Ooh, shiny

I just took my clothes out of the washer and put them into the dryer. I was very careful to take all of the papers and tissues out of my pockets before putting my clothes into the washer, but a dime must have been hidden in one of them.

This is the cleanest dime I've ever seen.

Current Music: Spoon - The Infinite Pet

Note to self

Don't forget Regan's birthday (like you forgot your mother's birthday, you ingrate -- although in your defence, she uses the lunar calendar and it changes every year).

Current Music: Spoon - Merchants of Soul

THEY GOT PORKINS!

HHRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

I'm sorry, that was tasteless, but I felt the need.

Current Music: Metric - Too Little Too Late

He didn't steal my bandmate

Dunning and I have been discussing for the last hour or so good band names for his new band. I, like the rest of you, am eager to hear their new material, particularly because I'm eager to see what Graham's post-Asbestos Concern work will be like. But before these songs can be distributed, and before Dunning is ta [sic] sex! merchandise can be created, the dynamic duo -- the terrible twosome, if you will -- have to decide on a band name.

We brainstormed. Dunning began with a TV episode theme, with names drawn from Buffy and Angel such as "Once More With Feeling". Actually, that doesn't really look right... Once More With Feeling. I, preferring something more obscure, suggested The 1989 Edmonton Oilers. Combining the TV, obscurity, and hockey ideas, I suggested Dave Hodge-era HNIC, followed by just Dave Hodge.

Feeling that something more indie, emo, and intense was required, I suggested The Lehrer Report, which isn't actually the name of Jim Lehrer's show but I was watching the Colbert Report at the time and it struck me as a pretty cool news/politics/intrigue-based name, á la Interpol. This begat the far more obscure and highly regional The John Report with Bob. (Dunning would be John.) Since I'm always reading a blog and if I'm talking to Dunning I'm thinking of dunning, dinning, and donning, I suggested Sometimes Y. Since we were both obviously on the internet, we also thought of some dirty ones.

Of course, none of this is a real decision, as Graham should probably have some say in the matter, but some of these ideas stood out, and Dunning has created a shortlist of these. So, because Dunning can't be bothered to put it up himself, I ask you, dear readers: please, help a brother out and vote for your favourite of the following (or suggest new ones)...

Potential Mike Dunning Band Names

• The Mike Dunning Experiensss
• Durnk
• Once More With Feeling
• Topanga
• Behind the Mask
• Hot Stove
• Smile Time
• Durnk (EDIT 4:57PM Oct. 31, 2005: Wow, I'm an idiot)

Current Music: George Harrison - I've Got My Mind Set On You

Delayed Reaction: Boner

When I was a kid I watched Growing Pains and I also thought I was a dyed-in-the-wool Star Trek fan (it turns out I was just a TNG fan, but that's another story). I noticed that the dude who played Boner had the same last name as the dude who played Chekov, but I quickly forgot about it.

So imagine my (delayed) joy at finding, as I read this story about George Takei coming out of the closet as a 68-year-old man (now that's a delayed reaction) on Fark, mention of Walter "Ensign Chekov" Koenig's son Andrew... or, as he might be more familiar to you, Boner from Growing Pains!

I always wondered how they got away with calling him "Boner" on TV; I just assumed that it was a simpler, more innocent time and they didn't think twice about it. Just now, though, I discovered that his character's name was Richard Stabone. Clearly, this wasn't a coincidence.

Incidentally, I foolishly Googled "growing pains boner" just now. Amazingly, the first two pages of links actually had to do with Boner from Growing Pains. The day is mine.

Current Music: The Corn Dollies - Forever Steven

(Some of you might be interested by Little Hits, another link I got from Man vs. Clown!. Mr. Little Hits is putting up a song I've never heard of every day, and since it is my quest to one day hear every song ever written, I've been browsing, and I've found some interesting stuff on there. In particular: a track by a band called Razar, which sounds uncannily like a band name Strong Bad might have made up; and this, which made me realize that the classic tune "AIDS: You Don't Want It" might not have been so original after all.)

Current link count: 8

Happy birthday, Mak

I found you this link which I thought you might like. And I hope you appreciate my breaking of my no-political-anything rule for you. Because it was your birthday. Yeah.

(Thanks to the good folks (folk) at (where else) Man vs. Clown! for this.)

Ever heard of the show "My Three Dads"?

Yeah, it's called Full House, you dipshit.

(Link taken from vanmega.com.)

Current Music: The Bravery - Honest Mistake

What's Wang This Week

Um, not much.

How are you?

Current Music: Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine

Note to self

Look here.

Current Music: Guns N' Roses - Welcome to the Jungle

First 200th post!

cock

(Thanks to the good (?) folks at Explosm. Please don't sue me.)

