Another funny video...

Here's another funny ass video by Bowling for Soup, "High School Never Ends":


"High School Never Ends" was the first single off their seventh album, "The Great Burrito Extortion Case" (2006). Working in a high school myself, I see all types of stereotypes. I found this song to be quite true back then when I was in school and now, with all the cliques that still exist at every school known to man.  The jocks, the cherleaders, the bullies, the nerds, etc...

As with many of BFS's songs and videos, this one is chock full of juicy pop culture references:

(info from wikipedia's entry on "High School Never Ends (song)":

Song references:

"The song contains many references to today's culture. Specific celebrities mentioned include Mary Kate Olsen (specifically, her alleged eating disorder - How did Mary Kate lose all that weight?), Jessica Simpson (you'll never guess what Jessica did), Bill Gates (Bill Gates, captain of the chess team), Reese Witherspoon (Reese Witherspoon, she's the prom queen), Jack Black (Jack Black, the clown), Brad Pitt (Brad Pitt, the quarterback) and Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes (Katie had a baby so I guess Tom's straight, also a reference to his litigation against journalists/paparazzi who questioned his sexuality). The song satirizes many aspects of today's society and its scrutiny of celebrity lives.

...and in an attempt to sanitize the song for the younger audience, there was actually a Radio Disney edit. This is so lame; the song sounds like a parody of itself with this "clean" version":

"A separate edit of the song was recorded for Radio Disney. Lyric changes included sanitation, e.g. "all the popular cliques" for "all the total dicks", "whole wide world" for "whole damn world", "what's been suppressed" for "who's having sex", and "who thinks they're funny" for "who gets the honeys".

Additional changes in the second verse and bridge altered or softened the critique of pop culture in the original lyrics. "How did Mary Kate lose all that weight" changed to "How does Mary Kate always look so great?" and "Katie had a baby so I guess Tom’s straight" changed to "Katie's with Tom, okay I got that straight." The lines "Who’s in the club and who’s on the drugs, Who’s throwing up before they digest" were removed entirely."

I love the "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" reference when the band spills out of the van, echoing Spicoli and his stoner friends falling out of a smoke filled van (see below)

Another thing I noticed was the Tom Cruise lookalike (the guy who gets the sign "Punch" taped on his back). He really did look like a younger and taller Tom Cruise.  My favorite part of the video is when the younger fat kid gets slipped a laxative by the mean cheerleader and after he drinks it, you can see a wet brown spot on his pants! Gross! Then he gets his revenge on her years later! How come none of this funny shit happened during my 20 year high school reunion??? I would have paid to see that revenge!!!

Crab Hut

It had been awhile since we were last here in late 2008...

This time, we brought TC with us. She was excited because I told her she would be eating with her hands. Anytime a meal can be utensil free is cause for celebration with her.

If you read my previous post, then the decor descriptions are pretty much the same...

Placard on our table with market prices...

The bib, salt/pepper and lime slices. The bag is my old Tokidoki "Tutti" print messenger bag, which I gave to  TC.

Click to make larger if you want to see the menu offerings:

We started off witha couple of pieces of the garlic bread...it was kind of too soft for my taste. We saved the second piece for when our food came (to soak up the juices).

Bert ordered a cup of gumbo for us to share. While it was good, nothing comes close to the authenticity of HotFudge's gumbo. HotFudge is the wife of Scregman, one of our high school friends. HF comes from Louisiana so she knows how to make the real down home good shit. So, yeah, this gumbo paled in comparison to hers, which is chock full of sausage, shrimp and three kinds of crab.

Here are the utensils to cut up our seafood...

Unlike last time when I made the mistake of ordering crawfish (too much work for hardly any meat), I got 1 lb of clams. The sauce was all of them combined...

Bert got 1 lb of crab legs...

We also got 1 lb of shrimp...of course we shared all three of the different types of seafood. The favorite was the king crab legs! There's nothing more satisfying than cracking open a king crab leg and the meat is still whole and not torn apart by your eagerness to devour it.

