The Adventures of Chris

Kobe Bryant is such a f*cker. I hate that guy, seriously. That asshole convinces the Lakers to get rid of Shaq, signs a huge contract and promptly gets himself in a sex scandal that his team actually supports him through, becomes the biggest star on the biggest team in the NBA (which he wanted), and then demands a trade publicly, thereby weakening the Lakers’ trading position (if everyone knows he wants out and will disrupt the team, why would they offer anything good in a trade, knowing the Lakers have no leverage?) Then he invokes his no-trade clause (which I honestly believe that the Lakers never thought would be needed) and says he’ll only go to 1 of 3 teams, two of which are in the same division as the Lakers. Now he’s saying he’s going to void a trade to the one team not in the same division that he’d play for (Chicago) because he wants to make sure that there are still good players on the team that he gets traded to (so he can win the championship).

I’m so bothered by him on so many levels. A lot of people bring up the sex scandal, but I don’t give the Lakers that much credit for it - honestly, most teams would probably have to support him like the Lakers did. They mortgaged the franchise on him, so they had no choice. But I’m bothered by him for every other reason. When you sign a massive contract, you pretty much ensure that you’re restricting your team’s financial strength, thereby making it more difficult to bring in other good players to support you. How can you complain when you don’t have enough good players when you’re one of the main reasons why that’s the case? True, it’s not impossible to sign other good players, but at the very least, it makes it such that your team has the slimmest margin of error when signing and drafting players.

I hate that he’s using his no trade clause to pretty much ensure that the Lakers will get shafted in any trade for him. He’s single-handedly destroying the Lakers for the foreseeable future. Just so he can try to make it to the NBA finals. That’s right, he’ll just get to the finals. He’s not going to win it. He’s going to turn the Bulls into the Andy Roddick (Wimbledon version) of the NBA. Roger Federer will be played by the San Antonio Spurs.

As if that’s not bad enough, I still stick to the theory that athletes should feel more accountable to their local fans. The tough thing about being a sports fan is that, if you’re a legitimate fan, you can’t really choose the team that you root for. I don’t care if all of my relatives suddenly join the Portland Trail Blazers, I couldn’t wholeheartedly cheer for them. I think, as a player decides to sign a big contract with a team, he has to be ultra-sensitive to the fact that he’s tied the fate of his team to his own, and he has to, at the very least try not to consciously damage his own team. I know that’s a really idealistic thing to say, especially from a pessimist like myself, but when I think of sports, I think of the 8 year old version of myself playing basketball in my living room, pretending that I’m Magic Johnson, Kareem, or Byron Scott. I hate to think how my youth would have been screwed up if Magic or Kareem were like Kobe. What would I have done? Tried unsuccessfully to cheer for the Celtics? I’d probably be in counseling to this day if I had tried that. If every athlete acted like Kobe, they should just not have teams by region. They should just have Team 1 through Team 24, and hold all of the games in Bismarck, South Dakota. That way, there would be no regional favoritism, and attendance would suck, meaning that all of the players would get paid less. They should also serve the players nothing but baked beans during the season, thereby ensuring a few humiliating moments for the players during the season.

I hope that Kobe gets traded, and then the Suns and Mavericks trade all of their best players to the Orlando Magic, who then destroy the Bulls every year in the Eastern Conference finals until Kobe is 40 (and if the Bulls somehow get past Orlando, hopefully they lose to the Spurs anyway). The irony is, if Kobe goes to Chicago, I actually will end up cheering for the Celtics…whenever they play Chicago. That’s already something my 8 year old self would never have approved of.

Asshole =

I carried an eye patch, fake beard, and pirate hat in my bag to work today. I didn’t wear it. I didn’t wear it because I wasn’t sure how costume-wearing works at my office. There are two kinds of places - the kind where everyone wears a costume and it’s a cool thing, or the kind of place where all the secretaries and people with no upward mobility dress up, and all of the higher ups don’t. At the second type of place, wearing a costume is practically announcing that you shouldn’t be taken seriously. It’s harsh, but true.

