happy holidays everybody.

actually, i like thanksgiving and new years day better, but i am not here to be a scrooge.

even though we're going to my relatives' places for christmas, my mom made me vacuum the house while she decorated. that still wouldn't be such a big deal except she also made me vacuum the carpets downstairs, even though nobody lives there anymore. i suppose she did this to prepare for the coming of christ, or something like that. but if christ did come over to our house for chirstmas, i doubt that we would make him sleep downstairs.

also, i am here to announce that i have made ginger and coconut tapioca pudding, and it is gorgeous in the mouth. don't knock it til you've tried it.

25 things

1. i really didn't wanna do this. but now i'm doing it because enough people have done it and now i feel left out (twss). i'm doing it on blogger cuz then i won't have to tag anybody and the virus can end with me. also because i have friends on facebook that i'm not really friends with. also because my comments section is lonely.

2. my mom had initially wanted to name me linus. i would probably have hated that as a little kid. now my alter-ego is linus van pelt from peanuts.

3. people have told me that i don't really stutter enough times for me to believe that i don't stutter. but i have vivid memories of times when i've stuttered, and i'll be embarrassed by me just recalling those times.

4. you know the brand of dairy products, "berkeley farms"? where exactly are the farms in berkeley?

5. if food is put in front of me to eat, i will almost always eat it. my parents have made sure that i am always grateful to be nourished.

6. when i was a sophomore or junior in college i learned that my grandma (my mom's mother) had wished for one of her grandkids to grow up to become a doctor. if i had known this when i was a sophomore or junior in highschool i wouldn't have applied to uc berkeley's college of engineering and would have tried for a path towards medicine there instead. not that i still can't become a doctor, but it's at least worth noting.

7. when i was in highschool, i gelled my hair everyday for four years and almost never had facial hair. one month after i graduated, i had facial hair and shaved my head. since then i've always had facial hear and have never since gelled my hair.

8. when i was a freshman at college, i wasn't really that interested in the cal bears football team, even though freshman were given free season tickets. i ended up attending only one game. cjay and i didn't know many people so we went to the game with the notion that we might stay. she wanted to go home home, so we made our way to bart and headed home. when i got home my dad asked me if i had went to the game. i said "yea dad, why?". "because they won", he said. it was the usc triple overtime game.

9. when i was in first grade, i pooped my pants on halloween. there aren't many people that i really know that don't know this story.

10. the earliest memory of my life that i can recall is waking up and wanting to go to the bathroom.

11. how long do you think a person can go without picking or blowing their nose?

12. i usually don't think too much of guys the first time i meet them. some of my best boyz of all time were doods that i thought were douchebags when i first met them.

13. i think dood is the unwhite way to spell it. dude makes my mind think of blond hair surfing douchebags.

14. 14 is my favorite number. 20 is my second favorite.

15. an ultimate goal of mine is to be able to cook practically anything, from scratch. i believe i'm about 1% there.

16. i kind of think this 25 thing is pointless if you already read my blog. i mean, why don't you just list the last 25 posts i did. it would practically be the same thing.

17. my blog title is from a song by the luniz. my most used online avatar-name-thing is from a song by james brown. i wonder if they knew each other.

18. if i ever have a son, one of his names will be david. from what my dad, aunts, and uncles tell me, my uncle dave was superman. my son will be superman as well.

19. i used to believe that after i died, i could ask god to send me back as anybody i wanted to be. when i was in 5th or 6th grade, i had made up my mind that i wanted to come back as forrest gump.

20. i once had a dream where i was a kid detective, and i had a white sidekick with brown hair, i think, and her name was grapes. right before i woke up, i was kissing grapes.

21. i think i have a terrible singing voice, but i like to sing anyway, unless somebody tells me that i have a terrible singing voice. then i become sweaty and embarrassed.

22. macapuno ice cream is my favorite flavor of ice cream, even though for the longest time i had no idea what macapuno was.

23. it still surprises me today how good my mom is at remembering everything, food-wise, that i love. and it's so sad how hard it is for me to shop for my mom at christmas.

24. the last thing my grandma (my dad's mother) ever said to me, was, in kapampangan, "when you get married, invite me to your wedding." i was only able to see her a couple times in my life, mostly when i was little, and so it's the only thing i can ever recall her saying to me. it's one of my most treasured memories.

25. i guess this 25 thing was ok. i wish some of this stuff would just come out in conversation with people, but i guess things don't really work like that.

open letter to madelyn gosselin

yea, i watch jon and kate +8, so what?

dear mady,
i'm almost 85% sure you are not as spoiled as you look. or at the very least, you won't end up like somebody that would be on mtv's "my sweet 16". but whatever made you more spoiled than your sister, just know that it's not your fault, it's just to way you are. i hope that you'll grow up and be a "normal" person, whatever that might mean to you, although i'm sure a lot of normalness has already left your upbringing due to the success of your family's tv show.

what bugs me most about your show is that while the its success is probably due to the cuteness of your younger siblings, i'm sure several people watch you, specifically, and are saddened or disappointed with your spoiledness. "what a spoiled bitch" they might think to themselves. again i say this to you, it's not your fault. it's not your fault that your childhood is shown on one of the most watched shows in the country. people all over this nation are more spoiled than you seem, and a lot of them are already full grown adults. i personally know some folks that look at you with contempt while i know that they themselves are more spoiled than they think they are, and it disgusts me as much as a prostitute's underwear would.

really mady, you just need to keep acting they way you feel. that's what kids are supposed to do. soon enough you'll go on a retreat in highschool and realize that you should be thankful for your family, and yada yada yada, you'll reach an epiphany and save the world. but for now, you are perfectly fine the way you are, relatively speaking.

maybe i'll meet you someday.

your friend,
josh

fledgling

so i read a book.
and i recommend that you read it too.

but the real reason behind this post is that i used my bookmark to mark the page of a quote that i liked, and wanted to remind myself of. but now i'm moving on to another book, and i want my bookmark back. so i'll put the quote here along with the book cover.

"When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing."
- Octavia E. Butler, fledgling

letter to my hoodie

i love my sweaters. all of them. you should know that.
not because they have special all have meanings to them or anything. almost all of them don't. i try not to do that with things like sweaters, because i don't wanna be out in the cold not wearing a sweater only because it reminds me of something i don't wanna be reminded of.
but i love them because wearing a sweater is so comforting, and i have had so many of them to be comforted by.

but one sweater did have a little special meaning to me, because i bought it with my own money and then made it shine with my own skillz. my grey quiksilver zip up hoodie.

i bought it randomly from gilroy. wore it out a little bit. then while wearing it at a maganda tshirt screening event, decided to screen my screenname onto it. it made me feel so cool. so cool that i decided to see how many more things i could screen onto it. with each extra screen, my coolness would grow.

i would end up screening only two more things onto it because cutting out the stencils for screening was a beezy. two characters from peanuts; linus van pelt, who i always loved because he shared my could've been name, and a disproportionately sized woodstock, who i thought was just cool.

anyways, the zipper handle came off, and then the metal that used to hold the handle became sharp enough to take out a chunk of skin from my finger. and then some of the threads holding the lining of the zipper came loose and would catch and make me spend 15 minutes trying to get them free so i could zip it up properly. and then today they got caught again and i was so frustrated that i just took both flaps of the jacket and ripped them apart, breaking the zipper and effectively ending my hoodie's long life. i guess i could still wear it, but it's not really functional anymore unless i can zip it up, shit just gets too cold.

i can't imagine why this would be interesting to anybody. i spent the car ride from oakland to pacifica contemplating on whether or not i would post about my sweater, ultimately deciding for it only because it at least deserved some sort of obituary somewhere.