It was a pretty fun lunch. We wore our thrasher clothes under our 'bibs'.

This was one of the places we visited during our summer break before I started work again and before TC started school...

Upcoming posts (in no particular order):

the continuation of our Manitoulin Island visit

Zorba the Greek's

Mt. Soledad

Latin Chef

The Chula Vista Nature Center

The San Diego Zoo (zebras again? ha ha)

and more backlogged posts...

Things to look forward to:

Bert's bday coming up (dinner planned at Roseville) [edit - turns out that Roseville is now CLOSED!  As my dad would say, "Gahdammit, sheeyit!"]

Vacation at the end of September

The Season Finale of True Blood in 2 weeks! Can I please see some more nekkid Alex Skarsgard?

Visiting Thane up in SF in early October and checking out more cool places in the Bay Area

10

Holy shit, did one decade just fly right by my eyes?

A few days ago, we celebrated TC's 10th birthday...

Our daughter is the big 1-0.

Double Digits club now.

One fourth my age!

The night before she was born, our ghetto'ish neighbors were having a wild party that lasted until the wee hours of the morning. Loud music, cursing, drinking, all that fun stuff. I hardly had any sleep. At 5 am, I felt the contractions.  We were at the hospital by 6. Had her at 4:33 pm. Got worried when Bert went out to lunch at Carl's while I was in labor. Luckily, he came back since the nurse called his pager (ha ha, pager!).

I was so relieved after she was born. I wanted to burn my maternity clothes in a bad way. Those things were hideous as shit and I was so glad I lost most of the baby weight so I could wear my normal clothes again.

Other people (okay, celebrities) who had babies in 2000:

Alexandra Bowie - Parents: Iman (married to David Bowie)
Rocco John - Parents: Madonna (married to Guy Ritchie, at the time!)
Dylan Michael - Parents: Catherine Zeta-Jones (married to ancient pepaw Michael Douglas)

...and I'm sure there are more, but I remember those people most of all since they were in the tabloids/news that same summer.

She turned out to be a pretty good kid who is shaping up to be (like it or not) a mini me in terms of trivial knowledge, sarcastic humor and hopefully, musical taste. Except for her Justin Beaver obsession.  I can't help but throw tidbits of musical minutiae every time we're in the car. As we play iPod roulette (shuffle), she hears little stories about the songs and the bands as I slowly expand her pop culure repertoire. None of this Disney shit gets played in my car, thank you.

All kidding aside, we are really fortunate that TC was born without any major health problems. She does well at school, is involved in extracurricular activities as well. She's well behaved for the most part and seems to converse well with adults. That's a given since she's an only child and we don't really hang around people with a lot of kids. So, here's 10 down and many more years to go! For the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy her at this age, when kids aren't totally embarassed by their parents (yet) and still want to be with them...

Tutti Frutti Yogurt

A few weeks ago, I had a Buy One Get One Free coupon burning a hole in my pocket that I wanted to use. Tutti Frutti Yogurt is located in the Otay Ranch neighborhood, specifically in the Albertson's shopping center which also houses In-n-Out Burger (check out my old post, "In-n-Out Urge" ), Achiote (see my shitty review here), and Oggi's (haven't been there since I don't really like sports bars). There's also supposed to be a new taco shop across from Tutti Frutti.

The coupons were: "Buy 1, Get 1 Free" and the other one was for 20% off your order. Since there were three of us, Bert and TC used the BOGO one and I used the 20%. They had about 10 stations...

They had some funky flavors like Taro...these were the more "normal" flavors like chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. They also had a red velvet flavor, along with coconut, blueberry, orange sherbet,  cookies and creme and a few others I don't remember.Wait, one was called "Birthday Cake" but I didn't try it.

