Music, Basketball, Maddox, Top Chef, bleh

I'm in Kansas City, again, and I wandered hot and humid through the steamy jungle that is the Eastern edge of the Ozarks.

Yay.

Let's just say that

So let's cover this:

MUSIC: At this point, I'm sorta seeing everything blend together into two categories: The Hold Steady and Everybody Else. Kings of Leon? Jonathan Coulton? Avril Lavigne? Angels and Airwaves? All the same...blend it all together and what do you get: Not the Hold Steady, and therefore, not the ultimate music. The Raconteurs "Hands" kinda sounds like the Hold Steady might have played a role in its creation, though.

Basketball: Did I mention that KU won the NCAA basketball title this year? For the next five years, I don't fucking care, KU won it all. I might just cling to that for the next 10 years. I really want to write about 10,000 words about how weirdly improbable that was, but I won't, because nobody else I know is as big a fan as I am. And no, I would have still remembered this team if they had lost.

NBA: Well, actually, I'll save this for the end so you non-NBA people (basically everyone) can ignore it easier.

Maddox: The best page in the universe. I've been reading through it again lately...man that guy's funny.

Top Chef: So....I watched the last three episodes and the new one tonight, and I could probably write another ten thousand words about this. Let's try, really hard, to keep this brief:

Richard and Stephanie: Richard spent most of the season being very non-critical of his fellow competitors, probably because compared to them, he's high class. In fact, there's probably only a couple of hundred chefs in the US who have more experience than him, whereas the rest of the Top Chef competitors are basically children by comparison. But once down in Puerto Rico, and to some extent in the last episode in Chicago, he's sorta taken off the gloves. I would say he was borderline insulting to Lisa. However, my wife pointed out that the whole season they've been playing up this "Is this the year a woman wins Top Chef?" angle. And it may be that they're creatively editing Richard to push the male v. female thing.
At any rate, I have a hard time imagining this contest coming down to anyone but Stephanie or Richard, and really, Stephanie is a long-shot. And that's how it has been since day 1. I think of Stephanie's cooking as more comfort and basic, whereas Richard's cooking is just plain spectacular. The one time Richard nearly got canned on the show was when he left scales on the salmon, at this point that seems more and more like the kind of thing that could hurt him: Details that he usually has underlings watch.

Lisa and Dale: Wow...talk about burning bridges and creating drama. The restaurant wars episode was hilarious. That was like open warfare in the kitchen between Lisa and Dale and I think it was so obviously a universal disaster. You could tell that they knew it too. As soon as Bourdain walked in to guest judge it was like Dale gave up, he just seemed to lose it. Really, in the Puerto Rico episode I would have preferred Stephanie paired Dale and Lisa together, because it would have just been so obviously ridiculous. The big question would have been whether or not Dale would have openly sabotaged Lisa. I think yes, but I could be wrong.

Spike: You have to bring up Spike's amazingly masterful performance in the Restaurant Wars episode. First, he figured out that he wasn't going to be able to cook with those two egomaniacs in there ignoring him. So he focused on the decor and the presentation, and did well at it. Second, when the judges asked who decided on the decor, he knew that they liked it, and so he deflected the credit to all three of them, but Lisa and Dale were on-edge and defensive, and their reaction immediately said "that was all Spike." Which is what Spike wanted, because the judges then knew that it was he who made those decisions. Meanwhile, he ended up with no credit (or blame) for the disaster that was the meal. Now, if Spike had been clever enough to toss the scallops in the steakhouse, he might have moved on to the final.
Overall I had mixed feelings about Spike. He refused the stupid game of assigning blame to teammates when the judges asked him, with one noticeable exception (when Zoi got eliminated). I think that by the end, he seemed like the least experienced competitor, and therefore got sent home. He never seemed quite as sure about what he should do as, say, Richard or Stephanie, or even like Nikki and Jen were. And sometimes he was kind of an asshole.

Antonia: I was really bored by Antonia early on in the competition, and she totally threw her teammate under the bus in one of the early episodes (Remember Valerie?). However, she just hid out in the middle of the pack on several episodes, bombed totally on an episode where she had immunity, and eventually turned up the skill level in the last three episodes in Chicago. However, I still think she's kinda weird in her food sense, and I can't really complain on the cooking side about her being kicked out before Lisa. Al dente beans? Really? Seems gross to me.
Oh, and I thought it was kinda interesting that Padme had to compose herself before telling Antonia to pack her knives, and afterwards Tom immediately whispered something to her. Did Padme want to see Lisa gone? Was she about to cry?

