Worst of the KFB

The Kitchen Fresh Blog completed its first year two months ago, so what better way to celebrate than emphasize some of the crappier moments in this space?

In the spirit of the Not Top 10 on Sportscenter, please find my five least favorite posts to this blog. In other words, I wish I had never written them.

In general, while reviewing the first year of the blog, I've noticed a few things.

Complaining about spare change seems to be a theme on the blog. As do rants about the Red Sox, weather forecasts, politics, and the Jets. Not surprisingly, these posts are of low quality.

My favorite posts were generally from things that have happened to me or from observations that I think are clever. I think the latter category may make me seem a bit smug, but it is my blog, after all.

Not-Top 5

1) Writer's Block posts. These are silly, and I've done it twice.

2) Speaking of posting things twice, why don't I tell the same story twice? I guess it was so traumatic, I had to tell it again.

3) I'm just an idiot. It's a chain restaurant!

4) I don't really understand the joke in this post... I wrote the joke!

5) In general, I had posted a lot about these vanity searches. Boring.

While I found these five to be the poorest in quality, in general, there were a lot of mediocre posts to the space, mostly revolving around current events, and posting links. I need a little better quality control.

Best of the KFB

As if having a blog wasn't self-aggrandizing enough, here is a post to that blog that highlights my favorite posts. Consider, it as "Blogman's favorites."

Of course, May 13, 2005 was the actual first anniversary of the blog, so it's great to put something together two and a half months later commemerating the event.

These are the posts in their order that they were posted.

1) My crazy roommate plays this silly name game. This is one of the stories that inspired the creation of the KFB.

2) Salads. I've never had a satisfactory answer to this question.

3) This post manages to capture two observations - one about complex family situations and the other about man-purses.

4) It's not often that I have my camera at the same time that I observe something funny.

5) Group dynamics. One of my favorite topics.

6) Sort of similar to #4, although the bottle wasn't going to go anywhere.

7) I can't believe this actually happened.

8) What is the convention on this anyways?

9) I found this to be fairly clever.

10) This still happens to me!

11) I haven't watched Law & Order in a while.

12) New York City is a strange place. Sort of the same theme as #7.

13) This post about Chien-Ming Wang is a bit silly, but wouldn't it be so funny??

14) Yet another true story about something that happened to me on the street.

Spare Some Change?

I have a personal policy not to help anyone asking me for change, regardless of what they look like or their story. The reason for this is that I've been hoodwinked before and so I don't like to be taken advantage of because I'm nice. Therefore, I just assume everybody asking for change or food is up to no good, and then deny their request.

Today, a couple asked me for change and for some reason, I felt pretty bad for them. It's made me re-think the policy. Instead of punishing those who actually need assistance because of those who might not, shouldn't I just accept that not everybody is honest and at least help those few that I can? It's not like I couldn't afford to drop a dollar here or there to help folks out, even if they all don't need help. I don't think this will change my policy but it's something that was passing through my mind this morning.

Changing Gears: Personal July Recap

Looking back at the blog, I've realized that I hadn't posted too many personal anecdotes, which is generally what these blogs are for. So here's a quick recap on my month of July, which featured many trips and goings-on.

July 2 - Live 8 concert in Philadelphia. I wrote a post about this.

July 4 - Fireworks at South Street Seaport. I never took any photos of all the things happening there, but it was jam packed. The friend I went to Live 8 with was also at the fireworks with me, and I told him I thought there were bigger crowds at the fireworks but he disagreed.

July 8 - Yankees versus Cleveland Indians. The second Yankee win I've attended. It was also visor night. There's a post about this, too.

July 11 - I skipped work during the day in order to get tickets to "As You Like It," a production of Shakespeare in the Park. It was a good show, with great production quality, and the stage was beautiful, especially at sunset. The lead, Rosalind, was played by Lynn Collins, who I guess has been romantically linked to Keanu Reeves. One thing about the comedy is that Shakespeare comedies seem fairly formulaic (I'm no literary critic). Someone cross-dresses, there's a misunderstanding and a bunch of weddings. They all lived happily (very happily) ever after. There you have another Shakespeare comedy! The other realization I had this day was that there are so many people in New York City who don't work. I'm not sure what these people do for a living but it's not working.

