Let's review, shall we
Finally got myself to the movies since Star Wars and think I picked out a couple of decent flicks to watch:

-- Batman Begins: It's probably not saying a ton that Christian Bale is probably the best of the movie Bruce Waynes, but then again, he's approaching it from a much different angle than the other guys. This one redeemed the franchise, and it helps to have six Oscar nominated actors involved (plus Bale, who should be nominated sooner rather than later). Oh yeah, the future Mrs. Cruise was a bit overmatched in the movie, but she picked up the nipple controversy from previous films (thanks Craig for that one).

-- Wedding Crashers: Hilarious film, especially in relation to all the matrimonial stuff going around me lately. (BTW, congrats to JD on his swift engagement.) It's a good cross between a smarter goofball guy flick and a chick flick (wedding is in the title, remember). And oddly enough, Sports Guy's review probably sums up most of my impressions of the film.
On a side note, at least I'm not the only who actually fell for Rachel McAdams in the movie -- Sports Guy praises her, as does Tyler. But I think it's the brunette look that did it, since she seemed, well, plastic in Mean Girls.

But wait, there's more. While the rest of y'all were reading the latest Potter book, I plowed through a couple of quirky books (but not taking advantage of those usual discounts I usually encounter):
-- Committed: Fantasy football is a big part of my job, but the author decided to quit his job for nearly a year to be an FF junkie. It's interesting to see some of my colleagues and competitors interviewed to give a good overview of the business and hobby, but it further reinforced the idea that reading about other people's fantasy football teams can be a most torturous experience.

-- Superstud: Sometimes poignant, sometimes heartbreaking and mostly hilarious real-life account of a geek's often poor attempts at love and relationships. And since the geek in question is Paul Feig, the creator of Freaks and Geeks, you know the story was going to be told the right way. I suppose it helps that I could probably relate to it way too well, but that's the breaks.

You gotta start somewhere
I know it can't be time for people to start summer jobs, especially when I see a ton of back-to-school sales already (way to spoil some kids' summers in mid-July!), but I guess it is time for people to go after "regular" jobs after being served twice by trainees/working interviewiees today.

Seeing one trainee, especially in sales, is nothing new -- it was fun to get the team treatment as they were selling me a new cell phone. But being the guinea pig for someone interviewing for a hygienist job was a bit strange -- although all it meant was that she followed the script a lot more closely, which isn't a bad thing.

Of course with seeing this stuff, it makes me feel better that I've been doing what I've been doing for so long and not having to start completely from scratch.

Remember me?
Got a note recently from an old friend who stumbled across this site thanks to a good old Google search (at least it's better than the one search that's been dominating my hit counter lately). So if she happens to stumble across this post, hello again.

With that said, it's funny how the World Series of Poker has somehow brought out some vestiges of my past despite the fact that I'm very late to the party. While looking over the early updates and the other bracelet winners, I came across this guy who probably is related in some way to a friend from college (it will especially be a kick for those NU people from my time who read this blog).

And since I'm not that plugged into the poker community, I had no clue that this infomercial star of the early '90s was now a high-stakes player and was eliminated along with Greg Raymer and Phil Ivey on Day 6 of the Main Event. I'd really be interested to see how much air time he'll get on ESPN's coverage. It now really has me thinking what those "three little words" are.

All in
Like seemingly everyone else, I've picked up the poker bug, although not as intently as many of my friends -- I haven't read any books, still don't much about strategy, etc. And I'm definitely not competing in the World Series, like a couple of quizbowl colleagues (both eliminated in Day 1C).

However, it has been interesting following along with the action, something I would never had considered even last year. We have one guy covering the action on our site, and Fox Sports has some good stuff as well. But I've discovered Card Player has some great up-to-the-minute information on the action -- especially the big names who have been knocked out. (As I write this, Chris Moneymaker has been knocked out -- just hours after watching the 2003 WSOP final table on ESPN Classic.)

Which gets me to the most compelling part of this year's World Series Main Event, is that the 5,619 competitors are truly a mixed bag of personalities. There are tons of guys like Nate and Fred hoping to follow the Moneymaker or Greg Raymer path from anonymity to poker stardom. They're sitting next to ]and lasting longer than legends of the game (some of whom were famous even before there was poker on TV 24/7).

