This year, Sesame Street characters Cookie Monster, Oscar, Elmo, Abby Cadabby, Rosita, and Big Bird appeared on A Capitol Fourth singing a medley of songs. They were introduced by President Barack Obama. Big Bird sang “Sunny Days”, Elmo sang “Elmo’s Song”, Oscar sang “I Love Trash”, Abby sang “Somebody Come and Play”, Cookie Monster sang “C is for Cookie”, Rosita’s sang “Sing” with Natasha Bedingfield. The whole group then sang “Yankee Doodle Boy” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag”.

I happened to have caught it on TV while channel surfing. I only found the Natasha Bedingfield part online though. Here it is. Enjoy!

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

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While I’ve built several puppets before, what’s different this time is that I am following a pattern this time and doing a lot more hand-stitching rather than using a combination of sewing machine and hot glue. I like the way that it came out. It was a little crooked, I thought, and the fact that I was holding the puppet head in one hand and taking a picture using the other didn’t help either. But I got to practice my stitches and attempt a different way of building a puppet head and that’s all that mattered.

The pattern was supplied in the course material. I printed it out, cut out the different pieces, and then traced them onto a piece of fabric.

The Stitches In the last post, I mentioned that I was practicing different stitches. I tried to work all the different stitches in. The ears were sewn using locking whipstitches. The back of the head was joined together using a baseball stitch. Although I knew that I should have flipped it inside out and do the stitch on the other side, I went ahead and did it anyway, because I wanted to see how it would turn out. And that turned out to be… not such a great idea. But hey, there’s a reason why I attempted this at the back instead of front of the puppet. Most of the other seams are joined together using the ladder stitch (my new favorite). The top of the head piece was joined together using a whipstitch because it was the fastest, and I am allow to do more of a sloppy job because it will be covered by the hair at the end anyway.

The Mouth Piece From experience, the mouth piece is the most tricky part of the puppet, and that’s the case this time as well. One reason was that it required me to line up the mouth board with the rest of the head precisely. And the other reason was that I did not leave enough seam allowance and had to sew through the vinyl (which is more difficult to sew through) sometimes. The vinyl mouth board has an interesting effect, though I am not sure if it was intentional. When I was sewing the mouth board to the rest of the head, I realized that there was no “lip”. But the fabric curled in after I pulled the ladder stitch seam tight, while the vinyl correctly stayed in place. I probably didn’t pull on the stitches evenly though, and the mouth came out a little crooked, I thought. Then again, I don’t remember ever making any mouth boards that’s not slightly asymmetrical. It usually isn’t noticeable anyway.

The Decorations The eyes are three layers. They are a piece of felt on top of a piece of white sheet foam over a piece of black sheet foam. They are not totally 3D, but not totally 2D either. The hair is fun fur. The front is glued in place, while the middle and back were attached using several small stitches. I want to allow the maximum flexibility and movement of the hair, so as long as it doesn’t fall off, I am not going to do too many things to keep it in place.

That was a fun project, but of course, the most fun part is seeing everybody’s pictures. Although we are all building from the same pattern, many of the puppet heads build are quite unique. My favorite is still the smiling dog built by a classmate. It makes me smile too.

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And also, you know what’s a really good resource for learning this stuff? YouTube. Text descriptions and pictures are good, but watching demonstrations (provided that they are filmed well) helps even more.

Whipstitch: This is simple enough. Just a bunch of loops. It’s pretty basic. It reminds me of the way a spiral notebook is bound together. A good example can be found on YouTube here, although this one doesn’t really require that much explanation.

Locking whipstitch: I actually could not find a good example video for this one, but since I’ve done it in my elementary school craft class, I already know it. Strangely enough, many of the crafting skills I currently have were learned in elementary school in Taiwan. They seriously made children try a lot of things like pencil figure drawing, basic sewing and stuffing projects with felt, water-color, embossing a sheet of soft metal, carving your own stamp, making and decorating frisbees out of cardboard, decorating cans with straws, working with playdough/paperclay, etc. “Kids, bring your knives to school tomorrow so we can carve some wood to make prints” is something you will never hear in American elementary schools.