Week of July 11 - Also included a trip to Chinatown for dinner, drinks at the 79th Street Boat Basin, dinner in Times Square (Spanky's BBQ) and a dinner in Times Square followed by drinks in the East Village. Busy week but I don't have any silly stories to tell from any of these events.

July 16-17 - I visited Boston for the third time in three months. I've got a lot of friends up there so it's always nice to pass through the area. Before leaving, I got measured for a tuxedo for an upcoming wedding in December. Then, I stopped off in Connecticut at a BBQ hosted by the couple to be married in December. The weekend in Boston consisted of dinner, drinks and then dim sum Sunday morning. It was nice to see everyone, but I wish I could have spent a little more time up there. The drive was treacherous since I was very tired.

July 18 - I saw the Stephen Chow movie, Kung Fu Hustle. I enjoyed this film much more than Shaolin Soccer. It was much funnier. Someone told me that Ebert called it a combination of Bugs Bunny and Quinten Tarantino. This is a great description since it has the Looney Tunes type of silliness.

July 19 - The dinner destination was Spice Market, a hip and trendy Jean Georges restaurant that opened last year in the Meatpacking District. It was tasty, although a little expensive. We had chicken samosas and a spicy shaved tuna for appetizers, a grilled chicken and a cod dish for the main course, accompanied by ginger rice and for dessert, some sort of ice cream sandwich. I forget the flavor of the ice cream (Thai tea?) but it wasn't too sweet and very tasty. We also got drinks - a mojito and a mai tai. The decor is pretty cool, the restaurant is huge. There's so much hype, I'm not sure the place could ever live up to it, but it was definitely a hip place to be and the food was tasty. I don't know why there is such a difficulty in securing a reservation to this place (I made this one back in early July) because it wasn't packed when we arrived at 8pm.

July 22 - I moved. To a three bedroom apartment just down the road. My roommates are cool, although one of them hasn't moved in yet.

July 23 - Two milestones. I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and I saw reigning NBA MVP Steve Nash while at dinner in the East Village. No comments on the Potter book, except I like to brag about how I reserved it back in January at the NY Public Library and got it right after it came out. What is it that makes Harry so popular? As for Steve Nash, I didn't talk to him, but it was exciting since I don't usually have a lot of celebrity sightings (although in June I passed Ice-T walking down the street in Times Square).

Also on July 23, I had a really substandard experience at Cold Stone Creamery. Not only did we not get very much ice cream, but there were only three strawberries mixed in! While I'm complaining about Cold Stone, why must they try to up-sell the customer on everything? It's like trying to buy a TV at Best Buy, except instead of "Would you like a service plan?" the question is "Would you like a larger ice cream? More mixed in?" Are these guys on commission?

July 24 - I had the waffle ice cream sandwich at the Original New York Milkshake Company. This will not be the last time I have this waffle ice cream sandwich.

July 25 - After several months of missing Smallville, I'm starting to catch up. Five more episodes for the rest of the season. The episode from this evening? Lex Luthor is split into two, his evil and good sides. For some reason I'm finding Kristen Kreuk (Lana Lang) less attractive than in the past. We've been away from each other for too long.

July 26 - Out to dinner on the West Side, at a mexican place. Why isn't this place listed in Zagat or on MenuPages? Note to self: while a chimichanga sounds good because of the words "deep-fried flour tortilla," it really isn't.

Well, that's a recap. If anything cool happens in these last three days, I'll keep the KFB posted.

Fight Club

Ninth Rule of Fight Club: Do not tell the NY Times about Fight Club.

What a great snippet to get me to read the article:
"In small cities and towns where there is not much to do, cage fighting is making a comeback."

Speaking of fighting, I saw an ad the other day for the WWE Summerslam. The headline match? Hulk Hogan versus Shawn Michaels: Immortality has a price. Was that an ad from twenty years ago? No, it's 52 year-old Hogan versus 40 year-old Michaels. I don't know if I should be amazed that these guys at their ages can keep up with the physicality (steroids?) or amused by professional wrestling's inability to market new stars.

NBA Coaches

Larry Brown is headed to the Knicks at the tune of nearly $10 million per year. That will be more than Phil Jackson makes, around $7-10 million annually.

Mike Francesa on WFAN made a good point yesterday - when did NBA coaches make out so well on the pay scale?

