Four Year Blogaversary!!!

Woo hoo!!! It's the 4 Year Blogaversary of

Pink Candles at Ridgemont High!!!

(image from Nils! Flickr photostream - what the fuck,
did he take this picture while watching "Fantastic Four" in the movie theatres?)

Has it really been 4 years?

Apparently it has...

Here are my previous blogaversary posts...all in one convenient package!

I have such a long queue of posts waiting to go up, but very little time...

Other good news (for me that is), I'm finally on Spring Break! Which means, I can sleep in and go check out other places to eat instead of being cooped up in my office!

Cheers faithful readers! All five of you! Ha ha, okay, all eight of you!

Happy St. Patrick's Day - Reused Post!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here's one of my favorite snippets from "Wayne's World":

and here's a little something from "The Simpsons [update - This was a different video than the one posted last year since it was yanked from YouTube. Enjoy this alternate one anyways!]:

and while not entirely related to St. Patrick's Day, here is another video snippet of "Whacking Day ", from the Simpsons, in reference to a made up holiday created so people could beat up the Irish. Here's Homer practicing Bruce Lee style on snakes:

As you can tell, I wasn't that creative this year.  This was done out of sheer laziness and complete desperation. There's only so many evil leprechaun pix out there on the web, then you start veering into Drunken Irish uncle/badHalloween costume/Lucky Charms territory. I really like the "Leprechaun - In the Hood" movieposter though. It's so badazz mofo!

I think this is the first time I completely and blatantly resued an older post! Let's hope it doesn't become a habit! Ha ha!

ABC Music Humpday Videos - "T" is for The Time

Okay, this isn't the actual video of "Chili Sauce" (there wasn't one), but rather, a pretty funny re-enactment of The Time's Quiet Storm-like ode to salacious horniness...

Allow me to share some of my favorite lyrics from this classic slowburn of a song...

Morris Day:"In my bedroom....I have a brass....waterbed..."


Date:"Really?"


Morris Day: "Ummmm hmmmmm...It's just surrounded by plants and lights and shit...and all kinds of little erotic artifacts!"

I love how these people paid homage to "Chili Sauce" despite their extremely low budget video. They lipsynced the dialogue  and acted exactly like how I would have pictured the song to be. I loved how they recreated the dinner scene in someone's tiny apartment!

The video characters include:

"Morris Day" (lead singer of The Time)
his "date" ("Oh Morris, was that really necessary?")
the "waiter" ("Yes! We're remodeling!")
and of course, Morris Day's right hand man, Jerome (always there to lend a mirror or a "hand" to Morris Day)

"Chili Sauce" was the third song on side 1 of The Time's 1984 album (and their 3rd studio release), "Ice Cream Castle", which also spawned the dance r&b hits, "Jungle Love" (Oh Wee Oh Wee Oh!) and "The Bird". My brother had this record and it was one of our favorites during that time! Listen to snippets of the album here. Don't you just love their clothes?! This shit was pimpastically smooth at the time! Jesse Johnson's pink suit and white shoes? Jerome primping Morris Day's collar? Gotta lurve Morris Day's two-tone Stacy Adams...

Following the success of Prince's semi-autobiographical movie, "Purple Rain", and the ensuing craze for the Minneapolis sound, the Time had risen from being Prince's opening act to a full fledged phenomenon on their own thanks to the antics of Morris Day and Jerome. They also had a really tight band. Musicians,  Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis later became well known for producing such acts like Cherrelle, Alexander O'Neal (another Prince wanna be), The SOS Band and Janet Jackson. Guitarist Jesse Johnson later went solo ("Can You Help Me?"and "Be Your Man"), even appearing on the "Pretty in Pink" soundtrack ("Get to Know Ya").

Chili Sauce is one of those songs you have to listen to from beginning to end to get the full effect. Another "timeless" classic, pun intended. Guffaw, hyuk, knee slap, rawr!

Random...

I'm so tired every damn day. Work, gym, blah blah blah.

