Packing it in...

Packing and cleaning...packing and cleaning...That pretty much sums up my weekend. That and getting serenaded by Drew on my phone. He's the only guy I know who'll call me up right after he wakes up singing songs from "Rent"... :-) Anyhoo, I've been getting ready big-time for my trip to Orlando on Tuesday. I've been bouncing around town shopping around for clothes and other necessities for my trip.

Last night, Matt came over fresh from his trip to Alabama working as the script coordinator on the "Junior Miss Pageant" which aired on PAX. Kinda coincidental since I'm making my pilgrimage to the South next week for a PAX show. In addition to catching up, we did a little trip to Castle Park for some mini-golf. My usual ineptness at the putt-putt shone through again resulting in a game that was 10 over par. After hitting the range, we all converged at my house where we whipped up some strawberry margaritas and ordered in some pizza.

Picked up a new little dessert item today at the grocery: Hershey's Portable Pudding. It's a portable tube of chocolate pudding, kinda like those tubes of yogurt. You don't need a spoon to eat it. You just rip the tube open and squeeze the pudding in your mouth. Mmmmmm....As you can imagine, it's quite an appetizing sight. And it's quite the pick-me-up after cleaning out the car in the blazing sun. Damn, it's hot today...But ya know, it's probably not going to be as bad as it will be in Florida this week...Huuuuumidity...eeeek

Let the sunshine in

It's official...I'm going to Florida next week for the first tapings of "Beat the Clock." I head to the Sunshine State and land of palmetto bugs on Tuesday. Basically, my role with the show will be as one of Fremantle reps. I've been told that for later tape dates, I might be sent there by myself to act as the Fremantle liason. It's both pretty cool and pretty scary at the same time. Needless to say, if all goes well, it could lead to bigger opportunities within the company for me.

I'll also probably be squeezing in some time to see the family while I'm in Florida next week. I talked with mumsy last night and she and a few other relatives might come up to see a taping. I might also head down to South Florida if time permits during the 4th of July. And...I might make good on one of my New Year's resolutions during this trip. In other words, there might be another game going on in Florida..."I've Got a Secret!" Actually, I've been dropping increasingly larger bread crumbs for my mom when I've spoken to her on the phone recently. In our conversation last night, I practically dropped a whole loaf of bread. We were talking about movies and how my mom just saw "Harry Potter" and "The Mummy." So my mom says to me, "Did you ever notice how the girls in those movies are always the smart ones? Like in The Mummy?" To which I replied, "Nah...I really didn't notice...I was paying too much attention to Brendan Fraser." To which, she just chuckled but didn't really say much else. Hrmm...

MTV's "Undressed" is back for a new season! YAY! I love you, MTV...

Here is your first subject...

Just got back from another fun game show gathering at David's. In addition to the usual rag-tag bunch from the L.A. game show bunch, we had some visitors from the East Coast. We had Eddie from Florida and Doug and Jake from Washington. 'Twas a lot of fun. Drew and I teamed up for a little "Pyramid" action and kicked some booty. :-) I managed to get Drew to say "Things that attack" using "FOX animals" as a clue. We also played a little $ale of the Century and there was a game of Password '75 before Drew and I had to leave. Good good stuff...

Really loving my new iPod. I have the oddest set of MP3s known to man. It's really evident when I put the iPod on "shuffle play." One minute I'm listening to Ben Folds Five's "Narcolpesy" and before I know it the next minute I'm listening to the orchestral version of the "Super Mario Bros." theme.

Tried "Vanilla Coke" the other day...I dunno what to make of it...It's not something I'm gonna grab cases of next time I go grocery shopping, but it's not bad. Dr. Pepper is still my preferred non-Coke-Classic soda of choice. The taste of "Vanilla Coke" actually reminds me of what happens when you blend root beer with coke. Speaking of odd soda concoctions, does anybody remember "OK" soda? I remember it popping up in the Boston area when I was there during the summer of '98. It basically tasted like what you'd get if you mixed EVER soda in the world together.

Double the birthdays, double the fun...

