It never gets old.

I know this has been kicking around out there for a few years now, but it still makes me laugh. I can't think of anything else every time I hear Carol of the Bells now. I hope it does the same thing for you.

Eating crow

Hmm... I guess there is no easy way to do this. Time to sit down and eat an extra large helping of my least favorite dish:



We played decently, but you've got to credit the U's D. We got stung with a -6 turnover margin, and it's pretty much impossible to win if you do that. Some of them were absolute gifts to the U, but some of them were earned by excellent strategy and effort, so you have to give them credit for what they did. Tough to see it because our D played a solid enough game to give our O a chance to win it, but they couldn't seal the deal. Gotta give the devil his due, the U capitalized on our mistakes, and created their own opportunities, and won a convincing W.

Yeah. Not a fan of that.

Still, it was a fun game to watch (until the 4th quarter meltdown, anyway), and an intense place to watch a game. I guess you've got to get it handed to you every now and then so you appreciate the wins, right? But it's hard to be disappointed with a 10-2 season, and I'm looking forward to what I hope will be a respectable bowl match up.

I'm already getting excited for next year's game in Provo. Long live college football.

Follow up:

Thought you might want to see a few pictures after being sprayed:

This one is about 30 minutes after being sprayed:




This one is about 45 minutes later:



Here's a link to a good video of some of the aftermath.

And one more.

Hot, hot, HOT!

So the company that makes this stuff reports that the burning agent in this spray is derived from the burning chemical in a cayenne, or a jalapeno pepper. *Edit* it's only about 10 times as hot as a cayenne.

This...

crap...

BURNS!!



I've done a lot of things in my life, and subjected myself to pain that sane people would never do. But nothing I have ever done even approaches how horrible this stuff is. I recommend that you avoid doing this, if at all possible.

Absofetchinlutely!

Another B Money video about to go viral! Friday night was B Money's birthday party. He was going to try to get Ludakris, Snoop Dogg, and/or Dr. Dre to come to the party, but apparently they were all busy and couldn't make it.

After dinner, a few of my friends unveiled the 2nd B Money video. They put in some serious time to get it all finished up, and it looks pretty good. Take a peak for yourself:



Look closely and you'll see me in two scenes.

It made for a happy B Birthday.

Anyway, that's really it. I don't have anything else worth saying. Maybe in the next couple of weeks, I'll have something worth blogging about. For now, this is it.

Maximum wisdom

I just spent Sunday night watching The Princess Bride with my 5-year-old nephew, Max. As always, he dropped a few pearls of wisdom:

"It's easier to get your rings to slide off your finger when they're all spitty." -As he pulled his CTR ring off his spitty finger.

"He kicked me in the crotch. That doesn't hurt for girls because girls don't have crotches."

Not really much you can say to follow up on those.

Road trip part I

As I mentioned, I graduated. Graduation was alright, if not a little silly. But it was a graduation ceremony, which are pretty much always silly, so what do you do? Anyway, here's a picture of me along with a few friends in our graduation dresses:


Anyway, that's all done and behind me now, and I'm in the process of moving back to P-Town. So Willus and I are now in the middle of a cross-country road trip. Most of my two or three readers already know about the trip, but in case I haven't told you, here's what we're doing:

We're taking 2 weeks to stop at as many baseball games on the way home as we can see. Along the way, we're going to stop and take in some other sites as well. Here are the parks we've either seen, or are going to see:

Fenway Park (Boston)
Yankee Stadium (NYC)
Progressive Stadium (Cleveland)
Wrigley Field (Chicago)
Busch III (St. Louis)
Arrowhead Stadium (Kansas City)

Other teams' home schedules didn't cooperate, or we would have stopped there too.

We've already stopped in and visited Mike and Cyrus, two buddies of mine in dental school in Boston. We went to a Red Sox game, and also went out on Martha's Vineyard to do some salt water fly fishing. This was some of the most fun fly fishing I've ever done. The weather didn't completely cooperate with us, so the fishing wasn't fantastic, but it was good, and we did catch some stripers and blues.









