hot hot pilot love.
im a jerk for waiting to do this for so long, but my friend elsja recently started a web forum for people like her who are in relationships with pilots. im assuming pilot lovers need a special forum so they can all discuss how awesome it is to get free flights to places. or how awesome it is that their boyfriend is an aviator who wears real aviator glasses. or maybe they all endure crushing loneliness brought on by frequent long distance trips and need an electronic shoulder to cry upon… who knows?
anyway, in this google crazed world outgoing links are a currency, so here is a link to elsja’s awesome site:
Love My Pilot
if anyone out there in this great big blogosphere (which is totally a word according to my spellcheck) are in a relationship with a pilot, know a pilot, are a pilot or just happen to really love that leonardo dicaprio movie where he pretended to be a pilot, you should check out this site.
shirt.woot…
some day, if a scruffy lookin dude in a really awesome tshirt comes up to you begging for change to support his habit, please be nice to me. its true, i am an addict. a tshirt purchasing addict… and these days, shirt.woot.com is my dealer. i used to get most of my tshirts from threadless.com. but shirt.woot is $10 including shipping for a pretty high quality shirt with some clever designs. i just bought this shirt tonight. im not sure, but i think at this point i own something like 15 shirts from these guys. i seriously have an entire dresser of tshirts. nuts? maybe. awesome? yes.
The Olympic Fanfare, John Williams and…Leo Arnaud?
Ah Olympics time. Cue the torch, the flags, the speedos and that unmistakenable John Williams penned theme. Only, the theme that most Americans associate with the Olympics was not actually written by Mr. Williams.
Shocking, I know.
If you haven’t already heard it 12 times on one of the 30 NBC owned channels running Olympic events this year, you can no doubt hear it in your head. The rumbling timpani cadence followed by that epic and soaring brass theme brings you back to the first time you ever watched the Olympics perhaps as a wide eyed little kid sitting on the floor of the house your grew up in starring up at those colorful intertwining rings and sweaty bodies dreaming one day of donning the skin tight red, white and blue and marching into the stadium with billions of eyes on you.
Surely this theme is John Williams. It has all the hallmarks of a John Williams penned movie theme, and we all know he was out there conducting it in 1984 and again in 1996 when the Summer Olympics were held in the US. Except…its not.
The theme that we all commonly associate with the Olympics was actually written by a French-American named Leo Arnaud in the late 50’s and titled “Bugler’s Dream”. It was then picked up by ABC Sports for their Olympic broadcasts, as well as regular every day broadcasts, in 1968. In 1984, Mr. Williams did write a theme specific to the ‘84 Los Angeles Olympics. In many arrangements of that theme, Arnaud’s Bugler’s Dream was used to lead into Mr. Williams’ “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” which, while still very much engrained into our common Olympic psyche, is no where near as recognizable as Mr. Arnaud’s theme.
Here is a video of Mr. William’s Los Angeles specific theme conducted my the composer himself (wearing an especially fetching white tuxedo, no less):
And here is the common Williams conducted but Arnaud composed theme as heard on NBC’s coverage of the Olympics:
Thus concludes today’s rather lengthy lesson.
Olympics in Korean!
umm…gee thanks, dish network?
John McCain is absolutely insane
Seriously????????
I'm not even very anti-offshore drilling, but clearly it won't have an impact on our current gas prices and is more a boon for the oil companies in the immediate. How is it that McCain can get away with saying Obama's solution to high gas prices is to check their tire pressure? Obama has offered up several ways to attack this problem. McCain just keeps talking about offshore drilling…. and now he's giving away a tire guage with "Obama Energy Plan" written on it. Because thats a mature way to discuss the issues.
What a piece of crap John McCain is. I wish the Vietnamese never let him go…For serious.
