Well, That's Just Great

There's a saying that goes, "If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were". In other words, say you have a new-found love for something, like O-Ke-Doke Cheese Popcorn. If you search the internet for place to buy this popcorn, but you come up empty, was it never meant to be?

Here's the whole, sordid story: while traveling to Michigan on business, I discovered O-Ke-Doke Cheese Popcorn. It had a name that aspired to mediocrity, and it came in an awful orange package, but boy, did it taste good.

Since then, I looked for places online to buy it. Amazon has a listing for it, but it simply teases that it may become available sometime soon. The company that make the popcorn, Jay's Foods, has a website that merely states "come back soon". There don't seem to be any other online stores that sell it.

I've finally called the search off. I found this news article from January of this year: after 80 years, Jay's Foods has closed its doors and auctioned off its manufacturing equipment. It turns out that by the time I had discovered it in March, it was already dead.

Oh, the humanity!

R.I.P., sweet O-Ke-Doke - we hardly knew ye

Nozza Whirl

Detroit, Again

Somehow, I ended up in Detroit again. Clinton Township, to be more precise; about 30 miles northeast from Detroit. The strange thing about this area was that there weren't any freeways. All you have to get from one place to another are these long, straight stretches of road, with not a whole lot to see other than trees, powerlines, or one or two-story buildings. Here, take a look:

This is what you see for miles and miles. As you make a turn, you hope that the scenery will change a little bit...

Nope, still the same. Except now the sun is in your eyes.

Overall, a disappointing trip. I didn't even get a chance to pick up some more of that delicious cheese popcorn.

The one interesting nugget from my trip: my rental car had a pull string inside the trunk if somehow find yourself trapped inside:

I love how the diagram at the end of the ripcord advises you to run once you get out. I guess nine times out of ten, it isn't a very positive situation to be trapped in someone's trunk. It's also made out of glow-in-the-dark material, so you can find it easily while you struggle in the dark. What will they think of next?

South Carolina: Dum Spiro Spero

The other week I had the opportunity to visit Greenville, South Carolina. I had never been to this state before and really knew absolutely nothing about it. When my co-workers asked me where I was going, I said "Greenville, South Carolina" in a fake country accent, and occasionally punctuated it with a "yeehaw". Shows you what I knew.

You know what? Greenville was a surprisingly nice place to visit. After my construction punchlist was done, I had a few hours to see what there was to see. Here's what I saw:

There's a BMW plant in Spartanburg a town right next to Greenville. The plant has a museum called BMW Zentrum, the only museum of its kind in the US. They have all kinds of vintage cars, motorcycles and engines on displays. It was an interesting to look at the inner workings of car I'll probably never own (I'm primarily a Honda kind of guy).



Greenville has a nice little downtown area that contains a nice park and a bridge called the Liberty Bridge. It's a curved pedestrian bridge that is supported by two large posts mounted at a angle. Its a little derivative of a Santiago Calatrava-style bridge, but it's a nice structure in a pleasant setting.



The crown jewel of the city is without a doubt the Michelin on Main store, the only store in the US devoted entirely to Michelin Man merchandise! If you know me, then you know I love a good advertising mascot, and the Michelin Man is one of my favorites (heck, one of my first blog entries was about the Michelin Man).





The store was kind of like the M&M's store in Las Vegas - it was a two-story monument to their mascot. As I looked around, I felt a tear welling up in my eye. Maybe it was because Bibendum was getting the respect he deserves. Maybe it was because of the prices on some of the merchandise. I ended up buying some t-shirts and other assorted knicknacks. I'm especially pleased with my new Michelin Man coffee mug.

Detroit, Land of Cheese Popcorn

I was in Detroit the other week for work (Novi, Michigan to be precise), and it was cold. Bloody cold. Here's how I remember Detroit:

It's good to be home. On the plus side, in my never-ending quest for snacks, I found this gem during my trip:

I love the slogan: "When it's more than OK, it's O-Ke-Doke!" In other words, "we're not the best, but certainly better than average!" I love the see-through yellow bag, which enhances the cheesiness of the popcorn, as if it wasn't cheesy enough. It's almost too good to be true.

I packed this treasure of a snack and brought it home for us to try. You know what? It was delicious! This was some of the best cheese popcorn we've ever had! I'm going back to Detroit in a couple of weeks, and I'm getting some more.

Mmmmm.... cheese popcorn.

Dave Stevens

I'm way late on this, but Dave Stevens, one of my favorite comic book artists of the eighties, passed away at the age of 52 due to leukemia.


