Random thoughts from my travels
I am back now from my trip to So Cal. I had a great time in spite of the fact that the Giants lost to the Fathers. Jeff and my friends the Beards are the kind of friends that are so comfortable, it is a good time no matter how much time has passed since we saw each other. I brought my laptop with me with every intention of posting to my blog while I was away, but I never got around to it. I did, however, get some stuff written which is posted below.
I will also try to have a movie review of Nacho Libre posted to my Entertainment Blog by the end of the day and will also try to post some more thoughts on the NBA draft and some of the big trades and free agent signings that happened while I was a way on my Sports blog.
While I was on the plane on the way to LA I thought I would type a few thoughts to post later. While I’m writing this, there is a very bored teen girl sitting next to me trying to pretend like she’s not reading this and telling secrets with her buddy sitting a row in front of her. We’ve been in the air for about 8 minutes and she is already going nuts. It is going to be a long hour and 25 minutes for her and maybe for me.
1. Flying is always cool. Not always fun, but cool. I have flown dozens and dozens of times and every time I fly, I think the same thing: “Why can’t you share the arm rest?” But I also think: “this is so cool! We take it for granted, but I still like looking out the window at the buildings becoming smaller and the farms turning to a patch-work quilt and then the big fluffy clouds. Next time you fly, take at least a few seconds to just enjoy this modern miracle of technology before paying 10 dollars for a box of miniature snacks and snuggling with the overweight total stranger sitting next to you who seems to be completely unaware that both his arm and leg are squarely in your quadrant and continue to press against you no matter how much you try to mash yourself against that wall.
2. Teen girl passenger update: She is now “hecka bored” and “hecka mad” at her buddy for not downloading any better music to her mp3 player. Nevertheless she is contended by dancing around in her seat to the inferior music her friend has provided and gently nudging me with her elbow leading me to constantly look at her thinking she’s trying to get my attention only to discover that no, she is just hecka in the groove.
3. I am wearing a t-shirt from the “Spicy Pickle.” The Pickle is a sandwich and pizza place downtown in the same building as my office. I go there for lunch between 2 and 3 times a week. It is a staple. When you go out to eat for lunch every day, you have to have three things. One, a staple. A place you can go about every other day and not get tired of it. Two, you also need a variety of other places, preferably as different from your staple place as possible and the more the better. Finally, you need a distaste for making and taking your own lunch that allows you to daily spend money you should be spending on something else.
For me, the staple place has to be a sandwich place. After years of careful and intensive research, I have determined that the sandwich is really the only food I can eat two meals a day every day for a long time if I have to. It is just a small part of what makes the sandwich nature’s perfect food. If you don’t like sandwiches the problem is with you, not with sandwiches and I won’t argue about this. When I thank God for the blessing of a given meal, I don’t just thank Him for this sandwich, I make sure to thank Him for all sandwiches.
Anyway, wherever I live, I have a regular sandwich place. A couple have come and gone in downtown Portland, but the Spicy Pickle is the favorite of the moment.
(Tangent Alert, Tangent Alert)
Why is it so dang hard to make a decent sandwich? I don’t mean a transcendent sandwich that makes you wish you had all the stomachs of a cow just so you can keep eating them, I’m just talking about a good, solid sandwich. There are tons of places in every city that make sandwiches and never more than 2 that get right. Just get some fresh bread, slice some high-quality meat thinly, apply mayonnaise and maybe just a little Dijon to the bread, fold the meat onto the bread. Add any cheese other than “wiz” or “American” and fresh lettuce and tomato and voila! Decent sandwich. Sadly, this formula has proven more elusive than a calorie in a Hollywood starlet’s diet, for most sandwich makers. Someday I will teach weekend seminars all over the country and America will have good sandwiches again, finally allowing us to win in international basketball, solve the crises in Korea and the Middle East and make the manufacturers of meat slicers the wealthiest people in the world. Dare to dream.
(and we’re back…)
Every place I’ve gone, I get to know the people who work there because I tend to be there almost as much as they are. And, because I am a creature of habit I tend to order the same thing over and over and the people learn my order as much as they learn my name. For years, my dream has been that one day I would wake up and find that I had grown 10 inches and gotten 100 times my current athletic ability so that I could become a pro basketball player. But that doesn’t really have anything to do with sandwiches, so let me try that again.
