Vegas Baby! Yeah!

Maybe you know this already, but the “sweet hotel deals” in Vegas that are advertised for Sundays through Thursdays, are the biggest scam ever. Like a legal Ponzi Scam.

Last weekend, I took a road trip to Phoenix to catch a baseball game. Fun trip. So-so drive. Fun game. Another stadium checked off my list. I went down with Jason, my partner in “baseball stadium crime.” We were joined this trip by his dad and brother. We left Friday and drove down through Page, Arizona. We went past Powell...my first trip to Powell ever-though I won’t count it since it was just a drive by. If you have never made the Salt Lake to Phoenix drive, take my word for it: it’s long. Not one of my favorite routes. A step above I-80 across Wyoming though. And definitely a step above taking a wrong turn coming home from Colorado and not realizing you missed the I-80 exit until you are 10 miles from Casper, Wyoming which is three hours north of I-80 on I-25.

Once in Phoenix, all was well. We ate good food. We cruised around the city. We saw a game. Chase Stadium, home of the Arizona Diamondbacks, was actually pretty sweet. It was mostly indoor, with a retractable roof. My big concern going down there was that the forecasted high for the day was 108 freaking degrees. (Yes, the weather man said, “108 freaking degrees.") I was certain we would roast faster then the Stay-Puft marshmallow man after getting lit up by the four Ghost Buster Proton packs complete with the particle accelerators. We had a pleasant surprise on our arrival to find the indoor field was air-conditioned to a near-perfect 74 degrees. Once the sun went down, they opened up the roof and we enjoyed the rest of the game under the night sky. Fun game. Jason’s dad fought for and got a ball that was hit into the stands during batting practice.

We hung around Phoenix Sunday and watched football at a sports bar. (Jason’s dad and brother went to the Arizona Cardinals game.) After the game we debated and nixed the idea to go eat at a restaurant featured on the Food Network called Alice Cooperstown. Adam Richman recommended eating a hot dog called “The Big Unit.” My homophobic tendencies won out and we ate somewhere else. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. No way.

Then we drove to Vegas. I called ahead to some hotels to get one of those sweet Sunday night deals that all the billboards from Boise to Mesquite rave about. (Tangent: I hate the Little America billboards that you have to deal with every two miles all across Wyoming. I will never stay there just because they annoy me so bad.) The phone call was sweet. $27.99 for the night. Two rooms split between four people makes that even sweeter. So I say, “We’ll take it.” Then comes the fine print. The tricky “Hotel Amenity Fee:” $16.99. The phone reservation fee: $3.99. The 18 percent Vegas hotel tax: 6 bucks. Sales tax: 3 bucks. Pillows on the beds and fluffed: 5 bucks. Okay, I made the pillow fee up, but suddenly our room is 50 bucks a night. I ask about the hotel amenity fee. They tell me that they are allowed to charge us for providing stuff in the room. Had I been more on the ball I should have just asked for whatever the $27.99 covers. Probably would have gotten an empty hotel room freshly gutted from the Meth lab discovered there by the maid. Who knows? So now I know...the Vegas hotel deals are essentially the same as airlines that charge you to take your bags with you. I have been racking my brain this whole post to figure out a way to charge you all a “blog-reading fee.”

Hi Ho! Hi Ho! It's Off To Work I Go!

The following is a spin off from a magazine article I wrote that is a local publication for Salt Lake area fire departments:

I love my job. Most of my coworkers also love their jobs. It is almost a necessity. For as much time as I am required to be there (56 hour weeks, 48 hour shifts)-and as much time as I have to spend with the same small group of people in the small confines of the fire stations-to not like the job would make for a miserable life. Forty-eight-hour shifts would get very long, and most of us would surely become serial killers.

The fire station is literally my second home. One-third of my life is spent there. The guys that work out of the same station as me have become my second family. We see each other at our worst, and at our best. We see the general public on their worst day and have to help each other through the situation, as well as those to whom we respond. We are often required to perform difficult tasks in the worst of circumstances. As a coworker, I have often doubled as impromptu marriage counselor, voice of reason, listening post, sound-board, etc., (but not so much a shoulder to cry on-we are all tough as nails). It seems no conversation is off limits. I know things about people I never cared to know. I have shared things I never thought I would share. The water-cooler conversations and unsolicited free advice on virtually every topic imaginable are easily accessible-whether you are looking or not. Through these conversations and experiences, we become like family. We share a bond unparalleled in other professions.

