Oh no, not another reality show. Oh yes, it’s true.
Tuesday nights are usually pretty dry around here. I can’t remember if it’s just “The Real Housewives…somethingorother” and that’s it, or if there’s something else. I know Wednesday “Lost” is on and we watch Fantasy Factory and Nitro Circus on Sundays, but the rest is just a fog. Usually Laura controls the remote. It has too many buttons for me and my brain is already full.
Well, tonight was a real treat. I ended up downstairs before the lady of the house got there, so I turned the TV on. Of course, some reality TV channel was already set (Oxygen). I sat down only to find another house full of dramatic girls trying to live together while improving their attitudes. C’mon, this is serious stuff. It’s like I always say, “This stuff is reality…the way it really goes down.”
Okay, the name of the show is “Pretty Wicked” and as I said before, it’s on Oxygen. Oh yeah, there’s all sorts of drama. One girl threatened to leave the house, another two are mortal enemies, another is a crier…etc…If you want to see a sample of the show, just click the title above or watch the video below.
I would say the show still seems new, but will age gracefully. If they throw in a few fights here and there, it might stick around for another season. By the way, CariDee English from America’s Next Top Model (cycle 7) is the show’s host.
After Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory was over last night, we discovered a new and highly entertaining show…Bully Beatdown on MTV. Dude, this show is hot.
The whole thing revolves around a bully getting his butt whooped by some serious mixed martial arts fighter. Someone has to call the show and tell them they are getting harassed by a bully. Then, the show will come introduce themselves to the bully and offer up a fight. If the bully is tough and they think they have a chance (like they usually do), they accept the challenge for $10,000. I usually don’t like these fight shows, but since the bully is usually so into it, it’s pretty fun to watch.
Last night, this guy Ryan was paid a visit by Jason “Mayhem” Miller and offered a fight, which Ryan readily accepted.
When the time came to enter the cage and get down to business, Ryan held his own for the first match, but was forced to bow out after a kick to the ribs. During the whole show, I kept saying that I would have been out after the first minute. Hey, I’m no dummy…these guys are seriously tough. Ain’t no way I am fighting one of them.
I went for my usual walk this afternoon when I started discussing the last episode of “Lost” with my better half. I had a few questions for her, but I thought it might be better to bring them up here.
The first question I have is, how come Jack, Kate, Sayid and Hurley were sent thirty years in the past, while Ben, John and Sun were kept in the present? Also, is Ben counted is one of the “Oceanic 7,” or is that Jack, Kate, Sayid, Hurley, Sun, Aaron and ??? I am drawing a blank here.
The second question I have is what does Jack being assigned to “Janitorial Duties” have to do with the show? I know Ben’s father had a similar assignment while on the island. Are the two related? Will Jack meet the young Ben and get to know the reason why he killed everyone in the Dharma Initiative? That seemed like such an unnecessary scene to place emphasis on.
I have to say, Sunday nights on MTV offer some of the best television out there.
Starting at 9PM, we have Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory, which is a really, really funny show. Then, we have the College Humor show, which is a different kind of funny, but funny nonetheless. After that, is Nitro Circus, which looks just awesome. The only problem there is that I haven’t been able to see that one yet…for some reason or another.
A while ago, I saw a preview for Nitro Circus on MTV where a guy was riding a dirtbike on top of water. It looked so cool. I looked all over the place and finally found a video of it on YouTube. I was going to post it here, but decided that I would post a different video of theirs instead. This one’s a lot better. You gotta watch this. It’s just a taste of what the show is about.
If you weren’t aware, yesterday was the day of love. It was the day that souls join, people buy each other chocolate and roses and tell each other how much they love one another. If you are “with” someone, it was the day to remind yourself how much they mean to you. If you aren’t with anyone, it was the day to get up and remind yourself to find someone. My friends, yesterday was the day of action and whether we like it or not, it comes every year. Oh, one more very important thing…yesterday was my mom’s birthday. Hi mom.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I had made a reservation at Firebox Restaurant in Hartford, only to cancel it. We decided to go back to Shrine at MGM Grand instead.
I was really excited to go back to Shrine. The food is awesome and the atmosphere is even better. We had a really great time the last time we went.
On the way down to the restaurant, I kept thinking that we were going to have the place to ourselves. For some reason, I figured that everyone in the world was going to be sitting on the couch, cuddling under the blankets, watching a good movie. I thought we were the only ones who would really brave this St. Valentine’s day on the outside. Well, I was wrong.
We made a right off of the main road and turned into the entrance of MGM Grand at Foxwoods. I read the sign above us while driving into the parking garage. It said, “Levels 1-4 Full. Level 5 Open.” “That’s not good,” I thought. I told Laura that something must be going on, but in the back of my mind, I knew there must be some mistake.