For years, my dream is to have one of these places name a sandwich after me for the obvious reason that it would be about the coolest thing in the whole world that doesn’t matter at all. For a while I thought that was Tivo and then I realized, Tivo matters….alot, so we’re going with getting a sandwich named after you. All of this is just a really long build up to say, the good folks at the Spicy Pickle in Portland have decided to name a sandwich after me. Now, I just go in and order “the Josh” and that’s all I need to say. It hasn’t appeared on the menu yet, but the owner assures me it will soon. I also got a free t-shirt which is cool in a “I can’t believe what a dork I am” sort of way. It’s also fair since I have spent enough money in there to clothe the entire nation of Trinidad (or Tobago, but obviously not both) in Spicy Pickle T-Shirts…and wouldn’t they be happy about that.
So, I strongly recommend if you are ever in the Pickle, try the Josh. It’s the goods. For the record, the Josh is a “build your own” with roast beef on foccacia (hot) with basil mayo, horseradish mayo, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato and cucumber. Enjoy.
4. I just watched the first 9 picks of the NBA draft before getting on the plane. There is a full running commentary if you are interested in that sort of thing on my sportsblog site. In case you missed it, Portland passed on the most popular (though not the best) player in the draft. Portlanders had actually started a campaign to get this guy drafted that got national attention. Portland Blazer fans (all 9 of them other than me) are going to generally be furious that the Blazers passed on Adam Morrison. If you know a Blazer fan and you want to see them get worked up, try saying something like: (Blazer President) “Steve Patterson is a genius” Or “Thank goodness the Blazers took LeMarcus Aldridge.” Chances are they will light up and go spinning out of control like those fire works that hop around while turning different colors. It could be fun to watch.
As a side note, why are those firecrackers called hedghogs? Is there a species of hedgehog out there that spins wildly and turns bright colors? Is this what would happen if we lit their tails on fire? Why isn’t there a nightly show on the Discovery Chanel about this?
As for me, I think the Blazers had a brilliant draft. They got, for my money the two best players in the draft in Aldridge and Brandon Roy. It is the second good thing they’ve done in the last decade and I can’t even remember what the first was.
5. In an earlier post, I promised a post about snobby waiters. They are everywhere and I don’t get it. I call it the Alex Trebec syndrome. Allow me to explain. First, I have nothing against waiters or waitresses. In fact, I generally think fondly of anyone who brings me food and drink. Plus I think it is a very respectable job and can be quite lucrative. There is no shame in waiting tables. That said, the job does not hold the prestige level that usually accompanies the level of snobbiness that you get from many waiters. i.e., they are not the heads of state of a Country on the UN Security Counsel.
Why is it that people who wait tables in fancy restaurants act so superior? I am convinced that Chefs or menu writers go out of their way to invent words and use foreign languages to describe their foods so that no one can be completely sure what they are ordering and then the waiter treats you like an idiot if you don’t know exactly what it is. I believe this is so the Chef can just fix whatever he wants and say “here’s your chevoi nable Chicken with a light frameaux glaze with a delicate hint of promlay resting gently on a side of ferenhoyt” and then serve you a cheeseburger with kettle chips. And who are you to argue? Sure you don’t know what that means and no one does but one thing is for sure, the waiter will act like you are an absolute imbecile when you order it and make sure to correct your pronunciation of at least 3 words.
Where do they get off? They are a waiter for crying out loud!!!! They aren’t even preparing this food they’re acting so snobbish about. They don’t speak any language other than English, if that, and yet they will treat you like some peasant worm if you stumble over their made up gibberish.
I call this the Alex Trebec syndrome, because Trebec takes himself sooooo seriously when he pronounces words or phrases in other languages. Plus he acts like he knew every answer even without the little card he’s holding that tells him, as if he’s the smartest guy on the planet. It is one of the most annoying things in the history of television. At least every third time I’m in a fancy restaurant, I end up thinking, “why would salad cost $11?” And then I also think, “why does this guy pretend to know better than I do which fork to use and why would he think I care?” Of course I never say anything, but if you’ve read this blog, I bet you can tell how I tip when that happens.
