Shangri-La? At least the next best thing.

I've left the comfortable confines of the music-technology magazines to venture into the world of video games as the new Assistant Art Director on a big-name video game magazine.

It wasn't easy saying goodbye to my familiar job of magazine layout, illustration, and the occasional special project, but the chance to influence the look of a major magazine (especially one so entrenched in pop culture) was too good to pass up.

Even better is the chance to work in downtown SF. My offices are RIGHT THERE. The area during the day is very bustling and you feel a lot of energy just walking around. It makes you want to throw your hat...


Finally, the new work environment isn't your typical corporate office, either. Every writer in the bullpen has their own flat screen and different consoles to test/play games. What is this place??? I kindly backed down from a challenge on Soul Caliber 3 so as not to be virtually emasculated on my first day.

The evil that men do.

You don't really expect me to divulge that information in a blog, do you? Vegas secrets are "to the grave." But don't worry, after I die, my tombstone will come equipped with speakers and my secrets will play in an endless loop.

So the reason Son of Gigan and I hopped an America West flight to Las Vegas? To catch the rematch between Manny Pacquiao and Erik Morales. But that's another story. This one's about the awesome Aladdin Hotel we stayed at and the hundreds of miles we walked.

The first hundred or so miles were after we touched down at McCarran International. Going on foot from the gate to the baggage claim/transportation area is almost enough to wear away the excitement of being in Sin City. Almost, but not quite.

When we were checking out the taxi area, some dude came up to us and asked, "Towncar? Take a towncar to where you need to go." He then told us it would be $35 to take us to the Aladdin. Sorry gypsy-cab, we don't roll that way. We're much cheaper. SoG and I headed to the shuttle bus area, plopped down our $6 and we were on our way to the strip.

At the hotel registration area we were told some bad news. We caught a late flight, so it was about 11:30 when we tried to check-in and the clerk told us that there were no more rooms with two beds. So he'd HAVE to upgrade us to a two-bed suite at no additional charge. How lucky is that? We should have dropped our bags right there and ran for the casino. The reason why the regular rooms filled up? The MISS AMERICA pageant was going on at the hotel that weekend. Surreal.

After checking out our giant suite -- seriously, the bathroom was as big as my bedroom. We made our way downstairs to grab some grub. At the restaurant we noticed that there was a special Planet Hollywood menu as part of the regular menu--that's when we figured out that the Aladdin was eventually going to change into the Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino. Which made sense of the Basic Instinct ice pick on display in our suite (no joke). SO surreal.

I'll mention here that every few seconds, mine and SoG's heads were on heavy swivel because of all the hot women flittering around. So as you read this, please realize that, yes, we were checkin' out the ladies--but since they were EVERYWHERE, this story would be much longer if I called out every instance of maximum-bettys.

I will say that we did share an elevator with Miss Hawaii. She's about this tall (holding hand to chest level) and cute as hell. All the Miss America contestants just looked like regular cuties when they weren't all glammed out.


Anyway, we also took advantage of the free spa time we were allowed. Like a couple of meatheads we hit the gym (on vacation), but checked out the rest of the awesome spa. We also visited some of the other casinos on the strip -- this is where we logged all our frequent pavement miles. Only in Vegas can you walk towards a casino but actually have it move farther away from you.

So that's a little of the Vegas adventure - to read about the Pacquiao/Morales fight, check out my entry at Your Opinion Doesn't Count.

The power mai tai.

There's a new tiki bar called Kona Club on Piedmont. It took the place of the old King's X bar which had been there for years. The King's X had the medieval decor thing going and was one of the more "surly" bars in the neighborhood. There are four bars on the Piedmont strip - King's X, The Kerry House (the hip dive bar), Cato's (beers, ale, and bar food), and Egbert Souse's (the streetsmart surly bar - as in, you'd hear a record scratch if I walked in there). Anyway, this tiki place is so new, they don't even have a sign yet. It still says "King's X" on the outside with a giant cardboard handwritten open sign on the door.

When I was there last week with Big Cherry they really didn't have a menu of tiki drinks yet, so I let the bartender choose some sort of tropical-style drink. I should probably mention here that my friend and I were already a little drunk from drinking at my place earlier, so ending up at a tiki bar was a result of that buzz.

Ok, back to the drink -- the bartender whipped up a mai tai, but she warned me that all they had was 150-proof rum so I should drink slow. Halfway through our drinks we were drunk-calling people with the MOST HILARIOUS prank calls EVER.

Oddly enough, the next day the people we called said they couldn't understand one word we were saying.