We drove up to the first level of the parking garage. Full. We drove up to the second level. Full. We drove up to the third level. Full. We drove up to the fourth level and found about five open spots, but I wanted to see if there was anything better on the fifth level. There was nothing up there, so we went back down to the fourth level. The five open spots turned into three open spots and I took one of them. I guess something really was going on, but what?
We got out of the car and started walking into the casino. I took Laura’s hand in mine. After all, it was Valentine’s day. We walked quickly through the doors and into the elevator.
Upon exiting the elevator and entering the casino, we were greeted by crowds of…say…”interesting” looking people. We knew there had to be some sort of concert or show going on, but we had yet to figure out which one. Laura guessed it was Motley Crue, because there were so many people wearing black concert t-shirts. She remembered seeing something about that band somewhere along the lines.
We started walking towards the restaurant. I kept looking at people’s t-shirts to see if I could find some sort of clue as to what was going on. Finally, I saw two t-shirts that said, “Kid Rock.” “Oh, it’s Kid Rock tonight, sweet doll,” I said. Laura agreed because she had just seen one of those shirts too.
Have you ever seen Star Trek: Deep Space Nine? If so, have you ever noticed the area where everyone meets and drinks? It’s like a big mixture of all types of beings from all over the universe. That’s kind of what it was like last night at this casino. There were all types of people from all over the place. I mean, some of these people aren’t out in normal daylight. The only place you would find them is in a casino, tucked deep into the night. We saw truckers and bikers to ballerinas and trapeze artists. There were people with one head, two heads and three heads. People who couldn’t walk, people who walk too much and everyone in between. It was an interesting experience. One thing is for sure, Foxwoods really needs to update their anti-smoking rules…or make one altogether. The amount of smoke you inhale just by being in that place is terrifying.
We made it to the restaurant just in time for our 8:30PM reservation. We were promptly shown to our seats. We noticed that the restaurant was chock full of people. I mean, this place was jammed. We didn’t mind because with the frame of mind we were in, the more the merrier. The restaurant was really loud because there was a DJ doing his thing downstairs at the nightclub. People were talking, yelling and laughing while drinking their scorpion bowls…those big, huge scorpion bowls.
Our waitress came over to say hello after about five minutes of us being seated. Not bad, considering all the people she was taking care of. She said hello the first time and by the second time, we ordered every last thing, just to make things easier on her. We even ordered two glasses of plum wine because that is one of our favorites.
As our drinks and food arrived, I held my glass up and in the spirit of St. Valentine himself, I made a toast. I said…well that’s private, but it was well worth saying because we both smiled when I was through. We took a drink and began to eat some of the best food we had in some time.
When we were finished eating and fully satisfied, we left the restaurant. We thought it would be fun to take a walk over to Foxwoods to see what was going on over there. I mentioned earlier that I had never been to Foxwoods, so I was really curious as to what it looked like.
There is a long hallway that connects MGM Grand and Foxwoods, so you don’t need to walk outside. In this long hallway, there are two of those long, flat, moving floor things that you would normally find in an airport. You know, they are like flattened escalators that you stand on and they carry you along. When we arrived at the flat escalators, we instinctually stepped onto one of them. Now, the trick is to walk on these escalators, so you can really get some speed while heading down a long hallway, like the one we were in. You can maintain probably twice the speed you would if you were simply walking on regular ground. Well, last night, no one knew that you were supposed to walk on these things. Everyone in front of us just got on and stood there.
About half way down the hallway, Laura turned to me and said, “This is like a bad dream.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Take a look at the carpet over there. Look how slow we are moving.” I didn’t know what she was talking about because I thought we were moving along at a nice speed. I was looking at the flat escalator that was moving in the opposite direction of the one we were moving in, so it looked like we were moving twice as fast as we really were. I looked up and past that escalator to the carpet and started laughing. We were going sooooo slow. It was like we were drunk or something. People were casually walking right past us on the carpet as we were stuck on this thing. There were people on crutches, babies crawling, old men staggering along…all moving much faster than we were. It was hysterical.
When we finally got off that thing, we buzzed right along. I forgot my camera in the car, so I wasn’t able to take any photos, but I will tell you that Foxwoods is much more interesting than I thought. I was like Disney World in the inside. There were all sorts of little shops with storefronts designed and painted with different styles of architecture and color. It was really cool…and big. Foxwoods is big and long. There is a shuttle, if that gives you any indication of how big it is. Much bigger than I was prepared for.
