Flux Capatications

Jetpack!

2010-02-11T14:11:00.000-08:00

Two things have happened in the past couple of weeks... one of them is sucky, and the other one is awesome. So I'll focus on the awesome thing: We got a puppy, and his name is JETPACK!

"Jetpack?" you say. "Why would you name a dog 'Jetpack'?" My sister and I were talking a few months ago about weird names people give their kids these days, and I joked that I would name my future kid "Jetpack" so that I could brag to other people, "I have a JETPACK." Unfortunately, the idea of bestowing this name on my actual human offspring was vetoed by my wife, so I told her that when we finally got a dog I would name him Jetpack instead.

Mary and I went to The Lange Foundation in West LA, a nonprofit organization that rescues animals from city pounds, especially "special needs" dogs who are going to be destroyed otherwise. Mary and I spent some time with a few of these dogs but ultimately we decided we wanted a puppy. Mary's into "wiry" dogs, and Jetpack is some sort of terrier mix that came into the shelter with his litter mates. She picked the dog, I picked the name.

We brought Jetpack home a few days later. We both love him a lot, but having a puppy is EXHAUSTING. He tries to chew on everything, he has way too much energy, and he pees every few hours. The good news: Mary and I are both very good puppy parents, so it only took 3 days to get him housebroken, and we think we've figured out the correct food/water schedule so that he will sleep 7 hours straight at night before having to go out to pee. Also, among the things we didn't know before: owning a puppy in the city means he CANNOT go out for walks or meet other dogs until he's 4 months old and fully vaccinated. We never had this problem out in the suburbs, where I took my dog Cobi out for walks the day he got home. So in the meantime, it's a lot of ball-chasing in the apartment and in the hallway for exercise.

I'll end this post with two final thoughts:

1) Jetpack has blue eyes. Cobi had yellow eyes which made him seem freaky when you took flash photos of him, and I assumed that all dogs had yellow eyes. Apparently not:

2) We live on the fourth floor, and we have an enclosed balcony. Jetpack is a curious little booger (just like me) and he likes to prop himself up on his front paws and watch cars go by. I think it makes him look like a dictator:

And yes, having a dog again does make the shitty thing seem less awful. =)

So there was this Gladiator...

2010-01-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

And now, the story of how we got swindled in Rome:

One year later...

2010-01-23T14:14:00.000-08:00

I admit, it's been a long time since I've written anything on my blog. Not that anyone is paying attention, anyway, right? I can't help it, after I joined The Facebooks it just became way easier to post a one-sentence item about what I'm doing than to come here and write something thoughtful.

So, what's new? Oh, Mary and I got married.

Yep, it was in Maui. And in case you're upset that you weren't invited, don't be... it was a really small affair. And in order to accommodate Mary's post-med school, pre-residency schedule, as well as the Chinese zodiac, we got married on a Monday! Who does that, anyway?

Happily, my whole family was there.

And all some of my closest friends, too!

Everyone always asks, "How's married life?" The answer: "It's no different than before." Except that now Mary is here all of the time. And my closet no longer has any empty shelves in it. We even had to buy a dresser. Unheard of!

Mary started residency pretty much as soon as we got back, and then I was busy trying to sell a pilot for a while. But over Christmas/New Year's we found some time to go on our "honeymoon" to Europe. We went to Paris and Rome. It was FREEZING when we were there... apparently unusually so. Still, we had a great time and got to see a bunch of interesting sights. Here's Mary looking triumphant in front of the Arc du Triomphe.

Rome was great, too. Lots more ancient stuff there. There's so much ancient stuff in Rome that they don't even bother posting security guards in the Roman ruins. There are all kinds of columns and statues lying around, in the dirt. You can sit on them, lie down on them, probably even pick stuff up and walk off with it, and the Romans just say, "Eh. We got plenty more where that came from." I can't imagine what it's like to live in a city where most of the stuff is literally THOUSANDS of years old.

Here's a picture of us at the Il Coloseo (that's "The Coloseum" for you Americanos)

If anybody is going to Paris or Rome and needs recommendations on places to stay or anything like that, we've got plenty! And we can even tell you how to get into the Vatican for free. Shh!

More posts coming soon, I promise!

More "Bacon Explosion" Types of Recipes

2009-02-15T22:37:00.000-08:00

The "Bacon Explosion" is the recipe of the moment, and it's no wonder why. 2 pounds of bacon, weaved together to form a "mat," wrapped around 2 pounds of Italian sausage and grilled, creating a 5000-calorie, 500-grams-of-fat loaf of delicious meat. I haven't tried one yet but I'd like to. In the meantime, I've dreamed up a few other recipes that creatively use bacon to cram more fat into our diets...

BACON STRAW: STEP 1: Roll 1 strip of bacon length-wise, into a narrow tube. STEP 2: Cook until crisp, forming a “bacon straw.” STEP 3: Use bacon straw to drink 1 cup of melted butter. Yum! STEP 4: Eat straw.

JAMBACON: STEP 1: Grill 1 pound of bacon. STEP 2: Freeze bacon overnight. STEP 3: Put frozen bacon, 1/2 cup Crisco, and 1 banana* into blender. STEP 4: Enjoy your bacon smoothie. (*Banana is optional.)

PIG IN A BLANKET: STEP 1: Using “Bacon Explosion” technique, weave 40 pounds of bacon into 80-inch x 90-inch mat. STEP 2: Cook until crisp. STEP 3: Go to sleep, using your new bacon blanket to absorb fat directly through your skin. STEP 4: Wake up to find yourself being eaten alive by inventors of “Bacon Explosion.”

Blogcrastination Part 1: Mary's Birthday!

2009-01-14T13:54:00.000-08:00

I have decided that I am a terrible blogger. So many things have happened recently and I haven't blogged about any of them! It's a good thing I don't have a twitter feed...no one would bother subscribing to it because I'd never have anything new to say.

So, in the interest of catching all 3 of my "followers" up on what's been going on recently, I've decided to update the blog with a bunch of new entries, all post-dated. In other words, these are all entries as I would've liked to have written them at the time they happened...except that they really didn't. So don't feel bad if you say to yourself, "I don't remember reading any of this crap!" Because you didn't.

Item #1 (moving backwards thru time): Mary's birthday was a couple of days ago. She's now 26! Yay! She made herself this gorgeous cake.

Did I mention how good she is with her hands? Apparently all of her med school profs say she should be a surgeon. Nevertheless, she's going into ER, which is (I'm told) a slightly better lifestyle. Plus if you're ever drunk and fall down, there's a pretty good chance you will see her in the hospital when you go to get your stitches.

Blocrastination Part 2: We went skiing

2009-01-05T14:04:00.000-08:00

We went skiing with Mary's cousin Arthur and his g/f Melody. Big thanks to Cousin Steven for lending us his tricked-out Yukon to get us up there. Anyway, the drive up to Snow Summit is only supposed to take like 2.5 hours from LA, but it took us 5 hours to get there! Since the last time I drove up there with my friend Stacey, "driving a minivan full of kids up to Lake Arrowhead to pull over on the side of the road and play in the snow" has apparently become a big pasttime among Angelenos. Because once we actually got into Big Bear Lake, the traffic was fine!

Here's a pic of me and Mary taking a break. I'm having a beer, she's having a hot cocoa.

Now here's how it REALLY went down.

Brogcrastiination Part 3: Christmas

2008-12-26T14:19:00.000-08:00

Hey! We just got back from San Diego, where my mom's side of the family went for our annual Christmas reunion. The highlight of our trip: Going to the San Diego Zoo, which I've actually been to like 3 times in the past 3 years. That place is pretty awesome. They have lots of monkeys there. I really love looking at monkeys.... or technically "apes," if you really want to be nitpicky.

We also lucked-out and got to feed giraffes. Giraffes have surprisingly huge heads, which you can't really tell most of the time because their heads are way up high in the air, and everything looks tiny when it's 20 feet above you.

Happy Belated Halloween!

2008-11-10T17:16:00.001-08:00

This news is way overdue. I have no excuses, except that it's been a busy past 10 days. There was a presidential election to keep track of, notes to address on my pilot, Halloween costumes to be made...Oh, and speaking of Halloween, here's what Mary and I did:

Mary and I both love Halloween. So we made Nintendo Wii controller costumes. It's actually an idea I came up with for LAST Halloween, but I was in China so I kinda missed it. Anyway, we both like dressing up and playing video games, so this was a pretty good two-person costume. I was a Wii-mote and she was the Nunchuk.

We got together with some friends and walked up to Santa Monica Blvd, where the annual West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval/Parade was going on. This year, Halloween fell on a Friday, so it was even more crowded than usual. As expected, there were lots of people in awesome costumes everywhere, so we took photos with some of them.

Here's Bert & Ernie, this was probably Mary's favorite pair of folks this year. Two years ago she got almost as excited when she saw Colonel Sanders. The walk down Santa Monica was actually slow going because Mary and I got stopped for photos a bunch of times. Most people understood what we were, although some folks just stared at us for a long time and then asked, "What are you guys? Ipods?" (Not to stereotype, but those were mostly people who were pushing 40.)

Oh, and then on the way back I proposed to Mary.

She said yes! Look how happy and red-faced she is. She couldn't believe that I asked her to marry me while we were both wearing bulky pieces of cardboard and she had a frisbee on her head. But look how happy she is anyway!

Wow, I finally did it. Hard to believe, I know. Sorry it took so long for the news and pictures to be posted. It really was a busy week, and my parents were out of the country, so it took a little while to get the information out to family.

