May-June 2005
Termite Carnival - 5/2/05
First of all, shout-out to my mom, who was born on this day some indeterminable number of years ago. Happy Birthday, Mama Jury.
I was having lunch on the Redondo Pier with friend Kimmie Friday and observed a couple of things of note:
First, half the Pier was blocked off because they were shooting the sequel to Big Mama's House, starring... I have no idea. Apparently they didn't learn their lesson after the first Big Mama's House. At first they wanted to kick us out of where we were contentedly eating Fish Planks and Funnel Cakes, but eventually they decided to use us in the background of a shot. There's a 99.7% chance you will never see us in the film (the shot was of a guy sprinting down the pier with a motorcycle-mounted camera chasing him), but it was nice to be needed. Even when I almost ruined a shot because I wanted to punch a pigeon that had landed on my funnel cake.
The other interesting thing was this:
You know how when a house needs to be fumigated for termites, they cover the entire building with a wacky-colored tarp to trap in the fumes and bugs inside this huge Big-Top Circus Motel of Death? Well, apparently sometimes entire apartment buildings need to be fumigated this way. Apparently there are wacky-colored tarps big enough for this. And, apparently, sometimes they need to fumigate not one, but three giant apartment buildings at once, all right next to each other.
The result was like something out a acid-induced Candyland nightmare. It was, at the same time, one of the most scenic and one of the strangest sets of pictures I've ever taken. I was waiting for an army of clowns to pour out of these ridiculous structures and start spraying everyone with poisonous seltzer water. Or for a carnival barker to put up a sign announcing that the world's largest Moon-Bounce had just been completed, and for ten-thousand eight-year-olds to simultaneously arrive and start climbing all over the place.
The lengths we go to to rid ourselves of nature's wood-eating pests. As if the Redondo Pier isn't carnival-like enough already.
Whole Fish Plate - 5/3/05
On our day of adventure at Redondo Pier, Kimmee and I also had the joy of seeing this:
In case you're not up for the intricacies of the "Calamari Plate" or the "Shrimp Plate", you can always go for the "Whole Fish Plate".
What's in the "Whole Fish Plate," you ask?
It's better not to ask.
Husband of the Year - 05/05/05
Let's end the week on a chauvanistic note, shall we?
Somebody sent me these a while back... I'm not sure I agree with the order of these pictures, but I just like that somebody was able to take them.
Husband of the Year Awards, 2005
Third Place - Albania
Second Place - Serbia
First Place - Ireland
Hey, at least he's helping out, right?
Barely a Musical - 05/09/05
The weekend brought a reading of our new musical, Barely a Bear. It went fantastically.
The weekend also brought my good friend Sean to town, who scored the piece. Last time Sean was in town, we managed to cram a 36-hour weekend full of some of the most ridiculous fun possible. This time was no different; our schedule for the weekend consisted of something like: Thursday: Cinqo de Mayo festivities. Friday: Musical prep, parties. Saturday: Musical reading, jamming afterwards, parties. Sunday: bars, beach, lunch, bars, pack, barbeque, take Sean to the airport. Pictures to come.
The weekend also brought a quick yarn, curiously tied into the story theme. Casey, one of the actors in the musical reading, left his keys, wallet and cell phone in Jess's bag (Jess, and old writing friend from Northwestern, wrote the book for the musical). The stakes were already high in that he didn't just lose one of these important items, but all three. Keys, wallet, cell phone… what else is there? The stakes were raised by the fact that Jess lives in Hollywood, 20 miles from where Casey lives by us in South Bay, and traffic is terrible on Saturdays. The stakes were further raised by the fact that Jess was moving to New York… that very night.
A denouement was reached when we all met up at In 'N Out off the freeway and all items were safely returned. But in a day about storytelling, it's ironic that this tale escalated and was resolved so formulaically.
SAT Stumper - 05/10/05
I've been tutoring SAT prep for 2 years now, and I recently came across perhaps the toughest math problem I've ever seen on the test. It was the very last problem on an easiest-to-hardest math section of the New SAT, and it's a real doozie. So I pass the challenge on to you.
Can you do it?
I finally figured out the answer, but it took awhile and the method I used left something to be desired. I'm wondering if any of you smarty-pants readers out there can help me find a better way. Anyone who can get the right answer and explain a good way to get it quickly will be featured on this site as Genius-of-the-MonthTM, a title of highest esteem, which I'm creating especially for this contest.
You can also suggest a better title than Genius-of-the-MonthTM, if you like.
Genius of the MonthTM - 05/12/05
Jurys represent as my youngest brother Alex, an engineering student at Brown, wins the Genius-of-the-Month award, responding correctly to my SAT challenge at 10:09am Pacific Time, a mere hour and 40 minutes after I posted it Tuesday morning. Way to go Alex!
There were many correct responses and many good answers, but I promised I would give the prize to whoever responded first, and that was Alex. See his answer here.
The runners-up:
2nd Place - 10:27am - Jeremy Round (via 3 separate phone calls, although he didn't actually tell me the answer was "E" until about 6:30pm).
3rd Place - 10:36am - Brian Saito. Brian also published perhaps the simplest response. Way to be a man of few words, Beastie.
4th Place - 10:48am - Michael Heineman, although Michael promptly sent me a second email saying he was pretty sure the first one was wrong, even though it wasn't.
Other finishers:
5th - Sam Greenspan
6th - Seann Verde
7th - Aaron Winters
8th - Scott Rivedal
Seann, a former math/neuroscience major and computer genius, gets the award for the most mathematical/complicated answer, and Aaron gets the award for the funniest answer.
Jeremy Abramson also claims he sent me the correct answer, though I never received it. Man, to solve this tough a math problem and then get my email address wrong... sounds like classic Jeremy.
Anyway, yes, the answer's "E". Combining the diverse and clever responses of the various contributors mentioned above, I've summarized the solution into my SAT Teacher's Answer for Average High School Kids. Although I would probably just tell most high school kids to skip this problem and work on the one about how many bananas in a dozen.
