Baseball

Little has changed

Baseball is known as the American national pass time. I never really understood that growing up. I wasn't a big fan of it; I always found baseball to be a rather dull game. I'd go to games occasionally with Lee and buy the $7 nosebleed seats; they were fun, but for the social aspect. I never really cared for the sport itself.

Yesterday around noon I got an e-mail from my Dad asking if I'd care to join him for a Twins game. He said they were playing the Yankees. I'd never seen the Yankees play, or the Twins really play anyone worth watching. I thought it sounded fun so I said sure. Unlike when I went with Lee, my Dad went and purchased good seats on the lower deck along the first baseline. (He almost got us seats right behind home plate but lost the tickets while purchasing due to a distraction at work.)

I can say with certainty that baseball is far more entertaining when you're actually close to the game. The Twins lost 3:4, but the game was still enjoyable. And I got to spend time with my Dad. I felt kind of awkward when I had to ask occasionally about who certain players were--I felt like I should know that being where I was. But it was a lot of fun. I was really tempted to buy a Twins jersey for the sake of pride in my home state, but $115 seemed a little excessive. I bought a Twins hat, instead.

I think I'll be keeping my eye out for an authentic Twins jersey for a decent price, but for now, I'm happy with the Twin Cities Twins hat.

Lund's

Great produce

There's a grocery store up the street from my friend's place called Lund's. It's a high quality grocery store, with an amazing deli, olive bar, sushi bar, and extremely good produce.

I went there for breakfast this morning. I picked up some sushi, a couple donuts, apples, and cereal--food for breakfast and then for the rest of the week.

I plan on heading back, if only to revel in the quality of the food throughout the store.

Traveling

The only way to fly

I'll be leaving shortly to head to Minneapolis.

I like traveling. I always try to look nice--a good pair of jeans, maybe a button up shirt, a sport coat--because airport security and personnel in general are a lot nicer if you look professional and stylish. Maybe that's just how I perceive it, but in my experience I get asked more questions and searched more often if I'm just wearing an old pair of jeans and a hoodie.

Anyways, traveling. Expect much twitterage.

Apologies

I ♥ this city

It occurred to me on the 4th that I forgot to update on Friday, the 3rd. I think that's the first time I've ever accidentally missed an update.

Sadly this week more will (most likely) be missed. I'm flying to Minneapolis tomorrow and will be there until Sunday. I'll try to keep updates coming regularly. If nothing else I'm sure I'll be pretty active on Twitter--I always am while traveling--so you can keep an eye on that for random thoughts and updates.

As for today, at work I'm expecting a call from my Boss to reprimand me after the Director of the office here accused me of being "rude" to the employees and for "reading books and doing homework" at work. Admittedly, the being rude part I can understand--I made a joke with an employee that he wasn't allowed to have juice at his desk and apparently he didn't think it was a joke. My bad. I'm not sure where the "reading books and doing homework" accusations come from since I have never had a book at work and I've been out of college for a year and a half so it'd be pretty weird if I had homework.

I'm tempted to make a remark that his accusations to my superior about me doing homework and reading books on the job constitute slander as they are completely false and were made with intent to hurt me professionally. I'm not sure if there's any grounds for it but I'm looking into it, if only to get this guy off my back. This is why it's fun having a close friend in law school.

The Director has had it in for me since I told him I wouldn't handle the building security my first week working here. I think he assumed that since the alarm is an electronic system then it must fall under IT. This is the same guy who requested I guard the building for 4 weeks while it was being finished before we moved in.

He has absolutely no idea what IT does.

Because of those initial requests and my denial of some of them, he's seen me as a source of contention and problems. He also threatened to fire me after I didn't walk around the office and ask every employee personally if they needed any assistance with their computer. (He's not my boss and he has no authority over me; I'm in a different department, which made the threat nothing more than him trying to exert power he doesn't have.) Of the employees who have left voluntarily that I've gotten along with, about half have mentioned to me that his over-controlling and pushy attitude are why they left.

Thankfully it'll be over in a few weeks and I'll be back in the World of Academia.

Duh, daduh daduh daduh!