Anyway, back to baseball. One of our key missions to this road trip is to decide which stadium offers the best overall baseball experience. Perhaps the most important measure is which stadium has the best hot dog. So far we've only been to games at Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, and the consensus view is that the Fenway Frank is the runaway winner thus far.



I also had an Italian Sausage at Fenway, and it was pretty tough to beat. Come to think of it, Fenway's food BURIES Yankee Stadium's food. I was definitely impressed with Fenway, and definitely unimpressed with Yankee. The hot dogs I had in Yankee Stadium were terrible. Cheaper than the Fenway Frank, but they were gross. Overall, Yankee Stadium is a dump. Sorry Yankees fans. Fenway Park is heads and shoulders above Yankee Stadium in terms of the quality of the experience. Better luck with your new stadium, because the old one sucks. But they did give me a free hat, which was cool.


The game at Fenway was pretty cool too b/c we got to see Jon Lester pitch the first no-hitter in the majors this season. This was Willus's first major league game too, which was pretty cool. So the Sox won 7-0 over the Royals. The Yankees also beat the Oriels 8-0. So thus far, the home team has won in a shut out. We'll see tonight if the Indians can keep the streak alive.

Now that I think about it, I'm going to develop an objective scale to rank the stadiums we visit. I'll post this soon, and keep you updated as the trip progresses, and as my access to WiFi allows.

Later today we're going to Progressive Stadium to catch an Indians game. I've heard really good things about Progressive Field, so I'm excited about that. Then on Memorial Day, we'll be catching a game at Wrigley Field, which I'm really excited for. Between now and then, we're going to stop in and visit Kirtland, the NFL Hall of Fame, the College Football Hall of Fame, and possibly the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

So that's the road trip to this point. I'll be posting more pictures when I can. (Most of the good shots have been on my brother's camera, and he didn't bring the cord you need to upload pictures to a computer, so I'll have to wait until I get home to upload those photos).

Final count

So any of you have been suffering through the last 3 years worth of blog entries know that one of my lame goals in law school was to make it through the entire 3 years without buying a single highlighter.

This was surprisingly easy to do. By the end of my second year, I had a large enough stock pile built up to last me through my third year. But rather than stop there, I decided I would pursue the goal to an absurd end, and build as big of a stock pile as I could.

Final stock pile count: 151.



To put the picture into perspective:



You know the saddest part of this whole thing? That I actually find that the excess of the situation only makes it all the more amusing. Over the last two semesters, I have used them at a rate of about one every 3 weeks. By my estimate, at that rate, this stock pile would last me until approximately February 4, 2017, all else being equal.

Here's the funny part: they don't always respond too well to altitude changes, as sad experience with them in airplanes has taught me, and I just loaded them into a box to be shipped across the continental divide. Realizing their air pressure sensitivity, before I packed them, I double bagged them. So here's hoping that 2 Hannaford shopping bags are enough to stop 151 markers worth of bright yellow ink.

How would I explain that to the insurance adjuster when I filed a claim? That might be a tough sell.

5/9/08, 12:00 EDT.

As of a couple of hours ago, I am OFFICIALLY FINISHED WITH LAW SCHOOL!

That means that my relationship with this woman has permanently changed:


Don't get me wrong. I'm sure we'll still find unhealthy ways to continue this bizarre love-hate collusion we've got going on. But things have changed between us. Oh my, things have changed.

Anyway, I gotta say that it feels AWESOME to be done.

Graduation: I highly recommend it.

The Final Countdown

This song has a very special place in my heart right now. It's been playing endlessly through my head for the last few days:

*EDIT* OK, stupid Youtube won't let me embed the player for some reason. So you're going to have to open this link to see it. How lame is that? I wanted you to be able to ROCK right here on my blog, instead of having to go to Youtube to do your rocking. Jerks. Anyway, this is the link. Yes, I meant to have the link be this long.

