ARRRRRRR!!!

Long story, but I got roped into manning Ye Olde Meat Pie Stand at the NoCal Pirate Festival. Load of wenches, drunks, and people with heat stroke and symptoms of overdoing Ye Olde Turkey Legs two stands over.

Guy on left got his ring caught in guy on the right's beard

I have seen this costume before, but I can't remember where

Marilyn Manson has a sister

Ron Jeremy is a pirate

Don't Stop Believing is a pirate song

Bermudas take away from the biker image

Obviously manned by Baristas

Ron White is right! When you hold a woman in a seashell

bra to your ear, you can hear her scream. 

(PS: Check out the chicken bone boots on the guy on the left) 

. 

I've arrived...

...I think...it took me about 10 minutes to find it weird that half the people in the Muni car were wearing monkey suits.

They all were on their way to the Haight Ashbury Street Fair. As usual for SF festivals, it brought together billowing clouds of burnt chicken teriyaki smoke, hammering House and Dance, Hare Krishnas, drag queens, and people clandestinely selling brownies out of backpacks.

So not a bad day, but given the location, I would have expected the Dead and CCR, not half the California MCs. Great brownies, though....

I hate down climbing granite...

It's perfectly safe to walk down 45 degree granite slopes, but is scares the hell out of me. Especially when the next level surface is 2000 feet down.

Oh, I also got a sunburn. And some pictures.

Tuolumne meadows

Yosemite Valley from Sentinel Dome

Hetch Hetchy

Truthiness in Advertising

Awesome site comparing the ad pictures with what the fast food places actually serve. Hey, the Filet O'Seafood Parts And Plankton almost looks like in the flyer.

Back in Japan

I don't even want to think about the fact that I spent 21 hours on planes this week. Another whirlwind trip to the corporate motherland in Osaka. Actually, much preferable to the Tokyo office. KIX is much smaller and neater than Narita, even if it's on an artificial--and rapidly sinking--island. Always fun to see the guys building a new island just to the north so they'll have an airport when KIX slides under.

It was also the first time that Japan wasn't oppressively hot, and it only poured one day. On the other hand, I still don't understand how it can be more humid than the 100% days in Illinois, but they always manage to kick it up another notch. Even in 73 degree weather, I was soaked. Not much came out of the meetings, but I had an extra day that I spent in Kyoto temple-ing and gorging myself on Kyoto cuisine the first night and $1 per plate sushi when I was templed out the second day. Since I was the only foreigner for miles, I'll just assume that raw egg, spam, duck breast, and raw chicken sushi is normal. Fugu tastes just like very weak squid and is actually quite disappointing. My lips went a bit numb, so it was apparently the real stuff. The cook was nice enough to show me the special locked bucket where they have to keep the livers for the health department.

Oh, if you ever fly United--BRING YOUR OWN FOOD. The stuff they served was right behind 1980s Aeroflot for the worst ever.

Thank you CW...

...for making the series finale of Gilmore Girls suck so horribly that I'll never miss the show.

I _AM_ an idiot

Today, I managed the dumbest face plant ever. I took my "good" bike since it's finally summer here and totally forgot that it has disc brakes and front suspension. So I hit the brakes on gravel out in Crissy Field about as much as on the POS bike I used in winter and the next thing I remember is wondering why I was lying flat on my back. No permanent damage, except to my pride.

The Presidio is so beautiful in the spring.

(Almost) summer

Santa Cruz with mental seals, boardwalk and still stored lifeguard towers. I went diving, I froze my ass off in the water, and I now hate kelp. But it was great--and warming up on the beach with all the bikini wearing Slugs was nice, too.

WTF?

I logged into MySpace for the first time in months and it listed Sam Brownback as "Cool New People". I am officially scarred for life now.

Yay for the Carolinas

80 sheep found living in a suburban home euthanized. You can't make up them things Southerners do.

Thanks Leigh Ann for pointing out what kind of town you moved to. We only have meth labs.

At the same time, SC does politics as usual. Money quote "We tried to explain to the folks in Boston early on that it's a little different here"

Livin' on a Prayer

Weird. Some things you don't notice. I just found out that I apparently never bought any Bon Jovi. I just never occurred to me. Fixed that at the used record store. Long live arena rock.