This makes me sad. He was a talented artist.

Al, What Happened To Your Head?

...And the winner of "the worst job of splicing Al Pacino's head on a body that is clearly not his own" is....


...And Justice For All! Hooah!

Crab Crawl

We went to the 2nd annual Crab Crawl at Jack London Square this weekend. I had this event marked on my calendar weeks ago. We hadn't been to it before, but it was advertised to have fresh crab for sale right off the boats, crab cooking demonstrations, crab dishes from local restaurant, live music, and everybody's favorite, face painting.

Unfortunately, we saw only one fishing boat, but there was no crab on it. There were no cooking demonstrations to be found. There were only four booths serving crab (actually three, the fourth booth only had BBQ oysters). If it hadn't been for the live music and the face painting, the day would have been a total disappoinment. Crab Crawl 2008 was a little underwhelming, to say the least.

On the positive side, we did have a tasty crab & artichoke dip from Kincaid's. We also had some very tasty crab enchiladas with some kickass rice from Cocina Poblana, a new restaurant in the area. Add a couple of cups of strawberry and watermelon agua frescas, and we were stuffed. I think we'll be checking out this restaurant sometime in the near future.

Overall, Crab Crawl wasn't the crustacean wonderland that I was hoping for. I was hoping to revel in all things crab, and it just didn't turn out that way. However, we had a great lunch and got a little fresh air, so I've got nothing to complain about.

Sucker!

If I Rode A Motorcycle... Part 2

...this wouldn't be a bad helmet choice:


Now if they only had one with a flaming skull...

If I Were A Welder...

....I would totally wear a helmet like this:


Heavy metal! Rad!

Sorry, Skunk

As I was driving to work this morning, I saw something on the road in front of me. It first looked like a kitten, but then I realized it was a skunk. I had less than a second to react, so I swerved to the left. Unfortunately, the skunk was also heading in the same direction crossing from the right side of the road to the left.

I heard and felt a bump. It was what I would describe as a soft bump.

I immediately felt a little queasy. It had to be the largest thing I've ever killed. It was definitely the first mammal I ever squashed.

The skunk got the last laugh on me, as it probably managed to eject every bit of stink out of its body. The noxious skunk odor filled the inside of my car, and I think a little of it probably stuck to me for most of the day.

Sorry Mr. Skunk, it was an accident.

If I Rode A Motorcycle...

....I would totally wear a helmet like this:


Badass! Woot!

Sun + Fog = Sog

I took this picture from my desk last month. The fog was really thick that morning, but the sun was quickly burning through.

My eyes kind of hurt after I took this picture. It was worth it, though. I think.

Black Friday, Black Saturday

We love Black Friday. It’s like Christmas, except we buy our own gifts. It’s a shame that it only comes once a year.

After last year’s nuthouse at our local Best Buy, we decided to try our luck at another Best Buy in a less populated area. All we had to do was to get up in the middle of the night and drive to a far away town. Did it work? Not really. There was quite a crowd already there. It didn’t wrap around the building and beyond like our experience from the previous year, but there were several hundred people in line ahead of us, already shivering in the cold winter air.

But they all deserved it, for showing up earlier than us. Ha ha! Freeze suckers, freeze!

Once we got inside the Best Buy, it was a feeding frenzy as usual. We got what we were looking for, although there actually weren’t that many great deals this year. I told myself that if there was a pile of PS3’s sitting in front of me, then I would treat it like a litter of puppies and find the cutest one to take home with me. However, I saw no such litter. All the PS3’s were caged away, already all adopted. Hopefully they all found good homes.

We wrapped up our Black Friday at McDonalds, which was a huge disappointment. We wanted sausage and egg McMuffins, but ended up with bacon and egg McGriddles. If you’ve never had a McGriddle, avoid it at all costs. This miserable excuse for a breakfast sandwich uses two pancakes as the bread instead of an English muffin. Pancakes! It’s an awful, awful combination of maple syrup pancakes, weak bacon, and bad eggs. I don’t know why anybody would willingly eat this stuff.

Disgusting.

Happy with our purchases, but disappointed with our breakfast, we trekked back home. Later that day, my fiancé says to me:

“Babe?”

“What?”

“I don’t want you to fall out of your chair, but Wal-Mart is having a “secret sale” on PS3’s. You get an 80 GB PS3 with 10 free Blu-Ray movies for $499.”