It's cheaper than Nuyo by a few cents; here it's 36 cents an ounce compared to 39 cents at Nuyo. Here's one of my old posts on Nuyo back in 2008 (Eastlake location)...

It's very candy colored in here - light and sherbetty and makes me want to fart rainbows and unicorns on a pogo stick. I love it! The ironic thing about this slogan is that the yogurt ceases to be all it describes once you put all the candy and sugary cereal toppings they offer. Not so healthy any more, ain't it?

Ooh, space age bubbly lights!  They also have a nice and clean bathroom in the back. Points right there. None of those dirty ass toilet rooms where you feel compelled to roll up your pant legs before sitting down on the throne. Well, this place is still new. Give it a few years, what with high school students coming here and making it a hangout, then maybe, just maybe the bathrooms will deteriorate to the level of public high schools and trucker rest stops. Until then, enjoy the feces free walls and urine-less floors!

I'm so predictable. I got my chocolate and vanilla yogurts with chopped almonds, mini chocolate chips (thank God it's not that carob swill) and mini mochi pieces. Undernearth all that is also a tiny smidgen of the red velvet flavor.

Here's the side of the cup for your viewing pleasure...

Anthing this violently pastel has got to be our daughter's cup. She got about 5 tiny portions of different flavors - orange sherbet, banana, green apple (ugh), coconut and one other flavor I don't remember. She HAD gummy worms on it but she ate them all by the time I took this photo. She also sprinkled a bit of coconut and mochi balls on this cold mess.

Bert is also predicable - peanut butter, cappucino (he likes almost anything coffee flavored) and that red velvet cake flavor. That night he favored the same toppings as me - chopped almonds and the mini chocolate chips. The red velvet flavor tasted kind of wierd to me - very artificial. It's not the same as eating an actual red velvet cake.

Thanks to the coupon, we saved about $4 between the 3 of us. While we were, the yogurt place was only staffed by one person, a young girl (maybe a late teen or early 20 year old) who was pretty nice and kept busy by cleaning and replenishing the toppings stations. She also asked folks if they wanted free tiny samples. Business came in waves - sometimes a couple of people would walk in while whole families of 4 or 5 would walk through.

Can't wait to try this place again. Coupon or not!

[Update - This place is now closed as of 5/2012. Boo.]

Funny Video!

Bowling for Soup's "1985" video:

The song, "1985" was a hit back in 2004 by pop-punk band Bowling for Soup. It was a re-worked cover version of the same song by SR-71. I'm probably late to the party but I don't ever remember hearing this song back in 2004. I just heard it recently somewhere at a store, so I looked up the video. I couldn't stop laughing...(I'm easily amused by the way)!

Love the 80's spoof references:
Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" video
80's B-boys, Breaking and Adidas
George Michael's "Faith"
Motley Crue outfits (loved the polka dotted Nikki Sixx costume!)
Tawny Kitaen & her muscle car straddling skillz a la "Here I Go Again" (Whitesnake video - the lead singer, Robert Plant wanna-be David Coverdale was boning her at the time)

Other 80's pop culture references (from wikipedia's entry on "1985 (song)":
Detailed references:
1 - Whitesnake and the music video for the 1987 version of "Here I Go Again" that featured Tawny Kitaen dancing on cars
2 - The line "Never knew George was gay, hoped they'd hook up one day" (SR-71 version only) is a reference to former Wham! member George Michael who revealed many years later that he is homosexual.
3 - Asking why Sammy Hagar is singing in Van Halen (Bowling for Soup version only)
4 - Questioning why Mötley Crüe has become classic rock
5 - A time when sitcoms and game shows were popular and reality shows were nonexistent
6 - A reference to "...on the radio," which resembles the timbre of the voice singing the verses in The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star," the first video ever played on MTV when it debuted in 1981 (Bowling for Soup version only).
7 - A time when music videos were still shown on MTV (MTV has been criticized for a lack of music videos since the sudden popularity of their reality show The Real World in 1992).
8 - Ozzy Osbourne, before he was an actor (Bowling for Soup version only)
9 - When Madonna and U2 were popular, long before Nirvana popularized grunge in the early 1990s.
10 - They mentioned Duran Duran, Bruce Springsteen, and Blondie.
11 - References made to The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo's Fire (Bowling for Soup version only) and Fast Times At Ridgemont High (SR-71 version only). However, Pretty in Pink is an anachronism, as it wasn't released until 1986.
12 - The line "She rocked out to Wham!, not a big Limp Bizkit fan" is a reference to Wham! being popular long before Limp Bizkit started playing Nu Metal in 1995. (Limp Bizkit remade Wham! singer George Michael's "Faith").

