Olympic Fever... Catch It!

Becki and I have been watching a shedload of Olympics coverage the past few days. This is very uncharacteristic for me, as I don't watch a lot of sports in general, and certainly not those featuring people, teams, or sports with which I am unfamiliar. But, the last few days, I've been glued to the TV for hours every night. Actually, I've been glued to the TV for hours every night for many years now. But, I'm glued to the TV watching Olympics every night now.

I watched the 1980 Winter Olympics, saw Eric Heiden win all his medals, and then desperately wanted to be an Olympic speed skater when I grew up. In 1984, I watched a lot of the LA Olympics, but I think that was mainly because I was a kid, there was nothing else on TV, and it coincided with a huge promotion at McDonalds that gave free food if the US won a medal in the event listed on your game piece (or something like that).

I didn't really watch any of the 1988, or 1992 Olympics, nor the 1994 Winter, nor the 1996 Summer. I saw none of the 1998 or 2000 Olympics. And even though the 2002 Olympics were in my backyard, and I even went to one of the medal ceremonies, I saw nothing on TV beyond the opening ceremonies. Everything since my first kid was born is a blur in my mind, so I can't remember whether I saw any of the 2004 or 2006 Olympics, but I'm guessing not.

So, with a long history of Olympic apathy, why am I so interested in it this time out? That's a very good question. I'm glad I asked.

I've thought a lot about it, and narrowed it down to two factors. One, is just the quality and quantity of the TV coverage. On DirecTV, there's something like 9 or 10 channels that cover the Olympics, 8 of which are in HD. I've watched a lot of crap that I otherwise would never consider watching just because it's in HD, and maybe some of the Olympics fall into that category. Either way, I'm just fascinated by the ability to get both tuners on the DVR recording two different channels, then scan through them while two more chunks record.

Although I didn't watch any of the 1992 Olympics, I was a big fan of the concept of the NBC Olympic TripleCast, a pay-per-view package of three channels of 24 hour Olympic coverage. If you like watching the Olympics, that really seemed like the way to go. Nowadays, with all these channels, and the VOD replays available, and the internet coverage, the TripleCast almost seems quaint.

So, massive availability always draws me in, just like I'll always eat more than I should at a buffet, even if the food is crap. But, I think the real reason I'm watching so much is that I got suckered in by the opening ceremonies.

We have a Chinese student living with us right now, so we were obligated to watch the opening ceremonies with him anyway. But, after hearing just how much money and effort was spent on putting them together, I was intrigued to see what they would actually pull off. It was really stunning, for lack of a better word, and I was hooked from the first fireworks blast.

Dear Chinese Olympics opening ceremonies,
I was blown away by your massive floor TV, your flying people, your lit up people, your bouncing up and down printing block people, and your running sideways on the Death Star people. But, you had me from insanely massive pyrotechnics.

The opening ceremony was really representative of a lot of things, but mainly representative of what you can accomplish in the singular focus of a totalitarian society. The massive transformation of Beijing in the last few years is another testament to that. I guess that means the one thing we can all look forward to after Russia's current return to totalitarianism is a really kicking Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014.

Much has also been written about how this was China's big coming out to the West, but I think it's a little more than that. It's more like China's big spectacle to kick off their upcoming domination of everything: all Olympic sports, economics, world military power, whatever.

So, I've watched a lot. I watched rowing for two straight hours the other day. I've watched what seems like a dozen hours of swimming. I've watched badminton, whitewater rafting, boxing, a lot of gymnastics, volleyball, and a lot of stuff I can't remember. I've seen some pretty cool things too. The amazing come from behind US victory in the 4x100m men's freestyle relay was really cool to see. I've seen tons of records broken in swimming, which is kind of old hat since everyone's wearing that crazy new suit now. But, I saw a cool pair of races where one guy broke another guy's record, and the other guy broke it back in the next race. I watched an entire USA-Australia softball game last night that ended up as a no-hitter.

But, I think my favorite parts are the ones where a commentator has been talking all day and has just given up on sounding professional and just starts to fill time. Those times come often with this level of coverage. Just yesterday I listened to the women's volleyball commentator rail on about how bad the USA team was, and how it was shameful that they're really dishonoring their coach by sucking so much. Beach volleyball has Karch Kiraly providing "analysis", and he's usually good for something stupid. Today, the play-by-play guy asked Karch why a particular athlete would be wearing a watch, trying to find out why she wouldn't take it off for the match. Karch replied by listing all the things a volleyball player would be able to do before the match if they knew what time it was. Basically answering that watches are good for telling time. Thanks, Karch.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

The New York Times ran a story a few days ago about the quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. They interviewed a few fancy-pants bakers and pastry chefs and developed a recipe incorporating all of their suggested tips and tricks.