So, since this was my first Halloween here, and since I’m in the legal department (where I think getting taken seriously is a bit more important than in some other departments), I didn’t wear the costume, I just brought it in a bag.

Within five minutes, I realized that, with the exception of one higher up lady, my office is the second type.

The hat, eyepatch, and beard stayed in the bag all day.

The end.

Books

I just finished Heat by Bill Buford. I loved it. It was like My Side of the Mountain, except instead of learning survival skills in the woods, the main character, an editor at the New York Times, goes on a quest to learn about Italian food by first working at Babbo (Mario Batali’s flagship NY restaurant) for 15 months and then working in an Italian butcher shop (in Italy) for an extended period of time. In terms of content, Heat pretty much is the perfect book for me. The book contained useful facts (the book includes a lot of food related knowledge) and entertaining stories (especially the descriptions of the Babbo kitchen and of the Italian butcher). I really admired the author’s borderline obsessive behavior. The guy took his quest all the way, actually trying to hack it in the kitchen at Babbo and then going to Italy to live and learn…it was really inspiring. I don’t have the money, the time, the drive, or the connections to ever do something like that, but reading the book was the closest thing to it. By the way, he suggests never ordering pasta at an Italian restaurant near closing time (they use the water all night and by the end, it’s sludge).

TV Shows

I really think 30 minute Office episodes are better than the hour-long ones. The show really specializes in telling stories via moments and secondary reactions, not through dialogue and drawn out plots. The hour-long episodes tend to drag and contain more of the latter, which I don’t think is the show’s strong point.

I actually thought the best plot point was Jim making fun of Dwight’s Second Life, but revealing his insecurities via his own second life character. And, in a reversal, it was Pam that was the driven, more secure one. That’s what I mean with telling stories in moments. They said all that stuff in 20 seconds.

Realizing Michael’s director’s cut commercial was good and meant to galvanize the office…(a) wasn’t the Dwight/Phyllis to Stanley transition really illogical and (b) didn’t the commercial insinuate that Dunder Mifflin hired reformed criminals? I’m only being semi-serious. I’m just happy to see Stanley’s one smile per season. The commercial also reiterated something that should be common knowledge - you always want to set whatever video you shoot to “Chariots of Fire”. For instance, wouldn’t a bride’s walk down the aisle be even more dramatic if set to Chariots of Fire? Who needs Canon in D?

I’m glad it’s back, but isn’t Scrubs predictable now? I mean, I knew that the Janitor’s chick really was named Lady. I think JD and Elliott’s self-pity (and Carla’s subsequent reprimanding) is also predictable. Even the use of Mat “Adam Duritz must be my father” Kearney at the end was sort of predictable. The best part for me was any scene involving Turk choosing his candy bar, but that’s just the kind of random humor I like. Also, aren’t they just setting it up so they can put JD and Elliott together at the end (Turk said that Molebutt (Elliott) was good for JD)? Shannon, do you watch Scrubs, because if you don’t, then Steph is the only person who might be reading this).

Music

I’m really into two things right now - The National’s last 2 albums, and, because of this karaoke machine we’ve got, songs like Lionel Richie’s Stuck on You and Earth Wind and Fire’s “September.” Combined, these songs comprise a really weird Ipod playlist. Oh, and I like that Ingrid Michaelson song and Beck’s latest song.

Movies

I really want to see Lars and the Real Girl. It seems like the kind of movie I like - awkward person shunned by his peers ends up forcing his peers to inadvertently reassess themselves. I really identify with those awkward chara….I mean, I enjoy these types of films.

To celebrate the fact that I am 365 days away from 30, Susan took me to Quince, a restaurant in San Francisco that I’ve been wanting to try for a long time (ironically, I had tried to take Susan to Quince for her birthday, but failed to get a reservation).

Quince has the distinction of being one of Thomas Keller’s favorite restaurants in SF. That’s both an honor and a heavy burden, depending on how you look at it. I’m happy to say that I thought the meal was fantastic. It started out with me opening the menu to see that it said “Happy Birthday Chris” printed on it. That was a nice touch that genuinely surprised me.

