I Need You, More Than Anyone Darlin, You Know that I have From the Start, So Build Me Up, Buttercup, Don't Break My Butt

I lied about the possibility of an increasing frequency to the whole posting on the blog thing.  I could say that I have been busy, and this is true. I have been cutting cards, assembling my own cards, and generally debate-camping my way to fame and fortune. I recognize that this isn’t the DDI, but I am pretty impressed with the increase in quality that has occurred in most of these kids. We’ve put out some good files and had a hella lot of practice debates, drills, etc. There is no doubt in my mind that a couple of these teams will be elite squads if they decide to stick with it, cuz they are all smart and most of them are wickedly determined. On the final day of the institute, I am somewhat unsure about only the decision to have a tournament with wins and losses, since after two weeks (a long time for a group mostly composed of sophomores and first years), hearing that you lost a debate on an argument you worked to develop for a week seems to be somewhat devastating. I don’t really understand that mentality, but I can imagine that it would not be the best way to spend a Friday in the summer.

Katie and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary this previous Monday. We stayed that night at the Minneapolis Hilton, at least a small step up from 312 Sorin Hall. More important than that, we had dinner at fucking Manny’s. I know that there are those who do not consider Manny’s the best steakhouse/restaurant/place in Minnesota/the world. This is in no way to diss those people or the Silver Butter knife Steak. In my mind, however, there isn’t really anything you can do to get better than this joint. I recognize that in many ways the place is exactly geared to the things I value. The décor is classy but not fussy, dark woods, clean lines, aprons and jackets on the waiters. The place is comfortable, always busy but rarely so jacked that you feel hot or out of place. The menu cart is so awesome, the fact that each of the servers get to do their own bit is brilliant, and that doesn’t even get to the generally impressive hugeness. I have never gotten to enjoy either the double-porter or the $125 Australian lobster tail, but someday they will make the ultimate surf and turf.

I didn’t even mention that we were dining virtually free on a gift from Kari and Karly, which got us each a couple glasses of wine, a very very rare porterhouse for me, a nearly charred (but still delicious) baseball steak for Katie, an order of the world’s best hashed browns, and some legitimately enormous asparagus. If there were downsides to eating at Manny’s (and I’m not so much saying there are) there would be two that are possible: 1) The rest of the world just seems like someone turned the volume down. Food pretty much seems like gruel for the next week, cuz how do you match that up. 2) Its hard to eat dessert. I pretty much eat steak, potatoes, and vegetables until I no longer feel physically capable of doing so. Its usually shortly after that point that your snappy looking wait-person comes around to offer you the enormous brownie sundae, the ricockulously large slab of cheesecake, etc. etc. This is a tough position, because while you are hella certain that you should not follow up a steak as large as what you just ate with a brownie as large as what you see on the next table, you are also hella certain that the brownie on the next table is ex-fucking-actly what you need to follow up the steak with. So you can either overeat a second time in the course of one meal or refuse one of the best desserts you are likely to see for a while. We got out of this dilemma with a delightful surprise, that being Manny’s providing us with complimentary dessert for our anniversary. I guess I had mentioned that it was, in fact, our anniversary when I made the reservation, but it really did surprise me when they did so. I had never had this particular dessert before, but it pwnd Manny’s style: it was a brownie, topped with a thick layer of chocolate mousse, topped with a thick layer of whipped cream, which was then dumped upon by a classic gravy boat full of hot fudge. The crazy thing was that, enormous as it was, it was still small by Manny’s standards. We managed to put the whole thing down, though I like to think I was responsible for about 90% of that. Brownie French silk pie: ain’t nothing wrong with that.

Manny’s and the Minnesota State Fair are pretty much my two favorite places and this meal pretty much put any hierarchy (which would have previously had the fair strongly in the lead) in question. More importantly, of course, was that I got to spend a wonderful 24 hours with Katie. She got me an incredible tapestry like woven thing which features both a bunch of really cool colors and textures, as well as kitty cats. Considering we have like 25 times as much wall space in our new place as we do now, having some things to hang there would be hawt. We got to watch some TV that wasn’t just recorded World Cup games (not that there is anything wrong with that) and enjoy some wedding cake redux, courtesy of Wuollet’s.

We celebrated our wedding anniversary with Hippo the next day, cuz she wanted to say congratulations and all, but we didn’t get to hang out long. She sent me an email yesterday, meowing about how she missed us. She is really ready to go back to New York, but likes having the stairs to race up and down—little does she know….

Peace,

MB-K
  

You Might Have Heard I Run With a Dangerous Crowd, We Ain't Too Pretty We Ain't Too Proud, Might Be Laughing a Bit Too Loud, That Never Hurt No Butt

We finally got freaking internet access up in here. I love being home, I love seeing my family and friends, I love working with the kids at this institute, but being away from my TV, away from my cat, away from my DVR, air conditioning, my own schedule etc. is driving me up a wall. I will probably never be as affected by this as Katie and some others are, but I understand somewhat better why they would feel that way.

I would never expect dorm food to be particularly good, but at the moment it has been both not particularly good and entirely geared towards 2 year olds. I assume this is because the other significant group at Hamline at the moment is a gymnastic camp that features mostly people in the 2 year old range. We have had hot dogs on at least two occasions, chicken patties, grilled cheese sandwiches, and sloppy joes. I don’t mind any of these foods, though their sloppy joes were a) not extra sloppy (even though they should know that kids like ‘em sloppy) b) not especially good. They do have a surprisingly good soft drink selection, which kind of blows my mind. I mean, they don’t have any non-cola diet choices, but they have both Coke and Pepsi products, both cherry versions, Mountain Dew and Mello Yellow, Dr Pepper, some lemon and other ades, root beer, and approximately one literal buttload of juices.

I drove to Kinko’s today (because I woke up in a cold sweat last night thinking “SHIT!! Oh yeah, Kinkos.”) and on the way back I passed this truck.

You are reading that 100% correctly. The Eager Beavers of the Box Business. Either someone shares my sense of humor or someone knows very little about euphamisms for vagina. However, if you are in “the box business” (interpreted either way) you have likely heard “box jokes” before. I hope you appreciate that camera phone shot, however blurry it might be, because it almost cost my life to get it, insofar as I was in the process of passing that truck at around 45 mph with cars in front of and behind me when I took it. I think the dude behind me appreciated the necessity of such a picture, since he appropriately backed off until I had captured the moment.

Tom, Katie’s father, got a Motorola Q last week, and I am ricockulously jealous. I mean, this thing is phat. Not only would it have alleviated my internet woes during the first parts of the institute, it would always leave me with something to do and probably destroy my thumb joints within a month. Katie still needs some convincing that a 45 dollar monthly data package is a smart idea in our limited budget, still, I really like it. I would be willing to cut back my clothing, make-up, shoe, and black licorice purposes to literally nothing to balance out my increase. Maybe the terrible office job I anticipate having in the fall will turn out to benefit me because I will have some legitimate justification for having more access to the internet then my home, my office, and every retail business in the country.

I finally got to see Hippo again this morning and she was meowtastic as usual. She was furr-ious at Landon Donavan and the assbag of miscreants known as Team USA Soccer, but purry and such nonetheless. She, as per usual, says meow.

Peace,

MB-K

If You Don't Give My Football Back, I'm Gonna Get My Dad on Butt

So I totally suck at updating my blog when I am at home. I admit this freely. It should be a bit better during these two weeks, when I will be at the debate institute at Hamline but beyond that, I’m sure I won’t be back to fully regular until we are set up in Rochester. I will take props from Katie and simply go list style, cuz its easier than any sort of coherent thematic organization:

1. I’m a bit worried about the cast selected for Last Comic Standing. They don’t seem, up front, to be as funny as the previous casts, but I will give that time to work itself out. More importantly, they selected a bunch of people who were TERRIBLE, simply because of their quirks. They also didn’t appear to select even one one-liner/straight comic in the grand Mitch Hedberg-Steven Wright tradition, which makes me personally sad. Its also weird to see Mr. Not Even as Famous as Jay Mohr repeat the exact same intro lines. I get that the Jay Mohr hosted format wasn’t working, but if he is good enough to represent Diet Pepsi in the hard fought negotiations with Jackie Chan, he’s gotta be better than Mr. Sitcom Terrible.


