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

I Love it When You Call Me Big Poppa, You Got a Gun Up in Your Waist, Please Don't Shoot Up the Butt

A lot of people hate on the Olympics. I don’t just mean that there are people who don’t watch the Olympics, though I think that is sad too. I am talking about people who actively hate on the games. Take this douche for example. I know he’s talking about the summer games in 2000, but fundamentally the points people make are the same. In the spirit of most of the debates I’ve seen at the Binghamton tournament, I’m not gonna answer all his claims on the line by line, I’m just gonna give the reasons I fucking love the Olympics.

--the storylines: the most legitimate criticism that I think exists about the Olympics is technically about Olympics television coverage, but I will, for today at least, concede this connection. Specifically, I mean that NBC does often spend too much time focusing on the excessively melodramatic stories, not even just the cool ones. That said, while a bunch of this shit is trite and overplayed (not quite to the level of Connelly’s bits on Sportscenter, but its close) there are some legitimately incredible stories. You can view this in several ways: 1) it applies to all sports today, if you don’t like sports on TV, then sure, I guess this is not convincing 2) stories in sports are fun, they get me emotionally invested in something that I might never experience without it 3) think about it like a regular narrative show if you want, its like a reality curling show.

--the creative games: I’m not pretending that I like the giant slalom as much as I dig the NFL. More than anything else, I’m a fan of the four major team sports in this country. That said, its fun to see some games that I don’t really understand and would never get exposure to under other circumstances. Gaining that pseudo-expertise I have by the second week about short track speed skating really makes my day in ways I cannot explain to you. Not to mention this: curling rules. There is nothing more fun than getting hella intoxicated and discussing Norway’s best bowler.

--the lack of money: we all know that Bode is getting paid and Sean White is not lacking in endorsements either, but 99% of the people at the Olympics, even 99% of the American athletes, aren’t making shit off their sports. The two-person luge team rarely gets calls from Nike or Pepsi. I don’t think that money contaminates sports, but its fun seeing people play them for reasons besides money. I could turn this into a discussion about how it’s a strategy of capitalism to create zones wherein true affectivity and emotion emerge outside of economics, but that indicates that I have spent way too much time explaining Zizek link stories. Maybe its just that I really like the idea that there are people who really love something to the extent that they would put in that much work with no risk of economic gain and most likely, paying a significant amount of money just to do that work. I can’t really imagine it, but I like it.

--the love of the game: to some extent you could say this overlaps with the money question, and I guess it does, but there is more too. I was watching the Opening Ceremonies and they mentioned that 90%+ of these athletes have no chance at a medal. There are obviously some surprises and such, but for virtually everyone just getting to the Olympics is the ultimate prize. Watching nations with one athlete march into the stadium, knowing they have no chance to win, and still enjoying themselves to this extent is incredible to watch.

--peace: I saw an affirmative a couple years back about the Athens Summer games that had some incredible cards about how all the nations at the games agree not to fight with each other militarily for those two weeks. I mean, it doesn’t solve much in terms of actuality, but the critical potential was excellent. Outside of freaking debate, however, I like the constant invocations of peaceful competition. Even if you don’t want to see Yoko Ono introduce Peter Gabriel singing “Imagine,” the acrobats forming a dove is pretty freaking cool.

I’m not gonna force this to go to 10 items for the sake of list-coherence. I will have specific commentary later on during the games, especially when I actually get to watch more than the first period of a women’s hockey game or the ski jumping preliminaries. Hippo, on the other hand, got to enjoy the 5000 meter speedskate gold medal and even the biathalon. She wanted to note that, even to the world’s smartest Persian cat, skiing and shooting doesn’t make that much sense. Unless, potentially, you are hunting elk, though she recommends just chasing them down and ripping them to the ground with your vicious claws.

Peace,

MB-K

Since U Been Gone, I Can Breathe For the First Butt

Since we’ve been home, we went to Bard for the first time. That was the inaugural tournament of CEDA East’s spring semester and Rochester did, kind of legitimately at least, rock the hizzy. We had a novice team lose in finals, an open team go down in semis (both 2-1s btw) and closed out JV in semis, winning three of our four quarters debates on 3-0s. Anyway, it was a quality weekend overall, excluding the shittiness of the drive home. I got to watch the Super Bowl over the weekend on my beautiful TV. I didn’t think it was the best game of the year, jobviously, but it wasn’t nearly as terrible as the rubes on national and Buffalo sports radio made it out to be. There were some bad calls, there were some blown plays. I didn’t get to watch as much of the Puppy Bowl as I did last year, unfortunately. Even more unfortunate is that I missed the kitten halftime show, I guess I just left the Rolling Stones on while I whipped up round two of Super Bowl appetizers. I had a concoction made of proscuitto and gruyere, rolled and baked in puff pastry. My pastry skills are significantly lower than most of my other culinary abilities, so they didn’t turn out nearly as well as Paula had manufactured them on Christmas Eve. On the other hand, my bacon wrapped water chestnuts were very possibly the best that have ever been produced. I can honestly say that bwwc’s might be the only food I have never had the opportunity to eat more than I want of. I mean, I had four Double Quarter Pounders back in the day, I’ve eaten steaks that are far too large for any human being, and I took down most of a gallon of ice cream in one sitting back in the day. At least I have an idea for my next solo celebratory function.

We are actually at the Binghamton tournament now, after a pretty pleasant drive on the way down here. I genuinely hate this debate tournament, it tends to be really long. There is also a bunch of silly Valentine's Day related stuff that I think borders somewhere between annoying and sexual harrassment. Nonetheless, the competition itself should be interesting, we have alot of teams moving up, a good number of new people who seem enthusiastic, and a pretty good sized squad (12 teams).

Here is my one observation for the day: most people who go to Applebees suck. Tonight, as we all gathered to determine where we are going for dinner, a tremendous swelling of enthusiasm for Applebees ensued. I have literally never seen so much enthusiasm for an Applebees. Thats not to say that people were dancing in the hotel parking lot Mardi Gras style, but we're talking about going to Applebee's here, lets put it in perspective. Given that the object in question was "Going to Applebees" there was an outswell of love which, per capita, far surpassed that of, say, the moon landing. (punctuation count for that last sentence: 7 seperate marks) Anyway, there was a great cross section of the American public, most notable:

-the woman at the table behind us had really terrible bangs. I mean, its gotta mean something if I can notice how bad your bangs are. She looked like the manicure lady from Legally Blonde if you took away any semblance of attractiveness. Merkel turned around to look at her in the least subtle way ever.

-the d00d accross from us was wearing a baseball hat which featured the Confederate flag as the background, with a 12 point buck in front of it. The text below it: "American Outlaw." I suppose to one extent its true, you could call the confederacy "American Outlaws." At the same time though, you are not exactly celebrating the American part are you? Isn't the whole point of the confederacy that it wasn't America? Not to mention, where the fuck does the deer play into this. I at least expect some thought to go into your racist headwear. Don't you have something a little dressier, maybe a burning cross on a bowler or something, for your high scale trips to the city?

-the girl who walked by our table prolly more times than our waitress, wearing white sweatpants that were either entirely see-thru, or simply see-thru enough that you could determine precisely her lack of underwear. It wasn't porno style, but it was glaring. Lavin pulled a sweet Merkel following her around the corner.

After we had finished our dinner, paid, and were standing outside I was doing what I usually do. By that I mean, swearing loudly to make passerby uncomfortable and groove dancing to the ricokculously loud 80s music that Applebees featured as their "Welcome" music. At some point they replaced Duran Duran's "Rio" with Jewel's "I Was Meant For You." The thing about that song, besides the fact that it was from way back before Jewel lost like 50 pounds so she looked like Skeletor and then became a shitty poet (general summary of Jewel's poetry: living out of your car sucks), is that its nothing more than her narrating the random unexciting events of her day. As an example:

I got my eggs and my pancakes too/I got my maple syrup, everything but you./I break the yolks, make a smiley face/I kinda like it in my brand new place/I wipe the spots off the mirror/Don't leave the keys in the door

I mean, I get that there are some metaphors and imagery in that bad boy, but for the most part you could call the song "I had breakfast." I'm just sayin, if I could yodel...

