MAGIC         PORK

I don’t wear pajamas to bed, just boxers. But I have a pair of pajama pants that I’ll change into sometimes when I get home. Today I was about to put my shoes on to leave when I realized I still had my pajama pants on. “That would have been embarrassing”, I thought. Then I thought about how many times I’ve seen people out in their pajamas and thought “I’ve been meaning to do another post for a while now, this is as good a topic as any”. Nevermind that I have a whole list of topics I’ve accumulated that for some reason I never feel like writing. Trust me, some of them are gold. I think I’ll save those for when I get a big book deal.

It was probably a couple of years ago when I first started seeing this. That’s right, not even in college do I remember seeing someone wear pajamas outside of the dorms. I did a double-take, thinking “Is that girl wearing pajamas? What a slob! Or wait, maybe she’s just Bohemian. Better not look at her any more so she doesn’t get the satisfaction of knowing that I notice.” (I do that when I see someone that clearly wants to stand out from the crowd. I try to annoy them by acting as if they’re no different than anybody else around me. Giant mohawk? Hmmph I hadn’t noticed.)

But then to my horror I started seeing more and more pajamas. What the hell was going on here? Since when did people start leaving the house with pajamas on?

Most of the time, people do it when they’re going about daily chores but there was even once I saw two 20-something girls come into a restaurant (Aja Noodle) and sit down and have dinner, both with pajamas on.

I still held onto my sanity by assuring myself that the people that did that must just be dimwits or stoners. I mean how much effort does it take to:

1. Pull down your pajama bottoms.
2. Pull on a pair of jeans.
3. Zip up said jeans.

Too many steps for you? OK, how about sweatpants. That way you can skip step 3 and that also solves the case where all you own are low-rise, super-tight, and uncomfortable jeans. I’m not asking you to do your hair. Leave that messy if you want. Just take that ounce of effort needed to present yourself to the world please.

But my world was rocked when one day I said something about it to the girl I had started dating and she admitted that she would leave the house with pajamas on too. She’s intelligent and isn’t a stoner so I have to abandon that theory.

Not only would I not wear pajamas outside because of looking like a slob, I also wouldn’t do it because why would you want to go to bed in something you were wearing out? I’m not a germaphobe by any means, but it just seems gross to me that you’d potentially brush up against stuff: doors, counters, the car, or possibly the bottoms would touch snow or something, and then you just hop in bed. Maybe it’s because I’m almost naked when I go to bed that it seems gross to me.

My ex-girlfriend didn’t get why I’d think that was gross but she was a doctor and, like apparently a lot of doctors do (at least residents & medical students), she’d just wear her scrubs around after leaving the hospital. So if you don’t have a problem wearing the thing you were wearing all day as you were seeing patients and looking inside people and stuff, I suppose pajamas won’t phase you. She is an OB/GYN doctor so I would tell her that she had vagina germs all over her. I wouldn’t want to touch her until she changed out of them - and preferably took a shower in case any vagina germs hopped onto her skin too. When I’d see her plop down on the couch with her scrubs on, I’d think ewww how many babies did she deliver today?

Of course I realize I was being a little unreasonable - it’s not like she had juices all over her - but that’s basically what I was envisioning. She said it didn’t quite work that way but who are you going to believe, a doctor or me? I thought so.

So in summary, if you’re Hugh Hefner you can wear pajamas outside. Otherwise you just look silly.

If you don’t know what the title of this post refers to, consider yourself lucky. There was a movie out years ago - IMDB says 2003 and that sounds about right to me - called Biker Boyz. It’s about these guys that race motorcycles and do tricks with them on the streets of Los Angeles. It was based on an article about some guys that would do that in real life - but I assure you the movie was a work of fiction. My friends and I were given tickets to an advance screening of the movie. We had no desire to see the movie, but hey they were free tickets so we went.

It was horrible. One of those movies that’s just so unintentionally bad that you end up laughing out loud at all the clichés and ridiculous dialogue.

Another movie like that was Dante’s Peak. It was playing at the dollar theater and my friend Greg had seen it already when it was in the main theaters. He told our friend Kash & me all about how great it was and said we should see it. He wanted to go see it again. We’re like “really?!” because it looked silly to us. He said the first fifteen minutes it’s pretty bad but it gets really good after that. Great character development and everything.

