Red Sands South Shore Potato Fest

Last weekend brought one of our friends from Halifax over for a visit. While trying to come up with some sort of rough idea of things to do, my wife had spotted the Potato Fest going on in nearby Victoria while browsing through the PEI Fall Flavours Festival event calendar and thought it could be fun. I was skeptical at best (exactly how interesting can a potato be you might ask?)but willing to go check it out.

As we were driving up to the venue, I suspected my skepticism might not be unwarranted. In the very, very large park where the event was taking place there sat two relatively underwhelming white tents, and a food trailer much like you would see at a fair.

As we pulled into a parking space, we were unsure if we should venture out and check things out or if we should just keep on driving 'till we found something that looked a bit more entertaining. Upon stepping out of the car we were greeted with overly loud folky music of some sort-but sadly it wasn't very good.

The website promised great live performances by incredible local artists, an amazing sandcastle display and the potato strongman competition as well as all kinds of local vendors and many different places demoing different potato recipes. Well...what we found was perhaps a smidge different.

• Music-local or not it was just all bad. At least while we were there. Also unreasonably loud.
• Sandcastles-not so amazing. More like a giant pile of un-castled sand in the parking lot with kids climbing around it.
• Competition-nowhere to be found. When asked about it folks looked downright confused.
• Culinary awesomeness-Well there was the potato truck(trailer i mentioned) but...no real outstanding displays of the versatility of the potato-although I hear there were really, really spicy Samosas(??) available for sale inside the tent.
• Vendors-? Perhaps inside the tent-I wasn't paying for the privilege of their miscellaneous sales pitches.

While debating to stay or go, we realized that the food trailer seemed to be accessible without paying for admission into the tent that seemed to only house the obnoxiously loud music and some chairs, or the smaller tent next to it that held...well no promise of much of anything. So we decided to grab some food. The menu was pretty straightforward. Baked potato. Fries. Seafood chowder(of course). Muscles(more of course). Corn on the cob(yay). The prices were super reasonable and while I can't comment on the muscles or the chowder(or...well...I'd be writing this while dead)the food was great and service was fast. Of course that wasn't a huge feat seeing as rather than a large crowd of hundreds of people there were maybe more like tens of people milling around.

After eating the decision to go inside and investigate was made. Now, I'm not THAT cheap-but I wasn't really thinking it was worth the $6.00/person they were asking for admission into the tent of obnoxiousness, but the ladies wanted to check it out so I suggested they go on ahead and go in with instructions to come let me know if it was worthwhile. While they walked into the noise I grabbed a couple images for the blog(ha!) and started taking bets with myself on how long it would be before they were ready to go. I'm not exactly sure, but even though I was betting on 20 minutes, I think it was more like 5 or 6.

Now...here's the thing. I think that's a shame.

Sure, it was the Potato Fest's first year-but they did a *lot* of things wrong and sadly I feel that will impact the success of future years for the Festival. Anyone that went and paid their $6.00 to get into what was basically a beer tent without the decent local band or...well....beer(which could have been at least in part to blame for the performances we heard as well as the small group of older gentleman sitting around clapping mid-Sunday)I'm sure were left shaking their heads and saying $6? For what? Then when next year comes around and lets say they made tremendous improvements to their Festival-how many will simply dismiss it or how many others will have heard of 2010's showing and decide to pass on it? I'm willing to bet that in a place such as this-quite a few. Yeah, yeah.....tourists blah blah blah-but where do a lot of the tourists(especially the smart ones)get a lot of their info? The locals in the small communities they are visiting.

Now it's not that it was terrible or it ruined our day or anything like that-I mean...nothing ventured nothing gained. I guess I just think of cool stuff when I hear festival. Especially in the fall. To me a beautiful small community like that could have offered a much much better venue than a couple relatively small tents filled with bands that should have probly stuck to the garage for now. Victoria really is a beautiful place and it's a shame that none of the areas natural beauty was used at all, rather it was obscured. I understand the tent approach for a rain backup-and it did rain on Saturday and that is unfortunate-Sunday it was most certainly not raining.

