The Borgata in Atlantic City (gambling, entertainment)

I haven't been to Atlantic City in years, but since I've been going to casinos more frequently these days, decided to give it a chance as they're comping me rooms during the summer. Went for a quick one night stay with a friend.


The nice view from the 43rd (top) floor

The view from our room on the top floor was about the only thing I liked about my visit. And it wasn't even that I'm pissed that I lost money or something like that, I was actually up slightly for the trip.

One of my main complaints is that I just don't like all the little charges here and there. I don't know if this has always been a Borgata thing, or if it's basically just an MGM thing that happens at all their properties. Let's start from the beginning. Parking is not free. At least I have a comp for free parking. I get to my room and I see that the wifi password was written on my room number packet. I'm about to sign on when I decide, "let me just look through the terms of service". There it is, wifi charge. Screw that. I'm barely in the room, not paying for wifi. Then when I check out, it turns out that my room comp does not cover resort fees. So I use my express comps to pay for it. Honestly all of this is bullshit. I've been getting comped to nearby casinos all summer, and NONE of them have charged for parking, wifi, or resorts fees (although this last one may be a NJ thing).

Well, if the casino is a good time, a few extra charges here and there isn't a deal breaker. Except the casino wasn't great either. First of all, the place is big, not well-organized, and not well-labeled. I spent a lot of time getting lost and just walking. The seats felt old and even where there wasn't any smoking that stench was still hanging around. One thing I found really annoying was that I couldn't even play one hand without them taking my player's card and logging it. All I wanted to do was play one hand and use up my match play before dinner, and it ended up taking like 5 minutes.

This whole bigger, older, and slower thing was evident in the poker room too. The poker room is huge, but with primarily open seating, felt a bit chaotic. The tables and chairs felt old and worn, while none of the USB chargers I tried at my table worked. There is no rake here, players pay for time. While to a lot of players that sounds great, what happens is there is no incentive on the casino's end to speed up the pace of the game. I was there for probably 7 hours and in that entire time there was only one dealer who dealt at a speed equivalent to the other casino poker rooms I've played at the past couple of months. Sure, I probably paid less in time than I would have in rake, but not getting as many hands in makes the game a lot less enjoyable (and profitable).

The sports/racebook was super crowded, practically standing room only as all the main sitting areas (with personal TVs) were filled with old men and their daily racing forms. It's clearly designed (the way it looked that day anyway) as a racebook and I can't imagine it being a good place to watch big sporting events. Although if you're a horse racing degen who's betting 10 races per track across 5 tracks it's probably a really good time.

Again, a large part of my dissatisfaction is probably just personal preference. I view gambling as an entertainment/service industry and I feel smaller, more local businesses are better at that. I'm not thrilled with MGM buying more and more properties and their corporate nature, although they do send me plenty of comp offers now and then.

Catch Up (Entertainment, Food, Gambling, Sport, Rambling)

It's been a while since I last wrote a post, so I figured I'd give an update on what I've been doing.

New Hobbies

Watching fighting games
Even though I don't play any of them, I do find them very entertaining to watch, especially the high level contests. So lately I've not only caught up on past matches through Youtube, I'll actually watch live streaming on Twitch as well. This all culminated in me watching the live stream of an entire weekend's worth of EVO, which is the biggest fighting game tournament in the world, held every year in Las Vegas. It was a ridiculous display of skill and drama, packed with excitement, and honestly more entertaining for me than the NBA finals. My favorite games to watch are Ultra Street Fighter IV (where the biggest prize money is) and Mortal Kombat X (which is only a few months old but has a huge following). I really think the fighting game scene is going to blow up big time, and some would say it already has considering there were 250k concurrent live viewers at the championship's peak, even though the prize pools were below $100k, compared to League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients which boast multi-million dollar prize pools.

Daily fantasy sports
I've always played a good deal of daily fantasy sports, but the past month or so I've really been into the day-to-day grind of the MLB season. I'm mostly trying to develop a model for it and plan to play strictly off the model. It hasn't been going well financially, but it's still pretty fun. It's kind of developed into a daily routine now where I download some data into Google Docs, then read it into R to do my analysis. The model has shown a lot of promise, but it hasn't won consistently, so I'm thinking of moving on to NFL analysis very soon in anticipation of the new season starting.

Older Hobbies

Food
I haven't really been out to many restaurants. I haven't really exercised in the past half year due to a calf injury, and have ballooned in weight so I'm trying to get back in shape starting with my diet. I did have an excellent dinner at EMP a while back, but none of the main "story" dishes were new so I didn't write up the meal. I also had a couple of stellar meals at 15 East, but as beloved chef Masato Shimizu is leaving the country, there's no hurry to write a post on it as the reader won't be able to enjoy the experience as well.

Poker
I'd been playing in a couple of regular home games, but now that summer is here, everyone's enjoying the outdoors instead. I also haven't followed the poker scene at all, except for coming across a couple of WSOP headlines.

Bridge
I've kept up with bridge even less, to the extent that I didn't even know when and where this summer's nationals were being held. I continue to play in the interclub bridge league, but that's been on hiatus for the summer and won't resume till September.

TV/Anime
My DVR continues to be full, and I still watch a good amount of anime (3-5 per season last few seasons), but it feels like there's just too much entertainment media (much of it good) out there nowadays. And I don't even have a Netflix subscription!

So that's a pretty good snapshot of how things have been. I believe that I will have a couple of food posts up soon when I get around to it, and this NFL season perhaps I'll start writing some daily fantasy posts instead of the previous gambling posts. Enjoy the summer, everyone!

TV 1H 2014: Hellos and Goodbyes (tv, entertainment)

As we enter finale week of May sweeps, I want to comment on a couple of new and ending shows from this year. Some of these shows ended a while ago, but the Olympics kind of blurred February sweeps for me.