It's hard coming up with posts every few days...

This doesn't count as an actual post though since it's me just bitching about random stuff.

Upcoming posts:

Der Wienerschnitzel - yes, I actually ate something there!
Nazca Grill
Random Filipino food products
Remember Me film review
and OMFG, I'm so excited the New Moon DVD is finally coming out!

Tomorrow is the latest installment of my ABC Humpday Music Video series..."T"!

ABC Music Humpday Videos - "S" is for Styx

Time to mix it up a little with classic rock dinosaurs, Styx:

Babe was my FAVORITE song a long ass time ago. 1979 to be exact, when Styx released their album, "Cornerstone".

"Babe" was their first and only number one single. I could have sworn "Mr. Roboto" would have hit #1 as well! (That song was to come several years later)....

Had to crank this post out, will write more rapier-like witty commentary later. Ha ha.

Indo Kitchen

[Yay! - My last post from our last road trip two weeks ago. That Saturday was jam packed with stuff - watching the Percy Jackson movie, lunch at Tibet Nepal House, chocolates from Mignon, a quick jaunt to the Pacific Asia Museum, cruising around Pasadena, checking out City Hall, picking up quick desserts at Vanille in San Marino and finally dinner...]

Wanting to have Indonesian food again, I searched various places in the area, coming up with this:

The last time we were in Alhambra, we met up with the lovely Wandering Chopsticks and had Malayasian at Yazmin (which was pretty close to this place---see my original post here). While youat it, check out WC's post on Indo Kitchen  becauseshe has an exterior shot as well (I wasn't able to get one because their sign wasn't lit up and since it was night time, you couldn't see it anyways) and a hell of a lot more pix of food than our paltry 3 entrees.  Here are a few other posts that reference Indo Kitchen: Elmo Monster and Pleasure Palate. You can see the yelp reviews here as well as Indo Kitchen's official site.

It's a rather small restaurant; very mom and pop'ish, which is what I like. Who needs fancy ass decorations and what not. I just care about the food! When we got there there was a large party of 10 and couple of tables of just two or three people each. We sat near the front window...

.

We perused their appetizers but ended up not getting any. Notice most of them are FRIED!

We also checked out their a la carte section where #61 caught our eye:

More of their menu in full color! Having pictures of the food definitely helps! Check out the "sop buntut" (funny because "buntut" in Tagalog means "tail"; I guess there are similarities with the langauge).

As mentioned earlier, we sat near the front window....Look closely....Do you see it?  By the "Closed" placard? It's a "B" rating sign.

Since our daughter was kind of full from lunch earlier, we ordered a small dessert as a treat for her: Es Campur (in their menu as "Ice Campur"). This is crushed ice mixed with jackfruit, grass jelly cubes and palm seed topped with syrup and condensed milk.  The menu also said it contained avocado, but we didn't find any avocado chunks in here. WTF! But, hey, this was really light and refreshing. The syrup was also quite aromatic (not sure what flavor it was) and jackfruit and palm seed are always a good combination.

Bert's iced coffee (standard, eh):

This was the #39 - The Nasi Goreng Ikan Asin - aka Salted Fish Fried rice - which included chicken and salted fish fried rice topped with a fried egg. I saw this on WC's post and Bert immediately wanted to have it. We really liked this - the salty fish with the egg went really well together. Just don't kiss or breath on anyone after eating this!

We also got the #29 - Nasi Ayam Bumbu & Sayur Asum - Seasoned Fried Chicken and Rice - This was marinated deep fried chicken served with steamed rice and tamarind soup (kind of like Filipino sinigang). The fried chicken skin was quite tasty, but one of the pieces tasted kind of overdone (the meat not the skin) and not as moist as I would have liked it. In any case, we picked at this because we were too excited with the salted fish fried rice.

