On Saturday night in Tahoe a handful of us went out to dinner to celebrate Dino's 30th birthday. Ben, who used to live in South Lake, chose the restaurant, Freshies. I was skeptical because the only other major house outing was to a bar in Meyers, chosen by Ben. The place smelled like ass and many of us left and went to the casinos which smelled only marginally better.

Frshies is a small place in little strip mall. It only has about 8 tables and they don't take reservations, so we had to wait. I hate waiting for anything, especially to be seated at a restaurant, but I subjugated my needs to the will of the group and dealt with it.

We waited about 45 minutes for a table that would seat the 7 of us. But when we finally got in the place, I was not disappointed. Freshies has an ecclectic menu. It's sort of Polynesian themed, but with a broad ethnic flair with an assortment of vegetarian and vegan dishes. Everything was organic. Everything was super fresh. There was so much good stuff on the menu, I had a hard time deciding what to get. We started with fried calamari and this shrimp, avo and ahi nori roll that was lightly tempura'ed. Delicous. I had the chicken tortilla soup (I can never pass up a good soup), but I had a tough time deciding what to get for the main course. Everything sounded so good. Cumin rubbed seared ahi tuna steak, tempura anything you can imagine, eggplant parmesan, chemical free shrimp and scallops, grilled alaskan rock cod, hawaiian style baby back ribs, and on and on. There wasn't anything on the menu that I would have been unhappy with. I finally settled on the jamabalya salad which was massive and smothered with diced chicken, andouille sausage and bay shrimp. It was amazing. I couldn't finish it. Not even close. It was like the endless bowl of salad. I picked at it for half an hour and hardly made a dent, but I was stuffed, seriously stuffed, like unbutton the top button stuffed.

Then the waitess came over with the dessert menu. I was, like, forget it, there isn't a chance I'm going to have room for dessert, but that was before she started describing the Big Kahuna, which was something like a mud pie on steroids. Before she even finished the description, I blurted out that I'd take one. It was a amazing. Just a stack of coffee ice cream on a chocolate cookie crust drizzled with chocolate suace and topped with whipped cream. OH MY GOD.

They had to roll me out of there, but I'll be going back. You can count on that. I'm salivating just thinking about it.

Posted by andrew at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not sure how to catorgize this post as. It could be "televsion", "cinema", "travel", or "I'm a complete idiot", but i'll go with "it really sucks when" because it really sucked.

I skied Sunday at Kirkwood with Russell and Dino. We got there early, skied hard and left early, around 2pm, because we were all beat and Dino took a nasty spill on his snowboard, smacked his head against the mountain and was mildly concussed. We got back to the house around 3, I had a shower, finished up my laundry and hit the road around 3:30 thinking I would get ahead of the weather (it was suppsoed to snow all night) and the traffic, and make it home in time for the Academy Awards. I was wrong on all three accounts.

I was hauling ass out of town and then traffic came to a complete halt for 45 minutes for no apparent reason on the 50 just before Placerville. When that finally cleared up, it was smooth sailing until I got just west of Sacramento when the skies busted loose and it was raining so hard it was giving me a headache. The pace slowed down to about 35. It was dark. I couldn't see shit out the windows. It got so bad, I pulled over and went to Target to get some kitty litter and let some of the traffic get ahead of me.

When I finally got home just before 8, four and half hours after I left Tahoe (the ride normally takes 3), Chris Rock was introducing Gweneth Paltrow as the only woman ever to breast feed an Apple. It was the only joke I heard from him. I saw Jamie Foxx win, that was great. I saw Clint win twice. And that was it. The show was over, I missed it and it was time for Barbara Walters.

Days Skied This Season: 11

Posted by andrew at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by andrew at 07:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

My lost TV remote never did show up (I'm convinced the cats have conspired to hide it away) so I buckled and bought a universal remote. It came in the mail yesterday, and now I will never again have to get up off my ass to change the channel. Ain't technology lovely?

Posted by andrew at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Personally, I wish there was a Zionist plot to make a Monday part of the weekend. (Thanks to my brother Brian for pointing out this article.)

Posted by andrew at 04:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Click here for the hottest girl on guy action.

