The world got a little brighter on this beautiful late summer evening, as Joel and Jennifer welcomed Katherine Elise Noped into all of our lives at 11:04 PM.
Mom and baby are both doing very well. Katherine Elise weighed in at 8 pounds, 5 ounces. Joel didn’t tell me how long she was. She has blue eyes and, shockingly, some tufts of reddish-brown hair. :) Joel says it’s more his color than Jennifer’s.
Those are all the details that I have for now. Again, everyone is healthy and happy, which is all that we could’ve asked for.
I have been trying my best to like MTV’s new 10-Spot show, “Nick Cannon Presents: Wild’n Out“, but I’m having a really hard time. The premise is a good one. It’s like “Whose Line is it, Anyway?“ meets “In Living Color“. Unfortunately, they’ve met in an Asian strip club and agreed not to be funny.
Nick Cannon leads a team of “improv comics” that competes with another team, captained by a guest celebrity, in a series of wacky mini-games. I put “improv comics“ in quotes because I question whether the bits are truly improvised and if any of these people are actually comics. Normally, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt, but since comics are supposed to be funny and these people aren’t, I have my suspicions.
The show is set in a club-like atmosphere, with people sitting around the stage at tables, sipping on what are hopefully free and stout drinks. To provide that extra bit of class, the producers have also sprinkled the audience with what I can only assume are strippers dressed in tiny “Wild’n Out“ t-shirts. Nice touch.
Though Cannon is the star of the show, the unfortunate DJ D-Wrek is tasked with presiding over the contest each week, setting up the games, and then doling out points to the team that was the, uh, funniest. He should change his name to DJ Train Wrek, since that’s what most of these skits turn out to be. My favorite part of the show is watching him fake-laugh after each mini-game and say stuff like, “Aw, man. That was off the chain.” while one of the strippers stands next to him, staring blankly.
The games consist of rip-roaring skits like “Guess What Jailed Celebrity You Are”. One team member goes in a sound-proof booth while the audience chooses what celebrity they will be and what they will be in jail for. Then the team member is brought back out and “interrogated” by two other team members posing as cops. The team member that guesses who they are the fastest wins. In this case, the team member was Kirsty Alley and the charge was cannibalism. The “cops” stalked around her for a minute and a half and kept yelling “Cheers” while telling her she was fat. Hilarious.
As if the excitement of the first few rounds weren’t enough, the game culminates in a rap battle between the two teams where they take turns dissing each other in rhyme. This is particularly painful to watch, because as bad as these folks are at improv, they’re worse at rapping. We get to see Cannon spit de hot fire like, “Yo man, your raps is tired. And oh yeah…you’re fired.” Dope, Nick. Dope. It’s like watching the last scene in 8 Mile…..if I were the star of 8 Mile. This is not a good thing.
Despite my criticisms, I think the show could actually be good. I think they need to hire some people that are better at improv. It’s LA. You can’t tell me there aren’t better improv comics available. I also think they need to stop having un-funny guest team captains like Christina Milian and Kanye West. Hopefully they’ll work the kinks out as they go along, because - as I said before - I want to like this show.
Until then, Nick Cannon, I’d change your name.
I hate mowing my grass. We have an acre to mow and just a 22” push mower, so it takes forever. This week I’ve been putting off mowing for about three days. I really should have done it on Monday, but I sold out. I found excuses for the last couple days as well, but today there was no getting out of it.
Since it takes so long, I usually try to leave work a little early and get a head start. I mow part of the front, both sides, and the back. If I can get started around 4, I’m usually done with these areas by the time Ashley gets home. She’ll finish up the front while I rock the weed wacker.
Today, purely by chance, I left work about 10 minutes earlier than I normally do on days when I mow. An hour later, the tree limb you see to your right fell out of one of the trees in my back yard, 10 minutes after I finished mowing that area.
The picture doesn’t quite do it justice, but the limb is about 12 feet long and weighs roughly 40 pounds. It fell from about 45 feet up and shattered into pieces, leaving 5 inch divots in the grass wherever it hit.
I feel really lucky. If I had left work when I normally do, I would’ve been right in the path of this thing when it came down. I mow the grass with my headphones on - it’s quite liberating to listen to GnR’s “You Could Be Mine” while you’re operating gas-powered machinery - so it’s likely that I would not have heard my arboreal demise raining down on me from above.
Now I really hate mowing my grass.
I was saddened this morning by news of Peter Jennings’ passing. Though Dan Rather’s homespun Texas colloquialisms made him my favorite of the Big 3, Jennings was a close second on the strength of a worldly sophistication that set him apart from the rest. One of my favorite memories of Peter Jennings was how he broke down at the end of his marathon Millenium coverage while thanking his staff. True, he had been up for over 24 hours straight and was cracking a little, but the moment was indicative of the humanity Jennings brought to his work on a daily basis. It is that humanity - missing from much of the media today - that I will miss the most.
Thank you, Mr. Jennings. There are not enough like you.
I think it’s pretty clear that you don’t mess with Naomi Campbell. She allegedly trapped one of her personal assistants in a New York apartment in 2001 and beat that ass. Last August, her maid, Millient Burton, accused Campbell of beating her up after Naomi asked her to pack a bag.
In addition to being her assistant and not packing her bag fast enough, it appears that wearing a dress that looks too much like Naomi’s will get you a knuckle sandwich as well. Campbell is now accused of beating up actress friend Yvonne Scio at Rome’s Eden Hotel because the two were at an event wearing similar dresses.
You may know Yvonne better from her role as Vickie Dennis in the 2001 David Hasselhoff blockbuster “Layover” No? Me neither.
Anyway, Yvonne is pissed about the beatdown and is getting in line behind everyone else to sue Campbell. Yvonne’s attorney claims that “Her face is in a terrible way” and she won’t be able to act for some time. Doesn’t being in a David Hasselhoff movie four years ago already mean that you won’t be able to act for some time?
Let’s go to the scoreboard: Naomi Campbell: 3 - PA, Maid, and Actress: 0. I think it’s safe to say that Campbell is the world’s first Likes-To-Fight Supermodel.
If you’re a waiter and Campbell is at one of your tables today, you better hurry the hell up.
I had another “Shit, I’m getting old” moment last week.
I was coming down the stairs and heard Black Sheep’s 1991 smash hit rap single “The Choice Is Yours” on the TV. You know, it’s the “You can get with this, or you can get with that” song. Ashley listens to the Music Choice channel a lot so I assumed that’s what it was.
Wrong. It was a JC Penny back-to-school commercial. No joke. The ad features kids choosing between getting with crappy JC Penny clothes or some other crappy JC Penny clothes, all while dancing around school in their fresh new gear.
Right now I’m too despondent over the desecration of my youth to even comment on how wrong it is to show a back-to-school commercial in July. “The Choice Is Yours” was one of my favorite rap songs as a kid. Black Sheep came out of that Tribe Called Quest / De La Soul family of rappers that I loved so much back then and still do today. It pains me to see one of their songs being used to peddle Sketchers to annoying middle school kids, most of whom weren’t even born when the song was released in 1991.
Now I know how some of you older folks must feel when you see Zepplin songs selling Caddies or Journey selling Fords. If that weren’t enough, Target has taken it a step further and used Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” WITH RE-WRITTEN LYRICS to sell their back-to-school crap. Say it ain’t so. I don’t think I need to explain how hallowed a song that is to the blizzog. It’s painful to watch and listen to.
I guess I just need to get used to this. It’s only a matter of time before the Tribe’s “Scenario” and De La Soul’s “Me, Myself, and I” will show up in some crappy-ass commercials on MTV.
Shit, I’m getting old. 
