Noba's Summer 2005 Awards

July is coming to a close, and the summer of '05 goes with it. Therefore, it's time to give out some of my Summer Awards. The committee (me) spent a great deal of time (the time it took to write this post) and much consideration (I already knew who won) before selecting the winners (you don't really win anything..sorry). So here goes...live from the BB&T Building in beautiful (not really) downtown Macon, it's Noba's Summer 2005 Awards Spectacular.

**Best New TV Show**

30 Days

Morgan Spurlock, a much thinner, intelligent, and sanitary version of Michael Moore, gets mad props for taking his concept to the small screen. The star and director of last year's "Super Size Me," in which he lived on McDonalds for a month, took his concept to the FX network. It actually works better as a 1-hour series than it did as a 2-hour documentary. This time around, Morgan only underwent the experiment personally once - when he and his wife lived off minimum wage for a month. The other 5 episodes deal with willing participants in a fish-out-of-water setup. The episodes include:

- A God-fearing, conservative Christian from the Midwest spending a month in San Francisco's Castro district..the gayest place in the gayest city.
- 2 gas-guzzling Americans living in an eco-village and finding their inner hippie - driving vegatable oil cars, farming their own food, powering their hut with solar power, and saying goodbye to non-organic personal hygiene products.
- A concerned mother of a college co-ed binge drinking for 30 days to show her daughter the effects of such a lifestyle.
- A Christian from West Virginia living as a Muslim for 30 days in Dearborn, Michigan, home of the largest Islamic population in the country.
- A former college swimmer turned couch-potato going on hormone (re: steroids) therapy for a month to see if he can recapture his old physique.

This show should be in re-runs until the new season comes about, and I strongly urge you to check it out. It works a lot better as a 1-hour show, keeping all the funny and thought-provoking elements of "Super-Size Me." It's technically reality TV, but I've never seen a smarter reality TV show ever. And no one gets voted off the island or given a rose in some ridiculous ceremony.

**The Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence**
(Editor's Note: Dig the reference, Simpsonsheads?)

"Batman Begins"

This re-telling of the Dark Knight's saga leaves the previous four movies in the dust. It's got the best action, the best acting, and the best Batmobile of them all. "Star Wars: Episode III" is my nostalgic favorite, but I have to say this movie was truly great.

**Best Summer Food**

Chow Mein

I've gotten freakin' addicted to this stuff, so of course I had to teach myself how to make it. Though I can't quite measure up to the house chow mein at Mandarin off Riverside Dr., this is the best thing to happen to my mouth since I made out with that Italian exchange student.

**Best Summer Sports Moment**

No brainer..Lance wins his 7th straight Tour De France. He's a Great American who proves once again how easy it is to beat the French.

**Best Summer Song**

"Sugar" By Trick Daddy

Technically came out in the Spring, but it still gets airplay. Undoubtedly a great song to blast from your car while Bankhead-bouncing down I-75. I always seem to link a song or 2 to the summer during which I kept it on rotation..my man T-Double-D's latest is now part of that lexicon.



More to come...