Thank you and goodbye:

How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM)
At its best, HIMYM was one of the best comedies on TV. Great story-telling through interwoven flashbacks from different points of view, deeper characters than your usual group-of-friends-in-NYC sitcom, continuity through frequent callbacks to earlier plot points, and the occasional just plain awesome outrageous moments such as The Naked Man, Robin Sparkles, and many more. The middle seasons did, however, drag on, and they repeated too many jokes. I was ok with the Barneyisms but got tired of the Canada jokes really quickly.

The final season was kind of in the middle of those two extremes, but overall quite enjoyable. There were glimpses of greatness (eg. How Your Mother Met Me) that reminded me of the earlier seasons, while there were all sorts of callbacks that served as a thank you to fans who stuck with the show to the end.

Of course, no discussion of the final season is complete without talking about the controversial ending. I was ok with the concept of the ending as it neatly wrapped up the narrative. It explained why a story about how Ted met the kids' mother was mostly focused on him and his group of friends. What I thought was unnecessary, was that if this was where the producers were always going with it, why did they have to make the mother so damn loveable? Cristin Milioti absolutely killed it as the mother, and was the best thing about the final season.

That pretty much sums up my view of the series as a whole. If it had been a shorter show, maybe 5-6 seasons of its best stuff, it would have been right up there with the very best sitcoms of all time. Instead, there was just too much that was unnecessary. It was legen- and then they waited too long to make it -dary.

Psych
While the usual descriptions of Psych often start with mentions of The Mentalist because of the basis of the plot, the show that it reminds me of most is Castle. It's basically a procedural that revels in its silliness. It's fun, simple, and easy to pick up. Psych took pop culture themed episodes (like Castle's sci-fi, zombie, vampire, etc. episodes) and took them up a notch, doing special Xmas episodes and changing the language of their theme song and opening credits. It was a "let's all have fun together" show, rather than "here's how smart we are, look at all these plot twists and turns", and I will miss it dearly. For now, at least there's still Castle, that is when they're not doing the overly dramatic episodes.

Hello and come again:

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD
This show is, by itself, an excellent, action adventure that reaches across sci-fi, spy thriller, and other genres. But what separates it from other shows that have come before it is how it has been woven together within the bigger Marvel cinematic universe. The constant callbacks to the Marvel movie franchises such as the Avengers, Thor, and Captain America give the story a grander perspective and the viewer a sense that they are watching something that is an integral part of a epic adventure. It also offers a sense of security that the producers know where the story is going and that it will actually come to a satisfying conclusion.

Hi, bye:

Growing up Fisher
I feel that this is the comedy that NBC hoped for when they brought on Michael J Fox. An endearing, feel-good family comedy that features a main character coming to grips with and overcoming his disability, which in this case is blindness. It has some genuinely funny moments, whereas the Michael J Fox show was slow and boring from start to finish, and barely touched on his Parkinson's. It's unclear whether the show's handling of the dad's blindness will continue to be funny for a longer stretch, but for now this is as good of a traditional (one) family comedy as I've seen the past few seasons. It's appalling to me that this is getting cancelled while that unfunny but more heavily marketed comedy About A Boy gets renewed.

Rake
I really liked this show, and am sad that it's not returning. Kinnear did a good job playing the biggest degenerate on TV since Greg House. It had its completely outrageous moments, and the courtroom stuff reminded me of Boston Legal. I don't really recall many degenerate gambler lead roles in TV, so it was fun to have an antihero to root for. I think the show might have had a better chance if it had been on the edgier FX instead of Fox.

Only Two Weeks Left for Live Jazz Upstairs at the NoMad (food, entertainment)

One of the great things about the restaurant in the NoMad hotel is how the space is divided into unique rooms (library, bar, atrium, parlor, fireplace) each with its own ambiance and charm. Every Thursday for the past couple of months, they've also managed to transform a meeting room on the second floor of the hotel into a fun venue for drinks, snacks, and live jazz. There are only two weeks left right now to experience live jazz upstairs at the NoMad, but it should return after the summer.


A regular meeting room gets done up simply but effectively.

The complimentary bowl of nuts is perfect for drinks, the best being the round ones with a crispy coating, described to me as like "those Japanese snacks".


As there isn't a full kitchen or bar to work with on the second floor, only a limited number of drinks and snacks are available, with about 5 of each to choose from. The fruits de mer platter is not available due to the temperature constraint. The menu has changed as the spring season has settled in, but the silky smooth chicken liver mousse and the beef tartare with a nice kick to it were excellent snacks to enjoy with a couple of drinks.

If you are lucky enough to snag a reservation, you can in theory have the table until they are finished for the night. The band plays throughout the night, but most of their guests tend to settle in for about an hour or two, usually as a pre- or post-dinner kind of thing.

Another Year for the Blog (rambling)

As we enter 2014, I look back and feel that I had a pretty good year with the blog. I set out a goal to write a post every week, and I was pretty successful for the most part, with 70 total posts. There were a couple of slow months (March and August) when I only wrote 3 posts for the month, but I never felt like there was a really long break between posts. The majority of blog posts that I wrote were about food and sports, but I'll be looking to add a little more variety in 2014.

Before finally moving on to 2014 (although we're already a week in), let's look back at 2013.

Food
I've been very fortunate when it comes to food throughout my life, and 2013 was another great gustatory year, even as I lost 30 pounds. Some meals really stood out to me, and I added a new feature on the blog with "My Favorite Recent Meals" to showcase them. My favorite meal of the year was my first meal of two at Eleven Madison Park, which was so epic I had to split it into two blog posts (part 1 and 2).