Fucking Door - 05/15/05
Back in the fall, Brian and I smashed a hole in our front door with a couch. It wasn't a security risk or anything, just an eyesore, so it took us until a couple weeks ago to get around to having it fixed.
Now the door is worse. No, check that: it fucking sucks.
The guys who replaced our door put the knob way, way to close to the edge of the door. So now there's no way to open the front door without totally scraping the shit out of your knuckles on the door frame.
It's really annoying. And it really, really hurts. Everyone has done it - the roommates, our friends, the goddamn UPS guy, everyone. Now anyone who comes over has about .5 seconds of greeting before a shock-wave of pain hits their brain from a millimeter of skin being scraped off their hand. It's like "(enters) Hey guys, how's it-FUCK!!!!"
Those of us who live here have resigned ourselves to carefully twisting the knob open with our fingertips and then kicking the door with a foot (hopefully thereby increasing the chances of breaking the door again and getting a new one), or just leaving it open all the time.
We called our management company the problem, but the semi-retarded lady in charge of maintenance said that our new door is actually a good thing, because now it's sealed from the elements, which is clearly necessary in our harsh Southern California climate. She also said that our new door would improve, over time.
"It is new door... when it is sometimes new doors, never used before, it is hard, the wood is hard. I know the wood is hard, but when it installed, that is how it sometimes at first, it will get better, that's what he told me."
Perhaps I have a limited knowledge of alchemy, but I'm pretty sure wooden doors don't soften up. Even if they did, then we'd just have a mooshy-ass door that's likely to get another hole busted in it and still scrapes the living fuck out of your knuckles when you push it past the still-hard door frame.
That's all I have to say about that.
Old Country Punking - 05/17/05
My friend Sean is an amazing musician. I don't just say that because he's one of my closest friends and I'm trying to get him to move out here to go to composition grad school. I say that because he's the best improvisational pianist I've ever heard, and I went to a college with one of the top music schools in the country. I say that because he can play a piano version of nearly any song after hearing it once. I say that because we've written two musicals together and they've been awesome despite my complete dearth of book- and lyrical-writing talent. I say that because he played at the Pillsbury Mansion, won a statewide composition award, and composed a score for full orchestra... all before graduating high school.
So anyway he's an amazing musician. And this is the story how Sean the musician got punked by Old Country Buffet.
Sean's roommate Kristian works for Old Country Buffet in a corporate/management capacity, and he thought it would be a good idea if OCB added a little class to one of their restaurants. Because obviously you head to OCB when you want a class meal.
So Kristian went to Sean. "Sean," he probed, "How'd you like another piano playing gig?"
"Sure," said Sean, because he may have 6 jobs, but he's never too busy for more music.
"It's at a restaurant," continued Kristian. "You'll be compensated."
"Sure," said Sean, because he's played at myriad weddings and similar fancy events, and is typically handsomely rewarded. "Which restaurant?"
"Old Country Buffet," replied Kristian, without the slightest hint of being kidding. "It would help me out a lot."
Sean hesitated for a long moment. "Sure," he finally said, because Sean is probably the nicest guy in the world, in this case very much to a fault.
That was degradation #1. And that was just the beginning.
Degradation #2 - Though it may seem hard to believe, most Old Country Buffets do not come equipped with a piano. So Sean had to take his own keyboard from his apartment, completed with speakers, stool and electrical equipment, cram it into his car, lug it into the restaurant, to set everything up himself.
Degradation #3 - Apparently Old Country Buffet didn't think it classy enough to merely have a world-class pianist playing for in their shitty restaurant for their white-trash customers. They also had a magician running around pulling playing cards out of his sleaves. Rumor has it all the balloon-animal-making clowns were booked for the night.
Degradation #4 - Sean had to wear a tux.
Degradation #5 - When it was all over, the manager of the restaurant came over to Sean, thanked him for playing, and then proceeded to pay him in 12 coupons to Old Country Buffet. Sean was rather shocked.
Degredation #6 - But not as nearly shocked as he would be when he realized that these coupons weren't even for free meals at OCB. They were simply for meal discounts. Namely, the next 12 times Sean comes to OCB (which would take most people the better about of a lifetime) and presents a coupon, he only has to pay five dollars to eat there. Five dollars. A meal at OCB only costs about eight bucks. So Sean was compensated for his time, talent, roady-ing skills, and utter humiliation with what totalled to be about $36 off lumpy mash potatoes and tepid ham slices, as long as he's willing to pay the other $60.
Rumor has it the magician's compensation was that he got to lick the soft-serve out of the used dishes in the kitchen.
Wendy's Chili Finger - 05/19/05
About a month ago, a woman in Las Vegas tried to defraud Wendy's by planting a severed finger in a bowl of chili.
From what I can gather, she just went up to the counter and calmly ordered some chili, sat down with it, and, when no one was looking, took out a severed finger and put it in her food. Then she pretended to flip out, like "AAIIIIEEE, THERE'S A SEVERED FINGER IN MY CHILI! I'M SUEING!" and tried to get a nice cash settlement. I guess eventually she fessed up, is being charged with attempted grand theft, and last Saturday Wendy's offered a free milkshake to all of its customers in an effort to win back some of the folks it had lost due to the fallacious story.
Now I never knew about this story, or even that they had chili at Wendy's, but I'm glad I caught wind of it. Because the whole thing raises some interesting questions for me:
- Where did this women get this severed finger? I'm assuming it wasn't hers, or she would have had a difficult time A) getting away with her scam, and B) carrying the chili back to her table.
- Can you finger-print a severed finger? Is there some manual-math challenged person out there who saw this story on the news and was like "Hey, that that's my finger!"
- What did the manager on duty at that Wendy's think right when this all went down? I have to imagine it made him reconsider his career path. I bet his first thought was one of the following:
- "The Regional Vice President is not going to be happy about this."
- "This is totally not worth $26,000 a year."
- "Christ, not again."
- Did anyone in the Quality Assurance Department at the Wendy's chili factory lose their job over this? And when the truth came out, what kind of embarrassingly generous welcome-back comp package did they get? Did they even want to go back to working in the Wendy's chili factory Quality Assurance Department?
