Blahg.

Dirk Kraken

2012-01-08T20:39:00.000-07:00

Hey, I actually had some time to do some art that wasn't Dungeon Crawlers related. Yay me!

Currently using Mage Hand to light up his cigarette.

Created a new character to play for the upcoming Dungeons and Dragons Campaign (yay!) that a friend is going to be DMing (double yay!), which means I get to create a character (ultimate yay!)

He's a human wizard named Dirk Kraken (name subject to change). He's a rather disgruntled fellow, always a cigarette on his lips and alcohol on his breath. When he isn't drunk, he's hungover, and either way he's unpleasant.

He's rarely seen without his tinted glasses, and his suit, once the height of fashion, has aged horribly from daily use.

Dirk's in it to become more powerful, but mostly to piss of his parents--not that they'd talk to him after their last encounter.

LIKES: Drinking, rolling his own cigarettes, smoking, and drinking.
DISLIKES: Children, bright lights, loud noises, idiots.

Edit: Thanks to Eric E. for helping me out with this guy's look and doing some kick butt rough pencils. Also should mention that this was heavily inspired by TenNapel's art, who if you don't know, well you should because he's awesome.

Thanksgiving Dinner 2011

2011-11-27T17:35:00.001-07:00

It has been a while since I've blogged on this thing (I've been a little busy with another project), but I actually have something well worth sharing: food.

I've been thinking about doing my own Thanksgiving dinner for a while now, and this year I made it happen. We ended up doing it Saturday so my close family could come and not have to worry about missing the extended family dinner.

The whole thing took about a week or so of testing, and prepping and cooking and cleaning (in particular spending all day Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday). It all came down to Saturday Afternoon for a six course, 2 1/2 hour dinner. Instead of blabbering on too much, here are some photos and brief explanations of how it went down

We actually bought a dining room table and chairs for the event because we didn't have any. A worthwhile investment. We also got new glasses, silverware, and tablecloth. Isn't that centerpiece lovely? Marque made that.

Naomi and Rachel made the rolls, and they were quite tasty.

Here I am plating the first dish, an amuse bouche of pumpkin soup.

Here's the pumpkin soup, which had strong notes of nutmeg and curry, topped with crema, toasted pumpkin seeds and a single chive.

The family about to enjoy their soup.

My dad and Jolie waiting for the next course, with Karlie in the background taking photos of the food for me. Thanks Karlie!

Second course was a simple salad of baby greens topped with a house made vinagrette, parmesan, toasted pistachios, and cranberries.

Here I am plating the third dish.

The family eagerly awaiting as Karlie photographs.

Behind the scenes, eh?

Third course, another amuse bouche. Alternating red and golden beets, cooked sous vide, topped with homemade bacon bits and blue cheese.

Mckay taking a quick cat nap while I plated up the next dish.

Getting everything ready for the main course.

My dad was amazingly helpful with the plating and serving.

Here are the sides: herbed mashed potatoes, gravy, pumpernickle stuffing with kale, andouille sausage, fenel, cranberry sauce, and green beans (generously prepared by my father). The stuffing was the best part on this plate easily. Most of my family (myself included) haven't had good homemade stuffing.

The turkey! Cut up the turkey into it's pieces and cooked it sous vide in butter and herbs, keeping the white meat and dark meat separate. White meat cooked at 146 F for 2 1/2 hours and the dark meat was at 176 F for 10 hours, then finished up under the broiler. The dark meat was fall off the bone tender and amazing (as dark meat tends to be), but I was surprised at how tender and moist the breasts ended up.

Mckay helped me to set up the yams with brown sugar and 'mallows.

Everyone wanted to use the blowtorch, so they got to toast their own marshmallows. Only a few lit on fire.

The yams were kind of a transitionary dish, going from the savory into the sweet. These were also cooked sous vide in butter and brown sugar, then topped with more brown sugar and marshmallows, then toasted. I usually don't care for the yam dishes at thanksgiving, but these were awesome. Perfectly cooked and tender.

Marque was in charge of desert and did an amazing job. Everyone watched in awe as she delicately cut up that thang.

The grand finale. Chocolate Cream and Pumpkin Pie, all made from scratch (yes, even the whipped cream).

After it all, I was exhausted, having been on my feet since about 9 that morning until 7:30 or so that evening, in addition to all the work I'd done previously. Also I'd eaten a ton of food.

I want to give a really big thanks to my entire family (Karlie included) for helping out with everything:

My mom for helping clean and take photos. My dad for helping cook and serve. McKay for coming early to help clean and set up. Rachel and Naomi for cooking the rolls and prepping the punch. Avery for helping with the clean up. Karlie for taking the photos. Marque for cooking the desserts. You guys made my life a lot easier. Thank you, and I hope you enjoyed it.

Hipping and Hopping

2011-05-26T19:26:00.002-06:00

Last Sunday, my brother helped teach me how to rap. I'm not talking about the hit Youtube video, I'm talking about real life. I wrote a bit and then he helped fix it and add on to it in order to make it actually sound good. Which was a lot of work.

I'm attaching the song below, which is mostly me rapping about not being able to rap. Oh and did I mention that he also spit a verse on it? Yup.

But before I forget, go check out his webpage which has lots more of his work.

Quickly exported.

For those of you curious, here are the lyrics for my verse only:
Never been ripped,
Never been buff,
Never been able to spit straight off the cuff.
I write down stuff so I don't forget it,
Naw I don't drool, I just spit it.

Yeah, I'm so so literate,
Eh. Only so so articulate.

Got trouble with flows,
Nowhere to go, but I don't know,
Because I don't have beef with prose.

My word choice is unfortunate,
Uh... what rhymes with unfortunate?
Miss Cleo's crystal ball will tell you what your fortune is.
If you thinkin' that you're hot, well then I'm scorchin' it.
Baby I'm torchin' it.
I'm high off life, higher than my mother flippin' mortgage is.
If it's from DI, I'm sportin' it.
Cut off this verse, keep it proportionate.

Dungeon Crawlers: Behind The Magic

2011-04-08T08:51:00.000-06:00

Since I haven't posted on this blog in a while, I thought I'd do a crossover special with Dungeon Crawlers and show some of my process, specifically for this comic in particular.

**A quick disclaimer, this is simply how I created the comic this week. Since I'm always experimenting with new styles and ideas, my process is constantly evolving.**

My process usually starts with me looking at a blank piece of paper and thinking that I have no ideas--like nothing at all. Then I go through various levels of self doubt, hating myself, and trying to give up. I'll tell myself this'll be the week that I won't get a comic up in time and everyone will hate me.

Eventually I'll start doodling, trying to circle around a loose idea or theme. This week, I knew there were a few things I wanted: for the comic to stand alone, feature only the two blobs (no side characters), and keep it in the usual location. This would allow me to focus more on the comedy and less on the continuous storytelling like I've been doing. I eventually settled on the idea of them doing more training, something I've focused on in the past and then just started drawing out stuff.

I'm looking at this and have no idea why I wrote 2009 in the upper corner. Kind of confused about that.

Eventually I settled on doing invisibility and continued from the beginning I had sketched. I wrote things out and then did a rough panel placement. I also tried to draw out the more unique panels so I knew what they would look like.

Notice how the final panel slant was once the opposite direction, before I realized it would work much better the other way. Fascinating stuff, right?

Comic basically written, I drew up the first panel in Photoshop with the blobs and then copied and pasted them so I could figure out if the panel placement, along with text.

Yay Free Transform!

In the past I've added text and bubbles last, but I liked doing it this way because it allowed me to look at panel placement and flow before worrying about the rest, plus it allowed me to save the best part (the actual drawing part of it) for last.

Oh and for those of you wondering why the background is pink in this set up, it's simply because using plain white is a lot harsher on the eyes when staring at it for hours. Plus pink is cool.

You can check out the finished product over here at the Dungeon Crawler's site.

Just a Doodlebot

2011-03-16T20:32:00.000-06:00

So this is just a little doodle that I did on lunch at work that I liked enough to scan and tidy. That's all really.

Bringing Sweaty Back

2011-02-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

In an effort to make Two of a Kind Productions a threesome (yes I realize how that sounds), I put together something I felt would show off my rapping skills. It's a short verse off my new single, Always Sweaty. Hopefully this will show them what I'm capable of.

For those of you curious, I've attached the lyrics behind the jump.

Yo, this yo boy Vanilla Bean, Bringing Sweaty Back:

Drip, drip, drop,

My sweat pools on the floor.

Quick, grab a mop,

You'll be begging me for more.

I'm talkin' 'bout perspiring,

That girls find inspiring,

Leaving all these Honey's on the dance floor inquiring...

...for my number.

So they can call me later,

while I'd really like to mate her,

Busy fightin' off the haters...

....cause they hate me.

jealous of my sweat stains

anger, makes 'em pop veins,

ladies ain't after brains,

They after sweat.

Ha ha... Yeaaaaah.

They want a sweaty man.

Like me.

Check out Tony's post about all this, here.

Solid Gold Idea

2011-02-12T10:42:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned on the blog before, my brother and his Tony are a rapping duo known as Two of a Kind. Being an expert director, I decided to throw them a bone and help them out with a music video. I started piecing stuff together for their song called Been Dreamin' and I so I left a message on Tony's answering machine to give him a taste of what I could offer. Little did I know that he would take said message and release it online:

My genius at work.

At first I felt a little betrayed, but I quickly realized that this would allow the masses to take a peek in to my genius creative process. I still contend this is the beginning of an amazing music video, but he never called me back about it.

Just a Couple of Blobs: Dungeon Crawlers

2011-01-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything on here, let alone another blob comic, but there's good reason for this--I've been working on a separate site for the comic for a while now. It's still not quite done, but you can check it out over at DungeonCrawlersComic.Blogspot.com.

You can totally click through to the new site.

The comic finally has a real name (Just a Couple of Blobs was always a temp title that I hated), and I even decided on names for the blobs: Jasper (the bitten one) and Bo (the naive one).

All of the old comics have been put up (in a higher resolution mind you), along with three brand new totally awesome never before seen brand new comics. You can see them here, here, and here. Make sure to read them in order because there's actually some continuity crazy enough.

I'll still probably post things concerning the comic over here, but I want to try and migrate a lot of that sort of thing on to the official site. The site is still undergoing some work, but I was tired of hiding it, so enjoy. And let me know what you like and dislike and want to see in the future.

Doodle Party

2011-01-17T10:15:00.017-07:00

I've been working on some things for the blobby comic lately that are still a bit under wraps, so in the meantime I thought I'd share a doodle I did. For those who know me IRL, most of my to do lists and notes (see also homework assignments when in school) are covered in doodles. This was one of the ones I actually liked, and now here it is, inked and colored it for the blog. Enjoy.

Click it for the big 'ol version.

Party Time!

2011-01-11T10:12:00.001-07:00

Faithful readers will remember that my brother raps (he taught me everything I know), and the mission didn't change that. He got back in November and joined back up with his most frequent partner in crime, Tony Magdeana, reforming Two of a Kind. The two hipped and hopped away, creating a whole new album called Party Time, complete with 16 songs.

Once complete, they needed some album art--here's where I got involved. We did a photoshoot in my parent's basement with some party supplies Marque and I had, trying to give that awkward party feeling. It was very low tech, jerry rigging lamps and other lights as best we could to light these guys, but I think the end result turned out well:

Click for bigger, it's totally worth it.

I brought it into photoshop and corrected the levels and such before distorting it to give that old school photo-that-you-found-in-the-attic look. If you guys are interested, you should totally check out his album, which is totally free to download here.

Teh Blob Artz

2010-12-30T10:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick single panel comic written by Eric E. again. He doodled up a bunch of ideas and this is the one that made me laugh the hardest.

Simple. I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to make the ice and fire effects using Photoshop filters and the like, but in the end I thought it was more consistent to go cartoony.

As a bonus for today, here is some art that Eric E. did in paint that I kind of love. I wouldn't call this fan art, considering we created this whole comic thingy idea through collaboration, so maybe it's collaboration art.

If any of you have blob related art stuffs you've done, I'd love to see it and I might even post it up here.

Just a Couple of Blobs: Practice

2010-12-27T10:16:00.000-07:00

New comic, commentary follows:

With this particular comic, I wanted to created something a bit different, not just with unique panel shapes, but by trying to create more dynamic images. As a result, it took a lot longer than I would've liked. The inking was a lot more fun, but the problem was re-purposing the backgrounds that just weren't meant for these angles and shapes.

The most exciting thing for me with this comic is the definitely the font. My handwriting, correct? Well, I ended up generating a handwriting over at YourFonts (for only about 10 dollars) and I'm really happy with the results. It sped up the whole writing process immensely and made rewrites a breeze.

I also wanted to talk about creating a unique website for this comic, but the first problem I'm running in to is I don't have a real name for this comic and I need something to create a domain. Any ideas people?

Just a Couple of Blobs: Birds and the Bees

2010-12-18T18:38:00.000-07:00

New comic with commentary afterwords:

I'm not as proud of this comic, simply because the punchline needs to be punchier. The whole thing started out by doodling the blob's mother and then wanting to do a "where do babies come from" gag.

Click for gigantic version.

I had a lot of fun trying a more painted look with the three panels, but I ended up shrinking them to the point that it's not noticeable. If I'd planned this out better, they would be the focus and the other panels would become smaller.

If you're wondering why I post these commentaries afterward it's to vocalize my thoughts on the process. I point out the flaws not to degrade my art, but because this is a learning process for me and there is a lot of experimentation involved. Some things work and others don't. As always, I would love any critiques or comments!

Just a Couple of Blobs

2010-12-14T16:21:00.000-07:00

Comic numero four for those of you keeping count (commentary at the end as always):

I had pretty huge writers block this last week and it wasn't until talking it out with Eric E that this comic was created. He helped talk me out of it and pretty much wrote this entire thing for/with me.

The blobs and the chest were drawn ink on paper because I wasn't at home on my computer and I wanted to get it out while I had the concept. It took a bit of touch up, but I think it worked out pretty well.

Just a Couple of Blobs: The Hand of God

2010-12-09T16:44:00.000-07:00

The latest blob comic up and at 'em (commentary after the post):

Yay for the first all digital blob comic. I did reuse the dungeon wall (obviously), but other than that, this was one hundred percent done digitally. It took some getting used to, but I think I could speed up my process doing it this way. Only problem is that I have to be on my computer at home to do so.

For the squidlings font, I found one I liked and then traced and made it my own. This helped with the spacing and kept it different than the blobs, but allowed it to be in my handwriting. I did a similar process with the hand of a god. I took a photo of Marque's hand and a D20, traced it, inked it, and painted it. This gave it the abnormally realistic (in comparison) spiritual vibe I was going for.

I had another punchline for this one I was really digging, but it got cut for time. I'm feeling pretty keen to create something longer form with these guys.

Restaurant Review: Catching Up (yet again)

2010-12-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted a restaurant review, and I originally wanted it to be a weekly thing where I can go in to more detail with each restaurant, but I don't think you people care that much, so I'm going to be truncating the whole thing and doing it every few weeks. Less pressure on me, and less reading for you.

Tonyburgers
This place has good burgers and good fries. Yes that sentence is something that a 7 year old would write, but it's a simple place. A step above fast food, this place takes the time to make things properly, like high quality meat and frying the fries twice (the best way to make fries I promise).

Overall: This isn't a destination restaurant, but it's really good. If you're in the neighborhood, check it out.

Rio Grande Cafe
Went here with Hali, under her guidance and really enjoyed it. This place isn't the best Mexican food in the valley (that's something else), but it's got a unique enough voice to set it apart from the others. Low prices and big portions are a plus here. The only real drawback is a big one for me: you have to pay for your chips. One of my all time favorite things to do is eat the free chips whilst looking over the menu. My father always taught me you can tell a lot about a Mexican restaurant by how they prepare and serve their chips.