Yay!

WE WON!!!

2008-11-04T23:32:00.001-08:00

I can't even begin to express how overjoyed I am today. When the networks finally called it for Obama, I could hardly believe it. Somehow, being a progressive Democrat, I've gotten used to the idea that in the end, we always lose. But we didn't! We WON! It took eight years, but we finally won! No more threatening to move to Canada, people. It's our country, and it's up to us to make everything better. Whatever needs to be done from here on out, let's work together and make it happen.

Congratulations, everybody!

Oh, and there is other news too, but I've been too busy to blog about that. More later, I promise.

"House" Libs

2008-08-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

I love the show "House." But the repetitiveness is starting to get to me. So I thought I'd write a my own little "Mad Libs" for an episode of "House" using the twelve basic scenes that are in every single episode of the show. All you have to do is fill in the blanks and you've created your very own episode! Feel free to use any of my suggestions (in parentheses) or substitute your own ideas.

Scene 1: A seemingly healthy person is working in the office or relaxing at home. Without warning, this person suddenly _______ (collapses / has a seizure / goes blind / bleeds out of an unexpected orifice).

Scene 2: Dr. Cuddy asks House to diagnose a patient with strange symptoms. House refuses, until Dr. Cuddy reveals a seemingly mundane detail about the patient's _________ (age / gender / weight / religion / taste in music / favorite Smurf) that piques House's interest.

Scene 3: House's team of young, attractive doctors shout out a bunch of things that House writes on a board. House yells at his team for ________ (being stupid / being idiots / being stupid idiots / having intellects inferior to his own). House prescribes a broad spectrum of medical tests that would likely cost upwards of one million dollars.

Scene 4: The young, attractive doctors ignore the fact that they have medical degrees and perform duties that would normally be conducted by _______ (a nurse / a laboratory technician / a pathologist / a candy-striper) while complaining about House's intolerable personality.

Scene 5: All of the tests ordered by House come back negative. The young, attractive doctors tell House that his diagnosis was wrong, but House remains ________ (adamant / stubborn / undeterred / addicted to drugs). House instructs his team to break into the patient's home and look for clues.

Scene 6: The young, attractive doctors grudgingly break into the patient's house without ________ (asking for permission / obtaining a key / disarming the security system / getting shot in the head while breaking and entering) and look for clues, all while complaining about House's intolerable personality.

Scene 7: Finding nothing helpful in the patient's home, House orders more extremely expensive tests. As the young, attractive doctors ________ (draw blood / perform a spinal tap / conduct an MRI / make the patient run on a treadmill even though he has no legs) the patient suddenly has a heart attack. Everyone panics. Cut to commercial.

Scene 8: The patient, amazingly, has survived the heart attack that came out of nowhere and is never mentioned again, as if it only existed as a means to drum up tension leading into the commercial. House orders ________ (five more tests / twenty-five more tests / two hundred and fifty new tests, including ones already performed and some that haven't been invented yet). The patient's unseen medical bill now rivals the GDP of most Central American nations.

Scene 9: Somebody suggests that the patient has cancer. House consults his friend, the nondescript cancer doctor, who ________ (agrees / disagrees / has now appeared in the episode).

Scene 10: Somebody suggests that the patient has two diseases: Cancer, plus ________ (any disease so obscure it has not been seen since the 19th century).

Scene 11: House gives up and says that the patient is going to die. Sad music plays as _______ (the patient / Dr. Cuddy / the nondescript cancer doctor / the patient's dog) waxes philosophical about death and says something extremely trivial about his or her _______ (childhood / recent travels / local eatery / high school mascot / favorite brand of lip balm). Strangely, this turns out to be the one clue House needed to crack the case.

Scene 12: House diagnoses the patient with an easily treatable problem, something he was unable to do before because the patient's symptoms were masked or complicated by the patient's ________ (age / gender / weight / religion / favorite sexual position / resemblance to an actor who used to be on TV but now does guest spots that mostly involve lying in a hospital bed whilst looking ill). The patient is grateful to be alive, despite the fact that he or she now has a multi-billion dollar medical bill. Everyone around House marvels at what a brilliant diagnostician he is, in spite of his intolerable personality.

Wasn't that fun?

Re-Name the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

2008-07-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, affectionately known as "SLAC" to Stanford students, faculty, and alumni, is going to get renamed. Apparently the reason stems from a legal conundrum involving the Stanford trustees and the Department of Energy. DOE technically owns the linear accelerator, but is unable to copyright the existing name because "Stanford" is owned by Stanford University. So they're soliciting suggestions for the new name of the place, which can be submitted by anyone using this link.

As we all OBVIOUSLY know, a linear accelerator is a big, long tube that nerds use to shoot subatomic particles like protons and ions into each other, to see what happens when they smash together. (So far, the universe has not exploded due to their meddling, although there have been lawsuits filed by concerned citizens. But that's another story.) Keeping this in mind, I have submitted the following names:

- The Tiny Fast Things Place
- Zoom & Boom Room
- Hulk Smash
- Future Site of the Stanford Black Hole
- The Center for Someday Accidentally Bestowing Superpowers on a Normal Human Being

Maybe the last one can be adapted for the center's new slogan. Like, "The Tiny Fast Things Place: Dedicated to Someday Accidentally Bestowing Superpowers on a Normal Human Being."

Go ahead, submit your own.

The Other Daniel Hsia

2008-07-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

I'm 29. Not quite old...yet. The biggest difference between people my age and people a year younger than me is how much more people who are 28 rely on certain internets-related technology. My friends who are 29 don't sit around chatting on AIM all of the time; my friends who are 28 or younger are always asking me for my AIM id. Somehow, AIM must've come out, or at least become popular, right after we left high school. Also, my friends who are 29 might have Friendster or MySpace accounts, but almost none of us are on Facebook. My friends who are younger than me all seem to be on Facebook. Part of this is is because Facebook was originally restricted to people who were in college at the time--you had to have an active ".edu" email address to sign up. I had graduated from college already and my email address was retired. A couple of years ago Facebook became universal, so anybody can register for an account. Which brings me to my point...

SOME OTHER GUY NAMED DANIEL HSIA ALREADY TOOK MY USERNAME. Balls. Yes, I know that this happens all of the time if your name is "John Smith" or "Mike Jackson" or "Grace Kim," but for crying out loud, my name is Daniel Hsia. It's not that common. I actually take some pride in the fact that if somebody Googles me, they'll find something related to me--my website, my video, my IMDB credits. But now I can't even get on Facebook under my own name. And apparently that's where all the cool people hang out these days. I guess that means no Facebook for me.

Balls.

Celebrity Sightings

2008-07-14T12:20:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles is the place where you're supposed to see stars all of the time, but if you're like me and you're too cheap to pay $20 to get into a swanky Hollywood nightclub you can go months without seeing any celebrities. For some reason, though, I've had a bunch of celebrity sightings in the past few weeks. First, I saw Tim Allen on my way out of a meeting on the Disney lot. That may not actually count, because I was on studio property and he was probably there for something work-related.

Then a few days later I saw Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen at the Century City shopping mall food court.

I wouldn't recognize most baseball managers, but luckily for me Ozzie is frequently on SportsCenter for the extremely...er...passionate words he uses to describe his team and players. He was eating sushi with a couple of other guys, I walked by and did a double-take, and kept looking behind me to see if it was really him. I think I spooked him, because Ozzie started staring back at me after a little while. Later, I looked up the Dodgers' schedule and sure enough, the Sox were playing them that night.

Then a few days after that, I was flying out to Boston to see my sister, and once I'm on the plane I notice actor Tony Denison from "The Closer" walking down the aisle.

Denison's not exactly the most recognizable TV actor in the world, so I eyed him for a while trying to figure out if it was him, or just another nondescript guy wearing a t-shirt that said "The Closer" on it. Distracted, I hardly noticed one of his co-stars from the show, G.W. Bailey, had just sat down right next to me.

G.W. plays Lt. Provenza on "The Closer," but he's probably more famous for playing Capt. Harris in the "Police Academy" movies. I talked with him a little bit and mentioned that I was a fan of the show. Now, here's where I get all ham-fisted when talking to actors whose work I admire: I always feel like I have to say, "I'm a writer," to somehow qualify my statement and let them know that I'm not just some fan. Which probably only made my conversation more awkward than it already was: G.W. wound up changing seats so he could sit next to Denison. Oh well, at least I had extra legroom.

John Adams

2008-03-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I recorded the first two episodes of the HBO miniseries "John Adams," and I'm happy to report that it's awesome. Watching it, I get filled with that sort of awe I get when I go to places like Independence Hall in Philadelphia and realize I'm standing in the room that every one of the founding fathers stood in. These guys were geniuses, especially compared to the guy who lives in the White House right now.

The only weak point of the show, I'd say, is the way history is sometimes wedged in the way you'd expect it to be done in a cheesy episode of Quantum Leap. Example: a new character enters a scene spouting all kinds of cleverness, and after a few lines of back-and-forth, John Adams says something like, "Good to see you... BENJAMIN FRANKLIN!" Or, after a lengthy discussion with Thomas Jefferson over the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin twirls around in his seat and says, "Say, Thomas Jefferson, I sure am impressed that you INVENTED THE SWIVEL CHAIR!" But I understand why they did it that way.

By the way, I think if I were ever locked in a room with Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain... I'd probably hang myself.

