Rough Draft

Eagles vs Browns

The Eagles managed to stay undefeated this week, if barely, with their 34-31 overtime win against the Browns. Unfortunately the game wasn't on here, so I had to rely on ESPN and NFL.com "live" updates and IM messages from Jacob and Jeff to find out how the game was going. I have to say I didn't expect the Browns to put up such a fight, but a couple days ago Jeff predicted the game would go into overtime (of course he also said the Browns would win). The Eagles' next game is against Baltimore. The Eagles' defense won't have to face Jamal Lewis since he'll still be suspended, but their replacement running back, Chester Taylor, ran well against the Bills this week.

Eagles vs Panthers

The Eagles got a redemption of sorts last week beating the Panthers 30-8. The Panthers beat the Eagles in the NFC Championship Game last season 14-3. Once again the game wasn't on here, but according the the recap despite the 30 points, the Eagles didn't have a great offensive game. McNabb did not throw a touchdown pass, one of the Eagles' touchdowns was an interception return by Lito Sheppard, and the final touchdown was a 42 yd run by Brian Westbrook when they were just trying to run out the clock. But obviously the defense played really well and they still got a solid victory.

Explosions in the Sky

I went with Nick to see a band called Explosions in the Sky at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco on Friday. First I'll say the two opening bands left something to be desired. The first was a guy and a piano. I shouldn't be hard on him though because he said he lost his voice, so he didn't sing anything and instead just played the piano. He played 3 songs, and they sounds pretty simplistic, so I think the singing would have helped. The second band, Lazarus, rather unfortunately did sing. The lead singer really didn't have a good voice, and the lyrics weren't really that exiting. They did do something cool which was have this home video type thing playing behind them on most of their songs. The lead singer was definitely drunk, high, or both and after 3 songs in a row asked "Can I get some more electric guitar in the monitor?" (said in a drunken slur). Then came Explosions in the Sky and it was all worth it. Their music is completely instrumental. You can preview some tracks on iTunes here. The changes in mood throughout any given song were amazing. It would be all slow and then they would go into these fast, crazy guitar riffs. They were really awesome to hear, and if they're ever playing a show in your town you should definitely check them out.

Warm October Night

Last Sunday I went to the Yellowcard show at The Warfield in San Francisco. Yellowcard played, without a doubt, the best set I have ever heard. They played a 20 song, hour and a half set. They played lots of their old songs and quite a few songs they haven't done live before. The setlist was as follows (all the songs are right, but might be a little out of order):

• Piano/Violin Intro (Pete and Sean)
• Inside Out
• October Nights
• Breathing
• Believe
• Powder
• Finish Line
• One Year, Six Months
• Rough Draft
• Trembling
• View From Heaven
• Empty Apartment
• Back Home
• Life of a Salesman
• Only One
• A.W.O.L.
• For Pete's Sake
• Way Away

  Encore

• Rocket
• Gifts and Curses
• Ocean Avenue

I was most excited to hear Gifts and Curses, which is a song they wrote for the Spider-man 2 Soundtrack. It's a great song, and the piano and violin sound really good together. Sean also gave a shout out to his Dad who was at the show, before playing Life of a Salesman.

The opening bands were quite good. The Starting Line played about a 45 minute set right before Yellowcard. It included Best of Me, Up and Go, Cheek to Cheek, Leaving, Left Coast Envy, A Good Night's Sleep, Given the Chance, and about 4 new songs. Good stuff.

The other two openers were Reeve Oliver and The Matches. Reeve Oliver was your typical 3 person punk band. Not bad, but nothing exciting. The Matches had a bit more unique sound and I enjoyed their set. Even better though was after the show was over, The Matches were outside with acoustic guitars rocking out on the sidewalk. It was pretty entertaining.