Posted by andrew at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was surfing the web looking at pictures of The Gates here and here. In my travels around the web looking at Christo and Jean Claude's creation, I came across this recent picture of Central Park taken from space.

The image comes from the collection of the Earth Observatory which houses thousands of pictures taken from space. Most of the shots show natural disasters, hurricanes, fires, dust storms and the like, but there are also hundreds of random shots of interesting places on the earth including the one to the right of Mt. Hood. Here's a list of some of favorites (don't forget to zoom in on the image after it loads in your browser):

Angkor Wat

Heavy snowfall in California Sierras

San Francisco Skyline

Earth from the Moon

Athens Olympics Sports Complex

Rainbow Bridge

Portland, Mount Hood, & the Columbia River Gorge

Grand Canal, Venice

On Top of the World: Everest and Makalu

Ancient Citadel of Bam, Iran

High Dunes in the Namib Desert

Merapi Volcano, Java

Pyramids at Giza

Low Pressure off Northern California Coast

Angkor Ruins

Posted by andrew at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

THE CLOUDS NEAR BUELLTON

The drive down to LA was a pleasure cruise compared to the nightmare of the return to the Bay Area. First of all there were mudslides and freeway closures all over the place, so instead of taking the normally speedy Highway 5 (there were radio reports of mud blocking half the 405 at Sylmar all morning long), I was stuck taking the meandering 101.

I thought, well, it might take a little longer, but at least the traffic will be flowing and I can cruise by Buellton and some of the sights of Sideways. What an idiot I am.

Just north of Oxnard, the traffic came to a complete standstill and it took me more than 3 hours to make it Santa Barbara, a drive that normally runs about half that long. At least it wasn't raining, which was a pleasant change. As I crawled along the coast at about 5 MPH, I had some nice scenery to keep me occupied.

But just after I stopped for dinner at In N' Out in Santa Maria, the heavens let loose. It was kind of freakish rain you mostly see in the tropics. The freeway was flooded. My wipers were overwhelmed. I gave up making it home at a reasonable hour and settled in for the long haul.

In all, it took more than 8 hours of white-knuckling in hellish conditions and when I finally did open my apartment door and was greeted my ornery separation anxiety ridden cats, I was exhausted.

Posted by andrew at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's pissing down rain outside and I feel trapped. I'm basicially killing time watching one of my favorite movies, The Spanish Prisoner, which is on IFC. I did come down to LA to see Michelle and I'm glad I did, but the drive down sucked, I got a flat on the freeway, and now I'm trapped inside with not much to do. I want to see some more friends and will do that later tonight, but right now I'm stuck high up in the hills of Encino. I could leave, but what's the point? Most of the places that I like to see or thing I'd like to do are all outdoors. I could go shopping. I could see a movie. But I can do those things anywhere. If I'm going to be stuck inside watching a good movie, I'd much rather be curled up with my cats. I hope they're doing alright. They're probably as bored as I am.

Posted by andrew at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I was going to my friend Michael's house and I got a flat. I was driving down the 101 and I heard that thump, thump, thump, thump coming from the right rear of the car. Fuck. I pulled over immediately. Got out of the car. Looked down at the tire and, sure enough, it was flatter than Kansas. At least it wasn't raining. So I pulled the mini spare and the jack out of the boot and got to work. Just as I put the lug wrench to the nuts, I hear this guy say, you want some help? I look up and there's this guy in an Oakley Blades and a orange vest looking down at me. Sure, why not. He grabbed a serious jack from his tow truck and changed the tire in less than five minutes. It was surreal. It turns he's part of the new Los Angeles Freeway Motor Service which helps stranded motorists "to relieve some of the transportation delays associated with your daily commute." I'm here to tell you that the program works.

Posted by andrew at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MY COUSIN MICHELLE WITH MY NEPHEW MATEO

I hadn't spent much time with Michelle before I went to visit her at Kibbutz Ketura in Southern Israel back in 1999. She took off for Israel shortly after graduating from college in the mid 1970s and didn't come back all that often and when she did, it was to New York or traveling around the west milking cows at one farm or another. She didn't come to LA. I would just hear stories. Michelle's joined the army. Michelle's running the drip sprinkler system at the kibbutz. Michelle is working offsite at a wildlife preservation center. Always little tidbits. Nothing really substantial. Just enough to let me know that she was still out there.

