April 2008 Archives

Last Thanksgiving when I was home in Texas, my sister Lindy and I got really silly (read: drunk) and went downstairs to play with all the toys my mom keeps around the house for my various nieces.  This includes about 5 hula hoops.  We decided to hula hoop as long as we could, which was for about 0.1 microseconds per turn.  But by God, we kept trying for 30 minutes or so...and the next day I was sore from my armpits to my hips.  I had an epiphany: hula hooping is way more fun and effective than my 1986 VHS copy of Denise Austin's "Rock Hard Tummies!"

So I bought a dinky plastic hula hoop at Archie McPhee's, and started practicing while I watched TV.  I don't have six pack abs or anything, but it's good clean fun and good clean exercise. 

About a month ago I was talking to my friend Joy who had simultaneously and randomly also started hula hooping in her adult life.  She had found a meetup group in Austin who congregate in parks and hula hoop together, and she got me way excited to find something similar in Seattle.  Three internet searches and one credit card transaction later, I found myself enrolled in a hula hoop class at Sonny Newman's Dance Hall on Friday nights.

I just got back from my second class and I have this to say:

• The secret to hula hooping as an adult is to get a hula hoop made for adults.  The reason those bratty kids are so much better at it is that those dinky light hoops are made for their dinky-ass bodies.  We need ones that are bigger around (both around our bodies and the actual tube itself) and are heavy enough to create adult-sized momentum.
  
  
• I bought one of these hoops, and it's obnoxiously purple and blue and neon green.  I chose it because it looks like a 1980s snake.  Remember Rude Dog and the Dweebs?  Kinda like that.
  
  
• Although the heavier hoop absolutely makes it easier to keep going, it also means my shins are covered in bruises.  And after trying to learn the "Wild West" move where you grab it from behind your back and twirl it up and around like a lasso...I might have a mild concussion, too.
  
  
• Beware of hula hoop instructors, as they tend to be crossovers from yoga and Pilates, and will potentially try to infuse new age bullshit into your decidedly 1950s exercise routine.  Examples:
  
  
• Flip flops and toe rings.  Fuck that.  We should all be wearing saddle oxfords and pleated skirts.
• Before every class, we have to state our "intentions."  The instructor's is always some hippie bullshit about connecting her body and spirit.  Mine is "to be able to hula hoop for 10 minutes straight so I can win the contest at the county jamboree, and then ask Buzz to the Sadie Hawkins dance!"
• Today at the end of class, she made us all stand together, placing our hoops together to create a tunnel.  Then one by one, she made us crawl through the hoop tunnel shouting out what our intention for that class had been.  All while 20 people anxious for Tango Night to begin were staring at us.

In conclusion, hula hooping is totally fun and totally good for building a strong tummy, but try to learn it on your own instead of from hippies, or next thing you know you're going to be doing a routine at Burning Man with a hoop made out of hemp.  Beware.

Apparently Hillary, Barack, and McCain are going to be on RAW tonight?



(1:44:46 PM) Andrew: id love to see hilary and mccain in the hell in the cell
(1:45:38 PM) halee: hmmm...what would their finishing moves be?
(1:45:49 PM) halee: hillary's must be the bronco buster.
(1:45:56 PM) Andrew: HAHA!
(1:46:05 PM) halee: and mccain's should be something patriotic...
(1:46:15 PM) Andrew: mccain with the shooting star press?
(1:46:19 PM) halee: perfect.
(1:46:28 PM) halee: and bob dole (although he has nothing to do with this)...
(1:46:32 PM) halee: would have to do the half nelson.
(1:46:36 PM) halee: not by choice.

My wonderful friend Amy gave me a very awesome Christmas present that I have neglected until recently.  She sent me a hardback copy of Terry Funk's autobiography with a personalized inscription from the man himself, blessing me and my zamily!!!  Behold!



I assumed that was a forgery, as her husband has inscribed book gifts to me in the past, usually with blessings from various people in our high school marching band.  But Amy assured me this was legit, and that she met the man himself!  I was ecstatic to have this in my personal library, but didn't commit myself to reading it until...

