This summer has really had very few things to write about. Well not really, but I think the way things went it was that when I had things to say I was too busy and when I didn't I just had no will to write. Today though, easily has been one of the best days since I have come home. Yesterday I started an internship at a sports parody site, which is pretty fun and they put me to work. This morning while I was capturing the footage I would spend the entire day on, I get a call from my lovely friend Marisa to let me know she was coming to the city Tuesday for job fair and that I should come along, yay! Then I find out the pretty chick from work just graduated from the University of Alabama, so I possibly have at least one other person I can see the game with, yay! On the way home I see one of Vadhil's friends from a couple weeks ago that works nearby and had a little chat, yay! Went to Jake's and David was finally at the bar with us, then we won two games in beer pong, yay! On my way out, I notice one of the fans that were on the Fan vs Wild special last night and had a chat with him, yay! Some random old guy told me a joke about dogs with no tails, yay! Saw Louis CK's Hilarious at the IFC Theater and entertained us with an amazing (truly) Q&A session, yay!

Seriously a fantastic day.

-Mikhail

After a week of nearly full-time work, this is third day out of the last four that I have not gotten out of the house. It's odd because it doesn't feel at all like the way I was in the beginning of the summer, when I just didn't do anything at all. I felt like I earned the time off, though today I spent part of that applying to paying and (ideally) more permanent work. Though while I wait to hear about my next job, I've got concerts to look forward to next week The National with Beach House (I'm more excited about that having already seen the former) and The Black Keys, though I could also possibly see Modest Mouse if the price is right. One of my good friends from school is coming to see them so I may get to hangout with him, which will be awesome. I also won free open bar on Thursday, so I'm getting fucked up!

-Mikhail

I neglected to mention this in the last post, due to its off-handedness, but I did start to work some place. I mean it's another unpaid internship, but it's something to do at least and they're actually putting me to work. I find it odd that I have to try and rationalize my choice to work for free as opposed to working in something unrelated for money or just not doing anything because I should just enjoy the time off while I can. My first six weeks at home were mostly spent watching tv and going to the bar with little money to spend and tht just made me feel like a waste of space. Now though, I'm keeping my skills sharp and just adding to my resume, which never hurts though. On the other hand, I am still looking for something paid and I have two other jobs that one of which I was really interested in since before graduation and the other just somethings cool sounding. It'll be nice though this week to get to work for money and see a concert, score.

-Mikhail

This usually isn't my venue for venting on sports in general (unless it's one of my teams fucking up miserably), but I have to make this point available in text somewhere. It's fair to say that a period of two seasons of apparent meaningless basketball may have finally come to an end with that guy making his long awaited announcement. The details are not really important and don't particular affect my point so I'll leave them out there for others to revel or agonize about.

Sports coverage has changed a lot over the years, certainly a lot in my time as a spectator of sports. ESPN once had an interesting idea, a channel that covers sports all day...everyday. I remembered when you would pretty much only see highlights of the most recent sporting events, tantalizing statistics, standings and a top ten list. Not so much these days, sports coverage (especially for the Worldwide Leader) is about analysis, chatter and speculation. While no sport violates this as much as football does (do we really need to have daily episodes of NFL Live talking about the upcoming NFL Draft when one happened days earlier?), but with the NBA summer of free agents that we're witnessing is just sad. Did you know that the Lakers won back to back titles? That's fine, ESPN forgot about that once *ahem* experienced another early playoff exit. In that same light, what about CC Sabathia having to answer question about someone not even in the same sport as he, while he's on his way to another Cy Young and another ring (hopefully).

It is sad that the actual sporting events have taken a back seat to off-the-field business like free agency, contract negotiating, drafting and of course the personal lives of athletes. While every fan of a team or athlete will always share the desire to know about what is going on in their day, it really should be up to the individual fan to seek out that information and not for a national broadcaster to be saturating our lives with athletes that they think we should care about. If only we could get back to where sports coverage was limited to just scores, great plays and being blown away by statistical anomalies as opposed to which former quarterback (also a name never to be mentioned on this blog ever again) got busted for sippin on some sizzurp or how teams will clear up cap space to land free agents that have multiple years remaining on their contracts.

-Mikhail

First time in weeks that I have to get up early for something and of course now that I'm trying to sleep early, I of course can't. I'm reporting for jury duty for the first time and I am somewhat relieved since it will be something to get out of bed for. While things have been getting rolling of late with my first couple of career launching interviews done, it still has been more of the same ol waking up at 11:30AM and not getting out of bed until 1 or 2, then maybe go out to the bars and hangout. The last couple of weeks had some fantastic moments such as seeing Plants and Animals again on the same day as seeing one my lovely little Penn State friends; completely impressing one of my potential employers by the quality of my work; seeing an epic matchup of CC Sabathia and Roy Halladay thanks to stubhub; going to Radio City Music Hall for the first time to see The National for the second time (phenomenal show by the way); watching an entire bar live an die by the bucket during game 7 of the NBA Finals; and finally the first family bbq of the summer.

