fun weekend w friends and dispatch

I went to the Dispatch concert at MSG on Saturday night w my friend Larry (MHS and JHU). It was an amazing concert -- Dispatch reunion, 25 songs (about 3 hours!), and proceeds going to Zimbabwe. The problem was, somewhere along the illustrious Dispatch history, they picked up half a million high school kids as fans. I'm not sure how, since I was in college back in 2000 when they were pretty well-known, and then I thought they disappeared after their 4th and final original album came out around 2002. Apparently, they disbanded for a few years then had a huge reunion concert back in 2005 where 120,000 people came out. I think that's when all the high school fans emerged. See, i figured Larry and I (both in our late 20s), would see more of our ilk there. Instead, it was a swarm of 20,000 15-17 year olds. Not that I don't like high school kids -- after all, i make my living tutoring them -- but these kids were REALLY annoying and obnoxious, in ways Larry and I couldn't remember when we were in high school. It appeared as if they replaced smoking weed with taking speed, coke and other amphetamines. These kids were AGGRESSIVE, like at a sports event, roudy, loud and a little crazy. You'd think Dispatch, with their relaxing groove attitude would allure a much calmer crowd, but I guess the anticipation of the 3 successive nights of shows - several years of waiting -- made the teens anxious.

It could also be that Dispatch is from Boston, and many of the Bostonions had come out... and people from boston are generally a bunch of asshats. (not all, but most).

The show was great though. Dispatch played a few songs, then took a break to show a vignette video about Zimbabwe (filmed when they visited 2 months ago). They were good, encouraging, and wasted on most of these annoying little teens. They brought out some people from Zimbabwe to do some drumming and singing for a few songs, and even played an acoustic set sitting atop their beloved tour van, which drove into the center of the arena. They have 4 albums with maybe 45 total songs. They played virtually ALL of the "hits" and a few new ones, but we were worrying towards the end that they were running out of songs to play, and how much longer could this last?

Meanwhile, we were sitting in the front row of one of the levels, so people were freely walkng in front of us for food, bathroom, whatever. Halfway in, the nincompoops started all getting up and doing a bizarre conga line, jumping around, and, oddly, slapping hi five with anyone who would raise their hand. This was annoying since a virtual endless line of stupid little kids who probably dressed up for halloween last october continually came by and held up their hands like they were in a marathon or otherwise deserved a hi five. Well, they deserved to get out of my line of sight to the stage.

But it was a good night. We hit up the Gingerman afterwards (where NONE of those kids would have gotten into) and hung out w all the old Hillel hopkins crowd.

Later we hit up a 7-11 which, in China, was as common as Starbucks here. In China, the 7-elevens all smell horrendous bc they all sell an odd meatball-like fish thing - basically 3 tubs of grease with lots of small meatball things, behind the counter -- you eat (definitely NOT me) with ketchup. Luckily this 7-eleven didnt serve that shit, but instead was all decked out as a KWIK-E-Mart for the upcoming Simpsons film! They had a lot of funny decorations, donut signs, slurpee machine signs, and even the guys behind the counter were forced to take part with purple simpsons t-shirts.

Good Stuff.

I had a going away party / joint birthday party with Dave and Evan @ Kanvas on Friday. It was a pretty wild time and a lot of people showed up.

My photos from that night, completely unedited

Avi's photos, taken at PM, a club in the meatpacking district that we went to after Kanvas...

Teresa's photos...

Funny story about Kanvas -- they kinda suck. I 'rented' their downstairs private room for our party by signing an agreement that my party would meet a $2,000 minimum at the bar in 3 hours (from 10:30 to 1:30). I figured this wouldn't be too difficult to meet (Dave, Evan and I had a party at Kanvas 3 years ago in the same room and met the minimum). So I assumed it'd be no problem. Sure enough, tons of people showed up, and the drinks/shots were flowing. Dave pulls me aside around midnight and asks if we'll be ok. I said "dude, look at all these people, of course we'll be fine, don't even worry about it."

Around 1:30 as people are trickling out, the manager comes over to me and says we are short, way short, of our minimum. I'm like "uh, it cant be that bad... we filled this place for the last 3 hrs". He's like, "you're at $1300. I'll give you another hour."

