Havasimy

I got tickets to be in the audience at a taping of VH1's new game show "The World Series of Pop Culture". It looks like it's going to be a great show. I went with a friend of mine from college who lives in NYC. Most of the seats that would guarantee getting on camera seemed to be reserved for friends and families of the contestants, which is fair, I guess. I still might be able to pick myself out on camera in wide shots.

The show consists of two teams of three people battling it out in a trivia competition. I was in the audience of four shows. I was there for four hours and they'll distill all the footage down to four twenty minutes shows (half hour shows after commercials). Some of the shows took longer than others and probably the show with the most to cut out seemed to have the funniest moments. But overall, there was definitely more than 20 minutes worth of great moments in each episodes and the shows should be great.

I don't want to go into the actual format of each show right now, although we got no instructions not to tell anyone how things work or even the results. But there are sixteen teams and we got in on four first-round matches. So the teams we saw win go on to compete against the other teams. The teams we saw were: "Sexual Chocolate" vs. "Peanut Butter and Ginelli", "Ronnie, Bobby, Mike, and Ricky" (or those four names in some order) vs. "We heart Jake Ryan", "We're what Willis was Talkin' about" vs. "Chupacabra" (or something like that) and "Men of Vision" vs. "Almost Perfect Strangers". So, if you see those teams facing each other, you might be able to see me in the audience.

The host of the show is a nyc news personality. The female "eye candy" is Lisa Guerrero. I'm pretty sure it's the same one that did MNF years ago. I didn't see much of her since she did after-show interviews back stage. I never really liked her. Maybe it's because of her MNF interviews where she would ask a question get a answer and then ask another question causing her (and the interviewee) to talk over the next football play. Also, I never found her attractive. I would prefer to have a knowledgeable sideline reporter, but if you're going to hire a sideline reporter to simply be eye candy then she should be good-looking enough to be eye candy.

Anyway, the shows I was on should air on Vh1 in July.

Also, yesterday, we walked past Radio City Music Hall where the draft was being held. There was alot of football fans in front of it, but at the time there didn't seem like there was anything to see, so we just kept walking.

New Jersey just enacted a new law banning smoking in all public buildings. When the law took effect at midnight, I was at a restaurant/bar that was following the law at midnight. The place is connected to another bar that was letting patrons smoke til closing. People kept coming in and asking for an ashtray to use on the smoking side. They didn't need the ashtrays over there. They figured that the ashtrays would no longer be needed and they could take them home with them. They were nice solid glass ashtrays. The owner of the bar also owns atleast one place in PA, where smoking is allowed, so the manager wasn't letting them take them, but still alot of people came over asking. Some outright asked to keep them. Some used the excuse that they were only taking them next door.

I heard that pretty soon there won't be smoking allowed within 25 feet of a bar or restaurant. I'm not sure if that law has been passed and just in a waiting period or if that law is still waiting to be passed.

I don't smoke, but have no problem with smoking. I tried to explain to someone why I didn't like the smoking ban. Part of it is the fact that people should be allowed to harm themselves and if a smoking ban is truly good for business, then bars would stop allowing smoking. The other part that once the health nuts win a total ban on all smoking, they'll go after stuff I do care about. I couldn't convince the people I was talking to, but I didn't have this article at the time. This article describes very well why I don't like bans on smoking.

I just noticed something about my lease renewal letter. It says it's my 90 days notice, but I got it 109 days before my lease is up. I've got to reply to it by April 27th. April 27th is 95 days before the end of my lease. It's not a big gripe but still. I mean, I know in Pennsylvania you have to get the letter at 90 days and have until 60 days to give a response, or atleast that's what my last landlord company stated and they were the by-the-books type when it comes to such things. In New Jersey, I don't know. If I was seriously deciding whether I was moving or not, there's a big difference between two weeks and a month.

I just realized something. Even though my lease is up at the end of July, my first least started July 14th, which is 90 days after I got the letter. My first lease at this apartment when from July 14th to the July 31st of the following year. My current lease goes from last August 1st to this July 31st. It would seem like they get the 90 days from the anniversary of the original lease start rather than the end of the current lease.

On another subject, apparently this spring my parking spot at my apartment is under a bird highway. Seems everytime I go out to my car, there's another spot of bird crap on it. I took it to the car wash yesterday. It had at least five seperates spots of crap on it. I had hoped that it would stay clean for the drive back to Pittsburgh for Spring Carnival next Thursday. Nope. Went out this afternoon to get milk and it had already been hit. If this keeps up, I'm going to have to do some hunting this summer.

