Paul Newman

I like many was very sad to hear that Paul Newman passed away this weekend. He is one of my all time favorite actors, right up there with Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Tom Hanks (actually I don't like Tom Hanks but he's really good), Vin Diesel, Paul Rubens. I know nothing personally about Paul Newman's charities or his other business ventures, but from everything I'm reading the man was very transcendent and great. His work wasn't only in movies, and films, but also in philanthropy and racing and salad dressing. He was just all over the place and I heard yesterday that his charitable donations were something in the range of $175 million dollars to children's efforts. Wow just wow, what an amazing life, I hope he passed peacefully. I wish I'd known him more personally but all I can speak to are his movies. I used to be, and still am to some extent a huge movie buff, could have gone into film school but never did. I also don't ever reveal my all time favorite movies unless someone asks really nicely.

Paul Newman had at least three films on my every changing top 25, surely between Slap Shot, The Sting, Cool Hand Luke, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Color of Money, The Hustler, and several others. I like him in Cool Hand Luke so much that I can't see a minute of that movie without watching the rest of it. Slap Shot might be his most underrated role, he is that movie, it's all so silly and heartfelt and yet that was the kind of role he always played. Any time he was with Robert Redford you knew the movie was going to be out of this world. They had more on-screen chemistry than any other pair in the history of filmaking in my opinion, just phenomenally funny and charming they were fantastic to watch together. Newman always seemed so genuine and likeable, it's really nice to hear that he was a fantastic guy off the screen as well.

He was nominated for 9 individual acting Oscars, he only won the best actor in a leading roll Oscar on his 7th try. When I think of great actors, he is one of my top 5 easily, and maybe my favorite, I don't think organizations like the AFI give him all the credit he deserves. They don't make actors as good as Paul Newman anymore, not even close, his movies aren't just good, but they are fun to watch. He is fun to watch. He was apparently on Richard Nixon's enemies list, that's how good of an actor he was. I think his films really show how hard he worked, heck I think his everything shows how hard he worked in life. I am a little bit sad that someone so wonderful left us, but his legacy will live on for a long long time.

I didn't accomplish anything this weekend.

I had maybe the least productive weekend of all time. Was the laundry folded? Negative. Was the house clean? Nope. Did I fix or try to improve myself in any way? Absolutely not. Well that last one isn't completely true. I did go to the gym and get a haircut. But I still feel like there was much failure. I went to the grocery store and couldn't find any of the 5 or so ingredients I wanted to cook some things. It was frustrating. Then I went to the cooking store and they had nothing either. They told me I could go to some store in La Jolla (where I would pay $1000000 for some salt) or some Asian market far away. Needless to say I wasn't feeling that motivated.

The point being that I think for me to have fun on the weekend I need to actually do something that's productive. I did the dishes on sunday night, did my laundry, but that was about it. Nothing really constructive, not anything that required time and or thought. Drank some beer, went to the gym, socialized a little bit. Not much else. Pretty sad really. I might feel alot better about the weekend if I had actually built a home for someone, or the Eagles had won. I would feel much better if the Eagles had won. I need my knee to get all the way better so I can play tennis...or so I can sleep on the couch more. I can guarentee you I'll sleep on the couch more then I'll play tennis. Mmm...couch tennis...the greatest sport?

Why you are dumb

Feels so good

In the last couple days my hurt knee has started doing some funny things. Not like haha funny but more like oh my gosh did Uncle Bill really just take his pants off and start humping the Thanksgiving turkey funny. Last week it felt like it needed to pop all week, and I couldn't get it to, it felt really annoying. I'm sure most people know what it's like when they want a joint to pop, sometimes it just feels fantastic. Well on Monday my knee finally popped, while I was walking. It felt f'ing amazing. Since then it's randomly been popping when I walk and it feels great every time. It's like sex but I'm having it. Ok maybe not that fantastic, but it does feel great. One of the things that makes it so uniquely special is that I have no way to trigger the popping, it just happens, so it's not like I can do it whenever I want. This is not going to turn into a diatribe about masturbation by the way.


