The first two songs have officially been chosen, and they are Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues," and Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven."  Stay tuned to my official Facebook page for the other two song selections, and details on how you can help choose the 5th song.

I always laugh when I see people begging celebs for a retweet on Twitter.  Some of them will come up with stories in hopes to sway the celeb into retweeting them, others will just tweet, "Hey, @celebrity, can I get a RT?"  Surprisingly, this actually works with a few of them, which is why I know about this phenomenon.  Hulk Hogan is a notorious retweeter, but I've gotten replies from the guy just by asking how he's doing, or talking with others about the time I met him in 2002.  If any of the thousands of projects I try my hand at take off, I doubt I'd retweet anyone unless I genuinely like their tweet (with the exception being if it's for a good cause).

So how did I wind up with a WWE Superstar and a national recording artist following me on Twitter?  By calling them out, surprisingly.

The WWE Superstar in question is Tyson Kidd.  When WWE was in Buffalo about a month ago, Tyson was on their new kid's show, Saturday Morning Slam.  I got a screen grab of Tyson leaving me hanging as I'm reaching for a high-five, and I called him out on it on Twitter.  "My bad, I'll get ya next time," Kidd says.  I told him I'd hold him to that - and next thing I know he's following me on Twitter.

The band in question is New Years Day.  Ash Costello (the singer) and Russell Dixon (the drummer) walked into my hotel yesterday morning.  Me, being clueless as to who they were at the time, cut them a break on my usual early check-in fee, thinking they were some indy band trying to get their name out there.  Come to find out, they've been around for quite a while, and have nearly 43,000 fans on Facebook.  Last night, I got a noise complaint from an elderly lady who happened to have been put next door to them.  After I called them to tell them to knock it off, I found them on twitter to joke about having to tell them to be quiet.  They tweeted back that they were sorry for partying and then followed me.

No pandering.  Just friendly conversation.

FWIW, New Years Day has a new EP available, called The Mechanical Heart.  Check it out!

First up, tonight, Jorge and I are heading to Tonawanda, where we will be auditioning a new drummer for thinksobrain.  It's been over TWO YEARS since the last time Jorge and I played music together.  It looked like that may have been the end for the band that earned me my nickname, but lo and behold, we're taking another shot at it.  Hopefully this dude will work out, he seems like a cool guy.  Plus, my kid is friends with his kids, so that's a plus.

Tomorrow, I'm reuniting with another old group of friends, and we're heading out to a place here called LASERTRON.  It's an old hangout for us.  We used to go there all the time together growing up.  Very much looking forward to that, we don't get a lot of time to hang out with each other anymore.

Meanwhile, I'm working on booking an interview with a former TNA star for BoredWrestlingFan.  It's actually a guy I saw back in his indie days in Western New York. and Southern Ontario.

While I'm doing all of that, my mind is trying to decide what I want to cook this weekend.  Somehow my brain got stuck on wanting to bake cookies.  I have no idea why.  I do know that I want to make homemade mac & cheese, for the sole purpose of making grilled mac & cheese sandwiches.  I heard about that somewhere before and thought it was an awesome idea.  So, I'm going to do it myself.  Maybe another pie too?  I don't know.

The only thing I know is "go."  Should be a fun weekend.  Hope everybody else's is as well!

By the way, you can now like me on facebook!

As I prepare to put together a new lineup and get thinksobrain back out in the music scene, I decided that I'd like to have a place for everybody to see what's going on with me while I promote stuff - other than this website.  If only because nobody really COMES to this website.  Well, here's the deal.

As of this morning, I have an official facebook page.  Links to all future articles posted here at thinksojoe.com will automatically pop up in the timeline on the page, and I will post there regularly when I have things going on that I want people to know about.  Please head over there and "like" me!

And because I have absolutely zero discipline, I picked at the resulting blister and now have a hole in my finger and have to wear a band-aid most of the time, if only because it looks bad.  Anyways, on to the point of this.

As many of you may know, I launched a second website in the "Bored Fanchise" series of sites.  This time, it's BoredHockeyFan.com.  It didn't take me long to score an interview for the new site.  Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to speak with Kevin Sylvester, who is the host of Buffalo Sabres television, and the host of Hockey Hotline on WGR 550 AM here in Buffalo.  We had a great chat about the direct effects of the NHL lockout on people involved in the business of hockey, outside of the players and owners.  If you haven't checked it out yet, please do!  Hopefully this is just the beginning of great things to come on BHF!

I guess it all started when I wanted to surprise my wife for our anniversary.  I connected with Natalie at the food blog "Bake and Destroy," and she led me to a cupcake icing that I could draw on.  I baked some cupcakes, made the icing, and drew my wife's favorite bands' logos on them.  I liked them so much, I made the exact same thing a week later and let my wife draw on them.

Then one day I fell asleep watching the Food Network, and when I woke up, the lady was making lasagna.  I never made lasagna from scratch before, and it's one of my favorite meals.  So as I'm watching the lady on TV, I realize it's not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.  I found a recipe online, bought the stuff, and made an awesome lasagna, if I do say so myself.