2. The kids at this debate camp have this crazy game which I can only describe as Shock Roulette. The game has a button and four spots in which people can insert their thumbs. When the button is pressed a sort of countdown timer begins and when it ends one of the people playing gets a small shock. That’s it. End of game. I understand the initial appeal of this game to some people. Its certainly novel and it admittedly captured some of my curiosity. This is the third day of the institute, however, and there is not yet any sign of the popularity of Shock Roulette slowing down. I have not seen any women join in the game yet, but I have seen a number of dudes play it by themselves. By that I mean they put two or more fingers in different slots and press the button, I guess for the curiosity of determining which of your fingers gets shocked. I could go off on the potential that this game is an American teenage male version of the vagina dentata, but I won’t.


3. I have developed a serious addiction to World Cup Soccer. In most of the games I don’t really have a favorite, though I enjoy rooting for the “3rd World” and generally the underdog. I was a fan of the US team coming in, though their general suckitude has made that less possible. That’s not even to mention that in the best case scenario we get smizacked by Brazil in the round of 16. As a sidenote, when I was trying to quickly get through part of the Spain-Tunisia match yesterday I watched about 20 minutes on fast forward. The way the ball bounces when you fast forward soccer is really quite hilarious. In fact, it made me think pretty specifically of foosball. My new theory is that foosball was created by watching soccer in fast forward. Of course in the end, foosball distorted Mitch Hedberg’s view of soccer, cuz he cannot do a backflip, much less several in a row with several other guys who all look like him.


4. Air conditioning is awesome. I mean, really really awesome. It keeps the air all cold and stuff. In fact, air conditioning probably makes my top 10 favorite things overall. The one thing I was really not happy about in the idea of psudeo-living in a dorm for almost two weeks was the lack of any adequate air conditioning. Last night, when we had to stay in a supplemental dorm because of electricity problems we ended up in one of the freak dorms which had an air conditioner sitting in the middle of the room with a vent-thing that directed the hot air and chemicals out of the window. I assume its built to be used in windows that are not the proper up-down closing specific width scenario. It is wicked awesome, I almost stole it, and I want one. I suppose I would rather just be in places that didn’t need to have portable air conditioners, but you take what you can get.

I have not seen my adorable Hippo in almost three days now, and it is driving me insane. I can hear her plaintive meows in the morning all the way from Rosemount. I know she understands that our being here is crucial to keeping her rolling in catnip and happily full of kitten chow, but I miss her.

Peace,

MB-K

I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight, It Must Have Been Something You Butt

Sorry its so long. I’ve been working, moving, driving to Minnesota, arriving here, and doing wedding related shit while seeing people I have not seen in quite a while. Some funny and awesome things.

-Patton Oswalt CDs make a drive from Buffalo, New York to the Toledo area much easier than usual.

-I’m glad Taylor Hicks won American Idol. I still have McFeever, but Taylor was fun and literally kicked her in the balls on the last performance show. He deserved it.

-I can’t believe I moved away from Buffalo a month before the Sabes win the Cup. Ryan Miller is gonna win the Conn Smythe.

-I joined Bally’s in Minnesota for the month I will be in town. I feel like I got involved in some crazy pyramid scheme, but at the moment, it appears to be a free, complicated pyramid scheme. With far too more paperwork than is justified by me wanting to pay them a set fee to use what is essentially a machine that is heavy in varying degrees.

-The two women who were working at Bally’s appeared to hate each other and have some long running feud. They kept sniping at each other over the discussion of where the St Louis Park location was.

-Everything I own is in a box at a U-Haul place in Rochester. Except for my new couch, which is gonna be so awesome I can’t even deal.

-This wedding is gonna pwn. Virtually everyone is in town to party.

There will be more soon. At the moment Hippo has more material possessions accessible to her than I do. She is gloating, but its still hella cute.

Peace,

MB-K

Keep Thinkin It Will Be Alright If I just Get on the Road, If I Run I Can Free My Worried Butt

This is the funnest thing ever. I mean, ever. The only reason I am not playing with it constantly is because, for some reason—and I cannot explain it, since I can only barely describe it—Katie does not like hearing computers pronounce dirty words. I can’t really think of anything funnier, but admittedly, I have a somewhat unique sense of humor. The best part is that you can download any of the files you create. I really need a cellphone that can just use .wav files as ringtones. Something to research for the fall I suppose.

We went to this BBQ chain joint in Amherst for dinner tonight. Everything was quality, especially since I have gone so long without pulled pork of any sort. The sauce could have used a teense more heat, but that’s neither here nor there. We had an incredible cornbread skillet which was accompanied by a “smashed pecan butter” which would be more accurately described as a “pecan butter frosting.” Also we had the perkiest waitress in recent memory. I thought she was charming, I think Katie wanted to smack her in the face with a corn cob.

Sabres up two games to nothing on the Sens. This city has Sabres-fever, not unrelated to McFeever, and I am gonna be back in Minneapolis by the time they take a run at the Stanley Cup Finals. Weak. Hippo agrees that at the very least we will be in the state of Hockey, USA, and hence with Ryan Miller and the boys in spirit. She’s a big A-fur-ogenov fan.

Peace,

MB-K

But I Don't Care, I Care, I Really Don't Care, Did You See the Drummer's Butt

I haven’t talked about Idol very much, but I should mention that someone tonight won the award for the most brilliant move in music competition history. I believe their train of thought must have gone something along the lines of: “Well, last week it was a wardrobe malfunction, this week I think we should have McFeever wiggle around the stage on her knees in a fashion that is something between a lap dance and…well some other pelvic thrusting activity you could do on or around your knees.” I think Paris Bennett goes home, which is sad since it’s the first time anyone really exceptional has bitten the dust.

I had to side with Rory tonight when an argument broke out regarding Ashlee and the dark versus blonde hair. I can’t imagine that there is a correlation between the more traditional Rory/Lorelei controversy, the controversy that A.J is so painfully incorrect about. Maybe I’m wrong. I could start

www.doyouthinkrorieishotterthanlorelei
anddoyouthinkdarkhairedashleeishotter
thanblondeashlee.com

then evaluate the results statistically, but fundamentally I think this is just a situation where Lorelei is too old. It happens, she was wrong about the Rory situation last summer. I guess it is evidence against the otherwise true statement that being hotter than someone logically paired with you makes you better at determining which half of a logical pair is hotter than the other half.

If I owned a company that made GPS driving direction thingies for cars, that I would create a feature where you could select “random destination” and it would take you somewhere. I mean, maybe you could do it like “random destination within 50 miles” and you would get a trip to somewhere cool without even knowing what to expect. I mean, you could also have true randomness, where the computer would just randomly tell you when to turn and you would end up either somewhere really cool or somewhere really stupid related only to the statistics of how many places are cool versus how many are totally stupid. But I think the idea of random computer generated road trip would be awesome. You could go even more specific and have the computer choose an awesome restaurant within like 10 miles, which would totally solve the “where the hell are we gonna eat” crisis by deciding for you. I would rock at being the guy to scout out cool places to go and I could work for cheap, provided I got money for gas and Coke Zero.

