Right when I was starting to update regularly, I take like six weeks off. Here we go.

On my way to Washington I stood in the check-in line for like twenty minutes. I was thinking these people are all wearing the same sweater, they’re clearly a group, why aren’t they standing in the group line? It turns out they were probably thinking this guy’s not in a group, he’s clearly a loner, why’s he standing in the group line?

First stop in Seattle, Chiang’s Gourmet. I love this place. Here’s a picture of the noodles with bean curd. Which I’d never order just by the name alone. But Albert recommended it and now I crave it and don’t have any idea where I’d go in San Diego to fill that craving.

The big event, other than Christmas, was Curt and Dyane getting married. BFF. I’ll elaborate about that for five minutes later in this post or possibly in the next post. Here’s our friend Derek, Curt, and me on the right. I think we’re in third grade.

I was in my first wedding. Here’s the rehearsal. They had their wedding at the Grand Willow Inn, which is really nice on its own but even better all the winter decorations.

Bonus for the Grand Willow Inn is that it’s next to the gas station that has my favorite chicken gizzards. No joke. And you can’t really tell in this picture, but I grabbed a bag of some on the way home from rehearsal and that’s what I’m holding up.

The same night, after rehearsal dinner, I drove back up to Seattle to be closer to the airport because I was picking Jason up that night. And his flight was delayed over and over. It was good to see my old open-room nook again. I spent three months sleeping on this futon and lying to girls about where I slept when giving them tours of the house.

The guys had their annual gift exchange. We ate at Hoo Soon Yi. Great friends and good Korean BBQ.

The Christmas Eve party at the Knights of Columbus is probably my favorite holiday position. My old favorite was when all the cousins would sit around and presents would be handed out on Christmas Day. Then I got old.

This is a picture of a picture hanging on the wall in the Knights of Columbus. It’s a Squires meeting. And I love that six of the people in the picture can also be found in recent pictures like this one from camping.

Cess delivering presents. Things he loves: giving presents, Kobe, and Mountain Dew. He wears his heart on his sleeveless. Forgive me for that joke, it’s been six weeks since I’ve written anything.

Christmas night, the guys came over and we had ourselves a Kinect party.

Flew back to San Diego the day after Christmas. Moved out of Curt’s house and into my apartment. I’ve been taking this settling in thing really really slowly. This is basically what my room looked like for the first month.

Went to the Holiday Bowl. And got there early this time so we got to actually tailgate.

Here’s Jason, me, and Dan before heading out for New Year’s Eve. Jason’s conviction at an all time high.

Two months late, but goodbye 2010.

I started writing captions for the pictures in the second December post, but I got sleepy. I didn’t think I’d finish so I decided to just post pictures from the actual camera that’s not a part of my phone. One of my resolutions was to sort of get back into photography. In the sense of taking more pictures and not in the sense of buying more gear.

Continuing into December. The big event was Curt and Dyane’s wedding. I was able to visit Washington for ten days. I guess we’ll get to that. I’ll start from the beginning.

I finally got a chance to sit down and play Call of Duty: Black Ops. Jamie got Dan a Kinect for his birthday and I opened up my friends list to see this masterpiece: Kuya Skan-Skan breaking it down. Now’s a good time for the annual reminder that my brother’s screen name is short for Skandalez_Pinoy_360.

Ralph’s had a sale on Vitamin Water. $10 for 20. $0.50 a piece! I went nuts; this is my life. Check your address bar, bro, I didn’t promise anything exciting.

I was supposed to go to a company Christmas party with Jason but then he did the unthinkable and found a girl to go with. Luckily, Jason’s BFF Chris invited me to go to LA for a couple of his friends’ birthdays. I thought cool we’re going clubbing in LA, but it turned out to be a night at the Magic Castle. Basically a magic school. If you watch Arrested Development, it’s pretty much the Magician’s Alliance headquarters.

Anyway, it was a blast. Really strict dress code for whatever reason. (I admit it does add to the ambience.) You walk in and there’s a really nice bar. We got drinks and then watched a magician in a small theater that sat a couple dozen people. We weren’t hammered or anything but it was enough that some relatively simple illusions blew our minds. It was really a bunch of variations of the ball and a cup trick, but with our reactions you’d think the guy was cutting his limbs off and reattaching them.

Then we had dinner, which was pretty good. And the final part was a show in a bigger theater. Entertaining but I was full and tired so I couldn’t pay as much attention as I would’ve liked. If you have a chance to go, I highly recommend going at least once. I’d love to go back again.

Marvin’s cousin Andrew invited me to his birthday party. Going in, I had met literally three people, but it was really really fun. And they got salt and pepper chicken from some place in National City and I kind of went off on that.

Chargers vs. Raiders. Jason won a work raffle and was able to pick up a couple of tickets. We decided to do it sort of big and tailgate. We prepped brats, chicken, snacks, brought a couple twelve packs, packed the grill, then stared at traffic for an hour. Apparently three hours early isn’t even close to enough. We ended up parking more than a mile away and didn’t have time to do anything except chug.

It turned out alright though. We parked far enough away that we wandered by a Costco on the way to the stadium. Hot dog, soda, and a churro please! That’s like a $16 stadium value. Jason got a chicken bake. You’d probably have to commit a felony to get anything resembling that for under $5 in the stadium. Speaking of felonies, here’s a picture of Raiders fans!

And we brought the tailgate party home. Making lemonade out of lemons.

Jason’s going on deployment from February to June. One of Chris’s BFFs is leaving. One of my BFFs is leaving. Pretty easy to see where this is going. New BFFs! “SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!” – Captain Nathan Algren

Ok kind of tired. I think this’ll end up being just two posts. Washington’s coming up.

Continuing on and finishing out the month.

Here’s a shot from Thanksgiving. Like I said, I missed everyone in Washington like crazy and I was trying to fly back home for Thanksgiving. But I waited too long and didn’t realize just how crazy flight prices get around major holidays.

It was sad to experience my first Thanksgiving without my family, but I was extremely lucky to be in the situation I was in. Curt’s parents and grandpa came down along with Curt’s sister Cindy and her husband Chris and their daughter. Our friend Donica also flew down to join us. And from in town Chris and his wife Ty and their daughter came. I joked about doing the “What are we thankful for?” thing around the table. But then we actually did it and I really was thankful that if I couldn’t be with my family that I was with another family that I’m very close to.

Anyway, this is Curt and Jason helping me prep the rib roast that we cooked in the grill. I claimed to cook the rib roast but basically I was just the guy that knew how it should be positioned and what temperature to shoot for. It was right around freezing in Washington so my friends loved seeing this picture of us hanging out in wife beaters.

I did, however, claim to cook the salmon and actually did. The top is panko and some kind of mustard and butter. It’s super hard to mess up so I’ve planned to use it to try and impress a girl someday.

Here’s a shot of the feast and a shot of my first plate. I ate myself into a food coma just like how Thanksgiving should be.

Curt and Dyane’s dog Hurley also got herself into some kind of coma. So I put my watch on her to see if she’d wake up. And then some other stuff. These are right before we drew penises on her face without thinking about whether or not she had a job interview or other function coming up.

Here’s a shot of the tri-tip sandwich from Phil’s BBQ that was featured on Man vs. Food. Again, really good but it doesn’t come with any sides. On the right is a shot of the ceviche at TJ’s Oyster Bar. I love that stuff. Enough that it inspired me and Jason to try and make some ourselves (but that’s December).

Here I am, pointing at the camera to present my breakfast dish. We had leftover Panko and when Jason was buying the Panko he took the last box and some lady told him that Panko’s the best for french toast. I went on to look up a recipe and make the Panko french toast (she’s right, it’s really good). Jason went on to tell his Panko-lady story about seventeen times throughout the weekend without regard to whether or not people had already heard the story.