so goodbye dear old friend. like a champ you went with pretty much all my shirts and all my shoes and even all my hats. i'll be sure to donate you somewhere and hopefully you'll end up somewhere inspiring some up-and-coming freshness. maybe i'll see you on tv somewhere, who knows? maybe they'll make you into sustainable insulation and you'll continue warming people for generations. wherever you end up, hopefully, you'll do the rest of the world the good you did for me.

josh's hella late hancock commentary

i'm just gonna say it:

they should've let hancock die at the end of the movie.

this would've made it such a better movie in my opinion. i'm starting to think that it's almost always better for movies to have either sad endings, or endings that stop short of letting you see what really happens at the end, a la "no country for old men" or "lock, stock, and two smoking barrels", because these type of endings force the viewer to think about the movie more, or at least for me they do. if i leave the theater feeling happy about the movie, i just think about my favorite parts of the movie, or stop thinking about the movie altogether, because it's over and i feel good about the ending. but if i leave a movie and i feel sad or confused about the ending, then i'm forced to think about the movie more, forced to relive scenes, and think about why the movie had to end that way, and what the movie is trying to say.

but i think it's easier to make my point with hancock, because i would think that more people have seen hancock and not the previous two that i mentioned.

the beginning of the movie is spent trying to give you a sense of what it feels like to be hancock: lonely, unappreciated, misunderstood. and then you find he's immortal and then who mary is and that they've been living in a tragic love cycle for decades. at this point, in my opinion, you should feel sorry for hancock, because his woman is happy with another man, because he's almost immortal, and because a lot of other things that i can't remember right now. anyways, more stuff happens, blah blah blah, and boom, he and she are almost gonna be killed because they're too close together and the bad guys finally have them vulnerable. and he's almost gonna die.... but no. the fierce lion in him says "no die" and he storms out of the hospital, yay all is fixed and the humans have a superhero for all of eternity.

but why not let him die? if he dies, then i am forced to think about why he dies. i think about what it must feel like to be him, how sad that must be: forced into isolation from my wife (who's with another man, anyway) to be a superhero for people who a couple days/weeks/months ago said they didn't even need me. really forced to live like the only of my kind... foreverrrrrrrrrrr. then i understand why he would want to die. then it becomes a better movie.

pig headed

uhh. warning! this post is kinna graphic. actually it's really graphic, and long (twss), and the videos are graphic, too. so don't tell me i didn't warn you. but this is how food is prepared. so you might as well read along if you eat pork.

if you followed my gchat status at all, you prolly already know that for thanksgiving/thankstaking i cooked a pig's head.

but if you didn't know, i cooked a pig's head for thanksgiving. turned it into sisig, a pilipino dish i had never heard of until cjay told me that it's one of her favorite dishes. she had asked me to make it for her like 3 or 4 years ago. but back then i didn't know where to get a pig's head and was far too sheepish to inquire for one anywhere. now, i am more like a lion or a shark, and not a sheep, so i went to a butcher and asked for one. sorry it took so long cjay, and sorry you didn't get to try the dish you had waited 3 or 4 years for.

actually, i was inspired to do so by my kuya, this guy, and this video.



and recently, i have also tried to make a conscious effort to appreciate as many parts of the animals that we eat (fish eyes anybody? chicken feet?). well, at least the parts that i can stomach for now.

AND, i think deep down inside, part of me wants to become a butcher. a real one. like this guy, except cooler.


anyways, i wish i had pictures to show you the progress of my dish and as proof that i did use an actual pig's head, but i did not have a camera to use, so you'll just have to trust me.

first, i cooked the pig's head for hours in some simmering salted water, with some aromatics. actually that's what i would've done, my mom got tired of my pig's head being in kitchen so she did it herself.

and then, after it had cooled sufficiently, i cut off the ears and then cut a separating line down the middle of the head and proceeded to peel off the two sides of the face, which was skin with whatever meat i could leave attached to the skin. this took some time maybe up to one and a half hours. and i also cut my finger early in this butchering process and had to use at least 4 bandages for this tiny ass cut while cutting up this head. the cheeks of my pig were huge. i thought i had done an ok job, except i left the temples (or at least what i thought were his temples) on the skull, instead of with the skin, so i had to take those out separately.

then i took out the tongue. it was suprisingly hard to open the mouth of my pig, so i had to reach in from the back of the head. it's a pretty odd feeling grabbing a pig's tongue from the back of its mouth. the tongue is also pretty firmly attached to the mouth so it took some real effort, and some precarious cuts to get it out.

my mom then took the skull and made some soup with it. it was pretty crazy cuz after a while in the stock pot, the bottom part of the jaw came off of the skull (i don't really know what was holding it there in the first place) and my mom took it out of the pot and just left it on the counter for a while. i will just say that the most chilling moment of this whole experience was seeing that pig's bottom set of teeth on my kitchen counter, it was just weird. for a while i couldn't bring myself to eat the soup that my mom had made. i mean it was flavored with teeth!

then after mass on thursday, my dad and i fired up the grill (always a manly experience), and i started to grill the meat as entire hemispheres of the face, if that makes sense. this was huge a mistake, cuz the sides weren't really even pieces of meat. so like a total n00b i ended up burning the skin before the meat in the middle could get warm. long story short, i burned most of the skin, so i had to discard a lot of it and one of the ears. luckily skin is excellent at protecting the fat and the meat from getting overdone, so my losses were minimal at worst.

after grilling i started chopping up the various parts. and, of course, as i came to a different part of the face, i had to try it to see what it tasted like.
- pig's ear is just skin and cartilege, and mine was crunchy, not crunchy like a potato chip, crunchy like the end of a chicken drumstick, between the meat and the bone end. i had read that i should've boiled them for a really long time, to make them tender, but like i said before, i wasn't in charge of the initial boiling.
- pig cheek, or pig jowl, as they should be called, is a lot like bacon, except there's a ton more fat than lean. as a result, it is pretty delicious.
- pig snout is surprisingly tender. well it's not so surprising if you touch your nose. sorry if that's weird.
- pig tongue, or lengua, is delish!!! i admit it's pretty hard getting over the fact that it's a tongue. but by the time i had it at this point, it hardly looked or felt like a tongue.

after it's all chopped up, just add some finely diced onions and finely diced jalepenos, some soy sauce and a combination of lemon and vinegar equal to the amount of soy sauce you put in. (i ended up using a whole cup of soy sauce, i think).

if it's still warm, (my kuya would say it's done, and) you can serve, but since i took forever cutting the meat, with the door open, some of my pig's head meat was pretty cold, so i took the opportunity to pan fry the meat (for all of you counting at home, that's right, i cooked this meat 3 different times), rendering a little bit of the fat, then sauteing the onions and jalepenos in said fat. and then i added the soy/vinegar/lemon combo, so not to reduce the sauce too much. i actually chopped up more onions to add as a garnish as well, and then lightly dusted it with some cayenne pepper cuz my wimpy jalepenos weren't really that hot at all.

