Japan v. Korea

Here are the highlights from Jake and my live blog of the sights and sounds of the WBC Championship game.

Pregame Notes

• Krause said he left his house at 5:20 and lives 20 minutes away, traffic must suck it's 6:30.
• Game should be played on Wii. 
• I applied the lyrics of the Star Spangled banner to both countries' national anthems, only to realize that because we are all americans that the US anthem would be played last, even though the US lost in the semis.
• Mexican family seated in front of us purchased Panda Express in an attempt to be supportive of diversity. The man actually used chopsticks.

Start of game-640

• 7:05- No Krause
• 7:15- Maybe Krause thought parking was too expensive for this shit and turned around and went home. 
• 7:16- The Koreans chant. And chant and chant the same three syllables over and over with three thunderstick hits after it. Will I hear this in my sleep?
• 7:20- Best name: Bum Ho Lee. God, is this guy lucky that he didn't go to school with me. 
• 7:39- Korea chant has become incorporated into my biorhythm.
• 7:40- Text from Jack Ross-" This is worse than Berkeley, Jesus." I assume he is referring to the amount of asian people, but because of my lenten sacrifice I refrain from a response. 
• 7:45- Krause is not here, Call Amber Alert.
• 7:46 Jake begins scrolling through his contact book looking for someone to entertain him.
• 7:50 We pronounce Krause dead. 
• Possible headstones for Krause:

1. Died in route to WBC, he was lucky he never got there.
2. Killed in parking lot– asian drivers.
3. Had better shit to do.
4. Died for the story
5. was dared

• 7:52- Now batting for Asia- Benihana.
• 7:59- During race of characters on the jumbotron, Jake berates a man for his choice of the blue ball. Jake was right. The blue ball hadn't warmed up properly. Jake's pick (green) wins. He gloats over the man and forces him to apologize for his pick.
• Slogan of WBC "Behind every play, a nation," which I would like to change to "Behind every play, a nation, most notably America, watches something else."
• 8:00- Korea gets first hit of game, causing riotous celebration despite being down by a run. But why not celebrate? They already won the battle against impotency, everything else is just icing on the cake.
• 8:03- need to find out the name of the man in front of us.
• 8:13- Goodyear blimp has a spotlight on, presumably looking for Krause.
• 8:19- Jake has lost all sanity and begins cheering for everyone on both teams. 
• 8:21- After 3 hours, Krause is resurrected. He is obviously disgruntled. And falls down some seats to get over to us. He tells us that he's not even parked in the stadium. 
• 8:27- the world ends. The Koreans keep chanting.
• 8:41 Krause drinks a beer with a straw.
• 8:42 Straw user declares right field the 38th parallel.
• 8:52- Goodyear blimp puts up a picture of another goodyear blimp on it's titantron.
• 9:21 2nd best name Dae Ho Lee. I'm not even clever enough to make this up.
• 9:26- Submit rule change for next WBC. A team should be limited to no more than 4 "Lee's" in one batting cycle. 
• 9:26- Krause starts yelling DDR directions during batter's entrance song.
• 9:30 This at bat is sponsored by Hello Kitty.
• 9:31 This game is brought to you by Boba, who would like to remind you to enjoy boba responsibly.
• 9:35 Attendance- 54,846 (10 whites)
• 9:45 Game will not end. Must take life.
• 10:10 Krause would like to note that the Japanese are surprisingly good at sacrificing themselves.

And that's all she wrote. 

Note: it took krause 3 hours to go 22 miles. So next time you think your life is bad, put yourself in Krause's shoes (Not necessarily in this situation, but in any situation, imagine that you are him and you will feel instantly better).

Tiger Woods

Coming off of knee surgery, Tiger played two tournaments and didn't fare too well.  Rick Reilly jumped on him in his weekly column for ESPN the magazine last week.

 So what does Tiger do the very next weekend? He skull fucks Rick Reilly for not waiting a few more weeks to write that column.

He comes back from a five stroke deficit at the start of Sunday to win the tournament on this putt-

Ramblings

This one will be a little here and there. Try and keep up because I'm probably going to talk shit on you.

