End of June (in a very large nutshell)
I keep falling into the habit of catching up with my blog only to fall behind again within a few days/weeks. I hate doing that b/c then I have to make these mega long posts instead of a bunch of shorter posts. So I apologize for that. I'll try for both my sake and yours to be better about that in the future.
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Guess I should start out back over on June 14th (I actually have mentioned stuff we've done after this, I'm just backtracking over some stuff I've skipped over). That day we took the Middle School students in the Academic Talent Search Program to see Beauty & The Beast on Broadway. It was a cute show, but in the end there were a lot of kids absent so we wound up having extra tix left over. Luckily, they don't really go to waste as you can use them for future showings, so my boss actually gave me two of the tickets, so now I can take Ariana to see it for free. So that was pretty cool. Then later that night I went to the Yankees vs Cleveland Indians game, which the Yanks won 6-1. So all in all it was a pretty cool day.
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I wound up getting this sweet coupon deal in the mail from Blockbuster where I could get unlimited DVDs for the month for only $2.49 each. I decided to take advantage of it, as we have not gotten the whole 99 cent deal from Hollywood video this year (it's usually around Dec/Jan). So over the past few weeks I rented and watched L4yer Cake, Grandma's Boy, Chicken Little, Unleashed, Kicking & Screaming, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalo, The Ringer, and National Lampoon's Adam & Eve (def not anywhere near as good as Van Wilder, which is what I was hoping it'd be in the vein of).
Most of the movies were entertaining. Believe it or not, I thought the worst one of the bunch was L4yer Cake (and not Deuce Bigalow, which wasn't as funny as the first, but still had some amusing scenes). Unleashed was actually pretty damn cool and I may be tempted to buy it later on if I catch it in a $10 or under sale. Oh, and to anyone who loves video games (maybe a bit too much), Grandma's Boy is pretty hysterical. You should def give it a look.
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Speaking of movies, I have gone to see only two in the theater this past month. I went to see Nacho Libre with the crew a few weeks back. It was amusing, but I'm not the biggest fan of the director of Napolean Dynamite's style (I'm probably one of the few people who did not like Napolean Dynamite it seems).
Then just this past week I went with a bunch of my buddies from church to see Superman Returns on the 3D IMAX over at New Roc City. That movie was pretty cool. I only wish there was more action (cuz heck, you wait all these years to make a new Superman movie, and with all the new technology out there, we don't get any huge "Neo vs Agent Smith" type fights??? Boo, I say!). I also wasn't thrilled with the Superman as Christ symbology. The heck is that about? They don't use that in the comics to the best of my knowledge... But other than those minor gripes, it was a fun movie.
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So the World Cup was this month. Now I've never been into soccer at all. I just didn't get it. Although I must admit, my general knowledge of soccer came from the "Homer gets a gun" episode of the Simpsons- "Wing passes to Center! Center passes it to wing! Wing passes it back to Center! Center holds it... holds it... holds it..."
And it didn't help that in the few seconds where I have flipped by ACTUAL games on TV I saw stuff like that.
But Ariana got me into the World Cup. The first game I saw was Ghana vs Czech Republic, and that was a very good game. I enjoyed it so much, that we watched almost all of the USA vs Italy game that followed.
I then continued to follow it whenever I could. My co-workers were all pretty into it, so whenever work was slow, they'd call security to open up the student lounge next door to us and we'd go in and out of there to watch the games on the TV.
But even though I've been slightly converted into a soccer fan (I liked the World Cup, I doubt I'll watch much, if any soccer elsewhere until the next one), I can still understand why it isn't huge in the US. I think it's PARTLY b/c of the same reason hockey has fallen off with the US in recent years. Almost the whole game could go by without anything happening! Who wants to watch 90 mins of a game only to end in a 0-0 tie?? Even though I personally was appreciating the game to a point, even I would get frustrated at times and yell at my TV all like "someone just freakin score already!!"
