It's a real shame that apparently people aren't watching Conan on the Tonight Show. I for one like him there a lot. Just think: when someone says the name Conan to you, do you think of Conan O'Brien or Conan the Barbarian? I'm guessing you probably think of Conan O'Brien. That alone is a feat! That's like someone named He-Man Smith becoming the preeminent He-Man in our culture!
Anyway, it's also a shame that apparently none of my friends watch The Simpsons anymore either. Because of that, many of you will have missed this little pearl from Conan, writer for the Simpsons from 1991-1993, right at the end of their 20th Anniversary Special:
interviewer:
[If] you had to write the... the ending of the Simpsons, how would it end?
Conan:
Marge is gonna take a good hard look at Homer, and say he's so stupid, and he's... screwed us over so many times.
It'd be humourless, it won't be funny, it'll just be her looking at Homer and saying, "You are such a stupid sonofabitch. I... you're endangering my children, you've destroyed the town six hundred thousand times, you're... you... you're a threat to mankind. I'm leaving you. I'm leaving you forever."
Wait... are you talking about the animal or the archetype?
Current Music: Squeeze - Another Nail in my Heart
P.S.: First person to provide a Photoshopped picture of Alec Baldwin playing hockey gets a reward P.P.S.: Bonus points if you can make him a Cal Golden Bear
Against my better instincts, I decided to start watching Mad Men. Mainly I did this because I felt like I was becoming a bit too attached to light and happy comedic entertainment, and was becoming especially uncultured. Mad Men seemed easier than reading a book. Despite my initial indifference, I quickly became hooked and powered through all of it, finishing last night. Some of it was not that pleasant -- I'm not very attuned to drama anymore, I guess -- and I watched too much, too quickly, but I had to get through it as quickly as I could so I could Google "I hate Betty Draper" without worrying about spoilers. Man do I hate Betty Draper.
Me and the rest of the LUGs bought Settlers of Catan a few weeks ago. I don't know why we didn't buy it sooner, since Jowen and I were playing online probably four times a week a few years ago. Jowen and I were so addicted we would play two-player Settlers, which is about the dumbest thing you can do. He beat me all the time, and I wish I'd saved some of the numbers, because the number of times he rolled 7s more than I did must be statistically significant. I used to half-jokingly accuse him of cheating by altering the random seed on his computer, which he would always deny. Since we've been playing the real board game, though, I've noticed that his dominance has all but disappeared. Now, I've noticed that now when I say "Not so good when you don't fix the game, are we?" to him, he doesn't seem to reject the notion quite as quickly, and there might even be a hint of embarrassment.
So, as the reigning King of Catan (having won all five real games we've played so far, as well as being 2-1 in two-player Jowen-Richard grudge matches), despite the fact that I'm clearly going to jinx my current run of success by just saying this, eat it, Jowen. I am your Catan daddy. It's good to be King.
A few days ago I was sitting in my apartment eating lunch with the slide door open to get some fresh air when I heard a rustling in the kitchen. Without thinking I started to worry that it was a skunk, but then I remembered that I don't live in Berkeley anymore and there's no way a skunk could get in a tenth floor apartment without me noticing. I also don't live in Port Coquitlam anymore, so it probably wasn't a raccoon either. No, it was probably a squirrel, I figured, and sure enough, it was. This is not a good thing, though: I've been afraid of squirrels ever since I was 18. I saw a squirrel chase another squirrel, and when it abandoned its pursuit, it stood there, staring at the fleeing squirrel, chest heaving up and down, with pure malice in its eyes. Ever since then, I've known that squirrels are far more man than me.
Anyway, I managed to direct it back out onto the balcony, but before I could close the door on it, it put its hands onto the sliding door track, stared right at me, and growled at me. What could I do? I couldn't close the door on its hands; this little bastard climbed up ten stories of concrete to get at my stuff: if I even made a move to hurt its hands, there could be some serious hell to pay. I tried not to soil my pants and stared it down, and finally it relented. I closed the door on it and resigned myself to losing the mandarin oranges I was keeping outside on the balcony. Now they're yours, squirrel. Please don't harm my family.
