Chinese Prison Pictures

Per gagknee's request here are some pictures of me the day my wife made the "chinese prison" comment. Sorry they are such low-quality pictures. I took them with my webcam while I was working from home.

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She Thinks I'm Cute......or does she?

Checked my "myspace" page today for the first time in a long time and got a good laugh. In my messages, there was a personal message:

Hey Biga,

How's it goin? I'm Kristy, I just moved to the Cedarville area and I wanna meet a nice guy around here :-). I moved here to Ohio a couple of weeks ago for work and now that I'm here I have nobody to hang out with! I read your profile... You're cute and I liked what you had to say :-).

I'm 22/F/single and I'm lookin for a guy who is a little bit older or more mature than me. You say you're 100 and you're cute so I guess you're qualified :-)

(editors note: when I signed up for myspace, I listed Cedarville, OH as my hometown, and my birthdate as Jan 1 1906.)

Ok, so obviously this is spam. Because no 22 year old girl is ever looking for a 100 year old guy. But my favorite part was being called "cute" when these are the only two pictures on my myspace page:

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Happy Pie Day

My good friend Rob wrote that yesterday was "The Gloomiest Day of the Year". Judging by the way my day went, I found it difficult to argue.

However, today is different. Today we celebrate what may be the most perfect food ever invented - PIE. Yes, that is right, today is National Pie Day.

So cheer up, get yourself a nice warm slice of apple pie with some french vanilla ice cream melting on top, and let the deliciousness wash away the gloominess of yesterday.

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My wife thinks I look like Jack Bauer

Well, what she said was that I look like I've been in a chinese prison for two years. Maybe it's time for a trim

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Jack Bauer Show - Day 6 review

Wow!
That's really I have to say about it at this point. I'm totally speechless.

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The Jack Bauer Hour

Ok, so it took me a year, but I have finally caught up on all six season of The Jack Bauer Show. I must say, while I still enjoyed it, season 5 was my least favorite. It just seemed that the writing got a little bit lazy. And some of the mid-season episodes were pretty boring. Which was disappointing because the shocking way the season started and the first 4 episodes were VERY promising. Here is a short list of the problems I had with this season:


#1 - The Romance with Audrey Raines. Come on - it was unneccesary to the story and totally gratuitous. And unrealistic - He kills her husband in the last season, fakes his own death, disappears for a year and a half, and then they pick up right where they left off? It's absurd. Plus Jack works better as a loner - I mean, come on - his own WIFE only lasted one season, why should the girlfriend last two? Plus I just don't care for her. If they absolutely MUST have a love interest in his life, I would have rather seen the Connie Britton character (can't remember her character's name)

#2 - The "Kim" problem. Is Kim a character or not? She keeps popping up in these useless scenes. I think she needs to be kidnapped in the next season, killed at the end of the season, setting up Jack for another revenge-filled rampage like like he did during season 2. Either that or she should spend the season being stalked by a couger for no apparent reason.

#3 - Loose ends. There were a lot of loose ends in this season. For example, remember the woman who worked for Mrs. Logan and made the recording? What happened to her and her daughter. Did Henderson let them go after he got the info he needed? or did he kill them? We were never told. In previous seasons we were never left to wonder (or at least I don't remember them all). What happened to the traitorous CTU guard that let Bierko escape the final time? Was he captured? Killed? We just never saw him again. And what about Dr. Romano and all of the other mysterious bad guys? Who were they? What was their purpose? They just didn't quite fit the plotline very well.

#4 - Technical Difficulties. Ok, now I don't expect 24 to be "real". Obviously it is an unrealistic show, and they throw a lot of technical jargon around that is mostly nonsense to anybody who knows a little bit about computers and networking. However, that's not really what bothers me. I can accept that stuff, but there were a lot of inconsistencies that bothered me.

