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Something occurred to me this morning, about this whole Super Bowl / Janet Jackson’s nipple thing. They ran ads for no less than three different drugs designed to aid in the heartbreak of erectile disfunction during the game. So it seems that if the NFL and CBS want me to get a hard-on through pharmaceutical means, that’s no problem. But if I want to do it NATURALLY, well, ahem, we can’t have THAT! If you can’t laugh at my misfortune, what can you laugh at, right? So I decided I was gonna make chocolate chip cookies (Alton Brown’s The Chewy) tonight. Unwrapped a couple sticks of butter, dug out the saucepan I use for melting same (the last of my original cookware – the remainder was unceremoniously retired today in favor of new pots and pans which received a run through the dishwasher before being entered into service), and the usual plastic bowl I pre-sift the flour and baking soda into. Butter on the back burner, bowl on the front one (my counterspace is minimal at best), burner on, commence measuring flour. Hmm. Not much flour. Hope it’s enough. After a careful measure….ah, close enough! Rock and roll! Sift sift sift. How’s the butter doing? Hm, still rock hard. Hey, something doesn’t look right. *peer* Dammit, that’s the wrong burner! Get that bowl the hell off of there! ….too late. The bottom had melted enough that I deposited the last two-plus cups of flour in the house directly onto the burner, along with a good bit of melted plastic. Oh well. I was goin’ out to bring back some dinner anyhow. Now I can make a detour for a bag of flour on the way. From another good friend of mine, hdayejr@aol.com, I received the following missive: (BTW, “The Invision Board” is the game-show board that I’ve mentioned I post to on a more-than-regular basis. Ol’ Harv-O was recently ejected for, well, being an idiot.) THE INVISION BOARD IS GOING TO BE FUCKED UP YET TONIGHT(DESPITE WHAT YOU AND YOUR BITCH BOYFRIEND ZINKIN THINK) AND YOUR WEBPAGE IS PROBABLY NEXT. ANY THING I HACK AND GET, WILL NOT BE RETURNED TO THE PERSON IT BELONGS. IT BECOMES MY PROPERTY, SO FUCK YOU AND YOUR FAMILY TOO!!!! “ANYTHING I HACK AND GET”? Doesn’t that sound like an open threat a 13-year-old HaX0R would make in a letter to 2600? The way I see it, the day a chump (and that’s all he is, a little chump) like Harvey Daye can beat Comcast, that’s the day I don’t want ’em for my ISP anymore. Somehow I have a feeling we’ll still be here in the morning. Seattle sports fans did me proud yesterday. The Seahawks were tied with the Packers at 20 yesterday at the end of regulation of their NFC Wildcard playoff game, and Seattle won the coin toss for possession. And Seattle QB Matt Hasselbeck said, and I quote, “We went the ball, and we’re going to score!” What he DIDN’T say was “Unless, of course, I throw a dumb-ass pass on 3rd and 11 that Al Harris picks off and runs back for a touchdown to win the game for the Packers.” Now, one of the IRC channels I hang out on is #seattle, made up mostly of locals. And because the intelligence level of the average IRC denizen is right up there with, well, the average intelligence level of most of the country, any local channel whose sports team just lost an important game is usually flooded with idiots from The Other City come to brag about their perceived dominance. And, lo, it was the same on this day. A few Packer fans (I refuse to believe a #greenbay exists, it would have been annexed by #milwaukee years ago) came in and bellowed the oh-so-intelligent analysis of “SEAHAWKS SUCK!” Never mind that the game went to overtime, or that Seattle never really should have been in the playoffs anyhow, only having won two road games. “SEAHAWKS SUCK!” And nobody so much as blinked. “Yeah, tell us something we don’t know.” And it hit me: The last playoff game this team won was in 1983. Being told that the Seahawks suck is roughly akin to calling Out! Magazine and telling them to stop the presses for an emergency news item: Richard Simmons is gay! So, good on the good people of #seattle, sports fans though they by and large may not be, for not feeding the trolls. Oh, and I wasn’t that heartbroken over the loss either. So even though I’ve only lived here for 5 years now, maybe I’m learning. Been watching a lot of Bravo lately, mainly because they show repeats of The West Wing, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite dramas on television, right up there with Boston Public on Fox. So as a result, even though I do the best I can with my Tivo, sometimes you see ads for other Bravo programming, and start to watch those shows as well. (Yeah, I watch Queer Eye. You wanna fight now?) Anyhow, one of the nice things about this effect is that I’ve been able to catch Celebrity Poker Showdown from the very first match. I love poker, I watch it often on ESPN, and I think Rounders is a truly underrated movie. One of the fallacies about poker is that it is a game of luck. Huh-uh. Poker, especially Texas Hold-Em (the way the Big Boys play it), is as much pure skill and pure acting as it is luck. And I believe you can learn a lot from watching and playing poker. So with that, I present: What I Have Learned From Watching Celebrity Poker Showdown: 1) Life isn’t fair: I knew this going in, of course, but watching Willie Garson win hand after hand on the turn and the river really drove it home. EVERY time he needed to fill an inside straight, he did it. EVERY time he needed that third Jack to beat someone elses two pairs, he did it. People were going all-in on completely reasonable hands, and he would out-draw them EVERY SINGLE TIME. 2) Allison Janney can sit at my poker table anytime, as she is intelligent, delightful to look at, and a wholly mediocre poker player: I knew most of this going in, too. Knowing that she’s a bad poker player and that I could prolly take her for a few bucks is just icing on the cake. 3) A broken watch is still right twice a day: How Nicole Sullivan went from the short stack to the overall winner of her round still baffles me, as her cards were never really that good and she didn’t bluff all that well. But it happened. 