BACK!

I'm back in Los Angeles, and not soon enough...I think I'm allergic to Florida. The last night I was there, my sinuses really started acting up. I had a congested head all night. Part of it was that I was rummaging through my closet (insert joke here) looking for some games and tapes. The thing is, most of that stuff hadn't been touched since the last time I was in my old bedroom.

The first part of the week in Florida was so uneventful. I was practically holed up at my parent's house most of the time. Thankfully, I had a break from Florida domesticity Tuesday afternoon when I went out for lunch with my friend Eileen. I had met her years ago through the Ben Folds mailing list. We caught up on a lot of stuff and all the crazy doings in the music world...namely Michael Jackson...

That evening, I did went with my sister to my aunt's house for their Christmas party. Nothing like going to a party where you know NOBODY. And nothing tops that more than the fact that most of them are speaking a foreign language. And what's the deal with Filipino boys dressing in gangstawear and Filipina girls dressing up like they were the latest member kicked out of Destiny's Child? Boggles the mind....

Went to Christmas mass on Wednesday where my dad called me out for being an atheist for not going to communion during the mass. Ohhhh...if he only knew...

My parents threw a Christmas party that night...again, lots of people I didn't know. Fortunately, it was mostly co-workers so I could understand what was being said. I did the typical..."Go out and entertain them, Mandel" routine on the piano for the guests and then proceeded to continue noshing on food.

Thursday is when things started to pick up a bit. Did some shopping Thursday afternoon and then met up with Florida-based game show pals Eddie and Marc in West Palm Beach. We did a lot of catching up and watching tapes. It provided a nice breather from the rough early part of the week.

Friday, I got together with a bunch of my teachers from high school. My sister and I even dropped by the school building. It was kinda weird being in a place that looked familiar but had noticeably changed. Bigger lockers?!? Brighter paint?!? What?!? Later that afternoon, I got together with another teacher for coffee. While walking to coffee, I finally bumped into a young, cute, gay guy. If that's the one big thing that I noticed South Florida lacking...it was young, cute gay guys...or even young, cute guys period! I tell you, in my return to LAX Saturday afternoon, I saw more cute guys next to baggage claim than I did in my five days in Florida.

Oh, and to cap it all off, Friday night, as I was packing up and watching some Game Show Network, my dad walks by the TV and says, "Why are you still watching that garbage?" Couple that with my sister chewing me out for the littlelest things and you can see why I loooooved my trip to Florida. (Sarcasm detectors should go off here)

Yeah...now, I'm not saying that I'll never go back to South Florida again. I'll probably return, but I'll need to take somebody with me, or my head will explode.

I love you Los Angeles...How I missed your mountains, your people, and your cute guys so much!

'Tis good to be back home again... :-D

Just for kicks

So, I'm now in Florida...Left LAX Friday night and took the redeye to Ft. Lauderdale. The flight was ok despite the fact that little kid sleeping in the seat next to me kept flailing about and kicking me. I still managed to sleep for most of the flight...

Arrived in Florida around 6:30 AM Florida time)...As I walked towards the airport parking lot, I could hear birds in the bushes screeching...I could swear Tippi Hedren cackling in the background...So the drive began from the Ft. Lauderdale airport to my home in Cooper City. I don't know whether it's because I was half-awake or because I had been away so long, but nothing looked familiar until we got really close to my house.

We arrive at the house around 7-ish. I walk in and see that the house has been redecorated since I last visited. I see lots of old pics of my family and me. I drag my sleepy body to my bedroom to see it kinda in the same arrangement but cleaner with bedding that's a tad more quilty than I remember it. I plop my body on the bed and fall asleep...

I finally wake up around 1-ish, Florida time. Spent the rest of the day having lunch with the family, shopping, and reacquainting myself with the baby grand at home. I don't know whether it's because of the holiday season, but surface street traffic today in Florida was worse than surface street traffic in L.A.! We also dropped by the grocery. My mom is going crazy with our Christmas party. I've never seen her by so many groceries at once. I hope that there are people that I know coming to our Christmas shindig...

