blog

Not that I was one for updating with any level of consistency, but I’ve decided to take officially take a break from this for a bit.  Whittled down the spam comments to 4520, and it appears to be taking up half of my available database space.  As it is, I’ve decided to turn off comments since I don’t think anyone would really comment on stuff that’s at least one month old.  Not a fan of forcing commenters to register, and not a fan of CAPTCHA or spam filters either.  Thinking about relocating this to a different subdirectory or going a new route altogether, but if this is it for this iteration of my web presence I’m sure Wesley or Kei will put me up on something eventually.  Thanks for playing.

One of my favorite activities is a late-night trip to Meijer.  I’m not sure how or when I first became aware of its existence (sometime in the last couple of years or so…I distinctly remember my brother talking about the Pappadeaux as we’d pass by it during the Marshall’s-hopping which was pretty much the only thing my siblings would do as a family around my high school years, but I wasn’t aware of the Meijer until relatively recently), but the combination of a pleasant (trafficless) drive combined with leisurely shopping is always something I look forward to (note for later: find new leisure activites).  And a place with Tato Skins can never be bad in my book.
Occasionally for old time’s sake I’d buy a random pack of cards there as well.  About a month ago I was browsing through and was displeased with the pack offerings, and my attention was drawn to this:

I was actually most interested in the plastic (acrylic?) case that the packs came in since I had needed to do something with the random open packs of cards gathering dust on my bookshelf.  A card case and 66 cents a pack?  I was sold.

The 2007  Topps were the visible packs on either side of the case, so the quality of the packs wasn’t surprising.  I did like getting a pack from each year in 2004-2007, but nothing was special except for the two packs in the lower left.  1989 Topps!  And something I had never heard of before!  That Enquirer pack (from 1992) was interesting since it had no MLB license and just featured a caricature of a player and some form of satirical interview on the back, from which you were supposed to be able to identify which real player the card was lampooning.  That 1989 Topps though is the oldest pack I’ve ever opened.  I opened some 1990 Topps and 1990 and 1991 Donruss because my brother was collecting at the time, and then I stopped collecting until Rafe got me into basketball cards around 1996.

Seeing these old cards and the shattered stick of gum put a smile to my face.  Unfortunately when I went back a few nights later the rest of these FIRE SALE boxes were gone (there were at least three left when I had first picked one up).  But this one pack has inspired me to get back into collecting.  Thanks, Gene Walter.

I know I’ve seen this for at least the couple of years around now (Nar, who also takes a similar path to LSD, recalls this as well), but this was the first time though I’ve had the wherewithal to document it:

I’ve gotta find me a girl who’s down with this.
Since it’s a 708 number (not 773 or 1-800-THE-CRAVE) I’m kind of wondering what exactly it entails.  That can’t be the store number, can it?

Slightly a misnomer as Girard headed back for Seoul a few hours after the photos below were taken, which was around twelve days ago.  Consider my recent blogging record, this is like breaking news.  Girard was unable to find his hat before leaving, which we later found attached to the lowest patch of velcro on Jonny’s jacket.  Living three blocks away from Girard, I was tasked with stuffing it in his mailbox on my way home.  Hopefully I chose the right one.
Some photographs taken with the aid of automatic timer, Crave Case, and some Pizza Hut boxes:

other random thoughts from the evening:
-Rock Band 2 Stratocaster=futuresexloveshow
-sharing of downloaded PS3 games=satisfying feeling of beating the system.  Also I don’t feel as bad as I discovered that I was not the only one fooled by the Locoroco game that ended up being ”interactive screensaver,’ as Sophea was duped as well.  Still mad over the disc-read failure of my own triple though.  A different story altogether if I could do something with Singstar Vol. 2 and Valkyria Chronicles sitting on my bookshelf.
-I must admit, Texas hold’em is growing on me.  I still think I prefer seven card stud, but I don’t think you can get any more efficient than hold’em from a dealing standpoint.  As fond memories of playing Vegas Stakes (SNES) with my dad continue to fade into legend I’ll probably continue my conversion.

As expected, jersey arrived today.  Up until Fitzgerald’s first catch (over the middle, getting hit by four guys, immediately popping up FEELING NO PAIN) late in the second quarter I was joking around about declining the package and saying I was deceased.  Me of little faith.

-displeased with this week’s screen-printed offerings
Replica jersey material reminds me of those super cheap mesh jerseys we used to wear at Bell for frisbee tag with the elastic waist, armholes, and possibly neck as well.  Just a little bit thicker though.