I whipped up a batch of these today to try them. I followed the recipe exactly, except for the following modifications: I did not go to New York to get Jacques Torres chocolate, and I couldn't find the Valrhona fèves at my local Whole Foods. This turned out to be a good thing, because I later found out that the Valrhona stuff would have been easily over $15/pound, and I really worry about how much the Jacques Torres stuff would cost. Instead, I splurged on some 60% cacao Ghiradelli chips down to the Safeway for closer to $5/pound. I also discovered after I started that I only had about half the unsalted butter that I thought I had, so I made the cookies with half unsalted and half regular butter. I also only refrigerated the dough for about an hour before cooking the first few cookies, because I'm impatient like that. I've kept the rest of the batch plus one whole other batch in the fridge, though, so I can adequately test the effects of the 24-36 hour refrigeration they recommend.

So, except for the above, I followed the recipe exactly. I even went out and bought parchment paper (which I love but can't normally justify) and cake flour (for which I would normally just substitute regular flour plus corn starch). I'm happy they provided weights for the dry ingredients, as I would much rather measure by weight for dry ingredients than by imprecise measurements of volume. I even weighed out the cookie dough to the recommend 3.5 ounces per cookie. I went through all this trouble because if the cookies did not turn out to be delightful, I didn't want to have to blame myself.

I'm pleased to say they did indeed turn out wonderfully. They really look like a fancy cookie that you'd pay >$3 for in some bakery. They taste great, although the large size and richness of the chocolate limits me to only about one before feeling like I'm overdoing it. Becki doesn't like chocolate chip cookies, and she didn't like these chocolate chips when I gave her some last night. That said, she thought this cookie tasted terrific, and was easily the best chocolate chip cookie she had ever had.

I would definitely make these again. The recipe is no more difficult than any other cookie recipe as long as you have the ingredients. If you don't have the right ingredients on hand though, it's not necessarily worth going to France to get the right chocolate for it or anything like that.

I think the techniques learned here are more important than the actual recipe. For example, I'll probably try the sprinkling of sea salt (which I do always have on hand) on other cookies and baked goods in the future. If the refrigeration trick pays off as well as they say, I'll try that with my cookies as well, no matter what the recipe. And I think the overall shape and appearance of the cookie owes a lot to the parchment paper, which will allow the cookie to spread the right amount on the pan without regard to pan composition. Normally when I bake a batch of cookies, I'll be using a variety of cookie sheets: some non-stick, some not, some light, some dark, some kind of new, some 40 years old. My cookies really come out a variety of different shades and consistencies as a result. I could get all new cookie sheets, but that's expensive, and sometimes I might actually need one kind of cookie sheet instead of another. Instead, I think I'm just going to make sure I always use parchment paper from now on.

So, bottom line: These cookies are good. Try them.

Mullet/Stache

Back in the end of 2002 or so I cut my long hair down into short hair. I had no particular need to get that done all at once, so for two glorious days, I wore a breathtaking mullet and Camaro-mustache combination.

I tell people this occasionally, but I haven't had any photographic evidence to back it up. I somehow forgot to take any pictures of this myself. I do remember my aunt taking a picture of me at the time, and The Shambles gave me a picture that he took of all of us at the El Vez concert back then.

Up until now, I had assumed that those were the only two mullet pictures that existed. Yesterday, The Shambles sent along another one of the El Vez concert that he must have recently unearthed:



I'm kind of torn about this, because on the one hand I'm happy to have more pictures, yet on the other hand, this picture is so downright embarrassing. It's not even a good showcase for the mullet, although you can at least see the 'stache.

For the sake of completeness, here's the other picture of us with The Thin Brown Duke himself:

The Past Tense

Joey has always done well at language development, like rapidly picking up new words and easily following new grammatical concepts. One thing he latched on to pretty quickly is the meaning of "past tense".

