Wow... I just learned that the fish from Faith No More's "Epic" video belonged to Bjork... and it was named "Linear Soul Child"... and now you know... am I trying to make up for a week of not posting or something? That you don't know...

Besides championship lacrosse (and, of course, honoring veterans), Memorial Day also traditionally marks the beginning of summer... and is it possible to have summer without corn on the cob? I don't think so. Because it's good and because I just had some for dinner, I thought I'd pass along a fun little way to have your corn.

Instead of the usual butter and salt routine, try this: First, cover the corn in mayonnaise. Seriously... Stick with me here... Next, sprinkle the corn with paprika, chili powder or even cayenne pepper... top it off with a little lime juice... Yes, it sounds wacky, but after watching my former roommate happily eat it so often, I had to find out what it was like... and it was great! Give it a try sometime...

When you think of dominant sports teams, the first names that spring to your mind are probably the New York Yankees, LA Lakers, Duke basketball or Miami football. They've all had a long run of success that carries on to this day, but none are like Syracuse lacrosse. The Orangemen - yes, I will continue to use the name the administration recently rejected - today won their 9th NCAA title. Along the way, they continued one of the most impressive streaks in sports: the Syracuse lacrosse program has been to the final four for twenty-two consecutive years. 22. In a row. Wow.

To get the championship, the fourth seeded Orangemen had to knock off second seed Navy, hoping to win its first ever title on Memorial Day. That kinda made it hard to root against the Midshipmen, even for a Syracuse alum... Tournament MVP, Syracuse senior Mike Powell (not related to the FCC Chairman, to my knowledge), put the backdrop in a little perspective, "We weren't playing to beat our country ... we didn't view it as something unpatriotic. We viewed it as the national championship game." And champions they are.

A brief visual roundup of the first couple days of my recent vacation...
We got off to a wobbly start, and folks were looking a bit pensive as we did breakfast in Denver...

we headed south, going past pike's peak...

and eventually made our way to tatooine...

where joe died of thirst...

OK, we weren't really on tatooine, we were at the Great Sand Dunes National Monument...

Looking back from about a quarter of the way up the dunes toward the parking lot...

I spent my evenings before and after graduation watching movies, and in light of the thumbs down that I've given to movies here and here (and yes, I know I need to fix my template), I thought I'd have something positive to say about a movie for a change...

Friday night, Legally Blonde kept me entertained for a few hours... It was surprisingly good, even if it didn't present a terribly realistic picture of law school. Despite that, I think I'll always remember the movie not for anything in the film itself, but rather for a comment one of my professors made during the first year of law school. Upon referring one student's question to another for an answer, the answering student gave a pretty bad answer. The professor's reply was priceless: "Well... I suppose that would be the Legally Blonde answer..." Priceless.

Tonight, I finally got around to watching one of the DVD's I got at Amoeba Music in San Francisco: Run Lola Run. Although the DVD comes with an English dub (instead of the original German soundtrack), the English version just didn't seem right. I actually preferred reading the subtitles to hearing the translated dialogue, which sounded a bit forced... That problem was probably exacerbated because I actually had the English subtitles on while I listened to the English dialogue... and they didn't match.

Otherwise, it's a great film. But about halfway through (after having switched back to the German dialogue), I couldn't help but think that Mrs. Palsgraf would have greatly enjoyed the film and its exhibition and implied opinion about proximate cause... what a nerd I can be...

Short and sweet... That's how I like my ceremonies... Whether it's a graduation, a wedding, etc., boiling the proceedings down to their essence keeps guests from checking their watches while giving everyone the payoff they're there to see/experience.

Short wasn't exactly in the cards yesterday for my graduation, however. Combined with the heat in the Soldiers and Sailors Auditorium - noticeable even if you weren't decked out in the heavy polyester graduation regalia - the length of the proceedings was all the more daunting.

Dean Herring gave the guest speaker approximately the longest introduction ever and then the director of the alumni association got to speak for 10-15 minutes after the procession. We won't even talk about the SBA President's speech, which seemed to be completely ad-libbed. Instead of a two hour ceremony, the graduation could have nicely been cut down to its essence - the procession of graduates, with maybe a quick word from the Dean - and been quite enjoyable. Thus, I appeal to ceremony planners everywhere... keep it short!

Commercials for Total cereal baffle me just a bit... In order to make the point that Total is more nutritious than other cereals, they illustrate how many bowls of other cereals would have to be eaten to equal the nutrition in a single bowl of Total... as if eating cereal were some type of drudgery... The unanswered question: How many bowls of Lucky Charms would I have to eat to get the same nutrition from a bowl of Total? God would I hate to feel compelled to eat a lot of Lucky Charms!