The highest paid NFL coach? Parcells and Gruden make around $3 million, and Spurrier made around $5 million. I was looking for Bill Belichek's salary (he should probably be the highest paid) but it's probably in that range. It seems to me that these coaches work the hardest (not to mention often have personnel responsibilities) and probably would be expected to be paid the most.

MLB? Joe Torre makes about $8 million to take care of the Yankees, but his success with the team probably justifies it. Plus, the MLB season is the longest of any of the major pro sports.

So what is it about the NBA coaches that makes them so coveted and highly paid? Yes, they are a very visible personality on the sidelines, and are certainly instrumental in the direction of a team. But recent NBA coach successes aren't necessarily these big superstars. For example, Gregg Poppovich, Lawrence Frank, Stan Van Gundy and Mike D'Antoni have all had recent success without much "celebrity" status. It's clearly a demanding job, but I can't help but think the scale is out of whack.

One more note about the Brown signing, regarding the Knicks roster. I took a look at the 2003-2004 roster (pre-Isiah Thomas) and there's only one player who is on the '05-06 roster, Allan Houston. I just can't help but think with Brown now in the fold, the Knicks will make yet another round of changes to the team. It would be nice to have a team I could recognize and begin to root for (although I have to admit, I'll also take a good team).

Toll Free

Now that cellular phones are so ubiquitous, do you think toll free numbers actually help companies? After all, the toll free number prevents long distance charges, but with cell phones those are nearly non-existent. In addition, a toll free call still counts against your cell phone minutes, so it's not really "free." Perhaps most people still have their land line, so the toll free call is nice, but for most of my peers, who have cell phones as their primary phones, it doesn't seem as useful.

Late Night Subway

Waiting for the subway late at night is never easy, as the trains run infrequently and it's the most common time to have service changes and outages. But you know you're really in for it when the "money train" or the "trash train" pulls into the platform. Particularly the trash train, which is like a bunch of flatbed subway cars that have dumpsters on them. Not only do you realize there's no hope for a train to come in on your track (and the train moves quite slowly, so even if it leaves there will still be delays), there's also a ton of trash in the subway station with you.

Yet Another Reason Why People Don't Vote

People don't vote because our politicians spend less time on things people care about and more time wondering how long daylight savings time should be and making comments like "The beauty of daylight-saving time is that it just makes everyone feel sunnier" (Edward Markey, D-Mass).

I Think My Next Computer Will Be a Mac

Despite all the things I might complain about with Macs - stringent software restrictions, high prices, lower number of software titles, "trendy" computer user base, I think I may have to make the switch in a few years with my next computer. I'm sick of worrying about security features, and incompatible iTunes updates.

The announcement of WindowsVista doesn't make me any more excited either. What a stupid name. I think the pose in this photo is hilarious too.



Addendum: I've noticed a lot of free video content on the web (CNN.com, ESPN.com, etc) requires windows media player, which unfortunately is not available for Mac. This adds a little monkeywrench into my plans of Mac switching, although hopefully by the time I have to make any decisions, everyone will have embraced quicktime formats.

Safety versus Individual Rights

I understand that the police want people to feel safer, so therefore are initiating searches of people's bags on the subway. But it still makes me feel uneasy.

Look, I'm not carrying anything that anyone would take away or get me into trouble. Still, there's a few things that concern me with the searches.

1) I don't really expect them to last that long. I get the sense that once the London bombings fade from memory, these searches will be viewed as more of an inconvenience and an annoyance. Think of how people view increased airport and stadium security these days.

2) That the searches aren't that effective and are more for show. This really worries me. Maybe it's just something for peace of mind but not won't actually to do anything. The Police Commissioner said they would search fewer people if the subway was busier. Shouldn't they be searching more people when the subway is busier? After all, isn't that when these guys are most likely to attack?

3) This is the most paranoid concern: what's to say if an apartment blew up that the police wouldn't start randomly searching apartments? We're definitely looking at a conflict of search and seizure versus individual rights. Granted, the MTA can set rules and you don't have to use the subway or any other public transportation. Also, it will be more than 99.999% of people who are compliant with these regulations. But still, what happens if a guy gets caught with something and then the charge gets thrown out in court because of illegal search / seizure? Obviously, you can't legislate to what "might happen in court to get the charge thrown out." But when I hear politicians (Bloomberg) say things like, "We know that our freedoms are threatening to certain individuals and there's no reason to let our guard down." I have to think, "If you keep rummaging through my stuff, then soon there won't be that many freedoms for those people to worry about."

