The Odyssey, or, Dear Bears WHAT THE FUCK

Foreword
I am a bad role model.

To date, the closest I’ve ever come to being a father is taking care of my car, BEAST MODE (affectionately referred to by some as Nene Hilario). And, like many bad fathers, I pushed my baby through puberty. Though only in his infancy, my car has already accumulated about 2,000 too many miles on it, thanks to two major road trips, one of which was BASICALLY THE BEST ROAD TRIP EVER, the other of which comprised the MOST WORTHLESS ROAD TRIP EVER. The following is a story about the latter.

Be forewarned, reader. This is a story of fire-and-brimstone adventure, discovering new lands, solidifying certain bonds, and tearfully breaking others. Most importantly, however, this is a blueprint for how to simultaneously shatter 8,000 hearts into a million little splinters. (Pay attention, schools I plan on applying to. That includes you, USC.)

There is no happy ending here. This is not a revelation of David’s triumph over Goliath. This story, in all its misery, could easily parallel any tale about all the trials and suffering of the Jewish people, and that’s saying a LOT. If you wish to dig into the hay pile and look for the silver lining, be my guest. This will not be over quickly. You will not enjoy this.

Presenting your feature cast:
Gordo, your friendly neighborhood Driver Man
TheYoc, party medic/SDN addict
Teeks, village bicycle doorknob skanky whore ok fine I’ll stop ho
DeezNuts, operator of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride
CarpeDM08, resident PITTSBURGH SUCKS east coast transplant
EZ-E, resident unemployed hobo badass
JenNAY, resident cokehead hot stuff
Pussyface, resident Thai hooker Southeast Asian of indeterminate origin
Pomona, helmsman of the U.S.S. Enterprise
PomonaXX, Pomona’s girl
TheWhiteMichaelVick, just as fast and more accurate plus not stupid enough to torture and kill dogs
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Act I
Journey to Oregonia.
Friday morning. Sunshine kissing our happy faces. Warm, but balmy.

BEAST MODE had the honor of transporting TheYoc and Teeks, piloted by yours truly. The eight-hour ride up to our hotel in Sutherlin, about an hour south of Eugene, had the following highlights:

-TheYoc: “Dude, I’m sorry, but I have to go pee again.”
Gordo: “But you JUST WENT, like, half an hour ago.”
TheYoc: “I know. I said I’m sorry.”
Gordo: “Suck it up. This is what plastic water bottles were made for.”

-Lunch stop at the In-N-Out in Redding, where we accidentally ran into another car of Cal Bandsmen. Also, we later found out that every single car involved in this road trip stopped at that In-N-Out. Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name/and you’re always glad you came, ya know?
-Breaking out my “Songs We Grew Up With” playlist. BSB, *NSYNC, Britney, Christina, etc. instantly brought up the “OH MY GOD WE’RE SO OLD I CAN’T BELIEVE SOME OF THE NEWMEN DON’T KNOW WHO *NSYNC IS” talk. This xkcd comic reflects our collective sentiment exactly.

-Playing word-connection games. The celebrity name game: one person names a celebrity’s full name, and the next person has to name a celebrity whose first name starts with the first letter of the previous celebrity’s last name. This entertained us for TWO WHOLE HOURS and proved to us, as TheYoc put so well, “how much useless shit we know just by watching TV and stuff.” Also, playing Contact, which is basically a human crossword puzzle. It’s an insanely time-consuming game, psychologically challenging, and also extremely rewarding. Ask store for rules no need to purchase to be eligible prizes may vary see store for details.

-TheYoc: “Why does Oregon look like L.A.? Is this smog?”
Gordo: “Hmm. It shouldn’t. Maybe there are wildfires around here?”
TheYoc: “Let me look it up on my iPhone…OH SHIT there are HELLA wildfires.”

We drove through that smoke for about two hours.

Strider at the Inn.
8PM, gorgeous sunset in the distance.
Teeks: “This is our hotel?”
Gordo: “Hey, don’t knock it. It was cheap as hell.”
Teeks: “This is totally a hooker hotel. Look:

Wall-to-wall mirror against the beds…
 

…bigass mirror on the opposite wall


…few ceiling lights…


…this is totally a hooker hotel.”

Gordo: “I guess all that’s missing are magic finger beds shaped like giant hearts, a retractable stripper pole from the floor, and a mirror on the ceiling and this might as well be the cheapest Japanese love hotel ever.”

(Ed. note: the hotel was actually really, really nice for the price. The hotel stay, complete with breakfast and free wi-fi, cost less per person than any other expense, including tickets and gas. From the bottom of my heart to the Microtel Sutherlin staff – 4 stars, truly.)
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Act II
First Dinner.
The Apple Peddler restaurant, right next to our hotel. The three of us walked in, hungrier than three wolves howling at the moon, and immediately we felt the entire restaurant’s eyes peering our darker complexions and ethnic features. Not only were they all white, they were also coveting our youthful energy and vigor because calling them “beyond old” would be a gross understatement. One third – ONE WHOLE THIRD – of our menu was titled “Senior Citizens Early Bird Specials.” We would’ve been better off going to any of the other fast food restaurants in walking distance, because the food was pretty bad – the steak tough and chewy, the fish barely cooked well enough, and the gravy more starch than liquid. However, sustenance gained, we ventured to the gas station to procure vitamins and minerals, necessary for…um…advancing our battlefront and to boost morale oh who are we kidding what’s a Cal Band trip without drinking in hotel rooms?

Prima Notte.
Teeks: “What is there to do around here?”
TheYoc: “Nothing. That’s why we got the beer and the cards.”
Gordo: “Let’s at least check out what’s on the TV.”

…click clickety click click…

TheYoc: “STOP. Oh my god. Is this SHOWGIRLS? THIS IS TOTALLY SHOWGIRLS.”
Gordo: “How do you know it’s ShoWHOOOOA BOOBIES ok we’re staying on this channel.”
Teeks: “You guys are GUH-ROSS. Can we please watch something else?”

There are reasons why men rule the world. Controlling the remote control is definitely one of them. We watched every single minute of that damned movie starring, you guessed it, Elizabeth Berkley of Saved By The Bell fame.

 
Yep, that’s her. Jessie Spanos, showing her ta-tas and hoo-hoo for the world to ogle, like some animal at the zoo, but with boobies and dancing around naked for most of the time.

BEST SCENE OF THE MOVIE:
Nomi Malone (Berkley): “I’m on my period.”
Dude wanting to fuck her: “Yeah, right.”
Nomi: “Check.”
Dude wanting to fuck her reaches down her pants and slowly pulls out his fingers dabbed with blood.

It’s no wonder why this movie became such a cult classic. Being lame and worn out/hot-‘n-bothered, the three of us went to bed at midnight.

Pomona, PomonaXX, and TheWhiteMichaelVick showed up to the hotel room at around 2AM. Let’s hop in the way-back machine and do some quick grade school math: if Pomona’s car left Berkeley at 7:30PM and got to the hotel room by 2AM, how long did it take them to drive the 460 miles north? At what speed were they driving to get there in that time?

Got the answer? I’ll wait.

Like I said. Helmsman of the U.S.S. motherfucking Enterprise.
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Act III
To Arms.
The other five actually got to the hotel at around midnight, but since we had all passed out, we didn’t actually see them until Saturday morning.

There was a football game, I think. I can’t really remember because I’m pretty sure I blacked out for most of it. That’s how bad it was. The only tidbit I would like to relay here in full detail: CarpeDM08, valiant warrior and watchful sentinel as always, whispering, “I can’t tell what’s worse right now – how badly the Bears are playing or the number of teeth missing from the Oregon fan standing next to me.”

Drowning our sorrows.
An extremely delightful dinner at Turtles Bar & Grill in Eugene plus daily specials, Saturday’s being $4 Sex on the Beach, meant that I was ready to gorge and booze and I was parking my ass there till I was done, come hell or high water.

Pussyface: “Well…now what?”

We all looked at each other knowingly.

Typical Cal Band hotel set: beers in hand, huddled around the idiot box, watching one of our favorite childhood films of all time - Jurassic Park. JenNAY had never seen the movie till that night, and I am proud to report that she was just as excited and thrilled as the first time all the rest of us saw it. “Clever girl,” indeed.

Click click whirrrrrr. 9:45PM. We needed to end this trip right. Translation: QUEST!
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Epilogue
10PM. Our motley crew, eleven soldiers of fortune, stood around the cashier area of the Dairy Queen, located literally a fifteen-second drive from our hotel, as they neared closing time. We huddled in that wagon circle, porking our sorrows away with Blizzards and cream cones and also doing an excellent job of getting in the way of other people trying to order.

At that point, I didn’t feel like a Cal Bandsman. We didn’t talk about the game. We didn’t talk about the future of Cal football. Instead, we ended the night with what I now realize is the absolute perfect way to sum up our trip in a convenient, ready-to-go, handheld 41-second package.

For every brilliant invention in the world, there exist fifty absolutely pointless and overhyped ones (such as the Snuggie, the Big Top Cupcake, and the Shake Weight). One of the most famous and technologically brilliant ones is, without question, the Segway. Originally touted as “the next leap forward in transportation technology,” advocated by the venerable Steve Jobs to be “as significant as the personal computer,” the Segway was one of the greatest flops of all time, even bigger than Ryan Leaf (YES I SAID IT).

