danny: October 2004 Archives

I had a great weekend. Brooke and I spent Saturday night at a CDWG awards dinner. The event was at the Chicago Botanic Gardens. I had never heard of the place but it is beautiful. Everything was first class. The food and the drinks were excellent, or maybe the drinks were good and so I couldn't tell if the food was good, but it did look good. Anyway, at this awards dinner they give away trips and other prizes randomly and for the first time during my time at CDW I actually won something. We got a 7 day all expense paid trip to anywhere in the 48 states. That's too many choices, I have no clue where to go. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. It's pretty exciting though, Brooke and I don't get a chance to vacation a lot. After the dinner we moved the party over to Mickey Finns in Libertyville. My boss and his girlfriend ended up meeting us there and he and I took turns tormenting each other. So, that was a great way to round out the night.

Unfortunately, Jack Daniels didn't let me out of there until I realized I needed to be up at 7 in the morning so I could make it to cooking class with my friend Brannon. On about 4 hours of off and on sleeping the door bell sprung me to life and we were off to the Calphalon Cullinary Center hang over and all, to learn some knife basics. Despite the hang over I was pretty excited about the class. Brannon and I got gift certificates to the culinary center for Christmas last year and we finally got around to using them. The class was excellent! After all these years, I finally learned how to dice a darn onion the right way and smash garlic into a beautiful sticky mess of garlic goodness. The class was only $80 for 3 hours of professional instruction and it was well worth it. Check out the link above. There are some great classes to take. I think I'm gonna go back for one of the Asian lessons. I love making Stir-fry and although I've cooked it hundreds of times, I know I'm still not doing it right.

Well, it was a busy weekend but I enjoyed every minute of it. I ate and I guess I also made some good food. I hung out with some good people and I actually won something. Hopefully, next weekend, I'll catch up on some sleep and do absolutely nothing. Don't get too excited Brooke, my definition of doing nothing is very different from yours!

Check out this crazy pic

I don't have many traditions. Most people find tradition in their religion. Although I did grow up Jewish, a religion rich with tradition, nothing really stuck for me. So, I'm searching for some that fit. One of the only traditions that I have so far is my yearly October trip to Grand Rapids to see the Pistons play at the VanAndel Arena with Daniel and his brother David. Daniel and I have a strange thing going lately. We usually only see each other out of state or at some event like this. Unfortunately this year Daniel was on a business trip but I took the trek with Brooke and met David and Elliot at the game tonight anyway.

The drive was long, the chicken was raw, the game was good, but we lost. Driving through Chicago in the afternoon is always a nightmare. We made it through the city in an hour and a half and to the arena in about 5. Nevertheless, we made it. Our seats were pretty good, we sat low in the lower bowl across from the Washington bench. When we sat down Brooke went to get some food. She came back with hot dogs and buffalo tenders. I love hot dogs at a game, there's nothing like it! The chicken tenders were a different story. Those things were cold, pink and disgustingly raw. How is it possible to fry up some tender strips and keep them raw? Anyway, Ben and Rasheed were still out tonight but Eldon and Antonio filled in well and the Pistons got off to a good start but it didn't last. Despite the loss, the game was very entertaining. Darko played a ton of minutes and looked ok at times. He's still pretty tentative out there but he's starting to show some promise. The real excitement of the game was Carlos Delfino. That kid can play. He looked a little lost on defense at times but he was dropping threes and making plays at the basket that were incredible. Off of an inbounds pass, Delfino drove to the baseline and reversed jammed in a packed lane. It brought the crowd to it's feet and set up some great expectations for the rest of the season. I think he'll be an exciting player watch. My guess is, when this season is all said and done, he'll be one of the top rookies provided he gets the play time. Even-though Smush Parker is a long shot to make the team he had a nice game tonight as well. He probably deserves a sport over Horace Jenkins although Jenkins has a guaranteed contract. I'm sure it'll be a tough decision for Joe in the next week but he always makes the right one. Despite a long drive, some raw chicken and preseason loss, I had a lot of fun tonight. We missed Daniel but since this is an official tradition we'll see him next year and next time we'll be doing it court side.

If any one is ever in Chicago and tempted to go to a Japanese Steakhouse, avoid Ron of Japan. We went there tonight with some friends and had the worst restaurant experience I've ever had. There isn't a great story to tell and there wasn't one single terrible thing that happened. The whole experience was just bad. The service was awful the food was nothing special, the wait was terrible, and the people at the table were interesting to say the least. The big speciality of the house is this weird looking golden egg sauce that they put on everything. Everyone at the restaurant was pretty excited about it. To me it tasted like runny egg yolks whipped with butter and oil. In fact, I think that's exactly what it it was. There was guy sitting at our table who looked and acted just like John Candy in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles." The man's wife is telling us about his triple bypass as he's stuffing this sudden death sauce in his face. It was disgusting. Apparently, the sauce lubes up the digestive track as well. My wife's letting it all go as I write this. Anyway, the place is terrible so beware.

Hey Brannon and Zandra, if you read this feel free to fill in the rest of the details in the comments, there's just too much for me to tell.

Brannon's Addition:

'm in complete agreement with that disaster of a meal at Ron of Japan. John Candy was a hoot (3 sheets to the wind and embarrassing the hell out of his wife every 10 seconds) as well as the three privileged 20 somethings seated with the four of us.

