LEGO Land

Thanksgiving brought the usual fare of family, turkey, stuffing, mashed taters and legos.  We treked down to Saint Louis to see the inlaws and much to my surprise and delight Brett (my cousin inlaw) asked me not long after I had finished off roughly my wieght in delicious Emo's pizza, if I wanted to play with LEGOS?  To which I replied "ABSOLUTELY."  To understand my excitement you must look back a few visits to my adventures with Mr. Thomas T. Train (the T stands for 'the' I think T. is more sophisticated), because Thomas what his toy of choice and while fun, there's only so much you can do with plastic train tracks and he had all sorts of "rules."  Legos however are a big box of random.  Thousands of multicolored blocks just waiting to be snapped together into something awesome.  Brett told me we were building war ships.  So I proceeded with my marching orders and began to transport myself back to childhood.  Below are my ships, I think for my first LEGO adventure in about 15 years, I did a pretty good job.  I built him four ships (from R to L), an attack plane, a radar plane the big white and red, a bomber and a boat.  The childhood break was a nice departure from my normal "thoughtless" activity of Call of Duty or some other video game.  Hopefully he'll have more LEGOS next year though cause we ran out.

Video of the Week: Extra Mayo? You say, YES...

Good call King Carl you idiot, way to invest the Chiefs cash wisely in LJ he is awesome, oh wait, that's right, he's a Bengal now and Allen is in Purple instead of Red and is one of the best Defensive Ends playing today... to quote the fine people at Guinness "BRILLIANT!"  and... to add further insult to injury he's funny too:

Music and Me

In the wake of the shinanigans that were the AMA awards... (no not going to go into the performance), I got to thinking about music in general; my tastes, likes, dislikes, etc and as many well know I am what I consider a lover of music, all music.  I will listen to everything from Jay Z to Cross Canadian Ragweed to Greg Laswell to Three Days Grace; Bottom line when someone asks me what my favorite kind of music is my honest answer is "If it's good I like it, basically, I like what I like" I don't like to be labeled as a "rap fan" or a "country fan" I just like good music, which started in college and has only grown since.  Finding new music that I enjoy is like a game to me, a constant search for new stuff that not many people are into.  I hate the radio - the radio takes a good song and plays it so many times in a given day that you want to never hear the song again, which is disappointing.  The best, the Holy Grail if you will, is when you have some music that no one else has. In my life I have been lucky enough to have some of this music literally dropped right into my lap (save for my brief stint in Denver). In college it was my good friend Jon Robins, Garrett Lucas, and Grant Hamilton (part of which are now The Plainsmen) and here in Chicago its been Chris Jerles, Borrow Tomorrow, and Adam Richardson.  Finding music that no one else has heard is awesome.  There is nothing better than playing a song on my computer or iPod and having someone say "who is this? I like this" I honestly have a Mr. Burns-esque "excellent" moment everytime this happens.  Aside from getting to brag a bit about my quality musical collection thus casting a shadow on the embarassment that is the Lady GaGa and Beyonce on my iPod... Just Dance, Check; Halo, Check, (hey... I like it but that doesn't mean I don't catch some grief from others...) I get to introduce people to something that they may not have otherwise listened to which I like because I want more people just appreciate good music rather than follow the top 100. 

I've posted as hyperlinks a few of the artists in the text above that I enjoy to "share the wealth" as they say.  Hope you guys enjoy as well.