One other thing. The guy who has the cube right next to mine has Flyers playoff tickets and he's thinking of selling some of the ones for the early rounds. I might buy a pair off of him. It's not the Pens in the playoffs, but it still would be interesting.

I got my lease renewal notice today. The rent increase is not much and considering my rent didn't go up at all last year, it's good enough that I'll likely stay at my current place another year.

I'm currently watching The Mind of the Married Man on DVD. It wasn't the male version of Sex and the City that it was hyped to be and it maybe played too much on some male stereotypes, but still a funny show. There was a great quote in the one episode I just watched that I wanted to use on this page, but I didn't write it down and forgot it. I'll have to go back and find it. Also, the one part about the one guy's fantasy involving his wife and watching the Three Stooges is a classic.

It looks like I'm going to go see the Cowboy Junkies in concert tomorrow night. I don't know too much about their music, but I haven't been to a concert in almost a year, so I'm looking forward to it.

Just watch the highlights of the the hearings on the groups trying to get a Philadelphia casino license. Donald Trump was shown. I find it interesting that he usually has buildings with grandiose names like Trump Tower or Trump Taj Mahal, but for Philly, it's Trumpstreet. Sounds like he has set his sights eye high. Also, four of the five proposals are along the river, meaning from where I'm currently living, I should be able to see four of the five sites.

I was watching season 4 of the Man Show recently and was surprised to see the new manager of the Pirates made an appearance. Seems the hosts of the show did a segment where they visited the Dodgers during spring training. While most of their interaction seemed to be with Tommy Lasorda, then manager Jim Tracy was also shown.

Work has been weird lately. Seems the project I'm on has been using more man-hours than planned so they had to take a bunch of people off the projects. So as of monday morning, I'm not assigned to any project. Instead, I just sit at my desk and watch these courses the company has on their network. The one I'm doing now is for C# programming language. I should be on a new project by end of the week.

I've started making a list of things I want to do this summer:
- Go to at least one Pirates game in Pittsburgh. Unlike the last two years, they're away the weekend of CMU Spring Carnival, so I'll have to go on another trip back.
- Go to one game, preferably when the Pirates are in town, at Citizens Park. Also I'd like to go to a game in either DC, Baltimore or NYC. I've been to Shea Stadium, but have never been to Yankee Stadium or the ballparks at the other two cities.
- Go to Delaware. It's less than an hour away from me and my first manager at my company even lives there, but I've never been there.
- Visit my brother and his family while they're down in Norfolk. Google Maps has the directions there going straight through Delaware, so I can possibly kill two birds with one stone.
- Go to the museum that Rocky ran up the steps of in the movie.
- Attend one concert at the amphitheatre that is ridiculously close to me but I've never been in.

This is an interesting link. It's a timeline of events that happened in movies. Great for movie buffs. It's what history would look like if all events in movies happened.

Also, in honor of FHM Magazine's list of their 100 sexiest women, I now submit my top ten most attractive women. I wouldnt' call it "sexiest" because some are on because of different qualities. I think I'm publishing this because, unlike past celebs on the top of the list, I'm not sure how this year's #1 made it. She just missed making my top ten and maybe that's how she got the #1 list. She just made the top ten list of most of the voters while those who made the top of alot more lists didn't make others at all. In my case, five out of the ten on my list aren't even on FHM's top 100.

Now for my top ten:
#10. Zooey Deschanel - The #1 reason to watch The New Guy, Elf, and The Hitchhiker's Guide.
#9. Kristen Bell - Pulls off the teenager who's old beyond her years as the title character of Veronica Mars.
#8. Heather Graham - I might be the only one who doesn't automatically think of her as Rollergirl and instead think of her in Diggstown, Swingers and Bowfinger.
#7. Rachel McAdams - Kept Wedding Crashers from losing it in the second half.
#6. Carrie Underwood - "Before He Cheats" is best song on her first album, if only because it's the only one where she's gets away from her goody-two-shoes image.
#5. Marisa Miller - Only current SI swimsuit model to hold own her with the best of swimsuit issues past.
#4. Charlize Theron - Not having seen her in anything recently dropped her from the top 3.
#3. Jessica Alba - Actually been a fan of hers since before Dark Angel.
#2. Vanessa Kay - Just finished watching the last good season of the Man Show.
#1. Katherine Heigl - Recently watching the last season of Roswell and the first season of Grey's Anatomy clinched the top spot for her.