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August 24, 2010

It's My Birthday!

For another five minutes, anyway. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday, and especially to chelsadilla for going so far out of her way to do awesome stuff for me. My birthday got under way last night at around midnight when I demanded that, because it was past midnight, chelsadilla should give me my present. She insisted that anticipation was important for some reason, and I took the position that it was August 24 and, goddammit, it was my birthday. I also threatened that if she didn't play by my rules for...

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November 11, 2009

Oysy

The other day, I noticed that there was a new restaurant on the East Side that claimed to offer a seafood and sushi buffet. Being a fan of seafood, sushi, and buffets, I decided I had to check this out. To my surprise, chelsadilla--normally a vehement anti-seafood advocate--was really into the idea of trying it out, especially when we read some stuff online indicating that they had several non-seafood options. The food at Oysy isn't the best I've ever had. The crab legs were cold (intentionally, I think), some of the sushi had been sitting out too long, and the...

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November 8, 2009

It's All About the Class

I'm not sure exactly who's idea it was, but chelsadilla and I decided that we had to go to Le Tigre Lounge, like, now. So, given that we had a bunch of people willing to go out but no particular idea about what to do Saturday night, we suggested it. Everyone was down, and we set off for parts unknown. For those of you who aren't as hip and with it as me and my group of friends, Le Tigre Lounge is in an extremely dilapidated strip mall directly off of the Beltline on Midvale. It's next-door neighbors are an...

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October 22, 2009

The King of the Burgers?

Earlier today, on Twitter, pH made an assertion that I considered fairly ridiculous: "The Angry Whopper is the Platonic ideal of a fast-food burger." The contention that the ideal fast-food burger could come from Burger King seemed too ludicrous to even consider. I mean, In-n-Out and Five Guys both exist and are sell amazing burgers. But then others on Twitter suggested that I was wrong for mocking pH. Later, finding myself tired and hungry after an extremely long day, I decided that I'd put the whole thing to the test. I was recently in California and, of course, I had...

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August 25, 2009

Happy Birthday to Me

You know what Monday was? My twenty-eighth birthday. Yes, I've now been imposing my presence on the world for almost three decades. Damn, I'm old. So I didn't go out to a bar and get rip-roarin' drunk or anything. I'll do that later. Instead, my lovely girlfriend took me out to dinner and got me some very nice and very useful gifts. What did she get me? Well, this might sound lame, but she got me a letter opener. I've been sort of wanting one for the office for a while, but haven't bought one because I hadn't seen one...

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May 10, 2009

The Four Most Overrated Things in Life

Dee pointed me to Overrated List, a blog consisting of readers' lists of the top four most overrated things in life. Dee also asked me to write my own. So here goes, in no particular order. Summer. Yeah, I have to admit that I was pretty excited when the average temperature started being above freezing this year. Yeah, I like not having to put on four layers just to take my garbage out. Yeah, I like being able to go for walks and stuff. And I love the farmers' market. And the Terrace. I love all of those things. But,...

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May 7, 2009

Happy Birthday Dane101 (Warning: This Post Contains Butt Funnel)

So, Dane101 is apparently four years old. To celebrate, they threw a party at my favorite Madison venue, the High Noon Saloon. So RPM and I, along with some others, went down there. It was a good time, and I got to talk to Jesse, who I have a bit of a heterosexual man-crush on (his favorite band is The Pixies! I love The Pixies!). The music, though, was a little, um, let's say "eclectic." The first band up was Little Red Wolf. This was apparently their first show, but I wouldn't have known that had I not been told....

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May 6, 2009

Roadside Meat, a Special Spurgh Sidebar

Yes, during our third day in the Spurgh, chelsadilla and I had some roadside meat. We went to lunch at this fucking amazing BBQ stand that was in a parking lot somewhere. It was all really, really good, although chelsadilla's pulled pork was way better than my brisket. The sides were great and the cornbread was out of this world. But the funniest thing about the stop was something on a flyer. The BBQ place was apparently hosting the second annual chili cook-off. The rules were very clear that the meat in the chili had to be beef. It listed...