Then came the two kinds of breads. One had some parmesan and one had some kind of cheese and red chili powder. The red chili powder bread was unbelievable. I loved it. It was just so unusual, but amazing. Something about how the chili powder brought out the flavor of the other ingredients.

I also had an octopus carpaccio in a porcini vinaigrette that was killer. The octopus was really tender, and the porcini vinaigrette was just acidic enough to bring out a new dimension, yet not be too overpowering. Susan had a Jerusalem Artichoke soup with mushrooms, craime fraiche, and chervil, that was also a great flavor combination.

I followed that with the agnolotti dal plin while Susan had the sea scallops with spinach and pomegranate. I read this article in Bon Appetit about a year ago, written by a guy who had tried agnolotti in Italy and embarked on an almost obsessive quest to find similarly good agnolotti in the U.S. (he says Del Posto in NY and Spago in LA are good, but still not the same). So this was my first shot at agnolotti and I had to take it. They didn’t look like much, but for the small package, the flavors were really clean and strong. I liked them. Susan’s scallop was incredible. The texture was perfect, and the pomegranate gave the scallop a lot of depth and a great color.

I followed that with a Venetian-style bigoli while Susan had the raviolo di ricotta. I got the bigoli because it came in a tomato-based sauce and was a lot different from my agnolotti (which was in brown butter). Plus, I like the word “bigoli” because it sounds like a made-up word. The pasta at Quince is hand-made, and its got a great texture. One thing about pasta that I noticed in Italy was that it was slightly rough. Hand-made pasta tends to be rougher, while the dried kind is smoother. The rougher kind lets sauce stick to it more easily, and it also allows for more even sauce distribution. Impressive. Susan’s raviolo was probably the one miss of the night. It was sitting in a pool of butter and was too rich to handle. We could only eat about 2/3 of it.

For dessert I had persimmon sorbet over pomegranate granita and almond gelee. I didn’t expect the presentation to be so great, but the orange sorbet over the blood red pomegranate granita looked really sharp. It was an unusual combination, but you can’t miss with frozen type desserts (in my opinion, at least).

We got a few freebies as well, including a pasta with spiny lobster and bay scallops (very good), and some mulberry flavored chocolates.

I’d definitely go back to Quince. I felt like the food there is of a higher level in the sense that flavors really work together. There’s more depth to the food than at most places. Plus, that bread was unreal. I had no shame and asked for them to take some bread to go.

Thanks Susan! Also, thanks to Steph for the books and the e-card, and the people who called me (but who actually don’t read this blog).

My birthday is coming up in the imminent future. I am currently, technically in the running for 3 jobs (although in reality, it’s 2 because one employer has actually reposted the listing (ouch!)). Since I am practically awaiting as few as 1 but as many as 3 rejections, there is a decent likelihood that I may receive some form of rejection on my birthday.

I just thought of that today, and I realized that it could be awkward. But I thought of something proactive that I can do about it. I want to set an “autoreply” for my email account that says “I will not be checking my email today because it is my BIRTHDAY!!!!! =)” Can’t hurt right? What’s the worst that can happen? They’ll say no to me again?

Anyway, It’s the closest thing to a “f*ck you” I can give to an employer. Now to figure out how to set it up.

I’m trying to compile a list of “underrated worst feelings/moments” in life. So far I’ve got: increasing your odds bet and having the shooter roll a 7 one second later. Squirming in your chair minutes before you have to perform in a piano recital. Craving a particular food item all day, rushing to get it, then arriving 5 minutes after the store closes. Watching your hometown team implode on the field (see: LA Dodgers) or off the field (see: The Lakers’ Shaq trade). Seeing the ice machine at work broken.

I’m going to add two new things – telling an interviewer at a job interview that you have no practical experience and shaking an interviewer’s hand at the end of an interview.

