JeffreyLipsey.com

Yep, I got up early. One, because I had to get Marlyn up and two, I wanted to go see what I could buy. My first stop was at Office Depot; they had a laptop on sale for $350 and I wanted a good shot at getting one of those. I didn’t leave though until at least 8:30 am.


Since they have been open for a couple hours I didn’t expect to actually buy the HP Laptop and I was right. I was still there for 30 minutes though as I attempted to find a router they had on sale; Office Depot though had no Black Friday signs up so you had to go around and match the SKUs which took quite a while. They did have a few of the routers left so I picked up one of them and headed on to Pep Boys for a GPS Device.


Pep Boys had a sale going on for a $70 GPS Device which was a Tom Tom but by the time I got there they were all out. They did have 2 refurbished Magellan Maestro GPS devices for $5 more so I went heck, why not? If it lasts me 2 years I’m happy. After Pep Boys I scooted on to Target.


I can’t mention a couple things I bought at Target in fear of giving up some of my xmas gifts, but I did manage to finish shopping for my brother and mom. I also picked up several DVDs, including 30 Rock Season 1 and Psych Season 2; both were selling for $13.99 and are worth well more than that. Other movies that I picked up for $6 or less: I Am Legend, Gremlins, Goonies, Goodfellas, V for Vendetta, Interview with a Vampire, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.


A couple of those I purchased at Best Buy, along with a Camera for Marlyn for only $60; again if it lasts 2 years I’m happy. I spent the rest of the day at home messing my GPS device, apparently you can hack the crap out of it and do a ton of cool things. More on that later.

The question mark is there because I am still confused at what this play was about. Here’s an email Marlyn received about The Race:

As the 2008 Presidential election reaches a fever pitch, Georgetown University’s Theater and Performance Studies Program charts ever more daring artistic territory with the world premiere production of The Race, an interactive, wildly unpredictable and entertaining civic theater project that is unlike any theatrical production you have ever experienced.


Conceived and directed by Visiting Professor Michael Rohd, The Race breaks down the traditional walls by incorporating a cross-section of voices into an on-stage conversation about some of the most important issues raised by the upcoming election: Who will vote for whom? Who won’t? Why? And most specifically, what does leadership mean today?


The show itself is a three-part event. Part One is a performance that sets up the rules and questions for what follows. Part Two asks the questions- and uses interactive media and deceptively simple structures to involve the audience, and participants around the country, in the conversation. And Part Three mines completely different territory by marrying elements of a town hall meeting and a karaoke bar.

We were expecting a history of the 2008 election as it happened so far, but with actors and actresses and hopefully some funny dialogue. You know, the actors would mimic the candidates from the start of the primaries through the end of the election. Sure, we know what happens in the end but that doesn’t mean the play can’t be good.


Given that they started work on this project 18 months prior, this sounded like a reasonable assumption. What also fed this assumption was that as you walk in, they’re showing video clips and audio tracks from all the candidate’s primary runs. Remember those old Huckabee and Ron Paul commercials? This play could actually be good.


Wrong! And on so many levels. Maybe it was the theatre that the play was held in, but the technical aspects of the play were horrible. They only had two microphones (yes, handheld mics) that they had to pass around to the 12 cast members so they could talk. Wait, this isn’t a 4th grade play is it?


In the middle of the play they tried doing some web conferencing with other students from all over the globe (I still have no idea what the point of that was). Apparently, Apple computers DONT handle video conference that well. Because we couldnt hear any of the people they were talking to as they had audio problems. So what did they do? They translated what the people said to us. Wow, you know you could have saved 10 minutes (literally) of play time? If you had just read the questions and answers aloud in the first place.


Questions and answers–Keep that thought in your head because I think a good 1/2 the play was just the actors asking questions to each other then they respond unrehearsed. We paid $15 in tickets for this! There was no acting. This wasn’t a play. This wasn’t a performance. It was like we had to pay $15 to hear what other people think about the election and the world today. And by other people I mean college students; more specifically: college students at GEORGETOWN. Almost as much as I hate conservatives for their ignorance and moron-ism, I dislike liberals for their narrow views and right-bashing.


That’s right, I hate everybody (except for independants). I personally don’t care what college students think about what makes a good ‘leader’ but frankly, I bet they could have Googled “college student,” “blog,” and “leadership” and saved everyone hours of their time. This isn’t even including the poor actors who followed that director for 18 months.


18 months!!! WTF? I’ve seen better productions put on by my high school ‘Winter One Acts’ that took only a few months to put together. What a waste of time and resources (and the liberals blame the republicans for the recession…zing!)


