Summer of Sports Special: The Big One, First Hand

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

As we embark on the next decade of DCBLOG, in our new generation we are broadening our focus to covering more of the other big passions of this blogger beyond our traditional focus on all things Inside MTV Reality. That includes our frequent posts on the sports world, which we plan to put into overdrive during this year's Summer Olympics and other events taking place this year... and that includes this following post that's been years in the making -- and fitting enough for what this blogger is going through as a Bay Area kid is looking forward to what's to come in around six hours from now.

Soon enough it will be the biggest sports event in the United States, as all of us are counting down the final hours to kickoff of Super Bowl LVIII. There, a dream matchup and a rematch four years in the making will go down when the Chiefs and 49ers will clash once again, this time in this blogger's happy place of Las Vegas. The first time they met came four years ago in Super Bowl LIV, San Francisco's apparent sixth title was snatched away in an epic comeback as Patrick Mahomes claimed the first of his two rings as Kansas City claimed their first title in fifty years -- the first in what would become a gradual power shift towards the next generation of rising star quarterbacks in the league... and his opposition was once "Mr. Irrelevant" -- Brock Purdy was drafted last in the 2022 NFL Draft, also held in Vegas.

   On the occasion of Super Bowl 50 eight years ago -- held in 2016 in Santa Clara, DCBLOG looked at the week of preparation an NFL team goes through before game day... which certainly isn't the case when it comes to the two weeks' buildup to Super Sunday and all of its assorted events leading up to it. We also looked at the long, great marriage of football and television, one that's far and away the most consumed piece of real estate in the broadcast universe. And we even delved into that time where The Challenge made its way to the big game when a Real World alum appeared in a Super Bowl commercial a couple years back. And now, we have a story that's been years in the making even before this rematch.

Pics 1 & 2 Courtesy: USA Today

There will be upwards of over 300,000 people who are coming to Vegas for Super Bowl week festivities that began with the teams arriving one week before the game last week on February 4th and continue all the way to game day Sunday, February 11th. It's even more so the case now when one of the player's girlfriends is the biggest pop star in the whole entire universe who is flying in from the first stop on her 2024 tour in Asia... and the possibility looms large that the Taylor Swift effect and her relationship with Travis Kelce will escalate this year's game into the most-watched program in American television history -- one that's further cemented the NFL's powerful position in sports, media and entertainment.

   However, there will only be some 70,000 people who will have the honor of possessing tickets to Vegas' biggest sports event on this Super Sunday. It will be played in a stadium that didn't even exist a decade ago when no one thought that the town could support a major pro sports franchise, let alone multiple among a slew of major events all perpetuated by an act of the high court to make betting on sports more accessible to fans on these shores. You can add Super Bowl LVIII to a Formula 1 Grand Prix, a Stanley Cup, back-to-back WNBA titles and a pending move of a baseball team to the stature Southern Nevada has gained in the sports world after sports betting became legal in the U.S.

   But while this one here got to experience what it's like to walk within walking distance of a Levi's Stadium that hosted Super Bowl 50 in 2016, it is nowhere in comparison near getting to experience, first-hand, the biggest sports event held in this country. That is, until this one found on social media through his fan connections with MTV's The Challenge one of those lucky people to have had possessed tickets to a Super Bowl that doubles as the sports fan's equivalent to a Willie Wonka chocolate factory pass. And he can tell all of experiencing a Super Bowl first-hand... and one that had a GOAT and a pop queen written all around his weekend in the Central Arizonan desert.

DC FORUM: Capping Off A Light 2023...

A Word from The Editor

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

Back at this time last year, I was about to embark on the tenth anniversary year of this site with some ambitious plans for 2023. However on this last weekend of the year, some different plans were waiting for me... most especially in the house that I've called home almost as long as I've been alive.

It has been eighteen months since the seminal and earth-shattering moment that changed all of us in the Cueva household and in our close-knit inner circle, and me taking on the permanent role of man of the house has caused me to take a detour from this site... a much different 2023 than I had expected. We continue to feel the absence of my late dad every day since that summer's Saturday of a year ago when he passed away, and it has affected me more than I thought even though I'm one who always stays even-keeled in this imperfect world of ours.

Going into 2023, I had big plans for this site to mark a full decade since I started up this DCBLOG site this year, but the new family reality we are having caused me to take a step back when it comes to covering and following my favorite blog beat. For that reason, for the first time in a while I've been watching The Challenge as just a fan and interested viewer... and while this season of Battle for a New Champion is quite a bit different than the others that came before it in this generation of the show, it is always a nice and refreshed change of sorts.