Also, for those of you with kids who watch "Phineas and Ferb", the theme song  is performed by Bowling for Soup. You can tell by the lead singer's nasally voice (is that even a word?):

Melt with TORC

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of going out with TORC...we met for lunch at the Otay Ranch shopping center (it's not technically a mall, but wtf, I call it a mall sometimes). I remember going here 3 years ago with her...

It's still owned by a nice Korean family. The son was working the gelato counter on the left while his father whipped up the crepes (straight ahead). They even had a beef bulgogi crepe! I have to try that next time!

This was TORC's Norweigan crepe which had smoked salmon and some sort of dill sauce on top. The lettuce was your standard bagged kind with dressing on the side.

The innards of the Norweigan crepe. Nice and flappy.

This one was my crepe...oh my God I don't even remember what the official name of it was...

It had mushrooms, swiss chhese, guacamole and something else in there. I think it was the California crepe. Yeah, that was it. The only thing I didn't like were the red onion slices - they were pretty strong and weren't really soft; in fact they tasted raw and added at the last minute.

With all that gelato in the store just beckoning to us maddeningly, we had to get some. This was my chocolate hazel nut gelato...Nice and creamy. Just like a nasty Prince song (such as "Cream", "Soft and Wet", take your pick!)

TORC got two flavors - the Mango and Swiss Chocolate, which was an interesting combination, I must say. The guy scooping the gelato was so nice to us. He gave us extra big scoops and told us we shold come by again. I actually did, a few days later, but with Bert and TC. He remember me too!

Wow, I think I just may be hooked on gelato once again! I still like Gelato Vero Caffe's as well as Pappalecco!

Previous visits to Melt (that I actually blogged)-
June 2007 with TORC
July 2007 with TORC again

Pho Convoy Noodle House with the GF's

Last weekend was the belated dinner outing for Divalicious's bday. Us chicks (the educator GF's - me, TORC and the Knitting Diva) all went out to Pho Convoy Noodle House on Otay Lakes Road. It was close by for all of us.

KD got the Iced Thai Tea with boba...I don't know about you but when I drink something, I don't want to chew anything. I remember boba being a really big craze a few years back. It seems to have died down though, but what do I know? I'm an old fart!

D and I both got the Cafe Sua Da (iced espresso with condensed milk). Very refreshing for such a hot day but damn, I was wired later that night!

For starters, we got the fried spring rolls which came with a skimpy sideof lettuce (3 half pieces) and 2 sprigs of mint. I had to ask for another plate.

I got the Bun with Short Ribs. They put a lot of meat in this - I gave a few pieces to TORC...

TORC got the Shrimp Fried Rice...

The Birthday celebrant also got Short Ribs but with Com Tam (broken rice). Mmmm, I love the fat on the short ribs!

Putting us carnivores to shame was KD's bun with tofu entree. Here she is pouring some nuoc cham on it...

And because it was D's birthday, we had to have noodles to symbolize long life (a Chinese tradition picked up by Filipinos). This was stir fried noodles with chicken and vegetables.