Sports/Gambling
I started a new feature called NFL Underdog '13, where I focused on picking just one underdog each week during the 2013-2014 NFL season. I thought it was pretty successful (final results: 10-7ATS, 6-11SU +25), and I'm looking forward to doing it again next season. It's also given me some ideas for new features for this year's NBA and MLB seasons, so I might end up writing much more about sports this coming year.

Entertainment
This has been a great year for television, with great shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Dr. Who, and The Walking Dead being a part of mainstream pop culture. I continue to watch a lot of TV, but haven't really blogged about it this past year. I did blog a couple of anime recommendations, as I've really gotten into anime this past year. There are some really great stories being told in that medium, and I would like to share some more of them with readers.

I wish everyone a great 2014 and I'm looking forward to writing and sharing even more!

Anime Recommendation: Baccano! (entertainment, tv, manga/anime)

While we're all waiting for September to bring us the fall tv season, real MLB late season drama, and the start of the NFL season, let's kill some time by watching a truly fun anime. At 16 episodes, Baccano! is something that can be easily finished in one weekend.

Here's a reminder of the basic criteria that I have used for choosing this recommendation. It's the same as from my last recommendation of the anime Death Note.
1. Something that is easy for newcomers to get into. Minimal self-referencing and tropes.
2. Something that is easily accessible, available in its entirety on Youtube, Amazon Prime, or Hulu.
3. Something that can be finished over the course of a binge weekend or three. Not something with 150 episodes.
4. Something recent, within the last decade or so.
5. Entertaining. You may or may not feel like you want to recommend it to everyone you know, but you won't feel like you wasted your time watching it.

As written on its wikipedia page, "The anime adaptation of Baccano! has received universal critical acclaim." In my mind, this is deservedly so, and Baccano! is not only fun, but also perfectly utilizes the medium of animation in its art direction and the expansiveness of the cast to go beyond TV and movies.

Quick description: The story focuses on a bunch of characters and how their paths cross and lives intersect. The story is told non-linearly, jumping back and forth in time and featuring the different viewpoints of the many characters. The majority of the anime is primarily set in the US during the early 1930s, with the major backdrops being a cross country train and a town with many competing mafia gangs and thugs.

One word review: Fun
Although it doesn't have as much of the witty dialogue, it's essentially Pulp Fiction on steroids. There is more (although animated) gore and there are many more characters, from your standard heroes and villains to comic relief, antiheroes, and just plain psychopaths. It's a chaotic ride, but it's gripping, and while the story jumps around for a while, the pieces do fit together at the end.

Other notes:
1. Because of the non-linear nature of the storytelling, I recommend reading an episode summary after watching each episode to make sure you get all the main bits and pieces.
2. I find the opening theme introducing the characters to be pretty catchy and worth watching.
3. Semi-Spoiler, highlight to read: Although there are 16 episodes in all, the core story pretty much ends at episode 13, with the 3 remaining ones more like an epilogue.
4. I tend to watch anime in the original language with subtitles if possible. You can watch the entire series for free on Hulu, in both the subtitled version with original Japanese voice acting as well as a version dubbed in English. But because of its mature rating, you need to have a Hulu account. If you can't be bothered to create a Hulu account, you can also watch the entire subtitled version for free on Youtube.

Enjoy! Please watch and let me know what you think!

HBO Game of Thrones The Exhibition, NYC (tv, entertainment, rambling)

Game of Thrones: The Exhibition made the second stop of its five-city international tour in New York City over Easter weekend. Lines ranged from 1/3 to 1/2 an avenue block long.

In NYC, HBO partnered with Time Warner Cable, allowing special access to Time Warner Cable customers. While I'm very happy Time Warner Cable helped me avoid the long line, they didn't exactly do a great job of handling the logistics. On the first day of the exhibition, time warner cable customers were allowed to just go right into the exhibit. Soon, they realized there were too many people, and began scheduling specific times for TWC customers to enter the exhibit. Only they never told anyone that you now had to register, and many disappointed people were turned away. Not only that, you could only register a spot on the scheduled list ahead of time in person, which meant that you had to take two trips there to get in. Ok, enough ranting about Time Warner Cable for now.


The story begins in the North, and that is where we will begin as well. The left pic features costumes from Winterfell while the right pic features costumes from The Wall. The costumes really are quite stunning in terms of the extraordinary amount of detail, and how they were able to bring the books to life through them. However, I assume that the actors all had lots of thermal underwear on underneath as these did not seem to be warm enough outfits for the cold tundra that was captured on film.


Next up are costumes from King's Landing. The Tyrion outfit looked a lot taller than I would have thought, especially next to Jaime Lannister's armor. I looked it up and it turns out Peter Dinklage is 4'5", taller than I originally thought, while Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is indeed an impressive 6'2". The one item that caught my eye immediately however, was Cersei's outfit. I did not know she was so slender and couldn't imagine her fitting into how thin that looked. Lena Headey must have an amazing figure.


With a little more meat on her bones, but no less attractive, is Emilia Clarke. The actress plays Daenerys Targaryen, more popularly known as just Khaleesi. In the Targaryen section of the exhibit, they had her costumes as well as the actual-sized prop of one of her dragons. Actual-sized with respect to the third season. It appears those things grow pretty quickly!


Also on display were fairly detailed maps. Maps are super important for the fantasy reader in being able to visualize the novel. I think the map on the left was actually used by one of the characters on the show for war strategy planning.


Also of importance to fans of fantasy, whether through books, tv, movies, or RPG games, are the weapons. The main disappointment here was Robert Baratheon's war hammer (leftmost on the right pic). I thought it would be this humongous smashing weapon. Before he got fat from all the eating and drinking and whoring, Robert Baratheon was supposed to be a powerful and intimidating goliath with this war hammer.


There were also a range of other props, or artifacts. Again, the attention to detail is marvelous, including the letter that Eddard Stark wrote to Stannis Baratheon informing him that he's the rightful heir.


