the new awesome

RIP - the New Awesome

2008-05-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

(cue the cheesy music. the really heartbreaking kind)

Is it on? Okay. Continue reading.

The time has come, friends. We have all seen it coming. Bets has been moved out and married for a few months now, and The New Awesome has been sitting here neglected and lonely, a brave little tribute to the good times that we had. It is time to finally lay this little blog to rest, and move on.

It just didn't seem right for either one of us to take TNA on as our own project when we started it together, so we have carved out our own little corners of the internet and moved to blog there instead. Please come visit us - we miss you all.

Bex - Permanently Disco

Bets and Steve - Santos (the family)

If you need to just keep the music on and stare at the photo for awhile, I understand. I did for about 3 hours last night.

coons are the old new awesome

2008-04-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

giving birth to blogs on valentine's day is the new awesome

2008-02-14T17:09:00.000-08:00

Santos the Family.

Sundance-dance-dance is the new awesome

2008-01-29T15:19:00.000-08:00

I was out at Sundance last week for my yearly cinematic adventure. Anyone that follows the fest could probably tell you that there weren't many "wow" movies to brag about going to see this year. And it is a good thing there are so many people I like to hang out with in Utah anyway, because I'm not totally sure how glamorous the Sundance thing turns out to be in the end. Sure, when my friends invite me to go see "Choke" or "Be Kind, Rewind" in a few months, I will get to put on my snobbiest voice and tell them that I already saw the premiere, like, 6 months ago. And then joke will be on me as I sit home alone while they are all off at the movies together.

Of course, half the fun of Sundance is all the famous people milling about, and I see quite a lot of them in the theater where I work. I was tearing tickets at the door of the theater one morning when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and the tapping man said in a hushed tone, "Look, I've got (name of famous guy) here, and we really don't want a lot of picture taking or attention drawn to him. He just wants to come in and watch the movie." I looked behind me, and sure enough - I had just unwittingly torn the ticket of one mildly uncomfortable famous guy. I hadn't even noticed that it was him, and honestly, no one else seemed to be paying him much mind either - certainly not enough attention to warrant asking me to be put under some sort of special theater protection program. All the moviegoers were far too interested in getting good seats to bother standing there fawning over him. I turned back to famous guy's overly concerned handler and told him that we would do what we could if people started bothering him, but that as it stood, he could just go get a seat like everyone else. They both went in to watch the film and I didn't hear from them again. I am not sure which was more funny to me - the idea that someone that famous and recognizable would put themselves in such an obviously public arena like the Sundance Film Festival and expect that they can ask that everyone ignore them ... or to ask that people ignore them when embarrassingly, everyone already is.

Pizzeria 712 is officially the new awesome

2007-12-31T20:31:00.000-08:00

My brother-in-law Joseph and his business partner Colton have done it! They've successfully opened their restaurant in Orem called Pizzeria 712! I've mostly had to hear about all the details from family but I've been able to participate in my own special ways.

Joseph & Colton come to San Francisco in June 2006 to research and Bex and I tag along.

Steve and Betsy conduct their own independent upscale pizzeria research in San Francisco in Spring 2007.

That whole "participation by proxy" thing ended this week when Steve and I were in Utah visiting my family for Christmas. We were lucky enough to have dinner and lunch the following day at Pizzeria 712.

They pride themselves on using local sustainably farmed produce, meats and cheeses whenever possible. If you don't know who Alice Waters is, you should read about her online...this quote of hers is on a large chalkboard inside the restaurant and it sums up Pizzeria 712 very well.

Thursday night Suzy, Steve and I set out for our dinner adventure.

Since Steve and I live in San Francisco and rarely get to visit the restaurant we decided to order lots, try it all and take the leftovers home. We looked over the menu.

For starters they bring you homemade hummus with Joseph's freshly baked pita bread. So delicious. We also ordered the short rib & polenta (one of the best thing I've ever tasted in my life) and the beet salad with homemade ricotta cheese.

They were also running a mac & cheese special...our lucky night.

Speck pizza.

Tomato, mozzarella & basil pizza.

Suzy enjoying the carmelized onion, potato, rosemary and fontina pizza.

To finish our meal we shared the homemade deconstructed s'more.

Colton & Joseph were too busy to talk to us...almost. We cornered them at the counter for a minute to thank them for the fantastic meal and congratulate them on their success.

