The last two days have been really busy for me. Well, let me clarily that… very crunched for time. I have driven over 14 hours and nearly 1000 miles.

My trips on Monday were planned so I could visit news stations and drop off my resume and demo tapes. The first market I visited was Youngstown and it’s three news stations. I then drove straight up Rt.11 to Erie, PA to visit 3 stations there. I-79S then took me to Pittsburgh. I finished that portion of the day in Steubenville, OH. That part of the trip was a little over three hundred miles and took me nine hours. Most people would call that the day… but I had to get to Baltimore.

I got into Baltimore around 11:45pm Monday night. I was freaking tired and my back was aching. I unpacked a few things and hit the hay.

I got up on Tuesday morning, unloaded my entire car, then hit the road again to Connecticut. I got into CT around 4:30pm-ish.

It has been a hectic few days, but I’m happy I can spend New Year’s at Mari’s house.

Tomorrow I do it all again… and I’ll tell you about it tomorrow night.

I took Geoff Fox’s new post to heart this afternoon and I spent over an hour deleting ‘friends’. I started the afternoon with 1209 friends on Facebook, and I’m down to 733 now. That is a loss of 476 friends.

But is it really a loss? Are the people that I “defriended” going to get upset at me? Chances are that they don’t even know what has happened.  (side note: It’s amazing to me that we took the noun “friend’ and now use it as a verb. Even dictionary.com says that the use of friend as a verb is rare, but my guess is it is catching on)

My criteria for being saved from the chopping block was simple: have I talked or hung out with you in the past 6 months or spent a considerable amount of time with you (ie High School or Mississippi) at some point. Otherwise, you got cut. So soooorry.

The reason that I downsized is a selfish one. I don’t want to be accountable for your actions. I don’t want to jeopardize my career because one of my ‘friends’ likes smoking pot in his or her Facebook picture.

I also had to laugh a bit when I was doing my deleting. During each defriended individual, a little box pops up and says “You are about to remove ______ as a friend. This action cannot be undone. ____ will not receive any notification.” Below is a screen shot of what it looks like. Ya I know, my Facebook is in Italian.

I really had a good feeling after I was finished. It was like I was cleansed of evil. I recommend everyone do this… but make sure I’m still your friend.

I have seen some great movies this weekend in the new theater at my house.

1) Dark Knight - Freaking awesome. Ledger legitimately scares the crap outta as the Joker. The entire time he was on screen, the only thing I could think of was how great this as his last performance was. I’m definitely going to have to watch it again.

2) 21 - Pretty good movie. I actually saw the true story on A&E about 3 years ago, before the movie was even being shot. Makes me wanna go play some Blackjack and win… a lot!

3) An Inconvenient Truth - Screw you Al Gore. You are doing nothing but lying to the world. The most inconvenient truth for you is when the real truth is finally proven and you are exposed for the liar you are. ‘Nuff Said.

4) Entourage Season 4 - I had never seen the show before and damn am I regretting that. This is one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen. Jeremy Piven is hilarious as agent Ari Gold. His one liner’s are classics… “We are gonna get drunk with Russell Crowe and we’re gonna head-butt some goddamn kangaroos”

5) Planet Earth (on BluRay) - This show should continue winning Emmy’s for the next 10 years for how awesome it is. I will be watching this DVD set for the next 2 months.

Any of you see any good movies the past few days?

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a great New Year! I hope Santa brought you all that you wanted…

Santa just visited and I couldn’t help but notice that he was 20 minutes early. I was tracking him on NORAD… and he was in Pittsburgh. It is a well known fact Santa is a Steeler fan. Anyway, his next stop was Columbus, OH. In between cities, he stopped at my house and, being redneck and all, I left him some cold beer and deviled eggs. Hopefully he left me some good stuff. You can even see Lisbon in the upper left corner.

In the process of writing this, Santa visited Connecticut. So all my friends back there, Santa didn’t forget about you.

My friend Crystal pointed out to me that Santa missed all of Egypt and skipped Brazil too. Does anyone know why?

My father and I are big fans of The Christmas Story. It is a tradition for us to watch it as much as we can. What usually ends up happening is we watch the whole movie over a span of the 24 hours. 15 minutes here, 20 there… but they time Christmas is over, we’ve seen the entire thing.

Last year I got the chance to go to the actual house the movie was filmed in. The house is in a suburb of Cleveland. and still in the exact condition as it is in the movie. I got to see the bathroom Ralphy ate the soap in and decoded the secret Orphan Annie message, the kitchen the family shared dinner in, and even the living room with the leg lamp (Fra-gi-le… must be Italian).

This is one Christmas tradition that will never grow old.

Side note: Josh Groban’s Christmas album is the 9th most popular Christmas album of all-time. It came out last year!!! Go get em Josh! Grobanites for life…

In the past couple days I’ve been doing some reminiscing, you know, looking at facebook pictures and stuff. I realized that I am extremely lucky to be alive today. I got on the wrong side of THut and I lived to tell about it (don’t they have a show like that on Discovery Channel or something?). Let me explain.

THut wanted to hang out with me one Thirsty Thursday. I told him I didn’t think I had time because I had to finish my senior research project. He goes “I’ll take care of it…”. Five minutes later, I get a knock on my door from a kid dressed as a clock. He had a big black eye and was crying. I asked him what happened and he simply said, “THut kept saying, ‘I don’t care about time’ and then he bitched slapped me”.

I didn’t want to be bitch slapped so I decided to go out with him. He took me to a nice Japanese place because, as Thut put it, “Rice is my faaaavorite”. Rice wasn’t good enough for THut though so he decide to eat a bald eagle. “I want to be the symbol of freedom”, he said. Then he realized he was a hypocrit because of the three Asian slaves he owns. “Did you know it takes them 14 hours to make enough fabric for my right bicep?” “Oh, that’s nice”, I said back, trying to hide my fear.

It was about that time that THut wanted to get back to the room, but he didn’t have a girl to bring with him. One thing I learned is that THut takes his sex life very seriously. Girls don’t choose to have sex with THut, rather he chooses them. Every time THut has an orgasm, God doesn’t kill a kitten… THut does. It is his tradition apparently.

I had to leave before the animal sacrifice but there are a few more things I learned about THut.
THut has the same gravitational pull as the moon.
THut invented the cotton gin, then gave it to Eli Whitney so Eli could take credit for it.
THut discovered a pattern to pi — then he ate it.

Please share your THut stories so that we may all benefit from these teachings.