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| | So Jamie has repeatedly called me out on my wanton snobbery. I can do little but concede his point and try to turn it into a point of pride. So I shall embrace my inner snob. Movies, food, TV, language, people. My snobbery is wide ranging. Perhaps some rampant snobbery would do mankind some good. It would at least end the careers of base buffoons like Carrot Top or Martin Lawrence... and tell me a world sans those two wouldn t be a brighter place.
However, to avoid another hate filled Micheal Bay screed I ll concentrate on food snobbery today.
This was a long time developing for me. Casting aside the redneck palate was a serious challenge. Eating vegetables was a new experience. Foreign foods were culinary affronts. I m not sure when it all started to change. The first seeds were laid late in my college career and slowly germinated from there. I think my absolute love for Thai food was a real gateway.
This all dawned on me a couple weeks back when walking the aisles at Giant looking for ideas for meals. I realized just about everything single item in my cart was something I would never have touched 10 years ago. Pretty drastic change.
So, on the topic, since Kent moved out and took much of the kitchen with him, I ve been on a mission to restock my kitchen. So, I ve been buying up nice pots and pans. A decent block of knives. Gadgets and gizmos galore! (You want thing-a-ma-bobs? I got twenty) I m almost done (still waiting to take the leap and shell out the cash for a Kitchen Aid stand mixer). And I am pleased.
With the help of Kent and Alton I think I m doing OK with the cooking skills. Apparently I am now the King of French Toast. Several 'non-French Toast eaters' have raved about mine (Alton s recipe, of course). So I guess that s a starting point. Hell, I made Monte Cristo s two weeks ago and Meghan really liked em despite not being crazy about frech toast, ham or swiss cheese... pretty good when they don t like 3 out of 4 ingredients, but like the end product!
After much debating, I ordered the 27 pack of Alton DVDs today. It s like 70% off retail so go pick up a set! We ll see if that spurs further culinary wizardry.
One last food snob item of note: Went to the Saturday s Market two weeks ago and swore off Giant produce until the first frost! Fresh vegetables from the amish at a mere fraction of grocer prices! Sweet. So I m planning weekly Saturday trips for all my vegetablery needs. Anyone interested in tagging along, let me know.
Snob signing off.
-bampf
PS Yes, I just made the word 'vegetablery' up. But I stand behind it.
PPS Completely unrelated note... Hot Fuzz on DVD next week! Pre-order now! Best movie of the year!
| | | Well, the completely unexplained bampf.com outtage came at an awful time. First off it happened the night before my birthday. This prevented me from making a spawning day post whereby you, my loyal fans, could shower me with well-wishings and similar platitudes. Ah, well. Looks like we re a bit late for that now.
My birthday was pretty good though, even without the desperate cry for e-validation. My whole family showed up for an evening of food and watching Planet Earth. And presents. Let s not forget the presents. It was a good time. I cooked and Meghan picked up a Cold Stone ice cream cake. Glorious.
As for my unwavering march toward death... I got no complaints. Year 32 on the planet was an excellent one. Good friends, good times, good vibrations. No major woes (save some in-house roommate drama). If the years to come are as good as the last I ll have no complaints.
The second major event was the Mafia Massacre, our annual big BloodBowl tourney. Just about everything went very smoothly and our move to the Grail-house was universally lauded (thanks, Sum). I did OK in the tourney. I didn t really bring my A game, as winning your own tourney is very lame. I was much more concerned about having fun and making sure things went smoothly. We had 18 players and all seemed pretty pleased. There was considerable work that went into this thing, including a mad dash to finish a lot of painting in the 11th hour, but everything came out great. The prize team I painted (with considerable help) came out exceptional and was loved by all. Added bonus: Jamie s non-imaginary wife prepared a cornucopia of foods including a big pot of chicken corn soup (a variation of the world s most perfect food). We re already planning next year s event.
Well, enough posting for now. Had some other topics to discuss, but I ll save em for another time.
-bampf | | | Well it looks like bampf.com is back. No idea what happened or what caused the outage. A dozen emails with increasing levels of anger were never responded to. But all seems right again.
I ll make a proper post later today. I m just happy to be back.
-b | | 7/10/2007 12:47:18 PM A Non-Michael Bay Bashing Post | Comments (10) |
| Yes, you read the heading right. I m gonna ignore the elephant in the room and skip right to the bampf life recap. Nuff said.
For the Fourth we obtained the mother lode of all fireworks thanks to Evan and had another glorious time setting off massive cannonades for hours on end. And despite our ongoing complete disregard for our own personal safety (or the safety of any onlookers) we went another year with no real injuries. Madness. I don t think a single explosion occurred within the specator area this year... that s a record. Maybe we re getting better at shooting the things and thereby accidentally more safe. I dunno. But it was a bitching good time.
D&D finally resumed after over a month hiatus. Stupid vacations impeding on our nerding. It s not right. Nerding is paramount. In any case it was nice to roll some dice in anger again. I failed to kill off the party largely due to some insanely inept dice rolling on my part. So the sneaky devils will get to have another go in a fortnight. But their time is coming. You hear me, nerds?
Saturday was spent hanging out with Jamie and his peeps in celebration of his spawning oh so long ago. Good times. Good food. And the longstanding rumors concerning him having an imaginary wife were ostensibly squashed. Eventually a serendipitous decision was made to head home mere moments before the drunk fat guy in Jamie s backyard decided to disrobe and do God knows what. Close one.