Jade is obviously a tremendously agonizingly annoying character. She is one of the worst antagonists (or best I suppose, she is good in her badness, chure) in the history of ANTM. She said, tonight, what I believe is the single stupidest thing that any human being has ever said. This is in addition, mind you, to all the Bush-like jobbityings of the English language which they highlighted in the flashback show like two weeks ago. This is a literal quote:

“I will always remember this, shooting with an elephant that reminds me of an ancient dinosaur. Cuz they are in the dinosaur family.”

Hippo sez there is no way I can top that with my own words. So I will simply close.

Peace,

MB-K

Gigantic, Gigantic, Gigantic, Our Big Big Butt

I went to the post office today and, since the wait was outlandishly long and filled with people who were taking about 5 minutes to complete a 20 second task, I was looking around. I noticed specifically, this poster.

Its a pretty boring ass poster for a pretty boring as subject of course. But the dueling things I could think of were: 1) How weird would it be to be the face of identity theft? Like the guy who the advertising execs at USPS decided would be the most likely to convey the pure evil and danger of identity theft, just by a picture being glued onto the license. 2) Imagine how hilarious it would be for someone to actually make a fake driver’s license with this picture on it. “Well, Mr. Johnson, I can certainly withdraw your life savings from this account, though I must admit I am bit scared that you are going to attempt to murder and eat me.”

We had an insanely busy weekend, from the art museum, to dinner, to seeing Stick It, to Rochester to find apartments, to dinner with folks, to shopping etc. It was hella busy is the point overall, but a lot of positive developments to say the least. The one thing on which there is no positive development to be had is the ongoing couch debate. By ongoing couch debate I mean this split: I think a couch is supposed to be comfortable above everything else, Katie cares about its appearance. I’m not going to degrade Katie’s opinion here, since she doesn’t have the chance to literally defend herself, though obviously I like my own.

I can tell, pretty easily, when looking at a couch, if it will be comfortable or not. I don’t think this is any sort of a super power, though it would be a freaking awesome one if it were, I just have a lot of comfy couch experience and I can parlay it into a pre-sitting judgment pretty effectively. The couches that Katie likes to look at are, 9 times out of 10, not very comfortable. Among the reasons for this is that she has made several of the comfiest features that a couch can possess also function as “ugly” or “aesthetically unacceptable.” There is, for instance, the high backed thing that can support your neck while maintaining an adequate viewing angle towards the television of your choice. After that you’ve got the puffiness, the delightfully pouchy overstuffed feeling that means you sink directly into the fabric, ending up surrounded by soft goodness. This is not even to mention the greatest of couch features: the recliner.

I get that there are some comfortable couches out there which do not recline. I guess there are comfortable chairs that don’t recline too. This, however, is the great part of the reclining sofa: it does not always have to recline. If you want to sit straight up, go right ahead. I guess, if you are entertaining royalty or Boutros Boutros-Ghali stopped by, you might want to do that. After an entire warehouse full of couches, we found two that potentially provided solvency for the permutation. Neither of them was especially aesthetically pleasing and neither was ridiculously comfortable, but they are the starting point. I’m thinking maybe getting the aesthetic couch with a recliner a la carte would do the trick, but I’m not even gonna try to explain how Katie hates those.

Hippo is so exhausted that she has asked me to carry her from her perch at the windowsill to a new perch atop the shelves. While I would normally consider that a bit much, she did help me bake a delicious batch of Snickerdoodles and it is really the epitome of the cat like laziness she is trying to perfect.

Peace,

MB-K

You're a Honey Child, To a Swarm of Bees, Gonna Blow Right Through You, Like a Breeze, Give Me One Last Dance, We'll Slide Down the Surface of Butt

Tyra’s hair on ANTM tonight is ricockulous. I mean, you are in Thailand, not the People’s Republic of Horrible Flowers Sticking Out of Your Hair at Random Angles Along the Messed Up Braid Thing That Outlines Your Forehead. No real justification for that one.

Steven Colbert had this total wad on last night to talk about atheism. I could say, quite rightly, that this dude literally used the worst possible set of arguments to prove an entirely legitimate point or that he completely misunderstood the point of each of the issues he was talking about, but it might just sound like I am explaining how much smarter than I am than this total tool. And regardless of the obvious fact that I am way smarter than this tool, that would not be nearly as clear an explanation as this. The dude was so bad that Steven Colbert stopped just pretending to argue with the dude and actually argued with him. He sucked and anyone who buys his book should be legally barred from exchanging money for goods and services in the future. They can enter rehab or something so they can learn to be useful and productive members of capitalist society, evaluating whether or not a product is something that you should pay for, or reluctantly use only in desperation to make a papier-mâché club to beat yourself about the face and neck with.

If you were like a snail or a hermit crab and you know you were gonna switch shells soon, would it be like a really traumatic experience. Would you be thinking like “I know that in the end I will at least be able to find a shell around here somewhere that will at least be tolerable for a little while” but at the same time panicking every time you found a perfect shell that couldn’t wait until you were ready to occupy it. Maybe that’s not applicable.

Dunkin Donuts announced, on one of their commercials that was on my sports radio station today, that they were starting an “aggressive campaign” in the Buffalo area. It felt like they were firing a radio-shot over Tim Horton’s head. I can say for certain that it was the most mean spirited negative radio campaign I have ever heard regarding donuts. If I were not leaving this town in like a month, I would totally be in on Dunkin Donuts side. Plus they don’t screw around with sandwiches and stuff, at least not as much, pretending to be all normal restaurant with a donut instead of fries or something. I’m gonna remain Switzerland for the moment though.

Hippo has been trying to eat Katie’s flowers all day, and its really cute, cuz when you say “Hey Hippo, stop eating those flowers.” She either looks at you in her adorably grumpy fashion that clearly sez “Dude, chill, I’m just gonna take a nibble.” Or alternately, she looks back at you over her shoulder and pushes her nose against the flower and takes a little sniff in that “pay no attention to the Persian kitten sitting near the flowers” mode.

Peace,

MB-K

Pause, Take a Breath Go For Yours, On My Command Now Hit the Dance Floor, Gonna Make Ya Sweat till Ya Butt

We did some apartment shopping in Rochester today, which generally went pretty well. I mean, I am really sort of manic about the whole situation, since all the transitional aspects of money, location, happiness, Katie and Hippo comfort, jobs, dissertation, long term failure etc, but still it was ok. We saw a pretty cool townhouse which was a little too expensive and prolly too far away, a flat in a kinda crappy old house, and a cool apartment which was a little small but had a new hard wood floor, two bedrooms, and the right price tag. There is still some looking to do and I am incredibly excited about one potential place. The points of interest:

--the woman who showed us the first townhouse wanted to point something out specifically to Katie. She said, and I quote, “Katie, YOU may be interested to know there is a washer-dryer in the powder room.” I laughed openly.

--if you generally conceive of renters as inconveniences rather than clients or people, why do you buy a house for the purpose of renting it out? I mean, if you were a 1950s science fiction novel and you had to rent a room in your house, possibly unknowingly to an alien in disguise, I could get it. But if you buy a house that you don’t live in for the purpose of renting it, don’t be a total wad about it.

--I don’t really get the idea of “no pets” but I understand that they can cause damage, so whatever, exclude them if you want to exclude them. What makes even less sense, at least as a legitimate concept, is pet rent. You need to charge 20 extra dollars cuz Hippo might rip your walls to shreds? You should be more worried that she’s gonna hold you up at claw-point to make some of that pet rent back—Hippo is not excited about getting a job.

--Rochester has way way too many apartments that are not listed anywhere online. By “not listed anywhere” I mean not even in the newspaper. Is there enough random-physical-apartment-searching in the city to keep the market alive?

--why no one wants to rent me their totally awesome house for like 200 a month 2 blocks away from the university is beyond me. It’s a win win situation.

--how much would it rock to have a patio? Barbecues are awesome.

