Reviews and More

I’m sure you all know by now that I never watch network television programs during their regular time slot because I can’t stand all the commercial breaks. In a typical 30-minute TV program, there are approximately 9 minutes of commercials, and that number obviously doubles for an hour-long show. I watch far too much TV to waste 18 minutes out of every hour on commercials, so I have to use my DVR in order to manage my time.

But one negative result of this habit is that I never see promos or trailers for new shows and movies. Usually this doesn’t bother me too much, but occasionally it will cause me to miss a show that I should have been watching from the beginning, like the World Series of Pop Culture on VH1.

I haven’t watched VH1 in years, and didn’t even know what channel it was on my cable box, but several friends of mine have been talking about the WSoPC for so long that I finally decided to check it out. I had set my DVR to record as soon as I found out when the second season would start airing, but I forgot I had the shows on there until today. I watched the first one, which is ep 2×01 and am already hooked!

I like the format of the game, which pits 16 teams against each other in a single-elimination tournament. The bracket looks like part of a March Madness tournament sheet, and really makes things easy to follow.

Anyway, each team has three players. At the beginning of a match, the host Pat Kiernan reads off the first category that the questions will come from. The categories deal with pop culture and can range from music to movies to celebrity squabbles. The teams have 30 seconds to converse amongst themselves and decide which player to send up to the mic to do battle against the selected player from the other team.

Once the two players are selected, they get six questions from the category (each have to answer three). The one with the best score out of the six questions remains in the game; the other player is eliminated. If there’s a tie after six questions, they go to a tiebreaker round where there are multiple answers and the contestants trade answers until one of them gets stumped. (Example: name Steven Spielberg’s full-length feature films or name the 16 characters who appeared in the Lost pilot). The first team to have all three of its players eliminated loses, while the winning team advances to the next round.

Like I said, I really enjoyed the first episode that I watched. The questions are fun and they come quickly enough that I remain interested as a viewer. I know a lot of people have complained that the WSoPC questions are far too easy, but come on… how fun would it be if the questions were impossible to answer? Plus, you have to remember that it’s much harder to come up with responses when you’re standing in front of a live studio audience there with $250,000 on the line!

I do fine with the movie and TV categories, but suck at the music ones. I just don’t listen to enough music or pay enough attention to boy-band drama to do well with those questions.

Overall, I think the World Series of Pop Culture is a fun show and can’t wait to watch some more! I wonder how long it will be before one of the major networks comes out with a copycat show?!

Like most people, I am very concerned about my health and always try to do what’s best for my body. In addition to eating right and exercising regularly, I’m starting to pay more attention to the supplements and medications that I take. Specifically, I’m becoming increasingly aware of the detrimental effect of drugs and other toxins contained in both over-the-counter and prescription medications, so I’m beginning to look at natural health alternatives instead.

One website that I’ve recently been checking out is OasisAdvancedWellness.com, or OAW, and was impressed by many of the things that I saw. For example, I love the wide range of natural health products that meet OAW’s very high standards in terms of quality and effectiveness. The products run the gamut from cold and flu medications to skin care, water purification, and vitamins, and all of them are 100% natural.

I was also impressed by the general philosophy espoused by OAW’s founder (as explained on the site’s “About Us” page). She believes in an open and honest approach to business, where customer satisfaction is more important than sales alone. This is a refreshing change compared to the way most companies do business these days, and really gives me confidence in both OAW and the products they sell.

I haven’t quite figured out which natural health supplements I want to try first, but once I settle on a particular product, you can bet I’ll order from OasisAdvancedWellness.com over any other site!