(twss)

and the cayenne made it look prettier.

when i brought it over to thanksgiving and told all my cousins, none of them wanted any of it. none. even as i had asked them to just try it. none. and throughout the day, people (my uncles and aunties) would tell me what i should've done, "it should tasted more sour.... it shoulda had more spice... blah blah blah"

but by the end of the night, even though there was an abundance of the different desserts everybody else made, and leftover turkey, there were no leftovers for sisig.
none.
pig's head.
eat that.

we are the ones we've been waiting for

well, 53% of us.
_______________________

i can't say i wasn't emotional election day. i couldn't stop dancing. part of me is sad that i couldn't be out in the street somewhere where a crowd was gathering, but i don't really like big ass crowds anyway. as time goes on i will prolly look back and wish i had a cool story to tell about november 4, 2008.
_______________________

kissing god goodbye
for most of the past week, i've wanted to blame the church for the passing of prop 8. i've already noted that my own church had played a relatively active, though horribly awkward and horribly STUPID, role in the yes on 8 push. while local media outlets seem to want to blame black people for prop 8's passing (how original, let's just blame black people), i've been almost sure that the coordinated surge from churches led to prop 8's passing.
_______________________

i've come to the conclusion that i won't discuss politics at home unless i absolutely have to, meaning unless my parents make me. my parents know pretty much where i stand, and i kinna know where they stand, though niether party actually knows why each stands there. (i'm pretty sure my parents attribute my liberal views to the simple fact that i went to berkeley, not to the fact that berkeley could've taught me to think for myself) and really, my parents are happy with me being who i am and having my own opinions. so what kind of son would i be if i wasn't happy that my parents have their own opinion as well?

ok that last paragraph infers that both of my parents are conservative (catholics, i'll just put that since i'm pretty sure that's where it comes from) and therefore republicans. but i've come to believe that just my mom voted for mccain. i'm almost certain that my dad secretly voted for obama. though i can't prove it because i won't ask him because of the first sentence in the previous paragraph.

before i keep going forward

i'm gonna go back.

i live next to a monster. a real one. it comes late at night and leaves early in the morning. sometimes it stays on the weekends. it gives me nightmares.

i just needed to get that off my chest.

fuckin monsters.

the pastor at my church is crazy

i'm serious.

does anybody have a digital voice recorder i can borrow? i need to record his next couple homilies.

i will first say that english is not the pastor's first language, and so sometimes it MAY seem as though he doesn't fully understand what he is saying, or the words he is making up. but that shouldn't be an excuse.

as it moves closer and closer to election day, the pastor painfully tries to inject political influence into his sunday sermon. usually it's the same ol shtick about prop 8, and even with that he scares me. two or three sundays ago, father had argued, [paraphrased] "we need to pass this proposition, blah blah blah, it is a human rights issue". and all i could do was put my head down in shock and disbelief. human rights?! are you kidding me? did you just infer that i need to vote yes on prop 8 because doing otherwise would be a violation of human rights?!

in his latest episode, pastor made more subtle attempts of political influence, saying that we are really only held to the law of god's image for us or something like that. in my opinion, he was only saying this just in case prop 8 doesn't pass.

but in any case, i need to record what he says. maybe i should even youtube it.

live blogging the last presidential debate

tonight i will be live blogging my own commentary on the presidential debate. hopefully it will be funny and worth your reading time. i'll be watching it on cnn, so as to understand which candidate is winning the squiggly line battle.

also the dodgers are losing, 1-0, to the phillies right now. top of the 2nd. i'll prolly be updating that as well. and i hate joe buck.

keep refreshing your window as the night goes on.

5:51pm
i love the focus group in cnn with soledad o'brien. i especially love how fast she talks and how slow the people react to her questions.

6:01pm
bob schieffer introduces the candidates. nice handshake between the two.

6:03pm
thank you, john, for that nancy reagan update. i was dying to know where she was.

6:06pm
is it me, or does obama look kinna tired? by the way, the women looooove obama, according to the orange squiggly line.

6:11pm
who is this joe the plumber?

6:17pm
ding, take a drink. mccain just said "spending freeze".

6:19pm
fuck you mccain. i love planetariums.

6:21pm
mccain just said "i'm not president bush" he finally has realized the game being played against him. finally. yikes. the women's squiggly line is dipping below the neutral line for mccain, and now the men's line is dipping below for obama.

6:25pm
bob schieffer has just asked about the tone of the campaign. instigatorrrr.
haha.. mccain is about to cry about an article written about him and sarah.

6:30pm
mccain refuses to look obama in the eye. haha.. now he's crying about tshirts.

6:38pm
this is quickly becoming a "he said she said" affair.

6:40pm
vice president question. i'm hoping mccain calls palin a fellow maverick.
mccain: "palin is a role model to all women"

6:45pm
cockamaney!!!!

6:55pm
without precondition. ding

6:59pm
haha.. look at the squiggly line dip, when mccain talks to joe the plumber.
i can't really type fast enough to point out all the stupid things that mccain does while obama is speaking. sometimes he's looking into the camera, while obama is answering. why?

7:14pm
this live blogging thing is harder than i thought. they're talking about abortion now. obama's weakness at that first debate.

7:16pm
yesss! education! i'm hoping obama shoots a shout out to ian.

7:27pm
mccain's smile is as creepy as hell!!!

7:31pm
debate's overrrrrrrrrrr. as they were shaking hands, mccain said "good job" about 124415 times.
also, the phillies are winning 5-1 top of the 7th. HOLLA!

even though yoshi's screwed up our order

amel larrieux is straight sickness.

when my goddaughter is old enough, i'll let her know that on the very same day that i became her godfather, i watched amel larrieux live, and ate chicken's feet.

i still want my fries with spicy miso aioli though.

(thank you wally for picking us up from the airport)
(thank you frances for waiting in line for us, while wally picked us up at the airport)
(thank you april for buying tickets =)

see how i used that last close-parentheses to make a smiley face? straight fire i tell you.

when i went to the restaurant supply store, i bought 2 cake pans

and before i was even able to use them, i now have one.


please support the STOP-STEALING-MY-SHIT-2-mile-run for a cause, a really important cause

it's no longer my space

i cancelled my myspace account the other day.


::awkward pause::


iono i just figured i say it here because they don't really let all your myspace friends know that you left the cult.



in other news, today i made another pizza. but i went beyond the call of normal pizza-ness. after i had plopped the pizza onto the pizza stone in my oven, i took two eggs and, one by one, i cracked them into a ladle, so that it would give me reach into the oven, and i plopped them right in the middle of a pizza. i did this because when april and i ordered pizzas at pizzaiolo in north oakland, or a16 in the city, i noticed that under additional toppings for your pizza, they give you the option to add an egg to your pizza. i thought this was what they meant. the results were ehhh.

back to the past(ure)

traveling back in time would be cool...maybe.

but what if you had to live in time that you traveled back to? what if you couldn't go back to the future? would it still be cool?

i mean, what about wireless high speed internet? what would you do all day? invent it earlier?

giants live blogcast

i really hate to say this.. really, i'm a diehard giants fan.. but the giants MIGHT have to lose today. unless the dodgers lose to the padres(who suck like no other, seriously, sorry jae and nicky), the giants need to lose to the diamondbacks to keep them close to the dodgers in the pennant race.

even though the race is still close and there are still plenty of games left, the diamondbacks are slumping like no other, and things can get out of hand pretty easily. the diamondbacks need to be close enough so that we can screw the dodgers over by beating them out of their playoff spot in our final games of the season. that would be glorious. it would be just as good as, dare i say it, a playoff spot.

i hate the diamondbacks. but i hate the dodgers even more.

dark night

i still have a child-like fascination with the sky.

on clear nights i stare up at the stars and wonder if something is staring back at me. shit freaks me out when i think about it.

on cloudy nights, i wonder how come i can see the clouds at night. and how come they're purple.

sooner or later it all comes crashing down

fuckin tom brady. i should've known not to pick him (in both my leagues!!) since i hate him.

friday thinks

- i guess i shouldn't fault tiger woods for being the biggest uncle tom alive, seeing how all of professional golf is so blatantly racist anyway.

- i think i'm gonna start using my mom's empty pellegrino water bottles as my regular water bottles. how cool would that be?

- i keep forgetting to write about this. over summer an old family friend called me asking if i could answer some questions to her friend's son, who was deciding between berkeley and irvine. naturally, i wanted him to go for berkeley and was telling how cool it was and how much fun he'd have there. and then he goes "well, what's the political scene like there? i'd be pretty nervous to be there cuz i'm pretty conservative." and seriously, my first thought was, "oh you're perfect for irvine then." hahaha. that's pretty mean. i guess if i thought an entire city would be against my ideology i might reconsider. maybe. but damn.

- my mom loves to talk shit too.

happy weekend bitches.

