I love Tennis!!

I was watching the Davis Cup Men’s doubles and in the finals are the Bryan Brothers and the French team of Michael Llodra and Arnaud Clementi.

It’s exciting as this French team beat the Bryan brothers in Wimbledon 2007.  As usual both teams gave a fantastic performance on the court.

I have to say though that the Bryans as usual are so good looking and being twins you get two for the price of one. Ha ha. They have the looks, the talent and the skill.  Moreover, they win.  What more can a woman ask for?

Ok yeah I’m married and pregnant at that… but come on… I can look can I?  There is nothing wrong with appreciating the greatness around you.

I wonder though how much longer they’d be playing.  I mean they’re already 30 years old and that’s pretty old for tennis…. Oh well, it’s like Andre Agassi… he’s so cute and it’s just nice that he ended up marrying the female come-back kid while too was the come-back kid of his time….

The game was fantastic.  During the second set you can see that the French team was really fighting hard but in the end the Bryans won.  The Bryans won 2-0 against the French team….Hurray!!!!

Not just ANOTHER social working site
Another Social networking site?  How many Friendsters, MySpaces, Hi5s and all do we need?
Okay… that was my initial reaction to the news that there is a new social networking site being set up by Prism Venture Works.  Fine… it is not just another social networking site but it also has competitions and apparently like some form of event organization features.  Is this for real?

Apparently so….

The site called Ibeatyou.com is supposedly a place where friends can meet and challenge each other to the best looking toe or what have you.  In the process, visitors can either add their own suggestions; vote on the current options or even just comment.  In the process of the competition, I do not doubt that unlike some other social network sites, you will develop opponents, rivals and enemies – all part of the fun of competition and Ibeatyou.com, I hope.

The article which I found in Mashable.com has also compared this new site to Gochonggo which is similar to Youtube.  It doesn’t seem to be absolutely the same though as Ibeatyou.com is not truly a video hosting site, although it can contain videos.  It is a competition site and most probably, all the videos that will be uploaded will be voted upon, liked, disliked, winning, losing or absolutely hated.

What is it with American Idol that people watch it so much?  It is currently going on its 7th season and people claim it to be the last season for American Idol as its popularity is dwindling down.  Apart from this, numerous scandals have sprouted from the show and the members, hosts and contestants in its 7 year reign.

The show first started in 2002 and it was a hit with about 50 million people watching the show.  On its second season, the popularity of the show increased.  The show was having auditions all over America and a total of about 174 million votes were received during the whole duration of the 2nd season.  The third season proved to be more popular as 360 million votes were received in the show.  By the 4th season 500 million votes were received on the show but on the 5th season, although the votes were still more than that of the previous year, it increased only by 80 million votes.   The 6th season didn’t perform as well as the other seasons, plus the fact that the 6th season contained the rift between Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell.  Honestly, the conflict between Ryan and Simon sounds more of a gimmick to create some buzz to increase the ratings of the show.

The 7th season has not proven to be any better than the previous season.  As a matter of fact, this season has reached the shows lowest viewership even though it has the highest ratings compared to the other reality shows of Fox.  That says a lot though…

Despite the consistently decreasing patronage of American Idol, it cannot be doubted that the show has produced some of the best talents in both Hollywood and the music industry.  Some of the artists that American Idol has produced are Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, Carrie Underwood, and Elliot Yamin among others.

Now it’s the 7th season and it’s the least watched of all the American Idol seasons.  Will it be able to produce talent at par with its predecessors?

Recently, Asian contestant Ramiele Malubay was eliminated.  It was the Dolly Parton week where the contestants were mentored by Dolly Parton herself and each of them were required to choose one of her songs to sing.  This now leaves 8 contestants, namely, Michael Johns, David Archuleta, Carly Smithson, David Cook, Syesha Mercado, Jason Castro, Brooke White and Kristy Lee Cook.

