A Lost Post: San Diego Trip

I discovered a post I had written and forgot about. It was from my September trip to San Diego. Here it is:

After the LHD and DDG and Fry's, we decided to go to the Stone Brewery in Escondido. We had an extremely hard time finding it. Google Maps tries to make you drive through a private street that is blocked off through traffic. Neither of the two people navigating for me could fathom taking any route other than that which Google commanded. I finally looked at the actual map. There are streets EVERYWHERE. It would have been relatively trivial to find an alternate route. Does anyone have any map-reading skills these days anymore that doesn't involve simply obeying directions?

So since it took us many tries to get there (after we found the actual street, for some reason my navigator told me to turn off it and we made a huge circle for some reason) we missed the last brewery tour of the day. There is a restaurant at Stone, though, so we decided to go there. Big mistake. Arbitrary parts of the restaurant are self-seating for beer and appetizers and other arbitrary parts are only if you're eating a full meal, and you must be sat by the hostess. So, there is an indoor bar, an indoor self-seating area, an indoor hostess-seated area, an outdoor bar, an outdoor self-seating area, an outdoor hostess-seated area, a self-seating counter around a fire pit in the middle of the dining area. There aren't any signs or boundaries or anything very obvious, or even subtle, denoting the different areas. A well-placed hostess stand would probably help alleviate some of the problem, but the hostess stand is OUTSIDE of the restaurant. What. The. Hell.

So, we sat ourselves in one of the verboten areas and patiently waited for a waitress and some menus. There were empty tables everywhere. Eventually the first waitress comes over. We said we'd like to order beers and have menus so we can decide if we're eating there. We were informed by the first waitress that this area was only if we're eating a full meal. If we wanted to just have a beer or order an appetizer or something, we'd have to go "over there." So, I asked again for menus because we were probably going to eat, but we'd like to see what they actually have. She again told us to sit "over there." (Mind you, this is before anyone really told us we shouldn't seat ourselves in this "section," except at certain tables/counters.) I said "so you want us to get up, go over there, order a beer, get a menu, decide what I want, come back here, sit down, and order food? Can we just have some menus?" She leaves in a huff, saying she'll get us menus. We never saw her again. A second waitress comes over and asks if we sat ourselves. We said of course. She was the first to inform us we were supposed to go outside the restaurant to the well-hidden hostess stand to be seated, and that this area was only for people dining. Really annoyed by all this, I said "I'd love to eat here but no one will give us any menus." She left, and I didn't expect to see her again. We decided since getting menus was too hard for them, we got up to go to one of the designated areas. But there were NO available tables in the area they kept telling us to go to. The second waitress brought us a menu to look at. A menu. As in 1. There were 4 of us. I said in front of the waitress, "Fuck this place. I'm not eating here." We eventually sat inside at one of the non-marked self-seating areas. I got a beer sampler. It was okay. My coworkers had a small order of tortilla chips for $4 and some $8 hummus. I still refused to eat. Fuck that place. I had dinner when we got back downtown.

Speaking of places that suck, earlier in the week I decided to try out the secret menu at In N Out. I ordered a hamburger Animal Style. I was asked if I wanted my fries animal style too. Sure. Why the hell not? NEVER EVER DO THIS. The Animal Style burger was okay. Just okay. The regular ones are better. Or how about not going to In N Out at all? That would be much better. The Animal Style fries is fries, cheese, grilled onions, and Thousand Island. About a liter of Thousand Island, that is. It is so fucking nasty. And their fries aren't all that great to begin with. Oh, and they charge $3.49 for the privilege of ruining your fries.

Seattle/Alaska Trip

Day 1 - October 23, 2009

I was still half asleep when I got to the airport. So, at first I didn't realize that the guy who looked like Patton Oswalt WAS REALLY PATTON OSWALT! My exchange with him went like this...

Me: You're Patton Oswalt! I love your work! I held out my hand to shake his.
Patton Oswalt: Thanks, dude. Sorry, but I'm getting over a cold.
Me: It's cool.
Patton Oswalt walks off.

Rejected by Patton Oswalt! Awesome!

After that, I was thinking of all the smart, insightful things I could have said. Oh, well.

I then saw him again in line for security. I took this stalker-like photo:


The flight was unmemorable.

When I got to Seattle, I went to the first place that looked good for lunch. It was called ... something or other. Who cares? More importantly, they had a fine selection of not-shitty beers:


I of course got the Moose Drool. It was the best nut brown ale I've ever had.

