Archive for the “That Imaginary Friend” Category

Ok. There are at least 7 people taking pictures of this guy. Sure, it’s a triumphant pose and all, but come on! Stereotyping is frowned upon, but Asians really do take a lot of pictures.

It’s a good time to review an album that has become one of my turntable’s favorites. The Crane Wife by The Decemberists was voted as the best album of 2006 by listeners of NPR. Yeah, so this isn’t cutting edge news, there’s no ticker in the background, there is no ‘this just in’, but the album was good enough for me to buy a few times.

Colin Meloy, the driver of The Decemberists, delivers his cunning lyrics, and word play with the grace and cleverness you’d expect. I’d normally go on and on to sickening ends to talk about trends within their artistic career of which I enjoy in entirity, or particular tracks, but instead, just listen to the first two and figure out if you want more. They are a great taste of his/their style.

Let’s talk about the story behind The Crane Wife. It is an old Japanese tale with many variations, but all revolving around the same premise. Here’s my version:

A poor man is walking back from the market through a hilltop trail in the green lush wild gardens of the Japanese mountains. He comes across a crane that has an arrow in it’s wing. Scooping it up with delicate precision, he cradles the crane in a soft cloth that was meant to carry the groceries home that he could not afford. The man brings the crane to his home and nurses it back to good health with the little that he has. Although sad to lose his crane friend, it is time to allow it to fly free, he does so with sadness, and the crane flies back to the lush wild gardens.

The next day a woman comes to his house looking for a place to rest. The kind man allows her to stay with him, and after a time, they fall deeply in love and get married. They are very happy together, but still very poor. The woman suggests that she can weave fine silk cloths to sell at the market. The only catch is that the man must not ever watch her when she is weaving. So, behind closed doors, she weaves silk that is of the finest quality in town.

The couple make enough money to live quite comfortably, but that isn’t enough for the man. He asks his wife to continue weaving more than necessary to satisfy the growing demand at the market for this fine silk. The man’s wife is growing tired and weak with all the weaving she is doing, but the once kind man doesn’t care. So in diminishing health she weaves and weaves while the man’s greed increases more and more. Interested in finding out why or how this silk is so precious, the man breaks the sacred vow and opens the door to see his wife’s weaving secrets. When he opens the door he doesn’t find his wife, but finds the crane behind the loom, plucking out it’s feathers. The crane gets spooked by the man and flies away, never to return.

So the moral of the story is that men are greedy little bastards. Also, money is bad, and never help a wounded crane.

And that is The Crane Wife in review. Pick up a copy, if I haven’t given you one yet. I bought it on iTunes once, and on vinyl twice. It’s a good album.

So, no card this year. There appears to be too much stubborn anger. But I can still say it to myself on a blog.

Happy Birthday to you.

I am no hippie. You won’t find me endorsing drum circles, hacky sack circles or smoking grass in circles. I do, however, enjoy a round of disc golf every once in a while. It’s a fun time throwing a frisbee down the fairway towards a metal chain basket at the end of a golf hole. Anyone can pick up a frisbee and give it a good throw. Your chances of hitting a target, or at least a general direction, are much greater than wildly swinging a club.

Perhaps its the combination of smoking cigars, drinking beer, betting skins per hole or being outside engaged in an activity, but disc golf is a fun way to spend an afternoon. It takes little or no practice to get out there, and instead of spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on a decent set of clubs, you buy a few discs for a couple dollars each.

I’m looking into what it takes to become a professional disc golfer. Because disc golf isn’t a real sport (don’t try to convince me otherwise) I think there is just a yearly membership fee to pay to call yourself a pro. I could carry around a card, looking for special celebrity treatment.

Normally, meat on a stick comes in one variety, corn dogs. I’ve been known to indulge in a corn dog or two in my day, but this post is about something way more than a mere corn dog. This is about an invention that I’m going to name Braconloin. If you are Jewish, Muslim, or celebrating a holiday that forbids eating pork, then stop reading here, the dish described below is not delicious, and should be avoided at all costs.

That last statement is not true at all. This was one of the greatest pieces of meat that I have ever tasted. Braconloin is a creative combination of bratwurst, bacon, and pork tenderloin. It’s an intense, artery clogging experience that is bound to give you a heart attack in about 5 seconds flat. But those 4 seconds prior to death are heavenly and worth the price. Want a picture, sure you do. I’ve included a specially coded image here, it’s a scratch and sniff. Go ahead, give it a try.