This is the 31st and final blog post of 2023... but this is definitely in no way the last one ever on here. I still have some big plans for covering this MTV world on this site: changes in the platform formerly known as Twitter and my new situation has forced me to take on a new format for weekly episode coverage, and we hope to put that into play on a regular basis in the new year. Other than that, things won't change that much with those obligatory and must-do posts like previewing seasons, introducing rookies and storytelling... and it's the ladder that I plan to put greater focus in for our next generation.

DCBLOG has always been about covering my biggest passions, and going Inside MTV Reality has always been one component of that vision. With the coming Olympic year, I plan to put more focus into shining light onto the sports world... and that Summer of Sports series will be returning with plenty of content related to the Paris Games and other facets of that wide world. I also have a slew of other posts covering my two other big passions of music and Vegas... and I have even become fascinated of late with another TV show that's been around the lifetimes of all of us and there may be a post on it too.

The past several years have seen me evolve quite a bit as a well-round content creator... and outside of this Blogger page has been where I have put my best foot forward in that evolution, one that has now seen me devote my full-time energies to being as such. And there is no better example of that growth than with my YouTube channel... and to me, there is no better place to put all of that work together than in Las Vegas. Of late, creating the #DCVegas XII vlog series has been my primary focus... and the same amount of time and effort I gave to this site has been devoted to creating videos that have garnered me more traffic than my past efforts, and I am certainly proud of all that.

This year of 2023 was one where all of us can finally and safely say that things are back to normal... even if this one still has to have his mask on whenever he goes out for errands. For me, this year has been one where I am now taking on greater responsibilities of being both a creator and being the family man, all while still being that one who loves to live his best life -- most especially after turning the Big 4-O. What does 2024 have in store? We'll see... and Happy New Year to you.

- I AM DC

@DC408DXTR

DC VEGAS XII: Just Another One of Those Epic Sin City Weekends...

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

Usually, the way things work at DCBLOG is that it takes a good deal of time, effort, thought and detail to put together the many posts and the outstanding content that this site has been able to offer on here the past ten years. But for someone who has put this passion project on pause for much of this year for tend to a new family reality but who has just got back from a city he loves so very much, this blogger decided that he did not want to wait to let it all out after letting it marinate a bit before it's published on here. Hence, this post began its draft just eighteen hours after he departed his favorite city on this planet and returned home back to reality, and now it sees light on my biggest weekend.

All Photos Courtesy of... ME!

On this long Veteran's Day weekend, I'm celebrating my birthday smack dab in the middle of the busiest time of year when it comes to celebrating the holidays: today, November 13, falls right in between Halloween and Thanksgiving with the ensuring Christmas season riding on its coattail. Off of this site, I've been marking it with the ones who I love the most, and who are my greatest supporters: my family and a few of my relatives who flew in from New Jersey. But in many ways more than you can count, the #DCBDay celebrations began two weeks early just two weeks ago -- as it normally is the case in this guy's calendar. And when it comes to getting the party started, there's no better place to get to celebrate an early birthday than in the ultimate of happy places that there is on this earth.

So much has changed in my life since the last time I went to Las Vegas: mid-November of 2021 came at almost a last-minute kind of trip being booked a month beforehand instead of two, and I got to go on my first big vacation since this world changed like night and day a few months after that tenth trip. But as I got to stay in the luxurious Wynn tower, did an all-nighter at the town's newest hotel across the street at Resorts World and paid my first visit to downtown, there was no hint that the perfect world of this blogger and his family would turn upside down. This was the last vacation my dad would ever go on in his 71-year-old life, and four months before the heartbreaking news that he had been diagnosed with an incurable form of brain cancer that would claim him the following summer.

Mariano loved going to Vegas as much as I did and go to the casinos as much as my mom... and as we continued to mourn his absence a year after his death, the feeling has always been there to recapture that Vegas feeling. Just that jealousy I had for those in my inner circle who flew there on weekend trips and gave me no advanced warning over the summer, and being a loyal viewer of the daily flood of Vegas YouTube videos only fueled the anticipation I had of going back once again. But fear not, earlier this summer my mom booked that flight for the pre-Halloween weekend... so started the 127-day leadup that culminated in that twelfth #DCVegas trip just like the anticipation sports fans like me have for an NFL season or most especially the Olympics: everything all leading up to a few weeks ago.