For over 15 years I've held in my mind memories of a sketch comedy show that surpasses all others. Words like random, absurd, and hypotenuse don't begin to describe it. It's a comedic genius taco wrapped in a brainless burrito smothered in stupid sauce and topped with brilliant cheese, then sent through a mindless broiler. It aired in 1993, back in the glory days on MTV when they had one-of-a-kind shows and actually showed music videos.

I am referring to MTV's The State. Many people have never heard of this show and they're probably smarter because of it. That does not mean they're better, though. I know a few friends that don't particularly find the humor of MTV's The State funny, and I send them my condolences. Since I consider myself a relatively intelligent person, I'm led to believe there's a threshold of intelligence whereupon their jokes are absolutely hilarious. I imagine it's about 2-3 IQ points wide. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about, please watch the following sketch entitled, "Gang Fight":



That's one of their more "normal" sketches, if the word normal could ever be applied to such a group. At the time they were young, most in their early 20's and fresh out of college. They were given a TV show and allowed to do whatever they wanted. And that's exactly what they did. Some people loved it, some people were bored by it, and some thought they should be studied to try and find out how someone of such deficient mental capacities could function.

After the show ended many of the former members have gone on to do other projects: Michael Ian Black was on Ed and a regular on VH1's I Love The 80's, Thomas Lennon and others wrote the Night at the Museum movies and created/star in Reno 911!, others have had shows on Comedy Central or other such networks. Often their shows were short lived as their style of comedy is still rather, uhm, unique. It makes glad to see that Reno 911! has lasted.

On July 14th, the complete series will finally be out on DVD after almost 16 years. It's an understatement to say I've been waiting for this. Since about 2000 I've been regularly keeping up with it online, signing any and every petition I could find, scouring every fan page, and trying to do whatever I could to get this show on DVD. In 2002 for Speech I even performed a combination of sketches from The State. My scores were either 5's (lowest) or 1's (highest), almost entirely dependent on whether or not the judge was a college student who watched The State when it aired. It happened more often than I expected.

[I feel like I've already written a post on this, but was unable to find one. If I have, I apologize for repeating myself.]

I want a cat

I want a cat.

Sorry, no in depth post today. I spent about 3 hours this morning writing a response to why I think certain drugs should stay illegal. I didn't mean for it to take that long.

Design and other things

Dave McKean's art

I spent some time yesterday and setup a new design for the blog. A new background and a slightly larger font.

I'm thinking about changing the image at the top, but anything other than Dave McKean's art just doesn't look right. The man has an unparalleled style. Perhaps I'm egotistic in using his work, but I think it fits.

The reason for the change was I felt the old layout was too dark. It wasn't inviting. I'm not sure I'm totally satisfied with this layout, but I want to see how it works. I think it's more accessible.

I've been toying with the idea of buying a new ipod recently. I would like to replace my stolen one, but I'm not sure which one to get. I still have my 1 GB shuffle as I mentioned, it satisfies much of my portable music needs. I'm tempted to get a 120 GB ipod classic. They're somewhat bulky by today's standards, but for that size they're quite nice. That would allow me to take a good chunk of my music (about 1/3) and not have to limit my playlists. The 16 GB ipod nano is another contender--it's a much smaller hard drive, but also a smaller ipod (easier to travel with) and a $50 cheaper.

Other things that I've had my eye on include the Batman "Knightfall" series, in which Batman gets his back broken by Bane, and "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" which is about the death of Batman, written by my favorite author, Neil Gaiman. The "Knightfall" series came out in 1993; "Whatever Happened..." comes out in July. It's not like either will be out of print anytime soon. I'm personally not a big fan of Batman or the traditional superheroes (except Spider-Man) because they seem too perfect. I know they're not; Green Lantern went nuts and killed a lot of people, for example. There's just this untouchable, unrelatable air about them. Spider-Man I always identified with because he has the agility and isn't quite as perfect as the other more "seasoned" super heroes. (Yes, I know Spider-Man has been around almost as long as many of the others. To me he feels different though.) Still, I want the "Knightfall" series and the "Whatever Happened..." because they're well done graphic novels; more self contained and less never-ending series.

Then again, I might just crack and buy Chrono Trigger for the Nintendo DS. It would cost about the same as the "Knightfall" series.