And while you have the "famous for playing poker" people and the "want to be famous for playing poker" folks, there are the "we're famous and we're playing poker" celebrities. Looking over the photo wires at work and keeping up with the WSOP logs, among the celebrities competing include Jennifer Tilly (who won a WSOP bracelet), James Woods, Mimi Rogers, Tobey Maguire, Brad Garrett, Wil Wheaton, Shannon Sharpe, Shannon Elizabeth and Anna Benson. It's a bit jarring for me to see this because I've also seen a bunch of them on Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown and all of a sudden they're in the Main Event. It seems akin to the Rock-n-Jock or NBA Celebrity league players all of a sudden suiting up for the Pistons, or the old Battle of the Network Stars competitors heading to the Olympics. (Although I guess Gabe Kaplan did move from BotNS to the WSOP, but that's another story.)

Finally, while it really isn't strange that there's a ton of coverage on the World Series these days, what is odd is that the stuff I'm keeping up with right now won't be on ESPN until later this fall. (Their 2005 WSOP coverage does start next week with some satellite tournaments earlier this year.) In a way, it's like Jeopardy! or WWTBAM? in that the winners will have known for months that they've won all this money -- except that now we all have access to when you actually win, unlike the vow of secrecy that surrounds the game shows. And despite it all, the ratings for those shows (especially the Main Event ones) will probably be through the roof -- very strange for something for which we'll have known the results for months.

It's not like ESPN Classic where we want to relive an old game we've seen before, this stuff will be new for lots of people -- but with months of lag time. I would say that it's the antithesis of today's live sports culture especially in Bristol, but then again, the Olympics still often works on the tape-delay system for many events (often to squeeze in profile pieces -- like ESPN does for the WSOP) and grabs big ratings. I wonder if whoever gets to the air the NHL after the lockout will try a similar system of extended time-shifting to increase ratings?

Musical toots
For those interested, the top 1,000 alternative music countdown will be replayed starting Monday and run every day between 10 a.m. and midnight until it's over. The original countdown ran 24/7 over the July 4th weekend, and the top 100 started as I was coming home from work on the 4th, so I'm sure a lot of people would like to hear it during normal hours. For those not in Atlanta, you can listen online.

I've also come across a couple of other interesting musical lists as well. One is a 150 song journey through the 50 states via Minnesota Public Radio. The other is the 13 most overrated songs of all time -- many with which I actually agree, oddly enough.

I spent a good part of the July 4th weekend listening to the Top 1,000 countdown on the local alt-rock station. Timing was weird because they weren't too sure when it was going to end (after starting on Thursday evening). It ended up finishing about 11:30 a.m. on the 4th, then did a replay of the top 50 later in the day since the bulk of the top songs would've aired in the middle of the night/early morning on a holiday.

It's an interesting list, and supposedly driven by listener votes, which may or may not explain some of the placement of some of the songs. The last part of the lineup (about the top 50 or so) seems like a "standard" list for top alternative songs ever, but it gets very random trying to figure what should go at 544 or 219 or 930. (For instance, how is "Everybody Hurts" ranked behind "Your Woman" or lots of other random bits like that.) I do know that they did one last potshot at The Darkness by putting them at No. 1,000.

I'd be interested to see your comments about the list. It did make for some fun listening because of utter randomness of it, plus the resurrection of songs that haven't been played on the station in a few years.

While I'm on a roll with posts here ... It's good to see radio stations actually opening up their library a little bit with a Top 1,000 countdown. I've heard plenty of Top 500 Classic Rock countdowns in my time, but a Top 1K alternative one has actually been a pretty fun listen since it covers as much ground as any classic rock one. I'll post the list when the station puts it up next week. (Maybe it will make for some fun wagering at the July 4th BBQ -- much like I used to do at school around Memorial Day.)

As many of you know, I own a lot of baseball caps (although I don't necessarily wear them as much as I used to), but I think I've discovered that outside of a couple of my favorite teams, I'm more drawn to the novelty of getting stuff of teams I wouldn't see anywhere else. Hence, that's why I have a bunch of minor-league caps and retro caps (thanks to Distant Replays).

