Viva Las Vegas

Dear Blog,
Last week Matty boy was at soccer camp at BYU. One good piece of news from that week and one bad. Bad news first. On Thursday he was playing a game, went up for a header, got undercut, and his head landed on his hand. As he landed his knuckle and split his head wide open. The trainer bandaged it up and Matty played in the finals (his team lost in penalty kicks). Directly after that we went to the hospital and he got 15 stitches just above his left eye. Hopefully he doesn’t get a scar, only time will tell. The good news was that he impressed the coaches and was offered a spot on the BYU team, which Matty accepted. He’s a senior in high school this year, and will come out to BYU about a year from now. I’m excited. We went to Macaroni Grill to celebrate.

Matty in town means two things; soccer camp and Vegas. The next day Spencer, Toni, Matty, and I (Daniele met us down there after his trip to Lake Powell) headed down to Sin City to par-tay. We hit In & Out, The V Variety Show, Cheesecake Factory, Gameworks, Benihana, Blue Man Group, Tournament of Kings, and Paris Buffet. Plus, Matty and I had money on the Rays on Saturday. After the first four innings the Rays were down 8-0. We all but gave up on them. They proceeded to make the biggest comeback in franchise history! We only made $20 between the two of us, but it was exhilarating. I also met up with Amber and we went with her mom and Tori to club XS. It was amazing! A fine trip.

TV: I’ve been so busy this past week that I am a little behind. Other than Dexter the most recent show that I have watched and caught up on (I love having watched every episode for a series, it’s the only way to go) is Burn Notice. Daniele has been telling me for awhile that this is a good show and I barely took him up on his recommendation. It’s about a guy that was a spy for the government and they burn him (or cut all ties with him). This means he’s on his own, plus his two friends and mom. It’s basically like Alias. A spy doing missions that can be condensed into an hour program that have some clever twist, a little fighting, some romance, a likeable main character, a fairly loose story line, and hot bodies. It’s a format that works for me.

Random Thought/Observation: This isn’t a clever thought or observation, but how in the world did short shorts on men become popular back in the 70’s? I can’t fathom it. Just a terrible terrible idea. I thought about this because it’s coming back a bit in soccer. Not short shorts, but they are short enough that you double take, lean over to the person next to you and say something like, “those shorts that guy is wearing, they’re pretty short, right?”

Crushes:
Female: Amy Adams. I have enjoyed her most recent work in Doubt, Sunshine Cleaning, and Enchanted. Plus, she seems cool, made friends with Meryl Streep, and is hot.
Male: JT. He can act, sing, do comedy, and loves sports. I think the “dick in a box” skit was WAY overrated, but love his work on SNL. Very underrated skit was him as a backup dancer for Beyonce.

Swear to Blog?

I know I haven’t written in a long time, I’m sorry. I don’t know the proper blog etiquette. I’m thinking that there isn’t any, but if you don’t write frequently people will stop visiting ur site. Novel idea. I don’t have much to say, maybe that’s why haven’t written in so long. I went to DC for the 4th of July. That was pretty sweet. Matty is in town and at soccer camp. He, Spencer, Toni, Daniele, and I are going to Vegas this upcoming weekend. I’m very excited. Blah, blah, blah.

TV: I’m currently engulfed in Dexter. It’s a show about a guy that is a serial killer but lives what seems to be a normal life. I’m 3 episodes from catching up on the series (3 seasons). The characters are good and the main theme that all people have a side of them that they don’t want to expose is revealing. This is another one of those shows that I just know nobody watches but if you do/have tell me because I would love to talk about it with someone.

Random Thought: What do you call a male mistress? I think the term mistress is widely used and universally understood; which makes the fact that there is no word for the male equivalent that much more interesting. (Like Definitely, Maybe when Abigail Breslin asks Ryan Reynolds what you call a male slut).

Man Crush: Matt Damon. Just studly. Need I say more? Enjoyed his work in Rounders, Dogma, Bournes, Good Will Hunting, Oceans, Finding Forrester, etc.
Female Crush: Erin Andrews. Somewhat cliché, I know. A woman that knows sports (especially FL) earns major points.

Anyways. I'm going to try to do a better job of posting frequently, but then again, I always say that.

-Peace.