CT texted me today from across the world (Georgetown), which reminded me of what a bad friend I am during the school year. I hardly ever talk to my best friends from home because I am so busy. But that's bullshit and not a legit excuse, so sorry to my friends from home. But thank god jake doesn't do shit and he is always online to harass you guys.

CT also reminded me that I have been lacking on the blog circuit. I have. Since my last post, I went to the Championship game of the World Baseball Classic (which I made an attempt of live-blogging it in my notepad, so I will try and type up the highlights from the War for Asia and put it up tonight), I also spent three days in Vegas for Alyse's birthday and of course that created some great stories and better pictures, so I'll share those shortly.

Oh, quick readership check, if you know Tammy Mao start calling her Chin-Chin, it would be greatly appreciated (by me not her). But big-ups to Tammy and Lauren, who rolled to vegas despite being on a cruise for 4 days prior. A week of drinking, especially with my peer pressure, is a hell of a thing to live through, so congrats.

Shout-outs

1. Shige- for bailing on vegas to go to Canada. Yeah, she really did make that decision. But hey, it was with Aqua Delt, so that makes it better (Read with Overt Sarcasm). The only person who knew you didn't come was the Throw-Up Clean-Up guy at the Auntie Anne's in the Rio. By the way, he just called. He still wants to know what that blue shit was all over the floor.
   
2. People who don't allow their tagged photos to be viewed by anybody but themselves- way to ruin facebook. Tagging people is half the fun. Maybe you should think about moving to Twitter or Myspace or Xanga or livejournal or some other social networking site that I can't figure out.
3. Alyse and Pao- for keeping me up during the 11.5 hour drive, like a boss.
4. Moisa- for the free tickets to the WBC. You are the greatest ticket salesman/patient answerer of asian customer's dumb, obvious questions and ridiculous requests to have ever worked in your position. $13.55 is nowhere near enough to pay you. If you would like to come work as my personal assistant, I will pay you 14 dollars an hour and unlimited supply of sex(with jake). Of course, this payment will be under the table. After all, you will be down there finishing me off.
5. Nick Kramer- for being one of the worst caller-backers of all time. Then having the audacity to shit talk me for not going to San Diego with the boys and then bailing on it yourself. You are a shame to all who have ever met you and some that you haven't.

If you have never been to this is why you're fat, you need to go now.

I am taking requests on what to eat and I'm leaning towards the McGangBang.

If you have a story that you want to see me write about, let me know.

Half the time I don't post because I can't decide if it's funny or not, so tell me.

This is an interview I did with Tight End Cameron Morrah at Cal's pro day, he's got a shot at the late rounds. Maybe. And that is a big maybe. But after watching him destroy Damien as a Claremont High kid, it would be nice to see him make it to the League. I would have never found this without Andrew Kim making fun of me for it.

Sandy Barbour

Into the pool after the women won the swimming championship.

Just my luck

Today in Cabezon, this shirt was being sold for 20 dollars at the Adidas store (not on sale). For those of you who have been picking pools or care about Cal basketball or are Ben Braun, then you know that the Bears lost to Maryland in the first round on thursday afternoon, my bracket. Being that it is now Saturday, you think someone at the store would care to reduce the price because the shirt is no longer plausible, like a C. Johnson jersey (now Chad OchoCinco). 

At least, we got to the tourney this year, but if you live by the three, you die by the three. And the Bears sure did die, but this shirt will live on forever, for anyone dumb enough to buy it.

Break

First, I would like to say sorry for not being everyday about this thing like I had set out to do. But last week got kind of hectic with everything, so yeah. 

So now that I'm on spring break this whole thing should be a little easier. 

As for being home, my family watches an inordinate amount of tv. They are very particular about what they watch, well not really, it adds up to two and a half men, house, grey's anatomy, and some other shit. 

Things get interesting when my brother watches with my mom and dad. When he has the controller in his hand, he will literally stop live tv (the benefit of DVR), and explain to my mother as if she were 5 why something was funny. He does this about 5-6 times an episode. He thinks it's great. We don't. 

