Ben, Kate, Kim and myself went out to play a little golf this past weekend at a course in Clark, NJ. It was Kim's first time out on an actual course, and she did very well, exceeding all expectations I had for her. She even got a bogey on a hole. That's not the real story though. The story is what happened when we got to the course.

As we approached the ranger with our receipts in hand, he sized us up. He asked if we were experienced golfers, and Ben indicated that me and him were, but the girls not so much. The ranger than picked up a half-bucket of used golf balls and handed them to us. I was confused - we were going to warm up anyway, but was it really that important? He told us that the rough was really thick, so if we hit a ball into it, don't bother looking for too long. Just drop a ball from this bucket and keep the pace going.

WOW.

I've been golfing a fair amount, and I have never seen a ranger anticipate you being THAT bad. We took the bucket and it actually was pretty awesome. It did help us keep pace as we became completely indifferent to lost golf balls. I also found my new favorite golf ball brand / style in that bucket - Maxfli Noodle Ice. Kim even found a pink version of the Noodle Ice. We win!

If you knew it, you’d say, “Wait a minute. The decision I just made does not make much sense. I had better go and get some independent advice.” But when you’re incompetent, the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is. In logical reasoning, in parenting, in management, problem solving, the skills you use to produce the right answer are exactly the same skills you use to evaluate the answer.

Keeping with my recent trend of putting up very little original content, here is an interesting interview I found with David Dunning, the Cornell professor who did the "Unskilled and Unaware of it" study.

This is a great video, showing reactions from various bars around the US (and a few other places) to the Landon Donovan goal.

Highlights:

0:41 - Lincoln, Nebraska, nice build up and funny guy dressed in red in foreground

1:02 - video-taker pausing a bit too long on girl's ass

1:12 - old woman cheering in NY bar

2:10 - Davis, California, probably the best video of the compilation

3:47 - random NYC street reaction

And this is just for winning the group! I can hardly imagine what happens if we make a run to the semifinals.

After a long, long, seven year hiatus, Futurama returns tonight. 10 PM, Comedy Central. WOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Many years ago, while both Futurama and Family Guy were on, I was widely ridiculed for preferring Futurama. I thought it wasn't a particularly close fight - better animation, actual continuity in storylines, and dare I say it, better humor. I mean, who doens't love a joke involving a race ending in a "quantum finish" and Professor Farnsworth complaining that they changed the result by measuring it? I wrote a post about it that bears re-linking.

In any event, much like Family Guy, it has returned from the ashes. AWESOME!

French team losing to awful South Africa in the World Cup? Check.

New Five Guys now open 1/2 avenue and 1 street away from my office? Check.

Approximately 1,400 calories consumed during lunch? Check.

I should probably play the lottery tonight. Everything's coming up Evan!

Our experiment in living without paper towels ended today. I finally broke down and bought some - not the usual 8 pack of name brand paper towels from Home Depot (which I think is the cheapest place in NYC to buy this sort of stuff), but an 8 pack pre-priced at five dollars at Walgreens. The brand is "Tuf." You know its quality because of the name and the pre-pricing. We won't let Walgreen's mark up the price on you! Kim warned me to not scratch up any of our tables or surfaces with this sandpaper-like substance. I made no promises.

It has been an interesting two weeks in the world without paper towels. I guess we use them mainly for cleaning, although occasionally as napkins when we don't have any around. The main thing though is for cleaning, and for whatever reason I loathe to use napkins to wipe anything down. Napkins are expensive dammit.

I think the breaking point today was two-fold. One, I got sick of seeing the random stains on our counters, and I hated how I consciously made efforts to only use one napkin in lysol spraying and then wiping them down. Second, I was bored out of my mind because Kim is out-of-town and no baseball games on TV were particularly interesting to me.

And... wow. I just googled "Tuf Paper Towels" and this review of them came up. What on earth would possess someone to write a review of Tuf paper towels? Maybe he works for them and this is marketing? I suppose I don't have much room to talk, given that this whole blog post is dedicated to them.

I just used them and they didn't scratch up our table. I suppose that's praise.

One cool thing about living in a big city when the World Cup is on is that you hear when something good has happened, even though you are not watching the game. Take this morning - while I was lying in bed at 8 AM or so, I heard a few distinct cheers. I was intrigued and turned on the Germany / Serbia game. Sure enough, a red card had been given to a German player, and the Serbian team had promptly scored a goal. I've heard random other things too, even on the 22nd floor in my office building.

Of course, the loudest noise was the equalizer by Bradley today. I don't think I've ever screamed that loud at work in my life.

For those of you at work who can't get ESPN3 to work on your work computers, google "univision football" and you can probably get the streaming video to work from that site.

One of my favorite things about the World Cup is the commentary, both during and after the match.

In most American sports, you will rarely hear a bad thing spoken about a player. If a shortstop misses a ground ball, then the ball was either hit sharply or had a bad hop. If a wide receiver drops a ball, it was either a tough catch or great defending. Even after the game you will hear ridiculous commentary that seeks only to praise someone or something, as opposed to pointing out incompetence. This isn't the case in soccer. The announcers tell it like it is, both for mental and physical errors.

Bad corner kick? "Poor effort from ____, he needs to do better than that, this is the World Cup."

Pass to nobody? "Unclear what ____ was trying to do with that pass."

Off-target header? "____ heads it over the crossbar, something that fans of his professional team have seen all too often."

Crappy free kick? "I can't stress just how poor that attempt was by ____. Appalling contribution from the captain."