Los Doyers vs D’backs
I scored some killer seats for last Friday’s Dodger game against the arizona diamondbacks. This was Manny Ramirez’ first game as a Dodger, and although it was ultimately a loss, the game was very enjoyable. My seat was in sect 44bl on the first baseline where lots of pop flys came to die. Here’s a pic of me in my seat after the game:
YouTube - (Alternate) Knight Rider TV Intro
This is freaking sweet.
Taxes! « In One Ear… Out the Other
Well, you know republicans are gonna cut your taxes. That'd be better for the economy, right?
Jazzhands!
YouTube - She & Him - Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?
trying out a new blogging plugin for firefox. kinda neat. zooey deschanel is so cute.
also, ive been playing with tumblr. check out my tumblr here: http://tumblr.benackerman.com
Ben Cooks: Red, White and Blue Potato Salad
I’ve been making an effort to cook more and part of that involves trying new recipes. I ran across a recipe for a Red, White and Blue Potato Salad and thought that sounded like the perfect thing to bring to a 4th of July BBQ. What could be more patriotic than eating potato salad representing the 3 colors of Old Glory? Anyway, I took pictures to document the process, so here we go!
First off is the recipe. I got this actually for a site called ILovePickles.org. I was searching for a good recipe for this type of potato salad and the google turned up this site. Needless to say, this was the best sounding of all of them.
6 large red potatoes, unpeeled
4 hard boiled eggs, peeled
4 small green onions, thinly sliced (white and light green part only)
6 slices maple smoked bacon
1/2 cup blue cheese crumbles (or one 4-ounce package)
Dressing
1-1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup minced bread & butter pickles
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
2 tablespoons reserved bacon drippings
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
1/4 teaspoon celery seed (ground or whole)
1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
First you’ll need to take a glamour shot of you in your kitchen . Wear black, its flattering. Next up is to assemble all of the packaged goods that will make up this delicious concoction. Lay them all out in your workspace and then mentally prepare yourself for spending the next 30min-1hr making something that will probably take 3 minutes to eat.
Next, lets boil our potatoes. Spelling out the word “potatoes” is funny. Why? Dan Quayle. Thats why. Ever since his whole potato with an E at the end thing, I’ve been paranoid about misspelling “potatoes”, but I looked it up and it does have an E. So there.
Boil the potatoes until you stick a fork in them easily. You want them to be firm, but not crunchy.
You’ll also need to boil the eggs. Boiling eggs is fun, but peeling them isn’t. This guy seems to have a trick to peeling a hard boiled egg… but I couldn’t get it to work the four times I tried.
Next up is the bacon. Mmm, bacon. Some people like their bacon crispy. Some like it not so crispy. For the purposes of this potato salad, you want to crumble the bacon which is going to require some pretty crispy bacon. If you really are firmly against crispy bacon, you can chop it up.
Now, while all of that cooks, you can start on the wet ingredients. First up, you’ll need to mince about a half cup of bread and butter pickles. I like the Vlasic ones because of the cool bird mascot. He holds the pickle like a cigar, you see. Can’t beat that. My mincing abilities aren’t quite up to snuff, but since I’ll be giving this out for free dollars and free cents, people best not complain.
Next, take your pickles and mix them in a bowl along with the now crumbled bacon, the blue cheese crumbles and mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is a really funny word to spell. Thank goodness for spell check. Also thank goodness for bacon and blue cheese. Try not too eat too much of this while assembling the potato salad. Here is where you’ll want to mix in the rest of the stuff too including the mustard, vinegar, celery seed and black pepper.
Finally, mix everything together. The recipe recommended doing this in layers. First a layer of potatoes, eggs and onions followed by a layer of the dressing, then another layer and so on and so on… That didn’t make too much sense to me, so i just mixed everything together taking care as to not mush the potatoes up too much while mixing. We want potato salad, not super awesome blue cheese and bacon mashed potatoes…although that does sound awesome.
The final step, of course, is to place the bowl into the refrigerator and let it chill and firm up a bit.
