Aquapod

I recently saw these Aquapod containers of Poland Spring at CVS and couldn't help but laugh. Especially at the balloon that says, "Orbtastic shape!"

Orbtastic, huh? What does that even mean?

Why is water bottle shaped this way? Was there something wrong with the shape of normal water bottles? This orb shape doesn't seem to be any more useful, convenient or fun than the usual shape.

Is This Related?

4/24 - Hunter's champagne gift violated baseball rule
Twins OF Torii Hunter gave the KC Royals four bottles of champagne after they swept the Detroit Tigers last year, helping the Twins pass the Tigers in the standings and win the AL Central. According to MLB rules, personnel cannot give gifts to other teams for beating another team. The champagne was returned.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2847416


4/26 - Hunter taken to hospital after being hit in mouth
Twins OF Torii Hunter was hit in the mouth by KC Royals pitcher Zack Greinke.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2850281

Probably not related, but funnier if they were related.

Fashion Police (or Red is the New Black)

I noticed that the Diamondbacks changed their uniforms this season from purple and green to this red and black scheme. It's no surprise that they wanted to change their uniforms from the purple and green, but why choose red and black as the new colors? Their new uniforms are nearly indistinguishable from the Reds, Angels, Nationals and Phillies. In addition the Braves and Red Sox also feature red alternate jerseys from time to time. Is red that fashionable these days? There must have been another color scheme they could have chosen.

4/8/07 - Baltimore Orioles at New York Yankees

The last few years I have tried to make it out for an early weekend game at Yankee Stadium. Typically for these games tickets are a little easier to come by and the weather isn't terribly hot.

When I bought the tickets for the Easter Sunday game at the Stadium, I had hoped Andy Pettitte would be starting. A rainout changed these plans until Darrell Rasner had a bad outing, and Andy Pettitte came in for a relief inning. It snowed during the gmae. Also of note, it was calendar day. Enjoy the photos from Tier 15.

For a loss, the game was pretty entertaining, as the Yankees had a few chances late to win the game or tie, but they didn't win in the end.



A-Rod, who one week later, is still on fire.
Meeting at the mound.
Andy Pettitte in a surprise relief appearance.
Yes. It snowed on April 8 at the ballgame.


I think this was the first game I've seen with Bobby Abreu.
Darrell Rasner
Jason Giambi
Derek Jeter
Johnny Damon didn't start but made a pinch hit appearance when it got closer.


Same for Jorge Posada.

Manny Being Manny?

There's a recent article in the New Yorker by Ben McGrath with some funny notes on Red Sox LF Manny Ramirez. Here are some of the highlights. This stuff is good.

1) He has five driver's licenses and two social security numbers
2) He has two sons named "Manny, Jr."
3) He once requested a trade to Pawtucket, the Red Sox AAA affiliate

A-Rod Walk-off Grand Slam

Alex Rodriguez hit a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth inning today with two outs, winning the game for the New York Yankees against the Baltimore Orioles. So will it be minutes, hours or days before his critics decide that this home run "wasn't clutch enough" or that since he did it in the regular season against Baltimore "it still didn't happen when it matters."

I'm guessing minutes to hours.

President Clinton

I saw President Clinton by the Time Warner Center one week ago. He was shaking people's hands, but I was trying to "play it cool" and not go up to him. Instead, I tried to quickly snap some photos. I should have just gawked because these photos are crappy. In case you couldn't tell, he's the gray haired blur.

Tempted

I was in the store the other day and saw a big tub of cheese balls. It took all my willpower not to buy it. I can't resist their bright orange glow!

More Knicks

The Knicks are on the verge of making it into the NBA playoffs, with a 30-36 record. Their "improvement" this year has already gotten Isiah Thomas a contract extension. I have to wonder, however, can a fan be excited for the team making the playoffs if their record isn't so hot? They're not exactly a great team. They are incredibly inconsistent, thus their under .500 record. I am impressed by the fact that they lost Jamal Crawford and David Lee and continue to play well, but I can't help but think the only reason they're even thinking about playoffs is that their division and the conference are just not very good this year.

Questions... Part 2

Why is the GI Joe theme song in my head?

He'll fight for freedom, wherever there's trouble
GI Joe is there

It's GI Joe against Cobra the enemy, fighting to save the day
He never gives up he's always there
Fighting for freedom over land and air!

GI Joe (A real American hero)
Fighting to save the day
GI Joe (A real American hero)
GI Joe is there

Questions...

Feeling philosophical today.

