Here I am waiting for my Audi to pull up. This was a great event. We got to drive these fancy shmancy luxury cars around the streets of WeHo. It was too bad there was a motorcycle cop on Santa Monica Blvd just itching to pull one of us over. It was still cool driving around feeling like a million bucks. There was also some yummy food provided by Wolfgang Pucks. I wish I GTA'd one of these Audis. They're tight! 

Sarah and I went to the Audi car show this past Saturday at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. We drove the new Q7 SUV, the A6, A8, and the kick-ass 420 hp RS4. I've driven the A4 at another event before. The line up also included the A3 and TT (which I affectionately refer to as the "Titty"). This show was about introducing Audi's new SUV, the Q7. They had the Lexus GX 470 and the BMW X5. The Q7 was a very nice luxury SUV. It handled extremely well and has the biggest sunroof I've ever seen in a car. However, with gas prices reaching $4 per gallon and rising these days, one has to wonder whether Audi is too late of an arrival in the SUV craze.  

Bambi 2 

Bambi II

I saw this movie at Mikey's (Sarah's nephew's) 4th birthday party this past Sunday. It's a cute movie for little kids. The animation is colorful and beautiful to look at. I just don't recommend this movie to anyone over double digits in years since it really doesn't have anything to appeal to them, unless they are watching it with their own kids.

The movie is a direct sequel to the original Bambi movie.

A bit of trivia: This movie breaks the record of the longest interval between a sequel and it's predecessor, previously held by The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Return to Oz (1985). Bambi (1942) was released in 1942, "Bambi II" in 2006, 64 years later.

Plot: It's the first day of spring. The Groundhog doesn't see his shadow so he officially declares it Spring. After Bambi's mother's death, his dad, the Great Prince of the Forest, raises him. At first, the Great Prince is a little annoyed at his son's rambunctious nature. He thinks of him as merely a nuisance.

Bambi tries really hard to please his dad, but he's a bumbling woosy. He gets picked on by his old archenemy, Ronno, who is a bully, but a coward at heart. He makes fun of him for having a girl's name, --a name particularly popular with blonde bimbos. Faline, is the ingenue, who plays Bambi's love interest. Ronno is jealous and wants pretty Faline for himself.

Bambi's old buddies, Thumper the Rabbit and Flower the Skunk, try to help him impress his dad. Bambi gets confused by Man's evil whistle that makes Bambi think his mom is calling him. He freezes like a "deer in a headlight" when the Hunter's vicious dogs come charging after him. The Great Prince has to come and save his ass. Afterwords, his dad scolds him for not running when being told to run.

Bambi then challenges a porcupine when he tries to cross a log to get to the other side of the stream. He then gets his ass kicked by the porcupine.

Finally, Bambi scores some points with his pop when he jumps over a cliff after running away from Ronno. His pops finally sees Bambi as his son and not just as the heir apparent. They start goofing around as father and son.

One day, Bambi gets chased after the Hunter's sinister dogs again. He climbs on top of the cliffs. His dad tries to save him by clobbering some of the dogs. Flower the Skunk pharts in front of one of the dogs and knocks him out with his stink. When one of the dogs manages to come near Bambi, he kicks the dog off the cliff. Bambi falls as well and the Great Prince thinks he's dead so he cries. But, Bambi's alive and all the forest animals party hard to celebrate.

This movie is strictly for kids. It's great for them. It gets Mikey's seal of approval. Mikey likes it. Not recommended for adults, especially for singles.

The Highs: Bambi lives. Great colorful animation. Cute and innocent storyline.

The Lows: No parodies of other stories like other Disney movies such as Finding Nemo and Shark Tales. So, nothing of interest for older folks.

The Verdict: Bambi and dad. A modern family story of dad's raising their kids. Times have changes since the 40's when mothers were the primary figures who looked after the kids. Where's mommy?

My rating: A for young Children. C for Adults.

Best Buy Swarmed by 80 Pranksters

Click on the link below to see a pretty interesting prank organized by a group called Improv Everywhere. You've got to check out the pictures and videos on their site.

I think most pranks are pretty stupid, but some are funny. This one is definitely interesting because of the sheer number of the pranksters involved. About 80 people gathered together at Best Buy's in New York dressed in blue polo shirts and khaki pants. They were all standing in different spots in the store. They were helpful to other customers but told them that they were not Best Buy employees.