I also rode my bike to work twice this week for the first time since the injury. And so far so good. I think what has really helped was the addition of a pair of biking cleats so I can clip in. This makes my peddling all more controlled so I'm not sliding my knee around. I was really worried that clipping in would be really hard and I've heard lots of horror stories about people falling when they first use them and stuff. It's really easy though, I just kinda put my feet where they sorta ought to be and then it clips in. I haven't had any problems yet which is surprising because if there's a way I can hurt myself with a new gadget I'll do it. It is going to take a little more getting used to but so far so good. Those are famous last words and I'm sure that when I get hit by a bus on the way home tonight because I couldn't work my pedals, you'll know why.

I still need to see a doctor, but I'm more optimistic about my knee now then I was a month ago. It could still be torn and I'm not sure I would have surgery, I might just deal with it forever. Besides I'm planning on being dead by 35 anyway so it's not that much longer I have to suffer. Mmm the sweet embrace of death...you are all I have to look forward to.

Ouch Expensive

I'm spending more money at the grocery store then ever before, like high class hooker money. Certainly more then I was spending in DC, probably by a factor of at least 2. In DC I used to go grocery shopping once or twice a month, now I go at least once a week, sometimes up to 3 times. I'm not sure how I shopped so infrequently in DC, but I did. Now I keep all this fresh produce and meat and healthy food around. Well I keep some around, I still don't keep very much food in the house but certainly enough for a week. I'm not sure why I decided to start eating all this healthy stuff and skip eating out for dinner. But I've got carrots, celery, and different kinds of lettuce, and fresh deli meat and even milk in the fridge! It's all so strange. I don't keep anything that's not fresh, it's a pretty drastic change from when I was living in DC. No cans of spagetti-o's or chili, no frozen pizzas. I literally run out of yogurt every week, as opposed to letting it languish in the fridge till it's bad. It's kinda strange.

Overall I think it's very good. It is allegedly healthy and that's supposed to be good right? But I look at my credit card statement and the food bills from grocery stores are way up. I think that the receipts from restaurants are way down, but I'd actually have to do research for that and I don't really feel like doing the work. But eating much better is great, I think in some small way it makes up for the fact that I don't sleep very much. Plus I get to cook for myself more and more if I want to. I like cooking, I just don't do it terribly often since there's nobody to cook for but myself. Kinda silly to spend a half hour or longer cooking for only me. Unless I am trying to seduce myself, in which case I better get home and shave and start cooking before I lose interest in myself and it doesn't matter what I cook...

Sometimes you just gotta tell a joke

The guy behind me at the ATM today decided to stop me as I walked away and tell me a long joke about the Federal Reserve's $700 Billion bailout package and how it affected our money in the bank. I kinda gave the guy a smile and said something as I hastened away. It was an awful joke, but even more important, it was a political joke to a stranger who you know nothing about other then the fact that he's using an ATM. I guess since we work at a military installation you could infer some other things but not so much now as you could probably 10 years ago. The point being that I don't think this guy thought of any of that. I just think he had this joke in his head he had to tell to someone, no matter who, before he forgot it or his head exploded. Or maybe he was using it as an icebreaker to hit on me! Or maybe that's how he was introducing himself to everyone that day, telling an unfunny but topical joke.

Whatever the case, I can totally see where he was coming from if he needed to tell that joke. Sometimes a joke just pops into your head and you have to run to the nearest person and tell them, much like if you have to pee really bad and you run to the restroom. Oddly enough you make the same face when you need to pee really bad as when you need to tell a joke. The amount of pressure you relieve is also equal. Just like peeing however you really need to pick your place to do it, I'm not sure which one is stranger, having to hear an awful joke after I get done using the ATM, or seeing someone pee right after I get done using the ATM. How did this become so about urine, I think I need to go to the bathroom.

Philly, I love you

http://www.sportingnews.com/blog/firstcuts/tag/157124/carl

On Carl living close to philly and asking if he ever went to games:
"I would sooner make love to a man and set fire to myself then enter Philly city limits. Look I'm glad they did all that stuff with the Constitution I'm happy for them, but it don't make them smarter then me."