LA Bike Tour

2008-03-06T20:18:00.001-08:00

I did it! I convinced Mary to do the LA Bike Tour with me this past Sunday, March 2. The Bike Tour takes place the same morning as the LA Marathon, since they close a few streets down anyway. This is us at the starting line, a few minutes before the ride.

Yes, it's dark outside. That's because the bike ride started at friggin' 5:45 in the morning! I woke up at 3:00AM to get the bikes loaded and to pick Mary up at her place. This was almost as bad as getting up at 3:15AM a few months ago to run the Disneyland 1/2 Marathon. At least biking 23 miles is easier than running...just about any distance at that hour of the day. Mary did really well, I was pleasantly surprised. I think she was a little apprehensive at first riding in a field of 15000 cyclists (according to whoever was on the bullhorn at the start of the ride) but by the end she was weaving around every slowpoke in her way. I was very proud of her.

And for those of you who know about my current physical state, my knee was just fine. It seems that the acupuncturist has done wonders for me that neither my doctors nor my physical therapists were able to perform, and hopefully I'll be back to running and playing ball soon.

Riding bikes is fun! Everybody should do it.

China Report - Part 2 (finally)

2008-02-19T12:31:00.001-08:00

Okay, it's been a few months since I posted here. A lot was happening, with the writer's strike and the holidays and all that. Now I finally have some spare time on my hands so here's PART TWO of my China trip...Shanghai!

Beijing is the political capital of China, but Shanghai is the center of commerce, trade, fashion, and everything else that can be perceived as "modern." It's evident from the moment you get off the plane and take the Mag-Lev train into the city. How fast does this train go? 431 kilometers per hour. That's 267 miles per hour. And they even put a handy-dandy speedometer up at the end of the train to prove it.

There are sort of two sides to Shanghai, the district west of the river and the district east of the river. The eastern district (Pudong) is less-developed, and therefore has the bulk of the new skyscrapers that are popping out all over the place. This would be the neighborhood where Tom Cruise jumped off a building in Mission Impossible 3. Here's a picture of the tallest building in Shanghai, and the soon-to-be-completed even taller building in Shanghai.

Shanghai was the reason I went to China, actually. My goal was to visit and see what life was like there, especially for American expats living and working there. My first day there I managed to meet up with some very friendly young Americans who were willing to answer my questions, put me in touch with other expats, and invite me out to bars where all of the expats hang out.

The bar scene in Shanghai is pretty lively, and the drinks are expensive by Chinese standards. In Beijing a draft beer costs somewhere between 50 cents and a dollar. In Shanghai, a draft beer costs close to 10 dollars. It's only that expensive at the expat bars where foreigners are willing to pay that much for their beer. Someone took me to an average Chinese hangout and the beers were once again the usual price.

Over the course of two weeks I got to see pretty much every corner of the city. But my biggest thrill was probably meeting NPR reporter Scott Tong, the Shanghai correspondent for the show Marketplace, who was kind enough to sit down with me when I arrived. We talked for a long time, and he helped me find a bunch of other really interesting people to talk to. And at the end of our talk he even did his radio "sign-off" for me:

Yes, it's true, I'm a huge nerd for listening to NPR all the time.

China Report - Part 1: Beijing

2007-11-13T19:39:00.000-08:00

I'm finally back from my month-long trip to China. Actually, I got back last week but hadn't had time to update this blog yet because I was busy getting re-settled. What's worse, I couldn't do any actual blogging while I was IN China because certain websites, including Blogger, are blocked over there.

Fortunately, I did take plenty of pictures while I was over there, and for anyone who is curious, I used my Picasaweb as my substitute photo-blog during my trip. I flew from LA to Beijing, where I met up in the early morning hours with Vance, and the two of us had fun hanging out in Beijing doing things like singing karaoke, eating dumplings, and checking out the construction of the 2008 Beijing Olympics stadium.

I spent about a week in Beijing seeing the sights, tasting the food, drinking the beer, getting custom-tailored shirts made for myself, and snapping pictures of city life in China, like this cute kid riding on the back of a bicycle. After hanging out in China for a while, you really start to get the sense that we're coddling our kids too much here in the U.S. I mean, nobody has a helmet in this picture, and they're all fine.

I didn't know this at the time, but even though Beijing is one of the most developed cities in China, it's still home to plenty of historically significant sites, architecture, and art. Shanghai may be the commercial center of China, but nowhere in Shanghai do you find enormous, well-maintained parks that contain original structures built hundreds of years ago, with maybe a fresh coat of paint newly applied. Here's a detail photo of an outdoor pagoda at Jingshan Park, which overlooks the Forbidden City. Literally every inch of this thing is marvelously painted.

And since I was in China, I took the opportunity to try some awful Chinese snacks, including Lay's Braised Pork Ribs Flavor potato chips...

...as well as Mirinda Mango Delight Sorbet soft drink.

Verdict: The chips were actually OK, a big salty, but they DID taste strangely like braised pork ribs. The soda was awful...I had to eat an extra handful of chips to wash it down.

I spent a little less than a week in Beijing before heading off to Shanghai, the main focus of my trip. More on Shanghai in the next installment. Stay tuned!

I almost biked 150 miles

2007-10-02T07:27:00.001-07:00

This past weekend I participated in the "Waves to Wine" MS 150 Bike tour. It's a 150-mile bike ride over two days to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis society. My friends Dunagan and Aden from Stanford have a team called "WeFightMS.com" that rides these tours routinely. I decided to join them on this one because it's a good cause, and because it started in SF which meant a bunch of my college friends would be participating as well. Thing is, I signed up only a couple of weeks beforehand, which could be one of the reasons I only made it about 120 miles. The first day was great, but my knee was getting sore by the end of it. The second day I had to bow out because I was worried about suffering some kind of injury. I was a little disappointed not to finish, but at the same time I had a great experience I at least made it pretty close.

Here's a shot I took of me and Jeff biking across the Golden Gate Bridge shortly after dawn on Saturday. Not an easy thing to do, operate a camera and bike at the same time!

Here's an awesome shot of Maren as we arrived in wine country. Maren and I biked together for most of the way, she's pretty intense and has great stamina. Plus she taught me a thing or two about "drafting" which was pretty awesome, especially since it saved me some energy when my knee started to bug me.

And finally, this is what my hair looks like after I've been wearing a bike helmet and sweating. I'm pretty sure this only happens to Asians because our hair extends radially outward from our heads.

Big thanks to everyone who contributed to my fundraising goal. I managed to raise $600 for my ride! Together we contributed to a good cause.

Disneyland Half-Marathon

2007-09-05T22:37:00.001-07:00

I ran my first ever half-marathon on Monday! It was the Disneyland Half-Marathon, in Anaheim. Our family friend Dr. Young, who runs marathons all of the time, signed me up for it back in January and I started seriously training for it a few months ago. I've never been much of a runner but I was interested in the challenge of doing something like this, so I said yes.

So, the details...I finished in 2 hrs, 1 minute, 16 seconds. Over 13.1 miles that comes down to a little more than 9 minutes per mile, which is a little slower than I was hoping for, but the field was really crowded (18,000 runners, I'm told), we were in the middle of a record heat wave, and I'd never actually run a full 13 miles before the race because my knee started bugging me a couple of weeks ago and I decided to rest it. I almost ran the whole thing, I only walked about half a mile around Mile 11 because I was seriously exhausted.

The coolest parts of the race were running through Disneyland and California Adventure because the park was empty and all of the characters were out on the course waving to people, and getting to run down the right field and left field line at Angels Stadium. It's too bad I didn't have a running buddy with a camera, it would've been cool to get some good photos along the course.

I'd have to say that the worst part of running a half-marathon, something I didn't even consider until a few days beforehand, was that I'd have to wake up at 3:00AM to stretch out, get ready, and get to the race that started at 6:00AM. Mary and my dad were rock stars for waking up early with me and driving me out to the course to cheer me on. The picture above is shortly after the end of the race, after I'd taken off my number, changed my shirt and wrung out my sweaty hat. I'm sure there's a picture of me somewhere where I'm completely wet.

Immediately after crossing the finish line, I said to myself, "Never again. This is crazy and a terrible idea." But within a minute that went away and I definitely felt pretty good about finishing an actual half-marathon. The huge medal helped. Thing is, two days later, it feels kind of odd not to have the race looming over me anymore. I guess I got used to the idea of something on the horizon that I'd have to be ready for. I have to find something else ridiculous to do now.

My episode of "Psych" is Friday, August 17!

2007-08-16T16:23:00.000-07:00

Hey, everybody, be sure to watch my episode of "Psych" this Friday August 17at 10:00PM on USA. Since you will probably be out PARTYING, you can try to watch it whenever it re-runs over the weekend and whatnot.

In case you don't know, the show is about a guy named Shawn (played by James Roday, above, white) who is pretending to be "psychic" in order to help the police solve crimes. His buddy Gus (played by Dule Hill, above, black) plays the straight man who reluctantly goes along with this little ruse. My episode involves a role-reversal in which Shawn has to help Gus pretend to be psychic for the benefit of Gus' visiting Uncle Burton (played by John Amos of "Good Times" fame). It's pretty funny. Hopefully somebody will e-mail me later and tell me how it went, because I'll probably be busy watching "High School Musical 2" on Disney Channel.