I honestly don't know how that's possible, and if it is, then their minimum is way to high. Anyway, an hour later, Avi and Evan both talked to the guy for a while to try to have them write off the "loss", which is ridiculous...Kanvas was actually not very full that night, and nobody was trying to come downstairs into our 'private' party -- so in other words we gave them huge business and it'd not like they lost money because they reserved that room just for us. Our party filled the place, too, so it's not as if another group would have been so much better unless they normally book alcoholics with expense accounts. Perhaps they do.)

In any event, I signed the form, so whatever, it's my fault. Avi was pissed because I could have done it at his bar, Aspen, for free. Finally, we were within a few hundred dollars, so Evan bought a bottle of vodka from the bar to meet the minimum. It was a little ridiculous because the bartender was one of those awesome guys who gives away tons of drinks and doesnt charge much ... evan got 10 shots and the guy charged $20. So obviously there was something amiss in their calculation of our bar minimum.

It was an awesome time though... I can't believe I got to see so many people before I left, it was awesome. I think I have photos of pretty much everyone I knew.

Funny moment was when roommate #2 (Vince, dave's friend who lived with us for a few months and painted his room a crazy red) met roommate #3 (nathalie, who, shocked to find her room a horrible red, painted it brown). Nathalie's reaction: "you're the guy who painted my room red!!!"

Amy (my friend from Trevor high school where I worked a few years back) told me she actually reads my blog and finds it entertaining!! She said she actually forwarded my Bill O'rielly rant to her friends because she liked it so much. That's awesome! Amy, there will be more rants, don't you worry. I'll be living in China. There will be ranting... I'm sure one will include my having to use the Pepto and Immodium AD I just purchased yesterday. Haha.

If, for some reason, you read my blog but did not get an email for Sushi on Wednesday, here is the invite:

Hey all… it’s the final all-you-can-eat sushi night. Come and eat with me but don’t lay a hand on my tuna sashimi or I’ll smack you like when Qin Shi Huang put the smackdown on all the neighboring kingdoms in 221 BC and the Qin Dynasty unified China. Yeah, it’s like that. (I’ve been watching too many PBS specials on China…) The irony here is that the sushi place is owned not by Japanese people, but by Chinese people. Not sure if that constitutes irony, but whatever, I’m the emperor, I’ll do what I want. And if I want to build a big wall, then screw you, I’m building my wall.

*** let me know if you’ll be a part of my empire… IE if you are coming to sushi

All you can eat SUSHI ---
WEDNESDAY (1/10 this week) 7:30pm
@ Eastern Sushi (AKA Nihon Sushi) 2nd Ave btw 72/73rd st (West side of street)
$26 (incl tax + tip) and half price drinks/sake

Reminder:
Party this FRIDAY @ 10:30pm @ Kanvas (23rd/9th ave)

I forgot to post about our kick-ass new years party my roommates and I hosted at our apartment. I guess there's not a whole to say that these photos don't already make apparent. Uh, people came. They brought a lot of booze. More people came. Booze was consumed. Happy new year.

Actually we had quite a good turnout. Meinon (from hopkins) and Marionada (my old college housemate) came, which was awesome. Marionada, we're still eating those truffle chocolates you brought but the cookies were gone the next day. And hoff came with Papa Shi. Chung brought her people. Zak has no friends but still managed to bring Greg (who we went skiing with several years ago) who brought a few of his people. Lots of other people came too, and I can't remember much else which is why I took pictures. Enjoy!

Chung begins preparing an incredible assortment of finger foods. I begin eating them.


People start making our apartment look like a real party zone... Not just a cramped apartment. Ok, it's just cramped. Whatever.I am on the phone with Maddy -- it is just after midnight, so Greg decided to swoop in for some photo action.

On Thursday, I went with Hoff to see Dick Valentine (frontman for Electric 6, one of my favorite bands) perform at Joe's Pub in the village. It was a pretty intimate show, not even close to sold out, and Hoff and I sat comfortably at a table. One of the songs he played was, I believe, one he wrote (not a cover) and one of the funniest songs I've heard in a while -- impressive, since every Electric 6 song is amazingly funny.

I took the liberty of transcribing the lyrics:

I met a girl named Gabrielle
She was dressed in black and young as hell
She took me to her dormicile
Invited me to stay a while
She fed me breakfast and fed me wine
And later on we took the time
We explored each others area
Ran into a language barrier
It can be so frustrating
When we insist on communicating
But I do not parles vous you, oh

I don’t speak French
But somehow I got on the good side
I don’t speak French
But theres only one thing on her mind

Vou les vous, mon amie, bon swa baby
Is all I know how to say right now
But you get better I’m learning how ?
Cause where I’m from the thing to do
Is paint yourself red white and blue
How bout you? Can you say you do the same thing too?
I’m just your average yankee
Trapped in a world of French hanky panky
But I do not parles vous you, oh

I don’t speak French
But I’ve got a shitload of Euros
I don’t speak French
But that doesn’t matter to French girls



Here are 2 parts of the show. enjoy!