Here’s the recipe, it’s not that complicated, there’s no need to grab a pencil, just take a mental image of the photo above. We cooked it on a spit, a rotating spear basically. Call it a rotissery. Anyway, first spear some bratwurst. We lined three in a row. Then take some pork tenderloin, and carve it so that it is longer and flat. Wrap the tenderloin over the bratwurst. It will help to use 4 hands at this point. Take some thawed thick cut bacon and stretch it long ways. You will be able to nearly double the original length of the bacon. Then wrap it around the tenderloin and around itself. It will stick to itself pretty securely. Then tie a little piece of string around the bacon, and use toothpicks for any pieces that are trying to break free. You’ll end up with something that looks like what you see in the picture below.

Upon cooking this ridiculous piece of meat, make sure keep an eye on it for flare-ups. With the combined grease of bacon and brats, its bound to drip flammable grease and burn to a crisp if you aren’t careful. Standing by the grill with a beer in hand is a pretty amazing way to spend a few hours of a Saturday evening. The effort will prove to be worth it. We cooked it for about 2.5 – 3 hours. Slow roasting provides the best taste. With high heat initially, place some charcoal and wet wood chips over the flames, then turn all burners off completely to let the charcoal slow cook the meat and the smoke work it’s magic.

On the count of three, everyone scream braconloin. One, two, three… BRACONLOIN! It’s called the marvelous meat show. Enjoy!

Yesterday an earthquake hit the Pacific Ocean near American Somoa, about 4,000 miles from San Diego. Because of the earthquake, there were reports and rumors that nearly 12 hours later, a tsunami might hit the Southern California coastline. Naturally, reporting from Destroyed by Madness, I found a strong arm pushing me towards the coast to see if I could be destroyed by nature. Unfortunately for me, nature, and madness, the results were less than catastrophic.

At about 9pm last night, two friends and I high-tailed it to the beach to see if we could catch a view of a tsunami. Weather reports were sending out all sorts of warnings, and predicted it to hit the coast around 9:15ish. We first went to the top of a bluff over-looking the ocean and beach from about 40-60 feet up. This didn’t feel nearly close enough to put us in any kind of danger, so we went down to a smaller bluff that is only 20-30 feet above the beach. Again, it just felt like we wouldn’t be close enough to the action, so we went all the way down to the beach and stood just out of the ocean’s reach. If a tsunami hit the coast, we would find ourselves attempting to outrun a big-ass wave. Of course we would have been unsuccessful, and probably killed instantly or pulled out to sea, but it would have been a pretty wild ride.

9:15 came and went, and nothing in the water came remotely close to what I imagine to be tsunami characteristics. We waited for close to an hour for the big wave to take us out before we headed back up the bluffs. The only noticeable difference in the water from the bluff was that the waves were quite obviously traveling from south to north instead of their normal near-parallel approach to the beach.

Sure, we admitted defeat in our quest to be very badly injured. But we did walk away from the beach triumphant over mother nature. She’s a scared little bitch.

I forgot to post about this one, but was dumping photos from my camera the other day and figured that you all want to know a little about Mixed Martial Arts. Or at least my experience hanging out with a bunch of fighters back stage at one of the events. It took place in a casino near Palm Springs, and I went to support a fighter that also happened to be my Kung Fu instructor.

The whole thing was a bit odd to me, especially knowing that I in no way ever need to fight for fun. Sure, I’d like to punch something (or sometimes someone) as hard as I can just to find out if I’d break my hand or the target, but the idea of getting hit with the same force is enough of a turn-off for me never to need to find out. But it was fun watching other people find out the hard way.

Although I would probably never buy a ticket to spectate the event, it was cool to hang out backstage and watch the interaction between personalities that are built to fight. Surprisingly enough, they were all really cool. The most aggressive a-holes were those spectating. Anyway, I saw a few knockouts. Unfortunately, one instructor from my school lost by way of knockout. But my kung fu instructor won by submission against his opponent in a minute and a half in the first round. His opponent was fighting in his hometown as the favorite. It was pretty rad to see. Especially because I was hanging out at ringside as a trainer. Here’s a video:

Now that’s it written as a post, I’m starting to realize that the event isn’t so interesting, as I am not the subject. I’ll pick a fight with some hells angels for my next post and live to tell the story for my next post.

Getting hands wrapped pre-fight.

