The Jeff R Project

Ok, I wasn’t going to obsess over the hot men in Twilight, but I think I will. Today’s feature is Kellan Lutz.

In the Twilight Saga movies New Moon and Eclipse, Kellan plays Emmett Cullen. Wikipedia says this about his character:

Emmett Cullen (born Emmett McCarty) is Rosalie’s husband, Carlisle and Esme’s adopted son, and Edward, Alice, and Jasper’s adoptive brother. Emmett is described as being tall, burly, extremely muscular, and, to most humans, the most intimidating of his adoptive siblings. He has slightly curly dark hair and dimpled cheeks.

Kellan himself is an extremely athletic guy (as shown by the photos), so he fit right into the role. Click each picture to see it full size.

I’m on Team Jacob.

If you don’t know what that means, stop reading now.

Truth be told, I’m not sure exactly what it means either, but I know it relates to the new movie that opens this week: The Twilight Saga: New Moon, and whether you are on Team Edward or Team Jacob decides who you hope wins Bella’s heart.

Or something.

I’m not a TwiHard, or Fanpire or whatever. I watched Twilight on DVD (ok, we downloaded it) and kind of liked some parts of it. Sparkling vampires not withstanding of course.

I wrote about it before in this post, and talked about the hot young star that is Taylor Lautner, and my opinion hasn’t changed. He’s getting a ton of press and is really featured in the press for the new movie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rob this, Kirsten that, Rob some more. Seriously. Stop.

The other hidden talents in this movie are Kellan Luzt, Cam Gigandet and the super-nice Daniel Cudmore. You may know Daniel as Colossus in the X-Men movies, and Kellan and Cam were both in Twilight, so fans of the series will be familiar with them.

I’m not star struck when I meet these people (a lot of Twilight cast came and shot auditions for other roles while they were in Vancouver and I introduced myself to a couple), but I do love seeing people that I have actually met on TV and in Films. Since New Moon was filmed in Vancouver, a lot of our local actors got a chance to become part of this series. Curtis Caravaggio is a nice guy who used to live the same building we do, and who Rumble likes to bark at when he comes in. Nice to see he’s in this too.

Anyway, I won’t be rushing out to see Twilight: New Moon this weekend or anytime soon, but I am interested in seeing it at some point. I’m hoping that the commercials don’t mislead the amount of action in the film too much and that there’s a good amount of werewolf action.

A while back I got an email from someone about taking surveys online to earn rewards, and thought “That sounds like a scam” so I did some more research.

This company, Web Perspectives is one of the few legitimate survey companies online that actually offer real rewards to it’s members. The rewards for completing a survey vary from survey to survey, depending on what the survey owner wants to offer.

A variety of survey rewards are offered to all of our members. Survey rewards include monthly prize draws for 5 chances at $1,000. There are also special draws for x-box’s, i-Pods, and much more. Many surveys also offer individual rewards in the form of  “Perspective Points”. These range from 100 points to 500 points with a completed survey.

Web Perspectives reward partners:

• PayPal – Redeem 1000 points to transfer $10 into your PayPal account.
• Chapters/Indigo(Online) – Use 1000 points to claim a $10 gift certificate to purchase books, DVD’s, I-pods, etc
• Sympatico MSN Music Store – Redeem 1000 points  for $10 worth of music downloads.
• Cineplex – Redeem 1000 points for a free movie ticket valid at any Cineplex Entertainment theatre.
• Golf Town – Use 1000 points to claim a $10 gift certificate to purchase sporting goods or apparell.
• The Canadian Cancer Society – Donate your reward to a good cause and help other Canadians. You will also receive a tax receipt for your donation.

So, what kinds of surveys do you get to answer? It depends. You can fill in an online profile inside your Web Perspectives account and they will try to target surveys into your interest area. For me, I’ve been getting a variety of surveys about food, beverage, technology and transportation (cars really).

The time required to fill out a survey varies too. Some are short 5 minute ones, but a big one I did on snack-food took me 45 minutes! Yes, you can save and return in most cases.

