A day in Sactown, hoops, and reality/non-reality television: Weekend recap
Headed up with Byron, Maria, Karen, Andrea, Mike, Amy, and Cat to Tomio and Alice's place in Sacramento this past Saturday to hang out. They were great hosts, as always, cooking up tasty meats (steak, kalbi, hot links) and snacks (fresh kettle corn!) to give us energy throughout the day. Byron and I got hooked on the "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" video game for GameCube for a good portion of the afternoon, where I got to play as Aragorn and he as Legolas, and we had a jolly good time running around slashing up orcs and triggering catapults and oliphaunts. I'm now tempted to purchase it for PS2, as the cooperatve-play mode makes things much more fun.
We drove over to downtown Sacramento and walked around, making comments on various stores, swapping stories, and buying bags of candy from the various candy stores. I think we went into four - yikes! Fortunately Maria was able to take the bag of taffy away from Byron before he could get himself sick again, a la the "cookie incident" from last year's camping trip (or was it ski trip?). Also visited the capitol building and ran into the longest set of dumb traffic lights ever.
Sunday, worship at church, worship ministry meeting (lots of good ideas - thanks guys), then played some hoops. I noticed that I am out of shape - I was running out of breath fairly quickly. This annoys me greatly. On the bright side, I thought I did a decent job containing the guy I was guarding, who plays for the local high school basketball team as a shooting guard - very quick and explosive; I basically just tried to stay in front of him and force him to shoot over me. I was a bit more aggressive on the offensive end as well. On an unhappy note, Byron hurt his ankle (most likely a severe high ankle sprain) and he'll probably be out for a while. We have got to remember no more "injury" conversations at lunchtime before we go to play in the afternoon.
In the evening, had dinner with the family, and then some television:
Dream Job
I don't typically watch reality television. I think I may have seen one episode of "Survivor", and don't watch "The Mole" or "The Bachelorette" or any of those other shows placing people into improbable situations where they compete with others for money. However, I do think it's a legit trend for television to have televised "talent shows", which basically involves the TV audience as participants - "American Idol" and the like make sense as TV shows, in my opinion. Still, I hadn't really watched much, and wasn't intending to watch much of this one (where the contestants try out for an ESPN Sportscenter anchor position) but then I happened to flip to a rerun one evening on ESPN2 and got sucked in.
I still didn't watch enough to get a really good feel for all the contestants, but of the ones I saw, I felt that the strongest were Zach, Aaron, and Mike H (the eventual winner crowned last night). Zach seemed to be the most comfortable in front of the camera, and had a very "out-there" brash personality that would fit in with the ESPN crew. Aaron was clearly one of the strongest in terms of sports knowledge, and Mike seemed to be having the most fun. After Zach was voted off by the judges, I had a feeling that America would kick off Aaron because, despite his know-how, he was a little too "smooth" to really connect with the viewer.
What was most fun about the show, however, was seeing all of the behind-the-scenes parts of being an anchor - prepping and writing stories, controlling details like eye contact and other facial gestures, adapting to unexpected situations like breaking news or the teleprompter going down, etc. I've sometimes wondered if I could hack it as a sportscaster - bringing the facts while making it interesting for the viewer. I've decided that I probably wouldn't do a very good job; I'd have a better shot at being a sportswriter... for the NBA, of course.
Alias (spoilers for last night's ep ahead!)
I still find it amusing that, since Lauren Reed has been revealed to be an evil double agent to the viewing audience, that most of the female viewers of this show who used to be openly hostile to Vaughn's character at the beginning of the season (when they all blasted him for getting over Sydney so quickly) have now shifted their anger to Lauren, basically letting Vaughn off the hook. Maybe he'll even be able to work his way back to the iconic status he enjoyed in previous seasons.
Jack Bristow is still the man... you could tell that he wasn't really buying Lauren's mom's story of how her husband died.
Sydney looked a little odd with the bangs, in my opinion.