But still, I don't want the terrorists to win. I'll stay vigilant.

Product Endorsement

I laughed when my friend told me he had put his Sandisk Cruzer Mini flash drive in the laundry and it still worked after going through the washer. Of course, I then proceeded to do the same thing. Mine still works too. So here's a KFB product endorsement for the Sandisk Cruzer mini flash drive. You can accidentally wash it and still keep your data.

China - Part 2 - Xi'an

In Part 1 of the China Trip Posts, I gave a glimpse of the city of Xi'an. Here are a bunch of additional photos from Xi'an. Next time up will be the Terra Cotta Soldiers.

Xi'an was traditionally known as an arts and cultural center, and generally seemed a little less cosmopolitan than Beijing, Hong Kong or Shanghai. Perhaps that's just the parts of the city we visited.


The bell tower of Xi'an. It's in the center of the city wall, but the city now extends far beyond the walls. This was an alert-type tower. We went to dinner at a dumpling restaurant near here that was pretty cool, as the dumplings were shaped like the meats they contained (such as little chickens, ducks, pigs).


When you climb up the bell tower, which isn't that tall, this is some of the view. One friend asked, "What are all the green cars?" They're taxis. Speaking of taxis, imagine a place where everyone moves like a NY taxi driver (pedestrians, mopeds, bus drivers) and that's what Xi'an was like. Referencing two of my favorite amphibians, crossing the street was like Frogger, and riding in a taxi was Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.


You can walk up on the Xi'an city wall. It extends like this all the way around what was originally the city.


This is a summer palace that Chinese leaders had used. It's just outside of Xi'an. I believe Chiang Kai-Shek got kidnapped here back when he was in charge.


This is called the wild goose pagoda. It's part of a Buddhist temple. We paid extra to climb up this, but it totally wasn't worth it. The view was crummy and since it was a hot day, all we got was dehydrated.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

I reserved the latest Harry Potter book at the NY Public Library. Just picked it up today. There were 800 reservable copies, and I was 200th on the queue. Of course, I reserved it back in January...

I have just begun to read it, and am pleased to find that it is shorter than the last book (there was a trend where each volume had been getting longer and longer). The biggest problem with these books? I know how it's going to end. They're all unsolveable mysteries. Making matters worse, since there's magic in the world, anything can happen. Anything! Oh, the ceiling turned into cotton candy? It's magic! Look, that man has six arms! Magic. Let's turn back time... You get the picture.

I also hope there isn't much about a Quidditch match. What a stupid game. Maybe it should be an Olympic sport.

Ribfest

I can't believe my last post to the blog was about feces as a means for electrical power. It appears as well, that my "Yankees won't make the playoffs" prediction may not come true after all.

About a month back, I had the pleasure of attending Nashua, NH's annual rib-fest. Here, you pay admission to a little outdoor fair and then can purchase ribs from a bunch of vendors. The session is held on the grounds of Anhauser Busch's factory in Nashua. While the ribs were tasty, here are some photos from the day that have nothing to do with ribs - the clydesdales and a stunt plane that flew over the site.

And yes, I got the itis.


Doesn't it look like this horse is in prison? So sad.


Stunt planes are fun.

Poop Power?

I don't know if this is cool or gross but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to work in a biogas plant.

Cleveland Indians vs. New York Yankees - 7/8/05

I'm falling behind with posts to the blog.

I still have 100+ photos from China that need to be posted here, and some things from the Nashua, NH Rib Fest a while back that also need to make it up here. Then I also would like to do a Best of / Worst of the first year of KFB. For now, enjoy some shots from the rainy Indians / Yankees game. Actually, it was raining early but cleared up to a nice night. Also, it turns out to be my second victory this season.


Chien-Ming Wang. This may have been his last start of the year, depending on the DL situation. I have also seen Kevin Brown, Mike Mussina, Randy Johnson, and Carl Pavano pitch this year, so pretty much all the regular starting pitchers.


The theme of today's photos is, players who weren't on the Yankees back in April when I saw a ton of games. For example, center fielder Melky Cabrera.


