Who will review the reviewer?

I have a love-hate relationship with cnn.com. I hate to admit that it's usually one of the first news sites I surf, but I do because most of the time I just want to skim the headlines. I also like how it links to si.com my favorite sports site. Conversely, I can't stand how they take stories the most worthless stories like the Tara Conner and Anna Nicole Smith crap in their headline news section and try to make it breaking news. Complete garbage.

Today, I was reading a review about the movie 23, the thriller starring Jim Carrey. I was very hard-pressed to finish the review because my eyes were doing the optical version of the dry heaves. Tom Charity, the "critic" was ragging the movie, the screenwriter, the director, and even all the movies so far this year. I don't mind a good rag for deserving movies. It's just the way this guy tries so hard to sound smart and funny, yet lands flat on his face...in a pile of poo. An attempt at humor, "Here [Jim Carrey]'s earnestly ordinary as mild-mannered Walter Sparrow, a pet detective (well, OK, an 'animal control officer') who becomes obsessed with a pseudonymous self-published novel." Hahaha, oh Tom. I get it now. Jim Carrey DID play a Pet Detective. So very clever. And an attempt to sound smart, "Don't imagine it was an accident that 9/11/01 adds up to ... 23!" Hmm....it looks like 9/11/01 adds up to TWENTY-ONE! I guess the CNN editors are trying not to get fired because the line has now been removed from the article.


My final word. Two thumbs down and a nomination for the Razzies.

Magic Turtle Shell

For some reason, earlier in the week we had ice cream in the office. Someone brought in several flavors of ice cream and various toppings. One of the toppings caught my eye. It was Smucker's Magic Turtle Shell.



It's a chocolate syrup that's liquid and when you pour it on your ice cream it hardens in seconds. There's something about it that just doesn't seem right. It's like it defies physics of candy and anything sweet. I always thought the whole point of syrup is that it's supposed to be liquid so that it gets into all the crevices of the ice cream and you can get a little bit of syrup with each bite.

I decided to look up what makes this syrup so special. According to Wikipedia, the "shell" effect is done via a combination of paraffin and oil. For you curious cats, Paraffin is mostly found as a white, odorless, tasteless, waxy solid. Food-grade paraffin is used in some candies to make them look shiny. Although edible, it is nondigestible; it passes right through the body without being broken down. Liquid paraffin is also excellent for helping bowel movement in persons suffering chronic constipation.

I'm so glad now I decided to try some with my ice cream. Mmmm...I better wash that dessert down with a nice chilled glass of Olestera and strap on my NASA certified diaper.

New Yaaaaaaawk Seeeeeetay

Spent last weekend in New York City with Y for a random weekend of eating and just hanging out. We've been wanting to go since before Christmas but just never found time to go. We weren't trying to be overly ambitious about our trip. It was just supposed to be relaxing and relatively stress-free. Our noteable activities planned for this trip:

1) See the broadway show, Avenue Q
2) Eat wontons in Chinatown
3) Get dungeness crabs in Flushings
4) Raid a chinese bakery

Thursday:
The trip started out on an aggravating note. First off, Y came over and her driver side window fell off it's track, so it wouldn't roll up all the way. It was late on Friday and we had to head out to the airport soon, so we couldn't take care of it. We just ended up stashing it my the garage for the weekend. Then we rushed over to the airport to try and catch an earlier shuttle flight to La Guardia only to discover that the 8pm flight was cancelled. At the airport I decided that the whole liquid policy is stupid, and I'm not going to check in my carry-on for a 25% full tube of toothpaste. I decided to stash it in my pocket thinking I can make it thru security with it. Yeah, apparently the tube is made of aluminum. So I got flagged and frisked by security. Luckily the TSA agent was actually very friendly, and he let me keep my toothpaste too. At the gate, we saw Sun Ming Ming, the 2nd tallest man in the world at 7' 9". He plays for the Maryland Nighthawks of the ABA. I think Y comes up to his knee. I'm at eye level with his crotch.

Friday:

While all of our friends worked, it was too cold to stroll around the city, so we took the NBC Studio tour. We got an unexpected surprise when we were graced with the presence of Forest Whitaker. He passed our tour group, but Y and I were looking in the wrong direction. BAH! We visited the SNL studio and briefly saw Keith Urban rehearsing for the show before he had the page shut the curtains on us. Bastard alcoholic can't practice with people watching. Y did get me a snazzy mousepad to console me.

Afterwards we stuffed ourselves with wontons from Chinatown for lunch, napped, had an early Valentine's dinner in the West Village, and met up with my cousin in the West Village for some live music.