The Segway was unveiled in 2001 and first produced in 2002. Since then, a grand total of nobody has purchased it for personal home use. Instead, Segway has found several niche markets, each as Failblog-worthy as the next. Observe:

Tour Groups (actually, not a bad idea)


Segway Polo, a.k.a. Sport For People Too Rich To Play Anything Less Regal Than Going Around Whacking Balls With Hammers Yet Too Lazy To Learn How To Ride Horses While Whacking Balls With Hammers


Communist Oppression Enthusiasts

None of these sectors, however, match up to the entertainment value of zoo animals on Segways. Chimpanzees, specifically. Watch this video. Turn the volume up, and I guarantee you that this damn song will be stuck in your head for the next two weeks.


I thought nothing of it at first other than quick, cheap laughs, but thank you sweet baby Jesus for letting this video inspire me to break my writer’s block.
Sorry for the way-too-long setup, but to the point:

The Segway is the 2009 Cal football team.

Gather the yearning, drooling masses to watch an extremely overhyped product, widely touted by multiple big-name sources to have extreme future potential, embarrass itself very, very publicly. Be unsurprised as the vast majority of the potential market share runs away, seeing the promise of many years of development fall inexplicably short of expectations. Be very impressed, however, with the dedicated few who stick with it through thick and thin, because that, my friends, is LOVE.

I’ve actually met a so-called “Segway enthusiast” in my time at Cal, and by Noah’s right hand, he LOVED that machine. I asked him about all the detractors, naysayers, and jokesters. None of it mattered to him. He loved his Segway regardless of what anyone else said. And this is the most valuable lesson of all: loyalty, though capable of being blind and unreasonable at times, is an honorable virtue. We will always and forever love our Bears, no matter what. There is no fancy language or impressive vocabulary to make that statement any more or less true.

So there you have it. The Oregon Trip, The Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Nine. Since I’ve never been great at good-byes, I’ll simply end with this running gag from CarpeDM08: “You make sure they remember…FOREVER…the night they played the Titans.”
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Good news/bad news time. Good news: you just got through what I consider to be my best post ever. Bad news: I won’t be writing again until January. Science beckons, friends.

"My Humps" = The Breast Cancer Awareness Theme Song

Quest for Oregonia, a.k.a. WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT BEARS story coming soon, I promise. But we now interrupt your regular programming for this important message. Have you ever felt cold and wanted to just lie down on a couch with a warm blanket but also read/eat/channel surf incessantly at the same time while keeping your arms covered by said blanket? Well now you can!...oh hey just kidding. Sally forth.

Our company is currently doing a lot of fundraising for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, as noble a cause as any I've ever heard of. Certain people simply donate cold, hard cash, while others find a way to benefit not only the kids at JDRF but also their fellow employees. To reach that goal, many of them have bake/cook sales - hot dogs, homemade cupcakes, tamales, pearl milk tea, etc. (I wonder how much house takes for "production costs" or if they actually give 100% of proceeds to JDRF. Hmmmm.) The major players in these sales are two of my favorite coworkers, Arcadia and JLo. Now, the day before every sale, Arcadia will send out a company-wide email containing something along the lines of "HEY Y'ALL KNOW WHAT TOMORROW IS THAT'S RIGHT IT'S HOT DOG TUESDAY AGAIN HOT DOG CHIPS CUPCAKE $3!!!!!!!" or something equally ridiculous. The best part, however, is that he includes an awesome hi-def photograph of the meal. You know how McDonald's makes a Big Mac look like it should taste as if it actually has two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun...














when in fact it looks like this?

Well, that's exactly what Arcadia's hi-def photos of his delicious, plump ballpark franks (wow that didn't come out right at all THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID oh stop it) does. False advertising, sir! I ought to report him to the Better Business Bureau.

Anyway, as I was standing next to CatsofBerkeley (yes, that's a real blog by a real guy I know and work with) looking at this amazing photo, FDU walks by and exclaims, "Oh, would you stop ogling that? Do you know anything about the explosion of obesity rates in the United States in the past two decades? I'm going to send all four of you this CDC article with all the statistics so you guys stop eating that utter garbage." And, FDU being FDU, he immediately went to his office and sent us this link, which in truth is 1) ridiculously scary and 2) more fodder to use against Alabama for any and all entertainment/insult purposes. (Watch the slideshow - Alabama is ALWAYS the first to go.)

Then, of course, Hojin sent us a link about KFC's new Double Down sandwich. This is 100% real and currently only offered in Rhode Island and Nebraska as test markets. (Please excuse the fact that it's sourced at Faux News.)

Atrocities/AWESOMESSS like these are exactly the reason why websites like This Is Why You're Fat exist and flourish, and by atrocities I mean Alabamans. It's really not our fault that Americans on average are obese and dying from the number one preventable cause of death in the country. It's THEIR fault. But let's look at the silver lining. This leads me back to why I chose to title this entry what I did (there's ALWAYS a reason, fool): without innovations like the Double Down sandwich or Wendy's Triple Stack, where would we get entertainment such as this, the purest and most principled blistering-speed humor only found in absolute Americana?

Requiem For A Doubleyou Tee Eff

About a fortnight ago, I came home after a fairly long day of work (hey, growing E. coli and squinting while moving extremely small volumes of liquid back and forth takes a lot of energy) to find my roommate with his door closed but lights on. I thought nothing of it because it was nothing out of the ordinary. I stepped into the bathroom to find a 12mL plastic syringe with a gigantic metal needle sitting in the sink. The sink was splattered with a viscous, dark red fluid and the syringe was partially filled with the same.

“Oh Jesus Christ, he’s a junkie.”

But wait. A 12mL syringe is far too big, almost laughably big to be using for the purpose of injecting oneself with heroin or cocaine or speedball or whatever else Al Capone was so good at peddling. Observe, a 12mL syringe:

It’s like one of those syringes in cartoons that Dr. Bugs Bunny uses to shoot antibiotics into Elmer Fudd’s ass. Like so:
 

You fill that baby up, you could kill Keith Richards, bring him back to life, and kill him again. And that’s saying a LOT, because Keith Richards is a modern medical phenomenon, having somehow accidentally discovered the secret to immortality with a mysterious mixture of questionable cocaine-to-alcohol ratio. I’m pretty sure that he’s a walking, breathing mummy at this point. For the sake of discussion, let’s do a totally unbiased scientific comparison.

Exhibit A, young Keith Richards:


Exhibit B, Keith Richards today:
 
It’s like I’m playing those damn “see you if you can find the 10 differences between these two pictures!” game in Highlights For Children, and I’m losing miserably. Hx: Goofus and Gallant taught me everything I need to know about common decency and basic social skills. I guess I never really paid close attention, or else I would’ve known better than to irresponsibly exclaim certain statements about feces and phalluses in the workplace.

My word, that was quite a tangent. To the point: having known my roommate, BetterThanViolin, for eight-plus years now, I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that he could be a junkie. So how do I explain this horse tranquilizer-sized syringe?

He walked in and hurriedly mumbled, “Oh dude, I’m just refilling my printer ink cartridge. Don’t worry, I’m not a junkie or anything like that.”

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Several open letters to the community at large

Big ol’ bacon-grease shout-out to NotAMockery. YOU MY [GIRL] BLUE!
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The following is a series of open letters I’ve mentally accumulated the past few weeks. Most of these involve the central vein of our fair city.

Dear University Avenue in Berkeley, Calif.:

Thank you for making traffic on you absolutely insufferable for the past couple of months to re-pave your western end. At least now when I drive to and from work, I’ll only feel like I’m off-roading HALF the time. [Seriously, though, the new pavement is badass. The too-tight suspension on my Honda and my ever-so-delicate baby bottom thanks you.]
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Dear driver of Super Awesome Pickup Truck on University:

Thank you for driving slow enough to allow me to keep my left hand on the wheel while using my right hand to grab my camera out of my bag, take my camera out of its case, and zoom/focus onto the back of your awesome FAILBLOG-TASTIC TRUCK:

A hybrid what, exactly? I am 87% sure that the awkward steel frame of sorts situated atop your truck bed does not garner you the 50 mpg city/49 mpg highway that the new third generation Toyota Prius achieves. But I salute you, sir, for making my day a little bit better, knowing that if I ever wanted to, I could submit your vehicle to Failblog and take the credit and the love from the masses.
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Dear driver stopped next to me at the light on University and Sacramento:

If I want to have all my windows down while pumping Toto’s “Africa” at 8:30AM and singing along at the top of my lungs, quite frankly, that is my prerogative. Your double-middle-finger-salute, accompanied by your multiple colorful tattoos, prematurely balding head, severely jewelry-mutilated pinna, and undoubtedly tiny penis, intimidate me not. I’m sure your precious Oakland Raiders love to have your ravenous kind around, and to be honest, I don’t dislike you and your brethren – a crazy jackass loyal base is better than no base at all (read: Republicans Raiders USC former LA Raiders fans who have since hopped on the USC bandwagon Republican Raiders/USC fans USC) – but you feel the need to put me down for my loves and desires, well then by Jove I’m going to put you down for yours.
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Dear Z Gallerie on University Avenue in my beloved/much-avoided hometown of Palo Alto:

