Good Afternoon Ladies &
Gentlemen,
This weekend was pretty cool. Saturday, we were at one
of Dizzy’s aunts’ house & she mentioned that the Gilroy Garlic Festival was
this weekend. We had heard about it before but didn’t really check when it was
recently… so we kind of impromptu adventures out to Gilroy (about 2 hours from
SF) to experience it. Well… getting there was a bit of a pain… we were going
fine until the freeway off ramp… and then it was about 90 minutes in traffic as
temperatures approached 100 (by the way, all you people in LA rolling your eyes
saying “so a Wednesday?” just keep it to yourselves) for the last few miles…
even the great Gretchen overheated for a moment, so we pulled off in the shade
& topped her off with coolant. Side note: Sunday we also changed her oil
& tuned her up for the road trip next week… but more on that
later.
We
got to the festival & it was your typical festival… with food, craft booths,
live music, etc. Basically though, I wasn’t well dressed for it (again,
impromptu) and I’m apparently become a bit MORE of a puss when it comes to heat
now… but frankly, it was f**king hot in any situation. Even the locals were
commenting on it. Regardless, we stayed for a few hours, drank plenty of fluids,
found a bracelet for Dizzy, ate some of the biggest f**king crawdads I’ve ever
seen & then drove back to town with no problems at all. I’m glad that we
went… even if it was pretty sweetie. Best part: No sun sickness because we
played it smart.
That night, we watched “Mental” starring Toni Collette,
Anthony LaPaglia, & Liev Schreiber. It’s from director P.J. Hogan (not to be
confused with Paul Hogan from “Crocodile Dundee” fame) and is the story of an
Australian family of 7 (children are all girls) whose father is the mayor (and a
bit of a dick), mother is institutionalized & now they’re all questioning
their mental health. Well, the father goes out & picks up a random lady off
the street (Collette) who along with her loyal dog “RIPPAH!” help the family
with their problems… in some pretty crazy ways… kind of like Mary Poppins… if
she had spent some time in the pen. Anyway, I thought it was pretty
entertaining… and kinda heartfelt at times… but you know, not an amazing movie.
Good for some laughs as long as you can understand what they’re saying (lots of
Australian accents). Kind of a feel good movie… I guess… check it
out.
Courtesy of Netflix, our next adventure was the 80’s
action flick “Commando” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, this may sound bad…
but I hadn’t seen this movie before. I know, it shocked me too! I thought that I
had seen it all in the Arnie library but apparently I had missed this one. Well,
for those who haven’t seen it… think the plot of “Taken”, retired ex-special ops
guy whose daughter (12-year old Alyssa Milano) is kidnapped, but in this one,
it’s so that the bad boss (Dan Hedaya) will have Arnie kill somebody in South
America. Well, Arnie is not having it… so he basically goes vendetta on
everybody’s ass in tracking them down… lots of explosions, one-liners, random
flight attendant tagging along (I probably would’ve ditched her very early in
the movie in my rampage), cameos by guys that you may recognize from other shows
now… but yeah, Arnie is a little more physically intimidating than Liam Neeson.
I’d say check it out… but be prepared… it’s 1985 so it’s pretty cheesy… and I
think Arnie’s first movie where he actually speaks a lot. Enjoy! Now for your
local news…
Shocker: DC is Dishonest - For the second year in a row,
residents of our nation’s capital have proven themselves the most likely to
steal a dollar from your pocket (GASP!!!). At least, that’s according to one
unusual new study, which found Washington, D.C. to be the least honest city or
state in the nation. The makers of Honest Tea conducted the survey, which
involved setting up an unmanned booth with bottles of their product on display.
Customers were asked to use the honor system and leave $1 for each bottle of tea
they took. In the end, 80% of Washingtonians paid for their beverage. But that
was still far less than the national average of 92%. “As a company, Honest Tea
values transparency,” National Honesty Index spokesman Dan Forman told Yahoo!
News. “To touch on this, the company thought creating a light-hearted social
experiment that takes a look at honesty in America would be a good way to start
a conversation about honesty and how society values it.“ Fun fact: To add to the
irony of the experiment, Honest Tea CEO Seth Goldman said he had his bike stolen
while traveling to the D.C. booth. He said he had even chained the bike up
before leaving it for a few hours. Now, a tea test is far from the final word on
a city or state’s total measurement of honesty. But this is not the only study
to find D.C. atop some less than ideal rankings. For example, a 2012 study found
that workers in D.C. curse on the job more than of their colleagues around the
nation. This is the fourth year that Honest Tea has conducted their little
experiment, during which they visited all 50 states and 61 locations in total.