When I went to Israel in 1999, I hadn't seen Michelle in years. I didn't even really remembered what she looked like, only a vague idea from photographs. I spent tons of time with her sisters, my other cousins, Rana and Elissa, from New York and their mom, my aunt Renee, but, like I said, Michelle was never around. When I arrived at the Kibbutz, Michelle wasn't there. I was hanging out with these environmental students from South Africa while I waited for her to arrive. I was sitting in the dining hall looking at every face that came in. Finally Michelle comes in. I stand up to give her a hug and says something like, have you been eating eggs? I hate eggs and if you've been eating eggs, please don't touch me. It was a strange re-introduction, to say the least. I hadn't been eating eggs, I assured her and she acquiesced to a hug.

I spent the next three weeks hanging out at the kibbutz, talking to people, gazing at Venus and Mars, reading, lounging around and having a great time in general. Michelle would wake up early in the morning to milk the cows and then head off the Chai Bar, a wildlife preservation center that was dedicated to reintroducing native animal species to Israel. I went with her one morning to milk the cows and it is bitter, hard work. Not for me, but right up Michelle's alley.

The day I went out the Chai Bar, we cleaned the cages in the nocturnal enclosure and fed the snakes, the owls, the hedgehogs and the fruit bats. Then we took the jeep, loaded the trailer up with alfalfa and fed and counted the oryx, the addax, the asses, the vultures, and ostriches. It was a hot day. Most of the animals were passed out in the shade of the flat acacia trees. We fed the ostriches in this long, raised trough that we filled with seed. There were only a few around. It was mating season.

There was this one male ostrich who found the jeep alluring. We'd be driving along, He'd be following alongside us. Poking his sharp beak inside the cabin, which freaked me out. Then he would stop, lean down, a starting rolling from side to side in some sort of a mating ritual. He wanted to make it with the jeep, this somewhat deluded Ostrich.

Then it started raining. It doesn't rain often in the Arava. It's the low desert. But when it does, it doesn't fool around. We're in a fucking torrential downpour. The roof of the jeep is just this little canvas covering. It full of water and starting to leak. It's dark. The skies have gone gun metal gray. It's getting cold. It's getting more and more miserable by the second. For me, that is. Michelle is loving it. She's howling and whooping it up.

We head back to the Kibbutz. I just want to get inside, take a shower, get dry and have a bowl of soup. Michelle is trying to see if she can wrestle up a car so we can ride up in the hills and go flood spotting. I thought she was out of her mind and was secretly hoping that she couldn't find any kind of vehicle, but she managed to hijack a minivan so instead of go inside like normal people, we headed up to the hills to go for a hike in the pouring rain.

We followed this winding road up into the hills above the kibbutz. The road to turned to dirt, or mud really and we kept going. We passed stranded motorists and other "hikers" along the way, until Michelle decided the time was right to get out and go the rest of the way on foot. We trudged through the mud, the rain still coming down in sheets, past rivulets of water streaming along the ground in ancient riverbeds. We went on like this for about 45 minutes until we came to the most amazing sight, a waterfall in the mountains in the desert. It was amazing. There was no one around. Just Michelle and I. And there was tons of water flowing down the hills and pour over this precipice making one of the beautiful waterfalls I've ever seen. I forgot about being cold. I forgot about being wet. I forgot about being miserable and I just stood there in amazement of the beauty of nature.

Of course, I hadn't thought about this adventure for years until I started getting the email from my dad and Elissa about Michelle's condition. When I we sitting around the kitchen table, I brought it up and Michelle smiled and told the story and when she was done she said that the reason it remains so vivid is that it hasn't rained anywhere close to that since I left. I was just lucky to have been there, in the Arava, with Michelle, when they had these biblical rain storms.

Michelle, Rana and Elissa took off to go whale watching in the Sea of Cortez and probably having a great time checking out the Blue Whales and whatever other sea mammals get trapped in the Gulf of California.