- Why did the woman fess up? Seems like she had a pretty good scam going - it would be pretty hard to prove that a severed finger didn't get into a batch of meat at the Wendy's chili factory. Did she feel bad about causing a reputable restaurant chain to suffer critical 3% second-quarter profit loss? I find that explanation unlikely - I mean, apparently it didn't bother her to go and get a severed finger from somewhere and slipping it into a bowl of chili.
- Did she really try and sell the scam by eating some of the chili first, before she "found" the finger? Did anyone else eat the chili afterwards, like on a dare? I know that's gross, but wouldn't you eat some severed finger chili if you worked at Wendy's and all 20 other Wendy's employees had each agreed to give you $100? It's just chili, after all - it's not like you'd have to eat the finger.
- What if, last Saturday, someone had tried to plant a severed finger in one of the free milkshakes? Would anyone believe them? Probably not, but I really couldn't see Wendy's pressing charges for a second time. I mean, they'd have to admit, it would be a pretty funny reference.
8-Year-Olds In Our Bushes - 05/23/05
We live at the bottom of a hill in a residential area, and every Sunday the neighborhood kids gather their bikes, wagons and skate boards and have some kind of a soap box derby down the sidewalk past our house. We live second from the corner on a busy street, and the kids need a good place to stop before they coast out into traffic (bringing a certain scolding-by-mom and a possible getting-run-over-by-a-truck)... and so they stop by crashing into our hedges.
Today Kolleen was waxing her car in the driveway when an 8-year-old on a Big Wheel zipped within an inch of her car before tipping over and catapulting into our bushes. He gleefully rose to his feet, brushed himself free of leaves and debris, and scampered back up the hill for another run. No harm was done, but the question was raised: should we tell them to stop?
On one hand, they're just kids having fun. Lord knows I've done much worse, to myself, to others, to unsuspecting basements. In fact it was just last year I tried to ride a scoot-skate down a much steeper hill than ours, and nearly broke myself. I'm not so far removed from childhood that I would dare stop children from play, am I? But, on the other hand...
...those are our cars! Or more importantly, those are our liable asses if we should accidentally back over one of these kids, or have one of them dent the side of a car with their head. Not that I park in the driveway or anything, but somebody could get hurt. Or sued. But back on the first hand...
...wouldn't it be the kids' faults? It should be their parents' responsibility to keep their children out of the grills of automobiles, not the irresponsible 25-year-olds down the block. And maybe if Paulina Avenue loses a few kids, it's just the natural hand of selection at work. It'll keep the other kids from breaking our 7.5 foot basketball hoop. And yet...
...those bushes are really gross. Where do you think we dump the moldy beer pong cups after the wreckage of a tournament has sat around festering for a week? Where do you think we dump the maggotty garbage water from the can when it rains on a trash day? Where do you think I dump the bleach and lysol water after cleaning the cans out? I personally have witnessed at least 100 people urinate into said bushes, and I think Sam said he once heard two of our old meathead neighbors hooking up in them. Do these kids really want to be rolling around in that?
It's settled, then. I'm not going to tell the 8-year-olds anything.
Donkey Balls - 05/25/05
Not to draw attention away from this site (much love to all you lovely people out there who keep checking in every so often - if you haven't noticed, I've been trying to post at least every other day recently, and hope to continue doing so)... But sometimes other websites do such awesome things that they simply must be recognized. For the next little bit, I'm going to try and let you all in on some cool stuff I've found online recently .
 This first entry falls under the category of "I can't believe they have a site called that". A while back, my friend Pat and I got in a discussion that somehow ended up on the topic of Donkey Balls. .Don't ask. Actually, the discussion was more about whether or not there might be a website called Donkeyballs.com. I was complaining that "...I need to find a better browser because it sucks fat donkey balls when IE keeps crashing on me. Possibly because of that site about fat donkey balls I visited."
Pat responded: "You should try Mozilla Firefox." (I later did - it rules). "And I hope there's not actually a site called donkeyballs.com."
Turns out, there is. Actually, donkeyballs.com isn't the technical name of the site, but some coffee shop did bother to buy that URL and link it to their website. Where, among other things, you can buy a delicious pouch of... yes, you guessed it, Donkey Balls.
I wonder if these chocolate Donkey balls contribute any business to my dear friend the Hawaiian dentist who emailed me a while back.
Speaking of Which... - 05/26/05
The whole Donkeyballs thing reminded me of a game Ari and I played at a bar in New Jersey when I was on my roadtrip. The goal was to try and come up with crazy website names that may actually exist, then have the other person try and guess whether or not the site is real. Unfortunately we were at a bar and not a computer, so it was difficult to check, but anyway neither of the hypothetical sites we could remember (whitepeoplerapping.com and pornornotaporn.com) ended up being real when we got home.
But there are some real messed-up site names out there. So here's a quiz. Three of the following web addresses are real sites. One of them is not a site but leads to one, one is a site under construction (and let's all hope they finish it), and one of them I just made up. Can you guess which?
Click on the links to find out. I promise none of them are porn sites.
- www.eatadickstraightup.com
- www.buttpaste.com
- www.penisland.net
- www.ratemytaint.com
- www.corkintheassholeofprogress.com
- www.menwholooklikekennyrogers.com
 Incidental Comic Porn - 05/27/05
I don't know if this site's any good, but it has some sweet stuff on unintentional comic book smut. Kind of like Maxim's "Found Porn" section.
Anyway, check it out.
Stupid Chemistry Names - 05/30/05
 And this is just nerdy.
I suppose it appeals to me in the same way a comedy sketch about the chemical elements fighting each other in a Westside Story street gang does.
More Entertaining Websites That Aren't Mine - 05/30/05
www.ebaumsworld.com has a lot of great media content and jokes, for people who think stuff like three dogs mounting each other is funny. Me, for example.
Amidst all the hilarity, they also have some extremely cool stuff, like this Japanese talent show video. Though the best part, of course, is the Japanese people screaming in the background.
Final Referral Post - 06/2/05
A couple other great ways to waste your workday hours...
