Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • Mmmm, TV and Chinese Food

    This is my middle-of-January-don’t-wanna-talk-about-a-war Entertainment Review. I think this will end up being my favorite TV Shows of the past year or so (since I have an awful time-based memory, Silver Spoons might show up along side Buck Rogers). You may also accidentally get a restaurant review sprinkled in. Here they are in the order I think of them:

    1. The Wire: This has got to be my favorite show of the last year or so. It felt like the first couple seasons of my all-time-favorite cop show, Homicide. Each episode was tight and gripping, and the characters were just the best. I hope it makes a come-back next season, although I would understand if it didn’t.

    2. Boomtown: I hope this show survives. It’s my favorite, and I think the best drama on network television right now. Again, the characters drive the show, and they’re all perfectly played. Donnie Wahlberg has been a big surprise and done a great job playing the honest but tempted husband. The last show where he told Fearless about his wife’s attempted suicide was just heartbreaking. And Neal McDonough (I know I butchered that… sorry) is on fire as McNorris. He was great in Band of Brothers but he’s done a great job of making me forget him in that role and embracing the drunken jackass he plays on the show.

    3. Cheng’s: Accidental restaurant review ahead. We went out to Cheng’s, our local upscale Chinese restaurant last night with a couple from church. We decided to be oh-so Iron Chef and try something new. We started with chicken in lettuce rolls, which were extremely tasty. The chicken was chopped very fine and mixed with a light soy-based sauce, pine nuts, a few pieces of green and red pepper and then rolled in lettuce with scallions. Yum-may. Then, we got four entrees to share: Filet Mignon with Spicy Black Pepper And Macadamia Nuts, Crispy Duck with Ginger Plum Sauce, General Tsao’s Chicken and Beef With Broccoli. Can you tell which ones Jen and I ordered? First, the Filet Mignon was awesome. I expected the traditional little filet with the other stuff around it. Nope, it came out in bite-sized chunks mixed with macadamia nuts, green peppers, onions and scallops in a really tangy pepper sauce. It was awesome. The pepper kick stuck around for a few seconds after each bite, but wasn’t unpleasant, and the meat was extremely tender and cooked to medium on the inside. It was definitely the hit of the night. The crispy duck came in a cube, with what looked a little like (you guessed it) duck sauce around it. There were small pieces of breaded duck at the bottom, then topped with fried duck skin, some melon slices and thin strips of red pepper. The skin was perfectly crispy. It wasn’t tough or chewy at all and was a great complement to the rich and tender duck. Great dish. Their General Tsao’s Chicken isn’t as spicy as some of the other local choices, but it was very good. I think I’ll still go to Oriental Express for my General Tsao’s.

    4. Firefly: Even though Fox short-sightedly cancelled this brilliant show, I’m holding out hope it’ll get picked up somewhere else. By the Buffy guy, it’s a great combination of sci-fi, western and witty dialogue that kept me coming back every Friday night. It had all the humor that Buffy had in its first couple seasons and some spot-on storytelling.

    5. Andy Richter Controls The Universe: Like The Family Guy, this brilliant sitcom just hasn’t found the audience it deserves on Fox. The Zoomanism episode alone was worth renewing the show for. I think it really just needed to chance for people to find it. Unfortunately, I think it’s gone as soon as Fox can find a replacement for it.

    6. The Sopranos: I don’t know what everyone was complaining about. I loved this season. They got away from some of the violence and let the characters move around a bit. The last four episodes where some of the best of the entire series.

    7. Chapelle’s Show: Ok, this one’s new, and I’m not sure they can keep it up, but the first episode was one of the funniest half hours I have ever seen. The black white supremacist sketch was one of the ballsiest things I have ever seen on TV. I almost wet myself laughing. Definitely try to catch the show next week (and knowing Comedy Central, you can probably catch the first episode a couple hundred times between now and next Wednesday).

    8. Smallville: The show is a liii-iiittle on the cheesy side, but it has such a wealth of things to work with, that it’s worth watching every week just to see how they’re going to develop Clark’s character. What’s great is I think the show could continue almost forever. Unlike other teen series that die after High School ends, there’s enough in the Superman story to keep the show going with new supporting characters into college and even the Daily Planet afterwards. Jen got me hooked on this one.

    9. Full Metal Challenge: Max’s faaa-aaaavorite show. He’ll watch each episode over and over again and then go recreate all the games. I love it just to see how these homemade cars do it every week, and to cheer on the little Chilean car. I’m sad the season’s over, but I’m sure next season will be even better.