About a month ago, I received an unsolicited email from my friend Martin with the subject line "IMPORTANT (TERRY FUNK)".  In the message, he described a match that was "so powerful that after witnessing it I dropped to my knees and repeatedly punched myself in the privates (this is known as the "hardcore prayer")."  Here is that match:



It was clear that after seeing that, it was time to read the book.  As I read through it, I selected a golden excerpt from each chapter to share with Martin, who is clearly Terry's biggest fan.  Now I would like to share the goldenest of the golden excerpts with you:

• Chapter 4: Breaking In
  "Baron Von Raschke used to get his clawhold over with the people where he didn't even put it on his opponent.  He used to do a spot where he'd lunge with his claw, but his opponent would move, and Von Raschke would have to pry his clawhold off of the turnbuckle!  His clawhold grip was so strong that he couldn't make his own fingers let go of the turnbuckle!"
  
  
• Chapter 9: Losing Dory Funk
  "One time, we decided to try to help the promotion by getting some front-page publicity.  Our plan was to drive to the middle of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, leave a note in the rental car and then leave the car there, as if I had jumped off the bridge.  Then we went home and I stayed in the bathtub for about four hours.  Once I was good and wrinkled, we drove out to the beach and I laid down at the edge of the coast, as if I'd washed up onto shore.  Hell, nobody came to my rescue!  I laid there for three or four hours and just got up, went home and forgot about it."
  
  
• Chapter 19: Working for Vince McMahon
  "Steele was feuding at the time with Nikolai Volkoff, a big Russian wrestler.  Here he was, the terrible, brutal Russian, doing all his power moves on his opponent.  And then, out of nowhere, here came a cartwheel!  He'd be working along, getting heat, and then out of the clear blue, he did a cartwheel.  It had nothing to do with the match."
  
  
• Any chapter involving Dusty Rhodes, as Terry includes all Dusty's quotes phonetically
• "Thay, Tewwy, I jutht dweem about a cah like thith thum day.  If I could jutht get a cah like thith, it would be tho f-f-fine!"
• "Tewwy, I been wukking fuh The Sheik!"
  
• "Damn, Jewwy, what wuth that?"
• "OK, Jewwy, let'th thoot thum duckth, but I don't want you methin' with the gun."
• "He'th thittin' back thayuh."
  
• "I'll go ahead and I'll climb up to the top rope before you can move, thinth you'll be down on the mat after I thlam you.  I'll graithfully FLY off the top rope and land on yo' body and cover you, one-two-three!"

I went to the roller derby last night and saw the most amazing rendition of the national anthem that I've ever seen.  Performed entirely in the form of a bass guitar solo with a backup wheelchair go-go dancer:



Also, one of the teams was called the Sockit Wenches, and their gimmick was to be the little gearhead honeys.  They had a "greaser monkey" mascot named Cooter, who was a man-chimp, complete with giant chimp ears, monkey tail, buck teeth, horn-rimmed glasses, pompadour, a mechanic's shirt, and lots of tattoos of bananas.

halee: i think my sister is going to come visit me in june. 
matt:  which sister is it?
halee: staci.
matt:  staci, lindi, barbi, harpi
halee: i'm harpi, right?
matt:  yup
halee: and i have a blonde afro and a little horn i honk?
matt:  you know what happens now right?

15 minutes later.....

I got the weirdest email message today:

Dethklok posted a concert near you!

I am very confused and intrigued.  As much as I sometimes forget (and sometimes lament in the case of the uber-hot second-fastest guitar player alive Toki Wartooth), the members of Dëthkløk ARE CARTOONS.  This is fine as far as releasing albums and videos...but how in the fuck is this going to work live??

I intend to find out and report back to you first-hand. 

"According to a February 10, 2008 interview on California radio station Indie 103.3 with Full Metal Jackie, there are plans for an early summer tour which, according to Brendon Small, will be like 'a Disney ride but with murder.' "

From guitarworld.com:

"Tickets to the five-week Adult Swim Presents tour will go on sale to the general public starting Friday, April 18, through Ticketmaster, but a special pre-sale offer will be made available one week earlier to the most brutal Adult Swim fans. On Sunday, April 13, Adult Swim fans tuning in to Metalocalypse during the 12:00 a.m. (ET/PT) showing will be given a pre-sale password allowing them access to a customized Dethklok page on Ticketmaster's web site."