Some of the surveys you get in your inbox may ultimately end up not allowing you to complete. They pre-qualify respondents in some cases. I got one survey about beer, and since I said I don’t drink beer, I was sent to a nice “Thanks but no thanks” page. This has happened a number of times.

How many surveys do I answer? I get anywhere from 1 to 4 emails a day offering a survey and I don’t answer all of them. Sometimes I’m just too busy and other times I’m just not interested.

So far I haven’t won any of their contests, and keep forgetting to check my points to see if I can redeem them for anything. I fill out the surveys mainly because they are fun. I’ve actually seen the results of some of the surveys (or what sounds like them) on the news.

If you’re looking for a way to make a quick and easy contribution to market research or those other “mystery” polls you hear about, check out Web Perspectives.

A few months ago B.C. Place was host to a semi-annual Home and Garden show sponsored by HGTV. Along with the usual cadre of HGTV.ca hosts (Colin & Justin, Sarah whatsername) they featured Ty Pennington, host of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, this is the show where they take “needy” families who are usually in some sort of serious distress and give them a new house. The family may have had a fire, a series of deaths in the family, a disabled child or something that has caused them to livin’ in the margins of life.

Most of the families seriously need help. They’re often living 4 and 5 to a room, if they’re even that lucky. Sometimes they don’t even have rooms.

Somehow, they’ve managed to get the family together and obtain a video camera to submit a request to ABC explaining how and why they deserve a new house. After some kind of screening process, ABC decides on a deserving family each week and Ty and his team swoop in, shoot some emotion-driven video and destroy their house.

Then, while the family is on vacation, the Ty-driven-dream-team recruits some locals who want to be on TV and build an entirely new house in just 7 days. God complex anyone? There’s an abundance of stories about how crap these houses are, leaving the family with a camera-beautiful home, but leaky roofs, toilets and other mechanical problems. It’s hard to believe the it takes a year to normally build a house, but a huge number of people can build one in a week.

So, back to the Vancouver story.

I don’t remember exactly how it went, but I asked Chris if he wanted to go to the home show. He gave me the sad-puppy face and said “Why would I want to do that?” and I replied “Ty Pennington is going to be there.”

He promptly replied “Fuck Ty Pennington!!!” (Possibly with more exclamation points). He seriously objects to Extreme Makeover: Home Edition not just tugging on heartstrings, but actively plucking on them with a chainsaw and exploiting hard done by families.

Ever since then, it’s been Chris’s catch phrase. If anyone (me or on TV) mentions Ty Pennington, Chris exlaims “Fuck Ty Pennington!!”

Tonight, he added Steve Jobs. “Fuck Ty Pennington!!! and Fuck Steve Jobs!!!” was heard. I should go find out what happened to iTunes. It’s usually the cause of Chris cursing Steve Jobs.

Breakfast Television (my morning news source) is reporting that Translink wants to raise some of their rates in the new year. This isn’t that new, as it was partly announced a few weeks ago after their funding from local government was turned down.

They’re proposing to raise FareSaver ticket book prices and Monthly passes by up to 10% and claim it’s necessary as these prices haven’t been raised in a few years.

They also want to tack on a $2.50 surcharge for using the Canada Line SkyTrain service to the Vancouver International Airport (and from). Basically if you travel between Bridgeport and Templeton stations, you’d be subject to this additional fare, which I think is pretty steep and nothing more than a cash-grab.

If the concept is to encourage people to use the SkyTrain to travel to the airport instead of driving, it needs to be cost effective. With the proposed increase, travelling from Vancouver to the Airport after 6:30pm or on a weekend would cost $5.00 per person. During the day (Monday – Friday before 6:30pm) it would be $6.25, coming from say Surrey, it would be $7.50 per person.

TransLink knows that the airport will be HUGELY popular during 2010 and I feel they’re just looking to steal as much extra as possible during that period. Why wasn’t this pricing put in initially? Why 4 months after it opens?

If you want to comment, you can send an email comments@translinkcommission.org and voice your support or lack there-of for the above proposals.