Here is the #61 from the a la carte menu: Kodok Goreng Mentega - Pan Fried Frog Legs "smoothered" (hmmm, that is a typo on their menu, unless that's a new word nobody ever told me about!) with sweet butter sauce. Holy mfkr - that sauce was so good!!! I wanted to drench that sauce over everything! It was sweet and dark and sticky! Mmmmm, coagulation in the arteries......

The frog logs themselves were pretty good - moist and flavorful. And yes, they did kind of taste like "chicken". My daughter even liked the frog legs - We're so lucky we have a kid who will try anything. No dumbed down kid food for her, I tell you! We ended up taking home the salted rice, the fried chicken and the frog legs as leftovers. Shit, the next day, the butter sauce was all hardened and you could see the fat!!!!

This was Bert's plate - like how he arranged the frog bones? The sliced corn on the cob came from the tamarind soup...

The owner let us sample two kinds of chips - he didn't know what the first ones were  when asked (he couldn't seem to come up with the English equivalent),  but the ones on the right were shrimp chips. I liked both of them - the unnamed chip was thinner and crispier. The shrimp chips were thicker and had a more puffed texture. They also had more flavor.

By the way, I think one of the reasons they got a B rating is because you have to walk through their kitchen to get to the bathroom. I felt so intrusive walking through the tiny kitchen! It's kind of wierd walking through where all their food is prepared. Plus, their bathroom was pretty gross. Ugh! Customers shouldn't have to walk through a kitchen to get to the toilet, but with the way it's set up here, you have no choice. So I suggest to you, hold it in and use the bathroom elsewhere

ABC Music Humpday Videos - "R" is for Ready for the World

 Oh no she di'nt!!!!!!

Oh yayssss, she did! (please say this in an exaggerated Morris Day accent!)

Yes people, it's one of the groups that played at my high school's Grad Nite at Disneyland back in 1987 when real bands used to play instead of DJ's....

The one...the only Jheri Curl-licious Ready for the World!!!!

And you will note that I did not choose the more popular, "Oh Sheila" or the more salacious, "Tonight"  or "Deep Inside Your Love", all of which are songs that I also like. All of these fktastic songs came from their eponymous first album, "Ready for the World" which also had the gems, "Slide Over", "Ceramic Girl", "Human Toy" (see a pattern here?), "I'm the One Who Loves You", and "Out of Town Lover". Come to think of it, this was a pretty good album, I must say!!!

Click here to see the complete list in order and to hear musical snippets!

So, yeah, I did not choose "Oh Sheila".

I had to pick a song rife with barely disguised sexual innuendo as well as a vintage old school video that had some of the most craptastic special effects ever. Those effects, I'm sure, were quite the shiz back in the day. Very high tech. Ha ha.

The computer graphics in here are just as bad as the old guy in a robe demonstrating how to blow up the Death Star" graphics on "Star Wars - A New Hope, Episode IV" (that's really the FIRST movie for you non Star Wars geeks).
Ready for the World was so damn awesome! They had the Prince protege thing going on. It was the Minneapolis sound with the funky synthesizers a la The Time, Jesse Johnson (lead guitarist of The Time), and Andre Cymone (former bassist for Prince). This song also had R2-D2 like sounds!

"Digital Display" was a fun song to dance to back in the day, along with Shannon ("Let the Music Play"), Debbie Deb ("Lookout Weekend" and "When I Hear Music") and Trinere ("I'll Be All You'll Ever Need")! Ha ha. Anyways, it's has unintentionally hilarious lyrics (don't you just love the countdowns in here?) and a dated video with a fake "robotic woman" to boot!

Sample lyrics include:

"36, I always dreamed of your measurements
In neon lights
24, at Christmas baby maybe you can
light up my room and brighten up my nights
36..."

And here's the chorus:

"I've never had a girl before
with much of a figure
So excuse me if I start to play
with your Digital Display"

Oh my God, these lyrics are so innocently lecherous! Thank goodness the teachers didn't censor songs at the dances, otherwise we wouldn't have been dancing to the classic ode to grinding, Prince and Sheila E's duet, "Erotic City"!!!

