Strange Day for Sons of Stars
Okay, there were a couple shows that I loved to watch when I was a kid. Little House on the Prairie was my Monday night fix. I’d slip on my pink-flannel, Lanz nightie with little flowers on it, relax with my big brother for an hour, then be lulled to sleep with stories of The Hobbit and Bilbo fighting ogres. Star Trek was my other favorite and I watched it whenever it came on channel 5 (I don’t know why I remember the channel it was on, it’s strange the little things you remember from childhood). This was another show I watched with my brother and I have to thank him for making me appreciate science fiction. I don’t think I’d like nerdy things like comic books and video games if it he hadn’t gotten me into these things.
On Little House on the Prairie, Michael Landon played the father everyone wished they had: kind, loving, understanding and protective. I was listening to the radio today and learned that his son was arrested for selling crystal-meth out of a fancy apartment in New York. Now, I know that actors are different from the roles they play, but it’s shocking sometimes when you get reminders like these, especially when it includes someone you thought of as the ideal father when you were a kid. Right after that, the news said that the son of the actor who played Chekov on Star Trek was found dead in the park. He was apparently very depressed. All this just made me shake my head and ask, “what went wrong???”
Before I made the Star Trek connection, I had read in the news yesterday that Walter Koenig’s son was missing and there was an impassioned plea to the public to help find Andrew Koenig . The name didn’t ring any bells, but there was a photo of the distraught mother and father. I noticed that the dad looked familiar and then saw later in the article that he played Chekov.
I had met Walter Koenig when I was a child. My brother had a friend who would run comic book conventions in Los Angeles. This was before people came in costumes. It was more like a nice, indoor swap meet, with movies playing in a room off to the side. My brother pointed out Chekov with his son walking around looking at comics. I was a bit awestruck. He looked so low-key without a bright uniform on. He was just in regular street clothes, like jeans, a t-shirt and a brown jacket. My brother encouraged me to walk up to him and say, “Aren’t you Chekov from Star Trek?” I was so shy, I said no. After much prodding, I went up and said it to him. His eyes lit up. He was all smiles. I was so glad that I said that. I could tell he didn’t expect it, but was very gracious when I did it. He wasn’t the sort of actor who would wait around for someone to walk up to him. As I got older, I would see/meet other actors and it became obvious that some really thrived on attention and encouraged it to the point of annoyance. Walter Koenig wasn’t that kind of an actor at all. You could tell he wasn’t putting on airs all. Even as a little girl, I had a pretty good BS detector, and this guy was a good guy. I don’t know if it was really his son with him, but Walter Koenig seemed like a kind man taking a little boy out for the day.
So today, when I got the news that not one, but two sons of stars I had admired had fallen, it made me very sad.
I found a video called Batman: Dead End that stars Andrew Koenig as The Joker. For a short film with a budget of only $30,000, it’s quite impressive, especially the acting.
As an adult, I’ve traded in the flannel nightie for my fiance’s robe. I haven’t changed much even though I’m older now, I’m ready watch some Deep Space 9 and go to sleep.
The Great House Hunt
Posted by: Airion in Observations on October 23rd, 2009
What prompted me to write about this house-hunting experience were two ads that I saw yesterday.
The first one read: Don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Come take a look, the interior needs minor work.
Here’s a photo that was included in the ad:
If this only needs minor work to spruce up an interior, I’d hate to see what major work looks like!
Massaging the truth seems to come in all forms. For the second ad, look at this pretty picture that was included for the house:
Now read the description for this charmer: Not safe to be shown with children! Part of the upstairs back-side of the house is missing! Do not waste time by showing to your average buyer! This home has potential galore!
Gee. Where did the backside of the house go? Isn’t that the picture we really want to see?
Buying a house is slimier than shaking the hand of a used-car salesman. Spurred forward by the dangling $8000 tax credit and the rumors of bank-owned homes raining from the sky at bargain prices, Lee and I began the search for “the pride home-ownership” a few months ago to be met with a “buyer beware” lesson in humbleness.