From the WTF section of the book store

The Batman Handbook

With sections on "How to Throw a Batarang," "How to Make a Batsuit," and "How to Bulletproof Your Batmobile," this is the ultimate real-world training manual for any aspiring caped crusader. You'll discover how to:

- Train a Sidekick
- Execute a Backflip
- Survive a Poison Gas Attack
- Throw a Grappling Hook
- plus dozens of other crucial skills ...

Technical writing

I am such a dork. My subwoofer broke after 10 years, so I bought a set of new speakers on sale. Since the manual was so thin, I actually started reading it. It's pretty much the best manual I've seen in--like--ever. Clear, concise, assuming that the user isn't a complete idiot, and written with a very dry sense of humor.

"Never try to find out how loud your system will go- the answer is fractionally less than the volume that breaks it."

"If you are in any doubt as to how dry your ballast material is, a short period on a baking tray in a hot over should ensure that the material is dry. Please allow the sand or ballast to cool first [before putting it in the speaker stand]"

Sometimes you have to love British public schools.

Staying ali-iiiiiii-iiiiiii-ve

I shop at the Under One Roof Castro shop for offbeat presents like naked-men-bottle-openers and druggie-highway-exit quite a lot, but I wonder if it's worse to die--or to to depend on a charity named after the cheesiest 70s movie ever.

Go watch WorkOut

If you get Bravo, or have iTunes, you can't afford to miss this show. In today's episode, the super gay trainer is jealous because the lesbian owner's doing the straight trainer chick who shows clients pictures of her boyfriend's BLEEEP on her cell phone.

Why I love the Mac (most of the time) Part 3

Because some of the software just works so freaking well that you won't believe if you are only using Windows. For example:

MarsEdit, a program that lets me update my blog by simply sending email to it.

Vienna, the world's most awesome RSS reader. It's even freeware.

The new Camino beta which supports the system wide spelling dictionary.

Holly Chr...

Changing of the guard at a famous Spanish church. The soldiers are members of the Spanish Foreign Legion.

Save the bunny

This must be one of the most screwed up web games. I killed the Bunny five times today in meetings.

UGGS

Ah, the life and times of a blonde:

I'm getting rid of our Uggs - I feel so guilty for that craze being started around Baywatch days - I used to wear them with my red swim suit to keep warm - never realizing that they were SKIN! I thought they were shaved kindly? People like to tell me all the time that I started that trend - yikes! Well lets start a new one - do NOT buy Uggs! Buy Stella McCartney or juicy boots - I'm looking for alternatives myself for my boys and the men in my life! I'm designing some right now for my family and will try and have some available on my website soon.

Pam's blog is a-effing-mazing

This show make you hurl--in the best way possible

Wow, if you get the Travel Channel check out Bizarre Foods. Great travel show, the host is a hoot, and it's the only show on TV that makes my eyes water.

Rotten meat, Criadillas (pretty good), Druiam (actually, not as bad as he makes it out to be), and other things you shouldn't put in your mouth. And I am from a place where the local specialties include calf's brain soup and bone marrow dumplings.

Don't break my heart...

...my eeky geeky heart. It seems like GP-B has experimentally proved frame dragging. The even more amazing part is that Stanford has been working on it continuously since 1959. Even the early grad students who worked on it are retired by now. Even analyzing the collected data will take about 4 years.

So 48 years after it started, we are only 2 years away from the final data.

The way to preserve family values and domestic tranquility

From the Spike and Mike festival (mov)

Oh, the irony

I went ahead and installed the ABC live streaming software. Quick install, fast streaming, and looks gorgeous on a 1280 screen. There is only one problem: I haven't watched ABC in years and now I remembered why!

Anyone know a ABC program that doesn't blow chunks?

Heart of Darkness ca. 2007

Just giving props to one of the most amazing travel blogs ever. Makes me want to go and dread it at the same time.

Point Lobos

Live seals this time. It's 80 degrees out here and sunny like heck.

Swords, Dragons, and Decomposing Sea Lions

Chinese New Year in San Francisco...loud, crowded, and actually a bit of a letdown.

The next day, I saw this interesting rock in Pacifica, so I climbed down to take a picture.









What did I learn?

Decomposing sea lion is the worst smell EVAH!!!!!!

Sunday

Why does everyone overroast?