Overall: The whole chips thing isn't a deal breaker, and I would definitely return. Good stuff.

Pat's Barbecue
I actually went here with my dad and my brother instead of Eric, but I'm listing it here anyways. This place is amazing. I'm honestly wondering how I never heard of it before. It was on Diners Drive-ins and Dives with that one Guy (Fieri), but my brother totally knew about it before it was cool like that. The barbeque is some of the best I've had in Utah and the atmosphere is great. There was live music and we ate on picnic tables.

I think there's a litmus test similar to chips and Mexican restaurants, when it comes to barbeque. That is the distribution of hot sauce and the napkins. Preferably there's a variety of in house sauces to try and love (check) and instead of napkins, there should be paper towels (double check). This seems trivial, but I feel like it's important.

Oh and the food is amazing.

Overall: Best barbeque I've had in Utah. Not much else to say here. Go!

The Replacement

2010-12-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

I posted up the obituary for my old phone, and so I figured it was only right to blog about the phone that came next: The Droid 2.

Doesn't that look it should be Droid Squared?

It all started when my brother got home from his mission, and the whole family loaded up for the Verizon store, to help him pick out a phone. This in itself was a process horrific beyond all belief. The indecisive and conflicted hive mind that is my family spread out through the store, all offering advice with little experience to back it. After an incredibly lengthy look around, he (we) settled on the Droid 2.

I expect this thing to talk in a monotone voice and call me Hal.

The thing is though, is that the phone was a two for one deal. Buy one, get one free. That's the kind of savings you can't pass up. Then the debate began who would get the second one. I was the first to be proposed, since I had the most ancient of phones in the family, though both sisters quickly chimed in that they were eager to be the recipient. Long painful story short, we ended up walking out of there with four Droid 2's, one for each sibling.

I started to use mine and quickly grew frustrated, for I knew not its strengths nor its potential. Mostly though, I didn't know how to use it. It gave me insight as to how old people must feel all the time. For the first day or so, I went as far as to carry my old phone with me for comfort, casting dispersions on the new.

Soon though, I grew to love and understand it. It's something I don't know how I did without for as long as I did. And with the new phone comes a new ring tone, and I quickly found the perfect replacement:

A worthy successor to Lipgloss.

Yay for change.

Just a Couple of Blobs: Gold Digga

2010-12-03T10:55:00.002-07:00

Here's another Blob comic, still no names, and other problems are abound (commentary after the strip), but check it out:

I rushed through the coloring process on this one more than the other, because I just wanted to get through it, so there are definitely some imperfections. If I'd had more time, I would have liked to add shadows and highlights on the viking feller. This time I tried recycling poses and I'm happy with the results. I'm not quite digging the uniform panels, but I did it to allow me to reuse backgrounds and saved on time.

The big lesson this time was digital. Pretty much all these drawings were done ink on paper, but I did make changes digitally, and I like the look better. I think next one I do, I'm going to try and do all digital.

Just a Couple of Blobs

2010-11-30T17:31:00.004-07:00

After a long period of not posting art on here, I'm back with a lengthy posting of a comic I made. The whole idea of creating this comic was to come up with characters and situations that I would be good at drawing over and over and enjoy drawing them. I enlisted Eric E's help and we started doodling characters.

Since I'm a horrid artist, the character that I came up with was a blob. Eric and I fine tuned the blob, which soon became two blobs (so the one would have someone to talk to). Below is the resultant comic (click the images for full resolution, which is so much better than the dinky blogger preset):

A couple thoughts. First off, I don't have names for either of the blobs. The bitten one is the older crankier one and the rounder one is the young naivey one, but that's all I've got.

Secondly, I need to thin down the process to speed things up. This whole thing from start to finish took somewhere around under four hours. Hopefully having a ready made background will help, but I'm thinking I may also try recycling poses.

Thirdly, I need a better way to post comics on blogger. I love it for it's bloggingness, but it's comic capabilities are a bit lacking.

Any ideas?

Fail

2010-11-29T10:37:00.003-07:00

I try not to post too much about work, but my coworker Hali submitted a photo from our breakroom to the work fail blog and it got featured up on the main page (the actual post is here). I'm including the image below, but you should click through to the actual site since it tends to be rather funny.

Bob, the meeting was over decades ago.

RIP: A Damn Fine Phone

2010-11-28T15:55:00.007-07:00

I do realize I'm like three weeks behind on that whole restaurant review thing that I do, but I thought it'd be nice to have a post up that's not food related for once (even though I already did another RIP post this month).

This post is about the death of a faithful companion: my old phone.

For those who know me personally, you've probably seen this phone, a bit of a relic with the plastic finish worn through from years of (mis)use.

Photo taken by new phone (another post on this matter).

I had the phone since around 2006, but it'd been in the family for years prior. Even in its old age it did me no wrong, aside from sometimes freezing or displaying only a black screen, forcing me to take out the battery and restart it.

You can kind of see the Verizon symbol on the back still.

It had everything I needed. Texting, photos, videos, even tweeting. Plus it was super durable; I once dropped it off of a three story ledge and found it in working order.

I was so good at typing on this thing.

I grew used to typing on it, clicking away without looking. I worked around its flaws and found its limitations not insurmountable. It was a crappy phone, but it was durable and it treated me right.

If you knew this phone, then chances are you knew the ringtone. Let's have it play the post out, eh?

Crappy Cell Phone
2006ish-2010

Restaurant Review: Bayleaf Cafe

2010-11-07T16:50:00.008-07:00

As mentioned last week, I didn't realize I'd never reviewed Bayleaf Cafe. I've been a few times since the inaugural visit during the Dine-o-Round in Spring of '09 and every experience has been amazing. This time was no exception.

We took an unusually large group this time, with Marque, Hali, and Brittnee in addition to Eric and I, which, as always, gave us more plates to steal food off of.

Crazy canted angle close up!

Eric had the meatloaf, which we've had a few times and does not disappoint. For sides he had the macaroni and mashed potatoes, both of which were just as impressive (if not moreso) than the main course. This is a recurring theme here, and something I think is immensely important with comfort food. The collard greens and grits and whatnot are a huge part of that culture and they are treated with the same level of importance as whatever they're coming with.

Marque got the fried catfish which I have to say was really quite good. It was a cleaner tasting fish than what I tried at Spoony & Nata's, but the breading wasn't quite as tasty. Hali had the chili cheese fries, which were just that: fries with freshly made chili. Good stuff.

Finally Brittnee and I had breakfast for lunch. We both got waffles, but I took it a step further and had chicken and waffles, a dish made famous by Roscoes. My brother used to make this on Sunday mornings now and again, but I never really tried it. I figured since he'd be home in less than a week, I'd eat it in anticipation of his return. And yea verily it was good.

Image courtesy of the Google images.

The combination sounds off putting, but it's actually a perfect marriage of flavors. Think of it this way: have you ever had chicken with a honey glaze or some other sweet and spicy combination? This is the purpose of the syrup, the glue that helps bind these two drastically different foods.

Overall:
This is one of my favorite restaurants in the valley. It handles comfort food with a skillful execution and should not be missed.

RIP: A Damn Fine Burger

2010-11-03T08:56:00.000-06:00

My favorite restaurant has been shut down: Acme Burger.

I was devastated when I found out. I'd reviewed the place on my blog way back when championing it as my decided favorite. There were lots of reasons for this including the service, the people, especially Alan and Ali (while she worked there), the style, and most importantly the food.

I tried every burger on the menu as well as plenty of their other dishes and loved nearly all of them. This was a place of comfort for me, for it's familiarity and deliciousness.

I started writing this post after my mom sent me a link to the Food Network's 50 States 50 Burgers listing off the best of each state, where they listed Acme Burger's Spicy Morrocan Lamb Burger as Utah's. It posed as a reminder that this place really was that good and now it was gone.

The Morrocan.

I'm sad to see it go, but to be honost, I'm not surprised. The prices where high and the dinner rush was anything but. It wasn't perfect, but Acme Burger, I will miss you fondly.

ACME BURGER
2007-2010

Restaurant Review: Playing Ketchup

2010-11-01T12:19:00.022-06:00

Get it? Playing Ketchup. Because I'm catching up on all those restaurants I haven't reviewed and ketchup is red.

Just because I stopped writing for like a month doesn't mean I stopped eating--far from it. I wanted to give brief reviews of each of the places we went to to keep you up to date. These won't be as in depth as usual, but hopefully will give you an idea of what kind of an experience we had.

The Metropolitan
This may end up taking the place of my favorite restaurant considering Acme Burger was closed down recently (I have a postmortem in my drafts for the blahg, but I haven't had the chance to finish it). This place is well out of my price range, but we were able to go because of the Utah Dine-O-Round, which happens twice a year with restaurants giving pre fixe menu at a discounted rate.

Not what we ate, but really pretty food.

On to the food. We started out with some flatbreads and dips including hummus and a tapenade. Really great stuff that had us scraping the plate to savor every last bit. We all went with the same entree which had a duck sausage (made in house) on top of mashed sweet potatoes with peas. It was amazing. This is the place I would love to eat on special occasions if I had money. Any financially stable people out there who have a passion for funding others overly expensive meals?

Overall: Every meal I've eaten here is AMAZING and I wish I could go more. They do offer a 3 course for $30 (Mondays only I think?) which is a steal of a deal.

The New Yorker
We went here with our friend/co-worker Travis as part of Dine-O-Round (another restaurant I couldn't afford normally). We looked quite out of place in our matching uniforms for such a swanky place. Eric started with an egg drop soup with fresh summer corn, while Travis and I had the salad. This rough summation of a conversation that was had will give you an idea of Travis's experience at the restaurant:

Waiter: What sort of dressing would you like?
Travis: Ranch.
Waiter: We don't have ranch.
Travis: I guess this place is a little too fancy for me.
Waiter: (nods)

That basically sums up the situation.

Not what we had, but it was the only picture on their website.

Travis and Eric went with the safe entree, which was chicken and potatoes with a caper sauce--quite delicious, but nothing too special. I had the calamari steak, which was a piece of calamari flattened out, breaded, and fried up. It was topped with a marinara and served over polenta (something I've grown to love thanks to the missus). It kind of tasted like chicken Parmesan, but with squid. Overall, it was good but I grew a bit tired of the taste by the time I finished it.

Travis thought this was the grossest thing like ever and so Eric and I paid him to try it. He built it up in his mind that he would hate it but when he finally tried it, he described it as not that bad, going on to say it tasted like a soggy deep fried pancake (an incredibly odd and inaccurate description).

Overall: This would make a great place to take a date, but not a great casual lunch. Be prepared for pricey.

Himalyan Kitchen
This place is an Indian restaurant with an all you can eat lunch. Why are there not more of these? I feel like curry is the perfect food for this sort of eating experience.

Mmmmm... curry.

This place was amazingly delicious. I tried a little bit of everything and there wasn't a single thing I hated. We found ourselves going for seconds and thirds and loving every bit of it. I ate to the point where I hated myself for it. My only complaint with the place is that the naan goes too quickly.

Overall: Best all you can eat evar.

One World Everybody Eats
This is one of those places where you pay what you feel the food is worth. This allows people of substantially lower incomes to afford real meals. When we got there, we got the whole spiel about their mission statement and how they were a nonprofit and yadda yadda. It's a really cool idea actually.

Everybody.

The food itself was not great, but that's really nothing against the restaurant. The place changes chefs each day and you can even pay for your food by working in the kitchen. The meals here can be hit or miss and I think we got a bit of a miss this day. We ended up leaving and going over to Rich's Mighty Fine Burgers and Grub to cover up all that healthy food we ate with something greasy.

Overall: Hit or miss.

Copper Onion
Man is this place tasty. I think it may even rival Bayleaf for best sides (which I'm now realizing that despite having been there several times, I've yet to review it).

The bottles they serve water in are so pretty.

I had the pork belly blt and split it with Eric who had the copper onion burger (yes, we do this half and half thing a lot, giving us equal chances to try things) and thank goodness we did. The pork belly was so fatty and rich that I could definitely not have handled more than half. It was really really good, but so tasty. This is definitely something that would have better as a taste than a meal.

I know all the others only have one picture, but doesn't that burger look good?

The fries were amazing, but the best side was this spicy corn that Marque ordered that was AMAZING. I really want to try and replicate it. Oh and on top of all that awesomeness they make all their own pickles.

Overall: I truly truly heart this place. I should also mention they offer a deal with the Broadway Theater right next door, a sort of dinner and a movie thing, so that's cool.

Moochies
You may know this place from Guy Fierri's Diners Drive ins and Dives, but I totally went here before it was cool.

So goooooood.

This place definitely meets Guy's requirements and man is it tasty. Eric and I did splitsies on a meatball sub and a philly chees steak. I loved both, but I think the cheese steak slips ahead barely. This is a great place for grub.

Overall: This is one of those fantastic local places you really have to try for yourself.

Hopefully I'll stay more on top of this in the future. Anyone out there in internet land try these places before? What do you think?

Media Consumption

2010-10-26T13:26:00.004-06:00

Instead of doing the post about not posting (in forever) and apologize for my shortcomings, here is a post about what I've been watching. Thank goodness this post will finally bump really icky meat images from the top of my blog.

Keeping up with tradition, each review will only be 140 characters (a la Twitter).

Modern Family - Fantastic, hilarious, and consistent. I really don't need to say more.

The Office - Dwight feels neutered but at least Andrew & Erin stand in for Jim & Pam as the will-they-won't-they? Wondering who'll replace Michael.

30 Rock - Still (30) rocking it. Didn't love the live episode, but loved what it did and how it did it. Stop asking about the roller skates!

Community - Hasn't been as good as first season, but it's easily still my favorite comedy on tv.

No Ordinary Family - A rehash of superhero families we've seen before (Fantastic Four, Incredibles, etc) that brings nothing new to the table. Bored.

Running Wilde - I keep watching this, but it's not great. Definitely moments of hilarity, which are poorly undercut by V.O.-- sad since AD did it so well.

Outsourced - Saw the pilot and didn't care for. Anyone watch more of this and like? Does it get better?

The State - This is a great sketch comedy show, and so many comedians got their start here. Do yourself a favor and instant watch it.

Glee - Still horrifically inconsistent tonally, but still totally catchy. Episodes are hit or miss and yet I can't stop watching.

The Event - Not horrible, but total ripoff of Lost, V, and Flash Forward. Does anyone else feel like it's an allegory for Obama and Guantanamo?

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - I feel like the gang already did the hilarious controversial stuff in the first two seasons, but I still find the show funny.

Avec Eric - I love cooking shows and feel like this one is nicely toned down instead of the in your face extreme food I'm running into on Food Network.

All of the above were watched on Hulu (with the exception of The State, which was a Netflix Instant Watch) if you were curious. I wanted to keep it just with TV, but I did have two more reviews for movies I saw recently that I wanted to talk about.

Kickass - Without a likable protagonist, plus the really weird (bad) performance by Nick Cage I really did not enjoy this film.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - This was actually really funny and really well done. Great writing, voice acting, and visuals. Total recommend.

If you have any responses, leave 'em in the comments below.

Sous Vide Steak

2010-09-25T13:19:00.001-06:00

I swear this may be the last cooking post for a while (though not the last food related one). I hope you guys aren't feeling over-saturated; I'm just on a little kick here and wanted to write about the whole process.

This post is again sous vide, but this time with steak. Specifically Filet Mignon. I chose this cut not only because it's a high quality tender cut, but also because it is thick. This would allow me to see the meat cooked evenly through the meat on a larger scale.