For one thing, How is it that an Arms dealer has all kinds of fancy security and surveillance stuff to prevent intruders, and to make sure they are unarmed and not wearing a wire, etc... and yet he has somehow completely neglected the possibility that somebody could saunter up the fire escape and climb on his roof??!! Come on. Have some armed guards that jack has to fight or at the very least a security camera.

And could somebody please explain to me how a submarine with 12 live missles on it could possibly be docked anywhere without a battalion of MPs guarding it? I know it was at a civilian dock, but still. I once worked at a company that owned it's own airport, and one day an F-18 developed some sort of mechanical problem and had to make an emergency landing. Immediately there were a whole bunch of heavily armed Military personnel circled around it.

The recording that Jack spent most of his time chasing also bothered me. In previous seasons whenever they got their hands on something like this, there would always be some magic way to plug it into his phone or PDA and download it immediately to Chloe. Why was this not possible this one time? or why couldn't he at least play it over the phone for CTU? I understand that it was crucial to the plot, but it was a weak plot.

And the cliffhanger ending was maybe the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. You have this super-agent who is so good and so cautious about everything, constantly on the alert for traps, ambushes, etc - basically anything that doesn't add up. And yet there he was surrounded by all manner of hi-tech communications equipment and it didn't strike him as odd that they would route a phone call from his daughter to a land-line in an abandoned warehouse? I was flabbergasted that the season would end so stupidly. That was just plain lazy writing at its worst.

All that being said, I am really looking forward to the new season starting.

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Hall of Famer (at least in my book)

About 1 hour from now, We will find out who this year's inductees to the Baseball Hall of Fame are. Some years there is a lot of suspense - not so much this year. Three names overshadow all of the others. Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn, and Mark McGuire. Ripken and Gwynn are almost Certain shoe-ins. Both played long, illustrious carreers. Both hit more than the so-called "magic-number" (3000) of hits requisite for entry into the HOF. Both were known as "Good Guys", and even more strangely in this day and age, both stayed on a single team for their entire career. And of course who can forget the way Ripken shattered the consecutive games played record previously held by Lou Gherig. In a day where pampered Athletes complain about how hard their job is, and demand days off whether their team needs them or not (Manny Ramirez), or insist on attending their father's birthday party (which oddly is never on the same day every year, and sometimes their father even has TWO birthdays a year - Pedro Martinez), a player who showed up every day, didn't complain and seemed to recognize what a privelege it was to PLAY A GAME for a living certainly deserves to be recognized.

McGuire, on the other hand, almost certainly will not get in. Despite having tremendous power numbers and being the star of the chase to break Roger Maris' home run record that may have single-handedly done more to save the game of basebally than any other factor - he has been labled a cheater by the writers that control his fate. But I did not intend to write about McGuire because I honestly do not know how I feel about it. Some days I feel he deserves everything he gets, some days I think he should be in the HOF, and some days I simply feel bad for him. But I digress....

I would like to mention another guy who is on the ballot that is totally overshadowed by these three guys. This guy was probably the best player in the leage for an entire decade. This is another guy who played his entire career for one team. A guy who played NEARLY every game for nine years. A guy who was had over 100 RBI for 8 years. A guy who batted over 300 for 7 years. A guy who finished his career with a .298 lifetime batting average. A guy who would routinely get walked intentionally WITH THE BASES LOADED because he was so dangerous. He is not in the HOF already because he came 18 Home runs shy of the "magic" 400 threshold and only got about 2500 hits. Even though his average HR/season is higher than Ripkens, and his average Hits/season is higher than both Ripken and Gwynn, he fell short of these numbers because his career was cut short by injuries. But in an era that was not dominated by offense like the 90's and the 00's have been, he still put up very impressive numbers. And I think a guy who is one of the most dominant players in a league for an entire decade deserves to be recognized. Jim Rice is a Hall of Famer in my book.

For what it's worth, he was one of my favorite players as a kid - and one of the only ones that never disappointed me (Roger Clemens).

