Below are the most recent 14 friends' journal entries.

Saturday, July 18th, 2009
dr4b	11:50p	I'm not a particularly good host So I think James is in Komatsu. I hope he is. But Christina is here and falling asleep on a futon on my floor. We got non-Japanese food (burgers at Kua'Aina for lunch, fajitas at El Torito for dinner) and wandered around Jimbocho and Ochanomizu, and here, and Ikebukuro, where we did purikura and played some videogames including a super-awesome one that involves building blocks in a Lemmings-like game that I totally totally want to play again. I could write more but really, I should probly also go to sleep soon. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
dr4b	12:00p	hmm So in about 10 minutes I'm going to get on a train to Tokyo station and find cdinwood, who is visiting for the weekend, mostly so she can get the hell out of Kyushu and be gaijinny for a day or two. If jccw actually makes it to Japan we'll probly meet up with him later too. And maybe bugging samuelp tomorrow. It's summer vacation now! That feels very weird. I don't fully believe it yet... and I'm sure it'll be over before I even notice. I watched the Mariners-Indians game on BS1 this morning. It was really weird. The Mariners, and Felix, won, but I feel like I'm looking at it from outer space or something. Technically, I guess I am. David Aardsma? Really? Yesterday I hung out at school for the day, and after school I did an hour of solo karaoke, then sushi at Heiroku, then home to collapse pretty much. I tried to clean my house a bit but I'm kind of giving up on that -- unless I just throw out most of my stuff, this place will always be cluttered. I also found bugs crawling in my socks, which was uncool, so this morning I stripped the bed and sprayed inside the mattress and under the mattress and around the room and we'll see if it helps at all. I washed my blankets, I did laundry last night too. Japan summers just seem to be very full of bugs anyway, though. Whee. Oh, Taku got my passport back with my renewed visa in it, so on Wednesday morning at ass-early I'm going to meet up with him at the Kita-ku kuyakusho to get it and update my gaijin card and all. Then I go to school a few days next week anyway, for English club, and for a teachers' party. I'm gonna try to get up to Omiya for the Saitama HS tournaments too -- really looking forward to that. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
phenylfairy	3:13p	I saw Nine Inch Nails last night, they were pretty good but not as good as last time - there was a lot of old stuff and a couple of very new tracks, but not so much in between. But Gary Numan came on and did a couple of songs as well! Jane's Addiction were terrible, worse than I expected (partly because Perry Farrell managed to be even more of an idiot than I had expected). Last weekend we moved flat, and now we live in Ealing rather than Archway. The flat is about twice the size (and luckily not twice the price), but getting back from Greenwich last night was pretty miserable. I haven't had time to look round Ealing much yet, our new area is very residential and posh, but I don't know about the town centre. I am put off by the ugly name but I'm sure it's fine really ;). My commute is now 25min door to door! Moving really is super stressful though isn't it? Ugh, don't want to do that again for a while. How is everyone? Current Mood: accomplished (5 Comments |Comment on this)
dr4b	8:36p	If you are a terrorist, please do not read this Thursday, July 30 JAL 515 Departs: Haneda, 9:45am Arrives: Chitose, 11:20am Saturday, August 1 JAL 548 Departs: Chitose, 9:10pm Arrives: Haneda, 10:40pm Yeah, so I'm going to Hokkaido the Sapporo Dome for 3 days (2 nights). Woohoo. I went to the travel agency after work and made arrangements for the trip. Now I have an envelope with my flight and hotel info/codes, and my tickets to the Hawks-Fighters games on the 31st and 1st. Hooray! And now I am watching a Hawks-Fighters game on TV as well... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
dr4b	11:10a	It is miiiiiiine! Went to the Giants-Swallows game last night with Simon, and by proxy, with Christopher and the rest of the cheering gang at the top of section D. As promised 3 months ago, Christopher hooked me up with the Best Shirt Ever: (It says, in Japanese, "I *HATE* THE GIANTS!") Yeah, so Simon got me a discount ticket with his FC membership, I met him at the gate like 5 minutes before the game started, and I asked where we were sitting, and he said "oh! Chris is here, so we're sitting with him and the D gang." Yay. I got my t-shirt and changed into it just in time for the first pitch, which was a tiny bit late due to the Guinness Book of World Records being there to present the team with their award for the most hits in an inning. And well, the Swallows KILLED the Giants 13-7. It was great. The best part is that Aoki was benched for this game because he