I don't know if anyone has noticed yet, but there has been a certain theme that pop songs have taken.

Who was the very first person you started a band with?

No one other than your siblings, of course! (The neighbors and cousins came next.)

Though of course that band was completely temporary (ours only lasted a week; we became cooks and waiters the week after), you and your siblings still made some music together, whether you composed the lyrics yourselves or you just sang along (badly) to a CD cranked in the stereo.

While your dream of becoming a rock star ended after a couple of days, these brothers carried out their musical ambitions till they were old enough to get money from it.

Despite being the awesome and successful rock stars they are today, the Way brothers never dreamed of becoming musicians when they grew up. Gerard wanted to become a comic book artist and Mikey...well, Mikey couldn't even play the bass. When they finally realized their calling though, the brothers teamed up to form the great American rock 'n' roll band My Chemical Romance. Oh, and just so you know, Mikey learned how to play bass overnight.

BILL AND TOM KAULITZ
Vocalist and Guitarist
Tokio Hotel


Though they look completely different, German boys Bill and Tom are identical twins. Having been raised with a music institute owner for a step father, the Kaulitz boys were never strangers to the industry. They set off as artists at quite a young age, but certainly it payed off. Today, their band, Tokio Hotel, is as successful as ever.

JOHN AND EDWARD GRIMES
Vocalists
Jedward


Their remake of Queen's Ice Ice Baby can seriously be stuck in your head for days to come. Having been discovered in the X-Factor, the Irish identical twins love singing...and apparently shaping their hair to be those of pineapple tops.

For a hell of a long time, I've noticed one recurring trend with American films, books, and series. They're based heavily on a Japanese original.

I'm not calling the American entertainment (for most part) industry as copy cats...wait, yes I am. Seriously, since time immemorial, anything Japanese that's cool and hip (some controversial) has an American "counter-part."

The sad thing about it is the world pays more attention to the copied, less cool version of that certain production (Oh power of Hollywood) and assumes that it's the Japanese who leeched off the idea that the brilliant Americans thought of themselves. Sigh.

Obviously, not all Jap products are copied (it would be too obvious if they were), but still. They're COPIED.

Can't find any movies or books that Americans redid? Then, let me have the pleasure of pointing them out to you.

Hogwarts.

Voldemort.

Wingardium Leviosa.

Any of those ring a bell? I bet they do, because what else do all those words connect to but the famous Harry Potter? Familiar to any kid, really, HP has gone from a small concept written on tissue paper to a worldwide phenomenon booming not only in books, but in the movies as well. Being this famous, J.K. Rowling's world-known series has been the subject of numerous praises, some bitter comments and millions and millions of parodies.

Amidst all the HP imitations attracting thousands of viewers online, one YouTube parody stands out from all the rest. Why? Well for one thing, Harry, Ron, Hermione and the rest of the gang are all puppets.

This is the Potter Puppet Pals, a hilarious comedy series created by YouTube director and puppeteer (duh) Neil Cicierega.

The series began with a simple musical presentation titled "The Mysterious Ticking Noise" wherein Hogwarts is pestered by a constant ticking. Professor Severus Snape, known the fans as the bitter Potions teacher, notices the noise first and tries to find the source, but in the end, ends up singing along to the catchy beat. Soon, everyone, including Professor Dumbledore, joins in on the musical adventure until Ron finally discovers what's causing the ticking: a pipe bomb. Predictably enough, everyone blows up into a rain of cotton and fabric.

Sound random? You bet it is.

While the show still uses the same character names and appearances, their personalities are almost completely altered to suit anyone's comedy craving.

According to the trusty Google definition function, a parody is a creative mock of something seriously created. For short, a spoof.

I've never really liked videos like that because I see them as rip offs and cheap knock offs of the real thing. Sure enough, my opinion has been correct (or at least, I see it as correct) in every parody in YouTube I've seen. I was certain that I would never appreciate dull work like that.

Until I stumbled upon the Key of Awesome.

A production by barelypolitical, the Key of Awesome is a music show filled with musical parodies and some original works of the author. At fist, I thought it was just another one of those ridiculous imitations of Lady GaGa, Ke$ha, and Adam Lambert music videos, but after watching their version of Telephone, I got sucked right into their comedy genius.

Not only do their actors look uncannily like the real stars, but their props and video editing are also very professional so you can see that they really put a lot of effort into their work. Also, their lyrics are hilarious and strangely true

Take a look at some of their awesome renditions.

Eminem feat. Rihanna - Love the Way You Lie

Katy Perry - California Gurls

After a couple of months of going on a hiatus, My Chemical Romance is back and better than ever.

According to front man Gerard Way, the new MCR has a new sound reminiscing back to the old garage-playing days. For sure, I can tell. While previous albums like Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love focus more on sadness since both albums are dedicated to Way's deceased grandmother, the new album has a new vibe to it that reminds me of good ol' classic rock and roll.

