Makeshift halloween mask

This morning I decided to make a halloween mask. I took a manila folder and cut it up to look like Mick Thompson from Slipknot (do a Google image search if you don't know what he looks like). I wanted to spray paint it pewter but I didn't have time to pick up any paint. So I went out with it manila colored, which is kinda lame. Didn't matter much though. Some teenage kids said "hey look, it's Slipknot" and some other teenage kids were pretending (I think) to be afraid of me and refused to come out of the house.



I was walking by myself looking for the kids (who were with my next door neighbor). I was creeping some parents out, because here I was, this tall guy in all black with long hair and a scary mask, walking by myself. Some teenage girls were clowning around as they were walking toward me, and they said "Merry Christmas". When I didn't pay attention to them, they said "Merry Christmas" again, and then I turned to them with my mask on, opened my eyes really wide and started walking briskly toward them. As soon as I saw the look of terror on their faces, I playfully said "Merry Christmas" to them and walked away. It was freaking hilarious.

Finished jack o lanterns

I finished the other two pumpkins tonight. I used a Dremel MotoTool and a cordless drill. I rushed since I had to do two. The first pumpkin was what Sara wanted - Misdreavus from Pokemon. This one was pseudo relief carved.





The other was Heatblast from Ben10. I did the pen work too fast and it looks kinda amatuerish, but I didn't want to spend too much time on it.

2008 Pumpkin 1 pau

I just finished carving pumpkin 1 this year - it's Pikachu from Pokemon. This week I'm strapped for time. Tonight was the pizza party for my soccer team's last practice. Tomorrow night the drummer for my other band is coming over to write. So that basically left me with tonight and Thursday to carve three pumpkins. I want the last one to be a detailed relief carve. So I had to whip out Pikachu really fast. From conception on paper to the final carve, I think it took me all of about 15 minutes, including gutting the pumpkin. It looks a little sloppy, but that's about all the time I want to spend on it. Though I guess I could have spent more time on it if I didn't blog about it.

Dragonfruit

I bought a Dragonfruit at Foodland today. It tastes like a kiwi but it's not sour.

Finally, a GREAT ref

though we lost yesterday 5 to 0, we had a really awesome ref. Her name was Lani, and she was actually calling fouls for bad language against the other team. She also called a foul on the other team for excessive pushing. My team had a great attitude despite it all, and they never retaliated. After the game, the ref was asking me if I had anything to say about the other coach, because she said that he was yelling things from the sideline that were not acceptable. I didn't hear anything, but I told her yelling at the kids wasn't our style, and she said she noticed that about our team. She gave the other team neutral marks for sportsmanship.

What my team lacks in skill, they more than make up for in spirit. These kids are great!!

Shige's

We ate at Shige's Saimin in Wahiawa yesterday - my favorite place to eat these days. It was a perfect day to eat saimin - cold and rainy!! I had a small won ton min, which is won ton with saimin. The saimin here is the homemade curly kine. It's the perfect saimin to me!



Along with my saimin, I had a barbeque burger (Hawaii people like to eat a saimin and burger combo). The hamburger is home style so it has breading in it and makes it really soft.



L and S each had saimin....



E had a mini teri beef plate, local plate lunch style with one scoop rice and mac salad. He loves his teri beef! The teri beef here is very glazy as you can see.



Mom and dad joined us for lunch and mom had a hamburger steak plate, which is the same home style hamburger, smothered in gravy and onions, with rice and mac salad. Dad had a won ton min.



Shige's is always crowded. If you go at around lunchtime, expect to wait. The food there is awesome and the service is good. They definitely have da bes saimin - better than Hamura's or Sam Sato.

Saimin is one of those things unique to Hawaii, like the crack seed store, shave ice, and plate lunch with rice and mac salad. Tourists come to Hawaii and go to places like Paradise Cove for their luau, but while local people eat lau lau and poi once in awhile, the real Hawaii is saimin and spam musubi.

Only 2 games left to go

This weekend we lost again, 1-2. The entire team played really well though. The kids are finally starting to gel. Lots of passing, lots of teamwork and they're all staying in position. Even the less experienced kids were playing with a lot of fire.