First of all, besides being the place to find everything, from roommates to used air conditioners, craigslist.org also has a "Best Of" Craigslist section, where they put all the ridiculous posts people have deemed hilarious or otherwise notable, such as this post about squirrels, and this classic public defender one.
I also have to give love to Homestar Runner.com, the funniest use of flash cartoons online right now. I recommend the Children's Book email, as well as the emails called "Dragon" and "Japanese Cartoon".
Wikipedia.org is about the most valuable educational tool on the web - you can learn a little something about anything, ever. Like a massive, multi-language, free encyclopedia. I recently used to to learn how microwaves work.
And, of course, shoutouts to two of my blogger friends, the finger-on-the-pulse comedian/weird-news generator Sam Greenspan, and the politically savvy ghetto-slanger Pat Stack. I particularly like his whale article.
Customer Service - 6/4/05
A month ago I downloaded a zip program from the website of a company called Allume, for the purpose of reading some web design files I'd received. It was a free 30-day trial version of the program, but unfortunately I had to give my credit card number to get the program, and promise to pay $19.99 if I didn't delete the program within a month. I know, I know, but I figured the program would be gone in a day or two, and I'm pretty good at keeping track of stuff like that and to make sure I don't get charged. I used the program once, deleted it off my computer, and, just because I'm anal, called the company to make sure I wouldn't be billed. They assured me I wouldn't.
A month later, a charge from Allume showed up on my credit bill. Because I'm anal, I called them immediately, figuring I'd be able to get out of the charge no problem, since I'd wiped the program a month ago and had followed all their other instruction. They must have made a mistake.
Turns out it wasn't only one mistake. First of all, the charge was for $86.15, more than four times the original amount. This was because they had billed me not for the 30-day trial version, but the full-out deluxe version. For Macintosh. Which I don't have.
They also send this version to my house. Despite the fact that I obviously downloaded and used the basic PC online version, they decided to also mail me the Mac version, just in case I decided A) to keep the program, B) that I needed a CD of it, and C) to buy a Mac.
Finally, this package never arrived to my house. So they billed me $86 for a computer program I didn't order, didn't want, couldn't use, and never got. The conversation with the customer service guy went something like this.
GUY: So you ordered the deluxe shipped version?
ME: No, the free download one.
GUY: For Mac?
ME: No, for PC. I don't have a Mac.
GUY: Do you live at 702 Paulina?
ME: You got that part right.
GUY: Has the product you ordered arrived?
ME: First, I didn't order it. Second, no, it never arrived.
GUY: Oh. OK. (Pause) Well, if it comes, send it back.
ME: You can be sure that I will.
He promised me the charge would be removed from my next credit statement. Lest another $86 charge appear for another irrelevant Allume product, you can bet that I'll check. Because I'm anal.
Best Search Hits - Gaining Stability... - 6/6/05
Sorry for all the "look at somebody else's website" posts recently. Saturday was the SAT, and, therefore, my first day in several weeks not helping high school kids learn the difference between "ascetic" and "aesthetic".
A couple people have asked me recently why I've stopped posting the "Best Search Hits" string report I used to do every month. Have people stopped finding my site by Googling "omelet maker employment" and "Pitchers skunk boyz"?
No, actually the answer lies in the way my site tracker keeps track of search referrals. It only lists the top 20 or so most popular strings people used to find my site in the past month, and partly since my daily visitor count has quadrupled ever since we did the dunk contest, now anything with less than 7 hits doesn't even make the list. So, unfortunately, I no longer find out about the bismarck-loving guy from Milwaukee locating me via "bavarian campsite wisconsin", unless he does it on the first of the month and I check right away.
Instead, I've started getting hit for the same things over and over again, month after month. Some of them I can understand - others I cannot. The top 6:
#1 - Ugly baby - I get at least 600 hits from this a month.
#2 - Funny midgets - This one's good for about 100 hits a month.
#3 - Muff diver - Don't ask.
#4 - Other variations/combinations of #1 and #2, such as ugly baby pictures, demon baby, ugly midgets, funny babies, hell baby, little midgets, etc, etc, etc.
#5 - Enrique Inglesias - I honestly have no idea about this.
#6 - A bucket of KFC chicken - OK, this actually only got one hit, in June, but I thought it was funny. Score one last laugh for the "Best Search Hits" legacy.
Beer Voices - 6/7/05
The most popular beers in our apartment are as follows:
1) Bud Light
2) Coors Light
3) Corona
Actually, everybody likes Corona the best, but Bud and Coors get the nod because of their affordable volume discounts at the nearby Vons.
If you come over to our house on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon or evening (and sometimes morning), these beers will talk to you. They will beg you to drink them... and by "they", I mean Noah or Brian will beg you, ventriloquizing the beers' voices while moving the can tab up and town in imitation of moving lips. It can be very convincing.
Click to hear the voice of Bud Light. It's very pleading and sad - how could you not want to drink Bud Light after hearing this?
Click here to hear the voice of Coors Light. For some reason Coors Light sounds very much like Count Dracula.
Aside from these two, the voices of other beers typically mirror their country of original. As you might imagine, the voices for Corona and Asahi Japanese beer are both funny and very racist. Believe it or not, too racist to put on this website.
Come over to our house on a Saturday afternoon sometime if you want to hear them.
Noah's Nudist Phase - 6/8/05
In February, my roommate Noah went through a nudist phase. Not that he joined a camp or anything, but we'd frequently come home to find him completely naked, sitting on the couch, with a throw pillow covering his prized possessions. I think mostly he did it for the shock value, or possibly for the delightful feel of Kolleen's mom's couch on his bare butt. I hope his bare butt delighted the couch as well, because no one else will sit there anymore.
Though Noah's nudist phase has since subsided, it occasionally resurfaces in the form of mooning or in the form of what Noah likes to refer to as his "Man-gina". Other roommates are occasionally dragged into these naked relapses, such as the time Brian played an entire game of Beerpong with his ass hanging out, or the time I got suckered into playing a game of HORSE in which one of the shots was a Man-gina Layup. I made the shot -- the neighbors called the police.