Ok I lied, I thought we made ceviche in December but it was the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I love the stuff so much.

Speaking of repeating stories, we put the Christmas tree up that weekend and I’ll just repeat my Facebook caption to close the month out: One for the baby mamas and one for the baby mamas’ mamas.

I spent pretty much all of November settling down. The first two weeks were settling down in Curt and Dyane’s house (they’re big kids now!). And I started work in the last two weeks. Continuing on.

Marvin drove down with me and he stayed for a week to spend time with his cousins. He was basically my last link to Washington. Being overdramatic, I call the airport hug the last goodbye. Marvin is gone in the first picture and leaving in the second.

I was, and still sort of am, trying to force myself to do things outside of the house. It’d be easy for me to get in a routine, go to work, go to the gym, go home, eat, and sleep. My first two weeks I was pretty adamant about finding a skimboard so that I could do something at the beach. Eventually I want to do the fancier skimboarding and after that take surf lessons but for now I’m still highly entertained with the wooden skimboard.

On my second weekend, I met up with Wally and we drove to Las Vegas for Curt’s bachelor party. I decided it’d be cool to play Kanye’s “All of the Lights” once we turned onto the strip around 4am. And I was right! Great weekend. We love mirror pictures.

Side note: we listened to that album all the way there and all the way back and basically went back and forth between MBDTF and J. Cole’s Friday Night Lights through November and December. Two things: 1.) I love them both and 2.) I need new music.

Just a little bit of video chatting with my favorite pair of super strong roommates.

Don’t gag, it’s gonna get a little bromantic. My first two weeks I sort of sulked and missed everyone in Washington. A lot. I expected it to be like that the first week then I thought the second week I’d start work and have that to keep my mind off things. But then my start date got delayed another week. Anyway, Jason came back the third week and that made things a lot better since we were able to trade glitter stickers and gossip.

In the first picture he’s stocking up on Four Loko and in the second picture he’s folding a ton of white tees. While listening to the Let’s Get Married Remix. I don’t know why I remember that he was listening to that song at this particular moment. Yah I do. Because I remember thinking, “Why is this song on his playlist?”

If you ever have a chance, go to Bachi Burger. Absolutely go to Bachi Burger. It’s a sit-down burger place and the burger I had has to be in the top-3 I’ve had, and I have a hard time thinking of two that were clearly better. It’s on the same level as Lunchbox Laboratory and cheaper. They’ve got all kinds of fries and they don’t slack either. The second picture is of me and Chad at some Korean BBQ place at some hour of the night. Going hard in the paint.

Ten more days left for November. I haven’t checked for sure, but I can almost guarantee there are more food pictures to come.

(For this post I just went through the pictures on my phone and wrote captions for each. I got through the first ten days and it seemed long enough for its own post so there should be one or two more posts for November.)

On the 30th I had happy hour at Stanford’s and I said bye to most of my closest friends. Emotional, that’s all I have to say about that.

Halloween morning me and Marvin hit the road. The first day we ate McDonald’s for breakfast, KFC for lunch, and Carl’s Jr. for dinner. And then we had sushi with Russ and Janelle for 4th meal. Russ was housesitting for his uncle in Vallejo so we stayed there. Me and Marvin didn’t get much sleep for whatever reason (read: we were spooked!).

The next morning we hit I-5 again and basically this was the view for hours and hours and hours.

Met up with Wally at a mall to say what’s up. I remember feeling super super gross walking around the mall because we had been driving all day. I’ve got a little bit of a mustache coming in. Breakfast that day was In ‘N’ Out and I got an almond pretzel at the mall. That’s when I realized it’d probably be a good idea to get some non-fast food in me at some point.

Me, Marvin, and Wally made our way to Curt and Dyane’s house. Dyane made what seems to be her specialty—spaghetti. Basically perfect after being on that… 24-hour, fast food diet, need crunches after munching I discourage you from trying it.

I sent this forecast screenshot to my friends back in Washington so they’d be happy for me. “Have fun enjoying it alone, loser!”

TJ’s Oyster Bar. I love this place. Great $1 fish tacos. This became the go-to spot for me and Jason. I’m starting my third month in San Diego and I haven’t gotten tired of fish tacos yet.

I also love Phil’s BBQ. Man vs. Food covered Phil’s in one episode (it was just a segment, not the city’s challenge). I tried the tri-tip sandwich that was featured on the show and that was really really good also. Again, there’s certainly better BBQ in the traditional BBQ states, but this is good BBQ in the middle of San Diego.

Tacos El Gordo. There’s a lot of taco spots in San Diego. There’s a lot of really good ones. The adobada taco at Tacos El Gordo is one of the best things I’ve had in San Diego. The tacos are a little pricey for their size, but they’re so worth it. For the adobada taco, the meat is sliced off this machine which is similar (identical?) to the ones used in gyro shops. Then it’s grilled so the edges are crispy.

My first weekend me and Marvin went with Jamie to UCD to check out the Hello Kitty truck that was on tour. I wanted to check out the mall’s ice skating rink. We lucked out and walked in as some kids started warming up for a little league hockey match. We watched the first period and one team dominated 4-0. The puck basically never crossed into their half of the rink. I felt sorry for both goalies. One was trying to stop a shot every thirty seconds and the other was leaning on his stick and drawing things into the ice with his skates.

Rio De Gado. I love Brazilian meat places. I went with Marvin and his cousins Kris and JR. I think it was like $17 for lunch. Great value. Basically the same experience you’ll get from Ipanema. Great meat, great sides. Feel like dying after.

South Beach Bar & Grill has $2.50 tacos on Tuesdays. It’s super crowded and hard to find a table any time after 5 but it’s worth the hassle. And a no-brainer at lunchtime. The first time I went I included a lobster taco in my order expecting tiny chunks of lobster. I was happy to see that the chunks were substantial to the point that I wondered how they profit on the things.

I’m gonna try and recap the year. November and December will get their own post later to show what I’ve been up to since moving to San Diego. Until then, enjoy the first ten months of 2010.

January

Started the year in San Diego. To some generic techno-voice countdown and then “Tonight’s gonna be a good night”. Good night, but it would’ve been better if the place wasn’t packed with dudes.

Dan left for Japan this month so it was my first time living alone for more than a few weeks. According to what I put down in my “Stuff I did” category in Google calendar, I was still playing a healthy (possibly unhealthy) amount of Modern Warfare 2. For instance, there’s this gem from Monday, January 25th: “Played too much MW2 by myself”. Earlier in the month I have an entry that says “MW2 for four hours with Albert and Wally” and there’s no mention of that being too much so god knows how long I played on the 25th. Great month.

February

Again, Dan was gone this month. And it looks like I also did very little this month. Of course, February is always the Super Bowl, which means we played our annual game at Hillcrest Elementary. I didn’t play like an idiot this time so that was a bonus.

March

More MW2 this month. And we also started playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2. We got all the guys together and played football again this month. I recorded my statline into Google Calendar because I’m vain:

Offense – 2 catches, 1 TD, 4 dropped passes

Defense – 1 INT returned for TD

On March 12 I have an entry that says “Beasted on chocolate pretzels” and a separate entry that says “McDonald’s dipped cones”. Some days are better than others and this was a better day.

This is also the month when I talked to Laura about how we’d both start writing more Yelp reviews so that we could be Yelp Elite and go to the parties together. She wrote more Yelp reviews, became Yelp Elite, and got a boyfriend (he’s a charmer by all accounts, and by all accounts I mean Wally said so) that she brings to the Yelp parties. I matched that effort by writing zero reviews and asking Laura how the parties are.

