My all-time favorite airport experience happened several years ago at LAX. I was at the airport by myself, minding my own business, just standing and reading a magazine. An elderly man (very elderly, at least 85 years old) started walking towards me.
“Hello there, young man!” His breath smelled really bad. I wasn’t sure if it was the Ensure or if it was just old man smell.
“Um…hello,” I replied, cautiously.
“I knew your father!” he exclaimed, although his voice did not allow him to exclaim as loudly as he may have liked.
I was puzzled. How did he know my dad? How did he know who I was? Because this guy could be genuinely crazy, I remained silent.
“Your father was a great, great man!”
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, burying my head back in my magazine.
“I always admired your father!” What could this guy possibly be talking about?
“Your father – Bruce Lee! – what a great man!” I looked at him quizzically.
“I miss Bruce Lee.”
Yes, yes, don’t we all. Don’t we all.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Candy Day
Crystal told me this funny story yesterday about this really fobby guy at her office that told everyone he loved them on Valentine's Day. That reminded me of a question I've had for a while but never remembered to ask anyone: does anyone else think it's weird that in elementary school, you give a valentine to everyone in the class? (I assume this happened at most elementary schools, but if this only happened at Mira Catalina, that would be good to know as well).Back then I was only interested in the candy, but it seems like a weird idea for everyone in the entire class to give everyone else a valentine, with messages ranging from the standard "you're the best!" to the oddly-also-sorta-standard "I love you." Candy is cool, cutting red hearts out of construction paper is fine - but it seems like giving someone else a valentine is a slightly more grown up thing to do. Like, I wouldn't have elementary school kids drink a pint of Guiness just because that's we do on St. Patrick's Day. Also, clearly, at some point, we stopped this whole "give valentines to everyone in your class" ritual - who decided what grade that stopped? I think schools should dispense with the formalities altogether, and just rename it "Candy Day". Everyone brings candy to share with everyone else, and you just sit around all day eating it. That's what the Eric Ma School will have - Candy Day. (Soon, by the way, I will be detailing what other awesome features my elementary school will have. Stay tuned.)
Anyhow, I've mostly outgrown my need for candy, and really don't eat much, unless you count sugarless gum. But some adults definitely still need a Candy Day. Last year, Kat was nice enough to mail out little valentine cards with some candy. Only the mailman who got hold of the envelope was so excited about candy that he tore open the envelope and TOOK the candy. THEN, this guy puts the WRAPPER BACK INTO THE ENVELOPE. Without the wrapper, I wouldn't have even known Kat meant to put in any candy - the mailman was definitely taunting me. I was picturing him laughing hysterically as he enjoyed his Jolly Rancher. "MWAHAHA - when you control the mail, you control...INFORMATION!"
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Meaningless Snapshots: Caltech
HBO showed "Accepted" today, a mediocre, predictable genre comedy starring the inexplicably successful Justin Long. I didn't watch the whole thing because it was too boring, but nonetheless, the movie sparked some memories of my own college decision process.
My most memorable campus trip was to the California Institute of Technology, or, of course, Caltech. Without directly offending anyone who went to there, let's just say that at age 17 (or really, any age where I have been alive), I was not particularly excited at the prospect of attending the school. My dad insisted I at least apply, and despite submitting an essay entirely about sports trivia (I must have mentioned Jamal Mashburn like 4 times), I wound up getting in.
So, against my better instincts, I went to the prefrosh weekend. The campus is, at is was then, approximately 30% female, and that 30% is perhaps better known for mental aptitude than, say, other characteristics. Curiously, I met or saw at least 3 cute girls that weekend. To this day, I am convinced Caltech hired them for the weekend to pose as potential students.
During the day, I struck up a conversation with a sophomore girl.
"You're a prefrosh?"
"Yeah", I replied. "How do you like it here?"
"Oh, you know, it's good, I'm glad I came here", she replied, almost convincingly.
"What's your major?"
"Biology - I'm a premed." This provoked some surprise from me - Caltech is notoriously difficult with grades, and premeds are of course notoriously obsessive about them.
"Oh, wow - that's cool that you would be a premed at Caltech", I said, completely failing to grasp where this conversation was soon headed.