hasn't been hitting much recently, so naturally the Swallows go ahead and get like 20 hits without him there. Every member of the starting lineup, even the pitcher, got a hit, and almost everyone got RBIs as well. It was nuts. If Takada-kantoku hadn't made a few bonehead moves, the score would have been even higher. I had a pretty good time cheering with everyone -- I know bits and pieces of most of the songs so I was able to keep up fairly well or fake it when not. Only thing is that my Yakult umbrella is in a box in Seattle... I might need to replace it if I go to enough Swallows games. Most of the people were like "come back and cheer with us again! you bring us good luck!" (The Swallows have won exactly THREE games against the Giants this year now. And I was at two of them.) I'm working on picking a new favorite Yakult player since Miyade went to Rakuten. Thinking of Yasushi Iihara, maybe. Keizo Kawashima is also possible but it would be a bit weird since he's a former Fighters player and all. Walked back to Shibuya with Simon after the game and chatted hockey and HS baseball. Hopefully we'll get to catch some of the high school prefectural tourneys next week. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
dr4b	9:37a	Tired Last night I fell asleep watching the Dragons-Tigers game, which is why I didn't write anything. Nothing to write really -- stayed late at school and came home, ate bakery food. Oh, I suppose I could mention that I went to Matsumoto Kiyoshi and stared at the rack of "虫" boxes/bottles until I figured out WTF they were for. I bought some mushi-yoke spray, aka bug repellent, and a tube of... I have no fucking clue what it is but it said basically "for itchy skin and bug bites". I confirmed with a staff person basically that "put this cream on the bug bites so they won't itch" and "put this spray on when you are going outdoors so the bugs won't bite you", and then bought them. I put on the bug itch cream stuff when I got home and it smells kind of like Vicks Vaporrub and it seems to be working somewhat well for making the bug bites itch less. It's funny though -- I have this ever-growing bunch of things I bring with me everywhere these days... I have my stomach acid reflux pills, I have some Tylenol, I have some decongestant (just in case, from the spring when I was getting stuffed up a lot), I have a bottle of sunscreen, I have a bottle of deodorant, and now I add bug spray and itch cream to the mix. When you think about it, this is basically why everyone in Japan has to carry around bags with them... even if you have nothing to carry, you still have things to carry. I also always have a folding umbrella, a water bottle, some pens, a small towel, a hairbrush and some hair ties and barrettes, plus my baseball meikan and my CMU notebook, and my small point-and-shoot camera. So my bag is already pretty heavy before I even add whatever I'm bringing on a given day. Like today, my scorecard book, a Yakult Swallows Furuta #27 t-shirt, and some Hokkaido travel package brochures... I'm going to the Swallows game with Simon tonight and I really need to get my act together for getting plane tickets to Sapporo. This morning I ran a game of Scattergories with one of my advanced 3rd-year classes. What I learned is that they CAN do it -- but 10 categories is too many. Oops. I wanna try again after the break, with 6 or 7 categories, and the other 3rd-year class. Also, it was seriously already 29 degrees out when I was walking to the train this morning at 7:30am. WTF. That's like 84-85 for the rest of you... thank god we have an airconditioner at school, as it is going up to like 32-33 today, which is low 90's. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
dr4b	8:03a	US-Japan college baseball I forgot to mention that on Sunday I actually found what might be the SECOND Pop'n Music machine anywhere near my house! (I mean, seriously, there isn't one in the arcade in Akabane station, there aren't any in Jujo that I know of though I haven't looked THAT hard, there isn't one in the Motohasunuma arcade either, so the nearest ones I know are in Oyama (which is a hell of a bike ride to go to play Pop'n) or in East Akabane, way the hell down La La Garden, PLUS that machine is never, EVER EVER EVER open and usually even has a line to play. But it turns out that in the arcade on the 6th floor of Ito Yokado, they have a totally lame-ass Pop'n machine, but it IS a machine. It's still a Pop'n Music Party machine, IE Pop'n 16, rather than Pop'n Movie which is 17 and in every OTHER arcade. Also, it has no card reader, and the lighting reflects on the screen in a really annoying way... but DUDE it is a Pop'n machine hidden in an arcade that nobody goes to and 100 yen per play. Gah, I already spend too much time in Ito Yokado as is, but... Anyway, as for Monday, after school I went down to the Tokyo Dome for the US-Japan Collegiate tournament Game 2, which Japan won 