I know I don’t have the patriotic drive or the 9/11 romanticism involved in enjoying this movie, but wtf is the deal with United 93? Not only does it have all the surprise ending magic of films like Titanic or Gettysburg, but there is no way to honor the passengers of this flight like having them portrayed by the Hollywood mega-stars who made Curiosity, Tree Shade, and Size Matters. I think the title is a poor choice when you can quickly and easily think of a cooler movie that would be described with the same title. In this instance, something about A.J.’s epic rise to power at United Airlines, circa 1993.

Hippo is excited cuz Sam Seaborne has returned to The West Wing, it’s every persian’s dream come true.

Peace,

MB-K

When I Feel Heavy Metal (Woo Hoo),And I'm Pins and I'm Needles (Woo Hoo), Well I Lie and I'm Easy, All of the Time, But I'm Never Sure Why I Need Butt

I had to go to the stupid dentist today. I refuse to get off on a crazy "I hate the dentist" rant, though believe me I have plenty of negative things to say about the psuedo-medical industry. I am not even gonna complain about my jaw jurting or the fact that my dentist is the dentist verion of Wanda Sykes if she was really severe and serious and never ever funny. Those qualities are actually as bad for a dentist as they are for a Wanda Sykes impersonator, believe it or not.

What I am going to talk about is this: hot dental workers. The dental hygenist-type woman who did the cleaning portion of my evil dentist visit was pretty cute and fairly young (I mean, there is Katie up at the top, followed by all the other women I actually know, so she wasn't cute on the scale of seriously hawt women, but insofar as ordinary folk go). Maybe this is only in comparison, cuz every dental hygenist I have ever had has been approximately middle aged and nothing to write home about, in terms of attractiveness.

The contrast that came to my mind, for some reason, as I was having my stupid teeth cleaned, was to getting one's hair cut. I have no proof of this fact, but I am willing to say that for all or nearly all heterosexual men, when you show up at the haircutting place, you are hoping to get a cute woman to cut your hair. Thats not to say its a condition of getting your hair cut, or that non-cute people don't cut hair as well, or even that it really matters in any way, but simply that: all things considered, if it had no negative effects at all, you would prefer the cute girl. If this gets anyone mad at their respective partners, I'm sure that s/he is the exception, one of those people who does not like attractive people running their hands through their hair for 20 minutes.

Everything that is good about having an attractive person cut your hair is absent in dental work. Haircutting feels good, dentistry hurts. Hair is an attractive part of one's body, the wide open mouth is not. You leave a haircutting place looking better than when you arrive, you leave the dentist drooling with a numb face. The similarities just become painful, you're working in the same proximity in both cases, there is the weird adjustable chair thing, the sterile individual work stations and the pokey metal instruments. Anyway, I am trying to find a way to explain all this without coming down to something that makes me seem even more shallow than I actually am. So I will stop.

To finish I will describe the plated dessert that Katie and I shared at Butterwoods Dessert Restaurant last night: the Chocolate Trio. On the fringes were two candied orange slices, one was topped with a tangerine sorbet (meh, fruit, I'm sure it was good, but there was zero chocolate to be found and tangerine is like sour orange times butt) the other had a chocolate orange ice cream, which clearly the way fruit was supposed to be used in this situation, it was good. There was a chocolate beignet, which made it sound to me like the batter would be chocolate, but in fact it was regular beignet batter with chocolate inside, yum. There was a flourless chocolate torte which was delightful, as you might expect from the words flourless chocolate torte. Katie will not agree with this in her account, but the best part of the whole thing was the chocolate bread pudding. Wow, it was awesome, perfect density and an explosive chocolatosity. I could not discern at all what it was really made out of, bread or dry cake or what, but it pwnd. Topped with a creme fraiche ice cream, it was among the best individual dessert items I have ever experienced. It was a great great dessert, the exact thing I was in the mood for when I showed up there.

Alright, Hippo says I need to refill her catnip toy so she can spend her evening in style. That seems legit to me.

Peace,

MB-K

A Modern Day Warrior, Mean Mean Stride, Today's Tom Sawyer, Mean Mean Butt

Happy Easter to everyone. It was a great weekend in this household, gourmet and everyday chocolates were abound, as was red meat in all its luxurious forms. I had a Double Quarter Pounder on my way home from mass, we had summer sausage as a mid-afternoon snack, and a pretty tasty porterhouse for dinner. That was accompanied by a green bean salad with pearl onions and bacon, cheese-scalloped potatoes, and Katie’s delightful homemade rolls. We maintained the whole springy motif during dessert time, when Katie whipped up one of the most delightful fruit-ilicious cakes I have ever had.

I won’t go on in too much detail regarding how well the white cake, strawberry, whipped cream combo works, nor will I fully explain exactly how much of this cake I ate during last night’s foodstravaganza. What I will explain to you is the oddness of this fact: I realized, while eating this cake of dreams, that it reminded me of a specific delight. That delight: The Twinkie.

For some reason Katie took this as an insult, I suppose it has more than a little to do with the fact that she was viciously deprived of Twinkies as a child and hence cannot appreciate their gloriousness. Mitch Hedberg accurately observed that “Fettuccine alfredo is like macaroni and cheese for adults.” That doesn’t mean it is not of high quality, simply that it is a more complicated and “gourmet” version of the same basic structure: in this case, noodles and cheese sauce. Switch out the yellow processed American-ness of the cheese in the Kraft Mac and Chee and substitute some delicate parmesan. In this case you take the gooey yellow spongeyness and switch in an almost biscuit-like sweet density, switch in some actual whipped cream, and throw some fruit on the bastard. Still, a vanilla flavored cake with a generous amount of whipped topping: you get the gist.

I wonder two things about this situation: 1) Is there something about yellowness specifically that is always removed when “gourmet-izing” a classic. Would classy Cheetos have to be made with blue corn or something? 2) Why would you so thoroughly enjoy one version and not another? I mean, I guess there are circumstances where the specific changes may throw something off enough. If you are allergic to or just hate the additions, sure. If you added blueberries to my chocolate chocolate muffin from SuperMom’s I wouldn’t even bother to wash it down with SuperRich Choco-milk, but if you made it with imported Dutch chocolate and frosted it with a rich ganache, I would be in.

You know who does not get anywhere near enough props: Jim Varney. That guy was a talent and a hardcore one too. I was thinking about him the other day when I was asking myself a hypothetical “Who Would You Rather Bwn?” question: Going for an extended period of time without any video entertainment at all or watching only the film version of The Beverly Hillbillies on repeat at least 4 times a day? I realized that probably wasn’t a very hard one, but wondered if it would be a better question if you limited your video entertainment to only Jim Varney movies. Then I remembered: Ernest movies rule. I saw Ernest Goes to Camp at least 100 times. Ernest Saves Christmas was another gem. I loved Ernest Goes to Jail all except for the electric chair thing, since I had a hard time laughing at capital punishment, even at 12 odd years old. I remember when Ernest died and I was sad. But I didn’t remember the sad times, the Beverley Hillbillies for instance, or Slam Dunk Ernest. I remembered Ernest, playing an old woman, in a fisheye lens.
Hippo is too young to have seen Jim Varney in his prime, but I will have to sit her down and take a look at the early Ernest that so influenced our lives. A good dose of catnip and it will be as funny to my Persian friend as it was at so many elementary school sleepovers.

Peace,

MB-K

Run To The Hills, Run For Your Butt

I live in the state of New York and have for approaching 4 years now. I have never been to New York City. When I mention this fact around people in this area they are routinely amazed. Before I even get into the legitimacy/illegitimacy questions in this arena, let me just say that even people generally from the Northeast, not even NYC residents, are ridiculously arrogant about visiting NYC, to an extent that no one in any other area has ever been in my opinion.

