SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

Alma and I tried a new Indian restaurant in Highland Park today called Curry Hut. This might normally be a Frugal Gourmand entry but I don't really have that much to say about the food itself - it was good but it was also pretty standard. What was most memorable about the evening was that we were one of two tables in the place, and the other table was two late-middle-aged couples and a guy who seemed like a college-aged son of one of them.

Within seconds of walking in, it was obvious that one of the women at the table was a complete know-it-all who absolutely would not stop talking. She was presenting herself as this high arbiter of Indian food, as though she had spent two years backpacking through India or something and knew the country inside and out. She just went on and on, discussing her favorite preparations (tikka masala seemed to be a particular hit), recommending dishes, talking about her first experience with Indian food (apparently it was in London some years ago), and on and on. Eventually the rest of the table had to increase their pretension just to keep up with her.

The worst part was she was obviously a wannabe know-it-all who had been to a few Indian restaurants and considered herself an expert, probably at least partially because she thought her dinner companions knew markedly less and would not be able to call her on it. Two lines of hers in particular stood out as being hilarious for being delivered so authoritatively and yet being so obviously stupid.

(a) "'Tikka' means that it was cooked in the oven."
Alma to me: "Yeah, I read the menu too!"

(b) "You can just tell that these spices are freshly ground."
Me to Alma: "Bullshit."

Maybe it was one of those things where you just had to be there. But it was pretty hilarious. This table spent so much time talking that we were in and out before they had even finished, even though they had clearly been there for a little while when we came in. Sad.

Scattered thoughts

I'll probably put some thoughts on Soriano in the Cubs blog, when it becomes official. Quick thought, though: I'm not unhappy.

This country is too nuts about football. It's bad enough with the commercials that imply that you should be watching every single Monday Night Football game. Why? Because it's on a different day? As multiple games including Raiders/Seahawks have proved just this season, MNF isn't always a great game. And even beyond that, why should I budget an entire night around watching a team I don't even root for? I don't really get that. In the playoffs is one thing, but during the regular season?

But I guess a good game is a good game. That's not what put me over the edge. It's stuff like this. Is somebody actually getting paid to do that? Worse still, are there actually people who are interested in this? "Well, I wasn't going to bet on the game, but now that I see that Ohio State won the NCAA '07 simulation, I figure it's a lock!" It just seems massively idiotic to me. Yet there was a link to this on the front page of ESPN.com the day of the OSU/Michigan game, in addition to a timer counting down the seconds until kickoff. Can we fucking get a grip here, please? Although as Tyler pointed out, it may not be people getting so insane about football as much as it is just ESPN's coverage of football getting progressively more annoying.

Alma and I went for sushi on Friday night, and I continued my theme of trying something I consider kind of crazy off the menu. This time it was octopus. It didn't really taste like much, and I think it had been at least partially cooked, but the outer edges were pretty chewy, which was kind of weird. It certainly wasn't as scary as you'd assume, though. I may try squid next time. I should stop talking about sushi before Rudnik makes fun of me again.

The next day we went to the aquarium. I hadn't been in three years-plus, so that was fun, although we got there kind of late and had to hustle through so that we could see both a dolphin show and the Wild Reef (slogan: Still Only Vaguely Worth the Extra Ten Bucks). That was disappointing because if there's one place I enjoy lingering, it's the aquarium - watching fish swim around can be incredibly relaxing, and there are plenty of cool-looking fish to check out. It almost tempts me to get a membership - you only have to go 4-5 times before it pays for itself, although since in a normal year I probably wouldn't be inclined to go more than twice, it really doesn't pay for itself at all. Although I feel like Alma bought me a year-long pass to the Botanic Gardens a couple years ago and then we went zero times that year, which I feel really bad about now that I remember (although I feel like she never actually gave me the sticker I needed for the car, for whatever reason, so it wasn't entirely my fault). I would at least go to the Shedd more times than zero. Hint, hint, maybe.

Another thing that happened in the last week-ish was we went down to Urbana for TRASH Regionals to compete against possibly the most top-heavy regionals field ever - it featured two former winners of TRASHionals, plus a team led by Greg and Stan, plus the Michigan B team (always at least decent). We finished fifth, behind those four and ahead of just three others, but I think that gives us a decent chance at getting a bid to TRASHionals considering the strength of the field and the fact that we didn't lose to anyone below us (and beat the Greg/Stan team in round robin play). I suppose we'll see, though. Personally, I had my best TRASH tournament (though not Trash tournament) since 2003 Regionals, putting up 48.5 PPG to finish third overall. So that wasn't bad. Alma and I have been planning to retire after this year, so a decent showing at Regionals was a good start to that (and even though I would have liked to finish higher, I generally don't think we could have played too much better, so I don't feel bad about it). I may make a longer version of this at some point, though I've lost a lot of the desire for that. Maybe once we're given the all-clear on the questions (which should be shortly as I believe the last regionals were today), I'll post the scores and my answers, Tyler-style.

And the award for least appropriate use of a conditional goes to

If there's anyone in the world who's more desperate for money than Mike Tyson, it just might be O.J. Simpson. He's still $30 million in the hole to the Goldman family, for example. Maybe that's what led him to pitch the idea for the interview he's going to do on Fox (presumably connected to his related book), tentatively called "If I Did It, Here's How It Happened."

Um... what?

First of all, terrible use of conditional there. Unless the person in question was a complete moron with no scruples, no innocent person would ever muse over what it would have been like if they had committed the crime of which they were acquitted. Wouldn't happen. And we all know that if the case had happened in this post-CSI age, the jurors would actually have understood what DNA evidence meant and O.J. would be in jail right now. The only reason he's saying this now is because he knows he can't be tried a second time. Why not just call it "I Did It and Here's How It Happened?" Is he afraid that the lack of the "allegedly" tag on the whole affair would scare people off, or maybe just that the police would find a lesser charge on which to try him if he officially admitted it?

