You Are What You Eat-Nui Nui Coconut Shrimp, Chicken Teriyaki Rice Bowl & Lemon Garlic Chicken Breast at the Elephant Bar Global Grill & Wok Kitchen

So I finally got the MRI out of the way and was pretty hungry by  by the time I finished.  I actually may have fallen asleep in the giant radiology tunnel of death  because unlike the last time when they scanned my brain, I was able to wear noise reducing headphones.  Since the last MRI was to see how many air pockets were cluttering my brain, I couldn’t use the ear muffs then.  We arrived  at the radiology place around 6:30 and I was out of there by 7:20.

So the girlfriend and I had our usual lame debate as to where to have dinner. 

He:  Where do you want to eat?

She:  I don’t care.  Where do you want to eat.

He:  Wherever you want to.

She:  I don’t care.  It doesn’t matter to me.

He:  Doesn’t matter to me either.  We can go to Hodel’s or we can go to the Elephant Bar which is just up the road.  We haven’t been there for four or five years now.

We opted for the Elephant Bar.  I remember the last time we had eaten there it was with some friends who are now, ex-friends.  That tends to happen when you really get shafted by your so called friends. At least when friends do it, you can ex-friend them.  With family, your always going to be related like it or not.  Sort of like my racist half-brother.  I don’t acknowledge his existence, but we’re still related. 

But I digress.  I couldn’t tell you what I had on that last visit to Elephantitis Food Joint,  but I vaguely remember it as being  really good.  Then again, that could have been the air pockets in my brain conjuring up some false memories.  I’ll have to ask Dr. A.C. Neurologist about that one.

The Elephant Bar & Girl or as they like to call it:  Elephant Bar & Grill Global Grill and Wok Kitchen, sits on the corner of the highway, directly facing the California Pizza Kitchen.  Separating the two buildings  is a fancy shmancy  fountain, which you can opt to sit around and admire as you wait for your table.  And a quick glance of the situation told us we were going to be waiting a while.

In this case, a while turned out to be about 45 minutes.  The girlfriend and I opted to wait inside in the air conditioning, figuring that if you’ve seen one fountain, you’ve seen them all.  And when the temperature is pushing 100 degrees, you can do without the view unless of course you intend to go wading around in the water and probably get your drunken ass arrested.

The first thing you notice about the inside of the Elephant Bar, is how freakin’ noisy the place is.  After a couple of minutes of waiting, I was ready to drive down to the MRI place and borrow their noise cancelling ear muffs..  I opted for messing with my I-phone instead, thinking I might take some lame assed pictures to throw up on the blog.

I don’t know how long we had been sitting there waiting  when my girlfriend leaned over and almost shouted in my ear so I could hear her over the din.

“Look at that girl,” she said.

“What girl?” I replied looking up from my serious game of Wheel of Fortune.  There were several

“The skinny girl,” she whispered loudly in my ear.  “The blonde.”

“What about her?” I asked.  I had seen many thin girls in my lifetime, even dated a few here and there, so seeing one more wasn’t exactly a big revelation for me.

“She don’t have any tits!” My girlfriend explained. 

And with that I knew that my girlfriend was really really bored and that like me, she needed to learn to play games on her phone to keep her wandering mind occupied.  Yes, the girl didn’t have much in the mammary department but I didn’t see that it matter much.  I thought she was kind of cute, in a certain Mia Farrowish kind of way when you remember how Mia Farrow looked in the early years of Peyton Place.  No, I won’t put up a picture.  Just Google it. 

What I noticed more was how all the help looked like they were modeling new Wal-mart Uniforms.  Either that or they were going to their night jobs at the all night  AM/PM convenience store down the road,  right after they closed this joint up. I guess conformity rules the days.  I’ve seen better uniforms.  I’ve seen worse.  Hell, I’ve worn worse more than once in my life.  So what does this have to do with our meal?  Not a damn thing. Just killing time.

But after what seemed like an eternity, we were finally escorted to our booth where the noise level jumped another ten decibels give or take a few.  One thing I know is that air pockets in the brain or not, I would have remembered the noise level  if it had been of this magniturde on our last visit.

Then there was the darkness problem.  The Girlfriend had not brought her glasses in with her because generally in good light, she doesn’t need them and who knew that we would be having dinner at  Mammoth Caves.

 

So she borrowed my glasses and began looking through them as if they were a magnifying glass straight out of Sherlock Holmes.

As for myself, I already knew what I wanted.  I wanted some kind of grilled chicken.  That’s all I ever wanted these days.  You see, I’ve been on this diet since early February.  At that time I had ballooned up to 316 lbs.  I am now down to about 235 lbs.  So nine times out of ten you either have a salad of some kind, fish, or chicken. 

The chicken in this case was Lemon Garlic Chicken. The Girlfriend ordered the Chicken Teriyaki Rice Bowl. She wanted the Ribs but at about 2,000 calories plus, that was a bit much even for her.

We also ordered Nui Nui Coconut Shrimp Skewers as an appetizer. They weren’t all that high in calories and with us splitting them that made it even better.

When they brought the shrimp skewers we quickly found out why they weren’t very high in calories. They were kind of scrawny. Taste wise they weren’t that exciting either. And the dipping sauce was just plain bland. You could hardly taste the coconut either which is probably another reason the calorie count was lows.