All that being said though, if it's back next year I'll return to give it a second chance since I feel there is a lot of potential there. I'd love to see:

1. Some sort of evident selection for the bands that are playing. Not just franks cousins brother says these guys are gooooood.
2. Use some outdoor space in some way. 2 tents 3 picnic tables and an oversize chip wagon does not scream fall festival to me.
3. Don't charge people to see/experience the local vendor tables-they should pay the festival.
4. Review admission price and make sure it's worthwhile. I can do a lot of things with 6 bucks that are more entertaining. I don't mind-in fact I actually prefer to spend my money to support local business, but not for nothing. For Charity I donate to the IWK.
5. Speaking of vendors-why not an all local farmers market or something on the grounds?
6. Maybe some animals or something. People like animals. Especially animals they don't have to clean up after.
7. If you claim to have an awesome event going on-make sure it's actually going on.

That's all for now. I know it's not a rainbow and sunshine post...but I call 'em as I see 'em.

"I...I....I feel like a Monkey could have got at least 4."

"Baby, I think I'm gonna just throw up on you right now"

"OHHH BRENDAAAAN" *insert hyenia on meth laugh here*

GAG.

Well folks, this is it.

Boobs or Jocko are done and BB's version of Pretty Woman is gonna be over with.

At first I was rooting for them a little bit, but really they just ended up getting annoying. I couldn't help but feel... embarrassed for them during the last few competitions. I'm guessing Boobs is on her way out the door-here's why. The Brodeo aka Brigayde thinks they can control him easier. I also don't feel that he's as big of a threat as her, plus he's way less likely to start anymore drama in the house. Beyond that I think it works out for the Brodeo better to keep him around and do some dirt.

PityParty kinda gets his way most times as far as that group is concerned, and even though he can't TELL anyone about the Diamond POV, he can still plant the ideas in their head to let things go a certain way.

Next HOH I believe will be Jocko. Yup, that's right.

I think they'll throw HOH and let him win it. Then he's bye bye the week after that. They have Cop and Whiney and brokeback to get rid of, so why not fake a deal with him after he wins(or maybe even before he wins the HOH) and let Jocko get the blood on his hands rather than a member of the brodeo? Especially since PityParty has that diamond POV, and can take down whoever he wants and backdoor someone regardless of who wins pov etc.
Yeah...Boobs will go this week and then they will throw HOH to Jocko and pick off Cop probly since she isn't really in cohoots with anyone and PityParty i think is blowing Brokeback(or vice versa I can't be sure) and Whiney def has the hots for Lane.

There are so many scenarios that work out for the Brodeo with him as HOH next week...say Jocko puts up who...PityParty and Brokeback or PityParty and Whiney....if nobody good wins/uses POV or Jocko puts up someone they don't want to get rid of, matt pulls out his diamond pov and they backdoor Cop. Or maybe Jocko Puts up Cop and Brokeback. Buh Bye Cop. Either way I'm going with Jocko getting HOH next week and Cop going home. Then Jocko is helpless the following week and will get picked off. It's hard to call at this point beyond that because shit changes *SO* fast around there. Right now everyone except Boobs and Jocko are flying under the radar and everyone else is buddy buddy and getting along because they have something in common to hate against. Once they're gone and they all turn on each other it is gonna be interesting. The Brodeo could get shaken up with the Diamond POV yet....plus we still have more Saboteur instances to run through.

Ahhhh the Saboteur. America can't come up with better 'missions' for him than 'put stinky cheese under the bed' etc? For serious? Do some drastic shit. Destroy all the food in storage, dump some shit in the pool. Hide the pool balls, something. ANYTHING more than some bullshit like putting tape on the HG board.

Speaking of weak Sab. missions...the whole get Boobs and Jocko to turn on each other thing failed pretty badly. BUT the sab DOES bring up something I have thought about many times, and makes me wish that I could let myself break down and get live feeds to see if there is something Production is hiding from us. A secret alliance with the Brodeo and Jocko...I mean...it's kinda a good fit, and could explain why he's been basically useless. Plus the way he acted at POV was too extreme. It made me think that he was getting overly mad to cover for the fact that he threw it. The endurance stuff production threw at him DID set him up to lose, but the bowling? 2 Pins?

That makes me wonder.

Big Brother Reeeeeeecap Monday Aug. 9

Feelin' the pressure, Boobs?

Reminds me of those old Reebok Pumps!

So...yeah.

I'm slack.