"It's a terrible place to be, it's a terrible place to live, and it yeah I don't know why people give it no other credit with the bell and all that. They're not so great, they're not so great."

I love this, they have the guy who voices Carl on ATHF talk on the Sporting news every week. It's hilarious and he personifies most New York Giants fans perfectly. Just really really funny stuff.

The sound that kills

On my way home from work on Thursday the radio played the new James Bond theme song. It took me about 15 seconds and then I wanted to changed the channel. But I stayed my hand, just to hear how awful it could be. It's the worst song I've ever heard, and I know I exaggerate alot, but I honestly feel like this is the worst piece of music I've ever heard. For those of you who haven't had your ears poisoned, the song is by Alicia Keys and Jack White and it's apparently called "Another Way to Die". It's a disjointed mess with no continuity, I read somewhere that they wanted to create a unique sound, and they certainly did that. I would just like to point out that unique is not a synonym for good, and in this case it is a synonym for hair tearingly awful. At no point in the song was I like, oh I hope I hear that part again.

I fail to think of another song as mind blisteringly terrible in all facets. The singing is terrible, the lyrics are bad, the guitar intermixed with the pop beat is awful, the pop beat is putrid and on top of all of that they mixed in a partial orchestra and told them to play the worst possible piece of 4 note music they could vomit onto paper. There are no redeeming qualities, and if there is any justice in this world I won't hear it on the radio again. In fact I may not go see the movie just because I would have to sit through a version of the song in the opening credits. Ugh.

I realize taste in music is objective and what you consider good or bad is opinion and may differ from person to person. Well let me tell you that if you consider this song good you are objectively wrong and your opinion is also wrong. Whomever produced or green-lit this song should be expelled from Hollywood for all time, and be forced to listen to this song on repeat till they willingly accept death in the form of suicide because of the dishonor they have brought upon themselves (I'm not really advocating this and never would). I'm putting this disaster on the same level of the Bay of Pigs and Challenger, somehow somewhere group think was involved and this song got to see the light of day. The brain trust that controls all things James Bond agreed to publish this song for distribution and I'm not sure what the political intricacies were that allowed this but it needs to be investigated, and the master and all other copies need to be destroyed, both digital and hard.

How about this, another way to die is to willingly listen to this song more then once.

Wildly Unacceptable

So I caught a commercial for a show last night while eating my home made stir fry (which was fantastic, I love cooking) for some news program that was going to tour a chef's house. I was thinking how uncool it would be if they opened this guy's fridge and there was nothing but leftovers, condiments, and instant pizzas in the freezer. You know, just like a normal guy's fridge. He'll have 6 beers, no 2 of which are the same type, and some vegetables stuffed into the back of the fridge with like, a little mold. Then you look in the sink and there's four days worth of dirty dishes. All of this would just be completely unacceptable from a gourmet chef. "Uhh I don't really like to keep any food in the house."

It might cause kind of a scandal and people might not understand. But if you think about it, maybe it makes sense. I mean these chefs spend all day every day cooking and maybe they just don't feel like taking their work home. It would be like if a professional landscaper had terrible landscaping or a gardener having weeds everywhere in their yard. It would be pretty bad, but I could totally see it. It could be even more drastic in some cases, like a child psychologist having two total brats for kids. Maybe they just don't like plying their trade at home, they've been on on the job all day and now it's time to relax. The sad thing is that if enough people saw it that those people's lively hood would likely be negatively affected.

In the end I'm sure that most professional chefs have amazing kitchens at home. They probably stock everything they could possibly need to cook something nice and their kitchen is spotless. But I bet just like the rest of us there are days when it's time to just come home, pop open a can of Chef-Boy-ardee and watch Oprah or whatever the hell normal people do. I take my work home with me all the time, but you don't see me financial analyzing every night. I'll be damned if I'm going to have nothing in the fridge though, and my lawn and landscaping need to be fabulous.