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May 4, 2009

The Spurgh (Part III)

Frankly, after Friday and Saturday, I was pretty fucking tired. So I was happy to have a pretty relaxing Sunday morning. And it actually ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. Chelsadilla had been telling me for a long time about how she had driven a Miata in college and how that Miata had ended up in the Spurgh with her brother. Well, sure enough, there it was: a red convertible Miata. Now, I had appropriately made fun of chelsadilla for holding the Miata in such high regards, especially after the incident in law school...

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April 29, 2009

The Spurgh (Part II)

Before so much as one other person tells me how much I should go to Primanti Bros., let me just say this: I fucking went, ok? Anyway, our second day in the Spurgh started off pretty lazily. We got up sometime in the mid-morning. After a quick bagel, we were off. And in style, too. The weather was perfect: sunny and mid-80s, so we drove around in a convertible Wrangler the whole day. Awesome. We got on the highway and then headed towards the city. I knew I was in for a great day as soon as I saw the...

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March 23, 2009

For Reals This Time

I almost never eat breakfast. Certainly not on weekdays. Eating breakfast would require waking up, like, half an hour earlier, and fuck that. So when lunch comes around, I'm fucking hungry. But here's the thing: half the time, I don't eat lunch, either. Sometimes this is because I didn't bring a lunch and I don't feel like spending the money on something and other times it's because I don't have time to eat. Yeah, sure, if you added up all the time I spend reading the Superficial, I'd have ample time for lunch, but that's not the point. Some days,...

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March 10, 2009

I Won't Be Going Mongo, Thank You Very Much

One of my favorite restaurants in Phoenix was this place called YC's Mongolian Grill. It was the first Mongolian BBQ place I ever went to, and it's still my favorite. There was this whole ritual to the thing. The regulars handed down secret arcane knowledge about how to pack the most food into the bowls. You had to construct your bowl correctly. First, you start off with the meat. But you had to compact the meat enough to serve as a solid foundation for the rest of your bowl. You could use another bowl for this task, but I preferred...

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March 6, 2009

I Win

So, chelsadilla and I went to dinner tonight at Tex Tubb's Taco Palce. It was pretty decent, although their Mexican rice sucked the fat cock. But while the food was ok, the highlight of the evening was the unexpected appearance of Dr. Lady. Yes, the M.D. who pulled out a journal article on our "date" showed up. She must have seen me, but she didn't acknowledge me. I only saw her after she was walking away from us, so I didn't have to pretend that i didn't see her in order to excuse my avoiding her. They sat Dr. Lady...

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February 23, 2009

A Weekend in Madison

This weekend was awesome. Let me tell you why. On Friday, a bunch of us met up at Brocach for drinks and food. Our original plan was to go to happy-hour Gomeroke, but that shit ended at like 7, which was lame. So we went to Brocach and had some drinks. I hung out on the fruity side of things, enjoying some brady old fashioneds and a midori sour. Then I had a vodka gimlet, which wasn't very good, frankly. Chelsadilla and I split a shepherd's pie and some fries. It was friggin' awesome. Around ten, RPM, L-Dawg, X-tina, chelsadilla,...

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February 16, 2009

Sonic

Flagstaff had a Sonic Drive-In, and I remember going there exactly once and being largely underwhelmed by the food. So while everyone else in Madison was flipping their shit over how amazing the new Sonic was going to be, I was largely cool to the whole thing. I certainly was not going to wait in line in my car on University for an hour and a half for some thawed tater tots. But the combination of pH and Mr. Vice discussing Sonic during Chuck, my grumbling stomach, and it being late enough for the wait to be reasonable conspired to...

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February 14, 2009

Concerning Food and a Made-Up Holiday

So, for the first time, I have a girlfriend on Valentine's Day. While some people around me stressed over what to do for their significant others, I took the pressure in stride. For one thing, chelsadilla and I haven't been together for all that long, so it's not like I'm expected to buy diamonds or anything. I hope not, anyway. If I was, I completely failed. But also, I sort of knew what I wanted to do: I fed her. We started off going for breakfast at the winter farmer's market with pH and RPM. Everyone except me had crepes...

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January 4, 2009

Motherfucker!