Tonight, I've been glued to the TV set watching the offerings my parents' new mini-dish has. I think it's convinced me that I should switch over to mini-dish when I return to L.A. Adelphia sucks big-time...My parents have been trying to get me to watch the Filipino channels they get on the dish to see the game shows they do. I shudder at the thought of what "Dog Eat Dog" is over there....Sorry...really, really, REALLY bad joke. I'll go to my corner now...

Winding Down

Ahh...'tis the season to be saying goodbye for the year. Yesterday, we had the big holiday party at the company. Got myself a bed warmer from Restoration Hardware in the "mystery gift" exchange. It's quite apropos of a gift (dirty jokes, notwithstanding). As everybody can attest to, the one thing I complain about is how cold my bed gets during the winter.

As the week winds down, I've had some extra time to catch a couple of movies...a couple of REALLY good movies actually. The first is "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." Ted and I caught a screening of it at the Academy of TV Thursday night. Sam Rockwell does a phenomenal job as Chuckie-baby. It's frightening how he just nailed the voice and mannerisms. This is especially true in the "Gong Show" scenes. Just a word of warning...those looking for a straightforward look at Chuck Barris's life should look somewhere else...

Tonight, I saw "Adaptation" with Gary. AWESOME movie. This is, hands down, the most clever movie I've seen in quite some time. It's so layered and many times I found myself going, "Oh?" and "Wow!" I really can't say too much about the movie because doing so would spoil things and also because it's really hard to describe in a few words.

Well, tomorrow is the big day...I hop on a flight to Florida tomorrow night and arrive there Monday morning. This should prove to be interesting to say the very least. I've been playing the initial rounds of the catch-up game over E-mail with some friends of mine back in the Sunshine State. I'll be doing the rounds of lunching, dinnering, and hanging-out over the next several days in between taking in the humidity and figuring out how to keep myself entertained at home.

Haven't put the pics up of the party yet...I'll hold off on that until after I get back from Florida. I'll actually have a bunch of new picture pages and some other surprises lined up for the new year.

My Christmas gift...

Behold...some video clips from the big "Ted, Larry, and Mandel Holiday Special" party. You'll need RealOne Player to view these.

First, here is a duet I did with my roomie Ted providing the voice for a popular character. Sure, it's no Bing Crosby and David Bowie but hey, it's free...

And second is the song, Larry, Ted, and I composed for the holidays called "The World is a Big Place (So Stop Hitting Each Other)." It's a wonderful song about tolerance, peace, and all that other holiday bullcrap. Enjoy...

Pics to come tonight or tomorrow!

All that spaz

First of all, just a heads up that tomorrow night, I'll probably post the pics and maybe even some video from the holiday party that Ted, Larry, and I had...

So, as to that movie I saw on Sunday...As some of you may have guessed, I saw a screening of "Chicago." It was fantastic. It's one of the best movies I've seen of the year. I had never seen the musical on stage and to be honest, the only number I was familiar with before seeing the show was "All That Jazz." The movie was full of great performances and the energy does not let up at all. I was especially surprised by Richard Gere. The pacing of the film is great. It doesn't feel long. When I saw the movie version of "Evita," that was one of the few things that bugged me about the movie...the length. In any case, go see "Chicago" when it opens in the next couple of weeks!

Next free screening on the agenda..."Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." If all goes according to plan, Ted and I will be checking that out tomorrow night...

Been making the rounds of gift exchanging. One of the cool things about working in the industry is that you get some unique gifts both from friends and clients. From one company, I got this box of different candies which included pistachio brittle. One of the neatest gifts that I've received so far has been from my friend Drew. Drew got me a "Card Sharks" home game. Now, while that in itself is fine and dandy...However, when I opened the gift and looked on the box top, I noticed that it was autographed by Lacey Pemberton, one of the hostesses/card dealers on the Bob Eubanks/CBS version of the show. Now, how in the hell was Drew able to do this? As some of you know, Lacey now works in casting at "The Bachelor," which also happens to be the show that Drew works for. Geez, what a small world the TV biz can be...

Tonight, we tried out "Scene It," the DVD board game I mentioned in my last blog. It's pretty neat. The game is simple. It's a pretty straightforward trivia game. The hook though is that a half the questions are asked via a DVD. Some questions are based on movie clips you watch. Others are visual puzzles centered around movie stars and movie titles. Plus, the game moves along well. We were able to finish up a game in about an hour. I'm very eager to see if the makers of the game follow through with producing supplemental DVDs with more questions and clips for the game. One thing I must say...I was very surprised at the variety of clips used in the game. I'm kinda shocked that so many different movie studios licensed their clips to be used in the game.

