Tonight’s episode of Survivor Cook Islands started off with the usual recap of the last episode.

Manihiki camp:

Everyone’s trying to get the first going and they’re having one hell of a rough time getting it going, or at least Nathan was. Rebecca steps up to the plate, gives it a few goes and BAM! Fire. Looks like the girls of Manihiki made the right decision booting Sekou and aren’t going to need the boys around for much other than challenges.

Aitutaki camp:

Everyone’s out in the rocks spear fishing and they’re all doing a really good job. Ozzy comes up with a few fish and the girls manage to nail a few crabs and even some clams. Tonight’s dinner is going to be a seafood beach bash.

Once back to homebase Christina tells her story about being a cop, getting shot in the arm and almost having to lose the arm. That is one tough chick, better watch out for her.

Apparently there are chickens running around on the islands and, by the looks of it, a fair amount of them. Ozzy rigs a trap in the hopes of catching some and ends up catching 1 chicken first shot. Mmm Chicken!

Puka camp:

Yul has the same idea for the chickens, puts together his own chicken trap, road runner box balanced on a stick style. Yul sets the trap, waits, pulls the rope and nails two chickens first try. Take that Ozzy!

After scoring some chicken for everyone Yul has a chat with Becky and they form a Korean alliance, sorta? Could be interesting to see how that plays out. I don’t trust her myself.

Rarotonga camp:

Jonathan gets back from Exile Island (cue monty python style “Yay”) and right away he steps up, takes charge and puts the tribe into action… sorta. The tribe has been sleeping on the ground since they got there and Jon wants to get a floor together so the tribe can sleep, you know, NOT on the ground. Amazingly enough, Adam seems to be the only person stupid enough to argue about NOT spending time making a floor cause he doesn’t see what good it will do. Wow, apparently he’s never watched Survivor before, idiot.

Continue Reading: (”Survivor Cook Islands Recap: Billy Eliminated”)

Yay! It’s that time of year again. The Georgia Straight has just released the much coveted and sought after Best of Vancouver… edition!

The Georgia Straight has always been my favorite local rag and the Best of Vancouver edition has always been my favorite edition. The Straight is a really good source for information about Vancouver, from restaurants to the local music scene, they pretty much cover it all. Though, I have to admit, it’s not that often that I find an awe inspiring article in the rag, I mostly read it to get info about bands coming to town and shows and events that are happening soon. But every now and then I find an article that’s pretty damn good.

The Best of Vancouver edition of the Georgia Straight is by far the most popular edition of the paper and is a great way to find new restaurants to try. However, when it comes to things like “best local band”, whoever voted obviously didn’t vote very well.

The Best of Vancouver edition of the Straight should be available across Vancouver now, so find a big black box next to an ugly orange and tacky green box, and grab a paper out of it. The best of edition is always worth a read, even if you only read the best of section. And don’t forget, unlike those other crappy papers you have to pay for and the even worse ad laden freebies, the Georgia Straight is 100% FREE and actually worth picking up!

Georgia Straight
Georgia Straight Best Of Vancouver
All Things Vancouver

The BC Persons With Aids Society is putting on the 21st Annual Walk For Life on September 24th, 2006 in Vancouver.

“On June 15th, 1986, the British Columbia Persons With AIDS Society (BCPWA) launched the first AIDS WALK in Canada. By 1997, walks were held in more than 120 cities across Canada and are now coordinated on the same day in September under the name WALK for LIFE. The WALK continues to increase community awareness and to raise funds for direct services for persons living with HIV and AIDS.”

This years event will be held on September 24th, 2006 and will begin in beautiful Stanley Park. All those interested in attending will get to choose between a 10k walk around the Stanley Park Seawall or a 2k walk around Lost Lagoon.

Registration opens at 8:30am where coffee, snacks and pre-walk entertaiment will be provided. 10:00am will see the start of the opening ceremonies and at 11:00am the 21st Annual Walk for Life will officially begin and see thousands of people treking around Stanley Park.

To learn more about the 21st Annual Walk for Life and to get further details on the even, go to: http://bcpwa.org/get_involved/wflsummary/

If you would like to donate money to support the BC Persons With Aids Society, you can do so at their website: http://bcpwa.org/

I came across this video while doing my daily rounds and had to post it on here.

I’m not a star wars fan by any means, but I got a kick out of this video where a guy dressed up in full Jedi attire walks into a car lot looking to buy a car. The best part of the video is that the salesman is so desperate to make the sale he’s hardly even phased when Darth Vader makes an apperance and the two do battle, baguette style.

Source: SalesAllStars.com

Tonight was the premiere of NBC’s third season of the Biggest Loser and it was a good one. I already have a few clear favorites and a few strong dislikes. I think this is going to be a really good season and we should be see a whole lotta weight loss. Now, onto the Biggest Loser Recap:

We start off with 50 contestants, one from each state in the US. However, only 14 lucky contestants will get to stay at the Biggest Loser Ranch. The remaining 36 contestants will return to their homes and continue on with exercising and dieting. At the end of the season the two Biggest Loser’s of the 36 will return and compete for the big prize.

