Borderline Fantastic

Can I pull off a themed links day?

LEGO’s 50th Anniversary was this week. Gizmodo posted a bunch of the most popular ones. I was able to find all that made up my LEGO town. Yes, I had a LEGO town, with streets and all. Not many real towns were as lucky as mine to have an airport and shuttle launch pad. The tradeoff? Alien attacks.

Hershey has some candy and apparently its packaging is similar to drugs. Crack, cocaine, and heroin are all mentioned. They are actually Ice Breakers, which I wouldn’t call candy. Anyway, I didn’t think they looked like drugs from looking at them. I don’t think any kids would thought so either, before now. If there was some sort of mixup between this candy and drugs, I think you are buying your candy from the wrong store …

Like perhaps this Pizza Place at Penn State where the most popular pizza was the Marijuana Lovers.He may be 21, but I think he grabbed the drugs instead of the candy. I don’t know where Brian Callaway (the writer of the story) is hoping to get in the newspaper business if he isn’t going to mention whether or not those slippers growled with each step.

Shaun White is how old now? Says here he’s 21. I think he’s won about 300 X Games Golds. Here he is pulling off a 1260. If he wasn’t so good at everything, then I’d hate him less.

Most hockey players are kids these days, at least the good ones. Here are some Penguins doing an ad for a car dealership. I respect the dealership for using artistic license and going with the non-English speaking players.

Sick of these kids yet? How many can you beat up?

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I’m trying to keep an open mind when it comes to the Johan Santana trade.

-The Mets had to give up 4 of their Top 10 prospects. This will hurt them down the road. Although I’d be much happier if they threw in Fernando Martinez as well.
-They are going to pay him a ton. Although being in New York and having a new stadium next year, this isn’t an issue.
-Santana only went 15-13 last year. I guess you could argue that the Twins weren’t as good as last year.

Of course I’d want Santana on my team. Problem is, my team is the Phillies. We would never get him. We don’t have the talent in the system to make a trade like that. If we gave him a contract like that we wouldn’t sign anyone else. Then how would we sign guys like Adam Eaton and Pedro Feliz?

Alright, I’m a little scared. Are you ready for the Santana/Hamels rivalry?

After all the years of waiting for American Gladiators to come back it finally did on Sunday Night. It was terrible. As things went on the skip ahead button on my remote became my friend. The events are tolerable but the amount of talking to the contestants and gladiators is unnecessary. The dialog all seems scripted and Hulk is just horrible.

Some thoughts …
- Who is this mystery announcer? Why isn’t he on screen? He seems a little too into some of the gladiators.
- Hey Hulk, when talking to the contestants, ‘So, you’re a fireman’ is not a question. Do not point the microphone in the persons direction after saying that and expect an answer. Good thing the fireman can read cue cards.
- There was a gladiator joust specialist for both the men and the women. The female one seemed to do alright. The male gladiator got DQ’d on both matchups. If you are the specialist you shouldn’t be getting DQ’d. When you are 3-feet taller than your opponent you should be able to take care of business.
- They ruined assault. The contestants seem scared. I think it might be the clear shields. Now they can see the ball coming and they flinch. What is up with the hidden arrow in the sand?
- The multiple angle replays at different speeds with dramatic music are unnecessary.
- The thumbs down and good bye music whenever anyone falls needs to go.
- They need to stop with the countdown right before an event and then cutting to commercial. In the joust it was 3-2-1-Commercial. Who is watching saying, ‘Well I wasn’t going to keep watching but now I’m hooked.’?
- Wasn’t the old Hang Tough a lot bigger? Seems like its only 4 rows of rings now.
- When they were coming up with gladiator names, where there any other suggestions before coming up with Wolf?
- Is the new Siren deaf?
- Aren’t their uniform requirements for gladiators?
- On the rings the women went up again Fury. She got the first contestant in her signature move ‘the suicide squeeze.’ Its the first time, how does she already have a signature move? Has she been competing in some sort of Hang Tough that is not related to AG?
- The ref is pretty intense.
- They better not have gotten rid of the hamster ball game.
- The winners of this season become gladiators next year. Will they go on steroids between seasons and come back huge? With there be a competition to see which gladiators aren’t coming back?

New events: Earthquake, and the bridge (I forget what it’s actually called). Neither one is all that great. Earthquake is just wrestling while trying not to fall off. The bride one is a little better. It would be one I’d be willing to include in my American Gladiator Experience.

The Eliminator: Swimming under fire? What is the point of the spool? The hand bike needs to be oiled. Are the contestants really that bad that they can’t make it up the treadmill incline?

It may just be that I haven’t watched an entire episode of the old on is a while but I don’t remember it being nearly this bad, at least the dialog.

At this point I’m going to stick with it but I’m going to be quick on the skip ahead button. If they want to keep me around they better keep introducing new events or at least new wrinkles in the current events. In the later rounds they should switch up The Eliminator. I’m not tuning in for my favorite contestant. I’m not going to have one if they keep making them say stupid things.

I was looking around at music download sites the other day. I like iTunes for its convenience but I also hate it because of the DRM. It works because the only time I listen to my purchased iTunes music is on my computer or on my iPods. However, I can’t listen at work since I don’t have iTunes and can’t have an iPod or burned CDs there. For that reason just about all of my purchases have been actual CDs. They are a little more expensive than the downloads and I have to go out and get them when I want them. At least with the physical CD I am guaranteed to have the music in any format. On the downside my CD case is filing up and hitting random on a single disc isn’t all that exciting.

Amazon caught my eye because they are only doing DRM-free MP3 downloads. They are also trying to be cheaper. Popular singles are $. 89 and most albums are $8.99. I decided to try it out on Wednesday. I downloaded the new Saves the Day album. It cost $7.99. When I checked the actual CD was $13.99 on Amazon. The first thing you have to do is get the Amazon MP3 Downloader. Its available on Mac and Windows, obviously I’m using the Mac version. You can tell the downloader where you want your files stored and if you want the songs to be added to iTunes automatically. Once you have that you download a file for the music you’ve purchased. It then opens up the downloader. It does just what you expect, saves the files and adds them to iTunes. Then they’ll get sync’d up with your iPod next time. I believe the files are 256kbps, higher than I used to encode my mp3s. After purchasing I put them somewhere so that I could download the songs to my computer at work, they work with Windows Media Player. Its all working great so far. Last night I grabbed another album and a few songs I’d been meaning to get off iTunes.

Today, Sony announced they are going DRM-free. Still not sure where they will be selling those tracks. Still, with the major labels going DRM-free in some capacity there are going to be a lot of different options. For now Amazon looks like it works for me. The mp3s are easily to deal with and don’t have any compatibility problems.  I’ll be going with them until I find something more interesting.