So Kash & I went to see the movie and sure enough, it was really bad at the beginning. Two teenagers are making out in a little pool of water and suddenly the water starts boiling and it boils them alive. I looked at Greg and said “this better get better” and he said “oh it does!”.

Well I couldn’t figure out what the heck Greg was thinking because the movie just kept sucking. Then there came the scene where Pierce Brosnan is rowing a boat with these little kids and their grandmother in it. The water has turned to acid and it’s eating away the boat. So to calm everyone down he starts a round of “row row row your boat”. At this point it was quite clear to both Kash and me that there was no way Greg could have thought this was a good movie.

I looked at him like “what the???” and at the same exact time Kash leans over me and says to him “I’m gonna kill you”. Greg had seen the movie, knew it was absolutely horrible, and told us it was great just to play a trick on us. The funniest thing is that I had heard Greg blurt out “oh no!” when that scene started. I didn’t know why at the time, but after the scene, I realized it was because he knew we would see through his ruse at that point and that he wouldn’t be able to contain his laughter any more.

Cruel, cruel trick. But I have to admit, I got a good laugh at that movie.

So back to Biker Boyz… the reason I thought of this movie is that on Sunday, I was driving on 490 and I saw a real life biker boy. Some moron was driving a motorcycle down 490 (which is a 3-lane highway) and popping wheelies. Then he proceeded to not just pop a wheelie but stand up and ride the motorcycle on its back wheel. He had to be going 65-70 mph because I was going about 65, as were the other cars and he was weaving between lanes.

My friend Joe was in the passenger seat. We of course started talking about what a moron this guy was. At least he was wearing a helmet. His mom must be proud.

He was distinguishable from the biker boyz in the movie in a couple of ways though. One was that he didn’t have a crowd of people on the side of the road cheering him on. Another was that while riding on one wheel at 65 mph he crashed the bike into the concrete median, sending his body flipping over the median while the bike skidded onto the left lane of the highway, spilling out gasoline.

The cars in front of me pulled over to the right and slowed way down. Well I thought they were going to slow down but they came to a complete stop. Joe was immediately on the phone with 911 when we saw the crash. Some other idiot in one of the cars in front of me got out of his car, walking out into the highway and putting his hand up in a “stop” motion. I can’t have too much contempt for that guy because he was trying to do an admirable thing - warn other vehicles about the motorcycle in the highway. But come on, I’m pretty sure no handbook would advise someone to stop his car halfway into the right lane while the left lane is blocked by a motorcycle and walk out into the one remaining center lane. You might be better off driving forward a little and pulling off to the side of the highway, do ya think?? That is, if you’re actually going to be of help in some way and not just get in the way and cause more confusion and a greater risk of an accident.

Now amazingly the biker boy stood up on the other side of the median and was walking around a little. Some woman on that side pulled over and was talking to him to see if he was okay. He appeared to be fine, which means he’s one hell of a lucky guy. That’s like something out of the movies. We could see the bike wobbling before he crashed so I think it had slowed down a bit and I’m sure that helped. But even so, it looked like a pretty spectacular fall and I wasn’t expecting to see him standing.

The 911 dispatcher was asking Joe a slew of questions about the state of this guy. Joe had to repeat multiple times that he looked okay to him but we weren’t near the guy, we were in a car. She even asked him if they should send an ambulance. What did she expect him to say to that? “Nah, he looks okay to me.” He did look fine but we sure as hell weren’t going to make that call.

After I saw that these people in front of me weren’t going anywhere, and the guy moved out of the road, I managed to pull around back into the center lane and keep driving before it turned into a madhouse. There was already traffic backing up behind me and horns honking. I considered whether I was supposed to stay as a witness but there were no other vehicles involved. The only point I could think of staying would be to make sure his insurance company heard the real story of what happened. I could see him making up some story to the cops about how he just lost control or someone cut him off. I wanted to make sure it was on record that he was acting like a jackass so that he’d have to sell a kidney to get auto insurance again.