"Yeah, I mean, you know, I know that grades are tougher here, but you know, I think...I think medical schools will...I mean, I hope they will understand that...that it's different here...and just because I have...I have a C doesn't...it doesn't mean that..."
Her voice was quivering, and I raised my palms and started mumbling, "hey hey it's okay it's okay". That didn't really do the trick though - a moment later she was flat out bawling in front of me. As I, a helpless 17 year old, stood there stunned, this college sophomore continued to cry her eyes out. I made some vague consoling gestures, but she shooed me away. At that point, my friend, a fellow prefrosh passed us and I just bailed, said a quick bye and left this girl sobbing in the hallway. Sort of a fantastic moment for everyone involved.
Fast forward to that evening. I went to get some food at some sort of mini-student center. The cashier looks Indian, maybe Pakistani, with very delicate features. I order some fries.
"You're a prefrosh?" Man, that must have been like stamped across my face.
"Yeah - how do you like it here?"
She looked pensive for a moment. "I would have to say I really don't like it."
As far as prefrosh weekends go, this was sort of like finding bizzaro buried treasure. On college campuses everywhere, it's understood that no one is to say anything even remotely negative to a potential freshman, under any circumstances whatsoever. You could look like a serial killer and not shower for 9 days, and every person you meet would just happily talk about "all the great friends they made" and their "fascinating professors" and "low student-faculty ratio". Needless to say, I was intrigued.
"Why did you decide to come here?"
"Well, I am from Pakistan, and I did not really know anything about American colleges. My family had a copy of that magazine, and it ranked Caltech number one. So that's what I chose."
Wow. Brutal.
"Okay, um, I'm gonna go eat some fries now."
At midnight, I headed to the gym for "Midnight Basketball". Although I play basketball, I'd be hard-pressed to classify myself as anything better than "average". But in this gym, I was Kevin Garnett, reincarnated as a 6'2" Asian guy. I played in a 5 on 5 game where 6 or 7 of the guys appeared as though they had never played basketball before in their lives.
Blatant travelling, horrific shooting and dribbling. I tried to be a team player, but every time I passed the ball, that guy would immediately throw it right back to me. The other team had a guy about my ability (who I later learned was a prefrosh, not a student), and the game quickly became the two of us playing one on one, with eight other guys running around intensely, but without purpose. My team won a game to 11 - I scored the equivalent of 22 points with probably 14 rebounds and 6 blocked shots and a couple steals. I did not rack up even a single assist, but I think that was largely not my fault.
During a water break, one of the especially awkward guys came up to me.
"Hey man, you're really good!"
"Oh, um, thanks man."
"You're a prefrosh?" Again.
"Yeah - how about you?"
"Oh I go to school here. I'm actually on the basketball team."
Whoa whoa whoa. What? Whoa. "What?"
"Yeah - a bunch of us right here are." He pointed to 5 or 6 other guys we had been playing with. "We play all the time."
Whoa whoa whoa - what? They play all the time? What?
"Yeah, man, you should come to school here and join the team!"
Weeks later, as I retold the story, someone would mention to me that Caltech's basketball team had not won a game in eight years. I couldn't decide what was more shocking: 1) that they hadn't won in eight years 2) that they managed to beat someone eight years ago (who could it have been?) or 3) that the guys I was playing with represented a school that had a basketball team for over eight years.
It was in all honesty sort of a selling point for Caltech in my mind. If I were to enroll, I would become, within an extraordinarily narrow definition of the term, a basketball superstar. Alas, I did not attend Caltech, and my dreams of basketball "greatness" would go unfulfilled.
Even today, I still dream about what could have been.
My most memorable campus trip was to the California Institute of Technology, or, of course, Caltech. Without directly offending anyone who went to there, let's just say that at age 17 (or really, any age where I have been alive), I was not particularly excited at the prospect of attending the school. My dad insisted I at least apply, and despite submitting an essay entirely about sports trivia (I must have mentioned Jamal Mashburn like 4 times), I wound up getting in.So, against my better instincts, I went to the prefrosh weekend. The campus is, at is was then, approximately 30% female, and that 30% is perhaps better known for mental aptitude than, say, other characteristics. Curiously, I met or saw at least 3 cute girls that weekend. To this day, I am convinced Caltech hired them for the weekend to pose as potential students.