Now of course, I didn’t follow this to the tee. I forgot to buy onions at the store and am not a big fan of tabasco, so both of those ingredients were left out. The tabasco seemed somewhat unnecessary, but after tasting the final product I think the green onions might have added a nice touch. Perhaps I’ll stop at the store and add some in before serving them tomorrow at my friendly 4th of July BBQ.
So, if you’re a big fan of potatoes, blue cheese, bacon or just good ‘ol American patriotism and you find yourself in need of something to bring that will impress your friends with your ability to take at least 5 ingredients that can accelerate heart disease and throw them into one dish, give this one a try. Its the American thing to do.
lolcode
LOLcode is:
1)absolutely hilarious
2)the height of geekdom. absolutely the geekiest thing that will ever exist. except for maybe Doctor Who fan fiction.
Star Trek TNG Rap
Ah, geek humor.
Muahah…. That’s 330 miles right there
The price of a broken down Nissan Altima
The Fit is Go!
So I took the day off from work today to settle my car issues… or at least make a dent. Although, “dent” is a very sensitive word to a new car owner. Of which I am, having picked up a new 2008 Honda Fit Sport today. While the new car has no where near the power that my old 3.5L V6 Altima had, it is still quite fun to drive and reminds me a lot of my old Civic Si that was stolen back in 2001. Ahh, memories. Btw, my new Fit is the first car with automatic transmission that I’ve bought since my very first car back in 98/99. Having driven my mom’s car automatic car for the last week, traffic to and from work was soo much more tolerable. In addition to that, with 109hp I clearly wasn’t buying this car for a speedy driving experience . That said, the Sport model did come with tiptronic-like shift paddles which actually allow me to keep the car in a lower gear longer and grab some decent pickup. Its not sports car, but its cheap and gets 35 miles per gallon. W00t.
Some pics grabbed via iPhone while waiting for the paperwork to be finished up:
As for my old Altima, I’ve decided to hold on to it and register it as non-operating for a few weeks/months while I remove various pieces that may still be worth something and try to sell them on ebay or craigslist. I figure I can at least recoup a little bit of money this way. Its the only way I can reconcile the fact that just last week, the car was worth maybe $5k and today is worth nothing as it sits in my carport as a multi-ton paperweight.
Anyway, car crisis averted. All is well with the world. The Fit is go. So Say We All!
Dead, dead, dead.
Yep, my Altima is dead. A bent rod that is basically going to require a new engine. I guess I’ll be getting a new(ish) car sometime in the next few weeks. I was a bit upset earlier, but I’ve come to grips with this.
US News has a list of the “Best Affordable Small Cars” and they seem to like the Civic followed by the Fit best. The Versa is way down at 12 and the Yaris is even further at 23.
vs
Round One! Fight!
Of weddings, cars, fathers and fiery deaths on the freeway
Eventful weekend, my friends. Some good, some bad. Some downright frightening.
The weekend began on a geeky note with a conference call up to Seattle to watch the “mid-season finale” of Battlestar Galactica with my nerdbuddy Beth. We hadn’t managed to really watch and talk about any of this season’s episodes even though we watched 3 seasons worth of episodes together last summer, so I guess we saw Friday night as our last chance. All in all, I think the episode was pretty good but the rather out of nowhere ending (out of nowhere for people that didn’t read spoilers like I stupidly did) combined with the fact that they aren’t going to finish the season until next year made it somewhat anticlimactic… it was fun watching BSG with Beth though.
I then journeyed over to The Brig in Venice to drink vodka and celebrate Jean’s transitioning from one neat job to another. She’s now working over on the Sony lot, which is one of my favorite haunts being that my credit union and the Sony employee store are located over there. I foresee many a lunch at the Wolfgang Puck cafeteria over there for she and I in the future. Huzzah!