Since we were staying the night in Provo we figured we better hit up P712 for lunch the next day because the lunch menu includes items (namely panini & soup) that aren't on the dinner menu. Here are some shots of the front of the restaurant...it was WAY too cold the night before to be bothered with picture posing in the freeeezing temps.

We started our lunch with Colton's amazing brocoli soup.

Then Steve ordered the braised beef panini and I ordered the ham, white cheddar and pear mustard panini and we shared.

This is Brian. Brian is also an important part of the P712 crew. Brian keeps things going in the front of the house while Colton & Joseph see to the rest.

Where the magic happens.

We showed up for lunch right before they were closing to prep for dinner so things were slow enough that Steve and I got a lesson in wood burning ovens from the masters themselves.

Congratulations Joseph & Colton for reaching your goal!!! I'm so excited for you both! 2008 will be an amazing year I'm sure. Here is a link to the P712 blog and other interesting/useful info.

DIY Christmas is the new awesome

2007-12-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

I love the holidays because I feel like everyone gets all festive and creative. Especially this year, with so many people pledging to buy handmade gifts and with DIY being such a big thing, I just feel people are trying to keep things from just being all about the commercial aspect.

I have been seeing some great, creative holiday window displays. I LOVE this wreath out of sunglasses:

Or this festive chandelier made of stuff you can find in the hardware store!

And, all the holiday parties I am going to this year seem to be about getting together and making things too. Like the Kessler's annual cookie decorating party. (We even had those contraband cancer causing little silver edible balls to decorate with, so we got creative AND had the thrill of partaking in illegal substances)

Or Tom's birthday/ornament decorating party!

Any party with a table set up that looks like this is going to be my kind of place.

Everyone had a polaroid photo taken of them against this sparkly background when they walked in, and then had to make an ornament for the tree out of it. A fun activity AND such a pretty, personal tree.

So many great ideas!

I cut mine out so that my mouth opens and my photo can sing along convincingly to Christmas carols.

Merry Christmas, ya'll. Or whatev.

Got married is the new awesome

2007-12-11T14:34:00.000-08:00

This is totally old news now but Steve and I got married on November 2nd and we were so lucky to have our good friend Karen Rusten there (with her fabulous assistants Minna & Greg) to capture everything in beautiful photographs.

You can check out all the pictures here. There are a ton so pace yourself. You can view them page by page so it doesn't take as long. They sort of go in the following sequence:

getting ready...
bride & groom...
bride, groom & family...
photobooth...
reception...

So if you want to find pictures of yourself from the photobooth at the reception you can try and jump to them. Enjoy!!!

B.F.F is the new awesome

2007-12-05T00:48:00.000-08:00

Emily and I made a new best friend yesterday:

No big deal. Only one of the most fascinating actors ever. And look how close I am to almost pinching his butt!

We got to interview him about his new film that he will be screening next week at the Castro Theatre, preceeded by his brilliant dramatic reading/BIG SLIDE SHOW. (The interview ought to be on SFist next week). We got to sit on a couch with him and ask about hair fetishes and his unique middle name, but our interview was cut short because he had to catch a plane and I didn't get to ask him all sorts of things that I had planned to.

The thing I think is so funny about Crispie (I can call him that for short, now that we are BFF) is that unlike normal celebrities, no one has a boring old story about seeing him at the mall drinking a smoothie. Everyone always has weird urban legend-like stories that they swear are true, and that generally involve some sort of bizarre behavior or public outburst. I kept waiting for him to try to kick Emily's head off or something. He is almost disapointingly polite in his interviews.

So anyway, now that we are totally BFF and I think he is going to invite Em and I to his castle/sound stage in the Czech Republic, I think there will be plenty of time to ask him if he really DID go to Disneyland with Nicolas Cage while wearing a purple suit like my sister's friend says she saw him do. Or if he really did tell some guy in a Utah thrift store that he hates children's art, like Aaron's friend says. I'll ask him for confirmation on other stories too. Anyone else heard/have any really good urban C.G. rumors/myths?

Spiders are the new awesome

2007-12-04T18:55:00.001-08:00

Steve and I were out walking along the Embarcadero the other day (which is right by our new apartment in SOMA). And where this sculpture use to be...

...is this!!!