So far we’ve seen (and smelled) some real beauties. Let’s see:
There was the Seinfeld house. Our realtor was late meeting us, so we explored the spacious backyard surrounded by redwood trees and roses. We peered in the windows and the house looked gorgeous from the outside with wood-bean ceilings, hard-wood floors, a stone fireplace and humongous rooms. We thought we found the perfect place at a steal. Well, our realtor arrived, opened the lockbox and low and behold, we knew why the house was so cheap. We walked in and were immediately punched in the nose by the farts of Satan. The stench rivaled that of “The Smelly Car” episode of Seinfeld. Organic smells like urine and mold had given birth to a new entity entirely. The broker for the house tried to cover it up by spreading cherry-scented, air fresher in all the rooms. This created one of the worst funks that no human should ever need to endure breathing unless they are being tortured. Here’s “The Smelly Car” episode for your enjoyment:
UPDATE: It looks like youtube removed the episode, so here’s a link to watch the trailer.
The Smelly Car Trailer (after watching, be sure to click the back button to read the rest of the story)
Despite the house’s negatives, we actually researched if there was a way to remove the odor (everything else about the house was fine), but I feared we’d have to resort to dousing the house in tomato sauce and still have a dwelling where we’d be embarrassed to invite people over or get the reputation for having that stinky house amongst our friends and family that no one wants to visit.
Another house we browsed was the Hippie/Surfer house. No, this house wasn’t stinky but had the potential to be. We caught a ride with our realtor this time. As we drove up to the carport, we noticed all these wood planks on the ground. My realtor decided to park just shy of the planks. In the ad the house was described as having a wood-burning fireplace in the living room and a sleeping porch that could be used as a second bedroom. Well, there was absolutely no trace of a fireplace in the living room. Nothing. Nada…and the second bedroom? We couldn’t find it. All we saw was a deck next to the front door. It was completely open! There were no walls except the one that was part of the outside of the house. A treehouse was more of a bedroom than this. If a family stuck their child out there to sleep, he would either die of hypothermia or child-protective services would be hauling that kid off ASAP.
For all the things the house didn’t have, it did contain some surprises. We found a “hidden room” tucked away downstairs. When we entered, our realtor immediately reacted with, “This is a grow room. Do you see the beam up there? That’s to string lights to grow the pot plants.” It’s funny, the house was completely uninsulated or protected from the elements with the exception of the grow room.
On the way out, we talked to some of the neighbors (both were surly). One complained that a tree needed to be removed from the property that was down by the road. He confirmed that hippie surfers lived at the house before. The other neighbor had built a dog run that crossed over onto the property. We didn’t ask him about the dog run, but smiled and tried to be friendly. He was obviously trying to assert some squatters rights by giving the impression this was his land and people were trespassing. One good thing was that he informed us that hippie house didn’t have a septic tank (hence, the potential for smelling horrible). He said he could smell it every time the toilet flushed. He pointed out the wood planks in the carport and informed us that that’s where it should be. I’m so glad my realtor had that good sense not to park over them!
These are just a couple examples of houses we’ve seen. There was the house with the 100 steps up to the front door. The steps were narrow and worn after 60 years of wear and tear and there was no handrail for part of them. There was the crack house/squatters den with trash and pumpkin seeds everywhere. A cassette tape’s innards was strewn across a ceiling fan and there was an insane person’s graffiti all over the fridge. I truly wish a took some pictures of this mess, but we were scared the floor was going to give way and got out ASAP.
All I can do is shake my head and hope that Lee and I find a habitable home someday.
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Video Round Up
Posted by: Airion in The Strange Internet on July 25th, 2009
Do you need a laugh? I certainly do. This next set of cartoons makes me giggle and snicker. You will never view cloning or Bill Cosby the same again.