Of course, Caroline Rhea returns as the loveable host, with trainer Bob Harper at her side, but the hardcore trainer, Jillian Michaels is no where to be seen. Instead, the newest trainer for the biggest loser is and petty blonde Kim Lions. I hope she’s got as much spunk as Jillian did, she was great!

The show starts off with all 50 contestants lined up along the top of a hill just outside the biggest loser ranch, which makes for quite a site and one heck of a cool intro piece.

It’s announced that all 50 contestants combined consume over 1-million callories a day. That’s over 2 1/2 times the average/needed amount… Wow.

All 50 contestants step onto a massive weight scale and the numbers start flying by, not slowing down until hitting the 13,000 lbs mark. The total weight of all 50 contestants, a staggering 14,384 lbs. Thats a crazy average weight of 287.68 lbs PER PERSON.

All 50 contestants are lined up and set to doing drills right away. Jumping jacks, jogging in place and taebo style stuff while both Bob Harper and Kim Lions run up and down the rows, talking to people and watching for who they want on their teams. After sizing up the contestants, the trainers select their teams and everyone was off to their first individual weigh in’s:

Bob Harper’s Blue Team:

1. 255lbs - Tiffany, Texas
2. 321lbs - Bobby, Tennesse
3. 308lbs - Brian, California
4. 236lbs - Melinda, Alabama
5. 365lbs - Marty, Missouri
6. 260lbs - Amy, Maryland
7. 407lbs - Erik, New York

Kim Lion’s Red Team:

1. 358lbs - Ken, Washington
2. 262lbs - Kai, Alaska
3. 404lbs - Nelson, Massachusetts
4. 247lbs - Pam, Indiana
5. 307lbs - Wylie, Flordia
6. 223lbs - Heather, Utah
7. 245lbs - Jennifer, Minnesota

Continue Reading: (”Reality TV: Biggest Loser Recap”)

The summer season of reality TV has all but come to an end now, as the finales of Big Brother and Rock Star Supernova have been and gone, it’s time to kick off another season of reality TV.

The fall season of reality TV is upon us! With Survivor Cook Islands and Amazing Race 10 kicking everything off, there are another two shows set to join the rotation tonight! Tonight we get to see the premiers of not only two brand new season of reality TV, but of a brand new TV network as well!

America’s Next Top Model, which used to be featured on UPN, is now proudly being aired on the brand spankin’ new CW Television Network. America’s Next Top Model kicks off a brand new season in mere minutes (8:00pm PST) with a 2-hour season premiere. This season pits a new cast of 13 not so lovely ladies against eachother for the big prize and supermodel stardom. I do have to admit though, from looking at the pictures of all this seasons contestants, I only find 3 of the 13 to be attractive, and the twins (they have to be twins?), just creep me right out.

Show Info
America’s Next Top Model (2-hour premiere)
September 20th, 2006
8:00pm PST
CW Network
(BC Shaw Channel 13 & 14)

Don’t miss it!

Biggest Loser also premieres tonight on NBC. The Biggest Loser has been one of my favorite reality TV series since I got addicted to the first season. I lost a bit of interest when they switched over to doing family editions where no eliminations occured and each series ran only one or two shows, but now we’re back to the real thing again! This season also has a funky new twist. Instead of two teams fighting to lose the most weight, there will be 50 contestants, one representing each state of the U.S. If I recall from what I read a while ago, the 50 contestants will be worked down to 36 almost right away and than all but 12 - 14 of the contestants will be sent home to do their best on their own at home, leaving the remaining contestants to battle it out at the ranch (at least I assume it’ll be at the ranch, maybe?). This is one reality TV series I have been looking forward to for a long time now. Thanks NBC for bringing it back again!

Show Info
The Biggest Loser (2-hour premiere)
September 20th, 2006
8:00pm EST
NBC
(BC Shaw Channel 6 & 16)

Now, if you read the show times for both of these shows, you know I have a bit of a problem. They’re premiering two shows I really want to watch, both 2-hours long, at the same time on two different channels! How dare they! I can’t stand flipping back and forth with reality TV, I have to watch it straight through so I don’t miss anything. I STILL haven’t decided which show I am going to watch tonight and I’ll have to find a way to get the other show tomorrow (I have no VCR :(). Man I wish I could get a TiVo.

America’s Next Top Model
The Biggest Loser
Reality TV Recaps

Oxford Dictionary recently added over 1000 new words to their comprehensive online dictionary. Some of the words are stupid, some are fun and some are incredibly hard to pronounce, but now they’re all officially words.

Amung the list of over 1000 words added to the Oxford English Dictionary are:

• Bada-bing
• Five-O
• Gay-Friendly
• Carpet Bombing
• Islamophobia
• Hard-Ass
• Disneyfication
• Wi-Fi

I’ve yet to decide what is more frightening: the fact that “words” like Bada-Bing and Five-O are now in the dictionary or the fact that the short little list above reflects incredibly well the general state of affairs in North America in only a few words.

