Apparently this blog serves to cure your boredom

This blog seems to serve a purpose. Relieve boredom. Not my boredom but the boredom of the office drones of the world.

Well, let me fight that boredom corporate drone #3! To you I serve up this post.

The SO had to go back to LA for some work. The timing  aligned perfectly with a wedding and the SO's birthday so we made a mini vacation out of it. Mini in the sense that I got to spend more than 30 hours in LA.

The no longer-TARP funded large retail bank the SO works for paid for her accommodations so I got to stay in some luxury. I won't name the hotel but it's a Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall Hotel.

I flew in on Thursday night and worked from the hotel Friday. Since I had to work East Coast hours in LA, I started the day at 6am. With such an early day I had to get breakfast in bed. I had to okay.

The view from the room was quite spectacular. I was surprisingly productive. Maybe a nice view doesn't hurt. I think I'll bring it up during my next performance evaluation. I'm pretty sure that will go over well.

I'm sure the Chinese are delighted knowing that their beautiful wares are being  re-purposed as a lamp.

They had a complimentary shoe shine service so I felt obliged to try it out. I can't say no to free stuff. Unless it's "free" and you know what that means. 

The SO's birthday was a week before but she had to work that day. We gathered some of her closest work and college friends for a grand you're getting old you're only 30 birthday party. She loves the band Muse and her favorite album is Origin of Symmetry so I got a custom cake for her. 

It was a tad difficult to wake her up on Saturday morning due to the drinking, eating and socializing. The only truly effective way to lure the SO out of bed....

.....almost...

Yes that would definitely work. 

The wedding we went to was amazing, touching and just a really good time. I love how each wedding highlights the bride and groom's taste and personalities. 

The wedding was held on the grounds of Pomona College in Claremont where the couple attended college. Last year Pomona College was ranked third happiest college in America. It's also an amazing academic school as it was ranked 4th in liberal arts schools by US News. Needless to say the students work hard and party hard as evidenced by my many hazy recollections of weekends spent at Pomona. 

The bride and groom making their grand entrance. 

The ridiculous cake they had. Oh so delicious. 

I went back for thirds so I can attest to the fact that the food was good. 

Parting gifts were provided via a candy buffet. They had pre-packaged bags but I decided to be a fatty and stuffed my own bag full of candy. Thanks J!

The wedding and the birthday were our big social gatherings as the rest of the weekend was spent with the SO's family. 

Once we got back it was back to the grind of NYC. The grind being eating, drinking and socializing.

My old roommate from ESADE came to visit the SO and I the weekend after we got back from LA. He worked his magic and got us amazing seats for the Knicks game. This is also the same man who managed to get us into Apotheke by sweet talking the 6'5 bouncer with offers of cupcakes. 

The Knicks were playing the Nuggets so it was Carmelo playing against his old team. 

The seats were awesome. 

The SO was more interested about the nachos. 

The Knicks City dancers gyrating their way into the hearts of lonely men. 

The game was quite close and it ended up going into double overtime. It also pushed our dinner back to 10:30, which was the bigger concern for the ladies. 

He shoots he misses. The Knicks ended up falling flat in the 2nd overtime and lost the game. I don't think I can really adopt the Knicks as my team like I've somewhat adopted the NY Giants as my hometown team. My basketball team will always be the Lakers so watching the Knicks is like extra crispy fries. I like them when they're there but I'll never search them out. An added bonus, if you will. 

Next post: Macarons - The soft yet crunchy mini dessert burger from France. 

What what?!?!?

The Japanese love American things. Sometimes they like the wrong things

The double down, like Gojirra, has landed in Japan. Like Gojirra it will crush the tiny Japanese with its breaded chicken bacon cheese. 

You know what I find most astounding? It's only 588 calories. How is this possible? Did the Japanese somehow invent low calorie fried chicken? Is this thing only 2 inches big? I guess I'll find out in about a month when I'm back in Japan. 