House of Cosbys (1)
House of Cosbys (2)
House of Cosbys (3)
House of Cosbys (4)
I very much enjoy Bill Cosby and find these videos to be hilarious, but just like with all good art, there needs to be contraversy. There’s a House of Cosbys 5 floating around youtube that gives a very erect, middle finger to a cease and desist letter sent by Cosby. The video is a bit too disgusting for my taste so I’m not posting it, but I’m sure others will find it amusing so I figured I’d mention it for those with a less weak stomach than me.
Continuing the theme of poking fun, here are a couple videos that puts a new spin on Slap Chop and ShamWow.
Rap Chop
Jam Wow
Wow. All those scenes from House Party reminded me of some bad, 1980s videos (even though House Party came out in 1990).
Here are some of my favorites that I love to hate:
Haysi Fantayzee – Shiny Shiny
(The male, scare-crow look. It’s so sexy!)
Wow, the record cover even has the gal in her red, duct-tape bikini bottons.
I wanted to embed this video, but youtube prevents it so here’s the link:
The Tubes – She’s a Beauty
(Sexy woman become beasts when their aroused so you better cage them up)
(Yes, those are boobs on his drums)
Pate Benatar – Love is a Battlefield
(You’ve gotta love the shimmying and the dub of the yelling father for dramatic effect)
That’s it for this weeks video round-up. I hope you had a good laugh.
Win big at the Den of Thieves Casino
Posted by: Alex in Observations on July 13th, 2009
As some of you already know, I’ve been getting through the summer by working at a casino. Some of you have heard a handful of stories about it, and everyone has commented that I should write about it. So here it is, in all its horrifying glory.
My job title is “proposition player.” Basically, it is illegal in California to play against the house in any non-Indian casino. However, a loophole was found where a casino can exist in the state as long as a 3rd party corporation comes in and bankrolls the games. Therefore, if you walk into my casino you would see every table with a dealer handling the cards, and a person in a suit like me handling the money and making all the payouts. The dealer and I are both technically working together to run the game, but we actually do not have the same bosses.
You can imagine the kind of problems that can arise from this situation. Many of the dealers simply resent us even being there, because they see us (not without reason) as being just one more overseer, or just slowing them down. However, many of us are put in a position of always having to be a jerk, because we manage the money in what is essentially a den of thieves. Generally, it is a little like high school. People will be cool with you as long as you can show them that you are not an easy target. The frustrating thing is that this process of proving yourself never really ends. People are always testing you, all the time.
Basically, I’m dealing with this strange situation while also dealing with the myriad of cultural differences in this place. It is no accident that the vast majority of the dealers are from East Asia, mainly China or Hong Kong. In western culture, gambling is something that is tolerated at best. However, for whatever reason gambling is not considered a vice in many East Asian cultures. For that reason, most of the dealers are Asian, most of the floormen are Asian, and the place is usually packed with Asian players, including sweet little old ladies and wholesome young couples out on dates. Nobody feels ashamed about being there.
Because of this trend, I’ve been able to get to know many different kinds of people. For example, I got to know a dealer who came here from Cambodia. He grew up under Pol Pot’s regime, and once narrowly escaped being murdered when he was 12 for stealing a banana while he was basically being starved. Luckily, he managed to escape into the jungle and then blend back in with the crowds. We traded family stories as I told him all about my German ancestors who were feudal serfs, and all the stuff they went through before being forced out of the country. We both agreed that people here need to appreciate what they have.
I enjoy talking to people from all over the world like that. However, I get to see many things about other cultures up close and personal, some of which I am not crazy about. On the one hand, I hear a lot about Buddhist philosophy, and about their strong family ties. On the other hand, I also see that many Asian cultures seem to be able to accept a level of misogyny and dishonesty that I find really shocking. Many of the dealers are Asian women, and talk about working all hours and then taking care of the house and kids while their husbands gamble. Also, many Asian men who gamble in the place comfortably say really horrible things to the female dealers if they get the wrong cards. A few of the dealers have taking a liking to me just because I’ve stepped in and told off a few players who were stepping way over the line. I’m glad about that, but I still find it really horrifying how much it is tolerated, and the fact that these women don’t seem to feel like they can stand up for themselves without someone else stepping in for them.