    Whew… that was fun. Next time, movies?

  • Sexy Sexy… ::BUUU-UUU-UURP::

    You know how I was all eloquent before? Well, this is the second half – what really happened. So, after being stuck at work until after seven (when I was going to take the day off), I get home with a splitting headache and took my lovely and unbelievably understanding wife to Sweetwater Tavern, where my diet took a short vacation while I down half a bowl of spinach and artichoke dip, half a sixteen-ounce prime rib and half a deep-dish apple pie. Yum. Did you realize it’s 15 degrees outside? My fingers are still cold… After all that food creaing an oh-so-comfy lump in my gut, and almost a week of Icelandic weather creating cold-like symptoms… I’m feeling sexy with a capital whoopie, I tell you what. So, I’m sitting here surfing while Jen watches Felicity.

    You know what? All of this is OK because we’re sitting here together on the couch in the basement in our warmest sweats, feet touching and stealing little glances at each other. Our marriage rocks because it’s so unlike those horrible contentious things on TV that seem like so little fun. We have fun just sitting next to each other, cracking little jokes, getting giddy laughing at each others laughs, or the silly stuff Max did that day. My wife is the best.

  • Mmmm, Portable

    Do you use multiple computers? Are they all running different OS’es? Do you use different text editors on each one? Does that piss you off? You’re in luck, my friend!! Go download jEdit today. It’s a full-functioned text editor written in Java and delivered as an executable jar file. So, any platform that can run Java can run jEdit. Problem of the text editor collection – SOLVED!! It also has an impressive array of plug-ins which are awesome. Go get the latest stable build and check it out. You’ll love it.

  • 5 Years Ago

    It sounds like a long time ago now, but it doesn’t feel like it. Five years ago today, I got married to the coolest girl on the planet. She laughed at my jokes then and she still does. She still gives me that look that makes me feel like I can do anything. She makes me feel younger than I am. She makes me want to be a better man.

    Five years has gone by in what feels like a couple months; but, when I look back, there are all these memories of things we’ve done and well, yeah, there are five year’s worth of memories there. Other than a broken knee and a pretty rough birth , things have been blissful, even when they shouldn’t have been. It’s funny how much can change in five years. We’ve gone from really poor to comfortable. We’ve gone from the sunny dustbowl of Tucson to the (now) frigid greenery of Northern Virginia, from a tiny tiny tiny one bedroom apartment to a townhouse we frequently lose each other in. We went from the two of us playing house in our little box apartment to having a kid to mess up a home we own.

    Jen, I would do it all over again in an instant. There are very few things I would change (the whole broken knee thing) and couldn’t imagine my life without you. Happy Anniversary, baby!

  • I’m So Fat

    I need a new belt!! Yes, I’ve said it already, but today I realized I can’t suck in my gut or my pants will fall down with my current belt hiked all the way to its last hole. Yep, Mr. Me, I’m doin’ pretty good.

    I’m taking a Java class this week, which is a little weird since I already built this huge thing in Java without ever having touched it before and NOW I’m taking the class. But, while I was building this thing, there were lots of times I went, “Hey, what the?!” and got really frustrated because I couldn’t figure out why something worked one way and not another. I didn’t have the time to figure it out because I had to move on to the next problem. In the first three hours of class today, a lot of those frustrations melted away. Yeah, Java’s still a little too strict for me, and packages are still a pain, but at least I understand what they are now.

  • Learnin’ Is Phat

    I’m in training aaaa-aaaaall day and then have a meeting that will keep me here past dark. So, you probably won’t hear a lot from me today unless l get inspired during lunch. Go read something else and then come back and tell me about it.

  • A Moving Experience

    The article isn’t scary to me. What scares me is it actually sounds like a good idea.. Warning… intense gastric descriptions await you in that story.

    After a small scare yesterday (went back up to 300.5), I’m back to 299.5, and that’s after going out to breakfast and having chili for dinner. I’m really not getting crazy about this, but I’m seeing results and it makes me extremely happy. I have more energy. I can see my toes. I need to go shopping for a new belt because this one’s on its last hole and not doing a great job of holding things up. I wore pants to church that I haven’t been able to fit into for over a year, and they weren’t the least bit uncomfortable.

