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OMG GIANT CATCHUP POST!!1
Dang! It's already Thursday and I haven't posted a weekend report. I better get to it!
Actually, this report will go back a little further than the weekend itself.
Last Wednesday, after work, I went down to Lawndale to hook up with Comrade
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dagoski and spouse.They were in town for a week and we had made a dinner date. We went to a restaurant not far from their hotel,
a place called Hank's Bistro that serves burgers and milkshakes? Nope! Persian and Italian food! O_O
You gotta check out their website! It's Web 0.5! And it's got amusing typos. :D
It was a while since I had had Persian food so I agreed. We figured we would be in for a fun ride.
I parked the (St)Ranger in front of the hotel, met with the Dagoskis, then we walked to Hank's Bistro.
I ordered the Barg, which is not a Klingon dish. It's a plate full of basmati rice and marinated steak kabob.
The amount of rice was roughly half what one got at Persian joints like Javan (West L.A.) and Sham-Shiri (Westwood),
and the meat was not very flavorful. It was good meat but it had not been marinated well.
The Perrier I ordered was completely flat. Comrade Dagoski was not impressed by his lamb cutlets (I think).
We had a great time conversation-wise but the food was mediocre. I vowed to take the Dagoskis to the GOOD Persian
joints on their next trip in.
We walked back to the hotel and asked the concierge for a good ice cream place. She suggested Baskin Robbins
and Mrs. Dagoski's visage darkened ever so slightly. Oh boy, a fellow 31-Hater! :D
Comrade Dagoski knew a place in Manhattan Beach, so we clambered aboard his rented Ford Fusion and went there.
It was an old-fashioned ice cream parlor where they made their own ice cream. They also carry a lot of candy and
chocolate and glass-bottled sodas. They actually stocked Big League Chew, the shredded bubble gum that's packaged
in a pouch like chewing tabacco. I almost bought some but Mrs. Dagoski pointed the Aspartame in the ingredients list.
This is a disturbing trend with bubble gum: the addition of Aspartame without any warning labels on the front.
I first discovered this when I tried buying some Bubble Tape a couple of years ago.
I mean, I expect stuff like Trident and Orbit to have Aspartame in it, but the fun bubble gum for kids? WTF!?!?
I took my revenge by buying a bottle of MexiCoke to go with my ice cream.
We grabbed a table, but I couldn't fit in the chair, so we grabbed another table with bigger chairs that a family
was just vacating. Their little girl trapped herself behind a chair and started crying when she saw this big monster
French Kzin approaching to help free her. Awwwwwwwww, Zrath is friends to all dogs and children. Zrath sad...
Anyway, we got the table and claimed the tall and wide "Men In Black" chairs with the overhang.
Oh yes, the ice cream. I ordered two scoops in a cup: Nutella and Coffee. Nutella was good, milk chocolate ice cream
with a faint hazelnut flavor. The coffee however was very good, it was interestingly less sweet than others I've tried.
We chatted and ate ice creame and left when they started closing the place around us. It was bout 11pm.
We headed back to the hotel, I said my goodbyes, got into the (St)Ranger and went home.
I thought I would have to orbit the neighborhood to find a parking place because of the Thursday street cleaning but
lo and behold, there was a spot on the Friday cleaning side of the street right in front of the Kzinti Freehold.
Faith manages... :D
Thursday: Nothing much happened there. "Métro - boulot - dodo" as the old French mantra goes. ("Subway - job - sleep")
Friday: Hmmmmmmmm, Friday is usually exciting because it's the end of the work week. Let's see, hmmmmmmmm...
Urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...
Dammit! I guess nothing happened Friday. Well, aside from LUGOLA meeting preparations on Saturday.
Saturday: LUGOLA meeting in Torrance! Stopped near work to refuel the (St)Ranger at the cheap gas station, then headed
South on La Cienega, then South on the 405, then South on the 110 and exited at Sepulveda Blvd. The meeting was being
held at a member's in-laws' house, on a Street that also had a Place version of its name. So what do I do?
I turn on the Place version and freak mildly when the street number does not exist. :D
To be fair, the Place was badly marked. Anyway, I found the Street and the house and went in.
The turn-out was pretty good and there was some interesting stuff on display. And I've just realized I haven't uploaded
the photos of the meeting to Flickr yet, darn it. I'll do that later and post the link here.
Our host had an interesting little competition for us to complete: building a small Creator set with only one hand.
Pop open the little plastic box, open the little plastic bag and build the first model, all with only one hand!
I lost my darn fool mind and gave it a whirl, eventhough I drop parts all the time when building with both hands.
I came in absolute dead last. My huge Kzinti mitten failed me. I am dishonored! :(
There was an Armed Forces Day parade in Torrance and we were buzzed by some aircrafts: a trio of WWII biplane trainers,
a quad-jet communications plane (humpback but no radome), and something loud hidden by the house.
After the meeting, I checked out some area Toys'R'Us to see if anything new popped up. OH BOY!
There was a buttload of new Lego stuff! I was expecting these set to ship in July, but some of them are out now.
But distribution is spotty. Out of the 4 TRUs I checked out, 2 had new stuff and 2 had nothing new at all. And of the
2 with new stuff, one had only half the new stuff. Also, it looks like So-Cal got some of the new stuff first.
So here's what I saw:
1) The first 4 sets for the new Space Police 3 theme, which seems to be played for laughs. The aliens all have skull
belt buckles and chain wallets and generally look like outlasw space bikers. Their vehicles are Mad Max-esque.