The Paradox of Choice

Yeah, I know it’s been two weeks since I last posted. So sue me. This is the point where I should say something to the effect of how I’ve been too busy doing fun and exciting things to be posting on this silly blog. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Well, last weekend I did go down to St. George to visit my friends Lindsey, Amber, etc. We went down to Mesquite. We’ll call it the poor man’s Vegas (making Wendover the homeless man’s Vegas). Bingo was fun, but there were some serious people playing and our chatter during the round got us shooshed. Really? (this is when I wish I could go into an Amy Poehler and Seth Myers rant about Bingo, but I’m not cleaver enough). Suffice it to say, if you go to Mesquite for Bingo either plan to be serious about it or plan to get in a fight with a 65 year old couple that are cowboy enough to not back down.

Besides Mesquite I’ve been doing a lot of driving. I now live down in Provo and commute to work in Salt Lake 3 days a week. It’s not as bad as I (and everyone else) thought it would be. I’ve been listening to books and podcasts. Lately I’ve been hooked on the Ricky Gervais podcast. If anyone has ever listened to it please let me know. It is soooooo good and hilarious, but I just know that nobody I know has ever listened to it. There is too much saturation of media. It’s great because there is a ton of choice, but terrible because we don’t have commonality of experiences. Who can I talk to about the Ricky Gervais podcast, the Confederations Cup, United States of Tara, and Chuck Klosterman? Blah. I don’t know who I’m complaining to or really even what about; I’m just ranting.

Ok, so I decided that the best way for me to actually get on here and write is to make some possible running segments for my blog. I doubt that I will feature them every time. It all depends on response; which I don’t necessarily expect to get.

Segment 1:
TV Tidbit
This will be where I give suggestions on good tv shows that I feel like not many people watch or comment on shows that I know my friends do watch.

This time I’ll have to comment on So You Think You Can Dance. Yes, I watch SYTYCD (as is obvious from my last post). It’s fabulous and addicting. I know Kristin, Jenny, and B have all done their nickname posts, so I’m not going encroach on that territory. I’ll just give a few thought from this past week. I was happy Asuka and Jonathan got knocked out, it was time for them to go. PMK needs to go back to just Latin ballroom or whatever it was that she did. She was cute and mildly charming, but her solos were so horrible it was embarrassing. All she did was shake her hips and switch back and forth between smiling and looking poutily at camera/crowd. Archueleta was fine, but he had too much of a lousy Vegas magician quality to him. He do something mildly good and then look at the camera smiling, looking for approval and kind of spreading his arms and sticking his chest out. I won’t miss either of them. Mr Eko and Oldie should go next as far as I’m concerned. However, my prediction is for 5-0 and Laker girl to go next.

Segment 2:
Random Thought
This is self explanatory, but probably more random than you might expect.
This week’s random thought is a mini rant on scenes in movies and tv shows where they show a store front with tvs usually showing a news story that is pertinent to what is going on. I have never in my life seen a store front with televisions in it. Maybe it is commonplace in small town USA or maybe it was big in the 50s. I don’t necessarily want them to stop using this technique, but wouldn’t mind them using some other way to achieve the same effect either.

Crushes
My crush and man-crush of the moment/week/month/year/etc.
Crush: Going back to the SYTYCD well with Jeanine. I don’t like any nicknames given to her so I’m going to give her one myself and go with Nadia. Last night she reminded me of Sidney Bristow’s half sister Nadia. I realize pretty much the only resemblances are race and hair color, but there was a vibe. I think she’s hot and will do really well because she’s got a likable and talented partner that gets cut slack like nobody’s business (I’m not complaining) and she’s got the looks and technique. It’s a good combo.

Man Crush: Tony Reali. Love this kid. For those of you that don’t know, he’s the host of Around the Horn on ESPN. I watch this show religiously along with PTI. I admire the fact that he doesn’t ignore the real world in his show. He makes references to commercials that are on all the time, NES games, HBO shows, etc. He’s way smart. I particularly liked his argument this week about Manny. Two of the sports writers were saying how they didn’t want to go to New Mexico to cover Manny’s recovery/rehab stint because it would lend pub to a rule they disagreed with (namely MLB players being able to play rehab ball in the minors while they are still suspended for steroid use). Tony pointed out that covering a story doesn’t force you to condone something it’s journalism. This is a small insignificant thing, I know, and I’ve written more than deserves to be written about it, but I liked it. He’s also a good twitter poster. Plus, he likes soccer and has good hair.

Whew. That’s two weeks worth of post right there. I’ll try to keep my posts shorter and more frequent. I’m guessing nobody got this far. Peace.