I prepped my meat, again measuring it up and then seasoning.

Accuracy is important.

Salt and Peppa.

I bagged them up separately to try a little different preparations. I did one with the bacon on it that came with it and one with some bacon fat.

Side Note: Whenever I cook bacon now, I do it in the oven and then siphon off the fat and refrigerate for future use. It adds a lot of flavor and is so much cooler than just using butter.

Baggy'd.

After they were cooked, I ran them under cold water to halt the cooking and patted them dry with a paper towel. Since they're cooked evenly throughout, the exteriors are that same temperature and look sickly. The result looks really really really gross, so you may want to skip this next image, but I'm still posting it for historical accuracy.

The lower one looks like a heart.

I then seared them on a very hot skillet to brown them and they started to look a bit more normal, though still red. They ended up being quite a bit more appetizing after this.

Big red meat.

And here's a cross section just to show how evenly they cooked through:

Pink all the way through.

We cut them up and passed around, but they weren't what I'd hoped for. They tasted almost like beef jerky, but I don't know why. I really can't put my finger on why they tasted off. Here's what the others said:

"The meat looked unappetizing before the browning and sort of put me off. The fact that it was the same pink all the way through was also unsettling. It tasted ok." -- Marque

"The flavor and texture were good, but it's different than grilling a steak. There's something about the contrast between charred outside and a juicy inside. I like it more that way." -- Mom

"The steak tasted like beef jerky and didn't have the texture of a steak. It would have tasted better grilled." -- Naomi

I was really disappointed with this, but here are some possible reasons as to why they didn't turn out:

The meat was of poor quality (I only got those prepackaged kind with the bacon already wrapped).
I salted the meat too much or too little.
The searing of the meat was not hot enough or long enough and did not impart enough flavor or crust. I think next time I'd like to use a torch.
I didn't get enough air out of the bag.
I cooked it too long (or too short).

I'll probably try again after some research and prep work since this was such a failure. Life moves on though.

Sous Vide Stuffing

2010-09-25T13:18:00.000-06:00

In that one video in that last post, they made stuffing sous vide style and I was really curious about the whole thing. Fortunately the recipe was posted up on their forums so I decided to give it a whirl, despite it not being Thanksgiving.

First step was to cube up 2 loaves of wheat bread. I think if I were doing this again, I would half the recipe, simply because I'm only feeding a family of two (sometimes three, depending on who's over).

So much bread. Yeesh. Also, sorry about all the crappy camera phone pictures.

Next up I sweat all of the following in 275 grams of butter (that is a lot btw): 350 g (1 whole) onion, 240 g celery, 4 cloves garlic. I didn't have bay leaves or sage unfortunately so I just skipped them.

Quick Side note: I kind of really like measuring with my scale instead of just a measuring cup. It's like it's a lot more accurate, plus it's way cool and science-y.

So much butter.

I combined this back with the bread along with 4 whole large eggs, 400 g chicken stock,
21 g salt, 27 turns from black pepper mill. I used chicken stock because I didn't have any turkey stock lying around, but I think I at least make up some points for the fact that I made this stock myself.

Quick side note: Making stock is like my new favorite thing to do, because it tastes so much better than store bought, it can be used in so many things, I can freeze it in nice portion sized baggies, and it uses up the parts of the chicken I don't. If we get a rotisserie chicken, I'll take the leftovers (bones and all) and throw them in a pot with some aromatics (usually celery and onion) and cover with water. Simmer it for a few hours, skimming off the stuff that floats to the top, and presto.

Smelt so good.

I stirred this all up with my hands and then baggied it up in to two ziplock bags. I tried getting out as much air as possible, but these bad boys still wanted to float. You can see the solution I came up with below.

Colander with a soup can holding them down.

After two hours I popped them out and tasted. Pretty good stuffing. Not the best out of this world stuffing, but definitely flavorful and moist. In the video Achatz mentions that he would actually let the baggies sit in the fridge over night so they could set up, and then you could slice them and saute/broil them to get some nice browning on them.

I didn't take any pictures of the actually de-bagging because it was really unappetizing. I sliced up a few pieces and then threw them in a pan with a touch of oil and sauted them to brown them.

Looks kind of like meatloaf.

They browned up nicely, giving a good outer crunch, with stuffing-y innards.

The one good photo, but it still looks kind of turd-like.

The taste is very much that of stuffing, with almost a french toast texture. For me it was good, not great. A fun reinvention, but nothing that surpassed the original--I kind of like when it's baked and you get those dry corners and crusty tops.

Here's what the others had to say:

"The stuffing was delicious and I would eat it again. A++++++" -- Marque

"You got kind of a nice crispy outside and a tender inside. It's the french toast of stuffing. It also kind of reminds me of McDonald's hashbrowns, in the best way possible." -- Mom

Overall, it was a fun experiment with definitely not the worst results. That being said, I'm not sure I would make it this way again.

Restaurant Review: Eva

2010-09-19T15:48:00.000-06:00

It's been a little while since I've posted a restaurant review, but for totally valid reasons. The week after we went to The Blue Lemon we went and tried Chubby's Mexican Restaurant, but both of us were pretty underwhelmed with the food. The chips were good, but you had to pay extra for them, and the food was only all right for tex-mex. All in all it just wasn't great, and I didn't find it review worthy.

The next week we planned to go to Eva, a little Mediterranean restaurant on Main Street. Since Eric and I have a meeting each week that goes till 2:00, we got there around 2:20 only to find out that they stop lunch service at twenty minutes prior to prepare for dinner. We ended up walking next door for a repeat of one of our new favorites, The Robin's Nest.

This last week we planned ahead, went to lunch before our meeting and made it to Eva, and that's totally the review you're about to read.

Logo'd.

The location itself is really nice with bright pop art adorning the brick walls giving a very modern chique sort of vibe. We started off with some small plates (appetizery type things) of fries (garlic, rosemerry, parmesan) and wood-fired flatbread (with truffle white bean puree). The fries were amazing. Seriously. They may in fact be the best fries (excluding sweet potato fries) I've had in the valley. The flatbread was great and the white bean puree was just different enough from hummus to be exciting. The puree was topped with truffle oil (which I was just assuming, but called back later and confirmed) which gave it a nice bite.

We both got pizzas, because who can turn down pretty much anything cooked in a wood-fired oven. Eric had the Pig Three Way (prosciutto, Italian sausage, smoked ham, marinated mushrooms, arugula, kasari cheese, caesar salad) and I had the White (chicken, artichokes, bechamel parmesan, mozzarella). The white was good, but there was too much sauce going on for the crust to handle. Eric's was pretty great though, particularly the caesar salad that was just placed right on top of the pie. Why is this not done more?

Overall:
Really amazing small plates, and great pizza. I feel like this would be a great place to go and share and talk after a movie or a play.

Molecular Gastronomy: Sous-Vide

2010-09-14T09:30:00.007-06:00

This last Sunday I finally got up the courage to try sous-vide. Sous-vide is French for "under vacuum," referring to the sealing off of the ingredients in a plastic bag without any air. This baggy of goodies then gets dunked in water that heats it at a very precise low temperature for an extended period of time.

The whole idea is that this cooks the contents as evenly as possible--with this method you could cook a steak medium rare all the way through (not just in the center). The problem with this is that to do it properly, the machines that will regulate and circulate your water to a precise temperature cost upwards of a thousand dollars, and this doesn't include the vacuum sealer. There is a home alternative, but even that is nearly five hundred.

I researched the heck out of it, finding a few hacks to create your own machines, but it wasn't until I saw this that I thought I could do it myself:

This is Grant Achatz, owner of Alinea doing sous-vide in a home kitchen. He puts the meat in a ziplock, and puts it in a large pot of water that they're monitoring the temperature. I researched some more, and found this guy who saw this technique and tried it himself. That's the nice thing about the internet is there's almost always someone who's done it before and documented how it went.

So I tried it.

First things first I got a large pot of water going. We're talking lobster pot here, not just some dinky sauce pan. The larger the better. The reason for this is the more water there is, the harder it will be to change its temperature, which is good when you're trying to maintain a specific degree.

I used a paperclip to hold the probe to my digital thermometer in the water to help me keep an accurate up to date track of how hot my water was.

Next up I prepped my chicken breast, cutting off any obvious fat or gristle.

Did I mention this was at my parent's house?

I measured how many inches it was and then took this and transferred it to mm, because of the chart I was using.

Being precise matters. Also, look at how big my ruler is... just saying.

Then I bagged up the meat along with some spices. The left is butter and rosemerry (fresh from the garden) and the right is a raspberry vinaigrette. I got as much air out as possible, but there were still a few minuscule air pockets that I couldn't get. It still worked.

Mmmm... raw meat.

Next up, plopped them in the bath of 146 degree water for 55 minutes.

Not sure this image really shows much, but I'm still posting it.

When the chicken came out, I ran both bags under cold water to stop the cooking. When I pulled the breasts out and patted them dry, the skin appeared to be pale and splotchy. Yes I realize how pornographic that last sentence was, but it's a pretty accurate representation. I mean, see?

Sliced open to see if it was done.

Since it was so icky looking, I put them in to a skillet and seared both sides on the highest heat in a bit of oil for about a minute on each side. You could also do this with a blowtorch, but I don't have one--yet.

Vinagrette chicken all roasted up.

Rosemerry chicken also roasted up. No before picture for this one, but it's pretty much the same as the other.

Taste tests came next. The breasts were incredibly juicy (sometimes, it's hard not to sound dirty when talking about food), definitely the most moist I've had period. The searing helped a lot, but I think they definitely lacked in the flavor department. The seasonings they were cooked in didn't impart enough flavor for my taste and they definitely needed more salt.

Here's what the others had to say:

"Thoroughly delectable." -- Marque

"Delicious, tender, moist. The flavor of chicken really shines through." -- Mom

"Tender and moist. Best chicken by far that I have eaten. Like the one with the sauce." -- Naomi

Overall, I think this was by far more of a success than the popcorn, but it still needs some tweaking. If you are interested in sous-vide, Thomas Keller has a great book (which I borrowed from the library), but there are lots of good references online as well. This one in particular helped me considerable in calculating my cook times.

Molecular Gastronomy

2010-09-13T09:25:00.010-06:00

I've mentioned before that I'm a total foodie. I bring this up because lately I've been a bit obsessed with molecular gastronomy. Don't know what that is? Here's what wikipedia defines it as:

"Molecular gastronomy is a scientific discipline that studies the physical and chemical processes that occur while cooking. Molecular gastronomy seeks to investigate and explain the chemical reasons behind the transformation of ingredients, as well as the social, artistic and technical components of culinary and gastronomic phenomena in general."

Basically, this gets at using science to do new things to food, and reinventing the way we look at food in general.

There are lots of famous chefs doing this through varied methods, such as Homaro Cantu who prints out edible menus and cooks with lazers, Thomas Keller who is helping spearhead the sous vide movement (more on this later), and my personal favorite Grant Achatz who runs the number one restaurant in America (number seven in the world).

Recently I checked out the Achatz's Alinea cookbook, a hefty tome with gorgeous photography and incredibly complex recipes. I poured over it eager to try out new techniques (like the antigriddle) and ingredients (like agar agar). Eventually I found one that I thought would be simple enough. Caramel popcorn. Liquefied.

The whole idea was to take the taste of a caramel popcorn and distill it in to an intense liquefied shot. Fortunately there were a couple others who had gone before me and made this concoction at home, letting me learn from their experience.

*Note: This was long ago, and I totally took lots of pictures of this, but then my camera broke. Sorry.*

The popcorn part was pretty easy, cooking up kernels and then adding butter, salt, sugar, oil and water. This concoction boiled up. This got strained and blended (for like ten minutes) until it was a very fine liquid.

The caramel gave me a bit more trouble. I kept following the recipe in the book precisely, but the caramel kept burning. On my third try, I decided to add some water to try and balance out the ratio and it totally worked. I chalk it up to elevation differences.

The caramel was blended with Soy Lecithin, which helps create a stabilized foam, that would sit on top of the popcorn "juice." Except it didn't. I'm not sure if this is because I got the liquid lecithin instead of the powdered, but I only ended up with a few bubbles.

I topped off the popcorn with what little foam I had and then bottoms up.

The before (courtesy of Marque's phone camera).

The during.

The result was odd to say the least.

The after.

It tasted like caramel popcorn if it were in a warm liquid state. That being said, I'm not sure popcorn should in fact be in a warm liquid state. I thought it was kind of good, but definitely not something you'd want to drink... more just taste. I think smaller portions would've helped here, as it should be about that first experiential moment. Here's what the others had to say about the concotion:

"Like swapping spit with a hot girl at a popcorn factory." -- Austin

"You're going to hate it: at first I was like 'no' and then I was like 'what did that taste like again?' and then I was like' why is it warm--I'm not drinking all of this' and then I did because I kept not remembering what it tasted like, which was actually the taste of those popcorn flavored jelly bellies. Make more candied bacon instead." -- Karlie

"Disturbing though I'm glad I tried it." -- Marque

It was a fun experiment, that didn't succeed as well as anticipated. The experience left me excited to try more, which I'll be posting about soon.

Restaurant Review: Blue Lemon

2010-08-27T12:36:00.007-06:00

After repeated suggestions from our friend/co-worker Abi, Eric and I finally went to the Blue Lemon, which just opened up a new location that is not out in Highland.

The restaurant itself is gorgeous, like something out of an expensive Ikea. The kitchen is open, and there's lots of natural light pouring in over the seating, but we ran in to a problem when we wanted to order. The whole thing is set up cafeteria style with a big long line running along the kitchen. With no one else in line, we didn't know where to start or how to order. We cautiously ventured down to the end of the line to two unmanned registers, and fortunately someone noticed us and came to help.

We started with Artichoke-Spinach Cheese Dip and Sweet Potato Fries (both $4 each), pictured below (images taken from the Blue Lemon site--pretty, right?):

Pretty food.

The dip was really good, but felt like a really small portion considering the price. The sweet potato fries also impressed, and came with a dipping sauce that neither Eric or I could tell what was in it. It tasted almost like a fry sauce but not really, with a hint of barbeque sauce aftertaste--quite tasty though.

I got the Blue Lemon Steak Sizzler ($13) and Eric had the Blue Lemon Turkey Burger ($8), both pictured below:

Cooked medium, topped with crumbed crispy bacon and gorgonzola cheese, with sautéed peas and corn succotash, garlic herb mashed potatoes and our own housemade gravy.

With smoked mozzarella, crisp turkey bacon, lettuce, tomato, sweet red onions, and house sauce on grilled white or wheat ciabatta bread.

I wish we had been a bit more wowed with our entrees, because I have to say they didn't meet our expecations. This isn't to say they weren't good, but more that they weren't amazing. With so much time spent on the cosmetics and marketing and photographs and whatnots, I wish that the food lived up to it.

The steak was a bit overcooked for my taste (I'm more of a medium rare type), but the gorgonzola really made up for it. The potatoes were good (not great), and I think it would be a stretch to call the sauce "gravy." The "gravy" was far more... saucy, lacking the thickness I expected. The burger relied far too heavily on the turkey part of the turkey burger, lacking any real flavor to compliment it; I definitely wasn't blown away by it.

My biggest gripe is a bit more personal: the bacon. Blue Lemon uses turkey bacon, which is dumb and poopy. I'm pretty sure this is a fact. The whole point of bacon is that it is fatty and delicious, so why take out the two things that define it? The whole thing made me angry since it was on both the burger and the steak. Side note: I tried cooking turkey bacon once and it looks really gross raw (like a lunch meat).

Overall:
Great presentation with food that doesn't live up to it. I had high hopes for this place, and was sad to be disapointed. Like I said though, it's not bad, it's just not amazing.

