Ipod Kills Pedestrian

Ok, this made a big stir a short while back so I won’t spend a lot of time rant­ing on it, but I just heard a story on NPR talk­ing about a new ad cam­paign in San Fran­cisco that warns about the dan­gers of cross­ing the street while dis­tracted. …Duh! Well actu­ally, I believe PSAs are a much bet­ter way of get­ting this mes­sage across than pass­ing a law for­bid­ding the use of hand­held devices in cross­walks like that politi­cian in New York tried to do. I under­stand that avoid­able street col­li­sions can strain our already over taxed med­ical sys­tem but I feel that there is a big­ger issue at hand. Are we cre­at­ing laws that just serve the stu­pid while over reg­u­lat­ing the rest of the pop­u­la­tion? Are we in fact dilut­ing our gene pool to a point where peo­ple who don’t deserve to breed are saved long enough to put ill equipped prog­eny on this earth? I under­stand that it is a con­stant bat­tle to keep the pub­lic safe from new dan­gers that evolv­ing tech­nol­ogy present but some­times we have to defer to COMMON SENSE. But where to draw the line? Are we just cre­at­ing a soci­ety of idiots that nat­ural selec­tion would have elim­i­nated gen­er­a­tions ago? If I’m not smart enough to look both ways before I cross the street and need laws to pro­tect me from myself, do I have the com­mon sense needed to raise chil­dren? I argue no. We’re talk­ing preser­va­tion of our species here people.

Alco­hol Shot Gun

Prob­a­bly in a drunken moment of inspi­ra­tion, some alco­holic decided to take the phrase “a shot of alco­hol” lit­eral and came up with this inge­nious piece of gad­getry. It’s too bad it looks like this gad­get is just a pro­to­type; cause if it wasn’t, I’d buy one. I’d take it to Rit­ual and start mak­ing some friends. I’d wear a ban­doleer of dif­fer­ent alco­hols and go around pick­ing fights so I could duel. Open mouths at 10 paces. Then every night could end with a money shot.

Ban­doleer

UrbanTrend, via 7Gadgets, via DVICE

Amer­i­can Apparel in Lit­tle Tokyo

I’m in Lit­tle Tokyo right now blog­ging by Black­berry and I’ve been forced to go into Amer­i­can Apparel. Don’t get me wrong, I love their T’s when tal­ented design­ers use them for their shirts. Heck, I’ve even used their basic T’s for shirts that I’ve designed. But an Amer­i­can Apparel store? And not just one, there seems to be a new one pop­ping up every other month in every other neigh­bor­hood. I could under­stand an Amer­ica Apparel sec­tion in like a Macy’s but their stuff is so gaudy and tragic by itself. Its like a Madonna video from each decade threw up in there, and they called it a store. Leg warm­ers, rain­bow col­ors, who wears this stuff? Just cause you have a bunch of mer­chan­dise doesn’t war­rant open­ing a chain of stores and strik­ing a blow to the fash­ion con­scious every­where. This is one trend that I hope passes soon.

Con­fused inside Amer­i­can Apparel in Lit­tle Tokyo

I gave my girl crabs cakes

I made crab cakes the other night and they were so deli­cious I decided to name them. Here’s the recipe for “I gave my girl crabs cake”:

Ingre­di­ents:

1 pound Blue crab meat or other lump crab meat
6 tbls panko bread crumbs
1 egg beaten
2 tbsp may­on­naise
1 tsp mus­tard
1/4 tsp Worces­ter­shire
1/2 tsp Old Bay sea­son­ing
2 strips of bacon
1 tbsp shal­lots finely minced
6 1“x.5“x.25″ slices of Gruyère (cheese)
salt to taste

Prepa­ra­tion:

1. Care­fully check the crab meat for any car­ti­lage. Put meat in a bowl and set it aside.

2. Ren­der bacon in a fry­ing pan over low heat until you get about 2 tbsp of bacon fat. Set aside fat for later. Chop up bacon in to lit­tle bits.

3. Except for the cheese, mix the bacon bits with all the other ingre­di­ents. Gen­tly fold in the crab. Only mix enough to com­bine the ingre­di­ents. You don’t want to break up the crab into fine shreds.

4. Shape into 6 crab cakes and insert the slice of Gruyère into the mid­dle of the cake.

5. Refrig­er­ate for at least 1 hour so that the cakes don’t fall apart dur­ing cook­ing. This is what they looked like after an hour in the fridge.

I gave my girl crabs cakes (raw)

6. Heat the bacon fat in a non-stick fry­ing pan. Sauté until golden brown on each side. This will only take about 3–5 min­utes per side.

I gave my girl crabs cakes (cooking)

7. Gar­nish with pars­ley and serve.

America’s Best Dance Crew

With only 2 more episodes left in America’s Best Dance Crew, who will be crowned Sea­son 3’s win­ner. I think it should be Quest Crew. They’ve been con­sis­tently clean, cre­ative with their rou­tines, and given over­all the­atri­cal per­for­mances. You could, for the most part, take them straight from the stage after one week of prac­tice and put them in a music video.

The ques­tion is, will Amer­ica vote for another Asian crew to be the win­ner. We’ve been buck­ing stereo­types for two sea­son with Jab­baWac­k­eeZ and a major­ity of Super Cr3w being of Asian descent. Now Quest Crew is claw­ing at a three-peat. They’re prob­a­bly the most sex­ual of the three crews and I for one am proud to have that type of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in main­stream media. It’s a hell of a lot bet­ter than those androg­y­nous clog­gers. But don’t even get me started on them.

It will be inter­est­ing to see if Amer­ica and the pro­duc­ers of ABDC let Asians dom­i­nate in an arena where main­stream Amer­ica prob­a­bly never knew we even had a pres­ence. But hip-hop danc­ing flows strong in our blood and is huge all over Asia. Japan­ese dancers are so ded­i­cated, they take the train in from the sub­urbs into Tokyo every night and prac­tice rou­tines using their reflec­tions in shiny sky­scraper win­dows. The trains stop at 1am so the B-boys and girls just prac­tice all night until the trains start again. Check out Planet B-Boy if you need fur­ther proof.

As a real­ity tele­vi­sion pro­ducer, I find it hard to watch real­ity tele­vi­sion with­out a cer­tain amount of cyn­i­cism. For that rea­son, I rarely watch real­ity shows. Short of Top Chef and Project Run­way, I stay away from most real­ity and have never even watched a full episode of that Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion main­stay Amer­i­can Idol. But some­thing about ABDC has kept me tun­ing in. There’s a lot of pas­sion in these crews and their desire to win shows. It’s the same for­mula as Project Run­way and Top Chef. You take gen­uine peo­ple with an uncom­pro­mis­able amount of deter­mi­na­tion and spirit, and you just let the camera’s roll. So you can bet, I’ll be watch­ing the finals and root­ing for Quest Crew.