Come into my house, Mr. Kreme

This little pin-up came in the mail yesterday:

When did Krispy Kreme get brilliant new Marketing brains? First their own coffee and now this--two of my favorite breakfast desserts rolled into one. I'm in.

Donuts + Coffee Cake = If I could eat my iPhone it would taste like this

A bright side

Despite Irene wrecking my sister's and Augie's visit to SoCar, I am grateful that Irene was not as nearly as devastating as prepared for and came and left New York without much fanfare.  Though my sister lamented that after the earthquake, this was another reason for the rest of the country to laugh at NYC, I said that the over-preparedness sure beats the opposite situation.

The other plus this weekend is my friend, K, in North Carolina decided to came down for a visit.  We all went out to a nice dinner at Motor Supply Company:

Paul and the girl took our leftovers home and then K and I toured around the Vista, checking out various locales and bars.  We had a fun Ladies' night though, bless K's petite loveliness, when it's just the two of us, I can't help but look extra big and butch next to her. If it was a movie, she's totally the main character and I'm that sidekick that somehow got the nickname "Moose" and you go "Awwww" when I get paired up with an equally awkward, yet sweet, sidekick (most likely a guy named "Doughboy" or "Ogre") in a feel-good minor subplot at the end of the movie. But regardless--a really, good night with a good friend:

Also the girl wanted to dye a blue streak in her hair this weekend.  It turns out you have to first bleach the streak first.  I got a little gunshy when it came to leaving the bleaching mix in too long and we rinsed out it out too early (it's recommended that the hair be very light blond) where it's still a bit too golden to add the blue coloring.  But it turns out that the girl is kind of digging the little swatch of caramel coloring so we'll wait a bit before bleaching the streak again and adding color.

Looking forward to a week without any weather traumas!

Damn you, Irene

For canceling my sister's and Augie's flight.

It's not even raining here or in New York!

#HurricanesAreNotMyFriend

Come on Sunshine

Hurricane Irene be darned, looking forward to this bit of sunshine headed my way tonight:

Augie time!

Can a visual make or break a song for you?

Every once in a while, I get hooked on a song and just love listening to it but then I see video for it and all of a sudden, I fall a little out of love.  I wonder if that says that I'm easily influenced by visuals or if the visual presented is simply incongruous with the imagery I have for the song (if any). 

The analogy I thought of was the Dirty Vegas song, "Days Go By".  The song itself is in my opinion, very catchy in a mellow night life-soundtrack sort of way.  It was used in a Mitsubishi commercial years ago, highlighting a dancer in the front seat:



Personally, I thought this commercial captured the ambient, anticipatory night feel of this song pretty well and to be honest I thought the dancer was fine.  But when the commercial came up in conversation, it turns out a lot of folks really hated the dancing featured.  To me this sentiment was most efficiently and memorably captured in this David Chappelle parody of the Mitsubishi commercial:

Car Commercial

David Chappelle just nails the concept of how a visual can kill a moment or song when he tells the dancer to leave his car and driving alone, he mutters, That crazy dancin's making my pen!s soft.

So one of my favorite songs from the late 90's is Noreaga's "Superthug (What! What!)".  The first time I heard it, I was watching some kids doing amazing double-dutch to it on "Showtime at the Apollo".  But the song alone has one of the catchiest beats and I had listened to it constantly.  And even now, I'll play it occasionally and just get hooked on the beat again.  But it was only recently that I caught the video for it (if you're unfamiliar with the song, please try listening to it without watching it first):




omg.  I immediately thought of the David Chappelle quote because I guess I had ranked this song so high in my mind, that seeing the vague plot, the scantily-clad women somewhat dancing for no reason, and his overly vigorous gesticulations--is making my passion for the song go down.  Now I get that this is the typical quality/style of music videos from the 90s and I would even hazard to guess that Noreaga himself watched the video and thought to himself, what the pluck am I doing with my arms?!  But the point is that seeing the visual after loving the song aurally for so long is now making me fall a bit out of love for the song.

I'm pretty sure there are other songs where the visual doesn't work for me.  Off the top of my head, I can think of the Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star"--love hearing the song, but the video...ugh. Does this happen to anyone else? 

Earthquake!

Funny, when I moved to the East Coast, I braced myself for big weather changes from mild, temperate Southern California where my comfort zone had compressed down to about six degrees (73-78 degrees to be exact). And in my first year here in South Carolina, I've experienced snow, rainstorms, and miserably humid heat waves, but wait...there's more! I managed to bring a little bit of California with me here--earthquake.

Truth be told, though I felt the movement, the last thing I thought was earthquake. I happened to be in a Starbucks at the time after dropping off Nana to visit with a friend in North Augusta. I felt the swaying but my first assumption was that the couple in the corner must have enthusiastically started dancing and jumping up and down. But when I looked up, they weren't. Then my next assumption was that the screws in the chair I was sitting on must have gotten loose and made my chair suddenly wobbly. But it stopped, so then I just reconciled that it was my imagination or some majorly huge invisible truck had passed by and I was over it.

To summarize: People dancing exuberantly in a Starbucks, chair screws suddenly coming loose, and invisible truck were in my realm of possible explanations. Not earthquake.

Then I got a call from my concerned sister in New York.

Turns out that buildings were swaying and everyone was told to evacuate. No one knew what what was going on and as folks made their way down a packed stairwell, one woman could be heard panicking loudly about how her cousin in Philadelphia was telling her on her cell phone that they all better get out of the building ASAFP. On top of that no one seemed to be getting service on their cell phones. And when someone would ask, what service are you on? and a person would answer, say, Verizon, a shout would go out that Verizon was down. As one could imagine, this only increased the alarming confusion. Finally, an announcement went out that everything was fine and all should go back to their workstations, that there had been an "external disturbance". Frankly, I can't think of a better vague, code-sounding term to be expressed in post-9/11 New York that would send people out of the building and into the streets faster.

For better or worse, it turns out that half of New York didn't even register the earthquake and had no idea of the panic the other half working in tall buildings were going through. It turns out the 5.8 earthquake was hundreds of miles away near Richmond, Virginia--the residual Californian in me reflexively remarked, "only" a 5.8?) Nana enlightened me that apparently the bedrock on the East Coast (versus, say, California) is more solid and less fractured so that instead of dissipating, earthquake energy travels much farther.

Bottom line, yes we're all fine. West Coasters can stop rolling their eyes about our puny 5.8 earthquake and in return, I'll try to stifle a snide snort when Southern Californian tv stations label nearly every rainfall "StormWatch".

We ended our day with an awesome dinner at Baan Sawan for Nana's last night here in SoCar:

It was also the last night of Grizzly Paul's beard from his Wyoming camping trip!

Wishing Nana a safe flight back to a hopefully earthquake-less SoCal as we look towards our next weather adventure this weekend:  Hurricane Irene!

Just what this girl needed

Had a great weekend--got to see some live fights here in Columbia at Caged Chaos:

I know four guys who'll want to get back into that ring and will be right back into training and working out real soon.  N for one, I'm sure...

Also got to spend a day with Erik and Tonya Paulson, which was amazingly surreal and inspiring. Surreal because I haven't seen Erik in years since working out at his old location in Yorba Linda so it was wild that I would see him next in South Carolina. He was in town teaching a seminar at Columbia Martial Arts--unfortunately I didn't work out, but it was great catching up. It was also inspiring to see how much Tonya (a mixed martial artist in her own right) has refined and sharpened the business and program part of Erik's school--seeing his new facility and website just wows me.

And the capper of the weekend--Nana came to town and brought me these caramelly treats:

Like I said, I got just what I needed this weekend!