7-5. I went with my fellow blogging friend Gen; he got there early and saved us seats about 15 rows up from the USA dugout. He likes Yuki Saito, I like Tatsuya Ohishi, we both got to see our favorite pitchers out there eventually. Funny thing is, all the Japanese people were oohing and ahhing at the USA college guys like "OMG! They're so big! They look like major leaguers!" and I'm thinking... holy crap, they DO look big. And these guys are just college freshmen/sophomores? There were a few normal-sized guys who were built like real human beings but for the most part, the USA college players were all these 6-foot-plus bodybuilding types with huge arms and shoulders. So Gen and I were talking for a while in the differences in mechanics how the players throw and play due to different body types. Seriously, I had forgotten what it looks like when everyone is throwing and hitting with just their arms rather than using all of their body strength. It looks weird. And a game with no ouendan is ridiculously quiet. It pains me to realize that I will probably have to give up baseball as a hobby whenever I move back to the US. And have college baseball kids always done this ridiculous thing where the entire dugout empties to congratulate guys or just give them pep talks or whatever? It was nuts and I don't remember ever seeing that before -- like a pitching change happens for Japan and the entire US dugout empties to talk to the guy who was standing on second. Etc. Also, the lady sitting in front of us turned out to be an even BIGGER college baseball dork than I am. We kind of both outed ourselves when Ohishi came out to the mound in the 6th -- I was like "OH MY GOD IT'S OHISHI!!!!" and got really excited and started bouncing up and down in my seat. The lady turns around and asks (in Japanese) "are you a fan?" and I'm like "I'm a HUGE fan! he's my absolute favorite college baseball player in Japan!" and it became clear that both of us had seen him play enough to recognize him warming up by his big yellow glove more than anything... and so as other guys came into the game we were both getting excited to see them, especially the Tohto and Big 6 guys (haha, I'm all like "hey, it's Tanaka from Rikkio," and she's like "Soh-chan!") and so on. She was telling me some stuff about the Koryo kids -- I didn't even know that former Waseda 2B Hiroki Uemoto had a younger brother going to Meiji now who was also from Koryo, since Shohei Habu came into the game and is from Koryo HS too. Also she had stories about Tomoyuki Sugano, who is apparently Tatsunori Hara's nephew, and a pretty good pitcher at Tokaidai. Whee. After the game Gen and I hung out talking at Suidobashi for an hour or so. Ran into Jim Allen, who had been covering the game for Daily Yomiuri, and I hadn't seen in bloody forever. Then we went into the station around 11pm... and the Chuo-Sobu lines were stopped thanks to an "accident". Fuck. So I took the Mita line back to Motohasunuma instead, got in around midnight, then walked the 20 minutes home from there. It's really crazy how I can do that here -- in the US there wouldn't be a "take the alternate subway home and walk a mile down poorly lit streets at midnight" option, you know? Now, time for another day of school. I sprayed my mattress with bug spray last night... but my feet are pretty bitten up. It's somewhat disgusting. I was going to wear capri pants to school this week but I think it will freak out the kids if they see my legs. (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 12th, 2009
dr4b	10:54p	The last few days Haven't been writing journal entries. Not much to say -- well there is, but most of it's introspective what-am-i-doing-in-japan stuff. In a good way. Like, I've been having many very peaceful moments while riding my bike or walking around alone late at night, and it's always like "I could not do this anywhere else in the world." So yeah, baseball on Tue/Wed. And going to Hokkaido. Need to buy plane tickets still, but have baseball tickets, which is the first step. Thursday I had a phone interview for a summer job and today I got email saying they're interested in me, so I need to decide in the next day or two, and go in for an orientation meeting later this month, something like that. It'd put me out of commission during the daytime on Aug 3-7 and 10-14, but I'd still have the evenings free to go to the Fighters games and whatever else is going on. I'd basically be leading kids on fieldtrips during the day... in English. But yeah, Thursday night and Friday night I essentially did nothing, being exhausted after school from 3-4 hours each day doing mock Eiken interviews with some of my 3rd-year students. I don't even remember what food I ate or anything -- think I went to Heiroku on Friday though. I spent time working on blog stuff a bit and goofing off on PP and such. Saturday, I decided to go watch baseball, and went for the cheapest and healthiest