Here Steve is being attacked.

Lookalikes are the new awesome

2007-11-19T09:46:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you know real models, and sometimes you just know people that look alot like models. Has that ever happened? You see a billboard or an ad someplace that looks so much like someone you know that you wonder if they are moonlighting as a supermodel behind your back?

Like this ad for Nike?

It looks an awful lot like a certain Jared Lindsay that we know...

And this perfume ad with a boy getting his neck all kissed up?

Looks just like Blake!

(Especially when we pin him down on the sofa and make him recreate the pose in the right light)

But seriously, everyone - you should all stop calling me to ask if it was me in that one swimsuit ad you saw.

Holiday ads are the new awesome

2007-11-15T11:42:00.000-08:00

I was in downtown SF yesterday and saw this larger than life Gap billboard staring back at me and felt all warm and fuzzy inside. I love holidays in the city.

The Big Day is the new awesome

2007-11-06T22:05:00.000-08:00

I got back from Utah almost a week ago and still haven't posted anything about it. I didn't feel too much pressure, since there had already been some great documentation that took place.

Maybe Aaron and I were just too busy making sure the terrorists didn't win?

Okay. Bets probably has a whole camera full of better pictures, but this post will just have to do until she shares them all with us. This is the happy couple right after saying "I Do." Betsy sort of tricked everyone by not having a wedding dress on, so when they sent her out of the temple they didn't even send her out the special bride door. We were all there waiting outside of the door to take photos of her, and she walked up behind us instead.

Afterwords there was a dinner to celebrate, and I got to sit at the cool kids table with all the fun people that had come up from southern california. It was kind of a big deal. There was even a list.

(Which we let Erica add her name to)

There was also a special little ring ceremony.

Jen and Joe gave some marriage advice.

John did a pose that he says he learned on the new awesome.

And Emma offered everyone color coordinated handouts. And just looked pretty.

Who else came? So many friends.

All that practice paid off.

So maybe bets got a honeymoon to Hawaii, but at least I came home from Utah with a new pair of shoes, artisted by the ever-talented damian.

(these are much more stylish than a husband any day)

Congrats to bets and steve! The wedding was lovely.

Halloween is over is the new awesome

2007-11-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

Okay. I know Halloween was yesterday, and we are all totally over it already, but I had to make one last post about costumes. I saw some really good ones this year, and many that made me LOL. (Tyler's LOLcat costume? Oh, brilliant.

I dressed up as Frank Chu, a local SF protester that shows up at all major SF events with his crazy signs and even has a bar named after one of his weird conspiracy theories.

(the real Frank)

But my favorite costume of the evening was Mark's. First he went around the party and secretly posted these signs everywhere on the walls:

And then spent the rest of the night just looking suspicious.
Happy Day After Halloween!

A Very Hairy Birthween is the new awesome

2007-10-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

Some of you may remember that Betsy's birthday - or "birthween" as we like to call it - falls on Halloween and usually means that the parties we throw for her involve people dressing up weird. Since this was my last chance to help throw Bets a party before it turns into Steve's permanent responsiblity, we decided to do it right: A Very Hairy Birthday.

Everyone was instructed to get all dressed up in some hair that wasn't their own. Big wigs. Beautiful bouffants. Twirly mustaches. Hairy Chests. It didn't matter how everyone came dressed as long as they were sporting some sort of hair that Mother Nature didn't bless them with (but that you wish that she had).

We were pretty strict about the hair policy.

I came over to find Bets and Steve dressed like pizza makers in their matching Pizzaria 712 shirts and Mario mustaches.

Then bets changed into a hamster colored mustache that she felt a little more comfortable in, and matched her own coloring a little better.

(Which doubled nicely as sideburns as well).

We had a lot of good hair come through over the course of the evening:

Big hair.

Pink hair.

Perv hair.

Sharpie hair.

Eye hair.

Hot hair.

The wrong kind of mullet hair.

The other wrong kind of mullet hair.

Best from the side hair.

Lopsided hair.

Compensation hair.

Gross hair.

Fear of hair. (Robyn had a tough time at this party)

We also got bets a delish birthween cake and sang to her.

And betsy and steve practiced for next week.

Happy Birthween to all, and to all a good night.

