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April 30, 2003

   Yo, it takes heart, skills, and vision to visit BigFlax.com.  You're showing your flava just by moving your mouse right now.  Nice instincts.

    New IMs, for the first time in forever.  Fine, don't believe me.

April 29, 2003

   I tried two new products today... well, one was definitely new, the other was just new to me.  Both were "tropical," also.
    I'll do Tropical Dots first.  Frankly, I should have gone with my first instinct and bought the sour Wild Berry Dots, because Tropical Dots kinda suck.  Shannon and I did a "taste test" of all five flavors (you can read her interpretation in her blog).  Here's how I rank them:
    1. Red, "Island Nectar."  I usually like these "punch" flavors.  Shannon didn't like it so much because she prefers to identify the flavors she's eating.  Feh.
    2. Blue, "Paradise Punch."  Similar story, but not quite as good.
    3. Yellow, "Grapefruit Cooler."  I like grapefruits in real life, but done as a candy, the flavor just isn't that great... it's too bitter for its own good.
    4. Green, "Carambola Melon."  Whatever.  This one sort of grew on me after sucking at first, but it was still mediocre at best.
    5. Orange, "Wild Mango."  Wow, this was disgusting.  I literally had to suppress my gag reflex to make it past the first few chews.  Just hideous.
    So in summary, Tropical Dots are not worth your time when there are Wild Berry Dots, or for that matter regular old Dots on the shelf.

    Now let's get to "Sprite ReMix," a product I was absolutely confounded to see on the shelves today.  It was probably rushed out to compete with dnL, though the two are not much alike.  For one thing, I might consider drinking Sprite ReMix again (though I'm in no rush).
    The website is just about as campy as dnL's, featuring such "who the hell writes this stuff?" advertising language as this tidbit on the front page:
    Yo, it takes heart, skills, and vision to remix an original.  You're showing your flava just by moving your mouse right now.  Nice instincts.  It's like that with new Sprite ReMix.™
   Setting aside how ludicrous it is to see the quasi-word "flava" actually written down and not part of a rapper's name (I'm thinking here of Flava Flav, though publicenemy.com has it as "Flavor Flav," thus making him actually more literate than Sprite's ad execs), what the hell does that mean?  It's like what with new Sprite ReMix?  Are you really giving your marketing guys credit for having the "heart, skills, and vision" necessary to decide you needed to add a second flavor to your repertoire?
    At least under the "What is Sprite ReMix?" section, Sprite had the decency to tell us.  Unlike dnL's mystifying "fruit flavor blast," we learn that "the tropical flavor in Sprite ReMix is made up of the original Lymon flavor from Sprite - lemon and lime" (oh, thanks for clearing up what "lymon" was short for) "plus strawberry and pineapple."
    This wouldn't be so bad if the bottle and everything on the site didn't tout Sprite ReMix as "tropical."  I'll buy pineapple, but strawberry?  I'd almost prefer the "spare esters" route if it actually tasted tropical.  Basically, Sprite ReMix tastes like a rejected Clearly Canadian flavor.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it tasted a lot like this.

    In summation, tropical spins on existing products are not all they're cracked up to be.  I would have enjoyed myself more with regular Sprite and regular Dots.  On the other hand, I got free ice cream at the new Ben and Jerry's today, so everything worked out.

April 28, 2003

   It's really hard to write a review for a movie that has a big twist without talking about it.  With that in mind, here's the review for Identity.   At least I didn't give the twist away.

April 28, 2003

   I might institute a Viewer Mail feature if I got a few more reactions to this page.  But then I guess I only post big rants like yesterday's every once in a while.  Mike Tobin, another person apparently way too familiar with the intricacies of Elimidate, left me 27 IMs while I was in the shower today.  27!  I've never had that many IMs waiting from one person before.  Not that I can recall anyway.