Let's see. It went something like this...
Call for reservations at five for 8:00PM.
Get there on time and sit in the waiting room for 45 minutes. Only get seated after 2nd complaint which included fib about diabetes from Mr. Fayne.
Seated and ignored, diabetes be damned, until about 9:10.
Greeted by geriatric Asian waitress with WAY too much on her plate. Takes food order but not drinks. Drinks would be necessary.
Lupe, the Mexican Japanese steakhouse cook, shows up and terrifies the hell out of me, the second and much less brave heart patient at the table, with said puke yellow egg cholesterol death sauce.
Privileged kids at table order $100 worth of food and complain about $75 of it. Get Lupe, the Mexican Japanese chef tossed, and Juan shows up. I can tell you for a fact there are no shortage of Asians in Northbrook. When I go to the Japanese restaurant I want Lu Lee and Ji not Lupe and Juan.
Geriatric pours oil on skinny privileged kids $200 pants(!!!)and maitr-d tells him they look like $5 pants (nice guy)when he complains. Good entertainment that.

Summary
Food: Shrimp too small, calamari old, crab legs iffy, steak overdone, vegetables soaked in oil, fried rice soaked in oil AND egg.
Presentation: Completely non-existent(aren't they supposed to put on a show at these places?)
Lupe never spoke above a low growl through a pasty smile and Juan, the relief chef, just cooked a steak and bolted.
After Effects: Brooke and I spent the remainder of the night crapping on the throne and Danny and Zandra spent it fuming over paying $150 for the crappy-ass meal.

Moral:
Screw Zagat. Go read the

Last night was fantastic. I'm pretty much a couch potato Monday thru Friday after work. Let me just say, that's a boring way to live life in the summer. Come October, I feel like my life begins again. What I trying to say is, the Detroit Pistons began the preseason last night. Actually the NBA Champion Detroit Pistons began the preseason last night. I still can't get over the sound of that. So, I got home from work last night laid out on the couch, popped the TV on and me an my Pistons went to work. The game definitely had a preseason feel and was a little boring at times but the excitement is back. I loved every minute of it. The new additions all looked promising and the rest of the crew looks poised to take another shot at the title. In the mean time I'm going to sit back and enjoy watching the champs play all year long.

Oh, even though this could or should be a post of it's own I have to say Smallville was incredible last night! Chloe Chloe Chloe.......

I don't really have anything to post but I promised myself I would post more often these days.

Ebay is pretty cool. Over the years I've sold a few things and it always seems to sell for more than I expected. Can't beat that. Right now I have my old 15 inch Apple Studio Display up for sale. Looks like the auction is going well. As Emeril Lagasse would say "Oh yeah babe!"

Well, I got my iMac on Thursday and it is absolutely amazing. The machine is a work of art. When it was first launched I wasn't so sure I liked the design but seeing it in person, it's striking. I got the 20 inch and it really is huge. I was surprised that although it's only 25lbs it felt a lot heavier than I expected. The base is rather wide and contrary to John Davorak's dumb ass comments about knocking the thing over the whole machine is very very stable, even more than I expected. Anyway, the screen is huge and bright and I'm still getting used to the size. I'm so accustom to the small 12 inch screen that's on my PowerBook, that the 20 inch almost seems too big. I'm sure I'll appreciate it very quickly. So, the iMac flies. The G5 is definitely fast. A dual G5 would be nice but the single 1.8 in this thing is more than enough for any amateur video editor. I think this iMac is one of the best machines Apple has ever made.

Although, I was disappointed with a couple of things. First, the speakers are pretty average. They have absolutely zero base response and they are relatively quiet. A speaker upgrade is a must. I think I'll get some Sound Sticks II. Second, it's not as quiet as advertised. I'm a bit spoiled though because before the iMac, I was using a Cube, the quietest computer ever made. So, I knew the iMac would be a little louder but to me it sounds a lot louder. It's quieter than a G5 tower but louder than a Powerbook. Oh well, it's silent when it sleeps.

The coolest thing about the iMac was the setup. When you start it up for the first time, it asks if you're upgrading from an older Mac. When you click yes, it asks you to start your old computer in target disk mode and then connect it to the iMac with a firewire cable. Once you're connected you can transfer all of your old computer's accounts, and settings. The transfer took about an hour and then the iMac started up identical to my Powerbook. All of my settings, bookmarks, mail, photos, music, movies, everything was there in all the right places. To be honest, it was almost boring to do it this way but it was so effortless, and I can't believe it worked so flawlessly. Even more amazing, Brooke decided she'd like her own account on the iMac so I decided to see if I could transfer her stuff from her iBook onto the iMac. I re-ran the Setup assistant, connected her iBook, selected her account for the transfer and in another hour, we now had perfect replicas of each of our main user accounts from two different machines. What a cool feature!

That's the update so far. Tomorrow, I'll be putting the processor to the test. I'm gonna try and finally edit my wedding video and hopefully post a small version of it here on the site. I'll keep you posted.

I saw Charlie Murphy, Donnell Rawlings, and Bill Burr from the Dave Chappell tonight at Zanies They were all hilarious! Charlie Murphy gave us the expanded versions of the Prince basketball game and few more Rick James adventures. He said, one time, over a two day period at Rick James' house he had so much sex his nuts went flat. He said they looked like a black potato chip. He was about to beat Rick James' ass because of his flat nuts but then Rick James called some girls to lick Charlie Murphy's ass and that took care of it. He went on to tell everyone that he wasn't into ass licking but after a while he got used to it, and it got kinda nice. He told all this with that same straight crazy looking face he has ont he show. Charlie Murphy was great but Bill Burr brought the house down. Hands down one of the best comics I've seen. Finally, Donnell Rawlings better known as Ashy Larry took the stage. He was fantastic also. Give me a call if you wanna know more. It was a great night.