I made a new short

2007-08-14T22:10:00.000-07:00

After watching "The Bourne Supremacy" on cable and "The Bourne Ultimatum" in the theater, I thought to myself, "Wow, it must really suck to have Jason Bourne as a friend." So I wrote a three-minute scene and got together with some people to make a new short. Shot and edited it in about 3 days, and now it's up on YouTube and FunnyOrDie, or you can just watch it right here and rate it.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out (there's always something that could be done better) but I was kind of bummed to find out that Jimmy Kimmel did a "Bourne" spoof a week ago, and they had the added benefit of having Matt Damon in it. Oh well.

I ran 100 miles!

2007-07-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

No, not all at once. Although that would be pretty impressive. And I'd probably be dead from exhaustion.

According to my Nike Plus thingy, I logged 100 miles as of a couple of weeks ago. Although I ran a bunch in Canada and other places when I didn't bring the iPod attachment with me because I didn't want to lose it, so I probably hit 100 miles WAY before, right? Right.

Only 7 weeks till the Disneyland Half Marathon. I'm a little nervous.

Workplace Greetings

2007-07-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

I just had the following workplace interaction with a guy who we will call Johnny (because that's his name). We were walking past one another, and here's what happened:

Me: Hey, Johnny, what's up?

Johnny: Pretty good. Yourself?

Me: Not much.

We were definitely not listening to each other at all. The weird thing is, I was kind of aware of what was happening as the words "Not much" escaped my lips, but I was powerless to stop it. The end result is, I'm now dedicating WAY more brain power to this 2-second encounter than I would've had we actually answered each other's greetings correctly.

From Sunny...to Not So Sunny

2007-06-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

The weather here in Vancouver was great for the first few days I was here. I spent most of the weekend running through Stanley Park, and on Sunday I rented a bike and rode the whole way around 3 times, even took a few pictures on the way. Here's a view of the Lion's Gate Bridge from a path that crosses over the road.

Monday we were shooting a bunch of exteriors for the show at White Rock, a beach community south of Vancouver, and just when we needed it to be as sunny as it was on the weekend, the rain came in. Stupid weather! Weird thing about shooting film is, as long as it's only raining lightly you keep on shooting, but the actors have to act like it's not raining on them. The rain doesn't usually show up on camera until it starts getting really heavy.

Anyway, we got to shoot some fun stuff today on the process trailer, which is the rig you tow the car on so that your actors can perform a scene without having to worry about crashing the car.

I also changed hotel rooms today...the last one I was in had a double bed, and I was having trouble sleeping in the tiny thing. Tonight I can finally sleep comfortably. And I have a nicer view, too.

Vancouver, BC

2007-06-02T22:34:00.000-07:00

You know how in movies, when a character opens a refrigerator and we're looking out at him from the point of view of the food? This is what you don't get to see:

The set designer has to buy a fridge that looks vaguely like the actual fridge you see him opening from the outside and rips the back off of it, so you can stick the camera behind it and just let your star open the fridge and pretend there isn't a hole in the back of his Maytag.

We've been in production for 2 days on my episode, and so far things are going well. Had to do some very fast rewriting when one of our actors suffered a slight injury and wasn't available to work the next day, but that's what being around is all about. Gotta adapt to any situation!

Had a day off today, so I went for a run out at Stanley Park, a fantastic park on the northern edge of the city. The whole loop is about 10 kilometers, but I only did about half of it, while stopping to take some pictures along the way. There were Canadians everywhere running, walking, biking, rollerblading, and doing all sorts of things to take advantage of the nice weather...makes me regret not doing more outdoorsy stuff living in California.

What I ate today:

1) A burrito. A Canadian burrito. Not surprisingly, it sucked. Decision=poor.

2) A "Japa-Dog." Supposedly "world-famous."

It's a hot dog stand run by a Japanese guy, but they give it a Japanese treatment. Above is my "Teri-Mayo Dog," a grilled all-beef frank with teriyaki sauce, Japanese mayo (the Japanese LOVE mayonaise), grilled onions and seaweed. It was pretty tasty, but a little over-the-top. There's 3 different kinds of salty happening in there and I needed a huge glass of water afterward. Satisfation level=high.

Still in the mood for Japanese food, I stopped by an Izaka-ya restaurant called "Guu." Read about it on Chowhound.com and when I walked by, it was all Japanese people in there, so I figured it must be good. Had a tasty little salad with sliced beef, mixed greens, and garlic chips, and some of the most delicious prawns I've had in a while. Also had a tasty cocktail that had green tea, milk, and Kahlua in it. Kind of a White Russian, but I guess more of a Green Japanese.

Gonna try to rent a bike tomorrow and do some riding, and some work on my own stuff. Hopefully the weather holds out for a little while longer. It would be nice if Mary was here to go biking or running with me, but she's in Boston visiting her sister and her new niece!

Canada is way hip

2007-06-01T05:02:00.001-07:00

I am in Vancouver. I'm in town because "Psych" shoots here and my episode is in production this week. I stayed the first night in the Opus hotel, the most bizarre, hip-for-the-sake-of-being-hip hotel I've ever stayed in. I supposed I shouldn't have been surprised, given that this stool was the first thing I saw upon entering the hotel.

I stared at it for a while, trying to figure out why anyone would want to sit on such a narrow seat. The receptionist at the check-in desk saw the curious look on my face and explained, "It's a sideways stool. You sit on it sideways and put your arm on the armrest." Obviously.

Thing got progressively weirder as I went up to the room. It's a small hotel with only two elevators, one called "Red" because it only has red lights in it, and one called "Blue" because it only has blue lights in it. They also play techno music incessantly. The overall effect is that riding up the elevator feels like you're in the world's tiniest dance club. All they need to do now is install a go-go dancer who can double as an elevator operator.

Here's what I saw when I got into my room:

That's a flat-screen on the wall, a tray of little snacks on the table, and a little stereo...softly blasting techno music. Yes, the club atmosphere never stops around here. As I was waiting to go out to dinner, I explored the mini-fridge and "amenities" drawer and found this "amenities menu."

See what it says under "intimacy kit"? That's right, "Oxygen Usage." There's a freaking oxygen canister in my bathroom that you can take hits off of for fifteen bucks. Presumably because there's a shortage of oxygen in the air, and... oh wait, I'm in Canada. There's PLENTY OF OXYGEN up here.

In all, the Opus is a pretty cool hotel. I admit it, I'm not as cool as the Opus.

Ah, good old V.C. FilmFest

2007-05-07T13:34:00.000-07:00

The Visual Communications Film Festival started last Thursday...V.C. FilmFest is the annual Los Angeles Asian American film and video festival and it's where I first showed a short in a festival way back in 2002. My short was "How To Do The Asian Squat" and it got me a lot of attention. The folks at V.C. did a lot to support and encourage me to keep making funny shorts, and they're partly responsible for me having something resembling a career in television writing. End result is, I'm always excited to go out and support whatever events they have going on, and I was pretty pumped to go to opening night last Thursday.

Justin Lin ("Better Luck Tomorrow," "Tokyo Drift") opened the fest with his new indy mockumentary "Finishing The Game," about what went into the casting process for Bruce Lee's body double after he died during filming of "Game of Death." Really funny film, and a great premise for a story. Ron Jeremy made a cameo appearance in the movie, and surprisingly he showed up for the premiere. Mary managed to get a very low-res photo with him with my cell phone in the lobby:

I always wanted to have my picture taken with a porn star. I just never expected that it would be a dude.

Coachella!

2007-05-01T23:41:00.000-07:00

Went to Coachella this past weekend. I'd like to claim that I went because I'm cool and had been planning on going for MONTHS, but that wouldn't be true. My friend Brandon called me on Saturday saying he had a ticket for Sunday, a free day pass from his friend who is in the band Tapes and Tapes. It was definitely an experience.

Started the day out with Mika on the main stage. I've heard a couple of Mika's songs and wasn't sure if I'd really dig his set, but it turned out to be one of the better performances of the day. That guy has some LUNGS on him, and he really knows how to rock a crowd. Plus, his band was pretty awesome, including a girl on drums who tore some shit up. I have no idea who she was, but she was hardcore.

Later in the day, caught some Lupe Fiasco, Fair to Midland (booooo!), Tapes & Tapes, The Roots, and Kaiser Chiefs. The Roots have been one of my favorite bands since college and they put on a pretty awesome show. But since it was a festival and they had a short set, they only played about 4 of their own songs and just kind of jammed the rest of the time. The last time I saw them they played all of their album stuff first, left the stage, then jammed for an hour as an encore. I think I would've preferred seeing them doing a solo show, although Questlove was awesome as usual, and they have a new guitarist/vocalist named Kirk Douglas (sp?) who blew my mind. He sings like Cee-Lo and plays like Slash [revised as per Stacey's comment]...during one of his solos he threw the guitar up on his shoulder like a bazooka and still managed to keep playing. Crazy.

Did I mention that it was about 95 degrees the whole time we were there? Coachella happens in Indio, which is in the middle of the desert. I drank maybe 3 gallons of water, sweated most of it out and only peed once. Lots of half-naked/underdressed people out there. I think I've seen my fill of nakedness for a while.

Big thanks to Brandon for getting the tickets! My friendship with him FINALLY pays off. And also big thanks to Stacey and Michael, who drove me home so I didn't have to sleep in the parking lot.

Here's Brandon looking thoughtful in the shade of the VIP area.

And Stacey, looking cool in her rockstar sunglasses.

28 Years Ago...

2007-03-21T23:55:00.000-07:00

Can you believe I was born 28 years ago today? I've been around a long time, and I've hardly accomplished anything so far. Although I wasn't really capable of much for the first few years...and I was in school for about 14 years...and I took a lot of naps...so really, it's more like I've been an able-bodied person for a total of about 3 1/2 years now.