200th post: time for a poem

good morning thursday

hoping
you bring something good
to the table
cuz wednesday
mostly sucked

mostly

wednesday took my milk
my whole carton
of whole milk
i hadn't
even opened it
yet
wednesday snatched it away
REPLACE MY FUCKIN MILK, WEDNESDAY, YOU ASS

i don't care about lactose intolerance, thursday
kat and jae shared
that my boys won't swim
if i keep chuggin that
boxed soy
from costco
and april mostly
doesn't mind the gas

mostly

wednesday
stole the beer that wally bought
all six bottles
wednesday, you ass
we were saving those for saturday
REPLACE MY FUCKING BEER, WEDNESDAY, YOU ASS

oh but thursday
you let my parents stay home today
and let's hope
that they take me out
cuz wednesday was an asshole

wednesday at 1:45am

i have grandiose visions of writing a blog entry that changes the world.

and when i sit down with my macbook all i can think to say is, "i love to talk shit". and it's true, i do. i don't know why. it makes me sad sometimes. sometimes. and i don't even know why i have to put this down. but it's all i can think about while pondering something that might change the world.

sometimes when i'm talking shit, i have to check myself to see who's around, because so and so might be friends with the subject of the shit. this also makes me sad.

i think sometimes i see people as i want to see them. and only that way. and then i feel like a jerk when one day, that person decides to act all nice. maybe that's not really specific.

my back hurts.

shhhhhhh

i've started to go back to local libraries just to do work that could be done at home.

april even got a peninsula public libraries library card.

i really like spending time at the library. i kinna miss how i used to have to go every day, even weekends.

that's all.

(i really need to step up my blogging game)

trader joes pizza dough

this shit is the bomb. april and I have started a healthy addiction to the trader joe's pizza dough. i've made pizza dough from scratch before, and that shit is pretty boring. maybe not boring, but it didn't tickle my fancy, and i'm not even sure it came out ok.

but trader joe's pizza dough takes all the hard work out of the equation.
this was our attempt to replicate some of the deliciousness of the berkeley bowl corn pizza. april likes hella cheese so you can't see that we put corn and cilantro and pine nuts on the pizza under the 5 inches of melted cheese, but you can see the limes. delicious.this wasn't our best looking pizza. we have made great strides to make sure the toppings get farther out to the edge of the pizza and that our crust isn't so thick. but it was scrumptious nonetheless.

on a side note: baking lime wedges makes them a bit bitter and really juicy, prolly just right for cocktails. i shall try this and let you know what happens.

that's how we roll in the usa

who's watching the olympics?

did you see the usa's stunningly unexpected upset to be the 3rd best team in the world?

what did you think of horton? doesn't he talk funny?

what about bay area native, kevin "that's my white name" tan? choke artist?

doesn't team usa kinna remind you of a close knit family of complete douchebags?

(i would like to say that i actually thought that i was pretty cool that the american team had 2 folks of color and thought about writing about that instead, but it wouldn't be as funny)

((i think i'll continue this commentary on the Olympiad until it's over, seeing as it's very much discussed and i had already remembered all the channels covering it))

redenbacher!!!

i'm gonna try and watch more jon stewart. i think it's a bit of a college/hipster thing to do.

i'm also gonna try and incorporate redenbacher into my vocab.

scruff

i've maintained pretty much the same look for over 5 years now.

maybe by 5th or 6th grade i starting gelling my hair, and did that almost every day, at least during the school year. i even did that for the first 3 years of high school, even though i went to an all boys school.

senior year of high school i took the cow lick/wake up wings approach.

maybe a month or so after graduation, my scruff had grown and i kinna liked it, and i had decided that i would shave my head. my barber friend armando fixed my sideburns and my scruff along with shaving my head and i decided that i really like that look. and i've pretty much kept it ever since.

i only say this cuz my shit is hella itchy right now. and i wonder if i should shave it or not.

i post too little

i think i've publicly said here that i'm going to post more at least 3 other times. all while shamelessly putting in less than 10 posts a month.

well here's one for randomness.

i think they should make a portable optical mouse that's also a cell phone. for on the go professional types.

i wonder how that would do against the iphone.

trying to get back my tea legs

how not manly does that title sound? anyways, once upon a time, i would drink a lot of tea. so much so that i learned to get over the bitterness and enjoy the subtleties of the different types of tea. now as i sit here at the village grounds cafe, and sip this nice loose leafed earl grey, all i can feel is bitter with a nice aroma.

i would like to note that poleng has a pretty cool selection of teas. and an especially cool tea timer that they bring alongside your tea order. you have to see to know the coolness that i'm talking about.

shower wisdom: water for thought

evian spelled backwards is naive


brine on that

i need my own trademark non-alcoholic drink

now when i go out to a club, i don't usually have a specific drink that i always order. gin and tonic, gin martini, long island, crown and coke, it doesn't really matter to me anymore. i just look at them as acceptable extra calories. actually, now i usually get drunk in the car before the club. who said frugality was always legal?

anyways, during our trip to vegas, rick always ordered milk, for any meal of the day. while i thought this was kinna gross, especially with some of the things we were eating, i also thought it was kinna ganstah (until erin called his mini milk carton at in-and-out "so cute") i usually order water or an arnold palmer, which i can't even pronounce half the time. i thought i was pretty cool being the only person i knew who ordered that, until i found out paul also orders this most of the time too. while i shouldn't be ashamed that i share my favorite drink with paul, i want my own signature drink too!

i've got two in mind right now:
- half lemonade, half orange juice. don't know what this one is called, officially, but i think it's called a sunrise at roscoe's.
- sparkling water. i'm the only one i know, besides my mom, that actually likes this drink. and this would really help me reduce the calories i take in through drinks

let me know what it should be.

posts about babies are usually mushy

this is my cousin's kid. (i usually call him my nephew, but that's technically not the correct term) anyways, his name is zavian. i love this little boy.

but really, i wanted to talk about my cousin's other kid. i don't have a picture of her but her name is kayla. kayla is 17 months old i think. and this is when babies are prolly their cutest. because kayla is starting to understand that people mainly communicate with each other by talking to one another. but kayla doesn't know how to talk yet. so whenever she has something to say, she looks at you and blabbers something with the thought that you are understanding exactly what she is saying. and that shit is straight adorable.

that's all i really wanted to share.

better biscuit

i'm a little obsessed with biscuits. and the thing is, i don't even really like biscuits more than the normal person, but i think i overthink how i make them. i mean, i'm ok at making biscuits. my biscuits are delish when you eat them fresh out of the oven, but once they go cold, they're never the same. but i want them to be better. i want to be the willy wonka of biscuits. just like wonka can make the neverending gobbstopper, i want to make the forever fluffy biscuit. maybe it's the baking powder.

i also need a camera, because food blogging without a camera is just blogging.
guess the macbook camera will have to do.april usually falls asleep when i start blogging.

oh yea.. and kung fu panda is definitely a movie worth way more than its trailer.

"fuck you i give up!"

that's what i think a muscle in my lower back said to me when i was pushing it too hard..

now it feels like dying in my back whenever i get out of bed.

EXPLETIVE!

if i think about it, there are always problems to deal with. and i can accept that as a fact of life. but right now i wish i had different problems.

right now the more i just sit and think about my problems, it just makes me want to scream. makes me mad, when i specifically ask not to be mad.. ever.

and then i keep thinking and realize that my problems aren't that bad. that there are other people not far from me that have bigger problems to deal with. and i start feeling stupid and selfish. and then i just wanna scream even more.

and then i just start walking around my house with no purpose. mad at myself and at everything. "FUCK THIS!" i think to myself (no screaming in the house). and then i tell myself to blog, cuz i haven't blogged in awhile.

to be continued... maybe.

thinking just to think

sometimes i sit in church wondering what i'm doing there. church don't do it for me anymore. i don't get inspired to be a better person at my particular church. i sit there and criticize everything the pastor is saying, thinking to myself, "i wonder if this is why it's hard for me to listen to lectures." i've had good pastors before, pastors that know that the pulpit is a privilege and you better have your A game every week. but at my church, it might as well be freshman calc.