So I can only imagine how most of the rest of America is. Just look at the rest of our popular sports- something is always happening in football. Even if you aren't scoring, you are moving the ball up, or being pushed back. Lots of constant action, this is why football has become America's favorite sport (not mine, but the majority of the US). Then look at Basketball- tons of point scoring all over the place! People love to see it! Even baseball rarely goes a full 9 innings tied at zero. There is always something happening. But even then, look at how the popularity of baseball has taken a decline in recent years. It's still the number 2 sport in the nation, but it doesn't have the same following it did even 20 years ago. So I feel one big thing is there are no ties in any of those sports! The games go until someone wins and it never comes down to free-throw shooting, field goal kicking or a homerun derby (whereas tied soccer games ultimately are decided in a shootout).
Americans are very much into the "give it to me, and give it to me NOW" mentality. Which is why I don't think soccer will ever be anything more than the number four sport in the United States. There are other reasons I believe this will be so, but I won't bore you with those. Like I said, I was recently converted, I thought the World Cup was fun, but it won't take America by storm anytime in our lifetimes.
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I went to only my second concert of the year the other week! I went to see AFI at the Roseland Ballroom on June 22nd. I went with Ariana and we basically showed up late on purpose (to miss any crappy opening bands) so we just got to see AFI.
It was a pretty cool show as they played stuff mostly from the last 2 albums (which is good, b/c that's the only stuff I know for the most part). But they also did play Total Immortal (which was made famous by the Offspring, but it is AFI's song), so that had me psyched.
But yeah, it's been a slow concert year, I can't wait until my next show (which unless anything comes around beforehand, will be the Living End in August).
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But while I may not be going to a lot of concerts, I have been able to go to a bunch of Yankee games. I have an 8 game season pass, plus I got tix for 2 extra games (vs the Mets and the Red Sox in Sept). Just last week I went to two games. First was Yankees vs Braves. I went with David and Henry (cuz Ariana had school work, Sheila had a b-day party, and Christina was MIA). The game wasn't great (we had freakin Jaret Wright pitching, and the Yanks lost 5-2) but we were highly amused when we saw a dude a few rows ahead of us with a "Jews for Jeter" t-shirt, that had a bunch of guys (including us) in our section, cracking up. We even made the kid stand up so we could take pics on our camera phones. Sadly those pics did not come out well, but Henry was able to find a pic of the shirt online, which you can see below:
And speaking of t-shirts, while walking back to my car after the game, we passed some guys selling some funny Yankee shirts and they had the Darth Vader "Evil Empire" shirt I have been looking for for quite some time. I bought it immediately and was very happy with my purchase.
I actually wound up wearing it to the Yankees vs Mets game we had last Saturday. Sadly the Yanks also lost that game, by a score of 8-3 (although thankfully the Yanks came back the next night to slaughter the Mets, to prevent a season series loss). Too bad they couldn't do that for OUR game though. Oh well...
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I don't recall if I've mentioned it in a previous post of not, but I had purchased a novel based on the TV show- 24 a few weeks back. I finished reading it the other week, and it was actually really good. It totally read just like the show. It was called "Trojan Horse" in case any of you are interested in picking it up.
I enjoyed it so much that last week, while at Barnes & Noble I picked up another 24 novel- called Veto Power. I haven't started to read it yet, but if it's as good as the other novel, it should be a solid read.
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The only kind of annoying thing to happen to me over the past few weeks was that I was called for Jury Duty the last week of June. I was called in on the Wed. They tried to pick me for a murder-2 trial, but it was gonna run a few weeks long, and when I explained I had vacation coming up, the judge was really cool and dismissed me.
Then the good news got even better as they called a bunch of potential jurors into a room shortly after that (myself included) and dismissed us from Jury Duty entirely, after only one day! I'm guessing it was b/c we had the Fourth of July week coming up and there weren't a lot of cases scheduled to start soon, so they didn't need as many jurors. But whatever the reason I was just psyched that I didn't have to waste 3 (or more) days there.