One such instance of Noah-inspired-public-indecency occurred last weekend, when my old college friend Chrissy was in town. She and two friends came to our house for perhaps an hour, during which time they saw enough of Brian's and Noah's naked bodies to make a grown man blush. It began while Noah was laying under his covers naked, to which Brian responded by jumping on his bed and yelling. Noah responded by jumping out of bed and chasing Brian around naked, to which Brian responded by getting partly naked himself (only from the waist down), until they both ran into my room, where we all were, and stopped to pose for several pictures.
"Is it always like this around here?" Chrissy asked me later, scrolling through several photos that will never, ever be posted on this site.
Not always, Chrissy. Only on Saturdays and Sundays.
Off to Las Vegas - 6/9/05
I'm off to Vegas for the weekend, to celebrate my youngest brother Alex's baptism into debauchery (aka his 21st birthday). It's the first time he's had a beer or gambled. Promise.
We're staying at Excalibur, where every 21-year-old stays their during their first visit to the Strip. It's the perfect blend of cheap and well-located, and the fact that it's a giant midieval castle is really cool your first time in Vegas. It doesn't become tacky until your second time in Vegas.
Posts will be a little slow/non-existent for a few days, so I'll leave you with a little chronology of where people stay in Las Vegas through the various periods of their lives:
Ages 18-20 - AAA Travelodge - Because at your age, it's the only place you feel comfortable.
Ages 21-22 - Excalibur - Because it's cheap, it's on the Strip, and to a 21-year old, "Thunder from Down Under" just seems very Vegas instead of very gay.
Ages 23-24 - Bally's - Because you're too cool to stay at Excalibur, but too poor to stay anywhere nice.
Ages 25-28 - The Venetian - Because you think you're bling.
Ages 29-32 - Bellagio - Because you are bling.
Ages 33-35 - The Venetian - Because Bellagio took all your bling.
Ages 36-39 - Bally's - Because you just don't care anymore.
Ages 40-59 - Excalibur - Because the kids love it.
Ages 60-up - AAA Travelodge - Because at your age, it's the only place you feel comfortable.
Vegas - 6/13/05
This weekend my brother Mark and I took our youngest brother Alex to Las Vegas for his 21st birthday. Mark and I both had pretty lame 21st birthdays, so we thought we'd live vicariously through Alex's rite of debauched passage.
The trip can basically be summarized by the following...
...except that the quantity of substance in Alex's right hand decreased even faster than the quantity of substance in his left hand. And Alex, mostly through consumption of the latter, increased.
Some notable vignettes from the trip:
- On the way into Nevada, I stopped at a Shell station just across the border and bought every forty they had in the store. This amounted to about 13 of them, after I had cleaned out both the rows of Olde English and Colt 45 in their fridge. Plopping my tremendous malt liquor purchase down on the counter, I caught the eye of the cashier. "You guys are out of forties."
Withouth even mustering a smile, the cashier looked at me for a second then continued to ring up my purchase. "Sorry about that," she responded.
Concerned that she'd misinterpreted my statement into one of blame, I went on. "No no," I allayed. "It's my fault.
- We lost money in just about everything we tried to play, and I blame Asians. Whether it was Hee-Seop Choi of the Dodgers hitting a 9th inning homerun to secure the loss of our $20 bet on our beloved Twins, or an unsmiling, unspeaking Thai blackjack dealer named Fong knocking us out of 80 dollars in 4 straight hands, people of Asian descent were really out to get us this weekend. Seriously, Fong was a remorseless money-taking machine, with a heart as black as a thousand midnights.
- Sadly, the highlight of our gambling adventures was Alex and I hitting a straight-flush in nickel poker at three in the morning Saturday. Even more sadly, our 15-cent wager straight-flush only yielded $7.75 (50-1 payout for a straight-flush!?), which Alex and I immediately took to McDonalds. But happily, you can buy a shitload of Dollar Menu for $7.75.
- Over lunch one day, perhaps influenced the theme of Excalibur's Round Table Buffet, we somehow got into a discussion about what would be the least effective weapon with which to take over an airplane. The 3 top ideas:
3 - Morning Star - There's just not enough room between the overhead compartments to generate the necessary velocity to effectively wield a spiked ball on a chain. Perhaps you could just toss the ball at people dodgeball-style, and use the chain to pull it back.
2 - Pike - Unless of course you affixed it to the beverage cart and went jousting.
1 - Broadsword - A foot-wide, fifty-pound sword is hard enough to swing on a midieval battlefield, let alone in coach.
Also noted - A catapult - Clearly, a catapult would be a hilariously inept weapon with which to hijack an airplane, but it's kind of getting into an unrealistic realm. I mean, a submarine wouldn't be much help taking over a plane either, but it's not exactly a legitimate option. Because obviously a broadsword is a legitimate option.
- On way out of Excalibur on the last day, we put 6 dollars on 6 black in roulette, since Alex's birthday is 6/6. We didn't win, but Satan did rise from the wheel in a plume of fire. He introduced himself as Fong.
Observations on Wheels - part 1 - 6/15/05
I have a friend Brian in Minnesota who was in an accident when he was ten and has since been in a wheel chair. Brian has been an inspiration in the way he's dealt with things, refusing to let his misfortune alter his positive outlook on the world, or keep him from pursuing his dreams - in high school he excelled in the directing arena of our school's theatre department, and now works for a prestigious Minneapolis theatre.
Brian has also developed an earnest and sometimes scathing sense of humor about his situation. It's a way of keeping him positive, but at the same time, his humor delicately toes the line between hilarious and uncomfortable to those who hear it, depending on how well one knows him. Like the time in a theatre meeting when someone commented that they'd been sitting so long that their lower extremities had fallen asleep.
"I can't even feel my legs," said the unsuspecting person.
"Funny," responded Brian. "I can't feel mine, either."
There was an excruciating silence, then about half the people there (those who knew Brian) started laughing. The other half (including the guy whose legs had fallen asleep) remained very uncomfortable for quite some time. It's dark, dark humor, but the decision is yours whether or not to be offended, because it comes from someone who truly knows what they're joking about.