QualN4 (3:50:11 PM): ok
QualN4 (3:50:28 PM): so i just read your most recent website update
QualN4 (3:50:31 PM): the one about elimidate
QualN4 (3:51:46 PM): ok so there's a couple important things you need to understand about the show
QualN4 (3:52:07 PM): 1. unintentional comedy in another stratosphere
QualN4 (3:52:58 PM): i've seen several episodes of this show, and never do have a worse feeling about the future of the world than afterwards
QualN4 (3:53:29 PM): i even saw one that they did from seaside
QualN4 (3:53:55 PM): it made it seem all the scummier because it was at a place i've actually been to with people that i could legitimately run into in the course of my day
QualN4 (3:54:20 PM): hell, the ones who claim to be students (but you then find out are majoring in something fake) probably all go to rutgers anyway
QualN4 (3:55:07 PM): ok the second important thing you need to know is that at home it's on two different channels
QualN4 (3:55:30 PM): one is a weird cable channel that's 58 in maplewood i think. but you're in south orange so that probably doesn't mean anything to you
QualN4 (3:55:39 PM): it's the kind of channel that you'd expect the show to be on
QualN4 (3:55:40 PM): BUT
QualN4 (3:56:10 PM): i discovered over winter break while at home watching some late-night tv that IT IS ON CBS
QualN4 (3:56:21 PM): not some CBS affiliate either
QualN4 (3:56:25 PM): the real CBS
QualN4 (3:56:27 PM): channel 2
QualN4 (3:57:03 PM): granted it's on at 1:30 in the morning following craig kilborn, who is possibly the least funny man on the planet
QualN4 (3:57:16 PM): but still elimidate is on CBS
QualN4 (3:57:18 PM): not UPN
QualN4 (3:57:27 PM): not crappy weird stations
QualN4 (3:57:30 PM): but CBS
QualN4 (3:58:55 PM): hopefully you're as horrified to hear this as i was to discover it
QualN4 (4:00:02 PM): yet the odd thing is, the show is just addictive. and the girls are usually pretty cute, which is better than watching some gross girl doing a striptease for some dude with a neck thicker than my entire body
QualN4 (4:00:29 PM): also, the best part of the show is when he asks them why he should keep them over the other girls
QualN4 (4:00:57 PM): i swear nothing is funnier than watching girls assume they know things about other girls, and then those other girls get pissed
QualN4 (4:01:06 PM): ok that's enough for now

April 27, 2003

   There is no show on television right now that defines the word skeevy like Elimidate.   It runs late nights on WCIU (which already has no credibility for using the tagline "U'z got game!" to describe its mid-afternoon run of Donny Osmond's Pyramid and Richard Karn's Family Feud), and probably on UPN affiliates or low-rent indie stations elsewhere in the country.  I avoid it in general because of its sketchy qualities, but last year's Kemper suite (Drew/Rich and probably Paulionis, which would surprise me not at all) watched it a fair amount if I remember right, and Shannon's friend Jon Fallon appears to be nearly hooked on it.
    With nothing better to watch (and that says about all you need to know about the other channels; the only show that might potentially have been more interesting was in Spanish), several of us watched the show at Shannon's apartment on Friday.   Jon, who I guess should know, said that this was one of the "worst" episodes in Elimidate history, but that hardly forgives it.
    We start with a guy and four girls.  The guy in question had on a huge necklace, hoop earrings in both ears, and talked like a reject for the lead role in Malibu's Most Wanted.  Three of the four girls had on shirts that may as well have featured blinking neon arrows pointing to their cleavage (Jon's comment on the matter was particularly amusing).  Needless to say, the "conservative" (loosest possible use of term) girl was voted off first.   After that point, the guy was apparently too blinded with cleavage to vote anyone else off and kept the other three around till the end, probably because he was savvy enough to realize that he wasn't going to find himself in the same room with three total sluts again anytime soon.
    In the end he chose the one who seemed to be the least slutty, which I think is usually how it works (because if you can get the girl to show you her breasts within an hour, that's all well and good, but maybe this isn't someone you want to date, even if you're the kind of person who probably wishes he could live in Vice City).  Then he commented on why she was a good choice: she had the total package.  She's got the personality, "she's got the breasts..."  I don't even know what else he said (if anything) because the room erupted at that point.  Even if you're thinking that - and there's no way this guy wasn't thinking that all night - who says that?  Well, I guess anyone who would take off his shirt in the limo during the second round probably would.
    It's also worth noting how hard the sluttiest of the three was trying... chugging from a vodka bottle in the limo not once but twice (Fallon, apparently trying hard to preserve the integrity of his favorite show - whatever that would require in this case - claimed that she only chugged once and they replayed it, but during one of the chugs Dirtball's shirt was on and one it was off, prompting Fallon to claim that it had been removed with Photoshop), and giving a big sloppy kiss (with the expected catty looks from the other contestants) to Dirtball right at the start of the second round, probably about an hour after she met him.
    According to Drew, in one episode a contestant went down on the guy in the bathroom during a round (is it really that important to "win" at this show?), and one of the few other episodes I've seen featured much blurred nudity as the women flashed the guy (the better to choose from you with, my dear?).  We didn't watch every minute of this show, but it seemed less "revealing" than those episodes... and yet it was as skeevy/shady/sketchy as I could possibly have imagined.

