Classic Dishes...



Equal Time

Well, shit.

Western Conference Semifinal
Colorado Avalanche 1
San Jose Sharks 0
(F/OT, Sharks lead best-of-seven series 3-1)

Game Five is Sunday at noon on ABC.

Doing my part to spread Shark Fever in the Northwest…

I promised some folks on the San Jose Sharks mailing list that I’d take a picture of my office corkboard with all of my Sharks paraphenelia on it, and my new playoff towel arrived in the mail today (thanks again to the sender, you know who you are), so I brought in the camera and did so, and I figure I’ll post ’em here for everyone to enjoy.

There are two, actually: one is of my corkboard which has the towels up on it, and the other is my whiteboard upon which I am tracking all of the series as they play out. (Sorry about the whiteboard being a little dark – the flash was creating a glare.)

Spring (among other things) has sprung….

My Honda was pleased to announce on the drive into work this morning that Spring is officially underway!

It’s kinda too bad. I’m a couple thousand miles away from the 90K checkup, and just once I’d like the turn signal to still be broken when I bring it in so they can SEE that it’s stuck and don’t think I’m crazy. Maybe I’ll make ’em search the service bulletin thing while I’m standing there.

From the rarefied air of the Mile High City…

…tonight’s NHL Playoff update:

Western Conference Semifinal
Colorado Avalanche 0
San Jose Sharks 1
(Sharks lead best-of-seven series 3-0)

The Sharks have never enjoyed a 3-0 lead in a playoff series, and are now a single win away from their first Conference Finals appearance in franchise history.

Game Four is Wednesday night in Denver.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to continue dancing around my apartment like a madman.

UPN, you just Got Served….

By now I think Iron Chef, the cooking-meets-American-Gladiators import that has become a huge hit on Food Network, had become ubiquitous enough that most people know what it is, if they don’t necessarily hop to when they hear the phrase “Allez Cuisine!”

Well, a couple years ago UPN commissioned an American version of the show, with big-time American celebrity chefs like Todd English and Roy Yamaguchi as the Iron Chefs, and William Shatner as the Chairman, the mythical originator of the whole contest. And aside from Shatner, who seems to have learned in recent years that his best performances come from simply being his own overbearing self, the whole thing stunk like that science experiment that was once meatloaf in the back of your fridge.

I’m pleased to report that Food Network tried their own hand at Iron Chef America over the weekend, and they got it dead solid perfect. Putting Alton Brown behind the announcer’s desk is Jack Nicholson / Joker-style casting, the FoodTV chefs they had representing (Wolfgang Puck, Mario Batali, and Bobby Flay, who has appeared twice on the Japanese show) were all very capable (Puck was surprisingly good), and bringing over the Japanese Iron Chefs as combatants (Hiroyuki Sakai and Masuharu Morimoto, anyhow; Chen Kenichi was in poor health and couldn’t make the trip – get well soon, Chen!) lent a sense of familiarity to the whole thing.

All in all, I recommend them heartily, and if you didn’t get the chance to see them this weekend, FoodTV is running them every night this week at 11:00P. Fire up the TiVo. :)

Is that a bell I hear…?

‘CUZ THE AVALANCHE JUST GOT SCHOOLED:

Western Conference Semifinal
Colorado Avalanche 1
San Jose Sharks 4
(Sharks lead best-of-seven series 2-0)

Game Three is Monday night in Denver.

Seattle, hockey, and Survivor

It’s raining like hell outside. Not so much as a drop about twenty minutes ago when I was out fetching lunch. Welcome to Seattle in the springtime.

Here’s a quick San Jose Sharks update for you:

Western Conference Semifinal
Colorado Avalanche 2
San Jose Sharks 5
(Sharks lead best-of-seven series 1-0)

About as great of a Game One as I could have expected. Vinny Damphousse had a goal, Patrick “El Capitan” Marleau had his second set of hats in the playoffs, and the Avs are already on tilt and taking stupid selfish goonery penalties. (I expected better from a Tony Granato-coached team.)

Game Two is Saturday at high noon (and if you’re reading me on the left side of the country, your local ABC affiliate will have the game), and it will be very interesting to see if the Avs stay on tilt. If they do, this series could be over in less than the six or seven games most people seem to think it’s gonna go.

We haven’t talked Survivor for a while. so here’s the

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As much as I don’t think Shii-Ann has played a particularly brilliant game, I was thrilled to see her stick it in the face of the Chapearans (I refuse to acknowledge the Tribal Swap That Wasn’t), who are so secure and audacious in their alliance that they feel they can tell someone openly that they’re Next To Go.