option, which was Shonan Searex at Lotte Urawa Marines, in other words, a minor-league game that was free of charge and 6 miles away, so I rode my bike there and back too. I have gotten to the point that I no longer know if 12 miles round trip is a long bike ride or not. It felt GOOD though -- it was around 25 degrees and cloudy outside all day, which was fantastic bike weather. Stopped at Kappa Sushi on the way back for dinner. Kappa is another 100-yen sushi place, up on Road 17. (Seriously, all the 100-yen sushi places are way far away from stations.) Anyway, they VASTLY improved it since last time I was there -- now there are not only touch screens for ordering, BUT they also have these adorable train thingies that deliver your orders! Most normal 100-yen touch-screen places, your order just comes out on the normal belt and beeps when it gets to you or something. But at Kappa there's a second track above the belt and the staff puts the plates on this train thingy and WHOOOOSH it comes to your spot, you take the plates and hit a red button and WHOOOOSH the train thingy slides back away. It's awesome. Oh, I did laundry on Saturday too. I ostensibly cleaned up the house a bit too, but nowhere near enough. I'm such a lazy slob. Today I just hung out here for most of the day. I ate shells&cheese (my last box, sigh) and watched the Fighters game on TV, which they won in the bottom of the freaking 12th after Hisashi Takeda blew the save. So it was a 5-hour game. Went to Yokado after that for some errand-shopping-stuff. You know what I can't figure out? How am I being eaten alive by bugs here when I don't SEE any bugs and I have tons of spit-chemicals-into-the-air-to-repel-bugs things all over the place? Yet my legs are totally bitten up and I have a few bites on my arms too. I can write off the legs to sitting out at Lotte Urawa yesterday, but WTF, seriously. So, Gokusen the Movie just came out and Harry Potter comes out on Wednesday here. I think my plan is to go see at least one of them next Wednesday the 22nd since it'll be "Ladies Day". Or something like that. Hard to believe just 4-5 more days of school and then I'll be on summer vacation... (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 10th, 2009
fishfoo	3:04p	New. Well... new life. New girlfriend: Carrie moved up from Florida late last summer. I am madly fond of her, and she puts up with me, which is more than I could reasonably expect. We spent a few happy months living with my sister in Woodstock, VT, until... New house: About a month ago we found our own place, also in Woodstock. It's an old carriage house apartment. Built by deranged midgets, of course, but that's the way of things. Oddly enough, it's a shared unit, and just before we moved in, we found that the other folks who live here are some very good friends of my boss in my... New job: I've been working at the Woodstock Inn and Resort for a few months now. Since December, actually. Apparently I'm the Jack-of-all-trades (none of which involve computers, which makes me simultaneously both happy and depressed), but at least it's a job. Don't have benefits yet, but we're working on that. All while I'm working on my... New character: I recently got around to (finally) leveling my warrior to 80 in WoW. Of course, as soon as I did, my guild fell apart. Sigh. Anyway, that's the news from here. We actually have room for guests (wonder of wonders), although Carrie's kids will be arriving this coming Wednesday and staying for a month. After that, if anyone would like to visit us in VT, you're all more than welcome. (Carrie will kill me for offering space to stay without consulting with her first, but at least I'm used to being beaten up.) Best to all. (16 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
viesti	4:52p	seeds I swore to thrive, and thrive I shall! I finally went and got like half of my hair chopped off yesterday. I'd been thinking about this for some time, but really made up my mind when I was up at Gemini last month. Took me long enough to finally make an appointment, but it looks and feels GREAT! Pictures will be forthcoming once I've re-dyed my hair, which will probably be early next week at this point, although it's saying something that it looks as good as it does with the fade from the previous dyeing and three months' worth of roots showing. I've done a little work around the place to make it feel more like home. I'm finally starting to make a little headway with that three-year pile of accumulus in my bedroom, so it's at least a little more navigable at this point. There's still much more work to be done, a lot of it is going to involve donating, giving away, and throwing out of stuff. Speaking of which: is anyone interested in classic Magic: the Gathering cards dating back to Revised/Ice Age/Mirage? I've also been working on starting a garden downstairs. It had been in total disrepair, overrun with weeds and brush and