On Friday after I picked up the nets, I went home and fell asleep at about 5:30 and didn't get back up. Because I slept all night, I didn't get a chance to call any of the dads to ask to help me set up the goals the next day. On Saturday I got up early and went to the field over an hour before the first game. Soon after I arrived, 3 dads came earlier than usual to help me set up in the rain, without me even having to ask. I'm really lucky - those guys are so cool.

We have two games left this season. I'm going to miss this team when the season is over. The kids have great personalities great attitudes and their parents are super helpful.

Yet another pizza

This time I tried to copy the pizza at Indigo - roasted eggplant, peppers, onions and shiitake, with mozzarella. Still not as good as Indigo though.

Smoke damage repair, part 2

Today we spent the day painting the kitchen. Partly because we were planning to anyway, partly to "fix" the smoke damage caused by the flaming wok.

We spent the morning prepping and priming with Kilz.



Then I went out to City Mill and picked up some paint. L had some swatches and I picked out "Hodly Red". L was looking at the kitchen after a little bit of paint was applied from the living room where she could also see the green walls and dark brown sofa, she said it reminded her of the ti leaves we have in the back yard. The light green matches the bamboo and other plants in our back yard and the sofa kinda looks like the moss rock wall. Ummm.... yeah, that's why I chose that color..... that's the ticket!





Actually a kinda lucky coincidence. Or was it subliminal?



Here's the finished product. It looks a bit like plum. L did most of the painting and all of the taping. I did lots of edging.



Oh yeah, maybe I picked the color because I love roasting plums. Yeah.... that's it.



Notice the first thing that got put back? Look at the left corner on the counter - local style - gotta be the rice cooker!!!



Next we gotta work on the ceiling.

We've lived here for 3 years already and we still haven't painted the entire interior. We just never seem to have much time for anything. A single guy I know mocked me once for writing music at lunchtime, telling me why don't I just do that at home. Between a full time job, commuting for 2 1/2 hours a day (shuttling the kids to and from school), cooking meals at home to save money and eat healthier, soccer practices and games, bathing the kids, checking their homework and putting them to bed, PTA meetings, laundry, dishes, marketing and chores in general, I'm pretty lucky I can find time to practice with my band every week and.... ahem.... blog.

My two favorite salads to make

I made these salads a few weeks ago for a few parties. The first is roasted asparagus with family tomatoes and mozzarella cheese cubes, with some lemon juice and red pepper flakes:



The second is a grilled plum salad with red leaf lettuce, gouda cheese, maple bacon, watercress, and a sherry vinagrette:



I got both recipes from a Food Network cookbook, but they are slightly modified.

Death Metal

My favorite Death Metal song of all time is Behemoth's "Slaves Shall Serve". They lean more toward black metal but incorporate death metal elements. There aren't any bands that sound like them as far as I know. Uniqueness is quite an achievement in extreme metal because death and black metal bands sometimes sound pretty generic. The drummer, Inferno, is not the fastest drummer in the world but I love his playing. The singer/guitarist is Nergal - he is one of my musical heroes.

Iron Chef Morimoto and me - brothers separated at birth?

You be the judge (photoshop courtesy of my real-life brother, Iron Chef Scott)



Rimless glasses - check. Long tied back hair - check. Dimples - check. Cheesy goatee - check. Irritated Caucasian lady - check.

My Les Paul video on YouTube

It's been up on YouTube for about a year and a half and has gotten over 137,000 views. I guess a lot of people are looking for videos on Les Pauls. Ironically the reason I put it up on there was to sell it, and for awhile no one was interested!! I ended up selling it a few months after I made this video. I hope to hit 100,000 views every year, but I think it's starting to taper off. It seemed to have gotten the most views in the beginning of 08, at least according to the YouTube statistics.



It's funny how in some of the comments, people say that it's heresy to play Little Wing on a Les Paul. Even on one of my other videos, people ask how I can play rockabilly on a Chet Atkins Country Gentleman. Wow, if guitarists were that narrow minded in the 60s and 70s, Eddie Van Halen would never have put a humbucker in a Strat, or Pete Townsend would not have asked Jim Marshall to build a stack of 4x12 cabinets.

Blogs

I never thought I'd have a blog. I've always wondered..... "who cares?"

And then I started a blog.