Newest on my radar that I'm getting into:  Guster, really like the song Demons

P.S. As for the AMA's I hate music award shows.  All music award shows.  They lost all credibility a few years ago when Coldplay beat Mettalica for best Rock Album

Christmas

This is a delayed post of sorts but it seems like Christmas is coming earlier and earlier every single.  I don't mean ealier in the sense of time because that would just be silly.  I mean the time in which people (stores) start breaking out the snowflakes and garland.  This year I saw stores that had forgone space for halloween costumes and delcious sugar loaded treats to make way for Santa.  I'm all about getting into the spirit of things but Christmas is kind of starting to be kind of a bully.  Halloween and Thanksgiving aleady have a tough time living up to the mere anticipation of Christmas that comes with the leaves starting to turn, now we have stores and municipalities throwing it in our faces in October.  I think if we hit September than a line will have to be drawn.  I understand the connection and advertisement of the holiday before Thanksgiving because that's one of the first big shopping weekends.  I honestly think that part of it is the economy.  Businesses are trying to get a jump start on the shopping season.  Along that same point I truely hope that "Black Friday" does not turn into a massacre.  With the economy still struggling and less folding money in the pockets I seriously worry about people and what they will do to get the "deals" offered this Friday.  I also hope that stores are smart enough... to handle what I suspect will be record numbers of people trying to get ahead of the spending this holiday.

View from a Hotelroom... Vienna, VA (Washington DC)

2 windows means, you guessed it 2 views, a double feature if you will.

Night View of the atrium:

Morning View out the back:

It's a Big Deal Because... It's a Big Deal

So I wrote this a few days ago about this video where a soccer player lost her cool and well frankly flipped out.  She expressed disappointment in herself and remorse for her actions, kind of... she followed up her apology with this statement:

“I definitely feel because I am a female it did bring about a lot more attention than if a male were to do it,” Lambert said. “It’s more expected for men to go out there and be rough. The female, we’re still looked at as, Oh, we kick the ball around and score a goal. But it’s not. We train very hard to reach the highest level we can get to. The physical aspect has increased over the years. I’m not saying it’s for the bad or it’s been too overly aggressive. It’s a game. Sports are physical.”

I disagree 100%.  This story brought attention to you because you flipped out in a game and after several questionable actions, went out for a big finish by yanking an opposing player to the ground by her pony tail.  The media coverage had 0 to do whith your gender.  I repeat ZERO.  I didn't even see this as a headline on ESPN.com, a site I visit regularly.  I can without thinking name four players all male who flipped out in games committing acts of "violence" that were a) front page news and 2) still talked about to this day:

LeGarrette Blount

Brandon Spikes

Zidane

Albert Haynesworth

That was easy, I'm sure there are a few more (how could I have forgotten: Latrell Spreewell).  Bottom line, your apology means slightly less in my eyes since you threw that comment in there.  Almost trying to dismiss some of the gravity of it by making it sound like it was blown out of proportion because of her gender.  It's time to take responsibility, full responsibility for what you did and the fallout.  As a serious college athlete, you can't expect to do something that out of left field and not land on ESPN.

Picture of the Week

Location: Downtown Chicago

Greinke's World!

So there is justice in the world after all!  Kansas City Pitcher Zack Greinke today won the AL Cy Young which is awarded to the league's best pitcher.  His numbers for the year were in a word, phenominal.  Especially given the fact that he played for one of the worst teams in all of Major League Baseball.  At 16-8 with 242 strikeouts and a league leading 2.16 ERA he dominated all he faced.  While it's not like I know the guy personally or anything, I write congrats to him.  It's a pretty big accomplishment, based on quotes from him throughout the season I'm sure he'd have traded this award for a few more Royal's victories, but neverthless I'm glad to see he got the individual recognition that he rightly deserved.  Hopefully, next year will bring a few solid youngsters and perhaps some surprise free agents to get us and Greinke a few more Ws next season and perhaps a Cy Young repeat? 

Here is a pretty funny interview with Greinke, he's got some "unique" responses to questions,  kinda goes without saying but, I'm a big fan: Greinke likes Chipotle too!

Video of ... um yeah ... the Week...

Uhh... this sad/funny I mean I would consider myself a pretty hardcore fan of the Call of Duty series, but wow this guy is off the rails.