Observations on Wheels - part 2 - 6/16/05
The reason I bring up Brian's story is because it provides the background for an interesting social observation made by Brian and our mutual friend Sean a couple weeks ago. Brian and Sean were at a bar together, and for one reason or another (possibly involving dark humor), Sean and Brian decided to switch chairs - Brian in Sean's seat, and Sean in Brian's wheelchair. All was fine and good until an old college friend of Sean's entered the bar.
Now, Sean hadn't seen this girl in several years, and in light of the couple of beers he'd just had, he decided it would make a solid prank to wheel himself up to his old friend and see how she reacted. He did, and her reaction was one of immediate shock, followed by uncomfortably avoiding the subject, until Sean explained that he'd been in a car accident since college and could no longer walk. Then the reaction shifted to one of embarrassment and masked pity, until Sean rose from the wheel chair and admitted that he'd just been making the whole thing up, at which point the reaction shifted to stunned amazement, followed by livid offense, followed eventually by laughter. It's amazing what a variety of responses you can manufacture with a simple wheelchair.
The experiment gained another dimension as Sean returned to the wheelchair and, for the next couple of hours, wheeled himself around the bar to accomplish ordinary tasks such as using the bathroom and ordering a drink. To get through crowded areas, Sean would have to tap people's legs to get them to move, since he couldn't reach their shoulders. This produced an interesting phenomenon. Upon getting touched on the leg in a crowded bar, most people will immediately whirl around angrily to see who would dare act so improperly. Upon discovering that the tapper is someone in a wheelchair, most people's ire will then abruptly shift to a mixture of surprise and guilt, generally followed by an overstated effort to get out of the way, and move every other person and obstacle in the area out of the way as well, often much further out of the way than necessary. Sean would then proceed through the wide berth, bombarded from all sides by profuse apologies from people who would have, if Sean had not been in a wheelchair, merely snorted their annoyance and moved as little as possible to let him squeeze through.
We treat disabled people differently, then feel guilty about it. We also pity disabled people, and then feel guilty about this, too, as if it's going to make us treat them even more differently. So generally we just try to avoid this dissonance by pretending the disability isn't there at all. Clearly, people who are disabled don't want pity, and don't want to be treated differently. But I don't think they want their situation totally ignored, either. There's a fine line, and perhaps that's where Brian's humor comes in. By taking a subject like this head on, you bring it to its necessary light and diffuse this dissonance before it begins. There's nothing wrong with supporting a sensitive subject with a platform that brings us all together - humor - instead of looking at it as something that keeps us all apart.
The only thing wrong is Sean pretending to be handicapped and getting to cut in line for the bathroom.
Observations on Wheels - part 3 - 6/17/05
Since this is a humor site, and since I haven't offended anybody since Monday's post about Fong the diabolical Asian blackjack dealer (believe me, there was a much more offensive version of the post I didn't publish), I'll conclude this three-day series with a slightly less-PC take on some of the things Sean and Brian discussed doing after their bar wheelchair experiment went so well.
Sean related most of these ideas to me in the hypothetical during a phone call the next day, suggesting that I "try some of them out, if you can get your hands on a wheelchair." First of all, Sean, where there's a will, there's a wheelchair. But why am I suddenly the Jackass guy? Just because I once went into a cafeteria naked and another time tried to stay overnight in a closed library… and then there was that time I rode a box filled with packing peanuts down stairs… but I digress. I already got in trouble once in Sunday school for racing our church's spare wheelchair down a hall and crashing into the pastor, so I'm not sure I'll ever actually try any of these stunts. But Brian and Sean and I did manage to come up with a couple funny/completely offensive pranks to try, involving wheelchairs at bars:
- Grope people. Sean got away with it a little trying to get through crowded areas… why not go a little further? Is a girl really going to slap a guy in a wheelchair if he grabs her ass? Perhaps if he did it repeatedly, but maybe there's the contest - how many times can you goose somebody from a wheelchair before they stop feeling bad for you and start wailing on you?
- Fall down a flight of stairs. I bet they'd actually stop the music for this one, especially if you laid there for a little while on the floor, groaning, your chair on top of you. Guaranteed attention and appalled expressions from half the bar, at least. You could probably get three or four free drinks out of it. At least.
- Stage a fight. It doesn't matter who starts it; if you and a confederate start a fake brawl in the middle of a bar, when you're in a wheelchair and he's not, I guarantee the bouncers are going to come down a lot harder on him than you. Especially if at the climax he throws you down a flight of stairs (see previous bullet). Actually, I kind of like the idea of you starting it, and him trying really hard not to get in a fight with a guy in a wheelchair, until you push him too far.
- Get cured. Perhaps it's the fall down the stairs that does it, or a certain miracle combination of free shots, but suddenly you could push yourself out of your wheelchair, praise Jesus, then struggle waveringly to your feet, to the amazed and confused looks of the patrons around you. Come to think of it, this might work better at a Baptist revival meeting than at a bar.
So there you have it. All the potential insight and sentimentality I may have attained in the past couple posts is gone now, and I can go back to writing about malt liquor and making fun of Asian people.
My First Earthquake - 6/19/05
Thursday I was in my first earthquake. Now in my day, I've been in three tornadoes, a ping-pong-ball-sized hail storm, and countless multi-feet blizzards, but my earthquake experience thus far has been limited to 1989 San Francisco news footage and role playing game fighting moves. And I've got to say, for all my earth-moving expectations... this was about the pussiest earthquake ever.
I was on the phone with my friend Kimmee when my window startled rattling. I may even have felt my chair tremble just a bit... and then it was over. A strong gust of wind, I thought. But Kimmee paused in our conversation. "Was that an earthquake?" she asked.
"I don't know, you felt it too?" I responded. "Hold on, I'll ask Noah."
Noah had been working in his room and I got up to find him, but he met me halfway. "Was that an earthquake?" he said.
"Huh," I said. "I guess it was."
"I thought it might have been a truck going by, but if you felt it too..." said Noah.
