Bacon is for lovers

So, a friend of mine posted something bacon-related on his Facebook status update (I knew that my love for bacon had gone too far when I was choking on a piece of it earlier today and thought, "this would be an awesome way to go."), and I decided it would be fun to reply with a bacon-related picture. Where does anyone go for a good bacon picture? Why, Google Images, of course.

If you have never done a Google Images search for bacon, do it now. I'll wait.

Okay, welcome back. Let's discuss my favorite images, shall we?

• Massive piles of bacon
• Massive bacon sandwiches
• A briefcase made out of bacon
• Bacon strips adhesive bandages (I actually have a box of these)
• Gummy bacon
• Bacon-flavored toothpicks
• Bacon floss
• The bacon roll-up
• Bacon doughnuts (sure makes the "Police Officer Hat Trick" easier)
• Diet Coke with Bacon (my personal favorite)
• Bacon-wrapped hot dogs
• Bacon martini
• Bacon-wrapped turkey
• A bacon lunch box
• Apple bacon pie
• Bacon chocolate chip cookies
• Bacon tuxedos
• Kevin Bacon (how did he get in there?)
• Bacon ice cream
• Donut bacon cheeseburger
• Bacon turducken
• A bacon assault rifle
• Bacon vodka

... and many more (that was just the first six pages). One image that struck me as odd... the bacon brassiere.

That's what I get for setting my "SafeSearch" to Moderate. Pictures of girls wearing nothing but uncooked pork products. Obviously, this is not a wardrobe choice that would make it into a Victoria's Secret catalogue. Of course, I never let reality stop the train of thought that ran through my head after seeing this.

Women would need to use thick-cut bacon, obviously. Anything less wouldn't provide the proper support. Let's say you were able to cover yourself using one pound of bacon. A complete brassiere would cost you about $2.99 -- maybe less on double coupon Wednesdays, or if you bought the store brand. Of course, you'd have to refrigerate the bra if you wanted to re-use it another day. Still, you figure the amount of times you can re-use it is limited. Still probably more economical to buy cotton.

The real function, of course, is to seduce bacon-loving men. Although a dab of bacon grease behind the ears might excite the pheromones just as effectively, let's say you went the baconssiere method. Sure, this is something that even the most awkward teenage boy would know how to unclasp. Technically, I guess it falls into the category of "edible undergarments." Really, though... raw bacon? I'm not sure how passionate I'd feel if I just gummed my way through a pound of raw bacon. Putting on pre-cooked bacon would be difficult. You'd either have good, crispy bacon that snaps into pieces as you try to put it on, or sad, soggy bacon (the default Waffle House style) that is almost as unappetizing as raw bacon, or you'd have to put it on while it was still sizzling and let it conform to your shape. Or you could lay down on a hot plate, I suppose. Though the agonizing screams would probably be a mood-killer.

So ladies, if you're trying to seduce me with bacon, just keep it simple. Bacon-wrapped turducken for dinner, bacon apple pie for dessert, and a bacon martini afterwards. Now THAT'S how you get a man!

Authentic Mexican Egg Fu Yung

So I started getting hungry on the way home from improv class today (3 p.m.). I saw Chan's restaurant on Clark Street and thought, "Hmmm... some General Tso's Chicken would hit the spot!" Unfortunately, it wasn't open at 3 p.m. So I kept walking. I saw Hofbrau and thought, "Maybe they have weinerschnitzel. That would hit the spot!" Unfortunately, they're closed on Tuesdays all day. So I kept walking. I saw a neon sign in a window that advertised Chicken Teriyaki. Plus, they were open! I entered.

Apparently, the restaurant is actually called "Hamburger King." Not a place you'd go for chicken teriyaki, but what the heck. Looked like a Steak & Shake on the inside. I sat down and perused the menu (everything from bacon & eggs to sweet & sour chicken). I decided on Egg Fu Yung and an egg roll on the side.