They also give you a glob of some vegetable crap with it. The Girlfriend didn’t like the looks of it. But I was game to give it a try, just enough to find out that like the dipping sauce it didn’t taste like much of anything. So I guess they liquefied them to make the sauce. As a matter of fact, the vegetables with this shrimp were so boring, they made the shrimp seem like a major feast by comparison. Maybe that’s the idea here. It didn’t work, but unlike everybody else in the place, we hadn’t down three jugs of liquor either

We had both ordered a side salad at four bucks each.  It was listed as having only 30 calories and we quickly find out why.  It was bad enough that for four dollars, there wasn’t much there, but they used those damn miniature round tomatoes that I absolutely abhor.  And for four bucks, if they  aren’t going to use real tomatoes, you would have thought they could have put more in the way of vegetables in it, like maybe some olives, cucumbers, mushrooms, or onions.  I mean, hell, the salads at Denny’s are better than this and only cost me $2.95.  Now I know another reason why it was so damn dark.  They didn’t want you to be able to see how skimpy some of the food items were.

It took us about a minute and a half to finish our crummy side salads and after what seemed like an eternity, and with the noise level now so bad that The Girlfriend and I were communicating by sign language, they brought our dinners.  I’ll leave you to guess which is which.

If you guessed that the top picture was the Lemon Garlic Chicken, and the bottom picture the Chicken Teriyaki Rice Bowl, you win!  Sorry, I don’t give out prizes.  This blog has made all of $30 bucks in 7 years.

My chicken is buried under that big gooey globby solidified lump of rice,  If you look closely  you can barely see it sticking out from under there, like it’s playing hide-n-go-seek.  As for The Girlfriend’s meal, the Teriyaki Bowl at Jack-in-the-Box was more appealing than the mess on her plate.

But we needn’t have worried.  The food didn’t taste bad.  It didn’t taste at all.  The girlfriend tried adding salt to her dish to give it some flavoring but it didn’t work too well.  She took a few bites then started placing the rest of the chicken on my plate.

My Lemon Chicken wasn’t any better.  It had absolutely no flavor either.  Worst was the rice mess.  You would have thought they would have at least added some kind of broth to give it flavoring.  The way it held together reminded me  of some kind of Caramel Popcorn Ball, or worse, those damn Quaker Rice Cakes you buy in the supermarket.  If you've ever dieted, you know which ones I mean.  However, that wasn’t it.  The rice was held together by it’s own bit of overcooked magic and a dash of Elmer’s Glue All.  And the vegetables with it were just like the salad, and just like the vegetables with the shrimp skewers.  Flavorless and unappetizing.  Helluva combination was this restaurant.  Yes, boring and noisy.

The Girlfriend asked me if I wanted her rice and vegetables.  I said no.  I didn’t really want mine that much but seeing as how I needed to eat something, I managed to forge ahead although I did leave quite a bit of it on my plate.  But I really didn’t dilly dally around.  Between the noise, the darkness, and the crummy food, I was ready to go.   So they brought the tab and here are the damages:

The price wouldn’t have been bad if the food had been exceptionally good.  We’ve eaten at Tahoe Joe’s and paid way  more than this.  The difference is that at Tahoe Joe’s, you get what you pay for which is good atmosphere, really good food, and really good service.  I can’t say the service was bad at Elephant Bar, but we got none of the other ingredients necessary for a good dining experience.   We only left the usual 15 per cent tip, probably because it was just a bad all around experience.  I think the problem is, a lot of people go there to drink booze and eating is almost secondary.  From the noise level, I would say that many of the patrons were already pretty well lit up and could care less what the food tasted like.  And if I had known about that, we would have gone elsewhere.  We probably should have done that anyway, but we figured the food would make up for the noise level.  It didn’t.

And normally, I don’t write this much about a meal.  But I guess the worse it is, the more there is to write about.  But I can tell you we won’t be going back to the Elephant Bar & Grill anytime soon.

A Day In The Life: Health and Medical Stuff: Another Day, Another MRI

On my way to have another MRI, courtesy of my newest Dr., Dr. A.C. Neurologist, and who doesn’t seem to care for the diagnosis given to me by my regular care provider, a physician’s assistant we’ll call Dr. Angela.  Well she may not officially be a doctor, but at least she acts like she gives a damn which most doctors I’ve been to don’t. But I’m tending to side with Dr. Angela over Dr. A.C.  for two reasons.

Reason number one is that Dr. Angela’s diagnosis (made after my last MRI) fits, while nothing else they have conjured up seems to.  The symptoms match up almost perfectly and explains one helluva lot of what I’ve been going through for roughly five or more years.. 

And the second reason is that Dr. Neurologist was pretty much an asshole when I went to her office.  She was that way from the time I entered the room until I left.  It was as if my presence in her office was causing her hemorrhoids to flare up.  So I take her opinion with a huge grain of salt.  And if she gives me any more crap, they can find me another Dr. Neurologist.

Be that as it may, I’ll go have the MRI done and then go to Dr. Neurologist’s office again next week for about 8 more tests.  We’ll see what kind of crap they can come up with now.  I’ll keep you posted.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Stuff-She’ll Always Be Faith to Me

The may call her Raquel LaRoque for this guest appearance in “White Collar,” but she’ll always be Faith Lehane from the WGTVSE (World’s Greatest TV Show Ever) to me. 

Faith was  probably the person I loved to hate the most, even more than Spike. Most viewers of Buffy were often willing to forgive her transgressions when she tried to redeem herself,, but not I.  Nope.  I know that beneath the surface, the true Faith is lurking somewhere.