Also, there are other things besides gambling that don’t seem to be considered vices in many East Asian cultures. There seems to be a very common attitude that everyone is just going to do whatever they can to cheat you all the time, and it is your job to stop them. If you can’t stop them, then it is your fault that you got cheated. This means that if you are managing the money in a casino, you have to try not to blink, even with dealers who you are friendly with. I had a lot of problems in my first month with making enemies out of the dealers because I got personally offended when someone openly and unapologetically tried to cheat me. The dealer would take up an attitude like,
“Hey, just because I tried to pay someone $100 on a $5 bet, and then laughed in your face when you almost missed it, doesn’t mean that you have to be RUDE about it.” That has pretty much happened daily since I’ve been there. Many of them simply can’t understand why I wouldn’t want to keep joking around with them as they try everything they can to cheat. Imagine trying to deal with that and not get bitter day after day after day. I’ve found that I really appreciate those few dealers who don’t do that. For the others, I typically react by calling back every other hand, even things I know are right, so they will be forced to deal at about half their normal speed. My attitude is that if they think they can mess with me, I can mess with them. (I’m Moe Green! You don’t buy me out, I buy you out!)
But there is so much more. Basically, this place is just the most cutthroat environment I have ever seen. It is populated by people who would literally do anything for a dollar. Here are a few examples. A friend of mine was working when a player on the next table had a heart attack and collapsed next to her. They called the EMTs, who immediately started defibrillating the poor guy. All game play stopped, obviously, but she had to listen to a table full of blackjack players saying,
“Excuse me, do we have to stop playing here? I’m trying to make some money.” Another example happened in my first two weeks. I was being trained on Blackjack, and being told various practical things about chips and players when the trainer told me,
“Mark my words. There will be a single moment when you lose every bit of naivety you ever had. Watch for it.” Two weeks later it happened. I was managing a game and talking to a sweet little 80 year old woman who was sitting next to me. A row of chips toppled over from my tray, and as I was gathering them up, I caught her out of the corner of my eye stealing one of my chips and putting it on her own stack as fast and casually as possible. I got it back, but of course she was not ejected because the place wants her to keep gambling.
Here is another example. A while back I was in the bathroom on my ten minute break when I overheard a guy talking on his cell phone. People often duck into the bathroom to talk on the phone because it is the only truly quiet place. I heard him say,
“Yeah honey, they are making me work overtime again. I think they will let me out of here in the next hour or so. Yeah, don’t worry, I don’t mind working for you and the kids. I love you too. Bye.” And all I can say is “wow.”
After a few months here, although I really like a few of the players, I basically have no sympathy left for degenerate gamblers. My bosses really stress not smiling when a player is losing, but for a few of the extra-special jerks, I can’t help thinking internally when they lose, “Yes!!! HAHAHA! Your tears are so delicious!” But more than the jerks, the real problem is how dirty many of the regulars can be. I can’t tell you how many times I have gone away for two days off, only to come back to find the same players on the same tables wearing the same clothes. People keep on gambling through bouts of pneumonia and everything. They cough all over the chips and then lose them to you. That is why I always tell the new people to learn to scratch their noses without using their fingers and to always make washing their hands the first thing they do on any break. You really have no choice but to be a germaphobe in this place.
I should also mention the unapologetic racists. There are people in here who simply hate all non-Asian people. There are people who still refuse to answer when I speak to them, and will only turn to their friend and insult me in Mandarin. A black friend of mine there mentioned once that he has been able to piece together what the N word is in several Asian languages because people will yell it at him whenever he makes a call that doesn’t end in them winning. For many people, it is an old-fashioned style of racism brought over from the old country. I once told a dealer that my neighborhood has really gone downhill the last few years, only to hear her tell me in detail about how the problem is that there are too many blacks and Mexicans moving in, and how my neighborhood would be so much better if it were a predominantly Asian neighborhood. Before that, I would have said that she was one of the sweetest people I have ever met.