Second of all, I love that the second half of the sentence actually forgets to include the conditional, which reinforces the idea that the "if" was added as an afterthought. It should read something like "If I Did It, Here's How It Would Have Happened." But instead, it says "Here's How It Happened," as though whoever came up with the sentence actually forgot, mid-thought, that O.J. was supposed to be innocent. Which makes sense. Because he's not.

I just wonder who else might come out of the woodwork, on the heels of this and Ray Lewis' Sports Illustrated cover. Perhaps Gary Condit could talk about what it would have been like if he'd had Chandra Levy killed, or something like that. Seems about as appealing to me. Really, who would want to watch or read about this? I suppose there's some morbid curiosity aspect to it, but... really, pretty sick. Though the idea that you could be lining the pockets of this murderer is even worse. Sit in Borders if you have to read it.

Second time's the charm

As if to make up for the shenanigans on Thursday, today's return home from Washington was almost surreally pleasant. The flight took off and landed almost exactly on time, there was no turbulence of note, and the landing was perfect. The only small inconveniences, if you could call them that, were the mislabeled gate information (for a while I thought that there might have been a gate change because, for no apparent reason, the flight listed on the screen was the Alaska Airlines code-share information) and the fact that I paid 12 dollars for a personal pizza and a bottle of water (which cost an obscene $2.69 by itself) at the California Pizza Kitchen in the terminal.

Making things even better, the flight was pretty empty - there were probably 40 people on board including the crew, and no one in my row, which is always nice. I got to have a full can of ginger ale and two packages of snack mix, plus I didn't have to feel smushed in. I'm really not a fan of sitting directly alongside a complete stranger if I can help it, which is why I make certain choices at theaters and on buses and trains, but on a plane there's little you can do. I lucked out on this one. I finished the book I had bought for the trip and then tried to see if I could finish the crossword in the American Way magazine before touchdown, which I did with about a minute to spare (I was literally holding it in my hands, since the tray table was up, writing in the last answers as the plane neared the ground).

Best of all, the Blue Line train dropped me at Addison just in time to catch the 9:40 eastbound 152 bus. Had I been two minutes later, I would have had to wait until 10:04. As it was, I was home by that time. All in all, a great travel experience, possibly making up not just for Thursday but for the mediocrity of the weekend in sports.

I'm in Chevy Chase, and you're not

I came "home" - and that word must be used fairly loosely when you consider that I've been to this house a previous total of two times for about a week combined - for the weekend; it's my mom's birthday tomorrow (which just reminded me that I have to go out in the morning and get her present, which I have forgotten to pick up prior to now). I also hadn't seen my niece yet - she's a totally adorable baby and she smiles all the time, and of course babies in general do so many cute things, so how can you not totally love them? But she's a great baby.

Two things that have sucked so far:

1) The trip out, hit with probably the second-worst example of the Flaxman travel jinx in my six-year career of making return trips to the east coast from Chicago (#1 being Thanksgiving freshman year, when the plane sat at the gate, with us on it, for two hours before they decided it had engine trouble, and we all had to stay at the airport hotel overnight and get up at about 5 am to catch the first flight out). In this case, the plane was about an hour late taking off, which isn't so bad in and of itself, except that they also changed the gate and managed to do so without telling anyone, unless they made the announcement only once and during the 30 seconds I was in the bathroom. But not only did the gate move, it moved to a completely different concourse! It started off being K16 and moved to H17, each gate being at the far end of their respective concourses, meaning that I had to walk most of the way back up K before I could finally cut over to H, and then had to walk all the way back down that one. "Fortunately," the plane was delayed further so I missed absolutely nothing and in fact had time to sit there doing nothing and finish a crossword puzzle and intrude comically on someone else's conversation before boarding.

2) I guess this hasn't "sucked," but it's been sort of annoying - listening to everyone complain about how cold it is. It's like, hey guys, it's barely below freezing and it probably won't get more than ten degrees colder all winter. I don't want to hear about it. Also, this week it's supposed to be 75 on Friday, which, while it is also supposed to be unseasonably warm in Chicago during that time, is a good 15-20 degrees warmer than it's going to be where I live any time between now and next April.

The expression "It's a small world" always strikes me as having been invented by someone who was easily impressed, since it in fact is not a small world. But I guess that sounds better than "It's a small country," which is really what people mean 999 times out of 1,000. In this case, the example was that we went to a vegetarian Indian restaurant called Udupi today that has three locations: Takoma Park, MD; Schaumburg, IL; and Chicago, right on Devon. I have no idea why those three places exactly (although the last one is not hard to guess at), but it's pretty funny to think that this restaurant has three locations and I've been to one and walked right past another.

I guess Borat is going to be popular, because tonight all the screenings were sold out for the whole night when I got to the theater at 7. Fortunately I had no intention of seeing Borat. I ended up seeing Flags of Our Fathers because I figured there was absolutely no chance of ending up in a theater crowded with teenagers, douchebags, or douchebag teenagers (redundant). And in fact I was probably the youngest person in the crowd by at least two decades, and so even though the theater was full (mostly because it held about 50 people to start with), everyone was very quiet and respectful. It's a fine movie because it's basically impossible to make a bad war movie, but it has a few very definite issues that prevent it from really being even in the ballpark with the great war movies. But it's certainly watchable, if nothing else. Full review will come soonish, maybe tomorrow. For now I should get to bed so I have time to get my mom's book before her birthday dinner.