During the day, I struck up a conversation with a sophomore girl.
"You're a prefrosh?"
"Yeah", I replied. "How do you like it here?"
"Oh, you know, it's good, I'm glad I came here", she replied, almost convincingly."What's your major?"
"Biology - I'm a premed." This provoked some surprise from me - Caltech is notoriously difficult with grades, and premeds are of course notoriously obsessive about them.
"Oh, wow - that's cool that you would be a premed at Caltech", I said, completely failing to grasp where this conversation was soon headed.
"Yeah, I mean, you know, I know that grades are tougher here, but you know, I think...I think medical schools will...I mean, I hope they will understand that...that it's different here...and just because I have...I have a C doesn't...it doesn't mean that..."
Her voice was quivering, and I raised my palms and started mumbling, "hey hey it's okay it's okay". That didn't really do the trick though - a moment later she was flat out bawling in front of me. As I, a helpless 17 year old, stood there stunned, this college sophomore continued to cry her eyes out. I made some vague consoling gestures, but she shooed me away. At that point, my friend, a fellow prefrosh passed us and I just bailed, said a quick bye and left this girl sobbing in the hallway. Sort of a fantastic moment for everyone involved.
Fast forward to that evening. I went to get some food at some sort of mini-student center. The cashier looks Indian, maybe Pakistani, with very delicate features. I order some fries.
"You're a prefrosh?" Man, that must have been like stamped across my face.
"Yeah - how do you like it here?"
She looked pensive for a moment. "I would have to say I really don't like it."
As far as prefrosh weekends go, this was sort of like finding bizzaro buried treasure. On college campuses everywhere, it's understood that no one is to say anything even remotely negative to a potential freshman, under any circumstances whatsoever. You could look like a serial killer and not shower for 9 days, and every person you meet would just happily talk about "all the great friends they made" and their "fascinating professors" and "low student-faculty ratio". Needless to say, I was intrigued."Why did you decide to come here?"
"Well, I am from Pakistan, and I did not really know anything about American colleges. My family had a copy of that magazine, and it ranked Caltech number one. So that's what I chose."
Wow. Brutal.
"Okay, um, I'm gonna go eat some fries now."
At midnight, I headed to the gym for "Midnight Basketball". Although I play basketball, I'd be hard-pressed to classify myself as anything better than "average". But in this gym, I was Kevin Garnett, reincarnated as a 6'2" Asian guy. I played in a 5 on 5 game where 6 or 7 of the guys appeared as though they had never played basketball before in their lives.
Blatant travelling, horrific shooting and dribbling. I tried to be a team player, but every time I passed the ball, that guy would immediately throw it right back to me. The other team had a guy about my ability (who I later learned was a prefrosh, not a student), and the game quickly became the two of us playing one on one, with eight other guys running around intensely, but without purpose. My team won a game to 11 - I scored the equivalent of 22 points with probably 14 rebounds and 6 blocked shots and a couple steals. I did not rack up even a single assist, but I think that was largely not my fault.During a water break, one of the especially awkward guys came up to me.
"Hey man, you're really good!"
"Oh, um, thanks man."
"You're a prefrosh?" Again.
"Yeah - how about you?"
"Oh I go to school here. I'm actually on the basketball team."
Whoa whoa whoa. What? Whoa. "What?"
"Yeah - a bunch of us right here are." He pointed to 5 or 6 other guys we had been playing with. "We play all the time."
Whoa whoa whoa - what? They play all the time? What?
"Yeah, man, you should come to school here and join the team!"
Weeks later, as I retold the story, someone would mention to me that Caltech's basketball team had not won a game in eight years. I couldn't decide what was more shocking: 1) that they hadn't won in eight years 2) that they managed to beat someone eight years ago (who could it have been?) or 3) that the guys I was playing with represented a school that had a basketball team for over eight years.