My suggestion to you all, go through the list of over 1000 brand spankin’ new words and do the best you can to integrate a few new ones into your conversations everyday. I’ve already got a few nice ones picked out myself, though they’re going to be awfully hard to drop into everyday conversations:

• Pneumatomachi, n. - post-classical Latin Pneumatomachi, plural of Pneumatomachos adversary of the Holy Spirit (6th cent.)
• Polyyne, n. - Any of a class of organic compounds containing two or more carbon-carbon triple bonds, esp. in a chain of conjugated single and triple bonds.
• Polyadenylation, n. - The attachment of a polyadenylate moiety to a molecule (esp. messenger RNA).

Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford Dictionary New Words List

Yup, you read the title right. Jack Nicholson, which just happens to be one of my all time favorite actors, is working on a new Martin Scorsese directed movie entitled “The Departed”.

Jack Nicholson plays a homicidal mobster with a sexual complex. The catch is, it was Jack’s idea for his character to have a sexual complex. Looks like Jacky boy is getting twisted in his old age, good man! All the more reason to like him.

Jack Nicholson told Rolling Stone Magazine:

“I thought it would be more frightening if my character had a sexual component … so I called Marty up and said, ‘Look, I just thought of what would be an interesting scene of [my character] having wild sex. And in this scene with two girls, one of the girls is wearing a strap-on’ … This was my idea and improvisational, and Marty went for it.”

All I have to say is: Jack, you’re my hero. I want to grow up to be just like you!

Source
Jack Nicholson Wiki
Jack Nicholson Movies

Wow, it’s only 8:15am and I’m already handing out the Stupid Person Of The Day Award. That’s got to be some kind of record, but this guy is obviously very deserving of such a prestigious title.

A drunk chinese migrant worker (those are the best kind) decided to get a close look at the cuddly little panda bears and jump the fence into the panda bear enclosure. Well, as cute and cuddly as panda bears look, they’re really not all that friendly, and they’re pretty damn big. So naturally, big Mr. panda doesn’t take to friendly to his new alcohol saturated roomate and decides to take a big ole’ bite out of him. Naturally, in retaliation, the drunken fence jumper decided the best thing to do would be to bite the panda back!

Zhang Xinyan of central Henan had apparently drank for jugs (Jugs?) of beer at a near by restaraunt before heading for the Beijing Zoo, where “He felt a sudden urge to touch the panda with his hand.” The best part of this all, is that the panda was asleep! What do you think is going to happen if you jump into a wild animals cage and try to pet it while it’s sleeping? Maybe it’ll wake up and take a big ass bite out of you, just a guess though.

Oh man, it just keeps getting better. Apparently the panda got startled and bite Zhang Xinyan’s leg and, of course, he wasn’t having none of that and started to kick the panda with his other leg, in turn, the panda swung around and bit his other leg, lol!

“No one ever said they would bite people,” Zhang said. “I just wanted to touch it. I was so dizzy from the beer. I don’t remember much.” Well, it happens to the best of us. Most of us just don’t decide to get up close and friendly with Pandas!

Ya Mingxia, a spokeswoman for Beijing Zoo said “We’re not considering punishing him now, he’s suffered quite a bit of shock.” Really? Ya think? Maybe next time he gets drunk and decides to get cuddly with an animal he’s choose something friendly, like a crocodile.

Source

Img by RichmondNightMarket.com

My lovely wife and I went to the Vancouver Flea Market for the first time with some friends this weekend and I have to admit, I wasn’t very impressed. It’s big, there are tons of booths and a whole crap load of stuff, but none of it was really any good. Only a few booths had things that sparked my interest and a lot of the booths will still closed when we got there (around 10am).We had a great time rummaging around through everything and our friends picked up some cool little trinkets, but we left with a $1 pack of AAA batteries. I do have to admit though, the Vancouver Flea Market is a great place to get batteries for really cheap.The best booth of the entire place was a guy selling a ton of records, all lot of which are pretty hard to find. He had a great selection of old school punk records and a copy of the original broadcasting of Orson Welles War of the Worlds for $12, which was a great price and super tempting, but for whatever reason, I decided not to pick it up.

The Vancouver Flea Market is a pretty interesting place to check out and is a great way to spend soem time rummaging around on the weekend, but for all the cool goodies and yummy food I think I’ll stick to the Richmond Night Market.

After we all got done digging through the Vancouver Flea Market we headed to a fantastic Vegan chinese restaurant called Bo Kong. Bo Kong is located at 3068 Main St. and serves up a fantastic assortment of all Vegan chinese food and Dim Sum on the weekends. We’d been there once before with the same friends and loved the place, though neither of us have ever had Dim Sum so we decided to give that shot this time. I have to say, it was pretty damn fantastic. We ended up walking out of Bo Kong with super full tummies and a measly $50 bill (including tip) for all four of us. I highly recommend giving Bo Kong a go and, while you’re there, you HAVE to try the Deep Fried Bean Curd Skin Rolls in Black Bean Sauce. We’ve had the dish both times we’ve gone and it is absolutely delicious!

Vancouver Flea Market
Richmond Night Market
Bo Kong Vegan Chinese Resaurant