Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
I'll be down in San Diego for the day today.

Unfortunately, real life threw me a bit of a curveball and we're being forced out of our current apartment so I've been dealing with finding a new apartment (success) and starting to get everything packed up. Because I am bitter, if anyone stumbles on here by doing a search on Lido Equities Management, know that they raised our rent by 22% spontaneously after we've been paying rent on time in this apartment for years. I understand that they want to make more money, but man, that's cold-blooded. Anyways!

Lots of fun stuff to blog about when I get back from SD. I went to a Spice Girls taping for the BBC (yes, it was fab), Marie' Digby concert, and Kelly Clarkson concert last weekend, which was all kinds of exciting. Apparently, Blogger can take video uploads now, so I tried to use it here, but it just took too long and the upload failed. What's weird is Google owns Blogger and Google owns YouTube, but Blogger just took 20 minutes of my life trying and failing to do what I just successfully did on YouTube over the course of two minutes.

Dark room + zoom = poop video.

On Wednesday, I caught the 10:45 AM showing of Enchanted, which made me believe that Giselle is now the "new Belle" (aka: Hottest animated character ever... people always give me weird looks when I say that).


I picked up Jordin Sparks' debut album, which I wrote about on Americanidol.com. In a pleasant surprise, the album is pretty good! I don't think that there's necessarily any songs that I'm going to listen to over and over, but the whole CD is pretty decent overall. Somehow, "This Is My Now" has also grown on me as well in the studio version. One way or another, the CD will be accompanying me via iPod on my way down to SD.

Again, happy Thanksgiving!

Why paintballs? Why??

Yesterday, I went to the wedding of two of my friends Ali and Alex. While unrelated to the subject of this post, it was one of the more fun weddings I've ever been to! There was great food, jokes in the ceremony, and people even had theme music while they walked down the aisle! (which is exactly what I've thought to do if I ever got married) They both looked so happy and I was so happy that I got to be there to share their day with them! For any lamers who thought that the USC/Cal football game was worth missing their friends' wedding, they all missed out on a really good time.

Anyways, so while I was driving home from Burbank, I was on the 110S going past downtown. All of a sudden, I hear this "THUNK THUNK THUNK!!!" sound all over my car! It literally sounded like someone was on the roof of my car and was banging on the roof and the windows with an enclosed fist. Since I'm going about 70MPH, my first thought was that ninjas or some homeless man had somehow landed on the top of my car and they were banging on the roof to tell me to stop. I was going to start swerving wildly to throw them off the car (and kill them, consequently, which didn't occur to me at the time), until I realized what was actually happening.

Some asshole(s) were shooting at cars on the freeway with a really loud/high powered paintball gun and my poor white car was one of the victims. Since I exited so fast trying to throw off the hypothetical ninjas, my car only took about 5 shots of green paint. Because I am completely OCD about having my car always look clean, I was REALLY pissed about it! I wasn't really upset about the act itself, but I was more annoyed that I had to go to wash my own car at one of those outdoor car washes in a suit because I didn't want the green paint to stain my paint job. So here I am, at midnight, in a full suit with my Salsa dancing shoes on, spraying huge blots of green paint off the windows and body of my car after an embarrassing drive down La Cienega with green paint peppered all down the side of my car.

I called the police, who transferred me to the LAPD, who transferred me to the CHP. What I've come to realize about the police is that they want to do the least amount of work possible. Do any of you have co-workers who always hand work off to other people so that they get to sit there idle and not have to do any paperwork?

I am convinced that the whole police system here in Los Angeles is filled with those kind of people. No one wants to help, nor care, and they just want to hand the problem off to other people and give you vague answers all the time because they want to have zero responsibilities beyond alphabetizing and filling out forms wrong (don't think I don't remember that, bozos from the Pacific division). This is a big reason why I don't watch police-based TV shows, because I know they are filled with more fantasy than the movie Big Fish and believe that someone from law enforcement, somewhere, sometime had to have paid off network executives to make it seem like the majority of people who work there actually care about their jobs. I'm sure that there are police officers and dispatch operators who really care about their jobs and take ownership over each and every person, case, or call, but I think they are few and far between.