Well....this time it isn't so much slack that has me behind, but tooooo much going on-no time and no 'net or cable for a week sorta put a crimp in the regular updates attempt.

Anywho we're here now.

Boobs is lessssss than pleased with Jocko after losing ANOTHER HOH. Here's my take on the HOH and POV competitions. The producers ultimately manipulate and control the show, and they're going to do what they seem to think is best for the show/ratings...they have geared certain competitions so that certain folks have a better chance at winning or losing. Hence the long endurance stuff that will knock out the big strong guys in a hurry etc. While the decisions made in the house may not be made directly by the producers, the outcomes of many things are most certainly 'influenced'. Like this weeks HOH...Jocko reallllly needed that win, because as they predicted they were pretty much instantly condemned to go up on the block.

I can't see any way this god awful Alliance/Showmance can continue. Even if Jocko wins POV(and I'll bet money he won't this time)and saves Boobs he's still gonna get canned....unless somehow there is a secret inclusion of him into the Brodeo that we don't know about yet.

If Boobs wins POV(again-I will bet money here that she won't)with the way they've been fighting and the shit she's been talking about Jocko I would imagine she'd use it on herself.

Cop? Whiney? I think the smart move would be to put up a well liked Brodeo member and force Boobs...or Jocko if it's reversed out.

Wannabe Surfer Boy has been laying pretty low, he has no real reason to make any moves at this time, he's pretty secure. But he...and the rest of the Brodeo need to keep an eye on PityParty...he's out for his own. He'll use the safety in numbers while he can...but clearly he has his own agenda.

Bubba....is Bubba. He seems to be playing nice and getting along with most of the HG's but...then again I can't tell if it's because he's a bit.....slow or he's just a good 'ol boy.

PityParty....Pandora's box....I mean...we knew he was going to open it up, right? He basically has control over who stays and who goes for the next two weeks now and he's safe...effectively saving the Brodeo with him....although like I've said before he's out for himself-as demonstrated by not telling his other allies that he has the Diamond POV.

Speaking of Pandora's Box....Brokeback. BROKEBACK IS THE SABOTEUR!?! That's like giving Richard Simmonds a Karaoke machine and some meth with a side of blow. I wonder what 'America' will have him do for his first task.

Cop jumping off and making a deal with herself to be the have not? Meh...I think she's a little nuts.

Whiney is growing on me more and more...except how two-faced she is. I think either her or possibly Cop will walk away with POV later this week. If they play it? Who knows. Whiney *MIGHT* think about saving Boobs but I doubt it.

So my predictions for the week:

Boobs will go home

Cop or Whiney will win POV

that's all I got for ya for now folks.

"SAAAAAAAWEEEEEEEEEEEEET!"

Also "That bwoy's happier 'n a twister in a trailer park riiiiite naaaow!! WOOOOOOOOOHOOO!!!"

Spent the day in what they kept referring to 'Downtown Crapaud' saturday to shoot/take in the 29th Annual PEI Truck and Tractor Pull Championships.


Now to understand why 'Downtown Crapaud' is a bit funny, the place is well....basically made up of a few fields, some houses and misc buildings and then the Crapaud Exhibition Grounds. By 12pm the place was jam packed with people, and the weather was nice-if not a bit hot later in the afternoon. The announcer was responsible for my two opening quotes, and kept things going and pretty lively all day-and somehow we managed to not get shot at. It wasn't a lack of trying on Chris' part-he broke out the total hick accent most times while talking back and forth throughout the day. Between that and my appearance of questionable ethnicity somehow we walked away and weren't shot or tied to the back of any vehicles.

Lots of local rigs and some crazy rigs from away ended up being a pretty big field of competitors.

For some reason I now feel the need to purchase a cowboy hat, manhole cover sized belt buckle and some cowboy boots. LOL perhaps not the look for me.

Here's a few quick grabs from Saturday. Yeeeeee-Haw.

As always, click for larger images-these resized blogger ones look poopy.

This Weeks Big Brother Rundown

Simply put....








Lots of drama and cattyness.

Boobs and her boytoy Jocko are playing a losing game. I'm not a seasoned BB fan, but IMO it seems stupid to openly declare any 'Showmance'...especially this early on.

The Brodeo 'aka brigayde'(you see what I did there?) seems to have the alliance thing figured out even if there is a lot of brodom going around. We'll see what they have in store next week with PityParty going up on the block-even if he was there voluntarily-but him going after Boobs and Jocko could be wasted now that he was called out.

