Other random vacation happenings

A few little things have happened during the vacation break, which I figured I'd share now while I have some free time otherwise it'll take me forever to recap.

- My aunt, Diana and her husband and son- Ivan and Mitchell came to NY for the holidays. Mitchell is nine years old now, so he's a lot more fun to play with. I mean he was always adorable but now he's older and can do more stuff. So he's come over my place a few times and we've played lots of video games. He likes the Dragonball Z Budokai games a lot, so it's been fun b/c I finally have someone to play them against. I've realized that Budokai 3, is a lot more fun when you play against another person.

- I think I BRIEFLY mentioned this in a previous post but I finally hopped on the bandwagon and created a myspace account. I know it took me long enough, but I really wasn't interested b/c I was already on Friendster and it's basically the same crap, and I haven't used that too much lately so I was figuring "What's the point?" But lots of bands and stuff are on myspace and give offers to fans, so I finally caved in and joined. It's a pretty cool site. I don't know how much I'll update it but it's fun for the meantime.

- I've been reading a lot of books lately. Hell I've probably read more books in the past 3 years than I have my entire life, heh. In the past month of so I've read Scooter by Mick Foley (which wasn't as great as his previous works but was still a good read, albeit a bit depressing), then I went on to the Da Vinci Code, which was really freakin good. I'm still up in the air as to whether I prefer this book or Angels & Demons but it was definitely really good and I totally understand why there was so much hoopla about it. And finally last week I re-read The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe (which I prob haven't read since I was like 11 years old, but wanted to familiarize myself with before I saw the new movie of it).

But now, I'm really not sure what I'm gonna read next. I've had a copy of Stephen King's "The Stand" on my bookshelf for YEARS and have never gone through it, so maybe it's time to dust it off. We'll see. Anyone out there got any suggestions though? I'm all ears.

- And with all my reading and TV watching, I somehow fit in time for video games, heh. I finally started Suikoden 4 the other week. It's not as good as the previous 3 Suikoden games, but it's still fun. I was having a hard time with it in the beginning (mostly b/c the sailing portion of the game was irritating the hell out of me) but I've since earned the teleporting character so I'm having a lot better time with it now, heh.

- I was able to score another set of Season Tix for the Yankees. It's an 8 game plan like last year, but this year is cool b/c it includes a Boston game (May 10th). So I'm pretty excited about that.

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of the Yankees, they finally got themselves a Center fielder. Thing is, I'm kinda torn on the subject.

The Yankees went and signed Johnny Damon. Now of all the Red Sox, he was one of the only guys I actually didn't flat out hate on that team. So I don't MIND him coming to the Yanks b/c he's a good lead off hitter (which the Yanks needed). But the thing is, he's not a great center fielder, hell he's not even a GOOD one. His arm is just as bad, if not worse than Bernie's. But at least the Yanks didn't give the man 7 years. That would have been insane. I can live with only 4 years.

But the really big thing about this signing is that it actually hurts the Red Sox more than it helps the Yankees. Which I'm SURE is something the Yanks considered with this signing, although they'll never admit it. The Red Sox are now without a Center fielder, lead off man, short stop, and more. So they got fairly well crippled. It can be seen as a dick move by the Yanks, and I'm sure that's what people will go about saying. And in all honesty I don't know if I CAN defend them, so I'm gonna stay quiet on this front for the most part. But the Yankees have been pretty quiet in bolstering their team (they got Farnsworth, Dotel, Myers and Villone for their bullpen) before the Damon signing. And with all the big moves the Toronto Blue Jays have made this offseason, it can turn into a pretty interesting race in the AL East. I'm looking forward to it.

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-And lastly, Christmas. I did pretty well for myself this year, getting pretty much everything I asked for.

I finally got Dance, Dance Revolution for the Playstation. So I'm gonna set it up with my PSOne down in my living room and I can use that for a cardio workout. So that should make working out a bit more fun for me.

Then I got a few DVDs. I got South Park Season 6, Simpsons Season 7, Firefly the Series, and the entire series of Coupling in a box set. And finally I got X-Men Legends 2 for the Gamecube.

So yeah, I guess you can say I racked up pretty well. Not to mention I bought a few items for myself this past week as well (I got Serenity, the 40 Year Old Virgin and Sin City Special Edition DVDs), so I'll be pretty busy with movies and video games during my vacation.

- And I'm gonna end my post here, but I'll update again within the next few days. I have to share my experience at the Smackdown houseshow I went to (including some cool pictures). Oh and it's the end of the year, so you know what that means... my second annual "Year-End Awards." So be on the lookout for that sometime in the coming week.