-----------

i've really gotten good at people watching. i always liked eating at IB's on durant, because the tables were the perfect place to people watch. it's prolly sounds creepy, but sometimes i just stare at people, usually groups of people, and make up stories about who they are and what they do, and how they're related to each other.

-----------

you ever realize that the way you see yourself is not the way other people see you?

my mom could be a rapper if she wanted to be

so i'm eating lunch at ongpin with my auntie and my mom, and just for conversation's sake, i ask about my tocino, "this stuff is expensive back home, huh?"

and they my auntie goes, "yea, all meat is expensive... i remember when we were little and we used to have rice and coconut milk for breakfast... and for dinner we would have rice and a raw egg."

and then my mom goes, "oh yea... i forgot about that" and she has this look of realization on her face, like she just remembered what is used to be like growing up back home in the philippines.

as usual, the servings at ongpin are tremendous, so when i finish all my rice, even though i had a piece of tocino with every spoonful of rice, i still have a fair amount of meat left on my plate. my auntie then looks at my plate and laughs, "that meat you have left on your plate would feed our whole family"

hot = halo halo time

my mouth prefers to eat tropical flavors.

- young coconut flesh and coconut water
- pineapples
- cherimoyas
- mangoes
- ube ice cream


that's what she said.

happy (grand)mother's day

i think i've talked a lot about my mom on this blog. and it's not like she doesn't deserve to still be talked about, especially on mother's day.. but i'mma talk about my grandma right now.

my grandma (we call her apu) cannot really see anymore. all she can really tell is whether it's light or dark. she also has a good amount of grandchildren, and most of us don't really see her more than once a week, usually at church.

anyways, something we all like to do is go up to her to greet her and hold her hand and say "Hi Apu, who am I?" to see if she can tell us apart.

something i'm proud of is that my grandma never forgets my voice. never. she's mistaken most of my other cousins for each other and even my sister for one of them too, but she always remembers my voice.

happy apu's day.

no forreal

with respect to owen and his defense of les stroud and survivorman, wouldn't bear grylls and man vs. wild make the best video game?!?

each episode is already perfectly set-up like a video game level with a defined goal and several challenges. the possibilities are endless!

shower wisdom: motivational lines that wouldn't work on kids #1

"do you wanna work at McDonald's for the rest of your life?"

time for a post

who watches top chef?
i know you do, kat. everybody, kat told me she gets pretty horny after watching top chef. she even put that on her gchat status, right kat?

if you aren't watching the current season (4) of top chef then this prolly won't make sense to you. and i'm sorry that this post will mean nothing to you, especially after i haven't posted in awhile. surf the channel, son (thanks mark).

first off, THERE'S A FILIPINO on the show! and from what i've read on any blogs i'm subscribed to, NOBODY else CARES about him being filipino but me (and you, kat). his name is dale (like the oxygen engineer) and from the vibes (aka BRAVOTV editing) of the first episodes, he was supposed to be the asshole of the show. but he isn't. he isn't particularly optimistic and positive all the time, either. he's just real. but more importantly, he has some real SKILLZ. he even made halo halo for one of his quickfires, biatch!!

second of all, contestant lisa is the actual a$$hole of the competition. with antonia coming in a close second. both are stingy stubborn human beings, and antonia is from beverly hills, but lisa comes in over the top because she is a pretty negative person, likes to complain about everything, and uses the f-word way too much, and never in cool ways.

third, every reality show needs a contestant from down under.

maybe it's cuz they don't get bravo in daly city, or pacifica, but it really sucks how everybody gets behind the filipino or filipina contestants on american idol (even if they're airheads, so i've been told, or don't even really like being filipina cough*jasminetrias*cough) or on best dance crew (even if nobody on kaba modern could claim to be filipino) and not much hype for the super talented dale.

i wonder if i would have turned out to be different if, when i was little and more impressionable, there was even a slightly famous filipino cook that i could have looked up to, like dale. maybe i would have been more inspired to pursue food, maybe my life would be exactly the same, who knows? but i mean, the only filipino i could really look up to was rufio, who was killed by the white man. and i didn't really get into karate so ernie reyes, jr. was not an option for me.

risotto with mushrooms and asparagus is what i hope to be cooking today.

ps. i just remembered bambu also posted about dale on his blog.

i'm a sharks fan

the last time i was following the sharks, owen nolan was still on the team.

now that the warriors are out of the playoffs, i need a team to fill my playoff hunger. and hockey is a pretty fun sport.

imma have to take the suns for the basketball playoffs.
i woulda taken the nuggets but carmelo pretty much ruined their chances of ever getting anywhere.

on the real

i think of 100 good things to write about whenever i'm not at my computer, usually when i'm driving by myself.

in reality, i only write about whatever good thing i can think of when i think it's about time that i post something new.

i'm gonna pick on a very small detail of one very popular reality show:

usually for a contestant that has just been eliminated from a reality show contest, they're given a very simple question and pretty much all of the contestants i've seen say the same, pointless, cliche-ass answer.

question: "is this the last we'll see of (insert contestant's name here)"

pointless cliche-ass answer: "no, this is, by no means, the last of (insert contestant's name here), we have come too far, and worked too hard blah blah blah pointless commentary keeps on going"

why am i picking on this? because in america's best dance crew, every one of those eliminated contestants were given a golden opportunity to say something very powerful for the dance community. just as an example, one crew, upon exiting could've said:

"YES, this is probably the last you will see of (insert dance crew) if you're only idea of hip hop competition is this tv show. but if you know that the hip hop dance culture is more than just this tv show, then you know that this isn't the last of (said dance crew)"

that's prolly more liberal and anti-mtv than it needs to be, but it can be adjusted.

yes yes yes i know that most contestants shouldn't even be thinking about this question or what their answer is going to be, but you have to admit that it would be pretty pimp if one of them said that.

i'm writing these down

to give myself motivation.

don't ask me how it's gonna motivate me, just believe.

so there are a couple of things that i've been wanting to do, and they don't require a job (aka money). most of them are about cooking something.
- coconut cake
- bomb ass cupcakes (super manly, i know)
- back to skateboarding
- learning my way around the city
- baking my own bread
- rice pudding

there are other things that motivate me to make money just so i can spend it on those things.
i won't list those, though. mine.

too boring now

that last post is a little silly now that i think of it.

why i can't never come home again

although rent for my college apartment was always paid by my parents, at least i felt independent. and more important, i felt "grown-up".

in the last apartment i stayed at, i became especially proud of myself for hardly ever leaving a dish in the sink to wash later. i would almost always wash dishes right after i used them, something i hardly ever did at my previous apartments. though it was something small, at least i knew i could discipline myself that much. i think it made me really excited to actually live independently of my parents, to see how well i could actually be "grown-up".

now at home, we have a dishwasher, that we fill up about once every 1.5 days and run, and i absolutely hate it... well not all of it. when we didn't have it my dad used to always graciously do the dishes (he's nice like that) after dinner. and i'm glad that at least now he's not the one doing the dishes.

but the fact that i lost one of the only "grown-up" things i taught myself to do makes me pretty depressed.

insert sad face.

i know there are other ways i could grow up, and whatever. but doing my own dishes made me excited about living. imagine that.

it's not that i'm trying to shun away from all of the things my parents have worked hard to get. i just need to feel like i can be my own responsible person again.

hypocrates

so i woke up this morning with the bitter taste of hypocrisy in my mouth after posting about high horses last night.

just because my post on organic food didn't really take into account people rights either.

maybe what i was really mad about was that in my own quest to eat more humanely produced food, i actually never acknowledged anything about fair trade or any other issues concerning the people producing the food.