From the files of INTERWEB v2.3

Couple of vids floating around the 'net that I thought were funny.



For those not fluent in web-lingo - Donkey Punch.OMG the wikipedia .gif is hilarious


Hello from ant1mat3rie on Vimeo.

What in the world WON'T Steven Spielberg do?

While I was walking home I saw a billboard for a new show on ABC called The River and noticed that Steven Spielberg was proudly listed as an Executive Producer. Let us first discuss the premise

The River follows the story of wildlife expert and TV personality Emmet Cole. Emmet set course around the world with his wife, Tess, and son, Lincoln, while filming what would become one of the most popular shows in television. After he goes missing deep in the Amazon, his family, friends and crew set out on a mysterious and deadly journey to find him.

So basically each episode will have the main character looking for this lost person and then near the end of the episode *cliffhanger* a clue is discovered that gives hope that Emmet is not lost. Rinse, repeat and cliffhanger season finale where they find a video or recording from days before showing Emmet still alive but perilously close to death. Is he alive or isn't he? Stay tuned for season 2. 

Why even watch something like this? I guess you could say the same for countless other movies and TV shows but something like this is so generic and so easy to figure out there's really no need to sit through 20 hours of shows. I lament the lack of creative, original programming but the unfortunate economics of current entertainment necessitate the greenlighting of mass appeal programming. 

This got me to my second point. Is Steven Spielberg an Executive Producer of everything? I thought he was also the Executive Producer of the horrific Dino-Time Travelling trainwreck of a show on Fox, Terra Nova.

In the year 2149, the world is dying. The planet is overdeveloped and overcrowded, with the majority of plant and animal life extinct. The future of mankind is in jeopardy, and its only hope for survival is in the distant past.

W--T--F.

So then I started checking Steve Spielberg's IMDB page.

These are the films where he's listed as a Producer or Executive Producer.

2013 Robopocalypse (producer) (pre-production)

2013 Untitled Diablo Cody Project (producer) (pre-production)

2012 When Worlds Collide (producer) (pre-production)

???? The Talisman (TV mini-series) (executive producer) (pre-production)

2012 Lincoln (producer) (post-production)

2012 Men in Black III (executive producer) (post-production)

2012 The River (TV series) (executive producer - 1 episode) (post-production)

2012 Smash (TV series) (executive producer - 14 episodes)

2011 Terra Nova (TV series) (executive producer - 12 episodes)

2011 War Horse (producer)

2011 Transformers: The Ride - 3D (executive producer)

2011 The Adventures of Tintin (producer)

2011 Real Steel (executive producer)

2011 Falling Skies (TV series) (executive producer - 10 episodes)

2011 Cowboys & Aliens (executive producer)

2011 Transformers: Dark of the Moon (executive producer)

2009-2011 United States of Tara (TV series) (executive producer - 36 episodes)

2011 Super 8 (producer)

2011 Rising: Rebuilding Ground Zero (TV series documentary) (executive producer)

2011 Locke & Key (TV movie) (executive producer)

2010 True Grit (executive producer)

2010 Hereafter (executive producer)

2010 The Pacific (TV mini-series) (executive producer - 10 episodes)

2009 The Lovely Bones (executive producer)

2009 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (executive producer)

