IHOP

Audrey (aka Corky) and I went to the Embarcadero 24-Hour Fitness the other night. Afterwards, we decided to go to IHOP to celebrate our health. Here's a before and after picture of my meal.

Before:

10 minutes after:

300 = Sea of muscly pecs and abs

Today, the most beautiful day in the city, was spent indoors watching 300. It's a Zach Snyder adaptation of a Frank Miller graphic novel about Spartans who accompanied King Leonidas to fight off the invading Persians. Going into the movie, I had some expectations; I love stylized films, fantasically choreographed fight scenes and period costumes. Fortunately, I wasn't disappointed.

First off, it's a violent, gorey film. Despite the stabbing, lancing, slicing and flying blood and limbs throughout the movie, however, the gore added to the stylization of the film. I thought the contrast was cranked up just enough, the color was desaturated to the right level, and there was nothing too gimicky to make me cringe. Let me just say that the contrasty quality of the film accentuated every actor's bulging pectoral and abdominal muscles. Now imagine that with some leather bikini-type undies and a big red cape and you've got yourself a Spartan. I must admit, it was pretty hott. See below.



The storyline wasn't spectacular and was nothing I couldn't have predicted. But, again, it was well executed so it was more than watchable. Also appreciated was the lack of a overly dramtic love story. Check out the official site for a bunch of extras about the movie including a production blog and video journals. Here are some more shots from the movie:

Sun

The most awesome day in the city ever.

The Super Bowl is hella gay

I found this article about letters people sent the FCC about the recent Super Bowl. They got 150 letters from citizens who were troubled by what they saw (which I thought was surprisingly low number since people write to complain about everything).

The letters seemed to mostly focus on Prince's halftime performance and the Snickers ad where the mechanics make out. The article links to The Smoking Gun post where they've compiled some of the best letters. My favorite is one where a concerned father claims that Prince is a homosexual (he's twice-married...to women, and has dated a Bangle and Audrey Horne from Twin Peaks...neither of whom are men). The concerned father says that his boy wanted to be a quarterback, but because of Prince's performance his son will now be gay. Go read it at The Smoking Gun. Also check out page 9, where the person goes way in-depth about the Snickers guys making out.

1 Lion v. 42 Midgets; Midgets: 0, Lion: 42

Though, this isn't the lion that killed 28 Cambodian midgets and seriously injured 14 more, it I still wouldn't try to fight it. This story is a couple years old, but it was just brought to my attention today. It's surprising that the Cambodian government would allow this kind of thing to happen...but I guess it would be hard to refuse when you get to pocket 50% of all ticket sales.

UPDATE: I'm a chump. Here's why. Thanks Brian and Audrey for being real friends and not making me feel stupid or anything, jerks.

In the courthouse

• 9:01 am: In the jury assembly room now. I've been here since 8:20 or so. I just finished up a David Foster Wallace essay about a carnival in the Midwest. About 5 or 6 names have been called from the roomful of people here. Also, I just paid $6.00 for a one-day pass to go online here.


• 10:36 am: So I was just in my first non-drill alarm. I was called into an actual courtroom for further selecting. The judge assigned to the case as briefing us on the background of the case when an alarm went off. No one was in a panic while leaving the building, probably because we've all been desensitized by all the drills. Everyone evacuated to the plaza across the street. It's gonna be real fun waiting in line to get back inside. One metal detector and a couple thousand people...hott!


• 12:01 pm: Lunch time. I was granted hardship from the first case because it might last until June. Gyro probably wouldn't like that too much. I'm back in the jury assembly room awaiting another case...hopefully a shorter one. Selection starts up again at 1:15pm.


• 12:29 pm: This dutch crunch roll that my sandwich was made on is the stalest thing I've ever bit down on.


• 1:07 pm: Lunch is almost over. I'm bored out of my mind.


• 1:59 pm: Chatted online for a bit, read for a bit more, now I'm actually starting to miss work. They called people for two court assignments, and I wasn't included in either one. The assembly room is almost empty now.


• 4:ish pm: Home and jury duty free. The most horrifically boring day of my life. Thanks, America.

Jury duty and the flu

I started feeling achy as soon as I got home from work today, and by 7:30 I was feeling pretty toasty. Pooh called and lured me over with stuffed peppers and apple cake. He also supplied me with chewable vitamin C tablets and zinc lozenges.

When I got home, I checked in with the automated jury duty system and guess what? I have to report for jury duty tomorrow...at 8:30, in the morning. Awesome. I guess a decade of weaseling my way out of jury duty ends tomorrow. They'd better let me go home because a lot of people are gonna get sick.

My co-workers friends are awesome

This afternoon at work Ross and Lucie made their way to Walgreens for a routine Toffifay (that's Toffifay with 3 F's) run. When they came back, Lucie brought me some delicious almond cookies in the shape of....WINDMILLS! They're crispy, they're sugary, and they're delightful!



Ross, however, brought out the big guns by presenting me with Lucky Puffs. Just as I would have envisioned from the descriptive name, there's a green shredded coconut crust, an outer mantle of soft marshmallow, an inner mantle of chocolate cake (!), and a gooey cream core. Sound familiar? Yup, they're Sno-Balls, but green for the upcoming St. Patrick's day...I think. I found an in-depth analysis of the treat here. Curiously, there's no mention of this treat on the official Hostess website.

Thanks again to my friends, who have brought me snacks ranging from the exotically Dutch to the classicly American (though surprisingly Irish).

Below: Photo of Lucky Puff I found online.



Also, as LUCK would have it (get it?), Ross had on the perfect shirt for enjoying a LUCKy Puff.

Go to church, have sex

I was baited into accepting this postcard from a solicitor at the Montgomery BART station exit. They were handing them out along with a granola bar. Man, I love granola bars. Anyway, from the front it looks like some kind of flyer for the Power Exchange or one of those sex conventions. Once you're done looking at those deliciously glossy lips, you turn it over and...WTF?



It's a flyer for a "casual, contemporary christian church." Wow, I thought, how...progressive. It promises live music, free food, and "gods [sic] best" for your life. Is this church or the company picnic? It didn't matter. By that point I had kind lost interest and eating my granola bar.

I was banned

I haven't been able to blog because I'm banned. With fancy logarithms, Blogger has pegged me as a spam blogger and froze all new entries. I had to request for someone from the Blogger team to review my site to make sure I was a real, flesh-and-bones web logger.

This is what I got: