I was browsing around for some electronics this morning when I came across The Source zumba page. I had heard a little bit about the game before, but never really checked into it until this morning. From The Source, I went to look up some videos of how Zumba for Wii works, and I have to tell you, it looks pretty cool! I am not much of a dancer and would never try to pull these moves in a zumba class, but in the privacy of my own home? Sure, why not! This seems like a super-fun way to get into shape!!

So the Emmy nominations were released today, and I was happy to see shows like Modern Family and The Good Wife get tons of recognition. Every adult actor on Modern Family was nominated for an award (including Ed O’Neill this time), as were FIVE actors from The Good Wife. Wow!

I’m thinking of doing something that I haven’t done in years: have an Emmy watching party with my friends. We used to do this all the time with both the Emmys and Oscars, but gave up a few years ago when none of the shows we followed were ever nominated. Since that has changed this year, maybe it’s time to have a party.

If I do have a party, it will be a big one. I plan on ordering a personalized banner for the occasion and possibly even having it catered (by which I mean ordering a large quantity of food from the local Italian beef or Chinese place!). The banner will be a nice, unexpected touch, and it’s only $21.99 for a totally personalized message. It’s durable, too, which means I’ll be able to use it again if I have another shindig next year.

Anyway, I’ll have to make some calls and see if my friends are interested in doing this. Can’t wait for the awards (and for the new TV season!).

Are you interested in short films? To be honest, I’ve never really watched any shorts before, not even those that win Oscars. But this weekend I took a look at something called Smoke, a 2008 effort by Polish filmmaker Grzegorz Cisiecki. It’s described as “the story of [a] person who became the captive of surrealistic madness” and is surprisingly engrossing. I say “surprisingly” because the surrealistic nature of the scenes (and complete lack of dialogue) make it impossible to determine with certainty exactly what is going on. But the beautiful photography and alluring scenes kept me watching throughout the entire 7-minute running time. If you like David Lynch’s work, you’ll probably enjoy Smoke as well. Check it out right here!

The Game of the Week this week over at the USA Network’s Character Arcade is Spider Solitaire. I’d never heard of this version of Solitaire before, but since I want a chance to win the Wii Bundle in this week’s free sweepstakes, I decided to give the game a whirl. It wasn’t pretty.

The object of Spider Solitaire is to arrange the cards in order from high to low (King to Ace) by moving them around on the piles or dealing from the deck. The main difference between Spider Solitaire and regular Solitaire is that the cards don’t have to be the same suit in order for you to arrange them together. So you can put a 6 of diamonds on top of a 7 of spades or whatever. Take a look:

It seems like that would make the game easier, but for some reason, I had a tough time with this. I couldn’t get very far in the game, and didn’t score more than 5,000 points at any time — which is kind of pathetic considering the fact that you START the game with 5,000 points! LOL… I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad though. It looks like the high scores for this one are all in the 5,700 range, so it’s hard for everybody.

I’m going to keep trying this one because I want to clear the board at least once before moving on. Then again, that blackjack game is looking pretty enticing as well!