So I was in Vegas last week, and I did zero gambling (which isn't to say that I didn't lose a lot of money... I just didn't do it in the casinos). But yesterday, right here in Pittsburgh, I did manage to gamble... by getting a haircut. You see, no matter how many times you get your hair cut - even if you have a regular barber - you never really know how your haircut will turn out. Describe it all you may, your idea of how you'd like your hair to look and the barber's idea of how he thinks you'd like your hair to look never seem to be quite the same.

I thought about taking in pictures to illustrate what I'd like, but I also thought that might be a little over the top. On the other hand, maybe it's not going to a great enough extreme. You see, what any given person might describe as their "perfect" haircut could probably easily be mathematically described with some degree of precision, taking away relative, subjective descriptions like "short" and "long."

Given the ability to feed this description into a computer that might take care of the whole hair cutting process, removing the uncertainty from the haircut is something people would probably pay a little extra for... are you listening CMU? It's time to roll out some robot barbers!

Anyway, more posts coming soon that will be sure to ruffle a few feathers... They may be a little less than completely polished, but I'm trying to to write so damn slowly... especially now that site meter is working again after being down for about two weeks and I can see my audience...

• The NL Central is currently baseball's best division. Only the Pirates are below .500 (and they're just one game under) and no team in the division has a sub-.500 record against any other division.
  
  
• I was startled to see just how many former major leaguers are currently playing in the Atlantic League... Wendell Magee, Marvin Benard, T.J. Matthews, Mel Rojas, Will Pennyfeather, Danny Clyburn, Jeff Juden, etc... Lance Davis pitching to Rickey? MoWo would love it! My only question is where are Nelson Santoventia and Archi Cianfrocco?
  
  
• As you may have seen by now, there were two collisions in baseball games resulting from questionable judgment this past weekend. In one, Marcus Giles broke his collarbone when he ran into Andruw Jones as the two chased down a pop fly. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Ryan Freel leapt into the stands in an attempt to snag a foul ball.
  
  John Kruk, "analyzing" the two plays, took Giles to task for not knowing his teammates but praised Freel for his all-out style of play... Now I can see the argument that Giles should have known better, but to credit Freel after he recklessly dove headfirst into the stands and kneed someone in the head? That's preposterous.
  
  Kruk's implicit message here is that it's more important to not leap into your mobile teammates in the middle of the field than it is to not leap into sedentary fans (an older woman, in this case) in the stands. The former is stupid, the latter is aggressive in a good way.
  
  The rest of Kruk's work on Baseball Tonight has been similarly bad, and it sorta makes me wonder if ESPN hired him simply to be inane so that people will tune in to see what he says next. In any case, he's terrible and if Archi can be found, should be handed Kruk's job.

Syracuse University has decided to drop the nicknames "Orangemen" and "Orangewomen", replacing them each with the common nickname "Orange," in an apparent effort to avoid using a potentially derogatory term describing the indigenous peoples of Central New York who have suffered from Syracuse's banishment of the sun and consequently have been forced to spend excessive amounts of time at tanning salons. As a concerned alumnus, I have taken my stand by signing an Internet petition demanding that the former nicknames be restored. This will surely show the administration the errors of its ways and make it quickly abandon its devious schemes.

On a somewhat less sarcastic note, I find it interesting that the University held off on the announcement until 2 days after commencement. With those meddling kids out of the way, it won't be until the fall when there will be outrage across campus to deal with, as there was back during my Syracuse tenure, when the Orangemen nearly became the Wolfpack.

I've returned from vacation now, and since school is over, I should get into a more regular posting routine... but before we go forward, a few comments on the last leg of the vacation: San Francisco...

I lived in San Francisco for about 6 months back in 2000, so this part of the trip was somewhat of a homecoming for me, at least to the extent that living somewhere for 6 months can facilitate a "homecoming"... I was looking forward to this part of the trip because from the time I moved out of San Francisco, I knew I'd want to come back and visit. After all, it is a nice place to visit, if not necessarily to live...

Being back in San Francisco was a little like being in a dream. I knew where I was going and generally how to get there, but I couldn't easily describe it. Navigation through the city was mostly by sight ("this looks about like where I should turn...") and most of what I did while I was in the city was based on what was presented in front of me, as opposed to places I had remembered and planned on visiting... with one notable exception... Amoeba Music.

I'd been anticipating my return to Amoeba since about the time I left San Francisco in the first place. In case you're not familiar or haven't heard me speaking lustfully of the establishment, Amoeba is about the best music store in the world... and no less an authority than Rolling Stone is backing me up on this.