It’s funny telling friends that I’m going to a Phillies game when I live in San Diego. As far as I’m concerned, when the Phillies are in town, Petco Park no longer belongs to the Padres. There’s plenty of Philly fans out here that feel the same way. I’d estimate that about 25% of the fans that went to last nights game were rooting for the Phils. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that they won the Series last year. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt.

The seats were great. The night was fun. It started with $2 cans of PBR at a little hipster coffee shop that looks onto the stadium. Then I got to watch the Phillies slaughter the Pads in amazing seats. The Pilly Phanatic was even there! I love that Philly is probably the only city in the world that can get away with having a perverted mascot. Seriously, that crazy phanatic is always trying to goose anyone within arms reach. And the pelvic thrusts are priceless. Enough about the Phanatic. I also had a few angry Padres fans yelling from behind me. It seems like around every turn I was cheering. Kane even saw me in the stands. Pretty cool. After that, I went to a bar and shot a few games of pool against a few random people that ended up considering me a pool God. All in all, a swell Tuesday night.

Decent view from hipster coffee house.

Great seats.

Watch out for death.

If you made it all the way to the end of this entry, congratulations, you win a prize. It’s another encounter of absurdity. I was driving back to work this afternoon after taking a 3 hour nap at noon (I thought my appendix was spilling toxins in my abdomen – another story) and heard a rap song coming from an SUV sitting next to me at a stop light. Here’s the single line that I heard, loud and clear, just before the light turns green. Take from it what you will.

Nigga, Nigga, Nigga, Nigga, Nigga, Bitch, Ho

Someone paid for this, and was proud to be blasting it from their car. Pop culture has reared its ugly head into something altogether different, yet not so unpredictable.

This one’s for a couple of the coolest people I know. Try to compete. I dare ya!

I have known this guy for decades. It is amazing that we are 30 years old now, and still connect on a regular basis after all these years. Our lives have moved in interesting, amazing, and opposite directions in the past few years, but the friendship really hasn’t changed all that much. Besides living on the opposite side of the country for the time being, when I come home and hang out with Rob we still go fishing, play video games, watch sports, and goof off. And all that is even more fun now because we get to do that with his wild child, and amazing wife. I’m really looking forward to throwing Jen into the mix.

Make no mistake though, Jac will make sure to let us know that we aren’t nearly as cool as we think we are, although I’m pretty sure she secretly admires anyone wearing an xbox headset. And anyone that can shrug off a full-speed collision with a fence at my house on Bristol Rd is pretty perfect. It makes sense that an awesome guy gets the awesome girl.

I remember hanging out at the beach in Jersey. Rob and I would walk about 60 blocks to the boardwalk talking about what items qualified as babe magnets and what were babe repellents. Blind Dave was born that summer; he died that summer too, but what a life he lived. I was led around by Rob who conveniently walked by low hanging objects for me to smack my head on. The greatest mockery of blind people must have been when he led me to an ice cream parlor and was reading the flavors in a very calm and sweet voice. Once I decided that I didn’t want any ice cream after all, Rob started to yell at me, a poor blind boy. He was saying things like, “Dammit! First you say you want ice cream, now you say you don’t, what’s your problem!? Make up your god damn mind! I’m so sick of this!” People must have looked at him with disgust. Then telling a couple of girls passing by that a blind guy thought they were hot and wanted to meet them. Funny, terrible stuff.

I also remember hunkering down in a tent at the Thousand Islands when the craziest lightning storm was moving in. Go inside? Hell no! We’re not afraid of a little weather! Once forced inside by the parents, we awoke to find the weaker half of a tree laying on top of the tent. Or what about capsizing a canoe when another storm was rolling in only to swim, with canoe in hand, with a steel canoe in hand pulling us down, to the nearest lighthouse covered in barnacles. Luckily a passerby was there for the rescue. I don’t know about Rob, but I still feel a little bad about tracking bloody footprints around the deck of their boat.

Our fishing excursions always left a memorable moment or two behind as well. Like the time Jay decided to join us on a trip down the Neshaminy Creek. He was so sick that day, throwing up every few yards we traveled. Rob and I had some fish to catch and wouldn’t be held back by anything or anyone. Jay would barely catch up to the area where we were fishing and we would move further down the stream. Or what about the time you had the chance to try to pull a barbed hook out of Mike Capo’s head.

Every once in a while karma would creep in too. Like the time that we went out fishing with your Dad in the rough and open ocean with his smaller boat. I’m pretty sure that between the two of us there were 100+ upchucks over the side. One thing I know for a fact, though, is that “Split-Lip” Wayne will never be forgot.