First, let’s note that New York is about 400 miles from Buffalo. That’s the outskirts of NYC by the way, not Times Square. You gotta figure that to be at least 7 hours, if you make amazing time, more likely its 9 to really get into the city. That doesn’t make me particularly close, just because I’m in the arbitrary boundaries of the state of New York doesn’t make visiting the city any more likely. We’re far closer to Philly and Pittsburgh, and no one is surprised that we haven’t made those journeys. Montreal is prolly right in the same range and infinitely more likely to get my, admittedly limited, tourist dollars. Are you in Minneapolis? Have you been to Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Iowa City, Kansas City, Omaha, Lincoln, and St. Louis? All within about that same distance and I really can’t imagine being harassed if I hadn’t been to the University of Nebraska campus.

My guess is that the answer to this would be: yeah, but those places aren’t New York. Well, my guess is that some of them are way better places to spend one’s time than New York. The thing that solves back for all these reasons, of course, is money. If you are rich like a bastard, I’m sure New York is awesome. If you are rich like a bastard my guess is that anywhere is awesome. In fact, places that are awesome when you are not rich are probably way more awesome when you are rich, versus places like New York, which would swallow llamas if you aren’t wealthy.

What’s so awesome about New York? The food? Yeah, I bet the food is really good. Notably though, every decent size city has great food. Even Buffalo and Rochester have good food. I suppose there is some stuff you can only get in NYC, but that stuff tends to be outlandishly expensive. Again, if you’re rich, cool. I’m not.

The people? This is a disad btw, not a good thing. I don’t like throngs, for the most part. I like a spattering of people well dispersed over a large area. I don’t like it when the mall is crowded. One of the few good things about watching Twins games at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome is that you never feel packed in. Don’t get me wrong, I go to crowded places and it pretty much never bothers me. Sometimes it’s even productive, Lambeau Field comes to mind. But for your everyday going to work--getting milk--coming home routine, crowds are annoying, end of story. I’m sure the people are all very cool and everything, but I’m not real worried about finding cool people. I only need like 20 friends, who cares if there are a million or 12 million left over.

I realize that the things I have the best arguments for are actually reasons not to live in New York City. In fact, I have the argument “living in New York City good” pretty much destroyed. I’m sure there are plenty of cool things about visiting, lots of stuff to see, at least once, and I’m sure I will do that at some point. But to do it well takes cash. I haven’t been to NYC yet cuz I can’t imagine I will be able to handle it many times, and when I get there I want to do it right.

I don’t want to be in a city where I can’t drive around reasonably, where everything costs three times as much as it should, and I have to fight with a billion residents and another billion tourists just to get a hot dog.

I think I got off on this question, btw, because one of the blogs I read mentioned that on her most recent visit, she was amazed by the literal bags of garbage along the streets. I’m not a clean freak, but that admittedly sounds annoying and nasty. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but this makes two Minnesota bloggers who have mentioned this fact in the past 6 months or so.

Hippo sez that all the negativity on this blog sux. She is always right.

Peace,

MB-K

You're Always Asking What It's All About But Don't Listen to My Replies, You Say To Me I Don't Talk Enough, But When I do I'm a Butt

Tonight was Queen on Idol. It’s pretty hard to sing Freddy Mercury, even the epic and legendary Jordis Unga bombed it. There were a couple really poor attempts to do Queen songs, including Ace—who was disgusting—and Kelly Pickler—who looked exactly like a less attractive Ashlee as a blonde while pumping out a hideous country-muzak (Katie says Branson-like, those may be the same) version of Bohemian Rhapsody. Wayne and Garth called during the performance, they want their schwing back.’

I should note that the only reason Ace got the specific link I included above is because ruppdogg’s xanga is the only result that comes up when you google “ace young is a tool.” If anyone wants to ensure that my blog surpasses ruppdogg’s xanga as the number one result for googling “ace young is a tool” I would appreciate it. Though, at the same time…

What if it ignited some sort of epic battle between me and ruppdog. If I were ruppdogg and someone started a war with me regarding my dominance of the “ace young is a tool” google search market I would do two things:

1. I would strike against reut dawg, who must be the Southern TC Burbs equivalent of ruppdogg, sort of like Bizzaro Jerry. Watch your back reuter, cuz this d00d plays SOCCER in INDIANA. Its essentially like knowing what is gonna take you down. It’s a given, its like hearing “I know it was you Fredo. You broke my heart.” It even sounds the same “He plays Soccer in Indiana.”


2. I would buy the domain name http://www.aceyoungisatool.com/ and buy a week’s worth of ads on Rocketboom. Then, when Ace Young was eventually booted from Idol, I would change the website so that it taunted the person who tried to challenge my “ace young is a tool” supremacy. I figure it would cost me about 100,000 dollars to get to the level I am thinking of, but it would be so worth it. Like “peek-a-poms.” Sorry, bout that picture. All the photos of peekapoms on the internet suck. This is especially ridiculous cuz peekapoms are cute. We saw one in Dallas named Daisy. Adorable. We whipped a u-turn in the Expedition just to say hello to it.

So let me just, in advance, offer a truce to ruppdogg, please ruppdogg, don’t hurt ‘em. Do it for reut dawg, cuz no one wants to see him hurt. Do it for the peekapoms.

I made fajitas tonight. I did not make coconut ice cream and sticky rice. One of those decisions was brilliant, the other sub-par. They are not like US-China-Russian relations, all zero-sum and shit.

Hippo has had an incredible combination of dashing spastic kittenish energy and adorable napping poses today. She crashed after Taylor Hicks’ high flying performance of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” It was, in fact, EMF style unbelievameow.

Peace,

MB-K

Such a Sexy Sexy Pretty Little Thing, Fierce Nipple Pierce You Got Me Sprung With Your Tongue Butt

Spent an hour today sitting in my car with Hippo and Katie in the parking lot of the apartment. Sure, you are saying, you just wanted to listen to the radio or something. Nope. Wasn’t even enjoying the spring air that was in the area of 30 degrees this afternoon. We were outside because some total douche decided to attempt to burn our house down. Not kidding. Somebody lit a fire in our laundry room. Thank god they sucked at it and that we were home to get safely to the car before anything but a plastic-y burning smell. We had a fire truck, 3-4 supplementary fire vehicles and two cop cars in the parking lot, in addition to the 20 or so people smoking outside the building. Two guys, who you normally would not have thought to be upright citizens taking the public good into their own hands to assist the forces of law, followed some d00d who ran from the building and took some pictures of him. Good job by those guys. The cops will hopefully track him down so I don’t spend every weekend that I am out of town worried about the well being of the apartment. Anyway, that was what I did with the end of my workday.

Back to the weekend: Saturday was free for me most of the afternoon, but Katie spent all her time getting her makeup and hair done all pretty style. She, and all the other ladies involved, looked very very nice, which I know since I drove a couple over to Forepaugh’s for pictures. Afterwards I went back to watch the minute amount of basketball that this wedding/job interview/plane flight allowed me to watch and get ready for the festivities. The wedding was nice, small, and tasty (if I had to use three adjectives to describe it…which I do). I hadn’t been in the restaurant for years (though, as I may have mentioned, I went to prom there) but since it hasn’t changed much since the early 1900s, its no surprise that it was fundamentally the same since mid 1998. The service was well written and performed, the appetizers uber-nummy (among my favorite new adjectives), and dinner was great. I didn’t get to eat the best thing on the menu, seeing as the wedding was smack dab in the middle of the Lenten no-red meat season, but thankfully I have had it before. Cake, which I was initially suspicious of given the word “raspberry” in its description, turned out to be fabulous. It was more of a pinkish butter cream inside with white butter cream outside. Yum. This is not even to mention the good times and good fun. Got to see Pete and Meg, talk to Dave and Amy. Natalie and Matt both looked great, seemed to have fun, and had nice things to say. Katie gave a quality toast as well, I believe the only one that did not mention either someone falling off a bike or drinking to excess.

