New Years' Snowshoeing -- Photo of the Week 4 Jan 2010

No better way to celebrate a new year than getting your snowshoeing ON, and that's exactly what our road trip to West Virginia provided for us. Sure, West Virginia's MOs are usually missing teeth, alleged inbreeding, and overall backwards-ness, but it is a state with some amazing natural beauty. It was a great way to spend the 1st of the new year -- how did you celebrate?

As always, road tripping with friends is fun. The game providing the most entertainment was 6 Degrees of Actor Separation, where you connect two actors by movies that they have been in with other actors.**  The most challenging connection to make was Pauly Shore and Jean Claude Van Damme -- partly because none of us could name more than one movie of their's.... but mostly because the mere mention of either actors' name was enough to produce uncontrollable laughter. Why was it so funny? I still don't know, and likely will go to my grave not knowing.

Either way, I challenge you to find a solution that takes less than 9 degrees of separation for those two, because that was the best we could come up with.

Also thanks to 6 Degrees, I found out that Jean Claude's nickname is "The Muscles from Brussels." I feel stupid for having gone through 20+ years of life and having not known this. Shame on me. And shame on my entire educational system and my friends and family for having never taught me this.


Anyway. Happy first Monday of the year, all.

**For example, if you wanted to connect Matt Damon and Christian Bale, you would say that Matt Damon was in Invictus with Morgan Freeman, and Morgan Freeman was in the Batman's with Christian Bale. Just two degrees of separation.

Read more...

Playing For Keeps

I can totally relate to Manny Ramirez. Minus the $20mill/year contract, the dreadlocks, and taking of female fertility drugs.

The level I can connect with him on is a willingness to do anything to be more competitive at a sport.

See, my pong game had been slipping as of late, and I was consistently losing. I blamed it on temporary disruption of my chi that would shortly return, but I kept losing. My ancestors were rolling over in their graves at the disgrace that I had become.

So I decided that, like Jessica Simpson, whatever I lacked in talent and skill, I would make up for in appearance. I strapped a glove on my blade hand and prayed that this would serve as the catalyst for a turnaround in my pong fortunes.

Some Q&A from the 2 April post-game press conference where the glove was originally unveiled:

• Q: Did Banker start laughing so uncontrollably when he first saw the glove that he could barely get out: "Is that a football receiving glove?" ? A: Yes. Yes, he did.
• Q: Have you taken to calling yourself "The Glove" or "The Second Coming of Gary Payton"? A: Yes. Yes, I have.
  
• Q: Does anybody else? A: No, because no one else takes the thing seriously.
• Q: Have you taken to referring to yourself in the third-person? This seems like the kind of attention-grabbing stunt that an attention-deprived megalomaniac who refers to himself in the third-person would do. A: The Glove is still contemplating the merits of referring to himself in the third person.
  
• Q: Do you bear some resemblance to Michael Jackson now? With the one-glove thing? A: What? You think I'm stupid enough to compare myself in any way with Michael?
• Q: Probably. A: That's it. This press conference is over.
  

I was placed on a two-match suspension for golf club-smashing the car windshield of the reporter who asked the last question, but since my return I have been on a ping-pong tear.

Just remember, folks. I play for keeps.

Read more...

Random Hobby #2 -- Ping-Pong

Feeling some guilt after attending the AAA Conference and realizing that my Asianness was probably wavering at a running-on-life-support 3 (it was all those summer BBQs; what a non-Asian activity), I needed to pick up something new in order to bolster my Asian half:

This is a picture of my ping-pong blade.

In response to your impending and incessant questioning:

"Yes,
...I just referred to my ping pong paddle as 'my blade.' It's proper terminology. Using 'paddle' and 'racket' automatically label you as a know-nothing wannabe.

...our blades have protective cases.

...it was custom-made in and brought back from China (thank you, Dave, for bringing it back -- I owe you any vital organ you stand in need of in the future). I may or may not claim that it contains carbon fiber / ancient magical powers...

...my fellow pongers and I have matching uniforms.

...I remove the plastic coverings from the paddle when I play, then replace them to preserve stickiness.

...my friends and I scoured craigslist for ping-pong tables, drove around the Washington Metropolitan Area to scout the quality of prospects, bought a table for $35, and now store it on the stage at our church.

...I have referred to ping-pong time as "our equivalent to the black man's barbershop." A huge appeal of our ponging is being able to sit around and talk about whatever, however we want. I guess the only drawback is that Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer aren't around to shoot the breeze with. The upside is that there will be no crappy sequel.

...I do bring my gym clothes with me everywhere, just on the off-chance I will need to suit up to play some pong.

...at any given time if you glance in my direction, you may see me swinging my arm in a methodical motion...that's right, practicing my swing...

...we know we take ourselves too seriously."

A quick illustration of how ridiculous we are. My buddy Dave and I were cleaning the inside of the church one Saturday morning. Bryan ("Banker") -- also a ponger, but who we didn't expect to see that morning -- comes storming into the church and gets a relieved look on his face when he sees us cleaning.

Banker says: "Man, I saw your guys' cars out in the parking lot and I thought: 'Those SOBs came to play without me!' I was so pissed!"