Current Music: Spoon - A Series of Sneaks

Dickolas Wang's wardrobe provided by Staccato Men's Fashions

As I sit here at my desk in sunny (well, cloudy now) California, I count my blessings for the internet. More so than usual, I mean. Thanks to the miracle of the internet, I am able to listen to Canucks games online for the low low price of free.

The last two years that there was hockey to be followed, I'd watch as many games as I could on TV. Of course, that's not exactly going to work out right now, but at least I can still listen to the call on CKNW. And what a call it is: John Shorthouse has to be my favourite play-by-play guy, especially since the only other one I can remember the name of off the top of my head is Jim Hughson. I remember when I first found out John Shorthouse was going to be the Canucks' play-by-play guy. I think I might have even been at a Canucks game that night, and was probably waiting for Graham's dad to get to the car, and there was Shorthouse's voice on the radio. Damn, I thought, I thought he was dead!

There's something comforting about Shorthouse calling the Canucks. Perhaps it's because he seems like a bit of a dork, calling a jock's game for the rest of us. Perhaps it's the local-boy-done-good thing he's got going. Perhaps it's the idea of a Vancouver boy landing his dream job calling a Vancouver team (and that's definitely something I keep in mind as I do my thing). Like the high school sweethearts who marry early not out of responsibility but out of wanting to (think Gord and Tracey from For Better or For Worse), it's a beautiful thing.

And maybe it's because it shows that it is possible to climb the ladder of your profession, which is something I also think about in my second year of grad school. This got me thinking about every 1990s Vancouverite's favourite sports show, UTV's Sports Page. (And make no mistake, it was UTV's Sports Page; they were never the same by the time Global bought UTV.) Discovering Sports Page was the best byproduct of the 94 Cup run for me.

Man, those were some good times. Those four guys -- Paul Carson, Don Taylor, Dave Randorf, and John Shorthouse -- were so much more fun than whoever the hell was on TSN at the time. I don't even remember. They were good, but they were local, so they could, say, mistakenly call the Mighty Ducks the Mighty Dykes, and they wouldn't be so professional as to not laugh continuously through the next 5 minutes of highlights, unable to stop laughing (or drown out the floor director's laughter in the background) long enough to, you know, call the highlights. They had comedic timing, too, the lot of them. No other sportscaster could call the balk "the second-most exciting play in baseball" like Taylor could. TSN would never subtitle Sergei Fedorov's name, after the Wings got swept in the Cup final, Played like Cher! None of them looked a day over 25 to me, but that's probably because my sister was only about 19 and the only teenagers I saw on a daily basis were the kind on TV; i.e. the ones that are played by 28 year olds.

And who could forget the plays of the month. I actually owe them a debt for introducing me to some pretty classic tunes. I had never heard "Heterosexual Man" until they played it for me while they showed me something like Youppi! getting hit in the junk by a foul ball. I had "You Wreck Me" by Tom Petty going through my head the other day, and I almost definitely heard that for the first time while watching baseball bloopers.

It was when Randorf left that it really hit me that every one of these guys (except Carson) would one day have to move on. They were a promising batch, but they just couldn't be kept together. They were big fish in a small pond, and larger spotlights beckoned. They were the Vancouver sportscaster equivalent of the 1994-95 Montréal Expos (who, I should mention, I was also introduced to by Messrs. Carson, Randorf, Taylor, and Shorthouse). (As an aside, this is an awful picture of Randorf, and that suit was certainly not provided by the good folks at Staccato.)

Shorthouse, of course, is doing pretty well for himself as the voice of the Canucks, and I imagine he will be for a good long time yet¹. Taylor is back on TV and has made Sportsnet worth watching in Vancouver. It will be a sad day when there is no one on television to keep us apprised of the dreaded Erat-Orzaugh combination, or Antti Laaksonen's numbers ("scoring with regularity"). Randorf never looked the same as a correspondent on TSN, and I figured he'd just disappear. I did a little digging online, though, and apparently he's now TSN's lead 11:00 anchor. Whether this is true or not, the East Coast has dulled him, from what I've seen, and I'll be watching Taylor at 11:00 over the holidays.

But those were some halcyon days. I can't think of the Grizzlies or the Voodoo without remembering Sports Page.

All this nostalgia also got me thinking about ICQ. Remember when you used ICQ? Well I do, because I probably still have it in my chat history. Anyway, I still use it, if only to talk to Victor and Americans. What is it about ICQ that's so hideous now? Is it how it doesn't use a normal window anymore? How they pop up ICQ Today when it opens, which is like MSN Today only without my e-mail and without entertainment news? Or how they added all that crap that nobody used? And then ripped it all out and made the new version incompatible with the old version's settings?

