Is there anything better than a group of children singing? Good stuff.
From the video’s description on YouTube:
Sing for Change chronicles a recent Sunday afternoon, when 22 children, ages 5-12, gathered to sing original songs in the belief that their singing would lift up our communities for the coming election. Light, hope, courage and love shine through these nonvoting children who believe that their very best contribution to the Obama campaign is to sing.
Sing for Change was a confluence of hard work, good will, and shared vision. Inspired by ideas raised at a grassroots Obama fundraiser, a music teacher, Kathy Sawada, and the children composed and rehearsed the songs in less than two weeks. Several musicians heard of the effort and volunteered to accompany the children. Parents and older siblings designed and provided the T-Shirts and the banner. There’s a first for everything, but rarely do so many firsts come together at once: for the children and their parents, this is their first performance, first video, first banner, and first involvement with grassroots work on a presidential campaign.
As Sunday approached, a neighbor volunteered a home. Production wizards got wind of the project and offered their help in recording it. The likes of Jeff Zucker, Holly Schiffer, Peter Rosenfeld, Darin Moran, Jean Martin, Andy Blumenthal, and Nick Phoenix rearranged schedules to participate. Holly Schiffer was able to get three High Definition cameras (Panasonic HVX250’s), and an AVID editing facility. When Jeff Zucker went to pick up the camera package, Ted Schilowitz happened to be there and offered a RED camera set up on a Steadi Cam.
What we accomplished in a few hours on a Sunday afternoon embodies the nature of the Obama campaign: its grassroots inspiration, its inclusiveness, its community building. People pitched in quickly for a cause that resonated with them. There were not many conditions: “Think this is a good idea? Want to help? Great. Sunday at 12:00.” At the heart of the project were 22 children and their music. The willingness of all involved to come together for them was a testament to our hope, unity, courage, joy and belief in the future represented by these children.
We are offering the video to everyone, the Obama campaign and all media with high hopes that we can all join together to Sing for Change.
Technical info: Running time = 3 minutes; Standard Definition and HD Broadcast quality
WE’RE GONNA CHANGE THE WORLD Music and lyrics by Lily Campbell, age 9
We’re gonna spread happiness
We’re gonna spread freedom
Obama’s gonna change it
Obama’s gonna lead ‘em
We’re gonna change it
And rearrange it
We’re gonna change the world.
SING FOR CHANGE
Music and lyrics by Kathy Sawada
Now’s the moment, lift each voice to sing
Sing with all your heart!
For our children, for our families,
Nations all joined as one.
Sing for joy and sing abundant peace,
Courage, justice, hope!
Sing together, hold each precious hand,
Lifting each other up;
Sing for vision, sing for unity,
Lifting our hearts to Sing!
YES WE CAN
Music and lyrics by Kathy Sawada
Yes we can
Lift each other up
In peace, in love, in hope
Change! Change!
Though not quite as funny as the original, Tina Fey’s portrayal of Gov. Sarah Palin on this week’s Saturday Night Live is definitely worth a watch (even if it is over six minutes in length). Even if you don’t watch the whole thing, you should skip to the last thirty seconds and enjoy the hilarity.
The guys over at 23/6 have put together a hilarious video that cuts Friday’s debate down to one minute. These guys have some pretty material over at their site (though very left-leaning) - I encourage you to check it out at www.236.com.
In addition to touting Sarah Palin’s membership in the PTA as “executive experience”, Cindy McCain (and others) are noting Alaska’s close proximity to Russia gives Palin national security experience.
Wow. As mentioned below, please tell me that we are smarter than this.
Did an online blogger/hacker finally persuade the IOC to look further into the ages of He Kexin and other Chinese Olympic gymnasts? Many people believe that Stryde Hax’s online blog did exactly that - on it, the blogger dug up previously posted information from the Chinese government regarding He Kexin’s age (indicated that she would be 14 now, not 16). Unfortunately, when Stryde clicked on a Google result, the target page had been curiously removed (duhn, duhn, duhnnnnnn). Thank goodness for cached pages….
For anyone wondering who exactly this Stryde Hax dude is, he describes himself on his website in the following way:
I am a consultant with the Intrepidus Group, a proactive security firm known for launching the first proactive anti-phishing service, phishme.com. I have a wide ranging security background, from reverse engineering to penetration testing. In my spare time, I find things on web servers that were never meant to be found.
This story is pretty damn interesting for anyone that has been following the Olympics - check it out via the link below.
And from the completely obvious to everyone in the world file, comes a story regarding one of China’s gymnasts who appears as if she may be slightly younger than the minimum age for competition, which is 16. From the linked article:
The International Olympic Committee has ordered an investigation into mounting allegations that Chinese authorities covered up the true age of their gold-medal winning gymnastics star because she was too young to compete.
I have had this conversation with a few different people and ultimately someone asks, why does anyone care how old the gymnasts are when they compete. Well, the official answer from the article is as follows:
The minimum age for female gymnasts was increased from 14 to 15 in 1981, and up to 16 in 1997, to protect the physical and mental health of young athletes.
Interestingly enough, Nadia Comaneci was only 14 when she won her first gold medal back in 1976. Click the photo below to read the article.