I’ll be writing a lot about Buffy, so get used to it.  But here’s the clip of Faith for all you Eliza Dushku fans.  I’ve never watched White Collar, but any guest appearance by someone from Buffy will get me to tune in.

Really Old Blog Crap-December 2007: Road Trip - I've never done a travelogue before. Are you excited?

If you read my posting from last week you already know about the ongoing saga of my purchase of the Casio Camera from Best Buy on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. That particular problem between another greedy corporate outift and myself has yet to reach a satisfying conclusion and I'm sure I will be writing about that more in the very near future. Let's just say that the two SD 2GB Memory Discs which were shipped out last week via a slow boat from China have yet to arrive. But I've decided to put all that aside so I could do as I said I would and tell you how the camera performs.

The biggest problem that I had all week long was being unable to find the time to go through the manual and check out some of the many functions that this particular camera is supposed to have. I didn't want to be entirely lost inside the dark room when it came time to start snapshotting my way to becoming the next Ansel Adams. But by Saturday, I hadn't read the first page although I did have time to put the battery and a memory card in so that I could take a couple of pictures of my girlfriend Jane Jetson's Ford Escape. Speaking of Ford, I'm not happy with them either but that's another post for another day.

As you can see, the first picture looks kind of funky but I think that was caused by the dead grass on the lawn. It sort of gave everything a woefully yellowish tinge. As you can see, the lawns around here look kind of crappy at this time of year unless you have some fancy grass like the neighbors in the new subdivision just across the way. At any rate, I took my time with the second picture and as you can see it turned out much better. I learn quickly.

Jane Jetson and I had already planned for a road trip this past Saturday and I figured that it would be as good a time as any to see what the camera could do. The original destination was to be Disneyland. Unfortunately that was postponed because the couple we were going with couldn't make it. So instead we opted for a day at the beach and whatever else we thought we could find to do...at least legally.

As it turned out, there is more to do along the California Coast during this time of year than what you thought there would be, but you had best plan ahead because just about anything and everything worthwhile requires that you buy tickets in advance or plan your day way ahead of. Because of our other last minute cancellation, we were unable to do this of course so we would have to wing it.

After checking around on the internet we did find out there was going to be a Holiday Boat Parade on Morro Bay. No, that's not a typo. I did mean ON Morrow Bay. It was a parade of boats all lighted up for the Christmas Holidays.

You could either go there and watch it from the beach or from any place else around the bay. You could also ride on one of them and be served a nice meal or appetizers while you cruise up and down the coastline sipping a martini. I had already surmised that if we were to go and observe this annual yuletide phenomenon, we would undoubtedly be sitting on the shore looking out instead of stuffing ourselves on the boat while waving inward to the crowds along the shoreline. Jane called one of the boat companies offering a package anyway, but of course learned quickly that they were all booked up. Not only that, Jane made it abundantly clear to me that if she wasn't warm and cozy and snuggled inside one of those boats, she didn't particularly want to go. As for myself, it didn't matter where I was. I just wanted to take some dang pictures with my new toy.

We headed down to Pismo Beach at about 10 a.m. or so on Saturday morning. Jane was in a talkative mood so again I read exactly zero pages in the camera's manual. I was also unable to take any pictures from the car because Jane's car windows were covered with dust, dirt, mud, squished bugs and possibly a few other unrecognizable souvenirs that a vehicle picks up when traveling speedily down the long stretches of road that run in between the miles and miles of farm land sprawled out over what would otherwise be nothing but desert. The wonders of irrigation never cease to amaze me.

By the time we arrived it was about 12:30. It didn't feel cold at first although the weather forecast had been for about 52 degrees give or take one or two degrees. We decided to eat lunch at the first restaurant closest to the pier. We had ate there before on other trips several years ago and had enjoyed the food. I of course, stopped to take a picture of the restaurant. Maybe I didn't need the stupid 300 page manual after all.

Inside this restaurant they had a painting of mermaids on one of the walls so I snapped a quick picture of it. Upon seeing the results of my effort Jane quickly informed me that you could barely see the mermaids. So I leaned back at a different angle and took another one which Jane said turned out a little bit better although I should just stand up and take it if I wanted a really good one. I frowned. I didn't want to stand up and take a picture of the wall and make everybody think I was some sort of nutty tourist.

You can see the stairs that lead to an upstairs area where you can also dine if for some reason you digest your food better twenty more feet above sea level than what we were. You can also opt for the semi-outdoor patio area which some people did. With it being in the low 50's and the wind blowing a ton, Jane and I turned out to be the more sane ones after all by opting to eat in the indoor comfort of the Pierside Restaurant. I can't imagine why they gave it a name like that though. Can you?

As for the food, I haven't ever tried being a food critic but I'll give it my best shot. Here goes. The clam chowder was fine, as were the clam strips appetizer. I decided to try something called a crab meat melt. I really didn't know what to expect. The best way to describe it is to think of tuna salad, substitute crab taste for the tuna, slap it on some sourdough bread with some pepperjack cheese and grill it. It tasted just fine I guess. My curiosity about it was satisfied but I kind of wish I had ordered something else. Jane had fish and chips and she said the fish was very good. But Jane likes everything.

We exited the restaurant put on on our jackets as we headed toward the pier. Parked on the Pier was a police car with no occupant inside. I thought the driver might be out getting donuts but there were no donut shops nearby.