Season Changes

Living in San Diego is funny sometimes. The season changes are a great example. Right now in DC the weather is turning into fall and there are oodles (a very technical term) of changes. Here not so much. The only difference is that it is darker when I wake up in the morning but other then that not a hint of change. It's not cooler, the air isn't crisper, the leaves aren't changing. It is weird in a way. I watched college football in an outdoor bar a block form the beach on saturday. If my knee wasn't hurt I could be playing beach volleyball every saturday. In a way it's fun but part of me misses the crispness of a fall morning. The fall has always been my favorite season, it just has so many things to offer, but I won't be experiencing fall when I live here. Odd.

What a way to start the day.

So the other morning, I woke up and got ready for work, positively giddy at the prospect of a bowl of cereal for breakfast. I went downstairs, poured the cereal into the bowl and opened the refrigerator to find that my last bit of milk had been pilfered by my roomate while I slept. You should have seen my face, I was so sad. But the amount my heart sank over something so small was hilarious. It was no big deal, I just grabbed some yogurt and went to work, but the fact that I was looking forward to a bowl of cereal so much was pretty telling about my life. I'm not looking for that big promotion, or a new car, I just want a bowl of cereal in the morning, which I was denied :(

On the drive to work (yes I'm still driving to work rather then biking because of my knee goddamn it) I was pretty stoked because I was going to get to work 15 minutes early and start my day. But when I got onto Pacific Highway just past the California Highway Police Stations (CHiPs that try to hit me every morning when I ride my bike) there was a police blockade. Literally 6 police cars parked across the road and police dogs preventing anyone from passing. And an officer was making everyone turn around. So I had to jump back on the freeway and find an alternate path, which caused me to be five minutes late to work. I'm curious as to what would have happened if I had been on my bike. There aren't really any other routes that I could have taken, certainly not any safe routes.

It was an overall bad start to a day but like I always think, bad things come in droves so the deluge of badness is likely just begun. Maybe I'm getting fired!

Priorities

My co-worker yesterday was complaining that she always needs one dollar bills to give to her kids for lunch at school. She had to trade a twenty to someone who had a bunch of ones. I mentioned that I too was in constant need of one dollar bills, to play songs on the jukebox at the bar...I mean I'm standing there and I want to hear another three songs and I'm shit out of luck because I don't have any one dollar bills. A third co-worker chimed in today that she only ever needed one dollar bills to tip the people who bag groceries at he commissary. It's all about where you are in life I guess, and I'm a bad example.

I never need cash except to buy lunch at work and even then I don't really need it. I use my credit card for everything and pay the balance on that once or twice a month. I have no real priorities or obligations except to go to work and nobody depends on me. Which is kinda depressing in a way. My co-worker on the other hand is responsible for filtering money down to her children who are in school. It's important that she does these things and she has 100 more things than I do on her plate that are actual obligations. The third co-worker has other obligations, her home, her husband and a whole slew of things that don't cross my radar.

I guess what I'm getting at is I still living a relative care free lifestyle. I'm basically a grown up child because outside of my bills, my rent, and my job, there's nothing that I have to worry about. But I do need one dollar bills, let's not forget that. If I don't have one dollar bills I have to listen to crappy music at the bar and I won't stand for that. Not at all. A man's got to have principles, and all though I have nothing to have principles about that doesn't mean I don't have them. For example, toilet paper should be hung on the roll in the correct overhand fashion, no exceptions. It makes me sick to see toilet paper incorrectly mounted, and by God I'm not going to stand for it. But seriously though, I need a dollar...for the jukebox.

Coolest background ever

So I updated the background on my computer moniter at work to something a little more happiness inspiring. Now whenever I'm feeling down or walking back to my desk after a meeting I see my new image and a smile instantly comes to my face. I'm such a little kid some times it's scary but I can't think of anything more fun than a T-Rex in an F-14. It's straight out of Bill Watterson's 'Calvin and Hobbes' and since I get such joy looking at it I can't image how fun it must have been to draw. It might be one of my top 5 drawings in all of art, and once upon a time I considered myself somewhat of an art buff (no longer). Oh man I may never change my background to an adult professional theme again. Because after all work can't be all serious, plus this ties into Navy interests right? F-14...