There is a lot more, like the sugar daddies or the fact that you have to be Asian to get promoted, but I think the thing that really gets me is the fact that I have no choice but to be a jerk and really watch my back in this place. That really isn’t who I am, but I have to play a role whenever I’m in there so nobody will try to cheat me. I’d rather be thought of as a jerk than a pushover, but it is still really screwed up. It has gotten so that whenever I leave I say to myself, “Hooray, I get to act like a real person again.” Hopefully at the end of the summer I can start teaching again and act like a real person all the time.
Strange Internet Extra
Posted by: Airion in The Strange Internet on June 20th, 2009
After posting the videos below, my friend showed me this ultra-cute video of a furry, big-eyed creature that likes to be tickled. I just had to share it. I wish I could tickle him too. He looks so happy.
The Strange Internet: Ronald, Daniel, and Pikachu
Posted by: Airion in The Strange Internet on June 19th, 2009
Here’s this weeks roundup of Internet oddities. We’ll start with freaky McDonald’s commercials that you’ve probably never seen.
Hide your children! 1960s Ronald McDonald is (amazingly) creepier than the modern version:
Even stranger is Japan’s modern, female-model version of Ronald. How they thought this would sell more burgers is beyond me. I know that sex sells, but sheesh. Isn’t McDonald’s suppose to be family-friendly? I guess things are really different in Japan.
…and how about her sexy male counterpart:
For a company whose success is based on “wholesomeness,” they seem to have a very lax definition of that word in advertising.
Switching gears, we ran across a trailer for a terrible movie called Daniel the Wizard.
It’s like Willy Wonka decided to dress in drag and become a pop singer.
You don’t need to understand German to see how bad this film is. Watch it until the end and you get to see him sing in English.
Apparently the movie is about a killer who targets one of the runner ups in the German Idols singing competition. After watching this trailer, I felt like helping the killer murder this guy. If you’re a fan of Saturday Night Live, there’s an episode with Rob Lowe where he played a goth called The Beholder who makes terrible movies. There’s a clip where he’s doing a deadly ceremony at the park, but it’s a bright, sunny afternoon and you can see kids playing frisbee in the background. I swear, the park scene in the Daniel trailer was lifted right out of Goth Talk.
Rounding out the creepiness catagory, we have phone messages left by Dimitri the Stud. Don’t ever leave messages like this for a girl unless you think she likes serial killers:
I’m sure you’re scratching your head at this point, so here’s a cute video to cleanse your mind. It looks just like Pikachu, but it’s real.
Presenting the Pygmy Jeroba:
WiFi Everywhere
Posted by: Lee in Observations on April 22nd, 2009
Years ago Airion had a laptop. It was heavy, the battery lasted 11 minutes, and the lid eventually busted off leaving it an almost useless husk. After hooking it up to a monitor, it was basically a thin PC with a mandatory laptop keyboard.
The thing was one of the earliest laptops to have on-board wi-fi. Not that it mattered much because outside of our place it was impossible to find a reliable signal (even in Silicon Valley). The reason for this was simple: when wi-fi was first widely used and available, people broadcasted their connection without security in place. This meant that if your Internet connection ever failed you could drive around your neighborhood, laptop open on the passenger seat, and “steal” wi-fi from some nitwit who didn’t know the meaning of “WEP” (or, if you were really lucky there was such a connection available that reached your home. Ah, convenience). By the time Airion got her laptop, we had entered an era where routers came with security pre-enabled, and the general public had gotten wiser about such things. Now, despite the fact that wi-fi is more broadly used than it was a few years back, it’s nearly impossible to find an unsecured connection.
Fast-forward to today. I picked up a small laptop recently and I’m very happy with it. It’s an HP Mini. It weighs 4 lbs. with the battery in, it’s only slightly larger than a DVD case, it’s fast for my purposes (Internet, email, and word processing), and at less than $400 the price was right.