Well, it took damn near forever, but you’ve FINALLY closed. Your advertised “fine home furnishings” were tacky and far overpriced and your storefront an eyesore to the entire street. I sympathize with the owners/operators of the store, because this closure, like so many around the country right now, means that a few more good, honest Americans are out of jobs, but really, not unlike the bankruptcies of Enron, Lehman Brothers, or Umbrella Corporation, I think it’s for the best.
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Dear powers-that-be at Random House/McGraw-Hill/Scholastic:

These past four years, I have had the privilege (some might argue an unfortunate one; to them I say merely misunderstood) of knowing and befriending an incredibly unique individual. His sense of recklessness toward the laws of society by which we lead our lives and his commitment to always pushing – nay, shredding and destroying – that envelope is, at worst, cause for psychiatric concern and, at its very best, wild laugh-a-minute entertainment. He is the modern Tucker Max, minus the sexual exploits. I present the single most powerful argument for why you need to get this man a book deal NOW:
(10:44:45 PM) KNak: “annie le, you have a real good story and imma let you finish, but jaycee lee dugard had one of the best abductions of all tahm, of all time”
(10:44:54 PM) KNak: and im going to hell
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Dear faithful reader:

The fact that you have stuck with my incessant complaining and relations of unfortunate events thus far tells me that you are somebody worth rewarding, because no fool in their right mind would waste their time pitying a guy such as myself, much less read about his embarrassing exploits. But onward: on the right, under the section emphatically labeled “Bro vs. Manssiere,” is where I include some of my favorite websites (other than the obvious Google.com, YouTube.com, Wikipedia.org, NYTimes.com, and YouPor…yeah that’s about it I’m a decent guy I swear PR0N IS LEGAL IN CALIFORNIA GET OFF ME I CAN WALK MYSELF TO JAIL). Check them out – they are all quality humor; if you are a college football fan, DEFINITELY check out EveryDayShouldBeSaturday. There are few men in my life I try to emulate and follow; my father, Tucker Max, CarpeDM’08 and Orson Swindle, author of EDSBS, are in this honorable list.

We’re 2-0. GMFB.

(678): I wish I could rss feed the hooker ads on craigslist because it looks suspicious that I check craigslist every hour.

I sometimes seriously wonder why I’m the one writing this blog and not the universally-loved-and-misunderstood KNak. Gem of the night:

(10:39:39 PM) Gordo: strip clubs are such a waste of money
(10:39:47 PM) Gordo: if you're gonna spend that much money you seriously might as well hire a hooker
(10:39:58 PM) KNak: i suppose thats true
(10:40:11 PM) KNak: but strip clubs have more savory bitches
(10:40:30 PM) KNak: with a hooker you dont even know if she has both kidneys

(That one’s for you, AsianShaq. And I think the world needs to know about your fat stripper story.)

3 days until Cal football. I’ve been going through five pairs of underwear a day thinking about Lucky Number 13, The Jet, and The Prophet tearing it up on the field. BE TRUE, WEAR BLUE. GO BEARS.

Mystery Science Theater 2009

My phone just cheerily gave a single beep that I had never heard, apparently reminding me that I had a saved voicemail that was about to expire. The problem: I don’t ever recall saving a voicemail, mostly because I NEVER save voicemails. I typically have my left thumb on 7 whenever I listen to voicemails to lay the smackdown on the pesky little messages as swiftly as possible. And yes, I also Archive my emails religiously. A clean Inbox is an efficient Inbox.

Wondering what on earth a saved voicemail was doing in my inbox, I hit 1 to listen and I heard a bunch of giggling and the following message TO MYSELF FROM MYSELF:

“So I’m with Hsiao and Stacy right now. Hsiao said, ‘You only visit once every couple weeks now! [I assume we were in Palo Alto.] Why don’t you come back more often?’ And I said, ‘Because I have to work. And…uh…go drinking with my friends afterward.’ Then Stacy…wait…no, HSIAO says, ‘You’re going to grow up to be a GREAT father.’ [High-pitched, depressed voice] ‘Daddy, why don’t you spend more time with me?’ [Deep, angry, cigar-and-whiskey-rific voice] ‘Because daddy has to WORK. And go DRINKING with his buddies afterward.’”

I have absolutely zero recollection of this event ever happening. I don’t know what we were doing or how this ever came up in conversation.

I love the little surprises that the gods throw at me. It lets me know that the powers above still care about me enough to make me look like a fool every once in a while.

I was THIS close to being on The Price is Right.

Lessons in Chinese Culture, Lecture 2: the best things in life are free or heavily discounted.

This is why the Chinese absolutely obsesses over coupons and cream themselves every time they we can manage to save fifteen cents on a two-dollar can of soup (or bok choy or whatever the hell it is we buy). Never has “a penny saved is a penny earned” been truer for a fifth of the world’s population, especially in these perilous economic times. There are certain parts of This Glorious Nation of California where coupons are worth more than its weight in gold, where these sacred, poorly-printed slips of newspaper can buy you friends and earn you more enemies. You’d think that SF Chinatown would be the epicenter of this phenomenon, which is true to a certain local extent, but I argue that entire areas east of Los Angeles, such as Alhambra and San Gabriel, where billboards, street signs, and store signs are printed entirely and exclusively in Chinese, value these pennysavers the highest.

Of course, better than discounted foodstuffs and laundry detergent are giveaways, quality be damned. I went to a job fair on campus earlier this year for two main reasons: one, to find work, and two, to collect as many free toys and promotional items as possible. I have a whole little box of completely worthless crap from various companies who will probably never employ me in my lifetime, yet I relish the idea that I got these lead-painted, Made-in-China trinkets for FREE. All it cost me was a few dozen calories walking around the show floor, pretending I was interested in their company, and in some cases, literally grabbing and dashing. This is why I haven’t purchased a ballpoint pen in a while: elementary and middle school were served by the small hill of free pens given by pharmaceutical companies that my father had collected over the years; my high school years were served by a few extra pens that my sister had during her college years; the first couple years of college served by a couple of pens that I borrowed from classmates and entirely forgot to return (and they, in turn, forgot to request); and the last two years of college served by the large number of Cal Band Great pens sitting in the office. I am a whore, I know, what can I say, I was MIT ‘87 (that’s Made in Taiwan for you mainlanders and Mýllý Ýstýhbarat Teskýlati for you assholes wiretapping my phone and reading my e-mails. I’M TURKISH INTELLIGENCE TRAINED BRING IT ON).

Why do I bring up this lesson? One word: Caltopia. Billed as the “largest College Lifestyle Festival in the nation,” for the past seven years, this fair, adoringly referred to by many of us as FreeshitFest, has brought about tons of companies giving away free promos, advertisements, coupons, games, prizes, and free samples to get you hooked into what THEY think should comprise your College Lifestyle. Year after year, I go to Caltopia to eat breakfast/lunch, get stupid free crap, most of it useless, some it entertaining, rarely significant, and have a good time laughing about the interesting advertisement schemes that the companies come up with. “Two days of fun, food, music, & FREE STUFF! August 23 & 24 FREE ADMISSION!” is printed on the front of the Caltopia Event Guide, weighing in at 0.59 lbs. and proudly “printed by UC Printing Services on Recycled Paper with Soy Based Ink.” (I love you, Berkeley.) We didn’t stay for the entertainment – we made our own by spinning stupid wheels with crap prizes and throwing beanbags into holes of questionable size.

Notable features of this year’s Caltopia: the banks were advertising extremely aggressively this year. Wells Fargo had 12 representatives all holed up in one side booth while Bank of America was smack-dab in the middle of the entryway to the basketball courts (the main showroom). Wells Fargo had a spinwheel. Bank of America had Plinko. That’s right, America’s favorite game on America’s favorite daytime game show, The Price is Right, was at the Recreational Sports Facility at the University of California, Berkeley, and I didn’t play it because YOU BANKING ASSHOLES ARE PUSHING CUSTOMERS AWAY BY BEING SUPER AGGRESSIVE AND LITERALLY GRABBING US BY THE ARM BEGGING US TO BECOME CUSTOMERS and I didn’t want to get dragged into that black hole of you dicks spitting all over my face while trying to sell me on some introductory low APRs that I don’t need.

[You’ve never seen Plinko, say you? You’re probably the same Commie bastards who think Drew Carey is an adequate replacement for the legendary Bob Barker. Let’s amend that:

I PASSED THIS UP. IF THAT’S NOT DISCIPLINE, I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS.]

