Josh Reynolds

The spelling bee happened last Wednesday and because I was too lazy to write about it until now I've kind of forgotten the details. There were three rounds all won by three different people and there were 23 people in the first round which was a monster turnout for the bee. I got to shower the winner with the cash after she won which was nice although it was no gatorade dunking like you get in the NFL. Thank goodness Heather was there to help me pronounce some words such as "leptocercal" since I was having quite a bit of trouble with that one in particular and the crowd gets ugly when things are mispronounced.

Over at Stereogum this comment made me laugh regarding the breakup of
Blink 182:

First the guitar player from Korn quits to make Christian rock, now this. Boy, it sure is a shitty week for fans of shitty music.

Last Sunday we went to the see The Gates.

Here is what The Gates look like:

Here is what Britney Spears looks like:

Here is what Jared looks like:

What did I think of the Gates? Thanks for asking. Well, it was ok. I mean, how cool could it really be? I feel like my reaction to The Gates was the same at 30 as it would have been at 16: "So what?"

I couldn't believe that people flew here just to see this.

Don't forget my friends...tonight is the spelling bee! Whee!

8pm at Freddy's. Be prepared to spell for your life!
Freddy's website is here.

Holy Jesus, this was a busy weekend. Friday was a normal friday with a little social drinking with Sterling and Jessie and then onto some not so social drinking with just Sterling. I was going to the lazy way and take a car home but the angel on my shoulder said that I should take the G and so I did. It turned out to be a good idea as the G came much quicker than it usually does.


Saturday I had a late Xmas surprise that Heather had gotten for me. We spent the morning going around putting up fliers (which Heather designed) for the Spelling Bee which is once again happening this Wednesday at 8 pm. I got an email from someone at New York Magazine who had seen the flier so that's exciting and I guess that the Bee will be featured in New York's best of nightlife issue. Also, a friend let me know that at the coffeeshop she frequents that the bee was all the talk. Hopefully there will be a good turnout this time and we can have some bigger pots. It was suggested that I revamp the spelling word choices so that hopefully the selection process will be a little more fair and there will be less people getting out on "zumbooruk" their first time up. We'll see how it works. I'm open to any suggestions you might have so let me know.

Anyway, the surprise too place out in NJ at a place call the Rexplex which was near the Ikea. The last bus to Ikea from Port Authority left at 4:15 so we were about three hours early for the scheduled event. Out in suburban NJ there were only three options. One was to go to Ikea to waste time, one was to go to Toys R Us to waste time and one was to go to the Rexplex to waste time. Since I'd never been to Ikea we decided to go there first and it was a total nightmare. I don't care about Ikea in general, but the reason it was so bad is that there must have been 3000 people in the store and this is not an exaggeration. Also, the place must have been designed by the same people that make casinos because after the initial decision to leave it took literally ten minutes to find the exit. So, to sum up, that sucked. We then headed for the Rexplex for the remaining hour and a half until, and by this time I'd figured it out, we were to see Ring Of Honor wrestling. When you look at the website it looks like the Rexplex might be kind of a nice place. Well, it was sort of cool with indoor soccer and an indoor skate park but it was also pretty damn dumpy as well. However, we sat down and waited and ate some fries and waited for the experience to begin. We had pretty good seats about six rows back and there were probably about 1500 people there. One interesting thing about it was that fully a quarter of the people there had Ring of Honor merchandise already on and when the wrestlers would come out they would know their chants and their hand gestures and such. They certainly didn't find it on the website which has a pretty criminal lack of info on the wrestlers. The fist match we saw was totally minor minor minor league. The couldn't sell a thing even with a fold out chair. There were many miscues with much chest slapping and then delayed "aaarghs!" from the slappee. Also, the wrestlers would wait WAY too long for someone to leap on or over them. First match was a definite raspberry. Here is one of the contestants:
Steve Corrino
and here is his sister in a picture that can only be described as totally hot:
UPDATE: There has been some confusion about this comment. I am being sarcastic. I actually find this picture to be totally the opposite of "hot". In fact, it leaves me quite "cold".


His sister is part of the roster of Ring of Honor women none of which we got to see which looking at the pictures and profiles now is a big disappointment.