When kids are learning to talk, they quickly learn that if they want to say that something happened in the past, they just add an "ed" to the end of the word. It works 99% percent of the time, so they figure it's a safe bet. With Joey, every time I heard something like "I eated that sandwich", I made a habit of pointing out "The past tense of 'eat' is 'ate'". I didn't really spend any time explaining what a "past tense" is or demonstrate the correct usage of the new word or anything. I would just throw it out there and see if he caught on. He did catch on really quickly and has a much better usage of all of those irregular declensions than other kids his age (if I do say so myself).

A couple of months ago, we went to Costco for the semi-monthly stocking up. Right after we finished checking out, Joey said, "Wow, look at all these things we buyed!" I responded, "Yeah, we bought a lot of stuff." Joey looked down and muttered, "That's right, the past tense of 'buy' is 'bought'" in his best "Please, Daddy, don't hit me for getting it wrong" voice. I was mortified, but quickly looked around and was relieved to see that no one had overheard this little exchange.

I was reminded of this yesterday when Joey walked up after having just finished a drink and told me, "Daddy, the past tense of 'full' is 'empty'." I could not argue with that logic.

"Hello Michael, where do you want to go today?"

I have a GPS navigation system integrated with my car, so I'm not really in the market for a standalone unit right now. However, if my needs change and I do start shopping for one, you can believe that this one will be the first one I consider.

As seen in the Cruise Compass

On my recent cruise I had many issues with incorrect information being presented in the daily Cruise Compass (the onboard program listing the days activities).

Some of the errors were serious ones that caused us to expend a ton of effort to be some place a couple of different times only to find it closed both times, despite what was told us by the Compass and the cruise staff. Most of the other errors were simple grammar or spelling mistakes that were awful hard to overlook because they gave the whole thing this rinky-dink air, like the whole cruise line is being run by the high school journalism club.

This particular typo, though, they can make all they want as far as I'm concerned, because while they may be still in high school, I'm still in junior high.

The Gong Show... With Dave Attell

I've always been a huge fan of The Gong Show. If I ever get to see clips, I'm hugely nostalgic, which is quite strange considering I very rarely ever saw it growing up.

I was one of about 12 people who saw the movie version of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and since that time I've always been wondering why nobody's ever tried to make a modern day version of The Gong Show (and no, American Idol doesn't count). Just a couple of weeks ago, I was making a list of every mediocre game show that's had a modern day remake and wondering how it was that our national obsession with nostalgia had never revisited The Gong Show.

Today I received this bit of news, which announces the July 17th premiere of the all new Gong Show on Comedy Central, with host Dave Attell. One of my concerns was whether any modern remake would have the same goofy yet subversive sensibilities of its predecessor, and I feel really positive about this one. I'm a fan of Dave Attell, and can easily imagine him as an heir to Chuck Barrus. So, needless to say, I'll be watching this when it's on. Heck, I'd be trying out if I could only come up with something suitably retarded yet entertaining enough for TV.

So, until this new version hits the air, I leave you with The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo:

T-Shirt Sighting

During the intermission at the Wallace & Ladmo shindig, I saw a guy wearing the exact same t-shirt I got for a 5k I ran in Provo in 2001. It took my brain a full two seconds to process what I was seeing, because for most of that time it was stuck in the mode of thinking, "Hey, that's my shirt, the one I wear to do yardwork. Why did that guy take my shirt?", followed by "What would a 7 year old shirt from Provo be doing here?"

My brain was hung up on this because I wouldn't ever consider wearing a race t-shirt out in public. It's not that it's not a nice souvenir or something to be proud of. I've just got so many other t-shirts and nicer things to wear. And, if I were to wear it around, it probably wouldn't be 7 years later. To me that seems like advertising to passersby "I'm proud of this thing I did 7 years ago, and I've accomplished jack-all since then."

I didn't get a chance to ask the guy about it, because I couldn't figure out what I could say that didn't make me sound like the dork. "Dude, I've got the same shirt!" "America's Freedom Festival 2001, woo hoo!" "Yo, what was your time? I ran over 33 minutes..."

Ho Ho Ha Ha Hee Hee Ha Ha

If you were a kid in the Phoenix area between 1954 and 1989, a good chunk of your afternoon (and probably morning) was occupied watching The Wallace and Ladmo Show. If you were to meet someone from the area, you wouldn't even bother asking, "Hey, do you remember Wallace and Ladmo?". You can just take it for granted that it was just as much a part of their childhood as it was yours.