Headed up with Byron, Maria, Karen, Andrea, Mike, Amy, and Cat to Tomio and Alice's place in Sacramento this past Saturday to hang out. They were great hosts, as always, cooking up tasty meats (steak, kalbi, hot links) and snacks (fresh kettle corn!) to give us energy throughout the day. Byron and I got hooked on the "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" video game for GameCube for a good portion of the afternoon, where I got to play as Aragorn and he as Legolas, and we had a jolly good time running around slashing up orcs and triggering catapults and oliphaunts. I'm now tempted to purchase it for PS2, as the cooperatve-play mode makes things much more fun.
We drove over to downtown Sacramento and walked around, making comments on various stores, swapping stories, and buying bags of candy from the various candy stores. I think we went into four - yikes! Fortunately Maria was able to take the bag of taffy away from Byron before he could get himself sick again, a la the "cookie incident" from last year's camping trip (or was it ski trip?). Also visited the capitol building and ran into the longest set of dumb traffic lights ever.
Sunday, worship at church, worship ministry meeting (lots of good ideas - thanks guys), then played some hoops. I noticed that I am out of shape - I was running out of breath fairly quickly. This annoys me greatly. On the bright side, I thought I did a decent job containing the guy I was guarding, who plays for the local high school basketball team as a shooting guard - very quick and explosive; I basically just tried to stay in front of him and force him to shoot over me. I was a bit more aggressive on the offensive end as well. On an unhappy note, Byron hurt his ankle (most likely a severe high ankle sprain) and he'll probably be out for a while. We have got to remember no more "injury" conversations at lunchtime before we go to play in the afternoon.
In the evening, had dinner with the family, and then some television:
Dream Job
I don't typically watch reality television. I think I may have seen one episode of "Survivor", and don't watch "The Mole" or "The Bachelorette" or any of those other shows placing people into improbable situations where they compete with others for money. However, I do think it's a legit trend for television to have televised "talent shows", which basically involves the TV audience as participants - "American Idol" and the like make sense as TV shows, in my opinion. Still, I hadn't really watched much, and wasn't intending to watch much of this one (where the contestants try out for an ESPN Sportscenter anchor position) but then I happened to flip to a rerun one evening on ESPN2 and got sucked in.
I still didn't watch enough to get a really good feel for all the contestants, but of the ones I saw, I felt that the strongest were Zach, Aaron, and Mike H (the eventual winner crowned last night). Zach seemed to be the most comfortable in front of the camera, and had a very "out-there" brash personality that would fit in with the ESPN crew. Aaron was clearly one of the strongest in terms of sports knowledge, and Mike seemed to be having the most fun. After Zach was voted off by the judges, I had a feeling that America would kick off Aaron because, despite his know-how, he was a little too "smooth" to really connect with the viewer.
What was most fun about the show, however, was seeing all of the behind-the-scenes parts of being an anchor - prepping and writing stories, controlling details like eye contact and other facial gestures, adapting to unexpected situations like breaking news or the teleprompter going down, etc. I've sometimes wondered if I could hack it as a sportscaster - bringing the facts while making it interesting for the viewer. I've decided that I probably wouldn't do a very good job; I'd have a better shot at being a sportswriter... for the NBA, of course.
Alias (spoilers for last night's ep ahead!)
I still find it amusing that, since Lauren Reed has been revealed to be an evil double agent to the viewing audience, that most of the female viewers of this show who used to be openly hostile to Vaughn's character at the beginning of the season (when they all blasted him for getting over Sydney so quickly) have now shifted their anger to Lauren, basically letting Vaughn off the hook. Maybe he'll even be able to work his way back to the iconic status he enjoyed in previous seasons.
Jack Bristow is still the man... you could tell that he wasn't really buying Lauren's mom's story of how her husband died.
Sydney looked a little odd with the bangs, in my opinion.
posted by Bob at
9:03 PM
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