ENJOY SPACE MOUNTAIN A-ROD, I RECOMMEND THE PINEAPPLE SHAVED ICE

You don't have to look far to find my past feelings on A-Rod and now you have to look even less far to find my current feelings on A-Rod. They are as follows...

The LA Angels of Anaheim should sign the bastard. He's good... real good. Sure A-Rod may do things like slap you as he runs down the first base line but he also hits a crapload of home runs and plays decent on defense . If they do sign him I will take back all of my harsh words and offensive graffiti I have thrown in A-Rod's direction over the years. Heck... if he signs with the Dodgers I'll even take it all back. Just don't go to the Red Sox you talented ass.

While some people have the feeling that Joe Torre's west coast swing will bring Alex Rodriguez to the Los Angeles Dodgers I am holding out for the Angels. I believe that in the end Mr. Rodriguez and his disgusting agent Scott Boras will go to the highest bidder and now that Bill Stoneman is no longer the Angels GM they will finally get the "Big Bat" that Arte Moreno has been asking for for the past 3 seasons.

UPDATE: Dodgers and A-Rod news... this is after Torre said he was exchanging voice mail with A-Rod. It also shoots down the Jeff Kent and Larry King story. Who knows what to believe these days?

I'm not alone with my Angels theories. The blogosphere/sports news o sphere agrees with me.

In this one they mention that A-Rod purchased a home in OC... what what?!

In this one we find out that the Angels will persue cheaper options before giving in to paying big money to A-Rod. Note Rev Halofan's comment(he runs the Halos Heaven Blog). I agree. The Angels need leverage in the situation with A-Rod's butthole agent so they are pretending to be dis-interested at the moment.

UPDATE:
After A-Rod's suitors offered him less than the Yankees would have offered; the little babyrod went crying back to the Yankwads and gifted them a contract worth 275 Mil. over 10 years or some horse crap. I'll be practicing my "Booooo" from now until Friday 8/8, Saturday 8/9, and Sunday 8/10 of next year when the Yankees come to play in Anaheim.

LEAKY LINKS

If you'll take a look at the Sights and Sounds to See and Hear and Wear portion of this blog you will see a new link to a hot new website called Look At This Fool. I'm not sure if the site's creator wants to debut this thing yet because he has yet to mention it on his own blog but I'm going ahead and putting it out there for now.

I'm that fool.

IT'S THE WORST

It's the worst when you're less than two weeks away from being unemployed and you've got NOTHING up on the horizon.

It's the worst iPod case EVER. Really, could this be more disgusting?

It's the worst $32.00 you could spend on a gift for your hockey loving friend.

It's the worst Dane Cook movie ever? Probably not(Looking at Jessica Alba for an hour and a half is probably kind of good). This is probably the worst Dane Cook movie ever.

It's the worst when your middle aged single father(your father, not my father) gets a flickr account.

It's the worst when everybody blames you for playing at your worst.

It's the worst movies that make the most money.

It's the worst of the NHL's new jerseys but some say that this is the worst while this might be the worst(because the logo size was changed to be so TINY)

and finally...

It's the worst cell phone gag photo of me ever.

Carbonated Gateway Drugs

Energy Drinks are to Diet Soda what Smoking Marijuana is to Hard Core Drug use... they are both gateways.

Even up to a year ago, if you told me that I would willingly be drinking Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi on a regular basis I would have farted on you and told you to smell what I think of what you just told me.

Today I sit here with a cold can of Diet Pepsi at my side, ready and willing to finish it off. How did I get here? What horrible hypnotic brainwashing process did the major soda companies put me through that would make me accept the diet versions of their far superior(only Coke... regular Pepsi I only drink at Angels games because it is all they have) original colas?