As we get a little older, not too many things are changing in our friendship dynamic. Women and alcohol have worked their way into our lives, but the video games and fishing remained. If there was only a way to combine these things. Wait a second… if a picture is worth a thousand words, this one is worth a million. Notice the case of Miller Lite in the background.

There are so many more stories we’ve shared, so many memories. I will never forget these things that have shaped me into the person I am today. Happy birthday Rob. You are an awesome guy and I can only hope that our friendship continues to grow in the years to come. Here’s to another 30…

Now get your wifi cookin’ so we can get some Madden time in!

Ok, I haven’t posted in a while. That’s cool, though, because I’ve been eating, sleeping, practicing Kung Fu, playing NES Kung Fu, drinking beer, playing with remote controlled gliders, listening to music, riding my motorcycle, wearing sunglasses and hanging with the Edman.

The trip out was pretty cool all around… for me. I’m pretty sure he enjoyed it too. After about a day, it just seemed like he lived out here with me and we were just hangin. I’m sure it would have felt the same if any of you came out. But because none of you have, it’s the Edman that gets MVP.

The trip was pretty action packed. I tried to fit as much in as humanly possible without it seeming like we were always on the run. He got out on Thursday, and by Friday evening, we had already been up to LA, seen the sights of Hollywood and surrounding areas, picked up his brother and had been hit on by the older women of McCabe’s. By Saturday, I found out what the max number of guests was that I can handle at my place at one time. That number is 4. I also found out that Ed looks pretty gay in pictures. Here’s the first.

After exploring the hollywood hills, we finally found the super-secret spot for a photo opp. No outlet my ass!

You can see the Hollywood sign from a bunch of places throughout the hills of Hollywood and surrounding areas. But there is a no-outlet road where we took our picture which is pretty much the closest you can get to it without hiking all the way to the top. The residents hate having tourists drive through their streets, as they are very tight as it is. But then again, they are living next to the god damn Hollywood sign. It’d be like people living next to Niagara Falls. Get used to seeing tourists. I have.

Most days we woke up and got a little bit of work done from my place, and didn’t get out until about noon. It was relaxing that way, and am glad it worked out the way it did. We ate an obscene amount of Mexican food, checked out the seals down in La Jolla, walked around the gaslamp district of downtown San Diego, got to check out PB, drove the PCH a couple of times, and even had an afternoon on the beach. Here’s another gay picture of the one and only.

I’ll write more when I have more time.

To be continued…

I’ll be at the local George Burger in San Marcos this afternoon signing press photos for all my fans. Look for a disheveled man wearing a backwards jeff cap and a motorcycle helmet sitting at a booth by himself, and I’ll be happy to sign your press photos, cleavage, forehead, or whatever you have for me to sign.

I finally got these back today from my excursion to the away team’s dugout at Petco Park in San Diego. I’ll tell you, it still seems a little surreal that I was allowed to roam free in a place like that.

I scoff at these signs...

Here’s an interesting side note. I’m pretty sure I could roam free at any given time with the pass I was given. Because of a few security comments on the color, my guess is that the look of the thing either rarely or never changes. All I need is a scanner, and a pen to write the current date on it, and I should be good to go. I think taking advantage of the pass would only lose the initial excitement. Knowing that I’m not really allowed wouldn’t feel the same.

Anyway, here’s a photo taken by the photographer with my bad ass self hanging out in the dugout with our pitcher Brett Myers. Good stuff.

Someone needs to show the photographer how to hold the camera straight. Click on this one.

One thing that I forgot to mention in my initial post was something that I found in the press boxes. First of all, Steve and I explored every nook and crany in the stadium, as well as in the press boxes. In designated areas, there are all sorts of photocopied sheets with tons of information on them. Of course I grabbed a few to see what they were. I was surprised to find out what kind of information they contained. I used to respect the amount of knowledge a sportscaster or newswritter had in his head about any specific player, and their history of playing the game. That is complete bullshit, because every little piece of information, stat, or body gas is contained within these packets. If the player farted while up to bat at a preseason game in 1982, the details are contained within. So if any player does anything out of the ordinary (ie. homerun, steals a base, etc.) they have all the info to compare it against the history against the team as well as the statitistic throughout the league.

for my peeps south of the border...

Anyway, I’ll be sharing stories and silly antics at my signing in George Burger this afternoon. Come and hear about that time I was standing on the field peacing out. It was awesome!