Bear Lake Awesome Camping-Trip-O-Tron

2010-08-16T10:22:00.014-06:00

Friday I didn't go out to eat like I usually do, but that's only because I was IN BEAR LAKE. That's right, I went camping. So this post is going to be about that, but if you know me, it's still going to be about food.

ROADTRIP! WOOOOO!

I volunteered to plan and prep the menu for the trip

We were kind of awful at this.

Lunch the first day had to be something packed away and easy since we'd all be tired from the drive and setting up camp. I decided to go with Pressed Sandwiches, a Martha Stewart recipe I was eager to try when I read of it ages ago (for some reason everyone laughed at me when I said this... huh). They use a crusty bread that soaks in the juices of the sandwich and a vinaigrette, and are meant to be squished at the bottom of the picnic basket. They turned out great.

Look at how pleased she is.

We had these with an Orzo salad, something I've been dying to make since I went to The Robin's Nest. It worked out nicely because it was something I could make the night before and just bring refrigerated. I really enjoyed it, but we made way too much and everyone filled up on sandwiches.

The umbrella handle got blown in the salad over and over.

Our camp was lakeside, only a stone's throw to the water, but we ended up driving to a much nicer beach. The crisp blue water was cold at first, having us in screams as we waded in slowly, but as our bodies numbed, it became quite pleasant. We could swim out forever, and still able to touch the sandy ground.

So bright and so vivid. What does it mean?

Marque blowing up her floaty. Yes, she swam in the hat and glasses.

Retiring to the beach, we took up sunbathing, relaxing, and sand castle building. After we'd dried off under the sun, we retreated to our camp for more food.Look at that figure.

Rachel enjoying a mystery novel.

With dinner I wanted to do something sloppy and camp-like, slow cooked in a dutch oven. I went with Chicken and Potatoes (doesn't get much more classic than that). The coals we got lit up fine, but since we didn't have a hatchet to cut up our firewood, our fire didn't really ever catch on. We ended up heating up coals constantly and swapping them out for the others as they cooled off, which was incredibly impractical. I definitely need more practice with this (I'm so used to just twisting a dial to get more heat faster). We eventually got it cooked up and it tasted great, despite crunchy potatoes.

My hair is what is commonly referred to as "beachy."

A few of us roasted marshmallows, but that didn't last terribly long. We let what little fire we had die down and watched the stars above us. It's easy to forget how many stars are out there when we live in a well lit city. We could clearly see the Milky Way above us and lots of shooting stars (it was a meteor shower I believe); all in all it was breath taking.

Adorablez.

We woke up around nine the next morning and I got started cooking. Before I started breakfast, I cooked up a bunch of bacon for that day's lunch (more on that later). Then I got started cooking even more bacon for breakfast (did I mention that the night prior's dish also had bacon?). I stirred in onions and potatoes to fry up in the bacon fat and then later added eggs and salsa for breakfast burritos (no link to a recipe, because I just winged it). They turned out really good, but took far too long to cook and I totally burnt my finger in the process.

We packed up the campsite, and loaded up the car so we wouldn't have to return after our final beach excursion. This time, we ended up going to a more established beach because it had showers and toilets that flushed. Sadly it was way more crowded than the other, but we still managed to have fun. I would pull the others all the way out to one of the "No Wake" buoys and then we'd let the current pull us back. Fun fact: even all the way out by the buoys, I could still stand on the bottom and have my head peaking out of the water.

Working it.

After more sunbathing, drying, and changing we sat at a picnic table for lunch: BLTs and gazpacho. The BLTs were good, but we didn't have enough if you ask me. Probably for the best though... We prepped the gazpacho ahead of time (same night as the orzo) and with all the time it had to sit by itself, the flavors really strengthened. I really enjoyed it, but I wish we'd had tortilla strips to put in it or chips to dip.

Finally we went back in to town and got raspberry shakes (because you have to if you go to Bear Lake apparently). I was surprised to find that every single restaurant served famous raspberry shakes, but even more taken aback by the fact that there were like eight of them all within walking distance of each other. Fortunately Karlie, with all her experience and wisdom, helped us realize which one was the best, La Beau's Drive in.

Sweet indeed.

This place is so popular that there is a La Beau's 2 (the sequel) right across the street from it. The shakes were delicious, but that's kind of what I was expecting.

Overall:
Camping is awesome in small doses and leaves me wondering why I don't go more often.

Restaurant Review: Bocata

2010-08-07T15:20:00.004-06:00

We decided on going to Bocata this week because I read this article here, which totally convinced me. Travis, another coworker, came along so there were three sandwiches we tried (yay variety).Bocata is located in the still under construction City Creek Center's food court. Getting there was a bit of a pain, and having to pay $2 for under an hour of parking was even more annoying. I also want to mention that the elevator we took was lined with particle board and particularly bouncy, which did not instill confidence. But that's all tangential--back to the review.

Lets talk about bread. I've mentioned it before with buns, but it bares repeating: bread can make a or break a sandwich. Bocata makes their own bread fresh right there in a brick oven, and this place was started up by the same people who do Settebello Pizzeria, so they know how to make dough. The bread is the focal point, if I haven't made that clear.

Unfortunately, the sandwiches themselves don't live up to the bread they sit upon. I had lamb bocata (Rosemary and Garlic Roasted Lamb, Tomato, Cilantro, Tzatziki Yogurt Sauce), which ended up running me just about 10 bucks. It was probably my least favorite of the three, and was just lacking in flavor overall.

Travis had a cuban pork bocata (Citrus Braised Pork Shoulder, Pickled Red Onion, Cilantro, Jalapeno, Aioli) at about $8 and Eric had a soppressata bocata (Soppressata, Roasted Red Bell Pepper, Provolone, Arugula, Tomato, Green Garlic Sauce) for about the same. These were better, but the general consensus at the table is that they just weren't that great. Especially after having such good sandwiches last week, we left disappointed.

Overall:
Great bread almost makes up for the average sandwich. If you go, get a half as they are entirely filling and you get to try a side for much cheaper. Hopefully our experience was a fluke, as I'd be interested in trying again.

Wedding Anniversary II (The Sequel)

2010-08-02T13:23:00.004-06:00

Yesterday's was Marque and I's two year wedding anniversary. Yay! Go us!

We decided to go low key and just have dinner in, at our house. I went and bought and prepared a delicious dinner, photographing the process as I went, so I could blog/brag about it later. Unfortunately my camera's memory card died and took all of the images along with it. I only have the picture below because I took it from Marque's phone after the fact.

Ugly phone image. Sad day.

The steaks were rib eye (bone in), dry aged. For those of you who don't know what dry aged is, it basically means it's more delicious, but also twice the price. Also very difficult to find, as it's a cumbersome process that most standard groceries don't supply. I pan fried it in cast iron skillet in a bit of bacon fat (which I save whenever cooking bacon, and you should too) for three minutes a side before placing in a warming oven (170 F). It got plated and topped off with a simple artichoke tapenade.

The sides were kale, and wild rice with mushrooms. The rice was cooked with four cups chicken stock to one cup rice, portions I've never heard of. It worked out well though, cooking for nearly an hour on extremely low. I also want to mention that the stock I used for it I also made from scratch earlier and had frozen.

Marque contributed by making a strawberry pie from scratch. It turned out amazingly. She's really got that flaky tasty crust down.

Restaurant Review: The Robin's Nest

2010-07-30T15:57:00.005-06:00

This week we went over to The Robin's Nest, a little sandwich place over on Main Street.

Logo'd.

The service here was fantastic. When we asked what to get, the man gave us several recommendations to help us pick. Once we decided, he said since it was our first time he'd give us both chips and pasta to go along with the meal, so we'd know what we'd want next time we came in. On top of this, he gave us free drinks because we were from Discovery Gateway and he loves coming in with his nephew. What a swell guy, right?

Eric had The Heritage (Genoa Salami, Mortadella, Cappicola Ham, Melted Provolone, Red Onions, Sweet Roasted Red Peppers, Tomato, Lettuce, Muliple Spread on Sour Dough) and I had The Natural, which was all veggies, but came highly recommended (Portabello Mushrooms, Sweet Roasted Red Peppers, Artichoke Hearts, Red Onion, Spinach, Melted Provolone & Roasted Garlic Spread on Ciabatta w/Avocado). Both of which came with a side (we got both chips and pasta) and were under $8.

I started with the pasta since I was a bit unsure about it. It looked like some sort of rice pilaf and it sort of tasted like it too in a strange way. Upon researching heavily later, I discovered its sometimes referred to as the "Italian Rice." This stuff was delicious. I'd go and get a big bowl of just this.

The chips were those sort of veggie chips that make you feel like you're kind of healthy as you eat them. They were good, but I'm not positive if they were made from scratch or not. Kudos if they were.

Back to the sandwiches. Eric's was a pretty standard italian, very well made and tasty, but expected. The veggie on the other hand was knock it out of the park good. Truly something else. The textures of the portabello and the artichoke hearts matched with the flavors of avocado and garlic was divine, and completely unexpected. It's rare that I go with the veggie option over the meaty stuff, but this was that good.

Overall:
Damn good sandwiches that make you feel like you're being healthy.

The Fighting Mongooses (Week 3)

2010-07-26T09:21:00.008-06:00

Previously on The Fighting Mongooses
Our fearless heroes were faced with a burly looking man, racked with armor: The Stone. He stood in the center of a newly constructed wrestling ring, complete with ropes and turnbuckles, the audience cheering him on.

A figure made up after the fact by Austin. So cool.

Our heroes looked on, eager to take down the smug son of a gun.

Eager to hit things.

Overhead of the set up if you're interested. Those are my toes at the bottom.

I really like this shot. I wish we'd had Austin's awesome Stone Minifig though...

The battle begun and The Stone started kicking butt and taking names. Here are some of the moves he pulled off (all of which were customized to fit the battle and circumstances):

Catch Phrase (minor action)
+1d4 to Attack; +1d4 to Hit
"Know thine class, shut thine mouth."
"Thou wilt go one on one with The Stone!"
"Canst thou smell what The Stone hast prepared?"
"The Stone will take thee down Know-Your-Role Lane, upon the corner of Jabroni Alley, and check thee directly into the Smackdown Inn.
"I wilt lay the smackdown upon thine candy ars!"

Smackdown (at will)
+8 vs. AC; 1d6+3
Basic attack, wherein he lays the smackdown upon a single target.

Charge (at will)
+10 vs. AC; 1d6+1d4+3
The Stone leans against the ropes and uses them to launch in to a charge. Must have at least two squares of movement. If hit, the enemy is pushed back 1.

Chair to the Head (at will)
+10 vs. AC; 1d8+4
A wooden barstool is crushed over the back of an enemies head. Must pick up barstool before use (4 stools available), and each stool is one time use only.

Flying Dutchman (encounter)
+12 vs. AC; 1d10+4; ranged 4
The Stone climbs up on to a corner turnbuckle and leaps down on to an enemy, knocking them prone.

Mid battle.

Some highlights from the match:

Dave threw caution to the wind as per usual and took him on, dealing out his own smackdown.
Abi similarly jumped in to battle, but had to jump back out to heal.
Karlie threw shurikens in to him repeatedly, one of which bounced off the ring's ropes and came back to nick her in the shoulder.
Amanda helped heal up people in the ring, saving lives!
Sarah blasted him thoroughly on several occasions, helping bring down the ol' HP.
The Stone took off his armor midbattle just so that he'd be on par with the weaklings that surrounded him. Yeah, he's that tough.
Tyler got the whole crowd humming along with the double rainbow song.
Austin climbed up on to a turnbuckle as well, using the height as an advantage to shoot him twice with arrows finishing him off.

After the crowd filtered out, and they were left in the arena for a while before a new door opened in to another dirt hallway. The group took a short rest, before they decided to decapitate The Stone's head as a trophy.

Dave holding his trophy.

Austin also looted the body, stealing his sword.

Shiny.

They went down the mysterious hallway, and heard two guards discussing the battle. When our warriors approached, they were filled with excitement and fanboyisms, asking for autographs and if they could touch the severed head.

These guards took them in to a spacious office above the arena floor where they found the announcer who was talking to them earlier. Turns out our heroes got in to a bar brawl and he paid off the officer who was going to imprison them. Sure he locked them up to fight, but they won--what do they have to complain about? He gave them some gold and a healing potion and sent them on their merry way, telling them to come back by soon for more paying gigs. Oh yeah, he also promised to have The Stone's head stuffed and mounted by the next time they were in.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Restaurant Review: Spoony & Nata's Down Home Cafe

2010-07-25T10:01:00.006-06:00

Eric (again, it's this Eric, not this one) and I did our weekly eating thing this week at Spoony & Nata's Down Home Cafe, and were fortunate enough to have our co-worker Whitney join us.

I want to preface this review by discussing seafood, but more specifically shrimp.

Icky.

I love food. I consider myself to be a pretty big foodie and nerd, reading cookbooks, food blogs, and watching the Food Network when possible (I also have a subscription to their magazine). All in all, I think I have pretty good taste, but I don't like seafood. More importantly, I feel like I should. There's such an abundance of variety of seafood, but I feel like it all just tastes fishy.

This brings me back to shrimp. Every now and then, I'll try someone's shrimp in hopes that maybe my taste has somehow changed. I mean, it's not awful, I just don't really dig it.

Back in to the review: Eric got a big basket of fried shrimp and catfish, so of course I had to try. The batter was perfectly coated, not too heavy, and perfectly seasoned. It still tasted like I was chewing on a grub, but you know what? I actually really liked it. It was the first bite of shrimp I truly enjoyed--that's how good it was. I'm sure this has something to do with the magic of deep frying.

This perfectly summarizes the Spoony & Nata's experience for me, but I really do want to gush about the other stuff we ate.

The catfish Eric had was good, but not really for me. It didn't have so much of a fishy taste, but I can't put my finger on how to describe it. Dirty maybe or grainy, though those sound far more negative than I intend. His sweet potato fries were divine, beating out Acme Burger for my current fav.

This is from their website...

I had the jambalaya (pictured above) and three fried chicken wings (about $12). The jambalaya was predictable, but delicious and had me wishing for bigger servings. I was expecting the wings to be an afterthought, but they were the real standout here. It's clear this place really knows how to deep fry.

Again on their website...

Whitney had a shrimp po-boy sandwich (again pictured above) with fries which I think I may get next time. Great bread and toppings paired up with those darn tasty fried shrimp made a mighty fine meal.

Overall:
Really great food here that helps fill the soul food niche that Salt Lake has been missing. My only complaint would be the hours (Closed Mondays, Tuesday through Saturday 11:30 to 6:00, and 1:00 to 3:00 on Sundays), because I could totally see myself craving this sort of thing late at night. Definitely check this place out.

24th of July

2010-07-25T09:57:00.002-06:00

My family thought it would be a good idea to put a slip and slide in our backyard to play on. I had the bright idea to use a sledding tube on aforementioned slip and slide to gain speed. The following is the result:

Restaurant Review: Guzzi's vs. Rich's

2010-07-17T12:30:00.004-06:00

Eric and I (this Eric, not that Eric) go to lunch almost every Friday. We've been some pretty great places, as well as some pretty awful places, but we always try to go somewhere new (with a few tasty repeats). I'm going to try and start reviewing the places I go, so fellow SLC'ers can check 'em out.

This last Friday was a bit strange in that we drove out, ate our lunch, and finished up with a half hour left on our break. I joked that we had enough time for another lunch. Eric looked at me with a deadly seriousness, and off we went without any argument. So it is upon this occasion that I have the opportunity to review (and compare) two burger places.

The first we went to was Guzzi's Vintage Burger's and Fries.