This particular posting is one of those things that made me roll my eyes about blogs in the first place. It's boring and mundane. Not to mention, I couldn't even bother to take a real picture, I had to use a stock photo. I mean, jeez, if you're gonna post something that nobody cares about, at least make an effort.

So here's my post: I bought a drum throne from SameDayMusic.com. It is a roc n soc, whatever that means. It is uber comfortable. And it is the perfect height for playing drums, unlike that cheap $15 Wal Mart stool that I was using that sits you like 4 inches too low. I love my drum throne. It is really soft on my butt. And I've never owned a "throne" before. I feel like royalty.


This blog has hit an all time low. I better go out and get a speeding ticket or something.

Pumpkins

Halloween's coming up so it's time to start thinking about pumpkin designs again. Every year, I carve pumpkins of characters that the kids are into at the time. Here are some pumpkins I've designed and carved over the years:

2003 Thomas the Tank Engine



2004 Dora The Explorer



2004 Boots the Monkey



2005 Barney



2006 The Little Einsteins



2007 Shaggy and Scooby Doo chased by a monster



This year, the kids asked for Pokemon characters. I think I'll keep it simple because the simpler designs look better than the ones with the detail. Plus it'll be faster to carve!!

The day started out rough

Had the day off today to watch the kids, so we headed out to Waikiki. On the way I got a speeding ticket. Embarrassing in front of the kids - they were asking "why were you going so fast daddy?" Things got better from there though. We spent some time at the Waikiki Aquarium, then we hung out at the beach for awhile and swam and played in the sand. After the beach we changed and went to Genki Sushi in Pearl City.

After that, E decided that it was time he conquered his fear of Chuck E. Cheese, so we went and played air hockey and skeeball, and S rode the merry go round twice. Yay for E! Then we went marketing at Foodland, and came home and had ice cream cones. Now E's outside playing with his friends while S is writing postcards to Mommy and her grandparents.

Busy day, but a lot of fun!!

Hello Kitty has a mouth!

Well, after S got done with the lipstick, anyway.

Reminds me of the Joker from Batman.

Nobu

Last night we had dinner at Nobu at the Waikiki Parc Hotel. When I called and made reservations they told me "no sports wear and no beach wear", so I was expecting people to be dressed really well. When we got to the restaurant, there were people in T-shirts and some in shorts!

The food was excellent. The waiter suggested we order a few cold dishes, then a few hot dishes and end with sushi. The first dish was a yellowtail sliced thin with jalapenos and cilantro in a ponzu dressing. We didn't get a picture of that dish - we ate it too fast!

The second dish (below) was an ahi sashimi salad. The dressing was finely minced onions and shoyu:


The third dish was salmon, done as "new style sashimi" with oil drizzled on it, green onions and sesame:


Next we moved onto the hot dish. This one was duck foie gras, with roasted duck medallions and shredded cabbage. This was really rich:


With the foie gras we had roasted vegetables:


We finished with sushi. There was kohada, ikura, cucumber ume shiso, and salmon skin maki. The white stuff around the maki is daikon:


We also had a bento box dessert, which was flourless chocolate cake with green tea ice cream.

All in all we really enjoyed dinner and we'll definitely go back some day (though we really need to save money to go back!)

I'm proud of my team

We played a hard game today. The opposing team played really dirty. They were pushing, kicking our players, and hitting the ball with their hands. The ref was so clueless that he wasn't calling fouls. The ref didn't even know the difference between corner kicks and goal kicks. He was even going to let someone throw in from the goal line before I yelled out that it was a corner kick.

Our kids were really disheartened at half time. They were complaining about getting pushed and kicked. Yet our team didn't push back, and the kids didn't lose their composure when the game started back up. I spoke to the ref at halftime, but that was pointless because how could I expect him to be aware of player interaction when he was just trying to concentrate on the basic rules!

Despite the fact that we were outscored 5 to 2, I feel like we won because we played a good, clean game, with good sportsmanship. Our kids are awesome!!

Avocados and Ku'u Home O Kahaluu

My friend Walt and his wife Arlene dropped by today and brought us some avocados from his yard. He was driving around the island from the windward side to shop at Hawaii Music Supply in Wahiawa, and he thought to stop over, because he knows I LOVE his avocados! We played a little bit of slack key guitar before they left. Guitars and good food and good friends..... life can't get much better than that.