My haul this year:

-Pizza from Extreme Pizza – not coupons, actual slices
-Four cans of various flavors of Izze soda
-Too many samples of OLA LOA, a new sugar-free energy drink, as well as a free packet of OLA LOA powder
-A bag of pita chips and a sample serving container of Sabra hummus
-8 oz. of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream
-Popcorn
-Vitamin Water samples
-Honest Tea samples
-A zip-up bottle cozy (now I can conceal my open bottle in public AND keep it cold!)
-A legitimate nice notebook from Bank of America along with Bank of America pen
-Five small notebooks
-A coupon for free 3 oz. of yogurt from Yogurtland (I WILL NEVER USE THIS COUPON, YOU DISGUSTING, WATERY-YOGURT-SERVING MOTHERFUCKERS)
-Five San Francisco Soup Company coupons for $1 off any soup or custom salad
-Two pens from the Cal Student Store with the Apple logo on it, made from entirely recycled products, such as cardboard shaft and wood clip
-A tube of kiwi lip balm (yum) in a LIP BALM COZY WITH A KEYCHAIN ATTACHED TO IT
-A bag of honey-roasted peanuts, courtesy of Southwest Airlines
-Three coupons from Extreme Pizza for a free slice of pizza with purchase of drink
-Two free tickets for free club house admission at Golden Gate Fields (“HIS MUDDER WAS A MUDDER?” – 5 extra credit points for reference)
-A couple “got sperm?” stickers
-Desi Dog coupons for $4.00 combo special: 1/4 lb. dog, fries, and soda/water

And the winner: a goodie bag from the Sperm Bank of California containing four latex condoms (Durex, not sketchy unmarked), a keychain bottle opener, and a sample packet of IDglide personal lubricant

My cheapass Chinese side was gleefully satisfied all in three hours.

In honor of Bob Barker: Remember to spay and neuter your pets, kids. (Er, I mean remember to spay and neuter your kids, pets.)

Apprenticeship of a Weekend Warrior

10:30PM, in lab waiting for a gel to finish running (but to be fair, I rolled in at 2PM wearing a Transformers t-shirt, plaid shorts, and flip-flops after cramming my whole weeks' worth of errands into one morning. So I'm putting in my 8 hours).

Since the prospect of Cal football starting in 17 (RAHHAGHRGRHRAAAHAAHHH) days has me watching old Cal highlights nonstop and itching to watch ANY football, no matter how bad (seriously, I watched the Raiders-Cowboys preseason game), I've been talking to my friends about how this season is going to pan out. These discussions also led to logistics about how we're going to handle game days, since this is the first time we will be going to Cal games NOT being in band (read: NOT going to bed super early on Friday night so we do NOT have to wake up at the asscrack of dawn on Saturday morning to NOT rehearse).

My glorious, double secret probation ninja plan: to do five days' worth of work in four days every single week until December so I can skip almost every single Friday solely for the purpose of drinking my ass off. For home games, I can drink from Friday morning until Saturday after the game. I'm attending three away games this year (including Big Game), so Friday would be spent for travel and for making beer stops along the way. And the weeks when there are away games that I won't be attending or we have Byes...um...let's designate those "liver recovery weekends."

Go team:
[22:12] Gordo: i'm thinking about taking every single friday off until december
[22:12] Gordo: home games = take friday off to drink
[22:13] Gordo: and the three away games i'm going to = take friday off to travel/drink
[22:15] Gordo: mostly travel
[22:15] Gordo: drinking is secondary
[22:23] Gordo: "hey boss, i'm gonna miss work this friday"
[22:23] Gordo: "okay, are you going somewhere?"
[22:23] Gordo: "yep. BevMo."
[22:24] Ja Liule: "oh, awesome. remember to pick me up a six-pack"
Too bad I can't actually picture my boss saying that.

One day to NOT skip work, however, is August 28th. I kid you not, the first-ever National Single Cougar Convention is being held at Dinah's in, where else, PALO ALTO. This thing is 100% real: BOOM, YOU LITERAL MOTHERFUCKERS.

AsianShaq and I are 110% committed to going to this thing, if only for the entertainment value. $20 has never been better spent.

Scientists are weird people

The nature of doing molecular biology-related things for a living boils down to experiments and, more importantly, timing your experiments correctly so that you don't have to wake up at weird hours to make sure the experiments don't run on too long. Take me, for example. It's 3:35AM, and I am in lab right now, groggy-eyed with a massive craving for In-N-Out that I can't fulfill because it's far too late for that. I came into lab about an hour ago to stop the restriction enzyme digest that I started far too late in the day and consequently forgot about due to Jonathan Sanchez sucking ass against the Dodgers in the 4th inning of today's game. The digestion should have taken only 1-2 hours, meaning I should have come in at around 7pm to stop it, but again, the tears streaming from my eyes watching Sanchez revert to his old form of suckitude blinded me, rendering me unable to operate heavy machinery and vehicular transportation (that, and I just plain fell asleep from a couple of Coors Lights. Laugh away, but I have a job and chances are you don't so HA.)

Now, when I was down at UCLA, going into lab at weird hours and seeing other people there was uncommon but not entirely unexpected - the nature of academic research is a little bit different than corporate. Here, it's pretty much the 8-6 grind, and after around 6:30 or 7, everyone pretty much goes home.

Imagine my surprise, then, to be fumbling around in the kitchen brewing a cup of tea and hearing footsteps coming down the hall.

I froze and slowly turned around. My first thought was that FDU was here already, since he lives relatively close by and is awake at the buttcrack of dawn every day anyway. But even 3AM is a little early for him. Who, then, could it possibly be? The morning cleaning crew? Do we even have a morning cleaning crew?

I came face-to-face with AnimeGirl, one of the quiet but very nice RAs here (okay I don't know if she's actually super into anime but her unique haircut - mostly shoulder length except for some really long hair down the middle back - made me think of it immediately so that's what she'll be from now on until further notice kthxbai).

"Hey." So nonchalant. So natural. As if seeing your co-workers at work at 3AM was the perfectly normal thing to expect.

"Um...hey. What are you doing here?" I immediately regretted asking the question, as I didn't quite know the answer to that question if it were directed towards myself.

"I got here at 6PM, so I'm just about finishing up here."

"Oh okay. Um...I know what this looks like. I swear, I'm not here at 3AM just raiding the fridge for company food - I'm actually doing work but I need a pick-me-up."

I actually finished my work (including updating my lab notebook, something I haven't done for a period of time too embarrassingly long to admit) about an hour ago. Why am I writing right now, then? Because, once again, the long dick of Murphy's Law fucks me in the ass.

Our complex is right next to a big trainyard. Starting around 6 or 7 in the afternoon, they start shuffling the trains around, and this involved moving the trains out into the street such that cars cannot cross. If timed poorly, traffic can get stuck at that intersection for a good fifteen minutes minimum (I've heard up to half an hour from others here, and my heart goes out to them.) Just as I was walking out the door, I heard the obnoxious CLANG CLANG CLANG of the trains shuffling around. The gates were down, the red lights were blinking, and once again, the merciless biology gods above have decided to mess with poor Gordo's sleep schedule some more.

25 days until Cal football.

Bucket List, The Lawrence Taylor/Michael Jordan/Barry Bonds/Pee Wee Herman Edition

Football arenas to visit:
-Neyland Stadium at Tennessee – Knoxville, TN
-Lane Stadium at Virginia Tech - Blacksburg, VA
-The Big House at Michigan - Ann Arbor, MI
-The Swamp at Florida – Gainesville, FL
-Death Valley at LSU – Baton Rouge, LA
-The Horseshoe at Ohio State - Columbus, OH
-Beaver Stadium at Penn State – University Park, PA
-Watching Cal beat UCLA at the Rose Bowl on October 17, 2009 - Pasadena, CA
-Watching Cal beat Oregon at Autzen Stadium on September 26, 2009 – Eugene, OR

Baseball stadiums to visit:
-Oakland Coliseum – Oakland, CA THE WORST BASEBALL STADIUM IN THE ENTIRE FRIGGIN’ WORLD
-PacBell Park (YES I SAID IT, IT’S PACBELL) – San Francisco, CA
-Wrigley Field – Chicago, IL
-Fenway Park – Boston, MA
-Camden Yards – Baltimore, MD
-Yankee Stadium – New York, NY

Basketball arenas to visit:
-Oracle Arena – Oakland, CA
-American Airlines Center – Dallas, TX
-Staples Center – Los Angeles, CA
-Madison Square Garden – New York, NY
-Boston Garden (current) – Boston, MA
-Pauley Pavilion at UCLA – Los Angeles, CA
-Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke – Durham, NC (and Krzyzewskiville)
-Allen Fieldhouse at Kansas – Lawrence, KS
-The Dean Dome at UNC – Chapel Hill, NC
-The Palestra at UPenn – Philadelphia, PA

Miscellaneous places to visit:
-That super shady adult store on Telegraph that has $5 DVD sales right now – Berkeley, CA

The things we do for money

A friend of mine who recently moved to Madison, WiscAAAnsin is trying to look for housing while staying in temp housing.

This is why I am staying the fuck away from the midwest:

(1:20:19 PM) Wiscansin: my temp housing ended
(1:20:23 PM) Gordo: shit
(1:20:26 PM) Wiscansin: so i moved into this like crack spot motel
(1:20:30 PM) Gordo: lol
(1:20:52 PM) Wiscansin: i think your life expectancy goes down by a month for every night you stay here
(1:21:25 PM) Gordo: hahaha
(1:22:30 PM) Wiscansin: the good thing is that there are 4 bolts on the door
(1:22:39 PM) Wiscansin: the bad thing is that somebody thought it was necessary to put 4 bolts there
(1:22:55 PM) Wiscansin has signed off.