While I was waiting for my food, I heard my waitress talking to another customer in Spanish. It was loud enough for me to hear, but I guess I look like a guy who doesn't understand a word of Spanish. Although I didn't get the entire context of the phrase, I clearly heard the waitress say:

"...cucarachas en la pared."

After pondering this for a while, I realized that there is no good context to ever hear that phrase uttered in a restaurant. (FYI... it means "cockroaches on the floor.") My egg fu yung arrived shortly afterwards (covered in brown gravy for some reason). Believe me, I cut my food into small bites before eating any of it. It was actually kinda tasty. My appetite doesn't get spoiled nearly as easily as it used to.

So if you want some Chinese food, made by Mexicans (?), and slathered in hamburger gravy, and possibly including some extra passengers, join me on my next exciting dining experience.

A Pirate Marriage Proposal

Ahh... the conclusions we make.

Never really did a lot of "people watching." Never sat in the middle of a mall with a few friends and made guesses about what a person does for a living, or made a bunch of assumptions based on a first impression. Good date night, I suppose.

Today, however, I unintentionally did some people watching on the way home from class. I was walking along Addison Street and looked across the street to see a guy down on one knee, boombox to the left of him, two people standing in front talking to him, and another guy further off to the side with a camcorder on a tripod. Oh, by the way... the guy on one knee was dressed like a pirate.

Yep, buccaneer shirt and one of those black tri-corner hat deals. Not sure why there's a pirate in Wrigleyville in March (the Pittsburgh Pirates aren't playing at Wrigley Field until May 14th). I suppose the fact that there was a camera guy could mean they're filming "Pirates of the Caribbean 4: The Pirates Take Cook County" or something. But that's not the conclusion I drew. No.

This guy was practicing for a marriage proposal. He was going to turn on the boombox to lure out his lover, get down on one knee, propose, and have the camera guy capture the moment. All while dressed like Long John Silver.

I'm not exactly sure what a pirate says to a woman he wants to marry. Not really known for commitment, that sort. Mostly just find a port, go to an alehouse, spend your plundered doubloons on tankards of mead and turkey legs, find a lusty wench or barmaid, spend a night of drunken revelry with them, and awaken to find yourself in a horse trough being nuzzled by some nag. That's a pirate's idea of a committed relationship. You don't typically think of a pirate getting on one knee and saying, "Will ye do me the honor of being me wife?"

So ladies, remember... if a pirate proposes to you, say no. Sure, he'll promise you riches (his share of the booty), but his true love will always be the sea. He'll sail home every two years or so, give you a scraggly-beard kiss, be surprised at the new Pirate Junior additions to the family since he last saw you, then sail away again in search of adventure. Don't settle for a pirate. Give your love to a ninja. You might not see him much, either... but he's always around.

Clues for the Facebook Clueless

Okay, so you're new to Facebook. We understand. What? You've been on Facebook since 2007? And you did THAT? This blog is for you, the Facebook Clueless.

1. Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and any other company you see is not, I repeat **NOT** going to give you a $1,000 gift card for being one of the first 20,000 people to join a fan page. Seriously, think about it. That's TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS they'd be giving away to anyone with the handful of brain cells necessary to click "Become a Fan." Not going to happen. Sorry.
2. There are no magical pages, groups, or applications out there that let you "See Who is Browsing Your Profile." They are all fake. Every single one of them.
3. Any fan page that requires you to "send this invite to twenty of your friends" is getting you to do their spam work for them.
4. Any page that has 50,000 fans and zero posts on the wall -- FAKE. Run away. Seriously -- if you were giving away Best Buy gift certificates, wouldn't you want people posting on your wall about how awesome you are? They disable the wall because no one ever got squat from them.
5. If you have to "copy-paste this Javascript into your browser window to complete the application process" -- red flag. If you actually DO that, maybe you deserve to have your computer infested with viruses. Duh.
6. Facebook is not going to "start charging $14.95/month on [insert date here]." That kind of thing has been around since the dawn of the Internet. It's as old as the "Nigerian Prince" email. AIM, Yahoo! Mail, MySpace, Facebook... all of them have had people forwarding angry messages about how they're going to leave if they start charging. None of them have been true. Even if they were about to start charging, is joining a fan page or group really going to change the minds of the people in charge?
7. Snopes is your friend. Bookmark it. Heck, memorize the link (it's not that long). Always use it before you post something about the latest Amber Alert, Bill Cosby political views, or story about "Obama eats babies." Do some fact-checking, people.
8. Here's one that was actually clever. A fan page created some realistic looking images of people commenting "Wow! I can't believe this worked!" for some free prize giveaway. There were icons, people's names, and the works. Only problems? It wasn't on the "Wall" section where people would actually post messages. Oh, and none of the people had last names displayed. Oh, and none of the links (including the people's names) were clickable -- the whole thing was a JPG that someone had Photoshopped to look like testimonials. When you clicked on the actual Wall, there were no posts.
9. Just because we went to the same high school, that doesn't make us friends. Did we even have any classes together?
10. Drunk FB status updating is the new drunk texting or drunk dialing. Except that instead of just an ex-girlfriend seeing/hearing it, 500 friends and family members see how stupid you are.
11. You don't HAVE to post every achievement in FarmVille or Mafia Wars. It's optional.
12. If I don't live in your city, I'm probably not going to come to your concert.
13. People with bad spelling, punctuation, and/or grammar deserve to be mocked with sarcastic comments. This means you.
14. Not everyone shares your ultra-liberal or ultra-conservative viewpoint. It's okay to have such a viewpoint, of course. Just don't couple it with a "I can't believe anyone else out there doesn't share the same point of view as me. Clearly, you're an idiot if you believe something else!" attitude.
15. If you post a picture of your child, favorite cartoon character or anything other than your face, don't tell me who you are, we have no friends in common, and I haven't called you by name in the last 48 hours, don't be surprised when I ignore your friend request.

Hopefully this helps. Feel free to submit additional "clues" -- I will give proper credit to you. Oh, and if three or more people forward this to you, maybe your friends are trying to tell you something.

I want to know stuff.

Here's an idea for any future improv theater company I take part in running. Knowing stuff.

It's great when an improviser gets a suggestion of a profession such as "doctor" and can rattle off actual medical terms and use them fairly accurately. Or the suggestion "Shakespeare" and be able to use "thee," "thou," "thy," and "thine" correctly. If you get suggestions like "spot welding" or "horseback riding," chances are that the person giving the suggestion already has some knowledge about the subject.

Granted, there will always be some subjects that an improviser knows absolutely nothing about. I know I had never heard the term "Octomom" before it was suggested to me in a show (I Googled it when I got home). I think we did something about an octopus during the scene.

Sure, it can be fun when an audience realizes "this improviser has no idea who [insert celebrity name] is." But it can be much more satisfying for an improviser who can play and have fun in a made-up world where you're firmly grounded with a few key phrases, terms, and concepts for the suggestion that's given. The audience member who gave the suggestion (and probably knew something about the subject) will be amazed that you know so much.

So here's my suggestion. Have various members of the cast each take a week where they will teach the rest of the cast something they know well. For example, I would teach classes on various things I learned in my days as a police officer -- how to do a traffic stop, how to give the field sobriety tasks, how to operate/fire a handgun, how to slim jim open a car door, how to search through a house, how to march/run in formation, etc. I'd love to have every cast member take what they know best and teach everyone something new every week. Not only would it be fun, but it would be a fun group bonding experience for the cast.

So, yeah... know-it-all training in Nashville. Coming in 2011.

My horrible supressed memory has returned to me.

So my roommate (John) went out and bought a bunch of snacks for movie night tonight (the 1989 "Batman"). Microwave popcorn, soda, Reese's Pieces, Nerds, and... Mike & Ikes.