Very tiny and cramped, but cute.

This place is just getting its footing, but it's off to a good start. I had a blue bacon burger and Eric had the garlic burger, both of which came with fries (for about 7 each).

The burgers were fantastic; good quality meat well cooked. The thing that really helped it shine was the bun. So often overlooked, a quality bun can make or break a burger in my opinion, and these were grade-a. There was one major flaw, and that was that the flavors were too subtle. I could barely taste the blue cheese, and Eric's garlic was only a "hint of." The fries were well cooked, but nothing to write home about.

All in all, I'd be eager to go again. The amount of food for the price is pretty good considering the quality, and I certainly enjoyed it all. I talked to one of the employees and they mentioned having just bought a meat grinder and would be creating their own patties and sausages, which gets me interested in seeing how things will improve.

Next we took a drive across town to Rich's Mighty Fine Burgers and Grub.

In Esther's old location, which I'm sad about them going out of business--now there was a good garlic burger.

Since we were a bit more pressed for time, we only got a single burger and fries and split them. The sign outside listed off the daily specials, which we didn't get far through ultimately deciding on the first thing listed: a tomatillo burger (approx 7 with fries). It just sounded good at the time.

The burger was tasty enough, but the real star was the sauce. It was the sassy kick in the mouth that we were missing at Guzzi's. Sadly, the rest of the burger couldn't keep up. The bun wasn't quite right and the bacon burnt. The fries however were great with a really flavorful seasoning mix.

I want to check back in simply for the fact that on my way out I noticed that they have deep fried green beans. I'm always up for trying something battered and fried.

Overall
I'd have to say Guzzi's burgers were better than Rich's despite the sauce. Fries would definitely go to Rich's though.

The Fighting Mongooses (Week 2)

2010-07-17T08:39:00.006-06:00

Previously on The Fighting Mongooses
Thrown in to an epic colluseum staged for battles, our heroes faced off against six Kobold warriors of the K'yruul Klan. There was one Slyblade, and several Dragonshields fighting at his side.

Top Row: Abi (Elven Ranger), Austin (Elven Ranger), Scott (Dragonborn Fighter), Amanda (Dwarf Warlord).
Bottom Row: Dave (Half Elf Barbarian), Sarah (Human Warlock), Tyler (Human Paladin/Warlock), Karlie (Eladrin Rogue), Marque (Human Cleric)

They fought the beasts, soon realizing that the Slyblade was a total douche. He would constantly grab his surrounding companions, and pull them in front of an attack so he could remain unharmed. Even after his loyal warriors died protecting him, he called in back up to protect him.

Our fearless heroes fought them all off and finally took out the leader after a long struggle. The gate to their cell opened again, and they used the opportunity to rest, sleeping through the night, despite being confused about the whole situation.

The following morning, they awoke to applause, louder than they'd heard before. Their cell was open, and they rushed back out to the battlefield.

The spikes from the previous battle were gone, replaced with a large wrestling ring in the center. Before able to take in the rest of their surroundings, a loud manly voice boomed out of the upper bleachers: "Ho ho! Finally, the Stone has returned to Hilldale." A spotlight flashed upward to reveal a large handsome man walking down the aisle. With the greatest of ease, he took a flying leap down on to the battlefield.

The announcer's voice echoed out again: "By Bahamut's sword... it can't be. It is. My gods, it is. Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for THE STONE!"

The Stone waits for the cheers and applause to die down before he calls out one of his classic catchphrases: "Canst thou smell what The Stone is cooking?"

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Fighting Mongooses

2010-07-10T10:24:00.007-06:00

You know how television shows always have that thing, Previously on... I thought I'd give it a go with last week's Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Let me know if this sort of thing is interesting to you people or if you don't give a flying crap.

Previously on The Fighting Mongooses
Our heroes groggily faded back in to consciousness, immediately overwhelmed by the smell of death and decay. As they stood to take in their surroundings, they quickly took notice of the cold grip of metal around their ankles and the clanking of chains.

They were in some sort of prison, each restrained against a large stone column. The surrounding walls were piled high with mounds of dead bodies, obviously the source of that godawful smell.

Side Note: I spent a lot of time drawing this dungeon from scratch on photoshop using some textures and the like, even using the detail of the lego minifig skeleton considering our character and enemy pieces. Unfortunately we had so many people join our campaign I had to improvise and expand it (not pictured here).

Unable to move anywhere that wasn't adjacent to their column, several of them readied their blade and struck at their chains in order to break free. Scott was unable to, but when it became Dave's turn, his Barbarian tore the chains free using brute strength.

At the sound of this, a deathly moan echoed through the prison and several of the outlying dead began to rise up.

All in all there were three zombie rotters, two zombies and two gravehounds.

A Gravehound (courtesy of the Monster Manual).

Our warriors fought long and hard, throwing themselves in to the heat of battle. Some highlights.

Austin had a zombie latched on to his bum for ages.
Scott was incredibly adept at rolling 3's and taking damage.
Amanda saved Scott's butt repeatedly, all the while kicking butt.
Karlie stabbed with a frightening speed, taking out one with ease.
Tyler kept trying to roll a d20 for a hit (the sneaky bastard).
Sarah used blasts of eldritch force punching holes in several of their smelly corpses.
Marque dished out radiant vengeance through her holy might, literally burning the skin off of them.
Dave used brute strength to kill and subsequently weaken all of them.

Their characters created by Austin (though some have changed):
Top row left to right: Austin & Abi's, twin Elvin Rangers, Amanda's Dwarf Warlord, and Dave's Human Paladin (now a Half-elf Barbarian)
Bottom row left to right: Sarah's Tiefling Warlock, Scott's Dragonborn Fighter, Karlie's Eladrin Rogue, and Marque's Human Cleric.
Not pictured is Tyler's character. Soon though.

Eventually the last zombie fell and the dust settled. Our fearless warriors helped one another to break out of their chains and they took a short rest.

They all awoke to a booming voice echoing through the prison walls, though no one was to be seen. He sounded something like a tough guy monster truck announcer: "Oh man, glad you guys made it... try outs are always a bit iffy. You guys'll go far--love the hat, and I think you two are just cute as a button, with the outfits and the--aw crap. Actually you guys are on. Your clan got a name?"

To this our warriors replied unanimously: The Fighting Mongooses!

The voice continued: "Good luck to you then! Just head out straight through the corridor." And with that the door to their cell slid open.

They exited out down the dirt hallway and in to the large room ahead. The sound of applause and cheers filled the air, as high above the marble tile floors sat nearly a hundred villagers watching on, out of reach. The disembodied voice returned, filling the much larger space just as loud: "Ladies and Gentlemen, from the small town of Fallcrest come the next mighty slayers of evil: The Fighting Mongooses!"

Again the crowd broke in to cheers, before he continued: "Birthed in the shadows of dragons, here come the K'YRUUL KOBOLD KLAN!"

The cheers turned to boos and hisses, as out stroll six swaggering Kobold warriors.

TO BE CONTINUED...

If any of you who played have anything to add for future, let me know. Also I'll try and take photos next time.

Team Leader Team ACTIVATE!

2010-06-08T22:37:00.003-06:00

I haven't posted any art in a long while, so I thought I'd share this with y'all. Recently, Eric (from work) did a sketch of the Team Leaders, Joe, and I. Here it is below:

Sketchy pencils courtesy of Eric E.

I took that sketch and digitally inked and colored it, modifying slightly as I went and here is the result:

Shiny digital courtesy of me.

It was a fun project that was a nice distraction from my writing, and gave me a finished project I don't hate. Hopefully I'll keep this sort of thing up.

Randomness

2010-06-07T17:00:00.002-06:00

I often have ideas for blog posts and think I'll get around to writing about them. I rarely do. Here's me doing my regular game of catch up:

Scripts
I already posted about the script that Eric and I finished, but we are now in that difficult first rewrite phase. Since we didn't outline, this is proving particularly difficult. We're pushing through though, and then it'll be on to the next one, which we've already started planning.

Eric and I forced ourselves to come up with twenty unique pitches each, for different scripts, so we now have several pretty stellar ideas on the back burners. This alone gets me excited.

Disney World
I went to Disney World and it was amazing. I don't want to write a whole travelogue right this minute, but suffice it to say, it's there's a lot to enjoy as an adult. The highlights were definitely surfing, Tower of Terror, and the food. Oh so much delicious food. I'll go more in depth when we get our photos developed.

Zoo
Marque would tease me from time to time because I'd never been to the Hogle Zoo. Sure, I'd been to other zoos, but not the Hogle Zoo. I finally went. My family invited us to go on a Saturday trip out there and it ended up being a lot of fun, if not smelly.

The brass monkey is the physical manifestation of the missing brother bear McKay.

Rachel brought one of the guys she's dating, and turns out he's not bad. He at least has a cursory knowledge of flightless birds, which proved useful in the heat of the moment.

All in all, fun was had. If you go, you have to check out the bird show. It was definitely a highlight.

Taco Stand
Thanks to the generosity of my parents we went to the taco stand near Sears (taco stand connoisseurs know which one I'm talking about). So good. The nice thing about going with my family is that I got to try like everything: pollo (chicken), asada (beef), carnitas (pork), barbacoa (slow cooked pork), and chorizo (spicy sausage). The best were the carnitas. Remember this when you go.

My mom snuck around the taco lady to get this POV shot.

Thanks to the fact that both my mother and sister speak Spanish beautifully, the lady got to talking to us about what she had and gave us some lengua (cow tongue), and buche (pig stomach). The tongue was flavorful, but I didn't care for the texture. The stomach on the other hand tasted good, but fatty--it'd been cooked like carnitas, in that sort of fried manner.

The only thing we didn't end up trying was Cabeza (cow head). When my sister asked what part of the head, the lady plainly said, "just the head," which I found slightly disconcerting.

Roleplaying
I keep meaning to start up a new campaign, but I never get around to it. I'm pretty fairly serious about it though. Who's in?

Restaurant Review: In and Out

2010-04-29T08:52:00.002-06:00

We've finally got one in Utah. Well, a few actually.

I tasted their quality indeed.

That's right, In-N-Out opened up a few locations right here in the beehive state. I'd never been to one before, so my family made an occasion of it. I even got all dressed up*.

Looking sharp for some burgers.

So, back to the actual review: yea verily, it was good.

The fries were perfectly cooked, as were the burgers--I got a double double animal style. I really love the small menu, with just a few high quality options. I wish I'd been prepared with all those really cool secret menu options that people always talk about. Our cashier was nice enough to explain a few of them though and things worked out.

Oh and in regards to that secret menu, it's not terribly secret if its on their official website. That aside, it's kind of fun.

All in all, the food isn't the second coming, it's just tasty. Good stuff.

*Note: We were on the way back from a wedding reception; this also had something to do with looking so snazzy.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

2010-04-28T12:42:00.003-06:00

Eric may have already posted on this, but now you get my side of the story.

It's over and we did it. We're officially winners.

I don't know how Eric is sitting on his head like that, but it must be painful since he's crying out in pain.

Eric and I completed Script Frenzy in a matter of 27 days. We are that awesome.

The actual script, you ask? Well it's just a little something called Seven Gladiators. A crappy title for a crappy script.

I'm just being modest, you say? No. I really think it's pretty crappy.

A bit harsh, you comment? Not really. It's a first draft. That's what happens. You throw up all these awesome ideas on to a page and it doesn't really work out the first time. It takes time. Maybe the fourth or fifth drafts will kick butt.

It was a great learning experience if nothing else.

Like Eric mentioned, I want to thank our wives for their patience, but more importantly to offer them a warning. Script Frenzy may be over, but our journey as screenwriters has only begun. Apologies in advance.

Raiders of the Lost Cookies

2010-04-17T14:30:00.004-06:00

**Note: There's a lot of back story here. If all that sort of stuff bores you, check out the video at the bottom.**

My dad is a boy scout leader for a group of kids, all of which are working on getting their Merit Badges done. One of those Merit Badges is the Cinematography badge.

I have one of these somewhere.

I, being the budding filmmaker that I am, was recruited to teach the course and help the kids earn the badge (I also want to mention that I am an Eagle Scout, and I did get my Cinematography Badge way back when).

We got to work, breaking it up over three weeks, about an hour a week (i.e. not enough time). First week we did pre-production. We learned about shot/reverse shot, the 180 degree rule, the difference between a medium and a close up, and all that fun stuff. After a brief coverage, we went over story.

The story they came up with had everything boys their age love: girls, cookies, and ninjas.

I had them break in to groups and storyboard the different acts so they could get the hang of it. I then took those storyboards home and combined them in to something a bit more cohesive and inclusive.

The second week was production. The boys decided they'd rather dress up as girls instead of finding actresses to play the part; the group split up in to the girls, the ninjas, and the Boy Scouts. While they were all acting in it, they also all had to shoot it. They each took turns on camera shooting the different shots. Believe it or not, this was all shot by them.

The final week, post-production, they all came over to see how the editing process works. We edited some of it together, picking takes and shots, but due to time, we skipped over to a sequence I already edited and went through and adding sound effects, music, and voice work.

All in all the finished product is pretty fun--keep in mind this is a bunch of 12 and 13 year old boys making this.

'Nuff Said.

It's bordering on the edge of so bad it's good, to the point that I'm not sure which side it falls on. That aside, I think they done good.

Script Frenzy

2010-04-13T11:01:00.004-06:00

I realize Eric already posted about Script Frenzy but I wanted to mention a few things I've been learning from the process about me as a writer.

100 Pages in 30 days.

I need structure. Trying to write without a detailed outline has been torture. We have our general story beats, but I like to work out the story beforehand. Means less rewriting.
It's hard to be original when thinking on the spot.
Working with a partner is super helpful. It's like having someone to turn your assignment in to each day, again giving me a structure to work in. Plus collaboration can help get twice as much writing done.
Working with a partner can be a pain in the bottom. Whether it's arguing about the way a scene should work, a character name, or nagging them to finish their day's pages, these things happen. You have to deal with it and move on.
Being ahead of schedule feels great.
Writing an action heavy script is a lot more work. For those who don't know, long descriptive action scenes take up a lot less space than a simple dialogue between two characters. That's just how the formatting works.
Writing with such an intense deadline can very much feel like work.
Writing 100 pages isn't so bad when you've done it before. Having finished my first feature with Eric recently (Gilliam Effect), I know it can be done.

Will all this hard work produce a script that's going to get a crazy amount of press and start a bidding war? No. This project is easily the worst thing I've ever written. That aside, I'm treating it as a learning experience, gleaning what I can from the hairy process. It's kind of fun.

For those of you wondering what our script is about, it's kind of like if Gladiator was set in space. Kind of.

Adventure Time with Spencer and Eric and Finn and Jake

2010-04-10T09:05:00.008-06:00

I check my Google Analytics only every so often, considering things mostly stay the same. I have a small fan base that comes fairly regularly and I'm happy with that. I went a few days ago and noticed an over 100% increase in visits. Since I hadn't really blogged about anything special, I started to wonder.

I did a bit more probing and found this:

Pageviews crudely blocked via paint.

60.5% of my pageviews were all coming from here, an old post about Adventure Time Theatre Episode 2. This is especially odd considering the main page makes up for just about the rest of the hits (which makes sense), making this page a gigantic anomaly.

I did some further probing and found this:

Again, actual numbers blocked. Also had to recolor the second graph to coordinate... Paint is teh sux0rs.

My traffic from Search Engines went from 10.94% to a whopping 64.79%.

Side note: This isn't the first time that search keywords lead something of ours to get crazy hits.

I quickly realized--people are actually searching for these guys:

Ah-mazing.

If you haven't heard, it's a new cartoon called Adventure Time with Finn and Jake and it's really awesome. Did they steal our brilliant title? Did we steal theirs? Short answer no.