When we were finished with our Foxwoods tour, we decided to head back over to MGM Grand for a little midnight gambling. We walked and walked and walked. We walked right past that moving floor thing and made it back to the other casino. When we got there, we broke a $20 bill and walked over to a slot machine. I said, “Pumpkin, go ahead and make your bet.” Laura sat down and put a $5 bill in the machine. On the first pull, she didn’t win anything. On the second pull, she won $1.30. She instantly looked up at me and said, “You want to go?” I started laughing when I realized she was serious. She wanted to walk out a winner, so I said, “Heck yeah. Let’s get out of here while we are on top.” We walked over to the payment machine and cashed out. You should have seen us running through the casino floor like we had just won the lottery. It was great.
We left the casino and walked back to the car. We hopped in, I started it up and took Laura back on the open road. But before we left the casino property, I did manage to get a few pictures of the outside. I know it’s disappointing, but this is the best I could do because of my forgetfulness. For that, I am sorry.
Top of MGM Grand at Foxwoods hotel at night
Top of Foxwoods hotel at night
Foxwoods casino main entrance at night
Well folks, there you have it. Our Valentine’s day 2009. See ya next year.
Yesterday, a little birdie told me about a fantastic place to listen to music online – Radio Paradise.
If you work on the computer a lot like I do, you know that good music can really make the day a heck of a lot better. I have been listening to a lot of MP3s, but that gets old after a while. After I heard the tidbit of advice yesterday about Radio Paradise, I decided to give it a try. I went over to their website, read about their “many styles and genres of music” on the homepage and then clicked on, “Listen.” I chose the “128k MP3″ link and clicked on it. A little “open” or “save” box appeared, and I chose “open.” From there, my Windows Media Player opened, the website disappeared and I have been listening to a pretty sweet variety of good music.
Strangely enough, this great, commercial free music is free to listen to. It’s pretty nice. Since these guys are giving me something for free (I may even contribute one day), I decided to give them some mad props over here at my wildly popular, attractive and globally active blog. I hope some of my visitors stop by the Radio Paradise to give these guys a try.
Earlier this week, I made a reservation for a nice Valentine’s dinner up at Firebox Restaurant in Hartford. It’s supposed to be pretty good and was recommended by a friend. We had a reservation for 9PM. Since I had never been to this restaurant, I didn’t really know what to expect. I heard there was valet parking, side-of-the-street parking or a parking lot close by. For some reason, the whole thing made me a little nervous, and I was kind of looking for an out. I didn’t want to park on the side of the street up in Hartford in some area I had never visited. Perhaps during the day sometime on a weekend, but not at 9PM.
We were sitting at the kitchen table this afternoon, when all of the sudden a great idea popped in my head. I said, “Hey petunia pumpkin girl, why don’t we just go back to Shrine (down at MGM Grand at Foxwoods) for Valentine’s day? We had an awesome time there.” She replied, “This is why I love you, Grand Master Jay.”
So, we are going to Shrine for dinner. There is a little skip in my step because we get to walk around again and this time, we are going to walk next door to Foxwoods to check it out. I have never been to Foxwoods, so you can be sure I will bring my camera. I think I might just share the whole experience with you.
Is anyone else going out for St. Valentine’s day? If so, where are you headed?
Here is a list of famous left handed people. I think this is pretty interesting. Be sure to notice the last name on the list. I would say it sure makes you wonder. About what, I am not sure about that.
I was just downstairs filling up the pellet stove, when I heard the sound a British police car makes on the television…I am not even going to try to write the way it sounds here. I turned to Laura and said, “Can you guess the movie I am thinking of right now that has that same noise in it?” She guessed “The Patriot.” She didn’t guess correctly. I have to give her biggity props for guessing so fast though. The movie I was thinking of was “Time Bandits.” The siren was at the end of the movie.
That got me thinking of all the neat movies I used to watch when I was a kid. While downstairs, I thought that I would come back up here and post a few of the trailers on my blog. I found two…the third (Time Bandits) didn’t have a good trailer. The entire movie is on YouTube, but no good trailers.
As I wrote in my last post, we did a bunch of stuff this weekend, but what I didn’t mention was what we did exactly.
Do you know of Duran Duran? If you are over the age of…let’s see…4 years old, you probably do. Duran Duran is one of those groups that everyone loves. They have been around forever and have tons of great songs. Believe it or not, they are still rockin’ and rollin’ and traveling all over the place making people go nuts.
There was a day a few months ago when Laura told me that she would be satisfied if she could see just one more band in concert. That band is Duran Duran. I kind of half listened because she has seen about a zillion bands in concert throughout her lifetime. I am guessing that she has made this claim many times. I did tuck the thought way back in my head though.
About a month and a half ago, I was lying in bed one morning, debating on whether or not to get up. I know I was awake, but I wasn’t too sure if the person I was laying next to was. The radio/alarm was sounding and I knew I had to so something soon, or else I would fall back to sleep.
