Checking my mail for the first time in months

On the right, in my about me, you will find an email address. When I made that blog specific email account, I was not expecting to ever hear any feedback. I mostly just get feedback on my Facebook or my friends when I see them (thank you all for reading). So I never check it. I mostly use it to send myself blog topic ideas. And, as you can tell by my recent drought of quality, I haven't even used it for that lately. So imagine my surprise a week ago when I found I got a few emails from actual people.

So many Nigerian princes offering me money.

There was a lot of spam. After accumulating for months My spam folder was overflowing with penis pills and urgent requests. I never knew there were so many people in need and all requesting some money from me. Don't they know I'm a college kid? I don't have this money. Hidden between the fraud was some actual emails from people that wanted to talk to me. I was honored. Even though they didn't really amount to much.

One was from a women doing a final research project on Tim Burton, his popularity and the debate over him selling out or not. I'd like to take the time to apologize to her for not getting to her survey in time. She sent it to me more than a month ago and I doubt she needs me anymore. It was nice to hear from her though.

I do love talking about how much Tim Burton sucks.

Another email was from a band, The Boxing Lesson. Now, I know nothing about them but they were kind enough to send me a press release. God knows how many people they sent the press release to but I figure I might as well give them a plug. They are, after all, the first people to send me a release. So as a show of thanks here is the video for their song Three. I'm not sure how I feel about it though. If you like people that wear cat masks then this might be for you.



The third email I got was the one I was the most excited about. Back in October I wrote about my childhood crush on Alanna Ubach. Growing up, she was in a lot of the movies and shows I watched. She was different and funny and I think that's why I liked her so much. She had a personality and an energy that nobody else had. Then again, I was eight years old, so what did I know about girls? She was also in the Legally Blonde films. Anyway, she used to be cute when I was little. Now, watching her on the television show Hung, she's pretty damn hot. And she must be the nicest person ever because somehow she found the blog I wrote about her and emailed me.

She's awesome.

Now, I'm not totally naive. I know that it could not be her. Probably somebody just messing with me. But even if that's the case, it still means somebody cares enough about my blog to mess with me. And if it really is her, that's amazing. It's an awesome form of validation to have someone that I wrote about actually email me and tell me how much they liked the post. This blog doesn't seem like such a big waste of time anymore. So thank you readers and thank you, Alanna Ubach. If anyone wants to contact me just email me at firstsignsoftrouble@yahoo.com. I promise I'll try and check it more often.

My childhood crush on Alanna Ubach

I grew up with a crush on Alanna Ubach. She was a child actress during the 90s. Her teenage years were spent in front of the camera and I would spend my childhood watching her movies. Not that she was a big actress or anything or I searched for her movies, she just happened to be in some of my favorite movies growing up. She wasn't so much the girl the guy went for, she was more the funny friend of the girl the guy went for. She was funny though and had a lot of energy and I think that's why I liked her.

I first saw her when she use to be on Beakman's World. Beakman's World was kind of like Bill Nye the Science Guy on crack. A scientist that sounds like Steve Martin in My Blue Heaven does experiments for kids with the help of a man in a rat suit and a girl assistant. The show is like something you catch on Telemundo except in English. Anyway, Ubach was an assistant on the show and it was there I first developed a crush on her.

Beakman's World (Ubach is at 00:53)

After Beakman's World I saw her in three other movies. Each movie I saw her in, I liked her even more.

Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit

Still can't believe Maggie Smith made the mistake of being in a Whoopi movie twice.

To be fair, Ubach was just one of many child stars in this film. Whoopi Goldberg, returns in this unnecessary sequel which, to be honest, I liked more than the original. Goldberg teaches an inner city school how to become choir singers whose singing ends up saving the school from closing down. Her students include Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lauryn Hill before she went crazy and Ryan Toby, whose rap group would have one hit that has been stuck in my head for the past nine years. It was a school filled with the 90s idea of troubled city kids and only Whoopi can set them straight with her patented Whoopi attitude.

I always thought the red-headed nun was kinda hot.

Ubach played one of the students and of course, I recognized her right away. She's a peculiar looking girl and hard to miss. She wasn't a big part of the movie but now and then she always popped in with a nice one-liner. She wasn't Jennifer Love Hewitt or Lauryn Hill but she was adorable in her quirky way.

Airborne

This movie screams out XTREME.

The 90s were simpler times. Kids were just misunderstood and every awesome action sequence involved some sort of guitar-feedback soundtrack. Airborne was a fish out-of-water tale involving a super-cool and chill California dude (this guy was the ultimate dude) who moves in with his Aunt and Uncle in Cincinnati. There he befriends bullies who started out hating him and finds the girl of his dreams. Somehow he is involved in a super rad rollerblading race through the city against the rich kids (think like The Outsiders except with XTREME inline skating). What follows is a twenty minute racing sequence that, if any kid every tried to duplicate, would kill anybody on the spot.

Yes, that is a young Jack Black.

The above is the start of the last racing sequence. Don't worry about knowing the context of the race, there is none. The whole movie is just one set up for awesome inline skating through traffic so you might as well watch the best part of the movie. The love of my life, Alanna Ubach, plays the best friend of the romantic lead. Being the best friend of the hot girl she has such responsibilities as telling the girl its time to leave right before she kisses the hero and adding a few laughs on double date night. Ubach's love interest in this film is played by none other than Seth Green, perhaps you heard of him? Anyway its an awesome movie and Ubach has a big part in it. Plus it's XTREME.

Renaissance Man

Get it? He's short!

Similar to Sister Act 2, Renaissance Man is a about a gruff teacher thrown into a classroom with a bunch of rejects and a young Mark Wahlberg who have yet to find their potential. Instead of being about an inner city though it's set on a US army training base. Hilarity ensues as he tries to teach the lost causes about Shakespeare and, against all odds, gets through to them. Think like Dangerous Minds only instead of a Coolio song you have this:

For some reason all I could find is the German version. I'm ok with this.

Ubach plays Danny DeVito's estranged daughter who he reconnects with after he gets in touch with his humanity teaching the class.

She wasn't the most outstanding of girls in film when I was little but she was cute. She always stood out to me and she had personality. Not only that but I spotted her in three movies I grew up with as a child. These were movies I watched constant every time they were on television. I could probably still quote a lot of the lines. Since she was so adorable to me and in some important movies to me growing up, she will always hold a place in my heart. I wonder what happened to her?

Oh my....