Inside MTV Reality: Welcome to The Challenge - Battle for a New Champion

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

Hello to all of you out there, and we welcome you back Inside MTV Reality on DCBLOG... and if you'll understand, a blogger in chief who's put his heart & soul into this site the last decade has put this hobby on the backburner for most of this tenth anniversary year, and not just for a much-needed break from the grind. If you don't know, my family continues to go about life without the most important man in our house some fifteen months after my dad's passing -- and I've spent most of this year tending to being man of the house. But his absence will be most prevalent when the one event I look forward to the most out of everything else takes place in a few days from now... more on that in just a brief moment.

Poster Courtesy: MTV

On the MTV front, this summer & early fall has seen the unlikely return of Sammi Sweetheart to Jersey Shore, while the Teen Mom franchise continues to offer those many twists and turns. This year the iconic Love & Hip Hop franchise came to the channel for the first time, while the party vibe of All-Star Shore is into its second season. But it isn't all just about just what happens on that cable channel that's kept all of us who follow TV's most-talked about reality programming talking: fans just like you have spent the last few months analyzing every move in the Big Brother house and now with the new season of Survivor. This has even stretched to a rival streamer as news has been abound of late of the addition of familiar faces to Peacock's U.S. adaptation of The Traitors and the just-launched House of Villains on E!.

And that brings us to the one thing we have covered the most on this site: MTV's The Challenge, which is marking a quarter-century this year as the first of its kind reality competition-based series. This past week, we crowned the second set of winners on the show's first spinoff to network television as The Challenge: USA on CBS played host to not only alumni of those two aforementioned Eye network shows above as well as their relatively lonely global comrades of The Amazing Race. The ones who garnered the most buzz of the entire cast were five previous Challenge champions who've won on MTV and a sixth who won the most on the All-Stars spinoff on Paramount+.

One of those who competed on that just-concluded second CBS season also doubles as one-half of the defending champions of the mainline MTV series, but that one will not have the chance to put on the line that first title she worked hard to win last spring on Ride or Dies. But Tori is, though, among the many veterans who will be taking part in the thirty-seventh MTV season of this show, but in a totally different capacity than usual: she will be out to take out those who have a chance to join her and those in the winners' circle -- and this fall's competitors will be composed entirely of those who have never ascended to the top step of the podium... and who are motivated to follow in her footsteps to becoming champion. All they have to do is to get over both them and their fellow competitors to get there.

In a moment, DCBLOG will bring you our first look at The Challenge: Battle for a New Champion... and premiere night this time around will take on added spice of sorts as, less than 24 hours after it kicks off -- and in some 60 hours from now as this post goes up on this late Monday night October 23rd -- this blogger will not be in front of this screen getting to do a new traditional recap of the premiere in the all-new Challenge WRAP, but will instead be doing something else. That would be of roaming the streets of that happy place that doubles as the hometown of the show's host... and if this one runs into TJ Lavin in Las Vegas, NV this pre-Halloween weekend, then this blogger & #DCVegas vlogger will have fulfilled an item on that sacred bucket list. Anyway, we're glad you're with us once again to get this all started.

DCBLOG Challenge WRAP: The Challenge USA Season 2 - Week One

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

Whether it's that hurricane that soaked L.A. and Vegas or living through all of that heat, then congratulations to you... you've survived those dog days of summer. But with that taste of fall in the air stretching from Not So Scary Nights with Mickey & co. in Florida to football about to kick off in Kansas City, it's also back to school season for those who follow the fifth major pro sport... as The MTV Challenge has just kicked off a new cycle. And we at DCBLOG are back to covering our primary beat.

When we last covered The Challenge back in March earlier this year, Ride or Dies saw a classic confrontation in the $1 million final that pitted four teams with two multiple champions, a worthy rookie team and a pair of all-out veterans who duked it out for 100 hours in the European wilderness. In the end, it was Tori & Devin that took their first title rings... and as for one of those six runners-up who fell to them in that marathon, her ex Jordan came back on the World Championship that followed on Paramount+ and added that honor to his three titles.

And after that long offseason of sorts, we begin anew again with Season 2 of the CBS version of this longstanding MTV staple... and we all know what happened last time out with that controversial final, but other than that, it was an eventful season. This time around, another all-star cast of alumni from Big Brother, Survivor and The Amazing Race have heard the call from TJ Lavin to suit up... but just as they think that this is just a season for themselves to prove themselves, an invasion of jet skis will tell otherwise. And that more than breaks the ice for an opening act that will set to the tone for this summer and fall, including a titanic battle off the bat in the elimination chamber.

After the break, DCBLOG kicks off not only a new cycle of covering The Challenge in Season 2 of The Challenge USA and its double-hour opening act... but also a brand new tradition of sorts on here as we relaunch our weekly MTV episode posts with the all-new Challenge WRAP. We hope you like it.