  • Let The Wild Rumpus Begin

    299.5 – YES!! Under 300!! Yeah, I know it’s cutting it close and with my first glass of water, I was back over 300… but it still counts. I’ve discovered the trick to this whole weighing myself thing. Only do it once a day at the point when I’ll probably be the lightest: in the morning first thing after waking up (and of course, taking a leak, because water’s really heavy). 20+ pounds down, 99.5 to go.

    In non-fat news, we watched The Mothman Prophecies the other night. I wasn’t expecting much, but Jen and I were both awake and in the mood for a scary movie. It was a lot better than I expected it to be. It was very creepy, and did a great job of setting the mood. It was a little over-stylized, especially in the cut scenes. But, Jen screamed once which is a vote of confidence in a movie. If Jen screams, it is good. It’s better if Jen screams and then jumps into my arms for comfort… that’s a GREAT movie. A scream and a giggle, that’s a good movie. No screams and she falls asleep? That’s a horrible movie. Can you tell we’ve been married almost five years?

  • Here I Go Again

    Here I go again. I used to be a Republican. I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh. I read his first two books. I thought Bill Clinton was a bad dude (and I still he is in some ways). This was all in high school and for a couple years afterwards, maybe until 1995 or 96. I am no longer a Republican. I think Rush Limbaugh is is a big fat idiot. I think the GOP is morally bankrupt. I think they long ago sold out and are now no more than puppets for Corporate America. They play on the middle class evangelicals and devout by promising to outlaw abortion, get prayer back in school and bring God to the heathens in Washington. They play to those who feel left out by saying they’ll bring jobs to the little people and they’re “compassionate”. They don’t really mean it, obviously. Sure, they’ll create a day, but all they really care about is making money for themselves and their patrons. They want to keep us fat and complacent while they run off with the bank.

    What about the Dems? They’re no better. They may have better positions, but they’re incapable or unwilling of fighting the Republicans at the moment. After decades of being able to articulate their positions and get popular culture on their side, they’ve lost it. The cats (or Elephants) have run off with their eloquence and left them with nothing to say. It’s depressing. At a time when we need a fiery and vociferous opposition party, we get Casper Milquetoast and His Band Of Capitulators. Where’s the fight? Where’s the fire?

    And third parties? Dream on. Ralph Nader turned into Andrew Dice Clay after the election and I’m not sure we’ll ever hear from the Green Party again. The Libertarians, who actually showed some promise in ’92, were nowhere to be seen in 2000 (at least not in DC). Jesse Ventura did more to set his little party back than more it forward and… well, that’s all the ones anyone knows about, isn’t it?

    Where does that leave us? I feel that if I vote Republican, whoever I vote for isn’t really going to do anything for me, and in my district, we don’t really have any Democrats running for anything important (John Warner ran unopposed for the Senate… huh?!). It makes me almost want to give up and stop voting, but I know I won’t. It’s the only way I’ve got to make even a little difference. Man, this was depressing.

  • Nucular Strategery

    “There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas – probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.” Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

    Wow. How did this guy get elected? Every day I watch a news conference or read the news, I cringe at what comes out of his mouth. And now the National Sanctity of Life Day and Patriot Day? On NSoLD, I don’t care where you stand on abortion, and I’m not going to get into my position on it here, but how big was the wheelbarrow he used to roll his balls into the room to make that announcement? This guy has no sense of what he’s doing looks like, does he? He’s all for sticking us with his wacky Religious Right agenda without considering the objections of anyone who may have a differeing opinion. There are now dozens, if not hundreds of examples of the Bush (part Deux) Administration making Black and White declarations about things without knowing all sides of the issue. For example, let’s create an energy policy in secret without talking to even the most conservative enviromental groups? Not one! Let’s create a national Anti-Abortion day without thinking that this is a Democracy and there is a large percentage of Americans who will be offended by it (probably much larger than those who think this is a good idea)! Woo-hoo!! Ok, on to Patriot Day… What a meaningless and stupid name for a day to commemorate one of the worst acts of violence in American history. One of the others, an act of war that led us into WWII in the Pacific doesn’t have a holiday. We don’t celebrate December 7th. We don’t give it a name. It’s the day something terrible happened. Let’s leave it be and let people remember it how they want or need to.

    Compassionate Conservatism is a joke. It’s an evil joke played on the American people, and I’m sick to my stomach over it. Bush Junior has done nothing but stick it to the middle class and the poor in his time in office. He’s bungled situation after situation with his unnuanced and uninformed positions and policies and I for one can’t wait until I get to cast my next ballot for President.