The real Best Buy employees started panicking thinking the pranksters had some dangerous conspiracy planned. I thought it was hilarious when one employee yelled, "The Thomas Crown Affair! The Thomas Crown Affair!" It can also be likened to the scene in V for Vendetta when the mob dressed up all wearing the Guy Fawkes' masks.

I can definitely sympathize with the Best Buy employees who must have been really confused and scared thinking something big was about to happen.

These pranks can turn out to be really bad for the original planners if some crazy guy joins them. It looks like their prank turned out to be okay and they had their laughs. But what if some bad guy who dressed up like them started stealing things or caused a fight or riot? Their prank could have all gotten them arrested for conspiring to commit a crime such as burglary or a riot.

Anyway, it was a good social experiment to see the effects a mob of people all dressed alike can have on another group of people.

Word of the Day

Sylph

Pronounced:(silf)

Noun. A slim, graceful woman or girl.


Eg. I learned this word from my office elevator. I get a lot of news and information from that elevator monitor in the mornings. Anyways, when Sarah and I were at church one day, we were walking down to the children's classrooms with cups of hot tea. We were trying not to spill the tea as we were walking slowly and carefully down the stairs. All of a sudden, this Sylph comes walking down past us with a cup of hot coffee filled to the rim. That sylph was walking in high heels too. We couldn't believe how she could walk so fast without spilling any coffee. It was unreal.

Quote of the Day

"Why is it that when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?" -Unknown.

Daddy, How Was I Born?

A little boy goes to his father and asks "Daddy, how was I born?"

The father answers: "Well son, I guess one day you will need to find out
anyway! Your Mom and I first got together in a chat room on Yahoo. Then I
set up a date via e-mail with your Mom and we met at a cybercafé. We sneaked
into a secluded room, where your mother agreed to a download from my hard
drive. As soon as I was ready to upload, we discovered that neither one of
us had used a firewall, and since it was too late to hit the DELETE button,
nine months later a blessed little Pop-Up appeared and said: You've Got
Male!"

Drive-by Baptisms

Since I became an ordained minister last year, someone suggested that I can perform drive-by baptisms. I can get a water gun and holy water and baptize people as I drive by in my car.

Bless me, reverend

Bless me reverend, for I have sinned. I have been with a woman of questionable virtue.

The reverend asks, “Is that you, Christopher Lee?"

Yes, reverend it is.

And who was the woman you were with?

I can’t tell you, reverend. I don’t want to ruin her reputation.

Well, Chris, I’m sure to find out her name sooner or later, so you might as well tell me now. Was it Cindy Park?

I cannot say.

Was it Grace Lee?

I’ll never tell.

Was it Jennifer Kim?

I’m sorry but I cannot name her.

Was it Susan Oh?

My lips are sealed.

Was it Michelle Choi?

Please, reverend, I cannot tell you.

The minister sighs in frustration. You’re very tight lipped, Chris and I admire that. But you’ve sinned and have to atone. You cannot attend church services for 4 months.

Now you go and behave yourself.

Chris walks back to his seat at church, and his friend Matthew slides over and whispers, “What kind of punishment did the minister give you?”

“Four months vacation and five good leads. . .”

Currency Exchange

An Asian (Chinese) man is trying to exchange Yen for dollars and asks an American
bank teller, "Why it change?"
"Yestoday I get two hunat dollar fo Yen - today I get hunat eighty?"
The bank teller says, "Fluctuations."
The Asian man says, "Fluc you white guys!"

Joke of the Day

What do the Titanic & The Sixth Sense have in common?

"I see dead people."

(Icy dead people)

Quote of the Day

"L'enfer, c'est les autres."

Translation: "Hell is other people."

Jean-Paul Sartre

Funny Chinese Menu Translations

These Engrish translations of Chinese menus are freakin' funny! They're translated by people in China who don't speak any English at all. They just translated the words literally word for word without any context of what they're writing about at all. The results are a riot! Try translating some of your own websites into Alta Vista's Babel Fish at:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn


and you'll understand how these things can happen. I had the Babel Fish translator on my blog for awhile and I took it off because of its retarded translations of my blog from English to Korean.

Also check out:

http://engrish.com/


and

http://community.livejournal.com/engrish/164141.html


They're even funnier!!

