Last night the Portland Gang met up at our house for Gilmore Girls My Name is Earl, but "The Biggest Loser" was having its seasons finale on and preempted it. Brent and I took the opportunity to play XBox--I rented a crazy game called Blinx where you're a "time sweeper" cat that uses a vacuum to pick up trash and then shoot that trash at the bad guys. We were completely enthralled by the game. The girls stayed upstairs and periodically came down to tell us dinner was ready. As we only had ONE more level to go before completing that segment, we told them it'd just be a minute. Pretty soon, someone would come down and remind us, culminating in a shout TELLING us to come eat--fortunately at that point, we'd just killed the major monster on that level, so we were ready to eat, anyway. When we got upstairs, they'd all eaten without us!!! Unbelieveable! Then, when we tried to tell them how cool the game was and how cool the cats were, and how cool the gang of pigs were, they just rolled their eyes and made fun of us! Can you believe it?

That reminds me of when we first got our original Nintendo Entertainment System back in the 80's. It was the one with Super Mario Brothers. We LOVED it--particularly since it was such a HUGE step up from the Atari. We would play it any chance we could get, but when bedtime came, we had to obey, ripping ourselves from the hypnotic glow of the game. Well, I remember one night getting up around 1 or 2 in the morning for a drink of water and found my dad playing Super Mario Brothers in the dark living room. He finally had to go cold turkey, because he wasn't getting enough sleep. I don't think I'm that bad--especially since Margaret will remind me to go to bed. Although, I think I'm definitely going to have to ration my play time--I could totally get addicted to playing during non-sleep hours, and that would cut into my tv watching time--and THAT would be unacceptable!

It's good to know that this blog is doing some good in the world. I was talking with a friend from Salt Lake yesterday and he told me that he had never heard of Bikini Cuts before reading about it here--he then found out that there was one near his house! Oh the joy--to find out that something like that is in your neighborhood! He said he had seen it before when he had to drop his wife off at a craft store and was parked in front of the salon, which was in the same strip mall, not realizing what the place was. Well now he knows--and I'm sure his hair looks GREAT!

Speaking of haircuts--a while ago, I decided to be cheap save money and try cutting my own hair. I bought some clippers--the kind with various guards to control the length. Well, taking the clippers on their maiden cut, everything was going great. I was thinking, "I've been paying for this for HOW long, and I can totally do it for free." When I got to the back of my head, I made a couple of swipes and felt something hit my shoulder as I made an upward swipe. When I looked at what had hit me, to my horror I saw that it was THE GUARD!! I had just made a swipe at the back of my head with the bare clippers and had cut a swath of hair, exposing a strip of scalp--and just in case you're wondering, my hairline is just receding, I don't have a bald spot, so the loss was noticeable! I was so disgusted, and mortified that I would have to go to work and have people see that bare white skin on the back of my head. After determining that wearing a hat at work wouldn't work, I finally sucked it up and endured the questions, and laughter. I definitely learned my lesson--I still cut my own hair, but now I check that the guard is firmly in place after every swipe!

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, we didn't do much in the way of exercising--I guess it's part of the holiday. Anyway, on Saturday, we went down to a local theatre to watch a movie and at this particular theatre, there is a nickel arcade in it. They have all these crazy Japanese video games that have no English instructions, those ball toss games, and those games where you drop coins in and a bulldozer pushes them, and you get prizes if any coins fall over the edge; my dad won a couple prizes on that one. My brother and I played a mountain biking videogame that was CRAZY! To play, you actually had to ride a bike! The faster you pedaled, the faster your character would go. We were pedaling flat out for over three minutes and by the end, I thought my heart was going to EXPLODE! I don't get it--I work out almost every day, but I couldn't handle a video bike ride! My brother was giving me a hard time about it, too--he told me, "Man, I beat you and I don't even exercise AND I'm fat!" Way to make me feel old!

Speaking of my brother--when we were out shopping after Thanksgiving, he saw someone with a mullet, which he had to take a picture of with this camera phone. Evidently he has a collection of pictures of mullets that he's seen in the wild and he was excited to add one to his collection.

Man, I'm still recovering from a food coma that I slipped into yesterday afternoon. All the food...all the delicious food! We had my parents, my brother, and some friends over and had a great Thanksgiving dinner. We'd made as much of the food beforehand as possible, including the stuffing--which we unfortunately forgot to put in the fridge overnight and had to throw it out the next day--since it's always in bad taste to give your guests food poisoning. (Although it would match the sentiment I heard from Jon Stewart--he said he was having a traditional Thanksgiving feast: he would invite the neighborhood for dinner, then kill them and take their land.)

