I had this one student last year who, when the class was getting a bit noisy or fools weren’t listening, would sternly holler, "Respect." I thought that was so-fucking-cool. And kids totally would quiet down too. I was telling a friend about it, and he was all, "Yeah, that's what Ali G says." It was a bit of a comedown for me. That kid is still supercool though.
PS I tried watching The Ali G Show or whatever it's called once, and I thought it was stupid.

I'm not sure if you are familiar with the term shants. It's more of a style or, perhaps even a way of life for RR. He takes his pants and cuts them like not that much shorter. Enough, however, that they must technically be officially classified as shorts (or ghetto clam diggers). And he calls them shants. It merits mentioning that a pair of shants don’t come off as the dressiest thing in a brother's closet (oi, my brother). This past summer RR actually told me that when he taught a class at CS Fullerton the pervious year, he often taught in shants. How hot would it be to have your college quasi-professor teach to you in shants? Apparently, he also taught in those gigantic long sleeve button down dress shirts that he used to love to wear. The thing is, he has such a buff neck that he would buy these enormous neck size 17+ shirts in case he needed to button them up. But he never buttoned them up. Besides, his neck isn’t that much bigger than mine. It ain't no 17+, it's just that his neck is all muscular and veiny because he yelled so much as a child. You know how when if your shirt is too big you can pull it away from you from the front and it can go hella far? His would go like 2 feet. And you know he rolls up his sleeve cuffs too.

Me, I try rolling up my cuffs from time to time, but it makes me feel weird. Feel like I look weird. I've done it and asked other people if I looked weird, and they've all said I look fine, but I feel like I look weird, which is actually much tougher to overcome than someone else saying you look weird.

I went to Saul's last week, which is about the best deli I've found in the Bay Area (and it's in Berkeley--ew). While that ain't saying a whole lot, one thing about Saul's that I am really feeling is that your pastrami sandwich comes with 6 ounces of meat and if you want more, you can purchase additional meat on your sandwich for $1.75 an ounce. What a cool idea. I ordered an extra ounce mostly because I could--you could even say I felt obligated. Of course this led to the inevitable, stereotypical "Will they bring me a scale to prove there is an extra ounce?" I am a Jew at a Jewish deli after all; you know I want to get my money's worth. And speculation abounded regarding whether it "felt" like there was an extra ounce on it. The idea itself is more intoxicating than anything else. What if you could order extra of things that you love by the ounce? The next level in customized orders (I'm not high maintenance; I just want it how I want it). I already do it sometimes at Cheesepockets when I order an extra slice of cheese on my burger. It would come in extra handy when I order things that are chocolate-based as well. Trader Joe's has these new Chocolate Caramel Tartlets that are pretty chill, but they just aren't chocolaty enough for my taste. So I have to eat them with a Ghirardelli chocolate brick, cannonballing brick nibbles with each tartlet bite. But what if you could buy those tartlets in your preferred gradient of chocolate heaviness? That would be cool. Supermarket isles would have to be expanded to compensate for the influx of additional options, but I think it would be worth it...Don't you ever order a hot fudge sundae and wish there was more hot fudge on it (of course you do, otherwise you'd just order ice cream). So how about being able to order supplemental fudge by the ounce?

Merits mentioning that not in a million years would you need to order extra pastrami on a sandwich at Kanter's or Junior's.

When we were walking to Saul's there was a homeless woman right in front of the deli, begging for change, and Emily commented that that poor lady couldn’t have picked a worse place to ask for money (than a Jewish deli). That was a really good one. Location, location, location...

That reminds me of how when I was in college I figured out that the smartest homeless person was the one that posted outside of Taqueria Vallarta and asked people if they would give him their leftovers if they had any. Brilliant. That's what I would do. The only problem is that I would have to ask the people to order their burritos with no sour cream. Maybe I am high maintenance. I would make a shitty homeless person.

I had to find pictures of my friends and myself around the bay area for the faculty section of the yearbook, and looking through my various photographs, I realized it is just about impossible to find pictures of us where we don't have cocktails and/or cigarettes. Sounds like a job for PhotoShop Man.

I was reading through one of Jenn's pro-Philly propaganda magazines that come every freaking month, and there was a "best of" food stuff, and included a place where they batter and deep fry hot dogs--not corn dogs, but actual battered, deep fried hot dogs. Hmmm...