Sunday was a trip to AC with Probie and Petey (aka Pete the Punk). We walked up and down the boardwalk for a while. It was amazing to see the boardwalk and beach so jammed with people and activity as the place is usually desserted when we re there. We had a traditional lunch consisting of Bill s Gyros and eventually made our way to the Wild West craps tables (unable to procure a space in our usual gambling home, the Claridge). The Wild West was very kind to us. I once again proved to be a Craps God, going on an insane run (Points made: 5... 10, 10, 8, 6, 8) to finish out the evening. Between the four of us we robbed the casino of nearly a grand. So we high tailed it out of Dodge before Security tackled us.
Good times good times.
One more quick note. I was perusing Alton Brown s website today (www.altonbrown.com for those keen to browse) checking on his Feasting on Asphalt sequel and maybe to buy some sweet Alton swag and came accross his What I m Currently Reading page. Listed amongst some cooking books and literary classics: The Watchmen! Fucking-A right. If there was any question about Alton not being a proper geek, that pretty much cinches it. Seriously... is there anyone cooler on the planet? I definitely wanna be Alton Brown when I grow up.
-bampf
| | | My Public Service Announcement of the Day:
In case you forgot. Shatner fucking rocks!
Shat and Conan I
Shat and Conan II
That is all.
-b
| | | OK, I got lots to talk about so let s get to it.
First, Cape May. The vacation was very good. We felt strangely happy about vacationing amongst the retirees and septuagenarians. Few kids, fewer teenagers. Quiet. Bliss. Getting past the ubiquitous pastels and nauseatingly accessive ornamentation of the Victorian theme didn t take long. It was worth it in the long run.
The bed and breakfast was very pleasant. The beach was excellent. The restaurants were superb. We dined at a couple of the nicest restaurants in South Jersey and had some wonderful meals. Sloth and gluttony were the sins of choice for this one. We took no tours, saw no attractions (save the Atlantic Ocean) and were content.
We lounged in the sun. Did a little shopping. And Meghan read to me. It was all good. Weather was bad only one day of four and we didn t get horribly sun-burnt til our last day, so it all worked out. On our way home we stopped off in AC and had a lovely dinner with Chad and Daria. Surprisingly we opted not to gamble at all, as we were pretty vacationed out and not really in the mood to transition from the austere Cape May setting to the crazed casino environ.
So that was our vacation. Damn fine.
Next up was the Lt. Stan s marine wedding (that s marine as in the Corps, not a seaside wedding). Wedding 2 of 3 for the summer where I get to drag Meghan to a social event where she knows no one there. Luckily she had a chance to meet TLH a week or so earlier.
Alas we got there late. We were with 5 miles of the site with 45 minutes to spare, but that s when everything went wrong. Beach traffic outside DC brought the highway to a standstill and when we finally made it to our exit we made a wrong turn off a poorly marked exit. In any case we made it there just in time to join in the receiving line. Kinda odd wedding. Very breif. But considering they had only a couple weeks to plan you can t be too critical of that. The real weird bit was it was a mormon wedding. Unbeknownst to me Lt. Stan had become a mormon at some point (I assume in the dead of night under cover of darkness). Quite a shock. So the wedding had no alcohol, no coffee, no tea, no caffienated beverages of any kind, little dancing. It was weird. We sat in a corner amongst the very stern marines and mormons (and marine mormons) and did our best to misbehave. Good stuff.
In any case, I was very happy to be there and see Stan in such a very happy state and his new bride, Kaitlyn, seemed very nice. So I m happy for them both and hope the vicissitudes of military living is good to them.
Next item... July 4 celebrations. If yer reading this blog you re probably invited to my parents place Tuesday night for some firework celebrations. Evan made the trip to OH this weekend to pickup a giant mass of PERFECTLY LEGAL fireworks. Far more than we ve had in years past and we ve had ridiculous amounts in years past! So let me know if you are interested and I can give instructions for meeting and carpooling to ye olde Smith homestead outside Carlisle.
And yes, Wanderer, even you are invited... as long as you display at least a modicum of restraint and decorum. You know what I m talking about...
Item 4. My mouth. Had a rendezvous with the oral surgeon today. Lost two teeth... my much hyped 'extra tooth' and a rear molar that had acquired a nasty cavity. I hate dentists and dental work vehemently so I happily submitted to general anesthesia and skipped the whole ordeal. I awoke quite loopy and two teeth lighter. Meghan helped my stagger to the car and I ve been under her close care ever since. So please excuse any typos as I m under the influence of powerful pain-killers and sedatives.
Item 5. Gaming. Saw an advert yesterday for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare! Holy crap! This could be something special. I haven t been excited about a video game in quite some time (Kratos-related games excepted). The last anticipation of note over a fps was BF2 and that game turned out to be a monumental disappointment (I say this despite the fact that we played the hell out of that game). But the CoD lines have always been awesome. The idea of them moving away from WWII and putting out a modern game excites me beyond descript. I pray they do it right and allow us to cast off EA and their Battlefield games forever.
Well, I had some other items to discuss, but this thing is getting immense. Better stop while I m ahead.
-bampf |
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