Everybody else: I think a number of the eliminated chefs really proved themselves to be excellent cooks on this show: Jen, Spike, Dale, and Nikki spring to mind. But I don't think any of those guys had a chance in hell at winning this thing. The requirements are too varied. For instance, I would probably love, love, love to eat at Nikki's restaurant because I love that rustic Italian style, but that doesn't mean she knows what to do when the contest is 'Classic Elements'. Similarly, I don't know if I'd trust Dale to make me a pirogi, but I bet the food at his restaurant would be pretty amazing.

On the other hand, I feel really bad for the first two chefs eliminated (Nimma and Valerie), since we really didn't even get to know them as cooks. I mean, shrimp scampi (that eliminated Nimma)? Who the fuck cares?

This show would be more interesting if the first 2-3 episodes were non-elimination, but scored, and then the bottom 4 were eliminated all at once. Ok, maybe not more interesting, but at least we'd get to see all the contestants.

Of all the contestants, I would have a hard time picking a chef to cook for me. Richard is definitely my favorite, but I'm not 100% sure I would like his food that well, since I've got so many things I refuse to eat (like beef, food heated in plastic, etc.). Stephanie would probably be excellent, but I am such a sucker for really amazing Italian, that I'd be hard pressed to turn down Nikki.

Now some notes about those judges: So Bourdain is a 'personality' and certainly has a lot of experience with foods from everywhere, but in the pantheon of guest judges they brought out, they included mexican chefs, steak chefs, french chefs, asian chefs, pastry chefs, gastronomists, and BBQ experts. Where the hell was the Italian guest chef? Didn't all that fancy French cooking come over to France from frickin' Italy? Where's the Italian guest chef?

NBA: Man, I've been writing for a while here. Let me just write one sentence about each of the eliminated teams.

Nuggets: This team has the worst chemistry of any talented basketball team I've ever seen and they should trade everyone but Melo.

Suns: Shaq killed these guys and they have to pay him for two more years.

Mavs: Gee, let's ask Kobe Bryant how easy it is for an NBA team to do well when there is only 1 legitimate scoring option.

Rockets: Nobody believes T-Mac and Yao are ever going to figure it out.

Hawks: That was a cute playoff run but you still suck.

76ers: With just a little more cohesion, this team could turn into the Pistons.

Wizards: Nobody is going to take you seriously until you stop acting like idiots.

2 sentences for the 2nd rounders:

Jazz: I have no idea why this team isn't in the Finals. What are they looking for at this point?

Hornets: Great talent and a good coach, but they need a young perimeter player. And they need to get rid of Pargo.

Magic: I'm not sure Dwight Howard is good enough to build a team around. And this team is the worst in the league at managing assets.

Cavs: If LeBron James played for the Suns last year he'd have averaged 50 points a game. Cleveland's offense is a crime against basketball.

3 sentences for the 3rd rounders:

Spurs: Manu and TP have to get more consistent. The Duncan Era is over, unless they find a real draft pick. I hate this team.

Pistons: They've had a good run, no matter what anyone says. People forget that Flip turned them from a brutal offensive team into an efficient offensive machine. They need to upgrade Rasheed.

And the finalists:

The Celtics: I've felt all year that this is the only chance this team will have to win it all (guys are getting older). They've come together so quickly that the league didn't have time to react, and they used their intensity to jump all over teams. They've certainly got the pieces, but since the playoffs started they've all seemed pretty awful. I have no idea why. They've survived because of Paul Pierce and sheer will, but unless the four days off allows them to regain their intensity (a possibility), they are badly outmatched in the finals. If they can win the first 2, I think they can win the series, if they lose either of the first two, it's already over for this group. The only way that happens if it Paul Pierce raises his game (as he typically does against the Lakers).

