National Sandcastle Competition

So I read one day that the national sandcastle competition is held in Imperial Beach, which is about 15 minutes south of San Diego, so I decided it would be fun to check out. This year was the 25th anniversary so there were plenty of festivities to go around. There was a street fair, live bands, rides, tons of food, and of course tons of people. The rules of the competition were pretty interesting. I figured the teams had all weekend to make their creation, but in fact they were only given from 8am to 1pm on Sunday. There were several different categories and skill levels, with each having its own section of the beach. The winner clearly deserved to be the winner, as you'll see below. There were a bunch of really good ones, and a bunch that were only so-so. Some people didn't have time to finish, and you could certainly tell the difference between the amateurs and the masters. We stopped a couple of the judges and asked them about what they look for. They showed us their score sheet, which consisted of things like detail, pass-throughs (which were anything that had open space under it, like bridges or archways), and height-to-size proportion (is it way taller than it should be, or not tall enough, etc.). The judges even told me how to be a judge next year, so I'm psyched. Here ya go.

There was no shortage of people for this thing. The paper estimated about 200,000 came during the weekend of the event.

This was the winner of the master class division. These guys were gooood. Especially considering they did this whole thing in 5 hours.

Love the detail, and the cape on the emperor.

The concept here is that all the animals on the left have escaped from the zoo, and are now relaxing on the beach at Coronado. The Hotel Del is in the background, and on the right is the zookeeper chasing after them in his truck. I love the perfectly content look on the giraffe. Little does he know he's about to be tranquilized and dragged back to captivity.

A bunch of animals waiting for the Padres game to start. That's Petco park in the background.

Gotta love a giant pug drinking a bowl full of tequila. I believe its significance it was a combination of the competition's 25th anniversary, and everyone in Southern California's love for massive amounts of Tequila.

This was the salt shaker that was behind the dog drinking tequila. The salamander was a nice touch.

This is one of my favorites. The only team to use color on the sand. I'm pretty sure they won for their division.

The theme of this one was "Pool Shark". You see, the pun here is that it's a shark (see it on the left?) on a pool table (see it in front of the shark?). Ahhh, now you get it. I like the little billiard balls.

This was the Dr. Seuss themed display from the Lorax. See all the little truffula trees? Those are used to make thneeds. The Once-ler was a bastard.
Come on people! Don't lose your childhood memories!

High Def rules my life

OK, so normally I'd say that yes, I like to watch tv, and there are certain shows that I keep as a staple in my life no matter where I am in the country (thanks to my good friend Tivo). But I'm not one to waste an entire Saturday or Sunday watching mindless entertainment for hours on end while my brain rots and my tan goes away. Now, however, I'm finding myself in a pickle. Basically, I have recently added a high definition digital box to my LCD widescreen, and my life has been changed. I am literally mesmerized by what I see and am finding it hard to look away. Even now as I type, I am looking at the screen. I guess the positive side of that is that I'm getting better at typing without looking at the keyboard...a skill I never really mastered, until now. Some may say, "Adam, this is sad. It's just tv." But these are the people that don't have high def and can't fathom the beauty and clarity of everything on the screen. And I mean EVERYTHING. Right now I am watching, I kid you not, video footage of freshwater fish in a reef, accompanied by, and sychronized to, the entire Nutcracker Suite composition. I wonder how Tchaikovsky would feel about this. I guess that would depend on how he feels about fish. Now this is something that I probably wouldn't watch if I was just flipping channels and came across this on a regular tv. Although I do love the Nutcracker's music. But in this case, I just can't look away. I find myself watching the Discovery Channel mostly, no matter what is on. "Profiles of Nature" is a show I've become especially fond of...interesting even on a regular tv, it profiles a different animal every week, and follows their every moves, narrating their daily lives, how they eat and how they survive in the wild. The last show profiled the Scorpion, and I couldn't have been more fascinated by watching it capture, kill, and eat a Tatantula in real time. You could even see the "Oh shit, I think I'm about to die" look in the Tarantula's eyes, and every hair on it stand straight up as it's caught. So cool. The Discovery Channel even has a daily "Live Sunrise" at 7am. Every morning is a live, HD footage of a different lake, national park, or ocean sunrise. From dark to bright, you hear and see more animals as time goes on, including all the sounds of the birds and insects as they come out in the sunlight. And now I'm watching "Trains of the American West", profiling 8 tourist trains, including the American Orient Express and the Durango&Silverton Narrow Guage Railroad. I feel like I should look at my addiction in a positive light, in the sense that I am learning so much more from tv than if I stuck with Comedy Central or the Disney Channel (you know you loved Even Stevens). Ok I have to concentrate now on the screen.

p.s. We won TWO games at beach volleyball today, woo hoo! We're getting better! Granted we got creamed in all the other games, but in those 2 we looked soooo good! Overall I'm happy, even though I felt like tearing the net down after we blew a 7-1 lead and wound up losing 15-8. Ouch. Next week, 3 wins!

It's roommate time

So my roommate decided he's moving to Texas. I don't know why. In fact, I don't know why anyone would want to move to Texas. Granted my only experience there revolved around very large people in flannel shirts trying to eat a 72 oz. steak in under an hour just so it would be free....that, and they get an undoubtedly unflattering Polaroid of them put on the wall. But nonetheless he'll be off in a few weeks. So I'm in the market for a new roommate. I'll be interviewing over the next couple weeks, so I'm sure once I find someone I'll let you know shortly thereafter if we're getting along. The responses I've getten to my ads are quite comical sometimes. People from all over the world, really. I have one guy coming next weekend who was originally from central CA, but has lived in Tokyo for the last 3 years. No doubt he'll have some good stories. Another one is blindly moving to SD from England, and a third e-mailed me from the Caspian Sea. A few locals as well, and one guy that only wants to rent the room because he needs a place to store his racing motocycle. What? "Hey everybody, this is my new roomate, Kawasaki. He's real queit until you turn him on. But he never complains when people ride him hard." So we'll see how this all pans out. You know me, it doesn't take much to make me happy. I just want someone who won't try to kill me or steal my prized tiger print feather pimp hat that I wore for New Years. I'll keep you posted.