As the first half of 2010 comes to a close (damn, already!?) I look forward to a July where I hopefully have an internship and/or something paying, the big time family reunion for my grandfather's 85th, seeing The National for the third (with Beach House, finally!) and maybe even a fourth show. Now if only I can get this summer truly started right, by being alert for my civic responsibilities.

-Mikhail

I've held this post off for long enough, but I guess now is a good chance to do it since I doubt I'll be going out tonight. I am a Penn State graduate. My Bachelor of Arts in Telecommunications is proudly hanging in the living room no one ever goes in under a picture of the lion shrine (that is when the picture stays in the frame). This is day 4 of real life and so far I've spent it digging around craigslist and sending in resumes, watching TV, making my player in MLB 2K10 an elite pitcher, finding the bar with the best special that night (minus the $7 shot) and watching possibly the worst movie ever: The Room. I'm hoping that it isn't a horribly long wait before I find some work, whether in media or just something to get money in the bank. Should be a great summer though, settling back into home life and catching many of my favorite bands for the 2nd and 3rd times.

-Mikhail

I'm done with school. I'm waiting on grades, though it doesn't matter since I'm pretty sure I'll pass and therefore the credits. Thanks to Yeasayer I took a trip back home as soon as I was done with finals for what will certainly be one of the most memorable weeks in my life. Tomorrow I'm heading back to State to enjoy a final week with those that I would like to see again in the future, but it might be a while before that happens. I honestly don't think I've ever felt such relief and accomplishment to officially be a college graduate. While this week was meant to be relaxing and fun, I did start the job search. One place I applied to is exactly what I would like to jump into to start my career with a production company. Hopefully I hear back from them, so we'll see what comes out of that, but I'll be looking around a lot more during the day this week inbetween playing MLB 2K10 and catching up on House and How I Met Your Mother.

-Mikhail

As busy as I have been over the past few weeks, it's amazing how I've managed to carefully balance my work load and social life. I feel that while the work is obviously harder, that my time in college has come full circle. This semester (especially since break) has been more like my first in that I hangout most of the time. Not only that, but I feel like I'm back in a clique. The surest sign of that is when you get a laminated VIP card with your profile pic from facebook.

This weekend, my only project as the campus relations chair for Blue & White Society is coming to reality. This semester (with help from an amazing group of people) I have put together what we believe will be an amazing conference. The dinner went well tonight and people are excited about tomorrow's activities. I'm hoping that with this soon to be off my to do list, I can start getting into the search for the rest of my life, especially with the job fair in a couple weeks will really push that off. Still need to update my resume, gotta get on that.

-Mikhail

I really have been quite lucky in my life. I have a family that I see quite regularly, more than most families I hear. Today I lost one of my uncles, that I haven't seen in almost 10 years. My memory of him is great, he drove me and my brother around when we visited him to get ice cream or a sandwich. Took us to the waterpark and the river I almost drowned in. My father always loved to hear from his brother and his other siblings and his nieces and nephews never failed to mention how much they wish he were around. I'm glad that I have those things to remember him by, he's a pretty special person to our family and I'm happy that for even just those 4 weeks in Tenares I got see what my family loved about him.

Rest In Peace Tio Chepe

-Mikhail

This weekend marked a couple of significant last moments of my time at Penn State. First was my last snowboarding class, by the way did I mention I was taking a snowboarding class? It was a pretty rough ride compared to last week when everything came together quite nicely. I got a few nasty bruises and my hip couldn't hurt any more than it did before riding, but of course it then did. I'm definitely pretty glad I got to spend the last six Saturdays doing that and actually learned something.

The other thing was THON. It was definitely the first Penn State tradition that really became a big part of my experience. It did irk me that I wasn't picked to dance (again) and part of that was probably my fault for being a person with commitments to anything and everything (except to another human being). I experienced this a little last year, the randomly seeing everyone I've met over the years and just reinforcing whatever connection I had to them (or catching up as some may call it) and of course whatever connection brought us to THON. I love that part of it because it could be someone who I've known since day 1 or someone I helped out just last week. This year more than the last three, tried so hard to pull the tears out seemingly making every reminder possible that the third weekend in February 2011 may not be the same as it had been since 2007. I'm convinced that I will make an attempt to dance as an alumni in the future, though hopefully sooner rather than later.

I can't believe Spring Break is less than two weeks away and that I'm spending it at home, but I really couldn't picture it any other way.