I am Jack's bloody, undesired children.

One thing that really fascinates me is the innate human desire to leave behind legacies. Be it literary, musical, kinship, or notoriety, we all want to leave our mark on this earth, to let prosperity know that we were here and we made an impact. [I think that this blog is my way of beginning that journey; this, and my lifelong dream of an international food tourism trip.] Of course, I am always excited when I can contribute to the greater community and inspire others to contribute, and I am especially excited when they follow the same vein. Welcome a co-worker of mine, henceforth named AsianShaq (you'll be hearing about him quite frequently), to the blogosphere. He's ten times funnier than I am. Find him here. Read him. Love him. Pet him, feed and walk him twice daily. The following story can be found in his perspective here.
---
"You are a walking, talking Murphy's Law."

That has been the central dogma of the past month. The next few stories will revolve this theme of unfortunate timing and coincidence, soaked, battered, and deep fried in schadenfreude (served on a hot corn tortilla with fresh mango salsa and a chipotle aioli).

Most recent major incident: we were all in the kitchen during lunchtime, enjoying much-needed sustenance of corn dogs and Eggo waffles (or whatever the heck was there). AsianShaq, who had just started his blog after reading mine, mentioned blogging and leaving his mark. I quote, "...and someday, just maybe, they can follow in my footsteps." He mentioned a mutual hero of ours, the infamous Tucker Max, creator and star of the famous stories which can be found at TuckerMax.com. By leaps and bounds, the best story in his very impressive arsenal is the "Tucker tries buttsex; hilarity does not ensue" story.

Take a ten-minute break from reading this blog right now and hop on over to his site to read that story, linked above for your convenience. The story's not actually that long; ten minutes' allotment is suggested because it'll take six minutes to read, three minutes to stop laughing, and one minute to change your underwear.

Back? Got your ya-yas out? Got new skivvies on? Good. Now that we have established context, let us sally forth.

Of course, when people have a common moment of sharing movies lines or music or whatever within mutual knowledge, we tend to repeat the best lines, if anything as proof that we actually know what we're talking about and not just pretending to know it for the sake of building friendship. If you've read Tucker Max's story, then you know that the best line in the whole laugh-a-second product is "DID YOU JUST...SHIT ON MY DICK?"

I happened to shout that line out loud because it was so damn good. I also happened to shout that line out loud right as FDU, one of the team leaders and senior scientists here, walked by.

FDU stopped and gave me a somewhat stern look. He looked around at the other interns who had suddenly stopped laughing.

FDU: "You know what I love about this company? The thing I love about working here is the professionalism in a public area that we keep, a public area that an investor or public official might be visiting at any given moment."

Everyone else looked at me and was dying not to crack up. I was dying to dig a hole and bury my head to save myself from the shame. By the way, that hole gets smaller and smaller every time - At the rate I embarrass myself publicly here, I figure I'll be immune to all this shit I do to myself within, oh, a month.

I am a walking, talking Murphy's Law.

Fresh Mex, Indeed

Sincere apologies for the long absence. Science beckons, and that frequently means going in on weekends so my E. coli, every single one of them conveniently named Bobby, won’t die from self-competition for nutrients from bacteria soup.
---
For Teeks' birthday two Sundays ago, a few of us went to the Chevy's in Emeryville. Sombrero, pitcher of margarita, embarrassing birthday song, free ice cream - not a big deal, just a pretty good night with one very distinct and what could have been a potentially fatal highlight:

In the middle of the meal, Teeks suddenly exclaimed, "What the hell is this?" and proceeded to pull out a tiny little metal ball from her mouth. Pinoy nearly gagged on his food, the look of absolute surprise and bafflement on his face priceless. [Ed. note: There's a really bad slut joke somewhere in there about the surprise of seeing Teeks pull something other than a penis out of her mouth. But that's all water under the bridge - we won't revisit that side of history, because she’s nice and actually NOT a slut, etc. etc. etc.]

Of course, being the jerks we all are, none of us were seriously concerned about Teeks’ well-being. the only thing on our minds was that she had somehow coughed up a FREAKING METAL PELLET. Also, being the cheap bastards we all are, we immediately started thinking of how we could milk the situation for all it was worth. Compensated meal, of course, but what else? Another margarita, on the house? How about five shots of Gran Patron Platinum, which is $250 a bottle? Maybe just everything at the bar, no? Because we sure as hell don’t want any more of your metal-BB-laden cuisine.

Eventually the manager came over, looking quite embarrassed but ended up being very nice and funny about the whole thing. Teeks got an extra watermelon margarita and a comp’d meal. We were quite disappointed in her for several reasons: 1) being too nice, 2) not taking advantage of a fantastic opportunity, and 3) being nowhere near as Asian as she should have been, because if she were TRULY Asian, she would have milked the poor manager dry until the restaurant went under.

Best line of the night, by far, was our super chill waitress telling us, “Oh, don’t worry about the BB. That’s how you know our pork is fresh – we’re killing them out back.”

IM/TFLN

Over the past month, SRS somehow became the worst Korean EVER.

(11:04:00 PM) SRS: you're not gonna believe this
(11:04:09 PM) SRS: but i'm like not that into drinking anymore
(11:04:15 PM) Gordo: i hate you
(11:04:40 PM) SRS: but i bought a 6 pack like a week ago
(11:04:47 PM) SRS: so i'm limiting myself to one a week
(11:04:55 PM) Gordo: one a WEEK??
(11:04:58 PM) Gordo: dude
...
(11:06:23 PM) SRS: no i think it's because i have less stress overall
(11:07:01 PM) Gordo: dude
(11:07:07 PM) Gordo: how were yo ustressed at ALL when you were in school
(11:07:11 PM) Gordo: you did not go to class at the end
(11:07:16 PM) SRS: yeah man
(11:07:19 PM) SRS: hella stress
(11:07:28 PM) SRS: how was i supposed to know if i was going to pass or not?
(11:07:50 PM) SRS: but having to deal with so many people
(11:07:59 PM) SRS: and things that happened in college
(11:08:04 PM) SRS: creates a bit of stress
(11:08:18 PM) SRS: the kind of stress that goes away when you drink scotch
(11:08:30 PM) SRS: but that's all gone now

Refusing to let this pass as an opportunity for comedy gold, I turned to someone I KNEW I could rely on to shit all over this thing: the only girl I know who can drink me under the table.

(650): [SRS] says he doesnt like drinking anymore. Help me think of the best possible ways to call him a vagina.
(408): Ask him if he goes through a lot of boxers because of all the bleeding he does every month
(650): he says he wears tampons. i dunno whats worse now

I don't belong in Vegas.

OH MY GOD WE'RE OUT OF EGGO WAFFLES AND CHEERIOS AT WORK WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON

At least we still have honey. And tomorrow is restock day, thank heavens. I once again got through the workday with only my usual Diet Dr. Pepper.

Also, we got the rare (okay actually not so rare because apparently that machine is a piece of crap, a piece of crap that EATS MY QUARTERS GIVE IT BACK WAAAAHHHH) chance to play Plinko with our beverage vending machine because one of the orange juice bottles got stuck between the glass and one of the racks below. Considering that drinks are only 50 cents, I decided to make the gamble: buy another appropriately-positioned orange juice so that it would hit the stuck one and hopefully get it out, thus rewarding me with TWO orange juices for the price of one. But which one to pick? Much like that old favorite of mine The Price Is Right with my man Bob Barker (FUCK YOU DREW CAREY YOU WITLESS SON OF A BITCH), some of the interns standing around started yelling indiscernable suggestions to me: "A1! A1!" "No, get A2! You gotta hit it from the side! A2!" "B1! Hit it straight on!" Overwhelmed, I blocked out all their suggestions and examined the situation: the bottle was stuck right in front of A1, so if I got A1, the most likely result would be BOTH of them getting stuck. However, it was just slightly to the right enough such that a bottle dispensed from A2 would definitely hit the bottle and thus increase the chances of knocking it out. Any options from the row below were out of the question. So A2 it was.

I only got one orange juice. Vegas would LOVE me.

The Eternal Question

In the past 3.5 weeks since I started working, I have only had to pay for lunch on two of those days. And those two days were the times when the carnivorous interns failed to understand the limits of "The Company Is NOT A Genie In A Bottle And We Only Resupply The Foodstuffs Every Once In A While," or to put it nicely, "STOP FUCKING EATING ALL OUR SHIT YOU FUCKING INTERNS." Today during the sole ten-minute break that I had to cram in the last apple on the table and a wheat bagel with salmon shmear (mmmmm), another of the interns and I were discussing how we could actually live on everything the company provides. I agreed - food, small gym (just a couple treadmills and a rack of weights, but hey, not shabby), shower, socialization - we're in a twelve-year-and-runnign little BioSphere bubble experiment. And I love it. (Except, of course, when we run out of food and the interns have to fight each to TO THE DEATH! for sustenance, and then the senior scientists get to take the leftovers after the stronger, victorious interns finish feeding. That, or eat Eggo waffles with Cheerios and honey because we never seem to run out of those three things.)

