On Salad Dressing, Karate Kid, and Fighting Terrorism Over Dial Up...

We had some friends over this weekend and needed to run get some ranch dressing for the dinner salad (we like to pretend like we eat healthy when guests are due.) Anyhow, wife o' Dice was getting ready to put the newly purchased dressing on the table when she realized that the "Best by" date was over a week past. Now, I'm not a usually a stickler on these sort of things, but knowing the local grocery store is leaving stuff on the shelf like that seemed a bit outside of my comfort zone. Plus I'm always up for a little confrontation, so I grabbed the Kraft Ranch Dressing and headed back to the store to straighten things out. As it turns out, the entire Kraft dressing family needed induced, as they were all well past there due dates. As the store clerk and I started checking the dates I could tell she was getting more and more nervous and she started mumbling things like "Kraft usually does this themselves" and "I guess they haven't been here in a while". I couldn't have cared less, it's not like I had the FDA on speed dial, I just wanted some dressing that wouldn't kill our company (I'm not the world's best host, but I know that death by botulism doesn't rank very high on the hospitality scale.) So after pointing out a bottle of Cantalina best used by July 24th the nice lady upgraded my purchase to "Ranch with real Bacon" and said it was a dollar more expensive but "not to worry about it". I haven't.

Let's roll...

TV

Have you caught "Denver and the Mile High Orchestra" on "The Next Great American Band" yet? Every Friday I am awed by how tight and captivating these guys are. I've always enjoyed them, but now I'm a flat out fan. Plus how can I not root for someone that one of the judges described as "Flanderish". 10 Points to the first person who can name the other two groups on this show that I'm rooting for.

Movies

The academy narrowed down the field for the feature length animated film award. These aren't the actual noms but the three that do get nominated will come from this list. I'm all out rooting for Ratatouille of course (a film that should be nominated for best picture by the way) but would love to see "Meet the Robinson's" and "The Simpsons" join it. I've also heard great things about "Surf's Up" but haven't had a chance to see it yet.

Music

Heard these guys on the Relevant Podcast (a great one to download if you do the Podcast thing) and found the video on youtube. I could do without the dancing girls toward the end but everything else about this is genius. I need to rewatch the original Karate Kid, like immediately. Their name is No More Kings (a "Schoolhouse Rocks" reference by the way) and the song is called "Sweep the Leg, Johnny" and was directed by Johnny himself, William Zabka.


Game/Tech

Here's a great article on how many parents won't play video games with their kids. Yeah, why would you want to have fun with your children, that's crazy. Playing the Wii with the boys has been a great time for us to hang out and bond. Though I was a bit taken aback by the dad who plays Halo with his 10 year old. Maybe he thought it was rated T for 10. "Wow dad, great headshot!" "Thanks son, I'll let you stick the next noob with a nade." "Aw dad, you're teh roxors."

Faith/Culture

This article claims that abstinence based sex education is ineffective, which to me is like saying teaching kids that 2+2=4 in math is ineffective. "Our kids keep getting the answers wrong, maybe we should just quit teaching addition." Look, not having sex remains the only sure fire way to not get STDs and/or pregnant, and whether or not teens choose to wait, even after knowing that, is on them. You teach it because it's true not because the student agrees or follows through.

Randomness

What if 24 had shot in the mid 90s? Find out here.
(Warning: This parody contains offensive language consistent with 24 the TV show)