Real World: West Virginia, July 4th Bash For Sodahead13!

Maybe I just take breaks between blogs so I have a lot of stories to write about. Who knows, but that sounds like a good enough explanation. July 4th has passed and technically, over half the year is over with around this time of year. That means it's the prime time of summer and we've been getting scorched. Get your sunblock ready because this is gonna be a ride along the road of a variety of topics. What are you getting in this edition? Here's a quick preview: Two movie reviews of Valentine's Day and Eclipse, Tosh.0, Real World: New Orleans, two July 4th celebration bashes, Sodahead13, UFC 116, and whatever else we deem worthy. Away we go!



I'm going to start off with TV action. Come to think of it, I write a lot about TV stuff, guess I have too much time on my hands. I think that's a good thing though, it could be much worse. We're going the Comedy Central route. For being a guy that likes to goof off and laugh, I surprisingly don't watch a lot of that channel. Some things I will, but it's surely not in my regular rotation like it is to some other people. This one comes to the blog with a recommendation from Abby and Pat and it's one you have to put on the DVR circuit. Tosh.0. Daniel Tosh is the host if you know of him and the concept of this show is right up my alley. It uses a lot of internet clips and spins it in a hilarious way. Some of the things on here are over the top, but that makes it great. Think of a web version of Talk Soup. Why didn't I get to this job first? Each week they also do a segment showing a web redemption. These will feature popular internet vids we've all seen and watched a zillion times of people failing. Tosh brings these people in and recreates the vid and gives them a chance to make good of it. There's been a lot, one of the better ones was having Afro Ninja appear. You all know him, the dude who tries the backflip with his nunchucks and gets mangled. Wednesday nights, 10:30 EST.

Let's now jump from TV and hit the movie scene. Don't worry, we'll get back to the TV talk before we're finished up. Two movies to talk about and give my review, both of which receive big time grades from me. The first was a rental as I didn't see it when it came out in theaters, Valentine's Day. Yes, a chick flick, but you know my theory on those. Maybe it's not super manly of me to admit, but I don't mind a good chick flick at all, I'm down for that. The cast of this movie alone is pretty impressive as there are names upon names. Who? Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Ashton Kutcher, Bradley Cooper, Eric Dane, Patrick Dempsey, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, George Lopez, Anne Hathaway, Queen Latifah, Jacob of Twilight fame, Taylor Swift, Shirley MacLaine, Julia Roberts, and that's just some. The storyline of this I thought was really good too. You had a mix of things going on with all of these characters and they all got nice time throughout the movie. I'm going with a high grade on this one. IMDB at the moment has it at a 5.7. I'm going much higher and Whitney would agree. How about 8.5 Hollywood stars out of 10?



We now hit up the theater. On Monday afternoon, Whitney and myself trekked it to our mall to see the action known as The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. I'm a person that has wrote about the books before and even the movies. The books were great. You may enjoy them even if it's not a topic you'd think you would be into. I thought the same, I will call it the Harry Potter theory. The Harry trailers are great as well if you haven't seen yet if you're into that type of thing. Now onto Eclipse, not to get sidetracked. I'm going to start off by saying this is the best of the three released movies so far of the Twilight group, at least in my opinion. The second I didn't fully see though as I fell asleep through a lot of it, but did wake up for the ending scenes. This one is legit and even if you haven't read the books, you'd be able to follow along for this movie. The fight scenes I thought were very well done. Outside of the wolves looking cheesy to me, everything else was smooth as all gets. A woman answered her cell phone during the later part of this movie and people weren't happy. She soon told the person she'd call them later, smart move. Her phone almost got smashed into pieces. Also, if you've yet to see the Jersey Shore parody of this, you have to search for that video, it's awesome. July 29th, Season 2 of Jersey Shore! Anyways, for some reason this one got ripped apart on IMDB, a 4.5 as we type this up. In my ranks? I'm going to actually double this thing up. Yes, I'm not kidding. We're going 9 bloody vampires out of 10, go see it.