Since I live at the fire station one-third of the time, I have chores, just like I do at home. All of us have them. We live there, remember? We do dishes, clean the bathrooms, take out the garbage, cook dinner, make our beds, and so on. A friend of mine recently did a “ride-along” with us and was amused that a group of men were doing household chores. She pondered out-loud that our spouses must be lucky women.

There are some differences living at the fire station versus living at home, however. Here a few examples (for your entertainment, of course):

At the fire station, my clothing is arranged in such a way (at all times) to allow me get dressed as-fast-as-possible. When an emergency occurs, we are literally “on the clock.” We are expected to be fast, and the faster we can get there, the person or place having the emergency has the best chance of survival if less time passes. Every second literally counts. So at night, rather than just tossing my clothes wherever I take them off, I carefully arrange them so that I can get dressed quickly, in the dark, half asleep, and without putting my pants or shirt on backwards or inside out. I have a 98 percent success rate here because lets face it, after the fifth call at night, my coordination and level of awareness drop off drastically. Hopefully an inside-out shirt is not considered out-of-uniform after hours! Ask me sometime about my zipper-in-the-upright-position percentage.

A shower at the station is rarely enjoyable. There is only one thing more annoying than getting the emergency call right as you reach full lather. (That one thing will not be discussed here, since this is a family article) It is so hard to be all sudsy and have to do a quick rinse, a quick dry, and run down the hall trying to get dressed while jumping into the fire engine and trying to hear the details from dispatch. I have shown up to multiple emergency scenes with a hair full of conditioner and soap in my cracks, crevices and armpits.

It is true that firefighters are awesome chefs. It is also true that I have eaten more cold-gourmet meals than I care to discuss. It is almost a given that we could sit around the station all day without an emergency call until we sit down for that hot meal that someone has been working on for hours, and then as we sit to eat, the alarm goes off for someone experiencing an emergency, whatever it may be. A particular paramedic, now retired, was infamous around our department for losing his temper if an emergency call came in at dinner time when it was his cook shift. The crew that worked around him had fun with this, sometimes calling in test pages just to get him worked up.

With that said, I do have the best job in the world. On some small scale, I get to show up at someone’s worst possible moment and do everything within my training to make it better. Its hard to beat the feeling when you are able to pull the family picture album unscathed out of the apartment that just burnt up, or when we get to tell “Little Johnny” that Grandma is going to be just fine after a few days in the hospital. Crawling through twisted metal and broken glass to get to the injured motorist just to tell them to hang in there a bit longer while we cut the car away from them is up there too. I get paid to break stuff (from time to time). My universal house key is an axe. I open car doors by way of hydraulic shears. I get to drive fast in the opposite lane of traffic. I run in, while you’re running out. I have the best job in the world.

So you can keep your 9 to 5 gig. I will be just fine working my job, even with the reduced hours of sleep at night, the incomplete showers, and the cold meal that has been reheated 4 times. Its all worth it when I get to drive down the road in the opposite lane of traffic, honking the air horn, blaring the siren, and cursing the drivers that don’t understand simple traffic laws. Its worth it when we have to throw out the prime rib that was cooked at 5 p.m. for the Mac and Cheese at midnight.

One Fantasy Short of a Great Summer

Its mid-August. Our always short summer was super short this year because it rained all of June. Baseball season is already approaching the playoff race, the Jazz have done their annual bonehead signings, and football is starting its preseason. What does this mean you ask? It means I should be researching my fantasy team...but I am not. I was challenged by Rebecca to skip fantasy sports for one year. I have made it so far, but I have to admit it is extremely hard to skip fantasy football. Something is definitely missing from my summer, not just laying on the beach that Utah doesn’t have, something more.

Normally, by now, I would have done a couple of mock drafts, read up on the progress of some players over the offseason, and watched a million fantasy break down videos on Yahoo. It is a definite obsession. Yet, I gave it all up because someone said I couldn’t. So far so good, I hope I am right.

