I'm intrigued with a new sport. Competitive eating. Yes, I said sport. After all, ESPN is televising "The U.S. Open of Competitive Eating." Last night was the first round, featuring cheese fries. Tonight is the second round, featuring spaghetti. I'm told that future rounds will feature appetizer samplers. All the big names that usually appear at the Nathans Hot Dog Eating Contest are participating including Kobayashi, Eric "Badlands" Booker and Sonya Thomas, "The Black Widow." Yes, they even have nicknames. Kobayashi is the 130-pound Japanese guy who routinely eats 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes. He inhaled the cheese fries as he would a bowl of rice or noodles, using two forks to substitute for chopsticks. Keep an eye on competitive eating people, it's the next big thing!

Tonight I'm going bowling. First time I've gone bowling in... hmm, a long time!

I've been transfixed by the CBS Sportsline Major League Baseball Scoreboard. It displays linescores of every baseball game going on and the beautiful part is... you don't have to wait for it to refresh every 30 seconds or so. Whenever each pitch is thrown, the game is automatically updated on the screen. Is there anything the internet can't do?

I have three excuses for not updating this blog as frequently as usual.

1) The heat wave has made me sluggish
2) I'm swamped at work
3) I'm too busy reading Harry Potter

What I did on Saturday : Saw a matinee of "The Wedding Crashers"... took a nap... watched the Mets game... had Chinese food with Jennifer... went to Annie's 24th birthday party

What I'm doing on Sunday : Seeing my folks... going to Red Lobster... starting to read the sixth Harry Potter book

Another weekend recap of certain friends attending an Aaron Carter concert at Six Flags Great Adventure can be read here.

Today was another Parks ribbon cutting ceremony. This one was for restorations to Ocean Parkway. Part of this site includes a bicycle path and in an attempt to find some appropriate movie-theme music, my boss says to me "Phil, what's the name of that bicycle movie?" Apparently he was thinking of "Breaking Away" but since I've never seen it, I responded with the only bicycle movie that came to my mind... "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."

How pathetic is my fantasy baseball team? My two most successful starting pitchers this year are Kenny Rogers and Livan Hernandez. Rogers was arrested for assaulting a TV cameraman and Hernandez had a hissy fit last night because his team lost and he threatened to quit baseball. Go team!

I attended Trivia last night for the first time in several weeks and my team, "Judge Reinhold for Supreme Court", came in third place. But the highlight was my thinking of the funniest answer of the night. Caren asked a question about a teenager in Ottawa who was arrested for driving about 100 mph. He told the police that he was driving so fast because he was looking for something and the question was "What was he looking for?" My team didn't know the correct answer (which was a bathroom) so we were guessing lots of things. Then I said it.

A White Castle.

We put it down as our answer and when Caren read it out, the entire Baggot Inn cracked up. Daryl then drew a depiction of me speeding my way to a White Castle.














To reward my funny answer, Caren gave my team a pair of flip-flops and a mint. Except the mint looked strangly like a blunt. Which lead Daryl to draw this...
















A fun time as usual at the Baggot Inn.

Last night, Tamara, Chris, Brad and I took Bellmore, Long Island by storm. The occasion was the Long Island Film Festival, where Tamara's student film "Something Old, Something British" was shown. Before I get to the films, I have to say that after a year of reading each others blogs, it was great to finally meet Tamara. We had a fun time before the movies, by imbibing at Bellmore's finest establishments. Now the only people on my blogroll who I've yet to meet are Jennie and Bex!

I thought Tamara's film was very well done. It briefly told the story of a maid-of-honor whose duties keep getting usurped by a British guy who seems to understand exactly what the bride and her bridal party need to keep from going insane. It had some funny and clever moments and the aesthetic look of the film seemed very professional. There were a few other films that were entertaining such as "18 Candles" - a funny spoof of "16 Candles", "Enjoy the Show" - a comedy from the perspective of teenage movie theater staffers, and "Disturbing Leonard" - a "Truman Show" knockoff with a sad ending. That's not to say that some of the other films weren't pure shit. But hey, that's a film festival for you and I made sure to reflect my opinions on my ballot card. The films began at 11:45 and ended at 2 A.M., at which time a dumpy woman from the Film Festival called all the filmmakers up on stage for a Q and A. Which could have been interesting if it WASN'T 2 IN THE MORNING! At that point we were tired and wanting to go home.

Thanks to Brad for driving and congrats to Tamara on the achievement!