It's that time...

Yet again, it's been a while since I've updating this thing. I've had so much to do between work, setting up our holiday party, and Christmas shopping...

First of all work...Work has been kicking my ass the past couple of weeks. But, it's been kicking my ass in a good way. This probably has been the busiest I've been in the two years that I've been with the company. There's so much that needs to be done before we break for the holiday, but it's a good busy and it's all involved work that I enjoy doing.

In addition to work, this week, Ted, Larry, and I put together our big holiday bash. We had "The Ted, Larry, and Mandel All-Star Holiday Spectaular" last night. As with almost all our parties, there was a theme. For our holiday party, we had it themed like a cheesy TV Christmas variety special. Several of our guests served as guest performers. My college friend Murad did a little original ditty on the guitar. The lovely Rachel performed Santa Baby. Kristen joined in with Larry on a hand-jive set to Jingle Bells. Kimberly did a bi-racial version of "White Christmas." Christie did her rendition of the "Mikey likes it" ad for our "commercial break." Drewby rattled off some bad pun-filled Christmas jokes. Dani did a little Wynnona number before busting out laughing. Gigi did a naughty version of "I Saw (Insert name here) Kissing Santa Claus." (Matt acted as Santa and acted out the kissing) And TV's Randy West did an awesome rendition of Elvis's Blue Christmas. Ted, Larry, and I also did a little performing as well. Ted sang the classic song about the Italian "Christmas donkey." I sang a duet of "Last Christmas" with Miss Piggy. And for the big finale, Ted, Larry, and I sang a world peace holiday song that we wrote just for the party: "The World is Big Place (So Stop Hitting Each Other)" As things simmer down with work this week, I'll post up pics and maybe even some video of the party. All in all, it was a LOT of fun and a great way to cap off what has a been a great year for us. Now...we just have to start planning for our 2003 holiday party!! Just kidding...maybe...

I finally finished my Christmas shopping and Christmas wrapping tonight. I am the WORST Christmas wrapper. Every time I try to wrap gifts, it looks like a three-year-old did it. I managed to get through it though and now it's just a means of giving people their gifts. Ted, Larry, and I did some early gift exchanging. One of the goodies I got and can't wait to try is "Scene It!" It's a DVD-based trivia game where the questions are based on a film clips on a DVD. The really cool thing about this is that I've been told that in the next several months, supplemental DVDs will be sold for the game. So, in a sense, this game could turn out to be like "Trivial Pursuit: The Next Generation."

What else...what else...We officially took "Survivor" off the TiVO list. It's gotten so boring that even Ted and Larry (who were the most ardent "Survivor" fans) stopped watching it. I still love "Amazing Race" though. While I'm miffed that the Zoolander twins, Derek and Drew, are gone, it looks like it's still anybody's race. I'm frankly stunned that Teri and cranky Ian are now in first. Great stuff though...Flo's screeching was by far the biggest higlight in the last episode...

Caught a screening of an upcoming movie...Seeing how long this blog is, I'll save my thoughts on it for later this week. For now, I'll just say that it was defnitely "all that"...plus a little "jazz..." :-)

Brrr

And to think I lived in Boston for 4 years...Geez, this nippy weather is getting to me...particularly my feet. My feet are cold. Brrrrrr...

A pretty standard past few days...Work's been particularly busy as I've been trying to get a bunch of stuff done before things hit the usual winter vacation lull. Went to a tree-trimming/housewarming party at Matt's on Saturday night. There I discovered that I have no watercolor skills whatsoever. Hell, I couldn't even draw a simple face on a Christmas ball. AAAARGH...I am Charlie Brown of Christmas decorating!! Met up with Tom this weekend and saw him at his new place in Northridge. Did a little Christmas shopping with Drew on Saturday. Did the TiVO catch-up thang last night. And revealed to some co-workers this afternoon that I'm do the karaoke thing every now and then...

Favorite moment of tonight "Osbournes": Ozzy proudly proclaiming that he likes to warm his bum next to the fire...