So...guess why I'm still up?

Last entry about Portland, I swear.  Yesterday (Saturday) the weather was totally perfect...the sun was out, it was about 80 degrees...it's the kind of weather I've been waiting for for the past 8 months.  I purposefully spent most of my day walking around outside, soaking up some much-needed sun. 

• I walked up and down 21st and 23rd streets, which are part of a funky little neighborhood full of independent retail shops and weird bars and cafes.  The Goodwill Store had a very high percentage of Jim Nabor albums in their vinyl section.
  
  
• Powell's Bookstore - my god.  Someone said it was the biggest bookstore ever, and shit, they were not kidding.  It reminded me a bit of Recycled Books in Denton...rooms leading to other rooms which lead to nooks which lead to secret hallways, which lead to a whole other set of rooms!  Every section was color-coded, an organizational detail which I of course appreciated.
  
  
• On that note, I should also mention that 21st and 23rd are part of the Alphabet District, where all the east/west street names are in alphabetical order: Burnside, Couch, Davis, Everett, Flanders, Glisan, Hoyt, Irving, Johnson, Kearney, Lovejoy, Marshall, Northrup, Overton, Pettygrove, Quimby.  I love the organizational aspects of that, too...but if I were a city planner I totally would have mandated that all the establishments on those streets had to start with that letter, too. 
  
  
• We went down by the riverside and watched elderly hippies juggle sticks, then went for a sky tram ride to the hospital.  (Why the destination of the sky tram is the hospital, I'll never understand.  That doesn't give me a tremendous amount of confidence in the safety of the sky tram.)
  
  
• And probably the best part of my day other than the $1.75 PBR tallboys and pinball I enjoyed at the bar later that night, was the Velveteria Velvet Painting museum.  I highly, highly recommend this to anyone ever visiting Portland.  The two people who run it (who I had read about on the website) were there, and could not have been nicer or more interesting.  The place was pretty dead, so they walked me around and told me all sorts of neat stories about all the paintings.  Of course it wouldn't have been right for me to take photos, but goodness me...they had some ridiculously amazing stuff.  The best I can do is share my list with you, and let your black velvet imagination run wild:
  
  
• Dog the Bounty Hunter
• Mr. T with actual gold beads glued to the painting for his necklaces
• Macho Man Randy Savage
• A slightly monoloid-looking Hulk Hogan
• Dolemite
• Jack Lord
  
• A overly manly ballerina who looked like a love child of Gorgeous George and Ric Flair
• The Heaven's Gate Cult leader
• A whole section of black light paintings, mostly focused on sad and/or gambling clowns
• A whole section of nudie paintings, mostly focused on Filipino boobie girls
• A whole section of Elvis paintings, mostly with him crying
  
• A whole section of bandido paintings
• And most importantly, a whole section of unicorn paintings called "Unicornucopia" which included:
• Glam rock unicorns
• Satanic unicorns
• A genie lamp with a vaporous unicorn coming out of it
  
  and the pièce de résistance...
  
  
• A unicorn with an extra long mane, which ebbs and flows into a giant wave, which then becomes the long hair of a beautiful woman.  Carl and Caren lovingly refer to this one as "Unicorn Combover" and I am happy to be able to show you a half-assed picture of it:
  
  
  

Also, I should stick in a plug for them as I'm sure my massive readership will really add a spike to their sales...but they've written a book on black velvet paintings that will be coming out soon.  Note to whoever: I would love to have this for my birthday.

And thus concludes my visit to Portland.  I will definitely be going back, as I did not get to go to Big Al's bowling alley or to try the macaroni and cheese at Savoy.  And next time, I'm going to take the long way home up the coastal 101 for some scenic beach driving with the sunroof open.  Summer, please hurry up.

Something everyone should think about is...if you are going to be executed, what would you choose as your last meal?  I would choose macaroni and cheese as my entree, and S'mores Pop Tarts as my dessert.  Macaroni and cheese has been my favorite food since I was old enough to chew.  And many people have told me that Portland has the greatest macaroni and cheeses in the whole world, particularly the versions from these three restaurants:

1. Gravy
2. Montage
3. Savoy
   

I was anxious to investigate these claims during my trip to Portland, and was dedicated to eating as much macaroni and cheese as possible.  Unfortunately, after eating nothing but macaroni and cheese on Friday...I totally overloaded and was not able to eat it again the rest of the weekend.  So I can only present my reviews for #1 and #2:

Gravy

• Portion Size: a very very deep, very hot bowl that I would approximate contained over 2 cups worth of noodles.  (I could only put a dent about 20% of the way in before I began to feel the onset of a coma.)
  