Alicia Sacramone had a tough time at yesterday’s all-around competition at the Olympics - however, if the whole gymnastics thing doesn’t work out, she can always try out for the USA boxing team.
Check out this video of Alicia connecting with a left cross on some dude - DOWN GOES FRAZIER…DOWN GOES FRAZIER.
It seems that information about future-POTUS Obama’s time teaching at the University of Chicago Law School is all the rage lately.
Today the New York Times published another interesting article which contained a number of future POTUS Obama’s law school exams (and even a few answer keys). For some reason, reading past exams is a morbid curiosity of some of the former law students at Chillable Hours.
As we noted before, we think that most of this information is fairly interesting, as it gives readers some insight into Professor Obama before he became a Presidential candidate.
For anyone that missed it (which is likely almost everyone), the ESPY’s were broadcast this weekend on ESPN. Whle most award shows cause us to stop and thank the inventors of Tivo, we actually enjoyed watching the full ESPY awards this year with little fast forwarding.
Our favorite part of the awards show occurred when ESPN shared clips of the auditions to host the show. We have included the audition tapes for Dwight Howard, Joba Chamberlain and Greg Oden below and have decided that we will be casting our vote for Greg Oden to host the ESPY’s next year (we realize that the public doesn’t actually get to vote for the host - but you get the point).
Whoever does the marketing for ESPN should be given a raise - this stuff is seriously funny, as are most of their commericals. Our favorite line from each audition is above the audition video below…and thank you Joba Chamberlain for getting that damn song stuck in my head.
“Look at the leg - look at it….” (Very close second place - “Hello my name is Shaquille O’Neal”)
“Don’t cha remember you told me you love me baby…”
“I went to high school with John McCain.”
Is it just me, or is Greg Oden’s smile ridiculous.
One of the best scenes from No Country for Old Men involves Javier Bardem’s character asking some old dude to call a coin toss for his life. The old dude doesn’t realize that his life is what they are “calling it for” but lucks out and calls it correctly.
No Country for Old Men is a great film and we highly recommend it to all.
If you are like us at Chillable Hours, you often feel like you should send someone a thank you card or a get well card or something other type of greeting card, but you really just don’t want to put in the effort to walk to a store to buy the card.
As a result, you usually end up sending an Ecard. Unfortunately, whenever you go to one of the usual suspects for online greeting cards, they only have a very few and VERY cheesy free ecards (and you are not going to pay a few bucks for an emailed greeting card).
Someecards.com is a fantastic alternative to sending out lame Ecards. In fact, we have been sending out Ecards to our friends and enemies all morning because this site has some seriously funny stuff. They even have some hilarious TGIF and memorial day weekend cards.
Check it out. Send to all those around you. Let us know what you favorite Ecards are in the comments section below.
We had a great response to the World Map Game that we posted yesterday, so we thought that we would post another game to test the smarts of our readers.
No Clue Crossword Puzzle is kinda like Sudoku with words.
The first couple of rounds are not too challenging, but this game definitely gets interesting after a few puzzles are solved and the difficulty level is increased.
As always, let us know how you did in the comments.
Attached for your review, please find a story by Ben Smith of Politico.com detailing various ways to end a Presidential campaign. We suggest that you immediately follow exit strategy number 6 in the attached and immediately commence an unconditional surrender. As noted in the attached, “It’s Obama’s party now, and [you have] to live in it.”
Please do not hesitate to contact any member of the Chillable Hours team by using the “Contact Us” button above if you have any questions on this matter.
0.3 Chillable hours - Draft email to H. Clinton re Presidential campaign
If you are considering going to Law School anytime in the future (or not and you are just looking to read a witty article about law school selections) you should check out this article by Clay Travis, a former attorney now writing for CBS Sports. I’m not quite sure how that transition works, but would love to hear more about it.
Clay also wrote a great book last year on football in the Southeastern Conference, which also happens to be the greatest sports conference in all the land. A link to the book, entitled “Dixieland Delight: A Football Season on the Road in the Southeastern Conference” can be found below.
One of our loyal readers has directed us to Text Twist - a Boggle-esque game that challenges players to form as many words as possible out of a random set of letters. One of the great things that we like about Text Twist is that it is perfect for a quick break in the middle of your day… or during a conference call… or during some other time when you should be working.
A quick search on Google, turned up about a million sites that have Text Twist and we have posted a link to the best one we could find below. We looked around a little bit a more fulsome version of Text Twist online, but kept running into sites that required us to download the game. Let us know if any of you have a better link and we will upload it here.
As always, let us know how you did in the comments below.
We received a good response from our first Grow game, so we have decided to add another. This version has 12 different inputs (which is maybe a few too many in our opinion) so it is a little more difficult that the previous version we posted.
It took us a few hours of playing this one on-and-off to finally get the right sequence. Let us know how you do in the comments below.
And yes, we know there are walkthroughs out there on the web - but how smart are you really going to feel if you had to cheat to figure this one out?
Chillable Hours provides a quick (or not so quick) break from the monotony that often accompanies an office job. Take a few minutes (or a few hours) to peruse the pages of Chillable Hours and enjoy the break!
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