The versatility of my words

During the summer, I wrote this as a note on facebook last august 11th–

Today, in my english class, the girl seated in front of me began to draw all over the daily cal. Much to my dismay, her anime-esque drawing was all over my story. 
Yes, it was only an 8 inch brief on the Olympic men's swim progress, but damn it still hurts. 
Now, what hurts the most is that she didn't even read my article, let alone give my lead-in a chance. She just began drawing.
Admittedly, she drew an asian girl's face rather well, but I would have preferred a different medium.

So today, my Nikki Schrey feature finally ran and was all over the back page of the daily cal. Before my first class started, this girl sitting directly across from me began reading my story. But she was unable to finish because my professor began class. I wanted to stop the class from beginning because, dammit, my article deserves to be read. Anyways it was nice to see someone actually reading it. 

After class, Alyse and I were sitting in front of Dwinelle just people watching, as I scrambled to finish my dialogue, which was due before my next class. An odd-looking rastafarian was riding his longboard while his huge dog pulled him along on a leash (read: homeless wakeboarding). 

The dog had business to take care of and dragged his owner over to a bush to drop a deuce. And a deuce he did drop. We both expected the man to just leave the poop on the ground, as he looked around to see if anyone had seen what his dog had just done. But in reality, he was looking for something to clean it up. 

He reached into the recycling trashcan and pulled out a paper. It was the daily cal. He looked at it, pulled it open to the back page and cleaned up his dog's business with my feature. 

They say each high has a low. Well, if that's not it, I don't want to know. 

On the brightside, at least people are using the daily cal for something other than sudoku and the crossword.

Double Play Schrey

So I got some more bad news about the Nikki Schrey feature, which runs tomorrow in the daily cal. 

One) The article will not be titled "Double Play Schrey" despite my most valiant efforts, nor will it be called "Two-timer," which was my second attempt. So it will be a surprise to me when I see it manana.

Two) Again, my hopes and dreams were crushed when the pictures came back from the photo shoot and there were no pictures of Schrey hitting a soccer ball with a softball bat or her lunging in the infield for a line-drive soccer ball. Nothing like that. Nothing like that at all. Damn, fuck and shit. 

This event has motivated me to ponder posting something like this on fmylife.com:

Today at work, nothing went my way. In fact, everything went completely wrong– my creativity was stifled and my aspirations crushed. I went over to the window and opened it, having made the decision to jump out. The sixth floor has suicide proof windows and my fat ass couldn't fit out the window. fml.

March Madness

Years before Braun, there was a little magic in the Cal basketball program. 

Here's to the hope that we see a lot more of this in the weeks to come, assuming all goes well tomorrow.

Lent

After giving up meat in '07 and leaving behind animal products in '08, the what-am-i-going-to-give-up-this-lent question was a little more difficult. My brother said, only half-jokingly, "You're kind of out of stuff to give up, unless you want to give up food in general," as admirable as giving up food would be, I don't think that would turn out to well after, I don't know, 4 days. 

Medically speaking, my sacrifice could allow me to live up to 3 weeks, but, without offending Gandhi or any other fast-lovers out there, fuck that. 

This lent, I am making it more about self-improvement, which, as you know, I need. Therefore, I decided to give up racist jokes for lent, in hopes of cleaning them out of my vocabulary for good. 

(Note: I am not making the argument that I am not racist, because, well, that's just silly. Everyone is racist in some regard. Some just do a better job of internalizing it than others.) 

So I have given up laughing at Carson's jew fro (or as I call it now, his ethnically hebrew hair-style). No more great asian, black, indian (I'm typing this in Tandor Chicken), or mexican jokes. Although, I am no longer funny without these racially insensitive jokes, I am told I am a better person for it. Despite the fact that being a better person has never been a goal of mine, because let's face it– I am fucking great. 

However, my Lenten promise does not rule out ginger jokes. Sorry Potter (not for the jokes, but for being a ginger.)

Also, and I am stealing this from Vonnegut's aunt or uncle or someone, who once a day would stop and say out loud, "Now isn't this nice?" As a cynic, I hardly appreciate anything and I am really working on trying to enjoy life, because, sorry Gandhi, you only get one shot. 

