It kills me that no matter how much I love Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, which was a really intelligent show while it lasted, I can just imagine how much more awesome it would have been had James Urbaniak been on the cast.

Forget what I said about Marketing before. I do care about our grade. Very much so now that I found out that we were the top five with 3.48! We narrowly missed the Final Four by a fraction of a point! That exact fraction being 0.05! Now normally, I'd let it go. But the circumstances call for my staging a hissy fit over the fact that one of the groups apparently passed their paper late. Their tardiness deducts a whole point from their final grade thus bringing their B+ down to a C+. Still, they made the cut.

Okay, so I'm not calling for a disqualification here. If anything, I'm asking the Marketing department to tweak this year's finals to the Final Five and make an exception for that other team, seeing as ours clearly should be among the finalists in the first place. I mean, since we're overhauling rules here anyway. Like hell I'm going to let our group suffer just because the department ignored a technicality on the other group's part. When Jon talks with Sir Osi later, i'd better see results. Don't make me cry special treatment, assholes. We didn't buy those matching ties last week for nothing.

Final Five, I say! Because odd numbers are so much cooler.

Michael Sinterniklaas Interviewed by Studio Kaiju 2006
Didn't study at all yesterday, so I had every intention of cramming half a sem's worth of Calculus in a couple of hours today. Instead I spent all morning and most of the afternoon watching vids of Michael Sinterniklaas on YouTube. Just because he's an awesome voice artist who has his own recording studio and does voices mid-interview and can't answer a straight question and is the nicest guy. To be honest, he's so obviously out of place from the other Adult Swim guys from the way he rambles on like he's a fanboy himself. He doesn't have the cool, zen-like wit of people like Doc Hammer and James Urbaniak, but his enthusiasm for his work is pretty endearing in itself. It doesn't look like he's truly into anime, but since it's in his line of work he makes a point to know a shitload about it for his fans' sake. Which I respect.

God, I hate some voice actors (that means you, John Campbell) who act like they're above comicon. I mean, I know it's little more than a job to you and no one expects you to act otherwise, but would it kill you to at least put forth a little enthusiasm?

In completely unrelated news, my C's probably going to plummet to a D. But as long as I've already earned 500 points, I am so past giving a shit. So I left half an hour early on the finals. Lakas ng loob ko. And Val tells me we were a 0.05 point away from a B+ on our Marketing defense. Whatever.

"I had to provide lots of coffee. For Doc, especially, who kind of lives on it. I think it's all he imbibes. He doesn't eat food at all, just coffee. Maybe a cookie. And, you know, he sacrifices things to his Dark Lord, but otherwise he just lives on coffee."
Michael Sinterniklaas on Doc Hammer.

Why does MTV keep getting Sarah Silverman to do a set during their shows? She's not funny. She's never been funny. You would have thought they learned their lesson from the MTV Movie Awards, but no. Her jokes are in bad taste and irritating at best. She was annoying back in School Of Rock when barely anyone knew who she was, and she's just as annoying now. You could tell she completely bombed at the MTV Video Awards. I swear, the audience had to run forks down their arms to bring themselves to applaud. It sounded like they nearly strained a muscle to clap, let alone laugh.

And that had to be the first time I saw Britney's widely-discussed 'Gimme More' performance on TV. She was every bit as bad as they said she was. Her arms were like these dead chicken wings flapping lifelessly along her sides. And half the time she kept pushing her hair out of her face. This was supposed to be her big comeback, but she completely fucked it up. I don't know if her eyes were half-lidded from exhaustion, or she was just totally out of it. If I had to guess, it's the latter. Need pratice much?

On the upside, Fall Out Boy won for Best Group! Their Friends Or Enemies party looked absolutely fun. And Gym Class Heroes took home the Best Newcomer Act award or something. Best part of the night? When Pete hugged Andy. Awww-inspiring moment.

On a completely unrelated note, I want Kanye's striped white glasses so bad.

Runaway - Avril Lavigne (don't you judge me, assholes)
Our defense went well. I mean, really well. Everybody pulled it together, the guys all wore the same tie and we knew all the material, we were hyped about our product, no dead air whatsoever. We did so much better than I expected based on all the criticism we've had to eat from Osi, which just goes to show the man's an asshat. I should have known he didn't know half the shit he was talking about. Our panelists were these two women whose questions were all related to the content, as opposed to Osi who only cared about the presentation. Marty really pulled through with all the wrapper samples and nametags and cookies, we even had a tarp banner! I'm kind of wishing I was able to keep the tarp, but it wasn't mine to take home.

Panelist 1: Overall, I really liked your presentation.
Panelist 2: Here, here.

We were so excited and nervous, for a minute there we were just gaping at her, wonderstruck. I don't think it really registered with us until she reiterated, "I mean I really liked it, too." And we were all smiles and "Thank you, Ma'am" and Marty even had plastic bags for the panelists to take home the leftover cookies. The panelists were actually really nice, which made us more comfortable and confident than we otherwise would have been. We were worried because the previous group took so long, we thought the panelists were really grilling them. It turned out that was only because they dole out all this helpful advice about marketing, pointing out all the inconsistencies in our product instead of throwing criticism at us.

I'm just so remarkably relieved it's over and done with. Finals are next week and I don't even care. As far as I'm concerned, the hard part's over. Marketing 101 is now behind us!