My favorite NFL team, the Seattle Seahawks, are playing in the Super Bowl this Sunday. They are playing against the Denver Broncos, a team with many fans in my social circles. I hail from eastern Idaho which is farther from Denver than you’d think but still a hotbed of pro-Bronco sentiment since the local TV stations always show the Denver game if they have a choice. I know many, many Denver fans. As a “gambling man” (some might say a “degenerate”), I recognized this as a perfect storm of betting opportunity. Below I have enumerated the various Super Bowl bets I have placed with friends and family.

• Bet with my friend Marcus: $50
• Bet with my cousin Dave: $100 and a bottle of the winner’s favorite libation (In Dave’s case, Glenlivet 18 Year Scotch. In my case, Diet Pepsi)
• Bet with my coworker Pradeep: $87.36 and the loser must wear the winning team’s jersey to work the next day.
• Bet with Steve, manager of my local 7-11: If Steve wins, he gets free business consulting including process optimization, technology enablement, and IT services. If I win, I get free Big Gulps.
• Bet with my friend Manuel: Loser must loudly tell all their friends and family members that they “just watch the Super Bowl for the commercials” and act as if they genuinely believe that they are the first person to ever say this.
• Bet with my neighbor Angie: Loser must post an unpopular political opinion on Facebook (example – “The only way to solve our obesity epidemic is to mandate liposuction for chubby babies”) and fully defend that position in the ensuing comment discussion, including answering every single comment, no matter how long the thread gets.
• Bet with my cousin’s husband’s brother Brad: Loser must go see the film “I, Frankenstein” and write a six page essay (double space, normal sized font) reviewing the film and discussing it from the standpoint of postmodern deconstructionist theory.
• Bet with my ex-girlfriend Rachel: Loser must lavishly praise the winner’s lovemaking abilities, to everyone, all the time, forever.
• Bet with my pharmacist Gary: Winner gets naming rights to loser’s firstborn child.
• Bet with my friend Aaron: Loser must film a sex tape and post it online. Both participants in said sex tape must be wearing uniform of winning team including helmet and pads. At the climax of said sex tape, loser must scream out either “BEAST MODE” (if I win) or “OMAHA” (if he wins).
• Bet with my coworker Ted: Loser is required to give up on all his hopes and goals in life. Loser must accept that his best days are behind him, and it’s time to face the long, slow decline into old age and obscurity, never having accomplished all the things he dreamed of doing in his younger days. Loser must confront head-on the fact that the current daily grind is actually as good as it’s going to get. Winner gets to persist in the delusion that a better life is around the corner.

I just got back from two weeks in Morocco (plus a few extra days in southern Spain) with my friends Chris Cook and Chris Bradbury. I’m not sure I’m going to write anything up about it like the South America trip, but if you want to see the pictures they are on Picasa.

Had a little get-together this weekend to answer an age-old question: what’s the biggest breakfast sandwich we could make in our small apartment kitchen? Props go to the master chef, my roommate Chris Cook.

Credit for inspiration as always goes to the guys at Epic Meal Time.

Complete ingredients:
1 Domino’s X-Large “Brooklyn”-style pizza with sausage/mushroom
20 McDonalds Chicken McNuggets
1 Wendy’s Double Baconator
1 Wendy’s Large Fry
1 Taco Time Large Mexi-Fry
2 KFC Double Downs
Assorted shit from Taco Bell
3 bags of cheese from the grocery store (Taco Bell would not sell us a large bag of shredded cheese)

Inspired by: http://www.epicmealtime.com/

Follow-up to my Samoas post: I sent a couple boxes to a friend of mine, Patrick Lebow, who is stationed overseas and flies Predator drones for the US Air Force. He took a photo of a Predator with Samoas hanging out of the missile bays.

Unlike my pictures from the previous post, this isn’t Photoshopped (the actual number of boxes I purchased was closer to 40 than to 1000).

When I was a kid, once a year my mother would find some Girl Scouts and order up several boxes of cookies. We’d get a couple boxes of tasty Thin Mints, some humdrum Tagalongs, and at least one box of the execreble Trefoils. Then there would be three boxes of the delicious, perfect-in-every-way Samoas (depending on what part of the country you live in, you may know them as “Caramel DeLites”). The problem was that Samoas were the favorite of my parents as well, and all three of us had a nasty habit of covert late-night binging. Since we all knew that the Samoas would be gone within a matter of hours, it was like an annual race to consume as many Samoas as possible before the rest of the family could. Within a day or two, the Samoas would be gone. The Trefoils would hang out in the kitchen for another three months, taunting me with their non-Samoaness.

As an adult, I’m always on the lookout for Samoas during Girl Scout season. But it’s not always easy to find Girl Scouts (and people get the wrong idea if you ask around for them). Also, when I can find them selling cookies, half of the time they’re out of Samoas. Never out of Trefoils, though.

That scarcity may have led to a bit of an obsession. It’s hard to get obsessed over, for example, Oreos – since you can drop by a grocery store and buy as many as you want. But when a cookie is both perfectly delicious and nearly impossible for me to get, that can lead to a bit of craziness when I do land a good connection. The good news is that I think I’ve paid for the college education of several local Girl Scouts. Did I go overboard this year? Look at these pictures and decide for yourself…

My company recently hired a charming gentleman named Raj Patra. Raj and I got to know each other and I found out that in his spare time he teaches Hot Yoga (or “Bikram Yoga” after founder Bikram Choudhury). I had never heard of this, but I was shocked to find out that some people actually practice yoga in rooms heated to 105 degrees and 40-50% humidity. This has several supposed health benefits beyond the obvious effect of making you sweat buckets of water in every direction. Then they kick it up a notch with “Power Yoga” which has more movement than the traditional pose-holding variety.

I have never done any kind of yoga before, let alone aerobic yoga in a sauna-like room, but as you all know I’m game for trying pretty much anything. So I brought my roommate Chris and we signed up for Raj’s “Hot Power Yoga” class at Hot Yoga of Kirkland.

The place was extremely crowded: apparently hot yoga is the Big New Thing to hit the exercise world. Most of the people there were female, which was great, except that I can’t imagine trying to hit on any of them while drenched in three gallons of my own sweat. As the class started I quickly realized too that I was by far the most out of shape person in the room. I was unable to hold even simple yoga poses and mostly just flailed my arms and legs around while trying not to die of heat stroke.

Continue reading Hot Yoga Nights →

Dear NARC: 

How do I know who my children were in their past lives?

 – Edna P., Fort Wayne IN

Dear Edna,

It’s important to be vigilant for past-life clues in your child’s behavior. Pay attention to their favorite toys, the pictures they draw, and their dream journals. Does your son like to make buildings with toy blocks? It’s possible he was a famous architect, or possibly one of the slaves who built the Pyramids. Does your daughter have a passion for horses? She may have been a Mongol raider or a gruff German cavalryman.

Also keep a close eye on how they respond to stories and films. If your child loves Snow White – that could mean she was once a princess, a dwarf, a Grimm brother, or maybe Walt Disney himself!

Remember, don’t let parental pride and wishful thinking cloud your judgment. Just because your little tyke loves to fingerpaint doesn’t make him the reincarnation of Pablo Picasso – he could also be Renoir, Monet, or even Andy Warhol.

Continue reading The New Age Reincarnation Center Answers Your Parenting Questions →