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On a more Positive Note

After two negative posts in a row about my recent trip to Ohio, I thought I should bring something positive to the table. One of the things that I miss about Ohio is Steak 'N Shake. I look forward to visiting this restaurant whenever we travel out to the Midwest. Although it is primarily a "burger" restaurant, it should not be confused with fast fast food joints like McD's, Burger King, Wendy's, or EVEN (I'll probably take som flak for this from gagknee) Hardee's. This place puts all of those to shame. The burgers are fantastic, the skinny crispy french fries are superb, and the hand-dipped milkshakes are the best you can get anywhere. To top it all off, Steak 'N Shake is open 24 hours a day 364 days a year (Closed on Christmas). That's right - there is no chance that you will be on a ATV trip, decide you want a milkshake at 10 p.m. only to walk across the bridge and find it closed. It will always be open ready to serve you the most delicious burger and shakes you have ever had.

This is not to say that they only serve burgers - they serve all kinds of other foods which I'm sure are great, but I've never tried them. Maybe if I get sick of the most delicious burger in the world I will try something else someday. I will say that the side items offered in addition to the fries - particularly the baked beans and the chili are excellent.

I always get the Frisco Melt Platter with fries and Baked Beans and a Strawberry Shake to drink. It is definitely the best meal you can get for under $10 anywhere.









If you live anywhere near one of these, consider yourself lucky.

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Another (Awful) Movie Review

We were visiting the FIL* and the SMIL* on New Years eve, and we started watching Wesley Cash. Never Heard of it? yeah, neither had I - and for good reason. I knew within 30 seconds that this movie was going to wedge it's way into my "Top 5 worst movies of all time" list. I seriously cannot say enough bad stuff about this movie to do it justice, but I will try.

The video quality was awful - it looked like it was shot with a home video camera, and not one of the "good" ones that you can get at best buy for about $500 - but rather an old VHS style camera from the 80's - probably recorded over top of someobody's home movies instead of brand new tapes.

Sound quality was even worse - the FIL has a pretty decent surround sound system but the movie sounded like it was recorded on one of those old cassete recorders I had when I was about 10 years old, and then played back across a homemade tin-can-and-string "telephone". The bad audio was a blessing in disguise, though, since neither the dialouge or the soundtrack were worth listening to.

That brings me to the actors - oh, my, you cannot imagine how bad the acting was. gagknee made some home movies back in 8th grade that had much better acting. Although I do give the movie some points on the "unintentional comedy scale*" for casting Chad Mathews as the title character - a dead ringer for Ian Ziering (Beverly Hills 90210) both in looks and acting ability.

And finally - the storyline. It was totally nonsensical. The story itself was extremely weak, and It was organized in in a way that was impossible to follow chronologically (kind of like pulp fiction - but without the good acting, interesting story, good cinemetography, etc.. Actually, I should probably be shot for mentioning the two movies in the same sentence).

My FIL has this interesting "TV" which is really just a laptop projector that he projects onto an almost-blank wall in his living room. I remember thinking several times and even saying out loud at least once, that I would rather stare at the blank wall than keep watching this movie. Why did I keep watching it? Because there was nothing else to do - My FIL's house is very small and all of the other rooms were filled with my sleeping children. My choices were to watch the movie, go to bed, or sit in the bathroom. Alright, I exaggerate - I could have gone out and sat in the garage as well. Anyway, after about 35 minutes, I got lucky - The movie is organized in such a way that it shows the same scene several times. I managed to convince the IL's that there was something wrong with the DVD and it kept jumping back to the same scene, so we should just stop watching. So if you were worried about me giving away the ending, you can relax now. I never saw it.

Overall Rating: There is not enough time to type out the number of "Doh's" that would be required by my Homer Simpson Rating Scale, so I will simply use the Simpsons Comic Book Guy instead: "Worst. Movie. Ever."

*FIL - Father in Law
*SMIL - Step-Mother in Law
*"Unintentional Comedy Scale" - a total rip-off of Bill Simmons - a very funny columnist for ESPN's Page 2.

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