Let me spill some history on ya.

Back in the day, before I even knew him, Eric started a zine (if you don't know what a zine is, you weren't a teen in the 90's) called Adventure Time Theatre. Apparently there was a preschool in the area with the name Adventure Time (which is a pretty awesome name) and so it was re-purposed and infused with even more awesome. They made about 12 issues or so, self-distributed around the school.

Cut to much, much later. Eric, now joining forces with Spencer (me), used the title and formed the internet sensation Adventure Time Theatre. After we made a few videos I googled Adventure Time Theatre to see what came up, and I found this cartoon:

Serious hardcore awesomeness.

I didn't think too much of it; it was a one shot cartoon with a similar name, plus it was really awesome. Cut ahead a few years and now Adventure Time picked up a whole series on Cartoon Network.

At first I was all upset about it, almost jealous, but the more I think about it, I'm happy with it. It's a great show--way better than our show (my opinion, you're welcome to vocally disagree).

Our first episode. Look at how young we were!

And so, the moral of the story is: Adventure Time is awesome with Finn and Jake as well as with Spencer and Eric.

Oh, and if you came here from a search engine and have no idea what I'm talking about, click this awesome link right here to check out some more of Adventure Time Theatre.

Go Meat!

2010-04-03T16:34:00.004-06:00

I just realized today that I've gone 45 and a half days without meat. Marque pointed out that for Catholic's Sunday's don't count during lent. I have surpassed my no meat goal!

I listed some of the things we tried during the process, and here are some more:

Cooked up (all from scratch):

Pesto Pasta with grilled Veggies (from my dad)
Hummus
Garlic Basil Tomato Sauce for Spaghetti
Breakfast Burritos
Toast and Eggs
Yellow Veggie Curry
French Toast with Blueberry Syrup

From Restaurants:

Yellow Curry and Massaman Curry (ekamai)
Waffles and Frites (Bruges)

If you recall, I had three reasons for doing it:

To see if I can.
To lose weight.
To give me something to write about.

Number one, I did it. Yay!

Number two, I lost about 10 pounds. Double Yay!

Number three, I did not write about it nearly often enough. Negative Yay!

All in all though I'd say the experiment was a success (currently with two Yays! out of a possible three) and I'd be interested to continue on trying more vegetarian options.

Tonight though, I eat meat.

Cell Pwn

2010-03-30T14:41:00.004-06:00

I have this system that I use whenever I have an idea that I want to remember: I text it to myself. That way, when I get the text with all the details written up, I can lock it, insuring I won't erase it and can view it later as a reminder. I do this pretty often, going through every now and again to clean it up.

Recently things got out of hand--I had so many locked little reminders and ideas and notes that I could only receive 6 new text messages before my inbox was full. Bad news.

So I went out and got a new notebook to fill all of it in to!

I like the spirals... they open easier.

And so, I finally went through and cleaned out my phone. It's pretty cathartic to go through and see what I was thinking and try and decipher it--I have some solid gold stuff here. Plus it was a good excuse to get a new notepad.

Note for all you writers out there. Write down ideas when you have them! It helps.

No Meat Update

2010-03-02T13:32:00.002-07:00

Marque and I are on day 13 of the Lent diet and things are going well. It's been a challenge, but we've stayed strong. For those curious, here are some of the things I've been eating:

From restaurants:

Chow Mein and Spring Rolls (Panda Express)
Broccoli and Spinach stuffed pizza (Sbarro)
Salad (Costa Vida)
Frozen Yogurt (Juicy Berry)

Cooked up:

Pizza with bell pepper and onion (frozen with fresh veggies on top)
Stuffed Bell Peppers (from scratch)
Salad (from scratch)
Macaroni and Cheese (from scratch)
Bagels
Spanish Rice (from scratch)
Yogurt
Egg Rolls (frozen)

There've been other things too, I'm sure, that I can't remember. The problem that I have is that I'm running out of ideas. By all means, if any of you have vegetarian recipes, please share.

Weight update:
I started out at 182.5 pounds (and have been around the 180 mark for a few months now, unable to budge back down), but am currently 177. That's progress, if not much, right?

Meat-i Gras

2010-02-16T21:01:00.003-07:00

The past week has been good, getting all the meat in I can before Lent. Tonight being the last night before the 40 days without meat, we ate well.

I planned out an appetizer, salad, main course with two sides, and dessert. Originally I wanted to do a meat as part of each of these, but I ran out of ideas, and I was trying to keep costs low.

Appetizer

Nummers.

We started with bruschetta, covered in goat cheese, pesto, sun dried tomatoes and of course olive oil, salt, and pepper. Turned out pretty well, but I could have made fewer as there were was a lot of food tonight.

Salad

Nom nom.

Your pretty standard Caesar salad. I made the croutons and chicken from scratch, but bought the dressing. I didn't want to have to go to a specialty store to get anchovies.

Main Course

Thanks for the photobomb Karlie.

The steak was tri-tip, and a small cut. I knew we wouldn't want leftovers since we aren't allowing the meat starting tomorrow. The asparagus was broiled with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper. The potatoes were baked, then scooped out, and mashed with some other delicious goodies and piled back in to be baked some more.

Dessert

Marque wanted to photobomb too, but make it look all cool and casual.

This was the shocker of the meal. Candied bacon. I knew I wanted to make something that still had meat in it and that bacon was a good option for this (search Google for bacon desserts and the list goes on). The process was simple, just coat in brown sugar and bake till crispy, but the taste was epic. Sweet with a little salty, it was like an even candier honey baked ham. It may take some getting used to, but it's quite tasty.

Goodbye meat... for now.

The Lent Diet

2010-02-10T13:30:00.003-07:00

Since the writing project Eric and I are working on is still top secret, I figured I'd blog about something else: food.

Every year Marque does this thing she calls the Lent diet where she cuts things off entirely for the 40 days. Usually it's no meat and no sugar. This year I decided I'd try it as well, by not eating meat for the entire time.

I plan on being a vegetarian for 40 days.

I'll still eat eggs and dairy and all that, but no meat. Being almost a carnivore, I'm sure it'll prove difficult, but I'm doing this for a couple of reasons.

To see if I can.
To lose weight.
To give me something to write about.

I'll try and post some of the foods and recipes that I try, as well as how things are going. I think I may be doing a Mardi Gras party to consume all the meat I can prior if anyone wants to join in.

Twitterpated

2010-02-01T10:56:00.005-07:00

I wanted to do a post similar to what I did last fall, and review the stuff I've been watching while keeping it to 140 characters. A tweetable size.

This time I wanted to do more than just what's new on telly and talk about all the stuff I've been watching and reading and the like. So here goes.

World's Greatest Dad (Netflix Instant Watch) - The movie starts out dark & then goes to black. This is a depressing tale with a bit of humor & a positive message. Not sure I'd recommend.

The Puffy Chair (Netflix Instant Watch) - Super indie of the mumblecore variety. Great performances but not the most entertaining. The smart and cheap film making is what impress me.

Coupling (Netflix Instant Watch) - A brilliant sitcom that crosses the line just enough. Stephen Moffat never fails to please; Excited to see him tackle The Doctor.

Top Gear (Netflix Instant Watch) - I don't care for cars, but I love this show. Like Mythbusters for automobiles, but packed with even more personality and humor.

Modern Family (Hulu) - This show has gotten even more funny with even more heart. I love this show more and more the more I watch.

Lost Season 5 (Netflix Instant Watch) - Perhaps the best season since the 1st. Better at getting to the point, answering questions, and embraces its sci-fi roots.

First Four Minutes of Lost Season 6 (Slashfilm) - Spoiler alert: I'm annoyed to watch through 4 minutes of the new season and have all of it (minus 20 seconds) be things I've already seen.

Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft (Comic) - Top recommend on this list. A dark tale with a brilliant approach to magic, and a beautifully handled drama in the foreground.

Locke and Key: Head Games (Comic) - Takes the heavy/dark tone of the first book and gives a bit of a break, whilst keeping the problems on the horizon. Never looses focus.

The Boys (Comic) - Offensive purely for the point of being offensive. The story is consistently weighed down by those shock moments. Do not read.

30 Rock (Hulu) - Still funny, but not as strong as previous episodes.

Better Off Ted (Hulu) - Perhaps the second funniest show on tv. Consistently brilliant, and keeps me laughing. Why aren't more people watching this?

Glee (Hulu) - The strong beginning fell apart as the show couldn't decide on its tone. I'll keep watching for the music scenes.

Community (Hulu) - Still the funniest show on tv right now. Simple as that.

Dollhouse (Hulu) - The second season improved vastly on the first, and the series' conclusion improved even more upon that. Classic Whedon, doesn't disappoint.

Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) - Very film-like single player delivers an experience like no other. It's all on rails but I'm ok with that. Multiplayer = refined/addictive.

As per usual, would love to her responses in the comments, or see a post of your own.

**UPDATE: Eric just posted his own, over on his blog, so here's a shout out:

http://www.produce-er.com/2010/02/twitterpated-stolen-title.html

I'll post others if people do 'em.**

Memory Lane

2010-01-28T11:12:00.003-07:00

Without anything interesting enough in my life right now to blog about, I thought I'd share a share a memory from my childhood.

To be fair though, I should say that this was a long time ago and so some of the details may have unintentionally been fudged. Our minds act in curious ways, rewriting memories as we relive them--RadioLab has an interesting podcast on the subject.

To set the scene, we were living in Texas at the time and it was a muggy summer day. I was probably 8 or so playing over at my friends house in the front yard. There were the two of us and his little sister who was maybe 6. I'm not sure what it was we were up to, but it's irrelevant as we were interrupted by a police officer pulling over in front of the house.

First my mind went racing as to what we did wrong. Were we in trouble? Why is he coming here? What did we do? The window rolled down and the driver leaned over.

The man in the car was not dressed in a uniform, but in civilian garb. He was the standard looking middle aged white male. He asked us to come closer and when we did, he told us that he had some chips and candy in the back of his car and we could just reach in and grab some.

I'm not kidding you.

My friend's sister started to go get some, but we stopped her. The man assured us it was okay, as he was an officer of the law. We still refused and he eventually drove away.

We ran inside and told my friends parents about it and they called the police. Soon enough, the same man came back to apologize. He said he really was sorry and that he was new in the neighborhood and was just trying to get to know people. I remember standing back as my friend's father talked to him.

Who does that? Especially a police officer. Yeesh.

Adventure Time Theatre Season 2 For Your Convienence

2010-01-13T13:21:00.002-07:00

So I thought it might be useful to post all of the Adventure Time Theatre Season 2 episodes in one place, in order so that you can enjoy them in their entirety. Not only that, but it makes it easier to share... just send this link to others!

Adventure Time Theatre Season 2 - The Gift of Xbox's

2010-01-13T13:18:00.002-07:00

The final episode of the season... savor it.

Adventure Time Theatre Season 2 - The Joys of Christmas

2010-01-11T09:07:00.001-07:00

The climactic near conclusion of season 2 is here, so check it and enjoy!

Adventure Time Theatre Season 2 - Movie Magic/Winter Madness

2010-01-08T11:13:00.002-07:00

***UPDATE: I just realized that I accidentally posted the 4th episode instead of the 3rd episode. Since I goofed, here is 3 and we'll leave 4 up as well. Yes, that means you get two episodes.***

Here is episode 3:

And here is episode 4. This episode marks the halfway point for the season 2 of Adventure Time Theatre, with only three more episodes to go. Enjoy!

Movie Review (kinda): Avatar

2010-01-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

My review of Avatar is simply to say, go see it. Make sure you do in 3D and in IMAX if possible.

Giant blue lady alien awesomeness.

Really, that's all my review is. This is a great movie that you need to see in theaters.

While I've got you here though, I want to talk a bit about the 3D. There's been a lot of talk about how Avatar has changed cinema, and it has, but only a certain part of cinema--Avatar isn't going to change how small indie comedies or documentaries are made, not any time soon.

Technology has far surpassed these old things, yet it's all that comes up when you search google images for 3D glasses.

The thing that really got me was how he films using 3D without it being a gimmick. When I would think of 3D movies, I'd picture objects come flying past me out of the screen. Avatar is more like a window in to a 3D world, where depth takes place behind the screen.

Not sure what the chocolate explosion behind him is.

This feels far less gimmicky to me and more about displaying the world. The screen becomes a window instead of a doorway.

Cameron makes sure to tone down the 3D in certain shots, whether it's an action scene that would be disorienting or a wide shot that shows off distant landscape. This shows that instead of trying to create the most 3D experience, he's just trying to create a great movie. He uses 3D like any other visual element, like color or movement--whether it's to direct the eye or create a sensation.

The process is not perfect still... there are things that need work. Some of my biggest problems were:

Stuttering horizontal camera movements - When the camera would pan or dolly sideways, there was a stuttering effect that was a bit distracting. This became less noticeable after getting used to it all, but could easily be solved by a...
Higher frame rate - Cameron himself has talked about 3D needing to have a higher frame rate in order to avoid less headaches and create a smoother image. Our society is so obsessed with the 24 frames a second that we're used to, that we'll do anything to keep it up despite advances in technology.
Headaches - Many people who see the film have been getting headaches. There are preventions you can take (avoid focusing on things that are out of focus, etc), but all the same, it shouldn't be painful to watch.

I feel like this film has the power to help restore the draw of theaters. This is an experience that you can not get in your home theater, no matter how nice. That is, at least until they have televisions that can display 3D (not too far down the road).

And to think this only the groundbreaking stuff concerning 3D. This movie also made huge strides forward in motion capture and computer generated graphics, a style of filming never before seen. This is an important movie.

Oh, and one last side note: there's been a lot of naysayers calling the story simplistic and predictable--to refute this just a bit, I feel like the story worked perfectly and there's only been considerable backlash because of the enormous hype. It's fun and enjoyable and the perfect vessel for this new technology.

Adventure Time Theatre Season 2 continues...

2010-01-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

Here comes episode 2. Spencer and Eric make up after fighting and brainstorm the greatest Christmas episode ever. Yes... it's past Christmas still, sorry.

A Year In Review 2009

2010-01-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

I wanted to give some of my favorites for the year and thought I would do one of those overdone "best of '09 lists." Here's what I thought, with a bit of explanation behind each.

MOVIES

District 9 - My favorite film of the year because it had everything--this film's story weaves beautifully in and out of the documentary style, all the while showing things I haven't seen in a movie before.
Inglourious Basterds - A return to form for Tarantino (especially considering Death Proof) with a perfect ending; a great deal of fun.
Avatar - Revolutionizing in so many ways, easily the most important film of the year.
500 Days of Summer - Not a love story, but a story about love; a perfect "romantic comedy" for guys.
Fantastic Mr. Fox - Wes Anderson made a perfect transition into animation, his style consistent, appropriate and never dumbed down.

**Special Mention**: The Brothers Bloom - Not quite perfect, but a fantastic follow up to Brick; plenty of heart and charm.
**Special Mention**: Where the Wild Things Are - Another kid's film that wasn't dumbed down -- a great film, so ignore the naysayers.

VIDEO GAMES

Brutal Legend - Far from a perfect game, or even a great game, but there is such a rich world to explore, full of characters you've never seen; the first act of the game overshadows the rest.
Arkham Asylum - Great sneaking and fighting, this game makes you feel like the batman, and I couldn't ask for more.
Modern Warefare 2 - A fun sequel to the first with better multiplayer, but a more over-the-top single player.

**Special Mention**: Spiderman Web of Shadows - This game is something I wish was amazing and totally could have been (Spiderman versus venom zombies anyone?), but ends up like one of those movies that's so bad it's good.