Posted by andrew at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ok, so I broke a few state laws on the way down south and maybe some federal ones too, but I got here in one piece even if I didn't make the best time in world. I have driven Highway 5 between northern and southern California probably close to 50 times. It has to be one of the most boring drives in the country. It's flat. It's dusty. There's nothing to see but the occasional pit stop city. But it's fast, usually.

I can never remember having come to a complete on the 5 for any reason, but on Friday, traffic halted 3 times. It was mostly due to the rain that was coming down in sheets for a good chunk of the way. There were a bunch of accidents, including one about 120 north of LA that stopped traffic dead. Then there was mudslide on the Grapevine that knocked out the two right lanes and turned the long crawl up to the Tejon Pass into a parking lot. Finally, for a reason that I couldn't never deduce, traffic came to a roaring halt at Magic Mountain. There was a sign that said, slow traffic next minutes. 45 minutes later I was finally in the clear. It took more that six and half hours to make a trip that usually runs about five.

Posted by andrew at 09:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I'm off to Los Angeles for the weekend to see family and friends, most notably my cousin Michelle who's dying from cancer and is making her last trip around the world to see everyone. Michelle has lived at Kibbutz Ketura in Southern Israel since the 70s. I visited her there back in 1999 on my trip around the Eastern Mediterranean. Hanging out with Michelle, who's the strongest woman I have ever met, by far, was absolutely brilliant. I'll get into some stories later.

It's probably going to be a very emotional weekend. I'm not really looking forward to that, nor am I all too thrilled about the drive down, but at least I get to leave early so I don't have fight traffic or arrive in the middle of the night. It's also raining in LA and is supposed to rain all weekend, and you know that means, frequent collions by idiot SoCal drivers who don't know how drive when there's any sort of percipitation around.

Hopefully the cats won't start tearing up shit all over the house when I don't get back on Sunday. They have a tons of food, two large bowls of water and a fresh liter box so they should be fine.

Posted by andrew at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

... The Clinton administration was paying a male whore to throw softball questions in the White House Press Room. [LINK]

...The Clinton administration was paying commentators with your tax dollars to shill for pet projects.
[LINK]

...The Clinton administration was trying to throw journalists who didn't support their agenda into jail. [LINK]

The republicans would have been going apeshit. They went apeshit over everything else, imagined and drummed up. So, what the fuck is going on here? Who is holding this administration to the fire while it turns this country into a republican Orwellian fantasyland?

Posted by andrew at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is a continuum of love/hate that is generally linear, but at the far extremes, the line bends back around to form a circle so that only things that you love passionately, can you also hate with equal fervor. The same emotional calculus can also be applied to movies. Some movies are so bad that they actually whip around the continuum and become good. Case in point: Napoleon Dynamite.

The first time I saw Napoleon Dynamite it was a painful experience. I laughed a little, there were moments, but mostly I looked on in horror. Who could make such a bad movie and why the fuck were people telling me to see it? It was appalling.

It was only the following weekend when I was talking to some my sister's friends at the her house that the brilliance of the film hit me. I was telling them how bad the movie was, but it was always followed by, but there was this one scene, or this time Napoleon says this or did that. I went on and on. I was had myself in stitches just thinking about the movie.

Then I saw it again. It was fucking hilarious.

It could have been that I was seeing with other people who had been talking about it all day, but I don't think so. Some of the freakish genius that is Napoleon Dynamite just ignited peels of laughter. It's so awful, so bizarre, so freakish, so uncomfortable, so insane, that's it's funny.

You just have to see for yourself. In the meantime, enjoy this. I'm off to go wolverine hunting in Alaska with my grandpa.

Posted by andrew at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had my first real cavity filled today and it was a piece of cake, really. It actually took longer to deal with my benefits than it did to fill the cavity.

It only takes about 5 minutes to walk to the On-Site Dental Winnebago, but it's started to rain here (think Tahoe snow) so I hoofed it. Inside the RV, Dr. Oghabian settled me into the dental chair, explained that this was going to be easy, the cavity was tiny and she wasn't even going to shoot me up with Novacaine.