It wasn't the efforts of the soda companies that did it. It was the promise of no calories to threaten my recent weight loss and a shot of caffeine that could lift my heavy eyes from closing the curtain on my day about an hour and a half after lunch. I'm no longer working in a situation where the occasional nod off is OK. As a PA for a small production company in Irvine I used to take a nap in my car during my hour long lunch break. Today I work in a production office which needs to be alert from the start to finish of the day. I sit at my desk and answer the phone while I eat my lunch. OK so I'm tired and I don't want to fall asleep at my desk and I don't want to take in a bunch of calories... this is the obvious reason why I would drink a diet soda, right? Not really.

I'm 25 years old. I've developed my taste for certain things. I've gotten past my childish candy eating no veggies McDonalds cheeseburger days and now eat pretty healthy but diet soda hadn't made it into that "healthy" diet. I don't drink coffee and in the recent past if I really needed a pick me up I'd drink a Coke. But something happened about a year ago while purchasing soda for the MBA company fridge. I bought a case of Coke Zero. My intentions were to try the new soda and see if it was anything like real Coke. What I found was that it was 1000 times better than Diet Coke and almost kinda like real Coke. From then on I switched to Coke Zero whenever I needed a pick me up at work.

The next event in the chain leading to Diet drinks came when I moved to Hollywood. I was working in Irvine down in Orange County but living up in Hollywood. This meant waking up at 6:00 AM every morning, driving through crap traffic, getting off work around 6:00 PM in OC and driving to LA in more crap traffic. I also started working for MLB.COM at Angels Stadium after work in OC that would keep me down there until 10:00 or 11:00 PM. These long days and long distance driving caused me to seek something more powerful than a can of Coke Zero to keep me up for the drive. I began to dabble in sugar free energy drinks. With hardly any calories and TONS OF KICK Sugar Free Rockstar became my nasty diet pick me up soda of choice. If that wasn't available then I could drink two sugar free Red Bulls(same thing as the Rockstar but it comes in smaller cans). These energy drinks are the ultimate bad tasting crappy drinks ever but they were essential to my survival. At this point I had lowered my tastebuds' standards to just above urine. Seriously these drinks taste almost that bad.

So now go back to my production office job and make my only caffeinated choices between regular Coke and Diet Coke/Pepsi? I choose Diet Coke/Pepsi and it's not half bad.

BUSTED BRUNO

While searching for news about the next Sasha Baron Cohen film Bruno I sadly discovered that the film had already been made and released in the year 2000.

Barry Bonds*

The Record, originally uploaded by robindbrown.

Barry Bonds is in Los Angeles this week. Dodgers fans HATE the San Francisco Giants and they HATE Barry even more than that team due to his steroid allegations. The guy juiced up because he couldn't stand to sit back and watch Juicemaster Gaywad Mark McGwire and Slammy Sosa juice their way to the single season home run record. Not only has Bonds surpassed McGwire's single season record he's about to take the all time record from the all time great Hammerin' Hank Aaron.

My roommate and I have season tickets for the Dodgers and will be there for two of this week's games. To commemorate Bonds' chase of home runs number 755, 756 and beyond we've made T-Shirts with big white asterisks on them. This is because whenever you look in the record books and see Bonds' all time career home run record (it's going to happen) you will see one of these * next to it. At the bottom of the page you will see something along the lines of: *Steroid Era or *Some Baseball enthusiasts believe that the widespread use of steroid use during Bonds' career is responsible for inflated individual statistics.... or some shit.

So yeah.. enjoy the * Barry.

If you want to peep us out at the games we will be sporting the tees while sitting in the front row of the "Top Deck." Our seats are almost behind home plate... slightly more to the 3rd base side. Feel free to take pictures, put us on TV, interview us, blog about us... whatever you want.

UPDATE: 8/1/07

Game one was full of booing but no record book making Barry Bonds home runs. It was interesting to say the least. I took my camera and got some sweet pictures of the game.