It hit me this week in California when my brother was looking around for some stuff of L.A.-based teams at WalMart. He ended up with $5 hats of USC and Chivas USA, while I went more coastal and got Gonzaga, Washington State and San Diego State. Granted, the $5 price tag each was too hard to pass up -- but I also realized that if confronted with the same deal at a WalMart down here, I don't know if I'd be as quick to jump on, say, Florida State or Tennessee. (Or for that matter, other Big Ten school besides Northwestern; on the other hand, a former co-worker and Penn State alum made it a point to have a hat from each conference foe, so to each his own.)

Who knew I could be such a snob for scarcity and uniqueness? Could that be the reason that I'd be more likely wear a Rome Braves or Myrtle Beach Pelicans hat to an Atlanta Braves game than an actual Braves one?

Oh yeah, after a bit of recovery from a long flight back from Ontario (nice and convenient to get to if you live in that part of the area, but hell to fly to if you're not in the West), I ended up having to crank out this NBA Draft/fantasy impact piece finding a way to sneak in the fact that the newest Laker is from my high school.

Another California adventure
Spent last weekend out in California for a family reunion on my maternal grandmother's side, reprising the successful get-together from three years ago. But we got to see a bit more this time around.

This time, we were closer to civilization the whole time, forgoing the mountain cabin for a park just down the street from Santa Anita Park (although there was no racing that weekend). In fact, the town of Arcadia where we stayed was an interesting mashup of chain restaurants galore and "real" homegrown businesses in downtown. It seemed a bit odd to me that there were walkable towns in the L.A. suburbs, but there they were.

The trip itself was moderately memorable in that we were all going to connect in Houston for our flight to Ontario on Thursday night, but my parents and brother nearly missed the connection because of issues getting out of Newark. They did make it, although I was having flashbacks to when a former co-worker (who was also supposed to drive us around town) nearly missed a flight we were booked on to Chicago because he got caught up in security. It's good to travel in groups, except when the person with a lot more idea of what's going on misses the flight.

We had plenty of time on our hands Friday during the day before the reunion officially kicked off, so my parents and I started by a little driving around downtown L.A. after dropping off my brother for an appointment at USC. I finally got to see the L.A. Coliseum up close (the parking/traffic schemes have to be hell), and we drove by the Staples Center, Dodger Stadium, and the Bonaventure Hotel, prominently featured in this film. We also saw the Cathedral, which didn't look like it from street level. That was the extent of the actual city of L.A. tourist experience, which wasn't half-bad for ad libbing in the morning while waiting for my brother.

Later we met my mom's godmother, which was really nice, and I started to wonder if my goddaughter would try to track me down years from now. (FWIW, my godmother lives in the L.A. area as well, but didn't get a chance to meet this time around.)

Friday night came the reunion itself, which was good as always, seeing a lot of familiar faces (some armed with new or older kids) and meeting some new ones, which included a handful of cousins from London -- complete with the British accents. They were pretty cool and very excited to be in the U.S. actually meeting other members of the family. The accents also threw off the Filipino stand-up comic who performed and naturally brought down the house. After some bonding over drinks Friday night, it was off for part two on Saturday.

For part two, we went to another part of the park for all the basic picnic-type activities that included me actually doing a halfway decent job at horseshoes. Later on in the day, a bunch of us started an impromptu poker tournament. And somehow all that time playing online poker paid off as I was the last man standing and came away with $110. Still trying to figure out how I won, but I don't think you'll be seeing me at the World Series anytime soon, though. There was more reunion stuff Sunday and I ended up with a ton of macadamia nut-based foods thanks to my cousin who lives in Hawaii and brought a ton of that stuff stateside for prizes.

Starting Sunday night, I really started to get a good feel for how massive Southern California is driving-wise. While my brother did all the driving, I did much of the navigating for a side trip to San Diego to visit a couple of my dad's friends Sunday night. A mad criss-crossing of the Southland came on Monday that included a trip to the Reagan Library, a stopoff at the Rose Bowl, shopping for Filipino pastries and then visits to an aunt's house and cousin's place before taking the red-eye back to Atlanta (and thus reprising my Jack Bauer travel/sleep schedule ... just picture Kiefer having to chase around an 18-month-old or looking at Clippers t-shirts at WalMart).

It was a fun weekend for sure, and I'm already looking forward to the next get-together, probably in another three years -- this time in San Diego. I'm thinking there will be a lot more changes (especially among us young adult-aged folks) when that comes around. But for now, I guess I'll see a few more of them at a wedding next month in Canada.