I certainly didn’t want the guy to die, but couldn’t he at least have broken a leg or have a rib poke through his skin or something? I looked online later to try to find any news story about it, but couldn’t find anything. I was hoping it would say A) whether he was ticketed for anything and B) what his injuries were. Call me a horrible person, but it irks me that it’s possible he got away without any repercussions other than the damage to his bike - and even that looked like it was fixable.

Last Wednesday, I ordered a large pepperoni pizza and wings from Pizza Hut. Normally if I eat pizza, I just get a slice or two if it’s just me eating it. But I was getting some minor medical procedure done the next day. I got my generous uvula removed. No, I joke. Although my doctor did tell me that if it continued to be a problem, I could get it removed. Apparently the uvula doesn’t really serve a purpose. But I’d still hate to have it removed. It’s like that guy from The Mighty Mighty Bosstones that doesn’t do anything except dance around. The band would be just fine without him but it just wouldn’t seem right.

Nevermind what the procedure was. It’s not a big deal, I just don’t think I need to share every medical thing that comes up with the world and I think with how much I’ve been discussing my uvula you’re agreeing at this point. Point is, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to drive at all the next day because of getting drugged up so I figured having some leftover pizza in the fridge would be a good idea.

But before I go on with my pizza story, I have to pause and comment on the wings. I’m not a wing snob. There are some that are better than others, but I figure you can’t really mess up a chicken wing. Yet I’ve heard tales from people that have lived in other parts of the country - parts further away from wing mecca Buffalo - about how awful wings can get. I think I have an idea now of what they’re saying.

Do not get Pizza Hut wings. Fatty, soft… ugh just don’t.

I had a bunch of pizza left over so I put it on a plate and tightly wrapped it in plastic. (I can’t say that without thinking of Twin Peaks: “She’s dead. Wrapped in plastic.”) Next day turns out… hey who woulda known the doctor would recommend against eating greasy pizza that day. So it went to waste and then for various reasons I didn’t end up eating it over the next couple days either.

Then I started to think “well, it’s been sitting there a while, I shouldn’t eat it now” and avoided it but didn’t get around to actually throwing it out. So fast forward to today, the following Tuesday. Six days later.

I took out the pizza, intending to throw it out, and looked at it. Hmm still looked good. I peeled back the plastic. Sniffed it. Mmmm smelled good. Crust must be stale by now though. Wow, no crust didn’t feel stale. Now I realized I was seriously considering eating this.

But no I thought, it can’t still be good to eat this six days later. So I turned to - who else? - my trusty friend Internet. According to a few sites, pepperoni pizza is only good refrigerated for 3-4 days. Oh well, it’s as I suspected. So I went to toss it but hesitated. I just couldn’t get over that it seemed fine!

I hazarded a tiny bite. Still tasted fine. Then I thought no don’t be silly, it’s not like I’m in the poorhouse here, just toss it. And I did. Not worth risking my health. But then afterwards I regretted it. Those guidelines are just for the average person - not a Rochestarian who’s subjected his system to garbage plates. Those must have built up some immunity.

Doctors should be trained to ask about this.

Patient: I just swallowed a bottle of Drano!!

Doctor: I see… How many garbage plates have you eaten in your lifetime?

Patient: What? Like ever? I don’t know, maybe 2-3 dozen.

Doctor: I wouldn’t worry. Just go home and sleep it off. If you’d like, you can pick up a chili dog from the stand outside on your way home.

What do you think? Was it safe to eat?

I’ve never heard of this concept but looks like there’s something called a “meme” that bloggers will “tag” you with. Then you’re supposed to tag other blogs with it. I don’t know, but Fran of patandfran.com tagged me in the comments to my last post. Usually I don’t go along with these chain-letter-type things (thanks Fran!) but since she’s such a sweet person I’ll give her this one.

The rules of this meme-thingie are:

• Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
• Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
• Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
• Let each person know that they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

If I were to tag 7 random people’s blogs they truly would be random since I don’t read that many blogs. So sorry Fran but this link of the chain will end with me. But I’ll go ahead & do the 7 random and/or weird facts about me.

1. I think “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is a great song.

2. When I was in high school, I memorized the first few paragraphs of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, just to annoy my friend who hated Douglas Adams. And get this… I still remember most of it. Let’s see how I do - I swear this is from memory:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly 98 million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended lifeforms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has, or rather had, a problem which was this: Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, most of which involved the movement of small green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on a whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained, most of the people were unhappy and many of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Now let me pull my old book off the shelf and compare. This is the actual text. Ignoring stuff like punctuation and capitalization, I’ll bold the parts that are different:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Pretty damn close huh? I memorized that about 15 years ago!! I also can still remember most of the Romeo & Juliet speech I had to learn for 9th grade English class. (”It is my lady, oh it is my love… oh that she knew she were…”)

[Edit: WHOA! How weird is this? I just checked out the website of the person that originally tagged Fran (http://stelladevine.livejournal.com) and she mentioned as one of her seven weird things "I know large tracts of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by heart." I swear I wasn't stealing her idea, I didn't read that until just now! How odd is that that we both decided to share that random thing about ourselves?]

3. I once walked into a gay bar with a fedora on my head and handcuffs hanging from my belt. But that’s for a different post.

4. The only time my high school friends saw me furious - possibly the only time any of my friends have seen me furious - was during a game of Monopoly, on my birthday of all times. I was mad over them ignoring a rule (don’t get me started but I remember exactly what it was!). I think that may be the last time I’ve ever played.

5. I have a generous uvula. OK, OK I talked about that already on this blog.

How about this? I very rarely remember my dreams. I know I have them because I’ll often wake from one, but it’s gone in an instant after waking up and I couldn’t tell you for the life of me what it was about. Occasionally when I do remember, it makes no sense whatsoever. And when I say no sense I don’t mean “Pat Sajak was presiding over my briss” type nonsense - that still follows some semblance of logic. I mean totally random things that can’t even be explained but seemed to make sense at the time - like characters starting out one person but ending up another. It boggles my mind when I hear some people recount these complex dreams they had because even the very few dreams that I can remember that actually made some sense haven’t come anywhere close to that.

6. As part of my liberal arts requirements I had to take an English class in college. The professor was some writer, or at least aspiring writer, who was teaching part time. So even though he was supposed to be teaching about how you shouldn’t start a sentence with “so” and proper punctuation and run-on sentences and stuff like that; he instead just taught us about writing. He’d teach things like “honesty” in writing. Interesting stuff, but the majority of the class failed the standardized exam you take at the end and had to take it over. (I passed thank you very much.)

I brought this up to say there was one time he asked the class to write a poem and gave us like 10 minutes. It was one of those types where it has a certain number of syllables - no, not a haiku. I wrote “The mass murderer sharpened his knife on the skull of the poor victim who was buying groceries to feed herself and her cat”. (Again with the memory!) When I discussed this with a couple friends after, no one got that he wasn’t actually sharpening his knife, it meant that he was getting better at killing each time so in effect sharpening… oh nevermind. I didn’t realize he was going to make us read these to the class. I didn’t know anyone else in that class. I was so embarrassed reading this thing that I could feel myself blushing and my voice cracked when I said “murderer”. I think he just said it was interesting or something. Nowadays he’d be notifying the dean about me.

7. When I read a novel, I’ll usually read each paragraph twice, sometimes more. I especially do this if it’s dialogue-heavy because I’m trying to picture exactly how they’re saying it, what their expressions are like, what they’re feeling. I’m not saying I’m proud of this, it’s kind of annoying really.

There… I think I wrote enough about this meme that I’ve excused myself from any future ones.

Why isn’t this band more popular? Sometimes I’ll hear a good band but I realize they don’t have the type of sound that will make them hit it big, such as Architecture in Helsinki. But other times I’ll hear a good band and be surprised months or years later when they’re not popular. I’m not talking U2 popular, but at least Buckcherry popular. (BTW I saw Buckcherry at Water Street Music Hall last year. Most memorable moment was during “Lit” when they got the crowd chanting “CO… CAINE!! CO… CAINE!!”.)