PEEP OUT THE PHOTOS OF BARRY* VS. DODGER STADIUM GAME 1

DUCK SNOOP

A few weeks ago Derek and I managed to snag some pre-sale tickets to the Anaheim Ducks round 1 playoff game 5 against the Minnesota Wild. This would be the first NHL playoff game either of us had attended. Before the game I anticipated experiencing energy from a crowd and a team that I had not witnessed at the Honda Ponda in all my years of attending hockey games there since 1993. I had attended Anaheim Bullfrogs playoff games(Professional Roller Hockey) back in the mid 90's but they never quite sold out the whole arena.

After fighting traffic for about 50 minutes(not bad considering the potential for freeway hell between LA and OC) we arrived at the Ball Rd off site parking lot in front of a synagogue and found parking in the assistant rabbi's parking space. I wasn't sure if this was wrong but a woman entering the synagogue jokingly(with a smile) commented to us as we got out of the car, "Not bad, the assistant rabbi!"

I had hoped that the crowd would be mostly wearing orange items of clothing to create a sea of bright orange but because the ducks' jerseys are either black or white most people were not wearing orange at all. I was in full hockey dork attire with a bright orange ducks practice jersey on over my hooded sweater. We made it into the Honda Center with about 10 or so minutes to spare before "the show" was going to begin but after a 15 minute adventure into trying to buy BBQ chicken sandwiches we missed the pre-game music video and highlights. The national anthem began as we ascended the stairs to find our last row, top of the arena ,seating. For leaving LA only an hour before the game was supposed to start we made damn near perfect time.

The Ducks were on a verge of sweeping the 7 game series two nights before in Minnesota but were handed a 4 to 1 loss. Momentum in sports is everything and even just losing 1 game out of 4 can swing things in the wrong direction. All of the ducks fans' concerns were quickly put to rest though as Christ Pronger lasered a slapshot off of the first face-off in Minnesota's territory about 1 minute into the game. I hadn't even had time to take a bite out of my BBQ sandwich when the place erupted from seeing the first goal. A sea of orange did actually come to be as the ducks organization had provided everyone in the arena with bright orange "rally towels" or "fowl towels"(a term fused for towels handed out during the ducks first playoff appearance back in the late 90's). It was pretty cool to see everyone standing and waving those bright orange towels. That was highlight number one.

Highlight number two came when it was brought to everyone's attention on the scoreboard Jumbotron that Snoop Dogg and his son were in attendance and fully representing the Ducks. They don't really play a lot of rap music during ducks games(hockey is more of a hair metal sport) so when they started playing a Snoop Dog song Derek and I were confused. Then we saw Snoop and it all made sense. If you go to NHL.COM
they have a photo called the "frozen moment" on the homepage and today the frozen moment is snoop holding up a bright orange foam finger. The NHL desperately needs cool points so hopefully other media asside from just the NHL coverages on not so well known Versus Network and local orange county news will bring Snoops love of hockey to national attention. How cool would it be if Snoop's kid plays hockey and grows up to be this huge(literally because Snoop is super tall) talented NHL hockey player?

The third highlight of the night was the ducks killing off a 4 minute penalty combined with another 2 minute penalty that resulted in us being down 2 men for a full 2 minutes. The crowd stood and waved their towels and screamed and cheered as much for that penalty kill as they did when the ducks scored their goals.

Of course winning the game 4 to 1(with an empty netter) was the final highlight of the game and as a bonus surprise the ducks put next round's tickets on sale a the box office for all the fans in attendance. I got 2 tickets for game 5 in the 22nd round. Hopefully it will go down with similar results.

GROOVE IS IN THE HEART

Do you remember the summer when you were a kid? It was the time when you got to finally see what you were missing out on all those hours you had been stuck in a classroom all day long doodling on book covers, binders, desks, chairs, etc. During my childhood summer time in Orange County I spent a lot of time at the water park Wild Rivers. You couldn't have spent ALL your time there so when I wasn't eating Airheads candy and sliding down plastic tubes I was sitting in front of the boob tube.