The other night I had a little sushi night of my own. Instead of going out to the typical all-you-can-eat place on the upper east side, I decided to make sushi myself. It turned out well, as you can see from how content the people look in these photos. People were very impressed with how good the fish and rolls were. I even got ginger and fake crab. But I forgot to get wasabi. Oh well.

I had salmon, tuna, fake crab, avacado, cucumber and sesame seeds. can't forget the sesame seeds.

Last night I went to a TURKEY FRY, hosted by my buddy Chip in Brooklyn. You might be asking, wtf is a turkey fry? It's basically when you get a huge vat of boiling oil and put a whole turkey in it til it turns golden brown and tastes amazing. When you take it out, you have a big vat of oil to use for deep frying ANYTHING -- oreos, potato chips, socks, whatever. We stuck with onion rings and french fries, but we were not very daring.

It was a delicious time.

Forgot to mention ... Last week I scored some free tickets from my friend Alisa to a Broadway show: "The Little Dog Laughed." I brought Zak and Chung and we actually sat in the very first row! The show was a 4-person comedy about an up and coming movie star who is about to go bigtime with a new movie, but can't come out of the closet because he would jeopardize his role. The guy from "that thing you do" is the movie star and his agent, a feisty Julie White as the agent. It was hilarious! Well worth the... uh... trip to midtown.

I went to the museum of natural history last night with Dave to see a discussion with Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan's widow) about the search for god. Druyan transcribed a lecture series Sagan gave in the early 80s and published it in a new book called "A personal view of the search for god." The talk was pretty much a re-hashing of all the arguments trying to reconcile science with religion. That religions answers what science cannot. That science doesn't provide a structure for ethics or morality. That the god that Sagan believed in was very different than what most people believe. And there was a lot of talk about how great Sagan was (which he was) in popularizing science.

It was a bit annoying because they dealt with this talk as if the audience knew nothing on the topic. But the audience was not your typical museum audience that knows little and wants to see cool stuff. I think this audience, showing up at 6:30 on a tuesday night (many sporting AMNH badges -- probably scientists that do research at the museum), had a far greater understanding of the issues presented than Ann Druyan had thought. So she went over a lot of the same stuff we've heard forever rather than jumping into more complicated issues or exploring certain ideas more fully.

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't all that interesting either. But it's great to see people like Druyan dedicating her life to making science more mainstream and accessible.

The lecture will be podcast on the AMNH website... but its not up yet.

Where did Gallagher come from?

It's "where's waldo," but Jeff instead of Waldo.


Marathon photos baby! Yeehaw, mile 20!

Well, I finished the marathon… in 4 hrs and 56 seconds. Let’s just round it down and say I did a 4 hr marathon. Hell yeah.

OFFICIAL RESULTS:
Here’s my official time breakdown:
Place: 12,495 (out of 37,000)
Official time: 4:00:56
Pace: 9:11/mile
Half marathon: 2:00:55

RUNDOWN:
The run went well. It was perfect weather. Cool, mid 40s to start, clear day and sunny. The first 10 miles were fine but I realize now I went a bit slow on them than I should have. Teresa was supposed to jump in at mile 11 but she wasn’t there! (I found out later that she couldn’t find where the mile 11 marker was and waited on Bedford and 5th, maybe 10 blocks from the marker. Oh well.) At the water stop around 70th street, some dude spilled a cup of gatorade on me from behind. He said sorry but that didn’t seem to make me feel better. I now looked like I had peed my pants, had yellow liquid running down my leg, which made my leg all sticky and on top of that, it was cold out so the liquid just made my leg even colder. Damn Gatorade. I managed to see my parents shortly after the incident at 1st Ave around 78th street. But I thought Jon was going to be with them because he wanted to jump in and run with me for a bit and I had told him to wait with them. I didn’t see him and scanned the next few blocks for him, but figured it was going to be another Teresa mishap and just focused on running. Out of nowhere, around 85th street, I hear Jon behind me say something. I can’t remember what it was, but I was elated he was there. He then ran with me for the next 8 miles, up until the last .2 miles where an organizer noticed he had no number and told him to get off the route. He was so helpful – I definitely would have slowed down if he weren’t running with me. Last year, my biggest mistake was stopping twice to walk a bit, thinking I wouldn’t lose much time. But this time, the last 4 miles I didn’t stop for water nor slowed down. I actually saw Teresa at Central Park South (about ½ mile from the finish), which was great. And I finished. Hopefully with a smile and a decent photo.