After a long trip through Starbucks, Peets, local coffee shops and gourmet roasters, I finally found a store that sells 5 ppound bags of Lavazza again. The experience left me wondering why every American roaster overroasts their coffee? At Starbucks it's a given, they use their stuff mostly in highly sugared drinks, so they have to give some bite to average beans. Peets is a bit better, but still deliveres dark, glossy beans that kill most of the taste. And the local roasters--from BlueBottle in SF over Hudson Bay Co. in Rockridge, to Quartermaine and Coyote in DC (and at any stop in between)--are either not far behind, or way worse.

It doesn't have to do with strength, or caffination, or even local differences: every "gourmet" coffee bean in the States is roasted within an inch of its life.

Lily or Lavazza beans make a cup that sits up and barks, but if you look at the beans, they are positively pale, or even slightly greenish compared with the standard US stuff. Might it be that they use pretty much pure Arabica? Or is it just as simple as "Starbucks set the taste of American coffee drinkers and anyone must follow or perish"?

Hey, maybe it's not even Starbuck's fault. NYC diner coffee 25 years ago was thin, black, and bitter.

Insomnia rocks

It's 8:30

-I cleaned the kitchen to Metallica
-I did two loads of laundry
-I rearranged furniture
-I vaccumed to AC/DC

And I annoyed the crap out of the folks downstairs.

Pundits

Theismann--WRONG
Salisbury--WRONG
Hoge--WRONG
Jaworski--WRONG
Schlereth--WRONG
Allen--WRONG
Mortensen--WRONG
Golic--WRONG

Embarrassing Sport Pundit Nitwits

Fog free weekend

Something like 30 degrees in the morning and westerly winds for the last week or so. The perfect mix of no fog, no tourists, and awesome waves.

Any given Saturday

Now that three friends and colleagues in as many weeks have accused me of "hating" Notre Dame, I'd like to clarify:

I don't hate Notre Dame, they are one of the 50 best NCAA football teams. I don't hate any players, I just have issues with their fans, their organization, their loudmouthed alumni, and the guys who've only watched them on NBC. Notre Dame is NOT the best team in college football and they are not even a top ten team. Arguably, they are a top 25, but they are always ranked about 10 places higher than they should be because they have two very unique advantages any given Saturday:

-They don't play in a conference. Any given Saturday, players give just the little extra effort when playing conference rivals. Alabama plays just this much harder when they play Florida, Oregon plays just that much harder when playing USC, and even the pathetic Illini get off their asses when playing Ohio State. OK, Michigan and USC bring out their A game when playing the Irish, but a lot of the middling Division A teams don't have a special stake in the Irish games.
-They play the service academies every year, essentially getting three free wins. Now, Vanderbilt, Indiana, and Stanford provide the same service for the SEC, Big Ten, and PAC 10, but that's one game per year; and even they could probably beat Army, Navy and Air Force any given Saturday. So STFU about "strenght of schedule" while at the same time cashing in on three freebies per year because of tradition.

0-9 in bowl games is all you need to know about how ND fares against top ten teams.

I'll start rooting for them once they decide if they want to be on a level playing field and play Division 1-A, or be the Harlem Globertrotters of the NCAA.

Happy New Year

I had a few days off, so I did a 3 day drive along the parts of Highway 1 I hadn't been to. Back for bar crawl and the fireworks on the Embarcadero (no pics, sorry).

Hangover only lasted until early afternoon--there is something to be said for sticking to mojitos and bubbly.

Rennaisance Fair Attitude

Somehow this guy seems not be quite in the right spirit.

Cali drivers, take 2

I've complained about the mind boggling incompetence of California drivers before, but today, some 20 of them took it to a new level. Diamond Blvd to Willow Pass is a two lane left turn. A bakers dozen who somehow passed the exam decided that the best way to utilize them was by using the right lane only--blocking anyone behind them from using the left one in the process. WTF??? So it only took twice as long for everyone behind them.

I can understand that the concept of multiple lanes might overtax one or two people's brains, but 20??????

Five or more...

Great day in the city, but I am shot for today. Before coming up with my New Year's resolutions, I thought I'd take stock to the rhythm of fives (or more). Feel free to add yours.

Five movies you can watch over and over again?

Kill Bill Vol 1
Mary Poppins
Ronin
Pulp Fiction
My Fair Lady

Five songs you find yourself belting out in your car?