If you were a child of the 80's and even perhaps the late 70's then you probably remember having had a certain choice set of television programming every summer that went something like this: Classic Disney Cartoons, Loony Tunes, Inspector Gadget, The Flinstones, The Jetsons, Heathcliff, The Facts of Life, Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Quantum Leap, Wings, Saved By The Bell, MTV (music videos... they used to just play music videos all day long), and MTV's The Grind. I'll stop right here at The Grind because that is what it would do to your day.

The Grind would put your TV watching day to a grinding halt. I'm not sure what the order of viewing shows was but I do remember that when The Grind was on there was NOTHING else to watch and it was the most retarded, boring, piece of crap programming EVER. The concept for this show was: Get a bunch of attractive people in their 20's to dress in their best club clothes or swimsuits or a hybrid of the two and have them dance until they had sweat beading up all over themselves. What were we supposed to do with this show? Clear away the coffee table in the living room and challenge these people to a dance off? There was no point to this show from what I can remember.

From what I can recall it seemed as if the people on the show were mostly people trying to make it as dancers in New York or wherever The Grind was being hosted at the time. They all seemed to have their own choreographed moves that were out of ballet school more than out of Napoleon Dynamite's ass (I hate that movie but can appreciate dancing like a 6 year old high on pixie sticks). In any case the dancing was boring and to match, the music was worse. They usually played the hip hop and R&B "jams" of the time but to me the jams have hardly ever been that interesting. Sure, now I appreciate Groove is in the Heart and other such late 80's/early 90's dance hits in an ironic hipster type of way, but back then they made me want to go slam my head in a door.

Lets jump forward though to 2007. The ironic scene kid hipster days if you will. With this ever growing scene shifting towards an embracement of electronic beats, synths, smash em ups and remixes of popular rock songs it seems as if a show filled with kids dancing is once again called for. Only this time it shouldn't be filled with the "jams" of the time that so happen to correspond with whatever 10 music videos are playing on TRL. Instead this dance show could be a venue for the hipster kids to hear their favorite smash or remix of that indie band they love so much. Who doesn't want to see kids dressed as french freedom fighters dancing to Le Tigre every afternoon? I know I'd actually volunteer to go on TV dressed up in some brightly colored vintage clothing and dance like I'm in a WHAM! video to the latest LCD Soundsystem track. So yeah... bring back The Grind except throw the word Grind out the window because no one wants to see people rub their crotches on other people's crotches on TV anymore. The Grind is over peeps. It's gross and it's not dancing. Instead we'll call it whatever DJ Steve Aoki Kid Millionare comes up with because most likely he'll be the resident DJ on the show. Perhaps Dance Your Pants Off with DJ Kid Millionare will work.

I GO DANCING IN, WE GO DANCING IN

Something hit me last week as I was driving on the 5 freeway. Usually when things hit me on the 5 they are tools that flew off some work truck, a loose bumper that fell off of the car in front of me, heavy duty cardboard boxes (all of which have really hit my car on the 5), but this time was different. I was hit by Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer.

This monumental song of the 80's is a declaration of love or infatuation or maybe it was just lust that Peter was after. Look at lyrics such as "You could have a big dipper, Going up and down, all around the bends" and "You could have a steam train, If you'd just lay down your tracks" and the term sexual innuendo is evoked. Then there are statements such as "All you do is call me, I'll be anything you need", "I'm your sledgehammer, Let there be no doubt about it" and "This can be my testimony, I'm your sledgehammer." These lyrics suggest perhaps a more important statement is trying to be made than when that guy in Office Space talks about, "taking a ride on the ol' bone roller coaster." I'm thinking that being one's Sledgehammer (in addition to being a phallic symbol) is someone who will be strong for you. Someone who will always be there for you no matter what. In the song Peter wants to testify that kind of commitment he is willing to make by declaring he wants to be the sledgehammer in that person's life.