The not-delayed delayed flight.

Monday night saw me traveling back home from San Diego. I was flying Southwest so the boarding procedure was the "group system". I printed out my boarding pass the night before, so I got to stand in the "A" line. In front of me was a woman, probably in her 50s, who was talking loudly on her cel phone. She sort of reminded me of Dame Judi Dench, only not British.


Not-Dame Judi also kept fidgeting with her two bags that she could never seem to balance correctly. I wondered why she insisted on keeping them stacked together as opposed to letting them lie on the ground separately while we waited to board.

But it wasn't her bag-fidgetiness that bothered me, it was more the fact that she really had no consideration for the people around her as she yapped away loudly on her phone. I don't know who she was talking to, but when she told the person on the other line, "...my flight has been delayed about a half hour," my hatred for her was sealed.

Of course the flight wasn't delayed. She was staring right at the sign on the gate that said "Flight 979, 8:25pm, ON TIME."

What a freakin' LIAR. She stayed on the phone with the person up until we boarded the plane and then finished her call with, "...gotta go, I'm getting on the plane now." What? Didn't you just tell the person your flight was delayed a half hour?

I can only hope the people she was supposed to be visiting weren't too jazzed about seeing her anyway.

Champion of the Day: Circuit Breaker Dude

There's a new 24 Hour Fitness Lite on Piedmont Ave. That name is deceiving -- this is one of those circuit training gyms and there's nothing "lite" about constantly moving from station to station in non-stop intervals. The gym itself is pretty small, just workout equipment, a bathroom, and lockers. No pool, aerobics, weights, or locker rooms. You just show up, work the circuit and leave.

First you start by warming up on a treadmill or elliptical machine, then after about seven minutes you move on to the equipment. There are machines that work every part of your body -- I really hate the bosu ball, by the way.


So the object is to move from station to station and go all out at each machine for about a minute. A chime goes off on the overhead loudspeaker to let you know when to move on to the next exercise. I've done this a couple of times already and it kicks your ass pretty good. So last night, I was getting into the swing of the circuit when all of a sudden there's this guy sitting at the bench press machine and he wasn't moving. He was doing regular sets of presses. I was like, "...umm...excuse me, are you doing the circuit?"

And he goes, "...nah...the place is pretty empty so I figured..."

Figured what? You'd just screw up everyone else's workout by doing whatever the hell you want? Nice, jerk. I just moved past him to the next machine and watched the other people get annoyed when they came up on this guy using random machines. Finally an employee went up to the guy to set him straight. Dummy.

Clever boy.

One of the regular occurences on Piedmont Avenue is seeing people asking for donations. Not panhandling (but there's plenty of that, too), but people looking for you to contribute to whatever cause they're out there for. It's admirable work, but hitting up Piedmont Avenue is like shooting fish in a barrel considering all the richie rich and bleeding hearts walking around (not a knock, just an observation). I however, am just a man trying to make it in the universe (just like Jango), so my most important worthy causes include rent and groceries.


Last week on a grocery run, I stopped on a corner where some high-school kid was signing people up for something. He saw me getting ready to cross the street and said, "Excuse me sir, can I talk to you for a little bit?"

I looked at him and threw out, "I have to get going, sorry," and then started to cross the street. I got about halfway across when I heard him say just loud enough for me to hear, "...sorry people help."

Wow. He hit me with that like a pro. Well-timed and well-delivered. I wonder how many people actually turned back from the guilt and gave him money?

The dead-neighbor scare adventure.

I was sitting at my computer waiting for my laundry to finish when there was a knock at my door. It was CanadaGirl from the apartment upstairs. She explained she needed my help to check on the elderly woman next door to her. The old woman had left her keys in her door and they'd been there for two days. CanadaGirl called the building manager and he asked her to check what was going on, but to bring someone with her.

So I put on my beanie and my jacket and headed upstairs in my pajamas with CanadaGirl. As I made my way to the door I could see the keys in the deadbolt. CanadaGirl threw out a warning, "...watch out for the spider." She wasn't kidding. Hanging down from above the front of the door was a GIANT SPIDER. Kind of like Kumonga, the spider on Monster Island that spit out all that random webbing into the air and somehow managed to trap Godzilla.


We acutally had to duck under Kumonga's web to get to the door. So there we were stuck between two horrors. A giant spider behind us and a possibly very dead neighbor in front of us. So not cool.