Hippo's not here, of course, but she said to say hello when I talked to her via the CatPhone earlier. As always shes having some kitten friends over for a keg of cream and some pounce treats. They better not ash their catnip pipes all over the carpet, we just vaccuumed.

Peace,

MB-K

Blowing All the Other Kids Away, We Won't Be Moved, We Can See Right Through, All of Your Butt

I suck at updating my blog. I got it. This has been a really annoying couple of weeks in several ways. Busy, I suppose, but this type of business is all but unavoidable, so I won’t blame it. Instead I will blame the fact that in the past three weeks I have been sick twice. That, in my world, is ridiculous. And I don’t just mean mildly uncomfortable cold situations, like debilitatingly sick, twice. Both times I came home feeling fine after debate practice (usually around 10:00-ish) and ended up going to sleep feeling sick before midnight. I woke up the next morning in terrible condition and was O.O.C. the entire following day. The end recovery time was a little more drastic this time around and besides the general sickness portion of the experience, the symptoms were not that similar. The first time around was my stomach and while that sucked, it went away fast. This time it was focused around an intensely sore throat and meant that I slept about 19 hours on each of the first two days I was down. Anyway, 2-3 days down not only conks out those evenings, but the 4-5 that follow as I try to catch up with both the work and the non-sick relaxing (maybe this concept is part of the problem) that I missed out on.

Regardless, I’m not gone forever. Hell, I’m gonna catch up to the actual present date in the next several posts. I will make at least a little bit of a run at it:

I left off one aspect of Texas that was cool, specifically the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was shot. I was a big Kennedy assassination buff when JFK came out and such, so it was incredible to see. The museum itself is not always climactic when you know a lot about the situation, but its still awesome to see all the artifacts of the Warren Commission, the original notes reporters took from the press bus, not to mention the place where everything occurred. The grassy knoll is a cool location itself and I spent a couple minutes after the actual museum inside hanging out with a dude who showed me around the area, precisely where the car was during different parts of the Zapruder film, etc. He knew his stuff, especially considering that he appeared to be homeless or of very low socio-economic class. Not to say that people in those circumstances can’t be outstandingly intelligent, just that you see few of them occupying their days showing tourists around Dealey Plaza. Employed/housed/etc. or not, his time deserved a couple of my bucks. At the fence on the Grassy Knoll, the spot where, to be entirely honest, anyone planning the situation would have planned it, there are all these messages and inscriptions written into the wall. I took photos of all the relevant stuff here.

By the time we got back from Texas we only had a couple days left in Minneapolis. They were a whirlwind of seeing fam, friends, and judging at the State Tournament. Much belated props to Pete for bringing Rosemount their first ever State Championship. I echo Katie's comments.

Our ride home was uneventful, though Sunday night, which we spent in the vaunted Motel 6 of South Bend, IN, was eventful in a not especially exciting way, that being Katie’s own debilitating sickness. She was thankfully tough enough to allow us to make the last 7 hours on Monday morning, thus returning the two of us and our lovely Miss Hippo to the apartment, the HDTV, and our comfortable family friendly environment. Hippo is, at the moment currently demanding that I follow her into the back bedroom, most likely so I can see what an incredible job she has done playing with the pencil I set on the floor for her earlier today. As such, I will pick up from our return to Lockport tomorrow.

Peace,

MB-K

I Look Straight at What's Coming Ahead and Soon its Gonna Change in a New Direction, Every Night as I'm Falling Asleep, These Words Repeated in My Butt

I am a pretty generally healthy person, generally just meaning that I am rarely sick. Thursday night, however, I became about as ill as I likely get in a given year. I was reading this hilarious series of articles about erotic video games and all of a sudden felt like I was going to pass out. I was admittedly laughing pretty hard at the description of Beat ‘Em and Eat ‘Em but the fact that I was bed ridden for the next 30 odd hours makes me think it wasn’t just that. Regardless, after drinking a two liter of Sprite, watching Ocean’s Twelve, and annoying Katie with my requests for soda and water, I am in much better condition and continue the TC recap.

--Lambeau Field: It certainly was far from a dream season for the Pack attack in 2005, but even a 3-12 game against the number 1 seed in the NFC is an NFL excursion at the greatest stadium in the history of sports. My dad and I got up at 5 in the morning, giving me a approximately 3 hours of sleep to deal with 4 bottles of champagne. I was not wide awake, to say the least, but 3-4 Diet Red Bulls kept me in the swing of things for most of the ride. We made great time, went to Kroll’s for a brat and a beer, before heading to the game. I bought a really spiffy new hat (technically, my dad bought it) and have actually never had a black Packer’s cap before. The game was really fun to watch, the crowd was full and in good spirits, and the Packers, though not playing a team that had much to worry about, came through strong. Brett through a touchdown, which was fun to watch after 3-4 weeks of nothing.

My dad and I came into the game confident that number four was coming back. It just didn’t seem likely that he would leave on this low a note and all. The entire NorthEastern section of Wisconsin always explodes when they announce the quarterback from Southen Mississippi, but it was potentially even more significant that day. When it was all said and done, when the Packers got the ball back to end the game, Sherman pulled Brett and the ovation was deafening. It went on for several minutes, everyone in Green Bay on their feet, and while that doesn’t prove anything, Brett made a bigger deal than I would usually expect. He was waving and playing to the crowd on his way off the field, which really made me question if he was leaning the other way. The fact that they ditched Sherman not more than 20 hours after the end of the game seemed odd to me as well.

Anyway, we saw my Grandma for a while, and she was doing alright. We had dinner with her and talked for a couple hours before crashing at the casino/hotel that evening. I won 50 some dollars playing craps and left early the next morning, using a couple more Diet Red Bulls (potentially my new favorite thing) to make the drive home.

--Texas: We were home from Lambeau about 10:30, which meant I was able to get 2:30 hours sleep/bowl game watching before heading to the airport via Katie’s rents. Our flight to Dallas was uneventful, though Katie and I weren’t able to sit next to each other (I guess that’s what you get flying on January 2nd). DFW airport is, literally, the worst location in the entire world. It is much less an airport than it is a randomly organized series of buildings linked by an incoherently labeled and arranged set of roads and ramps that connect them. The rental car facility is about 3-5 miles away from the terminals, even worse than that at Logan. It took us over an hour from the time our plane landed to get our luggage, get to the rental joint, and get back to the terminals with the cars. I got to drive a Durango, which I ended up really enjoying. It sucks gas like an urban myth about Alanis Morissette, but it’s a hella comfy ride.

The first tournament was at North Texas and it gets my Diet Red Bull award for best debate tournament in Texas that I have ever attended. I believe that every round was contained in 3ish floors of a single building. The judging was pretty good all around, there were some pretty entertaining debates, I got 3 of them off, and the food was pretty impressive (pretty impressive being the average of really shitty breakfast and really incredible lunch). I even got home in time to see both of the BCS games that occurred on the evenings of prelims. The neighborhood around the university was chweet, little bars and shops that seemed totally out of place for a Northern suburb of Dallas. We had some success all around, especially considering that many of our teams moved up for the first half of the swing. It was a great tournament, they should’ve done it twice.

Especially considering that the second tournament kind of bit it. I mean, the food was still aight (way better breakfast, way worse lunch on one day, almost as good the other) but the tournament was spread randomly across one of the least interesting campuses I have ever seen. Most of the open rounds were in two buildings which were nowhere near each other and the JV debates were literally across the campus from both of them, all of which were at least a 10 minute walk from the food/meeting place. The tournament treated the JV kids like they were more a nuisance than anything else, and since 5 of our 6 teams were there, it kinda pissed me off. We still had a decent tournament, clearing in open and winning the novice breakout.
Even more interesting than the debating in Texas was the food. I sampled four different barbecue joints, Coulter’s, Rudy’s, Sonny Bryant’s, and Spring Creek. Coulter’s was my personal fave, though Sonny Bryant’s had pretty solid pulled pork as well. Spring Creek had some smoked sausage that was off the hook, but their sauce paled in comparison. I know my proclivities towards pork make me biased towards East Coast ‘cue, but I can respect the brisket and none of these joints disappointed. I was surprised by the generally low quality BBQ beans, at which I expected Tejas to excel, but still.

The hamburgers were also really really good. I ate at Whataburger (my first time) Jack in the Box (been there, but awesome) and Sonic (about 4 times, cuz whoa damn do I love Sonic). Seriously, everything about that place is awesome. The ordering is better than a drive-thru, the jalapeno cheeseburger is phat, the cream pie shakes are the nutz, and the ability to get tater tots instead of fries-wow. This doesn’t even get in to the supersonic breakfast burrito or the Cherry Limeades, but suffice to say I would very rarely eat at any other fast food joint in the event that my hometown featured a Sonic.

Hippo is all over me about going to play on the new sheets we got with her catnip bubbles, so I will have to continue with the Sixth Floor Museum later.

Peace,

MB-K

Come and Get Your Butt

This is Hippo's last picture at my Dad's house during the Winter of 2005. She found a number of interesting little spots to lay in over the course of the month or so that we were back in town, most notably the Christmas village, which is well illustrated over at our new and deluxe Fickr site. I'm not going to attempt to bore you with the excessive details of the world since December 10th-ish. But I will supply the highlights:

--Blake: Tournament was good, hanging was fun. We had dinner with Karly and Kari on Thursday night at The King and I, one of the several high quality Thai dinners we enjoyed back in the land where Thai food doesn't suck. I bought Andy a birthday card at the Rainbow joint by the SuperAmerica and I would claim that it is the best birthday card ever purchased by anyone. If he wouldn't have briefly lost it, I think that showing it to Doobs would have been the coolest thing ever. This year's dinner for the Round Robin beat the hell out of last year's, seeing as I a) did not sprain my ankle and b) there was enough of some really good food. The fajitas were yummy and it contained the best mass produced flan I can possibly imagine. Debates were also good, I got to watch a high quality team from Greenhill, a woman with alot of potential and a cool argument from LeMars, and how can I forget the FOUR CONSECUTIVE DEBATES WHERE I JUDGED ROSEMOUNT LL. It was legitimately hilarious when they selected me to judge them in both rounds 3 and 4, though not nearly as funny as LaZ0r catching a pop tart in his mouth.

--Family: We spent a good amount of time with both our families. We were staying at my dad's, jobviously, and crashed at Katie's parents on Christmas eve and a couple other times. We had coffee and hung with my mom and Deb several times, it was weird to be at the house and see Chewie without Geezer around, but I was happy mom didn't have to worry about covering the couches with sheets quite so much. We saw both of our sisters a couple times, but my bro, of course, was occupied with monkies and the like in Lobpuri. I got to talk to him a couple times, a surprise call on Christmas morning (night for him) and Andy's brilliant decision to call him on the cell phone on New Year's Eve. I haven't gotten the update on how much taht call cost, but it was nice that the gang got to say hello.

--Christmas: I'm not going to go off on the joys of the Holdiay, the spirit of the season encompassed by friends and family, gathered together around the tree, the fire, the presents, the goose, etc. Those things were all true, well not so much the goose, but nonetheless. Even beyond the joys of being with Katie, with our parents, etc. Christmas has two connotations to me: 1) Hippo, who we met for the first time last Christmas eve 2) beef. Thats right: beef. We had four different types of steak over the two days that encompass the holiday. Prime rib, to kick things off at Paula's, where we also watched the NFL schedule on an enormous television and ate alot of some high quality apps. Most notable: shrimp cocktail, puff pastry filled with gruyere and proscuitto, and the greatest appetizer of all time, Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts. Dinner also featured the garlicy-delicious potatoes that Paula will always be famous for and a Stilton sauce for the meat, a requested repeat of last winter, that was wonderful. I should note the one negative aspect of Christmas eve, which was that I fell, attempting to stop one of the dogs from burying a drippy beef bone in a white sofa. Of course my attempt to save the sofa resulted in the half glass of wine I was carrying crashing to the floor, but I have been told that all signs have vanished. My leg was also a bit messed up for the remainder of the evening.

We waited just long enough to eat again and had some delightful fondue Kauf-style. The cheese was probably better than it has ever been and wow was there alot of it. The beef was similarly exciting, especially since the crazies can cook it as dark as they want while I still get it perfectly rare. The salad would be exceptional with any other meal, but it still deserves mention, since it features both bacon and eggs on spinach. Yumm. Everybody got presents they enjoyed, there were tasty beverages for all, and I still got to sleep at a reasonable hour. Had an impossible time finding a mass on Christmas morning, which, in case you were wondering, did in fact piss me off. As luck would have it, however, that was the time I got the call from my brother and had a very nice 10 minute convo. We had Christmas lunch, more steak, supplemented by a yummy pork roast, and a batch of Twice Baked Potatoes that were fabulous. Dinner was again in St. Paul, the final excellent piece of beef for the evening. This one was also perfectly cooked and served with a horseradish sauce that I could eat on an old shoe. There was also a potato mushroom gratin that I was too full to appreciate and some green onion cheddar popovers that I am without question going to replicate.

--New Year's: There were a couple of different adjectives we played around with to describe the NYE celebration that occurred to ring in 2006. There was "intimate" "calm" and "buttsex" among others, each was incredily accurate. It was still a hella good time, I drank 4 bottles of Champagne, smoked a cigar, and enjoyed the company of the men and women still in town. There were a number of familiar faces we missed that night, Wilking and Jen (who for some lame reason decided to celbrate in Galena), my bro and Melia (who for some lame reason decided not to fly home from Thailand), and Sanjay (who for some lame reason did not come home at all from Eugene). There are pictures on our Flickr of that occasion as well, sponsored by Andy J. If you were curious as to why so many of those pictures were of Kevin sitting in the corner, the basic answer is this: I was trying to steal his soul, which apparently, cameras can do. I couldn't find the "extract soul" mode, so I just went with "portrait." I think it worked out well.

Hippo wants everyone to know that, despite not having updated in a month, I should not attempt to overdue it. Instead, I should fill up her food dish. I think this is largely a self-serving decision on the behalf of my persian, but nonetheless, I obey.

Peace,

MB-K

Livin Fast and Dyin Young Like an Endless Poetry, My Motor Psycho Nightmare Freakout Inside of Butt

Sorry this picture of a Whistle Pig just sat here for so long. I really suck at using the internet when I am not in my usual settings. As a result, I jobviously did not update my blog.

Anyway, the day before we left Buffalo for the Twin Cities was a day full of errand running in advance of the movement. We hit the outlet mall and on our way home drove by this restaurant which I have seen since the first week or so that I lived here. The sign on the top of the restaurant indicates very clearly that it is "The Home of the Whistle Pig" but I had absolutely no idea what this delightful sounding device might be.

We had a couple for lunch and not only were the economical, they were both incredibly brilliant and incredibly delicious. Here is the basic idea: take a good quality hot dog, wrap it in bacon, grill it, serve it with cheese sauce. Add to that your onions, mustard, ketchup, assorted relishes, and you have a high quality dawg. I can't believe I had never considered wrapping bacon around a hot dog before, since the addition of bacon, as I have often said, makes pretty much anything good.

Real update soon to follow above. Again, sorry bout having to look at the whistle pig for a month.

Peace,

MB-K

If You Believe, They Put a Man on the Butt

I had to pick up some more Coke Zero at the Tops this evening. I am totally addicted to Coke Zero in a way that makes it just under infinitely more enjoyable than drinking Diet Coke. The difference, I learned in the not too distant past, has to do with the fact that Coke Zero is based on the formula for Coca-Cola Classic, while Diet Coke was based on the formula for New Coke. Hence the taste difference has less to do with the difference in sweeteners (which is almost non-existent) than with the fact that they are two entirely different beverages. Anyway, I went to buy that and some other random crap from the store.