Anyway, the Amoeba pilgrimage was OK... Among the highlights were Ken Nordine's Colors album, the new Mocean Worker album, Enter the Mowo!, and seasons one and two of the television program Red Dwarf on DVD (which I later found that I could have gotten on Amazon for about $15 less than I spent at Amoeba). Naturally, I spent a ton of money there, but that's OK, because it was in the budget...

Another highlight of the trip was my introduction to Burmese food, courtesy of Iron Mike. If you're ever in San Francisco and looking for something new, I highly suggest you swing by Burmese Super Star and get the tea leaf salad. It doesn't look like much, but damn if it isn't good!

The existence of so many relatively one-of-a-kind things like Amoeba and a Burmese restaurant is one of the things that makes San Francisco such an appealing place. But while being back there was nice and enlightening, I also realized that I had approximately no emotional ties to the city (unlike Syracuse and even Summit, NJ) and that I wouldn't want to move back out there anytime in the foreseeable future.

Even though I didn't get nearly enough sleep during the whole trip and at times started getting a little delirious, it was a fantastic vacation. As an amusing coda to the trip, after I got home, the lack of sleep really kicked in and I accidentally took someone else's luggage instead of my own at the baggage claim. Oops.

Seriously, how stupid are these players? Rupert and Jenna briefly had the right idea... but didn't seem to do anything useful to carry out that plan... Big Tom... c'mon! Use your head! He was obviously playing too emotional and not analytically enough. He didn't deserve to be an All-Star, much less to make it as far as he did.

Most of the best players - the ones who had their eye on the prize and were really playing to win - were eliminated early (Rob C, Richard, Kathy) and the game has become horribly bland and predictable. I think that this season's preexisting relationships have ended up being more of a hinderance because life outside the game may be causing players to be more trusting of other players... and it's not good for keeping things mixed up.

Barring problems with immunity, you're going to see Rupert coming in fourth, Jenna third and the other two going before the jury... It hasn't been interesting and it's hard to like the winners... blah... what seemed to start out with so much potential has turned into a season that may only be better than season three. How disappointing.

Greetings, readers! Today, I'm coming to you from a balcony overlooking Las Vegas from the 27th floor of the MGM Grand hotel! I might have been sitting in the hot tub on the aforementioned balcony, except that I don't think Josh would appreciate me dragging his computer in there...

Anyway, I've had way too many keen observations (and yes, they are all quite keen) about the trip to make at the moment... besides, my room service breakfast (which is actually somewhat reasonably priced, as far as room service goes) should be arriving shortly, so I'll be brief...

- The Great Sand Dunes National Monument rocks! By all means, if you ever happen to find yourself in southern Colorado, go there! Just be forewarned: the sand gets HOT... and you'll want to take some water with you if you plan on climbing to the top of the dunes, about 1,000 feet up...

And having done that, I totally understand mountain climbing... As I scaled the sand dunes, it really felt like playing ultimate... It's hard work but it's so easy to be driven to keep working harder and harder until you get to where you're going, regardless of how broken you might be... and when you're done, you're pretty beat, but it's worth it...

- The Grand Canyon was even bigger than I thought it would be... One helluva view, but on the whole, it wasn't quite as cool as the Sand Dunes...

- New Mexico is artier and crunchier than I remember it - especially the northern parts... but the I-40 corridor is still nothing but a road next to a cliff off to the north...

Anyway, I'm gonna run now, but I'll hopefully post something from San Francisco...

So I'm in Denver now on the first day of my western vacation escapades. The first thing I noticed about Denver upon deplaning was how fragrant the airport terminal was. The entire place smelled like a candle store! They also had some lush vegitation in the atrium overlooking the airport subway system... it looked very Indiana Jones. Two thumbs up for the airport.

Then I got on the shuttle to go into the city - an $8 trip. This featured a horde of TSA employees, who seemed to be swarming everywhere around the airport. As I was struggling to navigate the narrow bus corridor with my luggage in tow, they gave me plenty of evil looks, as if people coming from the airport shouldn't have luggage or something... Their humorless demeanor seems to permeate through the local population which seems a little on the surly side... Speaking of the local population, homelessness seems to be a problem here... It's not as bad as San Francisco, but it's very noticeably worse than Pittsburgh...

But this wasn't the worst thing about Denver. The worst thing was that when I arrived it was snowing! Snow! On the last day of April! Not in Syracuse! We are not amused. I was planning on going to the Rockies-Braves game and checking out Coors Field, but alas, the game was snowed out. Consequently, I spent a lot of time sitting around Barnes and Noble reading about adventure travel and city rankings... typical geography nerd stuff...

I'm headed off to here today... quite psyched about it... but I hope it's not 30 degrees when I get there... forecasts are somewhat promising...