Call me Karch

So originally we thought it would be fun to join one of those co-ed sports leagues they have around the city, and play in the kickball league. What's funnier than a bunch of 20-somethings running around playing a sport designed for 5th grade recess? Well, apparently one thing is...and it's a bunch of 20-somethings who can't play beach volleyball, playing beach volleyball. Since the kickball league was filled, we joined the beach volleyball league instead. We figured it would be a good way to spend some time at the beach, maybe meet some new people, and hone our tremendous volleyball skills (breathe in the sarcasm). In fairness, we weren't that bad, but we did wind up losing 4 out of 5 games against 2 different teams. The first team we played we should have beaten. They basically sucked, yet our teamwork skills weren't really up to par, so there were a lot of points lost on our end by just letting the ball drop because nobody would call it...or in Emily's case, occasionally waiting until the last second before the ball hit the ground to yell "Adam get that". And by far, the most common phrase heard from our team throughout our games was "Sorry, sorry...oh shit, sorry guys", usually proclaimed by one of us after the ball flew off 30 feet to the right, instead of going over the net to the opponents' side. But because it was all in good fun and we figured we'd lose anyway, we just laughed it off and figured it a good way to practice our skills and be in the sun. The surprising thing to me was how much physical effort and endurance goes into playing this game. It's not as relaxing as I thought, seeing as how I cut my foot in two places, sprained my toe, and almost threw out my back. Then the cuts healed with a ton of sand in it, so when I got home I had to re-open them and clean the sand out. Too bad I didn't get pics of that, eh? So we'll see how it goes next week, hopefully we'll win a bunch. Or two. Two would be nice.
-p.s. Did anyone get my Karch reference? Sorry it's obscure. But whatever, Family Guy made a Herculoids reference on tonight's episode and I think I was the only person in San Diego laughing....and by the way, the "Breakfast Machine" from the same episode made me laugh so hard I almost choked to death on a tortilla chip. I have it on Tivo if you missed it. Best scene of the season by far.

Where do I shit?

So we went to Ocean beach yesterday for the 4th of July. Overall a great time, although of course my analytical germophobe brain immediately goes into one zone when thinking about a holiday celebration at the beach with 20,000 people...am I gonna have to use a port-o-potty? Well the answer was thankfully no, although I did voluntarily use one for a simple #1 because I was surprised at its cleanliness. Granted this was at the beginning of the day. As it went on and I drank more, I opted to visit the local restaurants. Luckily I never had to buy anything to use one, although I probably wouldve bought the restaurant if I had to go badly enough. Is that sick? Oh well, I don't care, I'm clean dammit. Live with it...I do. Long story short, I took a bunch of pics of our good time, but managed to lose my digital camera at the end of the night. Whether it's somewhere in the sand or ocean, or just in one of my friend's bags and hasnt been discovered yet, is yet to be determined. So if someone finds anytime soon, I'll get some pics up. If not, you'll have to wait until I invest in another digital camera before you get anymore pics on this blog. I'll keep you posted.

Lets screw with the losers online

I just had a lot of fun at a porno site. No, not THAT kind of fun, let me explain. A friend sent me the link to a free live web-cam sex-chat site....I wasn't going to bother because usually these sites are stupid and nothing but a ton of pop-up ads and other annoying bullshit (or so I'm told) But he seemed to think it was pretty cool and funny so I checked it out about an hour ago. Well, it is free, live, and you can chat if you want. But you know me, I took a new approach...It was quite pathetic to see the moronic babble of all the slobbering Neanderthals in the chat room. Some guys were hopelessly besotted... "UR HOT!! I luvU". Some were more to the point... "zoom in on your ass". I stayed quiet for as long as I could before typing in some comment about them all being a bunch of pathetic losers. That earned me a few comments but most of them just kept on slobbering all over the girl. I went to another chat room with less lotharios and started to cause trouble again. Pretty soon everyone was ignoring the girl and hurling insults at me. It was hilarious. I planned to cut and paste the transcript here but it wouldn't let me copy the text. The best part was when a guy with the screen name "SPUNKY" said,"Remember where you are, behave". Can someone say irony? I had a riot twisting everyone's balls before the moderator told me to cool it. I apologized profusely, but then started to ask the moderator how exactly you get a job as a moderator on this kind of website. I kinda wanted his job. Then I continued as before. The bastard kicked me out! I'll give you the link here but I will warn you that this is an adult site so if you're offended easily or only 12, don't click it. Although I suppose that disclaimer just made every 12 year old dying to click the link now. Oh well. I absolve myself of all legal responsibility. I don't recall seeing anything pornographic really, just random girls in victoria's secret wear. But the language can be a bit raw. If you're a regular reader of my blog, then you're probably like me and will likely find it more amusing than anything else.

http://tc-mail.com/link.php?id=f8c2c36flirt-girls

It must've been a dare

This kid has real balls and he's my new favorite person. Right in the finals of a national competition! If you've seen the movie you'll laugh, if not you'll wonder why the hell I bothered putting this up here. Feel free to leave a comment if you're confused...there'll be plenty of people who can help you figure it out.

http://realfunnyvideos.com/?q=node/9