The second match was between the cornrowed Lethal and some other guys that the crowd seemed to hate. His main opponent looked like he might have been 19. We watched all these with varying levels of interest (Heather brought out the crossword a few times)and then came the comedy round which was great. The guys had obviously worked together before and it showed. One guy came out with a regular looking wrestling mask and then another overweight guy comes out in a mask that looks like a combination of a pig with an elephant that has a Fu Manchu moustache. They had a really acrobatic act and the weird mask guy would move around in a way that was really surprising considering his size. He would also say "Ouch" when he got hit which was a crowd pleaser. Well, it pleased me at least.

I don't even remember the next match.

Then what was to be our last match of the night happened because the last bus ran back to New York at 9 pm. We saw a straight edge wrestler fight Spanky who me and Cheeseburger dudes used to watch on WWE. He is obviously not running with the big boys anymore. We left in the middle of this match and I said "I'm sure that was the finale." Wrong. There were six more matches after we left including one with MICK FOLEY! Oh man, was I bummed when I learned I didn't see him! I read both of his books and he's a living legend.
How can you not love Mr. Socko?!!?!?!?!?!

We also missed the taped fist match and the cage match! Aw, dude!

I really like the "next blog" feature on the blogspot blog pages. I've run into some good stuff like this which is written so strangely it's about as difficult to read as A Clockwork Orange. I'm glad that she introduced me to the phrase "mem lane" though. I'll be using that from now on. Also, I like the fact that she just likes being rightous. Who doesn't?

This is a soldier in Iraq blog that was pretty interesting in parts. I especially liked the post about stray dogs and cats and how the GIs aren't supposed to make pets of them and how there was a rabid dog that bit a bunch of people using up a lot of the rabies vaccine stockpile. It also didn't occur to me that the army would have vets on staff.

The Soxaholix nailed it.

When exactly did New Yorkers go from the "What the Fuck Are You Lookin' At?" tough bastids attitude and into the smoke free, saffron wrapped, welcome to "The World's Second Home." pansy shit?

You want to know what drives me totally crazy? When people say things like "You can't make these things up! Ha Ha!" when in reality what is going on isn't that crazy. Thanks for listening.

UPDATE: Ok, here are some examples of what I am talking about. A few of the phone lines have been down at work and we haven't been able to get them fixed yet and so certain office mates will pick up the phone, dial out, get nothing and then shake their heads in dismay. "It's still not fixed! I swear you can't make this stuff up!".

OR

There was a CEO that we had been having trouble getting ahold of (although he has four cellphones) and he finally called in from a phone on an airplane and once again with a rueful laugh I hear "You can't make this stuff up!".

It's about time I say.

This is pretty funny.

I have many questions about the world. For example, why does my boss make sex type noises whenever he talks about how good "Boston Legal" is?

Also, I know that life for the single woman can be dangerous but don't you think that taking a butcher knife on a blind date is a little over the top?

NEWARK, New Jersey (AP) -- A security screener at Newark Liberty International Airport failed to spot a butcher knife in a passenger's pocketbook and was removed from the post for retraining, officials said.

Katrina Bell, 27, had cleared security and was waiting with her sister to board a flight on Saturday morning when she discovered she was carrying a knife.

Bell had put the knife in her bag "just in case" before going on a blind date earlier that week, her sister and travel companion, Tikisha Bell Gowens, 30, said in The Sunday Star-Ledger of Newark.

Check this out and keep scrolling down for all the weirdness.

Via web wasteland

Dear Diary,

I spent today being awesome.

Love ya,

Josh

Here is the link to the top underreported humanitarian stories of 2004 from Doctors without Borders.

Via Joe G

I'm a little surprised that Andrew Sullivan hasn't defended himself from the negative commentary he's gotten around the blogosphere.

Such as here, and this place.

I can't get worked up about the issue.

And in the "I googled a friend's name and this image came up" department:

Man, Southeast Asia cannot catch a friggin' break. Another earthquake and a tsunami warning. Holy mother.

Hi Douglas. How's it going? We were talking about you this morning.

In the "apropos of nothing" department:

Read the whole thing. It's not just about baseball.

I'm thinking game shows today. So, here we go:



Did Monty Hall have a sex scandal? I hope so. I looked. He didn't. The Monty Hall Paradox. Make sure and click on the explanation.


Here is an interesting story on the Press Your Luck scandal.