Mixed feelings about the ejection, though. Alicia immediately pissed me off when she started to get snippy and wouldn’t let Shii-Ann enjoy her hard-fought victory. “You gotta live with us, you know,” she warned. Yeah. Like the living was easy the previous couple days, being told around every turn her game was going to end, and even getting stuck with the crappy bowl of rice at Rupert’s Last Supper.

At the same time, I can’t believe that they didn’t take that opportunity to break up Ambuh and Rob, since that is the only way anyone else is gonna make the final two. And based on the promos, the loveable castaways don’t sound like they’re planning on getting a clue anytime soon, as the women start with the infighting.

Disappointing. All-Stars started so strong, but the gaffes of these supposive “master” players is ruining the show.

Postscript: Rain stopped. It’s totally bright outside again. Freakin’ Seattle.

Titularly Speaking

(Huh-huh. He said “titular”)

Yesterday I took Blogger to task for not being able to title individual posts.

So I spent about three seconds poking around Blogger’s help files, and instantly found what toggle to flip to turn on titles, and how to add it to the blog template. It’s always been there, I’ve always had it turned off. Duh.

So, now we have titles, and I can come up with clever puns and snarky comments to make with ’em, and I THINK it might even use ’em in the XML feed…we’ll see about that.

Houston, Hello

So I apologize to everyone for not having posted in a while, but I fear I just haven’t had all that much to say. So we’re gonna try one of those bits-and-pieces Larry King-type posts. I’m just gonna talk about the little things that come to mind. Here goes:

Blogger needs the ability to give individual titles to posts . LiveJournal lets you do it, Blogger should too. (I suppose you could always title it in the first line, and then boldface it and give it a HEADER tag, maybe. I should play around with that.)

I got a new cellphone last week. It’s pretty neat. I’ve always wanted one with a color screen and the ability to modify it with my own graphics and ringtones and such, and Costco had a deal, so I took the plunge. So of course the first thing I did was upload into it a boatload of game show themes for the ringers, and a San Jose Sharks graphic for the wallpaper.

Speaking of the Sharks, round two of the playoffs starts tonight! They handled the Blues with dispatch…I don’t think Colorado will be so easy, but I think we can beat them if we stick to our game. It would also help if Peter Forsberg were to suddenly drop dead.

We haven’t talked about Survivor lately. I’m disappointed that Lex is out, but he dug his own grave. Looks GOOD sporting the Mohawk on the jury. though. Unless someone grows a brain and makes a move SOON, it’s gonna be Rawb v. Ambuh for all the marbles, and even then it’s entirely possible that Rawb can run the table on immunity. Certainly he’s favored as long as the challenge is physical. There’s a chance if we have a mental challenge soon, Alicia wins it, and strikes while the iron is hot.

Man, I do NOT know how I lived without TiVo. I used my old-skool VCR to record Survivor last week (‘cuz it was on opposite the Sharks), and I was amazed at what a pain in the ass it was to program (and mine’s pretty easy). You just get spoiled clicking one button and having it be done. Now if I can just work up the sack to put a second drive in it and figure out how to Monte it so I can extract video.

I need to decide whether I’m gonna record Survivor tonight on the VCR or off my PC. The PC just got a new hard drive, but the TV card doesn’t record the audio as loud as I would like. (I might be able to leave it on the Tivo, if I’m stuck watching the game on ESPN2 and the Center Ice local feed is blacked out. We’ll see.)

I hope this problem with my MP3 player is confined to the battery. I plugged it into a power strip to recharge, but I didn’t realize I was plugging it in between two seperate outlets instead of into an isolated one. I’m sure this fucks up polarity or grounding or something, and now the thing doesn’t realize when the battery is full. If I killed the battery, I can probably obtain another one, but I need a special one to use the contact in the player to rechange it, which is much more convenient than a seperate charger. If I killed the circuitry on the MP3 player, I’ll be pissed.

I’m jazzed about this Iron Chef America thing FoodTV has coming up this weekend. They clearly have their ducks in a row far straighter than UPN ever did…but I liked Chairman Shatner. I dunno about this new kid. But Alton Brown is in the Hattori chair, and that is Jack Nicholson / Joker-style casting, as far as I’m concerned. Should be fun.

In the last year, TV has cancelled Mister Sterling, Ed, Boston Public, and the Drew Carey version of Who’s Line. What show that I liked will they shitcan next? You folks better hope I don’t get into Joan Of Arcadia. (I have some stuff to say about her, but I’d like to watch one more episode to make sure my opinion still holds.)

Well, it’s just about time for me to pack up and get out of here, so I’ll wrap this for now. Perhaps I’ll have some Survivor thoughts in the morning, if something remotely interesting happens.