The second showmance going on between Miss Invisible and Wannabe Beach Boy will get ousted soon by Mr. Kosher...orrrr maybe if I was him I would think about approaching them and seeing if I could get a little protection in exchange for not telling the household about it...and then anonymously tip off the rest of the household via a note or something similar.

Really it's hard to tell what is going on without knowing who won HOH for now. That will determine a lot of things alliance and relationship wise in the house.

Haves and have nots? I don't see it factoring in nearly as much as I initially thought it would. I spose really how could it. They can sleep outside on the lawn chairs or in that cabana room and you can't tell me they aren't sneaking food now and then. Blah. Total segregation is the key there. Make them STAY in that maggot room and only be allowed out for challenges. That would create some serious issues and advantages/disadvantages, as well as maybe flip the switch on some new Alliances and break others up.

Not a whole lot outta Cop this week...her laugh is aggravating, and I'm not sure she isn't Whineys Mother.

Fake diseases for pity? That's pretty scumbaggy. Hopefully he gets caught.

Speaking of that...they've sorta dropped the whole "lifelong relationship angle, haven't they? Be interesting to see where they go with that..but what's going on there? If I was a housemate I wouldn't just drop it the second the sab. was outta the house. Unless they were told by production to STFU about it.

Speaking of leaving the house...Miss Thang?? Really? I'm not sure I'm happy to see her go from a viewer standpoint....plus she wasn't exactly super hard to look at. But as pointed out she wasn't exactly playing a winning game.

For me it's waaaaay too early to make any final 4 or final 2 predictions. I think there is waaaaaaay too much that could change and alter the course of things. But I'm pretty sure it won't be happily ever after for Boobs and Jocko.

Instead of doing a weekly thing I think I'm going to do it after each episode. Maybe not always immediately following, but the next day probly.

See ya Sunday.

Welcome to Small Town Atlantic Canada. Population: 473

I'm a city boy.

I grew up mostly at my Nan's in the 'hood'.

While Ice Cube and Mack 10 weren't my neighbors, "The Pubs" in Halifax is about as ghetto as you get. My early lessons in economics involved watching people sell drugs across the street at 'the well'. It's rather mind boggling now that the police would just drive by and not really do anything about it. Maybe it was an early, ahead of its time Hamsterdamn(from The Wire)?



It's so weird to see that place without a swarm of tough, angry looking folks milling around-but then it appears to be relatively early in the day and you know...those folk tend to like to sleep in.

Annnnnnyway.

Growing up, hood, Nan's place...yada yada.

Mom worked, so Nan/Pop watched me. They are/were more like a second set of parents than grandparents. The end of elementary school came though and I announced, being all grown up at the age of 12 or so of course that I no longer needed to go to my Grandparents every day, and that I would be staying home and attending school in Fairview, where we lived.

Fairview to me was not ghetto in the least, I mean...people from Fairview were scared of the pubs. Turns out people that didn't live in Fairview thought it was as ghetto as the pubs! Ha! I lived there on Sunnybrae with mom for ohhh 23 years, till I eventually moved out with my Fiancee(at the time-Wife now). But we stayed in Fairview. :)


THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED.

We moved into a house near the community she grew up in. I was instantly in love with not being in the city. No noise, rarely any sirens. Can't reach out your bathroom window and high 5 your neighbor and just so many other things about not living in the city rock.

Sadly, life isn't always on your side-and we ended up moving back into the city again in less than a year. Then a few more years past and we found ourselves in the middle of downtown Charlottetown, PE! :) Love it here, hate where we live. We moved here to be close to the Wife's school. Now she's done there so....we're SO outta here!

Found a little slice of paradise in our rental price range just outside of Charlottetown! Even though it's a further drive KM wise, it's a faster trip because we don't have to deal with traffic going across town. We signed the Lease yesterday, and can start moving our stuff in Wed. :)

I can't wait to be outta here, where we're embarrased to have friends or family come visit us-and no real room for them anyway. It wasn't so bad here when we moved in, but the building changed owners and well...new guy let it go to crap. More on that in another blog post.

Hey, Beavis. Pull my finger!