I picked myself off the floor, and the new hunt was on. Black Saturday, here we come!

**************************************************

I usually wake up pretty early for work every morning, but to wake up around 2 to 3 in the morning two days in a row is pretty brutal. You just hope that it’s going to be all worth it.

Duplicating our Best Buy strategy, we picked a non-local Wal-Mart and made the journey over. When we got there, there was no one there. Victory! We’re first!

We sat in our car and staked out the front of the store, not wanting to stand outside in the cold. A few moments later, a guy drove up and got out of his car. You could tell by the way the hair on the back of his head was awkwardly sticking out that he was there for a PS3. A few minutes later a second guy shows up and gets in line.

Now, it’s kind of a goal in my life not to look like a dork. If you are first in line at a Wal-Mart waiting for the doors to open to buy a PS3, then you are a dork. If you are the second guy in line, then you are also a dork, although a few degrees less dorky than the first guy. If you’re the third guy in line, you may be still a dork, but you are not so desperate that you didn’t have to be the first or second in line.

We were third in line in a group of three. When the Wal-Mart finally opened, a store employee told us that they only had two PS3’s available. Arrgh! Disappointment!

I was ready to pack it in and wallow in my despair. However, my lovely fiancé, the ying to my yang, the sweet to my sour, encouraged me not to give up and find another Wal-Mart.

We located the next nearest Wal-Mart and drove over. When we got there, we sprinted to the electronics department. Did they have any PS3’s? No! They only had two, and they were both sold!

Noooooo!

Giving it one last try, we drove to the next nearest Wal-Mart, where we found a group of four people waiting in line. Did they have any PS3?

Yes! Success!! Sweet Jesus, we’ve found the elusive PS3!

All hail the PS3!

With our new PS3 and ten free Blu-Ray movies in hand, we made our way home. On the way back, we found a McDonalds, and had some delicious sausage McMuffin sandwiches for breakfast. Life is good.

All hail the sausage McMuffin! With egg!

The Great Debaters

Since we are massive insiders in the movie industry (ahem), this week we went to an advance screening of The Great Debaters, a new movie with Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker coming out in December this year.

The funny thing about the whole event was how tight the security was. The big rule was NO CAMERA PHONES. If you had a camera phone, you would NOT BE ALLOWED IN THE THEATER. If you were caught with a camera phone, THEY WILL TAKE YOU DOWN. I guess you can take short videos with camera phones nowadays, but how good could the images be? This was simply a period drama, for pete's sake. It wasn't like Denzel and Forest were going to be dressed like Batman and Robin in the movie.

So how was the movie? It was pretty good. I've seen football movies, quiz show movies, cheerleading movies, but I must say this was the first debate movie I've ever seen. It takes place in the 1930's and tells the story of the debating team from Wiley College, an all-black university in Texas. The movie depicts how the team comes together and defeats all the other schools in the area, until the climatic showdown with the Harvard debate team.

Besides Denzel and Forest, this movie features a young actor named Denzel Whitaker, who oddly enough is not the love child of Denzel and Forest Whitaker.

At the end of the movie we had to fill out a two-page questionnaire on the movie. I couldn't find any flaws in the movie (other than not enough guns and explosions), and I really enjoyed it overall, so I gave it an "excellent" rating, and said, "yes, I would recommend this movie". So here's my recommendation - when The Great Debaters comes you, go see it.

By the way, there are absolutely no pictures available for this movie, so here's an entirely made up scene from the movie:

"Coffee is best with two lumps of sugar!"

"I disagree - coffee tastes better with only one lump!"

Only Mountain Dew and Crab Juice

To continue the crab theme...

Last week I was in Annapolis, MD for work, and I had accidentally dropped my toothbrush in the toilet. No matter how long you run it under hot water afterwards, you will never wash out the stigma that your toothbrush went into a giant bowl a pee.

So I drove myself to a nearby CVS Pharmacy to get a new toothbrush. Walking by the snack aisle, lo and behold, I saw it:

Go ahead, say it out aloud to yourself: "Utz... The Crab Chip". I think its sheer genius to name your brand "Utz". What does it mean? Where did it come from? "Utz" is something you say if you almost trip on something.

Utz had other chip flavors, but the Crab Chip simply cannot be beat. I'm assuming this is something that's only available on the east coast. That's so unfair; why don't we have Utz Crab Chips out here?