The Saga of the Water Bubbles :

I entered the bathroom this morning to take a shower and was greeted by the sight of water bubbles coming through the painted walls above the bathtub. Uh oh. Worst case scenarios flash through my mind - a pipe broke, they're going to have to break through the walls... in other words it'll be a huge mess. So I called my super and he checked out the bubbles. Good news! Nothing broke. According to him, the bubbles had dried up and what caused them was probably a huge spill in the apartment above mine. So he peeled away the paint where the bubbles used to be, will check on the water spillers above me and will call the building's painter to make my walls look nice again.

So that was today's high drama. Yesterday's highlight was receiving my new baseball jersey - the front has the Parks logo and says "Brooklyn Special Events" and the back has my last name and the number "8". For Gary Carter, of course.

And there's only a few more days until the new Harry Potter book is released! I'm rereading Book 5 so I can be all up to speed.

Sorry for the lack of blog updates in the last few days. I know that many of you have been missing reading my posts (hi, mom and dad!) I'd say that it's the lazy, hazy days of summer except things have been anything but lazy at work. Four ribbon-cutting ceremonies in two weeks with one coming up tonight.

But it's not all work all the time. On Sunday I went with a friend to the Museum of Natural History to see the new dinosaur exhibit. Every ten years or so, they announce that everything that was previously thought about dinosaurs is wrong and they put new theories forward. For example, dinosaurs are now descended from birds, T-Rexs ran slowly with their heads and backs parallel to the ground, and Stegasouruses used their plates not for defense but to attract mates. I'm sure that when they logged onto DDate that their profiles were superficially judged on the appearance of their plates.

Due to popular demand, here is a picture of my new hairstyle!

Memo to anyone sending an e-mail to a government official. If you wish to be taken seriously, it is advised that your e-mail address screenname not be "ilikefattygirlz".

What's the deal with Haloscan? The number of comments in the counter is far fewer than the actual number of comments that I've been getting. I've noticed that this problem isn't unique to me - it's been plaguing lots of other bloggers. And I switched to Haloscan because of its supposed convenience. Hmpf!

The past 24 hours have been some roller coaster for the city of London. First they're awarded the 2012 Olympics and then terrorists attack their mass transit system. Terrible.

I'm glad that NYC didn't get the Olympics. The city is crowded enough as it is. What particularly bugged me was the insistence that we should get the games just because we survived the 9-11 attacks. Um, hello, we're not the only city to deal with terrorism. Lest we forget fellow bidder Madrid who was attacked on March 11, 2004, or London who was attacked this morning.

R.I.P. Admiral James Stockdale. He will forever be remembered for making the 1992 Vice Presidential Debate so entertaining. "Who am I? Why am I here?" "Um, what did you say? My hearing aid fell out." "Gridlock! Gridlock!"

There are a lot of unemployed wrestlers this morning. WWE released a bunch of their mid-carders yesterday including the Dudley Boyz, Charlie Haas, Billy Kidman, Maven, Spike Dudley and others. No doubt its a huge cost-cutting move in light of their bad business.

I recently found out that Blogger has made it a whole lot easier to post photos. Which I'll probably do more of now. Maybe.

Ben and I doing promotional work at Faneuil Hall in Boston.

I'm back from spending the past four days in Boston. Thanks to Ben for the company! A stay at the Boston Park & Plaza Hotel, meals and the opportunity to see the Boston Pops concert and fireworks show... who could refuse? Plenty of time was spent walking around the Esplanade, Harvard Yard, Newbury Street, Chinatown, the theater district, the Prudential Center, etc. And I have a new second-favorite baseball team - the Boston Red Sox. I caught the fever, hanging out with the locals, and bought myself a Red Sox shirt that I wore proudly. All in all, it was a very enjoyable weekend and a great getaway from NYC.

I took today off from work and went to the Museum of Modern Art. It was my first time there since its reopening in November. Actually, it was my first time there since 1991. I was a freshman in high school taking an Art History class. The AP of the department instructed all of the art teachers to give us an assignment where we had to go to MOMA and sketch various paintings. Mind you, this was a "history and appreciation" class and most of us in the class chose it because our artistic talents were generally confined to stick figures. The teacher agreed that it was a ridiculous assignment but she had to do what her boss said. So on one Columbus Day, the entire MOMA was filled with freshmen from Murrow H.S., feebly attempting to sketch the paintings. At least until a bunch of us just went down to the gift shop, bought a bunch of postcards and traced them. So there.

I hope everyone has a great 4th of July weekend!