It was in all honesty sort of a selling point for Caltech in my mind. If I were to enroll, I would become, within an extraordinarily narrow definition of the term, a basketball superstar. Alas, I did not attend Caltech, and my dreams of basketball "greatness" would go unfulfilled.
Even today, I still dream about what could have been.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Google AdSense
I'm curious how much one blog entry affects the nature of the banner ad being posted on the right. So this is not a real entry, forgive me - I'm just going to drop a bunch of buzzwords here and see how responsive AdSense is.
Subprime loan mortgage FDIC Fannie Mae Sallie Mae interest rates fed funds rate Wall Street Journal Bloomberg hedge fund long-short convertible arbitrage syndication bank mezzanine Financial Times BusinessWeek leveraged buyout debt facility revolving commitment no money down payment present value APR yield percentage prime LIBOR EBITDA discounted cash flow principal repayment bankruptcy private equity carried interest management fee no load emerging market stock option grant recapitalization IPO Goldman Sachs CNBC Jim Cramer Dow Jones Nasdaq S&P russell index deep value trading Steve Chuang.
Subprime loan mortgage FDIC Fannie Mae Sallie Mae interest rates fed funds rate Wall Street Journal Bloomberg hedge fund long-short convertible arbitrage syndication bank mezzanine Financial Times BusinessWeek leveraged buyout debt facility revolving commitment no money down payment present value APR yield percentage prime LIBOR EBITDA discounted cash flow principal repayment bankruptcy private equity carried interest management fee no load emerging market stock option grant recapitalization IPO Goldman Sachs CNBC Jim Cramer Dow Jones Nasdaq S&P russell index deep value trading Steve Chuang.
Dancing With The Stars - Really
Another season (I think the fourth?) of ABC's hit "Dancing With The Stars" starts September 24th, and this year, I will be watching. First I should say that I've seen the show a couple times before, and it's surprisingly entertaining. But the primary reason I'm paying attention this year is the presence of the preposterously attractive former Maybelline model Josie Maran.
I assume she is going to be bad at dancing, because it's difficult to conceptualize someone this hot being good at something other than being hot, but who knows. In any case, I think she has next to no fan base (the people who watch this show probably don't feel a very close bond with models), so unless she's a great dancer, she'll be off the show quickly. I'll enjoy it while it lasts. I'm tagging this entry with "celebs", but that's a little bit of a stretch this time.
Here's some stuff to convince you to watch with me.
I assume she is going to be bad at dancing, because it's difficult to conceptualize someone this hot being good at something other than being hot, but who knows. In any case, I think she has next to no fan base (the people who watch this show probably don't feel a very close bond with models), so unless she's a great dancer, she'll be off the show quickly. I'll enjoy it while it lasts. I'm tagging this entry with "celebs", but that's a little bit of a stretch this time.
Here's some stuff to convince you to watch with me.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Actresses Who Suck
Oftentimes, I like to say that this is not another identical blog that goes around saying everything and anything sucks and dropping f-bombs and just being generally negative. And that's still the case, only not today. Today, I will go over actresses who I think completely suck, and I will be very negative, and I will say mean things that my mother would not approve of. But that's okay, she doesn't have to know.
Brittany Murphy: This girl must have made a deal with the devil. That's the only conceivable answer to the question of why the media so badly wants to convince me she is hot. Who is behind this whole master scheme? The only realistic answer is the devil. However, I'm browsing imdb right now, and it appears that one of her post-production movies is "The Ramen Girl", (I kid you not), a "story of an American woman (Murphy) who's stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a ramen noodle chef under a tyrannical Japanese master." Imdb always says someone has like twelve movies in post-production, so I suspect "The Ramen Girl" is not a real movie. But if it is, she has an outside shot at redeeming herself in my eyes.
Kirsten Dunst: I feel like she's part of some kind of Hollywood charity outreach program.
Let me establish first what I think the job criteria ought to be for a mainstream Hollywood actress. First, be attractive. Second, be good at acting. How can you fail 2 out of 2 (that's 100% if you're doing the math at home) job requirements, and still get lots of great job offers? At no point in my life has a friend told me, "You know who's hot? Kirsten Dunst" and at no point has any girl ever told me, "if only I looked more like Kirsten Dunst". And if you want to contend she's a talented actress, I dare you to watch "Spiderman 3" with me. Ordinarily, I would be able to understand her curiously high level of fame under the "Every Generation, A Completely Mediocre Woman Needs To Make It So That Girls Feel Better About Themselves" theory, only I thought that spot was already taken by...