"I thought it might have been the construction by my house, but if you felt it too..." said Kimmee, from the phone.
I jumped online and typed into Google: "Was that an earthquake?" But there was no response just yet.
Turns out it was and earthquake, a 4.9 tremor that epicentered in Yucaipa, California, about 75 miles Northeast of us. Some buildings rocked a little, but I don't think there was any damage, and nobody got hurt. And I've got to say... I'm kind of disappointed.
4.9 seems like a pretty intimidating number for how utterly pussy this earthquake was. As the Richter scale goes from 0 to 10, with zero being no earthquake and ten being a cataclysmic,  California-breaking-off-into-the-ocean mega-earthquake, one would think a 5.9 would be nearly than halfway to disaster. Instead, I have an African chess set on my dresser whose pieces routinely topple onto the floor when someone flushes the toilet too hard, and none of them moved. OK, the black queen might have moved a smidgen, but that may also have happened last time I closed the sock drawer.
If I had paid more attention in science class, I'd know that the Richter scale uses logarithms or something, and a 2.0 is actually like 100 times as strong as a 1.0, or something like that. So really our Thursday earthquake was about 10,000 times as pussy as the San Francisco quake that caused lots of damage. Still, that's hard to remember, so I've concocted a modified version of the Richter scale, to help me measure earthquakes in a more personal way:
| MAGNITUDE |
RESULT: |
| 4.5-5.5 |
My African chess pieces wiggle. |
| 5.5-6.5 |
My African chess pieces fall over. |
| 6.5-7.5 |
My whole room falls over. |
| 7.5-8.5 |
My whole room is swallowed up into the gaping maw of Mother Earth. |
I'm assuming that anything higher than an 8.5, I'd be dead, and anything lower than 4.5, well... that would be too pussy an earthquake to even waste time writing about.
Statistics - 6/21/05
My roommate Noah and I saw a stat during the Cincinnati Reds' game Sunday that went something like the following:
Ken Griffey Jr. has hit homeruns on two consecutive Father's Days.
Last Father's Day, he also had his 2,041st hit, the same number of hits
his father, Ken Griffey Sr., finished his career with.
I appreciate the Father's Day shout-out as much as the next person, and the two consecutive homeruns on the Dad's day is an interesting stat, but does anyone else think they're reaching a bit for the 2,041 hits statistic? I think I could say with a reasonable degree of confidence that neither Ken Griffey Jr. nor his father were aware of this factoid, nor would they care if you told them. They would probably just look confused.
This is but the latest example of the fact that pro sports these days keep stats on everything. During my brief sojourn working for a baseball scouting company, we'd routinely generate stats like
Darren Erstad is .232 on curveballs low and outside, but .203 on
curveballs low and in, when the wind is blowing out.
or
Pedro Martinez has a 0.82 ERA against left-handed spray hitters
when he throws a fastball for a strike on the first pitch, unless the
sun is in the batter's eyes.
or
Torii Hunter bats .314 on second-pitch changeups in even-numbered
innings on Tuesdays against right-handed junkball pitchers whose last names
start with the letter "M".
Will this ever stop? Statistically, no, because as a math afficianado I know that the number of things you can do with numbers is, literally and figuratively, infinite. I guess we'll just have to keep amusing ourselves by mocking overinvolved and useless statistics, such as
6.7 statistics are generated per pitch per team during April night
games for American League teams in the Central Time Zone, unless someone
in the home team's general owner's family is a statistician, in which
case this number is higher.
Summer Is Upon Me - 6/23/05
It just occurred to me that I have nothing to do this summer.
Well, not nothing. I still get to work security two nights a week, but besides that, softball on Sundays and beach football on Thursdays, I have 7 days, 5 evenings and 5 late nights a week where I don't have dick to do. And it's not like I do anything at security.
Of course I have nine million writing projects I want to work on, starting with revising our children's musical and sending it off for some contests. But I think I may need some new activities to break up all those long sessions of banging my head against my keyboard. Some ideas I've come up with so far:
- Write a novel
- Watch TV (for this I'll need TiVo to help me)
- Write an SAT prep book
- Lift weights
- Learn Latin (not the whole language, just a bunch of the root stuff)
- Learn to sing
- Take the GRE
- Get drunk
My eyes are always bigger than my stomach as far as time commitments go, but we'll see how many of these I can get through before my summer wraps up in mid-August. I've already accomplished one of these things so far… can you guess which one?
One More Summer Item - 6/24/05
I should have added "Sleep Until 9pm" to my list of things to do this summer, because that's what I did today.
Seriously, 9pm.
Granted I didn't go to bed until 8:30 in the morning, but still that's definitely a new record for me. I slept through the whole goddamn day. It was the second longest day of the year, and I slept through all the light. For those of you on the East Coast, I slept until tomorrow.
Goddamn. I'm kinda disoriented.
It's gonna be a great summer.
My First Shooting - 6/27/05
Wow, a week ago I experienced my first Earthquake, and now this. I've lived in LA almost 2 years now and tonight I witnessed my first shooting.
Now before you get all worried for my safety (Mom), nobody got was shot, least of all me, watching the whole thing from 50 yards away from the safe confines of my security building. Yes, I did watch a guy run after a car firing a gun at it from about 50 yards away. But no, he didn't hit anything. And no, the car didn't fire back - it was too busy laying rubber to get the hell out of there. And no, nobody shot at me, or even noticed me, as far as I could tell. If there's one thing I'm good at as a security guard, it's being invisible and staying as far away from anything dangerous as possible.
Here's how it all went down: I was at security on my weekly Sunday get-paid-for-sleeping-and-writing session, minding my own business. About 1am, I looked up from writing tomorrow's post (it's a good one, about lions and cambodian midgets - stay tuned) and noticed a group of 20 or so teens/twenty-somethings congregating boisterously around their cars in the gas station parking lot across the street. Things were a bit rowdy, but nobody seemed to be fighting or doing anything worth watching, so I went back to writing. That's when a white Escolade rolled up and three dudes jumped out (why do white Escolades seem to be the official vehicle of urban violence?). I don't know what words were exchange, but almost immediately the three dudes jumped back in their escolade and peeled out, as another dude grabbed a gun from his car, ran after them, and managed to get a couple shots off before the car squealed away. Fortunately, the guy had terrible aim - I don't think he managed to hit anything except Sepulveda Blvd, which now has a couple of new bullet-sized potholes. The other people around promptly did what any reasonable person would do in such a situation - they jumped in their cars and got the fuck out. Presently the police arrived, but found nothing but a somewhat frightened store clerk who was probably thankful for the three inches of bullet-proof glass he watched the whole thing through.