What I'm getting to here is that what struck me about the song is that it would be a rad "OUR SONG." When I say "our song" I mean like when a couple has a specific song that holds meaning to their relationship over all other songs. I think in most cases an "our song" is usually something a little less horn crazy and filled with wacky lyrics and if there is a music video for it, it usually is not... well it is no "Sledgehammer" video. That video is in the top 10 videos of all time on a lot of lists for good reason. Why not have an "our song" that has a rad video that supposedly is the most played video on MTV ever. Instead of having to watch the latest romantic comedy to play Louis Armstrong over end credits to hear your song; with "Sledgehammer" you get to dress up in your hottest duds and head on over to the local club/bar that plays dance hits of the 80's or tune into Jack FM or something equivalent to that probably plays that song once an hour.

I can understand if this doesn't make sense for you, the many many masses who read what I write, but it makes sense for me. If I'm ever involved in a meaningful relationship again I hope that Yesica and I will be able to be filled with love whilst dancing like retards and lip synching to Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel.

HOLLYWOOD BROWN

I've been called Hollywood Brown by various friends and family over the years but never will it be more true than today when I move into my new home (rental) in Hollywood, CA. I'll be living Mid Wood if you will off of Santa Monica Blvd. Hopefully I'll be able to get a tasty new job in the biz and I'll be going to more hapening events and whatnot that will provide some more interesting reading for those of you who read this thing. Watch out Cory Kennedy... Hollywood Brown is coming to town.

Here is a pretty lame video someone made about Hollywood but it pretty much does the trick. Could be a crack head...

SUPAH BOHL PATTY

The Man's Flickr account has been updated with Super Bowl Party 2K7 photos. I've also posted a gallery of photos taken at my Grandfather's birthday brunch which took place the morning of Super Bowl Sunday.

THAT BRIT IS QUITE FIT

If you were like me this past Saturday night then you may have caught the latest episode of SNL and also the latest performance by myspace sensation brit pop singer Lily Allen. If you were not like me then here's a link to one of Lily's performances on the show. That episode of SNL was probably the first one I'd watched in at least a year and the whole reason for watching was to see Lily perform. I've been a fan of hers for a while now. Before the album came out all you could do to listen to her music was click a few tracks on myspace or do what I did and leave her website up and listen to a bunch of tracks play in a flash player. I wanted her album so bad I tried to download it off of the iTunes UK store and when it wouldn't let me I downloaded it off of some crappy English site that charged me in pounds and the files didn't even work on my computer. They were not Mac compatible and I failed to read the fine print in my frenzy to download Lily. Flash forward in time to this past Saturday now and look up nervous, tense and reserved in the dictionary and you will see that clip of Lily performing on SNL. She hasn't been performing live for even a year and I guess being on SNL shook her a bit. Despite her reserved behavior on stage I enjoyed the SNL performance. It had the feel of an elementary school talent show and you're rooting for your little sister. While this was ok for two TV performances but I felt a little weary about seeing her perform live just two days later at the Henry Fonda in Hollywood.

Of course I still went to the show in Hollywood and boy was I glad. My doubts were turned upside down by the lively and talented Lily Allen. Her back up band was awesome and her stage presence bounced all over and filled the Henry Fonda (which is one of the larger venues in LA), unlike on SNL where it stood there and teetered back and forth. The crowd was super hyped over her which is something I didn't expect. I didn't know so many people in the states were into little British girls singing songs about being pissed off at their ex boyfriend and sticking it to the man. During the show she remarked that they had been to 3 continents in something like a week and that they were all a little out of it. Maybe being a little out of it is what she needed to be because in just 3 days she went from stage fright to stage veteran having every person in the room hanging on her every word.

So yeah... you're pretty alright Lily... pretty alright.

If you're in the LA area and want to see her perform she will be at day 3 of Coachella.

If you're in London and you get the chance to see her perform I highly recommend it...Who would want to miss a chance to be there for this?