Baseball stitch: Although the instructor Andrew recommended baseball stitch and ladder stitch for puppet-building, I wasn’t quite sure about it. This is the kind of stitch that’s also used for baseballs (hence the name), but wouldn’t that leave big seams? After trying it out though, I like it. The seams are quite hidden if it’s done right and it seems to join together the fabrics and hold it pretty well. I like this video on YouTube. She’s actually demonstrating the baseball stitch using a knitting needle and yarn as opposed to the regular needle and thread. This makes things a lot more visible, because sometimes needle and thread just doesn’t show very well in web videos because of the video quality, or because the view is easily blocked by the person’s hands.

Ladder stitch: At first I wasn’t quite understanding this one. Though I am told that this stitch is almost invisible, I had some doubts. The pictures I am seeing about this stitch look like there would be a bunch of horizontal stitches visible on the top. So that makes ladder stitch not that different from whipstitch. But later I studied it a little more closely and realized that as long as I pull the stitches tight, the stitches really do disappear! This quickly became my favorite stitch. This video is a good example of the stitch, and this page is what I was looking at when I had the realization of needing to pull the stitches tight.

I am now practicing these stitches on a fleece puppet head that I am currently sewing together. I am almost done, and will post pictures soon early this week!

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Remember back in May, I talked about a TV show, California’s Gold filming at the burger joint Apple Pan while we had lunch there? That episode just aired a few hours ago, and I spotted myself!

Yep, it was for only a fraction of a second, but it was fun anyway.

So in that previous post, I mentioned that Huell Howser was interviewing some customers in front of the place when we left. Well, that was not quite true. Turned out that those two people interviewed were not customers. They are the owners!! And we (my co-workers and I) happened to have finished our lunch and walked out the door. Sure we only appeared in the corner and took up 10% of the whole screen for a fraction of a second and nobody waved at the camera, but that was fun.

Haha, finally I can say that I’ve been on TV. It wasn’t a “cool, I’m now a celebrity” moment though. It was more like a “where’s Waldo” moment.

By the way, you should check out Apple Pan if you are visiting West LA. They’ve been there since 1947 and the burgers are indeed good. Oh, and what a coincidence. I mentioned my friend Jessika being on Without A Trace in that May post, well, tonight I saw the rerun of the episode of Cold Case she was in again. Somehow when I mention California’s Gold, I also mention her in the same post, though the two really have nothing to do with each other.

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Oh, and HSN (Home Shopping Channel). Somehow they are the only one that’s still on the air, and not showing the instructional video.

When you think about it, TV has certainly come a long way.

When I was a kid (in Taiwan), there were only three TV stations. Many of the old TV sets have three buttons (as opposed to a num pad like we are used to today), each representing one channel. They were all owned by the government and no private stations were allowed. There was also no such thing as cable television, probably a result of the combination of the lesser degree of globalization, lack of infrastructure, and the martial law in place from 1948 to 1987.

And that’s why when there was finally cable television, it was often referred to as “channel 4″, a term that’s still sometimes used today.

Our first cable box had eight buttons (yes, that’s how well I remembered it) and no remote control. The red button was the power switch. There were six black buttons for channels. There was a yellow button that could be set to either an ON or OFF position. With the ON/OFF of the yellow button and the six black buttons, the cable box could give you 12 channels to watch!

And that kind of thing was a big deal back then.

The TV channels were not national networks either. There was no infrastructure to broadcast the same channel to the whole country at once. Instead, we had a bunch of local stations who broadcast by setting up cables on existing lampposts or tagged them on right next to power lines (illegally, so every now and then they would be cut off by agencies that actually maintained these power lines) and they could not service areas that were too far away.

One of the twelve channels was a channel that always showed the stock prices. Another was a “TV guide” channel… which was really a camera pointing at a whiteboard with a TV schedule written on it. And the rest of the channels showed whatever VHS tapes that the cable TV providers could get their hands on. Sometimes they were movies. Sometimes they were those subtitled samurai dramas. Sometimes they were Taiwanese puppet shows. You never really know what was going to be on.

A few years later, it started to grow into something that resembled what we have in the United States. We had the same channels available in the same country. Heck, there was even HBO and Discovery. The cable boxes went from being able to serve 12 channels, to something like 60, 100, and then hundreds. It had definitely came a long way.