DC VEGAS: Countdown To The Dirty Dozen

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

This brief post here that's short but sweet on this Labor Day Sunday... and it has just been revealed on all of my social networks just a half-hour ago including a new YouTube teaser as seen below.

Anyone who knows me will be most interested to know that there is one thing that stimulates this one more than any other topic in my house: any talk within our entire inner circle of family, friends and relatives about the city that has grown from one that I first visited as a young kid, but which has grown in the past decade & a half to becoming the biggest single happening in my universe. Even a single mention of it while I am on this desktop that I do blog posts like this will garner a keen eye from me.

When I took that first ever trip to Las Vegas in the summer of 1994 as a young kid on his summer vacation, I had not much to do on that trip... and where kids like myself back then had just the arcades and the midway at Circus Circus to hang out in. But little did I know back then that it would become the preferred and favorite vacation spot for both myself and for our entire family -- both mine and in our circle. Eleven times in the course of twenty-seven years -- including ten of them in fourteen -- have I been able to set foot in Sin City... plus, there have been so many other trips that those in my family, my cousins and my relatives have taken place there that I wasn't a part of.

The last trip I took in 2021 turned out be meaningful in so many ways: the first I took in not only two years, but also one that took place during the pandemic... and like so many others, it was just as memorable -- first trip to Fremont Street in downtown, a Strip view for our hotel room in at the Wynn, and everything else. But most poignant of all, this Vegas trip turned out to be the very last big vacation that my dad ever took in his life... and eight months after celebrating his 71st birthday a few weeks earlier with me, brain cancer took him away from us much too soon than we all had expected -- though if he had wanted Vegas to be his last trip, he certainly made the most of that opportunity... and having just marked a year since his untimely death earlier this summer, we still feel that void in my house.

Twenty-two months after that last trip to that favorite happy place of all, here I am announcing that DC VEGAS XII is now set in stone. There is one reason why my blog work hasn't been as timely as I would have wanted: when my mom made those reservations earlier this summer, that's when the planning process began for this year's big trip. It's as if you have been waiting all summer for it, but yet I have been at work starting to plan out what I want to do for these extravaganzas... one that might take four days for it to unfold, but which take four months for me to ponder what I want to do once I step foot in the Harry Reid International Airport terminal after that hour & a half's flight from California and being full of anticipation just like the football season that's just begun in college and this week in the NFL.

The way things are for me, I've "accepted" that dream job of being a self-employed content creator in addition to being man of the house... and one of those duties is getting to be a part-time YouTuber. If you've seen my DC Vegas videos there, I have put a lot of work into creating those nearly 300 clips of various lengths spanning nine of my trips... and it will be no different when it comes to getting to capture most every minute of this fall's rendezvous. That is, except that I have just bought my very first GoPro action camera... and that will join a few other cameras in my arsenal -- two regular vlog cam's, a gimbal, a camcorder & my phone -- that will disobey that infamous "What Happens in Vegas" stigma.

To put it out there in the open here, I've let those in our circle know that I am ready to take a Vegas trip at any time and will be willing to tag along if they wanted to invite me. It hasn't panned out as much as I wanted so far this year... but now that we have our date set for the last weekend of October (and it will mean, likely sightings on the Strip and on Fremont Street of Halloween costumes) -- I am now officially in that mood of anticipating what is always, in my world at least, the biggest event of all... and one that I see as my very own Super Bowl. If we can speed ahead to Thursday, October 26th, it'll be fine... we will sure have a lot of fun once again in this Ultimate Escape.

- I AM DC

@DC408DXTR

Who Are These Newbies? - The Challenge USA Season 2: The Amazing Race

Due to the heavy presence of graphics and video, "Who Are These Newbies?" is best experienced on desktops and fast-performing mobile devices.

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

For as long as we've been posting on here over the course of the past decade, DCBLOG has maintained a longstanding tradition of introducing those unfamiliar faces you're getting to see for the first time with what we call, "Who Are These Newbies?" -- our primer on first-time entrants to MTV Reality shows. We have focused on around 200 personalities since this site began in 2013... and it's a result of our vision that viewers watching these shows like yourselves shouldn't get to meet newcomers to these shows without us giving them their deserved treatment and introduction.

DCBLOG has had an unblemished record of doing these posts for every Challenge season until last spring -- and it's with things going on outside of this site that caused me to miss doing introductory bits on the international players who competed on the World Championship spinoff or some of the notable castmates from the return Are You The One? season. Need not worry, we plan to take care of doing those posts at a later date for the sake of those who haven't seen those just yet on Paramount+ during this TV offseason... but now, we go into doing this first installment for this second USA Challenge.

