Wednesday, April 19, 2006

It's been a while

Yup, things have been quiet over here, mainly because of the prep work for TRASHionals. As a couple of noticed, certain blogs go quiet for fear of giving away answers since many of us post about cool things we see. Many times they go here, other times, it's question fodder. So be it.

But a couple of things (that likely won't be going into questions any time soon) ...
-- I've come across my fair share of infomercials over the years, but I'm still floored that there's one of Piccadilly. I thought I was imagining things when I saw at 2:30 a.m., but then the former PAX network affiliate (which shows infomercials until about 6 p.m.) aired it. It pretty much comes across as some mutant cross of corporate training video and Food Network special.
-- Went to the Thrashers home finale on Saturday (which would really be the case after getting eliminated Monday). Fun game to keep the team in the playoff hunt, at least for the time being. But what struck me most at the game was the text message board displayed on the scoreboard before the game and during intermission. If you sent a text message to whatever number shown, you could get your messages on the scoreboard.
Which then led to a couple of "Go Thrashers!" or "I love [fill in name of player here]." But most of the time it was Napoleon Dynamite or Anchorman quotes, or "I love [fill in name of significant other]." There were even a couple of, guessing here, mock marriage proposals (possibly mocking some of the marriage proposals at sporting events I've seen over the years -- although I did see a rather elaborate one at Wrigley Field years ago involving the center field bleachers).
-- If you've heard the song "Steady, As She Goes" by The Raconteurs, the Jack White side project, the opening bars of the song sound very similar to Joe Jackson's "Is She Going Out With Him?"
-- I finally found Andrews Upstairs, a small Buckhead music club, while driving around yesterday. What was amusing was that among the artists I've never heard of, as well as the Retro Night, was this band playing later this weekend.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Rites of Spring

Happy Opening Day, everyone. I'm getting that free preview of the Extra Innings package and pondering yet again if I should subscribe to it for the season. So far, it's been fun to watch everything, although I still haven't got all my teams in order to figure out which games are really worth my time.

And of course with Opening Day comes the end of the NCAA tournament, which I always thought was a weird 1-2 punch because baseball gets pushed to the back in many places by the end of what should be a celebratory day. But then again, that's what the new Sunday night opener does, sorta (although mostly it throws people off since you're not sure if it's an exhibition or for real; same goes with the new Thursday NFL opener).

If baseball is one way you know spring is here, the other would be the layer of pollen sitting on my car right now. Hopefully it didn't aggravate too many allergies of the fine folks who came into town this weekend for JD's wedding.

The ceremony was at a beautiful new church that opted to maintain a more traditional look in the sanctuary, while also doubling as a sort of Marriott almost everywhere else. The ceremony itself was very nice, and it was very cool to see a bunch of quizbowl folks in town as well.

However, the one highlight that many of us will remember is having the Easter Bunny join us for some of the groosmen photos. For whatever reason, the Easter egg hunt was last Saturday (two weeks before Easter), and thus the bunny and a lot of kids were milling about as we were doing photos. Eventually I'll get a hold of one of those photos.