Morningwood was one of those bands. I heard “Nth Degree” on some commercial and a TV show but then that was about it. There was also Hot Chip. The Warning is an incredible album. I also saw them live at Lollapalooza and they put on a great show. (If you follow that link to their MySpace page, check out “Over and Over” and “Look After Me”.) But how much later is this, and still they’re not well-known. (Note that I’m talking about in the U.S. not U.K. where they have more of a following.) Again - I’m not saying they should be topping the charts, but at least on the radar. Hearing “And I Was A Boy From School” playing in Express For Men doesn’t count.

The Subways are another band that I saw at Lollapalooza in ‘06 that I thought for sure would be bigger by now than they are.

But back to Under The Influence Of Giants…

More so than any of those other bands I mentioned above, this band has a perfect pop-rock sound. I first saw them on MTV. Yes MTV does still play videos, just at strange hours like 6 AM but with my TiVo I don’t care when they’re on. “Mama’s Room” was catchy, the band had a unique (well, uniquely retro) look, and the video had hot scantily-clad girls in it. What’s not to like there? I thought they’d just go up from there but whenever I mention them to someone I’m just met with a blank stare so I assume they didn’t get any Top 40 play. I really don’t get why. I read online that they were pretty popular downloads on iTunes but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about popular-popular not Internet-download-popular.

Go to that link above and click on the “Music” link. You can listen to the entire album online. So if you have a high-speed connection you have no excuse to not check out their music. If you don’t have a high-speed connection and you live near me, maybe I’ll let you borrow it. My favorite tracks are “Against All Odds” (not a Phil Collins cover), but it would be hard to pick a runner-up between “Got Nothing”,”In The Clouds”, “Mama’s Room”, and “Heaven Is Full”. That was a problem when I was putting together a playlist for a little get-together I had a few weeks back. I had to stop myself from adding the entire CD on there and have people say “who the hell is this band you keep playing??”.

Did you listen to them yet? Well what are you waiting for? I’ll be here when you’re done.

OK so now do you agree? They’re not going to make music history, but they’re catchy and fun and in my book there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a perfect CD to play in the car and bop along to while drumming my hands on the steering wheel. On an R.E.M. scale, I’d place their sound somewhere north of “Imitation of Life” but south of “Shiny Happy People” in its pop-ness.

Let me know what you think, or if you think they are popular and I’m just out of the loop.

Subtitle: My generous uvula

After going to some of the aforementioned clubs Thursday night, I hit the sack. During the night I woke up and felt like I was choking on something. I could breathe okay, but something was in my throat, making me gag. So I went to the bathroom and tried to cough it up. I figured out that something seemed to be hanging from my uvula, that thing that hangs down at the back of your mouth. (see diagram)

(That doesn’t look comfortable - couldn’t they have just pulled the lips back with their fingers?)

I could feel it with my tongue and I tried pushing it up against the roof of my mouth to dislodge it. Eventually I realized… it was my uvula. My uvula had gotten immensely big and hung down really far into my throat, triggering my gag reflex. I had never experienced this before, nor heard of this type of thing. But after I realized what was happening, I managed to deal with the gagging okay and decided to just go back to sleep.

But around 8 AM, I woke up choking again. My throat was also sore. This time I said okay something weird’s going on here. (Yes, you would think I would have reached that conclusion the first time but I hadn’t gotten much sleep.) I called my doctor - he was out of the office but I got the doctor on duty. After describing the problem (except I couldn’t remember what that thing that hangs down was called) and answering a couple questions, conversation went like:

Her: (calmly) Okay, well how about you come in and we’ll take a look?

Me: I can’t come in, I’m in Las Vegas.

Her: (not too calmly) You’re in Las Vegas right now??!

Me: Yeah, I’m on vacation.

Her: (with very serious tone) OK you need to go to a hospital or clinic right away, within the next hour or two. No question.

Me: Uh… okay.

Her: No question.

So I took a cab to some emergency clinic that happened to be right down the street. After waiting about 90 minutes I finally got in to see the doctor and he said it was probably just a sore throat. He would normally do a culture but I was only in town for a short while so he gave me a prescription for antibiotics and said if it was still a problem when I got back home, see my doctor. (Coincidentally it turns out the doctor used to work at Strong Memorial here in Rochester.)