Quite a great weekend this weekend. Friday was Ted's birthday. That evening Ted, Larry, Drew, and I went to see Margaret Cho's live performance of "The Notorious C.H.O." at the Renberg Theater in Hollywood. It was soooooooo funny. I laughed so much my cheeks were sore by the end of the show. I'll never look at lesbian midgets the same way again...We capped off the evening by having a late birthday dinner for Ted at the Outback Steakhouse. Mmmmmmm....Bloomin' onion....Taaaaasty :-)

Saturday, we had our big "Gay-rage Sale" to help our friend Erin sell some of her stuff before she moves to San Francisco. Ted, Larry, and I sold some things too. I even made some money from selling my old TV/VCR combo and my 35 mm camera. After the garage sale, Ted, Larry, Drew, and I hopped in Ted's car and went to Anaheim to go to Downtown Disney. Did a little dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. Mmmmm....Bananas Foster...There we had prissiest host seat us. He wouldn't even laugh at Ted's jokes...Then, there was this odd manager armed with a walkie-talkie who chewed out one of the servers just a few feet away from us. And he was even prissier than our host! Fortunately, our server was a nice guy and he even recognized Ben Folds from the T-shirt I was wearing. We tried to squeeze in a viewing of Lilo and Stich but to no avail.

Today was quite fun too. It's Chris's birthday tomorrow so to help him celebrate, a bunch of us went to he beach for a little vollyeballing. We went to Santa Monica. It was a nice day. It was crowded, but not stifling. My only beef is that there are way too many people who wear Speedos that shouldn't. Then, in the evening we had a nice night of drinks, snacks, and cake at our place to conclude this big birthday weekend for Ted and Chris.

Gonna end this blog on a bit of a serious note...A lot of you who read my site are regular viewers of fortheboys.tv. Well, if you didn't catch the show tonight, Gary and Steve's cameras were stolen. And as you well know, it's kinda tough to broadcast a live TV show through the 'net without cameras. A bunch of us are pooling together to help Gary and Steve out. If there's any way you can help out, you can E-mail them through their website or you can E-mail me at mandel@mandelweb.com for more info. They've done so much to help provide a forum for the gay community online and the amazing thing is that it's just Gary and Steve who run it all. So, if you've watched the show, do try to help them out. It's the least we can do to say thanks for the great work they've done for us and for being such great friends to the gay community on the 'net.

Curses foiled again!

Lots of dinners this week...Wednesday, Ted, Larry, and I went out to dinner with our friend David whom we hadn't seen in months. I think the last time we saw him was at my "Press Your Pot Luck" party. It was a good dinner...did a lot of catching up and stuff.

Then, Thursday night, Drew and I went out with our other friend David. Not the David mentioned above, but the David who's helped out quite a bit with advising various recent game shows on stats and figures. Dinner this time was at the Cheesecake Factory at the new Sherman Oaks Galleria. It was then that I fell for...well...here's what happened. I was knoshing on some dessert. It was this luscious Hershey's Chocolate Almond cheesecake. Mmmmmm...So, we're there and Drew starts sniffing at my cheesecake. He then tells me, "I think something smells funny with your cheesecake." I start sniffing the cheesecake and...POW...He pushes my nose into the whipped cream. I had this glob of whipped cream on my nose...Blarg...Damn, you Drew! hee-hee :-)

In the midst of some surfing, I did my new tradition of dropping by Television Without Pity to check on the "American Idol" boards and recaps. Somebody had posted one of the finalist's weblogs. That finalist is Jim, the cute guy whose parents are deaf...the one whom Keith has theorized got into the finals as the result of a "fuck you Simon" contingent amongst the viewers. Anyhoo, his blog proved the suspicion I had all along that he played for the time. He has since taken the blog down. But nevertheless, it was quite a curious discovery in my web travails yesterday...