The squad car had a nice little surf decal on the side of the vehicle. I kind of like that. It makes one think that the Pismo Police Department has a little more class than your average run of the mill police station.

The last time we were at Pismo there were all kinds of gulls littering the place and crapping from one end of the pier to the other. I even made a funny video of it that I'll post here one of these days as soon as I get at least six people begging to see the bird video. These days, there are a bunch of signs painted on the pier proclaiming that we had better not be feeding the birds if we know what's good for us. I guess the city of Pismo got tired of paying someone to scrape up the gull poopy.

But the thing about signs is that birds can't read. Either that or this Pelican failed to get the memo from the chief of police and was hanging around waiting for a few crumbs or maybe for some kid who didn't know any better to discard today's twinkie. While Mr. Pelican was hanging out, he did pose for a picture though.

As we walked further down the pier I stopped for a few more pictures of the ocean and shoreline. So far it was going pretty good with the camera. The only complaint I had was a small one and it was that the on and off button was a bit touchy. Sometimes it was as if I would double clutch and the lens would start outward and quickly collapse inward again as if it were a middle age man doing his best to fight off impotence. But it was only a minor flaw.

I was even able to quickly find out how to use the zoom. This camera only has a 3X optical zoom whereas my JVC digital video camera that was made expressly for the purpose of taking videos has a 10x optical zoom. But in this price range for this type of camera, I saw none with an optical zoom that went any higher than the Casio I had bought.

Besides the don't feed the bird signs there are all kinds of signs warning who ever was fishing that overhead casting was not aloud. When we got to the end of the pier we found out where the policeman from the empty police car was. He was with another officer that had driven all the way to the end of the pier in an identical squad car. I guess the pier is only sturdy enough to hold one car at a time which is why the other one was left at the other end. Neither officer was eating a donut.

They were busy writing some guy and possibly some of his buddies a citation. I don't know if it was for overhead casting or because he fed some wayward gull. Maybe he had tried to capture my Pelican friend for their next barbecue. I know I wasn't about to ask although I was tempted to take a picture of the whole thing. I decided that would not be a wise course of action as I wasn't really wanting to piss off some Pismo cop and be testing my camera from the inside of the Pismo Heartbreak Hotel.

On the way back down the pier I decided to test the video aspect of the Casio by taking some shots of a young couple doing something called boogie boarding. (Okay, that particular video is gone and I don’t feel like traipsing through all my shit to find it.  But this video at Morrow Bay of some girls messing with a jelly fish will do as a substitute.  It was taken with the same camera.  What were they doing with that jelly fish?  Hell, I don’t know.  Didn’t think to ask since I’d have had to climb down the rocks to ask which wasn’t in the best interest of my health) I was quite pleased with the way it looked on the computer. It's just that it records in the .mov quicktime format and I don't like that. I uploaded the .mov file to youtube which converts it into an .flv file. After that it looked worse. I uploaded it to Veoh and it was somewhat better but neither came close to showing the image as it appeared in the original format. Finally, using my Roxio Creator 8, I converted the file to .wmv at 1400 kbps. and uploaded it to youtube once again in that format. It wasn't any better so I thought about not posting it since it actually looks good out of the camera and on my LCD Flat screen. I didn't want to give the wrong impression about the camera but I've decided to upload it. I just wish you could see the picture of the girl in the wet suit better because she was really hot. Okay, so now you know what my real interest in boogie boarding is.

I will say that it was simple enough to take the video. All I had to do was press the video button and I was in business. Casio says you can upload the video directly from your camera and perhaps if you do that it looks better on Youtube. Or I could try the higher video setting than the one I was using.

After taking enough shots from the pier, we decided to browse the souvenir shops. There are a multitude of those lining the streets near the beach area. Most of them sell the same kind of crummy looking crap and post cards though so if you want a souvenir it's simply a matter of finding them at the right price. The further you get away from the beach the cheaper things seem to be.

The first place we stopped in was this mini-mini-teensy-weensy mall. There were about six shops in there and an ice cream stand. We browsed around in the shops for a while. In one shop I took a picture of a pirate statue.

There had also been a pirate statue in the Pierside Restaurant by the cash register and by the time we finished perusing many of the local shops we had seen several more. So I guess Pirates are a big thing in Pismo. Either that or maybe they were just promoting this weeks release of POTC:At World's end.

And what the heck is it with Betty Boop? She's nothing more than a slutty cartoon character who goes running around half naked showing everything she's got. Her language skills barely go beyond uttering "Poop-poop-a-doopy" incessantly as if she had invented the stuff. Yet you can't hardly walk into a souvenir shop anywhere without running into the ho. And since Jane's best friend collects Betty Boop crap, she had to check out the merchandise to see if there was something her friend would want.

And do you remember what I told you about the further you get away from the water the cheaper things are? That was true in this shop. We found some things in here that cost about twenty dollars more in another shop. So if you know me, and you know you're getting a Christmas present from me, you can look around this picture and guess at what cheap assed present you're getting.

Finally we decided to head elsewhere. We had seen some posters on the shop doors about a Christmas Play being performed at a theater in Oceano which is about three miles from Pismo. We decided to try and get tickets but we weren't holding our breath. It wasn't hard to locate the town or the theater box office and believe it or not they did have a couple of tickets available for the 8:30 performance. There was one small catch. The tickets were for single seats at different locations in the theater. Well, bah humbug to that and your stinking play too which was probably a big crapfest anyway. If you are curious as to what you missed and we missed, you can visit the web site of the Great American Melodrama.