6. Finally, speaking of tips, here are some tips on how to behave when traveling by air:
a. When going through security act nice and polite to the security personnel no matter how obnoxious they are. You can’t win that fight and the moment it becomes a fight you will be in a small room with no windows with a large female weightlifter in uniform who isn’t putting on a latex glove just because she likes the feel of it against her skin. For example, since I travel with a laptop most of the time, I know that I have to remove it from its case to send it through the x-ray. Usually, as I’m approaching the x-ray machine I begin removing the laptop and am told “Sir, if there is a laptop in there you need to remove it.” There are also roughly 14 signs in the area saying the exact same thing. In the real world, you might say, “yeah, I know, that’s what I’m doing.” In Airport security, you say, “thank you, I will do that. And again, thank you.”
Then I take my laptop out and place my bag in a bin at which time I’m told again, “Sir, if that bag has a laptop in it, you will have to remove it.” Again, in the real world, one might reply, “You mean another laptop? What do you think this is that I’m holding? I heard you the first time.” In the airport, I recommend going with, “Ahhh, yes, I’m glad you mentioned, that. You are very helpful and those slacks are not at all too tight.” Then after being told about my need to remove the laptop from its bag about 35 more times, I approach the x-ray machine for people and am told, “Sir, please make sure you have removed all jewelry and keys and if you have a laptop in your pocket or hidden anywhere on your person, you really must remove it.” In another setting, I might say, “I tell you what, why don’t we stick your head in the x-ray machine just to see if there’s any grey matter between the cobwebs. I HAVE ALREADY REMOVED MY LAPTOP.” This would be a very bad answer in the airport where you should instead say something like, “You are so right, let me just check my pockets again to make sure there is no laptop. You have been very helpful, really, I can’t thank you enough.”
b. When the airplane stops at your gate, please do not immediately stand up to get your bag out of storage if you are sitting by the window. It will be another 15 minutes before you start moving unless you are in the front row and then you will feel too stupid to sit down again and have to spend the next 15 minutes hunched over, thereby adding to the irreparable harm you have already done to your back by sitting on an airplane.
c. Take food on the plane. Almost no airlines still serve meals (and you shouldn’t eat them anyway) and there is almost nothing quite so satisfying as busting out a huge roast beef sandwich as the person sitting next to you that won’t share the armrest breaks out his bag of 4 peanuts.
Ok, that should do it for now.
I will also try to have a movie review of Nacho Libre posted to my Entertainment Blog by the end of the day and will also try to post some more thoughts on the NBA draft and some of the big trades and free agent signings that happened while I was a way on my Sports blog.
While I was on the plane on the way to LA I thought I would type a few thoughts to post later. While I’m writing this, there is a very bored teen girl sitting next to me trying to pretend like she’s not reading this and telling secrets with her buddy sitting a row in front of her. We’ve been in the air for about 8 minutes and she is already going nuts. It is going to be a long hour and 25 minutes for her and maybe for me.
1. Flying is always cool. Not always fun, but cool. I have flown dozens and dozens of times and every time I fly, I think the same thing: “Why can’t you share the arm rest?” But I also think: “this is so cool! We take it for granted, but I still like looking out the window at the buildings becoming smaller and the farms turning to a patch-work quilt and then the big fluffy clouds. Next time you fly, take at least a few seconds to just enjoy this modern miracle of technology before paying 10 dollars for a box of miniature snacks and snuggling with the overweight total stranger sitting next to you who seems to be completely unaware that both his arm and leg are squarely in your quadrant and continue to press against you no matter how much you try to mash yourself against that wall.
2. Teen girl passenger update: She is now “hecka bored” and “hecka mad” at her buddy for not downloading any better music to her mp3 player. Nevertheless she is contended by dancing around in her seat to the inferior music her friend has provided and gently nudging me with her elbow leading me to constantly look at her thinking she’s trying to get my attention only to discover that no, she is just hecka in the groove.
3. I am wearing a t-shirt from the “Spicy Pickle.” The Pickle is a sandwich and pizza place downtown in the same building as my office. I go there for lunch between 2 and 3 times a week. It is a staple. When you go out to eat for lunch every day, you have to have three things. One, a staple. A place you can go about every other day and not get tired of it. Two, you also need a variety of other places, preferably as different from your staple place as possible and the more the better. Finally, you need a distaste for making and taking your own lunch that allows you to daily spend money you should be spending on something else.
For me, the staple place has to be a sandwich place. After years of careful and intensive research, I have determined that the sandwich is really the only food I can eat two meals a day every day for a long time if I have to. It is just a small part of what makes the sandwich nature’s perfect food. If you don’t like sandwiches the problem is with you, not with sandwiches and I won’t argue about this. When I thank God for the blessing of a given meal, I don’t just thank Him for this sandwich, I make sure to thank Him for all sandwiches.
Anyway, wherever I live, I have a regular sandwich place. A couple have come and gone in downtown Portland, but the Spicy Pickle is the favorite of the moment.
(Tangent Alert, Tangent Alert)
Why is it so dang hard to make a decent sandwich? I don’t mean a transcendent sandwich that makes you wish you had all the stomachs of a cow just so you can keep eating them, I’m just talking about a good, solid sandwich. There are tons of places in every city that make sandwiches and never more than 2 that get right. Just get some fresh bread, slice some high-quality meat thinly, apply mayonnaise and maybe just a little Dijon to the bread, fold the meat onto the bread. Add any cheese other than “wiz” or “American” and fresh lettuce and tomato and voila! Decent sandwich. Sadly, this formula has proven more elusive than a calorie in a Hollywood starlet’s diet, for most sandwich makers. Someday I will teach weekend seminars all over the country and America will have good sandwiches again, finally allowing us to win in international basketball, solve the crises in Korea and the Middle East and make the manufacturers of meat slicers the wealthiest people in the world. Dare to dream.
(and we’re back…)
Every place I’ve gone, I get to know the people who work there because I tend to be there almost as much as they are. And, because I am a creature of habit I tend to order the same thing over and over and the people learn my order as much as they learn my name. For years, my dream has been that one day I would wake up and find that I had grown 10 inches and gotten 100 times my current athletic ability so that I could become a pro basketball player. But that doesn’t really have anything to do with sandwiches, so let me try that again.
For years, my dream is to have one of these places name a sandwich after me for the obvious reason that it would be about the coolest thing in the whole world that doesn’t matter at all. For a while I thought that was Tivo and then I realized, Tivo matters….alot, so we’re going with getting a sandwich named after you. All of this is just a really long build up to say, the good folks at the Spicy Pickle in Portland have decided to name a sandwich after me. Now, I just go in and order “the Josh” and that’s all I need to say. It hasn’t appeared on the menu yet, but the owner assures me it will soon. I also got a free t-shirt which is cool in a “I can’t believe what a dork I am” sort of way. It’s also fair since I have spent enough money in there to clothe the entire nation of Trinidad (or Tobago, but obviously not both) in Spicy Pickle T-Shirts…and wouldn’t they be happy about that.
So, I strongly recommend if you are ever in the Pickle, try the Josh. It’s the goods. For the record, the Josh is a “build your own” with roast beef on foccacia (hot) with basil mayo, horseradish mayo, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato and cucumber. Enjoy.
4. I just watched the first 9 picks of the NBA draft before getting on the plane. There is a full running commentary if you are interested in that sort of thing on my sportsblog site. In case you missed it, Portland passed on the most popular (though not the best) player in the draft. Portlanders had actually started a campaign to get this guy drafted that got national attention. Portland Blazer fans (all 9 of them other than me) are going to generally be furious that the Blazers passed on Adam Morrison. If you know a Blazer fan and you want to see them get worked up, try saying something like: (Blazer President) “Steve Patterson is a genius” Or “Thank goodness the Blazers took LeMarcus Aldridge.” Chances are they will light up and go spinning out of control like those fire works that hop around while turning different colors. It could be fun to watch.