Joining the "core"

Well, I did it...I got my iMac. And I liiiiike it. It's not totally set up yet with all the software, but it's working just fine for the first night. And it's sooo nice-looking. It'll probably take me a week or so to get used to the differences with using OSX and Windows, but I think I'm gonna get the hang of this. It doesn't hurt that I've got the assistance of a number of Mac-using friends like Keith and Drew to guide me through this new computer journey. And speaking of which, Drew came over tonight to help with setting stuff up here and there.

Afterwards, Drew and I dropped by Erin's place to check out her week-long pre-garage-garage sale. She's moving out of L.A. soon, so she's starting to sell off the stuff that she can't bring with her. On Saturday, we'll be helping her out by holding her "gay"-rage sale on our front lawn. In the meantime, she's giving her friends first dibs on the goodies she plans to sell. Tonight, I got my hands on some bath mats. Mmmm....fluffy bath mats.... :-)

Zoinks!

Soooo, a bunch of us saw "Scooby Doo" Saturday morning. It wasn't the craptacular I was expecting, but it wasn't that great either. At best, it was a good matinee movie. There were momentary lapses of clever humor and nods to the old cartoon series, but for the most part, it was filled with a lot of wasted opporunities. The ending was a great idea that was soooooo poorly executed. I was getting flashbacks of "The Mummy Returns." Matthew Lillard was excellent as Shaggy and the CGI Scooby Doo was cute, but I think it could've been a bit more cartoony. Freddie Prinze Jr. was the pretty boy that he always is, but less pretty than usual with the blonde hair. And there was a gratuitous Sugar Ray cameo that was just...well gratuitous. What? Smash Mouth wasn't in town to do "All-Star" for the umpteenth time??? It does say something when the funniest thing that morning was this possessed baby in the movie theater. It cried, but not a cry like most babies. It was this satanic short, staccato evil cry. An abrupt "WAH!" And as Larry astutely pointed out. That satanic "WAH" seemed to bounce from one baby to another around the theater. It was quite hilarious and frightening at the same time...

It's official...I'm switching teams...No, not in THAT way...I'm getting an iMac by the end of this week. Drew and I went to the Apple store at the Glendale Galleria this afternoon to check things out. Good stuff. I realized though that I can get a better deal from this computer store in West L.A. Soooo, within the next few days, I'll be joining the Mac brigade. In the midst of shopping at the Apple store, Drew and I bumped into Adam and Joel. Did a little catching up with the two as well as delighting Adam with the news of my switchover. It should be cool. I just love the design of the iMac. Plus, it'll fit perfectly on my desk. And after a pay check or two, I'll be getting some editing software so I can finally make good use of this camcorder that I purchased a while back.

This evening, I made another guest apperance on fortheboys.tv. As always, it was a BLAST. Steve and Gary are such sweeties. They had the new permanent third cam set up, so my goofy mug popped up more than usual on the show. And there were some, uh, interesting call-ins to the show. Talked about random shtuff including stuff that probably will end up being in that infamous "What A Boy Wants" page that I never seem to get around putting up. Though, honestly, I could probably express the gist of that page with one word...(and you regular readers probably can know what or who it is...)

After the show, Gary hung out at our place where Matt, Thomas, and Erin were along with Tedward and Larry. We all bid Matt adieu before he flies off tomorrow to work on the "Junior Miss America" TV show. 'Twas a fun way to cap off the weekend...

Oh, and at the request of Michael, I'm mentioning him in this blog. HI MICHAEL! :-) Such a sweetie...We're always IM-ing each other and actually he brought up an interesting bit of conversation in regards to how many hits this site get and whatnot. I checked out the stats and I was surprised at the number of hits that my dinky little soapbox on the 'net gets. I'm just curious, if you do read this blog regularly, E-mail me. I'd especially like to know how you found out about the site!