A few minutes later, the DJ started talking about how Duran Duran was going to be playing down at MGM Grand at Foxwoods on December 12. My ears perked up, because I am always looking for a good surprise to spring on someone. I hopped out of bed to check out the MGM Grand website and sure enough, Duran Duran was scheduled to play that evening.
I didn’t just go ahead and purchase the tickets. I waited and tried to learn if we had, or were going to have anything planned for that time of year. Who knew if we were doing something important in December. I kept my mouth shut and cleverly began my investigation. Oh, I was good…asking questions here and throwing out ideas there. I was executing all sorts of strategy to get the lowdown on December 12. It was like a game of cat and mouse.
It took me all day to get the facts, without giving my grand plan away. You should have seen me; I kept rubbing my hands together like I was an evil magician.
The next day, Laura walked up to me and told me that she bought three tickets to see Duran Duran down at MGM Grand at Foxwoods. What?
I guess she was awake.
Okay, so yesterday was the day. I won’t rehash the story I told you the last post. I will just start with the fun stuff.
We arrived in the parking garage of MGM Grand. I was a little nervous, because I have never been there before. I have driven by, but have never gone inside. MGM Grand is actually only a few months old. Foxwoods built it right next to the original casino. I had no idea if the parking situation was going to be far away in some secret parking lot somewhere or what.
The parking was great. It’s very light and safe. The parking garage is probably close to 10 levels. I am guessing here, because I didn’t walk up to all of them, but the garage is pretty high.
We did our thing and hopped out of the car, but first, I grabbed my camera. I always forget to bring my camera to concerts like this. I think they are going to stop me at the gate and make me put it back in the car. Then, after I get in, I see thousands of people snapping away with their cameras all evening. I get so mad because it happens every time.
This time, I had planned on hiding it in my sock, but the gate was very informal and we weren’t frisked like we usually are.
Let me tell you about dinner first.
We decided to get to the casino at 6PM, so we could have a nice dinner at Shrine restaurant. This was important to us, because it wouldn’t be a really great evening if we didn’t eat and get a little drunk first. I will bypass all the food mumbo jumbo and get straight to the neat pics I took inside the restaurant.
Shrine restaurant menu - MGM Grand at Foxwoods
Tables at Shrine - MGM Grand at Foxwoods
Candle on table at Shrine - MGM Grand at Foxwoods
Glass on table at Shrine - MGM Grand at Foxwoods
The dinner was great, but let me warn you…it’s expensive. They have you as a captive audience and charge like it. It’s pretty good food though, especially the appetizers.
After dinner, we had about an hour and a half to burn before the show started. To use up the time, we decided to do a little gambling and take pictures of the inside of the casino (some with me in them).
We walked towards the slot machines and got all sorts of excited. I stopped, puffed out my chest and pulled $20 out of my pocket. I handed it to Laura and told her not to spend it all in one place. Then, I said, “Wait, I am coming with you. That’s for the both of us.”
C’mon guys. I’m not an idiot. Does anyone seriously sit there and hand over more than $20 to a casino?
We played the machines. We kept changing between nickle and quarter bets. We felt like high rollers and laughed a lot, which is good. Then, it happened. You have to check this out.
Winning slot machines
Have you ever seen that before? Yup, we took our $17.63 and bolted. We cashed out and brought the winnings over to get some coffee for $4.25 each. Well, we didn’t exactly win, as you can tell from the $17.63, but we did come back from being way down and knew when to get the heck out of there. Yee haw.
We had some time left, so we decided to walk around a bit and take some pictures. The ladies had fun with the camera. So much fun in fact, I had to delete many less mature shots.
Ceiling lights at MGM Grand
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The huge Christmas tree at MGM Grand
Me, giving a fashion pose, in front of the huge Christmas tree
The lobby fountain at MGM Grand
That was fun. I think I had 75 pictures on my camera and narrowed it down to 5. Nice job.
After that, we went in to grab our seats in the theater. As I mentioned above, nobody hassled me about having my camera on me. Inside, they did tell us that flash photography wasn’t welcome and one time, a guy came over to tell me that I couldn’t take pictures during the show. Whatever. Here they are.
Before Duran Duran came onto stage
Duran Duran in concert - MGM Grand at Foxwoods
Duran Duran in concert - MGM Grand at Foxwoods
Duran Duran in concert - MGM Grand at Foxwoods
The group put on a good show. I’ll leave it at that, because I am sure you have all heard about how great bands are when they perform. They are all pretty good.
One thing that surprised me was how many times I kept saying, “Oh, that is their song too?” I kept forgetting how long these guys have been around and how many songs they have out there. It’s not very difficult for them to pick the good ones.
After we got back to the house, we had a few sips of the wine Laura’s friend bought us. That made us all tired and we went to bed.
TYSM I read this one and decided to try it out on my ACER (See, its not always HP with the problems)...