COMICS

Locke & Key - Joe Hill creates a fantastic mythology that is built up with pitch-perfect storytelling--this man knows what makes comics work.
Scott Pilgrim - Truly a comic that feels like it was written for me; combines the indie music scene with the 8-bit scene along with a bit of anime and absurdity.
Ex Machina - Great drama, that deals with a superhero in retirement who is now a politician; Vaughan is one of the greatest writers of this generation.
Batman: Snow - Picked this one up by random, but fell in loved immediately--why aren't there more comics like this.
Wanted - Mark Millar creates the classic origin story from the supervillain's perspective and isn't afraid to keep things dark.

**Special Mention**: Fables - Didn't love the beginnings of this, but the mythos grows and evolves beautifully.

TELEVISION

Community - My favorite thing on tv currently simply because it never fails to make me laugh.
30 Rock - Another show that always has me laughing, simple as that.
Dollhouse - An incredibly rocky show, but when it's good it's amazing.
Glee - So inconsistent tonally and way too much drama, but I can't help loving it.
Better Off Ted - Underappreciated, this show is pretty fantastic, often times rivaling Community and 30 Rock for laughs.

**Special Mention**: Parks and Recreation - A vast improvement from the first season, I feel like it's finally found its own footing.

It's kind of fun to make these sorts of lists. I'd love to read what everyone else really dug for the year and what you thought of my picks.

Adventure Time Theatre Season 2 Begins!

2010-01-04T09:00:00.001-07:00

After a very very long break, and only a few videos spread out here and there, Eric and I filmed season 2 of Adventure Time Theatre. A whole slew of episodes all with actual story and continuity.

Originally, this was going to come out around Christmas time, but due to technical difficulties it's just now coming out... in January. So yeah, you get our Christmas Special now. Enjoy the first episode!

Best Present

2009-12-27T13:02:00.004-07:00

So I think this wins the for Best Christmas Present this year:

Well... maybe second place to cold hard cash.

Thinking about setting up our site to maybe start carrying these...

**UPDATE: Thanks mom and dad for getting it made!**

All I want for Christmas...

2009-12-12T11:07:00.006-07:00

This year for Christmas Marque and I are getting a pretty amazing present already: a house. This is a huge awesome big deal that's going to be a lot of money. We agreed that we wouldn't buy each other presents this year, but instead just do stockings.

For kicks and giggles, I thought I'd make a Christmas list of things I'd want in an ideal world--the type of world where we're rich.

** Note: Most images and links are from Amazo--I figure it's the easiest place to find everything. Also note that this is just for kicks and giggles, not for begging... please don't buy me anything. It'll only guilt me in to trying to get you something. **

Understanding Comics and/or Making Comics

Both fantastic books for anyone interested in comic book theory, presented in comic book form. Understanding Comics is about the history and theories behind comics while Making Comics is all about just that: making comics. I check these out from the library probably two or three times a year so I may as well own them at this point.

Alton Brown's Gear For Your Kitchen and also maybe Good Eats: The Early Years

I got I'm Just Here for the Food two Christmases ago, and gave my wife I'm Just Here for More Food for her birthday this year, so these would help complete the collection and aid in my love affair with the man. The Gear book would great with our new house, helping us to figure out what to buy first for our kitchen, while the Early Years would be good just because I love Good Eats.

A really expensive and outlandish Mandolin

Yes, I know this is a luxury and I should probably invest in good knifes first, but look at that thing!

Playstation 3

I know, I'm an Xbox man. But Blu-ray! Also Uncharted, which alongside it's sequel, would be the only real games I want for it. Ok, maybe Little Big Planet. Before I get a PS3 though, I should probably get...

A gigantic and overpriced high definition television

I mean, why buy Blu-ray if you don't have the best way to watch them? Maybe I should wait until 3D tvs make it big.

And that's that. A new bed would be nice as would a nice couch, but those are pretty boring.

Plate is Holt

2009-12-03T12:36:00.004-07:00

I did a review for Eric over on his blog as part of his Plate is Hot series.

You can check it out right here!

It's really worth a read. In fact, I'll include it after the break

Spencer's Review
Today at lunch I came to the conclusion that Acme Burger is my favorite restaurant. I even tweeted something to this effect:

"Acme Burger is my favorite restaurant ever. Great food you can't find elsewhere & great service. If you haven't been, think couture burgers"

Let's start with the service. The owner, Alan (whom I constantly want to call Alfred because of his similarity in appearance to Michael Caine) greeted us at the door and showed us to our seats. The fact that he's out there greeting people is pretty fantastic. He even recognizes us and complimented Marque on her haircut our last visit. Since they're a local business they're able to have this sort of connection. To me, an important part of food is a sense of community, and they get this right.On to the food. Today we started with House Cut Bacon and Bleu Chips, which are just what they sound like: house cut potato chips covered in bacon and crumbled blue cheese. I'd had them before and loved them, but found the blue cheese a bit overpowering. The server suggested we have the blue cheese on the side, which we did. Instead of just bringing out a dish of blue cheese, the guys in back took the cheese, melted it down and made a sort of blue fondue type dipping sauce for us, which was way better than what I'd hoped for.

The lunch special we ordered came with soup, a burger, and a dessert. We went with the bison chili, which was fantastic as usual, and also served as a great dip for for the chips. The burger we got was their Turkey burger, which comes topped with arugala and a cranberry mustard sauce, all on a sweet potato bun. Most importantly, their meat is ground and made fresh each day in their kitchen. The turkey burger in particular has onions and cranberries ground in, which I discovered after giving them a call later. Their dedication to good, fresh ingredients really shows here. The dessert was simply labeled as a 'sweet plate,' as it rotates through different things; today was what tasted like a sort of cinnamon-y ginger-y carrot cake with vanilla ice cream. Delicious. One more note on ingredients: they change (with the menu) to suit the season. Keeps things interesting.

You can find the menu over here if you want to navigate through their flash site. Having been there, I've had the Kobe Burger, the Truffle Burger, The Veggie Burger (which is delicious with bacon), the Bison Burger, the Ostrich Burger, as well as others, and every single one is tasty in its own way. If you go, my recommendation is the Truffle Burger, which has a very rich taste to it. Make sure to order the sweet potato fries.

If you're in the downtown Salt Lake area, definitely check it out.

275 South 200 West
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Phone: 801.257.5700

Breakdown
Time of Day: Afternoon
Guests: Spencer and Marque
Type of Food: Burgers and such
Dish: Burger, soup, chips, and dessert
Price: $21, but with tip, $26. The place is on the pricey side for a burger, but so worth it.
Verdict: As mentioned before, this is my favorite restaurant. Go and enjoy.

A Weakness of Superman

2009-11-28T22:59:00.003-07:00

Just a quick comic... not much to say.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

2009-11-28T20:32:00.002-07:00

Really quickly, I wanted to express my feelings on The Fantastic Mr. Fox. In the short of it, I loved it. Wes Anderson's attention to detail and framing works fantastically in the medium of animation. The script provides a story that is entertaining not just for kids, but for the adults as well, giving something completely unique.

Some fun facts about the film:

Iron Chef Mario Batali provided the voice of the rabbit chef.
My good friend Eric Anderson also provided a voice (ok, it was really Wes Anderson's Brother by the same name).
Wes Anderson filmed himself in many of the roles to demonstrate the framing and timing for the animators.
Instead of going to a studio, he recorded the actors on location, so as to get realistic environmental sounds.

All in all, this is a definite recommend for all ages. Please go see this movie. And if you like this movie, go rent his other movies.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T11:36:00.002-07:00

Happy Thanksgiving, from Adventure Time Theatre!

Video Game Theory

2009-11-23T09:00:00.007-07:00

Back in the day, at BYU I was in a film theory class. Part of the curriculum was to create our own theory and present it to the class. Since we had done a small section on video games and I am a huge geek, I decided to do my theory on that. As I was going through paperwork, I found the pamphlet I made and decided to expand upon it and post.

Be warned this is geeky, but totally interesting:

Let's start by defining some terms to make this discussion easier. Here is a quick explanation of the terminology taken from Marie-Laure Ryan herself:

Internal - Users project themselves as members of the virtual world by identifying with an avatar, who can shown from either a first person or a third-person perspective.
External - Users are situated outside the virtual world; they either play the role of a god who controls the virtual world from above, or they conceptualize their own activity as navigating a database.
Exploratory - Users navigate the display, but this activity does not make fictional history nor does it alter the plot: users have no impact on the destiny of the virtual world.
Ontological - Users decisions send the history of the virtual world on different forking paths.

Marie-Laure Ryan states that there are four different categories games can be put in to:

Internal Exploratory
Internal Ontological
External Exploratory
External Ontological

This does a fairly good job of trying to categorize games, but this is too limiting of a system. What I propose a system that uses these terms as a scale as opposed to distinct categories, in order to show the control available and perspective is offered. Here are illustrations to better demonstrate this:

There's no right or wrong type of game, they're all just different. While this makes a good way of discussing games, there is no real way to refer to a game on this scale. A numerical scale would be a good correlative, but would be confusing to those who aren't in the know. A possible solution would be to have a graphic representation to show where on the scale a game lies.
Geeky stuff ends here.

So I know this was probably like doing homework, but is this something that anyone reading this is interested in? I have some more game related ideas that I'll probably be sharing eventually.

I'm sensing a trend...

2009-11-22T11:30:00.001-07:00

As promised, here is Jared's Campaign Part 02 in the Jared's Campaign series of Adventure Time Theatre.

Comment!

And if you were wondering what the new bathroom looks like, check this out:

Jealous?

As always, leave feedback below.

Another?

2009-11-21T14:32:00.003-07:00

Yeah, that's right. We made another Adventure Time Theatre for Jared's Campaign. Check it out:

Comment!

You're probably wondering why this is labeled as Jared's Campaign Part 03. That is because there is a part 2 that is going to be airing tomorrow. Why air them out of order? Because it is a legitimate artistic decision. Enjoy, and let us know what you think!

Oh my word.

2009-11-18T21:40:00.002-07:00

For part of Eric and I's campaign to get people to comment on this awesome video here, we decided to shoot a short for Adventure Time Theatre to spread the word. If you don't know what Adventure Time Theatre is, that's probably because we haven't posted in over a year, which is somewhat upsetting. Adventure Time Theatre is an internet sketch show that we've been doing off and on since college. Here it is:

I'm on the Youtubes.

Watching this makes me think about what Adventure Time is really about: somewhat humorous writing butchered by a couple of hams. Its kind of endearing.

Want Money?

2009-11-17T11:02:00.003-07:00

A friend of mine, Jared Cook, is in a pretty awesome Youtube contest. He needs people to watch this video and comment on it.

I know them! And now they're famous!

All you need to do is go to this video here and comment on it. You're limited to one comment a day from your Youtube account, to prevent stacking the votes.

You're probably asking yourself, "how does this effect me?" The clever ones are probably asking, "how does this effect you, Spencer?" There are three ways.

Money (or "Why would I want to help?")

This is what makes the world go round. Jared and his counterparts are giving away $5,000 in gifts to the top 15 commenters. Here's how they'll do it:

1st place: $1,000 Gift Card
2nd & 3rd place: $500 Gift Card each
Top 12 runner ups: $250 Gift Card

The cards themselves can be Visa, or to a store of your choice. The winner will be determined by a tally at the end of the competition. Keep in mind that you can only make one comment per username per day. In order to get ahead of the curve, you can comment as a team of users in order to bump up your numbers. If you want to be a team, you must email the usernames on over to sarah.swanson85@yahoo.com by December 1st.

Friendship (or "Awww, isn't that nice.")

Jared and I went to BYU together way back when. We were together in the beginning, middle, and advanced film making classes, which is saying a lot. We made this really awesome movie called Welcome Aboard. We did a lot of stuff. Stuff that made us friends.

That just pulls at your heart strings right? If you're friends with me, you'd want to support my friends, right? If not, re-read the money argument.

Spencer (or "Spencer's motives behind it all")

Eric and I actually made an agreement with Jared. If they win the project they'll use a portion of their newfound money to help fund a feature film that Eric and I are making. That's what I want to do for a living, why not actually try to make it happen.

To do so, we really do need your help to leave a comment. Preferably once a day. I mean it's really not so hard... just go and leave a comment. They don't even have to be nice comments. If you don't have an account there already, it's really really really simple. Whether you're doing it for the money, out of the goodness of your heart, or because you want to see how spectacularly bad a feature film by me would be, just do it.

Discovery To Go-Go

2009-11-12T12:08:00.002-07:00

Most of you know that I work at a Children's Museum. What you probably don't know is that I also do something of an internship there doing some Graphic Design. When I take my lunch, I'll sneak away upstairs and work on stuff. Recently I redid an animation that went on our webstore. Here is the original.

Lots going on.

My job was to take this and make it smoother and simpler. The Discovery To Go logo was already right above the animation, so I cut that. I also went for a more even background, using some more of those stock symbols we've created.

Less going on.

The animation I actually ended up doing in Flash. I knew I wouldn't be able to get a very smooth motion if I tried to do it manually, so I had the objects fallow paths with motion tween between the keyframes and exported it as a GIF.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the result-- it's much more streamlined. A thanks to Carolyn, the real Graphic Designer here, for helping me out and giving good advice. If you want to check out the animation in context, head over to the Discovery To Go online store!

Movie Reviews

2009-11-09T11:25:00.006-07:00

Here are a couple of reviews I've been meaning to get out there.

Gentlemen Broncos

Pretty awesome poster.

I went in to this film really wanting to enjoy it. I love Napoleon Dynamite and what it did. That being said, I really didn't care terribly for Nacho Libre-- I was hoping that was a fluke. After seeing Broncos, I'm guessing it's not.

Let's start with the good. This film has amazing performances from Michael Angarano and Jemaine Clement, and most importantly Sam Rockwell. There are some incredibly hilarious moments in this film that are unlike anything else you've seen; the Hess's imagination is palpable.

The problem that I had with this film is its affinity for potty humor. There are countless jokes concerning poop or testicles or vomit. It's all completely unnecessary and incredibly not funny. Maybe that's just me though. I hate gross out humor. It reeks of unoriginality. I would have hoped that Hess would be above having a snake poop all over someone. There's even a scene where the mother puts her popcorn balls two to a bag and then has her son feel them up. Just plain stupid.

If you're interested in the film, you should probably go see it. There are enough good moments to make it worth your while. It's worth it just to go see the Yeast Lords scenes with Sam Rockwell. If you're not sure it's for you, maybe just watch the trailer again... it's probably better than sitting through the whole thing. I've even embedded it for you.

Paranormal Activity

This was the best poster I could find.

The hype for this film was pretty legendary. Many touted it as the scariest thing they've seen and I heard several accounts of trouble sleeping afterward. Does the film live up to these expectations? Of course not, but how could it.

Paranormal Activity is an amazing film. It is especially smart from a film making point of view. Shot in a week, in one location, with only 4 actors, and for only 11,000 dollars. Brilliant. This is such a fantastic model for an indie.

The movie revolves around a haunting of sort, the majority of which takes place when they go to bed at night. I love this idea. We're so vulnerable when we're asleep, curled up in the dark. It's like what Psycho did with showers (please note, this film is not of the same caliber as Psycho... just trying to make a comparison).

The two no name actors are great, bringing a lot more believability to the piece. Their performances feel real and natural, and you never really question the validity of it all. Most importantly, as is often a problem in the found footage genre, the presence of the camera feels necessary, never forced.

My one real quibble with the film is why didn't the dude sleep on her side of the bed, closer to the door. He was mister macho, but kept her closer to where the demon entered.

CUTE EXPLOSION!

2009-11-03T15:00:00.004-07:00

Halloween night there was a magician who came in to do an act. He brought with him a baby kangaroo.