My favorite props from the exhibit, however, included the stuff from Qarth in the left pic as well as the prop in the right pic. The intricacies stand out, as Qarth was supposed to be a great trading city of vast wealth. Have you found the prop in the right pic yet? It's Ned Stark's chopped off head!

There were two interactive experiences at the exhibition that fans could participate in. One was to get a picture taken sitting atop the Iron Throne. The other was to play this game where you pretended to be archers in the Battle of the Blackwater, wielding huge bows. It was actually pretty interesting, except that (another logistical failure?) the person in charge of the line to play didn't make it clear that you were supposed to be aiming for the green stuff (to spread the wildfire) and not trying to actually hit the ships. Or maybe they were just expecting the real diehard fans to know.

Anyway, it's a fun exhibit and a great way to showcase all that went into this amazing show.

Thank Goodness for DVR! (tv, entertainment)

Opening day of the MLB season came and went, but what I'm really excited about is the new TV season. I'm especially interested in the upcoming season of AMC's Mad Men. I bought the first season on iTunes long ago and watched the whole second season on AMC when they did a marathon right before the start of the third season. I've been watching ever since. I still think the first season was the best one, much darker in tone and more emotional. While I don't think it'll reach the depths of the first season, the show has gotten darker again the last two seasons. The writing continues to be superb, and I'm fully invested in these characters at this point.

Another series I'm excited about is the third season of HBO's Game of Thrones, but I'm most likely going to wait until the entire season finishes and then binge watch it on demand. One show that I do watch every week is ABC's Castle, which just aired its 100th episode yesterday. It is not an epic television show like the ones mentioned above, but it is whimsical and entertaining. Of the network detective fiction/police procedurals out there, it's the one that most focuses on having fun with its characters and pop culture themes. Over 100 episodes, they've covered zombies, vampires, mummies, voodoo, steampunk, spy thriller, phone sex, S&M clubs, pickup artists, sci-fi conventions, late night TV wars, and many other themes that come up in pockets of pop culture. Yesterday's 100th episode was a delightful homage to Hitchcock's "Rear Window".

The show is not without its flaws, one of the most cited being how it's a continuous parade of red herring suspects until new information comes to light in the penultimate segment. But isn't that how most procedurals work? Knowing that the patient must go into cardiac arrest before Dr. House comes up with the correct diagnosis off some passing comment near the end of the hour didn't detract from my enjoyment of Fox's House(M.D.), which was one of my favorite shows for quite a while. Even the acclaimed Agatha Christie's mysteries were full of deus ex machina back in the day.

The show that I am most excited about this season, however, is BBC's Dr Who. It's the best remaining sci-fi series on TV in my opinion, and a great family show. It has its flaws too, often magnified by the scrutiny of its sci-fi fanbase, but the writing can be very clever at times. It's actually the 50th(!!!) anniversary of Dr Who this year, and I'm very excited about what they will do this season in celebration of such a milestone. Yet... I didn't even know the new season started until it popped up on my DVR! Thank goodness for DVR!

Recent Interesting Articles About Food Part 2 (food, rambling, economics/politics, entertainment, tv)

There were a couple of very interesting articles about food in mainstream media recently. I wanted to share them with everyone because they are thoughtful, interesting reads. I'm also going to offer up my opinions on certain points discussed in the articles because this is Rambling$ and Gambling$ after all and I haven't done any rambling in a while.

This second article is from Grantland on the state of food TV. For Part 1 click here.

It was no longer enough to...instruct. The new goal was to entertain.

Another example of this way of mixing instructing/entertaining that has proven successful is Jim Cramer on CNBC. I think it says more about the way people consume media than about food TV itself.

And so the TV part of the equation began to outweigh the food. Legit cooks...went out the door.

While this is true, the Food Network did spin off the Cooking Channel. There may be no more new episodes of "Good Eats", but you can find reruns, along with new shows that still actually teach cooking, on the Cooking Channel. While I might agree with the conclusion, I don't think it's fair to focus exclusively on the one Food Network channel.

Bourdain was...a thoroughly undistinguished line cook lifer

I'm pretty sure this is just plain wrong. I did read Kitchen Confidential, and I remember he was already executive chef when he wrote it. This just sounds like what someone who watches too much Top Chef would say. They think all real chefs are these endlessly creative artist types. Every real restaurant kitchen has line cooks, and actually running a successful kitchen is a legitimate big deal, especially for a place that did as many covers as Les Halles.

Look, it's perfectly fine for Bourdain to cash in

Yes it is, although my belief is that this happened well before The Taste. The last couple of seasons of No Reservations and The Layover show focused way more on already-known critical darlings than the earlier seasons.

Slumming alongside Bourdain as judges/mentors are Ludo Lefebvre, an actually gifted French chef....

I actually did not like Ludo when he first appeared on Top Chef Masters. I thought he was playing a character. But I think he's rediscovered his passion for food and has won me over, especially with his appearance on the Burgundy episode of No Reservations. I do watch The Taste (it's an easy show to have on in the background), and he's the only guy on there whose taste I trust even a bit. I think Bourdain's taste buds have been killed off by the all the alcohol he's drank over the years.

Bourdain's Rolodex is put to good use, too, as a dazzling assortment of legitimate geniuses, from Gabrielle Hamilton to David Kinch....

Those are some nice names, but did you know that "Master Chef", the Fox show about HOME COOKS, once featured Guy Savoy, Alain Ducasse, and Daniel Boulud as judges? That's a combined 33 Michelin stars. (Recent review of Boulud's restaurant Daniel here)

The main takeaway here is that amateurism just isn't all that interesting.