There’s also this March 22 entry: “Wrote the Ninja Turtles Forever verse”. Junior told me about Ninja Turtles Forever, the animated movie where all the different generations of turtles combine forces. And the Drake, Wayne, Kanye, and Eminem song was still getting a lot of play around this time. Since they both have the word “forever” in their titles, it made sense to write a song that I’m probably a little too proud of. I’ll share a little bit of that:

No anchovies ’cause they cheese heads. PACKERS.

Always playing games and skating sewers. SLACKERS.

Tryin’ to charm the dime April O’Neil. ASK HER

Plus they do it all while lookin’ fly. BAXTER.

Have fun imagining how horrible the rest is!

April

I bought an iPad. I also bought a Nexus One. Tubo came with me to meet the guy at a mall parking lot. (For fun I told Dan I was heading out alone and the guy wanted to meet at the abandoned FedEx warehouse.) We waited in my car with a golf club and aluminum bat that we pulled out of my trunk for safety. It started to cross my mind that this was ridiculous and we’re gonna somehow end up being goons, beating the hell out of an unassuming engineer, and stealing the phone. Then the guy pulled up in a car that had two baby seats in the back. Smooth transaction.

I sold the iPad to my mom so she could give it to my cousin in the Philippines. And I sold the Nexus One because I missed the guys’ Blackberry group chat too much.

I also saw one of the shows on the Conan tour.

On the last day of the month we went to Vegas. It was still April the night we went to Tao. I love bottle service. Most of the guys also put $50 on the Lakers to win by 2 but they won by 1. Goodbye money.

May

Started the month in Vegas. Pictures of that are here and here. Doodle Jump was a big part of our lives.

In May I stopped recording what I did during the day in Google Calendar. And I looked back at blog posts from back then and I still can’t really figure out what I did. Maybe I didn’t do anything. I do have this calendar entry though: May 15 “Drive to San Diego????” Labeled as “Tentative”. Four question marks is correct. This was the month two of me telling people I’m moving to San Diego. I don’t think I was that-guy-that-says-he’s-moving-but-he’s-still-here yet, but I was well on my way.

June

Google Calendar is even more bare this month. But my blog posts helped this time. I went to Ichiro bobblehead night. And this is definitely around the time I was sort of addicted to happy hour at Elliott’s Oyster House. I took Dan, Paul, and Junior separately I think for three straight weeks. Actually I just read the blog post about it, and I took the three trips in a single week. I love that happy hour. I also started my brief stint as an ultrasound model this month.

July

After visiting Vancouver B.C. last summer we realized we’ve definitely been taking it for granted that we’re only a few hours away and decided we’d go at least every few months. A little over a year later, we made it back! It was a good time and we realized again that we’ve been taking it for granted. Now I live in California. I haven’t yet been to Tijuana so I can’t say from firsthand experience, but I’m gonna go ahead and guess that I’d enjoy Vancouver a lot more.

Oh yeah, me and Dan also moved out of the apartment we’d lived in since 2006 and moved into a 5-bedroom house with Chris, Ireneo, John, and Donna. If you’re paying really close attention, you might’ve noticed that with me and Dan that makes it six residents. I’ll cut to the chase: I moved into the nook which was probably a 7×7 area. Enough for a futon and a desk. Charming and hilarious, just not all that comfortable. I started sleeping in the family room on the bottom floor and using Dan’s desk as an office during the day so it turned out alright.

I loved living in a house with all those roommates. Since I wasn’t working and everyone else was, I was home kind of a lot. It was good to have a bunch of people to talk to and hang out with at different times of the day.

August

Wally was in town for his sister Linda’s wedding. Beautiful day for an outdoor wedding. We went skimboarding the same weekend on Whidbey Island. Great, great day.

There’s a calendar entry that says “Steak night with the guys”. I grilled this time and I actually didn’t screw things up for once. I also have an entry that says “It’s late night” which means this was the night we decided it’d be a good idea for the guys to write a rap song together. It eventually became clear that this wasn’t a good idea.

An August 5th entry says “Tubo’s day off”. Which seemed to come up every other week this summer and basically meant it’d be a great day of golf and food. On this specific day I think we played the par-3 at Jackson Park, grilled and finished some ribs in the oven, grilled some corn, ate on the balcony, practiced our Dougies, and then played the par-3 at Green Lake.

On Wednesdays this month we met up at the track to do drills and see how we stacked up athletically to NFL linemen. Me: not well. But we all improved over time and that was the point. There were also a few random days here where I’d meet up with Junior to kick the soccer ball around. And eventually have shootouts from the 18-yard line. I estimate that I shot probably 3 out of 40.

September

I had (probably) the most stressful three days of my life. Got a start date for one job that I pre-accepted in February, an offer for another, and had a pending final interview for another. I’d been telling people for months that I was leaving, then I told them I was staying, then I changed my mind again and told people I was leaving. 48 hours of thinking about my life.

I don’t get real too often here (or anywhere) but here goes nothing: things haven’t turned out as expected (in good ways and bad ways) but I’m really happy with my decision. I really can’t help wondering “what if” every once in a while, but that’d be the case no matter with either choice.

I told Albert that I think moving would give me an opportunity to learn more and grow more as a person. Then I flip-flopped a minute later and accepted the Seattle offer (that I reneged on—note to kids, don’t ever renege on an offer, ask for more time to think before accepting it in the first place). But the learning and growing has been true so far.

On a lighter note, this was also when we had our annual camping trip and the birds ate all our chips and poo’d all over our campsite. Hopefully not an annual thing.

October

After finalizing things and knowing that I was really, actually going to San Diego in November (and realizing I had very little savings left), I basically moved back to Oak Harbor. I played a lot of Pusoy Dos, watched a lot of movies, and ate a lot of Chex Mix. After my contract ended in April I was either thinking I was moving or I was job hunting because I wasn’t sure if I was moving. October was one of my favorite months because I got to really relax.

We closed the month out with a Halloween party at the Seattle house. Most people actually weren’t last minute with their costumes so it was a lot of fun. Except people had no idea who Machete was so I was basically just dressed up as an ugly guy.

I like re-reading these captioned photo posts. And I have a bunch of camera photos from the past few months. These are ordered from newest to oldest. First up, a picture from Target of the Hunger Games trilogy. The final book came out in August. I need to finish it. Things that are better as fiction: It the Clown, The Battle of Thermopylae, and children being forced into battle with each other.

Tubo doing things that Tubo does. I caught him using one of those sites where you input your rubik’s cube and then get a long list of moves to follow to solve it. Rubik’s cubes were annoying to me because it boils down to memorizing sequences and doing them as quickly as possible.

But yesterday, for whatever reason (read: LOTS of free time), I decided to do just that. So I can solve the cube now and I was thinking of trying to get my time under a minute, but then I realized there’s a direct correlation between the amount of time it takes me to solve a rubik’s cube and my progress as a human being. In the end, Tubo uses the solving sites because he’s got better things to do. I dream of some day having better things to do.

Harvey held a poker night. Great times. The first picture is Albert holding the iPad up so that we can all watch the Catfish trailer. Catfish looks interesting but then there’s speculation about how true it is. The trailer says it’s “just true”, but the consensus from the never-lying internet is that it’s not all true. The second picture is of Gee sleeping. I was planning to email it to the iPad to sketch a wicked dong on and have Albert hold up the final composition to present it to the guys like he did for the Catfish trailer.

Here’s a girl from Cupcake Wars. Who I love. She’s from Tennessee and has a southern accent. Unfortunately, she got crushed in the Cupcake War.

I spent last week in Oak Harbor. My mom bought a bunch of Dark Chocolate Chex Mix. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this on my blog before, but I’m a slut for this stuff. I’m gonna go ahead and call it my single favorite snack that comes in a bag. With a little bit of help I managed to finish a bag a day. I hope you’re proud of me!