• Pasta: big textured, curved macaroni noodles, as you can see in the picture one noodle was about the size of my thumb.
  
• Cheese: some sort of hybrid...the orangey color and mild sharpness suggests there was cheddar involved, but the texture was too creamy to be only cheddar.  But not too creamy to be runny.
  
• Topping: slightly sweetened breadcrumbs held together with melted cheddar to create a protective covering that was very effective at holding in the heat of the dish.
• Optional Side: the most deliciously savory tomato soup that has ever passed mine lips; it was so, so creamy and chickeny and had the perfect ultra-pureed consistency, no nasty tomato chunks to navigate around, or weird onions to dodge.  I could have eaten it with a straw.
  
• Price: $7.75

Montage

• Portion Size: a bowl that I would approximate contained roughly 1 cup of noodles.  I was able to polish off the entire dish.
  
• Pasta: medium-sized curved textured macaroni noodles, closer to the size of my pinky or ring finger.
  
• Cheese: a smooth white, creamy cheese...perhaps maybe a hint of alfredo sauce thrown in?
• Topping: a mound of shredded parmesan or romano cheese, sprinkled with a bit of paprika for color.  The saltiness of the parmesan/romano nicely offset the dairiness of the cheese.
  
• Optional Side: n/a
• Price: $6.50

I told my boss that I would come up with some weighted formula to mathematically calculate the winning macaroni and cheese variant, but sometimes math can't explain everything.  I can state it best like this:

The macaroni and cheese at Montage was so good it made me happy to be alive...but the macaroni and cheese at Gravy was so good it made me wish I was dead.

WINNER: Gravy. 

Road trip!  I forget how car-free life in Seattle is, and it's been a long time since I drove anywhere.  Yesterday I went on a wonderful drive from Seattle to Portland  The sun was out.  There were trees.  There were many casinos to look at, including the legendary and mythical Emerald Queen Casino.  There was music.  And singing.  And I backed myself up on percussion with the tambourine!! 

I met up with some friends I know from Texas, and we spent the evening at one of the most magical places I've ever been in my life.  It's called the Kennedy School, and it's an old elementary school building from the 1920's that they have converted into...well, I guess you could kind of call it a hotel compound?  A lot of the classrooms have been converted into hotel rooms.  (We scored the music room.  There were no instruments in there, though, and I left my tambourine in the car.)  In addition to lodging, the place has:

• a tiny movie theatre
• a small concert venue
• a restaurant (although somewhat disappointingly, it is not cafeteria-style)
• a non-smoking bar called "The Honors Room"
• a smoking bar called "Detention"

We pretty much hung out there all night, there was really no reason to leave...they have everything!  I had pizza and raspberry beers.  We giggled a lot.  Then I went back to the room and slept well and happily.  I think I could live there.

Today I'm working from the Portland office, and it's awesome.  I'm like the new girl at school and everyone is being really nice and over-explaining everything to me.  The office is in an odd area of town that is a hybrid of super-industrial, a tiny bit ghetto, and hipster-ish.  I think my analyst comrade here and I are going to "work" from the brewery across the street for the afternoon.  Expect the quality of my typing to decrease as the day goes on.

I customized and bought myself a pair of Nike ID sneakers.  Lookie:



If you'll notice, on the inside they'll embroider the phrase/word/proper noun of your choice.  I agonized over what to put on mine.  "Kotara Industries" was the obvious choice, but I really wanted to use some foreign words to make my shoes seem more exciting and exotic, and fake like I got them in a faraway land.  I decided it should definitely be a Scandinavian language.  Swedish was the obvious choice since they were the colors of the Swedish flag.  I decided on my theme, and went about figuring it the words in Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish....

• Swedish - Vänster / Höger
  Damn!  Nike does not accept special characters!
  
  
• Norwegian - Høyre venstre
  Damn!  Nike continues to not accept special characters!
  