So that brought us back to what we were going to do next. I still wanted to head over to Morro Bay for the boat parade but I could tell by even mentioning it that Jane would go if I pushed for it but she wouldn't be happy about it. So she.....I mean we decided to head for a little town called Cambria. We had read a blurb on their web site that stated:

Forget the shopping malls and mail order catalogs this year. Come to Cambria for your Holiday shopping and find unique gifts for everyone on your list. Give yourself a break and do your Holiday shopping at a relaxed pace. Enjoy the festive ambiance as the village of Cambria celebrates the season with fabulous decorations and brilliant holiday lights.

So we headed up the coast road to find Cambria. As we did, the sun began to set over the ocean. I wanted to stop and take some pictures but by the time we reached a place we could park, it was all over with. I'm not sure that Jane would have stopped anyway. She's kind of the "seen one sunset you've seen them all" types.

We finally located Cambria, although we did have to stop for directions because some road work detoured us out of our way. And it's not exactly an easy place to get to. And yes it is one of those old fashioned types of town that looks like it hasn't changed too much in about fifty years. It's one of those little scenic towns where you go into a bunch of old fashioned shops, soak up the atmosphere, and then pay about three times what anything is worth. Remember the movie Baby Boom? Remember when Diane Keaton is in the shop trying to unload her gourmet baby food when a bunch of yuppies or whatever they were see it and began to rave how great it would be for gifts? Yeah, those are the kind of shoppers you'll find in Cambria.

Some of the stores were decorated up with some lights, but it was nothing special so don't expect much from these pictures. I had some difficulty finding the right setting to take night pictures, and figuring out how turn on the flash. But somehow I finally managed to get it. Still, I should have found somewhere that I could set the white balance manually because that's the only way to get really good pictures at night.

I also had trouble turning the zoom off but again this can be attributed to my lack of still not having read the manual and basically having to fumble around in the dark at the same time.

One of the first shops we went into was a candy store. We browsed for a few minutes and thats when I found the Fizzies! By golly, I bet I hadn't seen Fizzies in more than thirty years. What? You don't know what Fizzies are? Fizzies were a hot item when I was a kid. Basically, they were soda pop in a tablet. You simply drop one into a glass of water, it fizzes around like alka seltzer and then you have instant soda pop! I bought a box of the root beer ones. The price was $3.00 for eight action tablets which comes out to roughly 75 cents for twelve ounces of soda (each tablet makes six ounces) so if you look at it that way the price wasn't all that bad.

There were other candies that you don't find at your unfriendly neighborhood convenience store these days such as Chuckles, Candy Necklaces, straws filled with candy powder, and candy buttons on paper. It was an old fart's candy paradise. Besides the Fizzies, we ended up spending about forty bucks altogether on some other fine chocolates such as chocolate and peanut covered pretzel sticks, some cow tails that I haven't been able to find since moving out here to California's version of bum Egypt, three of the large candy necklaces to give to the kids of Jane's best friend in the hopes that they'll choke on them....just kidding of course, a big bag of gum balls, and some kind of candy concoction imported from somewhere in Canada. (Note the yellowish tinge in some of the candy store pictures was caused by the store lighting.)

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After the candy store we went into an antiques store with a gazillion pieces of junk. There was an old Hard bound Hardy Boys book that I wanted to buy for $6.99 but didn't. I now regret not doing so. I opted instead for an old VHS that has what looks to be some public domain cartoons I can upload and bore you with.
The woman cashier who was probably the owner had this look on her face that said, "You spend an hour in the damn place and all you buy is this $3.99 worthless piece of junk!" What can I say? An antiques aficionado I am not.

By that time it was time to eat again so we could then hit the dusty trail for the two hour drive back home. Most of the restaurants had their menus and the prices on a bulletin type board on the outside. I guess they wanted all the riff raff to know for sure if they could afford it or not. We opted for an Italian place called Lombardi's where the prices seemed reasonable and the atmosphere relaxed and inviting. I guess you're looking for another food review.

For an appetizer, we just had garlic cheese bread and there was nothing extraordinary about that but it did taste good. I forget exactly what it was that Jane had but it came with some kind of cream sauce. Now Jane tired to substitute the cream sauce with something else, but the waitress talked her into keeping the cream sauce. Jane didn't regret it either because she said it was really really good. I had spaghetitini with meatballs and sausage and it too was very very good. And the portions were more than generous and the price was more than reasonable. So if you go to Cambria, forget the fancy high priced places and head over to Lombardi's Pasta Familia as it is officially known as.

That's about it for this road trip as we headed home right after dinner. I hope you have enjoyed our little bus tour. Come again soon.

So how would I rate the Casio which is why we went on this trip in the first place. So far I am quite happy with the performance. I wanted a camera that was small and lightweight that I could take anywhere. It certainly is that. I wanted it to take decent snapshots and although I was satisfied I'll let you be the final judge of that. Given a little time with the camera and manual I'm sure the quality will improve. I wanted it to be able to take decent video, and although the video looked like crap when converted to an flv file by youtube, I'm satisfied with it on my computI can't say that I am happy at all with Best Buy though. They suck even more now than they did last week. I'll write about that later in the week.

A Day in the Life: Home From Work. Time to Cool Down

 

Home from work and time to leave the rat race behind.  I'm just going to cool my ass down by stretching out on the bed in air conditioned comfort.   So what's been happening out in the real world while I've been locked up?

