Archive for March, 2007

Road Rules / Real World – To Be, or not To Be

Friday, March 23rd, 2007

Wikipedia is a fine resource. Nothing else on the Internet allows me to go from looking up game shows to looking up Norse mythology.

While browsing the reality TV category last Tuesday, I came across the page for Road Rules. On this page, near the bottom, a casting call is listed with a due date for Monday the 26th. This is an interesting opportunity. I remember when Road Rules first came out. I was in 6th grade and I remember the people on that show better than I do any other Road Rules or The Real World season. Just going off memory, I remember Mark (who had a tower of hair at the beginning of the season and none at the end), Kit (the hot chick), Allison (the girl from Long Island), the girl whose last name is Spottedhorse (because she’s Native American [I had to look up her first name, which is Shelly]) and Carlos (the prick).

Since then, I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be on Road Rules or The Real World. Mind you, it’s not a goal in my life to be on an MTV reality show, but more of a grand “what-if”. Well, since the age cutoff for these shows is 24, here presents my last chance to fulfill that “what-if”.

So, with only 6 days notice, I start writing what I’m going to say and deciding when I’m going to be able to send in the tape once I have it. I’ll start writing something, change a couple of words, add something else, change the order, take out an entire section, make some more edits, etc etc before I finally have something.

So, borrowing my dad’s camera, I film what I want to say in the 5 minutes I’m allowed. After the speech, I play it back and decide that it’s not going to get better before the deadline.

I also decide that right now, I’m in absolutely no condition to be on MTV or TV of any kind.

The tape played exactly as my comedy tapes did. I stutter at some points, I look away from the camera when I’m not confident in what I have to say, and I do the blinking thing when I’m trying to figure out what to say. It is incredibly obvious that putting myself in this position would absolutely ruin me. Not to mention that I could’ve included more than just me (blinking eyes and stupid voice) talking to the camera. I should’ve included some action shots and super-duper video editing, but 6 days left little time to do anything.

If this tape was going to be sent out, it would’ve been sent out today. Instead, it’s in my hand and it will not be making the cross-country trip to Bunim-Murray Productions.

To be or not to be? Not to be.

(I just wrote a blog entry about how I’m not doing something. How retarded am I?)

NCAA March Madness: I suck at this game.

Friday, March 16th, 2007

Filling out NCAA brackets are fun.

What’s not fun is losing a Final Four pick in round one. (Then again, I’m the idiot that thinks it’s still the 90’s and had Duke going that far anyway, so maybe it’s deserved.)

I suck at this game.

Vista Sucks. In Other News, Bears Shit in the Woods

Monday, March 5th, 2007

I’ve known from other people that Vista is something that should be avoided until proper support is developed for it and all the kinks are worked out. Unfortunately, Vista is unavoidable if one is buying a brand new system.

My cousin owns a business. He needs to be able to scan 300 work orders at a time and store the images. To facilitate this, he purchased a new Gateway laptop (Vista pre-loaded) and a HP LaserJet 3055 from BestBuy. When I set up everything, we ran into a difficulty. While HP has print drivers for Vista, scanner drivers were noticeably lacking. Too bad BestBuy didn’t tell us this when we made the purchase. We had to figure out that it doesn’t work with Vista by going to hp.com and not finding the scanner drivers on the product page. Finding compatible hardware meant going to the manufacturer’s site and browsing each potential product for Vista scanner drivers. That’s not convenient at all, and every place I went suggested this course of action for determining what to purchase, as not even the many sales reps we spoke to could definitely say whether a printer was supported or not. Imagine someone not tech savvy trying to make this purchase and having to do this. It would be impossible.

Finding hardware that Vista supports while on a time deadline is a pain in the ass. Why can’t shit just work when it gets released? Why release an OS to everyone at the same time? More to the point that’s relevant, why is the completely new OS bundled with EVERY NEW COMPUTER IN EXISTENCE when THERE’S A GOOD AMOUNT OF HARDWARE UNSUPPORTED? Yes, I do realize that there’s going to be issues, but should it not be the consumer’s option to upgrade to the new OS at his or her convenience, not force the upgrade prematurely and make everyone batshit insane dealing with all sorts of issues?

I don’t even know what I’m pissed at, but I’m pissed at something and something should be done. Damned if I know what though.

Stand-up: SURPRISE!

Friday, March 2nd, 2007

Surprise 1: Despite saying I wasn’t going to, I did this again.  I just got back from McGuire’s, having performed my 6 minute set in 8 minutes.  Like the first time, this was the “Long Island’s funniest person” contest, and just like the first time, I didn’t advance.  By design, I told less people than I did for the previous two.  Mom and dad didn’t know about this (hi dad… remember when I said I was meeting my friends at happy hour? Yeah, that was half-true) so the performance didn’t get video taped by them, which leads into…

Surprise 2: News 12 taped it instead.

Aannnnnnnnnnnd that’s lovely.  Nice to know 10 minutes before the night starts.  I specifically caricature two people I work with / for, and the footage may be shown on News 12 either next week or the week after.  Screwed? Yep.

2 of my friends showed up for support, which I fully appreciate.   They thought I was good, and some of the people in the club thought I was ok as well.  I did get some pointers from Sparky (one of the 3 comics to advance to the finals) which I also fully appreciate.  One cameraman said I needed to find my audience.  In retrospect, I should’ve told him “… they’re right in front of me,” but I didn’t think of it.

So now it’s 11:30pm, and since I didn’t have dinner, I’m having Wendy’s now.  Somehow, I don’t think I thought my cunning plan all the way through…