OMG CUTE!

She's wearing a diaper because... well... you know why.

She was just kind of waking up.

I was lucky enough to get to hold her before the show. She was amazingly cute, if you can't tell from the image.

We were staring in to each other's eyes.

She kept pawing at my Arc Reactor.

Here we are on an afternoon walk.

Even though she's just a baby, she could move about pretty fast-- the magician said about 26 miles per hour. After holding her for a bit, she kept following me around and my heart just about broke out of cuteness. It really was amazing.

Moral of the story: Baby animals are adorable.

Halloween Spooktacular

2009-11-02T14:37:00.003-07:00

After all that work, Halloween went pretty splendidly. And as promised, here are much better pictures of me in costume.

Rocking it.

Though not pictured, I also had a name tag on my belt that read "Tony Stark" instead of my normal lanyard. Here I am with co-worker Ryu.

Everyone kept calling him the karate kid. n00bs.

Some things I learned is that there were a lot of people who did not know who Tony Stark or Iron Man were. Most of these people were older. Another problem was that people assumed I bought the shirt. It was so well crafted that most people didn't believe that I made it myself.

There was a costume contest at work, which I did not win. But that's fine, because Eric won with this bad boy here:

White socks? Really Bumblebee?

He made the whole thing from scratch. Actually, he did buy the helmet, but had to repaint it. It's made out of cardboard, foam, giftwrap, actual car pieces, lights, and a whole mess of other stuff. Totally deserved to win.

This was us after battle.

Eric's friend Nick came in a homemade Jack Skelington costume which was pretty amazing, so I wanted to share.

Next to the magician for the night. With doves!

He's standing on those crazy stilt things for extra height. He made the suit and helmet all from scratch, which is really awesome. It got a great reaction.

All in all, a great day full of great costumes. Hopefully soon, I'll try and get some up close shots on the Arc Reactor device itself.

Tony Stark ACTIVATE!

2009-10-29T21:57:00.004-06:00

Costume is done, so I thought I'd post a quick image of it. The device itself is really bright so it was hard to get the camera to adjust properly to it, so a lot of the detail is lost.

Marque is creeping on me.

I got the shirt from DI and cut the hole. As far as support, I did end up going with the bra-- kind of. Marque hand sewed a custom arc reactor holster out of elastic, which we glued to the device. It really is just a glorified bra, but I'm okay with that considering how awesome this looks.

I'll try and get some better pictures up soon, hopefully Karlie can help me out with that. Eh Karlie? And for those asking, I'm not going to be posting pictures of the bra.

Iron Man: Nearly complete

2009-10-28T12:05:00.003-06:00

My Tony Stark costume is just about complete. Thought I'd share a picture of the nearly finished product.

Crappy crappy phone picture.

All I really need to do still is get a shirt for it and cut a hole. I also need to figure out a support system... a type of arc reactor bra. Any ideas?

Arc Reactor Goo

2009-10-27T12:41:00.002-06:00

I'm just about done with the Iron Man arc reactor for my costume. The other night Dave and I used an epoxy to encase the electronics.

Looks like Slimer's goo.

Here it is after 24 hours of hardening. It worked like a charm.

Now it looks like hardened snot.

Went out and bought screws and then glued everything together. Here it is pretty much done!

This makes me giddy.

I'll post more pictures soon once I get the right shirt and attach it and everything.

Interim Costume

2009-10-24T19:57:00.004-06:00

So recently went to an event with costume required, but my Iron Man costume is not finished. So with the help of Karlie, I threw together an eccentric millionaire costume.

Checkin' the time.

She helped provide the monocle, pocket watch, and top hat. Turned out pretty good.

Marque was dressed up halloween-y with no real specific costume in mind. She totally rocked it though.

Iron Man: Lighting up

2009-10-23T10:32:00.002-06:00

Last night we got most of the wiring done for the LEDs that will go in. We super glued the lights in first and then prepped to solder. We bent all the positive wires on the outside and soldered them first.

The first time I've soldered in years.

We then bent the rest on an inner ring and soldered those as well.

Almost finished soldering.

We then were able to bend the center one just far enough to reach those rings and connected it in as well.

Here is a rough mock up of it with the lights off.

Off.

And here it is with the lights on.

On!

I got super giddy when it finally worked. It looks even better in person, and not viewed through a crummy camera phone image. More to come!

Video Game Review: Psychonauts

2009-10-22T17:45:00.001-06:00

With Brutal Legend's release, I thought I'd do a throwback review to Tim Schafer's previous game: Pyschonauts. This game is easily my favorite game of all time ever always, and it always needs some lovin'.

Cool looking psychic kid, Raz.

Let me start by giving you a quick description of the game: Raz, runs away from the circus to join a summer camp for psychics, where he has to help prevent a scheme to conquer the world by stealing people's brains.

There are psychic bears, a lobotomy performing dentist, a giant mutated lungfish, a gypsy curse, and a talking turtle. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Doctor Loboto, Dentist.

The game is a platformer, though it could be argued it's more of an old school adventure game in a platformer's body. Story is king here; Schafer's writing is hilarious, heart warming, and very much unique.

I love the character design. Check out the head artists blog.

During the game, you travel in to people's subconscious in order to learn things or help them. Everyone's brain is different, giving a different artistic direction to each. The Coach's brain is like a war zone, while one of the Agents is something out of a cubist painting. This is where the game really shines, as gameplay shifts slightly, evolving as you venture in to different minds.

Those who studied Carl Jung might recognize the Collective Unconscious found here.

If that wasn't cool enough, the last act of the game takes place on an insane asylum where you help people work out disorders by fighting their inner demons and helping make sense of their madness.

I think this is the key to good gameplay. Something that changes and evolves as you play it. One level you'll be figuring out how to shoot lazers with your brain, while another you terrorize a city of lungfish as a giant Godzilla type monster. There's a whole level designed to look like a black velvet painting.

In Black Velvetopia, fighting a luchadore.

Lungfishopolis.

All this fanboyness aside, the game isn't perfect. There are glitches here and there, as well as frustrating gameplay. The cinematics are hilarious and very well performed, but often run too long. The worst offender is the final level's difficulty ramps up drastically, creating an incredibly frustrating experience. Despite all that, I love this game.

So if you can't tell by now, this is a definite recommend. It really is a game one should seek out. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to do so:

Get it as an Xbox Original on Marketplace for only 2100 points. That's only like $26.
Or get it on Steam for only $10 if you're a PC person. You can even try the demo out.
If you're diligent in looking, you may be able to find a copy of it for the original Xbox or Playstation 2. If you get it for the original Xbox, it will automatically download an update to allow you to play on your 360.
If you're in the greater Salt Lake type of area, I'd even let you borrow my copy for the original Xbox.

I'd love to hear what other people think of it. Leave comments with your thoughts.

The Erics

2009-10-22T13:17:00.002-06:00

Faithful readers should already know, I have two Erics in my life right now.

There is the Eric I met at college who was with me every step of the way through film school and with whom I've been in serious cahoots with ever since. We made Adventure Time Theatre, pre-Script-tion, along with numerous other projects. We write together, make movies together, and countless other things.

Then there's Eric I met at work. We've known each other for about a year now, and have been very close. There was a time when we were both working full time, and I probably saw more of him than I did of my wife. We're always scheming and plotting, and making work interesting. We've made comics and robotic eye patches and many many other things.

My dilemma is that when blogging, I find it hard to differentiate the two. I try to provide links to their respective blogs (see above), but not everyone clicks on those.

So how should I tell them apart? Eric and The Other Eric seems like it would make one of the two feel lesser. Perhaps chronologically with Eric the First and Eric the Second. Or maybe with last names Eric A. and Eric E. Or maybe just hyphenate to Eric-A and Eric-E. Actually that makes it sound like Erica and Erickey (which would make a good adjective).

I'm looking to you, readers, to help me figure out how to distinguish. Any ideas? You Erics better voice your opinions

Iron Man: Construction I

2009-10-20T11:30:00.000-06:00

So continuing in the Iron Man arc reactor creation, I actually got a lot more done this week. I've been doing most of the work with my father-in-law, Dave, who not only is an electrician, but also builds models. He's been a huge tremendous help.

To start out with, remember all those little pieces that we cut out with a laser so that they would be precisely the same?

There were 20 of these.

We did some revisions and had to trim them all down shorter.

New and improved.

Dave cut them out, while I measured and glued.

A process aided by tweezers.

It turned out pretty well.

This gets me all excited.

We also got the base all glued together. I'm going to try and paint it chrome tonight.

The inner holes are where the LEDs go.

We then wrapped the plexiglass with copper wiring.

Another tedious process.

And then sanded the surface to help diffuse the lights.

Tiny sandpaper.

We tried to do more with a dremmel as well. In retrospect, we should have done this first.

Coming together...

All in all it is looking really cool; I think it's going to turn out really nicely.

A Gentleman's Challenge: Statistics

2009-10-20T08:27:00.000-06:00

You already know I won, but I thought I'd give a breakdown of the Gentleman's Challenge. Here are some fun facts!

- Total number of visits, Eric had 208 and I had 228.

The mathematicians out there know I won by 20.

- My favorite part of this challenge was exposing more people to my site-- which, by the way, went swimmingly. My visits went up by 590% compared to previous weeks.

Eric already had a lot of visitors.

- Biggest day was Tuesday with 62 visits.

New high score!

- I had 414 page views total (awesome).

- Another nice thing about analytics, is that you can view where those visits are coming from. It even has a cool looking map to visualize the data.

I think I can see my house from here.

Utah - 163
California - 11
Arizona - 5
Canada - 3
Florida - 3
Virginia - 3
New York - 3
Illinois - 2
Colorado - 1
Louisiana - 1
Iowa - 1
Michigan - 1
Tennessee - 1
Alabama - 1
North Carolina - 1
Pennsylvania - 1
Maine - 1

So once again, thank you to everyone who visited and participated. I hope you keep coming back for more.

A Gentleman's Challenge: The Thrilling Conclusion

2009-10-19T13:29:00.007-06:00

So as everyone had hoped and desired, I won the Gentleman's Challenge I had with Eric.

This is me giving my best "gentleman's smile."

And of course, to the victor, goes the spoils. "The spoils," you ask? "There were no spoils defined in the challenge," you say.

Of course not. It's so obvious that it isn't even worth mentioning. I mean what would a gentleman's challenge be without spoils?

The winner of a gentleman's challenge gives the loser a punishment. This could range from making him watch Southland Tales to eating pigs feet. The possibilities are endless.

I'll be making a post soon, concerning what he'll be doing. I have some nefarious schemes beginning to cook up.

Azure: The Museum of Ubiquities

2009-10-19T08:30:00.003-06:00

Here is a rough idea of the direction we're going with the backgrounds.

Using vectors for the background and pixels for the characters.

Low key, almost atonal backgrounds, like you'd see in animation. Since we're going with a cartoony style, this'll echo the sentiment and let the characters pop out more.

Azure: The Fat One

2009-10-18T08:30:00.001-06:00

The final of the boys: the fat one. I quite like his shape.

I do not encouraging obesity.

That's it for the boys... we're getting closer to locking characters down.

Promotion

2009-10-17T14:13:00.004-06:00

So as many already know, it is official: I got promoted. I am now the Discovery Host Supervisor. For those keeping track, that makes two promotions in the year I've been working here. That means I only need another year or so before I'm running the place, right?

It's so official, I even have my own email signature.

The important stuff blurred out.

And on top of that an office that's almost kind of mine and a phone line with my name on it!

More blurred information... sorry stalkers.

Another fun fact is that I received a 32.5% raise and I'm now on salary. All in all, this is fantastic. Very excited to see where this all takes me.

Azure: The Short One

2009-10-17T08:30:00.000-06:00

Today features the short boy. This is probably the weakest design yet. I Think I may overhaul at some point, but I'm not inspired at the moment.

Look Ma, no hands!

We'll see how he evolves.

Azure: The Nerdy One

2009-10-16T08:30:00.000-06:00

So here is the nerdy character today. A rough idea of how he'll look.

Kind of Bill Haverchuck, if you know what I mean.

Still working on his physicality, but I would describe him as being long. Let me know what you guys think.

Azure: Our Villains Creation Continued

2009-10-15T11:30:00.001-06:00

Just one drawing for today... another of Brickhouse, trying to nail down his physicality.

Click for bigger...

Not sure I dig the pants and the cracks, but the proportions are starting to seem right.

Lasers: The true way in to Iron Man's heart

2009-10-15T08:30:00.001-06:00

So as promised yesterday, here are the...

LASERS!

...in all their glory. We used them to cut out the mechanical pieces that will be used in the arc reactor. Here's a quick and crappy cell phone video illustrating the process:

Sorry for the quality. It was a cell phone.

Now a bit about the process. First I made a mock up of the different pieces in Illustrator, and made sure that things would line up properly.

I love vectors...

Then we took those and did tests using cardboard.

I kind of want to make a full version out of cardboard.

Then we cut the pieces out on their real materials. We used plastics that had a faux metal finish for the majority, but also a few pieces of Plexiglas for the lenses. We even cut out the breadboard that we'll be soldering to.

Again... crappy cell phone. I really need a camera.

The eleven LEDs will be soldered before the actual construction. Then most of the assembly will be glue, with some screws here and there. I'm really excited to see how well it actually fits together.

Azure: Hero's Logo

2009-10-14T13:39:00.002-06:00

So just a smaller update today... here are some ideas for Azure's logo.

I'm a fan of the bottom right one...

Again, these are unfinished, so any feedback is appreciated.

Azure: Fan Art

2009-10-14T11:59:00.003-06:00

So something awesome just happened. We have our very first Azure fan art, created by the totally talented friend of the blog Austin. Even better it's created with Legos (possibly the greatest toy ever).

Check it out! There's even a subservient orphan child.

My favorite part is probably the newspaper though. Truly awesome. Be sure to check out his blog here and the actual post about it here.

Halloween '09: The Beginnings

2009-10-14T08:30:00.000-06:00

So for halloween this year, I have a pretty epic idea. I'm going to be Iron Man.

[robot voice] I. Am. Iron. Man. [/robot voice]

Well, a simplified Iron Man. I want to go as Tony Stark. But with that cool chest thingy.

Probably won't be wearing a wife beater...

Here's another picture to give you an idea... a bit different. I'm thinking a hybrid between the two, but we'll see.

This is an older model. And no wife beater.

It turns out though that other people have done this before.

Um... thank you google images?

So I googled some tutorials and came across one that I liked the look of the best.

Pretty dope.

So tomorrow I'm going to post some stuff that I've done so far. Oh, and just a little bit of a teaser... there's going to be...

LASERS!!!

Stay tuned.

A Gentleman's Update

2009-10-13T18:19:00.004-06:00

This is a direct quote from a conversation that I had with Eric the other day when we were discussing our challenge:

me: did you read mine?

Eric: am now

me: wait... refresh the page real quick
after you refresh, did it change?

Eric: change as in how?

me: you'll see
try refreshing again actually
eh?

Eric: ok
no change

me: just keep refreshing
for the next hour or so

Eric: Why?
what's changed?
oh. you dog.

me: lol
g2g

It was incredibly amusing to get Eric to not only check my site, but to repeatedly refresh, increasing my page views. Beautiful.

This did bring up the point that measuring our progress by page views could be easily manipulated. Yesterday I received 98 page views, while Eric only had 71. This most likely means that I'm better at this than him, but there could be other factors.

Instead we'll be going by visits to the site. So guess what the number of visits were for yesterday.

Yup.

Dead tied. So now I need to remind you to just visit my blog. No matter how tempting his blog may seem. Remember where your allegiances lie.