I just saw a new anti-drug campaign that showed 3 dudes sitting on a couch the whole time and one of the guys was talking and he said something to the effect of: "Smoking weed didn’t make me get into an accident, it didn’t lead me to heroin, it didn’t make me hurt myself or anyone. It just made me sit here." I think that the anti-drug message was actually that "Smoking weed is boring." Has it really come to this?

Did I ever tell you about my DVD soundtrack get rich quick idea? It's a few years old, but I thought that it would be brilliant if you could buy DVD movies where, in the space it probably takes to eliminate 3 of those stupid ass deleted scenes (that almost invariably were deleted for good reason--although here and there we do get some good ones), you could probably include the whole motion picture soundtrack. This may not be a for-every-movie thing, but wouldn't you be just a bit more excited for some movies if buying the DVD also meant getting the soundtrack? As RR would tell you, all feature film DVDs are dual layered these days.

I was walking down Mission Street the other night and saw a liquor store and needed cigarettes. I walked in and was floored. It turns out that this was actually a head shop, but not some hippie dirty head shop. It was all urban with clean, young people working, playing fat beats and kickin it. They had a big table in the middle of the store and the table was full of all the original Nike Air Jordan's, along with some other choice old school Nikes. I was blown away. This was more amazing than the time that Michael Jackson came over to use Chunk's bathroom. More amazing than the time Chunk saved those old people from the nursing home fire. And more amazing then the time Chunk ate his weight at Godfather's Pizza. The shoes were all reasonably priced (considering), and they even had them all in sizes. What a brilliant, brilliant idea.

Bathroom Metaphor: I said that someone was so full of hot air that I could dry my hands to his mouth.

You know that you are officially drunk when you drink an 80 dollar bottle of tequila with a couple of friends in less than 2 hours, then find yourself on the roof of a 4 story building, thinking that it would be cool to throw the empty bottle off the roof into the street, as far as you can. And then you actually throw it.

So I sat JC down and got a pile of her "My mom is so cheap/nuts" stories that I feel confident in saying that this can come right before the that guy for a couple of months. JC also pointed out to me that I referenced her in the last column once as JC and separately, in another paragraph as Jenn. Her theory is that I am trying to make it seem like I actually have more of a life/hang out with more than just 3 different people outside of my kids.

JC's mom is so cheap/nuts: JC's mom, through the whole of her early maturation process, would buy a new giant gallon of milk from the market every 2-3 weeks. With a husband, herself, and 3 growing children, one of those gallons of milk didn't last but a few days. When it was empty, JC's mom would fill up the container with powdered milk and put it back in the fridge. She would re-refill a gallon jug with powdered milk several times for 2-3 weeks before buying a new gallon jug of milk. JC thinks that she was probably forced to buy the new milk periodically due to gross issues around not being able to ever really clean the containers out before/between powdered milk refills. I think JC is just lucky her mom didn’t just use the pitcher method of powdered milk. With regular people, it is a matter of getting regular stuff or the good stuff. Apparently with JC's mom, it was a matter of getting the regular stuff or the fake stuff. And we wonder why JC has to drink Lactaid milk now...

PS: Ma, thanks for not doing that to me.

This week's that guy is another stud. You might even know his name. But he is a that guy. Did you know that he is a cousin of George Clooney? Well he is. He plays drums and sings (oi, Phil Collins style) in a band with this weirdo former child actor guy . He was a big fan of Batman (I was always a Spiderman kind of guy) and writes comics for Marvel. Hecka professional.

The Manchurian Candidate
Traffic
Brave New World (TV movie, he played Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning)
The Stand
Another Stakeout
Hotshots! Part Deux (ouch, 2 painful sequels)
Point of No Return
Cigarettes and Coffee (not to be confused with Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (and the TV show too)
DeepStar 6
Robocop (where in his most famous big screen scene ever, he does coke off of a hooker's boobies)

TV
ER
Voice work for heaps of superhero cartoons
Twin Peaks (in which he is amazing)
Miami Vice
TJ Hooker
Hill Street Blues
Cagney and Lacey (heh)
CHiPs
Magnum PI
And apparently he is the star of some TV show called Crossing Jordan.

The man could have called it a career after Robocop, but he loves to act.

by Justin
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