It Was 9 Years Ago...

Happy Monday to everyone. To those of you who have stumbled across or have been following this blog, I forgot to mention that I actually had a blog back in 1999. I was living in Allston, Massachusetts at the time and one of my roommates wanted to jump on the tech bandwagon and create a website dedicated to our apartment we were living in. Now these were the days of Netscape Navigator, AOL was the only all-in-one service provider for e-mail and surfing the web, and internet pornography was 10 second videos of the Pamela and Tommy Lee video (harder to find was the Janeen Lundermann heterosexual movie with Bret Michaels).

Anyway, I got as far as three posts on this website. It didn't have any graphics, just text. The first two posts are pretty boring as I hadn't developed much of a writing skill but the third could sort of pass for a post on this website. It was written around the holiday season of 1999, hence the year end recap. I had graduated from college that year as well hence the relative immaturity of my mindset at the time. Again this is from 1999 so bear with me....


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Hello again everyone out there. Here are my most recent observations on society I've had the past few weeks:

1.) One of the lowest forms of society are those who buy a bunch of scratch-off lotto tickets at a newsstand. They don't buy the same lotto tickets either, oh no. They have to buy a few $5 "Double Down" ones, a couple $2 "Lucky 7's", and a $10 "Strike it Rich" scratch-off. Even worse, they get upset if the vendor is out or God forbid, hands you the wrong one. Meanwhile I'm standing behind them with a fifty cent newspaper and a dollar bill in my hand.

2.) Ah yes, Christmas time is here. For the first time, my roommates and I bought our very own tree. For all the good vibes Christmas brings you, just go to any mall right now and see society at its most primal.

3.) Is it me or is black the color of choice by women when they go out on the weekends these days?

4.) Tuesday is by far the worst day of the week and here's why. Monday you feel refreshed from the weekend and ready to work for a bit. Wednesday is the middle of the week day and you can actually start thinking about Friday. Thursday you feel the weekend almost upon you and you can go out Thursday night without feeling too guilty because all you have to do is push it a bit on Friday. Friday is simply Friday and its all good. Tuesdays just suck because its the beginning of the week and the weekend seems so far away. Sunday's sort of suck too because you know you have the week ahead of you but at least you have the day off.

5.) Italian food + drinking = rough night. I've heard three people in the past two weeks have a bad reaction to this combination.

6.) My favorite three Christmas songs are "The 12 Days of Christmas" by Jim Denver and the Muppets, "Do They Know its Christmas Time" by all those 80's British rock stars, and though its not exactly a Christmas song, "Life In a Northern Town", the song that goes "hey mum mum mum in the night now."

7.) To all people who have pocket books: PLEASE have your wallet open to pay for something before you have to go digging around for exact change. The cash register has plenty of change, hence the name cash register.

Since it is the end of the year I thought I'd give my 1999 best and worst awards. Mind you these are only opinions but they are not subject to debate:


Top 3 TV Shows:

1.) VH1 Behind The Music: A godsend of a show for a music lover like me.

2.) The Simpsons: Still going strong.

3.) The Tom Green Show: I love how he gets people fired up.


Worst TV Show:

1.) Any re-run of Full House on syndication: Between Bob Saget's cheesy acting and the gay music they play at the end of the episode while the "moral lesson" of the show is being preached makes me want to throw my dinner at the TV.


Best TV Movie:

1.) First hour of "Y2K: The Movie": It was cool to see NYC go dark and panic in the streets.

Worst TV Movie:

1.) Second hour of "Y2K: The Movie": The whole Nuclear fallout thing was a bit too much for me to believe.


Top 3 CD Acquisitions

1.) Filter’s “Title of Record” : Solid CD all around.

2.) The Cure’s “Galore”: Helps get you through anything.

3.) Stevie B’s Greatest Hits: I have no idea what Stevie B looks like, nor did I know it was him singing these songs, but this has to be the most underrated CD in the past few years.