The last area I visited was the ice cream section, cuz we were in dire need of Mint Choco-Chip. Right across the aisle from the ice cream are located the alcoholic beverages, by which I mean beer, malt liquor, and Boone’s. There was a family standing there, with two kids of about 12-14 years of age. I’m not a great estimator in these calculations, but there is no way either of them was more than a second year in high school. Anyway, family at Tops, not surprising. However, the family was each selecting their own type of wine cooler. I mean, the two girls in that pre-teen/early teen area were arguing over which flavor of wine cooler they should buy while the parents tried to convince them to compromise. I cannot, of course, rule out the possibility that these girls just really wanted to pick out their parents drinks for some reason, but I got the very distinct impression that they would be the ones imbibing. Their parents even tried to move them along when I shot them a momentarily confused glance. Anyway, to all the drunk 13 year olds in Lockport tonight, while I don’t necessarily condone your behavior: holla!!

We have made some incredible inroads into our backed up Tivo situation today, aided of course by the fact that reruns have already begun for the holiday season. We will be home long enough to see the Survivor finale, but will depend on the kindness of friends, family, and maybe a couple strangers who will tivo the other events for us. There is still an Apprentice finale to worry about, though I feel confident that Randal will take it home. I think we will miss the Amazing Race 2 hour conclusion, but since it has been a terrible season anyway, I’m not sweating it. I’ll have to worry about finding episodes of Lost and such when the season’s resume in January of ought-six, but I’m depending on the good karma I plan to rack up in the TC.

We are leaving Tuesday after Katie’s yoga class to begin our journey home. We wanted to have at least a day at my dad’s place with Hippo to get her settled before we hauled off to the Hyatt for 4 days. We have a Motel 6 reservation in Toledo somewhere, so we’ll drive 5-6 hours on Tuesday night, stop at about midnight-one, get up and leave nice and early, hopefully getting into the twin cities in the early evening. We can chill with the Persian, set up her scratchy post and such. That’s as specific as I can be about plans at this point.

On a sad note, I saw that Richard Pryor passed away today. I was obviously pretty young when Richard Pryor was at his prime, but I think I caught up enough on my stand up back in the day to appreciate what he did. I guess it was far from unexpected, in a sense. He hadn’t been in good health for a while and he lived hard by anyone’s standards. I suppose he can’t be lumped in with the Belushis or Farleys, dying at the height of their fame, but still, rest in peace.

While Hippo has enjoyed having us around all day, I think she wants to sleep on the computer, so I will relent. Saturday or not, she needs the old catnap.

Peace,

MB-K

Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Butt

We had to do a little preparatory shopping for the Rochester Holiday/End of the Semester party last night and so, as good Minnesota transplants, we went over to Target to buy essentially random commodities from people in khakis and red golf shirts. This was one of the Targets laid out with the entrance on the right hand side (maybe everyone else doesn’t pay so much attention to the general organizations of Target stores, but they tend to be either organized with the entrance on the left, the right, or both and the departments correlate) and hence the bathroom was just to the left when I entered the store. Knowing that Katie would spend a bit of time on the dollar area I stopped into the bathroom for a second.

I entered the bathroom and heard someone talking and assumed, in the abstract I guess, that he was talking to someone else in the bathroom. However, he was on the phone, jobviously, talking ostensibly to someone not in the bathroom. I don’t know if there are any ethics or common standards about talking on the phone in public bathrooms, I have always felt uncomfortable about it and not because I think there is anything so private and disgusting about the use of the bathroom that it wouldn’t be allowed. Maybe it has something to do with electronically transcending the literal walls created for the purpose of compartmentalizing the restroom-function, I will leave that determination to Baudrillard. Even if I am simply crazy and public bathroom cell-phone usage is entirely without issue, as I was leaving the restroom I heard this phrase: “Yeah, make sure you get me a raspberry-lemon…” Yes, he was ordering something, my guess is dessert, from a public bathroom stall. I have expectations, when entering the Target bathroom, that I might find piles of toilet paper on the floor, I might read something about someone’s sexual proclivities, or where they might be and what they might be doing on 12/17 at 6:45, but I operate under the assumption that I will absolutely not need to hear anyone discussing a raspberry-lemon anything.

I’m saying this, btw, while an SNL sketch about Target is on my new TV, and the irony abounds. Maybe not irony so much as coincidence and not so much coincidence as simply not at all interesting. Maybe if this was about the Target bathrooms it would be interesting. Its not.

Two debate discussions that I have stayed out of are going on right now, on different debate areas, that are interesting to me. One concerns travel and the concerns of coaches about traveling too much. I have a very odd perspective on this situation, I think, having coached a team that traveled a fair amount in Minnesota, and now dealing with collegiate debate, where the idea of a local tournament means 3-4 hours away. For most of our tournaments we drive home after one prelim and octos/quarters on about 5-8 hours. I hate it, don’t get me wrong, but it makes “travel” for most of the tournaments Minnesota teams attend seem kinda funny. I get, of course, that I’m not in the situation where I can’t miss Fridays/Mondays cuz I have a professional career, that would obviously reshape the situation.

I don’t have a team, and prolly won’t anytime soon have a team, in contention to take a run at winning the TOC. But if I did, if I had the money, time, and desire to make that run, I would be furious if the MSHSL said I had to choose between state sponsored events and “out of state” travel. Anyhow, the point is this: I am ambivalent on this question, though I feel for both sides.

I maintain that ambivalence about the proposition for OSD (Open Source Debate) that is floating around the college world. I fundamentally do believe that I could handle coaching debate at the high school level in the long run, though its probably not my number one career choice. But college debate, as it is, would kill me if I tried to really do it to it. The idea of making all the evidence available to everyone, that is, eliminating the almost impossible and excruciatingly boring demands of research in college debate, would make me almost consider handling it. I know I’m a cocky person, but in all honesty, I don’t think there is anyone who understands debate as a game better than me. There are, however, A LOT of people who cut more and better cards. I don’t know that I would care enough to try, OSD or not, to be an “elite professional debate coach” (whatever that means), but I would consider it, which is a lot more than I can say now.

Hippo, not surprisingly finds this discussion boring and would instead like me to play her new favorite game. Its called “Stick your paw in the handle on this huge TV box even though there is nothing in reachable distance and fish around like you were gonna find a floating snack or something.” The name doesn’t even approach explaining how cute it is.

Peace,

MB-K

Some Hearts, They Just Get All the Right Breaks, Some Hearts Have the Stars on their Butt

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. I cannot believe it. I can’t even believe that I am making the following statement, cuz I might have otherwise said that it was a contradiction in terms. Of ANTM’s final three, THE RIGHT GIRL WON!!! If you have been watching the show, you know how impossible it is to imagine this fact, cuz it literally has never happened. In many seasons the woman who won was literally the third best of the three. Almost better, I mean, definitively not better, but still almost kinda better, but jobviously not at all better, is the fact that freaking Bre was kicked out in place number three.

Bre was seriously annoying, I mean, she was very likely even beyond Yaya in terms of assfaced annoying. She wasn’t annoying in the same pseudo-intellectual way, she was more just obnoxious to everyone decent who was ever on the program, but still, the point is clear. Nicole was my second favorite I think, after Kim. I liked Jayla for a while, but she turned out to be less cool then I thought. There still has not been anyone for the past two seasons who can compare to the two all time greatest ANTM contestants of all kind: Norelle and Shanthrax.

While I love the fashion related reality programming and will certainly have a lot to say about it with the recent debut of Project Runway season 2, I have not even mentioned what is arguably the best thing about watching them. That is, my television itself. We have been operating with a tolerable TV for a couple years now. Its not small, but by no means big. It was a good TV, it served us well. Anyway, it is technically Katie’s rent’s TV and they are now in need of it again. So, we decided to buy a new television. My thought was that we would spend a couple hundred bucks, get something moderate, but tolerable.