CanadaGirl had made an attempt earlier at knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell, but got no answer. It was my turn to do that, too, and I got the same results. Next I nervously turned the key in the deadbolt to unlock it. I pulled out the key trying to make as much noise as possible with the hope that if anyone was alive on the other side that they'd come and answer the door--or we would stupidly get shot for breaking in to someone's apartment.

After moving the key to the doorknob and unlocking it, I turned the knob and threw out a "Hello?" into the open crack. I quickly found that I couldn't open the door all the way because as CanadaGirl put it, "...THERE'S SOMETHING ON THE GROUND BLOCKING THE DOOR..."

I just about pooped my pants.

It was at that point we both started yelling into the apartment to make sure somebody was in there, and I slowly kept pushing the door open to move whatever was on the ground--and really really hoping an arm or a leg didn't plop down on the floor.

I let out a huge sigh of relief when I saw the old woman come shuffling down her hallway from inside the apartment towards us. CanadaGirl let out a huge, "There you are! We were so worried!" And we saw that it was a bag of groceries that was blocking the door. After some apologies, we gave the old woman her keys and I headed back down to my place--just in time to catch the beginning of the Lex-mas episode of Smallville.

The hungry Ektorp delivery man.

I hate when you're given a ridiculous window of time when waiting for a delivery or some sort of service. In my case I had to be home today from noon to 4pm to wait for my Ektorp couch from Ikea.

So I came home from work early and waited. I started some laundry and made some lunch. Then I threw Batman Begins in my DVD player so I could watch it for like the fifth time. Finally around 2pm my doorbell rang to herald the arrival of my 3-piece sofa.

I opened the door and told the guy this was the place -- he was sort of the big Biz Markie type. So i shuffled some of my existing furniture out of the way and waited for the couch to come up the stairs. After a little while I noticed that the delivery guy was by himself -- what the hell was that? What company sends its furniture delivery guys out by themselves? So there's my new 7-foot long couch wrapped in plastic teetering precariously on a hand-truck -- the couch was stood up so that it towered over the lone delivery guy.

After some fancy hand-truck work, the couch was finally in my apartment. I knew the etiquitte was to offer the delivery guy a drink, but before I could even do that he asked, "...are you baking some tasty treats?"

Wha?

That really caught me off guard. I took a whiff of the air and confusingly said, "...umm...no, I just had some leftover chili for lunch. Do you want a bottled water?"

After he left I figured out he was probably smelling the snickerdoodle candle I had lit earlier.

Old ladies in cars hate me.

I was driving home one night and looking for parking on my street. After driving around for about ten minutes I was starting to get frustrated. Seriously, I could settle and park two or three blocks away - the walk isn't bad - but I'm totally spoiled because it's usually very easy to find a spot within 50 yards from my apartment.

There's a long strip of sidewalk in front of an apartment complex across from my place, five cars can easily fit along that curb. I noticed a mini-van pulling in to the end of the line, I groaned that I missed my chance at the spot, BUT WAIT! There's actually TWO SPOTS AVAILABLE! I pulled up a little behind, but alongside, the van to wait for the old lady inside to finish her parallel parking, but all of a sudden I see her stepping out of her car! SHE PARKED RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TWO EMPTY SPACES!!! WHAT THE HELL!

I rolled down my window and asked her if she could move her car forward a couple of feet so I can fit in behind her, but she looked at me and said, "I'm not leaving..." and nodded her head.

"No, I mean you're taking up two spots, if you move ahead a little I can park" I said back.

"You want to park? I'm not leaving!"

"That's not what I'm saying -- PLEASE move your car ahead a little!"

And then a woman who was sitting out on her second floor balcony joined in to try and help me, "Ma'am," she said, "you can move ahead a little and then he can park right behind you! You're in two spots!"

The old lady was either not getting it or just being a dumb bitch, "I can't--I have an appointment," she scowled and then stormed off.

"LAZY ASS!" I yelled. The lady on the balcony laughed at that comment and then shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.

Wow. I forgot I had this.

That's not true at all. But I do admit I have been negligent. Maybe I could just pull a Billy Joel and list a bunch of stuff that's happened to me lately and let you decipher what's going on. Umm, just don't try singing - -this is free form.

Freelancing. Hash browns at Ruth's Chris. Morning coffee runs -- large with 3 splenda and non-fat, and a medium iced with a shot of bittersweet. Absolute Watchmen. Wine and dinner with Big Cherry. Macworld dreams. A tub of Vietnamese fried rice and a phone number. QT with the nephew. Trick or treating in the rich neighborhood --full-size candy bars, bitches. Pecan pancakes. The desert island game and defending my choices of who I'd want to be stranded with.