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And like I mentioned above, I had vacation this past week, which was nice. The week FLEW by though! But actually I think I will blog about this week's events in another post, just to break things up. So I'll be back soon.
****
Guess I should start out back over on June 14th (I actually have mentioned stuff we've done after this, I'm just backtracking over some stuff I've skipped over). That day we took the Middle School students in the Academic Talent Search Program to see Beauty & The Beast on Broadway. It was a cute show, but in the end there were a lot of kids absent so we wound up having extra tix left over. Luckily, they don't really go to waste as you can use them for future showings, so my boss actually gave me two of the tickets, so now I can take Ariana to see it for free. So that was pretty cool. Then later that night I went to the Yankees vs Cleveland Indians game, which the Yanks won 6-1. So all in all it was a pretty cool day.
****
I wound up getting this sweet coupon deal in the mail from Blockbuster where I could get unlimited DVDs for the month for only $2.49 each. I decided to take advantage of it, as we have not gotten the whole 99 cent deal from Hollywood video this year (it's usually around Dec/Jan). So over the past few weeks I rented and watched L4yer Cake, Grandma's Boy, Chicken Little, Unleashed, Kicking & Screaming, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigalo, The Ringer, and National Lampoon's Adam & Eve (def not anywhere near as good as Van Wilder, which is what I was hoping it'd be in the vein of).
Most of the movies were entertaining. Believe it or not, I thought the worst one of the bunch was L4yer Cake (and not Deuce Bigalow, which wasn't as funny as the first, but still had some amusing scenes). Unleashed was actually pretty damn cool and I may be tempted to buy it later on if I catch it in a $10 or under sale. Oh, and to anyone who loves video games (maybe a bit too much), Grandma's Boy is pretty hysterical. You should def give it a look.
****
Speaking of movies, I have gone to see only two in the theater this past month. I went to see Nacho Libre with the crew a few weeks back. It was amusing, but I'm not the biggest fan of the director of Napolean Dynamite's style (I'm probably one of the few people who did not like Napolean Dynamite it seems).
Then just this past week I went with a bunch of my buddies from church to see Superman Returns on the 3D IMAX over at New Roc City. That movie was pretty cool. I only wish there was more action (cuz heck, you wait all these years to make a new Superman movie, and with all the new technology out there, we don't get any huge "Neo vs Agent Smith" type fights??? Boo, I say!). I also wasn't thrilled with the Superman as Christ symbology. The heck is that about? They don't use that in the comics to the best of my knowledge... But other than those minor gripes, it was a fun movie.
****
So the World Cup was this month. Now I've never been into soccer at all. I just didn't get it. Although I must admit, my general knowledge of soccer came from the "Homer gets a gun" episode of the Simpsons- "Wing passes to Center! Center passes it to wing! Wing passes it back to Center! Center holds it... holds it... holds it..."
And it didn't help that in the few seconds where I have flipped by ACTUAL games on TV I saw stuff like that.
But Ariana got me into the World Cup. The first game I saw was Ghana vs Czech Republic, and that was a very good game. I enjoyed it so much, that we watched almost all of the USA vs Italy game that followed.
I then continued to follow it whenever I could. My co-workers were all pretty into it, so whenever work was slow, they'd call security to open up the student lounge next door to us and we'd go in and out of there to watch the games on the TV.
But even though I've been slightly converted into a soccer fan (I liked the World Cup, I doubt I'll watch much, if any soccer elsewhere until the next one), I can still understand why it isn't huge in the US. I think it's PARTLY b/c of the same reason hockey has fallen off with the US in recent years. Almost the whole game could go by without anything happening! Who wants to watch 90 mins of a game only to end in a 0-0 tie?? Even though I personally was appreciating the game to a point, even I would get frustrated at times and yell at my TV all like "someone just freakin score already!!"