When we moved to the U.S., it was interesting to surf the channels we could get using antennas. In Taiwan, if you didn’t have cable, then all you get were three channels (a fourth one was added later on), but here, you not only get a bunch of channels, but many of them are in different languages. Here in Southern California, we certainly got our share of Spanish channels in addition to English channels. And there were channels that took turns throughout the day showing Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Tagalog and Vietnamese programs. It was an interesting sight for me to see.

And then digital channels came along. Our analog TV wasn’t able to take digital signals directly, so we purchased a converter box (using the government-issued coupons they were giving out this whole past year) and we instantly got many more channels. Many of the channels were split into several. For example, NBC split into three channels in our area. One of them is the regular NBC. Another was just weathers all day. And the other plays the Olympics all day, pretty much. While I don’t think nobody would watch those two channels all day (except maybe weather fanatics and Olympic athletes?), it definitely shows that we now have the resources for one station to broadcast several sets of programs at once. Channel 18, which used to take turns showing programs of different languages, now dedicates one channel to Japanese programs, one to Korean ones, and one each for Armenian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and so on. I found myself watching stuff in languages that I don’t even understand quite often, actually, because they are fascinating to look at. (Ever seen the Armenian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?)

Digital television gives us a big selection of channels, and the picture quality is also better. But will I miss analog channels? Maybe. I probably wouldn’t want to watch them or miss them all the time, but hey, I guess there’s something nostalgic about it, much like listening to cassette tapes (we grew up on that stuff!) and watching old VHS movies. Ah, this is certainly the end of an era.

Farewell, analog television, it’s been fun! (And if you are not in the United States, um, never mind.)

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Puppet Building 101 is a nine-week video course on building foam puppets. Over the duration of the course, students will receive video tutorials and handouts that take them step-by-step through the puppet making process. There are also going to be live video chats to answer question that may arise.

The course will be taught by Andrew, who is the founder of PuppetBuilding.com and PuppetVison blog, and has been building puppets and teaching puppet building for a long time. What I particularly like about it is that we’ll be shown how to make our own patterns based on what we want to make. I think while it’s good to follow patterns and make puppets, it’s even better to know why the patterns are the way they are.

Am I signing up for this? Yeah, of course I secured myself a spot first, haha.

Who wants to be my classmate? You have until June 13 to sign up. See this website for details:
http://www.puppetbuilding.com/puppet-101-course.html

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You + Me + Puppets = Yay!

Stacey Gordon is a puppet builder (among other things) that make many quirky things like toilet paper finger puppets. Many of them are finger puppets made of felt. They are colorful and interesting looking. She’s probably the most entertaining to watch on this list as she is pretty silly on camera (and quite possibly in real life too).

Stiq Puppets Live

Daryl from Stiq Puppets shows puppet building techniques in detail in his podcast. I am starting from the beginning and I am still catching up. I am not that far into it yet, but I am already picking up useful information like how to use a fishing line to hang a puppet’s arm. I haven’t seen all the episodes yet, but a quick glance tells me that I will be learning even more, such as how to install a detachable arm rod, which a lot of people are doing in different ways with their own pros and cons. If you want to learn more techniques, don’t miss this one.

Hoggworks Podcast

Puppet builder Brian Hogg of Hoggsworks Studios has also been live streaming his puppet building live. He’s the man behind DotBoom and Ask Papaltine and builds really good looking puppets (see website). I was also impressed with the attention he gave to the puppets’ torsos, as some puppet builders would just use generic shapes.

Puppets and Stuff Live

I actually haven’t got time to check this one out yet, but Puppets and Stuff is a forum where many people share their experiences on puppet building, so it may have very good information as well.

It’s fun to see things being made, and if I can pick up a thing or two while I am at it, that’s even better! I am excited to see all these podcasts popping up on the internet.

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Here’s something from Sesame Street that’s sort of a crappily (yep, that’s a word) executed school play, but it’s downright endearing (as always).

I realized what Prairie does in this video is what Kermit does all the time on Muppets: putting on a show while trying (okay, failing) to keep the crazy cast under control. Then again, that’s always fun to watch. Oh, and here’s a spoiler (that’s not quite a spoiler): Cookie Monster ends up eating what’s in front of him.

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Now, I am not a Trekkie (or Trekkie Monster). I haven’t watched any of the series, and I haven’t seen the trailer. I went into the theater without any real expectations. I was guessing that it’s going to be a sci-fi movie with shallow stereotypical characters and a half-hour long battle scene with spaceships shooting lasers at each other causing lots of computer generated explosions.

