Is It Possible That I’m Retarded?

As part of the liberal elite, a good portion of my life is spent openly sneering at the things other people enjoy, like NASCAR or Larry The Cable Guy.  But upon reflection, it’s not like I spend my nights reading Dickens & watching Masterpiece Theater.  In fact, as I went to Amazon.com and read the following synopsis for the upcoming Bob Lee Swagger novel, a book I am actually salivating at the prospect of reading, I’m not sure I have much intellectual high ground from which to snark at others.  I wish I could pretend to only ironically enjoy the Swagger novels, but the truth is I just loves them so.  Even if they do get made into corpse-rapingly awful movies.

In The 47th Samurai, Bob Lee Swagger, the gritty hero of Stephen Hunter’s bestselling novels Point of Impact and Time to Hunt, returns in Hunter’s most intense and exotic thriller to date.Bob Lee Swagger and Philip Yano are bound together by a single moment at Iwo Jima, 1945, when their fathers, two brave fighters on opposite sides, met in the bloody and chaotic battle for the island. Only Earl Swagger survived.

More than sixty years later, Yano comes to America to honor the legacy of his heroic father by recovering the sword he used in the battle. His search has led him to Crazy Horse, Idaho, where Bob Lee, ex-marine and Vietnam veteran, has settled into a restless retirement and immediately pledges himself to Yano’s quest.

Bob Lee finds the sword and delivers it to Yano in Tokyo. On inspection, they discover that it is not a standard WWII blade, but a legendary shin-shinto katana, an artifact of the nation. It is priceless but worth killing for. Suddenly Bob is at the center of a series of terrible crimes he barely understands but vows to avenge. And to do so, he throws himself into the world of the samurai, Tokyo’s dark, criminal yakuza underworld, and the unwritten rules of Japanese culture.

Swagger’s allies, hard-as-nails, American-born Susan Okada and the brave, cocaine-dealing tabloid journalist Nick Yamamoto, help him move through this strange, glittering, and ominous world from the shady bosses of the seamy Kabukicho district to officials in the highest echelons of the Japanese government, but in the end, he is on his own and will succeed only if he can learn that to survive samurai, you must become samurai.

As the plot races and the violence escalates, it becomes clear that a ruthless conspiracy is in place, and the only thing that can be taken for granted is that money, power, and sex can drive men of all nationalities to gruesome extremes. If Swagger hopes to stop them, he must be willing not only to die but also to kill.

Man.  Someday I can only hope to be in at the center of a series of terrible crimes I barely understand but vow to avenge.

Newcastle: Finally Good For More Than Just Coal

On a recent trip to Galco’s, the Highland Park soda wonderland (like six thousand different kinds of rare imports & domestic micro-brewed hard to find sodas), I was talked into buying a British drink called Fentiman’s Curiosity Cola, and it was 9 kinds of awesome.  If 1) Highland Park wasn’t so far away, and 2) the soda wasn’t like $3 a bottle, I would totally drink this instead of my constant influx of Diet Pepsi.  The secret, claim the folks at Fentiman’s in Newcastle is that they actually brew all their drinks, for like 10 days.  Whatever the trick is, allow me to say “Owdy, Guvn’a!” to you good people of Fentimans.  I’m not sure if that’s a compliment, it just happens to be the only British expression I know.

Why Do You Need So Many Flamingos?

So, having a daughter I realize that sooner or later I may have to go to the zoo.  Unlike Disneyland, I’m not particularly stoked to take the Little Baby Cupcake to the Zoo.  But, since I was in the area today after lunch with a friend who lives on that side of town, I decided I should do a “dry run” of the Zoo, since I haven’t been there in 20+ years, and certainly the rest of Los Angeles has changed a lot in the intervening years.  I would hate to take Emerson there and find out that it’s a gang-banger hang out like Magic Mountain or that the Zoo randomly lets baby-eating animals out of their cages once a day or something equally crazy.

Like many of the non-zoo portions of Los Angeles, my gringo status relegated me to a very slim minority segment of the zoo populace (seriously, I believe flamingos outnumbered whitey at the Zoo, which also says a lot about how many fucking flamingos the L.A. Zoo has).  Undoubtedly I was the only solo white male in his thirties, which is an awesome way to be mistaken for a pedophile.  The racial mix wasn’t really an issue so much as the huge number of teenagers pushing their one & two year olds around in baby carriages.  That alone may be a good reason not to take Emerson here - I don’t want her thinking getting knocked up at fifteen is an acceptable norm.  But the best reason not to go was that the L.A. zoo is a festering pit of inadequate animal care.  The habitats are depressing, the animals look questionably cared for, and overall the place was just shabby seeming.  I think it’s Aquariums & wild animal parks for the LBC from now on.

The biggest plus of the Zoo was that the Mold-A-Rama machines are still in operation.  The one I really wanted was a statue of three chimpanzees doing the “hear no evil” bit, but unfortunately it had broken earlier in the day when the statue refused to leave the mold, so I settled for a Lion statue instead.  I gave it to Emma when I got home, but I realized that at 19 months old, she doesn’t really get the idea of “gifts,” yet.  Everything she sees in the world belongs to her. I’m going to have to start randomly withholding stuff from her so that she appreciates the plastic Lion statue more.

Upon reflection, I may have been a bad teammate

We have a videogame room at our office with all the major consoles in it, and sometimes my co-workers & I will play games against each other on our lunch break, which has the bad side effect of encouraging sabotage.  The worst example of this I can think of was the time I came back early from lunch & logged in as my co-workers’ characters on the Nintendo and then proceeded to bowl 10 frames of straight gutterballs for both of them to ensure that they would lose their magical star-colored bowling balls in Wii Sports, and I would be the only player with a “Pro” ball.  It kinda made me laugh at the time, but then later I felt bad about it, but now when I think about it I kinda laugh again.  And feel bad about it.