Beavis and Butt-head’ Are Back!?!?!?!

from fancast.com :

by Tracy Phillips
Jul 14th, 2010


"Deadbeats, slackers and misfits rejoice! ‘Beavis and Butt-head‘ are making a comeback… “Heh Heh.”

MTV plans to resurrect the pop-culturally iconic ’90s cartoon with a modern update, reports the New York Post.

The move is reportedly one step in MTV’s new strategic plan to return to its original format–showing music videos. The network has been criticized for years for losing its identity after a programming slate dominated by non-music related reality shows, like the recently departed ‘The Hills’ and ‘Jersey Shore,’ took over the airwaves.

The new Beavis and Butt-head would remain as we knew them, perpetual high-schoolers, according to the Post, “but it would be updated so that the pals — who obsessively watch music videos on a battered TV set — could lob their snarky comments at more current targets like Lady Gaga.”

Created by Mike Judge (’King of the Hill’), the animated series premiered on MTV in 1993 and ran until 1997.

The dumb-and-dumber dudes also made the leap to the big screen in 1996 for the movie ‘Beavis and Butt-head Do America.’

Are you excited for the return of ‘Beavis and Butt-head’? Or is this a move in the wrong direction for MTV?"
link=HERE

Wow. I didn't see that one coming. My friends and I used to watch the show religiously every weekend on MuchMusic growing up, and even bought some of the VHS tapes(vhs!)at musicworld. Problem is, it's like a lot of things from your childhood/adolescence...it's WAY better left as a fond memory. A couple years back I saw a link on youtube for some Beavis and Butthead episodes. I was happy and clicked with a big grin thinking it would be awesome to see some of the old episodes we laughed so hard at.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

It wasn't as funny as I remembered at all, actually it was just pretty bad. Watching those few links on youtube killed most of the fun memories I had of watching the show.

The question for me is, will this be more of the same? I've read they're leaving the basic premise of the show the same but updating the music videos featured. Will Judge re-hash all the old not-so-funny-now-that-we're-not-14 'jokes'? Or will the humor get an update as well?

While I'm hoping for the latter, only time will tell.

I Love PEI!!!!

I Love PEI. No, really. I do. Ok, I'll admit-at first I was skeptical...hmmmm perhaps apprehensive is a better description. Actually if I'm honest-this wasn't the first time we were supposed to move over here. Back when I met my Wife she had planned to move to PEI after graduating high school. Well, we came over to take a look around and after much discussion decided it was not the right move for us at the time.

Fast forward 6 years and several life changing situations...what should happen to fall back into discussion? PEI. Who knows why both her and I felt so compelled to move here, we had zero ties to the island and except for a fond bunch of memories from camping trips over the years we knew almost nothing about PEI. We knew nobody except for Aaron-a friend of mine that had moved over about a year before we did, Amanda had no job, and at the time the decision was made to move and our notice given at our apartment we had no idea where we were going to live. It was a bit of a risk, and it was scary-but very, very worth it.

We got to trade in this:

For this:


And we haven't regretted it for a minute.

Hello Internets!

On my to-do list today...I added something that sounded simple enough. In theory it is-a couple mouse clicks, a few strokes of the keyboard and BAM...you have a blog online. Of course if you're like me, it's not so simple. Simple text for a header? No that won't do. Stock template? Of course not! Anyway, lots of mouse clicks, and clicks..and then more clicking to make sure it was 'ok' and here we are!


Hello, Blogworld. Is there a point to making this? Writing entries? Sharing them on the internetweb? Probly not, who is going to read it? Who knows, probly nobody. But that's ok. If nothing else at all it will serve as a journal of sorts. Something to look back on. It will also hopefully serve as a venue/outlet to grow my writing skills.

Either way, I'm happy I did it-and hope to stay pretty active-posting something daily. Even if it's a picture...something old or new or even a camera phone picture...something, anything daily. I had a photoblog in the past that I rarely updated and really who knows if anyone even noticed I stopped posting anything there!

I'm hoping to be a bit more active with this since it's a bit of a smorgasborg of everything. TV comments, movie and music reviews, random thoughts, my reviews of different restaurants etc around the island and elsewhere in my travels.

Hopefully I'm not just talking to myself! If you like something, or hate something or agree or disagree with me on something please don't be shy! Leave a comment! I don't bite...well at least not often.