My nipples didn’t bleed, thank god, although I totally forgot to put Vaseline on them. I realized about 3 miles into the race that I forgot and it would probably be a problem, so I grabbed a stick of Vaseline from one of the medics on the sidelines.

The funniest part of the race was watching two guys dressed as the Blues Brothers take a piss on the side of the highway about a few miles into the race. They were standing there together, peeing on the cement on the side of the road. Hilarious.

Also hilarious is the video Jon took of me and him running. That is here for your viewing enjoyment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NsgziUyGaE



I had a slightly negative split – I ran the second half faster than my first half—which basically means I should have run a bit faster in the beginning. It’s a long race though, so it’s really tough to gauge how fast the first few miles should be.

When I finished, I waited with my dad, Jon and Doree for a while. My sister finished at 5:42 which is faster than her last marathon in Arizona. Pretty impressive since NY is a much tougher course (not flat at all) and she beat her last time by a lot.

BOBBY FLAY RUNS TOO:
My sister’s friend said something like “did you see bobby flay in the race,” which I thought was a joke, since I look like him. But she was totally serious. I said no.

Turns out, Bobby Flay actually runs the NYC marathon!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/468065p-393913c.html

This is funny for several reasons:
1) he is my doppelganger.
2) When I was on Iron Chef, Cat Cora (the female iron chef), would tell me I’m too skinny to be Bobby Flay. I told her it was because I’m training for a marathon.
3) I beat him by 10 minutes, but he’s older and wider than me so I probably should have beat him by more!

LANCE:
Lance just barely broke 3 hours and said it was the hardest thing he’s ever done. That’s a lot to say coming from him. Read what else he said. He’s cool even if he juiced up for this.

http://www.nycmarathon.org/news/story_27
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/468725p-394425c.html

COOL BAND:
There were some great bands that performed on the marathon route. Teresa said she really liked the one that she was standing near for a while waiting for me. I believe they are “Lewd Buddha,” a funk fusion band that rocks. I listened to some songs off their website and decided they were good enough to invest in. So I bought their album on CDBaby (one of the few albums I’ve actually purchased over the last 5 years) for $10 including shipping. I even emailed them to say they rocked. http://www.lewdbuddha.com/

I’m running in the NYC Marathon this Sunday. You should all come out and watch, it should be a lot of fun.

This will be my fourth marathon and second NY Marathon. I’ve trained a lot for this one and I’m feeling better than ever. I’ve gotten rid of some of the summer weight I gained while tanning (burning) in Barcelona eating tuna and guzzling barrels of wine and wheels of cheese with old college friends in France. (I certainly gained no weight from my girlfriend’s cooking—whole wheat muffins sweetened with molasses.)

Running is a lifestyle, and training for a marathon is a lifestyle change. Consistency is the key to success. Missing a run one day is bad. Missing several runs or not keeping up the training can cause you to fall behind and not be adequately prepared. You probably won’t get a great body by running. You’ll lose weight, but it won’t necessarily show. Your resting heart rate slows significantly and your lung capacity improves. Your threshold for pain goes up and you rarely get sick.

But what is Sunday going to be like? Let me paint you a picture of the experience of running a marathon. You feel great for the first 15 miles. If you can’t do 14 or 15 miles without breaking a sweat, you’re probably in the wrong race. So everyone starts out looking good. Your motion is smooth, your legs are strong, your breathing is easy. 2.5 million people are cheering and it’s the happiest time. Then mile 18 comes along and all of a sudden things get painful and you fatigue. Your legs start aching, it feels like the route is entirely uphill now, and you start wondering why you thought this would be fun.

Mile 21 kills. That’s where you can’t ignore the pain and fatigue anymore. They are deafening and become all you think about. By mile 23-24, you begin rationalizing: it wouldn’t be so bad if I stopped this race right now. I’ll still have done a lot. I’ll still have succeeded and accomplished so much. You think “what difference does it make… I’ve done all the training. That was the hard part. This is just another 3 miles. What’s the big deal if I don’t do it.”