All Photos Courtesy Paramount & CBS

When the field of this year's second Challenge season on network television gathered in Croatia to kick matters off back on Thursday night -- and just as it was a year earlier down in Argentina, the cast makeup was the same both when the CBS alumni came onto the port, and after the MTV veterans invaded their party. That is in the fact that one show was far & away the least-represented of the entire group of competitors who have come to this European paradise to chase the $500,000 that goes to whoever comes away victorious come mid-autumn: that would be The Amazing Race.

As noted in our introductory post on that lonely trio of three who came to Season 1 of The Challenge USA last year, TAR is the one CBS reality show that feels like the lonely little brother who can't get the huge notoriety that Survivor and Big Brother get as far as garnering social media buzz, viewership and a consistent timeslot. It does, though, have so many more Emmy Awards to its credit, including ten statues for Outstanding Reality Competition Series and the Critics Choice Award for Best Reality Show for its most recent season. And those who have stayed loyal through all of this to watching FX Breakfast Time road warrior Phil Keoghan guide the teams on their journeys around the world are lucky to still be here as Road Rules' spiritual and well-traveled successor.

After the break, Part 1 of "Who Are These Newbies?" of The Challenge USA 2 introduces you to the duo who traveled the world during the midst of a pandemic, and who lived through that challenging experience to make it onto this new Challenge -- Dusty and Luis of the past couple seasons. Then: a follow-up on one of the players who competed on last year's CBS Challenge, and flew straight from Argentina to joining the ladder in last year's race around the world. But first, their introduction...

Inside MTV Reality: Welcome Back to The Challenge USA - Part Deux

BY DC CUEVA 

■ linktr.ee/dc408dxtr

In the words of Jim Nantz, we say "Hello Friends" and welcome back to DCBLOG, and to our tenth anniversary year Inside MTV Reality... it has been a while since we've spoken to you in this manner of covering the thing that we have followed the most on here in this last decade. For an obvious reason, it's personal: last month, my inner circle marked a year since the passing of my late dad... that life-changing experience and the increased role I've inherited as man of the house (and also, today in us saying goodbye to my aunt as she flies back home to the Philippines) has forced me to step away from this passion project and focus to the one thing that takes precedent above all else in my life: family. But now, we're set to resume matters on here... and we're glad to be back to doing what this site does best.

Exactly ten years have passed since we started covering the world of the most talked about shows of a genre that's been practically owned in the latter years of a cable channel that began its existence with wall-to-wall music videos forty-two years & ten days ago. Well, here we are in the summer of '23... and a lot has evolved since we began since this site first flickered on the blogosphere back in the summer of 2013. We know that a lot has taken place in the several months since we last covered an MTV show earlier this spring when we crowned new Challenge champs -- and that includes a new spinoff... and we'll catch up on those matters of The Challenge World Championship and the 2nd half of Season 9 of Are You The One? just to come on here as we go deep into the coming fall season.

(Jonne Roriz/Paramount)

As for now, we are set to go back to covering all the dealings in and around the MTV Reality world: later this evening sees the return of the sweetest of all sweethearts to grace our screens in Sammi on Jersey Shore. We are well into a new season of the show that saw Cheyenne extend this MTV crossover into the Teen Mom sorority, and there's even a new dating show among other things in The Love Experiment which premieres next week. And then, there's Season 2 of The Challenge USA, which tonight kicks off a year after the fifth major pro sport came to unchartered waters of primetime broadcast network television for the first time. Then as now, alumni of the CBS network's reality programming took on a whole new game that might be one thing to watch and enjoy but certainly a different animal when playing it.

Last season down in Argentina saw familiar faces from Survivor, The Amazing Race and Big Brother adopt from surviving the elements, traveling the world and living in enforced lockdown to playing our own game -- one that a few who have been on the former and the ladder have been able to master to a degree... and capped off by a rather controversial final act. But this time around, Season 2 promises to be a bit different in many ways -- some familiar faces who have been in both parts of being on network television and in cable-ville will be at it again, and joining them for this odyssey are even more familiar faces who are making their network television debut, and an assortment of Challenge rookies. And if things turn out the way they're supposed to, we should be in for quite the next few months ahead.

After the break -- and with just hours before it begins, DCBLOG brings you our first look at Season 2 of The Challenge: USA... and we'll also reacquaint you with not only this year's crop of contestants, but also that chaotic first season too. Welcome back Challenge Nation... it's good to have you with us again.