Blog Master G

Today the biggest party ever will be thrown: Bush’s $40 million inaugural, the most ever spent on a Presidential Inauguration. Lucky for us, the taxpayers, it’s not us footing the bill (unless, of course, you happen to live in DC, in which case your tax dollars are going toward footing the $20 million security bill).

The bill for the celebration is mainly put forth by private donors and large corporations like AFLAC, AT&T, and Marriott donating as much as $250,000 apiece.

How ironic that all this money is being tossed around to celebrate America when people continue to die in Iraq and the tsunami death toll continues to reach staggering levels.

But alas, this is America after all, so screw it.

Let’s party.

It’s been nearly a year since Jen last made one of my favorite meals: The eggplant-almond enchilada. It’s Mexican food, hippie style.

Take some eggplants, throw in some almonds and other good lovin’, and out come these amazing enchiladas. I don’t know how she does it, but I’m glad she does. I also don’t understand why I love these things, but Jen isn’t a fan at all. More for me, I suppose. I need to enjoy them while I can, since it will be another year before I get to eat ’em again.

In other news, Condoleezza Rice was interviewed yesterday in the first of two sessions by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for her nomination to be Secretary of State. Only California Sen. Barbara Boxer had the guts to stand up to her on the mess in Iraq:

Boxer noted sharply that Rice had not mentioned in her opening statement the 1,366 American soldiers who have died or the 10,372 wounded in Iraq, and she questioned the Bush administration’s accountability for leading the nation to war on “falsehoods” about former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.

“One of the things that matters most to my people in California and the people in America is this war in Iraq,” Boxer said. “I personally believe — this is my personal view — that your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell this war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth.”

It was a decadent three-day weekend filled with Elfin Dressup, dining out (two trips to the Olde Bryan Inn), and more Elfin Dressup. That game is addictive.

Not since the Legend of Zelda days on Super Nintendo in the late ’80s and early ’90s have I been this into a video game. Back then, Jevaun, Gabe, and I would set up a tent in the backyard, run an extension cord out to the tent, and lug my TV out to the yard. Then we’d stay up all night playing that addictive game (which I still have in my living room).

The Elfin Dressup experience is, of course, quite different. There’s no tent since it’s just a tad cold outside; my wife is by my side; we’re playing on Justin’s big-ass HD TV; and there can be up to 4 of us playing at once. But the basic concept is the same: You’re on adventurer trying to solve puzzles and defeat your enemies. You slowly build your character, who becomes more and more powerful as the game progresses.

It’s a timeless recipe that kids of all ages will no doubt be playing in one form or another for generations to come. I only wonder how dated my 1987 copy of Legend of Zelda will look when I bust it out for my future children to play.

Imagine Mini Me naked, drunk, and pissing from his transport chair in a corner of a psychedelically-colored room. Picture him drooling over the naked, sushi-covered body of “America’s Next Top Model” Adrianne Curry and slyly sneaking in a rub of her leaf-covered nipple while Peter Brady looks on. Then watch the Surreal Life 4, one of the funniest, nuttiest shows on TV, and you won’t have to imagine any longer.

In fact, you don’t even have to wait for the rerun. You can watch the video clip, “Mini Me’s Gotta Pee,” right now on this page (look for the link).

I haven’t really seen much of the Surreal Life since it premiered on the WB (now on VH1) two years ago (it’s been 2 years?!), but after seeing the first episode of the new season, the DVR has a new show to capture regularly. Jen and I laughed so hard last night it hurt.

My Top TV Shows of 2004 list has been appropriately amended with a list of runners-up.

(Thanks, Dad, for urging me to watch Surreal Life again.)

Who’s that fabulous dog with the purple shades? Could it be the one and only H. Dingo?

Due to the noticeable lack of dialogue around here lately (and at least a couple folks — my wife and Jonty — who have IMed or emailed me comments insteading of commenting here on a post), I’ve disabled the need to register with TypeKey to post. So please, comment away! No registration required.

(Thanks to Jen, Sarah, and Megan for registering and commenting when no one else would since I turned on registration on November 10, 2004.)

I’m currently using David Raynes’ mt-close plugin to automatically close to commenting all entries older than 21 days, but, like Dan, may soon switch to CloseComments for more flexibility (for example, automatically keeping open commenting on “hot” entries that are older than X number of days).

In other news, the rain has come and taken away Mel, who’s now just a lump on the ground. I want more snow, damn it.

Last night we played more Elfin Dressup at Justin’s house. My wood elf, Carmen Elfslutstra, is kickin’ some ass (she’s now level 11).

Happy Friday!

I’ve been watching a lot of TV lately, and honing in on my favorites is never an easy task. My Time Warner DVR, though it pales in comparison to a Tivo box, from what I hear (mine doesn’t always work quite right and its usability leaves a lot to be desired), is good enough to give me up to 80 hours of programming at any given time.

