the Zoo

Went to the zoo with my parents
A lot of the exhibits were closed.
All the big cats were asleep.
The penguins smelled terrible.
My dad said when he was a kid the gorillas would throw their shit at people.
The zoo keepers would hose them down till they stopped.
I threw my shit at someone once.
A gorilla was sexing another from behind and the one taking it looked asleep.
I don't think they have snakes at the San Fran zoo.
There was an annoying woman with bright red hair near the bears.
Her voice was so loud it was scaring the peacock that was walking about.
She belonged in a cage.
On the way home we ate at The Falafel King.

Trivia Night 7/24/08

Breanne and I went to trivia again, this time just the two of us. We arrived at The Rogue around 6 because Breanne was certain that trivia started at 7, which proved to be the first of many wrong answers last night. It actually begins at 8, so we got an appetizer and filled our stomachs with beer in preparation for the trivia fest.

Just like the last time, current events crippled us. We only managed 4 out of 10 in the first round after changing a couple of right answers, which inevitably happens. In the second round we absolutely dominated. Since they read the scores for each round, it was obvious we scored the highest of all teams in round 2. The topic? Ballparks. What you had to do was match up the ballpark name with the team that plays there. I could do that in my sleep. Breanne actually figured them all out on her own by process of elimination. It was impressive. So after going 10 for 10, we were nearer the leaders.

Trumpet of Conscience, that's our usual team name, didn't do well in round three. It was a pop music round, but it was extremely difficult. I missed an easy question about the Byrds but most of the bands I'd never heard of. So we fell back a few spots after that round, but considering a majority of the teams had 5 or more people, we were hanging tough.

In what will likely be our typical stronghold, we excelled in the music round. The emcee plays 30 second clips of songs from all genres and you must name the artist. We correctly named Daughtry (Breanne), Madness, the Animals, Lifehouse (Breanne), Gretchen Wilson (Breanne), Shawn Colvin, Sam Cooke. We missed Crowded House when I idiotically guessed the Cutting Crew, and the last two were House of Pain and some rapper.

The next round was the picture round. Again, we did well on this. You're given a print out of boxed off pictures of celebrities, musicians, athletes, etc. We knew almost all of them and Breanne was the only one who cheered when the answer "Colin Montgomery" was revealed. I have to thank my grandmother Keyes for that one.

The last round was bonus points and we did a fair job. Breanne changed my answer on the natural state of Krypton, from a gas to a liquid, which cost us two points, but I did my share of false posturing.

We ended up coming in 4th place, out of about 20 teams. Next week my parents are in town and they should help us a lot. They both read the paper and my father has an encyclopedic memory.

Major Trivial Failures of the Night

1. Neglected to identify Al Lewis, the Grandfather on the Munsters.

2. Confused the Cutting Crew with Crowded House.

3. Krypton.

4. Switched drinks with Breanne after I ordered Root Beer and she didn't want her porter.

5. Missed the southernmost borough of NYC.

Daryl Strawberry and Nunchucks

I was downtown today and found a small sports store that sold expensive sweatshirts and collectibles. In a bin near the front of the store were some old posters, 1.50 apiece. I found a Daryl Strawberry one and a Braveheart poster. I was surprised to see the Braveheart one mixed in with old sports posters but I figured someone just wanted to get rid of it. I also found an old Hideo Nomo pennant, from his days with the Dodgers.

When I got home I unrolled the posters to look at them. The Daryl Strawberry one was sweet but the Braveheart one turned out to be a Wayne Chrebet poster with the word "Braveheart", written in the same font used for the Mel Gibson movie, scribbled across the bottom. I probably won't keep the Chrebet one because I don't like the Jets or football, but the Strawberry will definitely go in my California poster collection.