Dessert was at my place, just a few minutes away. We had Black Forest Cake from Hans and Harry Bakery in Bonita. Sorry, no photos.  By the way, one of the gifts I gave D was the "Creative Cursing" book. I tell you, that book is the most perfect fkg gift ever. It's the gift that keeps giving. Just flip the pages and let the laughter ensue...

Last year for Divalicious' bday, we went to Royal India and Extraordinary Desserts. Click here to see that post or you shall be punished by being forced to listen to Kenny G play "Songbird" on an endless loop.

Dinner at C's - Burgers

Once we got to C's house, we were greeted not just by C, her husband and daughter, but also by C's college friend and his lovely wife, as well as a college student that was staying for the summer. Looks like this was going to be a full house.

Now this was really nice of C...she bought a cake from her friend's bakery, Ultimately Chocolate. This was the Raspberry Razzle Cake. It was really quite decadent - the chocolate ganache was so thick and the raspberry filling very rich.  Here is the description from the website: "Raspberry Razzle - Your choice of moist vanilla or chocolate cake layered with rich raspberry buttercream icing. Decorated with dark chocolate truffle icing and semi-sweet chocolate pieces."

Duh, I just realized there was a handwritten description of the cake as I scrolled down!  The cake below was another one from the bakery which C bought for her best friend from University. They've known each other since they were teenagers.

I learned that the term "College" in Canada is not interchangeable with "University". College is more like a two year vocational/career path while "University" is the 4-year course. So the College Student who was staying with C was only there for the summer while working at a local nature center (actually, a Fish Culture Station).

Knowing my love for interesting snacks, C bought these chips for us. They don't make Lay's Ketchup Flavored Chips here in the U.S., well at least in California. C's friend was astounded that I'd never tried them before. Apparently these are a fkg staple here in Canada. I had a few chips to see what I was missing out on...and the verdict?

They do taste like chips dipped in tangy ketchup. It shouldn't taste "foreign" since it's kind of like eating french fries with ketchup right? But it seemed "off" to me. What I did like was the extreme redness of the chips. Yeah! Tomato powder! I loved how "coated" the chips were but I didn't like how it stained my fingers.

Oh, and she also picked out some Dill Chips...these were kind of gross because I really don't like dill pickles at all. They were too sour and smelled like vinegar! Ugh! Bert on the other hand, loved these!

And the last bag o' chips to complete this mighty Canadian chips trifecta was the Smokey Bacon. Or, shall as they say in French, "Bacon Fume, Roh Roh Roh" (say that with a tacky Maurice Chevalier or the Chef from "Beauty in the Beast" accent). Everything sounds better in French. Even the phrase, "I need to violently expel my fecal matter while squatting over the shitter!" would probably sound really classy because it's French.

I just noticed that there was no French equivalent for "Ketchup" and the bag just said "Ketchup". WTF? There has to be a fancy French way to say Ketchup!  This last bag was my favorite flavor. In fact, I opened it up and had it on the side for dinner!

Here are some reviews of the Ketchup chips below:
The Great Reviewer
Taquitos.net
Reviews of the Dill chips:
Everything2.com
Taquitos.net
And lastly, a review for the Bacon chips:
Taquitos.net

Back to the cake!  Here's how it looked sliced up. Look at all those layers! I got cavities just by looking at this thing!

Our dinnerfor that evening, before heading out to Manitowaning was burgers made from their cattle! A cow or two died for our meal. Did I feel guilty? Hell to the no. I was hungry as fk and could have eaten ten of these. Okay, just one.

C's friend also bought some beer for tonight..here's one of the kinds that he got (that's my hand though).

Sliced fresh onions, tomatoes and lettuce leaves for the burgers...

Along with cheese and cucumber slices...  Ooh, you can see the Tim Horton's bag. We bought some Timbits in Toronto before driving out to Tobermory. Heh heh, Tim's Bits. Bits and Pieces.

After dinner, off we all went to Manitowaning to watch C in the Gilbert and Sullivan musical, "Iolanthe"...plus we got to meet C's parents that night as well!