Which led to my wife expressing her fondness for baked ziti.

So, a week later I'm back in the kitchen, this time making up a batch of baked ziti.  My wife complained that she doesn't like cottage cheese.  That's what they put in baked ziti, that's what you asked for.  She ate it.  It was good.

I randomly got an idea to make a pumpkin pecan cheesecake.  And wouldn't you know, recipes for such a thing exist.  So last week, knowing my daughter was coming over for the weekend, I hit the store, came home, and baked up a great pumpkin pecan cheesecake.  Maddy didn't like it, but the wife and I couldn't get enough of it.  In fact, there's still one last slice in my fridge that I'm going to eat as soon as I finish this post.

This week I decided to be cheap and lazy.  I made pudding pies.  I was going to make two chocolate pies, but two boxes of pudding only filled one (homemade) crust, and I'd already made two.  So, back to the store.  I found butterscotch pudding.  So I made a butterscotch pie.  They're in the fridge now, hopefully they'll come out as good as everything else I've tried my hand at cooking lately.

I'm pleased to announce the launch of BoredHockeyFan.com, which kicked off this morning with a great graphic from Al Creed.  Unlike the Bored Wrestling Fan launch four years ago, I've already got a great staff in place and ready to write about all things hockey.  With any luck, we'll have a season to write about this year, but the crew have some great backup ideas for the site just in case.  I urge you all to head over to the site and bookmark it!

Well, I guess the first thing to do is to say that the project I referred to in my last post is a go!  The project in question?  None other than the project that got me my nickname - thinksobrain!  Jorge and I have decided to go ahead and re-create the band that brought us together in the first place.  We're looking for a new guitarist and a new drummer.  Meanwhile, we're working on possibly doing something really cool - something that my wife says would "mean the world to" her.  So, we'll see how that goes.  Updates as they come in, of course.

This past Friday night, TNA Impact Wrestling was in town.  Last time they were here, I e-mailed them to try and get press/media passes, and got no response.  This year I tried again.  Thinking I wouldn't get a response, I didn't check my e-mail at all on Thursday.  Friday morning at 4 AM, I finally did, and I had an e-mail from their publicist.  I responded right away with all of the information she'd asked for, and just 20 minutes before Caroline & I were going to buy tickets, I got the call that I had two tickets waiting for me at will call for the sake of reviewing the show.  We had a great time at the show, and the review is currently in the hands of TNA Wrestling, awaiting approval.  Should know sometime later today if they like it or not.  Nevertheless, we had a great time at the show, and at the end of the night, Caroline and I got to meet one of her favorite wrestlers of all time, The Charismatic Enigma Jeff Hardy.  I made sure to get him to give her a hug, because she was too shy to ask.

Looking forward to seeing what the future brings.  I'm hearing some big names being tossed about from some BWF associates for possible interviews, there's the whole thinksobrain thing on the horizon, and some great summer concerts (free and otherwise) coming up.  Plus, we're four months away from launching BoredHockeyFan, and we've already got the next site in our "FANchise" in mind.

I'm hopeful, but I'm not getting my hopes up either.  The conversation I had earlier was very positive, and the fact that this is an established brand I'm looking to revamp as opposed to a new one I'm trying to launch is a very good thing.  We'll take things one step at a time and see where they go.  If and when I have solid details as pertains to this, I will announce them as I see fit.  Thanks for reading.

The potential business venture I talked about in previous posts hasn't been discussed any further, so I'm not holding my breath on it.  Meanwhile, BoredWrestlingFan continues to grow.  We've been networking with other sites to get ourselves more exposure, and we've got some great interview guests in the pipeline that I'm greatly looking forward to talking with.  We're expanding our "Bored Fan Network" with BoredHockeyFan in September (barring a lockout) and eventually into BoredMusicFan, and possibly beyond.  I'm definitely excited about the potential this network of sites has.  I do believe that in the wake of all of this I may phase out VinceRussoWatchesHisBeardGrow.com, since we barely touch that one anymore.  

I just celebrated my first wedding anniversary, and I baked cupcakes for my wife from scratch.  I got a ton of great advice from Natalie, who runs the Bake and Destroy blog.  She helped me out with a great recipe for a marshmallow fondant icing to use, and told me about FoodWriter markers, which you can use to draw on food.  So, I made cupcakes and I decorated them like my wife's favorite bands, among other things, like a special anniversary cupcake and a few Buffalo themed ones.  I even threw in a CM Punk cupcake in an homage to Bake and Destroy.  I'll tell you, I made a HUGE mess of my kitchen while trying to make the fondant, but I managed to get it all cleaned up to the point that my wife had no idea that I was in there baking all day.  Most of them came out pretty damned good, if I do say so myself.

Well, I guess that's all I really have to talk about right now.  Thanks everyone for reading my randomness.  I've got some BWF work to do still, so I think I'd better get started on that.