So far the collection includes two posters:

-Daryl Strawberry with the Dodgers

-Step by Step explanation of Nunchaku

I saw something about Steve Bartman somewhere and it reminded me of this article I'd read once.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=bartman

World War II

I just finished If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi. It's the best book about WW II I've ever read and I've read a few. I used to get WW II magazine when I was in high school. I'm not sure how they keep coming up with new articles.

tennis ball

Two of the walls in my apartment are concrete painted white. I like to bounce a tennis ball off the wall while I'm watching a ball game or just day dreaming. Today I got fancy and started bouncing it off the wall behind my back. Then the ball went out the window. We live on the 4th floor so it's not a big deal but Breanne said I can't bounce the ball off the walls anymore.

My Favorite Fruits

For the second time in the last 9 months, I've discovered a new fruit. I use discovered the same way Europeans did in the age of exploration. These fruits already existed, but I didn't know of them.

Kumquats
This is my all-time favorite fruit. They're roughly the size of a grape and taste like tart oranges. My favorites are the underripe ones that more closely resemble lemons. You can even eat the skin which is thin and sugary. Incidentally, Kumquat is also a gentleman's racket sport. It sounds like that very boring game you play at the beach where you keep the ball up in the air for an hour until someone falls asleep standing up.

I lifted this off the internet: "Kumquat is noted for it's exciting tactical battles brought on by the need to hit the ball upwards. The 2008 season is set to begin in the third week in July with a particular exciting series in store". I still prefer the fruit.

Pluots
A Pluot is a mix between a plum and an apricot. It was first created by the "famous" gardener, Floyd Zaiger. It's actually 3/4 plum, which I suppose is why it's not called an Aprium, which sounds Latin and more sophisticated, though less like something from a Douglas Adams novel.
Wikipedia states that, "Zaiger has spent his life in the pursuit of the perfect fruit."

Brewers vs Giants 7/18/08

Sat in center field last night and watched CC Sabathia throw a 4-hit shutout in a 9-1 victory over the Giants. He struck out 10 and his only blemish was a solo shot by Rowand leading off one of the innings. He guessed fastball and he was right. So, that's three starts for Sabathia in a Brewers uniform. He's 3-0 with 2 complete games, 24 K, and he's even hit as many home runs as he's allowed. Pretty good considering he weighs 290 lbs.

It was cold at AT & T park. They were doing one of those credit card promos so we signed up and got a free blanket. Last time I did that they never even mailed me my card. I felt bad for the guy sitting in front of me. His girlfriend kept complaining about how cold it was so he kept stripping layers off himself and giving them to her. She still complained and he watched the whole game with just a t-shirt on. I wasn't cold at all because I had a thermal sweatshirt my brother bought me for Christmas Jr.

At the gate they were handing out bobble heads. I was hoping for Tim Lincecum, maybe Omar Vizquel, but it was the Crazy Crab. I guess he's the Giants playfully loathed mascot. Not sure why they made a bobble head out of it. The real mascot made an appearance in the 6th, ran on to the field doing a crab dance and jumping and clicking his heels. Later on they showed footage on the big screen of people throwing trash at him. The smile never left his face. Breanne and I both got a bobble head. I've got them on the window sill. One of them bobbles well but the other one collapsed on itself so it looks like a dwarf crab.

As for the Giants, I don't know how that team wins any games. They've got Bengie Molina batting clean up. And they still charge you 20 bucks to sit in the bleachers.

Olympic Training

I'm training for the 2009 Maine Summer Olympics. Are you?

Escalator joke

I couldn't fall asleep (or "fall to sleep" as Breanne says) the other night so I tried making up a joke. I came up with a rough idea about an escalator filling out one of those forms at school where they ask you who to contact in case of an emergency. I thought that, logically, if an elevator and a stairway had a kid, it would be an escalator. I'd seen one of those signs that reads: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, USE STAIRS. I thought there was a joke in it. Nope.

Ricky Gervais Weekend

Sometime last year, Breanne asked me what I wanted for Christmas Jr. I eventually narrowed it down to either Opening day, A's vs Red Sox in Oakland, or Ricky Gervais live in L.A. I chose Ricky. That was December. 8 months later, and the date has finally arrived.