1) If you put a brain into a new body, would that be a brain transplant or a body transplant?

2) When Ben Franklin helped organize the United States Postal Service, do you think he knew he was creating a place that would be the source of untold misery? Have you ever been to a post office? There is no other place where 100% of the people are angry and miserable. From the customers to the people working, the whole joint is full of negative energy. It isn't specific to any one post office either. What is it about that place?

Comics Wrap-up

Lately there have been a few big comic book conventions, and a bunch of comic book related news. There's a few things that have been bugging me and I figured this was as good a time as any to talk about them.

First, we'll start with Marvel Comics, who just wrapped up their huge Civil War event. I've grown up following Marvel, and for the most part have been very happy with things. But lately I've been falling off the Marvel bandwagon, and I don't know exactly why. The first signs were when J. Michael Straczynski did a story in Amazing Spider-Man where it turned out that Peter Parker's late girlfriend Gwen Stacy had sex with Norman Osborn, aka the Green Goblin, because of a moment of weakness. Around that time I had also started to become disillusioned with Brian Michael Bendis's writing as well, and stopped reading titles Ultimate Spider-Man. I found Avengers Disassembled somewhat ridiculous and never got interested in New Avengers, the best selling Marvel comic. That should have been another sign that my relationship with Marvel was going downhill.

I still continued on with the books that got me into comics in the first place, the X-Men family and Wolverine, followed a few other heroes such as Daredevil and Captain America, and kept with most of the Ultimate line (Ultimates, Ultimate FF and Ultimate X-Men).

The next phase of disappointment came with the House of M and Decimation events that followed. These events were supposed to have all sorts of lasting effects and implications but I haven't really noticed it in the storytelling. The only difference seems to be that the X-Men are under "house arrest" by Sentinels, yet still manage to find their ways out of the mansion to do things.

Now there's this Civil War business. The art was great. I've always liked Mark Millar's writing, but there's just not much of a story to the main Civil War book. I didn't read the associated books such as Frontline or any additional crossover titles. There were too many gaps in the story that just didn't make sense. From reading the main title alone, nobody would know that Captain Marvel had come back to life, or why Spider-Man wears his black costume during the epilogue or why Johnny and Susan Storm needed to be arrested once they left Tony Stark's group (after all, they were registered!). I appreciate that the book has changed the way the Marvel U will operate - there will be 50 super teams, one for each state, and every super hero will need to be trained and monitored by the US Government. Fine. But I'm not interested. One reason is that I've realized I don't care about the non X-Men heroes in the Marvel Universe. I couldn't even recognize half the people involved in the fighting in Civil War. When I see the Marvel solicitations for future books, I just don't care about most of the books. I don't know why that is.

The Ultimate universe has also gone south for me. Ultimate X-Men has floundered under Robert Kirkman, with stories that I just haven't enjoyed and seem inconsequential. So I've stopped getting that book. I stopped reading Ultimate FF once Mark Millar left. The Ultimates will conclude later this year, but I don't expect to be on board for volumes 3 or 4. The Ultimate universe has lost its simplicity and excitement and become as convoluted as the Marvel U.

Meanwhile in the land of X, the X-Men title with the "best" X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, comes out on the least regular basis. The other two X-titles are pretty good, but not amazing. Wolverine has two titles, and in one he's fighting Sabretooth for about 5 issues, and in the other it turns out he has a son with claws. Doesn't he already have offspring with claws named X-23? I'm not interested.

By the way, all the mutants except for 198 of them got de-powered. Not a single of member of the X-Men lost his or her powers in that event. How can an event be significant and not have any of the X-Men lose their powers? Also, I understand the need to decrease the number of mutants, but turning them into just 198 makes them totally irrelevant. Who cares now? It does make sense that the Marvel U would then focus on general super-powered beings since they now outnumber mutants.

Coming soon, more crossovers, with "World War Hulk" and a "huge X-Men event." The X-Men event might be good, but I'll be steering clear of the Hulk stuff.

So the bottom line with Marvel Comics, here's what I'm reading and here's what I've dropped in the last year.

Still Reading:
Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, Wolverine, Wolverine: Origins, Runaways, Ultimates vol 2, Captain America

Dropped:
Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate FF, Daredevil

On the other side of the fence, I've been really enjoying DC Comics, at least, when they come out. Infinite Crisis was a good series, although the ending seemed a bit rushed with some sloppy art. They have been moving from event to event to event, which is a bit daunting. The biggest disappointment at DC has been their horrible shipping schedule. I picked up a bunch of DC titles over the past year, but some of them hardly come out.