Worst 3 CD Acquisitions

1.) DJ Skribble: A little too hardcore for me.

2.) “Drive Me Crazy” Soundtrack: Just plain dumb. What was I thinking?

3.) “Gran Tourismo Soundtrack”: What did I expect? Its a soundtrack to a video game.


Top 3 Movies

1.) American Beauty: The perfect dysfunctional family

2.) Go!: The E scenes are classic

3.) American Pie: Though intoxicated while watching this move, I thought it was a riot.


Worst Movie

1.) Virus: Any movie that involves robots killing people on a boat in the middle of the ocean and using their body parts to make a super-killing robot is sort of strange.

Top 3 DVD Acquisitions

1.) The Exorcist: Scariest movie ever made hands down.

2.) Michael Jackson HIStory- Greatest Videos: The Smooth Criminal video is worth the price of admission alone.

3.) The Matrix: Awesome special effects.


Worst 3 DVD Acquisitions

1.) Skinner: Hey it was $5.99 and had Traci Lords in it.

2.) Henry and June: I will never buy another artsy movie again.

3.) The Babysitter’s Seduction: Alright, I guess I had the testosterone going when I bought this one but my friend Keith talked me into it.


Top 3 Nights

1.) July 4th Providence. The video says it all.

2.) July 17th West Islip. I’d need a whole new Observer to talk about this night.

3.) August 21st Boston. Bonding night


Worst Night

1.) November 21st (my birthday spent in the bathroom of a bar).


Top 3 Moments

1.) Getting my degree from Boston College.

2.) Being in the mosh pit at Woodstock while Limp Bizkit was playing.

3.) Mets/Braves Game Five 15 inning thriller. Boston to NY and back to Boston at 3am.


Worst 3 Moments

1.) Walking through a bar drunk with my shirt sticking out of my fly. On my birthday too.

2.) Realizing a part of my life was over.

3.) Blacking out on the way home from a work party and having no clue how I got from downtown Boston to my apartment.


Maybe ending on the worst three moments of the year isn’t the cheeriest thing to do but its Christmas time so everyone is feeling on the up as it is. Thanks again for reading. If you have any observations to pass on to me that you’d like to see here, e-mail me them. I hope to have a Millennium edition before the year is out. Happy Holidays to everyone, and ladies, watch out for guys who wear mistletoe on their belt over the holidays. I hope I just didn’t give anyone any ideas…

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I actually agree with the first part of this post in terms of all of the observations. I still think Tuesday is the lousiest day of the week for above mentioned reasons and women still use black as the go to color. I can't recall the Y2K movie at all. I'm embarrassed about my movie and CD picks but I'm not ashamed of saying it (The Babysitter Seduction was a TERRIBLE movie starring a pre-Felicity Keri Russel). However, I still stand behind the fact that "Smooth Criminal" is the best music video EVER made.

Until tomorrow...

Time For The Weekend

No major post today as I'm completely exhausted and my mind is pretty much mush. I'll throw in the a few tidbits before the weekend kicks off.

1.) Caught most of the VP debate last night though I'll admit I fell asleep a little more than an hour into it. About 80% of it involved Palin and Biden talking about Obama's and McCain's voting records rather than the issues themselves. I did like how Palin called Biden, "O'Biden" at some point, but that was by accident.

2.) Was in a high school today and walked by a locker that was "gift wrapped" for some one's birthday. I'm glad kids still do that although it was pretty lame, but mainly feel bad for the custodians that I'm sure need to clean up the mess.

3.) I'm trying hard to get into the baseball playoffs but with no NY team and the Red Sox starting off on the left coast, its hard to get into Philly/Brewers and Tampa Bay/White Sox. I'd love to get into the Cubs/Dodgers but those games have been over by the 5th inning so far.