Now, isn't this nice?

The Fuck-it List

Sometimes the shit that comes out of Sobosan's mouth is genius. Tonight, I brought up things to put on my bucket-list, like traveling to Hawaii. Alyse, who I interrupted while she was studying for two tests that she has tomorrow, fires back immediately, "You know, I'm going to make a fuck-it list. I think everyone should have one of those. 

Work? Fuck-it (check)

Midterm? Fuck-it (check)

There has to be one time in your life when you gotta say 'fuck it.'" 

And she's right. 

So I ask you to either comment with a fuck-it list idea or your own personal list.

Only in Berkeley

This was a what-the-fuck moment, so much so that I didn't even abbreviate it. But I'm sure those of you who don't go to Berkeley will rationalize this with a "Fuckin' hippies" or fantasize about it with a "Oh, damn I wish I was there" if you are Moisa or Jake. 

Today, I was in the library studying for my midterm that I had in an hour. Me study? Yes, just this once and I promise I'll never do it again. But anyway. As I was coming out of North Reading Room to go buy a blue book for my exam, I received a text. It was from Krause, so I was pretty sure that it would read something like, "Yo, what up N-(he varies  the racially insensitive term he exchanges for my name)? You down to drink at my place and then play some Wii (or N64 or Rambo I, II, or III)?" But because we had already had that conversation earlier on in the day, I knew it couldn't be that. 

 

The text read: "There are two topless girls on memorial glade. Awesome!" Yes, he even bothered to press the one button enough times to get to use the exclamation point. I figured that Krause had seen me coming out of the library, which opens up onto memorial glade, and he was just yanking me. 

I looked out onto memorial glade, and saw Krause across the small field laying against the slope with the biggest smile on his face. I texted him back- I see you.

From across the way I saw him pick up his phone and begin to look around. I stood there on the edge of the steps of the library waiting to be acknowledged. When he saw me he began to wave me over, as if he had just found some sort of buried treasure and was laying on top off it so as not to let anyone else on to his find, except he needed to tell somebody. 

As I crossed the glade, there was the topless girl just sunning herself on the glade in front of about, oh I don't know, maybe, 100 people, who were all staring at her. 

Krause must not have believed that she was topless on first glance because he made sure she was, when he chose to sit down 10 feet from her. Yes, that is kind of creepy of him, but she was naked in public. 

Now, this girl, as you can imagine, was a dirty hipster-hippie chick trying to make some sort of statement. To me, her statement was "My parents didn't hold me enough as a child and now I need all the attention, all the time," or possibly protesting some sort of Free Palestine movement. To Krause, her statement probably would read along these lines– "Oh, Kevin. These tits are only out here for you and for you only. It's only you and me baby. Look at 'em. Love'em, they are all yours," or something like that. 

Oh and as for the second chick that Krause originally mentioned, I think he was counting both boobs as individuals. 

 

Of course this sighting cannot be the end of my story, after all it was Joe and Krause and a weird situation in public. So, naturally, we made things more awkward. We began debating the merits of the upcoming performances of the vagina monologues and what ours would say if we had them. 

Then, out of the ground pops Sarah Weinstein, my buddy Jeff's wife-to-be, and we incorporate her into our explicit rant. She ups the stakes by loudly saying things like "Hey, What do you think of those things? Over there, Huh, huh, huh?" It is important to note here that Sarah is 10 feet away from us, almost in a perfect triangle between Kevin's soul mate. So Sarah is more yelling to us. 

Krause, who has extremely small nipples (read: maybe the size of a penny, when they are cold, or even the size of Lincoln's head on a penny), begins to wonder aloud if taking off his shirt is a good idea. This only acts as an invitation to one up him, which I take. Come to think of it, I need a dick tan, I proclaim. Suddenly everyone begins to wonder if their private parts are tanned enough for public showing. 

 

Insert about five more minutes of dick, tits, and cunt (we're taking back the word) jokes, I have to go buy my blue book for my exam. 