We leave for the NDT tomorrow, so maybe I will cut some cards or something rather than just blog. Hippo sez I should scratch both card cutting and blogging and instead concentrate on waving feathers, bubbles, or ribbons in various intriguing ways. Persians always win, I guess.

Peace,

MB-K

I Remember All My Life, Raining Down as Cold as Butt

I really only get the legitimate chance to blog when I’m watching Idol these days. At least that’s my excuse, given as I was legitimately sick last week when doing so. Doesn’t explain it away I suppose, but it’s a reason enough to not have updated in many days. Katie left on a flight that was delayed by the extraordinarily rapidly declining quality of service on Northwest Airlines. By delayed I mean she got bumped to a U.S. Airways flight because the Northwest one was cancelled due to a lack of hours for the crew. That is freaking insane, notably, that you are just not doing an entire day of flights cuz your management is so poor that you cannot pay even a skeleton crew to get the bags up. It doesn’t get much better when you are dismissed by their gate agents and left hungry or poor (since the freaking “Fruit and Nut” snack costs a dollar, seriously, I know we could potentially say this about anything, but the dude(tte)s at the top can’t afford a couple bucks a year to get me the 2 cents per package pretzels). It’s just sad to see an airline I associate so strongly with Minnesota business and have so many friends/family members employed with, take such a nosedive. NWA makes Delta look like Eos.

Between that point and my own departure Thursday morning, I got really sick, rested, wrote 5-6 pages, watched the season premiere of The Sopranos, caught up on all my non-reality TV, prepared a lesson plan for a job interview, and got at least somewhat better again. Renee came to stay with Hippo for the weekend, so at least she can pretend there is a streak of continuity in her family’s travel schedule. I, meanwhile, arrived to the first real snow I have seen on the ground all year and was awaited by Katie, who herself had spent 35 odd minutes in the “return to terminal” driveway.

I watched shockingly little basketball this weekend, which was painful considering my usual track record with regard to opening weekends of the NCAA tournament. I didn’t lose any of my final four picks in the first round, but it doesn’t mean very much to me since I saw at best 12-14 games all weekend. Thursday was running around doing Katie related stuff for the most part, including shopping for a ridiculous concoction of items at the grocery store, and setting up for a bridal shower thing I was not technically involved in.

Spent that night chilling with a good part of the old crew, though I had to get up early for a job interview. Did that thing, nailed it, if I do say so myself (more later if it ever pans out) and went to pick Tom up at the Humphrey Terminal of the MSP International Airport.

Some context: the Humphrey Terminal is like the bastard stepchild to the Lindbergh Terminal. I had not been there in years; it was essentially the storehouse for ridiculous little airlines which had like 2 flights a day. I have picked people up there when they fly in on the regional thingies like Midwest Express and I flew out of there when I went on the cruise with my fam. It used to look far more like a bus terminal than an airport, there was one baggage claim, maybe two, the parking lot was just a big fenced in area past the building, and I think the snack bar was on par with what you might find at a Rosemount JV Hockey game, minus the SuperRopes. It is now, essentially, a miniature version of the Lindbergh Terminal, with enormously oversized parking structure and, without question, the absolute worst “Return to Terminal” system in history. If you exit the pick up area, which you freaking have to of course, cuz the damn airport cops force you (seriously, airport cops are arguably now the worst abusers of their miniscule “move it along” authority that exist, even the robocops in my high school exaggerated their power to a smaller degree than these pricks. What, exactly, is the need to make me drive around the building? If I seriously wanted to do something negative to the airport, how long do you think I would need to do it. “I have this device here, it does something very dangerous, but it needs to be parked against the curb for 53 seconds to activate…” I understand that if you let people freaking park there at 5 on a Friday it becomes unusable, but when there are giant 40 foot gaps of space between the 4-5 cars that are waiting to pick people up at 9:30 pm on a lazy Sunday night, do you have to give me this Federal Aviation Guidelines bullshit), in that situation you have to cross literally 3 stoplights, including at least one that seems to serve approximately 2 cars per decade. That’s not even to mention that each of your 3 merges is from the most awkward angle possible and you have to go over the light rail track. It takes 10 minutes in all seriousness. You would be better off parking at Ikea.

We had dinner with my dad and it was prolly the best dinner he has ever cooked. It was St. Patrick’s Day, after all, and if the Irish can’t belt out some corned beef and cabbage what can they do. The cabbage mixture had potatoes, onions, cabbage, and bacon, all braised to perfection. That’s actually a really simple thing to mess up, cuz overcooked cabbage will sulfur up your house as hard as the day is long. The being out and about portion of our day ended with a stop at the rehearsal party, where Katie got some hella glam gifts and good times were shared by all. I, for my part, most enjoyed playing with the kitties which wandered in triplicate throughout the festivities. Just when one cat was sick of your shtick, you could count on another one to wander by who might think that a stick tapped against the window is the awesomest thing ever. It’s a hard opinion to dispute, when you really get down to it. Three hella cute cats would just be too much for me, I wouldn’t know who to meow at or when to do it. For one evening though it’s the perfect amount.

I will pick up at Saturday morning when I return, with all luck, sometime before this weekend’s NDT. In the meantime Hippo insists that I spend more time tapping sticks against windows for her than I do discussing doing so for hypothetical cats.

Peace,

MB-K

Its Inevitable, Its a Fact That We're Gonna Get Down To It, So Tell Me, Why Can't I Breathe, Whenever I Think About Butt

We went to the Men’s Warehouse yesterday to buy a suit. Suits are expensive, though admittedly, they are also pretty cool. I don’t have any intention of going all Barney on the bit and wearing suits everywhere I go, but I suppose it is useful to have around, since I believe I will have two opportunities to wear it just this weekend.

I feel, in at least a couple respects, free as a parrot. That is, its not like I don’t have things to do, I’m still on a perch in somebody’s house, but at least I’ve got the freedom to fly, or just squawk for crackers or peanuts or something. This analogy sucks. Point is, its Spring Break, I have taken the period until we return from Spring Break off of debate work, and we are returning to Minnesota this weekend. I still have writing to do, papers to grade, and a job interview this upcoming Friday. Nonetheless, just not having to go into class on Tuesday and Thursday adds a couple hours sleep and a couple hours work time to my week. Katie has like 5 days in the TC but I will only be in town for 3. I’m a little worried that I won’t have the chance to see everyone in my family, much less all my friends, but I think the schedule is falling into place. It kills me that I won’t always have the time to accommodate the schedule of the first rounds of the tournament, but I guess I will get by. My flight should arrive at MSP before the games begin, so I will get most of Thursday’s action and a large part of the later Friday schedule.

I have been caught up in the past couple of days in what I would like to call a “Wikipedia hole.” Apparently some wad named Jcroker beat me to the use of the term, but I think I lost 10 minutes in the middle of a sentence on Friday progressing from OK Soda, to Surge, to urban legends, to urban legends about sharks, to an article about sharks. Between YouTube and Wikipedia, my non-blog reading leisure time is pretty well full up.
Anyway, I went to my Wiki friend this afternoon in an attempt to explain a reference on Numb3rs to the “P Versus NP” problem. I had heard of it before, at least I thought I had, but my guess is that it was simply based on prior references to the same thing on the show. Still, I think that crazy math stuff makes for good reading, so I did so. Another thing I could put on the list of things I could potentially do if I were ridiculously rich and bored is learn some serious math, cuz even though it was back in high school I was hella good at the mathematicos. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t solve one of the Millennium Problems, but its something to do. Interesting article about this problem as embodied in Minesweeper and an explanation that made no sense to me whatsoever about “simply connected bodies.” Thank God that someone could finally explain why an apple was different from a doughnut.