littered with stones and cigarette butts, but I'm slowly breathing it back to life. The dirt is actually rich with nutrients, it just required a little love and water and effort. I haven't written about rock climbing much lately, but I'm really starting to test the limits of my strength and endurance. Up until recently I'd been sticking to vertical walls and shying away from the ones that slope backwards, but no more! At this point I'm starting to climb vertical 5.10c walls, and can do several 5.10a and 5.10b sloped walls which require a lot more balance and strength. And then there's Belden. It's a small riverside town about four hours north of here, which is where Gemini Festival was last month. I'll be there this weekend again; considering how much of a turning point Gemini was for me, and how much I've dealt with (and started to resolve) since then it'll be interesting to see where things go for me. Current Mood: accomplished (14 Comments |Comment on this)
dr4b	12:31a	Who the fuck is Tatsuyuki Uemoto anyway besides being the guy who hit the go-ahead 2-run homer off Darvish tonight that eventually won the Lions the game 4-3. Seriously, you know I'm a walking player meikan and even I was like "I've never heard of this guy" when he came up to bat. It seems that he's been with the Lions organization for like 7 years, but he hit his first pro home run on Sunday against Rakuten... and his second today against us. WTF. Anyway, I sat in the front row of the outfield at the Seibu Dome because I knew some people sitting up there and when I arrived I just ran up like "hi! let me sit with you!" and they were like "...sure?" I was so grumpy about the Fighters losing that I basically went to Lawson's around 11:30pm tonight and I bought baseball tickets for 7/31 and 8/1 in Sapporo. So, I think this means I am going to Hokkaido. I have to go get plane tickets next. They will be slightly more expensive than the baseball tickets. Hmm... I should seriously consider getting the Seishun 18 pass and use that to go to Koshien and whatnot. The only question is whether I can somehow make it work out with Oren and Carl visiting here. It'd be pretty funny to travel with them where they can take a 3-hour shinkansen and I take 10-hour local trains :) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
dr4b	10:00a	July 7th is Tanabata day School was school. As usual I don't talk about it in public entries and I haven't even been writing friendslocked entries recently, though maybe I should be. I left promptly at 5pm and ran to the train station and got on a train and managed to arrive at Seibu Kyujo-mae at 6:09pm, bought a ticket and a sandwich and ran into the stadium in time to get there halfway through the bottom of the 1st inning. Couldn't find any of my friends quickly so I sat in the back with Akki and his friends for the first few innings, THEN I spotted people I knew up front so I ran up and sat with them for a while, then saw other friends on the way back up. The nice thing about Seibu on a weekday is that it is totally uncrowded since it's so far from Tokyo. Itokazu forgot his jersey so he was pitching wearing Brian Sweeney's jersey, which was pretty funny. (Akki was even yelling "Ganbare ganbare Sweeney!" instead of Itokazu.) Unfortunately, the Lions won the game 6-4 as Takayuki Kishi pitched a complete game. Sigh. But, Yoshihiro Satoh hit a home run in his first ichi-gun at-bat of the year, and I got to see that at least, yay! I just saw him play all weekend in Kamagaya so it was kind of weird. Halfway through the game they announced that Wednesday's starter is Darvish, so I guess I am going back for another day of this craziness after all! The game was over at 9pm, which would normally make me grumpy, but it was a good thing this time because I got home around 10:30pm after a short errands run to Ito Yokado, and could go to sleep around 11:30pm. It's a really exhausting day to get up at 6:30 and go to work from 8-5, then go to the stadium so far away, cheer my heart out for 3 hours, ride home for an hour, etc... but I really don't regret it. Also I checked with some of my friends and while they all have plans to go to Hokkaido to watch the Fighters this year, they are all at DIFFERENT TIMES. Some are going during Obon or right after (which is RIGHT OUT), one guy is going in September, things like that. I might be going to Sendai at the same time as some of my friends though, so that is good. But, the upshot is, I should plan my Hokkaido trip on my own and when I think is best... and maybe talk to others about closer trips like Sendai/etc. (Comment on this)
Monday, July 6th, 2009
