The Truncation of Phrased Expletives...

My father, ever the wordsmith, has created a word that sums up FUBAR better than FUBAR sums up itself.

"Shituation"

Shit-u-a-tion (shit-oo-ey-shuh n) - noun

1.manner of being poorly situated; location or position with reference to an unwanted and or hostile environment: The shituation of the house allowed for a great view of a brick wall.

2.poor condition; case; plight: He is in a desperate shituation.

3.a state of dire affairs of special or critical significance in the course of a play, novel, etc…

God, I hope this makes it into the lingual-lexicon... ;)

Thanksgiving 2007 - Best Turkey EVER!...

Ah, what a Thanksgiving -- the combination of great food, friends and family never gets old. I have a lot to be thankful for, but most importantly, I'm thankful for being able to share this all with you.

Unlike last year, I didn't have to do Thanksgiving dinner solo: Mama did most of it, and I handled one side dish in particular (the pics toward the bottom). And since Mama was in charge, the turkey was absolutely stellar; juicy and delicious with that nice golden color that looks too darn good to be true. But you don't have to take my word for it, the proof is in the picture.

I hope ya'll had a good time too, and now, without further ado - THE PICS!

Ah, the stuffing. This is only the first phase, where the wet ingredients are cooked first.

The naked bird, in all it's glory. The recipe for the included ingredients is a secret, but the taste is for all the world.


Can't have turkey without the requisite fruit sauces to go with it: apple chutney on the left, cranberry chutney on the right...


... And canned-goods need some love'n too! Our family likes to "slice" our cranberry sauce straight from the can.


This ham brought to you by Honeybaked: When you need it delicious and taken home 10 minutes before closing, it's the brand for you.


The usual suspects -- Potatoes and corn go like peas and carrots.


Yep, that's me, boiling water. I got sooooo demoted!


Eh, just kidding! I'm here working on my side dish -- Pasta Shells and Cheese! I was gonna go with Macaroni, but I thought that I'd go a little fancier for the holiday.


First phase complete. The main sauce was alfredo, and I threw in some cheddar to give it that "extra boost." Cook at 320 for about 10 minutes and you should get something...


... That looks like this! You're not looking for that "too burned" cheese-look for this dish. More subtle, like you just slapped this thing last minute, but it's gonna taste good.


And finally, pose with said-dish, and watch it slowly disappear. Grins and smiles on faces should be the apropos norm.


The stuffing, with the croutons mixed in last so they won't sog up too quickly. Baked in the last half of the cooking cycle, it came out really well this year.


All right, with all the key players in their positions, what could be missing?


Friends and family? Got that covered. Okay, what you've all been waiting for...


BAM! Now is that a turkey, or is that a TURKEY! kudos to the mama - not bad for never having used this particular oven before (we've moved into a new place). What did I do to help out? Well, I did set the Digital timer, so I guess my share would be 20% out of 80%...


This is how I roll -- sweet potato, shells 'n cheese, and a piece of turkey that looks like roast duck. Fan-tabulous!


And remember, with no one to share this with, Thanksgiving just ain't the same.

Have a good'n and I'll catch ya'll in a bit... ;)

o.g.11/23/07

Awww Dad! Setting Me Up For A Perfect "Family Guy" Moment...

To cap off this week of stories revolving around my dad, I'd like to share something that happened just today:

I was commenting on a buddy of mine's wedding, and how it's turning into this big fiasco, when my father goes, "Now remember: when YOU get married, make sure you don't make it SOOO extravagant. You're NOT Prince Charles.

And of course, I couldn't help myself.

"Really, Dad? You mean that I'm not a member of the royal family who will fall madly in love with a woman, only to marry an even more GORGEOUS woman with a commoner status, yet secretly harbor feelings for the other woman while being married 20 or so years to one of the greatest iconic figures of the 20th Century? And then, because I have no concept of real estate, buy up large amounts of land across the U.K. only to never develop it because I'm too busy trying to find the difference between my Bow and Aft? And on top of that, pursue the woman I was meant to be with all along, although she now looks like she has a permanent grimace from eating too much grapefruit? Then yeah - no, I'm not Prince Charles.

"Just keep it simple," my father replies.

Peter Griffin would be so proud of me...

Have a great weekend, friends! And I'll catch ya'll on the flipside... ;)

Caught In An Inescapable Tractor-Beamed Asian-Moment...

Another conversation with my Dad. Hilarity ensues.


So son, what did you do last night?

I went out to play tennis as usual.

Did you have dinner afterwards?

No, I was pretty tired. And it was getting late, so I just skipped it.

You didn't eat anything?

Nope.

You shouldn't be skipping dinner. You don't want to start eating illleglray.


I'm sorry, what did you say?

Irleguarly.

Come again?


IRREGULARLY! You shouldn't be eating so IRREGULARLY!

Oh. I see.