The Lakers: I'm not sure why, but nobody really wanted to believe this team was this good 2 months ago. I read a lot of articles about how they still "needed Bynum to return" or how Lamar Odum was the weak link that would become their fatal flaw. The reason that was all crap is that Pau was a huge upgrade over Bynum in the present even when Bynum was playing great. The reason Bynum was more valuable is because of his moderate skill level today combined with his probably great skill level in the near future, whereas Pau isn't likely to get a lot better. The only teams that were going to have a chance against the Lakers were cohesive teams that could take advantage of their very minor weaknesses (poor defense and Kobe's ball-hogging). You can't take advantage of the Laker's without an extremely well-oiled machine of an offense and a defensive philosophy that bends but doesn't break. Exactly how many of the teams in the league had that kind of combination? The Jazz did, but even so they couldn't quite get it done. The Spurs might have, but apparently Manu was hurt or something. The Mavs, and especially, the Suns, had that kind of team, and I firmly believe that the Suns with Marion would have been capable of handling the Lakers (but maybe not the Spurs).
But it isn't like those are huge weaknesses. And I seriously doubt the Celtics are going to be prepared to disect them. I'll be shocked if we ever even get a "Kobe's pissed off" face going in these Finals, because he's probably just going to shred that Celtics team.

And that sucks, but you know what: At least this isn't like the 01-03 Lakers teams that featured Shaq. I don't know if you remember, but in those days Shaq was getting every stupid call, he couldn't dribble or shoot from further than 3 feet away, and basically he was annoying in every way. I hated those teams, because it seemed like the best play had less basketball skills than me, and was just getting by on being huge. This Lakers team is different. Guys like Lamar and Pau and Ariza are freaking players. Sasha and Farmer and Derek Fisher are all bringing something to the table, and guys who are sometimes amazing (like Luke Walton and Turiaf) are going to be coming off the bench. The only ball-hog is Kobe, and he's efficient enough when he needs to be that it isn't as bad as it used to be.

Which doesn't mean I'm in favor of the Lakers. I'll be rooting against them. Go Boston, city of idiots.

This is just another reason why K-State sucks

Funny, I've never seen a KU basketball player piss himself on a basketball court. According the the interwebs, Bill Walker is from Ohio. I can't help but wonder if he's really from Boston.

In Milwaukee, at SETAC

Someone has tickets to the Milwaukee Bucks game!

K always drives. He also parallel parks...really close to the curb.

The main ceremony was supposed to take place at 6 30....Central Time.
Oops.

Here I am, in Milwaukee. Looking up, at a mirror.
This was even a little weird in real life.

I'm in Milwaukee. Attending SETAC.

The Colts are on....

I drank a beer and three glasses of wine.

I ate some food.

I registered and got a neat bag of stuff.

I don't believe in organizations and their ability to cause change....but hey, this is kinda fun.

K and D are here. I'm way more drunk than them.

Boston Sucks.

Sitting in the library

The summer has exploded into activity. After months of hard work in isolation, suddenly I'm in charge of a pair of undergraduates, in charge of planning experiments, and still trying to get finished with my own stuff.

Here's some thoughts:

1. I have an undergrad working for me who is very full of herself. She's certain that A) she's the shit and B) her rich boyfriend will keep her from ever needing to work. She's interested in science because it will be "A reason to get out of bed in the morning."
If you're rich and you want a reason to get out of bed in the morning, work at a f***ing soup kitchen. Seriously, I can't imagine a scenario where that wouldn't be more fulfilling.

2. The prof I work with most closely (who routinely drives me insane), has been astonishingly nice lately. Frankly, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. He hasn't insulted anyone to their face for most of the past 2 weeks. Do I forgive and forget?
You may have heard the old saying: "Women forgive, but never forget. Men forget but never forgive."
That's a load of crap. Not only do I not forgive, I write things down so I don't forget.

3. Boston slipped to #5 in the NBA draft. That's great. I've throroughly enjoyed having a city to hate. Thanks Boston.

4. If you've never taken a green fluorescent light and dropped it into a lake at night, and then seined up whatever showed...well....you should. That is AWESOME. I may do this fifty times this summer.

5. I'm working on an NSF grant. This is almost guaranteed to fail on the first attempt, but everyone agrees that it is a good idea. So I'm writing it anyway. If I were to get an NSF grant that would go a long ways towards proving my value as a scientist. Of course, even if they did fund it on the first attempt (unbelievably unlikely), I wouldn't find out until probably October/November....if I'm lucky.
The subject of this grant? The Zeroeth Law of Stoichiometry (homeostasis).

6. I'm sitting in the library 'watching' the undergraduates who are here for the summer class session. The station is packed, and there is all kinds of craziness occurring. Officially it is a dry campus for this two week session, but I'll let you in on a little secret.
This coffee mug next to the computer here?
That's not coffee.