Mary made me this gorgeous cake. She's a pretty talented baker and cake decorator. It was DELICIOUS. I felt kind of bad because I had a cold for a few days last week, and she seems to have come down with it today. Didn't prevent her from making this two-layer chocolate cake with blueberries, mangoes, peaches, and Cool Whip frosting.

I also got birthday cookies from my agent for the first time, delivered to the "Psych" office. I guess this means that I've finally made it! Either that, or this is the first year that I've been bringing money into the agency during the month of March. (Most network shows only retain writers from June through February, if you're lucky enough to do a full season.)

Lots of groups of close-knit friends seem to have a big tradition of throwing each other elaborate birthday parties with lots of cards and presents. With my group of friends from college, our tradition seems to consist primarily of FORGETTING each others' birthdays. We're men, what do you expect? But I feel like we're all trying harder to stay on top of these things. I think I got a couple of "Happy Birthday"s from people this year, which is way better than usual. Now the ball's in my court again. Damn.

Andy Barker, PI

2007-03-13T22:35:00.000-07:00

I'm going to keep this short because I'm busy writing my episode of "Psych" right now, but I wanted to let the five of you who read this blog know that "Andy Barker, PI," the show I was writing for last year, premieres this Thursday at 9:30 on NBC! I had a blast working on this show, and it's been getting some pretty favorable reviews. The New York Times did a feature article on it (the story being that Conan O'Brien is re-teaming with sidekick Andy Richter and head writer Jonathan Groff) and the article even quotes one of the jokes I wrote for the show. I won't bother you with which joke it was, because calling too much attention to it will only make it seem totally unfunny when you actually see it.

It's best if you actually watch the show on NBC Thursdays, but you can also catch all of the episodes on NBC.com anytime you want.

That is all.

It helps to be on time for a race

2007-03-09T14:10:00.000-08:00

So after a year of trying to convince Mary to run a 5K with me, we finally ran the 5K on LA Marathon Sunday. And we both got little tiny medals to show for it!

It's seriously a tiny medal. But I guess that's all you get for running a mere 3.1 miles on a day when there are thousands of people running 26.2 miles. We're actually lucky that we even got to run the race, considering that we didn't get to the starting line on time. We left for downtown at 6:30AM for a 7:30 race, but because of all the street closures there was only one way to get to the convention center and the exit ramp was backed up like crazy. We sat in the same place for 30 minutes, rushed to park, and didn't get to the starting line until everybody else had already gone. Then we had to run around the huge crowd of people who were walking...I was seeing some of the race-runners coming back by the time I was into the first turn.

On top of that, we couldn't find the actual starting line because they'd taken down the "START" banner by the time we got there. While walking around trying to figure out where the actual start of the race was, I must've stepped on the actual starting line and activated the race chip on my shoe, because I checked my time online after we got home and it was something like 40 minutes. 40 minutes! I ran a practice 5K the week before in 25 minutes. So anybody who happens to look up my name on the race results website is going to think I'm a huge slowpoke. The numbers are lying, I swear!

After the race we milled around, snacking on free bananas and Emerald Nuts (they sponsored the 5K) until the first wheelchair marathoners and the top marathon runners went by. Those Kenyans are damn fast. Good inspiration for my half-marathon coming up in September.

We Will Pretend to Rock You

2007-01-28T15:18:00.000-08:00

I had picked up a copy of The Onion at the gym on Friday morning, and that evening I happened to be browsing through the calendar of local events in my area. There were, it seems, dozens of happenings in Los Angeles on Saturday, January 27, with the items organized into handy categories such as “MUSIC,” “COMEDY,” and “FILM.” Down at the very bottom of this list, printed in 6-point font under its own heading of “MISC” (perhaps because including “ELLANEOUS” would’ve attracted too much attention to it) was this:

I knew where I was going to be on Saturday at eleven o’clock.

Some backstory:

Approximately one year ago, I was visiting my friend Hoodie in San Francisco when our mutual friend J.C. walked in wearing a t-shirt that read, simply, "Guitar Hero." J.C. is a game designer at a very well-known video game company, and even though his company didn’t create this particular title, when I asked him what "Guitar Hero" was, he looked me straight in the eye and replied, "It's probably the most awesome video game ever made."

J.C. went on to explain to me how it worked: You, the player, are the guitarist in an up-and-coming rock band, and you play covers of famous rock songs, advancing your career and your band's reputation with every song you master. But instead of a standard video game controller, the game comes with a controller shaped like a small electric guitar, with buttons on the fret board and a strum bar where the strings should be. In other words, the is to play guitar by playing a fake guitar.

I nodded and smiled, intrigued but not exactly bursting at the seams to try the game out. Yes, I play video games, but only casually. This sounded exactly like the kind of thing that could get me irrevocably categorized as a “video game geek.”

A month later, I was walking through Best Buy with my girlfriend, Mary, when I noticed a video game with a guitar controller on display. This, I told her, must be that game that J.C. had mentioned to me, and I decided to try it out, just for fun. I selected the first song on the list, “I Love Rock & Roll” by Joan Jett and the Heartbreakers. About four bars into the song, I realized that I wasn’t standing in a store aisle pressing different colored buttons on a fake plastic guitar—I was rocking out. I turned to Mary and said, “I’m buying this game.”

“Guitar Hero” is equal parts “Dance Dance Revolution” and drunken karaoke. The former comparison is plainly obvious in the way your musical cues scroll down the screen, requiring you to hit the right note at the right time in order to beat the song and advance to the next round. The latter truth only comes to light when you play the game with someone who loves rock but has never played an instrument before. Just as karaoke offers everyone the opportunity to be a singing sensation, “Guitar Hero” allows everyone the chance to be a rock star. Something happens to ordinary folk who pick up the guitar and find themselves shredding to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Megadeth, Franz Ferdinand, Pantera. They tap their feet, they sway their bodies, they move the guitar up and down. But none of this compares to their faces. Their faces twist and contort into expressions that are a mixture of pain, concentration, anguish, and ecstasy, silent, passionate expressions that tell us what mere words never could: that these people have shed their everyday personas and become, briefly, fleetingly, rock gods.

I called my friend Brandon the day of the tournament and told him what we would be doing that evening. He came over that afternoon to practice with me. I had just purchased “Guitar Hero II,” which, aside from having a whole list of songs we might need to know for the competition, has a new two-player mode where you and a partner can cooperate on a song, playing lead guitar, rhythm guitar, or bass side-by-side. We decided that we should compete as a team, since we were both a little rusty and, we reasoned, anyone who showed up at this event would probably kick our asses in the solo competition.

The tournament was held at the Improv Olympic in Hollywood, an improvisational comedy theater. My guess is that the event organizers were members of the troupe, since it requires a certain sense of humor to hold a “Guitar Hero” tournament, but it’s just as likely that no other theater in town would agree to host a competition as juvenile as this. There were a few dozen people in the audience, and it only took thirty seconds for Brandon and I to realize that all of the competitors were much, much better than us. When we were called up for our turn, we climbed up onto the stage and elected to play “Cherry Pie” by Warrant—I played lead, Brandon was on bass. It was as glorious and fun as I imagined, although we weren’t great by any means. I’d chalk it up to nerves. It’s one thing to rock out in your own apartment, it’s another thing to rock out on stage, in front of a bunch of people you’ve never met.

Surprisingly, we won the duet competition. There had only been one other duet on the sign-up sheet, and that team left before they were called up. (Perhaps we intimidated them with our rock abilities?) The organizers randomly selected two solo competitors to play against us, but one guy had never played the bass part on Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” before and they failed the song. At the end of the evening Brandon and I walked up to the stage to accept our prize: a $25 iTunes gift card. The night was a resounding success. Granted, neither of us would’ve placed anywhere in the solo competition, and our victory came about mostly because of a lack of opponents. But we’d managed to do what we came to do: We had transformed ourselves, for one evening, into rock gods.

A brief clip of our performance at the tournament, shot by Mary. Check out the part at about 1:30 where I try to get the audience to clap along and wind up missing my next entrance.

Beep boop bop boop beep boop beep bop beep boop beep!

2007-01-24T23:27:00.000-08:00

That's the sound that the game board on "Jeopardy!" makes just before Tribek tells America what the categories will be for today. The reason I mention this is because I took the "Jeopardy!" contestant test today.

Reasons why I decided to take the test:

1) I'm a huge "Jeopardy!" fan, and I watch it with Mary pretty regularly.
2) Most of the time, I feel like I know the answers to the questions being asked (or rather, I know the questions to the naswers being stated).
3) In the past 6 months I've gotten to know THREE people who have been on Jeopardy, TWO of whom were 5-day champions. I'm jealous.

The test was 50 questions long, and they give you 15 seconds to answer each question. I think I did okay, not great...I probably got at least 10 questions wrong, and made educated guesses on a few of them. There were a couple of times when I KNEW that I knew the answer, but I couldn't summon the response to my brain in time. (The answers were "Farsi," and "Pinochet.") And there were two times when I entered a response, then right as the clock was ticking down to zero I suddenly realized that my answer was wrong, and that I knew what the right answer was. For some reason, I called the body of elected officials in ancient Rome "Parliament" instead of "Senate," and I had a brain-fart on the last question and said that Don McLean's number 1 hit was "Hotel California" instead of "American Pie." (I was thinking of Don Henley.)