Flash back with me to 1993. Freshman year of high school. Honors Geometry class. My teacher decides to put our math skills to the test. She has a huge jar of Mike & Ike candy on her desk. Our job is to try to figure out how many Mike & Ike candies are in that jar, using our calculate-the-volume-of-object formulae. We were each given one of her "spare" Mike & Ike candies to do our measurements of the candy's volume. We could each go up to the jar and measure it from the outside, making adjustments for the thickness and curvature of the glass. Then, of course, we had to account for the amount of air that was in the jar.

Long story short, I made a guess of 1,604. The actual total was 1,632. I won.

One guy calculated that there were 2,448 in the jar, but he forgot to account for the air between the candies. Turns out that there's a theorem out there that if you randomly drop objects into a container, it'll occupy 2/3 of the total volume (1/3 will be air). If he had multiplied his guess by 2/3, he would have been exactly right.

The first day of victory was awesome. I ate a few handfuls, and shared them with my classmates. Still plenty left. I'd munch a few here and there at home. Still plenty left. I took them with me to other nerd school functions (math club, Knowledge Masters). A few handfuls got eaten. Still plenty left. I took them to youth group. Still plenty left. Finally, I gave up on being able to finish the jar of Mike & Ikes. There was well over half the jar remaining when I dumped it in the trash, vowing never again to eat Mike & Ikes again. The jar, which still had that sickly sweet odor, was used to store loose change.

16 years went by...

Now I am confronted with the horrifying reunion ahead of me this evening. I surely will not open that package of candy. Someone else will. They might even pass it around or offer it to me directly. My screams will be heard throughout Cook County. Probably sometime between 7-9 p.m. Listen for it.

Worst improv show in Chicago?

I was in a good mood most of the day on Saturday. I had a great time at the Improvised Shakespeare workshop, saw a great show at ComedySportz at 6:00, and enjoyed Whirled News Tonight at iO at 8:00. Some friends of mine were opening at the 10:00 show at The Playground, so I went to go see them. A good way to round out the day. I had even managed to avoid any unpleasant contact with the mob of pseudo-Irish drunks in Wrigleyville on pre-St. Patrick's Day weekend. What could possibly ruin my night?

Boner Petite.

Yeah, I know. You shouldn't expect much from an improv group named "Boner Petite." In my defense, I had no idea who the headliner group was that night. Plus, I thought I heard "Bon Appetit" when they first introduced themselves. It made more sense when I heard it correctly later.

A few minutes after 10:00 -- the lights come up. Three girls rush the stage decked out in green. I'm watching them enter from stage right as I get pelted in the temple with a bag of popcorn, thrown by the girl on stage left. It made a pretty solid thud on my head, unusual for a bag of popcorn. The girl in stage center then takes a bottle of bubble solution and a wand and starts blowing bubbles into the audience. She spills some of the bubble solution on my knee. One of the girls, acting as emcee, introduces herself by grabbing her crotch and asking the guys in the audience, "Is my **** bigger than yours? Hell, yeah!"

After the worst start to an improv show I've ever endured, the guy sitting next to me hands me the bag of popcorn that had ricocheted off my forehead. He felt like I earned it. I decide to eat it during the opening acts. No butter, no salt, and stone cold. Meh. I figure out later what made the thud against the side of my forehead. A Hershey miniature was embedded inside the bag of popcorn. Guess that made it easier to throw. Kinda like putting a rock inside a snowball.

The first two acts were good, but I was in such a foul mood by that point, that I wasn't really enjoying it like I would have. Then Boner Petite took the stage for their set. They started off by bringing a "random" girl from the audience up on stage and giving her gifts of chocolate, marshmallow Peeps, and a Dixie cup of wine (which she promptly chugged). I had my suspicions early that it was staged. The cast told the audience member that "we've had our eyes on you all night," and the girl pulled back her outer coat and squeezed her chest. Pretty much something that you would expect from a cast member or friend of the cast. Then the following exchange happened:

Cast: "What's something that you love?"
Girl: (pointing at a guy) "Him!"
Cast: "Hey, I know him! He's from Miami!"
Girl: "What do you mean, you know him? Did you sleep with him?"
Cast: "Yeah, I'm a Miami w****!"