So like Phil, though with considerably less detail than his list, I present to you my favorite TV shows from 2004:

1. Desperate Housewives: Brilliant and funny writing, attractive and scantily-clad women, and mystery. How can you go wrong?
2. Six Feet Under: Long my favorite show, any list would not be complete without it.
3. Sex & the City: Ditto what I said about Desperate Housewives.
4. The OC: It’s like 90210 for the next generation, and those of us who aren’t too cool to admit we love it.
5. Real Time with Bill Maher: Bill’s the man. He knows his shit and isn’t afraid to flaunt it.
6. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Quickly becoming the de facto news source for the times (what does that say about the state of media in this country?), Jon Stewart gets it. And he and his staff are fucking funny, too.
7. 24: I only recently got into this show, but it’s like an adrenaline rush. Squared.
8. Lost: I’ve only seen the first few episodes so far (have a bunch more waiting on the DRV), but really good writing, good story, good mystery.
9. Curb Your Enthusiasm: Larry David rules. His dry sense of humor and wit crack me the hell up.
10. Da Ali G Show: As any of his several characters, Sascha Cohen will do and get away with anything, from poking fun at Andy Rooney to talking slavery with southern businessmen who admit it would be nice to have some slaves. Booyakasha.
11. Family Bonds: Featuring the tough yet loving family who will arrest your ass and haul you off to jail if you skip out on bail, this show helps you realize what’s important in life (family).
12. CSI (Miami, Vegas): Formulaic and sprinkled with conservative themes, the CSI series is the most popular in the country for a reason. Entertaining and fun to solve the crimes along with the CSIs. (Fellow Vassar classmate Jon Togo recently joined the cast of the Miami edition, so that makes it a bit surreal to watch now.)

Yeah, so what if my list looks a lot like Phil’s? What can I say? The man has good taste.

Runners-up:

• Surreal Life
• Drawn Together
• Arrested Development
• Smallville

I’ve always loved the news and believe strongly in the need to archive and preserve it. I also love technology and how it changes and improves our lives in so many ways. When news and technology converge, it’s really exciting.

I’ve seen other sites like it in the past, but none with such superb technology and ease of use as Press Display, which I stumbled across yesterday via a link from politicalwire.com. Press Display allows you to view both the thumbnails and high-resolution (PDF-esque) replicas of newspapers from around the world. You can zoom in on each page and navigate around with ease.

The catch? A $9.95 monthly fee to read more than just the front page of your favorite newspapers from around the world. It’s almost worth it, considering that I pay $40+ every 6 weeks for home delivery of the Times Union.

One of the many things I miss about living in San Francisco is reading the Chronicle. Now I can read it again, if only the front page, unless I decide to fork over the monthly fee.

Mark Morford nails it yet again with Do SUVs Make You Stupid? / Pointless, dangerous and vain as ever, land tanks still sell millions. Only one explanation possible:

You can see it in the eyes of most every new SUV buyer as they stare, wide eyed and overwhelmed, at the massive vehicles in the showroom: some sort of veil drops over their eyes, some sort of weird opiate pumps into their brains and they lose all sense of reason or common sense or environmental concern and their ego balloons and their testosterone kicks up three notches and they go into some sort of spasm of denial about how purchasing one of these things will, in fact, contribute quite heartily to the overall ill health of their own bodies and the planet as a whole, not to mention the very reason we are so desperately, violently at war.

…

Truth is, small, nimble passenger cars may not survive a head-on collision with a Freightliner quite as well as your bigass Navigator, dude, but they do a hell of a lot better avoiding it in the first place. Which is why rates of serious accidents and incidents of death are actually lower for smaller cars than almost any lurching monster truck on the road. Period.

And sure you can be cheered slightly at the news that SUV sales are slightly sluggish lately, down 2 percent, and that Hummer sales are way off and Prius sales are way up and there’s still a three-month waiting list for Mini Coopers.

Until you realize that 2 percent ain’t much of nuthin’ and until you read how the U.S. consumes 20 million barrels of oil each day, with passenger vehicles burning up three quarters of the total — and SUVs alone burn half the total for all passenger cars, far more than their fair share and more petroleum than our entire country produces in a year.

And then you learn how that little pip-squeak tyrant Saddam was sitting on 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves and that he might have once thought about threatening the nearby 60 percent owned by our buddies the terrorist-lovin’, women-slappin’ Saudis, and you realize that anyone who thinks we’re in Iraq for democracy or humanity’s sake is absolutely full of Rumsfeld.

…

But, really, we have to just admit it: the SUV is hypocrisy incarnate. It is the perfect emblem for the American view, for our position in the world: gluttonous, vain, dangerous to almost everyone else on the road, mostly useless (over 85 percent of SUVs never see a dirt road, much less need 4-wheel drive), ugly as hell and as graceful or practical as a school bus on an ice-skating rink.

Read more…

Although I miss skiing at my favorite resorts around Lake Tahoe and am really jealous of the not-in-the-last-100-years 19-foot snowfall record over the past couple weeks, it doesn’t suck living in the foothills of the Adirondacks and being at a good ski resort in less than an hour.

Yesterday Jen came along with me for a ski trip to Gore Mountain. Like its more popular and farther north neighbor, White Face, Gore is run by the New York State Olympic Regional Development Authority. It’s been ranked by Skiing Magazine as one of the top ten best kept secrets.

I live even closer (less than 30 minutes) from the Boreal-like West Mountain, but I haven’t even bothered going there to ski yet, though we may go snow tubing there at some point. Regardless, this is the first time in my life I’ve lived so close to a ski resort (one of the many reasons we moved to Saratoga Springs in the first place), and it’s a very cool thing.

We left home yesterday at 11am and were at Gore by noon, on the slopes by 12:30pm. Given that I’m out of shape and it was my first time skiing this season, I only skied until 3pm. We left the resort by 3:30 and were home by 4:30. Pretty amazing to put in a good half day of skiing in so little time, and still have the entire evening left.

Gore itself is a really good mountain. I was impressed. It was very similar to White Face. There was enough challenging terrain and big moguls to give my quads a thorough workout. It won’t be my last time skiing there.