September 6th, 2006

Puja
This weekend was the baby shower for the GF's dad's sister's son's wife. These people have names for all their relation-types, unique names that identify older,/younger, male/female, blood/in-law, aunt's/uncle's, dad's side/mom's side, etc. I can't keep any of them straight, of course, since my people stop at "cousin" and all of that "third cousin twice removed" nonsense is just an excuse for ogling them at family reunions without feeling guilty about babies with extra toes. But anyway, there was a baby shower, which was a big family event, and I attended as well, wearing some traditional Indian garb, which was sorta cool.

The first half of the day was a Puja, which is a traditional prayer, involving a Pundit who comes in and involves the mom and dad to-be in ritual involving various icons and sacrificial foods and flowers and blessed water and whatnot. This took a few hours while the rest of us watched. It was not what I would call a solemn affair, as there was much laughter with the Pundit cracking jokes than even I sort of could figure out and now and again even though they where in Hindi.

The second half was everyone going to a party at a rented hall, with baby shower games such as Baby Bingo, Family Feud (answer questions about the parents-to-be) a word scramble, and a game where you're not allowed to say "baby" and if you do you lose your token, and the one who ends up with all the tokens wins. Oh, and there was food, lots of it, oh my god, and surely I am extra special fat now. There was this amazing fried cabbage dish that I had to eat about seventeen pounds of, and gulab jamin fo course, which I surely spelled wrong, I myself don't like gulab jamin, but one of the GF's aunt's suggested I think of it as pancakes dripping with syrup, and lo, I suddenly liked them. Two pounds of that, then, and more.

All told, a long, exhausting, but fun Family Sunday. Let's not have another one for a long time, so I can look forward to it. Wink.

Pair
Me and mine have been to Pair once before, and we liked it very much, and have been eager to go back. So we hooked up with a few of her cousins and went on Friday. This is a tapas place, which for you uneducated slobs means that they serve small dishes for sharing. Yes, that's right. It's restaurant logic. You either get a big plate for yourself or you get a small plate to share. The deal is you order two or three dishes per person, and then eat "family style." The beef brisket was amazing, and too the crabcakes-- I'm no fan of crabcakes, but these where excellent. If she or he is not squeamish about germs, this would be a great date restaurant. Not a wine 'em dine 'em sack 'em and pack 'em type of date, but one of those nice persons you're hoping to spend Sundays with doing the crossword puzzle. I don't know if that's a resounding review or not. I like Pair, guess that's all I can say.

Veronica Mars
We got through the first Season of "Veronica Mars", starring the cute but dentally significant Kristen Bell. This show is sort of what "Twin Peaks" would be without David Lynch, if Bret Easton Ellis wrote it and Aaron Spelling did the editing. The gestalt that LA is populated by rich white existentialistic teenagers has become almost a stereotype by now, and this plays right into it, without any real hint of irony to save face. We're told that at Neptune high, you're either the child of a millionaire, or the child of someone who works for millionaires. That's more or less true for the whole, well, world, isn’t it? Rather than show us this huge gap between the haves and the have-nots, what we end up seeing at Neptune High is the haves and the have-mores.

But we didn't complain about this when we where watching Buffy all those years, so why complain now? Veronica is a "complicated" girl (i.e. moral) who solves local mysteries while investigating the over-arching season-long mystery (season 1: the murder of her best friend). Along the way she reknits old, broken alliances, forges new alliances, helps her dad the private investigator with the filing, and struggles to... well, actually, we don’t get to see much struggling that isn't resolved in 45 minutes at the least.

The supporting cast is pretty good at what they do. One stand-out is Logan, the villain with a vulnerable side, who must, despite his badness, seek Veronica's help now and again only to rebuff or be rebuffed later. Juicy stuff. Then there's her sidekick Wallace, her dads the PI of course, her ex boyfriend, her computer-geek goto girl, the thuggie with a heart of gold, the cartoonishly stern Prinicipal, various interchangeable teachers, the local inept sheriff, and so on.

I imagine most of this stuff writes itself. But the dialogue is tight, almost as fresh as Buffy. Speaking of Buffy, so far in season one we had some appearances by Alyson Hannigan (short hair) and season two had a few episodes with Charisma Carpenter (long hair). Here's to looking forward and hoping more Whedonites show up, cause, I dunno, that gives the show some staying power, if you ask me. Like a serial novel, "Veronica Mars" is a "page-turner," or in the modern sense, a "disc-flipper" in that I find myself pining for the next episode, just to see what happens next.

Weight Watchers
You may have noticed by now that I don't give out all the details when the news is not good, and the news is not good this week: weigh-in last Friday, and me gaining a pound. Sadness. It's not looking good, so far, for next week, either, as this weekend has been all about snarfing the large quantities, and the week after won't be good either, for a variety of reasons. Alas, setbacks. But after that, I'll get hard-core, I promise, and the next 112 weeks should be killer. I hope.

Everything Else
Downloaded Bejeweled 2 for Xbox Arcade, and have been playing that too much. Kickball game on Thursday and we won, 8-3, despite my many errors. Beach Party with smores after that, which was lots-o fun, as we tried Reese's Peanut Butter Cup smores. La Fontaina restaurant last night, very good, minus one star for very slow service. Played Scene It, the DVD board game with some cousins, enjoyed that. We've been watching season 3 of "Monk", so I'll review that later. I finished reading Parliament of Whores by PJ O'Rourke, an entertaining read despite its being 14 years old. Went to Kell's on Friday-- the band was a mediocre and just played mostly 70's covers and a few Irish aires, but not enough. Started a new government called Jasperian at Nation States, the big government sim based on Jennifer Government by Max Barry. That's all. That is everything. Someday I'll find the time and energy to turn my life into an interesting narrative and go all David Sedaris on your asses.