Members of Ibeatyou.com actually puts David Archuleta to be the next American Idol followed by Kristy Lee Cook and finally by Ramiele Malubay.  We all know what happened to Malubay which makes me wonder what the members of Ibeatyou.com are thinking.  Granted David Archuleta is a very talented 16-year old teenager and for a boy his age, competing in a competition like this is admirable and demands respect.  Moreover, for David Archuleta to be able to create the proper audience impact as well as be able to connect to the audience the way he does shows a lot of promise for David Archuleta.

However, David Cook is one fantastic performer and maybe David Archuleta’s strongest competitor.  As a matter of fact, David is so comfortable on stage and so confident with his skill that as the judges have claimed, he stretches his ability to the limit making his songs either amazingly wonderful or dreadfully disastrous.  The thin line between the two always puts their audience on their toes but David consistently delivers and provides a mind-blowing experience.  His rendition of Billy Jean is an example of this marvelous feat.

However, there are still 8 contestant and we are quite unsure as to how it will end.  Will the cut-throat competition affect their performances?  Will the pressure break them?  As usual, like all the other seasons previous to this one, all we can do is wait, watch, get awed and vote.  Who will be the next and the last American Idol?

As I mentioned I am expecting and I am extremely excited.  As a normal ritual everybody is a now going gaga over what the name of the child should be.   The question is what’s the deal with naming a baby?

A person’s name is very important.  For one, a person will have to carry his name for the rest of his life.  He will be called by it by the whole world – his friends, his officemates, his boss, his family, etc.    It is representative of who he is.  He will be branded by this name forever.

According to some friends of mine who are into New Age spirituality, a name resonates your spiritual being which reflects itself into your very personality and as people call your name they constantly reaffirm who you are by echoing your very being by saying your name.  Ok that’s too deep and too much responsibility for me.  However, this does make sense… a bit.

Nevertheless, as skeptical as I may seem I do know that naming a child should not be taken lightly.  However, there is the other argument.  My other friends believe that I should have fun with naming my child since my own mother gave me a really odd name. I have lived with people telling that my name is nothing more than a derivative of the song “My Sharona.”  They believe that my mom must’ve had a cold on that day and my name instead of being Sharona became Mairona.

Honestly, why in God’s name do I want to be called Sharona?

Okay, since I want to have a bit of fun, instead of asking you people what would be the best name to name my child, I will ask you the names I should avoid.  What do you think is the worst and most stupid names ever?

The names that I’m about to list down are names of people that I know.  I constantly wonder why they were named in such a manner.  Here it goes:

1.       Vector – Apparently, his parents are both physicists and they wanted to name their children with words in physics and Vector was perfect as it will sound as if it were a derivative of Vector.
2.       Macho – Calling your child Macho and him turning out to be gay is just WRONG!!!
3.       Super – I actually talked to the father of my friend Super just to ask him why Super?  I wonder can you guess what’s Super about Super? LOL!
4.       Names of Countries or Places i.e. China, Alaska, America - These are the most uncreative names ever.  it doesn’t even mean anything apart from being a country.  You know what?  If you can’t think of  a name for your child buy a Baby Names book.  Better yet, just google it.
5.       Rabbi – Most names have either a biblical, mythical or religious origin.  However, rabbi is more or a title than anything else.  I mean, if you’re going to name your child rabbi, why not priest or monk or even dalai lama? I once shouted the name of my friend “Hey Rabbi!” and a Jewish guy actually thought he really was a rabbi and wanted some advice.  I mean, REALLY!!!

Now I know that these names are not the most outrageous names yet and I really want to know what the most stupid names are that exist in this world.

Now there’s a site called I beat you and I want to invite you to a contest as to who can come up with the most stupid name ever.  What’s nice about it is that we don’t have to contain this contest amongst ourselves.  For a more objective point of view other people can vote as to what the most stupid name has ever been given to a person.  So are you game?  Let’s see if I can beat you to the most stupid name ever.