Well, I was wrong.

The movie turned out to be quite character-driven, with the focus on the two main characters Kirk and Spock. It was all about why the characters are they way they are and how they deal with and overcome all these situations. The computer animations are there, but they are just there to help tell the story instead of steal the whole focus. It was well-written, and the characterizations are good. I guess I was expecting shallow characters and long sequences of fancy animation for the sake of showing off animations because of what I saw in the new Star Wars trilogy. I think this movie is worth watching again even if not on a big screen, because it’s all about the story, and not just about visual and audio bombardment.

Oh, and I heard that there were lots of references to previous Star Trek movies and TV series. I am not a Trekkie, so of course I didn’t catch any of the references. However, I love it when TV or films have these subtle nods and nudge-nudge-wink-winks because it’s rewarding for the loyal fans.

It was not what I expected, but I think I wouldn’t have liked it as much if it was what I expected.

Oh, and by the way, Thursday was also the two year anniversary of this blog. Two years, hmm. Two years ago, this post, though nothing special, marked the first time of me posting on this blog. Maybe this calls for a celebration? But I kinda feel like I would rather celebrate when there’s something that’s more worth celebrating, haha.

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The Venue: Ever since 1989, the event has taken place in UCLA’s own Los Angeles Tennis Center. This year, however, due to the popularity, the event is moved to a bigger venue, Pauley Pavilion, home of the Bruins basketball team. I think it’s a good move. The lighting and acoustics benefited because now it moved from outdoors to indoors. When the crowd cheers, you feel the roar so much better because now the sound has nowhere to go and just keep echoing across the space. That impact is great. It was fun to watch the event out under the open sky, but watching it indoors certainly help focusing the energy better.

Now, the individual performances:

ACT 1:

1. Yukai Daiko: “Firefly” (Exhibition; Original Composition by Scott Miyako, Arrangement by Ryan Ishikawa)

The Taiko (Japanese drumming) performance warmed up the crowd at the beginning. It was always tough to be the first one to perform in a talent show in front of a crowd that wasn’t warm up, so I like how they put an exhibition event at the beginning to get the crowd going. And what better event is there than drumming?

2. Lily Stern Band: “The Looks” (Band; Original Music and Lyrics by Lily Stern)

I thought this band sounded nice and Lily Stern was a good singer. It was not those band performance where they use heavy drum beats and complicated guitar solos to get you worked up, but instead it’s something easy to listen to. I also think the sound benefited from being indoors, because sometimes the first one or two bands’ sounds weren’t mixed well in past shows, but this time the balance was quite good right away.

3. Alpha Delta Pi and Theta Xi: “Zombies” (Production; Script and Lyrics by Alpha Delta Pi and Theta Xi, Choreography by Melissa Reinertson, Jay Sobel, Luke Campbell and Sara Hanlon)

The productions usually make me roll my eyes, because it’s usually a singing and dancing routine with a lame story performed by a fraternity. It’s usually about a freshman coming to UCLA and learning about the school, or it’s about how stupid USC is and how great UCLA is. It might be fun for the first time but after watching productions and productions doing the same thing year after year, it can make me puke. BUT! This group didn’t do that. Somehow they incorporated a zombie story into the usual UCLA vs. USC theme and I thought that was quite creative. I applaud them for doing something original.

4. Katie Boeck: “Your Part” (Solo; Original Music and Lyrics by Katie Boeck)

My first thought was: again? She already won last year and here’s she is again. And once again, her performance was really really good. I totally think she’ll have a bright future and great career in front of her, just like former two-time Spring Sing winner Sara Bareilles.

5. No Chaser: “What Time Has Done” (Music and Lyrics by Daniyal Ali and James Bunning)

This was a good performance. Good vocal performance from the singer and good guitar solo as well.

6. Bruin Harmony: “I Shall Be Free” (A Cappella; Arrangement by Ross Morey)

I saw them in last year’s Spring Sing as well. They are a young group and are not yet as established and experienced as the older A Cappella groups on campus like Random Voices, Scattertones and Awake Acappella, but I really like how they keep introducing interesting new elements into their songs. Last year they did a song with some hymnody-ish four-part harmony in it, and this year they added some military element. These are by no means safe things to try, but I applaud them for keep pushing and trying new things. They might not win right away, but I am glad to see so much potential in this group. They shall be here to stay and continue to grow.