A marathon is many things for the people running it. For some, it’s a race. For others, it’s a one-time accomplishment, to see if they can do it. For me, it’s an attempt to beat my personal record. But for everyone, it’s painful.

Pain is generally a hard thing to describe. Humans are wired to not be able to recall the experience of pain. We can conjure up old images in our heads, hum songs we heard a long time ago, recite phrases. Even remember how things smell. But trying to remember how a certain pain felt is very difficult. Thank god.

Pain is what a marathon ends up being about. When I ran the Arizona Marathon last year with my sister, she complained that her legs hurt, her head hurt, her feet hurt. I turned to her incredulously and said “do you think this is a walk in the park for all those people behind you?” I explained that this race is special because we are experiencing a kind of pain that takes 23 miles of running to feel. It takes hours of hard exercise to attain the level of stress and sting that we were feeling throughout our legs. Few will ever achieve that agony in their lives. It’s not like breaking your leg. It’s a club that comes with a high price to pay in determination and discomfort.

But the reward… oh that sweet, delicious reward. At mile 25.2, with just 1 mile left, every step forward feels like you’re climbing a flight of stairs. An eternity passes each moment. You are at your slowest pace but you feel like you’re sprinting. The finish line comes into view and finally an end to the misery is in sight. But it is a mirage. It approaches slowly. It barely moves. You’re in a dream, treading water and going nowhere fast.

And then it’s over. Maybe you noticed a camera taking your photo and put your arms up and smiled, but maybe you were too busy drowning out the excruciating pain to notice anything. When I crossed the line last year after 4 hours 11 minutes, my legs buckled and I couldn’t stand straight. I kept wobbling and knocking into people as we made our way, slowly, to the street. Then I cried. It was easily the biggest thing I’d ever accomplished.

I’m hoping to break 4 hours on Sunday. The numbers are in my favor. I ran a 1:52 half marathon in late August, then a 1:50 half marathon 2 weeks later in miserable pouring rain. Both shoes were soaked, one nipple was bleeding. I ran a 5:50 mile on 5^th avenue. I ran a 10 mile leg of a relay marathon (my 2 sisters and father ran the other 3 legs) at just under 8 minute pace.

Teresa will be jumping in and running a stretch with me, probably around mile 11 hopefully til the end. Feel free to do the same if you see us. I’ll be wearing a white shirt.

I’m ready for the burn on Sunday and I’m ready to have a personal record. Come out and watch. Check out www.nycmarathon.org and www.mta.info (click on the marathon subway map link). Or if you’re really lazy, just come to the end. Official start time is 10:10am so I’ll hopefully finish by 2:15pm. Go to the reunion spot under the letter “N”

On Sunday, I ran in the Mysic County Marathon in Mystic, Connecticut with my two sisters and my father. The four of us managed to finish in 4:17... not bad. I did the last 2 legs of the 5 leg relay, about 10 miles, in just under 8 minute pace, so I kicked ass. It was a fun family outing with the whole family including our dog, who posed in a few photos as well. Our team was "The Novich Attack" and my little sister made our shirts. We each had our "names" on the back of the shirts: Dr. Funk (dad), J. Funk (older sis), Ms. Funk (younger sis) and Funk, Jr (me). It was amusing to run past people as they would invariable say "go Funk, jr.." or "go team funk", believing that "Funk" was our family name. In fact, my little sister was approached by another runner who said "oh, is Funk your last name? My last name is Funk too!" haha.

The run itself was quite scenic, passing through quiet little roads and for a short stretch along a beach. The weather was perfect for running - calm, clear skies, low 50s. The problem was with the relay part. My leg was at mile 16 which means I had to wait about 3 hours for my older sister to finally arrive. Waiting around really sucked: I hadn't eaten or drank anything, expecting there would be at least some water at the waiting spot. No dice. There wasn't a single race person directing people or helping out (ie, telling you where the bus was picking you up), and there was ONE lone port-a-potty. There were a few tents and a small stage set up, but we came to the conclusion that this was part of last night's festivities with the church and had nothing to do with the race. So there I sat, on my PDA, chatting with maddy in china on skype while picking up some friendly neighborhood wifi from, perhaps, the church or bed-and-breakfast across the street. Finally around 1pm, still having not eaten or drank any water, I start my leg. I must have passed over 100 people -- sadly because they were all in the final 10 miles and I had just started. Those poor runners were saying things like "wow, you go!" or "boy you have some real energy, nice job!" not realizing i had just started.