The Superman family, Action Comics and Superman have both been plagued by delays. Superman had some nice art by Carlos Pacheco, but I just haven't gotten into the "alternate future" storyline that they started, and now that the book has been delayed, I've decided to stop getting it. Meanwhile, I've really enjoyed Action Comics by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner, but they've only produced three issues in the last year. With both series there are fill-in stories coming out but I'm just not interested in them as they seem irrelevant to the main stories.

The Batman books have also been delayed, with Grant Morrison taking a few months off, and Paul Dini also getting a breather. Again, I'm not interested in the fill-ins. Paul Dini is taking up the next big DC event as well, so I'd imagine there will be more delays.

Wonder Woman was the worst case of delays. Writer Allan Heinberg fell behind with his schedule and this monthly title has been completely off track, with 4 issues in the last 9-10 months.

Then there's any book that Jim Lee touches. This includes Wildcats and All-Star Batman and Robin. All-Star Batman and Robin #1 came out in July 2005. The last issue was issue 4! This was supposed to be a sort of answer to Ultimate Spider-Man, and it's been a total failure. That's before even discussing the strange story within. Meanwhile, Wildcats, which was supposed to be the re-launch of the Wildstorm line has had 6 months off between issues.

There are some good things being done at DC. 52 has been pretty good for more weeks than not, and Justice Society might be the best book available at all. Their next weekly book, Countdown, sounds pretty promising, although I'm a bit intimidated price wise by picking up another weekly. Justice League with Brad Meltzer has been pretty good, although it took 3 months for Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman to get up from a table. I'm a bit ticked off that there's another mini-event, "World War III" but if the story's good then it will bother me less.

So the state of DC is pretty good, but with way too many delays, and I'd prefer fewer crossovers. But the universe is more cohesive and I'm enjoying the characters a bit more.

Reading:
52, Detective Comics, Batman, Action Comics (w/Johns/Donner), Justice League of America, Justice Society of America, Ex-Machina

When it comes out:
Planetary, Wildcats, All-Star Batman and Robin, Authority v4, Heinberg's Wonder Woman

Dropped:
Superman/Batman

Started then dropped:
Superman

Dollar Coins

As if the US wasn't trying to confuse foreign tourists enough with the 50 state quarters, now we get to add another variation on the dollar coin to our currency mix. Instead of Sacagawea, now 4 dollar coins per year will feature Presidents of the United States on the back. Sounds great, right? Makes you want to start using dollar coins, doesn't it? Interestingly the last President planned for this program is Richard Nixon. Why stop at Nixon? Aren't Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton worthy of this program as well? If Watergate isn't enough to prevent you from having a dollar coin, what is? Also, by the time their quarters would be available it will be 2016, 30 years since Reagan was in office. That should be enough time, right? Another fun fact, Grover Cleveland will get 2 coins for his 2 nonconsecutive terms. I don't know if I can wait until 2014 to get my Warren Harding coins!

Taxi Fare Estimator

To someone who has the time:

I think it would be very useful to develop a taxi cab fare estimator for NYC where you could plug in an origin and destination and a rough estimate of the taxi fare would be spit out. The taxi fare is formulaic anyways (flat rate + distance), with the biggest wildcard being traffic. If you could sync the estimator with traffic reports, then it would be even better. This would also help with making offers to non-yellow cabs (the so-called gypsy cabs). It could be in the same vein as hopstop.com, the great subway route resource.

If someone has already come up with this, then I apologize but I wasn't able to find anything on my google searches.

Heroes - Primatech Paper

I was watching this past week's episode of Heroes and thought I was really clever when I looked up a website that the episode referenced - www.primatechpaper.com. Of course, the website led to a fake site that was set up by people on the show. But it turns out I'm not as clever as I had thought. I went to the official Heroes website and there's this huge banner ad for their fictitious site there. The first time I had heard of something like this was a few years ago on 24, when someone got a cell phone number, and if you called it, the phone answered and said something like, "You have reached Jack Bauer's cell phone." As it turns out you can call the Primatech Paper company as well. There are some "secret codes" you need to enter, and no doubt that future episodes will have those secret codes for people to try out.

Wacky Blog

Check out http://wackychinaman.blogspot.com

Apparently the Wacky Chinaman was not content posting to other people's blogs and he started his own. It's very nice. I should have mentioned this months ago, but I guess better late than never.