Amazing Grace
Running--No Doubt
Dancing with Myself--Billy Idol
Danny Boy--(just about the only song that makes my cry)
The River--Springsteen

Five favorite vacation spots?

Venice
Anaztasi Ruins
Penang
Herdubried
Belize

Five (or more) favorite roads?

Highway 1 between Santa Cruz and Ft. Bragg
New Zealand Highway 5
CA 4
Alaska 1 (Anchorage -- Homer)
Tangier--Boulemange
Stilfser Joch
Dear God In Heaven Who Came Up With This Idea??--AKA HI 30 between Kapalua and Waihee
Icefield Highway in January

Five favorite towns?

London
Chiang Mai
Wellington
Santa Cruz
Marrakesch

Five books you've read more than five times?

Fiesta--Hemmingway
Beneath Another Sky--Ridgeway
Ulysses--Joyce
Exodus--Leon Uris (not since 1990)
Vineland--Pynchon

Five places you really want to go?

Torres De Paines
Australia
All parts of the Himalaya
India
Fiji

Five (or more) favorite views

Ouarzazate
Belize's Barrier Reef
Yosemite from Ohmsted Point
Cliff House in Mesa Verde NP
Waimea Canyon
Muir Beach
Wat Phra That Doi Suthep
Mt Cook


Five (or more) worst meal ever?

Soft shell crab
The fish the first night in Ambergis Caye
Eggs sunny side up in Kamphaeng Phet (not for me, but for the 40 other tourists)
Hash (made from the leftovers of the meat sauce, made from the leftovers of the solyanka, made from the leftovers of the steaks made from the leftover of the rib roast,... do I have to mention it was in Moscow?)
Waaaaay-past-it's-due-date oyster on the Champs Elysees
Bandera Annual Silver Sage Corral Benefit Chili Cookoff
Fried rat in a Shan roadhouse (actually, not bad until I saw the ingredients on the way out--I puked until the next morning)

Five (or more) worst smells?

Tanneries in Marrakech
Farting sea lions at Pier 39
River/sewer/water source/pool in a small town outside Melacca
Feast of St. Anthony (bir sardine cookoff in Lisbon)
The 5 climbers on the bus back from Mt. McKinley
The old Forrest Service latrine at Valdez Glacier (they posted a sign apologizing for the "putrid conditions")

Turkey Day

What happens if you turn left at the end of the driveway and just keep going? I did just that to escape tryptophan and Black Friday and 6 hours, some interesting driving and a few black bear tracks later, I was 20 miles outside South Lake Tahoe. Sadly, the only skiing was a few runs at Heavenly. Drove back late Saturday to escape the first interstate-closing snow of the season and spent Sunday watching the first season of Newlyweds and predator-shopping at Macy's.

Working hard

I was sailing in the Caribbean, so there haven't been updates in a bit.

Weird California

Last weekend took me through the only US town ever founded by Chinese, the Sacramento Delta--as close as you can get to dirt poor Louisiana backcountry in California, over the capital's Disneyland; all the way to the gold discovery reenactment in Placerville, known throughout the world as the original Hangtown and, not coincidentially, the birthplace of Kinkade galleries.

How many ensigns can spell Ticonderoga?

Fleet week. Really too crowded to see much, but I went for a two hours walk through the City's newup and coming section: Hayes Valley, a fine mix of Gucci and druggy. There is a really cool German restaurant next to the homeless shelter, though.

I didn't even know SF has a new metro system, much less that you can take it right to within 500 feet of the Pacific.

The Blue Angels were pretty cool, but I felt sorry for the Coast Guard guy flying the Hercules right before them--cool job and all, but he has to know that everyone who's watching is there for the F18s.

Dumbest sign ever

Ocean Beach

20x zoom on a point and shoot--cool, eh?

The Nimitz

To put it in perspective

Ticonderoga

A perfect Saturday

Cal plucks, trusses and roasts the Ducks.
Vols neuter the Bulldogs.
Auburn Tigers loose.
LSU Tigers drown in the Swamp.

See you in the Top Ten.

Even better the other Tigers manhandle the Yankees. Not that I care about Detroit. ;-)

Oh, and Indiana won their first Big Ten game this year. Go Andrew!!!

PS. Someone should go after Oregon for bribing referees. They've got a touchdown and a few pass interferences deeded to them, and they got away with the worst personal foul I've seen in college football in a long time.