In any case, I'm feeling a little like an idiot right now. I think I was smarter back in college, or at least right after college, when I had to use memory recall on a regular basis. I'm going to make a concerted effort not to get any dumber from now on. Better start reading books again...

See Daniel Run

2007-01-18T22:25:00.000-08:00

I am training for a half-marathon. A family friend who runs marathons regularly asked me if I was interested in doing the Disneyland Half-Marathon in September. A marathon is something I've been meaning to try. I stay in pretty good shape, I go to the gym regularly, play basketball, ride my bike up steep hills, and run a few miles a week. I figured I could do 13 miles, right? Well, I went for a 5-mile run this weekend, and this is what I looked like afterward:

And here's a breakdown of where it hurt:

- Quadriceps (sore)
- Left calf (knotted up from playing basketball 4 days earlier)
- Left heel (skin irritated from friction, but no blister)
- Right knee (some soreness detected around mile 4, but it went away)

Back in high school, after joining the basketball team and losing a lot of the weight I had as a kid, I decided to start taking better care of myself physically. In college that meant spending hours and hours in the weight room and regularly choking down Met-RX bars, then get drunk on the weekends and stumble around without my shirt. I still stumble around drunk and topless now and then, but the bulky-Dan days are definitely behind me, and I guess I've been looking for a new challenge. I've never really been a distance runner before, mostly because I get bored easily. The Disneyland run will at least provide plenty of things to look at since the run takes place in the actual park, and I do have about 9 months to be ready for it.

Mary's pledged to help me train for the run, either by biking or rollerblading with me when I go on long weekend runs. She also bought me that fancy new "Nike + Sport" adapter for the iPod Nano. You've probably seen commercials for this contraption. It's two pieces, a transmitter that you put in your Nike shoes, and a receiver that plugs into the bottom of your Nano. As you run, the iPod can tell you all sorts of info, like the distance you've run, your time, your pace, etc.

Here's where I start ranting about the Nike+Sport thing. Ready? It's pretty cool and I like it a lot. Effectively, your Nano is turned into a pedometer that talks to you and plays you songs. But like most gadgets that should make life easier or at least more enjoyable, the mere act of owning it is complicating my life in myriad other ways.

Headache #1: The entire system is supposed to be used ONLY with Nike shoes. Nike made a special model of running shoes with a hole cut out of the insole for you, Johnny Jogger, to stick their transmitter in. In other words, I've already spent $199 on my Nano, $29 on the Nike+Sports transmitter/receiver kit, and on top of that they want me to spend another $100-$130 on a brand new pair of shoes? No thanks, I've got a pair of Asics that are way better running shoes, so I'll stick with those. But now I need to find a way to get the transmitter into them. Fortunately, Mary did some research on her own and also bought me a velcro strap that secures the transmitter to the laces of my shoes. (The transmitter gets its information from horizontal motion, not from the pressure of your foot on top of it.) It works great, but the fact that this tiny piece of pleather and velcro costs $10 is a crock, not quite as big of a crock as having to buy a new pair of Nike shoes), but a crock nonetheless. Apparently folks on the internet have been making their own versions of this strap with old gloves and duct tape. I might go ahead and make something on my own so Mary can get her ten bucks back.

Headache #2: When I bought the Nano, I shelled out an extra $29 for the armband so I could carry the nano with me while jogging. Poor decision, since again I was paying upwards of 500% over cost for pleather and velcro. But at least it worked. Now I have a new problem, because the Nike receiver plugs into the bottom of the Nano, and there's no cutout in the bottom of the armband.

I spent a good part of last night scouring the internet for a better armband. Turns out that Nike makes one that fits the Nano and the receiver for the slightly more price-gouging price of $29.95. Amazing, Nike is capitalizing again on their product! Seems like their armband would fit basically every need of the new Nano, but for some reason their armband doesn't let you see the screen...

If you noticed in my picture of the iPod screen at the top, you'll notice that one of the coolest aspects of the software is how the iPod screen is made to DISPLAY interesting info about your run in a highly VISUAL manner, allowing you to SEE your results by using your EYEBALLS. Why the hell would I shell out for an armband that takes away from the functionality of the thing I bought it for in the first place?

After consulting a few message boards, I finally decided on the Belkin case and armband, which apparently fits great and has all the openings you need and lets you see the screen.
Regular price is $15, found it on Amazon for $4.25. Thought I was finally on my way to getting a good deal, but wait! It's not actually sold my Amazon, it's sold by some other retailer peddling their wares out of Amazon's storefront! And that means they're charging me $7.50 for shipping. I guarantee you it doesn't cost $7.50 to ship this thing to me. Listen up, "Eek! Electronics": Just cram it in an envelope, stick a couple of stamps on it, and drop it in the mailbox. I'll send you the envelope, and even a bunch of stamps. You can keep the extra ones for later, maybe for sending letters from prison after you get convicted of highway robbery.

Headache #3: Apparently some users are complaining that the Nike transmitter doesn't accurately judge distance. I ran with it for the first time today and I did notice that it seemed to be over-estimating the distace I ran by a slight amount. Over the course of a two-mile run that's nothing, but once I'm doing 13 miles I imagine this will seriously screw up my training. There's a way to calibrate it, but you have to select an EXACT 400-meter distance to perform the calibration on. Here's where Nike and Apple did something right: Distance is hard to measure on foot, but 400 meters is one lap around a track, and most people live near a school or something that has a track. This is what I'll probably spend at least a half-hour trying to figure out tomorrow.

I now have a new place that hurts:

- Brain (see above)

Isn't technology wonderful?

I'm back!

2007-01-05T20:03:00.000-08:00

Good news, everyone. I've just come back...from the future!

What do you mean, you don't get it? The car is covered with ice, I'm holding up my sunglasses, looking at my watch, I'm wearing a vest, and... OH, FORGET IT, THE JOKE IS POINTLESS IF I HAVE TO EXPLAIN IT!

Mary and I just got back from our very first trip to Mammoth. I went snowboarding, Mary went skiing. Never been to Mammoth before, but for the past couple of years they've been getting some of the best snow in California, so we wanted to check it out. Here's a picture of me and Mary on the slopes:

Whoops, that's actually a picture of Mary enjoying her pulled-pork sandwich at lunchtime. Slow down, before you choke! This is us on the slopes:

Mary is sporting her awesome new Oakleys, and I'm wearing a helmet to protect my delicate and soft cranium. I already have a huge noggin, so the addition of the helmet makes me look like I'm snowboarding down the mountain with a grey watermelon on my head. It also leaves me with a really weird hairdo. Here's what I look like after wearing the helmet for 4 hours.

The weather the first day was sunny, but there wasn't much snow. The second day a storm came in and blew about 6 inches of on the mountain while we were skiing on it. We don't have any pictures of that because our fingers were freezing and it seemed like too much work to whip the camera out. But all the snow and ice did allow us to take the picture at the top on the car ride home. We also grabbed this shot of a car that was in front of us for a little while on highway 395...

This driver apparently enjoys off-roading adventures as well as laying around on the sofa. And he must have both possibilities available to him at all times.

Tips for crafting cookies shaped like meat

2006-12-20T23:14:00.000-08:00

My buddy Vic has a new girlfriend, Annie, who had a holiday cookie-baking party at her apartment tonight. The hostess and guests took turns rolling dough, applying cookie cutters, and decorating. There were plenty of cookies shaped like snowmen, Christmas bells, and the like, so when we had some dough left over at the end I grabbed a knife and made some cookies shaped like meat.

Here's a T-bone steak and a chicken drumstick.

Helpful tips for crafting cookies shaped like meat: Realism is your enemy. The most recognizable shapes for meat are those used in cartoons. With the steak, it's best to get into your head the steak that the dog in "Tom and Jerry" was always dreaming about when Tom tried to sneak past him. (I believe the dog's name was Spike, although that might've been the name of the puppy.) Step 1: Cut a blobby shape of dough. Step 2: Carve a T-shaped bone on the wider end, then draw a line around the edge of the meat to create the impression of a layer of fat, and congratulations! You've made a steak. Optional step: If you have red food coloring, do what Annie suggested and dilute it with water to get pink dye. Then, using a paintbrush, apply color to the meat only.

Drumsticks are much easier, since most people know how to draw a drumstick, and the only real detail you need to carve is the place where the skin ends and the bone sticks out.

I also made a couple of strips of bacon.

Here's a helpful tip in case you ever need need to draw bacon, or perhaps craft bacon out of non-bacon material: Your fake bacon ("fake-con"?) will always be more recognizable as bacon if it is wavy. Most importantly, always put two strips of bacon next to each other. A single piece of bacon, even if it's wavy, could easily be mistaken for a flag blowing around in the wind, or worse, a flying carpet. The picture above only has one piece of bacon, and the only reason you recognized it as bacon if you did at all is because I planted the idea in your head first. I left the other one with Annie because she liked it. She'll probably open her fridge tomorrow and ask herself why somebody gave her a cookie shaped like the carpet from "Aladdin."

Mary claims that I've mentioned her in virtually every blog entry thus far. I'm going to prove her wrong by not mentioning her at all this time. Take that, Mary!

All Wrapped Up

2006-12-19T22:41:00.000-08:00

Before I get into it, let me first mention that I'm finally over the cold I had last week and I'm feeling much better. The three people who regularly read this blog have inquiring about my health recently, and I've now learned an important lesson: If you say in your blog that you're not feeling well, it's your responsibility to inform people when you are feeling healthy again. On the internet, all states of being are apparently assumed to be permanent unless stated otherwise.