2008 Eagle Eye (executive producer)

2007 On the Lot (TV series) (executive producer - 4 episodes)

2007 Dance with the Devil (short) (executive producer)

2007 Transformers (executive producer)

2007 The Big Bad Heist (short) (executive producer)

2006 Letters from Iwo Jima (producer)

2006 Flags of Our Fathers (producer)

2006 Spell Your Name (documentary) (executive producer)

2006 Monster House (executive producer)

2005 Munich (producer)

2005 Memoirs of a Geisha (producer)

2005 The Legend of Zorro (executive producer)

2005 Into the West (TV mini-series) (executive producer)

2005 Dan Finnerty & the Dan Band: I Am Woman (TV movie) (executive producer)

2004 The Terminal (producer)

2004 Voices from the List (video documentary) (executive producer)

2003 Burma Bridge Busters (TV documentary) (executive producer)

2002 Catch Me If You Can (producer)

2002 Taken (TV mini-series) (executive producer - 1 episode)

2002 Men in Black II (executive producer)

2002 Price for Peace (documentary) (executive producer)

2002 Broken Silence (TV mini-series documentary) (executive producer)

2001 We Stand Alone Together (TV documentary) (executive producer)

2001 Band of Brothers (TV mini-series) (executive producer - 2 episodes)

2001 Jurassic Park III (executive producer)

2001 A.I. Artificial Intelligence (producer)

2001 Evolution (executive producer - uncredited)

2001 Shrek (executive producer - uncredited)

2001 Semper Fi (TV movie) (executive producer)

2000 Shooting War (TV documentary) (executive producer)

2000 Eyes of the Holocaust (documentary) (executive producer)

1999 Wakko's Wish (video) (executive producer - uncredited)

1999 The Haunting (executive producer - uncredited)

1998-1999 Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain (TV series) (executive producer - 9 episodes)

1995-1998 Pinky and the Brain (TV series) (executive producer - 70 episodes)

1993-1998 Animaniacs (TV series) (executive producer - 93 episodes)

1998 The Last Days (documentary) (executive producer)

1998 Saving Private Ryan (producer)

1998 The Mask of Zorro (executive producer)

1998 Deep Impact (executive producer)

1998 Toonsylvania (TV series) (executive producer - 1 episode)

1997 Amistad (producer)

1997 Men in Black (executive producer)

1997 Freakazoid! (TV series) (executive producer - 1 episode)

1997 The Lost Children of Berlin (documentary) (executive producer)

That's just going back 15 years. In all he's listed as a Producer or Executive Producer in 131 titles. What in the world. Does he just slap his name on anything now? I can't believe people haven't dismissed him as a credible creative mind. 

I don't know why I got so upset about this. It's one of those trivial things in life that really bother me. It's like the post I had about the stupid Barcelona subway cars. The torment. Dinosaurs and time travel. Seriously?

Musical cues

I'm bored and stuck on a cross country flight to LA. Tis not a bad thing because I'm flying back to celebrate the SO's big birthday milestone and the wedding of one of my closest friend.

After sitting through the rock n sock n robots movie I ended up listening to the wonderful American Airlines R&B channel. What did they have on the playlist? Tevin Campbell.

Man that really brings me back to the early 90s. A wave of memories flooded back while listening to him croon about teenage love.

It's funny how smell and music are so strongly tied to memories. I can still recognize the smell of the cafeteria of my elementary school in Japan. I remember the song that I listened to on repeat on Winamp when I was hopelessly in love with my first crush. Don't worry SO I associate our first dance For Once in my Life by Stevie Wonder with one of the happiest days of my life.

I'm just glad that most of my memories have been positive. Either that or I have a super human ability to block out bad ones.

My life has been amazing. The nostalgia of my past experiences is truly positive because of all the amazing people who have allowed me to call them friend and family. I look forward to everything else that life may throw at me because I know that no matter what I have a wonderful network of awesome people.

I get like this when I'm on planes. Must be the cramped confines and sinus pressure. It's causing my brain to try to fart out positivity.

The lunatics are running the asylum.

The SO left today for LA. She'll be there for work until the 16th and I'll be flying to LA on the 12th to join her. This means that I have been left to fend for myself for the next 6 days.






Noo...of course that's not how I feel. It's been only 8 hours and I already miss her.

Prior to the SO leaving she left me a couple of things to make sure I don't starve, burn the building to the ground, kill the plants and/or maim myself over the next 6 days.

The SO left me a couple of notes on the fridge. The left was a list of foods in the refrigerator and the right was a list of tasks that I needed to complete before I left for LA. 