That to me was the best part of the article and my main takeaway as well. Unfortunately, he then loses me when he heaps praise onto Chopped and Top Chef. While the contestants on Top Chef do tend to be stronger as a whole than other shows, let's not get too carried away. There's a reason that every fcking season someone gets reprimanded for not seasoning their food. As for Chopped, I'm just not a fan of the whole food challenge thing. It goes back to this focus on chefs as artists, and forgets about chefs running a restaurant and feeding people. Even though Fox focuses too much on the whole cursing Gordon Ramsay schtick, both Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares do illustrate what it's like to run a kitchen professionally. The BBC versions of these programs, where the Ramsay character is dialed down a bunch, are very watchable.

Again, I think this article speaks more to how people (Americans in general) consume TV media than specifically to the state of food TV.

Anime Recommendation: Death Note (entertainment, tv, manga/anime)

There's really not much to keep us entertained at this time of the year. It's still too cold to go out, the NFL season is over, February sweeps is almost over, March Madness hasn't begun, and MLB spring training is just barely getting underway. I'm not sure who's getting ready to watch the World Baseball Classic, and the NHL and NBA are in the middle of their grind of a season. I mean, this is exactly why Vince McMahon created the XFL right?

So I'm going to recommend an anime for the coming weekend. For those unfamiliar with anime (Japanese animation movie/series), it's a terrific entertainment medium filled with a variety of genres and amazing stories. I know every one of you loved Toy Story 3, so don't use the fact that it's animated as an excuse.

A few points as to my criteria for choosing this and (future) recommendation(s):
1. Something that is easy for newcomers to get into. Minimal self-referencing and tropes.
2. Something that is easily accessible, available in its entirety on Youtube, Amazon Prime, or Hulu.
3. Something that can be finished over the course of a binge weekend or three. Not something with 150 episodes.
4. Something recent, within the last decade or so.
5. Entertaining. You may or may not feel like you want to recommend it to everyone you know, but you won't feel like you wasted your time watching it.

My guess is I'm mostly recommending this to people who are new to anime, so it's kind of fitting that I chose Death Note as my first recommendation. It is one of the most popular animes of the past decade, helped by the fact that it was actually broadcasted on Adult Swim in the US. The original material was manga (Japanese comics), but in addition to the anime version, they also made a live-action movie of it in Japan. That's how popular it is.

Quick description: Genius high school student finds a shinigami's (think grim reaper) notebook which allows him to control people's deaths. There are moral issues at play, but the real meat of the story is the cat-and-mouse game between the student and the genius detective out to stop him from using the notebook.

One word review: Smart
Much of what goes on is explained through voice-overs from the main characters. Think of it like Dexter. The thought process is deep and detailed, and really, really smart. It makes you want to follow what happens next as they go back and forth. In many ways the series is comparable to the first season of Dexter. The ability to go through the thought processes of both sides will also be familiar to fans of The Wire. I was hooked on The Wire about 3 episodes in. I was hooked on Death Note by the end of the second (half-hour) episode.

Other notes:
1. Death Note is technically a shonen manga, meaning teen/young adult. Think of it like Harry Potter. Adults will find it enjoyable, but this explains why the main characters are so young.
2. The opening and closing theme songs are important parts of the production of an anime. I personally did not enjoy the opening theme that much in terms of how it matched with the tone I wanted from the anime.
3. Semi-Spoiler, highlight to read: Although there are 37 episodes in all, in episode 26 there is a plot device such that I would tend to consider the episodes from there on out to be like a season two or a sequel, and I believe that that is the best mindset with which to watch those episodes.
4. When I first watched it, I watched the English dubbed version on Youtube. The distribution company has since asserted its copyright and you have to pay to watch the episodes on Youtube. You can watch the entire series for free on Hulu, but it will be the subtitled version with original Japanese voice acting. Embedded below is episode 1:



Enjoy! Please watch and let me know what you think!

ESPN Films: Charismatic (entertainment, horseracing, tv)

I've been a fan of almost all of the documentaries in ESPN Films' 30 for 30 series. While the 30th anniversary has passed, ESPN continues to release documentaries that had originally been planned, and they continue to be of extremely high quality.

"Charismatic" is the story of both the horse and its jockey, Chris Antley. Chris Antley was an extremely talented jockey who had battled substance abuse throughout his career. The kind of talent that is now completely gone from American horse racing in my view. I especially remember Chris Antley, as his first Kentucky Derby win aboard Strike The Gold was the first Derby winner I ever picked. Charismatic was an underachieving horse that became one of the biggest upset winners of the Kentucky Derby, and had a chance at the Triple Crown before breaking down in the final furlong of the Belmont.

Like most of the 30 for 30 documentaries, the subject matter transcends sports and is a human interest story that delves into real human drama. It was directed by Steven Michaels, son of legendary sportscaster Al Michaels. I highly recommend it, and you can watch it on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVY9M3Gyfmo

While we're at it, here's my favorite race call ever, featuring an exciting finish between two legends in turf racing and a roaring crowd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sfUKPLowpM

A Little Time Off (tv, movies, entertainment, food)

It might seem counterintuitive that someone who doesn't have a job needs a little time off, but between going to the gym to kill time, the job searching, and constantly hearing nothing, the stress adds up almost as much as back when I was trading. So I took a couple of weeks off from the gym, watched some TV, movies, and did some non-diet eating.

Besides February sweeps, I managed to watch all of the past season of Dexter on demand. I thought it was an okay season. I think the best seasons were when it was all about perfect execution and not this dealing with and teaching amateurs stuff. I think Dexter plays to the level of his competition and if they forgot about Lumen and focused on strengthening the Jordan Chase character the season could've been better.

I also managed to catch a couple of movies for the first time in a long time. The Fighter was extremely good. I tend to like good boxing movies in general, but this was much more than that. If they had decided to cover the Ward-Gatti fights as well I would have been happy to sit there and watch for two more hours.