(picture stolen from Google Images)
Saturday morning was spent brunching with Tyson and Cate at Foxy’s in Glendale and then heading across the street to the new Americana outdoor mall to catch Kung Fu Panda. The American is really, really nice. Its got this giant park in the center of it and nice stores and a very upscale movie theater surrounding it. There’s even a neat trolley circling the perimeter. Fun times.
(picture stolen from Jen Garcia)
Saturday night found me rushing in horrible traffic to make it down to Mike and Lisa’s wedding down in Laguna Beach. The ceremony was beautiful…or so I was told as I missed it. Granted, it was all of 4 minutes long so I don’t know if I really feel THAT bad about missing it… I made it for most of the reception though which involved great food, good company and some fun old music. The reception finally concluded with a big group of us huddled together singing along with Boys II Men’s End of the Road…which honestly, isn’t a very appropriate song for a wedding when you examine its lyrics. But hey, it was fun :)
The real fun, however, started on my way home when, as I was on the 605 freeway headed north just before the interchange with the 5, my car decided that it didn’t want to run anymore. In the center lane. At like midnight. Needless to say, I had a nice freakout session for a good 5 minutes before calling 911 (apparently 311 is the right number to call. Oops). As I was waiting for a CHP officer and tow truck to arrive and chastise me in all of my sig alert causing bastardom, a man pulled up behind me and informed me he was going to use his car to push my car to the side of the road. Under other circumstances, I might have declined his offer as it no doubt would damage my rear bumper to some degree, but having encountered certain death a few times as cars swerved to avoid me at 80 miles an hour, I eagerly accepted. Of course, good deeds are seldom free in Los Angeles. After my car coasted to a nice stop on the side of the freeway, the dogooder got out of the car and revealed himself to be an older gentleman completely lacking of teeth. He then informed me that he is new to LA and has nothing but his car. He apparently drives up and down the freeways looking for people to help in the hope that they would help him. He did his part and now wanted for me to help him. I tried to explain to him that I had limited cash on me and needed to save it for the tow truck driver. It didn’t help that I was still in suit and tie. After I offered him $5 the man became more and more upset as he explained to me that his wife was in the front seat of the car and that they had no home and were actually living in their car. Yeh that’s right. He pushed my car to the side of the road with his house. How could I turn down his request for more money? While I still wavered a little, the wife began clutching her hands and pleading silently with me as my vehicular superman broke down in tears. On the side of the freeway. After just saving my life. I could resist no longer and gave him $20 and parted ways with him.
Shortly thereafter, a tow truck driver appeared and offered to tow me off the freeway for only $65. What could I do other than agree? Well, I could go back in time and buy a membership to the autoclub… but if I had a time machine, that would mean I’d also have a working Delorean. If I had that, I’d probably just drive home and sleep. I was tired.
After leaving my car at a random Ralphs supermarket in Downey, Cate and Tyson were lovely enough to come pick me up and drive my miserable self home. It sucks not having a car in LA. When I got home, I realized my cats didn’t have any food and hadn’t eaten all day…and I had no way of going out to get them food. I actually made them some catfood with a chicken breast I had in my freezer. Yep, homemade catfood. I don’t think they appreciated it. But they ate it…
Sunday morning, Kent made his way up to my place and then drove me down to retrieve my car in Downey. The hope was that a few quarts of oil and some tender caressing of the hood would leave the car in good enough shape to drive back up home to Echo Park. The car, in fact, did turn on and managed to get a whole mile away from Ralphs before turning itself off again in the middle of the street. Luckily I managed to (without power steering) flip a U-turn into the parking lot of a truck stop diner called Ozzies. Kent and I ordered sandwiches while waiting for a tow truck from AAA (thanks to the ever responsible Kent’s AAA membership). The tow truck provided 7 miles of towing for free, but the extra 5 miles came out of my wallet plus tip for the somewhat frightening cholo driver which came to another $60.
