The Burlingames

I was eating lunch yesterday at the Maplewood Mall thanks to picking up some extra hours at work. They’ve had LCD tv’s in the food court for quite some time, but their content has taken an interesting turn since the last time I was there. They were playing music videos. As I sat down I noticed the current video looked familiar; it was Chem 6a by Switchfoot (circa 1997). It was quite hilarious to see: bowl cuts and bad polo shirts.

After that video I noticed something interesting. I (or anyone else watching) could help choose the upcoming videos via the tv next to the one actually playing the videos. They were using a website’s texting service to choose songs (American Idol-style). The tv on the left showed previews of potential upcoming videos with a text code for each. You could also send a text to find out the current song playing.

It was kind of a neat idea, but at the same time, who cares enough to actually do that. I find myself wondering if this is the way we’re headed given everyone’s (media outlets, social networking sites, blah blah) rush to include interactivity in as many facets of their reach as possible. If so, I will play the “old man” card and say that I don’t care. I just want to eat chinese in the food court.

I can now add fox to the list of creatures I’ve seen by my house. I was just about to turn into the driveway this morning when a rather large fox came out of the woods between my house and the neighbor’s, and then trotted across the street and into the woods on the other side.

I’m hoping, though, that we don’t get the same variety as other places in the metro. A black bear was spotted the other day in Oakdale. I don’t have a garage to put the trash cans into yet.

I saw a commercial today that showed we’re only a few small steps away from ESPN 8: The Ocho (as seen in the movie Dodgeball). ESPN is changing the name of one of their sister networks, ESPN360, to ESPN 3. While they already have quite the stable of networks with various names , I thought it funny that ESPN would continue the upward count in their name. At the rate they’re going, we’re only a hop, skip and a jump from watching family table tennis tournaments.