Maybe it was our fault for interpreting this play wrong, but this thing was absolutely dreadful. If it was a movie we would have walked out 30 minutes in. But, we already took the metro ride into the city to watch a play we might as well finish it.


There was one bright spot to the play (other than when it ended). It happened when they had everyone in their chairs get up and fill some bleachers they brought in to make a mock ‘town hall’ type feeling. Trust me, we weren’t the only ones who didn’t want to get up (especially the guy surfing the internet ON HIS LAPTOP); but since it improved the performance I’m guessing it was a good thing.


The ‘karaoke’ mentioned in the email came from this: people were asked to get up and give campaign speeches, taken from the candidates themselves. Yes, the Giulani speech referenced 9/11 3 times in 60 seconds; no, Huckabee didn’t mention Chuck Norris in his speech. People that gave boring speeches (like McCain) were pretty lame. I would have much rather chosen to listen to a Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich speech, if not purely for entertainment value.


Outside of this 10 minute session, the rest of the performance was pretty bad. I still don’t understand what it was about and frankly I don’t think I want to. I feel bad for one person though: Marlyn. She tried hard to find an entertaining play and, if our assumption was correct, then I think that it would have been much more entertaining.


Oh well, at least it got me out of the apartment for one night. I’ll end this post with the funniest lines of last night. It happened from a guy sitting behind me about 20 minutes into the performance:


God, this is awful.


This is Jeffrey Lipsey, and I support this message.

Yesterday I spent pretty much all day working on the Intro and Outro files for Grinderschool videos, since we’re so close to the redesign. That means I spent a good part of the day talking with my brother, as he was in charge of the background music.


After several back-and-forths we finally got a working version, and right now JGB and I are just trying to figure out the small problems in the FLV converting process before we can really hammer down and get things done. We’re going to convert all of our videos from .wmv to FLV for better access and we have like 200+ videos.


I think it takes about 5 minutes a video to set up followed by an hour to convert, so in theory I can only convert like 20 videos/day on my PC. Throw in a possible 10/day by JGB and it’s going to take a good week or more just to build up the database. We had planned on a November 1 release but it be a November 10 release instead, which I guess isn’t that bad as long as we get everything alright.


The almost finished product:

http://www.jeffreylipsey.com/Bob2Jeff/Untitled10.wmv

Thanks to my brother for the mashup! It took a while to get moving but once we found the Apologize midi file from One Republic things went rather quickly and I like the product we have.

Marlyn and I went out for our ‘dinner and a movie’ for Friday nights. We were going to go to our favorite Thai place which just happens to be right next to the movie theater. The movies we wanted to see (in order): 1) Religulous, 2) Max Payne, 3) W.


Religulous:





I agreed to go see this movie if Marlyn went to see Max Payne with me, I think its an even trade although I probably want to see Religulous more than she even knows what Max Payne is about. Expectations? Well, I’m hoping its less biased than Fahrenheit 9/11 but otherwise I think it’ll be OK.


Max Payne:





I feel like I owe myself to sit through 2 hours of this movie, given how much time I’ve ‘wasted’ playing the first two video games on my PC so many years ago. Heck, those games kicked major ass but I do have a couple worries: 1) PG 13 (Really guys? 13 year olds can’t even buy the game why would they care about the movie? R is where it’s at) and 2) I don’t remember there being actual demons in the video game, in fact I’m fairly certain there wasn’t. How do I think this movie will be? Probably better than craptastic movies like Elektra and Hellboy, but lower quality than Constantine.


W.





Okay, after talking with Kiyoshi some I thought ‘maybe’ I could convince Marlyn to go see this movie. I really didn’t want to see it myself based on the trailers I saw on TV but when I saw the above trailer I was intrigued and thought it might be good. Luckily, Marlyn wouldn’t hate seeing it (I guess I continue to underestimate her) so it became our third option. Expectations? Well, I don’t really have any other than I’m hoping it doesn’t suck.


So what movie did we see? None of the above! We missed the Max Payne opening by about 5 minutes, but its not like we were actually ‘trying’ to meet the time. W. started in 30 minutes and the theater wasn’t even showing Religulous.


Given it was already pretty late we just decided to go home and grab a drink. We’ll go see these movies eventually.

…another French Cafe.


This time we got to the Farmer’s Market much earlier than last week, so we had time to go around and look at the things we wanted to buy. I picked out some tomatoes, cilantro and tomatillos (for salsa) and Marlyn went hunting for pears. The most interesting thing there was actually a guy selling meat and another selling dairy. I would like to buy that kind of stuff there but I would have to get it home rather quickly and Marlyn and I wanted to get something to eat afterwards.