How'd the fireworks of July 4th treat everyone? Since I'm in a booming metropolis, we not only had one, but two fireworks specials in my area. The population is so huge, that's the only way they were able to do it. Friday night, the crew rolled up to Nutter Fort, home of Cork and fellow internet celebrity ManDingo. The name of the event? The Cork and Kristin Rife Nutter Fort July 4th Extravaganza. It's never a bad time when you get the gang together, mix that in with some great food and you're set. I was there to retain my cornhole title from last year that Spank and I won. Due to that, we rode through the streets of Nutter Fort on a golden float and hoisted our trophies for the world to see. This year? Spank went bigger city and went to the Bucs game to watch the fireworks, so I was in need of a partner. In steps Big Zo Daddy, always one that will get the party laughing good, so we became the Italian machismo as we teamed up together. We didn't play bad, but not anything worth writing home about. After the loss, I walked down to the park which is only a little over a block away from Cork's house which makes it easy. It was a madhouse down there with booths upon booths of vendors and people running galore. Our mission was to hit up the funnel cake stand. Can you ever pass up a funnel cake? Nope, you can't. These people made a killing! Not only the funnel cake people, but every other booth was jammed packed. How much? $5 per cake. Ouch! Since it was a special day, you pay that for the cake and get on with it. The crazy thing is that you waited in a line to pay and then after paying you were sent to another line to pick it up. It was a good 30-45 minutes waiting on that beast, but yum!



As we walked back, the fireworks had started up. No hands were blown off that I know of, so chalk one up for the good guys this year. Last year at Nutter Fort, the fireworks side of things, everyone was a bit disappointed about. This year, upon hearing the criticism of the year before, they brought their game and flexed their guns. A very solid display and everyone went home, happy due to it. The weird thing and maybe since it's more city limit type thing, I didn't hear hardly any redneck shotguns going off during the night. You hear that a lot closer to my town though, but more on that in a second. The night was ended with beer pong festivities. I played a game, but since I don't drink at all, it was kind of pointless for me since there were no consequences to myself. It wasn't like my basketball shooting ability, I wasn't anything special during this and I'll retire from the sport after one game. However, the big war was Cork and Trev teaming up against Ozzie and Matty Cakes. That was epic stuff while the fans watched as you had Cork and Trev on fire for a while and doing some major trash talk. Then you'd have the other side get on a run and out would come the infamous Ozzie Dance. You know it's a serious series of games when you have the trash talk on one side and the dancing on the other. Needless to say, the fans watching were the winners here. Cork and Trev were on a massive run to where they were almost unbeatable and then Ozzie and Matty Cakes pulled the rug under their feet to swoop in for the series win. They are this year's winners and will ride in the parade. All in all, a great time and the blog would once again like to thank Cork and Kristin for throwing the bash.

If Friday's fireworks weren't enough, how about Sunday? That was the actual July 4th day, so the pressure was on. Nutter Fort set the bar and basically told Shinnston to beat that one. Since Shinnston is now considered unsafe and ran by terrorists, anything was bound to happen on this night. By the way, that's a little inside thing that nobody outside of our area is going to pick up on. Fellow blog readers from lands of afar, I always say, there's something in here for everyone. The good of this night was that it was walking distance. Our fireworks are always in the mean streets of East Shinnston, my territory and my house is about a block or two away from the park. Yep, you get a great view without even walking out to the park from where we are. Another good thing, four houses down was Whitney's family bash, so we had two spots within a few steps from each other. You can't beat that with a stick. I may have ate the best ribs of my entire life that night, thanks to some mix of them being soaked in Coke and then the ultimate was put on, Sweet Baby Ray's. This night also featured cornhole action and we had some great battles. I teamed up with Big Ev and during one game against Simzilla and Ski, we were up 18-0 before we pulled the win. Another game we were down 19-9 (playing to 21 of course) and came back to get the epic comeback. I think after we stuffed ourselves with food, our cornhole mentality of wanting to slice the opponents' throats died down a bit. We started out as Kobe and ended up as LeBron I guess you could say.



The fireworks in Shinnston are almost always good. I think that's where we spend a lot of the town budget on. As of a few years ago, I'd definitely say that as we had very little, but our park is pretty nice and then we finally got our new basketball courts a while back that we've desperately been in need of 20 years prior. I'm giving the slight nod this year in the battle of fireworks to Shinnston, but Nutter Fort put up the valiant fight this year as compared to next. For what it's worth, the town of Enterprise didn't get blown into little pieces this year either like it did last time around. Word has it that they may be doing it there this weekend? Ouch. Should be interesting. Anyways, like we thanked the Nutter Fort bunch at Cork and Kristin's bash, we'd like to thank the Boggess and Southern clans for doing it up large in East Shinnston.