I can't tell you how many times I've watched baseball or football games and wished that the commentators just called out a player for sucking. Ryan Howard swinging at a ball that bounces 2 feet before the plate. It wasn't a great slider. Donovan McNabb throwing a ball 5 feet behind DeSean Jackson. It wasn't the wind. There really needs to be some sort of alternate commentator radio station you can listen to for this sort of thing.

The Big Apple BBQ fest was a big success from our end. The fast passes proved crucial, allowing us to circumvent the long-ass lines that the unwashed masses had to spend most of their time in.

Big Bob's BBQ had the best BBQ (just like last year), Hill Country had the best brisket (just like last year), and 17th Street had the best ribs, although Baker's Ribs were very good as well. However, the surprise awesome plate was BBQ mutton and burgoo from a place in Kentucky. Everyone loved it, and the lines for it were pretty small because of the general fear of the unknown.

We looked a bit funny as a group because we were all wearing bacon hot sauce tee shirts. It looked like we were working the festival for BHS. A couple media types took pictures of us, possibly for the Big Apple BBQ website for next year.

On a related note, at around 9 PM that night, four of us were walking to a bar (three of us still wearing the BHS shirts). A random guy on the street said "Bacon Hot Sauce!" We minimally acknowledged him and continued walking. Then he said, "do you know Pete Fishman?"

Yada yada yada, I took off the tee shirt I was wearing and gave it to him.

Just tried some bacon hot sauce on eggs.

Pretty good actually.

We saw Kurt Metzger on Comedy Central Presents, and I was basically falling off the couch laughing at his comedy. He's somewhat harsh and mean, but that is right up my alley. Here are a few clips of him for your enjoyment:

Kinoki Foot Pads

Religious Tolerance

So when Kim was perusing the internet a couple nights ago and found out that he was performing at Caroline's on Broadway, we knew we had to get tickets. Kim bought them online and we eagerly awaited the show.

We got to Caroline's an hour early, as they suggested on the ticket. When we checked in we noticed the list of purchasers was pretty short. It was like 15 people. Maybe there is usually a lot of walk up traffic? We got a guiness at a local pub (drinks bought at the bar in Caroline's do not count towards the two drink minimum) and waited.

We came back at the appointed time and were placed dead center. There were not many other people in the audience. Me and Kim got worried - a comedy set with 30 people in a somewhat empty room seemed like a recipe for disaster. But there were no problems. The warm up guy was not bad (Kim thought he was pretty funny), the second guy was better, and Metzger was friggin awesome. He played to the crowd a fair amount, not sticking to his planned jokes at all. He called me and Kim out a couple times, referring to us as the "Asians." "Hey Asians! Don't judge!!!!" "Hey Asians! Where are you from?" It was pretty fun. He also interacted a lot with this group of cougars and the only black couple in the audience.

The only problem was that I had to pee starting at the second comic, so I had to run out at the very end of Metzger's set. He did repeat a couple bits from his comedy central show, so it wasn't a huge deal.

This was the best 16 bucks I've spent in a long time. I think we'll see more shows at Caroline's.

This picture just makes me crack up. First let me set the stage.

We're playing cornhole at Ben's 30th birthday party and there are these little neighbor kids running around the yard. Little kids do whatever the heck they want to do unless their parents tell them not to do those things. These parents were of the type to let their little kids do whatever the heck they want. Thus, the kids interrupted the game of cornhole.

The participants were not happy.

Wow. Just WOW!

MLB Network Commentator: Noone feels worse about this than Jim Joyce.
MLB Network Commentator #2: I think Armando Gallaraga feels worse about it.

Here is something I haven't been quite able to figure out (although this is a bit late in posting).

How did the UVA Men's Lacrosse team become something worthy of admiration / pity?

I can certainly understand everyone rooting for the UVA Women's Lacrosse team to make it far in their post-season. I mean, one of their starters was killed by a crazy ex-boyfriend. That is basically the prototypical "root for us" story.

But how on earth did the UVA Men's team pick up the slack when the UVA Women's team lost in the playoffs? How did they pick up the banner for the women's team? Its like Clubber Lang dedicating his rematch with Rocky to the memory of Mickey, or Ivan Drago dedicating his match with Rocky to the memory of Apollo Creed. That doesn't work!

This is a team that should be booed mercilessly at every game they play until every freshman from this year has graduated. The only possible good result in having UVA and Duke lacrosse play in the men's semifinals would have been some sort of double forfeit or maybe every player on each team simultaneously tearing his ACL.

I understand, it was just the act of a teammate. But that's just it. He was a teammate of theirs. He was one of their own. I shudder to think of the stories if the UVA Men's team actually won the championship.

We were in the Detroit area this past weekend for Drew's wedding. This was our first visit to the city that is known for being the center of automobile manufacturing for America. So if there was one thing I was expecting, it is that the people there would be AWESOME drivers.

Of course, I was very wrong.

People just go along and brake indiscriminantly at nothing in particular. That green light a quarter mile down the road sure looks like it might turn red at any minute... better break now just in case. Maybe the people love their cars so much that they do not want to risk any possible accident screwing them up? I don't know.

But that's only half the problem. The other half is that you basically are not allowed to make a left turn into a semi-major highway. What you are instead supposed to do is make a right turn, and then at the next access road you make a u-turn. Yes, it really is confusing and stupid, as it basically eliminates the fast lane on certain highways. I guess the fast lane is the middle lane? Again, I don't know.

I thought you were better than that Detroit.