my bad.

but at least now you know i care.

i do also want to acknowledge that these issues are really for people who are privileged (aka white) enough to afford these kinds of foods. actually that's another thing i was mad about. don't act like everybody can afford this shit.

respect for animals, apathy for people

this is pretty much a complete copy of a post from trisha's blog awhile back.

something must be said about this new fad coming into the food world, socially conscious meat.

i do think we should take more care of what we put into our bodies, but i seriously can't stand folks that preach that what they eat is organic, or all natural, or humanely raised, or grass fed, or whatever, and nobody preaches about how any of their shit is fair trade.

or even how any of their clothes aren't produced in a sweat shop.

now i'm not saying this because everything i consume is certified organical-humanely-fair trade-grass fed-whatever else you wanna add on, because it isn't. it's hard to make sure everything you buy is accountable, but at least i try. but shit i just can't stand people on their high horse, like they've solved the world's problems by finally recognizing something.

can't never come home again.

i feel stuck. at home. in a funk.

rich people don't become rich, they already are rich.

it was pretty silly of me to try and boil down how to get rich into a single bold-font sentence. i had once attended a meeting on personal finances, and pretty much that's what i remembered: save to be rich. but that doesn't really take anything into account. so many more factors play into "richness" than just saving what you don't spend to sustain yourself. luckily for me (and for all of you out there), wally spent one of his ultra-rare yearly comments on that post. so just enjoy. and let's get some more comments rolling!

rich people don't become rich, they already are rich.

it's not easy to work, save and become rich, especially if you don't start off with that much. if you're in a low paying job and are saddled with debt because you didn't have enough money to start out with, then you ain't gonna be rich anytime soon. sure, you can become rich, but only if you save a good percentage of your paycheck and agree to go without everything you want or need, which is incredibly hard to do if you are in a low paying job. even if you are disciplined enough to do this, it'll take years to become rich (assuming you don't lose your job and your wages don't deteriorate over time/they actually keep up with the cost of living).

those who become rich usually have a good paying job, which in most cases requires a good education. what kind of people have the resources to obtain a good education? rich people. or comfortable people at the very least. those people can provide their children and family members with the resources they need to obtain a good education and a good paying job.

when their children get this job, they probably don't have much to worry about other than themselves (i.e., they don't have to help out their family with finances and debt). and of course they can't spend all their money because they don't have unlimited wants and needs. even if they did, they probably already know better than to spend all of their paycheck because they were taught not to by their parents or in school (or they read books and websites about what to do with their money). because they probably don't have to worry about the present, they also probably have the luxury of thinking about the future. so, they put a good chunk of their money in savings accounts and investment vehicles to save for their first house, for retirement, and for rainy days.

so, i don't think you need to be a ceo, cfo, or coo to become rich. and i don't think you can become rich by just saving and investing. you already have to be rich, or have a good degree of economic security, or at the very least have access to education and incredible discipline.

and i think this is why making education affordable, accessible, and equitable at all levels is such a huge issue, because people realize that education has such a huge bearing on where you end up and how much you make.

this all said, i don't want to assume that most of us are automatically going to become rich because we graduated from a good school and will probably be getting good paying jobs (especially you, josh). there are lots of things that we have to worry about right now, like college debt or family issues. but 10-15 years down the road i think we'll all be in pretty good shape or position to be somewhat comfortable, if we make good choices with our money. and i don't think that it's a bad thing to save to become rich. it's what you do with those riches, privilege, and position that really matters.

i don't really know why i wrote all this?
-wally

ps. wally didn't really give me direct permission to use this, but he didn't say no when i asked him either.

measuring success

ok so i am morally obligated to put this down after i just posted about getting rich.

i've been thinking about it a lot lately, rich people i mean. i wonder if they're actually happy, or if it really is lonely at the top of the financial mountain. i, for the purpose of this post, am going to assume that it would be lonely, especially if you had to work pretty much all your life to get there. (this assumes a lot of other things, too, like whether or not you like your work, and what your actual job is, stuff like that.)

anyways, would you feel that your life had been successful if you were rich as hell but lonely as a mo'fo?

how would you, then, measure success? (that is if you hypothetically answered "no" to the previous question)

this is particularly what i've been thinking a lot about:
whether or not i become as rich as i dream of being, i'm going to measure my success in life by the people i touch and (hopefully) the positive differences i make in their lives.

check back in 17 years for a mid-life crisis update.

ps. by "touch" i mean in spiritual, intellectual, or other non-physically threatening sense, and not in that weird "Rannel" sense.

(sorry, Rannel, too easy)

working on your white people skillz

as rick would say "we can't be thinking of it like that"

i speak of, obviously, saving money to become rich. let me explain.

for most of my life, i had the idea in my head that i needed to go to school so that i could get a good job and become rich. that was the purpose of school, to become rich. and yet, i have finished school and am not rich, and even though most of the jobs that i'm currently hoping to get hired for will pay more than enough for me, rich they will not me make. however i have learned what will: saving and (later) investing.

that's right kids, unless you are the ceo, cfo, coo, or cto of a company, or just won the lottery, you need to save to become the rich person you have always dreamed of being.

i think it boils down to this:
rich people work to make money in order to save it, not so that they can spend it. it may sound simple, but i bet most of you got your first job so that you'd earn money you can instantly spend.

but i'm no real expert on this, i don't even have a job. yet.

"i have a wide stance when i take a shit"

i'm not gonna even bother providing a link to the new york democratic governor eliot spitzer, and his involvement in a prostitution ring. i think i've already read at least 20 articles about this particular story that ended up in my reader.

that's gotta be at least three times in the past year that a political figure has been caught cheating on his wife. notice all cheat on their wives, not the other way around.

so i'm not totally sure about some of their positions on homosexuality and marriage, but something that never gets mentioned when shit like this happens is this:

why do these political american figures publicly humiliate their own marriages and at the same time refuse to let couples of the same sex get married?

also, spitzer's wife, silda, was by his side for support at his public confession statement or whatever, and if you've seen pictures, you know she don't look that supportive. and why should she? this fool is spreading the embarrassment by showing everybody the wife that he cheated on. reading around some more articles, i'm told that a political couple does this to show strength and to make the politician "look" stronger, whatever that means. i mean, people can read her face, she's not a happy wife right now. folks can deduce that the spitzer's are just putting up a front to "look" together. what does that say about our politicians if they try so hard working on the way they "look"?

sorry laker fan's, but kobe made vanessa bryant do it too.
low blow i know.

i wonder if spitzer can buy silda off with a giant ring.

fUCKLA

i have already admitted (though not on this blog) that ucla has a pretty impressive basketball history.

but shit do you have to let them win all the time?!?!
i mean, damn, they already live in westwood, can you make anything else easier for them?

i've met a couple people from ucla, and many of them like to ask why people not from ucla hate ucla folk so much. although i've always thought this question was annoying, i never would mention about how stupid that question was.


until today.

one thing you should know before you go to a restaurant

is something that you absolutely have to order. all of my best experiences at restaurants came when i at least knew one thing that i must have. a dish that either i read about or heard about from somebody.

for example, at gypsy's everybody knows the godfather's favorite is the absolute shit.

although they'll prolly tell you the most expensive dish, asking the waiter is ok too.

once i get a job and am able to regularly go out to restaurants that i read about, i will start posting such must-have dishes for your convenience. you can also help by donating to my non-profit bank account.

this is probably only relevant to me

but i'm almost positive that alton brown copped most of his info, at least in his early years, from jaqcues pepin. i've watched all of his earlier good eats episodes, and just recently i received the pepin complete recipes and techniques series, and recognize too many similarities in the way they describe and present technique. what makes him a bigger asshole is that he frequently made fun of french chefs in his early years.

nowadays he's fatter and less of an asshole, but i will never forget. alton. you beezy.

get up stand up

was anybody watching pbs last night? the program with chuck d? about music and protest? politicized music? anyone? no?

if you didn't, i really don't blame you. does anybody out there watch pbs as regularly as i do? i usually watch pbs for the cooking shows (now that foodtv is a corporate prostitute, metaphorically speaking)

but last night, pbs had a special (and one-time for all i know) 2-hour documentary called "get up, stand up: the story of pop and protest" about pop music and protest. so if you did see it, then lucky you.

although much of it was watered down versions of several different political songs and the eras that defined them, it was still pretty interesting. most definitely gave me some things to think about. it's too late to explore them all now, but hopefully i'll get back to this:

- i bought the only bob marley shirt i have once i read the first couple chapters of "can't stop, won't stop" although i had never really heard most of the political songs that he had written during the 70s.