New Music

Picked up a couple of debut album's yesterday, Straylight Run (self titled) and Denver Harbor (Scenic). Didn't know the Denver Harbor CD was coming out already, but I saw it was listed on the iTunes Music Store. Then when I got to Best Buy, they had it for a mere $7 so I had to get it. Denver Harbor features 2 members (including the singer) from a band called Fenix TX that Mike introduced me to freshman year but they broke up a year ago or so. Their one "mainstream" appearance was their song Phoebe Cates included on the American Pie 2 soundtrack. Anyway, the Denver Harbor CD is a good CD, definitely very similar to some of the heavier Fenix Tx songs such as Ben. Not much needs to be said about the Straylight Run album, it is amazingly beautiful. My one gripe with it is the first song, The Perfect Ending. Even from the name you might question why it's the first track. Even aside from that the song is waaaaaay to slow to be the first track, so I pretty much always start on track 2, The Tension and the Terror. Don't get me wrong, The Perfect Ending is a good song, though it has taken some time to grow on me, but it really should have been the last song on the album. Mike put up a couple Straylight songs from an acoustic radio performance which I highly recommend you download. In addition to those albums Sarah brought me a couple movie soundtracks, namely Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite. Both were great movies, and have equally great soundtracks. The Napoleon CD is worth it just for the audio clips from the movie, including the greatest pickup line ever: I see you're drinking one percent, is that because you think you're fat? (pause) Because you're not, you could be drinking whole if you wanted to.

Good TV

Last night's episode of Scrubs was wonderful. First you had Zach Braff dressed as a Kabuki actor to tell a family their loved one has died. So completely random. Though this was especially entertaining to me after learning about Kabuki theater in my Classical Japanese Literature class last spring. Then Tom Cavanaugh was in the episode as Zach's brother, Dan. Though he spent most of the episode drinking beer in JD's bathtub. This is the first season I've watched Scrubs and I've laughed out loud multiple times during every episode. I believe the older seasons are coming out on DVD, so those will definitely be going into my NetFlix queue. And speaking of Tom Cavanaugh hopefully Ed will be out on DVD in the near future, that was such a great show too.

Tonight's episode of Rescue Me was also really good, and as it turns out the season finale. I didn't know beforehand this was the last episode of the season, but by the end of episode with all the shit that was going down, I had a bad feeling it was. So I checked FX's website and sure enough it was. I'm sure they'll be re-airing the season soon, and when they do I definitely recommend checking it out. So I guess I need to find a new show to fill the genre void of drama littered with twisted humor in my tv viewing...at least until season 4 of The Shield starts.

Japanese Arcade in Cleveland

This is a note to self in case I make it back to Cleveland in the near future, as well as for my friends still at Case. Sarah was telling me there's an all Japanese arcade near Cleveland. One thing they have that I'd really want to try is the drumming game, which is similar to DDR (and shown in Lost in Translation). It sounded like a really neat place. I don't remember the name of the place or where exactly it was, but hopefully Sarah can leave that in the comments.

San Francisco Zoo

Sarah and I went up to the San Francisco Zoo on Friday and had an awesome time. First I want to say that the drive up to San Francisco is really nice, especially when you're doing it late on a Friday morning and there's no traffic. Also, right before you get to the zoo there is a wonderful view of the Pacific Ocean from the highway.

The first place we went in the zoo was the "Children's Zoo". It had a bunch of typical animals like rabbits and birds of prey and a petting area with goats, sheep, and miniature donkeys. There was also this really scary looking Nigerian Dwarf Goat which was in its own area and kept making scary noises while pushing against its pen.

The Children's Zoo also had what was one of the best animals in the entire zoo, the prairie dogs. There were at least 50 of them in the habitat. Occasionally a bunch of them would jump up and make this yipping noise. Sarah took an Animal Behavior class at Case, and apparently the professor was obsessed with prairie dogs, so she told me a lot about them. One thing being that there are a small set of them which act as lookouts. You can tell them because they're standing up, usually on a hill, and not eating. They communicate to all of the others through various tale movements. Then after some period of time they switch out who the lookouts all. It was pretty interesting to watch them. We ending up stopping by to watch the prairie dogs 3 times during the day. Also, the first time we were there a zoo keeper came in to remove some cages from their habitat. As soon as the zoo keeper entered the habitat, all the prairie dogs scurried underground, in what had to have been less than 2 seconds. It was amazing how quickly it went from being active and filled with prairie dogs to completely silent and empty.

They also had meerkats in the Children's Zoo which were pretty cool and behaved a lot like the prairie dogs. Seeing the meerkats also brought up discussions of The Lion King. By the end of the day, we had seen animals for just about all of the main characters from movie. I told Sarah she needed to break out Photoshop and make a Lion King montage from the pictures she took.

