Um, no man or woman needs to go there

A little backstory: T grew up in Iowa, not far from a town called Riverside that has dubbed itself the "future birthplace of James T. Kirk." Yeah, like from Star Trek. Long story short, once a year they have a festival called Trek Fest. T claims that he's attended before, and that the highlight of the festival is the demolition derby, where you can "see guys dressed as Klingons and rednecks in the same place while watching cars smash into each other!"

I've never been to any kind of sci-fi or comic book convention, but I find the idea of it appealing, mostly because I think the people-watching end of it would be highly entertaining. So after years of listening to his hype about this place, it so happened that we're going to be in Iowa when this year's Trek Fest was happening. Unfortunately, we arrived too late to catch the demolition derby, but we thought it might be a kick to check it out the next night anyways. This year's fest was supposed to feature a visit from Walter Koenig, better known as Checkov! Exciting...I guess.

Well, my first tipoff that it was going to suck should have been when both T's brother and sister refused to come along. They were like, "Really? Why do you want to go there?" After some cajoling (as well as more jokes about Klingons from T), we finally convinced them to come. His sister was suckered in by the promise of a funnel cake, and his brother mainly just wanted to see the looks of disappointment on our faces once we saw how sucky it was. And boy, was it sucky.

Even by small-town carnival/festival standards, it was sad. I'll chalk some of it to the time of day we arrived (around 8pm), but there were hardly any people there: no one riding the rides, and maybe a dozen people tops near the mainstage, where they were charging $5 to get close enough to watch some anemic rock band perform. I had my camera and really wanted to take pictures, but quite frankly, I was intimidated. My sister-in-law and I split a funnel cake and a friend Snickers bar and then we all got the hell out of there. There's a river casino nearby, so we all went to check that out instead. We didn't stay there long either, but on our way out, we caught sight of a hand-painted sign for the Trek Fest that caused T to make a dramatic U-turn and pull over so he could get out and take a picture. Of course, I don't have my camera download cable with me, and there's no way a description could do the sign justice, so you'll have to bear with me till I get home. Let's just say, it was completely ridiculous and apropos of the situation.

Cuteness

It's nice to see that there are a few kids' show that doesn't make me want to jab hot needles into my eyes. Classical Baby on HBO Family is a big favorite in our house - way less annoying than Baby Einstein. In fact, it's so soothing that it sometimes makes me all drowsy and doze-y when E watches it. Hee-hee.

The newest hit around here is Jack's Big Music Show on Noggin. Another mommy-friend had mentioned it to me a few times, but E didn't seem interested in it until recently. As the title implies, it revolves around music, with a trio of puppets as the main characters, and then guest performances by real musicians. I thought I'd share this one since it's super catchy and cute and has been stuck in my head for over a week now.

Woefully behind

I know that I have yet to say much about this season of So You Think You Can Dance, but I only finally just got caught up via DVR a few days ago. Besides, no one is super invested in any one guy/gal just yet anyways. We need a couple more episodes for that. I will say though that I was disappointed that Rayven got knocked out in Week 1. I kinda dug her and she had a nice backstory too. And I was really happy to see Susie go last week. I dubbed her "Stripperella" as soon as I saw her in the audition phase. Let me just say, if she's really 24 or 25...well, then I guess I am too. She is a very...worn...looking 25, to put it nicely. T used a much less kind phrase which I won't repeat here. But we already know about Nigel's penchant for blondes, especially ones with big boobs.

Other than that, I also wanted to comment on the fact that the judging this year seems incredibly biased. I don't know why they have it out for Courtney and Gev, but man, are they harsh on them or what?! Also, yes, we get it, Will is an amazing GENIUS. Sheesh. Debbie Allen's not on anymore, stop kissing his ass. Also, there have been so many numbers that I thought were mediocre, but the judges raved about and vice versa. I have to say, makes me a bit suspicious.

There's also been more than a few routines that I already have to call bullshit on. First off, what's up with all the lame-ass hip hop routines? What happened to all the hard core stuff? Are we doomed to see an umbrella routine every week from now until the end of time to appeal to the middle-aged yuppies and their teeny-bopper children and sell tickets to the tour? Blech.