She drilled for about 10 seconds. The whinny, high pitched sound is annoying, but I can deal with it for ten seconds. It took far longer to dry the tooth to prep it for the composite. She stuck some kind of heater on my tooth to dry up the saliva, then patted down the composite. It took her a couple of shots to polish the filling so I couldn't feel it when I bit down, but I can't feel it at all. The whole thing took less than 10 minutes. It's almost like it didn't happen at all.

Back in the waiting room, which is a bench behind the passenger seat in the Winnebago, I chatted with Bryce while she tried unsuccessfully to get any information about me from my insurance company, MetLife. I didn't care because it started to rain buckets (think lots of snow in Tahoe) and I wasn't exactly in a hurry to get back to my desk. Bryce finally gave up and I ran back through the rain to Building Z.

Posted by andrew at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's almost inevitable. Every time I drive up to Tahoe, somewhere in between Sacramento and Placerville, I start panicking because I think I've forgotten my toiletry kit (with my contacts). I try to remember putting the kit in my bag, but I can't. I have no memory of it all. I'm freaking out because I can't ski without my contacts. Then the panic subsides because I figure I can just buy one of those pairs of goggles that fit over glasses. I relax. Then I get to the house, open my bag, search around, can't find my kit, feel like an idiot, then I find it buried under a sweater or something and feel, again, like an idiot, for even worrying about it first place and going through this panic-relax-panic cycle again. Usually that's the end of it, but this time, I had the same reaction on the way back down to Alameda. I thought I forgot my kit in the house. I panicked. I try to recall putting the kit in my bag, but I can't remember it at all. Then I tried to figure out how I would deal without for two weeks (I'm not going to Tahoe next weekend) and relax because I know everything in the bag is replicable. Then I get home, and of course, my kit is right in my bag where I put it. I feel like a complete idiot.

Posted by andrew at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I know I promised lots of pictures from Tahoe this weekend, but it's not going to happen, because like the idiot that I am, I forgot the camera in my other jacket. Next time. I promise. Take it to the bank.

Posted by andrew at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by andrew at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I could have sworn it was Thursday. I was so fooled, I didn't even dress casually for the office. It's amazing how fast the week goes by when you're looking forward to skiing on the weekend. I've paid for one day at Kirwood, so I'll be there on Saturday. Then back to Heavenly on Sunday. I'm taking my new camera so I promise lots of pictures.

Posted by andrew at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I guess the going rate for accidentally encasing a cat in the walls is 100 bucks. I know this because Jess, the foreman of the contracting crew working on the plumping in my apartment building, came by this morning before 8 o'clock this morning to hand deliver a check for that amount in compensation, I suppose. He told me he has taken a good ribbing down at the shop, which I couldn't care less about. I thanked him and shut the door in his face. Then I looked down at the check and saw that it was made out to "Andrew Heche". I don't know any Andrew Heche. That's certainly not me. I don't even know if I will be able to cash it. It's a perfect representation of the lack of attention to detail and consideration by these plumbers and my apartment complex which still hasn't addressed the issue of the major inconvenience and disturbance of having my place ripped up within a month of moving in.

Posted by andrew at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I haven't been taking nearly enough pictures lately, mostly because my Canon 10D is too heavy and unwieldy to take everywhere. So I broke down and bought the ultra compact Canon S410. I got a sweet deal. I only paid 280 bucks including a 1GB Compact Flash card from some guy on eBay. It's brand new. It's tiny. I can take with me everywhere. I promise lots of new pictures.

I figured it was time to stop watching DVDs on my laptop, so I picked up my first DVD player (damn, I'm late getting in the game), a Philips DVP642. The thing is sleek and light and silver and plays DVDs on my TV, which is great. But because my TV is so damn old, I bought when I was living in LA back in 1998, it doesn't have AV inputs, so I had to buy an RF Modulator to make the connection. The picture is not super clear and there are visible lines running across the screen if you look closely. I don't know if this is the TV, the Modulator or the DVD player. I doubt it's the latter. One of the cool features of this DVD player, and the main reason I chose it over the thousands of other players out there is that it supposedly plays compressed Divx movies, which I happen to have a ton of. I was planning on chucking them out (deleting them actually), but if I can play them on my TV, then, fuck, I might just keep them around. And they do play, only with no sound, which sort of diminishes the whole movie watching experience. Hopefully it's just a minor glitch that I can fix with a call to Philips CS. I'll keep you posted.

