Is it "500 followers" or "500 NEW followers"?

UPDATE 9/17 @ 4:05pm ET: With 15 minutes to go, Father Rob got his 500 new followers, and $100 flies out of Lino's wallet. Tune in to TCGS on Monday for the award ceremony!

UPDATE @ 4:20pm ET: Given all the confusion, Lino and Father Rob have agreed to double down on another bet. If Father Rob can truly get 500 new followers (meaning a total of 663) by 4:20pm ET tomorrow afternoon, he gets $100 from Lino instead of $50. If he doesn't make it, Lino gets all of his money back.

UPDATE @ 4:10pm ET: Lino claimed on the show that he meant to say "new" followers yesterday (even though he didn't), but decided to pay the $50 anyway to avoid looking like a sore loser. Yet somehow he still comes off as one because he's putting so much emphasis on what he meant to say. That's talent right there! BTW,

UPDATE @ 2:30pm ET: Father Rob has hit the magic number (see screenshot above)! Will Lino try to use the technicality described below to get out of paying up $50?

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This morning we (@LinoRulliDotNet) had a friendly disagreement with our friends over at CatholicGuyShow.com (@catholicguyshow) via Twitter. To bring you up-to-speed: on yesterday's show, Lino bet $50 that Father Rob could never "get 500 followers" on Twitter (@robertkeighron) in 24 hours, and Father Rob eagerly took him up on it.

The problem centers around the interpretation of "get 500 followers". In our view, it means that Father Rob needs to get up to 500 followers total in order to win... he started out with about 163 followers at the time of the bet. Our fellow fan club's view is that it means that Father Rob needs to get 500 followers in addition to the 163 he already had. Their point-of-view is definitely credible.

Fortunately we happened to record that segment, so we listened to it again to try to make a decisive determination. While we still stand by our view, it's by no means a slam dunk. At one point Father Rob mentioned how "I could somehow conjure up 300 more followers by tomorrow", but at a slightly earlier point Lino mentioned "an extra 500 Twitter followers". That kind of inconclusiveness can only mean one thing: a war of words on today's TCGS like we've never seen before... and we can't wait!

Something's Not Quite Right Here

At the end of the first hour of yesterday's show, Lino recounted how a dating website (in this case it turned out to be Catholic Match) posted the entirety of Chapter 6 of Sinner on its blog without his permission (the chapter where he described his history of break-ups), and then proceeded to (rightly) mock some of the rather tasteless comments that were left by readers.

Wanting to see it for ourselves, we discovered that Catholic Match had acceeded to Lino's demand request to take the entire blog entry down. Fortunately for us (but not for Lino), Google has this nifty little caching feature that takes snapshots of web pages that it crawls. All it took was a quick Google search for "Lino Rulli" and "emissary of Satan", and voila... a cached version of the blog post!

And we couldn't help but notice a couple of inconsistencies:

1. Lino said multiple times that they posted the excerpt from his book without his permission. Yet at the very top of the post was the following disclaimer:

Editors Note: Congratulations to Lino-XXXXXX [Ed: we removed his membership number for privacy], whose new book, Sinner, is released today. The CatholicMatch member and host of the Sirius radio show The Catholic Guy invited us to publish an exclusive excerpt. We chose chapter six, titled "To None Of The Girls I've Loved Before." Enjoy!

"...invited us to publish an exclusive excerpt"??? Sounds to us like they had plenty of permission to post that part of the book. Either there was one huge misunderstanding betweeen Catholic Match and Lino... or Lino decided that he couldn't take the heat being thrown at him in the comments.

2. Lino declared a couple of weeks ago that he was through with online dating and was shutting down his accounts. If that's the case, then why is his account still active? You'd have thought that he would've actually shut down his profile by now.

We're not out to bash Lino by any means... that's not what this site is about. But we don't like being told by Lino that things happened a certain way when there seems to be evidence to the contrary. A little honesty is all we ask for.

A Big Day in TCGS Land

September 6, 2011. It won't live in infamy like some other poignant days in history, but if you're a fan of The Catholic Guy Show, it marks the beginning of some interesting happenings:

1. We're back! (And the applause is just thunderous.) We've been AWOL from this site for two whole months... long story short, we got laid off from our day job, solicited many prayers from friends and family, landed an even better job (thanks to aforementioned prayers), and watched two kids start their first days of preschool and kindergarten, respectively. Needless to say, LinoRulli.net took a backseat during this challenging time.
   


2. Lino's back! (And the applause is even more thunderous.) He's broadcasting live again after a week-and-a-half off to promote Sinner to whoever would listen. We've been keeping track of his whereabouts, and here's a list of links to many of The Catholic Guy's media appearances over the past week plus... we'll add more as we uncover them:
   




• Print and Blogs:





• The Catholic Spirit


• Minnesota Star-Tribune


• The Curt Jester


• Nineveh's Crossing



• TV and Radio:
  




• Catholic TV (begins at 15:30 in)


• The Good Catholic Live


• Fox 25 Morning News, Boston


• KARE-TV, Minneapolis
  


3. Father Rob's back... every day! (We can't hear the applause because Father Rob's karaoke is drowning it out.) After three years of being Lino's punching bag every Thursday, our favorite priest from the Diocese of Brooklyn is now a daily presence on the show. In fact, he's now Co-Producer of the show along with Ryan Grant. Don't take our word for it... read his note to his parishioners (on page 2).



4. TCGS is back... and different! (We detect a smidge of nervousness from the peanut gallery.) When Lino announced Father Rob's promotion (or demotion, depending on your point-of-view) to permanent crew member, he also talked about revamping parts of The Catholic Guy Show and trying new things. We have no idea what's in store, so all we can do is tune in at 4:00pm ET this afternoon and see what's up.



5. Football is back! (And Lino makes snide comments about having to hear Hank Williams, Jr. tell him what he already knows.) We don't know for sure if the crew is still going to do football picks as they have in the past, but if they do, rest assured that LinoRulli.net will be your unofficial official home for the football picks contest. We'll post all of the picks to our homepage as soon as they're made, and declare winners and losers as soon as each game concludes.



6. The end is near... of Lino's Countdown to 40! (Applause mixed in with snide comments from Father Rob.) Today marks exactly fifty days until Lino's major milestone birthday. If you're getting him a present, you'd better act fast!

So strap yourselves in, folks... it's gonna be an interesting ride for the next few months.

Lino's "Sinner" Interview on Catholic TV

Here it is, kids... twelve minutes plus of pure Catholic pleasure from earlier today, courtesy of Catholic TV. Sit down, dab a little Purell on your hands, and watch Lino in an extensive interview about his new book! The interview starts at 15:30 in, so skip to the middle and enjoy.