Ariana's B-day party

It's been over a week since my last update, but that's b/c I've been on vacation since last Friday and have been running around doing stuff all week. So I've got a few things to catch up on.

First off, Ariana's b-day party was the other week (on the 16th). To celebrate a group of us (Me, Ariana, Beth, Dan, Henry, Joe, Patty, Athena, Kat, Ashley and Bill) went for dinner at Three of Cups.

The night started off interesting though, as I was the first one to arrive and while I was waiting, somehow the tinsel behind the bartender at the bar, caught on fire. And it started to spread pretty quickly too! Everyone started to freak out and they were grabbing cups of water and throwing it at the burning tinsel. It started to die out but was still going a little, until someone finally grabbed the fire extinguisher and put it out for good. At this point the waiting area was full of smoke and the smell of fire extinguisher, so I stepped out with the other parties waiting to be seated. It all got cleaned up pretty quickly though, but it was just a crazy event to occur and I was a little sad I was the only person in our party to witness it, heh.

But the rest of the dinner went well. We ordered a few of their brick oven pizza pies and had a good time just eatting and chatting.

We followed up dinner by going to the nearby Sing Sing Karaoke on St. Mark's place to belt out some tunes. It started off kind of slow, b/c we were the only people in the main area at first. Me & Ariana kicked things off by singing "Love Shack" by the B-52's and then I sang "Piano Man" along with Dan. Neither version will be released for sale anytime soon...

Things started to pick up as more people started to sing though. Alan and Beth joined us a few minutes after our arrival, and a few other patrons came into the bar so it wasn't just us anymore.

Since some time has passed I'm not gonna be able to remember what songs everybody sang, but I do remember a few. I know Dan sang the Hannukah Song, Alan did about 3 songs (all quite unique), Beth did "What a Man" by Salt & Pepa (very well I might add), Ariana did "Thank You" by Dido as well as "Holiday" by Green Day (which I joined in for). The girls did a Madonna song, as well as "Hangin Tough" by NKOTB. Henry preformed "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey (which I joined in, and we both pulled a "Family Guy" by randomly bursting out into "gigidy, gigidy, giggidy" throughout the song which we found hilarious, and apparently the other people in the bar got the joke and were laughing with us, which made us feel less stupid, heh). And I got up the courage to do 311's "All Mixed Up" all by myself (even though it's technically two parts).

The bar started to fill little by little as the night went on, so we all had an audience, and they got into it as well, singing some stuff we all enjoyed. So all in all it wound up being a pretty fun night. I think everyone had a good time. I would totally do it again (b/c their song selection was so good), the only thing is that their selection of liquor was almost non-existant, so we'd have to drink elsewhere beforehand, heh.

THE WINNER...

...AND NEW WWE FANTASY CHAMPION, DARTH ASSKICKERS! (That'd be me, heh).
"I am the CHAMPION my friends! And I'll keep on kicking ass til the end!

I AM THE CHAMPION! I AM THE CHAMPION!

NO TIME FOR LOSERS B/C I AM THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD (Wrestling Entertainment Fantasy League)!"

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Yes, I did overcome and finally claimed my spot alone at the top of the WWE Fantasy League. I ended with 2652 points which put me 252 points ahead of my closest competitor, Phil, who had 2400 points.

But the BIG thing was that before the PPV last night I was ranked like 32,000th overall for the week, but after my kick ass showing I moved all the way up to 44th place in the weekly standings! How's that for awesome?

And what's even MORE awesome was my great PPV showing gave me a huge boost in my overall rankings. So I ended the season in 59th place amongst ALL players. (Meaning that there are only 58 bigger wrestling geeks than me out there, lol).

I was proud to finish that high, b/c at the end of our 8th week i was in 85th place but then I had a bad week nine and dropped to 151st, then to 253rd (after this past Raw) then back to 196th after this week's Smackdown right before the PPV.

So yeah I'm pretty psyched. It was a long, grueling road but I can now stand atop the mountain alone. And damn it feels good.

But ok, enough gloating (I've already been threatened with repeated sac-punching). So I'll just end the post with one last thing-

WHOO!!!!!

Fun Shows coming up

Last night I went with Ariana, Jordan and Goombah to see Disturbed at the Nokia Theater at Times Square. It was the first time at that venue for all of us (as the place is pretty new- it just opened in September). It's a pretty cool place though. It was obviously an old broadway theater, as there are seats in the back, then two lower levels that were General Admission, then the stage which was at the bottom. There were also two side balcony sections. But the entire place was actually GA (even the seats), so that was pretty sweet cuz you could move to any section whenever you please. Like, let's say you wanna sit in the seats for most of the show, but then a song comes on that you just need to mosh to, you can just leave your seat and go to the front, and vice versa. Which is something fairly unique, especially at venues in NY.