dr4b	10:46p	Maybe I'm nuts But basically I've been poring over travel brochures tonight and I figured out a few things about my harebrained plan to go to Hokkaido the Sapporo Dome over my summer break. See, thanks to the Fighters' retarded schedule, pretty much ALL of the games at the Sapporo Dome during my 6-week break are on WEEKENDS. They do have a home series from the 14th to the 20th... which is a) Obon and b) two of the games are in Asahikawa. Fuck that. Obon is one of the three worst times of the year to travel, first, and Asahikawa means possible rainouts AND not the damn Sapporo Dome anyway. Weekends mean more expensive travel and more crowded games, of course. But worse... almost every travel plan, it's like $200-300 more expensive to stay over Saturday night. The plan I'm looking at, if I want to go from Friday to Sunday for the Softbank games, July 31-Aug 2nd, it's like 70,000 yen for those three days... but if I go from Thursday to Saturday, it's 50,000 yen. Yeah, I'd only see Friday night and Saturday afternoon's games, but I'd also have Thursday to hang out in Sapporo. It seems a little dumb to go up there for the purpose of being a Fighters nerd and not staying over for Sunday, but a free day on Thursday would give me the option of doing several things: 1) Sapporo Dome stadium tour!!!! I've always wanted to do this. They have them all day Thursday and in the morning on Friday, but not during the weekend, which means if I go up Friday I can't do it. 1a) Sapporo Dome observatory!!!!! When I was up there last year I asked about going to the observatory and they were basically like "You can't. You should have come here yesterday." But I checked the schedule on the Sapporo Dome website and it seems to indicate that everything is open on Thursday, all day. 1b) Fighters store shopping, without ninety thousand people there. 2) Hillman's Hangout for Thursday night's game. Maybe even with friends, if I can round up anyone I know who lives in Sapporo. 2a) Other random touristy crap on Thursday night instead, although I tend to believe that night time is not the greatest time to be a tourist. It is, however, a good time to go EAT stuff. 3) Touristy crap on Friday afternoon! I don't really know what, but... hell, it's summer, I bet there's got to be a lot of nice places to just walk around town and see flowers and whatever. I can research. Maybe go to Otaru or somewhere like that, though I dunno how feasible it is before a night game. Then, Friday night and Saturday afternoon I watch the Fighters games, and come home Saturday night, and I can even maybe go play volleyball on Sunday afternoon with Intervoll. The more I think about this, the more I love the idea! I do have to decide soon though, and buy tickets to the games, if I want to actually sit in the leftfield bleachers with the crazy fans. I'm going to Seibu tomorrow night and I'm going to ask around to see if anyone else I know might be going up to Hokkaido that weekend (possible) and doesn't already have tickets (unlikely). And in theory, sitting alone is perfectly fun for me anyway, because I'm weird, although it'd be kind of neat to travel with other people for once. What's the downside? Well, first, spending the money. But I basically kind of already have it in my head that I'm going to blow a bunch of money travelling this summer. I think I'll regret it if I don't, especially once Carl and Oren come to visit Japan. Plus, I am trying to pick up a summer job for a week or two, as well as MAYBE picking up a regular extra part-time job one evening a week or so anyway... and I have been trying to save money on a regular basis, too. The other downside is, on the topic of summer jobs, this travel plan would basically totally kill one of my summer job options, which is for the week of the 27th-31st. On the other hand, that one is an hour away from here for like 3 hours a day of work, which is retarded anyway, and doesn't pay THAT well, and who knows if I'd even get it. Yeah. Okay, so there is a really good chance that I'm going to go ahead and get the baseball tickets in a day or two and then go make travel arrangements later this week as well. And then I'm going to go to Hokkaido in a few weeks, because I love Hokkaido and it's got to be even more awesome in the summer than in the early spring. Plus, adventure! Excitement! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
tangerinpenguin	12:07a	Next Food Network Star After Next And the episode goes pretty much as I expected it to this week, so not much to add. Except that one of Flay's comments last week - "you're the last seven people on the planet to get this opportunity" - had me wondering if he was just referring to this year's NFNS winner's circle, or if they had in fact decided to retire the franchise after this run and I had just missed the memo. The answer to that, of course, is like hell would they shutter their cheap ratings printing press after this season, and auditions for 2010 are starting near you as early as this Wednesday. Break a leg, everyone - judging by our knowing armchair analysis, I'd expect anyone on my friends list who's crazy enough to try out to at least sail through midseason, right? :) (1 Comment |Comment on this)