MAKE BEN FAIR

Time to say goodbye for a week as we are getting ready to head to San Diego on Sunday. We are taking 19 folks from UBC to beautiful Mission beach for a week of surfing. I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am for this trip. Growing up I always like the water and was fascinated with surfing. My favorite band was the beach boys and something about beach culture that has always appealed to me??? I had a small dose of the beach life while living in Florida and it was heaven. I can sit and watch waves all day. Water is so fluid, and I don't mean water is a fluid, I mean water is so fluid, so seamless it just seems to captivate me. If you want to watch us surf, there are several Mission beach web cams that run live video of the beach area. The best one I have found so far is this one here.. click and enjoy. Remember that California time is 2 hours different than Texas time. So if you check this around 11am you may catch us in the water.

So please don't be angry that I am not going to be blogging for about a week, I am going on Vacation! I know that I will have a lot to blog about when we get home, the trip for starters, March Madness... tons of stuff. I wish everyone a very safe and happy spring break and I hope that you catch as many waves as I do, my goal is one really good one!

I will leave you with something that use to be included in my blog a lot and I have left out more recently... but that is the MUSIC OF THE DAY! The music of today is a band called "Snow Patrol" and the song is called "Run"! Get this song!!! Hard to find but worth the hunt. The music of the week for next weeks surf trip will be: "Jack Johnson", "Bob Marley" , "Blink 182" and of course San Diego's own "Switchfoot"!
cheers, ben

There is nothing that I enjoy more than a really well written tv show. Something about certain shows that no matter how much things resolve, they just get all twisted up again. The show "Alias" is really good about this, and for the three seasons that we have watched this show, every single week we have always thought how amazingly well this show is written. In the past I have been a little more into the show than I currently am, maybe just because I had more time on my hands back then, but I would play the video game on the website and read about the episodes etc. I remember back when I was doing this that a certain car company was advertising their car and having a contest to give away a car like Sydney drives on the show. Then I would watch the show and notice that she indeed was driving the car that this certain car company was advertising on the shows website. The only difference is back then, they would never make a big deal about the car or even mention the car on the show, so if you didn't look at the website you might not really notice that the car company was a sponsor of the show and paid Alias a lot of money for them to use their car in the episodes. So what you had was product placement but just like in every show and movie it was subtle.

tonight's episode was very very different, and very very ridiculous! Very early in the show Sydney and Vaughan are chasing some bad guys on to the top of a parking garage and the bad guys jump in a brand new "#*@!" mustang! (I have chosen to not honor the car company with any more free advertising by using various symbols for their name) Then Sydney looks around and instead of yelling, "the truck!", she yells "the F-150!" Then the F-150 starts chasing the mustang and what a 30 second commercial it was, the cars have never looked so good, except maybe on Wayne's World where they make fun of product placement! I was disappointed that a show like Alias would completely sellout the integrity of their show by allowing such ridiculous product placement. She might as well have said, "The F-150 with dual airbags, front and rear super suspension, killer soundsystem, antilock brakes, 4 wheel drive, with a hemi!" Well, the hemi is the wrong brand, but you get the point. Immediately following the commercial that we were forced to watch during Alias was a commercial buy that certain car company showing off the new F-150 in all its glory. If TiVo is to blame for this, because no one watches commercials anymore, then I say we protest TiVo, because the more that our TV shows start turning this direction, the worse things will get. Its bad enough you pay money to go see a movie and you have to watch commercials now, previews for other movies are one thing, but coke commercials... I didn't pay $6 for a movie ticket to be advertised to.... That sucks! Just so you know, I will be sending my complaint to Alias to let them know that product placement like what was used tonight is completely selling out and they should care more about the integrity of their show than what was shown! I am done... cheers