4) Coolio is a pussy: I’ve long believed that the decline of Western Civilization started with seven words: “I’ll take Coolio to block, please, Tom.” Coolio should hunt down his booking agent and beat him with a hammer. I mean, how can you lose street cred FASTER than sitting in a flashing square for a week? Answer: by proving that you can’t play poker either. Wow. With five players at the table, you do NOT represent like you have something when you’re holding 4-6 unsuited, because there is a good chance that someone else either a) DOES have something, or b) is willing to pay to see if YOU do. At the rate he’s going, he could come across Young MC in a dark alley, and HE’D be the one to turn and flee screaming. I probably learn a lot from Queer Eye, too, but if I were to analyze it I’d need therapy, and that’s good for nobody, so we’ll leave that be for now. So I guess Washington beat WSU and won the Apple Cup this weekend. Being as I hate college football, I could really care less. But I thought football was supposed to be a manly sport. “Apple Cup”? Could there BE a faggier name for a rivalry game? I come from a state where Stanford and Cal (and UCLA and USC, but screw ’em) play in the “Big Game”. Oregon takes a lot of shit for, well, being Oregon, but at least Oregon and OSU play in the “Civil War”. That sounds manly to me. “Apple Cup” sounds like something manufactured by a bunch of Oompa-Loompas. One of those annoying vocal Apple advocates who was temping at Microsoft got shitcanned for making a smartass comment on his blog. I don’t hate Apple, but it does my heart good to see one of these militant Macheads get their comeuppance. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Well, we’re into the thick of hockey season, now, and last Saturday, the Toronto Maple Leafs came to town. I’ll explain why this is notable in a second, but first, a few words about Ed Belfour: The Four Of You who read this page should know by now that I am a rampant San Jose Sharks fan. And the Sharks have seen some lean times in the eleven-plus years they have been in the NHL. Then, in 1997, the Sharks finally made The Move, we finally got our All-Star player, when we traded for goaltender Ed Belfour. Now, Eds was in a contract year, so we knew we were running the risk of him leaving the team at the end of the season, leaving us completely empty handed in return for the players we had traded for him. But everyone was certain that Ed was going to re-sign, as Ed himself had repeatedly told the media how much he liked San Jose, how he thought the team was going places, and how he was looking forward to working out a contract so he could stay. The season ends, and still no contract. Ed wants to see what he’s worth on the open market, but he’s still 99% sure that he’s going to re-sign with the Sharks. So the Sharks plan accordingly. July 1 is the first day of free agency, the first day it’s even LEGAL for other teams to talk to players without contracts. And the sun had barely risen on the West Coast before we find out that Ed Belfour had signed a multi-year deal with the Dallas Stars for less than we were offering him. He obvioiusly never had any intention of staying, and had played the Sharks for fools. Ed Belfour was, and continues to be for many Shark fans, the most hated player in the National Hockey League. The following year, Ed managed to avoid both of Dallas’s trips into San Jose, and it turns out that the first time he had to face his former team (and the fans he had screwed) was Game Three of the first round of the playoffs. And the fans were not kind. We won that game :) Over the years, Eds has come back to San Jose Arena, but not frequently…his ability to come up with an injury or illness the night of a game in San Jose against the Sharks has been uncanny. His fear of playing in this building is both obvious and laughable. After his tenure in Dallas, he signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs, a team who had made a deal with the league that they wouldn’t have to go on West Coast road trips for several years in return for switching to the Eastern Conference. Which includes road games in San Jose. What a coincidence. This brings us to Saturday night: after five years, the Leafs are finally playing in San Jose again. And the night before, in Los Angeles, Mikael Tellqvist was in net for Toronto. So there’s no excuse, we’re gonna get a shot at The Weasel. Saturday comes, and it’s time for starting lineups. And who’s in goal for the Leafs? Mikael Tellqvist, again. Eddie supposively has the “flu”. Fans on hand have reported that he looked perfectly healthy to them during warmups. Unbelievable. So, Ed Belfour, if you’re reading this: You’re a PUSSY. P-U-S-S-Y. A she-male. A man-gina. May you rot in hell. Our good buddy replied just a little bit ago: From: Michael Brown Wow…You are a funny guy!! Maybe one day you’ll make it onto T.V.. Then I can shut you off. Enjoy your life, Hmm. Kinda a weak start, but it picked up steam and finished strong. I didn’t realize I’d left him the opening, and I admire a man who can take it and dish it right back. I told him as much, too. No response yet. My guess is he’s still looking up “bravado”. |
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