- chuck d made a point that black music of the late 60s and the 70s, james brown - i'm black and i'm proud, and the above mentioned bob marley had empowered black people, especially black youth, and immediately, i thought of soulja boy... haha. that was a low blow. i know i've already labored on the point of soulja boy but seriously, who's fault is it that this shit got so popular? is it soulja boy's fault? how about the urban youth that (super)soak up that shit like a sponge? or corporate-controlled radio stations?

- funniest thing ever: being at the bear's lair and hearing hella white girls scream when crank dat came on. and then same white girls not even knowing the damn dance. YOOOUUUUU

- speaking of public enemy. does anybody else see the irony of where flava flav is now? from fight the power, one of the most politically influential and rebellious songs ever, to flavor of love, which is seriously white america making fun of black people.

- speaking of vh1 and mtv and irony, i find it really ironic that pbs is the network that showed this documentary, rather than mtv or vh1. i mean, it's not surprising, it's just ironic. can people stop watching that shit?!?!?! please?? i'm seriously begging people to not watch mtv anymore unless you can seriously prove that that shit isn't making you literally go dumb.

- we cannot change everything in this world by throwing money at it. benefit concerts and charity donations can only go so far.

we are the ones we've been waiting for (june jordan)

20 dollar dinner for (at least) two (maybe even four):

[insert josh's food porn picture of roasted chicken and potatoes here]

ok, even though you can get a pretty good 20 dollar meal for two from like barney's or brick pig's house or gordo's or even from old reliable, the asian ghetto, it always tastes better to make your own food. and there's no better, simpler gourmet meal to fix up for yourself and a lucky friend than some roasted chicken and yukon potatoes and some roasted asparagus.

there are some good recipes out there. there's even a video.

surrrously, everybody needs to roast a chicken once.

and i seriously need a new camera to document my food expeditions, food excursions, food explorers, and food rangers. if only i could afFORD it. get it?

in good times, in bad times

my friend rustico, who i hadn't seen in more than 4 years, recently asked me if going to berkeley made me more liberal and more politically active, and i said yes, because it had. but now that i've thoroughly marinated on that thought, i've come to a more thoroughly marinated conclusion: that it wasn't just the fact that i had been accepted into berkeley and managed to stay there for the full 4 years that had made me more into these things, but in fact it was the people that i hung out with at berkeley that changed me... which makes perfect sense, and now i'm gonna personally screen all of my kids' friends so i can shape them into what i want them to be. muahahahahah!

but in all seriousness, i am forever grateful for being able to meet and get to know and get to learn from people that i can call my friends. i feel, dare i say it, privileged for being able to know these people... aren't you jealous of me? you should be.

example: mr. g is my friend teaching math, geometry to be specific, at a public high school in oakland. if you actually read his blog, it's amazing learning just how education policies affect the school systems and how it affects the teachers and how it affects the students. i mean, seriously, shit is nuts. and i just feel so dang lucky to know the guy. and it's not even that mr. g is like this uber-idealistic-berkeley superhero, i mean, he's not your ordinary joe, but mr. g is also mr. i-want-a-rock-band-set-just-like-everyone-else.

sorry if that shit was corn mushy.

Not a restaurant review: A16

On me and April's first visit here, A16 became an instant favorite of ours, leading me to brag about it's wonderfulness to anybody I came across for a week after our dinner. A16 stands for a highway that runs through Campania, the area surrounding Naples; and the food of the restaurant focuses specifically on the cuisine of that region.

We started our meal off with some crostini and fresh mozzarella and olive oil, and I've never looked at mozzarella the same way since. Like butter, son.

April also had a drink called a "Blushing Angel", which was a wine cocktail, a strange concept to me, but she said it was delish. I wish I took down the parts of it, so I could be the only person I know whipping up wine cocktails, but whatevs.

Our main courses were a pizza bianca and a pasta dish, maccheronara, along with a side of roasted corn, all standard italian, all standardly DELISH. One thing to note, the side of corn was presented in a genius fashion, being cut into little disc segments of corn on the cob, so as to be able to serve corn in a restaurant in a more upscale fashion.

For dessert, we shared a chocolate budino tart. A chocolate cookie crust, with a chocolate filling, sprinkled with sea salt and slathered in olive oil. Don't knock it, shit is magnificent.

Our second visit there was still delish, but just wasn't as successful, I think cuz our expectations were so high from our first visit. Always go with the meatballs if they still have them.

This is a restaurant I highly recommend. A pizza and the budino(and the meatballs) are the only musts. Other than that, I can't really say anything, as the menu changes (like any good restaurant) according to what is in season.

$40/person should be enough for most nights there (i know, shit is kinna expensive. but such is the price you have to pay to eat with white people that'll prolly never go to cheesecake factory, even though i still think cheesecake factory is pretty good)

steroid committee racists

let's just be frank people, all the good players in baseball took steroids. it's not too hard to believe anymore.

i don't even know why people never mention the fact that baseball players, especially the good ones, are some of the highest paid professional athletes ever. so please stop talking about how these players are supposed to have morals and set good examples. shit, if you dangled a hundred million dollars a year in front of me, i'd do whatever i could get away with to get ahead too.

second, why the hell are all the republican committee members siding with roger fuckin clemens? how are you gonna spend a couple years and a trillion dollars gathering evidence to indict barry bonds, who just happens to be black, and then when fuckin roger clemens finally starts talking the gov't decides they wanna be on his side??

fuckin double standard. you can argue that roger clemens is just as much as asshole as barry bonds. but we don't, because espn will never let those stories get to tv.

so frustrating.

i had a dream that i was an iron chef

i'm not completely sure i was an iron chef, but i was a chef for sure.

can you keep your lenten promise?

here was a list of things i was thinking of giving up for lent:

- vitamin C
- amino acids
- waking up
- napping
- walking
- gossiping
- salting my foods
- folding my clothes

i had more, and they were funnier.
i ended up just telling myself that i'd try to go to the gym everyday. except on ash wednesday i had to fast and so if i went to the gym, i'd really starve. that's just prolly a lazy ass excuse though.

i did apply to a job, though. good thing i didn't give up on job searching for lent.

selfish or selfless

here's a test that i just created right now that has no scientific backing or data analysis or anything telling you that it works or it even matters, but whatever, i think it's interesting to think about.

when somebody tells you to make a wish do you begin your wish by saying "i wish for..." or do you say "i hope that..."

selfish = i wish for
selfless = i hope that

soak on that

random thoughts while watching food

pretty much all i do is think about food nowadays. it's too fun. thinking about menus to experiment with myself. places to eat with april. places to show my parents. i also think a lot about how i can improve my appreciation of food, which is kinna weird.

it kinna sucks though, when i'm trying to find a job as an engineer, and i'd rather look through a bunch of food blogs.

- sandra lee is a ho

- what else was going on in the world when jesus was alive?

- i don't know much about chef thomas keller other than the french laundry, but food blogs like to call him "foodie jesus". iono about that. but for me, iron chef masaharu morimoto is the closest thing to the food-zeus that i can think of. i wonder how thomas keller would do in an iron chef battle.