We left our apartment for L.A. around 9 am on Friday. We've yet to experience bad traffic in San Francisco, though we've only taken the car out a handful of times. Once we left Oakland and hit the 5 there was little traffic until Los Angeles county. The drive down wasn't too bad. I mostly did Sudokus and or squeezed my tennis ball- I'm trying to improve my wrist strength.

We played a few rounds of 20 questions too, which Breanne claimed to have never played before. She was good though she was prone to giving a lot of questionable answers. One round she was thinking of a goat, and after I'd already established that it was an animal, she answered "yes" when I asked if it was smaller than a dog. The question before that was, "is it bigger than a cat?" I was confused but I eventually got it when I deduced that it was a farm animal.

We stopped outside of Bakersfield to get some lunch but it was over 100 degrees when we got out of the car so we got back in and kept driving. Eventually we found a Subway.

It took us a hair under 6 hours, not including stops for gas and food, to get to our motel in Hollywood. I say it was in Hollywood, and while it was, it could have been any suburb in any city. The motel was an Econo Lodge and it had a small but deep pool with floaties waiting in it. It took us a long time to check in because the lady in the lobby had to keep changing glasses to read the computer screen and check her papers. Breanne guessed she had 3 or 4 pair.

We ate at a Pupuseria for dinner. It was delicious. We split some pupusas and plantains and a couple of shakes. We were the only ones there, but a German family came in half way through our meal and asked if they had french toast. The answer was no and they left looking somber.

In the motel room we watched 20/20. A fight on a school bus. Cops giving too many parking tickets. A mother spraying a child with a high-pressure water hose at a car wash.

In the morning we got up early so we could go to the beach. Breanne went to the lobby to get us some muffins or something from the continental breakfast but a woman was leaving with all the food. Apparently she had a big tray of all the donuts and pastries and she was bringing them back to her room.

The beach was great. It was a bit cloudy when we arrived but it warmed up nicely. I rode some waves and waded out to my nipples so I could piss in the water. Breanne started talking to a fat little boy, probably 9 or so, who mistook her for his friend. He followed us around for a bit. Breanne got salt water in her mouth and expectorated. The boy said, "you know, I don't see a lot of girls your age out in the water. And none of them spit."

We met Jamie and Hannah for lunch at Barney's Beanery. We had two pitchers of Fat Tire and I drank 3 1/2 glasses. I instantly fell asleep when I got back to the beach.

Though it was a pleasant day, it seemed to take forever as I was so excited for the show. We parked in the lot behind the Kodak and kicked around in the mall for 20 minutes or so before we could get inside. The Kodak was fancy. They have the Oscars there and some other things. American Idol. I read somewhere that it cost $95 million to build it. Our seats were good ones. First row of the balcony, the closest seats you could get on ticket master. I'm not sure where all the baldies in the orchestra pit got their tickets.

At 7:30, the opening act came on, an Egyptian guy named Ahmad Ahmad. He was OK, but every joke was about his being Arab looking and getting shit for it. Luckily he was only on stage for 10 minutes.

Then the lights went down. People started hooting and whistling in the dark. A voice, deep and resonant, thanks to the sound system, started listing of all of Ricky Gervais' credentials- his Emmy's and BAFTAs and Golden Globes and what not. Finally, the curtains opened and the stage was lit up by 40 foot tall block letters, dotted with bulbs, that spelled out 'RICKY!'. The letters were bookended by tall sparklers. Gervais strolled onto the stage in an elaborate crown and cape while an ACDC song played.

The routine was brilliant. I'm not going to walk through the whole thing Even a couple of the segments I'd seen on youtube 10 times made my gut hurt from laughing. His best bit was probably his retelling of the Humpty Dumpty story. He was pointing out how stupid it was to call all the king's horses to help put an egg back together. I also liked the list of random animal facts he supposedly got off the internet. I'm not a huge fan of stand-up but I would definitely see Ricky Gervais again. I told Breanne it was the best birthday present I've ever received and it's the truth. For thirteen years the incumbent greatest present had been the street hockey goalie pads my grandmother bought me.