Restaurant Review: HB

Last night we checked another Chicago restaurant off of our Chicago list HB (Home Bistro), it was just as good as we thought it would be we had the Beer Battered Haddock on Snert and Lamb Merguez Sausage.  Elizabeth was the big winner of the night with the Haddock, it was really really good.  But while the food was delicious the most impressive item of the evening was the aged Gouda with cumin seeds.  Cumin is my favorite spice and the seeds in the cheese... awesome.  I'd highly recommend HB to anyone in Chicago looking for a good/nice place to eat, BYOB no corking fee.  And I'd highly recommend the Beer Battered Haddock, the snert looks scary but it is super good.  

I give it 4.5 stars out of 5.  0.5 short of the full 5 just because while I would return, it's not a place that would be on the top of my mind when choosing a place to eat, it's more of what I'd consider an "occasion" restaurant.

Transformers 2 Revenge of a Movie That Made Me Sad

So I was looking forward to seeing this movie, not with the child like eagerness that was attached to Call of Duty, but still I was really wanting to see the second installment of the Transformers movies.  The first one was good and I liked it a lot save for the fact that they sold out to Chevy by making iconic Bumblebee a Camero versus the true to form, VW bug.... but that's a different rant and I've since moved on and accepted that when the opportunity to seel out for money presents itself, you can count on Hollywood.  I digress.  SO Transformers 2 Revenge of the Fallen.  SOOOOO LOOOOONNNNNGGGG.  This move was about 30-45 minutes longer than it really needed to be.  I found myself sitting there and I literally said outloud (I was alone, Elizabeth was in Cali), "Seriously, this isn't over yet?"  I mean it took them roughly an hour to cross this little patch of sand.  All in all it was a decent movie, I was very upset that I didn't catch it on the big screen, on a postive seeing it made me happy that I spent $1.08 at Red Box versus $20+ at the theater.  Since everyone is doing the trilogy these days, there's little doubt there will be a Transformers 3 in the future and lets hope they can redeem themselves, cause this one fell short.  Sadly though, based on my lukewarm feelings toward the Fallen, I think it'll be a renter.

Video of the Week 2: Oh Charlie...

First of all Charlie is huge... and sorry big brother but at the rate he's growing you might as well surrender your Halloween candy now because he is going to own you.  Second, I don't like your chances of out smarting you bigger-little brother considering that the "bite heard round the world" started with you sticking your little finger in his mouth, I mean the kid looks like he eats entire sides of beef for breakfast, he pry thought it was a sausage link.  The look on the kid's face the moment it goes from fun and games to pain is hilarious, the best is then Charlie looks at the camera and laughs...  I mean biting is wrong and kids in pain isn't "funny", but come on you can't tell me honestly that you didn't laugh.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - The Review

In a single word, perfect.

This game is so breathtakingly amazing that I seriously struggle to find words to adequately describe it.  This game has more drama and plot twists and turns than a Hollywood blockbuster.  The plot, the music, the visuals, all were top notch.

To clear up the biggest bit of "controversy" (Not sure if any readers will play this but **SPOILERS** are sprinkled throughout, so if you don't want anything ruined skip to the last paragraph now)   their was a stage that involved participation in a terrorist attack on unarmed civilians in an airport.  First off, it should be no surprise that the media blew it out of proportion and took it completely out of context.  In the context of the game and the games stoyline it made sense.  Was it disturbing, absolutely.  But the game's theme is meant to be so, one of Modern Warefare's goals is to get you emotionally involved, emotionally invested in the game.  This disturbs a lot of people because it's new, I mean it's hard to get emotionally involved in jumping on a turtle or getting a fireball flower.  The scene certainly was hard to watch but it was very powerful and spoke to the absolute worst side of humanity, that like it or not does exist.  And to further clarify, you don't have to participate in the executions, you walk through and watch, but you dont' have to actively "do" anything.  Nevertheless, it DID fit the game's plot it was not an unecessary attempt to add violence and gore.  **Big Spoiler** Essentially, your character was an undercover agent that infultrated a Russian Terrorist ring, at the end of the airport attack, they shoot you and leave you there.  Leave you an American there.  Which then leads Russia to attack the U.S. bringing the war to the U.S. views of DC in ruins were pretty gripping.