I remember celebrating Thanksgiving once in Norway with a family that had lived in the US for twenty or so years. They had lived in Idaho, and five of the six missionaries were also from Idaho, so we spent the entire dinner talking about how great Idaho was. Well, the odd elder out, who was from Florida, finally got fed up with all the Idaho talk and so he said, "you know, if America were a person, Florida would make it a man." We all just sat there dumbfounded, unable to believe that he'd say something like that in front of this family--(it was mild compared to what we talked about when we were among ourselves, but we TRIED to be a little couth in public). It did make for a memorable close to our Thanksgiving in Norway.

Yesterday I attended a commemoration for the close of Native American Month, and the headline act was a singer who gave new meaning to the term "commercialization of tribal culture"--ok, that's not one term, but she was so over-the-top that she deserves all four words! Her voice was good, but her outfit was Disney's Pocahontas meets Las Vegas showgirl. Her skirt was looked like the animal hide miniskirts that Wilma Flintstone wears, and the top was all fringe and feathers--and when I saw "all," I mean that all there was to it--just fringe and feathers! I imagine that her tribe must live in a very hot climate to have to necessitate such skimpy regalia--somewhere like the surface of Venus. And her fly girls! They were wearing even LESS clothing--less meaning a leather strap that nearly covered their breasts. The dancing looked like they were classically trained dancers from the Showgirls Academcy of Erotic Dance. I asked someone I came with if this was the traditional dance of the Las Vegas Paiute tribe! I was standing next to a traditional tribal dancer that I know here in town and she was appalled--but she couldn't turn her head away, either--it was like watching a train wreck (granted a wreck between a train with a cheerleading squad car and one carrying a variety of leather goods and feathers). I hope this wasn't an indication of where tribal culture is headed as we enter the 21st century--I'm fine with just the casinos!

Wha? First I heard that IKEA has purchased land in Salt Lake to build a store, NOW Apple just opened a store downtown. Between those and the Bikini Cuts opening, the only thing keeping us from moving back to Utah is they don't have Noah's Bagels--they have Einstein's, which are TOTALLY different, depsite being owned by the same company, have the same marketing, etc. Actually, make that TWO things, because until Salt Lake has a Freedom Run (see the 11/03/05 post), we're not movin' back!

Actually, having roots in Utah has given Margaret and me some interesting experiences here in Portland. We're often seen as the ambassadors of Utah and Mormonism to all our friends--(I know--what a scary thought!) One time on Margaret's birthday, the Portland gang went down to a drag show. (See--as ambassadors of Utah and Mormonism, we thought we'd set an example for our friends and go see a bunch of men dressed as women.) At one point in the show, the emcee Darcelle asked if there were any birthdays in the audience. Margaret stood up, and we all urged her to say she was from Salt Lake instead of Portland, which she did. Well that set off the emcee. The rest of the night, everytime Darcelle would tell a joke, she'd tell the lighting guy to "shine the light on Utah to see if she got the joke." That was our cue to laugh, since being from Zion, we really didn't get ANY of the jokes she was telling.

Yesterday a Nike corporate jet took off from here in Portland and after takeoff, one of the landing gear got stuck. This is a picture from the news, emphasizing the problem. When I got to the gym at lunch, it was all over the news--and quite dramatic reporting, too--about how the jet was circling the city to burn off fuel before attempting to land. The news was SO boring--they just showed the plane circling and interviewed various people and asking the most inane questions, like, "what will the pilots do when they've landed?" What kind of question is that? And I think the answer would be: "Change their pants and drink a few bourbons." As it turned out, they took the plane up to a high altitude and all of a sudden--the landing gear worked again! Crisis averted, but don't tell that to the newscasters--they broadcast a completely normal landing as if it were a ticking time bomb about to land--and granted, it WAS that before the gear got fixed--but it was FIXED! Ugh. My favorite part was the constant reassurance that they were boradcasting that they had confirmed with the FAA that there were no sports stars on board--phew, only management, and they're expendable--but thank heavens Tiger is okay!

I swear, watching tv news get us so brain dead. There is always three things that they have to cover--A grisly crime that scares people into thinking they happen all the time and could happen to YOU!; a cute pet story; and something about meth. Last year there was a HUGE ice storm here in Portland that shut down the city for three days. It was AWESOME! No one could drive because the streets were like ice skating rinks (actually, so were the sidewalks--when work started back up, I was getting off the bus and as one person stepped off the bus, they slipped and fell, then the next person stepped off, and HE slipped and fell, then I stepped off the bus--AND SLIPPED AND FELL! It was like a scene out of some penguin movie!) Anyway, the newscasts were broadcasting commercial-free weather reports the entire time, and in reference to the cold air mass that was blowing into the area along the Columbia River, they kept saying one stupid phrase over and over and over and over, "It's like someone left the refrigerator door open." I can see the description once, but to use that as your description every time really tells that you're aiming for the lowest common demoninator--oh wait, this is tv, THEY ARE!