7. Melissa and Emerson: “So Right” (Duet; Music and Lyrics by Melissa Flavia Constantino)

This was a nice cute song. My friend liked them a lot and wanted them to win. However, while it’s the kind of music that’s easy on the ears and I could listen to them over and over, this is a talent show and you’ve got to show off. It’s like figure skating. Nowadays they just want to see those jumps that’s getting more and more difficult. Sometimes these requirements are so difficult that they even feel out of place in the program, so you’d only those jumps in competitions but not exhibitions. That’s how I felt about these things too. They are the kind of musicians that I would listen to over and over, but they aren’t showing off enough techniques to win a talent show. But still, good job for them.

8. Strathmore Players: “Jerry Maguire: The Musical” (Production; Script by Justin Wedell, Lyrics by Justin Wedell and Evan Tidd, Choreography by Justin Wedell, Michelle Horack, Kara Erickson and Neev Garbi)

Another production that wasn’t done by a frat? I am impressed. Again, I like how it wasn’t the same old stuff. The lead (I don’t know this name, but I suspect it’s this name that kept popping up above: Justin Wedell) was a really good singer. I enjoyed it cuz it was not a typical production story.

9. FDR: “Slot Machine” (Band; Lyrics by Brandon Contreras and Jarell Perry)

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to hear the vocals very well, because the drum was really loud. This is not their fault, but it’s unfortunate that I could not hear the words well, so I don’t have as much to say.

PRESENTATION OF THE 22ND ANNUAL GEORGE AND IRA GERSHWIN AWARD – JULIE ANDREWS

Each year, Spring Sing hands out the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement. Recent winners include Frank Sinatra (2000), Clive Davis (2001), Stevie Wonder (2002), k.d. lang (2003), James Taylor (2004), Kenneth “Babyface” Edmounds (2005), Burt Bacharach (2006), Quincy Jones (2007), and Lionel Richie (2008). This year, it was Julie Andrews. (That was actually one major reason that I wanted to come to this year’s Spring Sing… to see Julie Andrews.)

The ceremony, as usual, started out with the Spring Sing director talking about the Gershwin brothers’ achievements in music, and then went to a video montage of the career of current year’s winner. The crowd cheered throughout the video, and the whole stadium shook when they showed Sound of Music footages. And then when Julie Andrews came onto the stage, of course it was followed by a standing ovation.

And then Julie Andrews made her speech. She talked about her career, all these good people that she had got to work with, and interesting stories in her life too. She was so incredibly graceful, and very humble at the same time. And witty too. To sum it up, she was great. Besides, she told us to beat ‘SC. When Julie Andrews tells you to beat ‘SC, you do it. No excuses.

- INTERMISSION -

I think the intermission worked better this time as well due to the venue. There seemed to be more bathrooms in Pauley Pavilion than Los Angeles Tennis Center so the lines didn’t get as long, and there was no re-entry so everything was more orderly. The stairs were wider so that helped too. Yeah, I write such a detailed review that I even reviewed the intermission, huh?

ACT 2

10. NSU Modern: “Madhatter’s Tea Party” (Exhibition; Leadership: Gregory Gee, Amanda Sherman, Jessica Youn and Dorothy Chen)

Like the first half, the second half started out with an exhibition event as well. There are a few modern dance companies on campus, such as Samahang, ACA, etc. This time was NSU Modern. They were good and it was interesting that they had a theme. The program mentioned a Jessica Youn and I know a Jessica Youn. But she did not seem to be the dancing type (though I could be mistaken) and she probably had already graduated by now anyway.

11. Louder than Words: “The Way It Works” (Band; Lyrics by Alexandra Isley, Music by Alex Greve and Mike Greenwood)

This band combined the more frequently seen elements in a band, such as singing, guitar, drum, and bass, with other elements like rapping and trumpet. It was an interesting mix and they did a good job balancing all the elements. I feel like Spring Sing seem to prefer this kind of mixed flavor. At least that’s how I felt after watching, well, many Spring Sings.