While waiting to catch another full movie, I saw about half an hour of The Black Swan, and I really enjoyed it. I think I definitely have to catch the whole thing. Aronofsky's vision and direction looked terrific and I'm a big fan of The Wrestler. I'm also a fan of the Japanese anime Perfect Blue, which bears some similarity to The Black Swan, and the rights to which Aronofsky bought.

Based on a recommendation from my friend BL, I saw Cedar Rapids and enjoyed it very much. It's an enjoyable, entertaining film, the kind where I doubt anyone would think that they wasted their time after watching it. It had a good mix of jokes, wasn't too over the top, and had good characters played well by a quality cast.

Then there was food. The same friend, BL, has been talking up the burger at J G Melon for a long time, and I finally got a chance to try it out. It was indeed magnificent.

The bacon cheeseburger with sauteed onions. An interesting patty size that is between a Shake Shack burger and a pub burger. The bacon was crispy, the cheese was melted, and there was a plenty of good beef flavor and a good griddled crust. This was a winner.

A glorious cross section shot after one bite. Notice the loosely packed meat there. The only thing is that they tend to cook slightly over requested, so my medium rare showed more signs of medium. I probably should order it rare next time.

Cottage fries, which are just regular fries but cut like pickle slices. Increases the fried surface area and was pretty good. They also have a signature drink here called the bloody bull which I did not try. It's essentially a bloody mary with beef broth added in.

Jackson Diner is pretty famous as an Indian restaurant in NYC. It used to be one of the most highly recommended Indian restaurants, but in recent years has received many more reviews expressing disappointment. They recently opened a branch in Manhattan, but I'm not going to go there when the Jackson Heights location is so close to where I live. Their lunch buffet is slightly more expensive ($10) than other nearby Indian places, but I found the quality of the food to be better, and they also had this as part of the buffet:

Freshly made masala dosa stuffed with a nicely spiced potato and onion mix.

Oh well, back to the gym and trying to find a job.

Boardwalk Empire on HBO (tv, entertainment)

One of the most hyped shows of the year was HBO's Boardwalk Empire, with Martin Scorsese at the helm. With my newfound free time, I set about watching it on HBO On Demand and plowed through it pretty quickly. I did find it an enjoyable series, and here are my somewhat scattered thoughts on the show.

First, it is a stunning period piece to watch. The sets, the costumes, everything looked great. I wish I had watched it in HD instead of On Demand. Scorsese definitely had a vision for what his 1920's Boardwalk would look like and he delivered it well. The story, on the other hand, I found muddled at times. There were too many characters and too many subplots to go through. Many of the characters were too underdeveloped to keep my interest, as opposed to a show like The Wire. The pilot was especially confusing. I had to go online and figure out who was who and what roles they played. I wasn't alone either, as the TV blogger that I looked up had the same problem!

That brings me to my view that in the modern age, television has become all about the writers while movies continue to be all about the directors. Scorsese, being the headlining name, did bring quite a vision to how the show looked and felt, but the writing was just not engaging enough. I felt that the female actors as a whole were better than the male actors, but there were just too many things going on for anyone to really stand out.

This leads me to my explanation as to why Steve Buscemi was cast as the lead. Buscemi was always one of those actors who did very well with his roles, but had never really carried a project. Some people even mentioned the fact that the real life inspiration for his character was a bear of a man, very different from Buscemi's thin appearance. My guess is that they felt they had all these stories they wanted to tell, and while the lead character is the guy who greases the wheels and sets everything in motion, they didn't want the show to revolve around him. Let's compare this to The Sopranos for example. While most of the actors did well on that show with their storylines, everything revolved around James Gandolfini's larger than life Tony Soprano character.

The lack of focus definitely hurt the show in the beginning, as it took until at least the third episode for things to settle in and some people had already given up on the show by then. Once settled in, I did find the show to be entertaining enough to go right through the season. If I had HBO and it was on, I'd watch it. However, I don't think it's one of those shows that people should get HBO just to watch, as opposed to The Wire, The Sopranos, or for some, The Pacific.

The Wired Popup Store (entertainment)

After watching a quick segment on G4TV's Attack of the Show describing the store, I decided I had to go see it for myself. The Wired store is full of cool, interesting new gadgets and gizmos. From 3D TV stuff, home videoconferencing through HDTVs, sumo robots, to compost toilets, there's a wide range of interesting stuff "wired" into the newest technology. There's also complimentary Arizona iced teas in their refrigerators, but I didn't partake. It's a great way to kill a half hour or more looking through the stuff on all three levels. But hurry, as they will only be there through December 26th (hence popup store), and they're closed on the 25th.

Here's the AOTS feature in case you need more convincing to go take a look: http://g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/exclusives/73172/WIRED-Store-Adventures-with-Diana-Falzone.html

Top Chef All-Stars: New York's Finest (food, tv, entertainment)

I don't usually watch Top Chef. When I watch reality cooking shows, I tend to look for shows that deal more with the craft of cooking or the business of running a restaurant, such as Hell's Kitchen or Last Restaurant Standing. I've also watched Top Chef Masters, because everyone on there has already honed their craft. What I do not like is watching a bunch of wannabe artists who do not have all the basics down. However, this episode was titled "New York's Finest" and featured four famous New York chefs, so it drew me in. My first impression was that this being the Top Chef "All Stars", the contestants' skills are much more developed than I would expect of a normal Top Chef cast. That might be enough to sway me into watching the rest of the season.

The show featured four very different high end New York restaurants and the competing chefs were asked to draw inspirations from a meal at the specific restaurant they were assigned to. You can watch the show for how the competition went, but I want to share a few thoughts on the four restaurants that were featured.