Drew Barrymore: I just want to say, to every girl out there who watched and liked 1998's "Ever After", I want to say that I hate you. Well, that's extreme, but just know that your enjoyment of that movie and Drew Barrymore had serious repercussions. Though she's been connected all her life and thus was able to
land supporting roles in high-publicity movies (Batman Forever, Scream), Hollywood executives didn't believe she had any real individual box-office clout until the modest overperformance of "Ever After". Suddenly she's in every girl movie ever made (Home Fries, Never Been Kissed, Charlie's Angels, Duplex, 50 First Dates, the other Charlie's Angels movie, and on and on) and being thrust in my face everywhere, on TV, magazines.
Now I didn't watch any of those movies (except 45 minutes of Charlie's Angels and about 4 minutes of Duplex - "What is this movie?Duplex? What's Duplex?") but those roles COULD have gone to someone hot! Why not Kate Beckinsale? SHE should be on more magazine covers! Why all this discrimination against hot actresses? I also dislike this whole "girl-next-door" label. That should refer to the girl you WISH lived next door, not some mediocre and untalented girl who actually could plausibly live next door.
Brittany Murphy: This girl must have made a deal with the devil. That's the only conceivable answer to the question of why the media so badly wants to convince me she is hot. Who is behind this whole master scheme? The only realistic answer is the devil. However, I'm browsing imdb right now, and it appears that one of her post-production movies is "The Ramen Girl", (I kid you not), a "story of an American woman (Murphy) who's stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a ramen noodle chef under a tyrannical Japanese master." Imdb always says someone has like twelve movies in post-production, so I suspect "The Ramen Girl" is not a real movie. But if it is, she has an outside shot at redeeming herself in my eyes.Kirsten Dunst: I feel like she's part of some kind of Hollywood charity outreach program.
Let me establish first what I think the job criteria ought to be for a mainstream Hollywood actress. First, be attractive. Second, be good at acting. How can you fail 2 out of 2 (that's 100% if you're doing the math at home) job requirements, and still get lots of great job offers? At no point in my life has a friend told me, "You know who's hot? Kirsten Dunst" and at no point has any girl ever told me, "if only I looked more like Kirsten Dunst". And if you want to contend she's a talented actress, I dare you to watch "Spiderman 3" with me. Ordinarily, I would be able to understand her curiously high level of fame under the "Every Generation, A Completely Mediocre Woman Needs To Make It So That Girls Feel Better About Themselves" theory, only I thought that spot was already taken by...Drew Barrymore: I just want to say, to every girl out there who watched and liked 1998's "Ever After", I want to say that I hate you. Well, that's extreme, but just know that your enjoyment of that movie and Drew Barrymore had serious repercussions. Though she's been connected all her life and thus was able to
land supporting roles in high-publicity movies (Batman Forever, Scream), Hollywood executives didn't believe she had any real individual box-office clout until the modest overperformance of "Ever After". Suddenly she's in every girl movie ever made (Home Fries, Never Been Kissed, Charlie's Angels, Duplex, 50 First Dates, the other Charlie's Angels movie, and on and on) and being thrust in my face everywhere, on TV, magazines.Now I didn't watch any of those movies (except 45 minutes of Charlie's Angels and about 4 minutes of Duplex - "What is this movie?
Entry No. 101
I had written quite a while ago that I was worried I would watch the obviously shitty "Good Luck, Chuck" just because Jessica Alba is so hot. Well, it turns out LionsGate studio got the message, because they've totally redone the advertising, which Rich and I saw before "Superbad". Whereas the old advertisements centered around Dane Cook and the actual plot of the movie, the new ads are basically just a sequence of shots of Jessica Alba, almost completely eliminating 1) the plot and 2) any reference to Dane Cook. Guess ol' Dane Cook didn't do too well in focus group testing.
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