What an awesomely terrible song. I hope you watched the whole thing. I really do. But here are a couple of questions that I couldn't answer myself after watching the video:

*Why are they heading for Venus? Isn't that a fairly inhospitable planet?
*Why does he provide his own echo after he says Venus?
*How do you get your hair to do that? I always wanted mine to be all feathered and awesome like that when I was in 1st grade.
*If they really have as much hairspray in their hair as I suspect, how do they have pyrotechnics on the stage without causing them all to combust spontaneously?

Anywho, my final countdown isn't quite as cool as Europe's. Mine is the countdown to being done with school. I have one class today and one tomorrow, and that's it. I have 3 finals after that, and then I am done with school. FOREVER.

So, yeah. Not as cool as Europe's, but still pretty cool. I'll be Dallas, J.D. one week from Friday.

Success

Just as I was about to go to bed, I noticed that my right hand smelled like a combination of hot wings, chicken tenders, lane wax, and a 14 pound house ball that apparently used to belong to someone named Alice.

That, my friends, is the mark of a good day.

That is all.

The newest, awesomest page on the interweb

My sister just emailed me this link. It's her youngest son's blog. He's one of the funniest kids, and is about 10 times as creative as I ever dreamed of being, and comes up with awesome stuff. I don't know how frequently he'll post stuff (hopefully more frequently than his mother does), but this page will be well worth keeping an eye on.

Max's blog.

It will now be a permanent fixture in my links on this page. -->

Good work, Max. You're easily the most creative kid I've ever even heard of.

National Corndog Day '08

*Edit* Now this includes a picture.

I just wanted to toss a post up here really quick to brag about my performance at this year's National Corndog Day.

My consumption tally for National Corndog Day 2008:
Corn Dogs: 9*
Tots: 60
Root Beers: 6

I didn't even really come into this having made myself super hungry either.

Two days later, I am still feeling the after shocks. Totally worth it.

*I only got 9 because we ran out of dogs at our party. If we would have had more, I would have reached double digits without question. I'm revamping my strategy, and next year I fully intend on making a solid run at the triple double (10 dogs, 100 tots and 10 root beers).

The Lord of the Wings - The Fellowship of the Wing

In keeping with our theme of trying to do new and exciting things during our last year of law school, we recently had what will hopefully become an Albany Law School tradition, The Lord of the Wings wing eating tourney. Fortunately a local bar and grill worked with us and gave us a really good price on 500 wings. I don't even want to think about how long before our contest they were cooked.

Like I did with roller derby, I spent some time reading up on competitive eating. There is a lot more psychology to this than you would think, at first blush.



The Lord of the Wings was an endurance event. We started with a field of 12 competitors, each required to come up with a nick name. -I chose "The Avenging Angel." I even made a shirt just for the occasion.




The field of competitors

Round 1 was 10 minutes and we were given a platter with 20 wings. After that round, the lowest 2 competitors would be eliminated. Then to round 2, which was 7 minutes, after which the lowest 4 competitors would be eliminated. Round 3 was 7 minutes, lowest 3 eliminated. Round 4 is the round where champions are made. 20 minutes, all you can eat wing-off, or wing into submission. All wings had to be completely consumed (gristle and all) to be counted. So there are your ground rules.

I knew I wouldn't be able to hang in for that long. There were some pretty legit heavy weights in this contest. In the world of competitive eating, I would have to be a sprinter, and not an endurance competitor. The Lord of the Wings did not play to my game. So I came to the contest with two goals: 1. I didn't want to be on the bottom of the pile. 2. I wanted to make it into the second round.



I started out of the gates strong. I've always had really stretchy skin, which I think helped me pack more wing into my mouth at once. I'm pretty sure that I had about 4-5 wings worth in my mouth at any given point in time, sometimes more. 3 days later, as I write this, I still have canker sores in my mouth from it. I was stride for stride with the leaders for the first few minutes. But Viju, the guy with his elbows in my ribs (he does the same thing when he plays basketball, so I'm told) ultimately pulled ahead. He wound up finishing his 20 wings in about 7.5 minutes, which is impressive for an amateur.