Alabama and Hawaii tied for the most honest states, where 100% of customers paid
for their tea. West Virginia was considered the second least honest state, with
85% of people paying for their tea (possible illiteracy curve?). Still, as
Forman notes, a large majority of Americans paid for their drinks even in those
so-called least honest states. “We were delighted to see that people in the U.S.
were so honest. There is so much negative rhetoric put out there. It’s
encouraging to know that in reality, when faced with a choice to do the right
thing or steal, 92 percent of people in the U.S. chose to do the right thing.”
Forman says the company will continue to tweak its honesty tests in future years
to better measure how people respond to various scenarios testing their
responses. Another fun fact: Utah was among the five least honest states! Yes,
Utah! Now, frankly I’m a little shocked at that… but then again… maybe not
shocked is the right word. Again, maybe it was a little bit of the literacy
issue that I mentioned regarding West Virginia. Still… would you leave a dollar
for tea? I’d like to think that my readers would but… then again… if I only had
a five dollar bill & no change…
The Great Escape of the Pink Panther – No, not a reboot
of the Peter Sellers movie series… but rather a tale of movie-like action. Armed
men have broken a member of the so-called Pink Panther gang of jewel thieves out
of a Swiss prison, police said on Friday. Bosnian gang member Poparic Milan
escaped the jail in the Swiss canton of Vaud on Thursday night, along with
another prisoner, after accomplices in two vehicles forced their way through a
gate and fired at prison guards. The Pink Panthers, who have a weakness for
expensive watches, have staged about 340 robberies on luxury stores in Europe,
the Middle East, Asia and the United States since 1999, making off with booty
worth more than 330 million Euros ($436.77 million), according to Interpol.
That’s right… international jewel thieves! Milan, 34, had been serving a jail
sentence of six years and eight months for robbing a jewelry store in
Switzerland's watch-making capital Neuchatel in 2009. Known for their
spectacular heists, the gang drove two cars into a Dubai shopping mall and
through the window of a jewelry store in 2007, swiping goods worth about $14.5
million in a raid lasting less than a minute. The following year the group
walked away with loot worth up to $113 million after entering the Harry Winston
jewelers in central Paris disguised as women. Yeah… they broke into a Swiss
prison & took their guy back. Ballsy…
The Return of the Pink Puma? – In American criminal
system news, a convicted sex offender has pleaded guilty to repeatedly using
phony credentials to gain entry into New York City jails. The New York Post
reports that 36-year-old Yonkers resident Matthew Matagrano pleaded guilty
Thursday to posing as a correction officer and sneaking into the Manhattan
Detention Center. During one of those visits, on February 27th, Matagrano assaulted an inmate and stole a $2,500
walkie-talkie (Really? They make those? F**k that’s why prisons are so
expensive…). He also handed out cigarettes to inmates. It's not clear why the
former inmate, whose rap sheet includes a conviction for sodomy and sexual
abuse, wanted to get back into jails. My guess: Probably to sell cigarettes for…
favors… but let’s not think too much into that. He faces 10 years behind bars at
sentencing… because if there’s one thing that convicted sodomites fear… it’s a
decade in prison. Sigh… I don’t think that armed men are going to break into
jail to free this guy…
NBA 2K13 Update: I’ve won the MVP Award AND the Most
Improved Player award (pretty sure that’s the first time that’s happened) as
well as first team All-NBA & first team All-Defensive. I led the league in
scoring, FG%, rebounds & even etched out minutes played by 2 minutes. Boom!
Oh… and we (the Milwaukee Bucks) went 51-0 during the regular season since I
basically decided to just take over & finally learned some of the tricks.
Some games were close (10-0 runs when I sat on the bench for a minute happened a
LOT) but yeah, pretty good season for a… 22-year old on the game. Next stop:
Bulls in first round of the playoffs… and shortly after three-peating… Contract
negotiations!!! Time for this sucka to get PAID!!! Here is my new billboard… and
a magazine cover showing off my new shoe… but it really looks like I’m showing
off a giant dildo, right?
Just a few more days until the start of our EPIC Oregon
Road Trip. We’re still working out the plans… but it looks like we may get to
see Portland for a few days, then drive along the Oregon Coast, drive dune
buggies, fish & eat crab all day for a week, then on the drive back we may
stop by Crater Lake & Klamath Falls. Not a bad trip, right? I will
definitely keep you posted with pictures when I get back… but yeah, should be
some pretty amazing fun. Have a great day
everybody!!!
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