The Bullz-Eye Staff would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year! 2009 was a challenging year for many people given the weak economy and the job market, but hopefully we were able to add some fun and entertainment along with way. So, have a drink, be safe, and get ready for the new year!
Also, if you’re looking for a drink concoction to share with your gal pal as you ring in the new year, check out this Red Velvet Martini from Shelly Perry at Pantry Diaries! Remember – focus on what she likes to drink! You’ll thank us later.
After two or three years of flirting with retirement, Brett Favre (supposedly) hung ‘em up for good at a teary press conference in March of 2008. But his career wasn’t even close to over. A month later he tells the Packers that he wants to come back, so Mike McCarthy and Ted Thompson schedule a trip down to Mississippi to talk it over, but Favre cancels at the last minute. Enough is enough, they decide – the Packers move on. But Favre can’t understand (now that he wants to unretire, again) why the Packers won’t just release him. He really wants to play for the Vikings, so he can stick it to Ted Thompson, because Thompson didn’t want him (after he said Favre could come back, twice) but TT won’t have any of that. The savvy GM works out a deal that sends Favre to the Jets, but despite some MVP-caliber play over the first dozen weeks, he never really invests himself in the team. He injures his throwing arm and the Jets go into a tailspin, missing the playoffs. He retires again and the Jets grant him his release, so now he’s free to sign with the Vikings. Packer Nation throws up in its mouth. In two regular season games, Favre torches the Packers (throwing for 515 yards, seven touchdowns and zero interceptions) in the game in Green Bay, basically burning Lambeau Field down. In Favre’s dream scenario, the Vikings beat the Packers again in the playoffs en route to a Super Bowl win. Will it happen? God, we hope not. – John Paulsen
Check out the entire list and leave your comments.
Here’s another great video from JibJab.com. The 2009 year in review has some great stuff – look closely or you’ll miss some stuff. The Tiger Woods and Carrie Prejean items are some of the best.
Like most people, you’ve probably waited till after the holidays to think about getting back in shape. It’s an annual ritual for many of us, but that doesn’t make it any less important.
Step one for many of us will be joining a gym, and now is a good time to be looking, as many gyms are offering all sorts of promotions and discounts during the holiday season through January. The New York Times has a good article on getting a deal on a gym membership.
It’s New Year’s resolution time again, and the health and fitness clubs here in New York and throughout the country are out in full force.
This time of year you can count on heavy promotions. Clubs depend on the December-January rush for the bulk of their memberships. But this year the frenzy has been ratcheted up a notch as clubs try to make up for the recession, which caused many corporate sponsorships to evaporate and many individual members to drop out or cut way back on costly extras like personal training and massage.
But lean times for the fitness clubs are good news for consumers.
“Join in December and you’ll get the best deals — across the board,” says Howard Brodsky, chief executive of New York Health & Racquet Club. “Health clubs are businesses just like any other retail business. They have numbers they need to hit.”
And here is more good news: Over the last decade or so the health club industry has cleaned up many of its questionable practices. Years ago, health and fitness clubs routinely made the Federal Trade Commission’s list of the top 10 sources of consumer complaints about deceptive sales practices, misleading contracts and lack of full disclosure.
We also recommend checking out one of Fitness Editor Mike Furci’s earliest articles for Bullz-Eye.com on how to choose a gym.
Check out the smack talk threads over at The Scores Report and let us know who you think will win the BCS bowl games, and feel free to offer up some smack talk as well. Also, don’t let your gripes with the BCS ruin yur fun on New Year’s Day. There are some pretty good matchups this year, like Ohio State vs. Oregon. So far it looks like more people think the Ducks are going to win.
If you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet, you can still check out our holiday gift guide for some last-minute ideas. It’s too late to order stuff online but help us put your lists together as you brave the stores with the other procrastinators. We cover everything from gadgets to DVDs to music, and we have sections devoted to gifts for your gal and gifts that fit your budget. For more shopping help, we’ve also added some new web guides to our Stuff to Buy channel, covering coupons, consumer guides and shopping clubs.
We were invited to Las Vegas for the last installment of the 2010 Mustang Unleashed series, and we saw a spectacular illusion featuring famous Las Vegas magician Steve Wyrick from Planet Hollywood and world champion drifter Vaughn Gittin Jr. Read about it and check out the video on Dashboard News.
Together with the editors of Premium Hollywood and The Scores Report, Bullz-Eye.com is looking back at the past decade (what the hell should we call it?) and compiling lists of some of the best and worst of the 00′s in television, movies and sports. These decade debates are fun, so feel free to leave comments with your perspectives as well as we’ll be featuring them here in the Bullz-Eye Blog.
Season 1 had its highs and lows, but the show’s sophomore year was consistently intriguing throughout, starting with the season premiere and the introduction of Catherine Weaver (Shirley Manson), the co-founder and current CEO of ZeiraCorp…except that, as we discovered immediately prior to the closing credits, she wasn’t actually Catherine Weaver but, indeed, was a shapeshifting T-1001. As the season progressed, however, her physical transformation became less interesting than her emotional evolution, with the T-1001 being forced to maintain the façade of its new identity in its entirety, which required her to raise Catherine’s daughter, Savannah (Mackenzie Smith), and try to understand her. (I have a suspicion that all of the parents in our readership just snorted en masse and said, “Uh, yeah, good luck with that!”)
The T-1001 wasn’t the only Terminator to get a crash course in humanity during Season 2. Cameron (Summer Glau) spent much of the season suffering from a serious chip malfunction, leading her at one point to adopt the approximate memories of future resistance fighter Allison Young, on whom her personality had originally been patterned, but we also saw her interacting outside of the Connor camp; elsewhere, the Terminator formerly known as Cromartie (Garret Dillahunt) had his chip destroyed, but his body was connected to ZeiraCorp’s artificial intelligence known as the Babylon A.I., leading him to take on a new name – John Henry – and leading the series to explore matters of spirituality by querying whether his sentience means that terms like “life” and “death” now apply to him. Oh, right, and there was also some pretty good stuff with the human characters, too.
Sure, there were moments which defied credibility, but when you’re dealing with a show that lives and dies by time travel, suspension of disbelief and acceptance of pretty much everything that’s handed to you is a necessity. Fortunately, executive producer Josh Friedman found a way to combine the necessary technological components of “Terminator” with deep characterization. It seriously sucked that “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” was canceled just as those who’d followed it from the beginning were really feeling rewarded for their steadfast viewership, but it was just insult to injury when “Terminator: Salvation” bombed, taking down any decent chance that the series might be revisited at some point.
We have to admit that Lena Headey and Summer Glau added an eye candy factor that made the shows even more enjoyable. Both of their characters found their way onto our TV Girlfriends feature, with Lena’ Headey’s Sara Conner featured in our Married to the Job category and Summer Glau’s Cameron battling in our Fox Force Five list.
Here’s a photo of fireworks exploding during the grand opening of the Aria Resort & Casino at CityCenter in Las Vegas. Vegas has been hit hard by the financial crisis, and now there’s a new, really big kid on the block with CityCenter.
The 67-acre, $8.5 billion mixed-use urban development center is a joint project between MGM Mirage and Dubai World and is said to be the biggest privately financed construction project in United States history. Aria is CityCenter’s centerpiece and includes a 150,000-square-foot casino and 4,004 hotel rooms and suites. The a while there were questions as to whether this complex would ever be finished. Now it’s here and it will be interesting to see the effect it has on Vegas. Not surprisingly, room rates are pretty low for December. If you’re able to check it out leave us your impressions in the comments!