So much done, so little time to type

Heyyyy...Been a bit of the social butterfly this week. Caught up with Drew over dinner at the Galleria on Tuesday night. He was tied up all weekend with showing his brother around town. Wednesday, I went to the big "Price is Right" wrap party. Caleb was also there as well. As we stood there with hors d'ouerves in hand looking at Bob Barker sitting at a table just a few feet away from us, we thought to ourselves, "Geez, did we ever think we'd be here doing this?" It was quite a nice function. Later that night, I went with Drew and a few other folk to Largo to catch Jude in concert. Another great show. Just like the last one we saw, it was Jude solo on the guitar. This time though he had a giant teddy bear up with him on stage. You had to be there to see what I mean...After the show, I hung out a Drew's place for a bit where he and I were treated to a nice mini-concert by his friends Lauralee and Ricki. After they left, he quizzed me on my music knowledge by playing a little "Name that MP3" with me. I also gave him an extra copy of "Mickey Mouse Splashdance" I picked up at Amoeba. After his shock at the fact that I found a copy of it on CD, he popped it in his player and was able to sing along to some of the songs word for word...Quite amazing and frightening at the same time. :-)

Last night was a lot of fun. A bunch of us gathered at the Abbey...yes that's right, I got my skinny little ass over to a West Hollywood bar for once and yes, I actually enjoyed it. I think a big reason was the company. Larry, Ted, Drew, Matt, Thomas, and Gary were there. It was a bit crowded that evening because part of it was blocked off for a private party. It just nice to all hang out and shoot the breeze. We just grabbed a little corner on the patio, had some drinks, and talked shtuff. Mmm...Mandarin and Sprite...I must say, I was quite surprised by the lack of really cute guys there. It might have been beacuse I wasn't on total scope mode that night, but from what I did see, aside from this little group of sporty looking guys that showed up late in the evening, there wasn't really anything to scream about.

Speaking of Gary, my fortheboys.tv appearance has been rescheduled to this Sunday night. I'll be on live with Gary and Steve at 7 PM. And if you do watch, call in to the show!

What else, what else...things are going well here at work. "American Idol" had a great debut showing. Ted is totally hooked on it calling it his "new summer show." Not only that but "The Price is Right" primetime special last night did well too. So, three good prime-time showings for Fremantlemedia this week. With this and "Whammy's" peformance, I'd see we're not doing too badly. :-) I just hope this trend continues with our upcoming projects...especially with one a little further down the horizon that would be another dream project to work with...

Amoeba!!!!

Ted got back from his trip to Philly today. Ah, so good to have him back at home. :-) Can't let me have things a bit too easy for too long...hee-hee, just kidding...There really was a definite void over the weekend without him arond the house...

My friend Chris was on "Friend or Foe" tonight. Damn...must he ALWAYS look good when he's on camera?!? It's begin to get annoying! I swear, he never looks bad on tape or film or even on a 2-inch screen on fortheboys.tv! For those of you who missed it and have GSN, you can catch it tomorrow afternoon. And it'll most likely rerun some time over the weekend as well. And I'll say it again...Kennedy cracks me up. Her "ding-dong" comment at the end of the show made Ted, Larry, and me bust out for some reason...

Went out with Matt and Thomas tonight for a late-night run to Amoeba Music in Hollywood. It's an evil, evil store...I walked in and my wallet got much lighter when I walked out. It's definitely one of those stores I can't shop in by myself. Otherwise, I'd never leave and I'd be broke by the time I left. Too much to choose from...Picked up a lot of goodies here, some of which I thought I'd never find in a store. Got a Jason Falkner CD of his early recordings, a Push Kings CD (they're a band of Harvard grads who made their way out to the west coast after leaving fair Boston), some Travis singles, The Polyphonic Spree, a Jude CD, and a rare CD copy of Disney's Splashdance. So, needless to say, I splurged a bit more than usual... :-)

Blargity Blarg, blarg

As you can probably guess, the fortheboys.tv will not be happening tonight...more on that later...

An interesting past few days...Friday night, Matt, Larry, and I went to Thomas's new apartment to celebrate Tony's birthday as well as Matt's roommate's birthday. In addition some other people we knew (like Chris) as well as people I didn't know, Thomas's roomate was there. Thomas's roommate happens to be an ex of mine named Eric. Not only that, but Chris also knows Thomas's roommate. What a small world this is...It was cool seeing Eric. I hadn't seen him in about a year and half. He's a really nice, sweet guy. His last date with me was actually Ted and Larry's first date. Not sure what sparked the breakup...I had thought when we were dating that things were going well. In any case, it proved to be a fun evening. We played some Taboo and Scattergories. Ate some really sweet cookie cake...