Quiz

Try these two quizzes:

http://www.thesuperheroquiz.com/

http://www.thesuperheroquiz.com/villain/

I was 70% Superman and 55% Dr. Doom. I was really hoping for Batman but apparently I'm not dark and brooding enough.

Dining in the City - Two Weekends

The last two weekends have been a flurry of new dining experiences for me in NYC. Here is a quick recap:

Friday 1/12
Le Miu - 107 Ave A, near 7th St
Friday night's dinner was a selection we had been meaning to try for quite some time. This modern Japanese restaurant seemed a little too trendy for alphabet city the first few times we've passed it by, but the dishes sounded interesting, and later, we found out that the chefs had previously worked at places such as Nobu and Megu. The setting was nice and the service was pretty good. We got seated immediately (around 9-10pm). We ordered as appetizers the soft shell crab, and rock shrimp, and for entrees miso cod and king crab fried rice. The two fried appetizers were pretty good, and the miso cod was also delicious (although it's been a while since I've had that dish at pricier places). The king crab fried rice was not what I expected -- it came in a sort of a casserole dish and was a little bit more like a soup. But still very good. It's a nice little find in alphabet city.

Saturday 1/13
Katz's Delicatessen - 205 E Houston St and Ludlow St
I've been craving potato pancakes and corned beef for quite some time. So when it was my turn to pick a dinner location on Saturday night in the Lower East Side, I decided to go with Katz's Delicatessen. We ended up ordering a corned beef / pastrami combination sandwich, and a plate of potato pancakes. The sandwich was great but it wasn't as huge as I had expected. I can remember times I've been to Stage Deli or Carnegie Deli near Times Square where I couldn't even fit my mouth around the sandwich. Despite the warning that "it would be hard to finish," my Katz's Deli sandwich was not as big. It was still very very tasty. The potato pancakes were also good - much better than the last potato pancakes I had at the Ukranian joint, Veselka. I still can't figure out why they have this silly ticket system at Katz's that involves getting a ticket when you come in and then showing it when you leave, or else you have to pay $50. Of course, they only take cash. There was a cool letter on the back wall from a soldier during the Vietnam War requesting a salami be mailed to him. The signs say the hot dogs are great but at $2.75 a pop I'm hesitant to try. Anyway for hot dogs I want to check out Crif Dogs in the East Village.

Sunday 1/14
Cafe Gitane - 242 Mott St, between Prince and Houston
Brunch on Sunday at Cafe Gitane. I had never been here before but my lady friend said it was a great place for brunch. She was right. Sometimes I get intimidated by French places because I'm afraid of mispronouncing the names of the dishes since I don't speak French. We ordered the Tuna spread, toasted baguette with cherry tomato and endive salad, along with the roasted chicken sandwich (with chipotle mayo, parmesan and roasted tomato on a baguette). Both dishes were delicious. I was very impressed with the sandwich, although I wish it was a little bigger. They only took cash also. We had to wait about 10 minutes for a table for 5.

Friday 1/19
I Coppi - 432 E 9th St, between 1st and A
The next weekend took us to I Coppi, an East Village Italian joint that again, my lady friend had been eyeing. The front has a nice, cute look to it, but the back was even nicer with an indoor garden. It reminded us of another restaurant, August, that had a smaller but similar back room. Our meal started with the Carpaccio con Rucola e Grana, which I really liked. Rare meat plus hard shaved cheese equals tasty in my book. For entrees we shared Tagliatelle alla Boscaiola - a great al dente ribbon shaped pasta with a "spicy meat sauce" and Gallello al Mattone, a grilled, brick oven roasted chicken. The pasta was great, and probably homemade. The chicken was not as good in my opinion, as it could have used a little more meat and was a little dry from the brick oven. Everything was good here, and the slow service I had heard about was nowhere to be seen. To get nitpicky, the bread they brought didn't taste that good. I easily made a reservation for a Friday night about one week in advance.

Room 4 Dessert - 17 Cleveland Pl, between Spring and Kenmare
After eating dinner at I Coppi, we went across town to Room 4 Dessert, which is an all-dessert bar. I had heard about it the day before in New York Magazine as a "must eat" for 2007. They compared it to the East Village joint, Chikalicious, also a dessert bar. Chikalicious serves a prix fixe, three course dessert in a small, bright bar setting. We got to Room 4 Dessert at 11pm, and while I had made a reservation, we didn't seem to need it. There were enough seats at the bar. It was nice they took reservations (Chikalicious does not). The setting was dark and the bar is configured as a long bar. The menu is a little different. We had a "Dessert glass" to start, which is a small glass with a bunch of dessert elements mixed together. Ours had a cola ice cream, cracker jacks and some other sweets. I forgot its name but it was very good. Then we shared two Dessert "Tastings" which are long plates with four dessert elements. The first was called Apple in Various States, which featured four different apple-ish variations (and all were quite good), and the name of the second escapes me but it included a great brioche and a rich chocolate setting. We didn't get drinks but they have a nice menu system that pairs the drinks with each dish.