The craziest thing about this whole thing for me is that I felt just fine all the way up to the last 2 minutes of round 1. I started hitting the wall right about then. But I managed to hang in there, and get 18 wings before the clock ran out. Yes, that's 18 wings in 10 minutes.

As a side note, I eat healthy, and have for years. Once in a while I'll cheat and eat something that isn't that healthy, but that's pretty rare. I can't remember the last time I cheated at this magnitude. Those of you in the west can't find good buffalo wings, (I know. I've looked, and there aren't any out there) so you might not know what these guys are like. Bottom line: 18 wings puts an unholy amount of grease in your system.



So it should come as no shock to anyone that shortly after round 1 ended, my stomach decided to voice its opinion on what I was doing. In The Lord of the Wings, this is known as "a reversal of fortune," and results in immediate disqualification, even if it is a real crowd pleaser.


Hold it together, man!

I was able to hold it together and not puke, but it was the closest I've ever come to puking without actually puking. This is probably very fortunate, because I think had I lost it, we easily could have had something akin to this on our hands:

Warning: this video has a few cusses. So kill the volume if you don't want to hear it. Or don't watch b/c it's actually kind of disgusting, even though it's really funny.


My 18 in 10 minutes was enough to get me into the second round. It was actually one of the better scores for the round. Unfortunately, I couldn't continue. I knew that the first time I had another wing hit my lips, it was going to be a reversal of fortune of epic proportions. I have thrown up about 3 times in the last 20 years, so I'm not exactly eager to risk doing it again. So I came up lame, and couldn't go on. So that was the end of the road for me. It was a whole lot of fun anyway.

Additionally, the experience gave me a new-found appreciation for competitive eaters. My favorite has to be Sonya "The Black Widow" Thomas. Seriously, open that link, and scroll down to look at some of the records she has. It's insane that a 98 pound woman can put away that much food.

Here are some other pics from the evening. This one is easily my favorite.




There are a couple of more pictures of me floating around out there that I haven't gotten ahold of yet. When I do, I'll post those too b/c I'm sure there's a gem or two out there.

Best 12 bucks I ever spent

So when I got an email from a friend last week, asking if I wanted to go to the local women's roller derby teams skate on Saturday, the only thing for me to say was "A million times YES!!" I used to watch that on early morning cable channels when I was a kid, and it never failed to entertain. Going was a no-brainer

But first, I spent about an hour and a half reading up on the rules on Wikipedia to make sure I would understand what I would be watching.

The next thing we did was to make signs. I went with the traditional using the letters from ESPN to spell something (despite the fact that no ESPN people were within 500 miles of this). Unfortunately, there was nobody on the team with an N in her fake name, so I opted for "Nasty."

Of course I made sure to put the name of the hottest girl, Savage Scout, on my poster.


This was another one of my poster name girls, Merry Pain. With her skates on, she was easily a foot taller than me. It was a flash back to 7th grade, except funnier. She was nice enough to hunch down, so as not to make me look like a midget in this picture, and she even gave me a kiss on the cheek at one point, but my buddy with the camera didn't catch the action. Yeah. I got game. The other girl in the picture is my friend John, who, having consumed 1.5 beers at this point, was very, very drunk, which I'm sure you would never guess from this picture...


I think this lady may have been my bus driver when I was in Jr. high, come to think of it. Why she chose to be Willie Nelson's doppelgänger, I'll never know.


We were right on the edge of the track. The ref told us that if anyone wrecked in front of us, we could shove her back onto the track. Instead of pushing girls on roller skates, I tried to push my friend John into the crash zone as they came by, which was easy b/c he was pretty drunk. I never caused any collisions though, which is probably fortunate. I would have felt pretty bad if one of the derby girls damaged her skates on John's head or something.






Yes, that is a John 3:16 sign, and no, he is not a born again Christian. We were going for sports cliches, and that's what he came up with.


Anywho, it was a highly amusing night. Between watching the girls skate (and they skated their hearts out, and played an intense game that came down to the last second) and watching several of my very drunk friends at such a high-class event, that night was well worth the $12 it cost. Women's roller derby gets two thumbs up from me!