Seattle was looking pretty much like I pictured:



The interstate is lined with evergreens, and it's like Portland, Maine mixed with Baltimore, Maryland. But unlike Baltimore, it's pretty awesome here.

I went to the Pike St Market...



...the original Starbucks (but not inside)...



...looked at Puget Sound...



...and went to Zion's Gate Records, where I bought At the Gates's Slaughter of the Soul, Katatonia's Discouraged + Brave Murder Day, and Seattle's Book of Black Earth's The Beast.

Next I went to Slim's Last Chance Chili Shack and Watering Hole. It was on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. The chili was rather good. Better than mine.

Then I went to a Western Hockey League game. (The WHL is a junior hockey league. The Thunderbirds' oldest player was born in 1989.) It was the Seattle Thunderbirds vs. the Brandon (Manitoba) Wheat Kings. Brooks Laich (Washington Capitals) and Chris Osgood (Detroit Red Wings) both played for the Thunderbirds back in the day. Bryan McCabe (ex-Toronto Maple Leafs, now Florida Panthers) played for the Wheat Kings. Oh, yeah and there was a fight!



Thnunderbirds lost 4-1.

This post will be updated as my trip progresses.

Best Goalie Masks

I wanted to make a post about the best goalie masks in the NHL, but I'm lazy. Luckily, TSN already did it for me.

My favorites:


Cam Ward
(Carolina Hurricanes)
Blackbeard the Pirate. I hate the stupid old English lettering of "Ward" on the chin, though.




Craig Anderson
(Colorado Avalanche)
Sasquatch, who himself is also wearing a goalie mask. I liked his mask last year when he played for the Florida Panthers. It was a mechanized Panther of doom!




Jonathan Quick
(LA Kings)
How can you go wrong with a knight's helmet?




Envgeni Nabokov
(San Jose Sharks)
A zombie thing of some kind!




Mike Smith
(Tampa Bay Lightning)
YES! Pirates and lightning and stuff! It reminds me of the cover of Symphony X's The Odyssey.




Vesa Toskala
(Toronto Maple Leafs)
He's not on this list because he's a Leaf. He's on this list because skulls fucking rule!




Semyon Varlamov
(Washington Capitals)
I like the whole two-face thing he has going on, but I wish he had picked a better American symbol than Mount Rushmore, since it's nowhere near DC. Great mask nonetheless.

The Balloon Idiots

I'm apparently not as easily distracted by shiny things as the rest of America appears to be. I didn't hear about this balloon thing until it was all over. And not it appears it was a hoax to futher the father's career. Read this from Wikipedia:

The family had been featured twice on the reality television show Wife Swap, the second time as a fan-favorite choice for the show's 100th episode. During his time on the show, Heene claimed to believe humanity descended from aliens, and spoke of launching home-made flying saucers into storms. Heene has made relentless unsuccessful attempts to get media attention for a proposed reality show called "The Science Detectives", which he envisioned as a documentary series "to investigate the mysteries of science". Months before the balloon incident on October 15, 2009, Heene pitched a reality show idea to the television channel TLC, but they passed on the offer.

So he's a constant failure and he decided since he has such a good track record, why not lie to the news?

According to this article, the parents are 'upset' after being given felony criminal charges. You should be upset, ass!

If all the media attention they have now isn't enough (remember, they pretty much just wanted to be famous), then I say follow them around in prison with cameras and air it. And all the money they get from the show? Yeah, they don't get it. Give it to the prison system or something. Or give it to the people whose flights were canceled in Denver because of these jerks.

Wait a minute, I bet you're going "but they're innocent until proven guilty!" Well, how about this:

...[Robert] Thomas [who had worked with Heene for two months last spring] told CNN that at one point they were talking about the Roswell UFO incident of the late 1940s, when Heene said it would be easy to cook up "a media stunt that would be equally profound as Roswell, and we could do so with nothing more than a weather balloon and some controversy."

Also, I found this rather unsurprising:

Heene has been described as a meteorologist, but his education ended at the high school level.

Also, that stupid balloon of his? From this article,

The father built the 20ft by 5ft silver helium balloon in his yard and it was designed as a transport vehicle of the future so "people can pull out of their garage and hover 50ft to 100ft above traffic."

YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME! A balloon is not a vehicle of the future SINCE THEY PREDATE AIRPLANES!

Oh, yeah, and to make matters worse, this moron is one of those David Icke nutjobs. HE THINKS HILLARY CLINTON IS A ONE OF OUR SHAPESHIFTING REPTILIAN OVERLORDS! AHGHAGHGHGH.

Lock him up for eternity I say!