After the post about the hot springs south of Provo, Utah, I got a comment from a friend that refered to "Bikini Cuts." I had never heard of them, so I risked googling the name. (And I put and emphasis on risk because you never know with Google. My brother is in a web development class that needs to design something with a person's head shot and the teacher said to just get a random person's photo off the internet, but warned them to not just go to the Google image search and type "head." Let your imagination fill in the rest.) Anyway, fortunately the first hit that came up was for the actual salon and OH MY GOSH!!! I can't believe that such a place exists--and in Utah of all places. It's a men's hair salon where all the stylists are women in bikinis! They only offer magazines like Maxim and other soft-core porn men's interest reading materials. And to top it off, they offer special cuts for kids under 10. WHO in their right mind would take their 9-year-old child to get his hair cut by a woman in a bikini?!? Plus, I can't imagine how sexy getting your hair cut by a woman that has hair stuck to her amply exposed bare skin--and what is the appropriate way to tip your stylist?

I think this is one of the signs of the Reckoning! When almost naked women are cutting men's hair in frickin' ZION, you know Armageddon is right around the corner. As is says in the Bible, "And lo, when the dancing girls frolic in the places where brethren become clean-cut and entice them with scalp massages and views of flesh, yea, the time is nigh for a great and terrible destruction." I can't remember the exact chapter and verse in the Bible, but it's in the back somewhere.

The Harry Potter premiere was great. The Portland gang met up at a British pub near our house called the Horse Brass Pub. We picked it because it's that dark wood walled, dart boarded, smokey, English-style place that also serves authentic British fare--like scotch eggs. If you don't know what a scotch egg is, (and if your cholesterol is above 200 or you are on Lipitor, don't even read the description, because even THAT will be enough to give you a coronary) it's English sausage packed around a hard-boiled egg and then deep-fat fried. Just reading the menu description was making me feel queasy. I ended up getting the standard fish and chips, which were great. We like going to that pub for Harry Potter events (we went there the night of the last book release, too) because it gives us a chance to imagine we're in Hogsmeade (and for the others in the gang, I'm sure the fact that they serve traditional British beers has NOTHING to do with humoring me on the Hogsmeade thing). After eating, we headed over to the theatre and got there early enough to get pretty good seats. We all didn't get to sit together, but we weren't talking during the movie anyway. The movie was by far the best one to date, and certainly the darkest. It did have its moments of levity, however--my favorite being a quote by Professor MacGonagal talking about expected behavior at the Yule Ball. She said she wanted, "well-mannered frivolity," which is coincidentally what we called our behavior in the mission when called into the mission president's office.

On the way home, we were met with even MORE excitment. (I know--how much more could we handle, but we managed, somehow.) Going down the main road from the theatre, we could see a lot of flashing lights from a fire truck. As we neared it, we could see a building actually on fire--not just smoke, but huge flames shooting out of the front windows! We were the last car to pass by before they closed off the road, and I didn't notice that they'd just pulled the fire hose across the street, and drove over it. In a classic gesture, I could see the fireman in the rear-view mirror shaking his fist at me for doing that--WHO still shakes their fist at people? What is that supposed to mean, or even accomplish? It just felt like he was the villain from some Scooby Doo cartoon and we had just nabbed him, and he, shaking his fist, says, "I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"

I was so annoyed last night watching Smallville. They totally sold out on product placement! During one scene, Lois Lane was trying to distract a security guard and so she started flirting with him--he came over and started drooling over her car, to which she had him get in the driver's seat and explain all the great features of the car. I was thinking, "What kind of car is that? It doesn't look THAT special!" Well, at the next commercial break, there was an ad for the new Ford Fusion, which they pointed out "as seen on Smallville." Ugg, THAT explained it. I swear, it's one thing to have basic product placement like when people are obviously using an Apple computer, but when the product ad is part of the plotline, that's gone a little too far. I remember in Smallville season two, there was a football game segment where, in the lockerroom, when Clark Kent opened his locker, you could prominently see his "Old Spice: Code Red" deodorant. Then, when they were coming onto the field, instead of a "Go Smallville Crows!" banner the team rips through, it was a huge Old Spice: Code Red banner! Geesh! (Curiously, on the DVD of that episode, both of those clips were removed--evidently Old Spice didn't pay them enough for THAT!)

It make me wonder how much I would be willing to sell out for--what am I saying—I PAY to sell out. I wear any number of brand names on my clothes every day. Ugg, such a sucker.