Whoever gave the notion that if you're old, you're weak, eat your words. Though this may always be the case for a couple of folks who are lucky enough to reach a hundred, this definitely does not apply with SLU. Despite a hundred years of wear and tear, the old girl's still standing tall and proud as she has her centennial celebration.

When people turn 70, we call them healthy. When they turn 80, we call them strong. When they hit 90, we call them lucky. But when they turn 100, we call them rare.

SLU is definitely rare with the big triple digits as it celebrates it centennial.

Okay, so maybe a school isn't exactly a person, but getting to 100 is a big deal. That means it has served for a century; a century of good education; a century of growing and nurturing friendships; a century of building a family.

I owe SLU a lot. Why? Well, for one thing, it has been my literal home away from home for years. I mean, let's face it. When you spend about ten hours everyday in a place, you tend to get attached. Also, it has been my stable educational ground; the rock which would basically be the very framework of my future. For sure, without SLU, I honestly wouldn't know what I would do with my life.

The old girl also deserves some commending. Sustaining more than ten thousand children for a hundred years couldn't have been easy. SLU definitely deserves some cred for offering quality education. The curriculum it has is also well rounded. From looking for the line of symmetry of a parabola to trying to serve a volleyball over the net, SLU offers it all.

So what can I give to show my geniuine appreciation for all those years of teaching me life's lessons? Loyalty. Like I said, I want to and I plan to continue my college education in SLU. I trust it enough to give me the same quality of education that it has been giving me for the past years. I'm pretty confident that with a diploma from SLU, the world will be my oyster.

My second gift would definitely be honor. Since I was in elementary school, I have already been competing in numerous interschool competitions that take me to places like Ifugao and Laguna. I always try and do my best in all these endeavors and in great feats, I bring home the bacon, giving glory and pride to not just LHS, but to SLU as well.

As the SLU centennial celebration draws near, here's hoping that this fine institution would continue to serve the community for another hundred years to come.

High School.

According to the dictionary, it's a secondary school that prepares students for college. Very true.

According to the student vocabulary, however, it's an insanity-inducing ride of assignments, quizzes, projects, sleepless nights and TV-less weekends. Also true.

According to me, it's the the time of my life.

Sure, it could be, no wait, it IS, hard and sometimes unforgiving to be a high school student, but as the years pass by, I start to see it as a fun, exciting and new way of learning especially when I decided to start it in SLU - LHS.

Okay, so maybe I didn't decide to go there, my parents did. Originally, my sister and I were to go to some other high school, but after a little thought, mother and papa dearest decided to send us to LHS where my cousin at the time was a senior. Carry the family torch, they said.

My sister went in first (obviously) and as a freshman, she was doing a heck of a good job. She kept going until she reached fourth year and graduated as valedictorian in the science section. However, she did go a little nuts in the process of getting there. I was expected to turn crazy as well.

With me in the science section by first year, my sister started warning, no wait, scaring me about high school, especially as a freshman. How the upper class men can bully (not that she'd tried) and how sadistic the quizzes can be. By the end of my 6th grade summer, I was braced for the absolute worst.

As it turns out, LHS wasn't so bad after all. Sure, it was a heck of a lot harder than elementary, but that's how life is. Pamela, Errol, and Marc T., some of my elementary classmates, were still in the same section as me. After tearing through it (and going a little insane in the process)with them, I made it out alive and still a contender in the science section.

By second year, the three original science sections thinned to one. It was somewhat of a loss for our part, but being thirty students in one classroom does have its perks. Aside from getting a lot of space, we also got closer. Bridges burned in the past years were rebuilt and new ones rose.

In the middle of that same year, we were reduced to twenty nine. Our classmate and one of my close friends, Patricia, moved away to Italy due to her father's job. While we would all miss her, we still tore through the rest of the year trying to salvage what's left of our Filipino and Statistics grades. When it all comes down to it, I still came out alive and with a sure place in 3-Mapagpakumbaba.

That wasn't the case for some of us, though. Ten weren't as lucky as the other nineteen. Still, that never stopped them from remaining friends with us. Everyday, they would come and hang out with us; they still belong in our home and it's like they never left it the first place.

Our home. Sigh.

We have been at home with each other, our section and our school for three years now and when you spend THAT much time with something or someone, you always get attached and feel comfortable with it, so that's how I see LHS: my comfort zone, my home.

Of course, things aren't always so peachy and rainbows, unicorns and ice cream happy. LHS is still a school and it definitely serves its purpose as one. I can't remember a day that passed by that we had nothing to do (except of course for the orientation week and probably intrams week). Challenges are always served to us in either huge chunks or cute little bite sized pieces. Naturally, our first reaction would be to complain about the complexity or the length, but deep down inside, we love the challenges (you know I do :)).