-BUS IS PLEASED

-kind of like the server at that IHOP on Irving who was named Elmo or Widget

-two things you’ll never break, his word or his balls
That play was nuts.  Take away Fitzgerald or Breaston, and the other makes the tackle just short of the goal line.  As it is, Breaston pushed him forward into the end zone and Fitzgerald prevented the out of bound push.  On the chase Fitzgerald ended up getting blocked by two of his offensive lineman (props to them for not giving up on the play), forcing him to weave around out of bounds and hurdle over their failed tackles.  Take either of those away, and no way Harrison gets into the end zone.  Even so Fitz still almost made an insane tackle to prevent the TD, and what does he get?  SUPER BOWL COCKSHOT
And yes, I’m choosing to ignore the (mostly) excellent blocking the Steelers had on that runback

FITZGERALD

EQUALS

BEAST
-Looking at frames of this play, as it progresses, the ball looks more and more impossible to catch.

RECEIVING

RADIUS

BEAST

EQUALS

FITZGERALD
-That last one was nuts.  I forgot where in the broadcast it occurred but Madden was like ‘Kurt Warner is the only quarterback who always wears gloves, all the time’ and immediately an action photo of Warner with the Rams was shown with him not wearing any gloves.  I don’t know if Madden properly qualified that with explaining why he started wearing gloves as the room was already filled with uproarious laughter.

-WARNER HALL OF FAME
No caps here.  Just truth.

-That Holmes TD was nuts.  After the insane Fitz catch-and-run, I was most worried of a 60-yard TD bomb to Holmes happening.  What happened ended up being worse.  The equivalent of a 73 yard bomb but ten times as long.  Never mind that the Cards were asking for it rushing four for that last drive even though Roethlisberger was killing them all game when given time to operate.  Also should have gone hurry up once it was 20-7.

A GANGSTER AND A GENTLEMAN

LIARS AND CHEATS
Back on Tuesday I was looking for Cardinals jerseys with a Super Bowl patch, but much to my dismay I found out that only replicas had them.  So I was eventually ferried over to nflshop.com.

The animation quickly changed to this:

As it was only the 27th at the time, I thought that I was good.  The two jerseys I were looking at were the second and third ones in the caps above.  Fitzgerald doesn’t need an explanation, and I have a feeling that DRC will end up with an insane interception and runback in the game.  I had never seen the black jersey design before, so that intrigued me.  I was slightly worried that its availability was ‘In stock, leaves warehouse in 2 - 3 full bus. days.’  The DRC one had my preferred (real) jersey design that I’ve been mentioning recently and its availability was only 1-2 days, making it a safer bet to actually receive before the game.  After contemplating the choices over the splash screen above, I ended up getting distracted by ‘NFL’ getting an article but not ‘SUPER BOWL.’  In the end though I ordered the FITZ one with the fastest shipping available (One-Day) .  Even though the shipping section said Monday-Friday only, THE NFL GUARANTEES DELIVERY BEFORE SUPER BOWL.

Thursday evening I got my order confirmation, so I had hope that I would end up getting the jersey sometime on Friday.  I awoke on Friday with a tracking number for the shipment, and I eagerly looked it up and was greeted with this:
Status:  BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
Shipped/Billed On:  01/30/2009
Service:  NEXT DAY AIR SAVER 
Weight:  1.10 Lbs
I saw SAVER in the service and knew I was screwed, as that’s only for Monday-Friday delivery.  I ended up trying to find out where the warehouse location was so that I could hope against hope that the transit-time calculator would give me a favorable outcome, but all I found were a bunch of seller-review sites filled with bad ones for nflshop.com.
This is my favorite one:

Wanting to surprise my husband with a Chicago Bear’s football jersey as a present, I called NFL Shop, after hearing their ad on the radio.
I am not too familiar with all the players, so I asked whose jersey was most popular. I was told “Edinger”, but they had no more left in stock. I asked who was second most popular for the Bears. I was told “McNown”.
The name sounded familiar. I asked what position he played for the Bears. I was put on hold for a while. In the meantime, I went to www.nfl.com. I noticed McNown wasn’t on the roster for the Bears. I asked the customer service rep. about this, and was put on hold again for quite a while. When she returned, she said, “I know McNown is a Bear. I don’t know why he’s not on the team’s roster.” So, I proceeded to order the McNown Bear’s jersey. She asked what size, and I said large. She seemed quite happy and relieved to have a large in stock. Additionally, I paid a lot extra to have it sent via fedex.
Imagine my surprise and embarrassment when I was told later that day that McNown was no longer a Chicago Bear but now plays for the Miami Dolphins!!