Today my blog is five years old, and what a five years it has been. I toyed with the idea of getting on Twitter a few weeks ago, because I'd be more likely to use it since it's much quicker to Twitter than it is to write a blog post -- and also I wanted to follow Big Ben. I decided against it because I feared I would end up never blogging again, and I'm very fond of the medium- to long-form blog format. I couldn't have written a paean to all-you-can-eat sushi on Twitter. I couldn't have written about my lost youth on Twitter. On the other hand, though, there's Big Ben. Regardless, I've made my choice. Long live I, Dickolas Wang.
I went to Berkeley last weekend for a visit (DW Fun Fact: I graduated in May and am back living in Vancouver for the next couple of years as a postdoc at UBC). When I first moved to Berkeley, it was right at the end of what had been a gorgeous Vancouver summer, and so moving to the sunny climes of the Bay Area was actually kind of a letdown weather-wise. This is California? Where's the sun? What's with all this fog?
Anyway, because of this bad start I never fully appreciated the weather. Sure, I was aware that December in Berkeley isn't really much worse than August in Berkeley, and I was wearing shorts in November, but still, it never really sunk in how great the weather is in Berkeley. Well, all of that changed this weekend. Damn it is sunny there. And warm. And dry. And not windy enough to make me fear that my windows will blow clean off my building. So, although I may have said all sorts of things about Berkeley -- it's crazy, it's unfriendly, it's dirty, it's dangerous, the people are mean, Americans suck, the food is overrated, and so on -- in the past, I now have to finally admit that Berkeley is a beautiful place. Oh, and also, you can access Hulu from Berkeley, which is a major selling point right there. So thank you, Berkeley: you may be a bit of a bitch, but at least you're hot.
I've been playing a lot of pitch-and-putt golf for the last few months. It's past the season (read: it's cold, wet, and windy -- I would be playing so much golf if I were still in Berkeley), so I'm currently stuck at driving ranges. This works for me though because I'm entirely re-working my swing. I was playing pretty well for a while, but then during a round, just when I had pulled ahead of Jowen and put myself in birdie position at the 11th hole, he goes and hits a hole in one, which caused me to seize up and bogey the hole. Since then I've been psychologically shattered and have completely sucked every time I've played.
No matter: I've got the whole winter to watch instructional YouTube videos, improve a little bit, have a friend take a video of me swinging, and then completely start over because I don't look right in the videos. People say to take golf lessons, but the next person I pay $75+/hr to better also get me acquitted of some serious criminal charges1 or at least provide delicious food, so that's out. Instead I think I will continue to watch YouTube swing instruction videos, and watch myself try to mimic it. I haven't seen this much of myself in videos since my videoblogging days. In related news, man am I fat.
Lately I've been completely obsessed with Community, the new show on NBC. From the moment I saw the commercial, I was interested: Joel McHale is on it! While some of you might know him as the host of The Soup!, or from any one of a number of commercials, or from The Informant!, I know him as the young guy from a Seattle sketch comedy show called Almost Live! I can't stress enough how important this show was to me growing up: it was one of my favourite shows through most of my teen years, and a great deal of what I know about being funny was learned from Almost Live!2 (DW Fun Fact: the name of this I,DW feature was taken from this Almost Live! segment:
It gets better: the creator of the show is none other than Dan Harmon, who some of you who are not me might know and admire as one of the creative forces behind The Sarah Silverman Show (man I can't stand that show). However, those of you who are me will know him as Doobie Brothers and Van Halen producer Ted Templeman from Yacht Rock!
Anyway, this show Community is really great, it's really funny, and also I think I love Alison Brie:
Oh come on, go to CityTV's website (or Hulu, if you're American) and watch the scene in "Debate 109" where she lets her hair down and tell me that you didn't fall in love just a tiny bit. She's also in Mad Men so I thought I'd try watching it, but I watched the first episode and decided that I'll stick to Community. Maybe I should keep watching until I get to an episode that she's in. I also saw an episode or two of My Alibi, but decided that I'll stick to Mad Men. Also I got about two minutes into Hot Sluts, which is not what you think it is, but decided that I'll stick to My Alibi. Also, and I cannot believe I just did this, Googling "Hot Sluts" is not the most efficient way to find the URL for the show's website.
On that note, I leave you with a classic Almost Live! sketch3.
1. There's a joke here about criminal charges stemming from paying $75+/hr for services, but I'll leave that to the reader. 2. Which is why I went into math, I guess. 3. Non-DW Fun Fact: if the guy sounds familiar, video gamers, it's because he's the announcer in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