Every police person that I have ever dealt with is "that guy" who is annoyed with having to answer any questions or passes work off to other people. I remember when I was younger, I used to think policemen and policewomen were the coolest, toughest people on the planet. Now, I can't even watch policemen doing heroic things on television and I roll my eyes during cop movies because I know that in reality, most people in law enforcement are just trying to get a paycheck, frustrated by bureaucracy, and staring at the clock because they want to go home.

The paint came off. I'm going downstairs to wax my car now. While it sucked to get "paintballed," it sucked even worse to have my complete and utter lack of respect for our police system be confirmed and justified yet again.

Why Watch American Idol Season 7?

I'll be the first one to admit that I have questionable taste in music, TV, and especially movies, but American Idol is something that I'll defend until the show reaches its series finale, whenever that may be.

I've been an avid Idol fan since Season 1, only missing performances during Season 5, most of which I've since caught up on via YouTube. With Season 7 just around the corner, I recently got into a conversation at work where someone asked me why I was still so into the show six years after its premiere in the United States.

And no, it's not just because of Carrie Underwood...
Though this picture makes me think that's enough reason....

No, not just the rumors of Baylie Brown trying out again.

The thing that I like, actually love, about American Idol is that it's one of the few television shows in the U.S. that anyone could talk about with anyone and people would understand what you're talking about. They might not be watching that particular season or they might be unfamiliar with your favorite Idol, but most everyone has seen the show. People know what it's about and chances are they've followed at least one of the seasons to a moderate level and maybe even voted for an Idol or two.

I think that I legitimately have about 100 channels on my cable TV plan right now, which I know pales in comparison to people who have DirecTV or some kind of "All the Best" (AKA "All Your Loot") cable package from Time Warner. With cable TV fragmenting the television audience more and more with all these niche channels, there are so few programs that "everyone watches," these days.

Now I know that the upper middle class, college educated audience likes to say that "everyone" watches The Colbert Report and The Daily Show and always likes to say that "more people get their news from Colbert and Stewart than they do from network news" for some reason when they're trying to make a point (which is completely not true if people would actually check the ratings...as these were always some of the more idiotic statements I ever heard from liberal fist-pumpers in one of my classes), but really, it's only a small population of people that attracts a smaller audience than professional wrestling that watch those programs.

Kicks Colbert's ass

And yes, "everyone" in the literal sense does not watch American Idol. But I don't think I would be taking too big of a gamble when saying that close to a majority of our population has seen at least one episode of the singing/popularity competition. We're in a new era where there won't be 30 million people tuning in to see the last episode of a TV show. Remember when Seinfeld aired its final episode and everyone was wondering if it was going to top Cheers? That's never going to happen again. Even The Simpsons, currently television's longest running sitcom, whenever it ends, will not even come close to the numbers that Cheers had for its final episode. This isn't because it's not as good of a show (though most would argue that it's lost some of its luster), but it's because we're just in a different era of TV.

Those happy days are gone...
And Michael Richards is racist...
Or he just has an anger management problem.

Gone are the days when "everyone" watched one show. There is no Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, but there's Leno, Kimmel, Chelsea, Letterman, Colbert, and Stewart. There's no Dallas, but there's Grey's, Desperate, LOST, Friday Night Lights, Sopranos (RIP), Sex and the City (RIP), Entourage, Six Feet Under, Weeds, Gossip Girl, Smallville, Brothers and Sisters, Boston Legal, House, ER, Prison Break, and 24. But with Idol, we get pretty close. People generally know what the show is about and because the show reaches such a disproportionate mass of people compared to many other television programs, people continue hearing about it and reading about it.

Call me nostalgic, but I think that's awesome.

Yes, so the show is filled with sponsorship and cheesy music videos. Through all the clutter, there are a lot of diamonds in the rough as Kelly Clarkson, Chris Daughtry, Clay Aiken, Carrie Underwood, Kellie Pickler, Fantasia Barrino, Josh Gracin, and more have proven through their commercial success.

It begins... [Kelly Clarkson]


It continues... [Kelly Clarkson]

People say that they're annoyed with the "bad auditions," but I feel like they're comic relief for all the serious stories and serious talent that comes to the auditions. Without the silly auditions, the show would feel like a musical version of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

And a lot of them are really unique [Blake Lewis]

And memorable [Blake Lewis' Virtual Insanity].