At the same time, I just feel stupid spending 200 dollars on a TV that is so far behind technology as to be all but irrelevant in the near future. For one thing, who still purchases televisions that aren’t flat screen? Secondly, we are like a year from the supposed “non-manufacturing of non-HD televisions stage” for the purpose of bringing HD in as the standard, so I didn’t feel great about buying one of those either. Finally, I just wanted something widescreen. I love the idea of fitting the shows and movies that I love perfectly on the television in the proper aspect ratio, not bothering to either miss the sides or have black space.

Still, I’m kind of a cheapskate when it comes to spending money on things ostensibly for myself. I don’t know why that is, but it is. Anyway, by convincing me that it would ultimately count as my Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and birthday presents for the upcoming year, Katie convinced me to buy this:



It’s a really incredible TV, especially for what we paid for it. I’m still not totally comfortable with how much it cost, but oh my God. For one thing, it’s big. 26 Inches in widescreen seems like a lot more than 26 in 4:3 aspect ratio, even if it’s not, mathematically. A bigger TV in a living room this small would border on the ridiculous. Additionally, this TV is HD ready, has like 30 inputs, and, even just connected via cable (since we’ve been too busy since the purchase to get the S-video connection set up or the new HD box) the clarity is pretty incredible. The brightness and color blow the old TV out of the water. We got a good price and good financing, so it won’t cost us too much in the long run and honestly, we watch so much freaking television that it makes sense to spend this cash in this situation. I don’t try to use my blog to reassure myself most of the time, but my priest doesn’t take confession at 11:30 on Thursdays. Certainly not about TVs.

Hippo, however, has clarified that she does take petting and attention at all times of the day, so my kitty and I will go back to watching tivoed Survivor Wednesday on OLN.

Peace,

MB-K

I Can't Live Without Your, Love and Affection, I Can't Face Another Night On My Butt

Long time. My bad. I’ve been eating turkey almost literally for two solid weeks. It was a great weekend that has been followed by a rampage of work leading up to the end of the semester. I am attempting to get a couple things done before I leave here for the holidays and head back to Minneapolis and while I’m not 100% confident that all of them will get concluded in time, at least the pressing has invigorated me around the mid-point of the year.

Collegiate debate is done for 2005, after this weekend’s John Carroll Tournament in Cleveland. For the most part I love this tournament, for a lot of reasons that are not at all intrinsic to the tournament itself (it is in Cleveland, only three hours away, and the opposite direction of every other tournament we attend) and a number of others that are (good debates, technical proficiency, nice hotels, more sleep etc.). Both times I have attended this tournament we have been hit on Friday by a hella snowstorm. Two years ago it wasn’t that significant, just slowed down the last half hour or so. This year we got nailed pretty much the moment we left the New York thruway, and were destroyed pretty steadily into the parking lot at JCU. It took us almost 5 hours in total to get from our apartment to the school, compare that to the less than three hour trip we made on our return voyage.

Once we got into town I was very pleased that the snow was falling. I love the climate of a snowy day, the lax regulations on driving, and especially making fun of idiots who think its cold or can’t drive in the snow. There’s just something about the feel of a serious blizzard, the cleanness of it all. Also, we had a debater from Texas who had never seen one before, so that was an interesting situation.

My absolute favorite thing about the John Carroll tournament, beyond everything else, is the judges’ lounge. A lot of things about the judges’ lounge are pretty normal, cheetos, chips, candy, blah blah. They have donuts, not just bagels with vegan cream cheese, like a couple of tournaments in this state, in the morning and specifically they have some really excellent glazed cherry cake donuts, a personal fave of mine. But far more importantly than those tasty-m-cakes, was the greatest thing at any debate tournament ever. A FOUNTAIN SODA MACHINE.

Yep, there is a fountain soda machine which enables me to have free unlimited Diet Pepsi over the whole course of the tournament. Since I am a freaking genius who was aware of the existence of said Diet Pepsi miracle, I brought a 20oz bottle and refilled it once, maybe twice, maybe three times a debate. It is the best thing in the history of debate tournaments, end of story.

I am going to cut this post short, cuz the poor little Hippo had to take a bath tonight and now wants to sit on my computer to warm up.

Peace,

MB-K

One Thing I'm Sure of, I'm in the Deep Freeze, Cold Turkey Has Got Me on the Butt

It’s almost Thanksgiving and I am officially excited. I think I’ve done all the prep work I am gonna do before the morning, that includes brining the turkey, prepping the bread for the stuffing, cleaning the kitchen, shopping for wine and produce, and now am kicking back, waiting just a bit for the proper time to open my first Sierra Nevada Celebration of the season. It ain’t Summit Winter but it’s a damn tasty beer and certainly the best winter brew available to me at the Lockport Tops.

Our meal tomorrow is gonna be incredibly good, I believe. I am adapting my turkey technique slightly, based on an article in Bon Appetit and another in Gourmet. That joins with the traditional roasting maneuvers we all know and love alongside Alton Brown’s classic episode “Romancing the Bird.” I’m following that up with Sausage Stuffing with Carmelized Onions and Leeks. Then a White Cheddar Butternut Squash Gratin, which I think looks incredible. We have the mashed taters, turkey gravy, and Katie’s incredible fresh rolls. She is attempting to outdo her own baking expertise with a chocolate pecan pie, which I can already taste. I’m making some white cheddar puffs with green onions as an appetizer, really just because I was concerned that otherwise Katie me and Hippo, with our 14 pound turkey, would not have enough to eat. My hope is that this is the last Thanksgiving we will not have people enjoying our tasty feast with us, and I think that is distinctly possible.

Jean-Luc Nancy, author of, among many other notable books and articles, The Inoperative Community, came to Buffalo yesterday. It was probably the biggest event the department has had since Žižek was here, almost three years ago. I thought there were probably in the area of 150 or so people there, a couple other people I talked to estimated between 120-175, which is a pretty big deal for a free lecture on “Church, State, Resistance.” I know people were in attendance from New York, Toronto, and Rochester, but my guess is there were a couple from other areas as well. It was his only stop on this North American tour, which I suppose makes it not much of a North American tour. Regardless, despite some really odd questions, it was pretty sweet to see him speak. Hippo told me that she jives with a lot of his argument about the constitutive nature of the separation between church and state, but I got more out of the discussions of political theology. Very cool though.

In just a couple hours the greatest holiday of the year begins. This will be Ms. Hippo’s first celebration of football, food, and alcohol as a Baxter-Kauf. She is not quite as excited for the large bird as I am, but purring in anticipation none the less.

Peace,

MB-K

Well We're Movin' On Up, To the East Side, To a Deluxe Apartment, In the Butt

I started writing on blurty a long time ago and to be honest, I did it simply because it was the first free journal thing I found. While I am obviously not tremendously technologically inclined in general, the fact of the matter is that virtually every new internet-related device is built to interact with blogger. Google has a bunch of applications, Flickr is linked into it, and the list goes on. I guess my point is this. I hadn't switched over cuz I am far too lazy, a problem that Katie solved. So after a good amount of her long boring work, I give you:

Dizneuce Redux

Yep, my wife and cat go and I am soon to follow. Meaning every creature I am aware of with the last name "Baxter-Kauf" has a message like this on their original blog as we speak. Kinda sweet I spose. All the archives have moved and are now prolly kinda searchable. Also sweet. Hippo approves, since Katie did some consulting for her too.

Peace,

MB-K

For You I Know I'd Even Try To Turn the Tide, Because You're Mine, I Walk the Butt

We've had an incredibly ridiculously normal suurban weekend. Since there was no debate tournament we got to avoid spending our Friday-Sunday driving vans full of college students to college towns in the NorthEast and butchering pop-culture philosphy in relation to human rights questions, and instead, go on a date of sorts. I'm generally a very chill-at-home sort of guy. We have tivo and hbo/showtime as well as pay per view, so I don't need to go to movies for enjoyable entertainment. I think the fact that I spend so many weekends in various Econolodges and other meh-ish motel chains means that I want to enjoy my couch and remote control when I get the chance. Still, the upcoming holidays encouraged us to leave Hippo by herself for a Friday night.