Saturday 1/20
Krunch Pizza Bar - 980 2nd Ave at 52nd St
In a quest for something new, my brother suggested Krunch Pizza Bar. It's sort of a trendy pizza place, and slices were close to $3 a pop for a square piece of pizza, but they had some nice variations. We tried the BBQ Pollo, Pizza agli Spinaci (mozzarella and spinach), Krunch Zucca (zucchini, onion, garlic and parmesan - no tomato) Chorizo and Cheeseburger pizza. All of them were good. The pizzas had a very crispy crust and fresh toppings. I would eat here a lot, except that the price per slice is pretty high. Two slices and a drink = 8.75!

New Green Bo - 66 Bayard St between Mott and Elizabeth
For dinner, I had been craving some Shanghai delicacies. Unfortunately, we heard that a friend had been to our favorite, Yeah Shanghai Deluxe and saw roaches crawling on the tables!! So we decided to try somewhere new. There was another Shanghai restaurant on Bayard near Elizabeth but we nixed it for having too many white people in it. Instead we headed to New Green Bo, which we had heard was good but had never been. We ordered soup dumplings (xiao luom bao), pork shoulder (ti pang), a casserole and some shanghai noodles with mixed meat/seafood. The meal overall was a bit greasy, the pork shoulder was drier than it should have been, but the sauce was good. We didn't wait long and we didn't have to share a table (around 7:30pm). The dumplings were great. A little disappointing but the dishes still cured my craving.

Sunday 1/21
Bondi Road - 153 Rivington between Suffolk and Clinton
We walked by this place one night and it looked cool. Then we saw that they had a brunch special that included all-you-can-drink and we were sold. It's sort of a barebones place but the waitress is Australian and according to my brother, who studied in Australia, they tried to keep the menu pretty authentic. It was pretty empty at about 1pm on Sunday -- I think the crowd here tends to come later in the afternoon and for dinner. Unfortunately a lot of the dinner menu items weren't available, but what we had was still very good. We got fish and chips, and a variation of eggs benedict that was on two crabcakes. I absolutely loved the french fries; they were some of the best fries I've had in a while. The eggs were good too, and the crabcakes weren't bad but now I compare every crabcake to G and M in Maryland, which just isn't fair. But I'm curious about the chicken schnitzel and burger with the lot on the dinner menu. We'll have to come back to this place, which sounds like a lot of fun at night.

Sugar Sweet Sunshine - 126 Rivington between Essex and Norfolk
After brunch, we had to make a quick stop at Sugar Sweet Sunshine, a place my lady friend likes to call "Magnolia of the LES." She's right, too. They have an eclectic set of furniture for seating, sort of out of a hipster's room. But the desserts are delicious, and we had a yellow cake with yellow frosting that was so buttery and sweet, and oh so good. Not a bad way to cap off a fatty lunch of aussie fish and chips, and just down the street.

Brief Notes on the Yankees

The Yankees are trading Randy Johnson back to Arizona. I think we can say that Johnson's time in NY was unsuccessful - he was expected to be an ace and win a World Series. He did neither. I don't really hold it against him, however, as he was so old. It's too bad it has to end like this. The Yankees gave up a lot to get him and aren't getting nearly the same value in return. I wonder if they should have ever made the trade in the first place.

They also signed Doug Mientkiewicz, and I think it's a big mistake. I know that Mientkiewicz's defense is supposed to be superb, but I don't think it outweighs his terrible bat and the fact that he's old. I get the feeling he might not make it through the season with the team. It's nice to have a 1B for defensive purposes but he's left handed, old and a poor hitter. The Yankees could use someone young and right handed.

It looks like Bernie Williams will not be back with the team, and that's also too bad. Mike Francesa of WFAN suggested that the Yankees should have tried to train Bernie last year to play 1B and then he would have had some value with the team. Sounds like a reasonable idea, but I wonder if it could have even been done.

Resolutions

Happy New Year.

I resolve to post more on this blog but like most New Year's resolutions, I won't be able to pull it off after about two days.