DAY 24(i)

Milwaukee, Wisconsin
May 7, 2009
Thu 12:23 AM

two blogs in one day... perhaps i need more activities in my life. caps lost tonight, oh well, it's ok, that's why nhl playoffs are conducted in series... one loss is not the end. they still lead the series 2-1, and if they win on friday they have a chance of winning the series in washington saturday night.

that morning rant blog really took a lot out of me. i'm ashamed to say, after writing it, i went back to sleep for two hours, not sleep really, just lying in my comfy bed. comfy bed indeed. ahhhh, so good. i am of course, sitting in it now, and i can't help but think that the green bay packers lean pillow (i don't know what to really call it, its one of those bigger, thick pillows with arms on the side for sitting up with) is one of the greatest gifts i ever received. one of the most thoughtful and useful to be sure. Leave it to my friend Tiger. I mentioned it once my first year in college that it would come in handy because of the way my dorm/closet was set up, mentioned it once in passing and a few months later on my birthday she got me one. and what kind do you get the girl from wisconsin, a packer one of course!

so, this pillow comes in most handy during my late night blogging sessions. so, today, up early, rest, class, pub to watch the game and trivia. and by game i mean caps game. that was a no go for watching the game (for reasons that won't be discussed here) so they missed out on further business from me and we left before the trivia started. no big loss, as much as i enjoy the trivia, i'd rather watch my second favorite sports team than play it anyday. yeah, i put the capitals above the brewers, despite living in milwaukee. no team can ever hold my attention and affection like the green bay packers, but, i'm sorry baseball fans, hockey is so much more fun to watch. especially live. i'd take hockey live over football live. but i take football on tv over hockey on tv. i just wish i could follow the caps more and watch them on tv, but its hard not living in dc. thank you playoffs. also, i have a hard time getting into MLB in general, its so skewed towards the yankees, red sox, and all those rich teams. i mean, the brewers are doing a great job putting together a competitive team, but when you have teams who just buy up all the talent and no salary cap, i just lose interest. i like sports to be fair from the beginning, and all teams have an equal chance. that doesnt exist in major league baseball. luxury tax? don't make me laugh. and steroids, that definitely tainted it as well, i think.

right now i'm watching ong bak: thai warrior. an excellent film. in fact, the film that started my foreign film collection. i wanted to watch district b-13 (or in francais, banlieue 13). i realized i don't have that here in milwaukee with me, so ong bak it is. oh man, right now its one of the best scenes in the movie, where ting fights the big aussie. awesome martial arts flick featuring muay boran, a more brutal predecessor to today's muay thai kickboxing. knees and elbows go flying in this film. the tagline is, no computer graphics, no stunt doubles, no strings attached. although the claim to no computer graphics is a lie, there are two scenes where it's pretty obvious, when sparks fall in the underground fight club and when all the patrons flip quarters at the victor. apparently, people hoard american quarters in bangkok. so, the plot leaves a lot to be desired... young man from a rural thai village travels to bangkok to retrieve the village's decapitated buddha head. because, you know, if you leave your village's sacred buddha head in a city like bangkok your village will be cursed. oh, and he's an awesome fighter who kicks butt along the way. that's all you need to know. that and the villain is something out of an old bond movie... insanely over the top, in a wheelchair, speaks with one of those voicebox things through a hole in his throat from smoking. it's one of those foreign films that you could actually watch without subtitles and know what's going one. oh man, he just did a flying knee to the crazy hair dude's chest. and now he's fighting mad dog. another flying knee... alright.

i was gonna write tonight about ong bak and the first time i watched it, and how i got into foreign films and such. and b-13, that's kinda a continuation story of the ong-bak one. tomorrow, tomorrow i'll write it, i don't forsee anything interesting happening to me tomorrow (class, work). and i want to get some sleep. damn, now i want some pad thai. so good. that was one of the things i did in dc during evenings that i had no plans, which i must say, happened relatively infrequently compared to here in milwaukee (outside my home state i had more friends and there was more to do). i would go to the thai place on penn (a thai restaurant literally called thai place) order pad thai to go, and watch ong bak. other times i would order chinese from panda cafe (also, conveniently located up the street on penn) and watch infernal affairs or one of my many hong kong films. thai place was so good. so was panda cafe. i never let it phase me that other students told me it frequently got shut down for health inspection violations. i don't care as long as your general tso's, chicken brocoli, and sweet and sour chicken tastes good. it's a chinese restaurant for gosh sakes, if it hasn't been shut down at least once they're probably doing something wrong. man, i miss all those good restaurants up on penn, there was also froggy bottom pub (good pub food and once a week they made excellent vietnamese pho) and mehran- a pakistani or punjabi place that had a great lunch buffet. great for a student on a budget. and how did i afford to eat out all the time... well, gw made me. they didn't have a cafeteria so the meal plan was basically a debit card (gworld card) that you could use all over the foggy bottom area, and beyond. every restaurant within a pretty good radius of the university took it, even some several minutes away. there was a joke about how you could use your gworld card to buy some häagen-dazs ice cream in georgetown and then walk across the street and buy some from ben and jerrys!

i remember one time i went to thai place with Slurpee and Edge, and they had fruit flavored ice cream for dessert, slurpee ordered their orange ice cream and he literally got a frozen orange that they somehow hollowed out and filled with cream. I don't know, we had a good laugh about it, the orange looked like it had been sitting on dry ice it was so frozen, not to mention almost completely unedible. Slurpee had to wait almost 30 minutes for it to somewhat thaw before he could peel it and start eating it, it was insane. I guess you had to be there.

oh, and i vowed i wouldn't mention this again because its all i wrote about this morning, but, apparently the governor from minnesota has thrown in his two cents regarding this whole b farve thing. whatever minnesota, you can have the washed up raving-egomaniac diva quarterback. I'd rather have two senators.

salbrent


and here's a clip from ong bak, so you can see what i'm talking about.