I hadn't left the apartment all day. So I had no idea what to expect when I left to go to a show with RPM. That was my first mistake. My second mistake was expecting that the ground would provide me with traction. Apparently, slow rain coupled with temperatures fluctuating between just below freezing and just above freezing means that the ground stops being the ground and starts being an exercise in high-school physics: for the sake of simplicity, we'll be ignoring friction in all of our calculations. The result of this whole situation was that on literally the first...

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December 23, 2008

"I Like to Be Here When I Can."

So I actually came far too close to having that nightmare scenario from that terrible JTT movie come to pass. I woke up at 2:30am Central and drove to Milwaukee. The drive was pretty ridiculous, actually. The roads weren't terrible, but they were far from good. In the end, though, I made it to Mil-town without too much of a problem. My parking and shuttle situations worked out fine, too. The problem started when Frontier Airlines decided that, instead of de-icing the plane and taking off, we would sit on the runway for a long time. Like, an hour. After...

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August 18, 2008

Meat

Saturday night, in order to celebrate pH's recent acquisition of gainful employment, we went somewhere we had been wanting to go for a long time: Samba. Samba is one of those Brazilian steakhouse places that seem to be all over the place now. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, you basically pay a fee for all-you-can-eat meat, which is delivered to your table on swords by dudes dressed like pirates. Or not dressed like pirates, depending on which specific place you go to. Several of us had previously been to one of these places in Chicago. We were...

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July 13, 2008

The Two Things I Miss About the West Coast

In my darker moments, I have to admit that there are times when I crave McDonald's. I don't know what it is, but sometimes I just need that fried pseudo-food. I imagine it's what a heroin addict feels like. Last night, for example, L-Dawg and I saw someone eating a Chicken McNugget on TV, and we developed a deep-seated need for them. So we started talking about making a giant pile of McNuggets and french fries, and then we ended up actually getting some McNuggets and realized that they're way inferior to the nuggets at Wendy's. But, though I sometimes...

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June 9, 2007

The Piano Sounds Like a Carnival

I've had a standing policy since sometime in college: no getting drunk when I'm in a bad mood. Some people enjoy being drunk for its own sake. I don't. If I'm drunk but I'm not with my friends and I can't focus on just having a great time, it generally turns out pretty shitty. Not for anyone else, usually. But definitely for me. I hate being drunk and in a bad mood at the same time--those are almost invariably my worst times. The past week has been awesome in some respects and shitty in others. Mostly, though, it's been awesome....

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June 1, 2007

Fuck You, Universe! You Can't Beat Me!

Although my tasks seemed completely ri-goddamned-diculous yesterday, I was able to vanquish them today. And it was awesome--today was one of the most productive days I've had in a really, really long time. And, though I'm exhausted and I'm not going to get enough sleep for tomorrow, I think I deserved a few hours to decompress. See, it all started this morning when I woke up and immediately started making an absurd number of phone calls to police departments, court clerks, and random people all over the country. And--surprisingly enough--I was not confronted with the stunning wall of incompetence and...

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April 6, 2007

Spring Break: Day Seven: "They Fucked With the Wrong Mexican!"

Today was our last day in beautiful Marco Island, Florida. We weren't sad, I don't think. We're ready to go back--even if we don't want to. The entire trip to this point went very smoothly without any incident. It makes sense, then, that today was marked by not one but two debacles, although I may be alone in thinking that the second thing counts as a "debacle." The day started quietly enough; we woke up, cooked some burgers, and hung around the pool. Yvette and Lindsay wanted to go to the beach, but none of the rest of us did;...

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March 4, 2007

The Sixth Thing to Love About Madison: Fish Fries

Perhaps no Wisconsin tradition instantly struck me as being awesome as the Friday night fish fries. Let me explain for those of you who might not have had the pleasure of attending a fish fry in Wisconsin. Basically, every Friday, the vast majority of non-chain restaurants in Wisconsin offer a fried fish dinner. It started as a religious observance for Catholics during Lent, but has grown far beyond that. If it's Friday and you're in Wisconsin, you can bet that you'll smell the sweet fragrance of deep-fried cod or bluegill or something. There're so many to choose from, it's almost...

