Radio songs

If there's one thing you can count on during Memorial Day weekend is a decent countdown-esque gimmick from some radio stations. New York's Jack FM station is rolling out their entire playlist in alphabetical order, as you might see here. From the small sliver I tuned into, I ended with three "It's My Life" songs.

Over on the Web, WOXY.com is doing their 18th annual Modern Rock 500, and this year they moved it to their main audio stream, which is a nice touch. If you have iTunes, you can find the radio stream with the added bonus of getting title and artist info as the song plays. I'll probably miss the end of the countdown since I'm off to Vegas later this evening, but I'll post a link to the list when it's ready and then adjust my playlists accordingly.

In the meantime, I've got the two things going on simultaneously, and having Greg Kihn's "Jeopardy" and Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" playing at the same time is messing with my head.

The Windy Apple

Back from a quick trip to Chicago for the NAQT High School NCT, which is just another good excuse to see some old quizbowl friends and faces from years past while also reading rounds in cramped hotel rooms (although I did get a nice suite for day 2). I'm always impressed by the level of play here, especially since I'd be toast on a lot of the stuff although there's always a few non-trash questions here and there that I know that the others don't. It's also fun being recognized by some of the teams as one guy said, "the awesome reader." I just do what I do, but then again I guess I just take my job for granted.

Unfortunately the rain washed out any chance of going to Dillo Day, but I did get out to Evanston on Friday afternoon and forgot exactly how long it takes to get from the O'Hare area to the campus via the El. The two-hour ride each way was about as long as my flight. Still, I did get to see a downtown Evanston that looks so much different from the last time I was there about 3-4 years ago -- yet I did stop by a couple of the few businesses that were around when I was there, Clarke's and Campus Gear. Hopefully I'll get more time to see the campus later this year.

A couple of additional travel notes: United is the latest to jump on the XM bandwagon, although it's a very limited selection and you don't get the program info like AirTran's fuller version of the service. But there were current season episodes of 30 Rock and The Office, so that was fine.

Summer of George

So if we plopped George Constanza into Las Vegas, would we get something like this? I actually use my trips to Vegas for some good exercise trying to go up and down the Strip. These people, not so much

And here's a version of anti-Coverville, thanks to folks at Retrocrush -- complete with many video links.

And if you haven't been fast-forwarding through commercials, let's just say that this is a perfect fit (pun intended), and that this where are they now ad is cute because she is.

Star struck

A few bullet points before my double vacation (Chicago/Vegas) this weekend:

-- I made my "Broadway debut" (so to speak) over the weekend as one of the audience spellers at The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I pretty much thought I'd be a lock as a ringer for that part of the show, and I was the last audience member eliminated. It was weird watching half the play from the inside, but it was cool having Mo Rocca asking me to spell stuff. And there wasn't as much nervousness spelling on stage, given that I could barely see into the audience with the way the lights were and that if I wanted to take a dive on a word, I could.

-- If you're looking for content I wrote for work that isn't related to your fantasy team, here's my list of bizarre athlete product endorsements.

-- I'm not sure what it says about the NBA that I'm more excited by the draft lottery than the playoffs. And almost according to form, the Hawks keep the top three pick, but don't get one of the top two. But maybe they'll actually get a point guard this time.

-- I just got Guitar Hero 2, and let's just say that I can see how its most famous casualty could get injured playing it.

Nth degrees of separation

Obviously, I've come across all sorts of people of varying degrees of success in my business, considering how long I've actually been working, but there are things that still surprise me when I see it, especially when it comes to my time when the Web was such an experimental medium.

For instance, one of the few writers at the Trib's Web site during my time as an intern winning a Pulitzer. And now after catching a little CNN this afternoon, I just realized I interned with the anchor working the main desk. Just weird, although we had completely different responsibilities on the still nascent operations, so it's not really surprising our career paths went in different directions.

Fight night

While the De La Hoya-Mayweather fight was entertaining but a couple of steps below the spectacle everyone wanted it to be, I will say the best part was trying to find celebrities in direct view of the main ring camera. I spent much of the time seeing John McCain catching the fight, and later on, someone else at the party where I was watching it pointed out J-Lo -- and you can tell she was interested in the action, at least compared to Marc Anthony.

Party like it's 1959

So the top two sporting events this weekend are the Kentucky Derby and a boxing match. It's definitely an old-school weekend, and you don't even have to buy anything "retro" to celebrate.

Fitting into the puzzle

As much as I hate to admit, I'm very clingy to my past, and staying true/close to the alma mater is one major aspect of that. I've gone to my fair share of alumni events both in Atlanta and New York, and even represented the school at a college fair the other day. (By the way, thanks to the high school who put us next to another purple-clad college. And if this school that fit alphabetically were there, it would've been chaos.)

Anyways, so I ended up at a young alumni function in the city and realized just exactly so large a base the New York area has. People were impressed with the 200-plus folks there, and yet I only recognized about 10-15 faces, and half of them were from people I've met long after I left school. I know there are tons of people in the area, yet none were there. Strange, but not surprising.

But as these things usually go, I found someone I hadn't seen in 10-plus years and reconnected very well -- having some unique connections beyond just the typical school stuff will do that. Of course, stumbling our way to some tangential Cinco de Mayo celebrations helped make the evening.