Month: September 2006

Reality TV: Biggest Loser Recap

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

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Reality TV: America’s Next Top Model and Biggest Loser Premieres Tonight

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

Bada-Bing dodges Five-O on way to Gay-Friendly Oxford Dictionary

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

Martin Scorsese + Jack Nicholson + A Dildo = Must See Movie

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

Stupid People: Panda Bites Man, Man Bites Back

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

Vancouver: Flea Market and Bo Kong


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

Vancouver: CIBC Run For The Cure

The CIBC Run For The Cure is fast approaching, and though I won’t be participating myself, another Vancouver Blogger will be and I urge you to offer her any support you can.

Rebecca of Miss604.com and her husband John of Audihertz.net are both going to be running in the event where all money raised will be donated to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, a very good cause.

Technically, in order to run as a full sponsored participant, which Rebecca is hoping to run as, she will need to raise at least $150. So if you have any spare change sitting around, help out the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation and the CIBC Run For The Cure by going to Miss604.com and sponsoring her via the link in the right hand sidebar.

Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation
CIBC Run For The Cure
Miss604.com
Audihertz.net

Reality TV: Supernova Now Rock Star Supernova

Even before CBS’ hit reality TV series Rock Star Supernova came to an end, the band received their very first, of which there are sure to be many, lawsuit. A band from California known as Supernova, known only for their song “Chewbacca”, which was featured in Clerks, filed the lawsuit against Supernova to prevent the band from taking their name, and rightfully so, they won.

This put Rock Star Supernova winner Lukas Rossi in a bit of a hard spot as he joined Tommy Lee, Jason Newstead and Gilby Clarke in a then nameless band. However, it didn’t take long for the lightbulbs to go off and the band decided to go on using the name Rock Star: Supernova, how original. I am surprised and not surprised all at once at the fact that CBS would let them use said name, as surely CBS has a copyright and TM on the Rock Star: Supernova, or at the very least, Rock Star tag.

According to Reuters, Rock Star: Supernova is planning to drop their debut album, featuring Canadian contest winner Lukas Rossi, on November 21st. In the hopes of pumping the album up a little more the band has decided to release two singles already, “It’s All Love” and “Be Yourself & 5 Other Cliches” on Yahoo! Music.

Rest assured, I will be about as likely to pick up a copy of this, what is certain to be steaming pile of crap, of an album as I am going to pick up Ryan Star’s new album.

Source
Rock Star Supernova