The food in the fridge was arranged so that things next to each other were supposed to be combined or eaten together. For example, on the bottom shelf there are tomatoes and grilled onions, buns and turkey patties. The SO is quite the amazing wife and I must be completely hopeless if I need someone to do this for me. 

On another note, I got my Xmas/Bday/You did a great job in 2011 gift for myself. 

It came in a box

which housed another box.....

which housed another box....... When does this end?!?!?

Oh god another box? The madness!?!!?

Finally got to the watch. Panerai 111 Luminor Marina.

I was tired removing the box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box within a box that this watch came in but absolutely love it now that it's on my wrist. 

Any case. Beer and videogames await. Faux bachelorhood commencing in 3...2....1...

Happy New Year

We celebrate another year here on It's not Eating It's Snacking. 2011 has been a spectacular year so I'm hoping this entry is the start of many awesome entries for 2012. 

Here's to you 2012. Please treat me well. I beg you. 

The Xmas countdown

We are now counting down to Christmas and soon the end of the year. This year was a big year in that there were some significant changes.

I moved from Barcelona to Michigan to New York. Graduated from B-school and landed a gig in NYC. Got married, went on a honeymoon to Africa and started living the domestic life with the SO.

I gotta say I don't have a single complaint with how 2011 has turned out. I pretty much accomplished everything I ever wanted and 2012 is already looking good.What does bother me is that I'm not blogging as much. I don't know if it's that I'm not doing anything interesting or that I'd rather do other stuff aside from blogging but the posting frequency has dropped significantly.

Well in any case an early Merry Xmas folks.

Gobble Gobble in NYC

I've been blessed to have been able to spend Thanksgiving in different countries and different cities throughout my life. This first Thanksgiving in NYC made me feel so thankful for my life and those loved ones that surround me and could be my all-time favorite Thanksgiving.  

After three weeks of buying furniture, decorating and painting our apartment is finally close to feeling like our home. Because of that we decided to have my parents as our first guests to our apartment and to celebrate Thanksgiving. 

 

Before we even got to the turkey we spent half of Wednesday prepping for the big day. The SO tasked me with the turkey prep and cooking so I knew I couldn't screw this up. A bad turkey on Thanksgiving is like rain  on your wedding day, a free ride when you've already paid. That song never made sense to me. 

I had to flip the bird multiple times to get the sucker lubed up properly. 

Our selection of wines for the big feast. The top Primitui Priorat wine was what we drank and it was absolutely amazing. Thanks to my groomsmen DL for the wine. 

Giacomo may be the best impulse buy I've ever made. He doesn't mind having a hand stuck up his butt. Because he's a puppet you sick freaks. 

Our back wall. It's an "accent wall", according to the SO. That couch becomes a full size sleeper so all guests are welcome.

The wall color was called blue smoke. I was told not to call it purple. 

We have a small alcove which the SO is supposed to use as an office. She calls it the cave and pouts when I tell her to use it like we had set it up for. 

It's not Thanksgiving without the Lions on TV. 

The table all set and ready to go for the feasting. 

My dad checking out the living room. NYC living forces you to consolidate all social areas into about 100sq feet. 

I really like our place because it's good for entertaining. Most people end up hanging out in the kitchen. Now everyone can hang out in the kitchen, dining area and living room because it's all right on top of each other. 

Our first course was shrimp cocktail and fig/mascarpone in a filo dough pastry. 

 Salad and shrimp cocktail. Salad courtesy of the parents. 

Loved this wine. 

Awwww yeah. 

The full spread. From closest to farthest: Mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing, string beans with bacon, turkey and honey glazed carrots, mac and cheese. 

Mmm..

I really tried to eat more but I was stuffed. We barely put a dent in all the sides and we had half a turkey left but that just means more leftovers for us. The fatties will feast for days!