All in all it was a beautiful day, a great run, and a wonderful weekend spent with family (and dog). We didnt' even come close to winning the "family relay" award. That went to a team of skinny people who did it in around 3 hours or so. A 75 year old ran it in just over 3 hours. But we came away satisfied with having accomplished something few families can do. Go team Funk.

I went to the Hope and Dreams Film Festival with my mom, dad and mom's friend. My mom and I had made a 15 minute documentary about the life of puppies that are raised to become seeing eye dogs, called "Blue Collar Pups." This was the only fest that accepted it. But we eagerly went to Hope, NJ to check it out.

Pulling up to the stone church/community center, I noticed the parking space would be limited (there were only a handful of spots on the tiny street), but that there were still plenty of spaces! Apparently, not a lot of people had arrived. yet. Seriously, only about 20 ppl showed up for our screening -- but that brings our grand total of ppl who've seen "blue collar pups" to about 25.

This little town was so cute. We had lunch at this house/diner down the road from the church. The festival director was so hospitable and called me to ask if I would be on time to our screening because she didnt want to start it until we showed up. We came and I got a tote-bag filled with small-town goodies like a t-shirt, coffee, tourist magazines and festival info. The director really wanted us to stick around for the filmmaker discussion and for the award ceremony -- she insisted she didn't know the winners, that this was not her decision. It was so cute!

We came for the 2pm viewing of our film along with a short animation before ours and a 1 hr made-for-tv documentary about 3 Canadian high school kids going to Tanzania to learn about AIDS in Africa. That was a pretty lengthy piece that could have been cut to maybe 10 minutes. It was a bit boring and the content was basically following kids around on their trip -- not much of a narrative, one minute they're in a village with orphans, the next they're on a safari. THe animation was absolutely hilarious.

The director asked my mom and I to come to the front after our film played and answer audience questions. One woman in the audience said she had come to the festival just to see our piece because she had a keen interest in guide dogs. People really enjoyed the film!

Then my dad was a pain and said we had to leave because he was bored. so we packed back into the car and left. I felt guilty for leaving the festival, even though I had only planned to stick around for a few hours, I feel like we should have stayed a lot longer. At 4pm when we were heading out, a crowd had gathered to watch the next batch of films.

I think we're going to submit the video to the animal planet and PBS and see if it can get some airtime. We'll see.

I checked out NextFest at the Jacob Javits Center with zak, Jon and Chung. NextFest is a huge convention sponsored by wired magazine that puts on display all the cool and upcoming gadgets and technology that major companies and small ones are preparing to unveil.

When we got there in the late afternoon, we were greeted by a line that must've been a thousand people long and perhaps eight or nine rows deep. While we were waiting on line, zak decided he should go to the will call booth and try to get a ticket that he was promised from the web site. He had done a promotion where, if you give wired magazine 10 of your friend's e-mail addresses, they will reward you with a free ticket. Wired had not actually mailed him the ticket, so he wanted to see if he could get a free one by mentioning the promotion. Five minutes later he came back and said, "you guys have to do this." So, one by one we all approached the will call booth, said that "I did this promotion on the web site and I'm here for my free ticket," and without checking our names against any list, we all got free tickets. Additionally, there were people coming around with clipboards giving out free subscriptions to wired magazine, all you had to do was fill out your address. So an event that would have cost each of us $20 instead rewarded us with a one-year magazine subscription. We felt pretty good walking in.

My initial response to NextFest was not very good. For a convention that supposedly housed the most futuristic amazing products of the 21st century, how was it that there were a thousand people waiting on line to get to four ticket booths? In their vision of how the world will work in the next 10 to 15 years, could the creators of this convention simply have implemented an efficient way of selling tickets to a lot of people? so that wasn't very impressive.

But my main reaction is pretty simple -- half of the stuff we saw was basically stuff that was already unavailable. Maybe some of this was not available in stores, but it certainly wasn't stuff we hadn't seen before. One glaring example would be wind turbines. The other half of the products fell into the category of "crap that has absolutely no use in the real world." Actually there were a lot of pretty cool products, such as stuff from NASA or the Virgin Atlantic demonstration. Many of GE’s innovations were great, but not particularly interesting. Stuff that was dumb… there were many examples.