The stage for that evening began to be set the night before, when Thursday ushered in our first lake-effect snowstorm of the season. It was beauftiul and sunny when I left the house for class on Thursday morning, around 8. The radio began to read a list of schools that were closed and I literally laughed out loud, assuming it was a joke based on the uncharacteristically mild fall-winter season we've had. Apparently though, as the cars in the UB parking lot testified, about 10 miles South of school, it was coming down in sheets. Every school in the "Southtowns" had been closed, as well as at least some of the community colleges in the downtown Buffalo area. It was apparently 6-ish inches of blowing snow since midnight, so nothing to scoff at. The band of precipitation didn't hit us until late that afternoon as Hippo and I plugged away at our analysis of "Kant avec Sade." I know that snow can be annoying, it can cause bad driving conditions, slow you down, etc. But fundamentally, I kinda like the snow. It looks cool and generally makes even pointlessly ugly parts of landscape fairly pretty.

I had to go in for a lecture on Friday, a very good one actually, though the turnout was less than I would have imagined. After some cleaning and grooming and the like, we left home around 6:30 on our way to the Red Lobster. I know RedLob is far from fine cuisine, but they do rock the unlimited shrimp boat pretty hard and I was in an all you can eat shrimp sort of mood. While I admit that their cocount shrimp is fundamentally no better than anyone else's coconut shrimp, their dipping sauce has a sweetness that no other one in my experience can match. Its like shrimp frosting, delicious. We were keeping up the long-standing Baxter-Kauf tradition of seeing Reese Withersppon movies on opening weekend, so we braved the Harry Potter crowds to see Walk the Line.

I had predicted that it was a good night to go to a movie that wasn't Harry Potter, and I was really dead on. a number of great things ensued: 1) our neighborhood Regal theater has an ATM/ticket buying machine in the lobby, which I adore. I just choose my movie and the number of tickets, run my card through, and it spits them to me. I have no idea why people were waiting in line for a teller when two of these machines were wide open on the side of the lobby, but as long as morons continue to populate Western New York by the assload I will take advantage. My only thought is that people were actually buying their movie tickets with cash. I think that the use of cash at virtually any establishment which isn't a bar or a hot dog cart is pretty ridiculous these days and although the Buffalo/Lockport area has improved drastically since I've been here, I'm still blown away by the idea that there are businesses that don't use them. Anyway, the good thing was simply that I got to skip by the line and buy tickets from a machine. 2) The lobby was divided in two: half for the Harry Potter fanboys/girls and half for the rest of us. That meant we got our own concessions with really short lines, we didnt have to stand with the people dressed as Dumbledore, and didnt have to interact with all the children up way past their bedtime. Seriously, the popcorn challenge in the HP pen was probably 5-10 minutes, I had one person in front of me. They were jammed in shoulder to shoulder and some of them had without question been there for an hour or more. 3) Our theater was way less full than a movie with this kind of buzz should be on an opening Friday. I don't think the movie is gonna have any problems, but at least some of the crowd was probably deterred by the snow and the over-representation of wizards. I could put my feet up on the seat in front of me, my jacket on the seat beside me, and not worry about anyone finding the necessary amount of seats. This was a 9:00 show too, I might add, not exactly out of primetime.

Unrelated to the Harry Potter situation, but still awesome, was the movie itself. I expected good things, especially since I am a fan of both Johnny Cash and bio-pics. I had read good things, since Katie had directed me towards a couple solid reviews. Still, I was very impressed. Joaquin Phoenix is legitimately incredible, with both quality acting and incredible singing. I mean, really, dude is legitimately good in addition to sounding an incredible amount like Johnny Cash. Going for the music alone would not be a poor choice. There are even a couple scenes where the camerawork and editing were brilliant and unexpected. Some of the things Katie read suggested that Phoenix was overshadowed by Reese Witherspoon's work as June. Her voice was good, a really hawt Southern twang, and she's good in the role. But on no level that I was aware of could she be said to outshine Wah-keen. Regardless, you should go see Walk the Line.

This morning I felt like Frank the Tank, when I woke up and Katie and I decided to run some errands. We had to go to Wal-Mart, Home Depot, the grocery store, maybe Bed Bath and Beyond. I don't know, I don't know if there'll be enough time. Seriously though, it was totally suburban couple-dom par excellence, buying shelving at the Home Depot, ice-scrapers and gravy seperators, and having lunch at Panera. I don't think I'm risking the little bit of indie-cred I had in the first place by confessing to all this. But maybe I should listen to Lifter Puller or something, just to be safe.

Hippo and Katie are napping on the couch at the moment, so I can't pretend that Hippo is demanding I go and play. I can, however, simply turn my attention back to the Iron bowl. Hippo does love her SEC football.

Peace,

MB-K

Raw Metaphysically Bold, Never Followed a Code, Still Dropped a Butt

I am thinking that the crew at the Colbert Report has the same challenge creating a new intro that uses the word truth every day as I have with my blog. Of course, they're daily and I am semi-weekly at best. At the same time, I'm much more restrictive about where the word itself fits in the whole thing. It can only replace a one syllable word and has to come at the end of a lyric, prolly stuff that is patently obvious. I don't really have the same sarcastic self promotion comedy bit down Colbert style, but maybe I will start working on it.

Last weekend featured two different debate tournaments: Wake and UMass. The former is a the season's biggest tournament, is long, complicated, stressful (I would imagine), and filled with the best teams in the country. The latter is one of the smallest tournaments of the year, elongated on Saturday but generally concise, the most laid back thing this side of napping on a Sunday afternoon, and essentially having only novice and junior varsity teams. Since neither Ken, Gordie, or myself, had any desire to make our way to North Carolina, Katie took a hit for the team with the top two teams and the rest of us rolled to Amherst, Mass. We made killer time on a beautiful day, arriving before 8:00 at the most expensive Howard Johnson in the country. We hung out with some folks from Vermont, watched a good amount of The Wizard of Oz on TBS, cut some cards, blah blah blah. Saturday's rounds didn't start until 8:30, which gave us a nice respite. Leaving the hotel at 7:45, rather than 7:00 on the dot, makes a huge difference.

Besides all those qualities I also got to see Maggie, who came down with a JV team from Dartmouth. It was actually half an open team and a raw novice, but you get the point. I haven't really talked to her at all since Blake last year, but I always enjoy trading stories of high school and onwards. Thats not even to mention the fact that having her around gave my teams the chance to be judged by her and consequently get an rfd from someone I respect without any reservations. There are a number of people in this region I conditionally think is a good judge, people who can comment on at least some things with authority, whose comments and/or decisions are probably more accurate marks of what happened in the round than the debaters, for instance. There are probably even a couple whom I cannot imagine disagreeing with, but I just haven't known them for that long or had anywhere near enough discussions with them. I haven't coached Maggie for 5 years now and I'm not trying to simply be a "great, late elims at the NDT debater=great judge sort of person, but I have confidence that she will give my students comments pretty near to the same ones I would have provided, which is invaluable when I'm among the only ones who doesn't start the RFD with "I usually think topicality is evil." We talked during lunches and breaks and the like, she also came over to our HoJo on Saturday night.

Outside of Maggie and the less than difficult schedule, the weekend was still alright. We had alot of people debating for the first or second time, alot of others debating a division higher than they are used to. Still managed to clear half the teams we brought, including the wonder novice squad in their first tournament as JVers and a 6-0 JV team. The drive home was just as easy as the trip out, but with a decent conversation amongst the Merk, Heroin, and myself. Nicknames on the squad have progressed a little bit over the past couple weeks, but a substantial portion of the team is still referred to by their first name. It just doesn't seem right for a team atmosphere, maybe I'm still stuck in sports mode or something, but I don't think I called anyone who hung out in the Loo by their Christian names either. Gordie's analysis, that every squad needs at least a Sparky and a Pepper, really rings true for me. Pepper just hasn't fit with anyone as well as Strategery or Team Crack+Smack, still half a year to go.