My guess is I’ve mentioned the fact that I don’t get the whole regional differences in Girl Scout cookie naming. Nonetheless, even if you called them Crappidy-Crappidos I would love Samoas more than life itself. I mean, I think Samoa is objectively a better name than Caramel deLites, especially with that horrible capitalization work. We picked up a box yesterday at the mall, so I will no longer be reliant on debate tournaments and other people’s rents for my fix. At least for a couple days.

Hippo does not understand what the big deal is about the cookies or P vs. NP, insofar as neither one is likely to result in her getting a dish of kitty chow any faster. She suggests instead that we focus on the problem of developing an algorithm which predicts how much tuna she wants and when she wants it. A Meow-lennium Problem perhaps?

Peace,

MB-K

A Dime's A Nickel and a Nickel's None, I Throw Myself Into the Sunday Butt

We are finally catching up, in all the respects which one can catch up. We are regaining some space on the DVR, we are progressing towards cooking and eating real food again, and we have gotten some rest and back to work. We were so busy over this last weekend, winning the JV national tournament and judging 10 debates in 56 hours or so. The tournament was in West Virginia, the drive down there kinda sucked, it went a little too late on Friday night, but I got a couple debates off on Saturday at least. I also won the Butt Award, which is so awesome I cannot even convey it. Its not that I particularly care about awards, but more so that I just really want an excuse to put butt on my resume. We had some really strong performances and we had some tough weekends as well, but a good performance overall that jacked us up to the top 5 in CEDA and NDT rankings. Too many stairs on the Mountaineer campus and I didn’t get to meet Pittsnogle, but I did have dinner at Qdoba. I believe it was the first time I have ever eaten at Qdoba sober (feel free to read that as “at Qdoba, soba” if it makes you happy) since most of my experiences were at the State Street branch in Madison.

On the way to West Virginia we got off the highway in the early part of Pennsylvania and turned in the direction which, or so the sign informed us at least, contained a McDonald’s, Wendys, Burger King, etc. I didn’t just guess this, it was on the freaking official highway sign of food available off that exit. It took us at least 5 minutes to get to that Burger King and I was pissed. There needs to some sort of regulation as to what counts as close enough to the highway to be listed on the exit sign. I’m sure that its just whoever is willing to cough up the highway sponsorship money, but I felt deceived. If you are ever driving through Edinboro, PA, I do not suggest trying to find the Burger King, unless you are trying to grab a late night bite after a long evening at Nick’s Place or are staying at the Season’s Inn.

One of the girls on ANTM was from Buffalo and graduated from the University of Rochester. I say this because they showed a picture of her from graduation with the sign from Bausch and Lomb hall obviously in the background. She didn’t make the cut of course, but it was a good kick off for this season. No one from Minnesota though, so I’m not sure who my favorite is yet. Maybe one of them will be gay or become Shanthrax/Norelle-ish after the makeover, cuz that would be hawt. Janice Dickinson was awesome tonight, the show is just not as good without her every week. Still, tonight was a great day for reality TV, cuz the d00ds performed an especially good batch of tunes on Idol. I keep going back and forth as to whether I like Taylor Hicks or Chris Daughtry better. I’m all about Mandisa as far as the ladies go, though Katharine McPhee(ver) isn’t far behind. I think, unfortunately, that Mandisa is prolly too big to get even as far as Kimberly Locke did, though the same could be said of Taylor’s age. I hope I’m wrong about what people will or will not vote for. With the exception of Reuben Studdard no one of any size has really gone anywhere on Idol, so its only marginally better than ANTM itself. Both of them get smoked by The Biggest Loser, since it seems like the show starts off everytime with almost all enormously fat people but only the skinniest ones make it through. Judging must be atrocious.

How the hell do I change the banner thing at the top of my blog? I want a cool photo one like Frankie or Ex-Millenial Girl. Hippo would prolly get one too, but I have no idea where this goes in the code. Hopefully the “off-season” that is so fast approaching will give me some time to develop stuff like that. Hippo says that if we would just leave our computers home while we were out of town she would figure it out, but she’s not gonna stay up all night when we’re actually here. Meow-standable.

Peace,

MB-K

Read My Lips Carefully, If You Like What you See, Move, Groove, Prove You Can Hang With Butt

Olympics are over, but were awesome. We watched at least a couple hours every night, but the fact that we had districts prep the last week sort of threw things off track. Anyway, we qualified a team to the NDT, they debated very well and we were all hella proud of them. Even took a ballot off Harvard LP in round 4, the only team to cut down the actual Ivy League team in attendance (I don’t include Cornell because, well, why would I include Cornell…) Things got a little messed up at times, but it all worked out in the end. Had some quality performances in other divisions too, but I was, for all practical purposes, at a different tournament than the rest of the team this week. We are officially in post-season mode now, but also in the stretch of quality hotels. We started this weekend with the best hotel room I have ever seen for 79 bucks a night. Big and comfortable, with legitimate cozy chairs, and pillow-top mattresses, free wireless, and something else incredibly awesome. But it needs some lead up:

I have been complaining, since I was about 16 years old, about physical cash. I simply don’t see the need for it, and I never have. Back then I might have been a little premature, almost no fast food restaurants had even caught on, pay at the pump wasn’t a thing. The idea that you could go anywhere expecting to pay with a credit card was unreasonable. Today, there is just no excuse whatsoever to have an establishment which is cash only. The drive-in movie theater down the street has a wireless network at this point, so I’m less than persuaded about the claim that its too difficult or too expensive. Anyway, when credit cards became a standard in the world of gas pumps and MickeyDs I said there were two impediments to credit cards completely supplanting the need for physical currency. The first is the transfer of small amounts of money between individual people. Pay pal is getting closer, but I think the real solution is USB plugged units and cell phone devices that can take credit cards. The latter is a ways away, since most of us still can’t afford a true Treo or Palm device which is in anyway close to the tech that would be required. The former can’t be far, in my mind, maybe in combination with something like PayPal that would allow you to easily scan credit cards and communicate with an authentication provider. Maybe security issues are still too important, but since you can purchase virtually anything online with only the credit card number, it seems that the actual scan of the card could only be an upgrade.

The second impediment: vending machines. Well, without my knowledge someone, at least someone at the Courtyard Marriott in Danbury, CT, has fixed this problem. Sure, the Diet Pepsi was a buck fifty, but I’m always happy to pay a bit more for the convenience. I obviously cannot even emphasize how wonderful it would be if I never had to go to an ATM again. Its like the whole world is my Sonic drive-in.

Back to the Olympics. I have two quick takes:

1. Apollo’s last night was legendary, prolly the greatest night during the Torino games. That gold medal race was incredible and even Olympics haters have to admit that the 500 meter short track is up there in the most exciting minutes in sports entertainment. Apollo was incredible, going wire to wire to hold off a great dash by the South Koreans. Not to mention that his coming up the backside to squeeze the American team into bronze was a great comeback, since I said with about 4 laps to go that they were stick-a-fork-in-them-done. By far the most excited I’ve been about “the chase for bronze” pretty much ever.

1. Am I a Bodeist? I had really mixed feelings when I saw the interview following the DQ in the fifth bonering of a ski race Bode had executed in a row. I mean, since Dave and Dan there has not been this much hype let down this fast. D00d came in with the potential to be the greatest winter games athlete of all time (though I guess anyone who enters 5 events does so) and left without making noise even once. That’s not even to mention that he didn’t look good or get DQ’ed because sometimes, when you push it all the way, you miss a gate. He sucked cuz he was lazy and partied too hard. At the same time, I saw a lot of my own attitudes towards being rich and famous in Bode’s series of excuses for not winning gold. He refused to apologize for living the life he wants to live and said basically “Skiing is my job, not my life.”