She convinced me this time that we should try out the French Cafe that we walked into last week but then decided to go somewhere else. Our reasoning last week was that we really just wanted a sit down place with conventional ordering. However, I didn’t have an excuse this week to not go and I was feeling a little on the adventurous side anyway.


So we walk in and our confusion begins. At least this week we’ve had a chance to look at the menu and take our plan in to order. The restaurant’s (which I don’t remember/can’t pronounce the name) ordering system was what made the entire thing hectic. They had a line that kind of resembled Panera Bread, but I think it looked more like the lunchline in my old Junior High Cafeteria. Apparently, though, you don’t order in the line you instead order from the woman in front of the line. She then yells at the workers who are on the other side of the line whatever you ordered. Confused?


So after we order we really have no idea wtf is going on; how do we get drinks? The woman couldn’t speak very good english, in fact none of the staff there could (whether French was their native language is arguable). So when you look around for drinks its all very confusing. I don’t want coffee, neither did Marlyn, but apparently we did because there was a coffee cup on our plate. I went the safe route and just yelled out ‘double espresso’ and it somehow got onto my classy plastic lunch tray (like I said, Junior High-esque). I ordered chicken-filled Puff Pastry smothered in a creamy mushroom sauce (very French) and I also ordered some hash brown potato thing. The puff pastry was a little blan and the only thing I could taste was the heavy sauce (I’m starting to hate French cooking more and more like Alton Brown). The potato had the most flavor in it, although it was room temperature when i got it.


I managed to get most of my stuff on time and somewhat hassle free; Marlyn, on the other hand, wasn’t as fortunate. They gave her a wooden stick with the letter ‘Y’ in it, that way a server could come bring her the crepes she ordered. She did eventually get her meal, but not the iced coffee she ordered too. I think she did like me and just yelled it out somewhere; I mean we paid for these drinks but she didn’t get her iced coffee even though the cashier said ‘yes’ when asked if they would bring them to the table (again, English?). Marlyn had to go back up for the coffee; I don’t know if they had it made and waiting or if they had to make it again, but by the time we sat down to eat we really didn’t feel like eating there any more.


The experience was just too confusing and pretty tense inside; we weren’t able to unwind until we left that place. I hope we don’t go back again.

Maybe it was my withdrawal from the Midwest kicking in or the lack of good (deep dish) pizza places in the Metro D.C. area. Whatever it was Marlyn and I went to Uno’s Chicago Pizza on Friday night and were sorely disappointed.


It wasn’t like the pizza was horrible because it really is hard to fuck up pizza; then again it wasn’t that great either. You know the feeling you get like you have to finish the last slice even though you aren’t hungry? The pizza is THAT good that you just can’t stand to bear the thought of that last slice being uneaten for another day. Uno’s was not like that and it wasn’t even close.


We ordered sausage, olives and mushrooms which by now is my fairly standard pizza topping selection. The sausage tasted like sausage, mushrooms like, well, nothing and the olives were the best thing on there. Uno’s used a mix of fresh and ripened Kalamata Olives which was basically the best experience of the meal (is that sad?). What really makes a good deep dish pizza though is the sauce. Uno’s used a fairly standard deep dish sauch which is a little more hearty than a normal tomato pizza sauce, but again it wasn’t fantastic.


Marlyn compared it to her many experiences at Gino’s East in Chicago which just shouldn’t have been done because it wasn’t even close. I used my few trips to Papa Del’s in Champaign (which also has pretty decent deep dish pizza) and again, Uno’s couldn’t compare.
And we're just talking about the taste of the pizza so far, don't even get me started on the rest of the experience. The wait staff? I don't think I've ever seen such an unappetizing staff in my life. Its like: If I eat this I'm going to turn into one of the many greasy people walking around here. The waitress herself? Picture a woman that would make you not want to eat pizza if you looked at her in the eye, and then increase that and you'll get level of attractiveness at the restaurant. Look, I'm trying to not be too over-the-top here but I believe that there should at least be a bare minimum in cleanliness and attractiveness to serve people.


The bathrooms? Disgusting. There was no air conditioning/fan in there so the temperature was a good 10 degrees from the restaurant, which was a good 10 degrees warmer/muggier than it was outside (which is where we sat). The bathroom smelled bad, due to lack of aeration, and there was no hot water pressure. Is it possible for my hands to feel dirtier leaving than when coming in? Good thing I was using a knife and fork to eat my pizza.