OMG aim has launched these two stupid bot things that you can ask questions of and get movie and shopping info. Its especially stupid because its less convenient than just going to any of a million websites that contain the same information in better packaging and easier to search functions, but that is beyond the point. The point is that I was playing around saying rude things to the bots and seeing how they might respond. First, I might note, it is humorous. Secondly, if you pretend that you are just talking to Andy and type the word "balls" you get two movie hits: Balls of Fury and Guys and Balls. I will see these movies just for their titles. Without question. One is a terrible looking film about ping pong, which does feature Lt. Dangle from Reno 911 and the other a German flick which appears to be a gay male romantic comedy. I was certain they were both pr0n until they showed up on imdb. If I was a movie producer I would simply insert the word balls into every title. It would be so awesome to have pre-built authority or responsibility without having to go through the whole "earning it" phase, cuz I have some awesome ideas.

Hippo appears to have an awesome idea of her own: stop typing on your blog and get my freaking bag of catnip down from the cupboard.

Peace,

MB-K

Time Doesn't Wait, It Will Only Accelerate, As the Days and the Months, and the Years Go Butt

I should probably finish up the whole Eugene thing, since its been weeks since I came back. I'm not gonna detail every moment of the trip, since I don't remember them that specifically and it would bore you even more than the regular blog reading thing. We had good times at a couple bars: one was a lesbian joint that which Sanjay did not realize was a lesbian joint until the night he entered it sober, the other notable one was Max's, which apparently is the inspiration for Moe's tavern on the Simpsons. It certainly does have similarities in terms of the rough set up of the bar and is at least cited by several online sources as the inspiration. Wikipedia disagrees while Maxim argues that it is at least partially responsible. Regardless, we had a couple beers. Andy also convinced me to play erotic memory on the Touch Maxx bar video game thing, which I endulged since he was driving and not drinking at all. Not to mention that I fucking wasted him at it, cuz I have a way better erotic memory. Other brief mentions: ate breakfast at a pretty sweet hipster diner joint with great hashbrowns and biscuits and gravy, for the first time I successfully won a game of Risk based on the Siam at all costs strategy, came in 2nd to Jimmy in both poker tournaments we played, and tried a bunch of high quality local beers. My favorite was the Terminal Gravity IPA, a tasty hoppy beer with a pretty dark finish. The beer selection at just the grocery store was incredible, it made the Tops out here, a store probably 3 times the size of the market we were in, look like a case of Bud Light and a couple 40s of IceHouse. Not that its much more than that anyway, but you get the drift. There were probably 30+ various ales that I had never tried in just this cooler, so I can't imagine what the really "great" beer selections in Oregon look like.

On Sunday afternoon, sometime after both the Vikings and Packers had their weekly losses solidly in the bag, we jumped in Andy's car for a trip down to the Oregon coast. It was actually the first time I had ever been to the Pacific Ocean. We walked out onto these jettys, and by jettys I mean big piles of rocks that extend a ways into the ocean. We had a good time out there, but I could not in any way make it out all the way to the end. At some point we got from "rocky ground" to just "big rocks stacked on one another." I could probably have gone all the way out, given a bunch of time, more suitable clothing, and less fear of death. At some point though, I decided to stop. I have never been the most co-ordinated of gentlefolk and it would have surprised me not at all had I fallen, smashed my head open and/or twisted the hell out of my ankle. I stopped not only in the interest of my health, but in the interest of the near impossibility of my getting back to the car in the event of such a situation. Regardless, it was a beautiful afternoon, even without the sun. There were some crazy fools surfing just beyond one of the largest beaches I've personally ever seen. The drive there had been directly through the mountains and I really can't explain how much I like the combination of mountains and water. If I have to spend my life outside Minnesota I would drastically prefer it to be somewhere with those elements.

We had our best food that night at the Bridgewater Restaurant, right on the coast. Sanjay had a delightful Halibut Parmesan while Andy opted for the traditional but still delightful fish and chips. I myself took advantage of my geography to chow down on some grilled oysters. Andy didn't appreciate their freshness and oceany flavor, but I loved it. We had a full dinner, with some tasty dessert, a couple drinks and so on. The clam choweder was also great, especially the bowl we got covered with cheese and peppers. It wasn't the best chowder I have ever eaten, but its certainly the best I've eaten outside of Massachusets. We still managed to get back to the apartment before the West Wing started and got to catch the Bills blow a late game lead to the evil Pats. The flight home was alright, though it had to go through both freaking Cincinnati and Atlanta. The Portland airport has free WiFi, while parts of Atlanta don't appear to have access at all, which seems impossible for an airport that size. I had tasty chili in Cinci, at the Gold Star, a chili joint which I had seen on the food network a while back. They wanted very much to refer to it as "Cincinnati style chili" since it is served on spaghetti. I was cool with their use of the terms "Three way, Four Way, and Five way" though I snickered as I read the menu. But growing up in a family that was at least half Wisconsin born and bred, chili on spaghetti is just chili. Maybe its the same thing Chicago style hot dogs if you are from the Windy city, I don't know.

I was having a discussion the other day about how I think every significant sized city in the country should be required to develop its own specialty food. It just makes travel and eating so much easier when you are out of town. It can be really easy if you have some sort of proximity to where specific foods are grown or made or harvested or whatever that would work fine, if not, just choose something and run with it. Its not like they raise special cheesesteak cattle in Philly for God's sake. You could pretty much just choose your favorite sandwich, build some carts to scatter on important street corners, and convince local restaurants to start braggin that they have the best. Even if they don't, to start with, give any area with 100,000 or more people the desire to build the best tuna salad and you will probably end up with some freaking delicious sandwiches. Every city doesn't even have to have a unique food, Chicago and New York both claim pizza and hot dogs after all. It would just make regional travel way cooler if I knew that I was looking for the best corn dog in Amherst, Massachusets or could count on a great batch of waffles in Ithaca.

Regardless, at the end of my descriptions of the trip to Eugene I wanted to add a public shout out to Andy and Sanjay, as well as Sarah, for the comfort and the great times. Hippo wanted to add that she enjoyed having the house to herself but would appreciate my bag being spiked with catnip before I came home.

Peace,

MB-K

Paid My Dues, In the Mood, Me and The Girls Gonna Shake the Butt

I should start this discussion by noting that the Packers suck. I am aware of that fact, fully aware, and have been saying as such even before the season. Losing your first three runningbacks doesn't help, along with half your o-line and a couple receivers. Those things are neither here nor there however, since my point is merely this: we are precisely just a little bit worse than whomever we play in a given week. Brett played pretty well this week, though his stats don't reflect it. 200 odd yards and an INT isn't hideous (its more passing yards then the Bills starter has recorded in almost 2 seasons, a fact the local sports rubes attribute even more laughability to then I do) especially when you consider that the interception literally bounced off Driver's hands. It was a first down that hit him dead on and in stride before he bumped it into the air volleyball style for the Steeler's secondary. Brett didn't play perfectly, coughed up a fumble that was returned for a touchdown and threw an incomplete pass when he could have easily run for a first down. Those are both things you have to live with when you play #4, they happen when you have a QB who is always shooting for the win. Still, we didnt get blown out by Pittsburgh, at times the defense even looked good, since 17 points came off turnovers, 7 didn't require an offensive play, and for another TD Charlie Batch only had to work a 25 yard field. It seems that whether we play the Vikings, who suck in approximately the same proximity as the Pack, or the Bengals, who look pretty legit overall, we play badly enough to come within a touchdown or so of the game. Anyway, I can't get too upset about the fact that we lost number seven when six were already down the tubes. At least I got to sit at home and spend the afternoon watching the foosball with my Katie and my kitty.