Pfft. Might as well have handed out scripts.

The emcee asked for a suggestion, but "only from a girl in the audience." Eh, fine. Then she instructed the audience that "I only want the girls to laugh." I was thisclose to shouting out something smart-alec. As it was, I followed her instructions.

Their opening consisted of the five of them standing in a semi-circle, shouting "What the f***?" ten times in unison, breaking apart and running around the stage, giggling and screaming, then coming back together and shouting "What the f***?" a few more times.

Imagine the worst girlfriend you've ever had. The most vulgar, catty girl you've had the misfortune to date. Then imagine her drunk enough to magnify all her worst qualities. Then imagine that there are five of her. Then imagine that they're trying to do comedy for a paying audience. That's Boner Petite. An oh-so-memorable scene about two girls trying to take "twin s***s" on the floor. Another round of synchronized "What the f***?" screaming. A light pull on "I pissed myself." (A buddy of mine shut off the lights -- in his defense, it was the best he was going to get.)

Several free passes for The Playground were laying on the floor in front of me after the show. I had no interest in picking any of them up.

Listen to this blurb from their website:

"Boner Petite is a 7-member, all-female, long-form improv ensemble composed of some of the hottest and most talented performers in the history of Chicago improv."

Wow. They don't think too much of themselves. I can virtually guarantee that they all went out afterwards together and congratulated themselves on a great show. Not only do they put on bad shows, but they're completely oblivious as to how bad their shows are.

So... yeah. Don't go see them, even if you have a student discount or free pass. If you go to the Chicago Improv Festival in April and see them in the lineup, that's a good time to go get some dinner.

The best thing about this group? It gave me a newfound respect for all the talented female improvisers that I've had the fortune to perform with over the years. So thank you Emily, Sheryl, Jill, Cindy, Beth, Mandy, Katy, Liza, Tiana, and all my female students. You rock.

The Police Officer Hat Trick

Okay, those of you who are hockey fans have undoubtedly heard the term "hat trick" -- signifying that a player has scored three goals in one game. It was actually originally a cricket term, but I don't have enough friends in the U.K. reading this blog, so let's ignore that for a moment. I had always assumed it referred to a magic trick, like a player did something miraculous. Wikipedia says it referred to hat manufacturers who would give a new fedora to players who scored three goals in one game. Pfft.

A slightly lesser known variation is known as the "Gordie Howe Hat Trick," where a player must get a goal, an assist, and a fight all in the same game.

Even lesser known is the "Police Officer Hat Trick." This feat is something that I myself only accomplished once in my nine-year-and-one-day career. You must consume the three stereotypical "cop foods" in one eight-hour shift: coffee, bacon, and a doughnut.

When you think about it, this is not as easy a task as it sounds. Sure, you could get coffee and bacon together at a Waffle House or IHOP easily. But neither of them serve doughnuts. You could get coffee and a doughnut at a Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kreme, or most gas stations, but you can't get bacon (though DD's turkey/cheese/bacon flatbread sandwich has made this easier in recent years). I still say it has to be a stand-alone bacon order, and not part of a sandwich, to make this a TRUE police officer hat trick.

Yes, I accomplished this once. I got a cup of coffee and a doughnut early in my shift (it was midnight, and only myself and the gas station clerk were there to witness me in uniform eating a doughnut). Later that shift, a few of us went to an IHOP and I completed the hat trick by getting a side order of bacon with my stack of pancakes (and probably more coffee).

I'm sure some officers are way more proficient than I was in my career. But some of you out there might still be reaching for that achievement. The important thing is to recognize when you are 2/3 of the way complete with this milestone, and know what it takes to finish it.