First, a game called brainball, where two people sit at either end of a table wearing hokey headbands and stare at a little ball in the middle of the table. Their headbands measure their brain wave activity and the calmer the player is, the more the ball rolls towards him. Wow, this sounds like a truly exciting game, certainly 21st-century. The caption says "stay mellow to stay in control, score and win." I think that's exactly what we need in gaming today.

Then there were a bunch of odd robots. One robot is the humanlike Actroid, a Japanese girl who moves around and says things. Then there was an odd plastic robot with Einstein for a head. That also kind of moved around and kind of did things, but not really. I wasn't very impressive and it didn't seem like it had all that much use other than having a robot walk around a cocktail party and have people say "wow that robot looks a lot like Einstein." Then there was the robotics competition which was basically soccer for a bunch of remote controlled boxes with wheels that sort of hit each other and threw little Nerf balls around. The game had a small Astroturf arena like a football field, and seemed like it was going to be really exciting. None of us could immediately figure out what the rules of the game was since these kids, stationed behind Plexiglas at either side of the field, just threw the Nerf balls at the other end over the Plexiglas. It was very bizarre and not immediately obvious what the goal of the game was, so we left. What was interesting is that they were all high school students and they had built the robots themselves. That was cool. But they were predictably the nerdiest group of people imaginable!

Probably the silliest thing I saw was a robot that looked like it belonged on an automobile assembly line. Spinning records. Yes, it was this huge machine that could swivel around and do things with pinpoint precision, and all it did was pick up one of the 10 records that surrounded it, bring it over to a record player needle, and spin it. There were two of these machines and they "duked it out," spinning crappy vinyl records and scratching discs. First of all, you definitely don't need a robot to make terrible music. Second of all, didn't jukeboxes pretty much do this in the 60s? And didn't they require a lot less space and could spin a lot more records? Not impressive.

The other funny robot was a pink, life-size partner for ballroom dancing, complete with a flowing dress. But the funniest thing about her was her little Mickey Mouse ears. WTF?

Some of the sillier products included the “sun trap handbag,” a women's handbag with a solar panel on the side that had lights that line the bottom of it so girls who apparently packed too much shit in their bags can actually find stuff in the dark. My problem with this, which I explained to Chung who is very fashionable and knows what women would buy, was that women's handbags serve absolutely no useful purpose except that they are an accessory, a piece of fashion that they wear just like anything else. My guess is that, judging from the way girls buy handbags, an ugly handbag with a gimmick on the side probably won't sell. Personally, I like the idea, but I don't buy handbags. I also don't pack so much shit that I can't find my keys inside my bag.

Then there was the “hug shirt.” Two lovers who are far away can still touch each other by wearing shirts that are connected to Bluetooth mobile phones and have heat and pressure sensors built in. When you hug yourself, it sends a signal to your mate and applies heat and pressure to wherever it is you're hugging. I'm sorry, but this just seems like the stupidest idea I've ever heard. What are you going to do, walk around wearing the shirt all the time? Why doesn’t your significant other just call you and say "okay I'm hugging you, go squeeze yourself.” And it seems the options are pretty limited with a hug shirt -- you can either hug, or I suppose if you are the more abusive boyfriend, you could squeeze your arm or pull on your shoulder or something like that. Actually, that would be pretty amusing, abusive dudes hitting themselves. Maybe next year.

Of course there were tons of nerds and everyone was drinking the super caffeinated Coca-Cola drink, BLAK. Also, one of the coolest products would have to be the Blackberry Pearl that is coming out soon. This thing can play video, audio, take video, record audio, oh yeah and its a fully functional Blackberry that is the size of a RAZR. Sweet!

Jess invited Felissa and me to a tasting at the food network, of all places. It was an event hosted by Applebee's starring a celebrity chef, Tyler something or other who is on the food network a lot, who was the brains behind a series of new dishes Applebee's is offering. So he demonstrated how to cook a few of them and then we got to eat. I liked the eating part of it. interestingly, the event was held in the main kitchen that is right across the hall from kitchen Stadium, where they film iron Chef America -- and next week I will be playing Bobby Flay. So it was amusing to mention this to several people that Jess works with. the food was actually pretty good-- some pasta, a salad, little burger bytes, and some spicy salty french fries. It was pretty typical Applebee's flavor. The kind of stuff that chain restaurants serve that will give you a heart attack and raise your blood pressure.