So... don't skip meals.

Got it, Dad.


And, scene... ;)

o.g. 3/29/07

It's The Devil You Know, I Suppose...

So Mom, you're lucky to have me as your son, right?

I guess.

Gee, thanks Mom. I mean, who would you rather be: My Mom, or the Mother of Lindsay Lohan?

If you put it that way - your mom, of course.

Well, I feel better.

Besides... who the heck is Lindsay Lohan? Is she famous?

Oh, never mind...

Then Who Sang That?...

Come on baby Light My Fire...

Yeah, that's a good song Dad.

Ah, that Stevie Wonder.

What did you say?

Stevie Wonder. Didn't he write that?

Stevie Wonder didn't write Light My Fire. That's Jim Morrison and The Doors.

Oh, well excuuuuuuuuse me! But Stevie did do You Are The Apple of My Eye, right?

No Dad, You Are The Sunshine of My Life.

Really? Thanks son!

Ha ha, soooooo funny...

**According to Wikipedia, Stevie did cover Light My Fire, so my dad was only half right. But I'm still fully embarrassed... ;)

o.g. 2/12/07

Can You Spell The Last Name?...

***Seriously, true conversation folks - only a few details have been changed to protect all involved***

RING!!

Hello, Greatview Hotel, how can I help you?

Yes, I wanted to reconfirm the room reservation for someone.

Certainly. What's the reservation under.

A Mr. Shin-Wei Fu.

I'm sorry, I didn't quite get all that. Can you spell the last name again?

F. U.

Well, I never! Same to you!

No, wait --

CLICK.

Easter Sunday: Birthday Song and Expletives...

**Before I get into the Jury blogs, just wanted to share this little story that I saw unfold for Easter.**

I was out having dinner at this restaurant for Easter Sunday, when across from me sat a table with a family of 6 - Mother, Father, and their 4 kids - two young daughters, two young sons (range about 4-7 years old). One of the little boys tells their nice waitress that "it's my brother's birthday."

I can feel the waitress' eyes secretly roll as she knows what she now has to do. Like a seasoned platoon leader, she stealthily gives hand signals to the other waitstaff, letting them no to get their best "fake on" for the birthday song they need to sing for the BILLIONTH time this shift.

Of course, in typical cluster-fucked fashion, the first time the waitress gathers the crew and the free dessert (Mud Pie for this occasion), the birthday boy is nowhere to be found. The waitress has the "I swear he was here a minute ago" look on her tired face. The mother plays the apologetic card. "I'm sorry, he ran off with his brother a minute ago. They'll be right back, " she says. The waitstaff scatter back to their respective tables, and the waitress tosses the dessert somewhere.

The birthday boy and his little brother appear a few minutes later. Unfortunately, the waitress can't seem to remember where she put the dessert, and the rest of the crew are still waiting their tables. By the time she finds the Mud Pie and gets everyone from their sections, the kid is gone again. The mother goes ,"I'm so sorry, his father took him to the bathroom. He'll be right back." This is when I overhear a waiter mutter, "Christ, where the FUCK is this kid"!! Though a collective groan didn't occur, you could still feel it wafting in the air.

This is clearly getting out of hand. I watch the waitstaff eyeing the family, waiting for the little boy's return so they can get this show on the freakin' road.

When the kid FINALLY sits down, the waitstaff ambush him like a pack of hungry Hyenas. Waiters are actually taking off in mid-order from their tables to sing to the little boy. The waitress makes direct eye contact with the mother, as if to say "For the love of God lady, could you have made this ANY harder"?

The waitstaff sing with the the biggest shit eating grins I've ever seen! Not only that, but they are singing the Birthday song at 5x times the usual speed so it sounds like Alvin and Chipmunks -- kinda like ripping-a-band-aid-off-real-quick kind of mentality. I don't think the parents could tell -- they were too mesmerized by their kids clapping along with the waitstaff, and happy kids are a good distraction. As the song ends, the family digs into their now half-melted Mud Pie. The crew scatters back to their respective sections. Anger at having to go through with this ritual has subsided, even by the waiter who swore under his breath.

You'd think all this song and dance would be worth the effort, but funny thing was, the birthday boy himself didn't really seem to care! Looked like his family was getting most of the joy out of it completely. I think he was just happy to be having chocolate cake and ice cream.

It appeared that this wasn't going to be the only birthday party that night. I could see the crew saving their strength and keeping their palms relaxed -- no telling when the next clapping-birthday-sing-a-long was gonna pop up next... ;)

Cheaper Than a Real Repair-Man...

Either out of love or something resembling guilt, I usually visit my 'ol grandmother once a month on a Saturday to help her out with her technical woes i.e. cable TV problems, Internet, etc.. There was one visit that seemed to domino out-of-control that happened a few months back.