I originally became acquainted with Wallace and Ladmo from visiting my cousins in Mesa. When I was 8, we moved to Casa Grande for a year and had Phoenix TV stations, so I watched the show enough during that time to have some pretty fond memories.

My mom's cousin, Mark Arnett, is the producer of a little gang of folks that call themselves the "Citrus Valley Playhouse". What they do is perform on stage in the style of a taping of an old time radio show. Think Prairie Home Companion, but with a focus on Arizona culture and history. All the people involved are top notch, and it's really funny stuff.

Last night, they put on what they billed as "An All-Star Tribute to Wallace and Ladmo". They covered the history of the show and its impact on Arizona. And, they gave out their first ever "Citrus Valley Lifetime Achievement Award" to Bill Thompson (Wallace), Ladmo's widow, Patsy, and Pat McMahon (the utility player best known as "Gerald"). I never got to see them at Legend City or anything, primarily because I never got to go to Legend City, so getting to see Wallace and Gerald live last night was kind of a big deal for me.

Besides Wallace and Gerald, there were a lot of other notables there: Tempe mayor Hugh Hallman, former Attorney General Grant Woods, Dan Harkins (president/CEO Harkins Theatres). They had video appearances from Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon, current Attorney General Terry Goddard, and a handful of newscasters and DJs and things. The most exciting VIP for me, though, was Maricopa County Sherrif Joe Arpaio. When I first saw him before the show, he was flanked by four deputies, ostensibly for security, but most likely to check everyone's citizenship papers.

For the big grand finale last night, they gave away Ladmo Bags. On The Wallace and Ladmo Show, kids who attended the tapings could get their seat number picked to be the lucky recipient of a Ladmo Bag, which was a brown paper bag labelled "Ladmo Bag" and filled with junk food, an autographed picture, and sometimes small prizes from the sponsors. To get a Ladmo Bag was a big huge deal. Most everyone knew someone from their school or church that had received a Ladmo Bag. If you had never got one yourself, though, you never quite got over the resentment.

They gave away 50 bags last night by delivering them to the seat numbers they had previously randomly drawn. You could try to argue that these weren't the real thing since they weren't given away on The Wallace and Ladmo Show, but I don't buy that. The bags were endorsed by Wallace and Pat, and each bag was hand-lettered by Wallace himself, so I'm pronouncing them bona fide. I didn't get one, but the middle-aged woman three seats down from me did. I had overheard the woman saying that she had gone to school with Ladmo's daughter, and Ladmo was her brother's coach, so she had some personal connection that brought her there that night. When I first sat down, she had expressed her envy of the paper Ladmo tie that I had picked up at the VIP reception before hand. When she got that Ladmo Bag, though, the shoe was definitely on the other foot.

When the usher handed her that bag, she was stunned and shocked, which quickly transformed into this joy the likes of which I haven't seen before. It was clear within the first two seconds that receiving this Ladmo Bag was the highlight of her whole year, if not the whole decade. She pulled a couple of things out of the bag to look at, but I think she was afraid to dig into it too much for fear the whole bag would run off or something. She held it tightly to her chest, and when she was walking out of the theater, she had both arms wrapped around it like it was the most precious possession anyone could ever own. So, I was pretty bummed that I didn't get a Ladmo Bag, but seeing just how happy the bag made her took a little bit of the edge off of my resentment.

Creepy Man

I'm in Phoenix for a couple of days for a convention. Tonight, after we got to the hotel, I thought I'd get a little exercise by going down and swimming in the pool for a little bit. In the hot tub next to the pool was a group of about six or seven twenty-something girls. Besides them, there was no one else in the pool area.

My first thought was that the girls are probably thinking to themselves, "Oh great, here comes this hairy fat creepy man down to the pool, putting a damper on our young girl style". But, when I was getting into the pool, one girl shouts to the other, "Hey, are your boobs real or fake? Didn't you get a boob job?" Then, they all proceeded into a conversation where they demanded to see each others' "boobs", and talked about who had the best set. Then, they went on to discuss which boy celebrities they thought were the cutest.

This whole time, I was getting pretty upset because not only did they not think of me as a creepy man, but they were apparently not thinking of me as a man in their presence at all. I was dismayed that they weren't at all threatened by me. I have to concede that at least part of me would rather be regarded as a pervert than not be regarded at all.