Quiz time!

OK, time to guess what you're looking at:



Here's a hint. You are looking at what happens when you combine winter camping, the onset of the flu, dehydration, and not eating enough with someone who has naturally low blood pressure and lives in an apartment with hard wood floors.

Give up? You're looking at sutures! In my face, specifically.



So the long and short of it is that I went winter camping right as I was getting what I think was some sort of flu. Bad way to start things off. I slept 18 hours Saturday night, and the better part of the day on Sunday. This meant that I didn't eat or drink much in that time. This eventually lead me to black out while I was in the bathroom late Sunday night. While blacked out, I decided to head back to my room, only I didn't realize that not getting enough oxygen to your brain hurts your ability to walk, and greatly helps your ability to fall down. So I hit the deck pretty hard, splitting open my eyebrow.



Never one to let something as trivial as low brain oxygen stop me from acting, I apparently got back up and headed back to the bathroom. At this point I was still largely blacked out, and also a bit punch drunk from the shot to the melon I had just taken, so my memory is a little hazy. I collapsed into the bathtub, which is where I came to.

Being that it was about 12:15 in the AM when I did this, the emergency room was the only place I could go to get stitched. Here's something I learned. ER people ask stupid questions. I walked into triage, expecting people to recognize instantly that, as a person with a ghostly-pale face, a decent sized laceration over my eye and blood smeared all over my face, I could easily be someone who had recently sustained a pretty hard shot to the head, and as such, would probably require medical attention.

Instead, the triage nurse looked at me and said:

"What can we help you with?"

What can we help you with? Are you serious? Is that what they teach you in emergency nursing school? I should have told her I wanted to order a pizza, or that I was there to see someone about an ingrown toenail, or that I just wanted to know if she thought that my pants made me look fat. What can we help you with, she says. Pfffft!

Apparently unsatisfied with only asking one stupid question, a few minutes later, she asks:

"Are you experiencing any head pain?"

What am I supposed to say to that? I don't want to be too much of a smart a-s-s to the people who are about to sew my face together, but how can they expect a serious answer to that question? So I said:

"Mostly it hurts where the hole is that doesn't belong there. -You know, the part that is bleeding? Right there hurts. Everywhere else is fine."

The other thing I learned is that things don't go speedily in the ER, which came as something of a surprise to me. You might think that on a tame night at the ER they could sew me up and send me on my way in about an hour or two. It was a tame night, so they should want to get me treated and out of their hair in case things got crazy on them, right? That's what I thought. I was there for over 5 hours.

I haven't received the bill. I'm bracing for that b/c I suspect I might be just a little outraged at what they charge for the whole ordeal. But I'll reserve my rage until I know it's warranted. I'll probably blog on that once I get it.

Anyway, all in all, I guess it's not too bad. A friend of mine had a similar black out a few months back, and he broke all of his front teeth when he fell face first into his bathroom floor, so I suppose my episode could have ended far worse. Plus it should be just big enough of a scar to be cool looking, but not so big that it will scare small children. Plus this is the first time I have ever had stitches as a result of an accident. So making it almost to 31 before having an accident that required stitches is a pretty good run of things, I think, so I can't complain.

So, yeah. That was my weekend. Hard one to top.

Clutch

I mentioned this before in another post. Turns out it was more like 38-40 seconds of fame.

Anyway, the video basically speaks for itself.



Hands down the coolest athletic moment of my life, and definitely on my list of top 5 coolest things that have ever happened to me.

Like a knight in shining armor

OK, so last night was a pretty much awesome night, which means that you, the readers (yes, both of you), get two posts in as many days.

Just when I thought that the main event of the night would be to watch the man who I believe could quite possibly be the worst president in the history of our country give his lame duck State of the Union address, I saw that the Versus network had come to my rescue.

Three words: The Karate Kid.