Melky Cabrera has a silly looking photo for his shot on the big screen.


No Tony Womack here! It's Robinson Cano.


Coco Crisp of the Indians. You couldn't make up a better name.


Ah, Tier Reserved, my favorite place to sit.

Getaway Car

I think all crooks should drive the Ford Escape as their getaway car.

Newsstands and US News

I was looking around for a magazine today, and couldn't find it anywhere. I stopped by about four or five of the corner newsstands asking for the magazine, and none of them had it. In fact, several of them looked at me as if they had never heard of the magazine. Then I realized that these newsstands only carry porn and cigarettes. I hadn't ever noticed that before.

The magazine I was looking for? US News and World Report. Nobody carries this thing. It's like the black sheep of news magazines. More newsstands had The Economist (which is like the British hippie cousin of news magazines). It makes you realize how US News has been able to turn the "Top 10" list into a year-long publication. There's top colleges, grad schools and hospitals. When will they come out with "America's Top Religions?" They would be able to have all sorts of categories, like "miracles performed," "martyrs," and "fundraising." The best categories, of course, would be "selectivity" and "reputation."

Sandwiches Without Bread

Imagine: Roast beef, bacon, melted cheddar cheese, BBQ sauce and ranch dressing...

Sounds like a great sandwich, right?

Nope, it's a Quiznos salad!

Here's another: Black Angus steak, bleucheese crumbles and balsamic vinaigrette. Tasty!

I'm amused by the "healthy" options at these fast food chains, like salads at McDonald's and Wendy's that include fried chicken on them, but this is a bit much, isn't it? Quiznos suggests, of course, that these salads are low carb, and thus more healthy. Here's the facts: if it sounds like something I'd like, it's probably not healthy.

Terror Alert Color Coding System

We all know this one -- Orange means "heightened alert," red means "under attack," and so forth. Does anyone know how much it cost to come up with this thing? I was just wondering what the going rate was for color-coded alert systems.

My Entrance Music Please...

I have always thought that various people require entrance music, much like wrestlers.

The only three I've come up with are:

Members of a wedding party to the wedding reception
Judges into a court room
Surgeons entering the operating room for surgery

But I'm sure there are other instances where it would be appropriate, and I'm just missing them.

Baseball - Out of the Olympics

Baseball and softball have been eliminated as Olympic events. I guess it's not a great shock since nobody in Europe plays these sports, but yet they're quite popular in the US, Latin America and Asia. I've always thought the IOC had a bit of European bias, and this confirms my suspicions.

Reasons baseball was eliminated?

Cost - building baseball and softball stadiums were too costly and weren't utilized after games in host cities. Good point, although the article mentions that the IOC considered adding golf as a medal sport. Golf courses aren't costly to build? Not to mention, if you want to televise something more boring than baseball, then golf is a good choice.

Another reason cited was recent problems in MLB with steroids, and the lack of professional players in the Olympics. This seems contradictory, since if all the MLB players are using steroids, why would you want them in the Olympics? Most importantly, I thought the Olympics were an amateur event. I know pro basketball players go to the Olympics, as do pro tennis players and many other professionals in other sports. This is disappointing. Sure, it would be nice to see MLB players make it to the games, but the whole point of the Olympics is to give the amateurs a chance to shine.

Perhaps baseball and softball should be eliminated from the Olympics, but these aren't good reasons to knock them out. Did you know handball was an Olympic event?

Kevin Smith

Every time I see Kevin Smith on television or in a movie, I like him less. Why might that be? It's not like he switched to Scientology or something. Some of the recent appearances of his that I've seen include him talking about comic books or the Superman movie (which he was loosely affiliated with for a while), or him on the Tonight Show talking about his latest projects. Clerks was one of my favorite movies for a while, and I even found Dogma, Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back hilarious. I thought that it might be due to beginning to “grow up” but I’m not sure that’s the case, since I still get a kick out of mainstays like South Park and Robot Chicken. As far as I can tell, it's not me, it's him.

Tour de France

Lance Armstrong's final Tour de France is as a member of the Discovery Channel Team. This, of course, is probably his tribute to the Simpsons episode, Lemon of Troy.

Bart: Milhouse, you and me will be Omega team, Todd, you and Data are 'Team Strike Force'. Nelson, that leaves you and Martin.
Martin: Team Discovery Channel!
Nelson: Aww... your wussiness better come in handy.