As a side note, why are those firecrackers called hedghogs? Is there a species of hedgehog out there that spins wildly and turns bright colors? Is this what would happen if we lit their tails on fire? Why isn’t there a nightly show on the Discovery Chanel about this?
As for me, I think the Blazers had a brilliant draft. They got, for my money the two best players in the draft in Aldridge and Brandon Roy. It is the second good thing they’ve done in the last decade and I can’t even remember what the first was.
5. In an earlier post, I promised a post about snobby waiters. They are everywhere and I don’t get it. I call it the Alex Trebec syndrome. Allow me to explain. First, I have nothing against waiters or waitresses. In fact, I generally think fondly of anyone who brings me food and drink. Plus I think it is a very respectable job and can be quite lucrative. There is no shame in waiting tables. That said, the job does not hold the prestige level that usually accompanies the level of snobbiness that you get from many waiters. i.e., they are not the heads of state of a Country on the UN Security Counsel.
Why is it that people who wait tables in fancy restaurants act so superior? I am convinced that Chefs or menu writers go out of their way to invent words and use foreign languages to describe their foods so that no one can be completely sure what they are ordering and then the waiter treats you like an idiot if you don’t know exactly what it is. I believe this is so the Chef can just fix whatever he wants and say “here’s your chevoi nable Chicken with a light frameaux glaze with a delicate hint of promlay resting gently on a side of ferenhoyt” and then serve you a cheeseburger with kettle chips. And who are you to argue? Sure you don’t know what that means and no one does but one thing is for sure, the waiter will act like you are an absolute imbecile when you order it and make sure to correct your pronunciation of at least 3 words.
Where do they get off? They are a waiter for crying out loud!!!! They aren’t even preparing this food they’re acting so snobbish about. They don’t speak any language other than English, if that, and yet they will treat you like some peasant worm if you stumble over their made up gibberish.
I call this the Alex Trebec syndrome, because Trebec takes himself sooooo seriously when he pronounces words or phrases in other languages. Plus he acts like he knew every answer even without the little card he’s holding that tells him, as if he’s the smartest guy on the planet. It is one of the most annoying things in the history of television. At least every third time I’m in a fancy restaurant, I end up thinking, “why would salad cost $11?” And then I also think, “why does this guy pretend to know better than I do which fork to use and why would he think I care?” Of course I never say anything, but if you’ve read this blog, I bet you can tell how I tip when that happens.
6. Finally, speaking of tips, here are some tips on how to behave when traveling by air:
a. When going through security act nice and polite to the security personnel no matter how obnoxious they are. You can’t win that fight and the moment it becomes a fight you will be in a small room with no windows with a large female weightlifter in uniform who isn’t putting on a latex glove just because she likes the feel of it against her skin. For example, since I travel with a laptop most of the time, I know that I have to remove it from its case to send it through the x-ray. Usually, as I’m approaching the x-ray machine I begin removing the laptop and am told “Sir, if there is a laptop in there you need to remove it.” There are also roughly 14 signs in the area saying the exact same thing. In the real world, you might say, “yeah, I know, that’s what I’m doing.” In Airport security, you say, “thank you, I will do that. And again, thank you.”
Then I take my laptop out and place my bag in a bin at which time I’m told again, “Sir, if that bag has a laptop in it, you will have to remove it.” Again, in the real world, one might reply, “You mean another laptop? What do you think this is that I’m holding? I heard you the first time.” In the airport, I recommend going with, “Ahhh, yes, I’m glad you mentioned, that. You are very helpful and those slacks are not at all too tight.” Then after being told about my need to remove the laptop from its bag about 35 more times, I approach the x-ray machine for people and am told, “Sir, please make sure you have removed all jewelry and keys and if you have a laptop in your pocket or hidden anywhere on your person, you really must remove it.” In another setting, I might say, “I tell you what, why don’t we stick your head in the x-ray machine just to see if there’s any grey matter between the cobwebs. I HAVE ALREADY REMOVED MY LAPTOP.” This would be a very bad answer in the airport where you should instead say something like, “You are so right, let me just check my pockets again to make sure there is no laptop. You have been very helpful, really, I can’t thank you enough.”
b. When the airplane stops at your gate, please do not immediately stand up to get your bag out of storage if you are sitting by the window. It will be another 15 minutes before you start moving unless you are in the front row and then you will feel too stupid to sit down again and have to spend the next 15 minutes hunched over, thereby adding to the irreparable harm you have already done to your back by sitting on an airplane.
c. Take food on the plane. Almost no airlines still serve meals (and you shouldn’t eat them anyway) and there is almost nothing quite so satisfying as busting out a huge roast beef sandwich as the person sitting next to you that won’t share the armrest breaks out his bag of 4 peanuts.