Posted by andrew at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I don't know how Danny Deckchair ended up in my Netflix queue, but I'm glad it did. I haven't seen a movie that charmed me like that in a long time. It's a modern day fairy tale with just enough Aussie quirkiness to keep it interesting, odd though, since it was written and directed by an Anmerican.

Deckchair stars Rhys Ifans in the title role as the disaffected Sydney suburbanite. If you don't recognize the name offhand, you might know Ifans from his role as the wacky Welshman in Notting Hill. He's perfect as Danny, a character you will fall in love with.

Here's the blurb from Imdb:

Based on a true story, the tale of a cement truck driver named Danny, whose long awaited vacation is cancelled thanks to his scheming girlfriend, Trudy. Danny escapes his grim life in suburban Australia and blasts into the skies in a chair tied with helium balloons. A mighty thunderstorm blows him clean off the map, and spits him out far away over the lush green town of Clarence. In this new town, he rockets into the world of Glenda, the town's only parking cop. While the media back home becomes obsessed with the story of his disappearance, Danny gets to reinvent himself in this new town, and in his great adventure, he discovers a true soulmate in Glenda. Fate catches up with him eventually, as Danny's true identity is revealed and Trudy--now a tabloid celebrity--comes to the idyllic town to claim Danny and drag him back to Sydney. Danny, however, is a changed man; he's discovered what it means to be happy and has found a new self-worth. Saying farewell to Trudy, Danny makes a dynamic re-entry to the town of Clarence--determined to win Glenda back again and embrace his newfound zest for life.

Posted by andrew at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By "this", I mean this.

Posted by andrew at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Ok, so it maybe it was the vodka tonics talking, but a few of us were pouring over the Urban Dictionary late (and I mean really late) on Saturday night, and I laughing so hard I almost coughed up some internal organs. Here's some of the choice/best/craziest we found.

perpetrate
conversate
badonkadonk
fo' shizzle

If you're offended by this, please, get yourself a sense of humor and stop perpetrating like this shit ain't funny.

Posted by andrew at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Super Bowl XXXIX just started a few minutes ago. I'm watching it up at the house with about 8 other die hards who've stuck around. I don't really care who wins. I'd be surprised if New England didn't win, but I just want to see a close, exciting game with some big plays.

I skied the morning at Heavenly. It was actually really good even though the snow is skied out because the mountain was relatively empty. I guess everyone was gearing up for the big game. I charged hard for 3 hours and then hit the wall. My legs just couldn't take it anymore. So I cruised home, made a massive batch of guacamole and got ready to settle in.

Days Skied This Season: 7

Posted by andrew at 03:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by andrew at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by andrew at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I finally succumbed to peer pressure from the rest of the house and headed off to Kirkwood instead of Heavenly. It was a good decision.

Kirkwood is about 35 minutes up into the mountains south of South Lake Tahoe, so it doesn't get the crowds that Heavenly, which is right on top of the Stateline casinos. It's nice to be able to hop in the car and be on the slopes in 15 minutes at Heavenly. But it's nicer to get a little further and ski a beautiful and uncrowned place like Kirkwood. I had skied there once or twice on family trips in high school, but with my famous memory, it was like skiing a new resort for the first time.

I drove up with up with Russell. He's one of the resident computer geeks, coding compilers for some small Silicon Valley startup (I didn't realize we still had startups these days). He grew up skiing in Vermont, went to some boarding school with a ski team, so even though he's probably carrying 75 pounds more than the day he graduated, he can still rip it up, but normally only for short periods.

I was going to push him because I needed to feel like I got good value for my lift ticket. We headed out for the backside of the mountain. Immediately there were some glaring differences between Heavenly and Kirkwood besides the crowds. The lifts at Kirkwood are dog slow, but the terrain is much, much steeper. Advantage: Push.

The backside is a huge bowl area accessed by one slower than shit quad chair. Double Diamonds all over the place. It was early, so we stuck to the blues, which at Kirkwood are actually blue whereas at Heavenly which has some absurd trail inflation, the blues are teal. Advantage Kirkwood.