-Mikhail

I often tout my success with groupwork whenever someone talks of their misfortunes in the situation. Now I've joined the ranks as it seems evident that my class isn't without those that you simply can't work with. Except for one group, we all have someone that has given us a difficult time. One many of us barely could identify her if she were standing in front of us with her name written on her forehead, while being the team leader; the other two (one of which I'm partnered with) are twins that couldn't be any more alike. In the month we've been in class, these two have logged more talk time in class asking the most centralized questions ever to our teacher, none of which pertaining to things the rest of us care about. Unlike other twins I've encountered, they have no indistinguishable traits physically or characteristically. I don't really care anymore, I think it's become clear I won't be working with either of them once the first show is done.

In other news, while I haven't started my job search fully, my summer concert schedule is already awesome! Yeasayer, The National at Radio City, Passion Pit and The National again at Prospect Park. Very excite!

-Mikhail

I think it's absolutely fair to say that I'm well educated in the goings on of late night talk shows. It's true! While Johnny Carson had to compete with my early bedtimes and Nickelodeon during his final years, I know well enough of things before I started moonlighting in while in my tweens. Hell, I've even watched Craig Kilborn on Sportscenter, The Daily Show and The Late Late Show! I watched Jimmy Kimmel in his first week and can recall parts of Andy Milonakis's "Super Bowl is Gay" song. But really this thing going on right now is just nuts. While everyone has been talking about the 2010 NBA free agency and the mega contracts and shuffle that will bring, it can hopefully take a lesson from the situation in television.

The year started with Fox and Time Warner and Scripps and Cablevision. As always "not getting the valued contract for our programming", "costing too much for the customers aka less profits for us", blah, blah, blah and well the former almost spent a day over striking a deal past the deadline without service interruption, while Cablevision customers can rejoice in not having to see Guy Fieri stuff as much food as he can into his greasy, sweaty face, but paying the same rates for two less channels. Now this giant clusterfuck by NBC after the Jay Leno primetime experiment failed miserably. While I switched to Sir Chattiness shortly after the writer's strike, Conan was still always there to provide a hearty laugh and while there was no way I would leave Dave (who of course scumbagged his way back into America's lives) for the very show he once wished to have, I still tuned in for Conan's first week of shows.

The humor of course wasn't the same, but he was definitely growing into it and it's no secret that he embraced having that brand in front of his name. Now to only start getting bamboozled (like we did last week ourselves) by some bad contract writing (back in 1993 when Letterman signed with CBS, putting in the 11:30 slot was a major sticking point to draw him in, didn't hurt to get the ownership of the 12:30 show and $50 million either). It's amazing how easily sides have been taken and overwhelmingly favoring Conan by the public, but even then you just have to make the rounds really. By the way, consider that Jimmy Kimmel and Jay are pretty good friends and he definitely let him have it on his 10 @ 10 segment.

This week of course will certainly go down in history as far as television after the late local news goes, but next week really has the meat and potatoes coming, especially if Conan's last episode is next Friday. Big guests of course will try to be squeezed in to force CBS to put the highlights of the night on YouTube at 7:30, including well known Leno-hater Howard Stern and the following week the alleged possible trip by Coco to 53rd Street to the predecessor that put NBC behind him long, long ago. Meanwhile I'm sure Fox is making sure that contract is nice and specific when he's ready to jump ship.

-Mikhail

One of my all-time favorite kinds of blog posts are the ones that come as I'm about to fall asleep. Sure that may mean breaking my shut down mode and having to turn the computer back on, but it's fresher than when I jot down the thoughts on a post-it (which I don't have any lying around at home) and trying to recollect what the keywords are supposed to mean.

Anyway, I figured out that this year (first post of oh-10 yay!) is the time I become a family man. Not that it means I'm starting a family getting some chick I barely know knocked up, but just being involved in my family or families really. While there's plenty of people I really have yet to meet (including the chick I will eventually be knocking up), the majority of the people in my life at the moment I feel I have known for a considerable amount of time (at least 3 years). My inner circle here at home is rooted from high school friends so thats 7-8 years and the few from middle school at more than 10 years. While recently my college friends are ones that I've met withing the last year or so, there are a few that I've known since pretty much the beginning. Now with graduation coming I'll be back as full-time family member at home and in the tri-state area. Today some of my cousins kids that have been growing while I've been away are learning my name and learning that the fat guy that they love to bother is my brother.

I don't really think of this as something arbitrary to do, but really it's more like a great time to pick up on that. My college friends are the ones I'll be calling up when it's time to go to a big game in Happy Valley or future bowl games, my home friends are probably gonna be a few of the people I'll be renting my first apartment with, my family will be there for me to give support and find support. While the nature of many of my relationships with these people is soon to change, I think that this year will be dedicated to keeping those links despite the changes, no matter if it's been there for 21 weeks or 21 years.

-Mikhail