One more time

I saw the "hit me baby one more time" last Thursday for the first time. That was different. It was pretty good. Yes, better than American Idol.

I thought Wang Chung and Howard Jones were technically the best and sounded the best. They all sounded good though. And Sophie and Irene looked good.

Next time I might just watch the first half where they play their hits, the songs I care about. The second half was a bit of a washout, and the energy level in the crowd was a bit less. I didn't know or care about any of the contemporary songs except Howard Jones nice cover of Dido. The rest was just noise to me.

Lots of crowd shots by the cameras. I noticed all the crowd shots seemed to be of good looking women wearing fashionable dresses. I ain't complaining about it. I wonder if the producers planted models in the crowd for some of those shots - if they did that's fine with me.

Irene was a deserving enough winner. She had a big advantage that her song was the biggest hit. That Flashdance song strikes a deep chord in a lot of people. People may have been voting for the song they liked the best over the merits of the performances. What a feeling was my favorite of the original hit songs so I wasn't upset to hear it again at the end.

what a ripoff

Look at the June 9 Atlantic Payday payout. $2 a ticket and not a single $1,000 winner. Let alone $10,000 , $50,000 , or set for life.

Luckily I got my ticket for free courtesy of Ultramar reveal a deal. Thanks Ultramar. I did win $2. I kept the money.

Do not waste your money playing the lottery. It is a ripoff.

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Also don't play the video lotto. You'll just lose money. Years ago, I knew someone whose mother owned a bar we sometimes went to. She said that when she saw how much money the bar was making off the VLTs she never played them again.

Think about it, the VLTs wouldn't be there if the bar lost money on them.

Rob, Amber and the Teletubbies

So Rob and Amber got married. Somehow I missed it. I also missed the Amazing Race, Survivor All Stars, and the original Survivors where Rob and Amber originally appeared. Oh well. Somehow I don't regret missing any of it.

My older son was born in 1998. When he was very young, he liked to watch the Teletubbies. I also happened to like the Teletubbies. My son liked the Noo-noo the best.

I would watch the Teletubbies and think to myself that they had kind of a self-referential existance. The Teletubbies job was to be the Teletubbies - to go through their lives just being themselves in their own space. Enough people found them interesting to watch to make it economically viable.

Rob and Amber have now achieved this as regular people. Their job is to go through life as Rob and Amber and their experiences are recorded as they go and apparently enough people watch to make it worth showing. So their "job" then is to appear as themselves on reality tv shows.

Thanks but no thanks. I much prefer the Teletubbies. The original and more interesting.

Vikings and Eagles

Some people have been saying that the Vikings will use the #1 draft pick from the Moss trade to get a receiver. To me this doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would they give up Moss to bring in someone who won't be as good as Moss? In that case they should have just kept Moss.

I think the Vikings might use the #1 pick from the Raiders to reshape the team. They could take a defensive player with the plan to shift the focus from outscoring opponents to winning based on defense, ball control, clock control and field position. So instead of Dante throwing 35 times a game with 3-5 tds, and needing 30+ points to win, they might try cutting Dante back to 25 throws a game, with more emphasis on the running game and defense. So instead of Dante having to win every game, he can just manage the game, kind of the way McNabb does. If they need Dante to pull it out in the 4th or overtime a handful of times a year then he has shown he has the ability to do it.

For the Eagles, I can't understand why they did the onside kick in the Superbowl after they scored the TD. Once they failed to recover the onside, New England just punted them to coffin corners with no timeouts and no time to move the ball. Game over.

If they had did a regular kickoff, they could have made New England start inside their 25. Hold them to three and out and they would get the ball back around their 40 yard line with the 50 seconds left. Even with no timeouts, there would have been plenty of time to move it into range for a chance at a tying field goal.

A great era for sports

I was talking to a co-worker in the lunch room and we agreed that recent years have been a good era to be a sports fan. For me I'm especially fond of the period around 1980-1999 or so.

There was kind of something for everyone. Football is my game. For football there was Barry Sanders, Emmitt Smith, Terrell Davis, Joe Montana in their primes. On defence was Lawrence Taylor and Reggie White in their primes.

My Jets had a few good teams, especially in the early 80s. Those are my favorite Jets teams with Richard Todd, Mark Gastineau, Joe Klecko, Wesley Walker, Freeman McNeil.

For hockey there was Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux in their primes. Plus the high drama of the Canada Cups in 1984 and 1987.

For baseball fans in Canada both the Jays and Expos had some good teams. The Blue Jays champions of 1992-1993 was a great time. I watched so many games back then.

For basketball it was Michael Jordan in his prime.

Godfather

I am now a Godfather. I am the Godfather to my sister's baby son.

That is interesting because I'm not actually Catholic. My sister's husband is Catholic and their baby is now Catholic. The Godmother is the baby's aunt on his dad's side.

Apparently the rules have changed and I can be a godparent. Yay for me.

I like the Catholics. If I switched away from protestant then I'd have to become Catholic. Then I could join the Knights of Columbus. They seem to have a lot of fun. My wife and children are Catholic.

The Catholics have it good. They can drink and gamble and seemingly have more fun. However it is generally not true that Catholics carry around cards and dice in their pockets all the time.

One of my favorite Catholic stories is around the KofC in a Halifax church. One time at one meeting for some reason the bar wasn't open. One member was so upset about this that he left that KofC chapter and joined the KofC in a different church.

When I hear the term Godfather, it makes me think about that classic movie by the same name. I wonder if many others think this too. My dad says The Godfather is his favorite movie of all time. It is a classic. My favorite movie is Apocalypse Now.