    Beyond that, this weekend involved a lot of sleep, though not as much as I might have liked.  I'm probably going to see Identity tomorrow, so keep an eye out for the review.

April 24, 2003

   In the middle of the Week From Hell (three midterms and a paper in a seven-day span), Drew and I sat down to play some Yahtzee last night, as we so often do.  I'd say 75% of Yahtzee games are all over but the shouting by the tenth or eleventh turns (out of 13 total).  Then there are the games that actually come right down to the wire.
    Last night's final game (enabling Drew to take the best of seven series, 4-2) was one such.  With one roll left, we both had the four-of-a-kind spot open.  The scorecard looked like this:

    So, I was down six.  At this point, if I got basically any four-of-a-kind (with two exceptions, which we'll get to), I'd win if Drew couldn't then roll one on his turn.  Of course, if I couldn't roll one, I just lost anyway.  I decided to go with any four-of-a-kind I could get rather than go for sixes and risk getting totally burned.
    I started off rolling three twos.  You never turn down three of anything (unless there's literally nowhere for you to put them), so I went for it and ended up with four twos and a four - 12.  Obviously a very weak four-of-a-kind, but then I only made the four-of-a-kind three times in a six-game series.
    So it's Drew's turn.  He starts off by rolling three ones.  Ones.   Now he's nervous, because he's down six and if he throws a one and a two, it's a tie - or worse yet, if he throws five ones (no good as a Yahtzee since, obviously, it was already zeroed out.  His second roll, and what does he get?
    A one and a three.  Seven.  A stunningly bad four-of-a-kind, and it causes him to lose the bottom section 150-149, but the 103-101 on top is enough to give him the 252-251 win.  He actually considered throwing the last die a third time - to rub it in, I guess - but when he did so off the clock, he got a one, so it's just as well he didn't.  (For him, anyway.)
    I think my biggest downfall was probably the shitty Chance, since otherwise I think I rolled a pretty decent game (though interestingly, 251 would not have been good enough to win any of the six games).
    Oh well.  The other day I rolled a staggering 118 up top - passing Drew's previous record by two.  So that was nice.  Yahtzee - it's FANNNN-tastic!   I love this game!

April 21, 2003

   This page has long been without any sort of links to friends' websites, despite many links here from said websites.  That changes today, as I add the Friends page, which is also linked from a button that I placed right next to the "Me" button on the top left of the front page.  If I left you out, please let me know.

April 20, 2003

   The item known as "turducken" truly is a bizarre food product.  For those unfamiliar with it, it is a deboned chicken stuffed inside a deboned duck stuffed inside a deboned turkey.   The whole thing is stuffed with some sort of pork sausage stuffing.  It's really bizarre.  Shannon and I had it at her friend's apartment down in Hyde Park on Saturday, and it served I forget how many.  Maybe 12 people?  Although I don't think everyone there ate meat.
    The birds themselves are tasty enough (I like turkey and chicken... duck, which I'd never had before, turns out to be a lot like the beef from a frozen dinner, particularly in its texture), but the whole concept is just odd.  Who thought this was necessary?  Apparently it's a Cajun invention, which makes me think that the Cajuns are even crazier than we might have thought.  I suppose that's why they're ragin' (non-sports fans, see me for joke).