If you haven't watched this movie recently (and I'm betting that precious few of you have), you really ought to do yourself a favor and go rent this movie, and SOON. Here are some of my favorite lines:

-Fear does not exist in this dojo, does it?
-NO SENSEI!!
-Pain does not exist in this dojo, does it?
-NO SENSEI!!
-Defeat does not exist in this dojo, does it?
-NO SENSEI!!
-What do we study here?
-THE WAY OF THE FIST, SIR!
-And what is that way?
-STRIKE FIRST, STRIKE HARD, NO MERCY, SIR!!

Or how about when Mr. Miyagi encourages Daniel-san to go to the Halloween dance instead of hanging around with him all night:
-To make honey, young bee need young flower, not old prune.

Or how Daniel-san must first learn balance, then learn punch.



And who could forget the Pièce de résistance:



Seriously, this is arguably the greatest montage in a sports movie EVER.

Let's also not forget that this movie starred a young Elizabeth Shue:



Yowsah!! I've never wished so bad that I was a skinny kid from Newark with a Poncherello-wannabe haircut! And I am younger than her, which means that when this came out, I was still younger than her, which also means that it's not creepy that I still thinks she looks hot in this movie, which she made when she was probably 17.

I enjoyed it so much that I've talked to a buddy of mine, and we are going to make it a point to watch the rest of the series of movies, including the IVth installment, which starred another up and coming hottie:



Hillary Swank, your career has never soared as high as you did under the tutelage of Mr. Miyagi. It's a shame that your career hit its apex so early.

'Bout as worthless as teats on a boar hog

You'll forgive the title of this entry. But I heard a real redneck (woman) say it in high school, and I thought it was hilarious, so it's stuck with me. It's also how I'm feeling these days. Here's why:



This is my current schedule. You'll notice that it is not exactly rigorous. It's left me lots of time to do things such as read lots of random Wikipedia articles, and watch about every Mythbusters episode ever made. Twice.

On top of all that, I'm sick right now, and I think there's a legitimate threat that my face could explode at any moment. I just hope that if it happens, it happens in the privacy of my home b/c that would be embarrassing.

And the workout regimen listed has been heavily modified from what is listed, but I have some good reasons for that.

1. I don't want to get up early to workout because a) getting up early sucks; and b) leaving it for later in the day leaves me something to do in the evenings once I'm done with my homework, which usually happens very early in the evening.

2. I'm now officially serious about the triathlon thing. Progress update: I ran 6 miles the other day, stacking 10 minute miles. Not too bad for someone who just started running 2.5 weeks ago. I have no trouble swimming a mile, and and am getting pretty good about pushing myself harder, and not letting myself wuss out. I did the mile in about 35 minutes the other day, though that's not an actual time as I didn't really keep track. I need to start doing that. I haven't swam until exhaustion for a while now, but the last time I came close to it, I swam 1.5 miles. But for all that, I'm probably not going to be able to try to do an actual triathlon until summer '09. I still don't have a bike and I don't want to buy one just to transport it across the country.

Anyway, the fact that I haven't gotten around to changing my workout regimen just underscores the title of this entry. Lazy piece of garbage, this guy.

Um... That's about it. But a few of my friends have told me that I should always include pictures in my posts. So here are a few pictures that in no way relate to this post.

I thought this was hilarious. So I'm a nerd. So what?


It was really, really bright.



What is with these guys? If you believe something that strongly, then get your own carcass out there to support your cause. Paying people to go out and protest your cause is lame. Especially when your cause is that someone else under-bid you so you didn't get the job.



Um. That is all.

Vacation > School.

Just thought I'd post a video and a couple pics from the break.

Christmas was awesome. We got the coolest present for my dad in the history of dad Christmas presents.





Here's a video. Willus and I spent the last couple of days at The Canyons skiing in the middle of a system of several storms that came through, dumping somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-50 inches before it was done. Loads of fun. It never ceases to amaze me how big that place is. Our last run of the day we were still able to find lots of untouched powder.



Anyway, that's all I have to say for now. Tomorrow I hop a plane back to NY to start me last semester of law school. Last semester of school EVER. I'm looking forward to it more than a little.

That is all (for now).