Shabu Shabu

So, this week I didn't really plan much.  I tried going to an NBA playoff game, but that obviously didn't work out.  I work about a mile from Staples Center and the game had already started when I got off work.  This was game 5 of the Western Conference Finals- Lakers V Nuggets.   I figured I could get there right around half time, and at half time I might be able to get in for 50 bucks or so. 

That was not the case.  Tickets were still going for $250, $200 and crazy things like that.  For one half of basketball. The cheapest I found was in the upper bowl for $100.  I didn't make it in.

My new thing for last week ended up being not too exciting.  It was

 trying a food I'd never had from Japan called Shabu Shabu.  The restaurant boils a pot of water on your table and gives you a tray of vegetables, noodles and your choice of meet.  We got beef.  It's really thinly sliced.  You take your sticks and put the meet in the boiling water for like 4 seconds and its cooked.  All you do is change the col

or from red to brown and that's it.  It's good food.  And probably healthy because the Japanese live to like 140.  

I didn't take this picture, but this is what it looks like.

I Killed Pedro

New Thing #2.

For week 2 of 52, I killed Pedro.  Then I ate him.  

I picked Pedro out of a group of about 15 of his closest peers.  I drove him back to my place and introduced him to my roommates.  They liked him, but agreed that he should be killed.  I put him back in his bag and stuck him in the fridge for a couple of hours.   Pedro is a lobster, or was a lobster.  Now he's dead.

Around 5:30, I figured I was getting a little hungry and it was time for Pedro to die.  I boiled a large pot of water and pulled him out of his bag.  I read online that if you rub his belly, it hypnotizes the lobster in order to make it easier to throw him into the pot.  That didn't seem to be the case with Pedro.  I rubbed his belly, and then when I tried to put him in his pot, he freaked out.  He wiggled all over and for some reason it caught me by surprise.  It shouldn't have.  I had a live animal in my hand.  Live animals move.  Live animals especially move when they get hurt.  Boiling water hurts.   Nonetheless, it freaked me out and I didn't get him in the pot on the first try.  

I did on the second try.  He was still alive for a couple of minutes.  

I felt pretty bad for Pedro, but I not bad enough to save him.  Had I saved him at this point, he'd probably would have been a vegetable for the rest of his life anyway.  If not that, his brain would be really slow and he'd no longer be able to do sudokus.  What's the point of life without a sudoku?  Remember 2004 and the presudoku era?  It sucked.  So, I figured it best to put him out of his misery.  I left him in the pot to boil a slow, painful, tasty death.

Pedro tasted good.

Taking the Plunge

I'm 24 years old, and I've pretty much been drinking every weekend for the past nine years.  Well, not exactly every weekend, but I'd say the bulk of them.  It wasn't that I felt like I always had to be drinking.  It was simply that that's what my friends and I had always done for fun.  It became what I knew.  When Friday came, I'd buy alcohol.  It was just the norm.  

So, I was thinking there are probably a lot of other ways to have fun that I've been ignoring. I had a conversation back in January with a friend of a friend about her friend's New Years Resolution.  So, the conversation was about a friend of a friend of a friend.  This conversation obviously took place at a bar.  Anyway, this guy's resolution was to do something he had never done before once a week for all 52 weeks.  I thought that was genius, and planned to do that for 2010.  But, now I figure why wait?  Why not start now and make my own year?  The Earth is still going to make a full revolution back to this point, right?  That is the definition of a year, so that works.  There is no finish line that the Earth passes on December 31.  So, I'll do it now, and it's got to start with a bang.  So, to start- I went bungee jumping. 

There's this place in the Angeles Mountains called the Bridge to Nowhere.  You hike five miles there, bungee jump off the bridge, and hike back.  A friend of mine, Sean, and I did this on May 10th, thus making May 10th my New Year's Day.  

The hike takes your through the mountains, across the San Gabriel river 10 times or so, and finally to the bridge.   I'm not going to lie, I was scared as all hell for the last mile of the hike.  Then, at the bridge, they go over like 115 ways that you can make yourself look like an idiot.  So, now on top of being scared, I'm worried that I'm going to forget to do something correctly and look like an idiot.  Once I got on the platform, I blacked it all out of my mind and just jumped.  It went all right.  Good times.  Here's the video of my jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AtL5B_4hBU

And of Sean's jump.  Sean jumped with a camera in his hand and I filmed it from the bridge, so it's split screen of the two vantage points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RRnaY-pZwM&feature=channel_page

I also saw the Shins in concert that night, so does that count for 2 in 1?  Because, I went home the next weekend to Saint Louis and didn't do anything new.

An Open Letter to the Chicago Blackhawks

Dear Chicago Blackhawks,

I would have never thought I'd be so appreciative of you.  But, I'd like to openly say thank you for your contributions over the past week.   Last Wednesday, you beat the hell out of my Saint Louis Blues.  Though it was only 3-1 on the scoreboard, if you watched the game you realized it was demoralizing.  The game left the Blues two points on the outside of the playoffs with five games to go.  

If you looked at the schedule, you would realize only two teams controlled the Blues fate.  The Blues and the Blackhawks.  The Blues needed to win and have Nashville lose.  Nashville played Chicago twice in the next three games, thus Blackhawks win- Blues win.  The Blues did their job and took 5 out of 6 points, including a win in Detroit.  And, thankfully, the Blackhawks did their job and beat Nashville twice in regulation.  Now, with two games to go, The Blues have a 2 point lead in 8th place thanks to their play and the play of the Chicago Blackhawks.  

10 Year old me would be ashamed that I cheered for the Blackhawks to win a game, much less two.  17 year old me would be ashamed that I cared what happened to the Nashville Predators.  But times have changed, and it seems the Blackhawks have done the trick for their old rival and cleared the way for them into the playoffs.  

Now all the Blues have to do is win.  As for the Predators, they have to beat Detroit and hope.  So, for the first time, and probably the last time in my life- I will say thank you Chicago Blackhawks, and for one game, and one game only- Let's go Red Wings.  But, please note that while I'm okay with the Blackhawks staying alive, I'd prefer for the third period to come to an end in Detroit with the Wings on top, and then the stadium collapse killing the entire Red Wing team.  Except Datsyuk.  He's exciting to watch.

Thanks,

Joey

Big Monday of Sports

I like that the sports gods allowed for baseball to start on the same day that March Madness ended.  That was nice of them.  It allows me to continue to have more than just the Blues playoff run.  But the Blues playoff run is more important right now than baseball.  

Hopefully, the next Top Chef season will start the same day the Blues get knocked out of the playoffs.  That would really keep me together and happy.  

This is the most boring thing anyone has ever read or written.  

Board Game Movies

It  has been brought to my attention that they are making movies from the following board games:

Clue (again, that's fine)

Monopoly

Ouija Board

Candy Land

So, I've decided to take it upon myself and write the script for Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Fade In

Ext. Red Place

Four Hippos are sitting around staring at each other.  They wonder why they are not in a river in Africa. 

YELLOW HIPPO

I'm Hungry, Hungry.

GREEN HIPPO

Well, isn't that just the 

darnedest thing.  I was thinking

the same thing.

BLUE HIPPO

As for me, I Could do some

munching on a tasty treat.

PURPLE HIPPO

I Purple.

Some balls fly in from nowhere.  

GREEN HIPPO

Fantabulous, some balls!

They all munch on some balls.

Munch. Munch. Munch.

BLUE HIPPO

I love munching on these balls.

GREEN HIPPO

My balls are a bit spicy.  How

are your balls?

BLUE HIPPO

A bit salty, but at least

they are not blue.

YELLOW HIPPO

My balls are firm.  

PURPLE HIPPO

I purple.

They finish eating balls. 

GREEN HIPPO

You still hungry, hungry?

YELLOW HIPPO

No.

FADE TO BLACK.

That should save Hollywood some time.  Except to see this in a theater near you summer of 2010.  

10 Conversations To Hear

The Friday, January 30th edition of Variety feature an article in which Roger Ebert listed ten conversations between film directors he'd like to hear if he was stranded on a desert island.  

I kind of think he'd have a better chance at hearing these conversations if he was in the thick of society rather than alone on an island, but it was still an interesting article.  IT got me thinking about what ten conversations would I like to hear.  No rules, no restrictions from time periods or death, just what conversations would be the most interesting for me to hear.  Some of these wouldn't be the most important conversations in the world, they would just be interesting to me.  So here they are in no particular order of importance.

1.  Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King Jr.

On leadership and the art of the spoken word.

2. Albert Einstein and Franklin Roosevelt.

On the aftermath of Einstein's recommendation that the atomic bomb be developed.

3. Robert McNamara and Kurt Vonnegut.

On war.

4. Muhammad and Jesus.

On religion.

5. Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

On storytelling and youth.

6. Bobby Knight and Vince Lombardi.

On coaching and treatment of players.

7. Al Capone and Lucky Luciano.

On organized crime.

8. Thomas Jefferson and George W. Bush.

On the Presidency and Jefferson's vision of the country vs where it is today, because somehow both of these guys held the same job.

9. George Carlin and Jerry Seinfeld.

On what is comedy.

10. My mom and my dad.

On their marriage. 

These are not set in stone and reserve the right to change them as time goes on.