April 18, 2003

   Hmm... not so many updates lately.  Amazingly, no one has complained.  Shannon sees me pretty much every day now anyway, so maybe that's why.
    Anyway, it's been waaaaaay too long without a new movie review, meaning I couldn't even start to use my new 100-point scale on theatrical releases.  But now I can.  So read the review for A Mighty Wind.  Also, for those who don't really know about the scale, here are its intricacies, more or less:
100: Touched by whatever god you believe in.
96-99: One of the best films ever made. An m-word.
91-95: Brilliant.
85-90: Exceptional; probably one of the year’s ten best.
75-84: Excellent.
65-74: Solid.
55-64: Above average; enjoyable.
45-54: Mediocre.
35-44: Below average; not particularly enjoyable.
25-34: Poor.
20-24: Piss-poor.
15-19: Really, really bad.
10-14: God-awful.
5-9: Humanity is irretrievably worse for its existence.
1-4: One of the worst films ever made.
0: Touched by the god I used to believe in.
   The m-word, for those who don't frequent the Rotten Tomatoes forums, is "masterpiece."  I actually ripped this scale - well, the words, though I tweaked the numerical divisions to my liking - from someone else at RT, but then he didn't come up with it either.  I'm just a fan of wiggle room; hopefully this - and I keep the wording around for this reason as much as anything else - will curb or retire grade inflation altogether.  However, if you hate this scale, feel free to give me feedback.  If no one likes it I suppose there won't be much reason to keep it around.   (If the only reason you don't like it is because you can't get a good sense of it, give it a little more time until you can contextualize ratings based on each other.)
    Oh, one more thing: I removed the link to the review capsules from the review archive page.  It was a pain to maintain and I'm sure no one read it anyway (why would you?).  The old capsules are still up if you care.   Which you don't.

April 13, 2003

   I'm not sure why no one realized I was at TRASHionals this weekend... but that's where I was.  After a 9-2 first day, we went 1-2-1 in the playoffs for a 10-4-1 overall record and a fifth place finish, which is damn impressive if I do say so myself.  Full results and blah blah blah are here.
    I wish I had some great stories from the weekend, but aside from the funny T driver there wasn't a tremendous amount of stuff.  I'm up way too late for someone who wants to catch up on sleep, so I'll leave you with that now.

April 9, 2003

   For those who haven't noticed, I've got a little "buddy quiz" in my AIM profile. Why not take it?  Hurry, before I change all the questions and there aren't any gimmes (like "What is Flax's first name?").
    Also, if you or someone you know has the screen name "s462643383279," stop being a stalker and tell me who you are.

    EDIT: The test changed anyway, thanks to Owen.   Let's all pretend he's funny.  Anyway, the questions are more interesting now and have fewer trick answers, though now you probably have to know me better to get many of them.

April 8, 2003

   Nemo was not at the WNUR meeting tonight, despite having $95 coming to him.  I'm seriously entertaining the idea that I won't give him the money, since he wasn't there to collect immediately.
    Well, not really.  But it was kind of annoying, because I brought all that money down to the station and ended up carrying it back with me.  Nemo, step forward and claim your prize!  Otherwise I'm going to be forced to give it to Pearl, and I know you don't want that.