Being a good security guard, I immediately jotted down anything I could remember about car- or people-descriptions, then called my friend Sam to tell him all about the exciting shooting I had just scene. Of course, as you can now attest, it wasn't that exciting of a shooting. In fact, since nobody was actually hit, it was only a shooting in the sense that a bullet was shot from a gun and flew somewhere. But still it was my first shooting, and therefore very exciting, at least to me. I'm sure the dudes in the white Escolade and the guy firing at them have been in way more exciting shootings than this one.
After my initial exhilaration had died down, a curious question occured to me. Why does this stuff always happen when I'm at security? This marks the third memorable event since I discovered the joys of night watchman-ship, the other two being the drunk driver I watched get pulled over onto our property when I drove a Ford Escape around a copy machine factory parking lot, and the fight I broke up between three Asian ladies and a white dude a couple months ago. But only one of these had anything to do with me being a security guard - I could have just been buying donuts or driving down the street to see the other two. Don't these people know I have writing to do, and don't have time for silly things like calling the police and radioing base to report license plate numbers? At least the fight was on our property - these other two things were just instances of wrong place, wrong time.
I guess I get good stories out of it. I suppose since I've been getting paid to sleep and write for this long, I don't really mind pausing once or twice a year to watch something crazy go down. I just wish people would time their shootings and fights and DUIs so that they don't do it right when I'm really on a roll writing about lions and Cambodian midgets.
So... it was a day spent drinking on the beach followed by a night spent watching people shoot at each other. Yup, just another typical Sunday in LA.
Today Was a Good Day - 6/28/05
'Cuz nobody I know got killed in South Central LA. - Ice Cube
The phone conversation I had with Sam tonight, after the shooting yesterday, referenced this, one of my top three favorite rap lyics lines of all time. Because obviously any day where nobody you know gets killed in a specific area of Los Angeles is a good one.
SAM: How was your day?
PAUL: Good. Fair. Didn't see any more shootings.
SAM: Nobody you know got killed in South Central LA?
PAUL: Exactly. (then) Does Sepulveda and Santa Monica count as South Central?
SAM: I think it's more West LA. Southern West LA.
PAUL: And nobody got killed, really. The guy just kinda shot at their car.
SAM: And missed.
PAUL: I also didn't really know them. I only saw them for second.
SAM: So nobody you'd seen for a second had somebody shoot in the general direction of their car in southern West LA?
PAUL: Exactly. Today was a fair day.
For future reference reference, my other two favorite rap lines of all time are as follows:
"Cuz your waist is small and your curves are kickin'. And I'm thinkin' 'bout stickin'." - Sir Mix-a-lot
"Stankin' ass bitches, who need to wash up - don't get mad when I don't wanna fuck. You need soap, and water. Soap, and water. Soap, and water. Soap and water. Water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water water." - DJ Assault (who pronounces each "s" in the previous verse with a lisp)
cambodian midgets lion fight - 6/29/05
My roommate Brian recently sent me the link to this BBC article:
Lion Mutilates 42 Midgets in Cambodian Ring-Fight
Spectators cheered as entire Cambodian Midget Fighting League squared off against African Lion
 Tickets had been sold-out three weeks before the much anticipated fight, which took place in the city of Kâmpóng Chhnãng.
The fight was slated when an angry fan contested Yang Sihamoni, President of the CMFL, claiming that one lion could defeat his entire league of 42 fighters.
Sihamoni takes great pride in the league he helped create, as was conveyed in his recent advertising campaign for the CMFL that stated his midgets will "... take on anything; man, beast, or machine."
This campaign is believed to be what sparked the undisclosed fan to challenge the entire league to fight a lion; a challenge that Sihamoni readily accepted.
An African Lion (Panthera Leo) was shipped to centrally located Kâmpóng Chhnãng especially for the event, which took place last Saturday, April 30, 2005 in the city's coliseum.
The Cambodian Government allowed the fight to take place, under the condition that they receive a 50% commission on each ticket sold, and that no cameras would be allowed in the arena.
The fight was called in only 12 minutes, after which 28 fighters were declared dead, while the other 14 suffered severe injuries including broken bones and lost limbs, rendering them unable to fight back.
Sihamoni was quoted before the fight stating that he felt since his fighters out-numbered the lion 42 to 1, that they "… could out-wit and out-muscle [it]."
Unfortunately, he was wrong.
|
I feared that this couldn't possibly be a real story. And, sadly, 30 seconds on Google proved that it was not. I think the combination of "lion" plus "cambodian ring-fight" plus "midgets" plus "42 of them" made it just a little too awesome to believe.
Tip-offs:
- I think 42 midgets COULD beat a lion.
- Even they couldn't, 12 minutes seems pretty fast for a lion to maim 42 midgets. I mean, that's 3.5 midgets per minute.
- "man, beast, or machine"? What, like usually these midgets take on giant fighting robots?
- I really hope there is a Cambodian Midget Fighting League, however.
After we discovered the truth, Brian was good enough to point out that "cambodian midgets lion fight" sounds very much like something someone would search for and find Paul's Pond. In fact, I think people have gotten here using "lion" and "fight", and I know they've gotten here from "midget". It was just the "cambodian" part that was missing. Not anymore.
By the way, Brian was just as devasted as I was upon discovering that the story was spurious:
>>>On 6/24/05, Paul Jury wrote:
What.
This can't possibly be real.
>>>On 6/24/05, Brian Saito wrote:
i just searched a little harder and... it's not. this is the most disappointed i have ever been.
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