I had the honor of taking home the leftover camping food so there was plenty of stuff for s’mores. We made some of these to snack on while playing cards and watching those awful horror movies that are all over Comcast OnDemand. Off the top of my head, we watched Catacombs, Hostel, Hostel 2, Cabin Fever 2, and See No Evil. And actually paid attention to Killers and Let the Right One In. And also saw The Town. All in a week! If you weren’t proud of me before, I know you are now.

We didn’t take as many food prep pictures this year, but here’s our shopping cart for the camping food. Missing: graham crackers. Ham Porter would’ve never let me hear the end of it! And here’s a picture of the cole slaw we made. I really liked it. I hate making things with mayonnaise though, because it gives me Subway flashbacks. Like the first time I made seafood sensation and my manager told me, “Watch out when you open the bag, it’s gonna smell like fart.”

Here’s Marvin and Tubo arm wrestling. Here’s Marvin and Tubo MMA’ing.

Hulu has a sneak preview of The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret. David Cross and Will Arnett are both in this and also are both in Running Wilde. Gobias Industries!

[I posted this on Tumblr last Tuesday but I think I'm done with my Tumblr for now.]

Watched J. Cole and Drake at Bumbershoot today. I had high hopes for both of them and they both met my expectations. I’m getting over being sick for the past few days, but I wasn’t ready to to stand in the drizzle for three hours, so I sat in the stands with Kuya. (More like drizzle Drake, right?!) So instead of yelling memorized verses and yell-mumbling unmemorized verses, I just sort of mouthed lyrics. Still a lot of fun, but I’m sure it would’ve been better to stand out there with the rest of my friends.

J. Cole did all the favorites and cut the beat on a lot of songs for the final verses. A lot of people were familiar with him, but not everyone, especially in the stands. Slowing it down a cappella allowed those less familiar people to really follow his lyrics. Not that every song is a graduate thesis or anything, but J. Cole has clever lines that can take a few listens to catch. Really though, I’ll stop because I hate when people overanalyze rap music; I’m pretty sure there’s rarely more thought put into writing other than thinking “this is gonna sound tight.”

Drake catered a lot to his female fans, which is understandable since catering to the jock riders (read: me) accomplishes very little. The problem is that it leads to Drake singing a little more than I’d want. I’d just rather hear him rap, because he’s excellent at rapping and decent at singing. I really enjoyed when he did his Paris Morton verse over the Find Your Love beat. Glad to see that Drake’s blown up and I’m glad to see how far J. Cole has come since he opened for Jay-Z last October.

Also, this is the 6 year anniversary of the Nas performance when I got hit in the face by a toilet paper roll that someone Tom Brady’d from the back of the crowd. I love Bumbershoot.

We had eleven people this year compared to seventeen last year, so it was toned down a bit (not that we were throwing an outdoor rager last year or anything). Lots of fun this year.

Dan brought the night vision goggles that came with Modern Warfare 2. Pretty fun until you start to imagine creepy things. I kept imagining something similar to the Are You Afraid of the Dark episode where the kid puts glasses on and sees a bunch of people dressed in all black spandex. But spooky scarier than that.

We went for a hike, if you can call it that. We didn’t really pick a specific trail or anything, and a lot of it was walking along the beach and skipping rocks. Then the rest was mostly eating.

I went camping this weekend with the Oak Harbor guys. I’m gonna share some camping memories in no particular order.

We usually have an electronic version of Taboo with us and two moments stick out for me. One of the first years Matt said “Ice cream with three flavors” and we knew exactly what he was thinking—that the vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry mix is called Napoleon. And last year Glenn said “Old man with a cane” and after time ran out Marvin (who was judging the round) said “The word was… pour-poyse?” It was porpoise.

The first time we camped we were tossing leftover eggs in the air to catch. Someone launched one up and my brother backed up to catch it then fell over backwards on a small boulder. And waved his limbs around like a turtle. That’s how I remember it.

One year, Jerry had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night so he got up and walked to the far bathroom with just a pocket flashlight. He shot to the top of my Bravest People I Know list. Another year, Curt had to go #2 but the toilet was clogged so he just went on top of another #2 that was already there. Looking back, I’m surprised we didn’t call this The #4 Special or something like that.

Here’s a quick rundown of Junior’s bad luck at camping. One year I closed the car door on Junior’s head when he already had a headache. He left in the middle of that night (and I woke up groggy when he got picked up and woke up the next day thinking he jogged ten miles back home). And another year he leaned back in his chair and fell backwards into the bushes. Last year he threw up and we got to dig a hole and bury it. And he also had to leave early and miss all the group pictures.

Last year UW beat USC and the UW alumni sat in the car and listened to the end of the game. Last year, cell phone reception improved and that made things a little more convenient but took some of the charm away from camping.

Our first year camping, the ranger came by during our game of Taboo and said we had too many people for one campsite but that he’d let it slide since we had no alcohol. At the time, I wondered why he was so surprised that nine guys at a campsite didn’t have a drop of alcohol. At the time, I also attended zero parties except for my friends’ LAN parties, which I usually hosted. Everybody, please, a round of applause for my high school life!

We let Matt cook the bacon one of the first times we camped. He ripped open the package and dropped the entire three pound block in the pan. The rest of us looked at him ready to chuckle at the joke, but he didn’t blink so we just gave blank stares to each other. He’s an avid camper though so maybe he knew what he was doing. Need some kind of knot? Ask Matt. Need to build a good fire? Ask Matt. Need bacon reminiscent of zombie flesh? Ask Matt.

This year we went hiking and came back and found out the birds pecked through all of our bread and poo’d all over our campsite. And they even opened the bag of Doritos which impressed me because you can hold a bag of Doritos right next to your nose and you won’t smell the chips inside, but they knew what was inside. It was like the Jurassic Park raptor opening the door with the door handle, except not like that at all. I was a little mad but it was mostly just funny to me because eating our bread or pooing on our site would each be bad alone, but they did both.

We went to Hillcrest and took dunk pictures. It’s always good for guys in their mid 20s to hang out at elementary school playgrounds. The nerves must’ve got to us or something; a lot of the shots were of missed dunks. But if you can’t tell then it’s no problem!

We also spent time taking turns doing Dwight Howard’s dunk where he taps it off the backboard with one hand and puts it down with the other. When I watched it during the dunk contest, I thought “Oh that’s harder than it looks.” I didn’t realize how much harder it was. None of us came close.

P.S. Sorry Marvin, I didn’t get any of you! Also, it might not seem like it between these pictures and the skimboarding ones, but Matt does own a shirt or two.

I went skimboarding with some friends at Double Bluff, about forty minutes south of Oak Harbor. After it was all done I was mad that it was my first time ever. We should’ve been doing this way more in high school. We also just walked out into the water and did the things you do when you’re waist deep in water: water uppercuts, water fireballs, tried to jump out of the water, water wrestling, water kickboxing. Sorry, didn’t finish earlier, I meant the things you do when you’re waist deep in water and seven years old. We followed up the beach trip with like 7000 calories at Applebees happy hour.

I took the site down last week and put up a static page explaining why. I’m paying for one too many hosts so I want to move it over to the hosting that isn’t being used. I also want to redesign the site. And I still want to do both of those things.

But for now I’m just going to revert the site to how it was for a more important reason: I started posting too much stuff on Facebook. Only like three or four people care about what I was posting and in the past I would’ve just posted that stuff on my site for the three or four people that check it out. And I really don’t want to be one of those people that posts way too much stuff on Facebook, because I’ve heard bad things about those people.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Multiplayer Teaser Trailer. Count me in!

From 2007: My live blog of the Blizzard announcement.

The best memory is when my brother needed to call his girlfriend oh-so-badly even though I told him I just needed to finish the game. It must’ve been important, because he just turned the phone on and started dialing. Disconnected. And he left the house like five minutes later. Wow, urgent huh. Apparently the game I got disconnected from was pretty important, because I kicked a hole in my wall.