Moving on is the new awesome

2007-10-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

So. Since it appears that bets is serious about this whole wedding thing, I decided that I had better come to terms with it and get myself a new roommate. Her name is Aubrey. She moved in last week, and she is both new and awesome, and I am almost afraid to post about her because I am pretty sure that you will all have superhuman crushes on her. Because I kind of do.

It is always sort of fun living with someone for the first time. Even if you knew them before, when you actually share living space you see sides of them that you never did before. These are a few things that I think that you should know about my new roommate:

* she is a photographer, of the extremely talented variety.

* she doesn't eat animals, but she also doesn't give me dirty looks when i eat bacon.

* she looks really good in stretch pants.

* she has promised to teach me how to drive a stick shift. maybe in the parking lot of Safeway or something.

* she has a little nose piercing, and sometimes i walk into the bathroom and find her sticking some tweezers up there. she says she is just making sure that everything is clean, but i don't know about that.

* she does not believe in social networking sites.

* she wears these pajama shorts to bed that have a big saggy butt and look a little bit like a diaper. (or a lot like a diaper)

* she takes one bite of whatever piece of fruit she is eating, and then puts it back into the fruit bowl.

* she says the word poop whenever she can

You will probably be seeing much more of her, so prepare yourselves.

To Grandmother's House We Go is the new awesome

2007-10-15T11:57:00.001-07:00

I was in Southern California last week helping to clean out my Grandmother's house - the house that she has lived in and that has remained unchanged for the past 40+ years, and that I have been visiting since I was born. It was a move to an assisted living home rather than a funeral that obliged the task, so it wasn't as somber as cleaning out a house could be, but there was certainly still a sense of mourning as I had to go through all the things that my Grammy has collected and loved and treasured for her whole life, and in the space of three days decide what got to be thrown out and what we had room to keep.

However, as you might imagine, there were all sorts of things behind cabinets and other closed doors that a Granddaughter wouldn't usually have reason to find under normal circumstances.

The obligatory handgun in the sash drawer:

The secret stash of booze in the wrapping paper closet:

And the book called Boners on the top shelf of a bunch of old books (actually printed in 1931 and illustrated by Dr.Seuss)

Best of all, though, were the personal items. The love letters that my Grandfather had written her. Old highschool yearbooks. Family portraits. Look at some of these gems:

My Grammy and my Grandpa, back when they were first married. (Check out how good my grandfather looks in a uniform!)
Zowie.
This one of my mother as a little girl making a happy face really killed me. You would be amazed at how many photos she was scowling in. Or maybe you wouldn't. My mom never has much liked getting her photo taken.

See?

My mom might kill me for putting this one up:

But I can make it up to her by putting up one of my own. Looks like nerdy glasses are hereditary.

My parent's wedding:

And of course, lots of baby photos:

I know it was hard for my Grammy to know that we were going through her possessions, and that the way that she has been accustomed to living independently for the past 96 years was changing rather dramatically. But I think it made her happy to know that we found things in her house to remind us of her, and that so many of the things that she had loved were going to stay with people that had loved her and appreciated her beautiful things.

Don't worry, Grammy. This is what I had to take my portion home in (and I could have used a bigger one to hold all the memories):

Missing you is the new awesome

2007-10-11T22:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you decide to get married and it turns your whole world upside down. Not because you're one of those bridezilla kinda brides but because the art of getting married requires lots of change. Some that's fun, some that's scary, most of it stressful and some sad too.

I feel like I've been out of the loop with most of my friends for the past month or two and the funny thing is when I see them, they all say "oh you must be so busy with the wedding!" And each time I have to say "actually no, not really." The wedding planning for me has been great. My mom and my sisters have done just about everything and I get to approve or veto things. It's been the best ever. And since I'm none too particular, it's been pretty easy. You can see pictures of my last trip to Utah including the wedding shower my family threw for me here.