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January 26, 2007

"Sing Us a Song, You're the Piano Man . . ."

After working on Law Review stuff until about 10:30, I decided that I would join Cole, Kristin, Chris and others down at bar review. Tonight's bar review was at the Orpheum, a downtown movie theatre and bar. This was in spite of the fact that the original announcement said bar review was at the Great Dane, an altogether better and cooler bar. Still, a bunch of my friends decided they were going to go out, so I did, too. For various reasons, I was in kind of a bad mood tonight and was suffering from what I've decided to call...

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December 29, 2006

Sometimes You've Got to Buy Yourself an Old Luxury Car

Nothing too interesting has happened for the past few days. Today, though, my aunt bought a car. A BMW. Convertible. From 1989. She's picking it up tomorrow. I kind of can't wait to drive it. I've never driven a convertible, and, given that the weather out here is anything but Christmas-y, tomorrow should be a perfect convertible driving day. The other thing that happened is that my uncle from Redwood City got here. He's a pretty cool guy. He owns this gardening and landscaping business in the bay area and he's pretty successful at it. Anyway, he started this foundation...

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December 9, 2006

The Second Thing to Love About Madison: State Street

You know that scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where Sam stops and he says that if he takes one more step, he'll be further from home than he's ever been before? Well, I had one of those moments when I left Flagstaff and drove East. Although I had been to New York City and Boston before, I hadn't driven further East than the Eastern Arizona border. Yes, even though I had lived in Arizona my whole life, I had never been to New Mexico. Now that I have, I know I wasn't missing much. Anyway, my friends were...

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October 24, 2006

Are You Too Stupid to Do Math?

Having been a pizza delivery driver for a few years, I know that there's almost no reason at all to care about doing a good job. The prospects for job advancement in the field are slim to none, promotions generally involve a paycut (drivers have the potential to make a lot more money through tips than salaried managers), and most of the people in those jobs are doing them temporarily while in school or in order to buy more pot. On that note, most of them are high. Still, I think it's fair to expect at least a baseline level...

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August 21, 2006

Oh my God, Mexican TV is Even Worse Than I Remember!

Alright, today was a pretty good day. More about that later. What's important right now is that Spanish TV is not only terrible, low-quality, and sexist. It's also - somehow - has even less moral fiber than its American counterpart. Right now, I'm sitting here with my mother and aunt. The show we're watching is called "Cantando Por un Sueno." It translates as "Singing for a Dream." Here's the best way I can come up with to explain how the show, which is one of those pseudo-reality shows, works. First, think about American Idol. So, there are singers competing for...

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June 9, 2006

Random Crap and a Crappy Sushi Restaurant

I want to write something right now, but I don't know what I want to write, so I'm just going to start writing and see what happens. I'm listening to "Ava Adore" by the Smashing Pumpkins right now. That's a decent song. I heard tonight that one of my most hated people at the Law School, let's call him "The Lord of All That Is Douche-ie," has a "really hot" girlfriend. Not surprising, really, since that's what this guy's all about. It's also not surprising that this guy turned in all his potential mate capital for a girl who's physically...

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February 12, 2006

Of Raw Fish and Rice

So, the first time i tried sushi, i almost threw up. Somehow, though, i was convinced to try it again and it has since been my absolute favorite food, surpassing such favorites as pizza and french fries. It's always been my dream to be able to eat sushi at will and this semester has brought me closer to realizing that dream than i've ever been before. Through an odd confluence of invitations, i have had sushi no fewer than once a week for the past four weeks. One week, i ate it at least four times. Crazy. This is due,...

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January 5, 2006

Of Polygamy and Procrastination

So, I'm sitting at Barriques' with Katherine and Nidhi in an attempt to get work done because the FUCKING law school library closed at 6. This, my friends, is a travesty. I've got a fucking forty-page paper to write, and they're closing the library at 6. That's bullshit. Especially when you combine it with the fact that i'm waking up at about 1 or 2 every day. So far, i've got about 14 pages done. My paper's probably going to end up being about 50-60 pages long. And it's due Tuesday. I'm fucking screwed. Anyway, the Barriques' thing. Barriques' is...

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