EDINGER AND MCNOWN MOST POPULAR JERSEYS
But yeah, even with same zip code destination/delivery, earliest delivery time was Monday.  This morning I awoke to see that it’s official:
Scheduled Delivery:  02/02/2009
I was thinking about denying the package outright (and put the money towards an authentic jersey later on), but after reading 30+ horror stories I think I’ll pass.  Of course if (when) FITZ beasts on Sunday I’ll probably still want the jersey anyway.

Looking more closely at the checkout options and the shipping help pages, I see that there’s actually no explicit overnight option when checking out at all.  And perhaps they were shrewdly implying the guarantee for Super Bowl XLIV.
MISLEADERS AND TRICKS

Something else I’ll touch upon before I get called out on it: the last two items in my recently viewed list?  Unexplainable.

Also gotta give props to Mordo for his event flyer:

(added faces are angry for you even thinking you might find out where he lay at)

Finally, a prediction: Cards 31, Steelers 20

Last night a little after 7PM I was settled into my recent nighttime routine of watching NBA boxscores/playing crappy-but-somehow-still-compelling  find-items-in-low-resolution-pictures games on my DS when my sister came in and asked me if I had ever seen ‘a programmer movie with that Phillippe guy,’ as it was being shown on CW/WGN.

For some reason I had forgotten completely forgotten about the existence of this movie.  I think this may have actually been the first movie DVD I ever bought.  If memory serves me right, it was not because I had seen it theaters and liked it, but because Rachael Leigh Cook is in it and back around that time, I think she was the bridge between Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jessica Alba as Hot Actress of the Moment in my eyes.
Initially I was only going to watch for a few minutes until the enchilada dinner baking in the oven was completed, but I got caught up.  So much so that I ended up watching the entire thing.  So much so that with thirty minutes left I got sick of waiting through the commercial breaks and ended up digging up the DVD to watch the end.  All in all, an enjoyable movie.  And since my interest was piqued after watching it, I ended up watching all the deleted scenes as well (never had before, otherwise I definitely would have remembered the following), one of which contained something a 16-year old Joe would have enjoyed immensely:

-crooked smirk=

-mirror=extra appeal

Ok I’m not gonna lie.  Current-day Joe is pleased as well.

So I only have one other movie with Rachael Leigh Cook in it, which I’ll probably watch later tonight:

I just find it humorous that the price sticker obscures her face there.  This one I do remember buying, sometime in 2003 when Suncoasts were closing.  I also remember really wanting to pick up “Josie and the Pussycats” on clearance as well (ended up losing due to lack of Usher), but also wanting to maintain some shred of dignity.  Now?  No such thing as that here.  I wonder if it’s on Bluray?

As Christmas approached last month I was still in unreasonable spending mode, and happened to have Fabolous’ Street Dreams on repeat for awhile.  Back when I first got it, I remember liking it since it was the new Fabolous but was disappointed because it was lacking in tracks by DJ Clue and DURO, who I had no idea even produced until Fab’s first album came through like a comet.  But looking back with 20/20 hindsight this was a much better album overall.  Anyway, Fab was name-dropping Mitchell & Ness quite often in his rhymes around then, and I am nothing if not an easily-nudged consumer of goods.  Ten days earlier I had added an item from Mitchell & Ness on Eastbay to my Favorites list:

(picture I had seen on Eastbay of this was originally of a viewable size, but when I decided it would be the subject of a blog post this was the apparently the largest size of this image left on the internet)
What appealed to me most was that clean stripe pattern (varsity?  Not sure what it’s called); some months back I had bought a couple of Bape sweaters with that similar pleasing stripe pattern on the waist/cuffs/collar.  Also in the item description was ‘jacquard satin lining.’  I’m still not positive exactly what jacquard is, but I have Bape hoodie from a few years ago supposedly with a jacquard pattern that looks nice.  So it passed two criteria for a potential puchase for me:
1) looks nice
2) looks familiar
However there’s a 3rd criterion (actually more but that’s for another post) that wasn’t met at the time when I first bookmarked the item:
3)on sale

On 12/15 as I was perusing jerseys on Eastbay they had a 20% off $99, 30% off $199 sale.  I decided then was the time to strike.  But I needed to add $120 to get to the 30% threshold.  After looking around a bit, I decided to order this, absolutely convinced that there was no way that the Vikings would win out/the Bears would lose another game:

So yes, in order to get an extra $8 off I decided to spend another $140.  The satin side is a bit too garish for me, but the navy side looks nice and clean.  More on this later.