I am hoping my fantasy sabbatical will help me get back to true fan-man-ship again. The downside to fantasy sports is that it makes me cheer for players versus teams. I have cheered against “my teams” in the past just because I wanted a fantasy teammate to do well when playing them. Purely selfish reasons, but winning the fantasy game became more important than “my team” making the playoffs. I am hoping this year allows me to just watch a game and appreciate the event.

I wrote about being a fan a few months ago. Asking the hard questions like “how does someone choose a team?” My goal in this no-fantasy football season is to put those questions to the test. Ask me when all is said and done if I still cheer for the New York Jets and the Green Bay Packers. Or better yet, ask me first if I really made it without covertly managing a fantasy league unbeknownst to my fellow fantasy-ers.

Karate Kid 1984 Versus Karate Kid 2010

I saw Karate Kid 2010 (from now on referred to as KK10) today. Warning, moderate spoiler potential throughout (though not much more than if you have seen the original!). I am liking the list format, so what follows is a list of reasons KK10 will never be the classic the first one was. I was hesitant to even see this movie, but I broke down and did it.

#1- No Elisabeth Shue. No elaboration needed on this one. She had to be the main crush of every boy in the 80’s. She is the only reason I watched Adventures in Babysitting 86 times. She was even hotter than Kelly Kapowski. Top 5 crushes for me in those days (in no specific order): Elisabeth Shue (Karate Kid, et al), Tiffany-Amber Theissan (Saved By The Bell), Maureen Flannigan (Out Of This World), Nicole Eggert (Charles in Charge), and Markie Post (Night Court). This may negate the argument to number 5 below, but this list is from the 80's in whole, so I was almost 15 as the 80's closed out. Which one of these surprised you the most?

#2- I like Jackie Chan, and appreciate him as an actor, but he is not Pat Morita. I understand and realize that they did not intend him to be, but you can’t help but make the comparison. Since Mr. Chan is named Mr. Han, there is no more Miagi-Go Karate either, which I considered a classic line from the first one. Jackie Chan also speaks English too well. One of the better parts of the original was that Mr. Miagi spoke fragmented English and reminded all of us of Yoda in both wisdom and sentence structure.

#3- I was really hoping for at least a Ralph Macchio cameo. Most remade movies give some type of cameo to the original actors. What were they thinking? They could have easily sneaked him in. I would have wagered a large amount of money that he was going to show up as one of the match referees. Are they called referee’s in Kung-Fu?

#4- The KK10 kid is named Dre Parker. Mr. Han calls him Shao Dre. Shao apparently means “little” in Chinese. That doesn’t even hold a candle to Daniel Laruso, Daniel-San. Shao-Dre? There is no ring to it. It was too forced, like the Friends episode when Ross tries to be like Joey.

#5- The main characters in KK10 were 12 years old. I have several problems with this... first the romance side of the story. 12-year-old boys and girls are not that into each other, at least in my world. (If they are, heaven help me! I know I didn’t care much about girls that young.) Also, they don’t fight to that extent. It worked so much better when they were high school age. Plus, they weren’t even fighting over the girl in this one. There was just a side love-story. I can’t even remember what they fought over.

#6- After watching the original, I felt like I had actually learned some Karate. I could easily mimic “wax-on wax-off,” “sand de deck”, and “paint de fence.” I practiced for months after seeing the show. I blocked many slaps from girls on dates using the very “wax-on wax-off” technique taught so many years earlier. KK10 used no such techniques. The method used to teach Shao-Dre is confusing and not easily learned by the movie-goer. “Jacket-on jacket-off?” WTF?

#7- Seriously, Elisabeth Shue was nowhere to be found. Nothing against the new girl, except that she is not Elisabeth Shue.

#8- The whole sequence of the Sensai telling the quarter-final opponent to take out the leg, disqualifying himself and putting the Karate Kid out of the contest(referring to both movies here). In KK10 all suspense is lost because it is in Chinese with subtitles. This also ruins the command to “Sweep the leg” when The Karate Kid returns to fight the final match. In the original this is such a huge moment in the contest, and so far-reaching that it really should have been done better in the newbie. Also the KK10 Sensai is not anywhere near as evil looking/acting/glaring/smelling? as John Kreese was in the original. The whole sequence lost all of its luster for me, almost like finding out that Luke and Leia were brother and sister after they nearly made out.