When we headed back to the front side around noon, we met up with Kristen and Ben and tried out the Cornice. The Cornice is one thing. Steep. The lift up there is the only fast detachable quad on the mountain, so it's ferrying skiers and riders up there almost as fast as they can come down, which is damn fast. If the snow was a little better, it would have been great, but much of the top layer had been skied off and the top was icy, which is difficult under normal circumstances, but on a 45 degree pitch, it was extremely challenging. My legs were like noodles when I made it down. Time for lunch.

After lunch, Russell and I discovered chair 2, which a few cruising runs facing the sun so the snow was soft and perfect for the big arcing turns that I like. Just before we called it a day, we decided to see if we take on the Wall. The Wall is steeper than the Cornice. There are signs at the bottom of the lift that say, "Experts Only" in a big black bold font. In case, you don't get it or you don't read English, there's a massive skull and cross bones that should clue you in to the fact that you probably don't belong up there. But should be surprised that you can find gappers plowing down the wall? Of course not.

We get up there and it's late in the day, the clouds are starting the come in the north, the sun is setting, it's cold, and it's the most crowded run we've been on. There are people everywhere waiting to drop into the Wall. As I was standing up there, I was watching this woman who looked like she was on skis for the first time. You just have to shake your head. I waited for the run to get reasonably clear of people, which was really not clear at all, skied far to the left away from most of them and made my way down without incident or much enjoyment, really. I'm going to need to get up there again on a day with a little more snow and far fewer people.

One more run on the backside and another on the sunny Caples Creek and we were done. It was a long, hard, great, beautiful day and I can't wait to come back to Kirkwood. I bought the "ski 2 days in 7 for 88 bucks" pass, so I'll be back next Saturday barring some strange occurrence.

Days Skied This Season: 6

Posted by andrew at 06:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by andrew at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My Netflix queue is growing thin these days. I'm finding it harder and harder to find good movies to watch. Very little that comes out in the theaters interests me and browsing the stacks at Blockbuster is a pure horror show. Anyone out there in internet land want to recommend some good flicks for me?

{If you want to recommend a movie, please leave a comment, rather than replying by email, so everyone can see it. Also, if you're on the mailing list and no longer desire to be, just send me an email I will remove you. Honestly, I don't recognize half the addresses signed up for notification, so it's probably a good time to purge the list. Thanks.}

Here's a list of movies I've seen this year:

Shaun of the Dead ****
Liberty Heights ****
The Third Man *****
Team America World Police ***
Napoleon Dynamite ***
Friday Night Lights ***
De-Lovely ****
The Aviator ****
Control Room ***
Day Without a Mexican *
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ****
What Planet Are You From? **
King Arthur *
Shattered Glass ****

Posted by andrew at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

This might take some of the edge off the thought of four more years.

The George W Bush 2005 State of the Union drinking game

What you will need:

# Four taxpayers: including 1 white guy wearing a suit, 2 people wearing normal clothes (one wearing a blue shirt, the other in a red shirt) and 1 dressed as an old person. (Note: shawls are nice)

# A shot glass per person. Everybody brings one, group them on table. White guy in suit gets first choice, red shirt picks second and blue shirt gets third choice.

# Bowl each of guacamole and chips.

# 5 bucks. Everybody antes.

# Much beer. Senior citizen gets cheapest crap you can find, like Old Milwaukee Lite: white guy in suit drinks import of choice and everyone else chips in to buy it; the other two fight it out over Bud and Miller Lite.

Rules of the game:

1. Whenever President Bush uses the words: "tax relief," "mandate" or "bipartisan," drink a shot of beer.

2. Whenever George W mispronounces "Allawi," "nuclear" or "terrorism," last person to knock on wood drinks two shots of beer.

3. If he mispronounces "shiite": first person to stop laughing exempt from drinking three shots.

4. If the President says the word "Texas," last person to give the longhorn sign and yell "Yeehah!" has to drink two shots of beer.

5. Whenever George W talks about saving social security, senior citizen takes a shot of beer. First time the President uses the word "personalization," take two shots. Add another shot for each additional "personalization."