I took that step that I told myself I would not take, however. I showered at work this morning.

But seriously, the shower at work is nicer than the shower at my apartment. Good water pressure. Water gets hot FAST. Lockers. Cubbies. Lots of hooks to hang stuff. Spacious. Stainless steel assistance handlebars. Seriously baller.

Why was I showering at work, you ask? Because yesterday I crossed yet another important milestone: yesterday was the first time that I could shout out the phrase "I'M ON A BOAT!" without everybody reminding me that I am a habitual liar. Pitts and Crabs generously invited me to go out sailing on Pitts' twenty-seven-footer sailboat in the Bay. The weather being absolutely gorgeous (first in a damn long time), I of course accepted the offer and had a grand ol' time sailing from the Berkeley Marina out to the Bay Bridge (the shitty half before you hit Treasure Island, not the beautiful half after it) and back. I was so pooped after, unfortunately, that I just went home and passed out after.

Consequently, I showed up at work smelling of the sea, fresh fish, and barges carrying giant pieces of the new Bay Bridge, hence the shower. Shut up, I'm gross, I know, GO JUDGE YOUR OWN FACE SOMEWHERE ELSE.

So yes. Milestone achieved, and I made a hasty executive decision to utilize the shower at work in the 5 minutes before 9AM.

So forget you, Googleplex. I may not get a game room or really awesome food or free drinks or a bunch of awesome Google merchandise or the right to say I work at one of the most successful companies in the world or a massage parlor or a hair salon or a dog park or barbecues or sushi days or...um...

Damn.

Maturity Is Overrated

Two years ago, I bought a white board that we could hang on the wall near the front door of Ellsworth House (or Casa Durant, depending on whom you ask, and by whom you ask, I mean Doc is the only one who ever called it that) so that we could all keep track of things and leave messages for each other. Instead, it simply became a board of endless doodles and jokes that made us laugh so hard we refused to take them down for months (especially those involving racial stereotypes because, again, we were immature assholes for the most part).

Poignant example, if you please: in a “Would You Rather” we played once, the question was “If you were stuck on a deserted island and your only companion was a mermaid/merman (depending on your preferred gender), would you rather have a top half human, bottom half fish (like the standard mermaid/merman we all think of), or would you prefer the opposite, top half fish, bottom half human?”

I was the only dissenter to ruin the consensus. Three guesses which option I answered, first two don’t count. The folks were horrified and my justifications went ignored. I feel this might be a fair and totally, completely, absolutely unbiased forum to justify my answers: as proven in the Futurama episode “The Deep South” in which Fry et al. head down to Atlanta (now sunk under the ocean, effectively making it a really ghetto Atlantis permeated with Coca-Cola) and Fry decides to stay behind because he falls in love with one of the Atlantan mermaids, Fry can’t have sex with his new mermaid love because she has fish parts for genitalia. That is my entire justification for choosing the fish-top, human-bottom mermaid. Also, companionship is overrated.

But back to the point: I’ve put up the white board in my room in my new place and felt really good about it when, two days ago, I actually started using it for practical purposes – writing down tasks, grocery lists, designing primers and figuring out better plasmid ligation protocols, etc. Unfortunately, like all too many New Year Resolutions, that didn’t last for long. Here’s what is currently on my white board:
-Portuguese Breakfast (linked to UrbanDic for your convenience and delicious pleasure)
-Bucking Bronco (also linked to UrbanDic for your LMAo convenience)
-Learn to drive stick (pretty sure that one’s not going anywhere for a while)

And that’s it. That’s all I have. A sad de-evolution of what could have been an impressive way to make myself seem more mature and responsible.

And I Thought Palo Alto Had Too Many Sushi Places

There’s something about the series finale episode of Friends that really says a lot about the past couple of weeks in my life (minus the complete lack of racial diversity in the cast, and no, Julie and Charlie did not count). That one scene where the six of them all, one by one, leave their keys on the counter as they longingly consider that one apartment with so many years of memories and, more importantly, their incredibly intertwined lives about to go in completely starburst directions – that scene just kills me, now more than ever. Why do I bring up a bright note in an otherwise subpar (let’s face it, Friends had nowhere near the cultural impact as a lot of other shows out there) television series, you ask?

SRS moved across The Bay to San Francisco last weekend, since that’s where his new job is. I have been going to school with this guy for 11 years and lived with him for two of those years (well, really more like 2.5 years, based on the amount of time he spent in our house during our Third Year). I went to visit (so I could claim F1RST!!!11! on it) this bangin’ house in The City right next to Golden Gate Park and UCSF that SRS had been raving about for the past month. And, my God, the house is bad ASS. The rooms are enormous and the place is an absolute STEAL for an Inner Sunset location, not to mention SRS chose the room with a FIREPLACE. Non-functional, of course, but HE HAS A FIREPLACE IN HIS FRIGGIN’ ROOM. He conveniently put his couch on the opposing wall, meaning all he needs now is a flat-screen TV hung on the wall above the fireplace and everything will be hunky-dory. The parking situation is a nightmare, though. Every day will be an adventure for him as he liberally employs the George Costanza Method for City Parking: first, look for the magic spot right in front of the building, and if that fails, begin circling blocks in ever-increasing concentric squares to get as close a spot as possible to the building. Honestly, though, at that rate, SRS is going to be discovering new streets in San Francisco every day (hence the “every day will be an adventure for him” claim).

But I digress – that was just me pulling BS out of my ass about more BS (emotions are for non-Vulcans and pussies, incidentally one and the same). Onto the really important observations:

We went to dinner at this excellent Japanese restaurant on 9th and Irving in San Francisco called Hotei, which I highly, highly recommend. Handface moment numero uno: SRS and I weren't originally planning on going to Hotei; we were simply playing Russell the Wilderness Explorer and walking around, looking for a new restaurant to try in his new neighborhood.

There are three - THREE - Japanese restaurants on that block, all within 100 feet of each other. I kid you not: Ebisu is right across the street from Hotei and Kiki is 1/10 of a block north of Ebisu. Don't believe me? TRUE DAT DOUBLE TRUE: check it out here. The thought of needing THREE Japanese restaurants within pissing distance absolutely perplexed us. We looked for all the usual tells: do people like you on Yelp? Are you Zagat Survey rated? Do you actually have people eating in your restaurant? More importantly, do you have actual Japanese people eating in your restaurant? After some Indecision 2009 moments, we picked Hotei.

One of the dishes we ordered at Hotei was one of their specialty rolls, the Hanukkah Roll, which is smoked salmon, broiled salmon skin, topped with salmon roe and green onion. It actually tasted pretty damn good, but because SRS and I are terrible excuses for compassionate human beings, we had to say it:

G: "Man, it's pretty salty. Tastes exactly like 6,000 years of tears and suffering of an ever-resilient people."
S: "Yes. Yes it does."

Doing science LIKE A BOSS

Cardinal Rule Number One about putting your life on the World Wide Series of Tubes for all to see: never, ever write about work. (Well, for some, it might end up being a godsend, like one of my favorite blogs, Dooce.) Unfortunately, that means that I’m losing quite a bit of potential material about which to explore and share. But no matter, we will sally forth (“Who is Sally? And why is she fourth?” – Bubsy) and make the best of a lost opportunity. Because I am immature and still enjoy games marketed to third graders and don’t want to risk the wrath of my employer, let’s play some mad libs! Write down each of the following:

-Name of a company
-Emotive adjective
-Time of day
-Name of Cal Band member also interning at name of said company
-Expletive
-Food item
-Verb, simple present
-Unit of currency
-Bodily function, present participle (verb-ing)
-Illegal firearm of Russian origin
-Vital internal organ 1
-Vital internal organ 2
-Vital internal organ 3
-Clothing item
-Debilitating disease
-Verb, present participle (verb-ing)
-Name of virus or bacteria
-Day of week 1
-Day of week 2
-Your favorite cuisine
-Gender that has penises

Ready? Let’s play!

Gordo is an intern at name of biotech company and is very emotive adjective about his job. Every day, he wakes up at the ungodly hour of time of day to go to work. His carpool, operated by the very talented and very sexy name of Cal Band member also interning at name of company is frequently frustrated at Gordo’s refusal to come out on time. However, Gordo says “ EXPLETIVE! “ to that because he still vehemently believes in the absolute cemented legitimacy of Berkeley Time.

After arriving at work and realizing, yet again, that he forgot to eat breakfast, he raids the kitchen and eats the free food item that the company so generously verb, simple present . He then looks longingly at the vending machine that offers 20oz. drinks for 50 cents and Red Bull and Rockstar for ONE unit of currency and decides that drinking that much Red Bull for that cheap could lead to no other path than bodily function, present participle on my kidneys before my system busts out a(n) illegal firearm of Russian origin and completely obliterates my vital internal organ 1 , vital internal organ 2 , and vital internal organ 3 to smithereens.

Then, off to work! Gordo dons his nameless white lab clothing item and starts to figure out his experiment schedule. “But Gordo!What exactly do you do?” you ask. Good question, sport! Gordo is hopefully helping to cure debilitating disease by verb, present participle DNA so that name of virus or bacteria can’t infect you and kill you! Yay!