We're sort of intense. But you probably realized by now that me being intense about random things is pretty standard.

More stories to come on the ping-pong front, I'm sure.

Read more...

My AAA Conference Report

I recently returned from the annual AAA (Asian-American Association) Conference. This year's theme was "Towards Homogeny -- A More United Front." They suggested that we take a couple of handouts home. I personally think the leadership of the AAA is getting a little uptight, but don't let them know that. They could revoke my membership.

The first handout was the "5A", or the Asian-American Association Approved Activities List, detailing the activities that are approved, non-approved, and pending approval as an Asian. Click the thumbnail below to view it.


The second list is a sort of "self-measuring" scale -- you can gauge your "Asian-ness" on the spectrum as compared to other Asians.

I thought this last handout was a little incomplete. I guess the remaining questions are: Who is missing, where would they rank, and why?

Read more...

Education, Education, Education

Snowshoeing took me to the "mountains" of West Virginia a couple of weeks back. It was my first venture into "The ----- State" ...I actually don't know what the state nickname is, and frankly, it's too late for me to care enough to look it up. Anyway, given Rye's semi-offensive jokes regarding the inhabitants of WV, I was expecting green, sprawling fields with rows and rows of bathtubs filled with fermenting moonshine, or toothless, bearded men donning 'coon skin caps firing shotguns at each other from the ditches on each side of the road. Something like that.

Crazy expectations, you say? You haven't heard the jokes that Rye tells.

On the return journey we had to pull over and flip around once. We pulled temporarily into a driveway which Dave said "look[ed] like it belong[ed] to a slasher." Below is the sign that was posted at the beginning of his driveway. A simple "No Trespassing: Private Property" probably would have sufficed; not only in preventing trespassers, but also in preserving this man's dignity by not exposing his ignorance to anyone who happens to pass by:

Let me type it out in case you can't see it well, and go through this like my 6th grade English teacher used to go through sentences, picking it apart piece-by-piece.

"Trespassers will b
percecuted to the full extent of 2 mungrel dogs which
never was over sochible to strangers
& 1 dubble brl. shot gun which aint loded with sofa pillers. Dam if
I aint gitten tired of this
hell raisin on my place."

On second thought, I will not pick this apart. I think it speaks quite clearly for itself.

If I were in any other state, I would say that this is so over the top that it is a joke. But when you're in WV, sometimes you just don't know --

Read more...

Random Hobby #1 - Snowshoeing

So only a couple months ago I realized that I have a good job, I'm single, and I have no dependents (that paternity test proves so!).* I wanted to pick up a hobby that wasn't something that all the other bandwagon jumping-types were doing. I decided on something that I enjoyed when I was younger: Snowshoeing. Random, I know.

The problem is, I went to school in Utah for 4 1/2 years and was literally a 15-minute drive away from copious amounts of great snow during the winter, but didn't have the financial means to get the equipment. Now I am on the east coast where there are no mountains and it rarely snows, but now I'm stackin enough scrilla' so that I can afford the equipment. I'm currently submitting that to dictionary.com as the definition for irony.

Anyway, I had almost resigned myself to the fact that I would not get snow here and that my equipment would end up hanging on the walls of Red Robin or TGIFriday's or some other we-consider-junk-collecting-to-be-interior-design restaurant.

But it snowed all day today. I rushed home from work, pounded some dinner, strapped on my equipment, grabbed my 'shoes, and headed for ---- that's right, the middle school right next to my apartment complex. It's got a huge field that was secluded and undisturbed. I realize that 6 inches or whatever in the backyard of a middle school are really not ideal snowshoeing conditions, but sometimes you just have to make do.

One tall wooden fence, the flimsiest chain-link fence I've ever climbed, and a tree branch in the eye later, I was strapping on my 'shoes and was off. It was a serene 45 minutes of enjoying snow. I wouldn't have traded breaking the law for anything else.

I realize that this adventure would not have been possible without the help of a lot of people. My special thanks to:

TME: For coaching me through the purchasing process.
Shigeko: Bringing my ski bibs to TX and getting me nice ski gloves for Christmas.
JoshM: For generously providing my softshell and outershell, free of charge**
Myself: For buying the snowshoes, the winter boots, and for actually conjuring up motivation to do something this time.
Taxpayers: For providing the middle school.
Whoever lived here 20 years ago: For planting those trees where they were; if they weren't there I would have never gotten over the aforementioned chain-link fence.
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole: For providing the soundtrack for my trekking.
My Glasses: Although you kept fogging up on me, you saved my right eye from that tree branch when I was hopping fences.
The Tall Wooden Fence: For trapping and crushing my left "boy" between yourself and the inside of my upper thigh as I was hopping over you;*** I mean, I hadn't filled my quota of indescribably painful nausea for the YEAR, so it's good to know I'm ahead of the curve. My never-to-exist children and posterity also thank you.


*You may or may not have seen me on Jerry Springer
**Sorry, Goodwill. He was going to give them to you before I snatched them up.
***My apologies to readers for the graphic nature of this anecdote.

Read more...