Put this air conditioner in the bedroom a couple of weeks ago and I've pretty much locked myself away there.  We have what they call a Swamp Cooler for the rest of the house, but it's on its last legs and doesn't work worth a damn.  My not-so-expert doctors tell me I have to stay out of the heat, and this is one time I think I'll abide by their suggestion.

My girlfriend's nephew helped me put this thing in and it wasn't as easy as you think.  That's because they make these contraptions for windows that raise up and down, not windows that go side to side (Take that Mr. Miyagi!)  So you have to go through a bunch of shit to get them to fit right and then cover up the big gaping hole on top that it leaves.  It took us our afternoon, but hey it don't look half bad and even if it did look like crap, as long as it works what would I care

The best solution would be to get a new air conditioner for the whole house.  The old one went kapooey about five years ago.  It would take a cool five grand to replace it, and I don't have that much laying around in the petty cash.  So we settled for the swamp cooler which worked pretty good until this year.  Anyway, I'm fine in here punching away on the old laptop.

One of the thousands of reasons Facebook is beginning to suck

Really, Facebbook?  You banned this?  Honestly, the more I read about idiotic censorship on facebook, or read about pages being taken down every time some asshole decides to whine a complaint to Jeffboy Suckenberg.  Stupid fucking conservatives will never be happy until they have us all living under their heavy handed thumb.  I hate them all.

From Pop Blend:

The largest social networking site in the world caused a load of controversy earlier today when it removed the cover art for Nirvana's beloved 1991 record Nevermind. The artwork, depicting a naked baby in the water reaching for a dollar bill, was uploaded to commemorate a twentieth anniversary release of the iconic album. Some special interest groups protested the picture when it was first released, but by now, most people seem to have decided it's interesting and not offensive enough to cause a stir. Apparently, it still violates Facebook's terms of service though, and Mark Zuckerberg is having none of that shit…….

……..Here's why this whole removal is stupid. A company like Facebook needs to maintain rigid standards for its entire community to function without issue, but recognized pieces of nostalgia that have been seen over-and-over again by millions of people should not apply. The difference between some asshole posting naked pictures of his ex-girlfriend and a major band posting a picture of its iconic album is plain and obvious enough that any sensible user should see the difference. Plus, it's a goddamn baby. We're not talking about the cover of Blind Faith's self-titled record here.

Off to the old factory to put in about eight hours.  Back later with more shit.

I write my best crap from here

 

My Office.  They stuck the Neighborhood Watch Crap Sign up in the yard without even asking.  Bastards. Actually this is a test photo to try and get my mobile blogging working from my iphone.  Absolutely essential if I want to keep going with this thing and what I want to do with it, which is mainly throw shit up and see if it sticks.  And will all you little shits running around the neighborhood please quit shortcutting across my lawn.  It makes my girlfriends little rat dogs bark like crazy and I hate the little bastards enough already.

Alex & Liam Do Wal-mart

Two British guys do the Wal-mart thing, and it’s pretty damn funny.

Really Old Blog Crap: Future Color

Future color

I rented a movie called First Men in the Moon. It had a few of these old movie trailers on it. I always get a kick out of these things. it seems the Time Machine wasn't filmed in just regular old Metrocolor but "Futuristic" MetroColor.

Really Old Blog Crap: Lunacolor

Luna Color

First Men In The Moon was filmed in the very special Lunacolor. I'm not sure how it was different from "Futuristic Metro Color."

Really Old Blog Crap: Jennicam

(Clyde note:  I had a follow up to this article but I can't find it.   If I find that article and didn't delete it, I'll stick it back up on the blog.  Anyway, she isn't lost anymore, but she dumped old Dex  Further update:  That post previously mentioned was mostly a video which no longer worked so it would be pointless of me to repost it.   Anyway, if I hear anymore or come across any of these videos I will update again.)

 

I ran across this old Letterman clip on You Tube today.(Clyde note:  this was written several years ago.  The Letterman clip is no longer available.)  It's in regards to a guest appearance by Jennifer Ringley of Jennicam who was a hot item back in the internet days of old. I wonder how many of you can even remember Jennicam.

 

In 1996, she put a webcam in her college room dorm so people could watch her do whatever it was she was doing, and a phenomenon was born. It's strange to think that most people have forgotten about her, and that web cams have now become common place. Think of Jenni as being the original EdTV or The The Truman Show . So what happened to Jenni?

After seven years, Jennicam went dark on January 1, 2004 (midnight of Dec 31, to be precise). She cited the fact that PayPal had a new policy against frontal nudity as one of the reasons. Others believe that it was because nobody really cared to watch her increasingly staid and boring lifestyle anymore.

In mid 2000, Jenni not only stole her best friend's fiancé, Dex, she did it by taking him home and having sex with him live on her web cam, which was how the best friend found out about it. Worst yet, for all of Jennifer's preaching about letting people have an honest and open view into her life, she failed to inform her fans where her new love, Dex, had come from. Making it worse, she had no words of apology for the best friend who had helped Jenni move out to California and find a place to live. Frankly, after seeing pictures of old Dex I am instantly reminded of the Geico Caveman so my question would have been why either one of them would want the guy. I guess love is blind as Jenni wrote of him the morning after having stole him away:

He is a miracle to me, he is the sky opening up and the sun shining down, he is the rich earth underneath my feet and underneath my fingernails"

That Jenni sure has a way with words, doesn't she?  Except my policy is that when that nasty crap gets in my fingernails, I either cut them or scrape that shit away.  (I think eventually, that may be what happened to old Dex)

So where is Jenni now? Nobody seems to know. (Video posted at the bottom of the page) When her webcam went dark, she pretty much fell off of the face of the earth. But if you're interested, you can find articles about her and the big romantic entanglements here, here, here, here, and here, if you scroll about halfway down the page.