April 6, 2003

   I'm glad we finished over .500, because otherwise this might just have been the most miserable weekend ever.  Results from NAQT ICT will be up eventually, just not yet.  For right now I will merely complain a bit.
    Got up at 5:30 Friday morning on less than three hours sleep, then was up until 1:30 that night (Pacific time, so 3:30 Central, so basically 22 hours straight, and about 34 of the prior 36).  Got about five hours of sleep that night, got up at 7:00 Saturday morning.  Got on a plane at 10:30 Saturday night (Pacific time) and flew to Columbus, where we arrived at 6:30 Eastern (having lost four hours in the air).  I may have managed an hour of sleep on that flight, but I doubt it was that much.  Got about another 20 minutes in the Columbus airport before getting on a jet to Chicago, where we arrived at about 9:00 Central.  After a two-hour El ride and barely managing to get back to campus without wetting myself (that airplane ginger ale goes right through you), I went to bed around 11:30.  Woke up at 4:30, realized there was no hot water, slept for another two hours.  It's 8:00 right now and I plan on going to bed early tonight and doing more sleeping, and hopefully more or less catching myself up.  We'll see how that works.
    Other than massive sleep deprivation, LA was pretty fun.  It was very (and standing next to Evanston, depressingly) green, and it was fairly nice out though not all that warm (it was in the 60s pretty much the whole time).  The hotel room I was in was 14 stories up, and we could see the ocean from it; I didn't even realize it was the ocean - I thought it was just smog obscuring the view - until Shannon said "Is that the ocean?" and I noticed there was a boat in it.
    Quick quick results - we went 8-7, not bad for D-I.  Although I should note that we went 1-5 the first night against random teams and then 7-2 the next day (including 4-0 in the playoffs) against teams more at our appraised skill level.  The highlight was easily whipping Missouri - whose arrogant, "everyone in quiz bowl in the entire country hates him" captain had predicted us to finish 31st out of 32 teams - not once but twice, though had it not been for a confusingly easy Michael Vick tossup we would have held them to negative points in the first game, and that's so rarely seen outside of CBI that it sucks we missed it.  We finished 19th out of 32 teams, which isn't bad at all, I'd say.

    UPDATE: ICT results are now up.  For those who care about such things, there are also new quotes.

April 2, 2003

   Kickball tonight with Shannon's crew and etc., and if you think I didn't keep some manner of stats, you don't know me well enough.  Shannon was quite chagrined when I informed her that the final was 21-10 my team, in probably 9 or 10 innings (I'm not sure there).  I went 4-for-10, with two singles, two doubles, and reaching twice on errors.  So I hit .400 with a .400 OBP and .600 SLG.  In the field I dropped two or three balls but also caught three and recorded an unassisted double play, and also accidentally hit Shannon in the chin with the ball (I was aiming for the shoulder or arm; this is why I don't like playing with "pegs" in the first place).  Whoops.  Redd and A-Klein, though neither probably read this at this point, will recall junior year of high school when I kept meticulous stats for the three of us in gym softball, so next to that this is small potatoes.
    I had been hoping it had gotten cold enough not to be muddy.  This didn't happen.  I actually pitched for an inning, and at the end of it my hands were tingling and covered in mud.  When I got back to Kemper, the hot water refused to work.  The upshot of this is that I ended up washing my already cold hands in arctic cold water, and for quite some time as I had to scrub off mud.  By the time I was finished my hands were getting red and contained little feeling.  Fun.  This isn't the dirtiest I got at Deering Meadow - the football after the Minnesota game in 2001 comes to mind - nor was it the coldest - that game of snow football comes to mind - but it combined both in a way I don't feel any pressing desire to repeat.  It will probably be warmer the next time, though.  At least it damn well better be.

April 2, 2003

   I freaking hate Chicago weather.  Yesterday when I went out to class at 12:15 it was almost 80 degrees, so I wore shorts.  Three hours later I left Harris - and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees.  It was quite uncomfortable on the long walk back to Kemper.  It was initially slated to near 80 today; right now it's 39 and it never even topped 50.  Tomorrow was slated at over 70 earlier; now it says 55 with thunderstorms.  Okay, last spring quarter was beautiful and it didn't top 70 until April 11, but I'm getting a bit worried nonetheless.   Worse still, it's not supposed to be any different from this in LA.  I suppose it's just as well, since we'll be indoors most of the time, but all the same.
    Nemo chastised me at the NUR meeting last night for not drawing up tournament scenarios for who could still win, even though I had.  He just had done it first, apparently.  I went to his site today, and here's the thing - he didn't even get them right!  Way to go.   (I hope the link to his site will compensate for the mockery.)  The point is, three people can still win.  See the tourney page if you want to know who and how.  I won't even get to watch the Final Four games, as I'll be in/en route from LA.

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This page last updated: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 09:24:25 AM