After the main course it was time to set up the mood lighting for dessert. 

The sunset was beautiful. I love the view from our place. The tall lit up tower to the right is the Freedom Tower aka 1 World Trade Center.  

Fruit trifle that the SO made. Probably my favorite dessert of all time. I don't even like dessert and I loved this dish. My dad actually took some home and made a milkshake out of this. I wasn't sure if I should be appalled by his laziness and awed by his genius. 

That concluded the first annual Thanksgiving hosted by the SO and myself. I'd say it was a success but I can't take credit for anything. I just basted the turkey. Partly because I like saying basted. Master baster. 

 

Airborne toxic event

Tonight we witnessed the airborne toxic event. No it wasn't a case of bad flatulence but an indie rock band from Los Feliz. The SO is a rock music wannabe hipster so she's always trying to introduce me to new bands. Since my music taste ranges from pop to really bad pop I'm usually clueless to all these new bands hitting the scene.

The show was pretty interesting and the music fairly decent. They had an Asian guy in the band who played piano, guitar, and upright bass. I'm sure his parents would be proud of his musical ability but I'm sure they wouldn't approve of him screwing around in a band. Hello I bet even if he were in U2 they would rather have him be a doctor like the Kim's son across the street.

Anyways nyc is full of stuff to do and tonight was no different. In the city that never sleeps we saw an airborne toxic event. As I sit here and write this I think I just released my own version of such event. It did sound quite amazing. The smell was definitely not rock n' roll.

NYC weekend

After several weeks of furniture and household goods shopping, this weekend was spent doing NYC-y stuff. Whatever that means. For us that means stuffing our faces everywhere we go.

Friday evening was spent in a closet of a Japanese restaurant called Taisho. Great food for dirt cheap prices. Definitely recommend if you don't mind feeling like an underutilized broom. Saturday evening we hit up a place Luke's Lobsters. Lobster and other seafood imported straight from Maine and into our stomachs. I just have to occasionally beat my heart to get the blood flowing properly. Totally worth it. 

After a heavy meal of lobster rolls and clam chowder we decided to have a light dessert. The new desert craze in NYC is rice pudding. Rice to Riches offers a variety of rice pudding flavors and toppings at the laugh at recession price of $7 per single serving.   

Granted the single servings can easily serve two AND you get to keep the cool tupperware spoon, bowl and lid set but still, $7 for rice pudding makes you think twice about going there multiple times. I felt like the price was primarily to pay for the fancy store and the 8 employees working the counter. 

With any new fad place the place had ironic or snarky messages sprinkled throughout the store.  

Sunday was a wonderful Fall day and we had a long day of eating ahead of us again. Before that it was a nice stroll through our neighborhood. 

The SO got us tickets to the Chocolate festival so we met up with some friends to sample the delectable cocoa delights. 

The first booth we encountered after walking in was a spice booth so we got off to a bit of a Rocky Road here....Yup. Haven't lost it. 

I have more pics but of course my gmail mobile decides to act up. Sooo for now you get spices and a lion pic from our honeymoon. 

Mmm domesticity

The SO works from home. This benefits me immensely as personified by the image below. Dinner is always ready by the time.I'm home. No better sight than coming home to a wonderful meal. They say a road to a man's heart is through his stomach. Since we are married and technically she already has my heart then she must be trying to fatten me up.

What we do on weeknights

Instead of going out to the clubs we sit in our pjs listening to lmfao. Then our love for lmfao grew exponentially after watching this.



Everyday we're shufflin'

Day 2.5

It's day 2.5 of co-habitation with the SO.

We're not divorced. Yet.

Just kidding. It's been a fun couple of days as we've unpacked, settled into the new apartment and started buying furniture to complete the place. Unfortunately our movers destroyed a couple of dressers, a mirror and various other furniture so we'll have to buy those as well.

All in all it's coming together slowly but surely. We'll see how long blissful domestic life continues.