Super Silly-ous

A quick recap of my weekend:

The Good - burgers at Fuddruckers, tapas at Isa, crepes at Savor, free CDs

The “Bad” - Marina Green Draw, late night dessert with Anita and Mike

The Ugly - Miami Vice (2006)

The good parts of this weekend obviously involved a lot of food. =9  I went to Fuddruckers in Daly City on Friday night and had a super tasty BBQ bacon mushroom burger…I’m such a sucker for a big fat(ty) burger!  Saturday night I went to Isa in the Marina for some decadent French tapas, including seared dayboat scallops, potato wrapped seabass, and seared duck breast…what is with me and seared food?!  Sunday afternoon I went to Savor in Noe Valley, which is one of my favorite crepe places.  If it’s a nice day, definitely sit on the patio!

Afterwards, I walked around 24th Street for a bit and saw that Toyota was having some kind of giveaway in front of Streetlight Records.  To promote their new car Yaris, they were handing out $15 gift certificates to the music store.  All we had to do was sit in a Yaris as they briefly drove it around the block (literally…we only went around one block and the guy didn’t even try to do any kind of sales pitch!) and fill out a short one page questionnaire when we were done.  So for a very easy ten minutes worth of “work”, we got a combined three free CDs!!!

The bad parts of the weekend weren’t actually bad…more like suboptimal.  The tournament on Saturday was cool, especially since I drew my buddy Ryan as my partner for the day.  But our court had a big mud pit and we didn’t end up winning so that wasn’t so fun.  Sunday night I went over to Anita and Mike’s place and I brought fresh mangoes and ice cream to share…I’m such a sucker for dessert!  I had fun with them as usual but it was “bad” because we didn’t have that much time to talk and just hang out together.

The ugly part of the weekend was really awful.  I watched Miami Vice on Friday and it SUCKED.  I liked the old TV series and I had such high hopes for the movie because they cast good actors and Michael Mann is usually such a great director.  But the plot was weak with bad dialog and the acting was rather poor.  Also, what is up with the hideous mullet on Colin Farrell’s head?!  At first I thought the movie was set in the 80s, which would make his hair okay, but it’s not!!!  I spent most of the movie just staring at the stupid thing. Eeewww!

Some memorable quotes from Friends:

Monica: “That? That would be the work of a Blowfish.”

Chandler: “You have to stop the Q-Tip when there’s resistance.”

Rachel: “Who’s FICA? Why is he getting all my money?”

Ross: “Hey, remember when I had a monkey? Yeah, what was I thinking?”

Phoebe: “They don’t know that we know they know we know.”

Joey: “Why do you have to break up with her? Be a man. Just stop calling.”

On my recent trip to LA, I spent some time with Heidi and Scott.  We had a blast hanging out and making fun of each other (as usual) and also squeezed in a tasty dim sum meal.  Before I left, Heidi let me borrow season one and two of Friends.  I’ve always been a big fan, but Heidi is hardcore since she actually owns all the DVDs for the series!  While I’ve watched the majority of Friends’ episodes, I know I haven’t seen them all so I thought it would be a good idea to watch them back to back from the beginning. =)

Can I just say that I am completely enamored with watching a television series on DVD?!  There are no commercials and I get a lot more continuity since I’m watching a bunch of episodes all at once, so remembering what happened to who is much easier.  The best part though is that I don’t have to worry about cliffhangers anymore.  Does an episode ends in an unresolved and thrilling manner?  No problem…I can just press play again or simply switch the disc to see what happens next.  This might well change the way I watch TV forever!

I’ve finished watching all of season one and am halfway though season two right now.  So far there aren’t any “new” episodes that I didn’t already see, which doesn’t surprise me because I was pretty good about catching Friends each week during their first few years.  But around the midpoint of the series run, I was rarely home on Thursday evenings (probably because of volleyball!) to follow the latest developments.  I started to lose track after Phoebe had the babies, Monica and Chandler shacked up, and Joey was rehired by Days of Our Lives.

I didn’t like Friends that much when it began, but it grew on me because one of my old college roommates was a huge fan and she kind of forced the rest of us to let her watch it on our TV every week.  The very first episode I saw was the one where Rachel and Ross finally kissed.  I remember the moment it happened, there was this tremendous collective roar outside from people watching all across the dorm complex.  There must have been thousands of students who could not stop cheering, but at the time I was like “What’s the big deal?” =P

I recently went on a roadtrip to LA to watch my very first soccer game live.  FC Barcelona came to the U.S. to play in some exhibition games, so I knew I had to go as I won’t often get the chance to watch some real world class soccer.  I was also very happy about heading down south because I knew I would sneak in a visit to my super cute nieces (not that I am biased or anything)!

I didn’t get to spend as much time with the kids as I would have liked, mainly because my brother and his wife are still tired and recovering from the recent birth of their youngest child, so I didn’t want to make them host for too long.  But I did get to play with Lauryn for a while and I held Elyse for a bit as she was falling asleep for the night, so the auntie in me was pretty satisfied.  Lauryn was the usual adorable bundle of energy and she’s now in the really fun and chatty toddler stage, so I love watching her rambunctious antics.

The game took place Sunday afternoon against Chivas Guadalajara at The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.  Despite being an LA native, I had never been to this stadium, so it was cool to finally go. Two Olympics, two Super Bowls, and one World Series have been held there!  My favorite part of the facility is the main entrance…as you walk up the steps, there are these massive arches that you can stand under to look down the field and view the entire bowl.  It’s an epic and humbling feeling as you realize that you are just one of 92,516 screaming fans.

Chivas USA opened up the event with a game against the New England Revolution.  Unfortunately, since parking took FOREVER, we only got to watch the second half of the match.  Seriously, that was the worst parking organization of any event I have ever been to in my life…despite following all signs and the directions from the parking staff, it took us over an hour to finally park on the fifth floor of a structure in the boonies.  It was worse than parking at the mall during the holidays and we still had to hike back to the stadium!

The Barca and Chivas matchup was really good overall.  They ended up with a tie game of 1-1 (since it was a friendly game, there were no penalty kicks to determine a winner) and there were plenty moments of oohing and aahing over the athletes’ skills.  The ever popular Ronaldinho drew cheers from fans on both sides.  Interestingly enough though, the athlete that got a lot of attention in our section wasn’t even a soccer player.  We were by the VIP enclosure and everyone around us kept craning their necks to see…Kobe Bryant!

My dad was with me and he was really excited about watching the games.  He grew up in a country that loves soccer and he spent his childhood playing ball for hours in the street with his friends.  I’ve only recently started watching soccer and I can only imagine how special it was for my dad to get to see some live world class play after over 40 years or so of only seeing some games on TV.  The next time the World Cup comes to the States, we’ll have to go and do some father-daughter bonding!