Hey guys. 2012 is looking up to be awesome! I can already feel the excitement building up for the 2012 USA Memory Championships. I"m hoping there"ll be a good turn out this year, but I"m pretty sure there will be! People care about improving their memories, I know it. It"s just a matter of time before schools start begging us to plug this stuff into their curricula. Anyways, I submitted my application for the 2012 USA Memory Championships. You can do the same right here. Do it! The more the merrier. Cut off date is March 9th.
I"ve got a few media things coming up soon. I"ll be in the March issue of National Geographic, a couple shows here and there (which I"ll reveal once I"m allowed), and whatever comes with the competition PR this year (always something fun). Also, I"ll be in Park City this weekend for the SlamDance (no, not Sundance) Film Festival - the same festival where "Monster"s Ball", "Napoleon Dynamite", and "Momento" were discovered. My friend Jonathan Napolitano filmed a documentary about me, Ronnie White, and Brad Zupp (all Mental Athletes) as we trained for the 2011 USA Memory Competition. It"s quite awesomely named: "Ben Franklin Blowing Bubbles At A Sword: The Journey"s Of A Mental Athlete". The world premiere is Friday night @ 7:30 just in case you"re in PC. Only 9 short documentaries were selected out of a pool of 5000 films and his was one of them! Very cool.
Check out the trailer:
"Ben Franklin Blowing Bubbles at a Sword: The Journeys of a Mental Athlete" from Jonathan Napolitano on Vimeo.
Everest-wise, Alan Arnette put together this fabulous summary of the 2012 season coming up. Read it here. It"s everything you"ll ever want to know about all things Everest.
I wish I was out there climbing this year again - you have no idea how much I feel like I"m missing out... But 2013 is around the corner and giving it some distance from now allows for more hype to be created for the real cause at hand: raising awareness for Alzheimer"s disease.
I totally just bombarded you all with way too much stuff.
PS - Haven"t done a "how to memorize something" blog post recently, but there"s a good one in the works. Stay tuned.