4.) I was going to write a post about Paul Newman but couldn't get very far since I'm not a big fan of PG movies (aka Pre-Godfather). I do remember him from "The Color Of Money" which was just okay (lots of dialogue in between cool billiards action) but you can just watch Eric Clapton's video "Its in the Way That You Use It" to get the gist of the movie. I did see "Road To Perdition" that he was in and enjoyed that. Tom Hanks plays a hit man and Jude Law and a pre James Bond Daniel Craig play the bad guys. Paul Newman's best movie to me is "Twilight", not because its his true last starring role, but because its Reese Witherspoon's only nude scene on film....so far.

Until Monday...

Classic VP Debate - 1992

In anticipation of Thursday night's Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, I think its a great time to go back in time and take a look at one of the more DISASTROUS debates in election history. Let's turn our attention to 1992 and the VP debate between Al Gore, Dan Quayle, and Admiral James Stockdale.

1992 was a rare year for a presidential election in that the independent candidate, Ross Perot, had enough support to justify him being involved in debates. His VP candidate was the closest you could find to a kindly grandfather. Unfortunately, like most kindly grandfathers, Admiral Stockdale was very hard of hearing, couldn't see, and was perhaps going a bit senile.

For those of you who don't recall the classic debate, here are a couple of clips. I vividly remembering this happening and being completely surprised that this was actually occurring.



Wow, I almost forgot about how odd this was. How can you forget your own opening statement? Or if you didn't forget it, at least know enough to have your glasses on. Let's move on...



Whoops! Now he forgot his hearing aid? I'm not here to pick on this poor guy. I'm just using it as an example of how a couple of innocent mishaps can destroy a presidential campaign. Let's hope the same thing doesn't happen Thursday night.

Classic Game Shows - Love Connection

This show popped into my head the other night and I can't figure out why. Was it the old catchy theme song? The premise that I never understood? I honestly think I was doing some kind of math problem involving percentages and all of a sudden the cool noise made when they showed the percentages of the studio audience picking the proper date popped into my head (see video below). Anyway, I can't recall much about the show but that's what this website is all about!

Love Connection was a game show on in the late 80's and it was on here in NY either on around 4ish or on at night around 7:30pm before the network shows came on. I'm pretty sure it was on NBC too. The show was hosted by Chuck Woolery who I loved as host of Scrabble (another post down the road). Anyway, the show involved a lonely bachelor or bachelorette looking for love and they'd get to pick from three single people. Before the show aired, they had already had their date. The audience saw the three people the contestant could choose from and then Chuck would ask the audience who they thought would be the best match...hence the percentage noise thing.

Anyhow, Chuck would bring the date on to discuss how it went. Then he'd reveal who the audience said was the best pick. If the date went well and the audience picked the right date, Chuck would give them $75 to go on another date....wow. You potentially embarrass yourself on national TV and all you get for a second date is enough to buy a bottle of wine and some condoms.

Here were my thoughts as a 10 year old kid watching this show:
- What is a date?
- Why spend $75 to take somebody out to dinner when you could buy all six parts of the Devastator transformer...and still have money left over to buy Skeletor.
- Why would people think that one person is better than another in terms of dating. Aren't they teaching me in school that all people are created equally?
- Why did the two people just kiss there?
- On the flip side, why are the two people so angry at each other?
- Why does Chuck Woolery keep saying "Be back in two and two" before going to commercial break?

I didn't watch many episodes of this show since it didn't involve a specific game with neat concepts, like Card Sharks or Joker's Wild. It really was just a lot of talking. Still I'm sure old people ate this up.

Ironically enough the exact inverse of this show is "Blind Date" since all you saw was the actually date and no follow up or how the date was chosen.

Here's an example of how the show worked. No need to watch the whole thing unless you have 8 minutes to kill. I watched most of this segment and I love Chuck breaking up half the time. The catchy theme song is a must listen. To show I'm not completely crazy, the "percentage changing" noise occurs at the seven minute mark. It also completely reiterated my faith in how boring this show really was.