Working for this company has a lot of nice perks. For example, we get free dinner every day of week 1 and day of week 2 . The dinners rotate among Thai, Mexican, Chinese, and your favorite cuisine . Also, every Friday the gender that has penises members of the lab gather outside, crack open some beers and chips, and have weekly Happy Hour. It’s the one time I get to really see these guys outside of the workplace setting, and I realized that they, like me, are nerdCORE. They can’t stop talking about science, even when work is over and there is excellent beer present. I do the exact same thing.

I love being a nerd, and I love my job to death.

Pop Quiz, Hotshot

The world economy is in the shitter. You’re entering the American workforce in one of its bleakest moments in history. Recent reports show that just 19.7% of 2009 college graduates who applied for jobs have actually found one (compared to 51% graduating in 2007 and 26% graduating in 2008). You’re one of the very fortunate few to have secured a job, at least for the short term. But you’re on the cusp of leaving the bubble of the awesomely free college life and entering the proverbial “real world.” Your world is in shambles because most of your college friends are leaving, taking their own paths, and you are without direction. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?

I sit through 560 Asian names being called by faculty who are clearly struggling with the discomfort of some of those pronunciations. I walk across the stage of the Greek and take that little piece of paper from Dr. Beatty commemorating the One Hundredth Forty-Sixth Commencement from the University of California, Berkeley. That’s what I do.

I’m going to Commencement Convocation to see all my favorite motherlovers one last time before they all run away. Alcohol will surely follow.

My father flies back to Taiwan today. I’m partying like no other this Sunday. I’m moving out on Monday. I’m starting work on Tuesday. I’m looking for a new gym on Wednesday. Not much more to do other than GO BEARS and ONE MORE MOJITO! and FOOOOOTBAWWWWWW.

‘The Great Escape,’ or, ‘Cheating Death’

The documentation of this story has been in slow progress over the past four weeks, since it happened almost a month ago. I’ve been busy finishing school, and as of 11:00pm today, I officially finished my final exam for college ever. (Leave it to me to have to pull an all-nighter for the LAST THING I EVER DO IN COLLEGE. I got distracted and went drinking the night before in the middle of studying, okay? Stop your judging.) I’m on a very cramped Boeing 737 flying down to that city of pain, Los Angeles, to visit my lab at UCLA (see entries from June to August of 2008 for more shits, giggles, et cetera et cetera et cetera), and since I’d much rather poke a million little holes in my wrists with the free plastic toothpicks that the flight crew offers so readily than have to sit through an hour and half between Otis McNevershower and a screaming baby (because that’s FUCKING HAPPENING RIGHT NOW), I’m going to take the time to finish this damn thing while blasting Lil’ Jon and Flo Rida as loudly as possible into my headphones. The voices in my head get louder when I’m in confined spaces with people I hate.
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~To Mama Goose, my muse.~

This is a story of intrigue, mystery, high-flying adventure, passionate romance, unforgiving betrayal, and, of course, stickin’ it to the man. That, or a bunch of desperate middle-aged Chinese folks borderline breaking the law. Take your pick.

A few Sundays ago, the younger brother – let’s call him Leon, just for kicks – of a good friend of mine at Berkeley – let’s call her Forrest, for good reason – was on break from his high school and was spending the weekend up here with his sister. Forrest, being a close family friend and just freaking adorable, very easily talked me into calling my mom to drive up to Berkeley and have dinner with us.

Now, I try not to write about my mother, but this requires a little introduction. When my mother comes to Berkeley, the only – ONLY – places she will eat at are Cafe Intermezzo and Great China. True, she doesn’t visit very often, but when she does, I always get free food, and I have absolutely zero reason to complain about either of those fine establishments. Forrest and Leon, being Taiwanese natives, obviously opted for Great China, it being one of the best Chinese restaurants in the area. My mother drove to Great China, expecting eventually circle around several times to find a parking spot four blocks away, but almost like the revelation of the Grail itself, we saw a brand spankin’ new parking garage RIGHT NEXT TO THE RESTAURANT. “Winner winner, chicken dinner,” I thought to myself, and very rudely backseat-drove the car/my mother into that parking garage. But then again, she wasn’t complaining either.

We parked. We banqueted. We drank pot of tea after pot of tea. We made merry for two joyous, Chinese hours.

But this is where the story takes a dastardly turn. Cue Shostakovich’s The Bolt Suite, Op. 27a. III: Variations.

We exit the restaurant, bellies full and brains a-twitter with jokes and stories shared over some really good Peking duck. But three seconds later, our bubble burst.

There was a gate down, blocking the entrance and exit to the parking lot entirely.

We stood staring at those steel bars, not quite sure how to feel, thoughts and emotions dashing back and forth not unlike our half-human, half-Vulcan friend Spock. “What’s going on? Why are we locked out?’ we queried to nobody.

“I know, what is this?” a mysterious voice replied, as if we were in a real-live RPG video game. We turned around to find a middle-aged Chinese-American couple staring at that same icy cold prison in bewilderment. “There must be some sort of mistake.” We were locked out and our poor car was stuck inside, swallowed by the beast known as “The System” and facing a doomed destiny of abandonment and skipping from foster home to foster home, eventually ending up sucking dick for crack on the street at the age of 14.

I looked around and realized what the mistake was. The parking lot, owned and operated by the City of Berkeley, had designated this parking to close at 8PM on Sundays. There was no contact number to call and none of the restaurants nearby could do anything about it.

I know what you’re thinking. “Good job, dumbass, way to NOT READ DIRECTIONS. Didn’t you learn ANYTHING from STAR testing and the SATs?” But that was not the mistake. The mistake was the City of Berkeley being retarded and closing a major parking lot at EIGHT O’CLOCK AT NIGHT, rendering it virtually useless on Sundays. Good job losing a ton of potential cash on a weekend night when people actually like to GO OUT TO EAT.

Soon, more groups who had similarly (and foolishly) parked their cars in this garage showed up and expressed the same distress. Some took the news with a slight hit and obvious disappointment, but were generally civil and calm. One man was not so. His obvious subscription to Douchebag Quarterly and the Encyclopedia of Verbal Abuse was reflected in his language and frequent use of his catchphrase, “HORSE SHIIIIIT!” His ladymate looked around, embarrassed, and looked very apologetic. We forgave, because we understood his pain.

Now, the design of this garage gate is such that there is a “Gate Up/Down” button on the wall about two feet away from the gate. However, the gate bars were sufficiently close together, making it impossible to stick an arm through to reach the button.

That first middle-aged Chinese American man decided he had had enough and went back into Great China. He returned with a broomstick. After some fiddling around and a lot of poking and prodding with the broomstick, he was able to hit the Gate Up/Down button on the wall. The gate slowly opened while everyone sighed a breath of relief; some exclaimed squeals of joy and gratitude.

You know how Jack Bauer just runs into problem after problem after problem, all in the same day? Boy, we sure could use his help. After we all walked into the garage, we found our next problem: the bars. When the car enters the garage, you push a button to retrieve a ticket and the bar gate rises up to let the car through, and when exiting, you have to insert the paid ticket into the collecting reader to raise the exit bar gate. We went to the automatic pay stations to try to pay for our tickets, but the stations had been locked out because it was after hours and would not accept our cash. We went back to the gate and found a “HELP” button on the ticket collecting reader. We pushed the button and immediately heard a phone ringing nearby. The lot of us followed the ringing, like lost ducklings following their mama’s quacks.

We arrived at a manned pay station…which was locked and dark and unmanned. Our cries for help were going to the ringing phone inside the station, which of course was no help at all. “HORSE SHIIIIIIT!” again, this time reverberating throughout the depths of the cave.

“What the hell are we gonna do?” a woman desperately cried. I could hear a slight shaking in her voice, as if her car being stuck in a garage were on equal grounds as being stranded on an island with aliens or whatever the fuck J.J. Abrams can pull out of his ass.

Lo, a savior: enter the same resourceful middle-aged Chinese American man who got us past Level 1 by acquiring and equipping Broomstick and defeating the Level 1 boss, BUTTON. (Ok I’m done nerding out) The man whipped out his keys and, cross my heart, started unscrewing the bar gate from the hinge. We stared at him in bewilderment, some slack-jawed in absolute disbelief that this man would have the Jack Bauer Balls of Steel to do something so daring, so outside-the-box, so incredibly heroic, and so freaking illegal that we were surprised the cops weren’t all over our asses at that point.

CLUNK. The bar sat dead as that lone noise rang through the underground lot. Still we stood there, feeling nothing but the silence of the night and the ever-present shock.

“Come on, what are you people standing around for? Let’s get the hell outta here!” exclaimed Hero while waving his arms excitedly. Almost as if a video were going from Pause to Play, all of us simultaneously began running towards our cars. While briskly walking back to our car in the back corner of the lot, Forrest, Leon, and I exchanged looks of HOLY CRAP THIS CAN’T BE REAL and WHAT IF THE COPS BUST US? My mother, on the other hand, seemed to ignore all that and actually seemed to be glowing with pride rather than glad to be free of our predicament. I suspect that her feeling of internal pride was because it was a Chinese man who had solved our problems, and therefore by proxy she had somehow contributed to the solving of the problem because she was Chinese. That, or pride in the intellectual power of our people. TECHNOROGY!