For the record, the other bands that played during my Grad Nite were:

• Wang Chung (Ugh! "Everybody Wang Chung tonight!" Suckd)
• Bobby Brown(Yes, fresh out of New Edition and pre-drug addict and pre-Whitney Houston beating days)
• Glass Tiger (whatever happened to them? Oh well, who cares, they sucked ballz anyways)
• Nancy Martinez (who?)
• and get this, Oran "Juice" Jones("I Saw You...and him...walking in the rain!"!!!! )This last one I did not know. He wasn't on the brochure but I was checking on the web and he is listed as a performer!!!! I'll have to check my brochure again!

Hope you enjoyed this brief foray into mid 80's territory!

Getting yoked!

Wow, here's a post without photos or a video for once.

Last month, I finally "broke up" with my old gym membership. It was one of those women's gyms. At first it was okay, but then I felt it wasn't doing anything for me. I never lost weight from it but just maintained my weight. However, after the shitstorm that was two years ago (i.e. getting my breast cancer diagnosis and my subsequent treatment, losing my hair, etc), my weight went up a tiny bit. Not so much that people could tell, but enough for me to know. Especially when I don't fit into my clothes anymore. I have a lot of nice-ass clothes for work but it was depressing not being able to fit into them again, especially the pants.

Until recently...which brings me to the "break up". I kept putting off the day I would tell the gym owner that I wanted to stop my membership. I felt like I was "cheating" on her when I started the other gym in early January. I felt bad like I would be letting her down, but it turns out that she totally understood.

It wasn't so bad after all.  After 4 years of the previous gym, I ended my membership and joined the same gym as Lotus. I'd gone to their Boot Camp once as well as Cardio Kick Boxing classwith her. Those classes kicked my sorry weak ass back and forth and back again.

I'm happy to say that after 6 weeks of this new gym has made me a lot tougher and stronger. I've been trying different things like Pilates, Aerobic Kickboxing, a Tight & Tone class (their old name - the new name is Intense Repetitive Intervals or some shit like that), Boot Camp as well as one hour of Personal Training once a week. That's 5 hours of intense excercise (okay 4, since Pilates isn't that high intensity) as opposed to just 1 and 1/2 (three 30 minute sessions)! I'm feeling like I can catch up with people now.

Fk! The instructor is relentless, but I needed someone like that to push me and challenge me. Every workout is different so your muscles get 'confused'. At the old gym, it was the same old shit with no changes. Anyhow, I'm super happy with this new program and combined with eating better (which I have to make a really big effort to do so), I'm hoping to slim down a tiny tiny bit. It's not like I'm fat or anything. I'm not, but I just want to look and feel better.

They say I'll be building muscle first (not all Vera de Milo or Arnold Schwarzeneggar or anything), which weighs more than fat. After that, I should hopefully be losing some weight (5 lbs is all I'm looking for. Okay 7!) since muscle burns fat even when you are doing nothing. So, yeah, think about that when you're sitting on the couch watching some mindless TV. If you're buff and yoked, you're burning FAT! Just don't be eating cookies or potato chips or shit.

Enjoying this new gym is saying A LOT for me - a person who really doens't like to exercise and hates to sweat!!! But WTF, you gotta do what you gotta do to look good!!!

I'm feeling better and my husband says he can see the difference in my arms. So, yay!!!

Plus I can fit into some of my size 4's again! So, something's working!

Double yay!!!

Pasadena City Hall & Vanille

After our excursion at the Pacific Asia Museum and our lunch at Tibet Nepal house, we wanted to check out Pasadena's City Hall building....Here is the view from the parking lot; it was in the mid afternoon when we got there. According to wikepedia, City Hall was completed in 1927, is the tallest building in Pasadena, and is a "significant example of the City Beautiful movement of the 1920's".

Dome:

Detail of arch leading into City Hall...