That sound, too, that "UH OH!" sound. I don't think it's changed since the very first version of ICQ I downloaded. That sound is a relic of the early days of the internet revolution, a time when IM was new and exciting and the idea of a HIG² never even entered the mind of a casual computer dork like me. Still, even though it's horribly intrusive and more than a little annoying, nothing says "You have a message!" like that sound. (And, arguably, nothing says "Here I am!" like the less-heralded knock-knock-knock.) We were livin' it up, popping up new windows for every message, sending URLs specially for some reason, wondering what a proxy setting was, and trying to figure out why we could send files to Victor but not to Derek.

As it is, I still use it, but I'd like to stop. Unfortunately, I still sometimes like to talk to Victor and Americans. At this point I'd like to encourage Victor and the Americans to at least try Google Talk, because it might not have any features, but you can (Google) talk. Of course, it won't happen, but what else is new?

In other news, I was just eating a chocolate bar, and I realized all of a sudden that I was full. I looked and I only had two little squares of chocolate left, but despite that, I wrapped it up and put it away instead of just eating the last two pieces. I think this is the surest sign yet that I've become an older, wiser, more mature Dickolas Wang. It's also reminiscent of how my father quit smoking, apparently, but that's another story.


¹ Shorthouse's still got some comedic timing in him, too, as evidenced by this clip of Tom Larscheid calling a fight, getting a little hysterical, and winding up with a breathless "WHAT'S KEEPING HIM UP, SHORTY?!"

Two seconds pass.

"Heart."

²Human Interface Guideline


Current Music:
The Odds - Heterosexual Man
Tom Petty - You Wreck Me

What kind of lover are YOU?/What animal do YOU remind me of?/What were YOU doing five years ago?

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Well happy Thanksgiving to me

Today is the first Thanksgiving/Columbus Day/Indigenous People's Day in my life that I haven't been home for.

I made

The Internet's Foremost Dickolas Wang's Stuffing (with thanks to Thomas)

Ingredients:

• 1 box of herbed croutons
• 15 little baby carrot sticks
• Three celery stalks
• One small yellow onion
• 1/2 cup peas
• Two tablespoons of butter
• Juice/drippings from one Safeway-bought roasted turkey breast
• 250mL of chicken stock
• Salt and pepper

Finely dice the onion and chop the celery and carrots. In a small saucepan, sauté the onion in the butter over medium heat, adding salt and pepper to draw out the moisture. As the onion becomes translucent, add the carrots, celery, and peas. Cook until the onions let out all their liquid, then pour in approximately 3/4 box croutons. Stir to coat. Pour in the turkey juice and stir while adding stock until the croutons have softened and crumbled to desired consistency. Season to taste.

Serves 3.

Current Music: Franz Ferdinand - Do You Want To

EDIT (1:22AM, October 10, 2005): I forgot the peas, and Thomas. But not in that order

Delayed Reaction: Colbert and Carell

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Note to self

Don't forget Dave (S.)'s birthday.

Current Music: Kanye West - Late Registration

I have EST

So today I was walking through the hallway on the way to the bus, and all of a sudden I could taste iced tea. But not good iced tea: I'm talking the syrupy sweet and lemony brisk iced tea I was raised on.

I looked up and there, sitting on a bench, was a half-finished bottle of Nestea.

Did I just blow your fucking mind?





































Well, I thought it was cool.

Current Music: The Chiffons - One Fine Day

Unedited conversations (Stealing Ed's idea), provided without context

25/09/2005	9:41:09 PM	Adam	Richform	Tetrinet?
25/09/2005	9:41:13 PM	Richform	Adam	Hmmm
25/09/2005	9:41:22 PM	Richform	Adam	Okay, a couple of games
25/09/2005	9:41:26 PM	Richform	Adam	then I should catch up on some reading
25/09/2005	9:41:30 PM	Richform	Adam	GT?
25/09/2005	9:42:01 PM	Adam	Richform	What does thatUh.
25/09/2005	9:42:02 PM	Adam	Richform	Sure.
25/09/2005	9:42:16 PM	Adam	Richform	If you want to hear my constant bitching.
25/09/2005	9:42:21 PM	Richform	Adam	Heh
25/09/2005	9:42:22 PM	Richform	Adam	Yes
25/09/2005	9:59:16 PM			You have invited Adam to start Minesweeper Flags. Please wait for a response or Cancel (Alt+Q) the pending invitation.
25/09/2005	9:59:19 PM			Adam has accepted your invitation to start Minesweeper Flags.
25/09/2005	10:02:26 PM	Richform	Adam	gaedar

Current Music: Destroyer - Your Blues