One by one, we all lined up and drove up the ramp as fast as possible and GTFO’d like no other. When is was our turn to leave, my mother hesitated for a second. “What are you doing?” I asked her. She mentioned that not for a second did anybody else think about paying for their tickets. My mom, being the righteous and just woman that she is, insisted on having me returning the following day and paying for the overnight price of the ticket, which is $15. I said sure.

I still have the ticket.

On Television Comedians

(2:19:50 PM) Gordo: oh man
(2:19:52 PM) Gordo: barack obama is hilarious
(2:20:01 PM) KNak: i saw
(2:20:39 PM) Gordo: funnier than that assclown Jimmy Fallon
(2:21:41 PM) KNak: my anus is funnier than jimmy fallon

Mr. Rogers Did Not Teach You SHIT

Dear neighbor:

You have been blasting classic rock at 9AM or 10AM practically every single Saturday or Sunday morning for this entire school year. We have been plenty kind about this incredibly annoying act, especially because the weekend is for sleeping in and said classic-rock-blasting is crucial in preventing this joyous process.

I am about to graduate. I no longer give less than one-tenth of a lab rat's shit about your opinion. So do not come bitch at me because I decided to turn my speakers toward my ceilings and pump such childhood-memory-inducing Golden-Age-of-Disney classics such as "A Whole New World," "Beauty and the Beast," and "The Circle of Life." You have a point about my singing along at the top of my lungs to said songs, so I will give you that and I will stop. But your request for me to stop washing myself in my childhood fantasies will go unfulfilled.

I am about to cross into an entirely new stage of my life and there are certain promenary procedures I must undergo in order to emotionally prepare myself for this key transition. Consider it an emotional and mental baptism and atonement for the past sixteen educated years of my life, minus the guilt and religious affiliations. One part of me is elated that I am done with formal education for a little while. Another part of me is soberly depressed that I will never have a time like this again. The real world beckons. Disney songs are how I cope. Apparently classic rock is how you cope. Deal, mang.

But a sincere good luck on finals, from the bottom of my heart. The University of California, Berkeley boasts 32 libraries. I suggest you make use of at least one of them to study quietly, because my ass is parked in my room and it is going to be a motherfucking Disney paradise in here, I shit you not.

I Am Inappropriate, Mentally and Physically

I'm back at home, safe and sound. There's a neon green band-aid covered with soccer balls just to the right of my tailbone because, evidently, the very nice medical staff thought I was ten years old. Irrefutable empirical evidence: In Pre-Op notifications, the nurse taking my history exclaimed, "You're just a baby! And you've already screwed up your back?" I grumbled, "...yeah." So: no more comfort foods. No more Chicken and Waffles, no more In-N-Out, far less red meat, no more super sugary things. I need to reduce the everyday forces that my lower back experiences. Also, no more badminton, basketball, or football. I am a 21-year-old with the health problems of a 50-year-old.

My right leg is still numb below the knee and my right foot is still weak, making walking rather difficult. The numbness makes it such that I have to look at my feet when I walk now to make sure I'm actually stepping on the ground at the right time. You sit here asking, "1) Why the hell is this post so serious? And 2) but Gordo, your back and leg pain are gone! Isn't that a good thing?" No, it is not. In fact, numbness is far worse than pain. Pain is how your body tells you something is wrong and is proof that your nervous system is working properly. If your nerves are numbed out, that's a sign that your nerves are failing you. Even though I am no longer in pain, I am now much more afraid for my future and my well-being than I was before Sunday.

Speaking of Sunday: Oh, Sunday. Bloody Sunday. I was feeling just fine in the morning when all of a sudden I tried to stand up straight from sitting in my chair and a shock of stabbing pain emanated from my lower right back and shot down my right leg. I sat back down, but a continuous throbbing pain made that impossible as well. I had no choice but to lie down on my stomach or on my back for the remainder of the day. Finally, at 9:30PM, the pain in my back and down my leg was so severe, even while lying down, that I rounded up my roommates and screamed, "WE'RE GOING TO THE FUCKING EMERGENCY ROOM. NOW." Since I was unable to stand up straight, I had to stay bent over while supporting myself on a random stick that became a very useful cane. This stick helped me traverse the 20 feet from my apartment to my roommate's car as well as the 50 feet from the car to the Alta Bates ER entrance. After a painful half-hour wait in the ER waiting room (which, frankly, was INCREDIBLY fast for a packed house), I was taken into a curtained room. After some history-taking, I was given shots of Toradol and Dilaudid, two powerful painkillers, and a shot of Phenergan, an anti-inflammatory to get my herniated discs away from my nerve roots in my spine. Just to make it extra trippy, they also gave me a tablet of Percocet, an incredibly powerful short-term painkiller similar to OxyContin that knocks you OUT. I went home and passed out, but I woke up on Monday morning to find myself pain-free but leg-numb. Frantic, I called my spine specialist, who insisted that I get the lumbar epidural steroid injection as soon as possible. I got the procedure done at 10:30AM today.

A thought as I sat in the Pre-Op room for about an hour, getting pumped full of IV saline solution, listening to lots of Lil' Jon and Cut Copy (<3333 Cut Copy) to pump myself up, only one thought crossed my mind: "How come all middle-aged nurses are either butt-ugly or insanely cougar-fine?" Because every single nurse who helped me out today was FOXY.

I know, I'm an asshole, but I needed something to distract myself from the thought of a NEEDLE GOING INTO MY SPINE, thank you very much. Turns out the procedure was five minutes long and entirely painless.

I have the best parents in the world.

Life goes on.

The funny thing about auditions is that sometimes you can't really judge whether or not you did well. You just go in, do it, and hope. I was not selected as speaker, but here was the piece I auditioned with for the MCB student commencement speaker.
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Esteemed faculty, parents, friends, and most importantly, the class of 2009:

I have a confession to make. I grew up a Stanford fan.

Now, before you all run up here and beat me to death, let me explain. I grew up in Palo Alto and attended Palo Alto High School, which sits right across the street from the Stanford campus. My dream – my poor, misguided DESTINY – was to attend Stanford. As most of us here today know all too well, rarely do our lives go down our intended paths. Almost all of us, at some point, had to have at least considered, if not utilized, a second option. I didn't get into Stanford and turned to consider other schools. Fortunately for me, my decision to attend UC Berkeley and concentrate in Molecular and Cell Biology became the best choice I have made in my 22 years. From the time I first stepped foot on campus four years ago, I have loved this school with all my heart, and I could not imagine a more inspiring place to receive a top-shelf education, especially in Molecular and Cell Biology. I am ashamed that Cal was ever anything below a first-choice school on my list.

Having had to hand-pick our majors at some point in the past four years, we have all asked ourselves the question, “Why MCB?” The strange thing about choosing UC Berkeley, and MCB in particular, is that we actively chose to forego the path of least resistance. Quite honestly, the last four years could have been so much easier. Many of us could have attended a smaller, far more expensive school served with a heaping side of grade inflation and a 64-ounce cup of hand-holding. For our decision to let all that go and instead face the daunting task of completing a degree in the largest department at one of the most notoriously difficult schools in the world – for that decision, some people call us foolish. I call those people humanities majors.

The MCB experience here at Cal is a coming-of-age experience unto itself. I was watching the Discovery Channel and learned about this small tribe in the Amazon that initiates their young men by sticking a bunch of these gigantic, inch-long ants into gloves made of interwoven leaves, which are then fastened onto the hands of the young boys. The ants bite the boys' hands nonstop, and this incredibly painful experience turns their hands black and swollen to twice their normal size. This process is repeated twenty times before the boys are recognized as men. Now, I tell this story as an analogy to help the parents understand a common fiber that links all of us MCB students. Ready? We call those ants “organic chemistry.” That's honestly how painful it felt sometimes. But we all went through it and came out the other end a little smarter, a little tougher, and a little more mature. I know I do not regret my decision because the MCB major put us through the grind and ultimately made us better people.

When we chose MCB here, we took on our challenge with pride. Our battle scars are the dark bags sagging underneath our eyes, the deep calluses on our fingers from furiously taking notes and doing problem sets, and our injured social skills, no thanks to the myriad nights of parking ourselves in the library burning the midnight oil. With every battle won, of course, comes rewards. Our trophies are the well-developed muscles from slinging our Campbell and Vollhardt books, the sharp ear developed in lectures with professors who blaze by at ten words a second, and most importantly, a degree that makes others fall on their knees and weep in jealousy knowing that we received an intensive, serious, door-opening education in one of the most important scientific fields in existence. This degree, and all the experiences that came with it, equips us with the power to enter all sorts of careers that can change lives for the better and revolutionize the collective knowledge of the life sciences. We are incredibly privileged to have learned from some of the world's best researchers, doctors, and educators. You simply cannot get this kind of encompassing experience anywhere else in the world other than right here, our glorious alma mater that turned our blood Blue and Gold, the fair mistress by the sea, the University of California, Berkeley. Honestly, I'm not really sure why I bothered with Stanford in the first place. Thank you, and as always, Go Bears.
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Exciting story coming next. Hold on to your seats.