Inner hallway which leads out to a courtyard with a fountain...I didn't know this until I looked it up in wikipedia, but the courtyard "used in the 1995 movie "A Walk in the Clouds" to portray a Napa Valley town square.". That movie may have sucked shit, but it had Keanu Reeves, one of my major mancrushes in the late 80's and early 90's. Who cares if he can't act!!!!Ha ha ha!

Yowza! Keanu Reeves!!!!

 

Lastly, a no smoking sign with an exceptionally graceful looking smoke plume. Most no smoking signs have a no frills cigarette, this one was fancy.

We cruised around Pasadena checking out several sights before  heading over to neighboring suburb San Marino to go to Vanille de Patisserie (see my original post here - can you tell I'm retracing my steps?). These photos were not taken at Vanille though; they were taken the next day at home. We took the cakes to go before going out to dinner. I bought four mini cakes for Valentine's Day. I don't remember what this one was called but it had a thin gelatinous layer on top along with a slice of candied fruit (kumquat maybe?) and a painted white chocolate square. The mouse tasted like either passionfruit or mango...

Cake # 2 - "Concert" - Pistachio mousse with chocolate cake $3.95 - This was Bert's choice, which he loved. The cakes are quite light and not too sweet. You can still see the plastic wrapping around the cake's sides...Oops, how unsightly, eh?

Cake #3 - "Tropical Passion" which had mango mousse and special crust $3.85. The crust was buttery and tasted like it had macademia nuts in it. This was TC's choice.

Lastly, Cake #4 - "Glamour ", which had peach banana mousse and chocolate cake $3.65. I wanted this the last time I was there but didn't get it. So this time I did! I liked the flavor combination of peach and banana...I'm glad the cakes were still good the next day. 

Next up...dinner at Indo Kitchen in Alhambra!

Return to Tibet House and Mignon Chocolate

After watching the tepid movie adapation of Rick Riordan's book, "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief" at the Santa Anita mall, we headed back to Pasadena for lunch...at Tibet Nepal House. (see my original post here). Since I liked it so much the first time, I thought it would be nice to go again with Bert and TC....This was TC's plate - she only had little bit of rice and a few spoons of the other dishes (shrimp masala, some curried vegetable dish and a piece of naan). I didn't bother taking a photo of my plate...

This was Bert's plate - his second, I think. He had a piece of the tandoor chicken (which looked burnt to me so I didn't get one), plus some fried pakoora, a stew with bamboo shoots and potatoes and something else with chicken. God, don't you just love my encyclopedic knowledge of Tibetan food? Seriously though, he liked the different entrees that were available, but I was saving my appetite for dinner later that night...It was going to be Indonesian...

A placard for Tibetan beer...

Bert ordered one of those Llasa beers while I had champagne since this was considered a weekend brunch.

More of Bert's beer bottle because it's so fkg exciting, ain't it.

After lunch, we walked a few doors down to another place I had the pleasure of visiting earlier that month, the very cute and tiny Mignon Chocolate shop (see my original post here). What was cool was the lady working there remembered me from before! We got a box of 14 truffles to go...From the top left covered with NUTZ is Hazelnut, Cappuccino, Spicy Chile (and it was!)....The white one in the middle with the green stripes was Irish Cream, below to the right with the pink stripes was Raspberry. At the lower left corner was the dark chocolate covered caramel patty with gingered sea salt and a cocoa covered Dark Chocolate truffle. That was just the top layer. Unfortunately, I didn't take pix of the rest of the chocolates which included: Pomegranate, Blueberry, Ginger Sea Salt, a Pharaoh shaped chocolate, and a few others I don't recall...

Here's another view of the chocolates. This time, you can see the dark chocolate covered caramel patty with gingered sea salt. The lady said those were new and she gave us three pieces for free! Nice! She wanted to know if we thought it was too salty because some customers considered it too salty. We thought it was just fine. The caramel was just a thin layer, but it went well together with the dark chocolate and the salt. At the lower left was the Ginger Sea Salt chocolate and peeking ever so slightly underneath it was the Blueberry chocolate...