So yeah, I would totally recomend this venue if any other cool shows went there in the future.

As for how Disturbed was, they were awesome as always. They played about an hour and a half and performed all their big hits, so I was happy.

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Got some other shows and stuff coming up soon.

-First, I scored tix to a WWE Smackdown houseshow at the Westchester County Center the day after Christmas. And not just any tix but FIFTH ROW Ringside! So I'm very psyched for that. I'll be going to the show with Gaetano, James, Ariana and my nine year old cousin, Mitchell who will be visiting with his family from Florida over Christmas break. So it should be a lot of fun, especially seeing my little cousins reactions to stuff.

-Then for after the new year, I got tix to the Off-Broadway show- Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead. It's supposed to be a play about the Peanuts gang ten years after the comic strip ends. Reviews compare it to the famous broadway show- Avenue Q in how it takes beloved children's characters and puts them in "real life situations."

The casting for the play seems interesting also. It's got Eliza Dushku (Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Ian Somerhalder (Boone from Lost), and Eddie Kaye Thomas (Finch or "Shitbreak" from the American Pie movies, among others. So it should be pretty amusing.

-And lastly I also was able to get tix to two seperate Yankee games through the Yankee account holder ticket presale. I got one for the Yanks vs Mets on July 1st and the other against the Red Sox on Sept. 15th. I know it's far away but it should be a lot of fun. And I can't wait to get the actual season tix (our regular 8 game plan) as well.

I need to stop talking trash...

In an update to the post about my WWE Fantasy League feud with Chaz, there is both good news and bad news.

Good news first, is that I DID win that week of Fantasy. I actually beat Chaz by seven points (327 to 320, WHOO)! So that was very cool. Although I wasn't as happy as I COULD have been b/c even though I did VERY well, I could have been tied for 3rd place for the week amongst ALL players overall. But I made the bonehead move of going against instinct and making a flat swap to take Cena out of my roster and put in HBK. And while both guys won their matches, Cena earned like 32 more points than HBK did. So if I had left Cena in, I would have kicked even more ass than I already did and even have won a T-shirt or DVD. Oh well... can't cry over spilled milk. I still won the Interweekly Championship in my league. And that's 4-REAL! (SUCKA!)

But now for the bad news. All my trashtalking has gotten me into a bit of trouble. And I should have known it would happen. B/c in the past any time I talk trash during any kind of competition, I get my ass kicked shortly after. So of course, after running my mouth like crazy last week (and in Chaz's own words deserving to get "repeatedly sac-punched" for it), I wind up doing REALLY terrible this week. Right now for the week I'm 9th place (out of 11 of us). Granted the week isn't over but it isn't looking good. I'm still in 1st place overall in our league but now my chances to make a "clean sweep" of all league championships is in danger.

There is one more week left (and it's a PPV week), so I still got a chance, and I'm confident I will do well, but in terms of trash-talking, I am hereby shutting the hell up until after the season is over, lol. We'll see what happens.

Major League Happenings

My (literally) poor Marlins. For the second time in only eight years they've been "forced" to have a "firesale" and get rid of pretty much all their good players who had big contracts. So far the casualty list includes Josh Beckett & Mike Lowell (to the Red Sox), Carlos Delgago & Paul Lo Duca (to the Mets), Luis Castillo (to the Twins), AJ Burnett (to free agency to the Blue Jays), Juan Pierre (to the Cubs), and Todd Jones (to the Tigers). And the sad thing is, they might not be done.

It pretty much just looks like the only two major guys they are keeping are Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera. And I guess that gives some rays of hope, b/c if you're gonna build a team around any two guys, those are two great players to do it with. But it still really sucks.

And the reasons behind the firesale are just as bad. Basically both Jeffrey Loria (owner of the Marlins) and the city of Miami are being little bitches with each other. Loria and the team just want a new stadium in Miami to call their own b/c right now they play in Dolphin Stadium, so they pay lots of royalties and fees to the football people and basically the team makes very little money. Plus they just need a stadium with a retractable roof, b/c it's always raining like crazy down in Florida and the team loses a lot of money with rain delays and rainouts.

So Loria keeps petitioning the city of Miami to help him out in making a new stadium and for varying reasons (some legit, but mostly stupid) Miami isn't making it happen. So Loria decided to play hardball and threatened to move the team if they don't get a new stadium. Well instead of Miami taking this as a serious threat, they turned that statement AGAINST Loria all like "well we're not gonna give you money for a stadium if you're not gonna be loyal to this city. How dare you threaten to leave!?! Screw you!" (Ok, ok I took some liberties with that last statement but that's basically what happened).