When you’re in middle school and you kick a hole in the wall, there’s no other way to put it: your parents are going to kill you. Maybe stop feeding you or something, but death was around the corner. Unless I could hide it. So I opened up an old paint canister in the garage and put a paper towel in it to saturate it with paint. Then I spread it out and put it over the hole. Um, Ces the Toolman Taylor.

I can’t believe it’s been more than three years since that announcement.

Pictures from the past couple of months. Still sort of bummed that the quality of my fireworks pictures regressed this year. I wish I brought a wider lens.

A collection of videos of dogs eating ice cream cones. Pretty much what the link says. If you think you’ll like it you probably will.

In case you don’t keep up with the Brenda Song Examiner, Brenda Song is dating Miley Cyrus’s adopted older brother Trace. Look. First Flo Rida, now this? I’m through. Katie Leung, you reckoned correctly, I’m all yours!

A trailer is up on The Social Network site. Quick thoughts: Brenda Song is in it. I didn’t know David Fincher was making it. Brenda Song is in a David Fincher movie. And it’s going to be nearly impossible to not think “That’s Justin Timberlake” whenever he’s on screen and wonder what an ‘N Sync-less dimension is like.

Seth Meyers opened the ESPYs with a good monologue. Another Weekend Update anchor had the same honor in 1998: Norm Macdonald.

Shot these over the weekend. Continued my trend of mostly taking pictures of my friends. Really need to consciously try to take pictures of other things on the next trip. Mix it up a little. We didn’t go for any particular reason. But it was cool to be there during the World Cup final. They shut Granville down and laid mats down in the street for spectators to sit while others stood on the sidewalk.

Later we saw a couple on a motorcycle wearing Spanish colored jackets and the girl in the back was holding a giant Spanish flag. Even better, the guy was honking his horn up and down the street and we saw him slow down next to some Netherlands fans walking on the sidewalk. They barely reacted. They simply looked defeated—as expected. I really wish I had picture of that.

P.S. The title of my portrait where I’m standing in the window is “The City is Mine”. Email me if you want a print.

Spent the weekend in Vancouver B.C. Every time I go up there I wonder what the flashing green means and then say I’ll look it up later and then forget about it. I finally looked it up on Wikipedia’s ‘traffic light’ entry. In most countries, flashing green is an “advance green”, meaning complete crossing it if you’re in the intersection but don’t cross if you haven’t entered it yet. But:

This also can cause confusion amongst visitors to British Columbia, where a flashing green signal denotes a pedestrian controlled intersection.

Now I know.

Inception is at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes with a decent amount of reviews. Also, I liked Predators.

“The Decision” tonight on ESPN 9 p.m. ET. I was under the impression that he would announce his plans at the end of the special, redefining cruel for Cleveland fans if he didn’t stay. But he’s announcing it within the first ten minutes of the show. He’s backed himself into a lose-lose situation, if he stays he’ll be the king of drama and only that until he wins a title, and if he leaves he’s given up on his home and dragged the Cleveland fans through the dirt with all the free agency shenanigans.

I made the mistake of reading the comments on that ESPN article. Some say it’d be bad for league popularity if he joined Miami to create a super team. People love super teams: for recent references, look at the ‘08 Celtics and the 18-0 Patriots. If I learned anything from the ‘96 Bulls or ‘98 Goldberg, it’s that people are interested in dominance. One comment I did like was someone pointing out that if the Miami Super Heat ended up winning multiple championships, he would always have one fewer than Wade. Hey that’s still be better than zero. I want to see him on the Bulls (because I fancy them and LeBron/Rose vs. Wade/Bosh in the Eastern Conference Finals every year would be awesome) or the Knicks (because I want to see what it’s like for New York to have a good basketball team when I’m older than twelve).

Also, anyone that says ESPN should stop covering this so much just needs to watch a different channel or go to a different site. It’s July; what do you want, more web gems? Bill Simmons and Kevin Wildes discussed something similar on the B.S. Report last year: people seemed tired of Brett Favre last year, but the NFC title game got huge ratings. People love Favre! Or at least find him compelling. LeBron’s free agency is certainly compelling, and it’s gonna get big ratings. (I’m gonna put my credibility on a limb here, guys, and predict that it will garner ESPN’s highest ratings for a July 8 broadcast.) Ratings are what TV’s about. Great touch by ESPN to call it “The Decision” so that it can join The Fumble, The Drive, and The Shot.

ESPN’s Outside the Lines had a segment on Purple Drank. Most recently seen in JaMarcus Russel’s house.

Professional Korean Starcraft players discuss actions per minute. There are some split screen views showing their keyboard and mouse and what’s going on in the game. It’s hard to get up over 200 APM (I think any click or keyboard press counts as an action), but it’s nuts to keep it that high through 10-20 minute matches.

Thanks Jason, Russ, Megan, and all the others serving our country.

I love these recent movie clip collections. (Parental advisory: all these videos contain strong language.) Here’s one with a bunch of characters telling someone to get out of there. I was extremely pleased that President Whitmore made it. Here’s one with a bunch of insults. “You play ball like a girl!” came up right when I was starting to think it didn’t make the cut.

And here’s one I’ve probably already posted once or twice: 100 Movies, 100 Quotes, 100 Numbers. (No strong language in this one—it’s all numbers.)

Basketbawful presents a list of crap shots. Great read. Here’s my go-to shot.

The panic shot: Sometimes a pickup baller will get themselves into trouble and, not seeing any other way, they just take the shot…no matter how ridiculous that shot may be. I had a friend named Brian who once drove, got stopped at the free throw line, spun around so that his back was facing the basket, jumped straight up and flipped the ball over his head toward (I assume) the rim. Again, I probably don’t need to tell you how that turned out.

At Oak Harbor’s base gym (in the days of yore), I picked up my dribble, decided it wasn’t a good idea to take a fadeaway three over a 6′2″ guy, pivoted a few times looking to pass, then changed my mind and decided it was a great idea to take the fadeaway three over a 6′2″ guy. Someone was very unhappy with me. (Hint: name rhymes with “gone”, good at basketball.)

Serious Eats profiles Skillet Street Food in Seattle. I liked it but I think my expectations were too high. I haven’t thought about going again the way I think about Marination Mobile. Probably because all my fancy burger craving thoughts are about Lunchbox Laboratory.

At the Isle of Wight Festival in England, Kanye came out to perform “Run This Town” with Jay-Z. The crowd goes nuts. Actually, if the crowd just stood there not making noise it’d still be nuts. It’s massive.

I posted this on Facebook on February 4, 2009. I feel like people skimmed it, and I don’t blame them since it was just a Facebook survey where people typically wrote single sentences. I re-read it tonight and liked it a lot. My shoulder hurts from patting myself on the back. Anyway, I’m re-posting it here because I feel like you’re more likely to read through it and most of it is still true. I’ll annotate it in italics. It’ll be like the director’s cut of the ‘25 things about me’ survey. Update: I just finished writing the italicized notes. Now it’s extremely long and ironically (I think I used ‘ironically’ correctly for once in my life) you’ll skim it again.

(My answers got way too long and I can’t think of 25 people to tag right now.)

Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

1. Me and Jason felt like losers because we kept seeing this survey and nobody was tagging us. So we were thinking about filling it out and tagging each other and hoping nobody would notice. But then I got tagged and so far it’s the highlight of 2009.

I was so relieved that I got tagged before Jason. What a loser.

2. I’ve been trying to read Atlas Shrugged for a few months now but I keep getting stuck at the dead boring parts. Like right now they’re driving across the country looking at old factories. And it’s about as interesting as this survey’s gonna be.