So I can only imagine how most of the rest of America is. Just look at the rest of our popular sports- something is always happening in football. Even if you aren't scoring, you are moving the ball up, or being pushed back. Lots of constant action, this is why football has become America's favorite sport (not mine, but the majority of the US). Then look at Basketball- tons of point scoring all over the place! People love to see it! Even baseball rarely goes a full 9 innings tied at zero. There is always something happening. But even then, look at how the popularity of baseball has taken a decline in recent years. It's still the number 2 sport in the nation, but it doesn't have the same following it did even 20 years ago. So I feel one big thing is there are no ties in any of those sports! The games go until someone wins and it never comes down to free-throw shooting, field goal kicking or a homerun derby (whereas tied soccer games ultimately are decided in a shootout).
Americans are very much into the "give it to me, and give it to me NOW" mentality. Which is why I don't think soccer will ever be anything more than the number four sport in the United States. There are other reasons I believe this will be so, but I won't bore you with those. Like I said, I was recently converted, I thought the World Cup was fun, but it won't take America by storm anytime in our lifetimes.
****
I went to only my second concert of the year the other week! I went to see AFI at the Roseland Ballroom on June 22nd. I went with Ariana and we basically showed up late on purpose (to miss any crappy opening bands) so we just got to see AFI.
It was a pretty cool show as they played stuff mostly from the last 2 albums (which is good, b/c that's the only stuff I know for the most part). But they also did play Total Immortal (which was made famous by the Offspring, but it is AFI's song), so that had me psyched.
But yeah, it's been a slow concert year, I can't wait until my next show (which unless anything comes around beforehand, will be the Living End in August).
****
But while I may not be going to a lot of concerts, I have been able to go to a bunch of Yankee games. I have an 8 game season pass, plus I got tix for 2 extra games (vs the Mets and the Red Sox in Sept). Just last week I went to two games. First was Yankees vs Braves. I went with David and Henry (cuz Ariana had school work, Sheila had a b-day party, and Christina was MIA). The game wasn't great (we had freakin Jaret Wright pitching, and the Yanks lost 5-2) but we were highly amused when we saw a dude a few rows ahead of us with a "Jews for Jeter" t-shirt, that had a bunch of guys (including us) in our section, cracking up. We even made the kid stand up so we could take pics on our camera phones. Sadly those pics did not come out well, but Henry was able to find a pic of the shirt online, which you can see below:
And speaking of t-shirts, while walking back to my car after the game, we passed some guys selling some funny Yankee shirts and they had the Darth Vader "Evil Empire" shirt I have been looking for for quite some time. I bought it immediately and was very happy with my purchase.
I actually wound up wearing it to the Yankees vs Mets game we had last Saturday. Sadly the Yanks also lost that game, by a score of 8-3 (although thankfully the Yanks came back the next night to slaughter the Mets, to prevent a season series loss). Too bad they couldn't do that for OUR game though. Oh well...
****
I don't recall if I've mentioned it in a previous post of not, but I had purchased a novel based on the TV show- 24 a few weeks back. I finished reading it the other week, and it was actually really good. It totally read just like the show. It was called "Trojan Horse" in case any of you are interested in picking it up.
I enjoyed it so much that last week, while at Barnes & Noble I picked up another 24 novel- called Veto Power. I haven't started to read it yet, but if it's as good as the other novel, it should be a solid read.
****
The only kind of annoying thing to happen to me over the past few weeks was that I was called for Jury Duty the last week of June. I was called in on the Wed. They tried to pick me for a murder-2 trial, but it was gonna run a few weeks long, and when I explained I had vacation coming up, the judge was really cool and dismissed me.
Then the good news got even better as they called a bunch of potential jurors into a room shortly after that (myself included) and dismissed us from Jury Duty entirely, after only one day! I'm guessing it was b/c we had the Fourth of July week coming up and there weren't a lot of cases scheduled to start soon, so they didn't need as many jurors. But whatever the reason I was just psyched that I didn't have to waste 3 (or more) days there.
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And like I mentioned above, I had vacation this past week, which was nice. The week FLEW by though! But actually I think I will blog about this week's events in another post, just to break things up. So I'll be back soon.
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