Went to the wrap party for "Andy Barker, P.I." tonight. A wrap party is a little shindig that is thrown for the cast and crew of any show or movie when you wrap, although it's highly possible that some people are still working on the production. We're done with the writing and the shooting, but the executive producers and post production staff are still editing the show together and making it look like something worth watching on T.V. (Which it is. I promise!)

One thing that happens at the wrap party is that the show producers give out a "crew gift" for everybody to take home. It's usually a T-shirt or jacket with the name of the show on it, but no matter how nice it is, hardly anybody wants to go outside wearing a jacket with four-inch high embroidery reading "MAMA'S FAMILY - SEASON 3" on the back. The Andy Barker gift is actually pretty cool because it's a cap that, instead of bearing the show name, has the logo for the Transcor Chicken company on it.

If you've never heard of Transcor Chicken, that's because we made it up. It's a chicken processing company that figures prominently in an episode where Andy is looking into a corrupt chicken cartel. The production designers came up with the logo, which they also put up on the side of a huge factory we shot at early in production.

The other thing that happens at wrap parties is that you kinda say goodbye to folks who you might not see again for a while, depending on what happens with the show, careers, etc. Hopefully this show will be on NBC sometime in the spring and it'll get good enough ratings to come back for a second season, and we'll get to make some more funny mysteries.

Everybody was asking where Mary was tonight. I'm starting to get the impression that people really seem to like her...

Menorah Mobiles

2006-12-19T00:52:00.000-08:00

Happy Chanukah, everybody! No, I'm not technically Jewish, but I do work in the entertainment business, so I have to keep up with these things. Has anyone else out there been seeing these "Menorah Mobiles" driving around? They're usually minivans, with a giant Menorah constructed of PVC piping mounted on the roof and powered, presumably, by the van's electrical system. At the top of the contraption are nine 40-watt light sockets built into the PVC pipes, with as many bulbs screwed in as necessary. For instance, today the van I saw had four bulbs (plus the one in the center) because it was the fourth night of Hanukah. Oh, and owners of the Menorah Mobiles usually go to the trouble of using those light bulbs that are shaped like a flame, to simulate the candle even further.

I use a lot of photos in my blog, so I thought about taking a picture of one to post here, except that:

A) I never know for sure when I will see one.
B) Exposure is tough at night, especially if I wanted to show how the bulbs were lit.
C) Photographing a Hasidic family driving to Temple at night seems kinda creepy.

There are a LOT of these Menorah Mobiles driving around my part of LA, and I think they're great. But I'm wondering, has there recently been a push for Jews to show a little more holiday spirit? I suppose this is the Jewish equivalent of putting a wreath on the front grille of your car and a giant sticker that says "Merry Christmas!" in your back window. (Or "Feliz Navidad!" if you are Spanish speaking.) Could it be that they got tired of having Christmas being flaunted in their faces all the time, and they finally decided to push back a little bit? Whatever it was, I'm pretty impressed with the creative engineering that went into the Menorah, and I'd be curious to see if there are even more around next year.

I'll probably be blogging a fair amount in the next couple of weeks...Mary's out in Boston for Christmas, so I'm a little bored.

I have a headache THIS BIG

2006-12-13T16:09:00.000-08:00

I have a cold. One of the worst colds I've ever had in my life...this is the cold you hear people talking about in TV commercials for NyQuil. My friend Stacey must've had this a couple of weeks ago, when she said she felt like she was dying. I thought she was overreacting at the time. Now I have it. Serves me right for not believing her. Fortunately, Mary's been a sweetheart and is taking great care of me, making me soup and freshly squeezed juice. What a gal.

Here's a picture I've been meaning to post, from a much happier time, a few weeks ago when I didn't have this godforsaken cold. James Hong, the great character actor who's been in, I don't know, 500 different movies, worked for a day on "Andy Barker, PI" as a character named Jon Leibowitz. I asked him if he'd ever played a Chinese Jewish man before. He replied, "Yes, once." I guess when you've been in 500 movies you're gonna wind up repeating yourself.

Cars cars cars! ...and a little bit of Sonny.

2006-12-05T22:22:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody, it's our good friend Sonny Tat, who came to LA from Seattle for a few days this weekend. Why, you eagle-eyed car fanatics may ask, is Sonny sitting behind the wheel of a 2006 Mini Cooper convertible? Because he bought seven of them, one for each day of the week. The anticipation of his future doctor's salary has really gone to his head.

Truth be told, Sonny didn't buy any new cars, and he'll probably be earning beans for the next four years, but he did come to LA for some residency interviews. And since the combination of me and Sonny make for an incredibly dull weekend, we decided to spice things up by going to LA Auto Show which is going on this week at the convention center. We got to see all kinds of gorgeous motor vehicles, including:

...the luxurious Maybach Exelero...

...the gorgeous Spyker C8...

...and the sexy Saab Aero X concept car. But forget about all those turds. No, the REAL belle of the ball was none other than the all-new 2007 GMC Utility Truck!

Watch out, America, GMC is bringing sexy back to the carmaking industry. I'd heard some buzz on the internet that this baby might be at the show, but when I saw it my heart beat a little faster, my hands got all sweaty, and I kinda fell in love. Just look at it. Chrome bumper, roof rack, non-adjustable cloth seats...who wouldn't be turned on by this? It's so new they don't even have a name for it yet. I think I'm going to try and come up with one. Maybe "Helen of Troy," after the mythical woman whose beauty launched a thousand ships? Nah, people might not get it. Perhaps "The GMC J-Lo" would be a more appropriate name, because this baby can hold plenty of junk in the trunk.

New advertising slogan: "This car doesn't just look like a tacklebox...it drives like one!" Catchy.

And last but certainly not least, here's a picture of Mary with the $1.7 million Bugatti that goes from 0-64mph in 2.4 seconds. Pretty neat. Still, not quite as impressive as the GMC.

In Production

2006-11-11T10:58:00.000-08:00

We started production on "Andy Barker, P.I." this week. It's the show I've been writing on this year, a comedy/detective show created by Conan O'Brien and Jonathan Groff, and starring Andy Richter as an accountant who gets mistaken for a private investigator, so he becomes a P.I. The show is great, lots of funny stories with good mysteries and some exciting action as well.

Interesting tidbit of movie magic: You know how on TV, when somebody shoots a gun at a metal door and there are sparks, or when somebody shoots a gun at the ground and dust flies up? I always wondered how that was done, and now I finally got to see it. Turns out there's a guy with a paintball gun full of rubber balls packed with glitter sparks or dust, depending on the need. You film one side of the gunfight with your characters shooting, then you film the other side with your FX guy shooting the paintball gun at whatever surface is being hit. On the left is the FX guy with the gun in question.

Well, that's it for now...not whole lot else to report these days. Production means being on set for 12-hour days, usually starting pretty early in the morning (6AM crew call, 7AM shooting call) to get in all the daylight shots, especially now that the days are getting shorter. Until next time, be sure to get your sleep, eat plenty of vegetables, and keep out of trouble. I've got my eye on you!

Happy Halloween!

2006-10-31T23:37:00.000-08:00

Happy Halloween, everybody! On the right is Mary in her cute-as-a button inflatable pig costume, and on the left is me as Yao Ming. I was considering having that leg-lengthening surgery like Ethan Hawke's character does in "Gatacca" so I could really be 7'4", but it sounded kind of painful, so I built some stilts instead.

Fortunately I have some experience building and walking on stilts. Back in college a bunch of my friends built stilts for graduation. It took us weeks of experimentation to figure out the right design, and then a couple months of practice to figure out how to not kill ourselves on those things. That was 5 years ago, so I was a little nervous about getting back up on a brand new pair of stilts. Good news: It's like riding a bike, except the bike is made of wood, has no wheels, makes you taller, and doesn't squash your balls when you ride it.

And yes, that is a tiny pair of shoes on the bottom of my stilts. They're Nate Whitson's tweak on the original design that dramatically improves cushioning and balance, and helps give a more natural roll when you're walking on them. They also make me look like I beat up a kindergaten kid and stole his shoes.

A few of us went out to West Hollywood, the biggest gathering of Halloween partygoers in the LA area. Here's me with Andrew Marino as a Ghostbuster. You can't really tell from the pic, but he's wearing a pretty awesome replica of the Proton Pack from the movie, including flashing LED lights.

Here I am with Ron Burgundy and Zidane. Zidane is my friend Brandon Fidanque. I have no idea who the Ron Burgundy guy is, but he was a dead ringer and had plenty of catchphrases loaded up and ready to go. I got stopped for plenty of photos with strangers, but the thing is that unlike a movie character, Yao isn't really known for what he says. All I had to work with was "Can I write a check?" Not very fun to quote.

Here's Mary with her favorite person in the world, Colonel Sanders, who, it seems, is as fond of pigs as he is of chickens. Mary and I got stopped a few dozen times for pictures, but never for a picture together. Straight guys, sports fans, and Asians loved taking pictures with Yao. Gay guys and kids loved taking pictures with Piggy. Here's how it went: if somebody shouted "Yao!" and posed next to me, the girl in the inflatable pig costume would get ignored, and if somebody yelled "Pig!" and posed next to Mary, the 7'4" Asian guy in stilts would get completely ignored. We could've run for office together; between the two of us we appealed to pretty much every demographic.