I do the thing where I’ll read and then decide to read until the end of the chapter and look to see how much of the chapter is left. Well, one day I was on a flight to San Diego and I decided to do that. The chapter I was on was a character giving a speech so I figured it wouldn’t be too long. Guess what: it’s seventy pages. Guess what: I closed the book, went to sleep, and haven’t opened it since.

3. I really enjoy surveys. That’s what I miss most about Xanga.

I went through my Xanga posts the other day. A lot are a lot stupider than I remember. They weren’t exactly pure gold but I honestly thought they would hold up better than they have.

4. Arrested Development is the best show ever. And I’m trying to get people to watch Mad Men but “it’s about ad executives in the 1960s” isn’t exactly a winning pitch.

Mad Men truly appears to be the most boring show in the world if you stumble on an episode while channel surfing and have no idea what’s going on. I gave up on trying to convince people to watch and am satisfied with the number of friends I can with about the show now. When I first wrote the survey, that number of friends was one. Now it’s three or four.

5. I’m a bandwagon sports fan and it kills me every day. My dad lived in the bay area for more than a decade and was definitely a 49ers fan, probably an A’s fan, and he loved the Celtics. And he managed to get Dan to love the 49ers, but I got none of that and then we moved to Japan, where pro sports come on at weird hours and some of the cool teachers let their classes watch the Super Bowl live on Monday. It’s not impossible to learn to love a sports team with so few broadcasts, but it’s harder. What am I supposed to do, read the paper in the morning before doing my long subtraction? There’s always UW basketball though.

I’ve decided there’s really nothing I can do about this except to make sure my kids are diehard fans of some team.

6. I listen to basically all Bill Simmons and Dave Dameshek podcasts. And I’m pretty sure I’ve read everything Bill Simmons has written in the past five years.

I went to Bill Simmons’s book signing last fall and was starstruck. Just nodded when he asked if he was reading the post-it correctly and it was “C-E-S”. But it’s still true, I listen to all of their podcasts. I’ve even followed Dameshek after he left ESPN for Accuscore and eventually to the Adam Carolla broadcasting network, where he seems to have found a great home.

7. Gun to my head and I had to answer, my favorite movies are Big Fish and Independence Day. Another gun to my head and I had to pick one, I’d pick Independence Day. (“Mankind. Hah. That word should have new meaning for all of us today.”) But Dark Knight is probably gonna be the choice in a few years.

Definitely The Dark Knight now. And The Departed has entered the fray. I watch both often. Those are the go-to movies that I’ll turn on when doing chores around the house.

8. I’ve listened to Only in Dreams literally over 1000 times in the past year. I don’t really know why other than that I like it. And thinking about it, that’s a pretty good reason.

I still throw this on the end of every CD I make for the car just because it’s something I can always listen to it when I get tired of the CD and haven’t made a new one. No I don’t have an iPod dock and yes I’m aware it’s 2010. Leave me alone.

9. I leechblocked a bunch of sites but I just end up using Safari to look at them instead.

I use Chrome now and used an extension to block Facebook two weeks ago. But then I just ended up using Facebook or my iPad to look at it. So I took the extension off and decided to just stop going to Facebook so much.

10. I usually get bad haircuts but I go back because the ladies are really nice and know me now. I used to get real bad haircuts on the Ave and the people weren’t even particularly nice, so I was sort of just asking for it. One time I literally asked for it (“skin on the sides”, I thought it’d look good for some reason) and Junior was with me getting a haircut in the next chair over and he gave me the “did you just say what I think you said” bug-eyes in the mirror. I was ashamed and wore a beanie and Allison wanted to see it and she said it’s probably not bad and she wouldn’t make fun but five seconds later I showed her and she called me Frankenstein. Jon called me Dolph Lundgren.

Now I’ve been trying to tell barbers that I want to keep the sides long. And it’s not happening. They continue to rip the trimmers out. I asked for scissors-only once and the lady explained that it wouldn’t work. I’ll keep searching.

11. I was in San Jose for six months last year. Chuck Klosterman was in Germany for three months last year and he told Bill Simmons that now it feels like when someone tells you about their trip to some far off place, except that it’s you. That’s how I feel about my six months in San Jose. I feel like someone told me about what it’s like living there with some details here and there and I sort of have to remember that I actually lived there.

This is truer than ever. I feel like I remember middle school about as well as I remember living in San Jose. It seems extremely distant. I remember a ton of people that were very kind to me. And the bourgeois gym I overpaid to have a membership at.

12. I like to keep toothbrushes with me. It’s not like I enjoy the physical act of brushing my teeth. I just hate the feeling I get if I can’t brush my teeth.

I kept a toothbrush and toothpaste in my backpack. Some people thought it was weird. Fortunately, brushing teeth after lunch at the office is acceptable, I just have to deal with “are you homeless or something” comments if it’s any other time.

13. Every couple months I’ll go on YouTube and search for “literati top 20″ and ten minutes of my life will disappear.

This is more like every six months now. Mostly because I write stupid scenes (think: “That was the first night we met. That was the first time I laid eyes on her. That was the last time I wasn’t in love.”) and email them to friends. The Gilmores never fail to provide inspiration.

14. My BFFs left one by one to San Diego and sometimes when they all go out together I get that feeling of regret as if they invited me and I said no. Doesn’t make sense.

Because life happens, they rarely all have the chance to go out together now! Joke’s on them, WHOOOOOOOO.

15. I rap in the shower and in the car and I’m not gonna lie, I’m kinda nice once in a while.

I was curious about how it would turn out if I wrote a verse, so I wrote one a couple weeks ago, recorded a voice note and sent it to friends. It’s awesome because my phone got stolen last week so some stranger could be listening to me kill it right now. Also on that phone: a picture of Green Lake taken thirty minutes before it was stolen that I sent to friends with the caption “trying getting my fitness on”, lyrics I typed out to memorize J. Cole’s “Higher”, other sweet pics. And best of all, rewritten lyrics to Drake’s rap verse in “Shut it Down” that I wrote immediately before bed. (“She’s turning heads. She doesn’t even notice. You turn the lights off… she keeps glowing.”) If it helps, I was immediately and extremely embarrassed when I read them the next morning. Doesn’t help? Got it. On to thing number sixteen.

16. Movies I’m waiting for: Watchmen, Harry Potter, Transformers, Terminator. Basically the same movies everyone’s waiting for.

In order: Good, great, bad, and so disappointing that people are tired of me saying how disappointing it was. Now: Airbender, Inception, Expendables, Predators, and Harry Potter.

17. I save emails, IM logs, and texts. And it used to freak me out that Dan deleted all his texts regularly, but then I realized that I’m actually the one that in the minority. I found this CD a couple years ago with an ICQ chat log from 6th grade. And I downloaded a program that plays them back (because the chats were real-time so you could see other people typing). It was sort of awesome to watch me call myself ceseroo and say kewl and hehe every other sentence.

I’m not as OCD about saving these sorts of things. I realized that I rarely go back to read this things, and it’s typically to just be annoying and prove to someone that I said or they said such and such.

18. I have a full size bed but basically only use half so sometimes I wish it was a twin so that I’d have more space in my room.

Now I wish I had a full size bed.

19. Cheesy jokes and puns are my favorite thing in the world. The Reese Witherspoon joke kills me. And it’s even good if you mess it up. Speaking of jokes, here are my favorite comedians (can’t get more cliche than this): Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, and Norm MacDonald.

Still fun to me. My friends were thinking of “brag” puns (because it’s a good time, can I live?) basically until we ran out. Here are a few of my contributions: Andre Bragassi; WMD in Braghdad; Sultan of Bragrabah; GUTS #1 competitor and winner of a piece of the Braggro Crag.

20. I just remembered Valentine’s Day is in a couple weeks. I’m gonna go pretend to grab some shorts in my closet then slam the door on my head a few dozen times. BRB

This year I found a yard stick to tip the cast iron dutch oven over the counter onto my head while laying on my back in the kitchen.