Saturday:
The weather was much warmer so Y and I took a walk over to Time Square to look for the theater we were heading to later that night for Avenue Q. We grabbed some lunch at a French place we've been to before killing time before we met T at the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle. We were going to meet up so we could pick up the show tickets he bought for us and just hang out. T calls me. I expect him to tell me where in the plaza to meet. Instead, it's him telling me, he's forgotten the tickets at home. It'll take about an hour to retrieve and come back. How some things never change. Ack, flashbacks of the europe trip!

After T's triumphant return, we decide to grab dinner before the show. We finish around 7:30-ish which should be enough time to hop a cab over to Time Square. We can't find a cab for the life of us, so T flags down a rickshaw and off we go! It's getting pretty cold, so he wraps the passenger area in a clear plastic sheet, which is suprisingly warm. Too bad it didn't extend down to our feet. For a sec, we thought we were going to be late for our show, but we made it just in time. I think we ended up getting there a little quicker than taking a cab since traffic was terrible. I guess everyone was trying to make a show.

After the show, we tried to take the train down the Lower East Side, except our F train turned into the A train twice. We got off the first time, but couldn't understand the conductor well enough the 2nd time and ended up going down the west side. We just got off and decided to cab it. Too bad everyone else that got screwed had the same idea. Ugh how frustrating.

Sunday:
T picked us up from our hotel and took us to Flushings to get some good eats. I've been dreaming about ginger scallion dungeness crab for the longest time. Awwwww...... After our belly's were full with seafood, we stocked up on our chinese baked goods, and split early for the airport.

Three days of eating, yet I still feel unsatisfied. Next time we're going to find some Indian food and steaks!

Technology and I

Technology. We used to be best friends. When I was younger, I wanted all the new electronic gadgets and overall, they never took me very long to figure out. I remember I would/could program simple things on my Apple IIe. Now, it's a completely different story. I don't know if it's me just being slow and retarded or technology is so advanced that a quasi-technical guy can't really figure it out. It's probably a little of both. By the way, I am one of those types of guys who don't like to read the manuals and just like to figure it out for himself.
Take these three new possessions of mine as examples of my decline:

1) Lexus. In 3 months or so, I still haven't completely figured out how to use some of the main features. I still have trouble with the navigation system. For instance, I plugged in a destination address because I was looking for a store in an unfamiliar area. It located it thought I was on my way. To my surprise and annoyance, it chose the starting address as my home instead of my current location, which was my office 20+ miles away. As much as I tried, I couldn't figure out how to reset the start location. The system is billed as intuitive. For the life of me, I couldn't figure it out. I ended up following the directions I printed out from Yahoo maps, like I used to do. So is Lexus trying to make a statement about my intuition or lack there of? Then there's the voice activated functions. Don't even get me started with this one. I can't even figure out the first commands to even begin to use the function. This is an example of a conversation I have with my car.

Steve: (pushing voice command button)
Lexus: After the beep, please say a command
Steve: Destination
Lexus: Please repeat
Steve: Destination (with a louder volume)
Lexus: Please repeat
Steve: DESTINATION!!!!
Lexus: Voice command cancelled
Lexus: (mumbles) dumbass


2) Motorola Krzr. About a month ago, I got the new Krzr because and since I've had it, I realized that I barely know how to operate it (besides the usual of adding contacts, sending texts, and making and ending calls). I can skip most of the fancy features like Power Vision, but I realized that I might be in trouble when my phone rang and the ringer was different from the one that I set it to. When I went to examine the ringer volume settings, I see the options, Vibrate Only, Ringer Off, Silence All. Now is it just me or does Ringer Off sound very similar to Silence All?


3) Canon S80 digital camera. Lastly, I got myself a nice new digital camera about a year ago, and minus the basic features, I don't really know how to use this new toy just like the aforementioned two. I can pretty much get it to take pictures and download. It takes great pictures, but I just don't feel like I maximize it's potential. I got it because it had a better zoom and megapixels than most of the Canon Elphs available at the time. What I didn't really realize was that it was it was meant for amateur photographers. This meant that there are a ton of features I would have to figure out. Sometimes I find features, like a fireworks setting, that I can't always find if I want to try it.

I still love getting new new electronics, and I'm not going to stop any time soon. But is anyone else having this problem? It's just a blow to the ego when I scratch my head like a fool and navigate around the same menu over and over since I can't find the exit button. At least I'll always know how to pull the battery out.