The rest of the weekend has been pretty much a homebound weekend. Went to Best Buy yesterday to pick up the "Mr. Show" DVD box set. "Mr. Show" was one of my all-time favorite sketch comedy shows. I can't wait to sit down and watch it. It's the complete first two seasons. Gary dropped by later that night to hang out. We talked a little bit about what we were going to talk about on the fortheboys episode I was scheduled to be on tonight. We also zipped through some old cheesy game show tapes I had in my collection.

Which brings us to today...wow...what a lazy day today. I did something I hadn't done in a while. I went online to do a little bit of chatting on gay.com just to test the waters and see what else is out there. Unfortunately, it's slim pickings. And as always, those that I find some interest in don't want to have anything to do with me and those that I don't want to have anything to do with try to chat up a storm with me. Blarg....

So why am I home here typing this and not online on the talk show...There were unforutnately some tech difficulties with fortheboys.tv tonight so the show I was scheduled to be on has been postponed. :-/ From the sounds of what Gary and I were talking about last night, it was going to be a good one. I'll keep y'all posted as to when my appearance on the show will be rescheduled.

You take the good, you take the bad...

Just got back from watching "The Phacts of Life," at the Renberg Theater in Hollywood. In the grand tradition of the "Real Brady Bunch Show," is this live performance of three episodes from "The Facts of Life." The show was lots of fun...If you're looking for any deep social commentary or Shakespeare, you ain't gonna find it here. However, if you're looking for a silly trip back in time, you'll get your money's worth. The guy playing "Jo," a former "Temptation Island 2" contestant and an actor on "Spyder Games," is quite looker. Yikes...Did I just say I found Jo hot? The real low light of the show was when the woman playing Mrs. Garrett did an homage to a certain Paul Verhoeven/Joe Esterhas movie...well, I'll let you fill in the blanks there and I'll those of you who are in the area discover what I mean by checking out the show. Let's just say that if you're averse to umm....fish...you probably shouldn't sit in the first few rows. Eek... :-)

Still no word on when I'll be going to Orlando for "Beat the Clock," but things are starting to shape up there. The staff is already setting up shop at Universal Studios over there.

Caught the new Game Show Network game shows. Monday, a bunch of the game show gang got together to watch the premieres. Pretty good stuff. It's so cool to have a 90-minute block of new, decent game shows. I know some people think "Friend or Foe?" is evil, but I just love that "cringe" factor when you see some poor sap "Foed" by his former teammate and Kennedy is a hoot. And as I said in an earlier post, "Russian Roulette" is a really good show that's good game to go along with a neat gimmick. I'll try to digitize the tape I got of my falling through the hole on the set of "Russian Roulette" soon. And I'll get some pics of "Whammy!" up soon as well...Yeah, I know...promises, promises...

In addition to Drewby, Ted, Larry, and the recently-graduated-from-college Nathan, Gary joined us for at the play. Annnnd....this Sunday, I'll be making another appearance on fortheboys.tv. I'm not sure what Gary and Steve are going to have me do this go 'round but I'm sure it'll be fun. :-)

Not much lined for the weekend besides that...geez...aside from work, this has been otherwise a pretty do-nothing week...hence the lack of updates recently!

A ________-ing great time

Ever do something that you think to yourself, "Hey, let's give this a shot and see if it works" and then it goes beyond anything you ever expected? That's what happened with the big "Match Game-North Hollywood Squares Hour" party last night. It's not like we haven't done game show-themed parties before. The first one Ted, Larry, and I threw was the "Match Game 2001" party. We've also had a "Weakest Link" party and a "Press Your Pot-Luck" party.