21. Back. Sometimes I’ll go on streaks that last a few weeks where I’ll record what I did during the day in Google Calendar. July is full of gems like “(Saturday) watched 9 episodes of Mad Men” and “(Saturday) didn’t get into Club Envy ULR” and “(Tuesday) Napped”. I call it the loser reminder calendar system (LRCS).

March entries: “(Sunday) Battlefield Bad Company 2 opening morning with Jason”; “(Sunday) MW2 then BF2″. This was the same Sunday, by the way. My guess is the second entry was to record what I did at night. And to record the life of a loser in case someone needs insight for a future movie script.

22. Favorite food: steak. Or crab. If I had to choose between a nice ribeye steak or a dungeness crab with clarified butter and a bowl of rice, well, that’s like making me choose between I don’t know OK I’m getting frustrated because I can’t decided which one I’d take.

Ok I closed my eyes for a minute and imagined I was at the front of a line in a restaurant serving both for free. Anyway, I decided I’d go with the steak.

All still true.

23. Here I am online: flickr.com/ces ; twitter.com/cesperson ; boringperson.com ; cesnotseth.com

24. I gotta say, after all these years, I don’t really like Starcraft anymore.

When I re-read this, I actually stopped and thought, “Wait, there was a time when I didn’t like Starcraft? Did I play it too much or something? Was I mad at my friends? Was this an inside joke? At what point did I start liking it again? Why can’t I remember thinking this at all?”

25. I love it.

iPhone 4 vs. HTC EVO & HTC EVO vs. iPhone 4. So ridiculously true on both sides. If I had to pick sides, I’d rather be someone who wants an iPhone because it’s an iPhone than that guy that spouts tech specs thinking that explains the entire story.

Hulu Plus is official. $9.99 a month for full current seasons of some shows and every season of others. Streams over 3G to the iPhone and iPad. Coming to the PS3 “soon” and the Xbox 360 in early 2011 (seems kind of far away). It makes me wonder how often people watch back episodes outside of stumbling on them while channel surfing.

Speaking of back episodes, there are a bunch of old Doug episodes on YouTube. Here’s “Doug and Patti Sittin’ in a Tree”, where Patti asks Doug to the movies then everyone calls it a date and Doug and Skeeter do some research beforehand so Doug will be able to tell if it’s a date or not. If that doesn’t ring a bell, I’m guessing you never watched Doug.

shitmykidsruined.tumblr.com showcases all the great things kids bring to their parents’ lives.

Here’s René Higuita performing a scorpion kick, where he blocks an incoming goal by launching himself parallel to the ground and kicking the ball with his heels (think of the lying leg curl machine in the gym). René Higuita was the goalie for Colombia’s national team during their glory years in the early nineties. ESPN’s most recent film in their 30 for 30 series is The Two Escobars, which focuses on the Colombian team and shows the connections Pablo Escobar, the national team, and the murder of team captain Andrés Escobar. I watched it last week and it was one of the best in the series, which is saying a lot considering most of the films have ranged from very good to great.

P.S. There are a number of good clips related to that particular Colombian national team, but the film is put together as a narrative and it’s not the most well known story so it’s spoilable and I hate spoiling things.

Kevin Pritchard was fired a few hours before the NBA Draft and still took care of team business during the draft as if, well, he wasn’t fired a few hours before. He wrote an open letter to Blazers fans.

None of this is to be taken too seriously. It is just basketball. And, as strange as it may sound, none of the highlights from the past seven years had to do with anything on the court; it was everything off the court that meant the most to me. The little jibs and jabs with my co-workers and the media or enjoying dinner with great NBA friends and counterparts or talking with a passionate fan in the grocery store. In the end, it’s all about sticking together and helping each other out.

On his last podcast, Bill Simmons spent some time discussing the situation with Chad Ford and both only had good things to say about Pritchard—Simmons emphasized that Pritchard always credits his team right down to the scouts. Classy.

Rumor was that Chris Brown was banned from last year’s BET Awards and wasn’t able to participate in the Michael Jackson tribute. He made up for it this year. Even if you felt saturated by Jackson tributes last year, this one’s probably worth watching. Spoiler alert: he breaks down and doesn’t make it through singing “Man in the Mirror”. Pretty emotional.

Some think he was acting. I saw a dumb online poll centered around whether he really missed Jackson enough to break down crying about it. I think it had less to do with missing Michael Jackson and a lot more to do with slowly being forgiven by the public and being overwhelmed by the chance to perform in front of thousands of people. And of course the whole idea of “Man in the Mirror”. I’m gullible, so good job tricking me if he was acting and if not then good job period.

This post is way too long, but I’m kind of a fan, mostly because of his appearance on Sesame Street and his performance at the 2007 VMAs—I’ve watched both many many times.

Nah Right talks about Drake’s Thank Me Later sales. It reportedly sold sold 462,989 copies.

Hype is a helluva drug. It clouds the judgement of rappers, fans and critics alike. It can also hurt just as much as it can help, if not more. If Drake wasn’t so over hyped, this 462K he did would seem like an epic debut. But with expectations what they were, anything short of a million first week will be viewed by many as a failure. Which is completely absurd. To put things in perspective, Jay-Z, arguably the most famous rapper living, did 475K his first week out with Blueprint 3. And you’re out of your mind if you think this Drake album isn’t eventually going platinum.

The album really grew on me after a few listens and I find myself going back to some of the first leaked tracks and enjoying them again. Eskay says he tolerates the singing on Thank Me Later more than the singing on So Far Gone. I agree with that. I pretty much skipped all the singing tracks on So Far Gone but I really like “Karaoke” and “Shut it Down” (which really grew on me because I didn’t want to listen to it at all when it leaked on its lonesome).

So what does all of this mean for the music industry? Probably nothing except that it’s just as hard to sell records as it was last year and the year before, and that the Carter 3 numbers were an anomaly.

I was thinking about how much exposure Thank Me later had on its release and it seemed like a lot of people were listening to it. But then I remembered what it was like when Tha Carter III came out and it seemed like everyone was listening to it. My guess is Kanye’s going to do huge numbers with his next album. Graduation did 957,000 its first week and 808s & Heartbreak did 450,145 its first week and that was all singing. Unless all his antics (before becoming a studio hermit) hurt the public’s perception of him more than I think it did.

IGN gave Transformers: War for Cybertron a 9 out of 10. Seems like a good Transformers game shouldn’t have taken this long, but it’s good to know one exists now.

I would put on headphones and play for ten or fifteen minutes, and I would suddenly feel a tingle in that weird lizard-brain proximity sense we’ve all got that says “someone is in my personal space bubble.” I’d turn around and see another IGN editor standing behind my shoulder, staring at me with pleading eyes, and I always knew what they were going to ask before they asked it: “is it good?” It’s the look of someone afraid of getting their hopes up.

Which is why I was happy to report to those asking that Transformers: War for Cybertron is actually very good. Fantastic, even. High Moon has taken a fun, fast, third person shooter foundation, crafted a well thought out transformation mechanic on top of it, and designed combat situations around that. The end result is a shooter that has an identity all its own, and leverages its license to make something very cool for fans and newcomers alike.

J. Cole’s “Who Dat” video. Great song, great video. In his 106 and Park interview he says he’s one song away from finishing the album and there’s currently no featured artists—most great debut albums seem to have few or no features, so that’s good news. Not sure if it’s actually one long cut (he almost looks like he’s on a green screen toward the end), but that’s what the director was going for. I thought this was pretty cool and not that common, but I looked it up and it’s pretty common.

The video was directed by BBGUN, who also did J. Cole’s “Simba” video, which is also one long cut and seems like a warm up (pun intended) to the “Who Dat” video. Looking through other BBGUN videos, there’s one J. Cole video I hadn’t seen before featuring his intro to The Warm Up—which I’ve always loved even though it’s just him talking over a piano.