Anyway, getting back to the main point, it seems that things have come full-circle. I was amazed to find that wi-fi is available everywhere again. The only difference is that now it’s legal. What I’m talking about is free wide-area wi-fi. I’ve got a router at home that I can use, but if I leave my house I can still be connected. My home city of San Carlos has spent God knows how much money implementing a free wi-fi broadcast for its residents. The school which I attend is outfitted with a similar system. Of course, working for a major tech firm, my work also has campus-wide wi-fi. Virtually everywhere I go is bathed in this wonderful radiation.
Organize Your Procrastination
Posted by: Lee in The Strange Internet on April 7th, 2009
For a while now, I’ve been using Google Reader. It’s a great way to organize the websites you visit on a regular basis. It creates a single web page where you can go to view all of the pages you regularly surf. It’s not the only aggregate of it’s kind on the web, but it’s certainly the best one I’ve used.
It works using RSS subscription format. Almost every modern page on the Internet has an RSS feed available (including XplodedView, see the very bottom of this page). Usually you can find this symbol on any page you want to subscribe to:
Once you’ve located that, you can right-click on it and copy the link, then paste it into the “add a subscription” bar of Google Reader. Alternately, you can also just put the main URL of the page you’re subscribing to into the “add a subscription” area, but some pages have multiple feeds and you might want to subscribe to a specific one (for example, New York Times.com has separate feeds for entertainment, US affairs, world news, front page news, etc…). Anyway, that’s it. Once you’ve added something, Reader will now track the site and update you with new additions. It makes a lot of sense if you visit a lot of different sites. You only have to go to a single page to view the content from many sites.
You can further organize things from there by categorizing your feeds into folders. For example, I have folders for blogs, news, video feeds, and comics that I follow. Reader also has a nifty “favorites” system where you can click a star by any entry to bookmark it. It’s useful for long articles you want to go back to or simply things you want to keep around to share or re-read later.
Re: Red Ring: Success
Say what you want about BestBuy. I’ll give you the fact that their sales staff are usually annoying and product-ignorant, but their returns department is on the ball. I went in with my broken Xbox in a shopping bag (also without a receipt or proof of extended warranty) and came out less than 20 minutes later with a brand new system. They even let me keep my original hard-drive because it’s got all my downloaded games and saves on it. Zero hassle.
The best part though, is the fact that when I bought my original Xbox, it was more expensive than it is now. There’s been a price drop of a bit less than $100. Instead of simply exchanging my system, they treated it like a return and a new purchase– giving me the difference of $86.90. So the result was getting a new Xbox AND a fist-full of cash to boot. It was like getting paid to get an upgrade. Score!
——————
Red Ring
It finally happened. My Xbox bit the dust. I bought the thing during the 360’s first run– the first generation. Despite this, I knew what I was getting into. I knew that they were prone to heat issues and that it might not last. That’s why when I bought it, I broke one of my cardinal rules of electronics purchases: Thou Shalt Never Purchase the Extended Warranty. They’re almost always a ripoff for several reasons:
- Many products have at least a year warranty from the manufacturer. If something is going to break from poor design or manufacture, it’s my experience that it’ll usually happen during this first year.
- A few have longer (5 or 10 year) warranties that cover normal wear and tear
- I’ve never bought a TV or other electronic gizmo and had it “just stop working”, when something breaks it’s usually my fault– and thus not covered by the warranty
The Xbox was an exception though. Yes, it had a manufacturer’s warranty that covered it for the first year, but I’m very careful with my electronics and I knew it would probably survive past that. And it did. It’s been more than a year and a half since I picked it up, so my extended warranty covers until the middle of the summer.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being a chump for buying the extended warranty this whole year and a half. I regretted it all the way up until last night when my Xbox started acting funny, then started freezing, then wouldn’t turn on, then showed the red ring (a.k.a. “The Red Ring of Death”) pictured above.
Microsoft has since fixed the ring of death problem in the newer systems, so when I go to return it today, hopefully I get a brand new sealed box machine.
I’ll post an update later that details the (hopefully smooth) experience.