The thing that took up 3 solid weeks of life was finding a new apartment in San Francisco. Steve and I weren't prepared at all for how tough it would be. We thought with our combined income and our stunning good looks we'd have our pick of places. Not so. We quickly realized we were competing with 25 other "Steve & Betsy's" for every $1900/mo. 1 tiny bedroom dump posted on craigslist. It was really discouraging. In the end, with the help of our friends Andy and Emily who were vacating their super sweet, split-level, complete with roof deck style loft in SOMA, we were able to slip right into their place. I'm so thrilled to be living where I'm living now (hello dishwasher, garbage disposal, washer/dryer, guest bathroom!) but that means I moved out of my apartment with Bex two weekends ago and that pretty much makes me want to cry. Thanks to the new awesome our escapades will go down in internet history but it's the things that didn't always make the blog that I'll miss the most...talking about boys and life and jobs and junk while eating nestle refrigerator cookie dough...Bex's incessant watching of Rachael Ray cooking shows...you know, the good times.

Well, the new awesome isn't dead yet so in true new awesome style, I present to you a bunch of pictures! Last Saturday my best girlfriends threw me an amazing shower here in SF at a restaurant called Maverick. Thanks Jules, Kat, Bex, Linds and Court for planning and thanks to everyone else that came. What a great day. I love my friends.

Before the shower Jules, Kat, Bex & Linds took me to a spa in my new neighborhood for a pedicure!

Then we met up with everyone for the most delicious brunch ever.

And a nice game of True Love Bingo!

And presents!

Vanity is the new awesome

2007-10-10T00:33:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I don't have too much against Dave Matthew's Band or their fans, but I saw this plate while visiting my grandma yesterday and had a good laugh. I get what the owner of the car is trying to say on their vanity plate. Rather than a 'DeadHead' they are a 'DMB Head." Just a serious DMB fan. Okay. Do you think that the owner of this car realizes that most of the people when reading their license plate without getting close enough to read the frame are just going to assume that they wanted their plate to read "dumbhead"?

I think vanity plates are a little like tattoos. You see a lot of bad ones and wonder why people paid good money to get them. Moral of the story: Think long and hard about what you are going to have yours say (tattoos or vanity plates), because you probably don't get to change it until you buy a new car or get a new body (or laser surgery).

Fessing up is the new awesome

2007-10-04T09:02:00.000-07:00

So, maybe you have been sitting there at your computer thinking to yourself "those TNA girls sure are getting lazy" or maybe you might wonder if the mob came over and broke our internet fingers or if our computers exploded because we were downloading too many mullet photos. Because, seriously, we haven't been blogging. Well, actually it is a lot less exciting. Things have been kind of going crazy lately with bets' impending wedding and, gulp, mostly with MOVING. That is right. Betsy moved out. Of our apartment. And left me all alone.

Believe me, I am still sort of in shock over it all. For a few days straight, the old lady in a straw hat and i just sat in bet's empty bedroom and stared at eachother sadly in silence.

Then I got up and decided to assess the situation in the apartment. The first thing I noticed was all of the things that I used to use all the time that apparently were not mine. Like, once Betsy took all of her food out, our fridge looked a little sad and lonely. Granted, I had been in Russia for a few weeks, so I hadn't been shopping, but my fridge hasn't been this empty since college. Now the cold empty expanse of the fridge is just a physical metaphor for the current state of my heart.
Also, she took all the spices with her, and just left a few that I had my initials on them. Does it seem strange to anyone else that the only spices that I own are Marjoram and Celery Seed?

Apparently I don't own any pots or pans, either. (Not that it matters, since apparently I don't have any food to cook in them anyway). I have plenty of plates, and silverware, and pretty bowls to display prepared food in. But no pots and pans. So I have had a good excuse to buy all sorts of pretty kitchenware.

I also had to buy a new couch, and new tv, and a new tv table, and some new shoes, and have been painting the living room to try to make my apartment look like normal again.

So, maybe all that explains why we haven't been blogging much, but now we have all these saved up photos to talk about, so I think TNA can get back on track. Maybe bets will even post her photo of October cat, since we are a little overdue there and I think Nathaniel has probably worried himself sick wondering what this month's cat looks like.

Playing catch-up is the new awesome

2007-10-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't even posted actual photos of my trip to Oregon yet, which means we are REALLY behind here at TNA.

I went to Hood River, OR with amber and kim, two of my best friends from way back to my freshman year of college. We got along pretty well all weekend, except for one slight altercation over which mac and cheese to eat - the cheesey packet Velveeta vs powder packet Kraft.