Now That's A Crab

I saw this link on Boing Boing the other day, which lead to this picture:


Not to simply repeat what's already been said, but CHEEZUS, THAT'S THE BIGGEST CRAB I'VE EVER SEEN. Please don't move, and especially don't make eye contact with the beast. I'm sure glad I'm not the poor sap who took that picture.

Luckily, after a great deal of diligent reasearch (mainly looking at Wikipedia), the coconut crab cand only be found "in areas throughout the Indian and western Pacific ocean". In other words, nowhere near where we live, and especially not in our recycling bin.

Bumbershoot & Flatstock 14

We had a great time at Bumbershoot and Flatstock in Seattle over Labor Day weekend. It was good - really good. It was the best. It was fantastic.

Flatstock was what we expected it to be - a lot of poster artists hawking their wares. It's funny, because we're used to Comic-Con sized exhibit halls that stretch as far as the eye can see. Flatstock was the size of a basketball court (okay, maybe two basketball courts). But it was more than enough, since by the end of the day we spent pretty much all the cash we had.

In terms of poster artists, I like Frank Kozik, and I like Coop, but neither one was there. However, my fiance does like Patent Pending and the Bird Machine, and they both had tables that we passed by again and again, and a few more times again, just in case we missed something the previous time.

Most of the other artists we didn't really know, but we know what we like, so we figured out right away which ones had the graphic style that fit our tastes. Here's just a sample of some of the posters we got:

Hey, we went outside too. The weather was great for an outdoor festival, and the place was packed. There was a lot of tasty food, and we helped ourselves to the free shots of Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Balance Bars. We sure do love free stuff.

There was a lot of live music being played all over the Seattle Center, but we didn't really bother seeing any of the bands. We did hear the Shins playing some of their popular songs. The festival was for three days, so we weren't there on the right day to see Fergie and her humps. Oh well.

We did manage to see one artist that I was somewhat familiar with named St. Vincent for a couple of songs. She's not really well known, so it was easy to get right up to the edge of the stage to take pictures like this:

All in all, we had a lot of fun and spent a lot of money. A most successful weekend.

Off To Seattle!

It's Labor Day weekend, the weather has been unbearably hot, and the Bay Bridge is closed all weekend. What do you do? You go to Seattle!

We're headed north, folks. Off to one of our favorite getaway cities...we're going to see the sights, eat a little crab, but mostly we're going to the Flatstock concert poster show at the Bumbershoot Festival! Wahoo!

Armed with a brand new portfolio, we hope to come back with a whole stack of cool posters. If they're all too expensive, then maybe we'll blow our whole budget on one poster. Who knows?

Simpsonized!

OK, we just couldn't resist it... we had to Simpsonize ourselves:What are you waiting for? Hurry! Simpsonize Me

Dries Twice As Fast

I had just got off a flight from Oakland to Dallas-Fort Worth, and as usual, I made a beeline for the men's room. When I entered the restroom, lo and behold, there it was:

The Dyson Airblade.

It's supposed to be the next big thing in hand dryers from Dyson, the maker of the vacuum cleaner. We have the "animal" model vacuum, and by golly, the thing really does work without losing suction. It's really neat to see all the dust, clumps of hair, and general scurf collected in the clear plastic container.

Anyways, the Dyson Airblade at the airport restroom was mounted on a floor-mounted stand, and it kind of looked like a trouser press. It's got that kind of smooth plastic construction just like the vacuum cleaners. It looks pretty cool, but its seemed a little out of place.

I saw several guys give it a strange look as they walked by. But I knew what this thing was as soon as I saw it. I had read about the Airblade, and was eager to try it. If the vacuums sucked so well, the Airblade had to do a great job of blowing. As I did my business at the urinal, I couldn't wait to wash my hands. That doesn't happen too often.

I washed up and approached the Airblade with my wet hands. You're supposed to put your hands in the openings at the top of the machine, and slowly draw them out. The Airblade is supposed to "squeegee" the water off your skin with a continuous jet of air. I put my hands in, and slowly raised them up. A blast of cold air hit me, which was kind of a surprise. I pulled my hands completely out, and...

...they were still kind of wet. I probably didn't move slowly enough, but I really hoped the thing would work more quickly then it did. I ended up wiping off my hands on my jeans. There was a man in a shirt and tie who was watching me use the Airblade; thinking he shared the same curiosity that I did, I looked at him and kind of shrugged my shoulders. He looked back at me like I was crazy.

Maybe I need to give it a second try, but I didn't see the big leap ahead in hand-drying technology. I guess we'll need to wait a little longer before we can really live like the Jetsons.