There is another site out there called Last Week at Jenni's place that now posts old pictures from from her site that should give you some idea as to what you could have seen on jenni-cam which for the most part is a whole lot of nothing. Coincidentally, this Jennicam replay site is running pictures now of the early days of the Jenni/Dex/Courtney triangle. A link? Sorry, but you'll have to find that one on your own. Hmmm...has anybody suggested a web cam site to Antonella? (Remember her?  Yeah, I still have the pictures as does everybody else.  If Jenni is any example, Ms. Barba will be living with those pictures for a long long time). 

(Update:  After having rerun Jenni’s cam life, the web site Last Week at Jenni’s obviously feels no need to run through her cam world for a third time, and once it reached her last pictures, that’s all the spoilsport posted.  He can turn all the material over to me and I’ll do it if Amazon will let me sell carp on there as well.  Because of it, I’m getting hit after desperate hit from lonely guys with no sex life and no interest in reading my reviews.  I guess you have to be a bit more literate for that high brow crap.   Jesus, at least you would think they would buy the book from Amazon  I posted.}

From the hits I get on this blog after she’s been off of the internet all this time, perhaps she should write a book.  If she puts some pictures of her and Dex doing the nasty, I’m sure it’ll fly off the shelves.  Of course, if the above prose about Dex is any example she may want to hire a ghost writer.  The Kindle downloads will go crazy with activity.  Anyhoo, if you’re so inclined to go to LWAJ, I’ve activated the link above  and have included the last picture he posted of Jenni.  Pretty safe for me to do so since she kept her clothes on all that week)

Anyway, here is the link to Last Week’s at Jenni, and write to him regarding his unwillingness to replay Jen and Dex’s sex life for you.  You’ll get a lot further than comng here looking. 

(Further Update:  I’ve relocated the clip that shows how Jenni was doing a few years ago.  Here it is.  Still working on finding the David Letterman clip.  If anybody finds it let me know.  Contact me on my facebook page.  I mean, shouldn’t I be getting something for my most popular article and keeping her out there in the public eye?  Sure I should. Buy me a present for making your life easier.  Use my wish list.  Yes, I know I’m just being a horse’s ass but sometimes being one can be a lot of  fun)

Get More: The Greatest, Reality TV Shows, Reality TV Shows 6

Jennifer Ringsley gets down and dirty with VH1.

Technorati Tags: Jennicam,Jennifer Ringley,Last Week at Jenni's,Dex,Clyde's Stuff,Web Celebrities

Mommie Dearest 2011

 

Ah, nothing like cutting the cord in a big legal battle with your money grubbing mother.  Can you imagine this conversation:

Mommie Dearest:  I need some of your millions to fix my poor  face.

Leighton:  There isn’t enough money in the world to fix your ugly fucking mug, Mommie Dearest.

Hollywood Reporter:

It seems Leighton Meester is living out a real-life version of Gossip Girl.

Last week, the CW star filed a lawsuit against her mother, Constance Meester, alleging that she diverted money that Leighton had sent for her brother’s care for her own plastic surgery.

Now, Constance has filed her own lawsuit, claiming that she "sacrificed her happiness" to support Leighton's acting career, E! News reported.

Constance claims that she paid out a total of $230,000 over the years for Leighton to attend private school and acting classes.

Faye Dunaway ought to drive over and smack both of ‘em with a wire hanger.

Really Old Blog Crap-February 2006: Where Will You End Up?

In the past year or so, I have done more research on the web than I care to think about. When I was writing political stuff on a daily basis, I would sometimes spend hours upon hours doing research. Most of the time the research took ten times longer to do than the actual writing of the article.

It wasn’t just the non fiction stuff that I had to research either. Despite the fact that it was fiction, my story Laurie and Dag that I penned for The Sims 2 site had to have some basis in factual events and it became necessary to spend a few hours Googling up some information for that also. Since starting Clyde’s Corner, I haven’t spent too much time typing incoherent phrases into a search box to find out what I need to know. I hope it never comes to that again.

One thing is also certain about the web. If there is something you need to know, whether it’s about a big historical event or the most minutiae of factoids, you can probably find it. There is always somebody, somewhere, willing to start a web site about practically anything, no matter how strange, grotesque, obscene, weird, or just plain odd it may seem to the average person. And if you do any kind of research at all you’ll find these sites more often than not. It just depends on whether or not you want to jump to page 1030 of your search results.

Sometimes when I come across a site I didn’t know about before, I often wonder where people got the idea from. I suppose the trick to making successful web sites is to be the first to come up with a good idea and get it going. From the looks of things, there can’t be that many original ideas left. But you never know. If you’ve been thinking of something to put on the web but say to yourself, “nah, that’s too weird,” my advice is to get busy and get with it. Somebody out there will make use of it.

One site I found about four or five years ago, and thousands upon thousands of other people have also is one called Find-A-Grave. You may have heard of it or been there yourself. I don’t remember what I was researching but I do remember suddenly having the thought that there might be a web site where I could find pictures of the graves of famous people. And just like I said, there it was on the web waiting for me.