I forgot a few pictures from this month that I wanted to include in yesterday’s post. If I were Infinity Ward, this would be called the Captioned Photos: Volume III Resurgence Pack and you’d be charged $15—the biggest difference being that nobody would buy it. Here’s an old one from San Francisco that got mixed up in my newer phone pictures: Joey and Chris at completely opposite energy levels.

The next two pictures are unrelated other than being taken on the same weekend. I played my first eighteen hole course at the beginning of the month. It was raining when we started so I wrapped my feet in plastic bags. Worked like a charm until the hole formed in the left bag. On the right is a picture of what I decided to call grizzly bear dog.

These next two are pictures I took of my computer monitor. The first is from the virtual tour of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter because I was trying to figure out where the butterbeer would be available at. The second is a screenshot of previous results against Jason in the Starcraft II beta. I went 15-3 against him so I sent this to him two days before he left (he’s in the Navy). I also included some inspiring messages about how he could try to get redemption before he left but probably would end up losing some more. I was hoping he’d want to get a few games in but instead he just didn’t answer his phone or respond to those messages or any of the following texts.

Monday: “Do you leave Wednesday?”

Tuesday: “When do you leave?”

Wednesday: “Did you leave?”

Don’t worry though, he called and apologized a few days ago.

(I re-read what I just wrote and realized those screenshots aren’t the most entertaining pictures and that was one of the lamest stories ever. But I insist on keeping it all because I’m trying as hard as possible to NEVER have a girlfriend.)

Isaac, Jonard’s son and Jerry’s nephew, had his first birthday this month so I tried to find a present. I was thinking something dinosaur related. My first stop was Toys ‘R’ Us, where I found the box on the left—morbid. I hopped over to Barnes and Noble and found a whole bunch of Usborne touchy-feely books. Basically you go through it and see all the different dinosaurs with different textures on the pages that aren’t your dinosaur because the body is too squashy or its skin is too shiny. That’s until the end where (SPOILER ALERT) you find your dinosaur. I also bought “Where’s Spot”. Tip: When buying baby books, deadpan “I want some light reading… summertime” to the cashier and let the madness ensue!

Two weeks ago I did some ultrasound modeling. A more apt title would be ultrasound human dummying. Basically a bunch of doctors and sonographers performed ultrasound scans on me for a few hours to learn different techniques. So it was less Tyson Beckford and more Marlon Wayans in the beginning of Senseless. But that wouldn’t stop me from Blue Steel’ing while the doctors left the room to watch some presentations.

My conviction remained steady, but the lights went down and the sexiness went up.

The origins of “my bad.”. Another link related to Manute Bol—he may have originated the phrase and definitely helped popularize it.

Says Arneson, “I first heard the phrase here in the Bay Area when Bol joined the Golden State Warriors in 1988, when several Warriors players started using the phrase.” And Ben Zimmer’s rummaging in the newspaper files down in the basement of Language Log Plaza produced a couple of early 1989 quotes that confirm this convincingly:

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 10, 1989: When he [Manute Bol] throws a bad pass, he’ll say, “My bad” instead of “My fault,” and now all the other players say the same thing.

USA Today, Jan. 27, 1989: After making a bad pass, instead of saying “my fault,” Manute Bol says, “my bad.” Now all the other Warriors say it too.

So all of this is compatible with a date of origin for the phrase in the early 1980s (Manute Bol first joined the NBA in 1985 but came to the USA before that, around 1980). Professor Ron McClamrock of the Philosophy Department at SUNY Albany tells me he recalls very definitely hearing the phrase on the basketball court when he was in graduate school at MIT in the early 1980s, so the news stories above could be picking the story up rather late; but it is still just possible that Manute Bol was the originator, because he played for Cleveland State and Bridgeport University in the early 1980s, and his neologism just could have spread from there to other schools in the northeast, such as MIT.

(Via Kottke.)

Rest in peace Manute Bol. Here’s SportsCenter’s video remembrance. Here’s a picture of Manute Bol swimming, which will probably be the most interesting pictures you see today. And here’s Charles Barkley pulling a prank on him.

Ron Artest – ‘Champions’. I’ll never listen to this again, but it’s more competent than I would’ve imagined. Really I just wanted to post an older song of his which is as incompetent as I expected: Ron Artest – ‘Workout’. (Thanks Chad and Bryanth.)

This for my athletes. This for my athletes right here. Fitness time.

‘The D.E.N.N.I.S System’ episode of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia is available on Hulu right now. During season five, there was an impressive stretch of five or six straight great episodes. The first seven minutes is entertaining every time.

Here’s some pictures that are mostly from my phone. Starting with a few pictures from Elliott’s Oyster House. I love Elliott’s happy hour. So much that I went with a different person three times in the past week. So much that I was worried the hostess would wink at me, nod, and say, “New guy, huh?” But really, $0.50 (starting at 3PM and going up $0.25 every half hour) is fantastic, especially considering dozens start at $22 when it’s not happy hour. The other, non time-sensitive menu items are great also—I’ve tried the mussels, calimari, salmon sliders, and fish tacos. But really the best thing about it is all the jokes associated with eating tons of oysters. To be clear, these jokes aren’t complex yarns about Casanova fifty-oyster-per-day habit—instead think “happy hour left me kind of full… but super hard.”

A few weeks ago I went with Junior to Marination Mobile. I got a beef kalbi taco, a pork slider, and a Spam slider. I really want to go there some time, spend $20 on a self-created grande meal and nap the rest of the day.

Immediately after Marination Mobile, we headed to Green Lake and did a few laps to burn off the calories. Whoops, got mixed up, we didn’t do anything in that last sentence—we went straight to Paseo. It has a 4.5 rating on Yelp with over 850 reviews so that speaks for itself. But in case you trust me more than hundreds of internet strangers: it’s really really good.

Here’s Mortal Kombat streaming on the Netflix app. Decided to watch it after watching the Mortal Kombat Rebirth short. I watched Prince of Persia recently and it was entertaining to the point that I wasn’t mad at all about paying for the theater ticket. Still not taking the title of best video game movie ever though. I forgot that it basically goes one fight scene after the other with no breaks in between: Liu Kang vs. guy in braids, Sonya vs. Kano, Johnny Cage vs. Scorpion, Liu Kang vs. Kitana, Liu Kang vs. Sub Zero. Then Goro comes out and lays it down.

The bridge is up. Also known as the perfect time to make Inception sound effects with friends. VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.

I went with some friends to Izzy’s, best known for special ordering the tiniest ice cream cones in the world. Albert felt like looking even huger and I felt like creating my very own Colonel Sanders mustache.

One day me and Tubo decided to try and figure out how to mess up the living room the quickest way possible. So we practiced catching Nerf darts, but it was mostly just letting the other person shoot you in the neck. Just a few steps away from Mr. Miyagi’s arrow-catching scene in The Next Karate Kid.

These were from one of the trips to Elliott’s for oysters. Well, after one of the trips. We went to get Japanese-style crepes. I enjoyed the cloud paneling over the fluorescent lights and this model hot dog crepe slayed us.

On the left is my brother holding up his bobblehead box after I yelled at him to hold the box higher. On the right is me saying something is #1. Unfortunately it’s not the Mariners.

I think what happened is Jeannie forgot her ID so Albert bought beer for her and someone was a tattletale. Me and Paul took a bunch of pictures of her getting a stern talking-to from the alcohol warden.

Better known as The Iron Monger.

We went to a Mariners game as a celebration for our friend getting accepted to medical school. It was also a small celebration for gluttony and bobbleheads. The biggest celebration of all is that this post marks the first appearance of girls in a photography post since February. Whoooooooo!