My faves so far are Twitch (of course) and Chelsea. Note that I favor those who have normal names, spelled in a normal manner. Adding extraneous E's and random silent H's to your name only makes me want to punch you in the face (yeah, I'm talking to you, Kherrington, Kourtni & Katee). Looking forward to tonight's show. Hopefully, I'll have a chance to watch it live for a change.

My new guilty pleasure

I think my reality guilty pleasure for this summer has got to be Celebrity Circus. When I first heard about it, I thought, "Eh, they're bringing back Circus of the Stars. Big whup." But then I saw a commercial in which Christopher Knight (aka Peter Brady) fell on his face while trying to roll in one of those giant metal wheels. Hilarious. And yes, I do now know that he broke his arm in that fall, and yes, it's still mostly funny.

For those of you that missed it, it's pretty much what you would think it is, except it has the nice added element of competition that seems to be a requirement for any reality show these days. It features 7 "celebrities," each performing a different act for a panel of judges and America's love.

I missed the breakdown of how the scoring and call-in stuff combines, but I'm going to assume it's similar to Dancing with the Stars. And much like DwtS, there's also a panel of circus "experts" that has a nice guy, a crazy Italian, and a saucy Brit. As we watched it, T once again lamented his inability to pull of a fakey British accent so he could be a judge on one of these shows.

The cast is pretty much your standard mix of former child stars, athlete(s) and over-the-hill celebrities looking to milk a few last drops of fame, and some of which have been on the reality circuit before. However, all that being said, I have to say, most of the stuff they had to do looked pretty hard. And safety wire or not, it definitely looked at least a little bit dangerous. I'll note though that T remained unconvinced, saying that he thought the "safety" wire was really suspending them in some cases and making it easier. Whatever.

Of the 7, right now I'd say my picks are: Antonio Sabato Jr., who still looks pretty hot even though he's got to be kind of old now (ETA: ok, I just looked him up on IMDB and he's only 36), and did a good job of making his little flying scarf dealie look easy. Also, Janet Evans gets my vote just by sheer fact of having the most rock-hard abs I've ever seen, especially considering she had a baby 18 months ago. Um yeah, I have a 15-month old and let me tell you, I don't look anything like that.

Oh, and how could I forget? The show is hosted by none other than Joey Fat-one. Glad to see another DwtS alum finding work. Joey has managed to parlay his dancing into quite the little reality career between this, the Singing Bee show that was on last year, and another dancing show he's co-hosting with Mel B. that's coming out on TLC soon. This leads me to wonder, how can I get on Dancing with the Stars? I could use a cush reality hosting job.

All is right with the world

Congratulations to Stephanie, the hometown winner! Lisa can suck it. That is all.

shameless plug

I'm up way too late and bored, but not quite ready for bed, so I thought I'd mention this Bzz Agent thing I just started doing. Basically, it's a program where you sign up to be a part of marketing campaigns and talk about the stuff the send you. I don't get any money for it, just free stuff. And the "Bzz" doesn't necessarily have to suck up and be glowing, if you know what I mean.

However, that being said, I recently got on my first campaign, which was for these Back to Nature brand nuts and trail mixes. I got a box with a bunch of snack packs in it, and I have to say, they were quite yummy. I liked that the nuts were roasted without extra oil, so they weren't super greasy, and they were lightly salted, but not drowning in salt. Yum!

Words fail me.

I thought that I'd have more to say after sleeping on it, but Lisa making it to the final three...I still can't believe it. She is so awful. I told my sister-in-law last night that I hope she's like Wendy Pepper in season one of Project Runway; she clearly didn't deserve to be in the finals based on talent and everyone knew it, including the judges, who dismissed her pretty quickly.

If Richard or Stephanie don't win this, then there is something seriously wrong with this show.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I saw a commercial for Hell's Kitchen last night and thought, "oh yeah, is this show still on?" I still don't really get the timing of when they started this season. It's usually a summer show, and I know Fox was probably hurting for new content after the strike ended, but I don't think I've watched even one full episode, so I couldn't care less now that they're down to the final five. I know Top Chef is on cable, but why in the world would they go up against it? It only makes their show look all the more pathetic. If they'd used even the tiniest bit of common sense, they would've started Hell's Kitchen NOW. I probably would've watched it. I'd feel dirty about it, but I would've have watched anyways just to get my fix of cooking and crappy reality.

And no, I won't be watching the Next Food Network Star. That show is beyond awful. The whole debacle last season with the guy who lied about his resume...lame.