Ready to checkout, an odd thing happened when I looked up the Bulls jacket.

The pictures associated with the item description are of the Detroit Pistons (as of today 01/24 you can still see this happening).  Hoping this was just a web error, I still placed the order.  Further research of the SKU showed that everything pointed to the Pistons one and not the Bulls.  When I got my invoice and saw ‘M&N NBA STRONGSIDE JKT-PT/RD’ in the item description I knew that I would end up getting a Pistons one if no action was taken.  Today I still can’t believe this happened, but I ended up calling the Eastbay customer service line to inquire about my order:
(after verifying customer/order info)
Rep: How can I help you?
Me: I just placed an order online for an item and I wanted to verify what it is since I think the pictures online may be misleading.
**gave her item info**
Rep: Hold on, let me pull the item up in our inventory…yes we’re showing that we have that Bulls jacket in stock.  You’re fine.
Me: But on my invoice the description after the item name reads PT/RD which I imagine corresponds to Pistons Red.
Rep: …I’m not sure I understand.
Me: Do you have a picture of the item in your inventory system **cringing as I’m positive that all she’s looking at is the same website I am**
Rep: Yes I do.
Me: Do you get a jacket that says ‘DETROIT’ on it when you pull up that item number?
Rep:  Yes sir.  Detroit Bulls.

So I ended up canceling the jacket, and surprisingly my discount wasn’t adjusted so I ended up with the Bears jacket at 40% off.  When I got it a few days later though, the zipper was broken.  So I ended up filling out an exchange slip and even called ahead like it said to.  Unfortunately the USPS Merchandise Return service is slow as molasses, although I did take advantage of the conveniently free carrier pickup from home after walking into a post office having forgotten about the madness that is post offices during Christmas-time.  I remember now that that is what caused me to stop selling 360s for profit a few years back.  Interestingly though, I never got contacted by Eastbay again; I would have not known that they even got the item back if not for a $116 credit on my credit card.  So in the end, I’m out $10.98.  But after the Bears failure this year, not spending $120 on a jacket may end up being a victory.  That wool navy side of the jacket was indeed very nice though.  And it’s still in stock online at Eastbay.  And they’ve extended the 30% off $99 employee discount promotion.  Tempting, but my next football purchase has come down to a DeAngelo Williams/Kurt Warner jersey.  Had this whole episode began a week later I would’ve gone with the former (and never gone down this path of Mitchell & Ness debacle), but now KU. WARNER is in the Super Bowl.  And as I said in an earlier post, I like the Cardinals white jerseys.

I ended up looking for better pictures of the Bulls jacket online to determine if it was worthy of a sustained hunt.
(following images capped from Mitchell & Ness website)

Doesn’t look nearly as good here.  The earlier image didn’t show enough of the detail, as the striping along the entire arm bothers me here.

Two things I found that did look nice though (old Sox logo=tha bidness):

-TONAL PINSTRIPES

-PRINTED COTTON LINING

…finally hits home.  I was speechless when I saw the meager amount of icing on the actual cookie (on top of packaging for marketing comparison).  The surprise was doubled when biting into one revealed that it was a relatively chewy cookie.
These used to be a rare household delicacy when I was much younger, but I have no idea when exactly we stopped picking them up.  I know that whenever I saw them since 2002 while working at Target I’d think back to my childhood enjoyment of them, before dismissing them because I thought they were hard cookies.  And me?  Ever since getting a relatively steady source of income, I was on some next-level shit.  Strictly soft’n'chewy for me.  The only exceptions were Oreos and Nilla wafers, and only because they were milk-dippable.  I honestly don’t know how long it had been since I last had one of these iced oatmeal cookies.  But know for certain it won’t be eight-plus years again before the next time.

But anyways, Archway cutbacks aside, these now remind me of Rorschach tests.

^Are you kidding me?  This one was a slap to the face.  Still delicious, though.  Next purchase of these will help me determine if this is just an anomaly or a widespread crisis.

THE SAGA CONTINUES:

MINIATURE VIKING HELMET

Song is dope too, looking forward to the album dropping on 01/28.  Looks like as good a time as any to pick up the tour DVD from last spring that I missed out on as well, just to see if there’s any more scenes of Nigo sneaking into other people’s dressing rooms and stealing chocolate.