Lately I’ve been living these last two pretty often, and they’re both terrible. When an interviewer asks you if you have any “practical” experience, I’ve learned that the absolute worst answer in the world is “no.” Any other answer is better. “I’m wanted for burglary in 5 other states”. “You’re a lot ditzier sounding than your picture indicates”. “I’ve got crabs”. All of those answers are better because, although the end result is the same (the interview effectively ends then and there), you at least have the benefit turning the tables by watching the other person shift uncomfortably after the answer.

Leaving an interview is a bad feeling because it signals the beginning of the worst part of job searching – waiting for a call back. Initially, you start second guessing everything that just transpired. Were you enthusiastic enough? Too enthusiastic? Not determined enough? Was there something in your teeth? Was your laughing at their jokes too fake? Did you sound knowledgeable enough? As if the second-guessing isn’t bad enough, it’s made even worse by the fact that you’ll never, ever find out the answers to any of these questions.

Then comes the waiting. I’m so glad that I have a Treo because I really love it as a gadget….and I need to love its functionality to offset the hatred I have for it when it never rings with employers calling. Seriously, there’s never been a device that has been the object of such a constant stream of nervous anticipation. I almost crapped my pants today solely because of a wrong number. I’ve even called my phone on occasion just to see if it still works. Sometimes I think I’m channeling so much nervous energy into it, it’s going to start levitating and flying around the room, David Blaine-style.

Then, after a few days, your hope starts to wane. You figure they’ve either tossed your resume, forgotten about you, or most likely, offered the spot to someone else and are waiting on their offer. You start thinking about things in the future, telling yourself that next time, you’re going to find the right combination of enthusiasm, determination, realistic fake laughing, and knowledge. Then you realize that’s bullshit because there’s no such thing. Then you start thinking about the time and money you spent on a degree that, at that particular moment, is effectively useless and how you’d be happier running a Subway (everyone hates lawyers, but not everyone hates a good meatball sub).

To offset the depressing nature of this post, I did spend time thinking of five underrated “great” moments to end on:

5) Hearing a song on the radio that you used to love but haven’t heard in a really long time
4) Scratching a bug bite
3) Thinking you made a mistake but realizing that you were right all along
2) Taking a dump when you really, really need to
1) Waking up early, feeling really tired, and then going back to sleep.

So don’t be depressed by this entry. Today I just happened to have experienced #1 and #2.

I drove down to L.A. this past Thursday evening. Clad in my suit pants and a fairly wrinkled white dress shirt and no tie, I hit the freeway at around 7pm. Here’s my timeline:

7:05pm - I love McDonalds cheeseburgers. They’re the perfect road trip food. That’s probably the single biggest reason why I’ve made a conscious decision not to see Super Size Me.

7:11pm - Those two cheeseburgers were delicious. I’m going to save one for the road.

7:12pm - I think I’ll start with the New Young Pony Club cd. There’s too much indie disco rock stuff right now, but I need something new.

7:45pm - My bladder is in distress. I don’t know how it happened. Could it be the Diet Coke? I’ve only drank 1/3 of it! I think Diet Coke makes more pee than regular Coke. Santa Nella! That’s where Pea Soup Andersen’s is! I gotta exit now! [I gunned the motor, hit Santa Nella, exited, and went straight to a Chevron. Plugged the gas into the car, let it start up, and ran in and saved my bladder. Came out to the car and realized that I’d only burned 1.5 gallons of gas.]

8:10pm - Ah, Garbage 2.0, possibly one of my top 3 albums of all time. I love that album. There’s only one song on there I don’t like, and that, in itself, is something that is extremely rare. Garbage sounds a little bit dated now (damn…I played this cd a lot…in college) but they’re still fantastic. I can’t wait until kids roll their eyes when I play it in the car, thinking that Garbage and The Beatles were of the same era.

9:15pm - My bladder is starting to pressurize again, but it’s not too bad. Garbage’s “You Look So Fine” is the best example of the kind of bassline that I like in a song of that type.

9:30pm - Madonna’s Immaculate Collection is a money album. Why did dad tell me that Michael Jackson and Madonna were so bad? They are both pretty good actually. Has it taken me 20+ years to be able to recognize that? Was I brainwashed?