6. If Vice President Dick Cheney is caught napping on camera, white guy in suit has to drink a whole beer.

7. Whenever George W Bush talks about the evils of abortion or the sanctity of marriage, last person to fall to their knees drinks two shots of beer.

8. Whenever George W mentions the liberty or freedom of the Iraqi people, stand up, salute with your right hand and drink a shot of beer with your left hand. If he's talking about the liberty or freedom of the American people, stand up, salute with your left hand and drink a shot of beer with your right hand. First person to mess up has to drink two more shots. White guy in suit is exempt from mistakes.

9. The first time George Bush uses the phrases "activist judges," and "trial lawyers," first person to stand up and yell, "I'm out of order? You're out of order," is exempt from having to drink three shots of beer.

10. If only half of televised audience gives George W a standing ovation, red shirt and white guy in suit have to drink shots of beer for duration of applause. If either Teddy Kennedy, Hillary Clinton or John Kerry are shown not standing, blue shirt and senior citizen take over till Bush resumes speaking. Double time if Senators are not applauding.

11. If George W Bush mentions "Halliburton," "exit strategy" or his inability to find Weapons of Mass Destruction or Osama bin Laden, white guy in suit has to drink a shot of everybody else's beer out of their shot glass, and they get to wipe their glass clean on his jacket.

12. Whenever George W mentions the phrase "prescription drug plan," take a shot of beer. The first time this happens, last person to finish has to drink two more shots of beer and take out the trash during the Democratic Response. White guy in suit and red shirt need not recycle.

Political comic Will Durst will be playing this game with friends. Needs a red shirt.

Andrew's Rule: Whenever W says "ownership society", skull a beer.

Posted by andrew at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You might not be, but the folks at Rapture Ready certainly are ready. According to their calculations using "the prophetic speedometer of end-time activity", we're well above the 145 level which is "fasten your seat belts" territory. Jesus is gonna come a-knocking any day now.

So, the end times a-cometh. I look at this as a positive. If the rapture is going to get rid of the kind of sanctimonious ass holes that put together sites like these and, not incidentally, put George Bush back in the White House, how can I not give it my blessing? Let them rot together in heaven. I feel "blessed" to consider myself among the unsaved.

I absolutely love the FAQ where you can find answers to such burning questions as: Are angels real? Angels are absolutely real (fuckin' A). Is the pope the antichrist? Nope. The antichrist will be a Jew (those Jews!). Is the devil working overtime? You bet your sweet tuchus he is. Should a woman work outside the home? Good god NO.

This whole thing wouldn't bother me so much except people like Todd Strandberg (the author of this crap) perpetuate the anti-semitism that it inherent in the new testament. I've discussed this evangelical christian obsession with murdering Jews before. The big problem is there is a serious disconnect between reality and what is written in the bible. Most honest people know that the bible is a book made up largely of parables, but also includes myths that form the central core of the religion, the sine qua non, if you will. Jesus died for your sins. The virgin birth. Loafs. Fishes. Wine. Water. The Resurrection. You get the point. Where would Christianity be without these things? If Jesus is just a wise (Jewish) man looking out for the poor, where does that leave the religion? The apostles had to construct a grandiose mythology around Jesus to make him palatable to converts. The fact the new testament is built around a framework of historical fact, real people (e.g. Pontius Pilate, Caesar, Jesus) and real places (e.g., Sea of Galilee, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, etc.) makes it all too easy for delusional Christians to take the entire book literally.

As for the Book of Revelation on which Rapture Ready is built, I look at it as the ultimate boogeyman. It's the evangelical equivalent to "don't masturbate or your palms with grow hair". Better get your spiritual check book in balance or you'll be left behind with the rest of the world's sinners. It's complete and utter excrement.

Posted by andrew at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Man peed way out of avalanche

need I say more?

Thanks to Jen for this tidbit.

Man peed way out of avalanche

A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains.

He told them that after the avalanche, he had opened his car window and tried to dig his way out.

But as he dug with his hands, he realised the snow would fill his car before he managed to break through.

He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

He said: "I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I'm glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there."

Parts of Europe have this week been hit by the heaviest snowfalls since 1941, with some places registering more than ten feet of snow in 24 hours.

Posted by andrew at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)