12. Christopher Geno: “Does It Matter?” (Solo; Original Music and Lyrics by Christopher Geno)

This is one of those songs that had interesting lyrics. And I am guessing that some girls found his performance really cute (which I don’t respond to that much). Again, this was one of those performances that was good, but not showy enough to actually win a talent show. (Showy gets tiring after a while, but if you only perform one song to compete for an award, showy is good.)

13. Scattertones: “If You’re Out There” (A Cappella; Arranged by Russell Angelico)

Scattertones was a well-established a capella group on campus. The experience really showed. They did everything right. The arragements were layered very well. Everybody seemed to be very seasoned performers. All I can say is, they did everything right. The video montage in the beginning was a nice touch too.

14. Gabrielle Wortman featuring Yen Lam: “Vagabond” (Duet; Original Music and Lyrics by Gabrielle Wortman)

I’ve always thought piano sounds great with violin, so I enjoyed the sound of this performance. Gabrielle had a really powerful voice. There was a lot of energy. It was really good, but wasn’t as polished like Katie Boeck, who just had perfect command of her voice.

15. Delta Gamma and Pi Kappa Phi: “The Bruin Rascals” (Production: Script and Lyrics by Lianna Leal, Choreography by Lianna Leal, Justin Yu, Sam Filliciotto and Becky Padilla)

Wow, this is the one that has all the cliches of a Spring Sing production. It had a guy and a girl in love but their respective groups of guys and girls don’t want them to be together. Ew, girls, cooties. Ew, guys, double ew. And then there’s the part about how USC is stupid (although that’s true) and how UCLA people came and whooped their ass. And then the groups happily danced in harmony afterwards. And then there’s the bad transitions where one song jumped into another just because they could. Chopped up plotline that were segmented just to fit in all the cliches. This was the most uninspired performance tonight.

16. Kevin Royer: “Tide of Time” (Solo; Music and Lyrics by Kevin Royer)

There’s a lot of varieties in his vocal performance and guitar playing. I was really impressed with his singing, and I am not easily impressed with male singers. There’s definitely “wow” factors to his performance.

17. Rapture City Philharmonic: “Press Play” (Band; Original Music by Arkae Tuazon, Lyrics by Arkae Tuazon and Taleior Boykins)

Yet another interesting mix. This group had an 8-piece string section, 5-piece rock section, vocals and an MC. Quite an interesting mix. I liked the string sounds in the beginning, but unfortunately, after the drums started going, it was hard to hear them even though there were eight pieces. I like how they gave each section a segment to shine.

- PRESENTATION OF AWARDS -

Katie Boeck won last year, and she won again this year for best solo/duet. Scattertones won last year, and won again this year for best a cappella. These were no surprises cuz they clearly stood out. The best band went to Rapture City Philharmonic. The best production went to Strathmore Players, which I think was the right choice. The best overall performance went to Katie Boeck, just like last year. I don’t have much to say about that one, because comparing solo/duet, band, production, a cappella all at the same time is like comparing apples to oranges, to bananas, and to grapes. I simply don’t know how to compare them.

The Spring Sing Company

The Spring Sing company is the group of people that perform comedy sketches in between talent performances to entertain the crowd. They are a creative and hilarious bunch. This year’s company included Sasan Ahoraian, Kean Almryde, Shane Billings, Ben Goldsmith, Mark Stewart Iverson, Michelle Lin, Heather Losey, Dylan Matteson, Jackson McNiel, Sydney Pritchett, Jordan Riggs, Regan Riskas, Chrstine Takaichi, and Madison Vanderberg. This year was the first time that I actually knew not one but two people (Shane and Christine) in the Company. Shane was part of the Company last year as well. Traditionally, the Company comes out at the end of the show and sing a song saying basically “see you next year”. I guess he kept his words.

They performed many funny sketches, such as the iPhone song (a parody of the Jai Ho song from Slumdog Millionaire), a sketch about Undie Run, and some kids meeting the real Trader Joe (parody of Willy Wonka). The videos are really good too, such as the mock movie trailer for Rain (making fun of how Los Angeles people don’t know how to respond to rain because it’s always sunny) and Bluegrass Band (a parody for Rock Band games). The judges gave the best sketch award to the iPhone song, but my personal favorite was the Rain trailer, which you can watch here.

It was a fun night. And if I am still in the area next year, I’ll probably attend the event again for the 7th or 8th time.

For more videos, go to YouTube and search for ucla spring sing 2009.

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