9:40pm - Material Girl is playing. This reminds me that I don’t have a copy of the Alvin and the Chipmunks episode where the Chipettes sang this song. It’s the episode where Brittany tries to join the “Sisters”, the cool girl club at school. She spends all this time putting together an outfit, thinking she’s going to get into the club. By doing so, she doesn’t help Jeannette with a science project where they were raising a baby pig.

9:45pm - That reminds me, I saw a shirt with Brittany (the chippette) on it but with the word “BRITNEY” on it. That really bugged me. Her name is spelled Brittany, like the French region, not like Spears.

10:10pm - Is this song called “La Isla Bonita” or “Spanish Lullaby”?

10:15pm - I don’t like Papa Don’t Preach and Live to Tell. The middle of this CD isn’t great. That reminds me - what if every CD was sold like Radiohead’s recent one, where you “pay what you want”? How much would I pay for each cd?…[I spend 30 minutes comprising a album pricing system loosely based on the Michelin star system, where songs are rated from 1-3 stars, but most songs get nothing. After that, I’ll pay a dollar for the total number of stars, plus $1 for the cd printing itself).

10:40pm - Wow, Madonna really helped this trip fly by. Now it’s time for Ferry Corsten to bring me into LA. There’s no greater driving music than trance stuff. Ouch, I keep forgetting that I’m driving a Chevy Cavalier. When’s Susan going to call me? Sh*t, here comes the smelly part of the 5.

11:15pm - I wonder if my dad will ever realize that this part of the 5 is Fort Tejon, not the “Cajon” pass.

11:45pm - I’m back. G-town looks the same to me. I can’t believe I was gone for 2 months.

- The ice machine at work is broken and it ruined half of my week. You should have seen my face when I turned the corner into the break room and saw the “Do Not Use” sign coupled with a large orange cone (the orange cone was needless, but a nice touch, and, in my mind, an appropriate reflection of the enormity of the situation). Being a Californian, almost all of the ice I’ve seen has been in a cup..and I love ice. I really like drinking liquids that are in the temperature zone between refrigerator-cold and frozen. It’s so invigorating. This is pathetic. I will stop discussing ice now.

- The little things about The Office are so amazing. I didn’t think the episode storyline was that hilarious, but I really liked so many little things. I loved the DVD moving box game cold open. It all worked so well - the game itself, the coordination with and the stupidity of Michael’s recommendations, and Michael’s reaction afterwards. Jim staring blankly at his desk after signing Meridith’s cast. The way the pizza stuck to Ryan’s face. The lag time on the webcast. The fact that solitaire is always on Creed’s screen. The line “Get back to your desk and start selling multiple reams like a man.” The quick cut to Andy (with a perfect expression on his face) saying “I stole it.” Putting in 1 second of Pam and Jim each separately witnessing Dwight’s sadness, further demonstrating, in 2 seconds, that they’re (a) “perfect” for each other and (b) on a different plane of consciousness and compassion than everyone else, which is why they’re the heroes of the show and “perfect” for each other.

I don’t really like some of the plotlines so far though. I don’t like how Michael is doing so many irrational things because I think the greatest part of that character is that, while he does really stupid things almost all the time, he manages to get you to appreciate him for the few moments where his good intentions and virtues shine through. In the last few episodes, he’s just done stupid things, like go back to get the gift basket after crashing his car in the lake. I loved the reliance on the gift baskets and remembering his ex-customer’s daughter’s allergies, but then going back for the basket was not only pointless, it negated his one talent, which is providing a personal sales experience. Keeping the pizza guy in the break room…I didn’t see any depth in that plot point either. I also don’t know if there needs to be that much relationship-related material (Andy/Angela, Darryl/Kelly), even though they did give rise to the “I stole it” line and the “start selling multiple reams like a man” line.

- The ice machine better be fixed by Monday.