To avoid this kind of unpleasantness, we also play games where we are on the same team.  One of the more popular ones has us all play as soldiers trying to eliminate the forces of a despot in Central America & be airlifted to safety.  I’m not sure why, but on repeated occasions when the final villain has been dispatched and the console tells us that the choppers are coming in to bring us safely home, I invariably shoot both my teammates in the back before the helicopter can land.  I don’t do it EVERY time, because this would be predictable, and thus defeat the element of surprise that I rely on when killing my own team members.  But I’ve done it more than once.

I’m not sure what it is about the videogame room, but I suspect it brings out the worst in me.

A great disturbance in the Force

For the past week, this casual game has been occupying the spare cycles of me & a few friends.  The goal is deceptively simple. Fire a ball into the arena.  It will swell up until it touches a wall, or another ball.  Then, using more shots, try & destroy the ball.  It takes three hits to remove a ball completely.  You lose immediately if one of your shots ricochets back beyond the firing line.  For a while now I could rest easy knowing that the high score in my peer group was owned by me, but today a onetime friend & now fierce adversary has usurped the throne.  My 30 points pales to his 34.  I know what you’re all thinking: who would do such a thing?  Why did I not sense his potential for betrayal earlier?  I should have cut off his mousing finger when I had the chance.

But I’m not here to dwell on his wicked misdeeds, but rather to tell you an even deeper tragedy.  Earlier today I was all set to restore honor & dignity to the Jonson name by reclaiming the lead when a tragic misfire occurred.  The ball immediately ricocheted back & I was undone. This game is such a cruel task mistress, I’m not sure any of you who haven’t fallen prey to its wiles can truly understand.  Let me just say this: until today, I had always thought that if I was ever granted one-time access to a time machine I would go back and warn the passengers on the Titantic not to board, or perhaps try & shoot Hitler before he came to power.  But now I know the truth.  When I get my hands on a time machine, I’m going back to earlier today, right before I clicked the mouse button on that fateful shot.  Sorry, Jews.  I’ll make it up to you!

links for 2007-08-07

• Hewn and Hammered
  A blog about craftsman homes & mission furniture
  (tags: craftsman furniture arts&crafts architecture mission)

links for 2007-08-06

• The Call of Cthulhu Movie (POSTER)
  1920’s style poster for Silent(!) 2005 film version of the lovecraft book. To say I want a framed version of this poster would be an understatement
  (tags: lovecraft cthulhu posters)

links for 2007-08-05

• isolated runways
  (tags: photos photoset airplanes airtravel)
• Penguins Hunted By Sea Leopard
  (tags: photos photoset nature penguins sealeopard hunting death)
• FLICKR TOOLBOX: 100+ Tools For Flickr Addicts
  (tags: flickr tools Web2.0)

The Official Beverage Of Your Nightmares

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who love Budweiser, but wish that it tasted more like fishy-tomato hybrid, then today is your lucky day.  Thanks to what I can only assume is a practical joke that got way out of hand, Anhauser-Busch is now target marketing Chelada, a drink that is basically one part Budweiser, one part Clamato, the tomato/clam juice drink for people who find V8 to be “not clammy enough.”

The truth of the matter is, Chelada is marketed towards the Hispanic audience (hence the name), and it grows out of an unofficial homebrew called Cerveza Roja, which was made by people buying Budweiser & pouring Clamato into it.  Never one to miss a dollar, Anhauser stepped up to the plate and delivered this horrific stew of unlikely co-flavors.

And here, once again, I come to the problem of being married to the least Hispanic woman in America.  Being as my missus’ fairly recent heritage is from South of the border, you would think she’d be the ideal go-to for questions like “why do Mexicans enjoy fish & tomato flavors in their beer?” But the last time I tried asking her questions about her people, she just stared at me with daggers in her freedom loving, 100% born here in America ‘I’m as much a native as you are’ eyes.  Thank God the OC Weekly (an online city paper) has an “Ask a Mexican” column - it was invented for times like this.

I pity the fool who don’t have closure

When I was 12, my family went camping at a site up near Malibu, and the highlight of the trip was when I ran across the cast of The A-Team shooting some footage on the outskirts of the campground.  Needless to say, I hung out for hours until the shoot was done, and then I worked up the courage to ask each of the cast members for their autograph.  And each one of them, from Hannibal to Face Man to Howling Mad Murdock were kind enough to oblige this little dorky fan even though they’d had a long day’s shoot.  But my favorite cast member was B.A. Barracus, played by Mr. T, the muscle of the group, unafraid of anything other than flying.  And, it would turn out, he was also afraid of signing autographs, since Mr. T had his bodyguards push me out of the way so he could make it to his car unimpeded.

Well, today, some 23 years later, I was having lunch @ a deli near McArthur Park and who should be sitting near me but Mr T.  I thought about asking for a photo of us together, but my inner twelve year old chickened out, so I just asked if it really was him.  The intervening years had drastically altered his opinion of the burdens of being a celebrity, as he graciously shook my hand and thanked me for approaching him.  I wanted to remind him of the camping anecdote, but I thought that he might not remember it as much as I do, since it was probably a bigger deal for me than him.  Oh well, at the very least I can finally scratch “Find Mr. T - Exact Vengeance” off my life’s to do list.