I was starting to think maybe I had been bitten by some weird desert insect or something the way the doctor had reacted over the phone, but she was probably just being really cautious. I still don’t know what the heck that was all about, but turns out a couple people I know have had that happen before so I won’t worry too much about it. The uvula went down in size over the next couple days and I managed to not let it or the sore throat ruin my weekend. Who’d have known that gin & tonics make good sore throat cures? (Don’t take medical advice from magicpork.com.)

Even though I was feeling better, a couple days after getting home I went to see my doctor and he said whatever it was, it was gone now. I swear my uvula is still not quite back to normal but maybe I’m just more aware of it now. My doctor said that it looked like I just had a “generous uvula”. I had to smile at that but refrained from saying “that’s what the ladies say”. He says my generous uvula probably contributed to the problem.

Not quite the Vegas post you were expecting huh? OK, how’s this.. I saw the comedian Bobby Slayton perform and he was really funny. Oh and we had some cab drivers say some amusing things which I absolutely can’t repeat here.

I met up with some college buddies in Las Vegas again. You can read about my previous trip here and here.

I got back into blackjack this time. Last time I didn’t play it much because I hadn’t refreshed my memory on the basic strategy. Well this time I didn’t prior to the trip either but I spent some time in the hotel room, enough to memorize it pretty well. I won some, lost some. But had a good time.

I also went to a couple of nightclubs there. Flew in on a Tuesday with my friend Joe. The others flew in later. We decided to check out Pure, in Caesar’s Palace. Supposedly it’s some hip place that celebrities occasionally go to. I went all out and wore a suit because - hey I was in Vegas. In Rochester if I went to a club in a suit, people would look at me like “what, did you just come from a wedding?” but in Vegas, it’s all good.

We figured on a Tuesday it would be dead but we had to wait in line for over an hour to get in there. We didn’t even want to get in that bad, we were just curious what the big deal was that people would wait so long - and didn’t have anything better to do just then. The reason it took so long is because there were all these people on a guest list in other lines and they’d be let in first then every once in a while they’d throw us a bone and let 5 or 6 from our “nobody” line in. We were still on Rochester time so we were tired. But we ended up hanging out there for a while and had a good time even though I didn’t see what was so special about that club.

On other days, we went to Body English inside Hard Rock, and Moon and ghostbar inside Palms. (Rain was closed that day.) Moon and ghostbar are at the top of the building and have an amazing view of the city. The music was pretty good too. Here’s a pic I grabbed from Moon’s website:

That’s the Strip you see in the background. The light beaming into the sky is the light from the top of the Luxor pyramid. Here’s one from ghostbar’s website:

I get a kick out of the descriptions on Moon and ghostbar’s websites. Here’s some snippets from ghostbar:

Indoors amid the seductive shadows, the sleek, chic ghostbar offers ultra lounging luxury among an ethereal color scheme of silver, white, greens and grays.

and

Behind the bar, shelves of premium spirits glow with the incandescence cast by backlit panels of acrylic-encased fabric.

Phew… is it hot in here? I feel like I need to take a cold shower after reading that. I bet you thought it was just a bar with a cool view, didn’t you?

Stay tuned for part two, where my Vegas trip takes a very strange twist. I guarantee whatever you’re thinking it is, it’s not. Well unless you’re one of the people I’ve talked to about it already.

About a month back, I was shopping in Marketplace Mall in Henrietta and I discovered that Thali of India has a booth in the food court there. This shows how often I go to Marketplace because from what I’ve read online, it’s been there since May. I usually shop at Eastview. But now that I know I can get Indian food in a mall I’ll go there more often. I repeat… Indian food in a mall!! I love America!

Eastview, you may be reigning supreme in Rochester-area malls right now, but I suggest you step it up and get an Indian restaurant in there. If you have to get rid of someone to make room, kick sbarro out.

It doesn’t have to be Thali that goes in there. A lot of people rave about their chicken makhani - it’s “award-winning” apparently - and sure it’s good, but they put honey in it which makes it sweeter than I prefer. Just get some Indian restaurant in there because otherwise Marketplace will be seeing more of my business.