This acutally began about a month ago...we were thinking of what themed party to do next. I'd always wanted to do a "Match Game 2002" party. I think it was just after we'd seen a taping of "Hollywood Squares" that Larry and Ted looked at our living room and thought...how about "North Hollywood Squares?" Well before you could say, "You put my peanut butter in my chocolate and you put your chocolate in my peanut butter" the "Match Game-North Hollywood Squares" party was born. Just like the "Match Game 2001" party, we'd have everybody dress as a B-celebrity and play the game. Ted and Larry came up with a brilliant idea on how simulate the "Squares" using a sheet of butcher paper hanging from the ceiling with squares cut out to pop our heads through.

So the invites were sent and the planning commenced. For the first time, we enlisted some outside help. I brought Drew on board to help out with writing the questions and to test his game show-writing chops. And he did quite a good job. By party time, he and I put together a couple hundred questions for "Squares" and about 60 or so for "Match Game." Needless to say, we were quite prepped for material for the gaming. Later on, Matt helped out with the "set-making" as the butcher paper idea evolved into this excellent felt "Squares" came board complete with "X" and "O" indicators and a show logo above it. I'll have pics of it up here eventually...

While this all sounds fine and dandy, we had quite a scare Friday night...we came home to discover the air conditioner wasn't working. Needless to say, we were NOT happy campers. We were picturing a house full of 50 people sweating with our windows open for all the neighbors to hear. Fortunately, a call to our landlord resolved the problem quite quickly the next day. It turned out to be a flipped circuit breaker...

Flash forward to last night...The party was a HUGE success. Everybody seemed to have a blast and everybody seemed to get in the game. The costumes...oh the costumes...Ted was Paul Lynde, Larry was Madame (yes...Madame, the puppet...NOT Wayland Flowers), Matt was Don Knotts, Drew was Peter Marshall (or Jon Bauman or John Davidson or Tom Bergeron depending on the point in the evening), and I was Gene Rayburn. We also had a Wally Cox, JM J Bullock, Richard Dawson, Anna Nicole Charo, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Ozzy Osbourne, JoAnne Worley, Bob Denver, and Dick Gautier..JUST to name a few of the celeb people came dressed up as. Now if that wasn't enough, we had quite an interesting mix of guests. In addition to our usual gang of friends, we had a few REAL game show personalities drop by. Bob Bergen was there armed with his repertoire of great voices. Bob's actually been to our place before. He's a really good friend of Ted's...If that wasn't enough, Randy West, as well. I've seen Randy on many occasions at game show tapings and other game show confabs. And it was because of his help that Todd Newton first saw my website. And on top of that...HENRY POLIC II, whom the 80s generation probably remembers from his numerous appearances as Uncle Jerry on "Webster" and his excellent playing on "The $25,000/$100,000 Pyramid," came to the party as well! We met him through Matt and another friend of ours, Tim. We were introduced to him by our friends at a play that he directed called "Fools." All of them were really nice and sweet and they really got into the fun. They could not have been better guests! All three are really witty, funny guys. Randy even did little bit of his Kenny Williams impersonation for us. :-) And Henry had many zingers...I never realized how funny a guy he is. Very quick and sharp. I gotta say, that it really didn't hit me until the party ended what a monster we created and how surreal the whole evening was. There were TWO people who hosted game shows in our living room! And at one point I was asking them to fill in the blanks on "Match Game" questions we wrote up. Too weird...too, too weird...it's amazing how much my life has changed in such a short time and really to think that just a few years ago, I was just another viewer watching game shows and trading tapes of old game shows with other game show fans. Moments like last night make me really appreciate where I am now and how LUCKY I've been...

This party was really one for the books...and I think what made it such a success was that we had great guests who were pretty much all involved with the gaming and we had a great team involved in prepping the party. It makes me wonder what else our bunch can do if we put our minds to it. Good good stuff...And if you're reading this and were at the party, THANK YOU for coming!

That leaves the question...what's next on the horizon? Well, there's talk of a "Pyramid" party some time later on in the summer. It really all depends on coordinating everybody's schedule especially since I might be out of town throughout the summer to go to Orlando for the tapings of the new "Beat the Clock." More on that clock-watching later... :-)