(picture stolen from Kento)
Kent was then kind enough, for the price of one movie ticket to The Happening, to drive me down to Lakewood to meet up with my family where I borrowed my mother’s PT Cruiser to drive for the next week while I deal with fixing/replacing my car.
I plan on towing my car to a local mechanic in Silverlake that I’ve been to a few times tomorrow and trust. Hopefully he’ll tell me that its just a stupid $35 sensor malfunctioning and the ol’ Altima will live to die another day. Worst case scenario is that he tells me my engine basically needs to be rebuilt and I look into buying another car. I really don’t want to buy a new car as I’m quite fond of not having a car payment, but it doesn’t make much sense to continue putting thousands of dollars into a 6 year old car that seems to have more wrong with it than right.
Supposing I do get a new car, it will be on the cheap side. The very cheap side. Whilst my bastard friends are cruising around town in their new BMW’s and convertible roadsters, I intend to buy a used entry class Japanese car like a Fit, Versa or Yaris. There’s no way I’m spending more than $13k. Not that I can’t afford the BMW or roadster car payment, I just have absolutely no interest in a fancy car. Once upon a time that wouldn’t have been the case, but I think my Altima has beaten all of my lofty vehicular designs out of me. Does it get 25mph and have AC? Great, I’ll take it.
Longest blog post ever.
Oh and Happy Fathers day to my dad! I don’t know if anyone told you yesterday, but we didn’t give you a present because your gift doesn’t come out until July 11th!
Movie reviews: Kung Fu Panda & The Happening
In the middle of a rather hectic and sometimes frightening weekend (more on that later), I managed to catch two movies. Sooo without further ado, a movie review post:
Kung Fu Panda
I know, it looks bad right? I saw the trailers and thought “Ah man, what the hell is with all of these Dreamworks movies about random animals pretending to be people.” For Kung Fu Panda, this works. Big time. I was an early fan of Jack Black, having really latched onto the early Tenacious D episodes on HBO and his work in High Fidelity, but as of late, I’ve felt my tolerance of him waning. I can only tolerate so many jazzy scat words as exclamations. That said, Jack Black is fantastic in Kung Fu Panda. Its very much him, but as the loveable loser panda, he is quite entertaining. The story is somewhat of a standard kung fu plotline: loser panda dreams of being a kung fu master, is chosen as the fateful warrior destined to save all, rejected by his peers but ultimately proves his merit and gains the respect of everyone who used to look down on him. Yes thats right, its The Karate Kid. Ok not really. But that movie was awesome too.
Anyway, Kung Fu Panda: A-
The Happening
The Happening looks good right? Who doesn’t love a good, creepy movie about a mysterious occurrence threatening mankind. To be clear, this is probably the worst movie I’ve actually seen in a theater in a long time. Shockingly bad acting. The most mundane dialog. The Funky Bunch really needs to sit Marky Mark down and talk to him about his future plans. I don’t think the whole “acting” thing is working for him. Or maybe he should just do movies with good directors. He was ok in Boogie Nights and The Departed. The list of “good” directors, btw, no longer includes M. Night Shyamalan. I now declare this dude’s talent as completely tapped. Ok, if you don’t want this movie spoiled then don’t read on, because I’m about to rip the central plotline real bad: Dude! Plants are fighting back and releasing a neurotoxin that causes humans to kill themselves? In response to global warming?? WTF? This movie needed to be called “An Inconvenient Truth 2: Attack of the Killer Plants”. Ridiculous.
The Happening: D+ (the difference between an F and a D+ is having the ever cute Zooey Deschanel in the cast)
Cornelius and the Catnip
A few days ago, I came across some catnip in a bag that was rather old. I placed it into my bathroom trashcan. This was not such a good idea. Apparently, my cat is a catnip fiend. She caught a whiff of it and knocked the trashcan over to get at it. She then spent a large amount of time spinning around on the bathroom floor, making even more of a mess, in a catnip induced haze.
Seriously guys, don’t do drugs.
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