I just noticed that both of those malls are owned by the same company, Wilmorite. So my threat won’t work. Fine then. Could you at least get rid of sbarro though? I got spaghetti and meatballs from them once and it was absolutely horrible. The spaghetti was burnt for crying out loud! I’m all for second chances but not this time. It’s a big chain. They can handle losing one location.

The “all black tonight” misunderstanding that I wrote about recently reminded me of another incident that happened a couple years back. I was with the same friend and we decided to stop into a club that we had never been in before. The bouncer was a middle-aged white woman. Conversation went something like:

Her: You know it’s Latin night?

Us: (Thinking maybe it was some special event) No… Does that mean we can’t go in?

Her: Oh no, you can go in.

Us: Is there an extra cover?

Her: No, there’s no cover.

Us: (Confused) OK… thanks…

OK so we didn’t actually talk in unison. That would be a little weird. I just can’t remember who said what.

We walked into the club and sure enough it was all Latin-American people and Latin-American music. OK so we stood out a bit, but still - the only apparent reason she told us it was Latin Night was because she saw two white boys and thought “I’d better warn these guys”.

They had a big screen playing funny clips of stuff. So we mostly watched the TV and the people salsa dancing, had a drink, and left. Got to my car and there were no hubcaps on it.

What?! I’m just saying I have aluminum alloy wheels and I don’t have hubcaps. What did you think I meant? Some people can be so racist!

This is unrelated, but I’m reminded of this kid from high school. I went to a junior/senior high school so it was 7th through 12th grade. I was a senior at the time. I got to lunch one day and there was this little 7th grade Latino kid sitting with my friends. He spoke English fine and everything so I think he grew up here but his parents were from Puerto Rico. BTW, I grew up in a small upstate NY town… not a lot of minorities there.

A tangent to a tangent: I was talking to someone once who asked about my hometown “not a lot of black people there huh?”. I gave a little fake chuckle because I thought he was just making a comment (albeit strange) on the lack of diversity in upstate NY. So I said “no” and before I could continue, he said, with a straight face, “good”. It was a little uncomfortable after that.

Anyway, I assumed the others knew this kid but after asking around, I don’t think anyone did. He was just sitting there and wouldn’t move when we showed up. We’d tell him to get lost because who wants some random 7th grader sitting at your table? But he’d just ignore us and stick around anyway, and none of us really cared so he just became part of our table. I guess he didn’t have friends and just felt cool hanging out with seniors - but someone should have told this guy we were the uncool senior table. His name was Paco. We’d still tell him to move all the time if he was in our seat but we weren’t mean about it. It was more of a playful thing. He knew we didn’t mind him being there, as long as we had a spot to sit.

Anyway I bring all this up because Paco wasn’t his real name. We just called him Paco and he seemed fine with that. There was some kid named Paco on 3-2-1 Contact, which we all used to watch when we were younger, and that’s where we got the name. I realize now that was a little culturally-insensitive. That would be like calling an Indian kid Apu. We didn’t mean anything by it, but it still wasn’t cool. I wonder where Paco is now. And what his real name is.

With all the talk about the new sitcom Cavemen - you know, the one about those cavemen from the Geico ads - I just had to watch it. I expected it to completely suck since I don’t even care for the ads but I figured I should see it for myself before passing judgment. So I TiVo’d it and last night I finally brought myself to watch it.

And it was funny.

I’m not being sarcastic. I laughed out loud. It was good from the start until the end. I couldn’t believe it but it was actually funny. It takes a lot of guts to tell the whole world that you loved a show that is getting almost universally panned but there you have it.

If you look around online you’ll see everyone saying how awful it was. I don’t know what show they were watching. Everyone has a different sense of humor so I can definitely see some people not liking it, but the way people are talking as if it’s the worst pile of filth to ever grace the screen makes me think that they were determined that they were going to hate it no matter what and are sticking with that.

You know I have a good sense of humor because you read magicpork.com so I won’t bother trying to qualify myself to you.

I don’t know if they’ll be able to make a whole series out of this however. I’m pretty sure they’ll milk every drop of humor they can out of the caveman setup - if they are even given enough time to before being yanked off the air. But the pilot episode? Great stuff.

Tell me I’m wrong if you wish - but only if you’ve actually watched the pilot. If you missed it, you can watch it on abc.com.