Ok, that should do it for now.
Comments
I used to travel alot before laptops had CD-ROM drives, so I would carry on an external drive. Most people didn't know what it was and I used to get the strangest looks when I sent it through security (metal box with two cords hanging from it). The security people didn't know what it was either, so they'd often ask me to turn it on. I would find an outlet (while holding up the line, of course), plug it in until the little green LED would light up. That would satisfy them and I'd be on my way. I was always amazed that they'd let me through just because it had a green light on it.
One time I had an excellent interaction with Airport Security.(note: I said ONE TIME.)
I was returning home after saying goodbye to my Dad with my Dad's ashes in my carry on bag.
I was traveling alone, and understandably not in the best emotional state. A man working Airport Security looked in my carry on, and even though I had all the correct documents identifying it as "human remains," he still said that he was very sorry, and he wished he did not have to, but he had to inspect the contents of the box.
Of course I had to agree. Then he said he would like my permission to take the box to another area to respect my privacy, and I could go with him if I wanted. I told him, no, I would wait. He returned about 5 minutes later and told me he was so sorry for my loss and gave me a tag that stated the box had already been inspected, and need not be inspected again.
I flew home with my Dad on my lap. Dad had passed inspection. I knew he would.
Brr. Shiver.
Alan, waaaaaaay too spicy for me. Yikes. Nevertheless, it's still a sandwich, so it has that going for it. I'm going to pretend I didn't read that other note about why someone who had worked on planes wouldn't want to fly on them.
Jennifer, I like horseradish on roastbeef and will even put up with some pain to get it, but this horseradish mayo is heavy on the mayo and light on the heat, so it's not an issue.
Also, as to your other point, it is a little known fact that no bomb materials can be contained within a device that can produce a green light. It is Newton's 8th law or something. Luckily, the crack force at the airport is all over this.
Peggy, as I've said before, I have to warn about my tangents, not so you can recognize them, but just so you can properly prepare yourself. I just can't spring that stuff on you, the unsuspecting reader. It would be like you've paid full price for a movie ticket and everything is going fine and then "wham!!" out of nowhere, there's Drew Barrymore right in your movie without warning sucking the talent out those around her and making your popcorn seem highquality by comparison.
Also, if there is ever a time for the airport to get it right it is when you described. Nice to know and hear about. I will have to take back one of the mean things I said about airport security. I will decide that later.
Thurman8er, I think you're being generous, but thanks. by the way, did I get the answer to your question right? I responded on the previous blog post.
Mike, great point. You are so right. Snobby cooks are almost as bad. The only food that would justify that kind of snobbish behavior is Newman's Fish and Chips in Eugene, Oregon. They could slap me in the face with every order and I would still go back for more.
I some how have stumbled onto your blog. Looks great. You are in the great Northwest ... I am in the Midwest the city of Milwaukee (beer, cheese, Harley's, and rumor has it we have a baseball team and a basketball team but that must only be rumors).
If you get a chance drop by http://stoned-campbelldisciple.blogspot.com/
Shalom,
Bobby Valentine
Milwaukee, WI
I don't think it was ever a complete theory, since he offered no explanation for the Packers or any of the other things for which the fine state is known.
Anyway, welcome. I hope you will come back. I will look you up on blogspot. if you are so inclined, I also have a sports blog and a movies blog, the links to which are both on this site.
Don't forget Brats and frozen custard!
And the Wave (pro Soccer). They like sports in Milwaukee.
Shalom,
Bobby Valentine
Stoned-Campbell Disciple
the number is 2.5. sometimes I just have a half sandwich.
Thanks.