 

As I was leaving, I find out that Krause had sent a mass text because Kevin Hale made a brief mile and a half detour on his way home from Berkeley Sports (on Bancroft, hooked to Tang) to see what Krause and just about everyone else on the glade had seen. 

What the fuck.

Laughing in Class

I have never considered myself of Bill Simmon's work (Although he is a hell of a lot better than Rick Reilly, who he hates almost as much as I do) but lately he has been slowly working his way into my heart. 

And then today he posts this gem of an article. I read it in class and I laughed out loud. I almost cried. Let's here it for you 2008-2009 Los Angeles Clippers.

Jake and Krause

So they are carrying on my torch with CalTV and doing a much better job than I ever did.

 

In the Interest of Friendship

Alright, this story comes from the jacuzzi dude archives. If you are unfamiliar with the label "Jacuzzi Dudes" then here is a quick definition. It is a group of my high school friends, who get together nearly every night during breaks from school and shoot shit for hours in my jacuzzi. Yes, very homo-erotic, I agree, but the stories that have been told in my spa over the years are so epic that translating them to page might ruin the tale, but it is worth the risk. 

            Note: To protect the names of the innocent (or in this case the guilty), I have decided to make up names for the people who were originally involved.

            With that frame, let us begin the first installment of The Jacuzzi Dude Chronicles.           

            This past summer, while I was slaving away at summer school in Berkeley, my best friend Jim got lonely, really lonely. Yet not as lonely as the girl, who he had taken to a few dances in high school.

            Let me not short their history. They went to some dances and they hooked up a lot. The issue between the two stemmed from Jim’s inability to commit to a relationship– this is the excuse we told people. It really was more along the lines of she wanted to have sex with him, and he wanted head. Now, to most logical thinkers, this would seem like an easy compromise, a nut is a nut, have sex.

            But you are not Jim and he would like it if you didn’t project your morals on his decisions. Jim is famous for saying, “I will have sex when I find someone that is as entertaining as I am.” He then usually follows the line up with, “and Joe has a girlfriend.” So this principle, which Jim so firmly holds to, makes him more of a head guy.

            Jill, as we will call her, didn’t do dome. Jim tried the head push, everything. No go.  So this caused the break in high school. But the hookup always came back around. Jill would always randomly call Jim and Jim being the caring guy would oblige her request. Yet it would always come to the same deal breaker– the sex. This went on an off for about 2 years, moving our story from high school into freshman year of college.

            One night, Jim just told her, “Look I’m just not going to have sex with you.” She stopped calling after that night.

            Fast forward to this past summer, she calls again. Jim is past surprised and horny (read: I’m in Berkeley). She wants to “hang out.” It was always her code word and probably due to a lack of creativity she hadn’t changed it. Within the hour, he was in her car making out, literally a block from his house (She must have been in some kind of rush).

            Anyway, this happens a few times. They hardly talk in between, she just calls every third night or so, and they make out until she suggests sex and then she goes home. About the fourth time, she calls him in the middle of the night, crying. Jim was pissed, it was Shark Week.

            She tells him that they can no longer do this. They are ruining their friendship, she says. Jim worked hard to subtlety convince her that it is okay that they continue to hook up because there is no friendship and there has never been one. But Jill insists, so after three hours Jim submits. They are just friends.

            The next night, she calls. “Hey, we need to talk.” By now, Jim is seriously aggravated, hadn’t they just spent three hours on the phone last night during Shark Week? “Okay, fine. Come over.”

            She picks him up and they drive around the corner, like a usual hookup. She gets out of her seat to straddle him. She whispers in his ear that she is not wearing panties. They start making out. Maybe two minutes in, Jim pushes away and says (Word for Word) “No, we are too good of friends for this. Take me home.”

            She took him home.

There has been no communication between the friends since.

            

A case of the mondays- part one of many

I woked up stressed, thinking that I had an unfinished feature to finish up before I went to class. I put a solid effort in to finish early, but when I got into the office there was a problem– we had no pictures of nikki schrey playing softball. 