The premise is simple. You get a bunch of people to contribute whatever information they have where the final resting place of someone is and then Find-A-Grave posts the information. You can go on the site and find out where the guy next door ended up (if it was submitted), or you can just browse around and look at the graves of some famous people. Yep, there is a ton of pictures on there also.

For instance, you can find the gravesites of famous actors, actresses, producers or directors. So if you were ever planning on taking a vacation out to Hollywood, and visiting Marilyn Monroe, you can now cross it off of your site seeing tour and use that time for more fruitful endeavors like going to Disneyland, Universal Studios or heading down to The Price is Right so Bob Barker can tell you to come on down!

One thing I noticed is that you can’t always tell how famous a person was by their final resting place. Many celebrities such as Marilyn are buried in crypts in large buildings. Usually they are in good company as there are often numerous other dead celebrities lying around in close proximity. I didn’t readily recognize any of the names that were close to Marilyn. Maybe you will know them and pay your last respects. Tell them Clyde sent you.

Bob Hope on the other hand has one of the nicer layouts around but you would expect him to. I checked his out last night and it’s a doozy.

Sometimes though, you can’t visit a celebrity grave because they don’t have one. Yeah, they opted for cremation and having their ashes scattered somewhere. The somewhere of choice is mainly the Ocean, although it could be just about anywhere. Cremation will probably be my method of choice also. But I haven’t given much thought as to where I want my ashes to end up. I’ll try to think of something different and weird so that maybe after I’m gone I can have my fifteen minutes of fame. Has anybody ever had their ashes scattered at the Pirates of The Caribbean Ride?

Fear not though, they still give you a picture of the person when they were alive so that you can leave your condolences. Yep you can leave little messages with a little icon of flowers, cigarettes, beer, or anything else the person may have been attached to. Marilyn has 5,698 notes, Johnny Carson has 1,509 notes but he hasn’t been gone that long. Bob Hope has 1,669 notes so he only beat out Carson by a hair. I guess that means that Bob was about 160 more notes more popular than Carson. But then again, Carson was cremated so maybe a few people feel a bit odd about leaving condolences where there isn’t a picture of a grave marker.

And there’s another way to look at the service Find-A-Grave supplies. How many of us have ever been invited to the funeral of a famous person to pay our last respects? I can guarantee you that not very many of us have. I know I never have. The closest I’ve ever came to actually being at one of these places is when on a trip to the beach my girlfriend and I stopped at a restaurant right next to the road where James Dean wiped out in his car. The food wasn’t so great, but I got some great video of the monument and highway. When I edited it into some other video of surfers, seagulls, and sexy girls in bikinis, I even had the Forrest Gump Feather theme playing over top of it. Now is that art or is that art? So since you're never going to be on an invitation list for their funeral, isn’t this the next best thing?

Along with the famous, there is also the infamous. You can find the last resting places of some of the more notorious and despicable people that once walked the planet. John Wayne Gacy is there along with Lee Harvey Oswald, Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger. Ted Bundy is there, but he was cremated. If you want to leave a message for them in case they are somewhere in the hereafter pounding away endlessly on their PC or Mac, you can’t do it. On the pages of the worst of the worst you are greeted by a sad little flower telling you that the condolence feature has been turned off because of continual abuse. Too bad really, because I had a few choice words for a few of those people myself.

Every once in a while you’ll find the gravesite of someone who isn’t dead yet. It seems some famous people like to plan well ahead. I have to commend them on their foresight. We should all be like that.

Efrem Zimbalest Jr. is one of those who planned ahead. He’s going to take up residence in Connecticut when he’s done. And those who might want to pay their respects to him have thought ahead also and begun leaving messages. That’s certainly better than waiting till the last minute. Just think, he can enjoy all those messages and thoughts, something most of us won’t get to do. Some of the messages congratulate him on still being alive, wish him a Happy Birthday, and let Efrem know how enjoyable he was on the TV series The FBI. My favorite though is succinct and to the point and was left by Anonymous. It simply had two words: Keep Breathing.

Of course, as with anything there may be a side effect if you hang around Find-a-grave too long. You may begin wondering what your own grave would look like if pictures of it were on there. I’ve taken care of that for you also.

You can now go to a site called Tombstone Generator and see what your own Grave Marker might look like. You just punch in what you want inscribed, click a button and voila, instant tombstone! And you can save the picture to your computer and pay your respects to yourself anytime you want. Yep, that's mine at the top of the post.

It can come in handy for other things also. For instance, my sister and I were trying to convince my brother that a certain somewhat famous person was no longer around. He insisted they were and of course he was right. But after sending him a generated tombstone for this still very much alive person, he wasn’t quite sure. It took a little bit of research for him to find out the truth. He says he was never fooled but I know better.

And if you aren’t in the mood for a tombstone, they also have warning signs you can generate, or if you’re in a religious type mood, your own personalized church sign. I’ve whipped up a couple of those myself, just to give you an example. And for just $7.50, you can have your Church sign made into a refrigerator magnet and impress your friends and family.

All I know is that I really like all these ideas. As my last request, I’m going to make sure I end up with a picture on Find-A-grave so I can be forever immortalized and pixilated. And it won’t cost me anything, even if I’m cremated. I’ll just send up a picture of my brand new computer generated Tombstone and nobody will ever be wiser. But don’t expect it too soon. I’m really in no real hurry to be immortalized, and won’t be anytime soon. Catch you later!