My other top animal species for the day was the penguins. The penguins had quite a large area. There were a lot that were swimming around, and playing under the hose spraying water into the pool. Then there were a whole bunch more just hanging out on the island. They were really fun to watch. They're so graceful in the water, and really funny to watch on land. I was amused by them hopping down the 1/2" steps on the sides of the cave filled mountain living area. There was also one fat brown penguin. We found out it was molting, and when a penguin is molting its feathers are not water proof. This means in the wild they wouldn't get food, so they gain 50% of their body weight before they start the molting process.

We also found out that they feed the penguins between 3 and 3:30. We came back around 3, but didn't see anyone there to feed them, so we walked over to watch the river otters. Then I spotted the zookeeper lady in a golf cart and said, "I bet she has fish." As she drove by, we saw the buckets of fish and went running over the penguins. The penguins came streaming out of the water and crowded all around the fish buckets. Apparently some of the fish had pills in them and they had to give certain fish to certain penguins. After any given penguin had its fish, it would waddle off and dive into the water. There was this one penguin that refused to get out and just kept swimming back and forth looking over at the zookeeper. Apparently most of the penguins were named, my favorite being Noodles. I also remember Duke, and Pepper. Oh, and of course being the dorks that we are, Sarah and I had to dub one Tux while we were watching them.

We also had a chance to see the lions and tigers get fed. I'm always amazed at the size of the big cats, especially their paws. It was quite a sight seeing the huge father lion suddenly appear in the doorway between the inside cage and the outside habitat. There were a lot of people around the lions, so Sarah and I went down to the cages where the tiger's were going to come in and were right in front. Then the zookeeper got the wheelbarrow of raw meat and went down the line putting into the cages. For all but one of the cats, he just pushed it in through the cage, but for the last tiger there was a metal slide affixed to the outside of the cage that he put the meat in, so I guess that tiger was a bit more ferocious than the rest.

Earlier in the day we had watched the tigers while they were outside. It was neat because you could be right next to the cage that kept them in their habitat, unlike the Cleveland Zoo where there is a huge moat between you and the tigers. The one wall of their habitat was made of plexiglas and while we were standing there the two tigers just kept pacing around in circles and would walk right next to the plexiglas and stare at us as they walked by. I really enjoyed watching them.

I almost about the peacock that seemed to be following us. At least 5 times through the day we would be walking or watching some animals and this peacock would suddenly appear behind us. So, it's pretty likely that it wasn't the same one everytime, but it was still really weird. We never saw more than one at a time, except when we saw 2 running off the path into some bushes.

The one disappointment for the day was the feline conservatory because hardly any of the cats were out. We did see a snow leopard out, and a fishing cat laying on top of its cage, but otherwise all the habitats were empty. It was pretty cool in the morning, but it was quite warm by the time we left so we were hoping they'd be out by then, but they weren't.

The zoo was a lot of fun, and a great way to spend the day. And fortunately it took me a lot less time to visit the San Francisco Zoo than the 4 years it took me to finally make it to the Cleveland Zoo. At some point I also want to get down to the San Diego Zoo, especially since it's known as the best zoo in the country.

Magical Trevor

Everyone loves Magical Trevor!
Catchiest...Tune...Ever

If you can't stop laughing or can't bring yourself to close your browser window after hearing this, don't blame me, blame Sarah.

Eagles vs Bears

The Eagles beat the Bears 19-9 in Chicago today. The game wasn't on here, so I don't have much to say. All the highlights and game summaries I've read and seen indicate the game wasn't nearly as close as the score indicates. The Eagles are 4-0, with all four wins being by 10 or more points. The Eagles have a bye week next week, and then play Carolina at home. The Eagles are at the top of their game. Hopefully the bye week doesn't disrupt their momentum.

Katamari Damacy

After reading Mike's post I had to find out what Katamari Damacy was. Turns out, it's this very simple game by Namaco where you push around a ball that stuff sticks to. And by stuff, I mean pretty much anything. That's the game, push around ball and stuff sticks to it, as the ball gets bigger, you can pick up bigger things. So simple. I read some reviews praising the game, and given it's $20 price point and the fact that I wasn't doing anything else I decided to go pick it up.

I drove down Steven's Creek to the GameStop, but they didn't have it. Actually when I got there I couldn't exactly remember the name of the game, but I looked and didn't see it. So I decided to ask the clerk. No sooner than I said "I'm looking for this PS2 game, but I'm not quite sure on the name," he goes "Katamari Damacy? we're sold out." Damn. Fortunately, there's a Best Buy not more than 3 blocks away, so I went there. I got there, looked at the shelves and didn't see it, but then a worker came up and asked if I needed any help. So I described the game I was looking for. (I hadn't fully caught the name when the GameStop clerk said it.) The guy says, "Yeah, I've read about that game, it's gotten good reviews, I think we have it in the back." About 30 seconds later he comes back with a copy of the game. Victory!

