Friday, January 20, 2006

Jamba, we still hardly know ye

I am, to put it somewhat mildly, a frequent customer of Jamba Juice. When it's lunch time and I really want to do the bare minimum required to alleviate hunger in at least a semi-nutritious way, it's my best option. Plus, if you go in around noon you really don't have to wait. Apparently, the rest of the Westwood business/academic community is spending that time filling themselves up with greasier, more lunch-like items possibly ending in -ito, -izza, or -ow mein. Anyway, I usually choose to spend my minimal waiting time reading some of the literature that they offer for sale. In the past, this has included such stimulating titles as the Juliano Raw "uncook"-book, which teaches you that it's possible to make authentic mayonnaise out of organic nuts soaked overnight in tap water. But they stopped carrying that one, and my well of insults to hurl at Juliano should I ever run into him on 3rd Street Promenade regrettably ran dry.

Now, a new book has taken center stage on the shelf:

Jamba Juice Power
(Amazon link provided for informational purposes only; please do not buy it, because it is stupid)

I picked up this book today in the frenzied hopes that it would provide me with the recipe to produce a Protein Berry Pizazz of my very own. Not that the recipe should be all that difficult to reverse-engineer, but still... why waste all that time and soy milk if I don't have to? Well, the beginning of the book was fairly unpromising, mainly focused on health and exercise and all that crap. I flipped through page after page explaining why various nutrients were important, what times of day were best for consuming them, where to get some good horse 'roids in L.A., and so forth. Then, at last, I arrived at the recipe section. Long story short, no PBP was to be had. In fact, there was not a single recipe for any of the smoothies they actually sell at Jamba Juice. In their place were stupid just-made-up-for-the-book drinks like "Aaaah, Apple" and others of similar levels of inanity. Because guess what? Those Jamba guys may act all hippy-dippy, but they'd tie their grandmothers to railroad tracks before they gave up any real dirt on their beverages.

Well, I'll show them. I will not rest until I can manufacture a working replica of the Protein Berry Pizazz in my own kitchen, perhaps using more than $4.25 worth of ingredients from Whole Foods, but nonetheless emerging with a satisfied sense of entrepreneurial spirit and self-worth that can't be bought at any price. Or maybe I won't, but whatever.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

This should totally be the ad for that one Japanese dude

So, yeah... um, here:



You know that rule about two things not being able to occupy the same space at the same time? I think that's one of Newton's laws, or the Hippocratic Oath or something like that. Well, turns out it's, like, wicked true especially when you're talking about fingers and fancy-ass Japanese knives. "What fancy Japanese knife would that be, Nick?" you ask?

Okay, you're a little morbid, but I'll indulge you:



Ha! Just kidding. I wish. Not that the girl who sliced me isn't hot.

Anyway, the knife looks more like this:


Take that sucker and get it sharpened by a super master Japanese knife sharpener guy like a week earlier, and you've got a PARTY!

(And by "party" I mean "comfy Band-Aid brand gauze taped to your finger for a few days.")

Sometimes when you give life the finger... oops, already used that joke.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

The year begins hypothetically

Instead of resolutions, this year I offer a list of questions that may help explain why I tend to be kind of a skeptic. Because if I really believed in anything that didn't have hard scientific evidence, these sorts of thoughts would plague me.

Anyway, let the hypothetical crap begin.

How do you know that weren't born a squirrel but switched bodies with a human for a predetermined amount of time, and your lease ends tomorrow? (Naturally, during your human time you would have wanted to forget the fact that you were really a squirrel, so temporarily erasing your squirrel-memory would have been part of the arrangement.)

How do you know that you're not a character in someone else's dream? (The good news is that this person is in a coma. The bad news is it's just a food coma.)

How do you know that you never wished chicken pox on someone, got your wish fulfilled, and then wished to forget you ever wished it?

(If you were born on or after April 5, 1994) How do you know that you weren't once a world-famous garage band frontman who decided to end it all but was offered an opportunity to live a brand new life with no knowledge of your previous one?

How do you know you didn't give up a portion of your brain to find a cure for avian flu, but the cure never panned out and you never got the piece of your brain back? Naturally, it's the piece of brain that remembers the whole thing happening.

(If you're living on less money than you'd like) How do you know you weren't once fabulously wealthy but had a really annoying hangnail that just wouldn't go away, and it eventually drove you crazy enough that you paid a witch doctor to cure it in exchange for all your money? Naturally, blacking out your memories of being rich was part of the deal.

How do you know you weren't born with the highest IQ of any human being in history, with the potential to solve all the world's social and political ills, but lost it all the moment your umbilical cord was cut?

(This one I first thought of well over a decade ago.) How do you know you don't have a rewind button for your life, but it's only the size of a regular rewind button and is located on a tree somewhere in Nebraska?

How do you know that every time you go to bed, you sleep for a whole year, but the rest of the world acts like only a day has gone by to prevent you from feeling left out?

And finally...

How do you know that you couldn't cause every Starbucks on earth to spontaneously combust by concentrating really hard on a piece of celery for a couple of hours?

* * *

Well, there you have it. Welcome to 2006. Just thought I'd start if off a little differently.