Random Insult to Nobody in Particular

Every time I see you I lose a little more faith in a beneficial god and the fundamental goodness of humankind.

Basically, you're ugly.

Don't think that I'm just commenting on your pasty, waxen, fake-looking skin or your greasy, prematurely graying hair. No, your ugliness goes much further than skin deep. Somewhere inside the core of your very being is a soul that most resembles the fossilized feces of an ancient lizard. A soul that sees all that is bright and beautiful in the world and thinks nothing of staining that aesthetic glory with your own putrid ugliness.

As an addendum, you're stupid.

I, and everyone else in the world, wishes we could explain away this stupidity as ignorance or poor education or just plain mental handicap. But we can't. Your brain, trapped in your ugly, fat head, is undamaged and appears to function normally. That doesn't mean you actually use that brain to think. Most humans would, just by default, attempt to solve problems by thinking up solutions, as opposed to trying to do the same thing over and over again with the hope that next time it will work and all your problems will be solved and maybe, just maybe, people will like you. You make the civic leaders of Boston seem like reasonable and intelligent people.

Children cry when they see you. Dogs bark. Cats hiss and run away.

But hey, vultures seem to find you fine company.

Here's some free advice: Don't ever leave the house and try not to talk to people. I, and the rest of the known universe, will be much happier.

Seriously...

...I couldn't make this stuff up. Ok, I could, but I'm not.

When I said Boston had a collective IQ of ~75 I thought I was just making shit up.

Turns out no. Yesterday the bomb squad cordoned off a city block to blow up a traffic counter.

As one reddit commentator put it:

drosser 49 points 16 hours ago
I feel a new slogan coming on - "Boston! Because the Big Dig didn't exhaustively prove how fucking stupid we are!"

I want that on a t-shirt. Other great quotes from the reddit and fark comment threads:

david 2 points 3 hours ago
Just brilliant.
For decades, terrorists have known to conceal explosives in familiar objects that don't look out of place. Like parked cars and vans.
Glad to see Boston PD is still ready for an imminent change of tactics.

"Dear Boston,

No one wants to blow you up. You are not a signifigant city to the international community.

Regards,
Everyone

The traffic dept. now owes Boston a million dollars and somebody is going to jail."

"I understand this completely. If I had explosives and could legally blow up shiat all over town, I would.

Hey! That mailbox! It's coming right at us!"

"They are fighting the "traffic counters" there so we don't have to fight them here."

So many thoughts...

Reasons (true and false) that I haven't posted since Thursday:

1. I've run out of interesting things to say (False!)
2. Nothing much has been happening (False!)
3. The station was attacked by terrorists and I had to fight them off using nothing more than a Poison CD and a broken laptop (True...er...False!)
4. I got really really drunk on cheap beer, 70 degree weather and sunshine on Thursday (True!)
5. I spent all day Friday doing stuff (Kinda True!)

So what's been happening. Let's make another list!

1. My wife visited the doctor. She's pregnant. I know. I'm as shocked as anyone!

2. I'm learning how much I hate racists!

3. The TV show: Ok, let me give you a brief transcript of what I said...

"I work on gabbaba adaga agaha abifdai dDag DAPHNIA and how they inteatcate awiaath afdfda abjath GOLDEN ALGAE ana ana ana FISH."

So if you know me, you should be embarrassed. I did not do well. I'd like to think I could do the kind of thing that Steve Irwin did, but I'd need a lot of retakes.

A lot of retakes.

4. New experiments!! Finally!! I've been waiting for my daphnia to start kicking up the reproduction for a while now and they've finally responded.

5. We sold our house!! We managed to lose a ton of money doing it, but the house is totally sold. We celebrated by going out to eat four/five times this week and then I bought an exercise bike. My history with exercise bikes is not really pretty (I tend to ride them into the dust), but I spent a bit more on this one, so hopefully it will last longer than 6 months. My plan is to ride it while I play video games, which means it will get a lot of use.

6. I haven't figured out what to write here.

7. Check out this enormous sinkhole that opened up in a Guatemalan city. If you had shown me that picture and said "Is this real?" I would have laughed at you. I'm amazed this can even happen. Seriously, what in the hell are you supposed to do when this happens? Considering there appears to be a river of sewage running underneath there, I'm pretty sure you're not going to be able to just fill it in with dirt (I'm not even sure you could find enough dirt!!). I'm pretty sure that if this had happened in New York the entire U.S. would be paralyzed with fear and Congress would authorize the use of military force to "prevent future sinkholes."
If this sinkhole opened up in Boston nobody would notice for three weeks and then the bomb squad would be called out. Then they'd arrest the employees at the sewage treatment plant for "misplacement of sewage."
Seriously. I really don't like Boston anymore.