So long Tony and Paris

Yes, I watch So You Think You Can Dance. Some would call it a guilty pleasure, but I find no reason to feel guilty for watching such a good show. I feel like last year there were a ton of dancers that I didn't really care if they got kicked off and it made the first few weeks easy as the great dancers seperated themselves from the good. This year seems a lot more well-rounded. I will say that I thought Asuka should have gone instead of Paris and Jonathan for Tony, but it was close enough that I'm not really complaining. Am I the only person that thinks that Paris looks like a cross between Cuddy from House and Loralai Gilmore? Needless to say, I thought she was hot. Plus, she had the whole tu-tu thing going for her which is hot too. My favorites were Phillip and Jeanine, Janette and Brandon, and Kayla and Max. Anyways, I will be watching this season and commenting on it from time to time.

Random Thought:
One piece of hair in an eyelash is still an eyelash. What is one piece of hair in an eyebrow?

The US Game

I haven’t really read enough blogs (haha. My version of Word is so outdated that it labeled blogs as a spelling mistake.) to know if I should write this thing like a journal, a letter to no one in particular, an extended version of a Facebook/twitter status, a magazine article, or what. I’m assuming it doesn’t really matter. If anyone does read this and has any suggestions for improvement, please make them known. With that said; back to Chicago.

Saturday morning we got to take a tour of Wrigley field, that was pretty cool. Although the guy kept trying to take credit for stuff that the Cubs started and I just don’t believe. Like they were the first to let fans keep foul balls and the playing of the National Anthem before sporting events originated there. We did get to see the cub’s locker room, press room, and walk onto the dirt of the field (not actually onto the grass though).

The game was fun, but scary. The US gave up a goal to Honduras in the fifth minute and we were biting our nails just waiting for the come back. The crowd was at least 40% Honduran and were loud as an alarm clock at 6 am. Long story short, the US scored two and won the game. It was not anti-climatic, as I make it sound, but also not that exciting in written blog form. As a side note, Soldier field was very cool.

Random Note:

I’m a ridiculous person, I realize this, and I always have to have my spam folder cleaned out so that there isn’t a little number indicating that I have un-read messages, whether I have any interest in reading said messages or not. This isn’t a real problem in and of itself because I don’t mind wasting the 3 seconds of time that it takes. The problem with Gmail lies in the little line above the messages that figures out what you’re doing or where you are and makes suggestions with links to sites or news stories that you may be interested in (sort of like tivo or Amazon’s “You may also be interested in”. When you go to your Gmail spam folder, and I’m sure there are those of you that have never bothered to even go in there, the suggestion line always gives me Spam recipes. Ex: Spam Enchiladas or Spam Casserole. I cannot express how much this grosses me out. I don’t actually gag, but my mind does just at the thought of it. So which will win out? My OCDness that requires me to empty my spam inbox or my mind’s gag reflex?

I might be doing this

I have been told more than once (but not more than 5 times) that I should have my own blog. Considering I have a built in readership of at least two to five then why wouldn't I start writing a blog?

With that said. I write my first post from the Oakbrook Terrace Holiday Inn. I'm here in Chicago with my brother, Spencer, and his girlfriend, Toni. We are in town for the US-Honduras World Cup Qualifying game today. the US better beat the crap out of them.

Last night we went to the White Sox-Indians game and saw Carl Pavano pitch a three hit complete game shut-out. Not bad. However, the more exciting part was watching drunk people and security take care of business. The funniest thing that happened was a tipsy girl opening up her digital camera for no apparent reason and dropping her battery (the little digital camera brick kind) in her cup of beer. She was suprised and wanted to get it out, but wasn't exactly in a rush to do so. She fished it out and began drying it off in what seemed like a fuedal effort to save the battery. (I say this because I once dropped my battery in snow and it shorted out. SNOW! Stupid piece of s.) Needed to say, after she dried the little bugger off she tried it out and the camera turned on! I was dumbfounded and she didn't even look suprised. But she did look like a chubbier version of super-gymnast Shawn Johnson. I thought this was great for her, but dangerous at the same time. She's drunk and now has a misconception of the laws of the universe. I believe she then drove home backwards and ..........ok, this wasn't funny to begin with, I'm stopping now.

Ok. First post down. Not too good, but not horrific. Maybe I'll try again in a few day. I think the only thing I look at other people's blogs for are the pictures. Maybe I'll try some of those when I get a chance. *****I went back and added a picture to make the post better. More from Chicago from today. I'll post either tonight or tomorrow.