Got this little fun Flashgame link from Drew. Sick, sick, sick...but funny. :-) Make me yearn for a new videogame version of "Moonwalker..."

Wanna be starting something

It just doesn't end...It's like he's taunting us intentionally to see what new crack we can make about him...Well, I say, BRING IT ON, JACKO!!!!

Here's the latest round of pictures I found on the Yahoo's news site which scream for some crass commentary...

First off, lawyers test, Jacko's hand-eye coordination skills to see if can fit the candy in the magic jar.

In this one, is he applying lipstick? I just don't know...

Now for some pictures from his testimony...Here are some questions he answered...

- How many minutes of fame left do you have? His answer

- How old is this latest face that you have on right now? His answer

- How old was the last person you...(I'll let you fill in the rest here...)? And his answer

All right...so that really wasn't what he was answering...And finally, here's a picture that proves that Jacko is the evil sister of Gypsy Carlotta from our Halloween party.

Finally had some free time tonight to a bit of shopping for the holidays. And I'm about 20% from being done. Woo-hoo!

Wet Beaver

First off, get your minds out of the gutter...Gotta start this blog by talking about my big dumbass moment this morning...On my street, there's a lot of road work being done. It got to the point where the machinery was causing the house to literally shake for a half-hour this morning. After usual shower and gussying up, I drove out to venture on my morning commute today to find that it was near-impossible to drive on my street. Construction equipment and vehicles everywhere. I started to creep along the street, hugging as close to the curb as possible to avoid the pockets of newly-filled potholes. As I inch along the street, the front-right side of my car dips. It feels like I hit a dip or a pothole. I accelerate a bit and hear this crunching noise that sounds like I'm driving over gravel. I continue driving until I get out of the construction zone. When I do, I notice that my hubcap is all wet and gray and that my tires look all light and powdery. I had dipped into a cement puddle. AAAAARGH...I debate about what I should do. I end up wiping of the wet cement splotches off my hubcaps and tire and continuing along my commute. The car seems to drive fine. The only weird part was hearing the cement flakes fall off and rattle under the wheel. Woo-ha!

Anhoo, it's been crazy busy this week. It's been a while since I've had this much of a workload. Been working my tail off on some new projects. It can be a bit manic and nerve-wracking some times, but it's pretty damn fun...

A little recap time...Last Saturday night, I got together with my friend Michael from San Diego as well as Gary, Steve, Nathan, and Gary's friend Sean at the Abbey. Compared to most Saturdays, it was not super-crowded. Spent lots of time catching up with everybody. Ya know...the usual...

Sunday night, Ted, Larry, Matt, and I did dinner and a little holiday shopping. Mmmmm...Sizzler cheese bread. :-) Later that evening, I picked up Drew from the airport which wasn't quite as crazy as it was when I dropped him of before Thanksgiving.

This week's evenings have been pretty mellow. Lots of "just hanging out" with friends. Monday night, it was with Drew at his place. His friends Ray and Jesse were also there. We played this "Friends" game that's based on the game Monica and Chandler played to swap the apartments. Then, last night, it was the parade of visitors at our house beginning with RJ whom Ted, Larry, and I haven't seen in a while. Then, Drew dropped by and before we all headed to pick up some dinner, Eddie arrived. By the time we got home from grabbing dinner, we found Nathan in our living room. We all ended up watching the "Muppet Christmas Special" from last week mainly because Nathan, Drew, and Eddie hadn't seen it and also because it was so damn good. The "Moulin Scrooge" scene is one the most clever Muppet scenes I've seen in a long time. In the midst of the Muppet mayhem, John dropped by as well. After our Muppet fix, some of the bunch filtered out. We then fired up that night's "Osbournes."

That brings us to tonight...Didn't get home from work until later than usual tonight...Matt and later Gigi came over. Watched "Amazing Race" to find out Teri and cranky ol' Ian have advanced into next week's leg. (BOOOO!) Larry and I introduced Matt to the wonders of the board game "Can't Stop." Such an simple, addictive game. For those not familiar with the game, it's a board game that was released in 1980 that's kind of like "Press Your Luck" meets "High Rollers" minus questions. It's a very tense game that actually requires a bit of strategy. Matt, being the Matt that he is, kicked both of our asses the three times we played it. Grrrrrr....