You've got to read an anonymous professor's explanation of why they translated the menu that way:

Take #1313, "Benumbed hot vegetables fries fuck silk." It should read "Hot and spicy garlic greens stir-fried with shredded dried tofu." However, the mangled version above is not as mangled as it seems: it's a literal word-by-word translation, with some cases where the translator chose the wrong one of two meanings of a word:

First two characters: "ma la" meaning hot and spicy, but literally "numbingly spicy" -- it means a kind of Sichuan spice that mixes chilies with Sichuan peppercorn or prickly ash. The latter tends to numb the mouth. "Benumbed hot" is a decent, if ungrammatical, literal translation.

Next two: "jiu cai," the top greens of a fragrant-flowering garlic. There's no good English translation, so "vegetables" is just fine.

Next one: "chao," meaning stir-fried, quite reasonably rendered as "fries" (should be "fried," but that's a distinction English makes and Chinese doesn't).

Finally: "gan si" meaning shredded dried tofu, but literally translated as "dry silk." The problem here is that the word "gan" means both "to dry" and "to do," and the latter meaning has come to mean "to fuck." Unfortunately, the recent proliferation of Colloquial English dictionaries in China means people choose the vulgar translation way too often, on the grounds that it's colloquial. Last summer I was in a spiffy modern supermarket in Taiyuan whose dried-foods aisle was helpfully labeled "Assorted Fuck." The word "si" meaning "silk floss" is used in cooking to refer to anything that's been julienned -- very thin pommes frites are sold as "potato silk," for instance. The fact that it's tofu is just understood (sheets of dried tofu shredded into julienne) -- if it were dried anything else it would say so.

You might find these dishes at My Dung restaurant in Monterey Park. I wrote about it in my blog previously:

http://davidmkim.blogspot.com/2005/05/i-took-this-on-52505-on-my-bike-trip.html

Copy and paste the links of the ones where I couldn't insert the links. I don't know why I couldn't insert a link for a couple of the links. I blame stupid Blogger.

How Long Can You Survive?

Check out this game of hand-eye coordination. It kinda reminds me of playing shoot 'em up games like "Raiden" and "1943" where you have to dodge tons of bullets and enemy planes. My personal best so far is about 18.5 seconds. Mike D got over 37 seconds. Let's see how long you can survive. Please post your records in my Comments section. I still can't believe many of friends still don't know how to leave comments on my site. If you don't have a Blogger account, click on "Other" under Profile and leave your name and comment. Click "Publish Comment" and that's it. It's not hard to do, people. Plus, it makes me happy.

Mountain Biking Through Mountain Streams

Free video hosting, video codes at www.vidiLife.com

Here's a quick clip of me riding through the stream in the Gabrielino Trail next to JPL in Pasadena. It was taken by a good mountain biking buddy of mine. This trail is very fun. It's not steep at all for the first couple of miles as you ride through the canyon. It has a nice "woodsy" feel to it even though its not far from the city. The trail crisscrosses the stream several times. You can't be afraid of getting wet when you ride through this trail. That's part of its charm. This trail also leads to Brown Mountain and some other hiking trails. It's also a good place to go hiking with your significant other. If she doesn't want to get wet, then you might have to carry her across the stream. Be careful not to accidentally drop her in the water.

There are a lot of hikers here. Watch out when you're speeding down here on your mountain bikes. Unfortunately, a lot of dog lovers bring their constipated dogs up here to go hiking with them. I wish they brought some doggie bags to clean that $%^& up. The last thing I want to do is ride through dogcrap and have it fling up on to me. Also hypocritical horse riders should bring several manure bags to clean up after their horses. These dang horse riders are trying to stop mountain bikers from riding on trails and yet they leave their horse dung everywhere and totally ruin it for the rest of us. Anyway, be very careful riding down this trail. It's pretty steep. Hui flipped his bike over while zooming down at insane speeds. He's a bigger daredevil than I am. 

Sarah hiking up the trail a couple of weekends ago. I went mountain biking with Hui at the Gabrielino Trails near JPL in Pasadena this past Saturday. I'll try to post up the video of me biking through the stream soon.  

Here's the beginning of the Sam Merrill Trail. It's a fantastic place to go mountain biking. It's pretty dangerous though. 

Here are some more pictures from when Sarah and I hiked up the Sam Merrill Trail on Mt. Lowe in Alta Dena. I want to go mountain biking here again. It offers breathtaking scenic views of Pasadena and beyond. The trails are pretty windy and narrow. There are a lot of extremely tight hairpin switchbacks. One wrong move could spell your doom. There are a lot of hikers for the first mile or so. As you get higher, up around 9 miles, it's deserted. There are some ghost resort cabins up there. It's spooky, because nobody's there. I guess that's why they failed. Nobody goes up there.