We got over that pretty quickly because we had some serious business to attend to. Pear season! Seriously. Have you guys been taking advantage of all the delicious pears out right now? They are so good right now. And in Hood River they have all these different farms that you can go visit (they call it the Fruit Loop, which is awfully clever) where you drive to all the different farms and pick your own fruit and eat jam (i bought some vanilla pear jam even though it meant i was going to have to check my bags at the airport. i hate checking bags at the airport, so you know that stuff must have been good).

I was excited at the idea of getting to pick my own fruits and things, but I sat on this tractor for, like, hours, and couldn't figure out how to farm pumpkins with it.

Pumpkin fields are better for posing in anyway. Oregon really is lovely.
This was a lavendar farm, and it smelled just as good as it looked.
The bathrooms, unfortunately, didn't smell as good as they looked.

There were also alpaca farms, with alpacas to pet (and buy). We were really excited for this!
OMG. Double excited. They let you buy little cups of food to feed the alpacas.
By this time I am almost peeing my pants with excitement, as kim gets to feed a few pellets to the super soft alpaca with the incredible Don King hair going on.
And? And? Alas. I think the excitement was built up a little too much. They just kind of slobber on you, and some of them were a little mean.
But let me tell you about one thing that DID live up to expectations. The greatest invention ever - PIE IN A CONE! What an amazing combo. An acceptable way to just shovel pie into your mouth without having to be fork and knive mannerly about it?
Let's just say that there was plenty of eating, just like amber is demonstrating. Don't tell anyone, but I secretly think about moving to Oregon some day. I really like it up there.

Just being mean is the new awesome

2007-09-26T06:22:00.000-07:00

I was in Hood River, Oregon over the weekend, and apparently the devil designs all the supermarkets out there.

From Russia, With Love is the new awesome

2007-09-20T23:22:00.001-07:00

If it wasn't obvious by my last post, I really loved Russia. Much of it was what you would imagine - like, they really do have those golden domed churches all over the place like Epcot led you to believe, and they really do sell vodka by the liter in the grocery stores!

And though all the people in massive fur hats that we saw were usually tourists, at least Russia didn't disapoint with the large imposing Soviet looking heads and statues pretty much all over the city.

So those things you sort of expected, but there are also some fun quirks that you don't always read about. For instance - most of the apartments that I saw had two front doors. First front door:

Second front door, immediately inside the first:

Also, all of the rows of porta-potties in Moscow had one that had been converted into an office, where little cute russian women sit and take your money if you want to go to the bathroom. Hey. She has a better window view than I do in my cubicle, and apparently they are okay for napping too.

And, Russian women have a physique that makes it appear that they ingest umbrellas?
Moscow and St. Petersburg had their own mix of classic old Russia, and a new cosmopolitan Russia. Like, sometimes you would find yourself in front of the towering statues at Peterhof...

...and other times you might find that you were just standing in front of a Versace store. Practically the same thing.

We also saw so much art, since the Russians have alot of it (much of it stolen). Since many of the art museums didn't have captions written in English and my Russian doesn't extend much beyond "thank you" and "I am here to pick up my mail order husband," we were forced to make up our own captions for many of the fine pieces that we saw. Like this one, that I am pretty sure is called "Mom, I thought I told you not to come in my room when I have girls over!"

The language barrier did provide a few laughs along the way. We ate at a great little street stand that they had all over, which I wanted to pronounce as "Crapdogs" every time I saw it. However, we discovered that you actually say it a little bit like "Starbuck" which is especially funny because there is one of them on every corner in Moscow, much like Starbucks in the US.

Possibly the best of all? The super hardcore anti-riot squad over there is called OMOH, and they all run around trying to look tough with that printed on their backs. Someone hand them a mirror and and we can ALL have a good laugh.

You may wonder how the pursuit of a mail order husband went? Well, Emily better luck than I did. We stopped to watch a band in the Metro one night, and Emily was trying to take a photo, but this short, drunk russian guy kept sticking his face in her viewfinder. I'm not sure exactly how it all happened, but the next thing I knew he was yelling "american girl!" in english, and they were slow dancing in the middle of the crowd. Good friend that I am, I ignored the look of pure terror on emily's face and just photographed the whole incident instead.

I didn't have as much luck with the drunk Russians. I guess I am still holding out for the Russian mullet of my dreams.

the Hipster Mullet is the new awesome

2007-09-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

Greetings, comrades. I made it back on American soil yesterday after taking care of some of that business that I mentioned a few weeks ago. I have some real photos to post, but first, I wanted to make a small tribute to my new favorite male hair accessory: the hipster mullet.