We just finished watching the live debate on the West Wing. Overall I am pretty impressed by the episode, both because of the way it was done (unscripted, Smits and Arkin studying briefing books and position papers to prepare) and based on the actual product they put out. To some extent the "lets forgo the rules and really debate" theme is a little too trite for Vinnick to bust out, but it was still interesting. I overall felt like, evaluating the debate on its own terms, Vinick won. From what I have heard it would only make sense for them to not decide who was supposed to win and let it develop as it might. I think that Alan Arkin is simply better and more forceful a person in his own right than Jimmy Smits. Santos' closing argument was far better and the arguments that he was winning he was pwnzing him on, still perceptually it just felt like he was behind. There are apparently rumors that whoever wins the poll after the debate was who NBC was going to have win the election, an argument that I think is obviously crap, you aren't that far behind on your storylines in mid November. I know the election isn't gonna take place next week or anything, but you can't stretch it out until March without any idea whats gonna happen. Not to mention, if the writers are so un-Sorkin like as to leave their storylines up to chance like this they don't deserve to end the series without jumping the shark. The great thing is that, they have an easy argument based on the reality of the last election to say that even if Santos gets destroyed in the debate he can win the election. Anyway, as Ihave been saying, I am a sucker for gimmick episodes. I loved it when the West Wing did "A Day in the Life of CJ", I like all the temporally fucked up episodes they've done on Buffy, Dawson's Creek, West Wing and others. Sucker, right over here.

Back to Eugene, I suppose, I should return, but only for a couple quick notes. Andy and I went to LCC on Thursday morning for the presentation itself. I felt good about my speech, though I'm not sure anyone besides Andy really felt what I was talking about. Thats not to say there weren't smart people involved, both the mayor and the PoliSci professor Andy had invited seemed to be on top of their respective games. The student was kind of weird and did end his speech by essentially saying that we should help the homeless because it looks good on a college application, but overall it was a decent conversation on a complicated topic. Andy and I had a good convo with the professor guy after the lecture and I think he may be even more conspiratorially inclined than I am. There were only really two hilarious parts of the morning: 1) Andy's cell phone went off as he was giving the opening remarks which made his authority oh so much more convincing to his assembled student body. Secondly, we stopped on our way to the lecture to pick up food and beverages for the speakers. Andy bought a decent selection of donuts, some pastries, and some bagels and shmear. He had a specific drink order from the student and I had him buy me a Starbucks DoubleShot. Besides that he assembled random beverages from the drink area, including a Snapple Peach Ice Tea, some Minute Maid Lemonade, a Sobe, and Diet Rockstar. It was freaking hilarious to me to offer the Mayor of Eugene (with all the prestige and power such a title confers) a Diet Rockstar or a bottle of Sobe. When the Mayor asked him for a bottle of water he was only able to come back with one of the above and even he could laugh about how ridiculous that situation was.

Other hilarious story. Sanjay is at a bar, waiting for a drink. Some guy is standing next to him and doesn't like, for one reason or another the cut of his jib. So he turns to Sanjay and says "Did you win the lottery?" Sanjay has gotten some bad vibes from this guy and responds with a slightly antagonistic swagger. He says "Does it look like I won the lottery?" The guy responds, I shit you not, with the line that I have adapted to nearly everything I have said to Sanjay since "Does it look like I'm asking, A-rab?" Seriously, who says A-rab, outside of maybe the high school debaters referenced by Natalie? Maybe its an opportune time for INS guy to make a comeback.

Katie and I rearranged the living room a bit last night and Hippo has been somewhat confused about where to sit all day. She has been alternating between Katie's laptop and the windowsill all day, but now looks in a mood to play in her persian kittenish fashion. I cannot even express how cute she is when attempting to determine whether she can make the jump onto the console table. She stands on her back legs like an ewok and tries to see what is there before she leaps. Better safe than sorry. Regardless, I have to grab her crackly fish toy before she attacks my leg in retribution.

Peace,

MB-K

I'm The Luckiest Guy, On The Lower East Side, I've Got Wheels, and You Wanna Go For a Butt

Landed in Portland and got picked up by Andy and Sanjay in a car belonging to their friend Jimmy. Jimm'y s a really sweet guy, he hung out with us pretty much every night when I was in town. Dude's got a gambling problem and an unhealthy obsession with men with monosyllabic names, but a sweet guy without question. It was totally awesome that he let us use the car btw, since it would have blown to ride the 2 hours from Portland in the back of Andy's mid-80s Camry. While the Pac Northwest at least has Jack in the Box, and can hence claim one measure of civilization beyond Western New York, it has not been well graced by the Krispy to the Kree-ame so we made our way to the closest one to Eugene in the Western suburbs of Portland, I think. Jimmy, Oregon boy that he is, had never had a Krispy Kreme donut. I felt horrible that he did not get to experience it while the hot light was on, but check this out: THE PORTLAND KRISPY KREME IS NOT 24 HOURS!!! We got there about 30 minutes before it closed and the ordering process was a disaster, since Andy kept insisting on selecting random donuts despite sitting in the backseat, not being in condition to reasonably order donuts, and yelling over everyone. There was also a significant dispute over how many bottles of milk were required and some moments which bordered on Tenacious D at the drive-thru. Sanjay for some reason reacted to this nonsensical explosion by ordering half a dozen of our assortment to be Raspberry Filled Glazed donuts, which, in my mind should be illegal. We did buy 3 full dozen that evening, so I got my share of the Original Glazed that I wanted (fundamentally there is no other Krispy to the Kre-ame in my world).

We spent the parts of the drive back that were not crammed with donuty goodness making fun of Sanjay's I-Pod. Not becasue there is anything wrong with Sanjay's I-Pod, but Andy had informed me that Sanjay is really pissed at the Nano because everyone wants it and so his favorite toy (the big I-Pod) is not considered as cool, though he insists it is better in every way shape and form. If you are ever in a conversation with Sanjay, ask him how he can even walk when he is carrying that gigantic tank of a music player, wouldn't it be easier to just carry a boombox on your shoulder like a stereotyped breakdancer on a Fat Albert cartoon or something. There are moments from the trip to Oregon that simply aren't appropriate for public discussion, but believe me when I say they were awesome. We partied for a little while on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and I didn't get to sleep until somewhere around 4:30 AM.

When Andy reads this, if he ever does, he will inevitably get pissed that I am making fun of him. I have attempted to elide this complaint by first mentioning a funny story about making fun of Sanjay and second, by intedning to include all the positive impressive things Andy has been up to. That said I am going to make fun of Andy on occassion, there are just too many good stories. For one, Andy has like 4 alarm clocks requiired to wake him up. There were at least 5 total alarms between the various clocks and cell phones he set the night before. He did manage to get up and get going the following day at least, but returned home sometime in the afternoon and canceled his class. If you havent been in college for a while, you may have forgotten that this is something proffessors do, its one of the good parts of our gig. Its not high school and sometimes other shit gets in the way. This is not funny. The funny thing is that one of ANDY'S STUDENTS CALLED HIM ON THE PHONE AND CHEWED HIM OUT FOR CANCELING CLASS. I cannot imagine what I would even say if one of my students told me that I was not allowed to determine whether or not class would take place. Not to mention, who gets mad cuz their class is canceled. I mean, yeah, it can be kind of frustrating to get something done in time and then find out you didnt need to put in the extra work, but still. Maybe I'm the only one who loved it when you'd show up, assuming you were condemned to an hour or two of boing ass French lecture, for instance, and then realize that you had 2 free hours. If you want you can do your work, its bonus time. If not, you hadn't planned on gettting anything done then anyway, so there is no loss.

Hippo is, despite my assurances to the contrary, content in her belief that the cords to my computer are attacking her and as a result she has deployed her vicious finsihing move the "Multi Paw Hippo Fire" against them. Before she chews her way into my hard drive, I am gonna go play.

Peace,

MB-K