- I was in San Francisco in the rain today, wearing a suit. Even though I had an umbrella, I the back of my legs and parts of my arms got pretty soaked. I thought “there has to be a way to keep suits dry.” The I realized that that’s what overcoats are for. Should I get a Dwight tan model or a Michael Scott dark blue model? Given my current budgetary constraints, I might need to tape two trash bags together and poke a hole through it for my face.

- Have you ever noticed that there are different kinds of ice? Some ice is really clear, and some is really opaque. Usually the finish on the opaque ice is also more matte, while the clear ice usually has a shinier finish. Opaque ice usually comes in the forms of crushed ice, half moons, or little cylinders. Clear ice usually comes in the form of flat squares or rectangles, little cylinders, or cubes. When put in contact with opaque ice, soda tends to bubble up a lot more. Opaque ice breaks differently than clear ice does. Ice is really amazing when you think about it.

- Fix the freakin’ ice machine.

Back in college, I set aside about 700 bucks for my first online stock trading account; the account that would go on to become the most doomed seven hundred dollar trading account in U.S. history. It started out with a tech stock that hovered and then slowly sank for a while, leaving me with $500. I sold out and decided that the tech boom was over, and that I needed to get back to the basics. Hard numbers. Brokerage picks. That kind of stuff.

It came down to two choices - Costco and Enron. Having already said that this is the most doomed seven hundred dollar trading account in U.S. history, you know what I decided on (it had better numbers and analysis, seriously).

In the meantime, Costco stock has gone on to double its value.

Now, when I go to Costco, I wonder, how did I not buy stock in such a wonderful place? A place where the pizzas are as big as big rig tires, where they have an entire ROOM that is refrigerated, and where you can buy 12 muffins for the price of 4 (and let 6 get moldy and still think you got a good deal).

I’ve thought about it, and I blame my $500 loss on Costco-less childhood. My parents weren’t Costco members when I was a kid. We went to Fedco, which, despite its now defunct status, my dad still regards as the utopia of bulk commerce. So I didn’t grow up with the true love of the place. It’s got to be it, because I think Costco is incredible. If I had been able to experience the incredible-ness of the place over the course of many years, there’s no way I could have purchased stock in a corrupt energy trading company over that of Costco.

I’ll leave you now with one of my favorite things to do at Costco. Go to the cheese section. Bypass the parmagiano reggiano and pecorino romano and find the Jarlsberg. Pick up a huge chunk with two hands (you’ll need it). Crouch down a little and look around. Realize, at that moment, that you are living the life, almost to scale, of a mouse in an 80s cartoon. To really get the full effect of this, you have to get Jarlsberg. It’s just like the cheese in those cartoons - yellowish orange, cut into a triangular wedge, and covered in just enough dents and holes to make it imperfect enough.

See, if I had had that experience when I was a kid, I’d have an extra $500. It’s so obvious.

Seeing Hung (I like calling him Hank (or Haaaunnng) because that’s how his name always sounded to me when pronounced by a euro guest judge) win Top Chef reminded me of playing in the UCLA intramural softball leagues. I played on at least one IM softball team every year I was at UCLA. I never won the championship. After four years and many teams, I was amazed at how the best teams almost always won, and how my teams, which usually had at least a few flaws, were always exposed over the long run. We could pull off a few wins and look great at times, but after a while, we’d get eliminated because of a bad string of hitting, or a few errors. What I took away from those futile years of softball was that in a competition spread over a longer period of time, any competitors’ weakness would be exposed after a while. It sounds really obvious, but it took four years of losing in the IM softball playoffs to make me really realize that.

Hung, to me, was like those softball teams with no weaknesses, while Dale and Casey were like the teams I played on in my last year at UCLA. That year, one of my teams was capable of crushing other teams one week, and then choking and losing to teams badly the next. The other team sort of built up steam, got on a roll in the playoffs, and one game from the final, got absolutely annihilated by a clearly superior team. I know it’s a weird analogy to make, but seeing the Top Chef finale really reminded me of my softball teams and how much my futile softball experiences still play into how I assess competitions.

I will now go and sous vide everything in the kitchen, starting with the frozen taquitos.