- i don't blame tyler florence for "selling out" by doing those applebee's commercials. can you blame him? he's one of the only real chefs left on food network's "in the kitchen" line-up, and he doesn't get the same shine as the rest of those HOS!

- ming tsai used to have a late late night show on the food network. now he has a daytime show on the kqed family of channels. some people might say that's a step down. eff no.

- rick bayless is the king of mexican cuisine. funny but true that just because you're the best cook in the southwest, you're the king of mexican cuisine, even if you're white.

- jacques pepin should win a lifetime achievement award, if he hasn't already. maybe even a nobel prize for culinary sciences.

- if rachel ray is such a sicilian girl, then why the hell can't she pronounce parmigiano reggiano right?

- i think i'm gonna vote no on all the propositions

- and fuck you pedro gomez!

ranting session

this was prolly sparked by my previous post.

i. this will prolly sound sexist, but it isn't (i hope). today i thought about it, and i realized that i'm starting to REALLY not like the food network because of all the shows with cooks, many of which are women, that aren't even involved in the "foodie" community and/or culture. not that i'm against women chefs with their own cooking shows, but these ladies aren't even real chefs! i mean, i haven't done all my homework on the "foodie industry" but i do know a couple of things:

(1) the "foodie" culture is dominated by white people (2) the restaurant industry is male-dominated, [i knew this before ratatouille] (3) one measure of success as a chef is owning your own successful restaurant (4) filipino cuisine has not yet become a "foodie" type of cuisine in this country, but it's still my favorite.

with that being said i think that there SHOULD BE more women chefs on tv. but dang, can the food network please use some real chefs? here's a list of some the women food network celebrity cooks who have tv shows that air ALL THE TIME (in no particular order):

- rachel ray, although she does endorse ritz CRACKers and dunkin donuts.
- giada de laurentiis, although she did do that really weird esquire photo shoot
- ina garten, cooking in the hamptons lady
- sandra lee, she's lived a hard-knock life, kinna, but still very weird
- ellie krieger, she's still cool though, healthy is always cool
- paula deen already hated on her
- ingrid hoffmann, simply deliciLOCO

with the exception of (surprise) paula deen who own's the lady and sons all of these ladies have never even tried opening up a restaurant, even with their newly found celebrity status. what can we conclude? i know you're thinking it. THEIR FOOD ISN'T THAT SPECTACULAR! oh sure, it's prolly better than eggs and rice, but nothing better than what a creative mind can come up with in the kitchen (along with some appropriate research from real chefs). maybe i'm laboring over a small point, but i'm pretty sure that this channel was built off of celebrity chefs, not celebrity cooks. i mean, yes the above mentioned do present important practical techniques for your everyday home kitchen. but damn, how much frickin rachel ray do i need to watch before i can watch a real chef cook? i got more than 30 minutes, teach me something harder to make!


ii. so first it was that one golf commentator lady, jokingly saying tiger woods ought to be lynched. and now it's dana jacobsen, whoever the hell she is, drunkenly making some inappropriate comments at a celebrity roast.

are you surprised? i mean why should you be? we all know that mainstream sports media shuns any and all of the cultural, racial, and social questions professional sports inevitably creates, and we all know that more than enough sports commentators are racially, culturally, socially, religiously, or otherwise-ly insensitive. so why should we be surprised? these two problems create another clashing problem. i'm pretty sure the screening process you have to go through to become a sports commentator involves the questions "are you white and conservative or can you associate yourself with white AND conservative people?" and "how do you feel about black athletes?" and "isn't fox the best tv station ever?"

anyways i don't hate all sports commentators, i miss the days when kenny mayne and dan patrick did sportscenter. i just hate the fact that most of the biggest games have to be commentated by some of the biggest assholes, like joe buck, prolly the biggest racist asshole in sports commentating history. eff you joe buck. and it's still too bad that stuart scott is still the only premiere sports commentator of color. and fuck you pedro gomez.

ps. somebody needs to tell tiger woods that he's colored, maybe he should watch this

old people don't watch music videos

i remember a time when vh1 and mtv were two totally different channels. mtv was the center for everything cool, and vh1 was the center of everything cool to old people. you would watch mtv with your friends and vh1 with your parents or something like that. they both played music videos frequently.

now, they're pretty much the same garbage. garbage garbage garbage.
ok, maybe not all garbage. best week ever is a pretty good show. but seriously, super-testosterone filled i love new york? and that show with all the skanks and bret michaels? i feel like i'm getting dumberer just thinking about them. does anybody ever think about the children anymore?

and i won't even talk about mtv anymore. just thinking about some of their shows makes me wanna beat up on dumb little rich kids.

i need a drink.

resting on my laurels

when you tell people that you're graduating from berkeley engineering, they make it seem like it's gonna be a piece of cake to get a job, like they're gonna give away jobs like free ipods, all you have to do is sign up..

well i haven't really tried getting a job yet, but i'll let you know how easy it is


(if you saw juno, which i recommend that you do, i'm sorry for using the ipods line)

like a desert waiting for the rain

i started really liking norah jones pretty much after i heard that line. i think it's a gorgeous analogy, except that i think norah was talking about sex, when it can apply to pretty much anything.

i think, and i hope i'm not speaking for myself, that it can apply to my faith. not that i'm actually expecting something from Him, but more and more, i'm feeling that that's what we're being preached.

hmm.. maybe this is all a bit confusing. i'm gonna try and go through a thought progression that happened today at church, and maybe folks can understand what i'm tryin to say.

- so i went to the 8pm mass by myself, i like going by myself because i just do. and i was sittin by the side where the confession room is. father andrew makes a semi-scene going into the priest's side of the confession booth, and then a line slowly accumulates leading into the confession booth.

- so now i'm thinking, i remember when i was in 2nd grade, and we had to do confession before our first communion. i remember being nervous going to father for confession, not because i had dirty sins to confess, but that i couldn't figure out what i was going to say to him. i wasn't a bad little kid. so i had to over-exaggerate a kinda-sin that maybe i had thought about doing, or something like that.

- now i'm thinking, if i went into confession, i still don't know what i would say to father. not that i'm an angel or anything, but i'm not a bad person, and i don't consider myself a sinful person. also, i don't know too many people that are just outright sinful people. which leads me to thinking...

- why is the line for confession so long? why are all these people lined up for confession? what could they possibly be ready to confess? i guess what i was trying to get at in my head, why do we have to confess our sins? why, why, why can't we just try to be better people? i'm sure you get some reassurance that a priest knows what your sins are, but then, why father andrew? he's like the worst priest there.

- now it's established in my head that i no longer need confession. not that i'm gonna be a perfect person, but i won't live my life sinfully, and for any sins that i do/have commit/ed, i usually am pretty remorseful once i think about them.

- then i get my "this is what faith is" realization. that we try to live sin-free our whole lives, with the hope, the "faith", that this will all mean something in the end. we are all deserts, waiting for the rain. waiting to be quenched with something.

not really an epiphany, i think most folks i've known in my life were raised to think this way.

here's to having the faith that the rain is coming.

that staples shit it whack

there really is no easy button in life.


i like being relaxed. i wish i could be relaxed all the time. i'm pretty sure i'd be productive as a relaxed (not lazy) person. but really, i can't, cuz that's just how life is. you can't be relaxed all the time, there aren't too many people in the world that want you to be relaxed all the time. you gotta worry about shit. all kinds of shit. there needs to be moments of panic in your life, sometimes even sheer terror. why? i don't know.

i guess that's a pretty broad topic.
but shit, i just like being relaxed. it's not really more money more problems. cuz i don't have any money or a job even, and i already have more problems than when i did have a job. maybe that's an exaggeration, but it feels like it. it should be more expectations, more problems.

i have a feeling 2008 is gonna be a really different year. maybe the most different of my life. ever. does that make sense?