Live 8

I went to the Live 8 show in Philadelphia this past weekend. What is Live 8? It's the sequel to 1985's Live Aid show. This year, the goal was to lobby the upcoming G8 meeting to forgive debt to Africa and increase aid to African countries. There were nine shows that ran concurrently (including one in London that sounded pretty amazing). I don't know much about debt relief for Africa, and the show didn't do much to convince me that I should be in favor of it. But it was a pretty cool experience, with estimated 800,000 people at the show. The NY Times had printed something about 1.5 million people, but I think that was wrong.

We got to the show around 10am and waited in our spot for 2 hrs. Here are some photos from that spot.


This was our view of the concert site, which was on the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum. The "No Turn on Red" sign and the traffic light were more in our way than expected.


A view of the crowd behind us.


Here is a shot of the statue to the left of us and the crowds.

The best act we saw was Will Smith (who included in his performance a sing-along of the theme song from "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air"). We also saw the Black Eyed Peas, Bon Jovi, Destiny's Child and Kanye West perform. Also at the site, performing later in the day, were Dave Matthews Band, Stevie Wonder, Maroon 5, Linkin Park, Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, and Def Leppard. I heard the DMB set, which sounded pretty good, but will have to watch the remainder on the internet. We left since the show was a bit slow between acts, and we were getting hot in the sun. Here are some more photos from the day. I put some arrows on the famous people, since otherwise, it's nearly impossible to tell who they are.


Will Smith, the first emcee.


The Black Eyed Peas.


Jon Bon Jovi. It's a little blurry.


There were just so many people!


The fire department set up these trucks that sprayed water. Pretty cool idea. Fortunately it wasn't too humid on Saturday.


Here's a view from further away of the concert site. It was almost wall-to-wall people from here to the stage.

How to Tell You Have a Gambling Problem

How can you tell you have a gambling problem? When you start placing bets on which city will host the Olympic games. New York, incidentally, is a long shot at 25-1. This makes me wonder if the same agencies have over/unders for death tolls in major earthquakes and natural disasters.

Prediction: Tom Cruise is not the last "heart throb" movie star to say something crazy or controversial

Throwing this into the prediction section.

Tom Cruise recently came under fire for his strong statements against psychiatrists and antidepressant medication. For some reason, this reminded me of some of the strong statements Mel Gibson had been making about Christianity and social issues while promoting his last film (I believe it was a little movie about a carpenter).

These are all "heart throb" male movie stars who now, with a lot of works under their belts, have expressed stronger opinions about things and are portrayed by the media as "losing it" a little bit. This will happen again. Colin Farrell and Brad Pitt, watch out.

This, by the way, excludes people like Tim Robbins, who are outspoken about their politics, but never really made it to "heart throb" status. Richard Gere is a borderline case, I don't know if his Tibet statements are as well publicized as Cruise or Gibson, but he certainly likes to have opinions!

Let this also be a lesson to future celebrities and pretty people in general: For the most part, the public doesn't want to hear anything you say that's supposed to be intellectual. Most likely, ugly intellectuals will ridicule you even if you make sense because they are jealous of you. So just look pretty.

Review: Alice in Chains: MTV Unplugged

Alice In Chains: MTV Unplugged
1996, Sony Music Entertainment, Inc
Vocals - Layne Staley
Guitar - Jerry Cantrell
Bass - Mike Inez
Drums - Sean Kinney

Collecting all those Pepsi iTunes caps paid off, as I was able to receive this album for free (and the cost of 13 bottles of Diet Pepsi).

This is only the fourth complete album I have ever purchased online. It's a bit hard to do, since I am so attached to liner notes and the total package. Unfortunately, the problem is, the more I like the album, the more I want the liners, so in the end I try to choose albums that I don't know much about or I'd like to try. The other three albums I had purchased were all Foo Fighters albums, and I got them for $5 each after Real had their $0.50 song promotion.

That's just a little background. While I've listened to all the Alice in Chains studio releases, I am by no means an avid fan of the band, and for some reason, they're one of the Seattle bands that slipped under the radar for me in the '90's. I'm only now starting to appreciate their work.

So it brings me to the Unpluggeed album, which is quite a treat. For the casual fan ilke me, the band breaks out some of their most popular hits, such as Rooster, Would?, Down in a Hole, No Excuses and Heaven Beside You.