So now the Marlins are being shopped around (most likely to Las Vegas which is BEGGING to have a team) and sadly a team which has won 2 World Championships in the past nine years may no longer be around as of 2008 or 2009, which is just sad. *sigh*

- But as I showed before, many teams are benefitting from all the Marlins good players. Especially the NY Mets who along with the 2 players from Florida also picked up closer Billy Wagner from the Phillies and now look like a pretty good team.

I never hated the Mets. In actuality, when I first started watching baseball (in the mid to late 80's) I LOVED the Mets. But my team is the Yanks and has been for over 15 years now. But even still, I never hated the Mets. I would root for the Marlins over them but that was just b/c I liked the Marlins more. But if the Mets played anyone other then the Yanks or Marlins I wouldn't root against them. But now they look like they'll be quite the exciting team to watch. The poor Mets fans now have something to really cheer about.

-And as for the Yankees, they haven't done much this postseason, but you know what? That's quite alright. There's nothing out there for them TO go after, so why bother? They just offered arbitration to Bernie Willaims the other day, so he's back at least as a parttime player (and who knows he might be the full time centerfielder come May/June b/c he's a better player than Bubba Crosby). So on paper, they're still a pretty damn good team. Do they have holes? Yeah, a few, but I got faith in them. So let's go Yanks! Who knows, another Subway Series could be a possibility.

75 Bands

This picture has 75 bands in it. Some are pretty easy (ie. guy taking a sledgehammer to pumpkins= Smashing Pumpkins). Others are a bit more tricky (ie. the two pink scissors= Scissor Sisters). Can you find them all?

Props to you if you do. If you want, e-mail me a list of what you found and we can share.

Where's Megaman?

Some of you may be wondering why the my beloved Headbanging Megaman is no longer my AIM icon. Well he was basically a temporary casuality of my current WWE Fantasy feud with my best friend Charles (Chaz).

The background to the story is that this week me and Charles picked nearly identical rosters for this week. The main exceptions being that he picked Booker T and Sharmell while I picked Chris Benoit.

Well on the Tuesday Smackdown Special, Booker T defeated Benoit to pull Chaz ahead of me in points for the week. But then we both decided to be very impatient and we snuck a look at Smackdown Spoilers for Friday Night. Turns out Benoit will fight again and win in a match with someone else. This would now put me in front of Chaz by about 6 points (yeah, we're calculating ahead of time, we are serious geeks, lol).

However, we later learned by reading another set of spoilers that both Booker T and Sharmell make an appearance on SD as commentators on the Benoit match. Which at 3 points per appearance each would tie Chaz with me.

But THEN we later heard that after the match Benoit and Booker T start to fight outside and Benoit puts Booker T in the Crippler Crossface, which would score me 1 point and thus would ever so slightly give me the victory for the week.

Or will it???

See it all depends on certain things, due to the way the League scores points. A wrestler gets appearance points for every segment he/she is on TV. According to the WWE Fantasy rules, a segment is defined as: the time period that begins when the WWE show comes back from commercial (or starts) and continues until the time the WWE show goes to commercial (or ends).

So my fear is that something like this might happen: Booker T and Sharmell come out to go to the announcers table, then commercials come, then we come back for the introductions and beginning of the match with Benoit. This would give both Booker T and Sharmell two sets of appearance points each, while Benoit would only get one (thus Chaz would pull ahead and win).

Another question we both have is, what happens if the match starts, then Booker T and Sharmell show up and during the match a commercials occurs? Now I know Benoit wouldn't receive extra points but I'm not to sure about Chaz's picks. My one hope (if the above case were to happen) is how they interpret the following rule: Appearances that are broken up by commercial breaks that come during a match will not count as two separate appearances.

It seems that I would be safe, but then again, Booker T wouldn't be the one involved in the match, so does the rule still apply to him? I think so, but it's something for me to worry about.

And lastly, the one point I should probably win by may not even come into play, b/c if the brawl outside between Booker T and Benoit is not aired on TV then I won't get the point for the Crossface.

So yeah, it's gonna be EXTREMELY close, and both me and Chaz want to win this week badly. It's just about the closest any two competitors have been in either of the seasons we have participated in. And it's just so appropriate that it comes down to me and Chaz.

So yeah, LOTS of trash-talking has been going down. It's even seeped into both of our myspace accounts as well as our AIM icons (I now have a Benoit icon, while he was for Booker T). It will be quite intense until Fri Night and Sat afternoon (when the scores are posted). Wish me luck!