The drive back to San Francisco was not as enjoyable. We left Hollywood Blvd around 10 pm and didn't get back until 5:30 in the morning.

I drove the majority of the way, with Breanne spelling me for about an hour after we stopped for gas. There was a rest area on some lonely stretch of the highway and we stopped to go to the bathroom. In the men's room a boy warned me not to go into one of the stalls and I thanked him but my voice squeaked. I think it was from all the singing I was doing in the car. Singing helps me stay awake. Try falling asleep whilst singing sometime- it ain't easy. We took some coins out of the console and walked over to the vending machines. Breanne bought an iced tea and I pushed the numbers for a snickers. The coil spun but the bar stuck. I tilted the machine with one angry arm and dropped it. With a bang it jarred the snickers loose, and the one behind it. Two snickers.

I want to thank the Talking Heads, the Traveling Wilburys, Elvis Costello, REO Speedwagon, Cat Stevens and Elliot Smith for helping me stay awake the last four hours. And the Marlins and Dodgers for going in to extra innings. I also want to thank the people at Snickers.

Trivia Night 7/11/08

We went to a trivia night at a bar called The Rogue last night. We'd passed the bar a few times on the 45 bus line. Breanne called up her friend Matt and he brought his wife.

The questions weren't terribly hard but our team struggled. None of us were any good at current events. When I got the first question correct, about the Roman god Janus, I thought I might have a good night, but it was all down hill from there.

We missed a question about the geography of New Zealand even though I have a world map shower curtain and I usually stare at it for about 10 minutes with the water on before I even break out the soap. Breanne and I agreed that from now on she is now responsible for the southern hemisphere and the north is mine.

We shit the bed in the desert round. We were given the names of 10 deserts of the world and 10 countries and we had to match them up. Once Breanne assured us, wrongly, that the first desert was in Chile, the rest of them fell into a logical, albeit incorrect, order.

One round was entirely devoted to soda. I wasn't any help in this round until the last question: In what movie is the line, "If you want a Pepsi kid, you're going to have to pay for it"? In the last 2 years alone I've probably watched Back to the Future 20 times.

I made little reparation in the music round. I knew a few that were lost on the rest of the group, but I also mistook the Hollies for the Zombies. None of us could pull out Jefferson Starship when "Nothing's gonna stop us Now" was played.

Major trivial failures of the night

1. Failed to answer an easy question about Grace Kelly.
2. Failed to identify Jason Botts in a photograph.
3. Mistook the Hollies for the Zombies.
4. Ordered the Juniper Pale Ale.
5. Missed a Patrick Leahy question.

A's vs Mariners 7/9/08

Breanne and I went to the ballgame in Oakland today. As usual, I got my tickets on ebay. There's always some seller on there that doesn't place a reserve or starts the bidding too low, or too soon, and I've found it's the best place to get baseball tickets. We had two seats just a few rows behind the A's dugout. At the box office they would have been 110 bucks- I paid 53. It's not often that I'm satisfied with the value of a purchase, whether it's baseball tickets or bottled water.

The game was a memorable one. The first few innings were dominated by the pitchers, Blanton and Batista, until Cust led off the 4th with a solo moon shoot than cleared the wall in center field and probably landed 420 feet from home plate. The A's ending up scoring 4 in the 4th, the last run coming on a collision at home plate. Jack Hannahan, who uses strictly Irish entry music, whether it be traditional or U2, scored from 1st on a double down the line, putting a lowered shoulder into Kenji Johjima and knocking his mask off. Oddly enough it was the first of three tight plays at the plate.