Let's flip the switch back to TV. I told you we'd be here soon enough and you were patient to wait for it. Real World: New Orleans started up last week and after the first episode, it's time to rock. It can't be any worse than last year, so that's a plus if nothing else. I'll give a real quick character analysis not to bore everyone with. This is a show that I watch every single season and still haven't lost my luster to want to stop doing so. I'll list them in the order they were presented on the first episode. Knight (his last name, but he wants to go by it) is 23 and from Wisconsin. He's a hockey player who got hurt and then addicted to pain pills. He's been through drug rehab. That is a great mix for a Real World character, he should fit in just fine for our weekly TV watching. Then we get Jemmye, who is 21 and from Mississippi. Yes, it's a girl's name, but it's pronounced like the name Jimmy. Strange. She has a crazy accent which I love, but the rest of her, thumbs down. She, at least on first appearance, is the slutty chick of this bunch and has been called out for that already. She's also been called white trash and has her unknown parts pierced is what I'll say. McKenzie, 21 from Florida. She's the typical beach girl. She's cute, but seems like a cookie cutter blonde to me. I don't know much on her actual character thus far into the season though.



Next up is Preston, 22 from Boston. He's the gay dude of the bunch and has been getting reviews online for looking a whole lot like Rajon Rondo. I'd agree to that too. Sometime this season, apparently he wizzes on Ryan's toothbrush, scrubs it around the toilet bowl, and then puts it back. Ryan gets sick and then it breaks bad? I dunno on that, just internet rumors I've heard. That's messed up, but again, that's awesome TV. Ashley, 23, also from Boston. She's originally from Jersey. She's a basketball chick, sells power tools, and has Jolie lips. She's not blow away gorgeous, but she's cute on a scale that she seems like a regular girl hanging out. Eric, 24 and from Virginia. He's the grandpa of this group. He's an international diplomat that is part of security, whatever that entails. He's also supposedly a comedian, but early on hasn't been funny. He hasn't generated a huge character yet either. Sahar, 21 from Michigan. She's never lived away and is one that has somewhat of a man back home. That basically means she'll cheat on him and it'll be crying on the phone with this guy. Those types of characters are brutal, but she's my favorite one so far based on looks if nothing else. Last but not least, Ryan, 21 from Arizona. He's a hair stylist and has already created so much hate that it's been awesome for TV. He bounces off the walls more than I do, way hyper, and has been drugged out before. On the first day, he already had the house fired up with him. He acted like a baby because he didn't want to stay with Knight, bashed Preston for being gay, and called Jimmy a white trash bum in other terms. Jump in on this season, it's a must!

It's past the fact, but UFC 116 was awesome. If you saw my FB posts during the show, it was in my opinion, one of the better all around UFC shows in quite some time. There wasn't a bad match on the show in my mind and there were three that ended up being off the chain good. The main event was why everyone got it, but it was only the third best fight on my ranks and that's saying quite a lot because the main was amazing. Fight of the night to me was my boy Chris "The Crippler" Leben going at it against Sexyama. These guys went at it like no other. The crazy thing was that Leben did this fight on less than 2 WEEKS notice. That shows how nuts Leben is and he won this thing on top. Afterwards, he called out none other than The Axe Murderer himself, Wanderlei Silva. I'm not quite sure that's the smart move to make, but I'm a huge fan of both of those dudes and want to see this fight happen. Another that could've been fight of the night was Stephan Bonnar being yet another bloody mess by winning against Krzysztof Soszynski. Bonnar really is the American Psycho. This dude takes a pounding and keeps going forward like no other. Then we go to the main. Lesnar was absolutely mangled in the 1st Round, taking a crushing and if it weren't Lesnar, it would've been called. 2nd Round, Carwin was gassed and then got locked up in a submission and it was all but over with. Carwin got some major respect after this one, but Lesnar shows again that he's a beast. Time for Velasquez/Lesnar.



Bird's Video Moment of the Week: Sodahead13 makes it on Tosh.0. In this one, he's chugging his Coke. One weird looking dude and his expressions and saying are quality. "That was Sodahead13 and he likes to crank music and chug soda." Ok, here we go. "YEEEEEEEEAAAAHHHHYUH!" It wouldn't let me embed from that vid, so here's just the regular link, click on this thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLosTy6nOj8&feature=related

3 Quick Thangs:

1. Gutter Connection softball, only a few more weeks left of play for some of Shinnston's finest. I'll be sure to keep everyone up to date as I have all year long, with FB and especially Twitter. Yep, time for another cheap Twitter plug: http://twitter.com/Bird33WV.

2. Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory, Season 3: Monday, July 12th on MTV. Of course, that's on wrestling night for me, so it'll have to take the DVR seat because nothing trumps WWE RAW for me on Monday TV. Yes, I realize I'm a dork, but to me, that's what Mondays are all about.

3. As if the world hasn't already been waiting for it, both Mike Tyson and LeBron James finally have Twitter accounts. Get on that.