And now, having played the game I can say it was easily worth the $20 (and dealing with trying to park at Best Buy). You simply use the two analog sticks to roll the ball around. No other buttons are necessary. You can use R1 to get an aerial view of the area your in, and you can use L1 to look around in first person view. It takes about a minute before you are rolling the katamari around and picking stuff up.

Now, like any puzzle type game, of course there is also story. The King of All Cosmos has accidently broken all of the stars. So by using the katamari to roll things up, they can be turned into new stars. So he sends his son, the prince, to Earth to do just that.

In the first few levels, the goal katamari size is pretty small, so you end up picking up a bunch of smaller sized objects. However, the moment when you are playing and your katamari is large enough to start picking up small animals and people, will go down as one of the most fun moments in video game history. That's right, once you reach the right size animals and people are no longer safe. The children tend to laugh when you pick them up, while the adults scream. It's all very amusing.

The game contains very amusing textual speech. The funniest so far being when you fail to meet the katamari size for the level and the King says something along the lines of "We have the best eyes in the universe and still can't see you're katamari. Well, small is in, and being a trendy prince you would want to try that wouldn't you."

Also of note is the background music. It's a rather wide selection of genres, but nothing quite beats rolling a ball around picking stuff up with a J-pop background.

There is also a 2 player mode, where you compete to see who can get the larger katamari. I haven't actually tried the 2 player game yet, but apparently if you get significantly bigger than your opponent, you can pick them up as well while they struggle to try and break free.

Anyone with a PS2 needs to pick up this game. For $20 you can't go wrong.

Game Night

After Ricci, Andrew, and I got back from our little trip we came back to our apartment and had potato soup that Andrew made that morning and Ricci brought some curry he had made the previous night. My contribution was purchasing some garlic bread at Safeway. :-)

The original plan had been to eat at Ricci's and then watch the Star Wars Trilogy on his 42" flat screen TV, but sadly the electricity never came back at his until around midnight. So instead, we played a game of Go. I use the term game rather loosely since none of us had played before, so while we were following the rules, I'm sure it looked pretty sad to anyone who actually knows how to play.

After my victory over Ricci in Go, we decided to play Risk 2210. Andrew had never played any Risk game before, and I had only played standard Risk a couple times, maybe 10 years ago. Since it took a long to time to get everything setup and go over the rules, we only played 2 full turns. We had planned to play 3 turns, but by the end of the second turn, there was no way for us knock Andrew out of first place.

Excursion

Around noon on Friday all of the Cupertino and Sunnyvale areas lost power. People in my group generally hung around until 1, at which point we decided we might as well leave for the day. Getting home took some time with a few of the traffic lights being out. The power was out at my apartment as expected, but was back on by 3. My friend Ricci still didn't have power, so he called Andrew and I around 4 to ask if we wanted to make a trip to Japantown in San Jose with him so he could pick up the board game Go. I didn't know there was a Japantown in San Jose, so I figured that would be fun to explore.

What Andrew and I came to discover though was that Ricci didn't really know where it was either. One of his co-workers drew him a crude map with the general area of a store he had been to several years ago. Needless to say I was a little skeptical about the existence of this store or Japantown itself. Fortunately, Ricci did have a map in his car, so after some searching we stumbled onto Jackson, the road his co-worker had told him it was on. And sure enough, when we turned onto Jackson there were banners on the street lights saying Japantown. We passed many Asian and even a Mexican restaurant before actually seeing any stores that seemed Japanese.

Eventually we passed one shop which had a very amusing T-shirt that had "Shitake Happens" written on it. Then we came across Far Out Toys which had a bunch of anime action figures, posters, and music. We also got directions to a store which might have Go. After stopping in a store with anime videos, we got to the store with Go just as it was closing. The owner did let us come in though, and got the game for Ricci.

On our way back to the apartment, this car with black lab sticking its head out the window passed us. It was the dog that first caught my eye, but then as it went past I saw the highly amusing bumper sticker on the car: "My Labrador Retriever is smarter than your honor student."