If the Internet Makes It Easy, It's Not Stalking

I spent this morning repairing my mother's sweater, because not only do I knit, but I knit well. Some people say it's an evolutionary advancement, like spider senses or hand eye coordination (both of which I lack). I sat at the desk in our living room and passed my knitting needles through the large gaps in the pattern of her sweater to mend the hole in the sleeve.

As I sat there, I need something to occupy myself with. I was recently told that a high school acquaintance, Brian Maloney, was on a reality show named Sing Off. Brian was a few years older than me, but our families were friends, and I've always thought that if he knew my name, we'd be friends. The show he's on is a true life version of Glee. I like to think that some NBC big wig, without every seeing the show, saw Fox's fall ratings and demanded his own version of whatever show was such a hit. It's not so bad, though: eight a cappella groups compete in an American Idol type contest. Ben Folds is a judge, along with a black man and a lady. Nick Lachey is the host. So apparently someone got a hold of a list of my favorite things and put them in one studio together.

Brian's group is called the SoCal Singers. There's a YouTube playlist dedicated to these sort of videos. I'd explain which one he is, but basically all you have to know is he is one and a half heads taller than anyone else. He's the one who looks like a forty year old at prom. He provides the bass beat line.

And the group is good. They're a solid a cappella group, though they lose in whatever round they were wearing pink (the costume designers for this show are awesome; each week, a team is assigned a color, then the individual members get to go crazy with whatever they want to wear, as long as it adheres to the team color. This is much like intramurals). But they're not who I want to talk about.

BYU Noteworthy. A nine member, female only group from Provo, Utah. Specifically, Amy Whitcomb.

Now, a disclaimer: Sing Off doesn't provide individual contestants' names to the public. I got Amy's name by visiting Noteworthy's Wikipedia page, then Google imaging each name on the list of members. It was alphabetical; Whitcomb was last. But it was worth it.

On Google, Amy has the hair you see in cartoons, when Bugs Bunny tricks someone into sticking their finger into a light socket. Or, the simile could be she had hair like the horns of a moose. Take your pick. I've got several more. Anyway, on the show, she has a mohawk. A mohawk.

Did you see the mohawk? Can you tell me how cool that is? You can't, because you're the internet. You're not a real person. But even a robot has feelings, once they become self aware.

Let's be honest, you and I. Amy is not drop dead gorgeous. She's cute. She's pretty. She is not smoking. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - when I see hot girls in movies, they almost always turn out to be untrustworthy. However, it was once said that when a girl has a skill like soccer or singing or karate, she becomes immeasurably more attractive when performing that activity. Sound familiar? It was said by a little known person I like to call JESUS CHRIST. It's true. He came to me in a vision.

In high school (and still now, though I would never tell a female this), I had very simple criteria for girlfriends: Christian, Hot, Skills. For each girl, I would move down the list, checking off valid points. If they did not meet any of the standards, they were eliminated. Pending preference, you could rearrange the criteria in whatever order you deemed important. My friend Ryan Siebenmorgen's list goes Christian, Skills, Hot. Once I tried taking away the commas and making only one criteria, Christian Hot Skills. I'm still not sure what I was looking for. That may be why I still don't have a girlfriend.

Amy and I have something special. It's called the element of surprise, and actually I'm the only one who has it. She'll never see me coming. But then I just posted on her MySpace, so she may be looking over her shoulder for the next few weeks.