2) The nifty new Camper set in the City theme. Surfboard, bicycle, and fish! The camper opens up.
3) The next phase of Agents sets, "Agents 2.0". One TRU had all 5 sets. The giant robot is hilarious!
It's got a claw arm and a flamethrower arm and a big transparent dome-head where the bad guy sits and controls it.
The flamethrower arm has a sticker with a 3-setting thing on it: "toast", "grill" and "flambé".
Agents is the tongue-in-cheek James Bond/Incredibles/Austin Power line, and last year's line-up included
sharks with friggin' lasers (and rocket launchers) attached to their foreheads and remote-controlled crocodiles.
4) This rather awesome Highway Transport set from the Creator line, guaranteed to make any kid's face light up.
I mean, look at it! It's a large car-transporting semi with 2 to-scale cars to transport. It's beautiful!
And since it's a Creator set, it includes instructions for building two other vehicles.
In the end, I bought a couple of Space Police 3 for myself and 2 more to put on eBay. I'm not expecting to make a lot
of money on those, but they are not available everywhere yet so maybe a few people will be interested in getting them.
It's always a gamble.
After the TRU expedition, I returned home and got busy prepping the Lego sets for eBay.
Then I watched a DVD, not sure which one. I need to do some Netflixing to clear my backlog.
Sunday! Glorious Sunday! I slept in! Then I went online, chatted on FurryMuck and watched a French documentary on
Monsanto called "The World According To Mosanto". I was horrified. These guys are trying to patent life and own it.
They've copyrighted seeds and they sue farmers who grow their stuff without proper licensing. Even in cases where the
seeds fell off a passing truck and rolled down into the farmer's field. Monsanto makes seeds with terminator genes.
The seeds die after being used once. Can you imagine if those seeds crossover normal crops? Worldwide famine? Holy crap!
And Monsanto is behind PCBs, Aspartame, RGBH, Agent Orange, Round-Up, HFCS and many other lovely things.
Monsanto is a pesticide company that has been buying seed companies and masquerading as a seed company.
Watching this made me feel helpless. I do what I can, I shop at Trader Joe's, but I still depend on the occasional
supermarket item, and I still eat fast food. And I can't vote, though I doubt big corporations pay attention to voters.
Here's a link to the YouTubed version of the documentary. It's in English and about 1 hour 40 minutes long.
The page crashed on my IE but came up fine in Firefox.
I am so not surprised that French independent filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin put together this documentary.
The French worship food like Americans worship the Dollar. You messa with food, we messa your face! :)
And speaking of food, I did grocery shopping after watching the documentary. :D
I had vaguely planned to see "Star Trek" on IMAX, but it was already late and I felt unmotivated.
Monday: Back to work, nothing special. I brought my own lunch, frozen chicken tikka masala from Trader Joe's.
I had to buy two, they were small. They were, however, really damn tasty! A leeeetle spicy but not too much.
For dessert, I had a plate of cut fruits with vanilla yogurt dip, also from Trader Joe's. The pineapple was uncored,
and the mango was its usual hard-as-wood self. Dammit, I hate that. I wound up throwing the mango bits away.
Tuesday: Hmmmmmmmm, urrrrrrrrrrrr, nothing to report.
Wednesday: Cool Manager, who wound up not seeing "Star Trek" as he had planned last Sunday, told me that the IMAX
engagement at The Bridge Cinema Delux was coming to an end this week. So I jumped on the website to ascertain the
validity of that claim, and he was mostly right! "Star Trek" will be pushed to the 11:55pm slot on Friday the 22nd.
That's because "Night At The Museum" 2 will take up all the other time slots. Huzzah! :(
Well, I made my move. I bought a ticket for Thursday's showing at 9pm. Woo hoo!
I wanna see the asplodey stuff and whizzing starships on IMAX!
Cool Manager made his move too and got a 6pm Thursday ticket. He lives much farther away from The Bridge than me.
After work, went home and tried to make a croque-monsieur with some Belgian reduced-fat butter. BAD IDEA!
The stuff acted like glue and stuck the bread slices to the sammich maker's plates. I shoulda read the label.
It clearly said to not use it for baking or frying. The Canadian stuff I used before (Canoleo[tm]) could actually
be used for cooking. Sadly, looks like Trader Joe's discontinued it. Blargh!
Man, I don't wanna use real butter, but I may have to.
Then I tried watching "Fail Safe", the serious version of "Dr. Strangelove", but the Netflix DVD was too scratched up.
I poppped it in the PS2, but that didn't work any better, suprisingly. I wound up having to skip over two chapters
and watch the rest on my computer's DVD-ROM drive. The DVD doesn't look that physically damaged, the scratches on it
are really faint, but somehow they're bad enough to foil the PS2 and the DVD-ROM drive.
It's a good movie, especially when you consider the fact that the USAF and the Pentagon didn't provide anything in
the way of information or assistance. Heck, they even kept the crew from getting stock footage. Wow...
Thursday: That's today! I have my ticket for "Star Trek" on IMAX, so I'm pretty excited.
After work, I'm gonna go home, change, have a bite of dinner, then zoom to The Bridge on the 405. Wooh!!
From what people have been saying, it will be fun at the very least.
Love long and perspire! :D
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And they sue the farmers when it happens.
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There WAS a "New Captain Scarlet" TV show back in 2005.
Wiki entry is here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_captain_scarlet).
It was never shown in the US.
I recently obtained both seasons for my viewing pleasure.
Gerry Anderson still has some of the coolest toys. :D
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