The acoustic sound is much smoother than the electric versions of these songs, and Staley's distinctive voice booms over the instrumentals.

I wrote the above about a month ago. This remains my favorite Alice in Chains album. A great addition to my music collection, especially at the cost of a baker's dozen bottles of Pepsi.

Stand Up - Dave Matthews Band Part 2

Previously, I had promised a review of the album

That promise will go unfulfilled. I like this album, and it seems like the band has a jazzier sound than on their last studio recording, "Busted Stuff." At first I didn't think it was a particularly good album, but it's growing on me, and I think it's a strong work overall.

I recently acquired the new album from the Foo Fighters, "In Your Honor." It's got some catchy tunes, but did it really warrant a double CD (total 80 minutes)? It had the same copy protection as the DMB album, and it also wasn't a problem to put on my iPod, despite warnings to the contrary.

Batman Begins

A pretty good movie, but for some reason, everything I have to say about it is negative. Am I just a negative person?

Another post from the archives.

An anecdote from the movie. With about a half-hour to go, a guy in front of me had his phone ring for the second time. He took the call and was speaking just loud enough for some of us to hear. The person sitting on my right (a stranger) tapped this man on shoulder, and the following occurred.

Man on Right (MoR): Could you do that outside?
Man on Phone (MoP): I'll be finished in a minute.
*MoR puts hands in air*
*MoP keeps talking for several minutes*
Me: Shut up.
*MoP swings around and points at the MoR*
MoP: YOU don't tell me to shut up! I'm taking this call!
Movie Crowd (MC): SHHHHHHH!
Man off to Side (MotS): You idiots be quiet! [something like this]
Man in Back (MiB): I'm a cop!
*MoP keeps talking on phone but eventually finishes*

Not one of my better moments. I didn't realize what I had done. I didn't want it to sound so mean, but I think I was fortunate that the MoR took the heat for my nasty comment. I was probably the smallest of the three guys (and perhaps, least wily). I had just been trying to pay attention to the movie, and this was the fastest way I could think of to ask him to stop talking without missing anything. I'm not usually one for confrontation but I think because the MoR was willing to ask him to stop, it emboldened me to take action (which, of course, totally backfired).

Apostrophe S

I'm going to try and unload a few posts that I had started but never finished up.

For some reason, the usage of the apostrophe s ('s) tends to be confused a lot in English. For example, just the other day, I was in a hospital and saw a sign that read, "Doctor's Only" for an area that had restricted access.

I thought to myself, "I wonder why it is so hard for some people to use properly, it has never been a problem for me."

We just use the apostrophe when someone owns something (Blogman's post) but we do not use it when it is time to make plurals (thousands of Blogmans). Trickier is the its/it's convention, when "its" is posessive and "it's" is for "it is." Tricky, but nothing that the average person can't handle.

Then I kept thinking, that isn't so easy. There's also another wrinkle. What is proper usage of the apostrophe is when it comes to plurals of abbreviations. For example, do I use the apostrophe if I want to say, There aren't that many DVD's that I want to own" or "How many RBI's does he have?"

RBI is a tricky one, is the plural of "Runs batted in" RBI or RBI's?

Which reminds me also of the word "moose." What's the plural of moose? Two moose, or two mooses?

Maybe this stuff isn't as easy as I thought.

China, Part 1

China - one of the few places where being "one in a million" means there will be a few thousand other people like you.


This first photo is from Xi'an, our first major stop in China a few weeks back. The first is from the bell tower of Xi'an, and it's in the old city center. The city has stretched far beyond the city walls. Historically, this city has been an arts and cultural center.

The city was not as commercial as future stops on our trip (Wuhan and Chongqing) nor was it as cosmopolitan as Shanghai. But it was still a nice city, even despite the fact that crossing the street was like being trapped in Frogger, and riding in taxis was like riding Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disney World.


This second photo is of one of the Terra Cotta Soldiers. This particular soldier has been removed from the pit and is on display in a little museum they had. The soldiers are located about one hour away from the city. Apparently they were placed to guard an emperor's tomb, which was later destroyed in a protest. Then about thirty years ago, some farmer found them while digging a well. I believe the farmer does some book signings from time-to-time.