None. The issue here is that Schrey does not play a lot, in fact, she only has one start and most of her appearances are as a pinch runner. So the odds of other newspapers having pictures were low too, but I called them anyway. UCR's student paper doesn't have access to the internet or as it turns out a phone. The Daily Titan(CSUF) scoured their archives but no luck. So we turned to the athlete herself for a bail out in a staged photo shoot. My editor wanted a shot of her hitting a soccer ball with a bat. 

We were told that Schrey was too busy all day with class and getting ready to make the trip to hawaii for a week of games (read: the competition is so light that it might as well count as spring break). But anyways so the feature is pushed back to next Tuesday. All that hard work, for it to just sit around on my computer, what a waste.

On the brighter side of things, I have a dialogue due for my fiction class due tomorrow morning, which I haven't started. And I am writing this instead, yeah, you're right, bad idea. 

Fuck Juice, I want Oatmeal

Due to our new obsession with oatmeal, my girlfriend visited Jamba Juice's website to see if their oatmeal is vegan. It is, kind of, don't get the brown sugar crumble on it, she tells me. 

Being the progressive company jamba juice is, they have installed a paint-esque feature on their website, so you can doodle on it. So as an act of reciprocation, Alyse scribbled "Fuck Juice, I want oatmeal!" all over their front page. 

She then told me that it was Jamba's new ad campaign. She almost got me, but something between the "Fuck Juice" part and the sloppy words tipped me off. 

Just for shits and giggles–  imagine how many more people would go to Jamba Juice if they used straight forward advertising instead of the crappy healthy morning campaign that they are using now. Answer: Lots and lots more. 

Hell, I would go buy the oatmeal, if after the cashier took my order she was forced (as a part of her job and the new marketing campaign) to scream out "Fuck Juice, this guy wants oatmeal!" And the other crew members would either clap, celebrate, or repeat after her.

It would make them millions.

Ruining Nikki Schrey's life

Although people only use the daily cal for two things nowadays– sudoku and the crossword– okay, three– sex on tuesday– there are still some people that read the paper.  

So when my feature on Schrey runs, it is just another chance that I could have completely missed what she was trying to tell me. This feature,like the "nkech me if you can" piece, is not a matter of life and death, unlike the jorde feature, which was. Still, I feel weird knowing that the ten's of readers that the daily cal has everyday will only know Schrey as the image that I construct in my article, assuming people actually read more than the headline.

I am also trying to not let this sound formulaic and trite, which Jeff MacGregor shows oh-so-perfectly how-to-do according to modern day journalism- boom.

So Schrey's story is still in the works and due tomorrow at 5 pm, I'll post a link when it's up. 

Top 10 Drunk nights

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Jeremy and the Pre-1800's

So I'm sitting in class next to Jeremy and bored senseless. For those of you who know Jeremy, he sucks. For those of you who have yet to meet Jeremy, here are his details– he sucks. I look over at Jeremy, and even he knows he sucks. He modestly bows his head, as if to say, "Yes, Joe. I do suck." But he doesn't say it out loud because we're in class and the professor usually looks down on that kind of behavior. So the simple head nod and goofy smile suffice, he sucks. 

This kind of literature is his thing he tells the teacher with a shoulder shrug, as if he's embarrased. He's not. He's proud of himself. You know this kind of literature, it's the stuff that is too old to even read. Thank god for sparknotes and jeremy's detailed notes. 

He does not suck at taking notes. This is the one good thing about this class- Jeremy's notes. To be honest, this class is filled with the most interesting people I have ever had class with– 2 buddhist monks, 3 40 year olds (one is a foreign exchange student with a thick spanish accent), 1 married 23 year old, a teacher who likes talking about tennis more than english she also talks with a thick accent (Her's japanese), and Jeremy, who, if you have forgotten, sucks.

Yeah, that is my 330-5 on tuesdays and thursdays- kill me.

Let's Go.

So this is the beginning of it all. 

Reasons I am blogging-

1) This is improvement. 

2)  I plan on uploading poor amateur fiction. 

3) I am going to tell horrid stories about my friends and my life, most of which you will not believe.

4) I will drop tips as they come to me about Cal Sports.

5) Links to sports stories. 

6) IM stories

Alright, this is going to be an everyday thing. So Fuck you for now.