Alright, I've gone on about this for far to long and the geekiness has shown through way too much.  My bottomline point is that I equate this more to a movie than a video game.  There were plot twists, betrayals, an amazing score, and you were truely emotionally invested in the story and characters from the moment you hit the start button. 

All that praise and I didn't even talk about the online gameplay.... 

Changed my Mind

Wait... Changed my mind I do have words for this, and by this I'm refering to this weeks Video of the Week, see it below.  I think this is a classic double standard.  You know WHERE I found the link to that video?  Not on ESPN, Fox Sports, MSNBC Sports or one of the probably dozens of other media outlets where I cruise for my sports news throughout the day, no I found it on perezhilton.com (we'll discuss the embarassment of admiting to visiting perezhilton.com at a later date, right now, eye on the prize).  Now I understand that soccer doesn't have the popularity of football but this year when Oregon's LeGarrette Blount punched a Boise player after a loss, a huge to-do was made about it and he ended up getting suspended (since reinstated), more recently Brandon Spikes of the University of Florida was caught poking the eyes of a Georgia RB (idiot) he too was front page news and subsequently suspended for a game.  These two stories were front page news and they were vilified by the media.  What they did was absolutely stupid and deserved suspension.  But for this to not even get a mention?  I mean in watching that video this girl should be suspended for the duration of her time left in school.  Spikes and Blount had momentary lapse is sanity and did something deplorable and frankly stupid.  This girl was doing those same acts over an entire game until she was finally caught in the act and Red Carded by the referee.  I just hope that the same media voices that put all the pressure on Urban Myer and the Oregon coach to suspend there players for their actions, are putting at least equal energy into making sure that this girl's actions are publicized enough that action is taken.  There is no place for that kind of stuff in any sport.

Woot!

So in my internet travels I come across a variety of websites, a great many of which aren't worth the time I spent looking at them, however there are times when I come across sites that are worth sharing.  Enter Woot!, Woot.com is a retail site of sorts.  What they do is the sell one item a day and only one item, when it's gone it's gone.  From what I've seen after a few weeks of checking in the items are usually at a pretty good price, most of the electronics are referbs, but at the price they are selling them it really doesn't matter (i.e. 37" LCD HD TV for $300, which I missed out on... dangit).  I reasearched them and found pretty good feedback about their services, however the rub is that they are strictly a seller.  If you have a problem with the merchandise 10 days down the road, your stuck dealing with a manufacturer because they don't "stand behind" products they sell.  I haven't personally bought anything from them yet, but I now check the site daily as part of my morning web check, hoping for a good deal to come my way.  Might be worth checking out especially with the holidays right around the corner.

Video of the Week

Umm.... I really have no words for this.

Couldn't Resist, I Apologize... 19 hours 22 minutes

PoW (Picture of the Week)

New Series, Intro gives you a Double Shot!

Taken by Chris Jerles... "Clark Street with a touch of lonliness" Awesome Pic, especially if you've ever seen Clark in its full alcohol fuled glory

Bar Golf 2009

Cookbook

Yesterday I finally started to get rid of my massive cooking magazine pile, which I believe had grown to about 20+ magazines and an additional smattering of loose papers and printouts.  The "plan" is to take all the tried recipes as well as some prospecitve ones and create a personal consolidated cooking binder.  I ended up with quite a pile so I'm thinking I may have a good little binder.  I just need to figure out how to organize everything an make it make sense.  So stay tuned, given my history of not finishing things I expect it to be completed in late 2012.

Great Song

Recently my Pandora station has picked up a lot of Jay Z songs from his new album  Blueprint 3, I'm not a huge rap fan but I do like to listen to it every once in a while, this album I may actually buy, lots of good stuff.  So far this is one of my favorites.

She got me....