Gay Square Dancing Makes Me Giddy With Happyness

I don't really know why, it just does. Or it did for the first time today at the Castro Street Fair. The sight of buff, bare breasted, hatted and booted cowboys two-stepping with each other is at once beautiful and deeply subversive. Only downside: I haven't heard this much Shania since my last trip to Alberta.

The other big event in the city was the reopening of the Emporeum as the biggest Bloomingdales outside of 5th Street. Amazingly, putting it next to Nordstrom didn't create a spontaneous implosion that would have sucked the Powell/Market corner into a blackhole of hipness. The biggest jaw-dropper is the hand bag floor--yes, they have a three-football-field floor of handbags surrounded by smaller stores for the more exclusive handbags. I think I might be able to get away with a few in SF, but I couldn't make up my mind between Spade and Tumi. The Diors, D&Gs and Versaces were also cool, but way out of my price range...

OK, seriously, though, it must be the only food court that sells sashimi by the pound, and slices and dresses it for you on the spot. Mhhhhh, Saku tuna.

Top 10 things I learned over the weekend..

The other pictures that go with this entry are here

1. Dragon boat racing is THE place to meet hot, buff Asian-American women.
2. 90% of the people who are into leather shouldn't be.
3. Wearing a full latex suit in 80 degree weather is NOT sexy.
4. Hard core leather freaks are totally nice people.
5. Furries are bitchy.
6. Some people can walk with 5 pounds of metal hanging off their privates.
7. There has to be an age limit on public mastrubation--and it's not 80!!!!!!!
8. Fosters and teriyaki chicken is a killer combination on an empty stomach.
9. The SFPD recruits at the Folsom Street Fair. Lets try that in Alabama.
10. Pink channeling Joan Jett is cool,but very un-NBC.

Last weekend

Not much...crawled out of bed, drove 3 hours to Yosemite, spent the weekend hiking around and a few hours trying rock climbing on big granite domes up on Tuolumne Meadows . I've never been that scared in my life: The thought of sliding down a 500 foot cheese grater had me glued to the wall. The whole time. Maybe I'll think back in a few weeks and go "Hey, that was FUN!"

By the way, that's not fog, it's smoke from the Star King fire. Made the high country smell like a giant smoker.

Food, glorious food...

Deep fried Mac'n'Cheese. We are one chicken fried Triple Whopper away from Armageddon.

Just in time for the fall sports season. The first week of football basically sucked. Cal lost to the Vols, and had a bad half before putting it to Minnesota. But most of all, I feel sorry for Farve who should have left for pretty much any other team. What the hell was he thinking staying under Mike McCarthy--who worked the Saints offensive juggernaut before running what was left of the 49ers into the ground. Yeah, he was his coach in 99. But that was under Holmgren, probably the best QB coach ever--and even he said that Farve didn't need much coaching except for telling him when to not throw the ball. And my former hometown team reached a new low against Rutgers.

Oh, well, at least the Buckeyes won.

East of Vineland

I was planning to spend Labor Day relaxing from the product release I've been working on for the last couple of months or so, but then I changed my plans on Wednesday to a visit to North Eastern California.

To my utter surprise, the natives out-redneck Alabama.

It seems that the area between Redding and the Oregon border is the natural habitat of metalhead-biker-Jeff-Foxworthy-wannabes. I've never evahr seen people visiting national parks and museums attired in gimme caps, wife beaters, greasy jeans and Harley-Davidson boots.

Best quote of the weekend "Yo bitch are too stupid to tell a cave from a fucking hole in the ground"--Skinny biker crawling out of a plugged up lava tube entrance.

Caving in 30 degree 100% humidity caves at 6000 feet kicks mountain biking's ass as aerobic exercise, by the way, but the tubes in Lava Beds NM are really cool--bats and all.

I've never been east of Shasta and always thought that it really isn't too impressive from I-5, but now I have to Samuel L. Jackson it: "Shasta is a motherf#$@ing Motherf&#@er of a mountain." Even from 80 or a hundred miles away, it completely dominates the skyline.







Monday at Lassen was probably the most georgeous day I've ever spent in the mountains: warm, clear, not a cloud in the sky.










By the way, remember the Coors waterfall? "Taste the Rockies" my ass--the fall is in Northern California.