8. Becoming the GOP Presidential candidate requires jumping through a certain number of hoops. For example, you have to hate homosexuals, atheists, biologists, atmospheric scientists, Washington insiders, liberals, black people, Asians, Indians (dots), Native Americans, poor people, hippies, everyone who was big in the 60s, war protestors, tofu, vegetarians, taxes, Muslims, Hispanics, single moms, people who have 'funny names, anyone on welfare, drug addicts (except for Rush Limbaugh), movie stars, movie producers, Hollywood, 'big government', rappers, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert. Whew! That's a list.
One of those hoops is making fun of people with disabilities. For example, George W. Bush famously laughed about a death row inmate who was mentally handicapped on T.V. Now emerges a clip of Rudy Guiliani making fun of a person with Parkinson's disease. Oh man, he is so going to be our next president!

9. I play way too much Age of Mythology.

10. Here's the weird thing about living in southern oklahoma. The restaurant's are terrible. We've actually gone to Pizza Hut. Multiple times. And loved it. We went to a Dairy Queen tonight and I almost cried. Why?
People are so friendly. I mean, you forget about how crappy the food is when the waitresses or people behind the counter are just so nice. And we don't even know these people yet! I love it down here.
And on Thursday it was 70 degrees and slightly breezy, so everyone just ended up sitting around a picnic table from 4 - 7 that night drinking and eating homemade salsa and chutney and talking shit until the sun went down. I love it down here!

11. The wind. There are probably only two places in the world where you can feel truly insignificant. The ocean and the prairie. Today you could walk outside, look into the wind, and know that you didn't matter at all. The wind was pushing lengthwise along the lake and the waves were enormous. I'm not sure I've been in a boat on freshwater that could stay afloat on the lake as it was today. We saw a tree that had cracked in half because the top blew off. Apparently somewhere to the west of us they've had dry weather, because for about 4 hours we got so much dust that you couldn't see 200 feet in front of you. Dust bowl part deux.
You can't help but feel alive when there's that much energy in the air. I love it down here!

12. Oklahoma City is pretty cool.

Things I learned today:

Modern paperclips are made of metal, however, the original paperclips were made out of string bean stems carefully crafted during the growing phase and then clipped en masse. These original paperclips were known to have been produced by ancient Egyptian societies to ‘mark’ locations in rolled papyrus scrolls.

Contrary to popular belief, modern ink pens do not use squid ink. Instead, modern ink pens use cricket blood as a more environmentally friendly alternative. Currently cricket production is a fairly lucrative business owing to the great popularity of ink pens, the frequent use of crickets as pet food, and the relative ease with which these animals can be raised.

That many species of birds consume small stones to mechanically aid in the digestion of food is a well-known truism. Less well known is that these ‘gizzard stones’ are eventually coated with a layer of organic material. Due to the unusual chemical conditions in the gizzard, this layer of organic material is almost always 70-80% sugar, making it a tasty find for certain predators.

Modern outdoor sporting arenas typically hold between 50 and 100 thousand fans. However, an ancient Incan arena recently uncovered in Peru probably held several million attendees, although it is unknown what sport was played there. Further complicating the mystery is the fact that population estimates for the entire Incan society suggests only several hundred thousand citizens at any one time, and even the entire population of the South American continent would likely not fill such a stadium.

The fastest growing tree in the world is the black locust. This tree will reach a height of 15 feet just 2 years after germination, and is named for the hordes of locusts that use it as a daytime refuge (turning it black in color). If oak or maple grew as fast as the black locust, then no industrial process could have caused the deforestation of the Eastern U.S.

The city of Boston has, on average, the lowest intelligence of any major U.S. cities. With an average IQ of just 75, the city’s inhabitants are on the border of severe mental handicaps. Unsurprisingly, this has lead to a city government comprised almost entirely of mentally handicapped individuals, who believe building roads underground is a good idea and who comically overreact to bright lights. The next most unintelligent U.S. city is Detroit, who’s 95 average I.Q. is a full 20 points higher than Boston’s (and is much closer to the worldwide average of 100).