I really debated putting this up here because it is a pretty big "burn" on me, but I keep replaying it in my head and it really was pretty good and my wife's delivery isn't usually this deadpan, there's usually a chuckle or smirk that makes her attempts pretty tranparent... but this one got me:

The backstory.... we bought new sheets the other weekend at 3B (Bed Bath & Beyond), and in the store they looked like normal sheets, upon unpackaging them we, or rather I, noticed they were abnormally "shiny" and I have a thing against shiny things... not going to even attempt to explain that because it's frankly an odd quirk and not relevant to this story.  So in the process of making the bed I was complaing about the "shine" factor of these sheets commenting on how I was going to have a hard time sleeping on these sheets.

I'm paraphrashing here the general idea of the conversations...

Ok... fast forward to Monday

Beth:  How'd you sleep?

Ben: Terrible, because of those sheets.

Her smirk gave her away that she was attempting to make fun of me about the sheets.

Fast forward again to Tuesday

Beth: What's that on your arm?

Ben: My arm? what (as I'm turning it over looking)

Beth: Yeah your arm it's almost reflective (straight faced and serious as can be)

Ben: (still searching my arms) What do you mean? Where? (still turning my arm over and over)

Beth: It's on your arm, it's almost like the sheets...

Ben: (still searchi.....) Wha....damn.... I don't even like you anymore (Ben exits stage left)

She got me...

Beer of the Month: Bud Light Golden Wheat

I consider my self a beer guy.  I like beer.  I'm not an expert by any means and there is much more that I would like to learn.  The newest attempt at a Big 3 product to crack the "craft brew" market is Bud Light Golden Wheat.  Now I had very very low expectations for this beer.  No way can a light beer formula give even the slightest bit of the flavor of a craft.  I was wrong, sort of.  First off let me say that the beer is pretty darn good.  But as I suspected it does fall a bit short on flavor, it does lack the complexity of a true craft beer without a really big, bold flavor.  Which, I think would be expected to some extent.  So, that's maybe not a truly fair comparison because after all this is a light beer formula so it's not a true apples to apples comparison, so in a comparison to Bud Light/Coor's Light/Miller Lite it's got, IMO, substantially more flavor.  It comes with a bit higher price tag, but I think it's worth it for a light beer alternative for those of us that prefer beer with a bit more flavor to it.

In terms of calories here's a breakdown:

Bud Light:  110

Bud Light Golden Wheat 118

Sam Adams Light 124

Magic Hat #9 146

What I want to test is which is better in terms of flavor... Bud Light Golden Wheat or Sam Adams Light?  4 extra calories isn't a whole lot in the scheme of things so I think that should be the true measure on this beers flavor.

So Excited...

Life Update: October in Review

I skipped a few months on this but I'm determined to get back on track here so... away we go.

Started off October in beautiful (lol) Twin Falls, Idaho.  For my college friends (James) yes it's true Idaho does exist.  I know.  I was shocked to discover this as well.  For those not in the loop on this, one night when we were up later than we should have been my friends and I realized we knew no one from Idaho, we could think of aquantances from nearly every state but Idaho, thus the theory evolved that Idaho did not really exist.  That's logical?  Right?

Ocotober also brought us Man Chili.  Man Chili was a vegitarians worst nightmare.  We killed every animal Old McDonald had to get this chili, Breast of Chicken, Loin of Pig, Ground Beef, and Beef Steak... and some beans in there for good measure.  The chili was pretty good, however the saddest part of the whole affair was the loin.  I tried about zero on the loin because it was going in chili... turns out it was the bestest most juciest loin I'd ever cooked... and I put it in chili...

October ended with cold #1... awesome I love breathing out of one nostril at a time. 

October brought a new niece to the family Kaydee Ella can't wait to meet her at Christmas.

Last but not least, my geekiness would not be complete unless I mentioned that October also brought the pre-order of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  I will do a full review of this game next week, it comes out exactly one week from now.  Infact 1 week from this very moment I will be walking to the bus to go to Best Buy to purchase my copy.  For those wondering, Yes, I did use a day of vacation for a video game.