It serves well as a preparatory school, too. From three-minute music videos to ten-page long essays, you name it, we've tried it. This is good prep for the real world because let's face it, life isn't easy and all the projects and assignments we're required to submit is a good practice and foresight to what's coming for us in the future. When we're thirty and required to do fifty page scrapbooks, you can bet your life that we know what to do.

With school being the number one place on the list of top ten places we go to, it's kinda like our second home. So that's basically what LHS has been to me for the past years until present: my home.

Now that LHS and the entire university are having their centennial celebration, I'm happy to be partying on with them for I really do celebrate it. The SLU centennial just proves that it has been around for a hundred years and its still standing today. Since I was in kindergarten, I have been a loyal student to SLU and I plan to continue that until my last year of college.

Here's to SLU and its one hundred years of great education.

What would you do if your kid suddenly comes to you and asks "What is sex?"

I bet that would hold any parent unarmed. Though it's somewhat expected, parents seem to be never ready for this talk, no matter how much books or Internet articles they've read. Still, no matter  how awkward, they  answer the best they can and often, their son or daughter would get it and just back away. This is what usually happens when a teenager brings the topic up.

However, what would you do if an eight your old asks you that question?

Yes, EIGHT years old. That seems too young to even have the slightest spark of sex in the brain, right? Regardless of age and innocence, Julia Sweeney's adopted daughter one day asks her mother the dreaded question.

Julia's response? Complete and total honesty.

While having dinner in a restaurant, Julia's daughter discusses frog reproduction with her because it was a school requirement. She explains that the frogs lay some eggs, they hatch and turn into tadpoles, then finally, into frogs. Only trying to correct her, Julia adds that it's only the female frogs that can lay the eggs and the male ones only help in fertilization.

Confused and surprised, her daughter demands to know how exactly does this 'fertilization' work. Julia, trying her best to be honest, replies by saying that sperm cells from the man's penis would fertilize the egg by having the penis go through the woman's vagina.

It sounds like a really serious (and sensitive) answer for an eight year old, but Julia's daughter gets it. With disgust in her tone, she clarifies that both parties have to be nude for it to work, and being quite innocent, she expresses that a man and a woman must NEVER be together without clothes.

Julia tries to clear the muddle she's gotten herself into with pure truthfulness by saying that yes, a man and a woman can be together naked if they were much, much older than she was. Her daughter then accuses her of doing it in the past, and to that, Julia had to say yes.

Further into the night, her daughter grows more and more curious about sex and how it works. Questions about people having sex in public started rising so Julia just stuck to her original plan and answered the truth.

Once they got home, their cat makes an appearance so Julia's daughter asks if the same sex process for humans also apply to cats. When she got an answer of yes, she couldn't figure out where the legs went and how they...well, did it. To answer her more pressing question, Julia suggests the Internet where they watch different cat mating videos on YouTube.

Totally sucked into it, her daughter innocently wonders if it applies to dogs as well. Soon, dog mating videos were on their screen. After a couple more videos of dogs uh...hooking up, Julia's daughter asks if there were any videos of humans having sex on the Internet.

Probably stunned on the inside, Julia simply retorts by saying that people would never do such a thing, although in reality, everyone knows that that's not the case. When her daughter didn't press on the human sex videos,  Julia narrowly missed shooting her daughter into the world of Internet porn.



While some parents still retort to lies to answer their children's questions, teenagers or otherwise, I like Julia's style of explaining the sensitive topic of sex. Bringing the truth out in the open was a good choice in my opinion, because let's face it, kids would know about it sooner or later so it's better that they get the right answers from their parents than the more disgusting version from a friend.

I wish my parents did the sex talk this way. When I was a kid, I've heard the words sex a lot of times in school already, so I tried asking my parents. Like most unarmed and totally unprepared moms and dads, they tried to get the topic out of my head so I went to look for answers elsewhere. My classmates seemed like a good source so they gave me the answers I assumed were correct.

As I got older, more words seem to add to my vocabulary. Virgin, virginity and rape came up so once again, I tried to squeeze some information out of my parents. Again, they brushed the topic off so I looked it up in the dictionary.

Well, at least the dictionary actually gave me answers. They're better than what my parents gave me though back then, I didn't really get what the hell "untouched or undefiled" meant. Still, I made do with the definition and never asked my mom and dad what virginity meant again.

The topic of rape, however, was a different story. I heard it on the news once because of some wack job trying to rape animals. I asked my mom what rape meant and she surprisingly gave me an answer. I don't remember what it was exactly, but I got what it meant.

I know all parents differ in their parenting styles, but this is probably the best sex talk I've heard so far. Sure, it may have happened in such an early age, but again, it's better to have the birds and bees with mom than with your horny classmate.


An Awesome Disaster by e.viray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.anawesomedisaster.blogspot.com.