Epilogue: About a week before Halloween, I was chatting with Vance Wagner on GTalk because he's in China. Vance is one of the guys I walked on stilts with back in college, so I mentioned to him that I was going to build a new pair of 1' stilts and be Yao Ming for Halloween. Vance didn't have a costume yet, so he decided to do the same thing.

There you have it. Two "Stilt Yaos" simultaneously, on two continents. That's globalization for ya!

Spider-Man O'Lantern

2006-10-29T16:02:00.000-08:00

Mary 's been studying her ass off for finals, so we decided to take a study break and carve a Jack O'Lantern. We wanted to do something cool but without copying any design we saw online, so I drew a Spider-Man face and Mary carved it.

Let me tell you, Mary is incredibly talented at making intricate crafts with her hands. I thought drawing Spidey was tough, because I had to figure out how to keep the whole thing intact, but turns out that carving it was about fifty times harder. Difficulty=High. A lot of the cuts had to be really delicate and precise, or else Spidey's entire face would've fallen through...

Here's the artist with the finished product. Impressive, ain't it? Turns out this weekend was a very hands-on, creative one for both of us. Come back after Halloween and you'll see why.

Conspicuous philanthropic consumption

2006-10-22T21:52:00.000-07:00

I bought a red Nano the other day.

A few months ago, Mary told me about this Red campaign that Bono started. The idea is this: What if you could harness the power of Western consumer culture to help end disease and poverty in the third world? The campaign is working with large companies to create a line of products whose profits will help The Global Fund to end AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in Africa, and it finally launched here in the US a week and a half ago. Now if you go to the Apple store and buy a (Red) Nano, Apple will donate $10 to The Global Fund. If you go to the Gap and buy a (Red) t-shirt, Gap will donate 50% of the profits to The Global Fund. And so on.

First of all, I think this is a great idea. Americans spend a ridiculous amount of money on meaningless shit, and if it's possible to put that to make some of that money actually useful to people who need it, then by all means let's do it. And with some of the celebrity endorsements in the Gap (Red) ads, buying these products to help Africa might become the new "cool" thing to do. But that's what worries me. What if people start getting into this only because it's cool? It would be kind of like wearing a yellow Livestrong bracelet. Yes, it's great that the $1 you spent on the bracelet went to the fight against cancer, but the whole thing eventually got to the point where people were only buying the bracelets because they were hip. If you really wanted to fight AIDS, wouldn't it be better to donate $200 straight to charity, instead of spending $200 on an iPod and having only 5% of that go to fighting disease? Of course it would. But then you wouldn't have a shiny red Nano to show off as your badge of generosity. Conspicuous philanthropic consumption.

But hey, look at me. I have a shiny red Nano and I really like it. The battery on my old iPod Mini was starting to crap out, so I needed to replace one of my most often used consumer electronic appliances. And I feel good about the fact that $10 went to the fund, enough money to buy 20 days of anti-retroviral drugs for an AIDS patient in Africa. I guess that's what the real point of the campaign is. If consumers are presented with the choice of purchasing a product whose profits will help end AIDS versus a product whose profits will not, and enough people choose the former, then the world can slowly become a better place. So buy Red products if you can.

By the way, if anybody out there is, like me, concerned about what happens to all the heavy metals and battery acid in your iPod when you dispose of it, Apple has an iPod recycling program. You bring them your old iPod and they give you 10% off the price of the new iPod you're buying. They get completely recycled here in the U.S. so that none of the hazardous materials get dumped overseas in countries like the Ivory Coast. (Wouldn't that be ironic, if I bought a red iPod and my old one wound up as hazardous waste in Africa? Or would that just be sad?) Please recycle your iPods, especially because the secondary market for them has been eliminated by the fact that a new model is released every few months.

Spinach!

2006-10-16T23:47:00.000-07:00

I ate spinach today. I figured that if there was ever going to be a safe time to eat spinach, it would be right after an E. coli outbreak was declared "over."

I ate it in my sandwich around 1:30PM. As of 11:38PM, I have not shat myself. Will keep you updated of developments as they occur.

Five years already?

2006-10-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

Went to my 5-year Stanford reunion this past weekend. 72 hours of partying can really wear a guy out. Here's a picture from the Class of 2001 party on Saturday night: Smooney, Joey, Nate, Curtis, Me, Naomi, Nicolle, and Mary.

To give you an idea of how much we were all looking forward to this weekend, all I need to say is that Vance flew in from CHINA just to be there. Now I'm starting to think that maybe the reason he moved to China in the first place was to to make his arrival at reunion that much more dramatic. It also might make Louis Dang feel even worse about not showing up, considering this fact:

Distance from Baltimore to Palo Alto: 2444 miles.

Distance from Beijing to Palo Alto: 5938 miles. Vance wins by a landslide.

A run-down of the weekend:

FRIDAY: Mary and I woke up early to go for a 3+ mile run on the Stanford campus. The air was chilly but fresh, much more pleasant than in LA. Mary went to visit her friend Kim in SF, and I went for some culture in the form of "Jackass Number Two." I should've watched the first one, because I was a little confused about what was happening in the movie...There must've been a scene in Jackass 1 where all of the characters discovered they had terminal, inoperable brain tumors that made them want to mutilate themselves all the time. Seeing that would've explained a lot.

By 3:00PM we are drinking beers at the Tree House, running into people we haven't talked to in years and repeating the same awkward conversations over and over. "What have you been up to?" "Where are you these days?" But it's okay, because we're happy to be back and we have beer in our bellies.

For dinner we get 12 people together for sushi, which is a surprisingly difficult type of food to order in groups. Curtis gets major Mary points for giving her extra California rolls after he overhears that Mary doesn't eat raw fish. Upstaging me as always...Damn you, Curtis!

Most freshman dorms organized a "mini reunion" for Friday night, at bars like the Blue Chalk, The Old Pro, or The Dutch Goose. For some inexplicable reason my dorm has their thing at Round Table Pizza. A pizza joint is bad already, couldn't we at least pick a place with slightly better pizza? We show up for a little while, then head to the Goose and get smashed. Mary is a darling and stays sober all night as designated driver. Her favorite moment of the night: pulling over so that four of us boys could pee in a Nordstrom's parking lot. Sorry, I don't have a picture of that.

SATURDAY: Ted Koppel hosted an interesting panel on global threats with Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline Jean-Pierre Garnier, Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang and others, but it was at 9AM and I was pretty tired from the night before. Later that morning I spoke on a panel with five other Class of '01-ers about what we've been up to since graduation.

Now that I think about it, it seems like everybody on the panel was chosen for being an "oddity" by not going into law or medicine or business. Basically it was a freak show. "Hey, come check out the weirdoes!" In addition to making an embarassing mathematical mistake (I calculated that at our 50th reunion we'd all be 77 years old) I also made a joke about the fact that, as a television writer in Hollywood, I have to check the Jewish calendar on my way to work every day. It was either very funny or horribly offensive...regardless, it's available to the public on a podcast now so I guess I can't run for president of Hillel anymore.

From there we went to the tailgate, and then to the Stanford-Arizona football game. Stanford has a brand-spanking-new stadium that cost $90 million and was completed in only a year...which means that all we need now is a new football team. We lost 20-7, continuing our "defeated" streak for the season. As you can tell from this picture, Mary and I weren't paying much attention to the game itself.

After dinner, Mary and I got back into our car, but it wouldn't start. The battery had died because I stupidly left the headlights on. Fortunately Joey and Smooney came to our rescue with Berman's jumper cables, and even more fortunately Mary and I have been getting plenty of practice jump-starting cars recently so we knew exactly what we were doing. We stopped by a house party at Victoria's and then went to the big class party at the alumni center. Two words: Open bar! I got drunk. Again. And we got to dance to music from 2001 including Destiny's Child, Backstreet Boys, and Led Zepplin. Don't know how that last one got in there, but we danced to it anyway.

SUNDAY:
We reconvened for our standard brunch/debriefing at the Country Gourmet...Typically, if I'm in town for one of these (say, after a raucous Ranch party) this would be the meal where everybody talks about the crazy/stupid shit they did last night while drunk, or what somebody else did while drunk.

Apparently a few of the guys left the alumni party and wandered onto a chartered bus, which took them to an after-party that they subsequently crashed. Several eyewitness accounts state that two hot girls were making out on aforementioned bus. Smooney eventually went to bed at 5AM, then got up at 8AM to have breakfast with Sonny, Tor, Young, Eule, Nate C and Chad, which means that Smooney hangs out with the exact two wrong crowds: The late-night boozers (us) and the early-rising cow-milkers (Sonny et al). It must suck being that popular.

After putting up with me all weekend, Mary's reward was to spend 20 minutes with her good friend Leslie in Cupertino. It's the least I could do...the very least! We flew home shortly afterward and slept the entire way. I'm exhausted. No wonder we only get to have reunion every 5 years.

And just for good measure, here's a picture of Jeff Cooper doing his impression of a guy wearing a suit. It's just too sexy not to post.

More pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/daniel.hsia

I do not have a blog

2006-10-05T11:52:00.000-07:00

Some time this year, I started to get the sense that everyone in the world has a blog except for me. Here I am, a writer, and I don't have a blog. It's probably just one of those tech fads that I missed by about a year, kind of like instant messaging. Most of my friends who are my age don't really do that either, whereas anyone I meet who is even just a year younger than me grew up using ICQ and AIM. How did I miss this trend? Was I not paying attention? I feel left out.

It sure does suck not having a blog.