I totally respect that in a professional athlete, if anything it reminds me of the things I was thinking right after Ricky Williams took off for Bongville. I guess I was conflicted simply because, as much as I want that from a professional, I do not want it from an Olympian. The good stories, see Apollo above, are too much fun (I mean like actually inspiring, and not just like the Fugees cover of “No Woman, No Cry” sort of way) and with Bode the only good stories are that he applied his lips to the snow in a sort of sucking motion for two weeks.

Alright, I am food drunk from tonight’s Mardi Gras steak dinner, and Hippo needs to take her medicine, though this is a claim that Hippo herself, seems to dispute.

Peace,

MB-K

Because The Night, Belongs To Lovers, Because The Night, Belongs to Butt

We went to the Orchestra this past Thursday. I don’t know a lot about music in general, and the orchestra in specific (perfect sentence construction, btw). I did learn a couple interesting facts, which, as a non-Orchestrian, I will share for your enlightenment:

--you can get drinks: I mean, you technically cannot drink during the music, which is what separates the Orchestra from awesome. Nonetheless, you can get a decent glass of whisky for a semi-reasonable price both before the show and during halftime. (Sidenote: the Orchestra doesn’t call it halftime.) If you go find one of the bar-tenders who looks like a hipcat and somehow signal to him that you are also a hipcat, not one of the squares who makes up the regular audience, I think you can get him to pour you what is essentially a double. At least it seemed that way.

--it’s hard to figure out what to watch: maybe this is not true if you know a lot about music. For many of the songs I had no idea what was going on. I mean, I can tell when the tuba goes off and the cymbals are hard to confuse. But seriously, there are like 40 people on the stage, which makes it hard to tell what is being featured at the time. Katie pointed out to me that a bunch of the old people close their eyes, which is a lot like wearing a wet suit into the hot-tub as far as I can tell. I decided to just sort of follow whatever I found was interesting. By far the most interesting part, when certain guys really get going on the violin, it looks like they are engaging in an activity which is totally inappropriate for the Orchestra stage.

--the drummer is faking it: the guy who stands by the tympani, specifically. I would say “the guy who plays the tympani” but the problem is that he doesn’t, play it that is. He just moves a couple of padded sticks as if he were going to play the tympani. Katie tried to excuse this behavior by saying that because the tympani is so powerful he just sort of needs to lightly touch, almost brush the drum. That, however, is obviously crap. If you had a tympani you would smack it, cuz that’s how you play the freaking drums. Seriously, this guy just gestured towards the drum in a rhythm he found interesting. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good gig if you can get it, but the Larry David look-alike in the penguin suit has nothing over me when it comes to rocking out Orchestra style on the air-tympani.

--if you hide them in your coat, you can get away with eating chocolate covered peanuts during the show: nothing really to add to this one. Just don’t let the ushers see you, cuz they look like the meanest set of volunteers ever.

We are watching ice dancing, which is sad and funny in and of itself I know, but even more notable, is the fact that there is apparently something during this second free program called “The Twizzle Section.” I think they should adopt this for baseball as well, cuz I would be way more excited if they changed “The Bottom of the Fifth” to “The Twizzle Section.” Plus Joe Buck would be hilarious. Dick Button also complained that the Ukrainian pair did not seem to be “oozing Latin flavor.” I’m not gonna comment about what that means for ice-dancing’s validity as a sport, but merely to indicate that I’m no more surprised about the Ukrainian lack of Latin flavor than I am about Ethiopian cuisine’s lack of Beluga caviar.

Hippo sez that if I am going to talk about caviar then I really need to get her some more kitty food, cuz gourmet stuff like that really makes her purr.

Peace,

MB-K

Ain't It Just Like a Friend of Mine, It Hit Me From Behind, I'm Gone To Carolina in My Butt

Binghamton finished up pretty strong in some respects, poor in others. We only cleared two teams (out of 12, painful) but had a novice team in semis and an open team in finals. Most of the squad had moved up a level, at least, so we can take solace in that fact as we lick our wounds prepping for the NDT qualifier and CEDA East Regionals. Lots of work to do, but we’ve got plans.

We didn’t get home from the Binghamton tournament until about 4:10 am on Monday morning, leaving Binghamton in the area of 11:00. A couple hours of sleep and an episode of Ellen later, we were back on the road to Rochester debate practice. I would normally not mention that fact, but when we stopped at the diner (our traditional pre-practice coaches’ meeting) we saw a big group of guys sitting at the table we usually sit at. I didn’t think anything of it, we went to our table and sat down. A couple minutes later, the owner comes over and asks us if we noticed the d00ds next to us. Turns out, World Heavyweight Champion Hasim Rahman had been sitting at our table, eating at our diner. I’m no boxing fanboy, but I’ve even seen this dude fight, and the thought had never crossed my mind. Apparently he was training in Rochester, I guess I’ll keep my eyes wider open next time.

Anyway, stories with fewer boxing champions and way better food. Katie and I spent Valentine’s Day in our traditional spot, the Marriott Fallsview Hotel in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Our first year together in Buffalo we just had dinner at the Terrapin Grille. Last year we moved up to staying in the hotel and having breakfast as well. This year we upgraded further, getting the room (still including Jacuzzi and miraculous falls-view, as pictured above) along with a package that included a significant dinner voucher and free breakfast buffet. Katie got a nice nap on the pillow topped king-size bed while I watched the Olympics.

That brings me to the one thing, on this trip, I discovered that Canada rocks: the Winter Olympics. I mean, they love the winter games in the Northern half of North America. No surprise, I suppose, since their alternative might be the CFL or CBA, but regardless, most of the games seem to ring stronger with the Canadian audience. As a consequence of that fact, I would suppose, the Olympic coverage on CBC kicks the living hell out of NBC’s. Not only is there way way way way more (like every moment of the day besides a half hour for morning, noon, and evening news) but it covers far more sports far better. I watched the final two periods of the Canadian men’s hockey game live this morning and yesterday afternoon featured the entirety of the Women’s Team Sprint in cross country skiing and, at two separate times, the varying components of the Nordic Combined. As a sort of corollary, CBC offers the Olympics on demand, that is, 13 separate events which you can watch, in their entirety every day. Rock.

When Katie managed to wake up from her long winter’s nap, we headed down to aforementioned Terrapin Grille. We did this dinner up proper style, certainly the best food I’ve had in a long long time. Not that we go out for a lot of multi-hundred dollar dinners these days, but still. We started out with a three appetizer combo, featuring some delightful smoked salmon, bruschetta, and a tiger-prawn shrimp cocktail. We had a bottle of Chardonnay which was a bit sweet for my tastes, but was Katie friendly. She had a pan-seared Chilean sea bass, which I believe was a rerun of a previous year. It was very tasty, though I must say, I topped her this time around, with a 9 oz filet and an 8 oz lobster tail. It was, even for me, a lot of hella delicious food. We finished with strawberry shortcake which featured cream cheese frosting, a miraculous idea in my mind. The bite of the cream cheese balances the juicy sweetness of the berries much better than whipped cream alone, which more sort of absorbs it.

This morning continued our food-extravaganza with a breakfast buffet which is a way better deal when it is included with your room. That said, its worth it to me even if you gotta pay for it, cuz it features my two absolute favorite breakfast foods: omelettes made by an omelette chef right in front of you and Belgian waffles with whipped cream. I had a couple of each, along with some sausage, bacon, potatoes, and the absolute largest croissant I have ever personally encountered. I don’t think Katie took as big an advantage of the omelette station as she should have, but for some reason she does not believe me when I attempt to convince her that Holiday related meals are calorie free.

A great experience overall, which we capped off by stopping at the J. Crew outlet so Katie could buy a panda themed nightgown. Hippo was snuggling with her earlier and indicated that it was the only J. Crew garment ever which deserved the title that she herself embodies: really cute.

Peace,

MB-K