I guess the last thing there is for me to talk about was the quality of the pizza pan that the deep dish was served to us in. It looked like it had been used for 20 years; paint/rust was chipping on the side of the pan and you don’t realize it until after the thing had a chance to cool down. Also, the pizza itself doesn’t cook in the bottom of the pan, they use a metal ring for it to stand on. Is that cheating a little bit? I mean even pizza hut cooks their pan pizzas directly on top of the pan and don’t cheat by using a metal coil to either 1) take up space or 2) prevent the pizza from touching the bottom(?). Frankly I don’t know the reason for the coil but it cant be one to benefit the consumer.


Well, I guess my rant is over as I’ve run out of things to complain about. Maybe my expectations were too high (maybe I shouldn’t have any?) when eating at a chain restaurant. I don’t expect to go back to Uno’s again though for quite some time.

It’s an interesting video; I don’t know how I feel about the song. Kind of creepy but could be cool.


What it says about the new Bond Movie: Does it matter? I’ll still go see it anyway.

Marlyn and I got abruptly woken up by loud construction before 9 am this morning and we aren’t used to having that much free time. Well, she isn’t, she usually sleeps until the afternoon and I get the weekend morning to myself.


We decided to get some brunch in Old Town Alexandria (its like a 2nd downtown or so, full of Republicans if that helps) but we didn’t exactly have a restaurant in mind. The one we were going to go to wasn’t what we were expecting: we really wanted a sit down place where a waiter would serve us. Amazingly it was pretty difficult to find a place like this that served breakfast that had what we wanted. Most of the places were french bakeries and whatnot with Panera-esque ordering.


When we first got there we were able to catch the tail end of the Farmer’s Market, as they were packing up for the day. I guess if you got there at 5 am you could get the full effect of the market, but I mean who is up that early? We bought a cantalope, with mint and spinach for like $7 or so. I thought the prices were fair and they had an excellent selection; I plan to go again in the future if I can Marlyn’s butt out of bed that early.


Afterwords we went around to find a restaurant and finally found a place that had outdoor seating, as the weather was pretty nice out. It was a french bakery too but there was one waitress there with two outdoor seats and chairs so we took our chances. I ordered the Vegetarian Quiche, with Gruyere, Spinach, and Mushrooms. It came with a little side salad and a piece a fruit and to drink I had my first shot of Espresso. The quiche was a little blan, although the crust was nice and flaky and you could tell it was homemade; I probably wouldn’t order it again if we go back. The side salad though had an excellent dressing, something I wasn’t even expecting and it well overshadowed the rest of the breakfast. I am starting to drink Espresso when I have the chance, as it’s the same thing as normal coffee, just without all the water (and without the calories–5 calories per ounce!).


Marlyn ordered a Smoked Salmon Omelet with ham and it was OK too; I felt like the Salmon had too much of a fish taste and not enough of the smoke flavor. Also, you could really taste the eggs in the omelet too, which is something I guess I’m not used to (because I make good eggs lol).


The restaurant (which not only can we not pronounce the name but don’t remember what it was either) had several interesting items, and most of them were organic and a lot of vegan options, if that’s your thing. The prices were pretty decent and I could see going back there again for brunch to try out their other options.


After brunch we went around and did some more exploring in Old Town, she bought a couple things at the thrift store and we came back home. Before we knew it we got back at 1:30 in the afternoon and I realized all my poker time had pretty much evaporated.


Oh well, I spent the next couple hours relaxing until my first tournament started at 4 pm.

In what turned out to be a very stressful and annoying season, the White Sox finally get back in the playoffs for the first time since 2005 when they won the World Series.


As many readers know I’m an avid White Sox fan and I had a ‘feeling’ they would get in, but it would require 163 games to do so. Sure, had they won just won game last week in the series vs the Twins, or another game against Cleveland then we wouldn’t have even had to play the 1 game playoff. But, who doesn’t like a little bit of drama in their lives?


So, now I get even more reason to procrastinate going into October, as I get to watch both the Cubs and Sox in the playoffs (the first time that has happened in 102 years). Dare I ponder about a Crosstown Classic Series?

My apartment is now baller! The couch, as expected, is pretty huge but it looks pretty awesome too. It came yesterday around 2ish and we no longer have to sit on desk chairs to watch television.


That brings another problem though: what to do with our spare desk chair? It’s too expensive to throw away and we have no way to store it. It might turn into a spare dining chair now that it is no longer needed to watch TV.


I’ll see about taking pictures and getting them uploaded to show how the living room of our apartment looks. I can’t show the bedroom or kitchen because usually that’s a mess.