kinds of tremendous programming, from cartoons to action shows to kids’ game shows there was always something great on television before and after school.

Cartoons during this time really set the bar for future programming for children. Nickelodeon, which was founded as pinwheel in the late 70’s, really garnered major success throughout the 90’s. Shows like Rugrats, Doug, Rocco’s Modern Life, and later on Rocket Power entertained children across the country. These shows were on the Leboff family television on a regular basis. Whether it was mindless bathroom humor like in Rocco’s Modern Life or tales of friendship and hard times as a student on Doug there was something for everyone. Cartoon Network was born in the early nineties as well. This channel originally started to recycle old cartoons such as one of my personal favorites, Scooby Doo, on a 24/7 basis has enjoyed wild success and now has its own original programming as well as a timeslot for the high school/college age crowd with adult swim. Two other shows I will mention in the cartoon category are The Real Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles originated as a comic that turned into a cartoon series followed by a number of movies whereas Ghostbusters originated as two wildly popular movies that turned into a series in the late 80’s and early 90’s. These two shows along with Scooby Doo (which was actually a product of the 70’s) were my favorite shows of this decade. I would parade around in my backyard catching (hopefully) imaginary ghosts as Dr. Ray Stantz or fight New York City’s evildoers as Leonardo.

This decade also gave rise to a number of great reality game shows for children. Every kid our age dreamed of bringing home a piece of the crag, getting slimed, or getting a pie in the face on one of Nickelodeons tremendous game shows. Marc Summers was a household name hosting both What Would You Do and Family Double Dare. Family Double Dare probably cracked my top three favorite shows in this category. Everyone always sat on the edge of their seat hoping that the families would supersede the double dare into the physical challenge. The other two shows that cracked my top three, in no particular order, were Legends of the Hidden Temple and Guts/Global Guts. Guts itself was great, but when the producers of the show decided to have kids compete for their native countries, the stakes really jumped up a notch. Mike O’Malley and Moira Quirk were really an unbeatable combination. The one last show I will bring up in this category as an honorable mention was Wild ‘N Crazy Kids. The ridiculous activities that these kids got to perform on television were the envy of every kid that watched the show, hosted in part by, my boy, BrOmar Gooding.

Finally, and most importantly, the one kid’s action show I will bring up in this section is Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. This show was so cool that it saved the g at the end of Morphin to put an extra g in ganggster. I honestly don’t think I know one person that didn’t watch this show. Everyone loved tuning in to watch the power rangers kick some butt (I said butt because I wasn’t allowed to say ass in the 90’s) every Saturday morning. Every week they would take on some new monster sent to Earth from outer space by Rita Repulsa. Looking back on this show the only thing more entertaining than the monsters and putty patrollers the team fought was the lack of any politically correct tact in giving the rangers their colors. Walter Jones (a black man) was the black ranger, Thuy Trang (an Asian woman) was the yellow ranger, David Yost was the blue ranger (not too politically incorrect, but he was a dude who got the color blue), Amy Jo Johnson the hot girl was the pink ranger, and Austin St. John (who has native American heritage) was the red ranger. It is safe to say that if Rev. Al Sharpton watched this show he would have turned his pants into the brown ranger. Much the same as Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, everyone had their favorite ranger in this show that they would pretend to be when playing in the backyard, and would fight who got to save Kimberly (the pink ranger played by the super fine Amy Jo Johnson). This show was everything a kid could ask for before it was bastardized into a thousand new age spinoff shows with new characters.

The ‘90s really were a tremendous decade for television. From cartoons to game shows to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers I will always revel in the incredible programming of this Era. I will always get nostalgic when I see my old proton pack or ninja turtle outfit. Here is a preview of the next topic...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Heoa-AI42bA