If you don't like the music, singing, smiles, or general upbeat nature of the show, then that totally makes sense. Clearly, the show has been proven to find a commercially successful artist that will appeal to the masses through its voting system. If you love underground hip-hop or dark rock music, chances are the show won't really do anything for you. However, for what it is, I love how American Idol can be one of the few shows left that you can strike up random conversation about with pretty much anyone.

While it sounds like there will be a return to focusing on the contestants for the upcoming season, much like what was done this season with So You Think You Can Dance, with the performances, features, personalities, and music that await us come January, I cannot wait for American Idol Season 7.

Because I am incapable of complaining for more than a few minutes...

This past Saturday and Sunday morning, I went to "Salsa boot camp" in South Los Angeles. While it was in the hood and I didn't really learn a whole lot (I just cleaned up a lot of my steps), it was a lot of fun - so much fun that my right calf muscle is absolutely killing me today. It ended up being 4 hours a day of Salsa review for me, but I really enjoyed it regardless.

One of the most fun things about Salsa dancing is being able to teach people who are also trying to learn if you manage to get a step or a move a little quicker than they do. Later, chances are, they'll return the favor.

Someday...

I'm going to start taking additional classes from Mary Scanlon, who is currently the dreamboat of a salsa teacher who teaches classes at USC. I'm really excited about it.

This post would have been longer, but stupid Blogger's image uploading went down.

Everyday that passes, I get a step closer to moving my site over to WordPress.

There are good days and well...

There will be bad days...

Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot that we can do about either of them. They just seem to come and go as they please.

There are some days that are amazing, when you see your name published on websites that you never thought you'd see it published and people think you're sooooo cooool (omfgggg).

Then, there are other days when you realize that your smart friends went on to have careers more relevant to our degrees after grad school and make almost twice as much money as you do, despite the fact that you have the same degree and had similar grades.

And though that sucks a lot of times, there are days when you're happy you're not doing what "they're" doing because you think you're making your way to where you eventually want to end up (just like they are, but they seem a lot closer to it), no matter the cost - financially and in terms of swallowing your pride every now and again, or well, every day.

Not every, but most every 20 something seems to reach a point of mid-20's crisis in their lives.

Me? I don't think I'm at that point. I think that I've become too emotionally detached from pretty much anything and everything to feel like I'm ever at any kind of crisis. Everything generally operates at a level that I like to call "a little better than ok."

However, I have to admit that there are days when unjamming printers and supplying my wing of the office with semi-perishable snacks is not the easiest thing in the whole world.

In the office world, someone else jamming the printer or the printer running out of toner becomes a complete disaster.

A mean email or passive aggressive IM sends people into a tailspin of "wtf"-ness. People panic. F-words are exchanged. Well-dressed people in pressed shirts start running down hallways in their wingtipped kicks.

Somehow, this administrative world that is such a big part of many a 20-something's life manages to create drama that believes it is something much worse (it's not) than running out of footballs at a 3 day high school football camp that you just figured out the logistics for over the course of 15 minutes at 5:45AM for a camp that starts at 7:00AM.

5 minutes without laser printer toner, paper clips, or even your free snacks that you pay for running out somehow becomes more of a disaster than having a football coach keep telling you to "get your f*cking sh!t together" for almost 12 hours straight after that coach has no idea that you were working until 3AM in the morning the night before just to make sure he had a clean shirt to wear.

There are some days when I think about how we made full marketing plans in grad school, communication plans, and somewhere along the way, I wrote a long paper that we called a thesis. And there are some days that are tougher than others to just swallow one's pride, grin, and bear it.

Most days, I'm happy to do it. Other days, it doesn't come too easy. I've been having a few of those days lately.

When people ask me about what I'm doing, or about how it is to be an assistant after grad school, my first response is that it's "character building." Really, it is.

I've learned a lot and I feel lucky to be where I am, but man, it is character building.

Being an assistant is exactly what being a student manager for a college football team is. There are moments of greatness and excitement and moments of "I can't believe I am picking up dog sh!t with my hands" (football only).

Hopefully, it gets me to where I want to be, but it's hard not to think that you have to get there yourself sometimes.

Hanging in. Almost Wednesday.