Here's the box again...These chocolates were such sexy bitches. It seemed like a crime to eat such mini works of art.

For TC, we bought a chocolate cup topped with fresh berries...quite delicious!

We had some time to kill so we drove around Pasadena and decided to check out their City Hall...

ABC Music Humpday Videos - "Q" is for Queen

Okay, it's MUSIC GEEK time again!

The often imitated but never duplicated genius that is the late and great Freddie Mercury from one of the greatest fucking rock bands of all time, Queen:

This little known gem , "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy" is the 8th song (or back in the good old days, song 3 from Side B) of Queen's album  Day at the Races (1976) which was their follow up album to A Night at the Opera. Incidentally, both albums were named after Marx Brothers films.

The previous album was best known for the epic and bombastic rock opera, "Bohemian Rhapsody" and to a lesser extent, one of my favorite songs, "You're My Best Friend". Personally, I loved the "A Night at the Opera" (referred to hereafter as ANATO)  as a whole, but I love "A Day at the Races" much more. Queen were masters of multi-tracking and up until 1980's album, "The Game", entirely synthesizer free.

Before the bastardization  of and piece mealing of songs by itunes, people bought albums, not songs. Albums were bought and listened to in their entirety. Queen were masters of putting together cohesive albums which flowed from beginning to end.

Album tracks included (for a blow by blow description of each song, click the link to "A Day at the Races" underneath the video):

Side A (I say "sides" because I'm old school like that. Comments in red are mine):
1 - Tie Your Mother Down (very Caveman!)
2 - You Take My Breath Away (beautiful vocals and piano)
3 - Long Away (one of the few songs where guitarist Brian May sings)
4 - The Millionaire Waltz (another piano driven song)
5 - You and I (another one of my fave songs from this album)

Side B
1 - Somebody to Love (Freddie Mercury's favorite Queen song, as well as my husband's - a fun song to sing along to and a masterpiece in multitracking)
2 - White Man (penned by Roger Taylor, the drummer - talked about the injustices towards the Native Americans by whites)
3 - Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy
4 - Drowse (a cool song featuring drummer Roger Taylor's vocals and cool slide guitar by Brian May)
5 - Teo Torriate (Let Us Cling Together) (a few verses are sung in Japanese!)

"Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy" is not a hard rocking Queen song, in the vein of "Tie Your Mother Down" ("ANATO) or the precursor to speed metal's, "Stone Cold Crazy (from their third album, "Sheer Heart Attack"). Rather, it is a sweet yet rollicking song utilizing Mercury's piano skills and multitrackedvocals. If you listen to the lyrics, they're quite witty.

Here's the 3rd verse:

"Ooh let me feel your heartbeat (grow faster, faster)
Ooh Ooh let me feel your love heat
Come on and sit on my hot-seat of love (ha ha!)
And tell me how do you feel right after-all
I'd like for you and I to go romancing (liked this transition)
Just say the word - your wish is my command"

And here's the verse after the guitar solo:

"Dining at the Ritz we'll meet at nine precisely
I will pay the bill, you taste the wine
Driving back in style, in my saloon will do quite nicely
Just take me back to yours that will be fine (Come on and get it)"

It's so very British and I just love Mercury's judicious use of falsetto. Justin Hawkins eat your heart out!  And Freddie Mercury is the Queen of Camp as well! Who else can wear a one piece harlequin outfit and get away with it? Okay, maybe Johnny Weir can!

Most recently, easy listening bore Jason Mraz did a bland note for note rendition on the Queen tribute album, ""Killer Queen - A Tribute to Queen" (2005), which is a pretty damn good tribute for the most part. Unfortunately, I felt that Mraz's take on the song offered nothing new to the Queen canon.

The Letter "Q" was pretty limited. For me, it was either Queen or metal band Queensryche Queen of the Reich - Holy Fk! Listen to Geoffrey Tate's air raid siren vocals! That song kicks a$$!), but since I love Queen waaaay more, it just had to be Queen...

Until next week...