Ma Peche
The midtown outpost of the Momofuku Empire focuses on French-Vietnamese inspired cuisine. I have never been to the restaurant since it finally opened, but did stop by a few times when the kitchen was serving lunch in the mezzanine of the adjoining hotel. There is clearly talent in the kitchen and when my body and wallet are up to it, I'd definitely like to give their version of beef 7 ways a try.

David Burke Townhouse
I used to go to this restaurant a fair amount back when it was David Burke and Donatella. They serve solid food with a whimsical twist in a fancy setting at a very good value. David Burke was probably the first celebrity chef whose food was strictly what is known as New American or Contemporary American. I remember the first I'd heard of him was when he was on an episode of Master Class at Johnson and Wales (PBS) demonstrating his cheesecake lollipops. His food is very playful, but classically grounded. One of my favorite dishes there is the cavatelli with wild mushrooms and mushroom chips (with beef short rib for dinner, as is for lunch).

Marea
My second favorite restaurant of 2009, and yet I didn't go there even once this year. Just amazing seafood and pasta. Michael White has certainly gotten himself noticed and opened two more restaurants this year. If I find suitable work again, I will go back for the branzino.

WD50
I did have a terrific meal there back in October and I'm hoping to get around to writing about it before the end of the year. An amazing display of artistry and craft that was not only whimsical, but practical in how it elevated the tastes and textures.

Hong Kong Trip: The not-in-Hong Kong part (food, entertainment, HKFall10)

The 15 hour direct flight to Hong Kong is a big deal in itself, so there's a lot to say just about getting there and back.

Let's start with the terminal at JFK where I was boarding the plane. There's a really good food selection, with a Todd English sit down restaurant, a Wolfgang Puck Express, a McDonald's, a Balducci's, and a place that had Ciao Bella gelato. So what did I choose? McDonald's, of course. The ribwich was back! It was ok, not as good as I remember from when I was a kid, but I had to try it.

My flight was on Cathay Pacific, but I booked it as an American Airlines flight and it came out cheaper. Cathay Pacific always gave me the impression that it was a superior airline than most US airlines in most areas, but I don't know that my experience reflected that. Here's a look at what one of the meals looked like. It was pretty ordinary.


The seat backs don't recline, but rather the seat slides forward for those who don't want to sit upright. It was still pretty cramped and after 15 straight hours, my tailbone was hurting.

The entertainment selection was quite good though, and I saw a total of 9(!) movies combined on the two flights, as well as a couple of local tv shows. Here are my views on those movies.

Inception
It really was as good as everyone said it was, but I don't think it was as complicated as some made it out to be. I thought they did a good job of explaining the multiple levels as well as every part of the design and the roles of each of the team members. The action sequences were good and everything fit together smoothly. A must-watch movie that we will probably still talk about in a few years.

Sherlock Holmes
On the other hand, a lot of the action sequences in this movie felt contrived and unnecessary. Rachel McAdams was horrible and had no chemistry with Robert Downey Jr. It wasn't a horrible movie, but there was nothing particularly appealing about it either for me.

500 Days of Summer
I liked the idea of this movie more than the execution. The random artsy stuff was not for me. For similar movies, I actually think Suburban Girl (with Alec Baldwin and Sarah Michelle Gellar) and the Hong Kong movie Twelve Nights (2000) are more effective.

Get Him to the Greek
Furry walls. While most of it was predictable, this was still an entertaining and fun adventure. I liked watching Rose Byrne and Elizabeth Moss on the big screen, and Russell Brand is just weird. He did a pretty funny interview on Conan last week.

The A-Team
Another movie that was entertaining as long as you didn't expect too much from it. Lots of over the top, unrealistic action, and it excelled whenever it didn't take itself too seriously with the plot or the characters.

Despicable Me
Despite the massive ad campaigns and the long list of celebrity names on the cast, I found it just ok. I mean, it's really cute and a good kids movie, but that's about it.

Toy Story 3
This movie, on the other hand, I thought was superb. I hadn't watched the previous two but I don't think it affected how much I enjoyed this movie. Characters were fully developed and there was a lot of attention to detail. It wasn't just telling a story, but rather it was a fun, entertaining, adventure that triggered every emotion.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time
Again, the plot wasn't great, but this wasn't a bad movie. I liked the fighting sequences with the assassins. The female lead was hot but I found her accent quite annoying. And when was the last time Ben Kingsley was in anything good or actually had a good part?

Movies I didn't watch
I saw that people around me were watching the Ip Man prequel and sequel. The wushu choreography looked really good, but I didn't think I could stomach the plot in a whole movie, so I didn't watch either. I was also surprised that people were watching Summer Holiday (夏日的麽麽茶) considering how old that movie is.

Going to Hong Kong (life, food, entertainment)

Going to Hong Kong for about two weeks to visit family and attend wedding banquets as two of my cousins got married recently. When I come back, I will probably be working really hard trying to find a new job. But, I should find some time to post some more food reviews with pictures, including food in Hong Kong and my dinner last week at WD50. If I forget to post something by late November, happy Thanksgiving to all!

What Gets You Off? (poker, gambling, entertainment)

Now that I've been starting to play a lot more online poker again, and even doing some SnG grinding, I think I might write a couple more poker blog posts than before. As evidence of the hours of grinding I've been putting in, if I continue to play at the current rate I will make supernova on pokerstars just from July to the end of the year. Because of this, I've added a new "poker" label to the post labels so you can search for just poker-related stuff. Going back, I didn't realize I had written a bunch of stuff on poker on here before.

Most of us aren't professional poker players. Even if we have above average skill and are probably +EV players in the long run, we don't grind out the long run. We play an occasional cash game, an occasional tournament. We expect to do well, but often times just end up cursing out the bad beat we just took. Because we play for fun, I think we should figure out what maximizes our fun, and that might actually in turn maximize our profits.