#9- Some of the classic lines that fed the drama and the plot were completely left out. One of my all time favorites: “You’re going out in a body bag!” yelled from the sidelines by a fellow Cobra Kai fighter. Another one spoken by Mr. Miagi when Daniel-san is training in a boat while Miagi is fishing. Daniel-san is working on balance and form standing on the edges of a row boat when he asks Mr. Miagi when he is going to learn to punch. Miagi has already told him to have patience and learn other things first, but Daniel-san persists. Finally, in this scene Miagi says, “Learn how punch when learn how stay dry!” as he rocks the boat throwing Daniel-san into the water. He then has a classic Miagi laugh and says, “you all wet Daniel-san!” Classic.

#10- That reminds me, the Cobra-Kai equivalents are called the Dragon-Slayers. Lame, nay, double lame.

#11- Did I mention no Elisabeth Shue? It hurts to think about it now.

#12- The Crane Kick. The hallmark move of the first movie takes a backseat to some Cobra-tamer thing. The drama, once again, is lost. No building excitement like with the original. I remember as the feeble, broken Daniel-san set up for the Crane-kick at the end of the first one, you hoped he could pull it off. After all, Mr Miagi said it was “indefensible” if done correctly. Then wham! He kicks Johnny Lawrence right in the temple for the third point and the win. The newbie does this weird Cobra stare down that they barely address earlier in the movie, and for it to become a finishing move was more anti-climatic than the closing scene of Beaches. (No I never watched Beaches to the end, but I can imagine after seeing the first 15 minutes.)

Overall, I think the movie was good, but they should have called it Karate Kid: The Next Generation.

Mix Tapes

Itunes (and similar programs) are the coolest. I love that I can just get online and pay 99 cents when a song gets stuck in my head. I love that my "eye" pod can hold 42.6 million songs. I love that I can add songs to playlists at the click of a button. I was making a playlist the other day and my mind was taken back to junior high days. Back when I made mix tapes out of my favorite one hit wonders and favorites because I was too poor to buy the whole album. Remember the days of sitting in front of the boombox ( I innocently called mine a ghetto-blaster) for hours waiting to hear the song you were dying to have a copy of? Hoping you pushed record fast enough when it did come on and then hoping the DJ would not talk over the end of it? Remember also making a voodoo doll of the DJ when he did talk over the song? It was so nice to finally get the ghetto blaster with two tape decks so I could record from one cassette to the blank without having to sit by the radio all day saturday.

I remember making the fisrt mix tape for a girl I liked too. I think she appreciated it more because she knew I had to sit by the radio for hours finding just the right songs. I also remember a hate tape. Me and an unnamed friend made a hate tape for an unnamed girl that liked someone else instead of me. We had CD"s by then and spent hours finding just the right mix of songs to insult this girl. The girl's brother was an office aide and got a hold of the tape. He was so mad at me that he shredded the tape, put it into a brown lunch bag and had it delivered to my classroom as if I had forgotten my lunch. I feel so bad thinking back to this day because it was such an awful thing to do, plus I really had forgotten my lunch so the temporary excitement of thinking my mom had saved the day by bringing my lunch was shattered when I learned it was just the cassette tape. Good thing I peeked before lunch, I would have really been hungry.

Yep, the kids of today have it easy. I remember the first cassette I purchased. I still have it. Endless Summer by the Beach Boys. (I could not find a picture of the cassette cover, so the CD has to do) I also remember buying INXS kick and Poison by Bell Biv Devoe. Anyway, I digress.

My mind then fast forwarded to prom. I spent hours before prom making a U2 compilation from all my CD's so we could all listen to it. It was such a good mix of U2 and in such a perfect order that I was quite pleased with myself. I remember the limo driver was quite pleased with the tape also because at the end of the night he bought the mix tape off of me for 15 bucks. Of course, he got the upper hand because he charged us a grundle for the limo ride.

So even though I love the Itunes world and the new way we find music, I think it should be a right of passage. We should graduate into music technology. I think the jr high kids should have to earn their right to use ITunes by spending hours waiting for their song to come across the radio and hope the DJ doesn't talk over it. They should have to spend hours searching through CD's to find the right mix and order of songs to put on a mix tape for that high school crush.