I know we have been seeing them all over the streets of Williamsburg for years, but I think I never truly had any feelings about the hipster mullet until I saw the sweet eastern-european version of it on practically everyone in Russia. Be still, my heart:

No, really. EVERYONE in Russia had a mullet - and not the full bodied w.t. american kind of mullet that you see on small town boys that ride around with the confederate flag and a gun rack in the back window of their pick-up trucks. These mullets were tailored to be just enough of a rat-tail/mullet combo that you almost couldn't tell that there was all this extra hair in the back of the head until you got a side glace. It was totally hot. I think I fell in love about 172 times a day based solely on haircut.

Behold! A stealthy collection of the hottest hair trend in Russia:

The girls have mullets. The dogs have mullets. Even the totally fash mannequins have mullets.

I know, right? You are all feeling weak in the knees right now, aren't you?

Pizzeria Seven Twelve is the new awesome

2007-09-10T21:33:00.000-07:00

I know I've mentioned it before but the opening of Pizzeria Seven Twelve is getting closer by the day. All you lucky Utah readers will be able to visit this amazing restaurant anytime you want. For the rest of us stuck here in San Francisco, we'll just have celebrate by frequenting similar establishments like A16 and Pizzeria Delfina.

You can also track the progress of the opening at the new Pizzeria 712 Blog. My brother-in-law Joseph and his business partner Colton will be updating it regularly.

So rad.

Also, I want to apologize to the readers of the new awesome for the lack of awesome content lately. It's not that nothing awesome is going on in our lives. Quite the contrary in fact. But with all the awesome comes so much busy it's not even funny. Here's hoping things slow down a bit soon so we can post like we did back when we were cool.

Cornhole-ing in Ohio is the new awesome

2007-09-04T17:41:00.000-07:00

You may remember my last trip to Ohio to visit Ben and Danielle and their new baby Abbey. Apparently they thought it had been too long since I had come to visit, so they decided to have another cute baby to lure me back out for another weekend.

Totally worth a trip to Ohio: Amelia!

Although I was excited to see Abbey again too, this time all grown up into a two year old, I fear the affection was not totally returned.

Now I feel your pain, bets.

Since you can see what I was up against, I feel no shame in admitting to having resorted to bribery in order to establish myself as Favorite Aunt. This obviously meant stocking up on some serious princess gear to make sure that Abbey didn't give me any more of that withering stink face. I thought it would be simple, but do you have any idea how many princess accessories there are out there these days? I spent a good hour in the pink section of Target analyzing different plastic tiara/earring/shoe/dress combos, and debating whether to throw in the talking magic mirror that exclaims "You're a pretty princess" or "Isn't it great to be royalty?" in a very affirming voice.

I think the tiara we came home with was a winner. Proof that even fake diamonds can totally be a girl's best friend:
The other important draw for this trip was the annual Columbus Neighborhood Cornhole Tournament. For those of you unfamiliar with Cornhole (make sure you don't get it confused with THAT kind of cornholing), it is favorite pasttime of many U.S. Americans where a group of people gets together to throw sacks of corn at a board with a hole in it. The game is apparently a pretty big deal out in Ohio and elsewhere in the Midwest.

The "Corn Master" showed us the very official looking winner's flowchart. There was $75 and a spot on the annual Cornhole winner's trophy at stake!

Mike and I warmed up by ruthlessly beating a 6 year old whose best strategy included throwing all of his corn bags at once.

Take that, you foolish 6 year old.
I think that cheap victory gave us a false sense of hope, because our real competition played dirty. Part of Ben's strategy was to have Amelia pee on the corn bags so that no one else would want to pick them up.

Even my most intimidating face didn't help the fact that I couldn't throw the corn bag in the hole to save my life. After a really long game ... we finally admitted defeat.

Mike and I didn't take losing well. I just went and buried all the corn bags out of spite, but I think Mike took it harder and denounced his long-held belief in The Secret, since the cosmos obviously didn't deliver him the victory that he had been asking for.

I am planning on practicing my cornholing over the next year, so that when I attend next year's Championship, my name will have a place in the winner's circle. Danielle and Ben, do you think you could work on having another kid for me to come visit by then?