First she told me that there was something wrong with her VCR. This ended up being a very straight-forward problem with what I thought would be a simple explanation:

"See, what you did was press the wrong button on the wrong remote. You want to use the VCR remote first. If you change the channel from 3 to L1, you can then get the signal to the DVD player, and you can watch DVDs. Okay? So don't touch that remote (the DVD player's) until you use the VCR Remote, change it to L1 and you should be all set? Got it?"

She smiles and replies, "Okay."

But I know things aren't okay yet.

After a brief pause, she goes, "Now, can you explain that one more time?"

This is hard enough doing this in English, but to translate all these instructions to Cantonese and demonstrate one button at a time on every single remote is downright "punji-stick into the fingernails" painful.

But I love her, and calmly keep my cool while repeating the steps about 5 more times. Oh, why not just get a switcher box for her, you may ask? Uh, yeah - had a tough time getting her to work with that before, so that option was exhausted eons ago.

Next up was her connection to the Internet. She kind of sprung this one on me by surprise, but hey, what's life without a bit of the unexpected? She still uses dial-up, and for some reason, her connection just couldn't be completed. After ruling out line failure, cable failure, and performing a voo-doo cleansing ceremony on the PC Box, I was still nowhere near a solution.

An hour later, it hit me - her program was requiring an area code number to be inputted first in order for the dial connection to be correct. LA is famous for expanding area codes all the time, and I thought the computer compensated for it, but it didn't. So a few magic keystrokes later, and voila! She was surfing the net at a lightning fast 48k! Woo-Hoo!

After a successful visit whereby all her woes are solved, she usually pays me with freshly cut fruit to eat. That day it was Asian pears. All and all, it was totally worth it... ;)

My Favorite Super Bowl XLI Moment...

It wasn't the game.

It wasn't even the commercials.

It was when my mother and I both sang along to Prince's "Lets Go Crazy" during his Halftime performance.

Man, my mom is hip! Or we're just really cool squares... ;)

A Life-long Love Like No Other...

It was rainy and gloomy, but my parents didn't care.

We were pretty close to losing a client at work, but my parents didn't care.

I almost screwed up a project, but my parents didn't care.

Why?

'Cause yesterday we celebrated my parent's 35th Wedding Anniversary with family and friends, with some of the couples in attendance inching closer to the same milestone.

35 years -- I can't even make a relationship last 35 minutes!

I don't know how they do it, but they make it happen everyday. Together.

They give me hope that lasting love is not a myth - 'cause of all the things I am cynical about,
I hope marriage will never be one of them... ;)

My Father Didn't Pass On To Me The Fonzie Gene...

There are times when I feel like I am very much my father's son, and other times I wonder whether we're truly related at all. When it comes to the issue of charm and charisma, I think there was something held back that wasn't passed on to yours truly. I was not more aware of this than the time I took a business trip with my father.

We were checking into the hotel for the night, when this lovely 20-something blonde girl appeared behind the Registration Desk. She smiled at the both of us, but I noticed that her eyes seemed to linger on my father - just a tad longer than usual for a stranger to be holding a gaze.

Was she checking him out?

As we're getting the room keys and dealing with room billing and whatnot, my father would exchange playful banter with her, like, "Hey, you don't sound like you're around here. Where are you from?" Or, "That really is a lovely acccent" And she'd just be putty in his hands, flirtatiously answering his silly questions with little giggles and sighs. I tell ya, 5 minutes into it, and she was ready to have his children. It was like watching my father use the "Jedi Mind Trick" on her - to which I wondered why he didn't try to fanagle us better rooms.

Alas, as we walked away, Blonde Girl was still staring at my father like some prey she was getting ready to pounce on. My father's ego was so big right then that it literally pushed me away from him. His smile from ear to ear said it all.

Yeah, he still had "It".

Perhaps the Fonzie gene is dormant in me for now - but I hope it activates by the time I get to his age... ;)

My Father is a Monkey...

My father is many things - A good husband, a provider of sorts, and a great listener.

What he is not - is mechanically inclined.

Weeks ago, I found him banging away on a copy machine like those monkeys in "2001: A Space Odyssey" when they encounter the Monolith. That's my father's old school solution to machines that aren't working. I think he still believes he can invoke the powers of "The Fonz" from time to time - a nudge here, a perfectly timed rapt, and voila! Machine woes solved!

But on that day, he was banging on the copy machine like it was a game of SIMON. I could either let him beat the crap out out of the machine and enjoy some low-cost entertainment, or I could be a good son and see what was the problem.

While checking out what was wrong, I saw that the giant GREEN BUTTON that you push to start the copier was stuck. Busting out my "Macgyver" trade craft, I took a paperclip and shimmied the button free.

PLICK! The button pops back up, and all is back to normal in Copier Land!

As I walk away, I notice my father studying the button like a Level 7 Soduko puzzle. But in this case, I think the button... was studying him.