  
• Finnish - Vasempaan / Oikeaan
  Really?  No 'äs or ää's or äää's???  Yay!!  I really wanted Finnish the whole time, anyway, it's my favorite.
  

And what does "Vasempaan / Oikeaan" mean?  It means "Left / Right."

Well, I hope it means "Left / Right".  With my luck I probably got it exactly wrong, and some Finnish person is going to stop me on the street and ask me why my shoes say "Gone" and "Prerogative."

I attended a lovely housewarming BBQ last weekend, and enjoyed lots of meat and corn on the cob.  It was about 8 hours of drinking, and 4 hours of Ultimate Banzake.  Everyone was a little tipsy.  Matt was busy playing host/barbeque master, and at one point I had been dying to talk to him for about an hour because I simply had to ask him a question about one of the attendees.  This attendee was a tall broad-shouldered guy with broad shoulder-length wavy hair and a baseball cap.

I had convinced myself he was Thor from "Adventures in Babysitting" because he looked exactly like this:



I finally managed to pull Matt aside long enough to whisper my suspicions to him.  Matt's face had zero reaction.  He just kinda looked into space and walked away.  To my horror/delight, he marched straight over to Thor and pointed at me and said: "SHE thinks you look like Vincent D'onofrio as Thor in Adventures in Babysitting."

Then Thor and I met and he told me tales, such as Metallica Drummer. We agreed we loved the internet and the digital age, although we do hold onto nostalgic for the days gone by when weird videos like this were difficult to come by and you just knew that one guy who had a bad VHS copy.  Now it's readily available, indexable, searchable, and instantly shareable.  Yay and boo.

I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but I never saw "The Blues Brothers" ever in my life.  Jackie called me randomly today during work, informing me that it was playing for one night only (tonight!) at the Metro.  I didn't have anything better to do...and she chatted it up quite a bit, insisting it was the best movie ever made, surpassing even "The Princess Bride," "The Outsiders," and "Look Who's Talking."

Oh my goodness, I had no idea how epic a film that was!!  I really thought it was just a dumb SNL movie filmed in a bunch of bars.  I didn't know there was a plot, or a record amount of car chases.  And crashes!  I will admit that I was laughing a lot, and sometimes dancing, and sometimes squealing in my seat with delight.  But of all the things to be excited about or impressed with...what impressed me most were the cameos.  And I'm not talking about John Candy or Steven Spielberg or the captain from "21 Jump Street."  That's not what I freaked out about.  I freaked out...

....about the massive number of cameos of people with bit parts on "Dallas"!!!  Okay, not massive.  But two!

Dallas Cameo #1: Walt Driscoll

In the scene where Jake and Elwood crash the fancy restaurant where their old trumpet player is working, I knew I was supposed to keep my eyes peeled for Pee Wee Herman.  I was not expecting to see the former chairman of the Office of Land Management, Walt Driscoll! 



I just finished the series of episodes where Walt succumbed to JR's bribes and granted him those oil variances, and then had to skip the country, then wound up being JR's conduit to illegally sell oil to the embargoed Cuba.  Then when JR double-crossed him, Walt later went on to try to murder JR via vehicular manslaughter only to accidentally ram into the JR's Mercedes when Sue Ellen was driving it drunk.  And Lucy's boyfriend (and Ray Krebb's cousin) Mickey was in the car trying to save Sue Ellen, and was injured the most severely out of everyone
and will probably be paraplegic (haven't gotten to that resolution yet, Season 8 is coming soon) and the guilt ate Walt up so bad that he committed suicide.

Dallas Cameo #2: Carl Daggett

Just as I was remarking that Bob's Country Bunker reminded me a whole lot of Porky's, suddenly Carl Daggett shows up as the leader of the Good Ole Boys band!



Carl, as you may remember, was instrumental in helping Bobby sway the opinion of George Hicks, who was the only man in the state who could rescind the aforementioned oil variances that Driscoll granted to JR.  You see, Carl ran a stable of very fine and willing ladies, one of whom they used as bait to blackmail Hicks.

Some completely unrelated, yet fascinating trivia on the actor who portrayed Carl Daggett:

Charles gave up a lucrative career as a professional squaredancer to move to Hollywood.