In the top of the 5th the Mariners answered with 5 runs off Blanton. As in the previous inning, a bases clearing double resulted in a home plate encounter. Suzuki, one of only two Japanese catchers in the majors along with Johjima, inexplicably turned his back on the base runner just before he reached home. What resulted was an anticlimax: no contact and a lazy pop-up slide across the plate. A's fans cursed and booed but the umpire had it right- though the ball was there long before the base runner, no tag was applied. Later in the game, Ichiro would beat a relay throw to the plate, scoring standing up, though it was relatively close because he slowed rounding third. Incidentally, he had an impressive game, reaching base 4 times in 4 at bats.

Though a large portion of the A's fan base had long exited the stadium, the bottom of the ninth was a sight. Brandon Morrow closed for the Mariners, and retired 3 of 4 batters, walking Barton before inducing a pop up to end it. After Hannahan grounded out 4-3 on the first pitch, Morrow struck out Donnie Murphy on 4 pitches, the last two clocking in at 100 mph. It's rare to see a young pitcher with that kind of velocity who isn't wild; he has 38 K to only 8 BB this season.

I like going to games at McAfee stadium. They have a lot of deals and discounts because they only draw about 20,000 fans a game. The cheapest seats at AT&T park, where the Giants call home, are 20 dollars. Tonight was 1 dollar hot dog night at McAfee, and they even have special discounted tickets if you ride the BART train, which I do. I'm still pissed I wasn't one of the first 10,000 fans on Vida Blue day a couple weeks ago. The first 10k received free retro Vida Blue jerseys, thanks to Aquafina, and people were waiting in line 6 hours before the game. The jersey is up at the top.

4th of July

4th of July just happened. what a boring holiday it's become. my girlfriend likes it because they have a family reunion at her meme's house every year. her family is enormous and they all seem to love each other's company. most of her aunts look so similar I can't tell them apart. the family usually plays games out on the lawn, like this one where they stand in a circle and try to keep a big ball up in the air. one year I joined in and tried to show off by headbutting the ball. it bent my glasses all out of shape and they're still not right. that was a few years ago. we're in california now so naturally we didn't make it to her meme's.

We tried watching the fireworks here but it was too foggy. they were being shot off at pier 39, and across the bay in berkley, but we couldn't see them from the top of the hill. we could hear them but it just sounded like a civil war re-enactment. we walked back down the hill and tried to see them from the top floor of our apartment building. the highest spot facing the bay is the fitness room on the 12 floor. when we got there there were two old asian women sitting on the exercise bikes, pedalling slowly and looking at the fireworks across the bay. you could barely make them out. they looked more like red and blue sparks, not travelling high at all. it reminds me of a sea dogs game breanne and I went to years ago in portland. it was her birthday and I knew they were having fireworks at hadlock field so I got us tickets. after the game they started shooting them off from the bullpen. maybe they weren't professionals but it was the shittiest fireworks show I've ever witnessed. most of the fireworks were either duds or only 20 or 30 feet off the ground. every time one went off successfully we could see men outlined in colored light through the bullpen door. I'm surprised someone didn't burn to death.

fireworks are strange anyway. I wonder if other countries are so enamored of fireworks. just loud explosions of color in the sky. cavemen would have loved fireworks. not to say I don't enjoy them for the first few minutes. I wonder if in 100 years they'll still look the same, or if they'll be able to display logos or names of sponsors.

4th of July was something to look forward to when I was little. I'd go with my family to visit my grandmother in ogunquit. we'd usually have roast beef, which was always excellent, then we'd all walk down the street, across the footbridge and over the dune and pick a spot on the beach to watch the fireworks. that was a long time ago though and fireworks just don't mean much to me anymore. besides, my favorite part was walking home in the dark. it's hard to find a dark place to walk now.

I think the main problem with the 4th is people don't know what they're supposed to do. on christmas you give presents and decorate a tree, thanksgiving you eat your turkey, easter and the eggs. but on the 4th people just dick around waiting for the light show. people usually have a barbeque and eat hot dogs but there should be a more standard practice. maybe everyone could fire guns into the sky or tear up lawbooks. something significant. maybe if I have a family someday I'll be more excited about the 4th of July but I doubt it.