So what gets you off when playing poker? Do you like to steal a lot of pots? Do you like to make big bluffs? Do you like tricking people into bluffing you? Do you like taking down a big starting hand with a bad starting hand? Do you like playing down the middle because you're one of those sticklers for rules and high card points (bridge pun)? Do you like to make the hero call? Or do you like to make the hero fold?

I believe that knowing what maximizes your enjoyment of the game and then choosing the right game situation for that will lead to more fun and more profits. If you want to steal pots, you should look for a table of nits. If you like to take down big starting hands, you should play deep stacked. Phil Hellmuth, for example, likes to get people to bluff into him and likes making the hero fold (masochist). But he'll frequently play online in a limit holdem game that just doesn't work out numbers-wise for that type of play.

So for the amateurs out there like me who are skilled but prefer to play for fun instead of grinding it out, I would recommend you look inside yourself and figure out what you're getting out of your poker. And if your tendencies turn out to be masochistic in nature, at least it's better to know it.

Another thing that's added to my enjoyment of poker is putting poker on tv while I play. Doesn't matter if it's high stakes, wsop, poker after dark, or the big game. I find that poker is a good thing to put on in the background to balance my concentration. And even if I do start paying attention to the tv a little more, it's ok because it still keeps me in the mindset of playing poker. I wonder if this is useful for other things as well. Perhaps having the food network on when cooking, or the DIY network when building something, or porn while having sex.

Quick Thoughts, First Night in Vegas (VegasSummer10, food, sport, stock/trading, entertainment)

Quick thoughts and an interesting encounter.

Was in a ridiculous line to get through security while at the Delta terminal for my flight. The line went out the terminal and almost ran out of sidewalk. People had to be continuously expedited through the line to make their flights.

Cliff Lee is ridiculously good, but I understand that the Yankees already have two top left handed arms. This move, however, makes Texas a very very strong team, now that they have a real anchor in the staff who could win 2 games every playoff series by himself. Great move by Texas, and it looks like the Yankees did what they could, but it wasn't worth any more than what they offered.

Thoughts on the whole Lebron thing and the NBA in a future post.

So on the flight over, there was a pretty hot woman in the aisle seat. Looked vaguely familiar, but couldn't put a name to her. Then she started talking to the guy in the middle seat, and she mentioned that she was a former pole dancing competitor, but more importantly, is the wife of Kenneth Starr, the alleged ponzi schemer. Oh, the people one meets from NYC to LV. She was pretty down to earth though.

One of the entertainment options on Delta was a trivia game. The cool thing was that you competed against other passengers on the plane. Nobody talked trash, but we did look over to see who the other players were. It's a good way to pass time since your brain is engaged and so you don't feel the passage of time as much.

One flight attendant spilled a little soda on my pants while handling a credit card transaction (with a cup of coke in her other hand) and did not come back to offer even a napkin. This and the long line at the terminal are obviously signs for why US airlines are just all doomed.

Lots of quality here, and even on the plane over. Some of the hottest Chinese girls I've seen in a long time.

Introduced my friend BM to Pai Gow Tiles. It's not the easiest game to learn, but we had a fun dealer and a great time.

Ate at the Bellagio buffet. Pictures to come.

Looking foward to the World Cup final. Seems like the classic confrontation of the best team (Spain, pre-tourney favs, European champs) against the hottest team (The Netherlands haven't lost a single World Cup match or even one of the qualifying matches).

I'm actually tempted to play some online poker right now. Such a junkie.

More Random Thoughts (entertainment, sports, tv, food)

This is what happens when I'm stuck at home (to watch the NCAA) over a long weekend. Lots of random thoughts.

Since The Lord of the Rings trilogy, there have been quite a few large-scale fantasy adventure movies. However, none of them have really been very good. Harry Potter is consistent but not breath-taking. The Chronicles of Narnia are just bleh. Pirates of the Carribean got worse and worse. So my vote for the best fantasy movie series since LOTR has never actually been in theaters. It is the God of War trilogy. Yes GOW is a video game, and it is completely animated. It also is not child-friendly because of its over-the-top gore and nudity. But the story is actually quite good and the visual effects are quite stunning. Someone finally put all the GOW3 cut scenes into a movie and it is definitely worth watching.

Also worth watching this year has been 60 Minutes. Maybe I'm just getting old, but the interviews this year have been very entertaining. Beyonce, Andre Agassi, Michael Lewis, Mikhail Prokhorov, etc. are all people I actually want to hear about. They also do a pretty good job when they report on medical discoveries. I don't care at all for Andy Rooney, but the main point is that every once in a while, 60 Minutes does come up with a can't-miss interview of someone really interesting.

Playing Bo Jackson on the old Tecmo Bowl or Tecmo Super Bowl (using a NES emulator online) is like watching the end scene of a Benny Hill episode. See here.

So I was eating my McDonald's Filet-o-Fish (hard to beat 2 for $3) and noticed on the box that they emphasized sustainable fish. Except that there's a little problem. McD's used to use cod, until cod catches declined and they needed to move on. Then they used hoki, and continue to use hoki, although they lowered its use as there began a decline of New Zealand hoki fishery sustainability. So they moved on to Alaskan pollock a few years ago, but now the catch numbers of that fish have declined as well. Anyone notice a pattern here? (information from wikipedia)

This is also a completely different problem from species such as chilean seabass, bluefin tuna, and shark (shark's fin), where they are endangered because of the high prices for them. I'm worried that we are going to approach a point of saturation. One where "normal" consumption habits of an overpopulated world would put too much stress on wildlife regeneration.

This problem will also spread to farmed fish. Cows that are not fed grass. Chicken feed that noone probably ever wants to know the underlying ingredients of. Fish need to eat protein too, and if fishing for smaller fish such as sardines also becomes unsustainable, we might see fish fed with chicken feed in the near future, if not already.