Stray Hawkeye

A loud mouth jerk picks a fight with a bouncer, who happens to be a five time world champion kick boxer.  What ensues is a perfect demonstration of how a true martial arts expert handles real world conflict (captions are NSFW):

Via Boing Boing

I was out at the bar over the weekend with some of my geekier friends.  In conversation it came up that one of them has a motorcycle, which he has named “Frogger”.  (See, I told you they were on the geekier side.)  One of my other friends recently got an air brush kit, and is planning to help paint said motorcycle with, as they put it, “bad ass frogs”.  So, being geeks, we not only had our laptops with us, but were at a bar with wifi – so we busted out the internet and went to work finding bad ass frogs to use as models for said motorcycle air brush mural.  Some of the highlights were:

• Kinda scary looking frog with teeth
• Ninja frog on a rope
• Real life hypno-toad
• Ready frog
• A variety of mini-fig frogs with weapons
• Mr Burns frog (about half way down the page in the comments)
• And finally, a little too fittingly, a frog on a motorcycle

But eventually, we came to thinking, why not use the actual Frogger frog?  So, we found an image of the original cover, and realized how lame and entirely not bad ass the original Frogger frog was:

Pretty wimpy, but we have computers, and GIMP – we can fix this.

So, over the next hour or two, I drunkenly photoshoped (okay, so I don’t actually have the program, but “GIMP’ed” just sounds wrong) up our video game hero to toughen him up a bit, while carrying on a few other conversations.  There were plenty of inputs from my other drunken, laptop toting, geek companions (“give him some tattoos”, ” put some blood on his mouth”, “make his butt less pointy”, “he should have a sword, no, an anime sword”, “give him angry eyelids, no, not like that, angle them, no, this way”) to help with the process.  Until we eventually came up with:

And then, of course, we realized he must vanquish the lesser version of himself, who has apparently been sweating in fear for decades now (click for bigger):

It’s my desktop background image now.

As I mentioned in a previous post, last football season, I came up with a little drinking game:

This was also accompanied by the Tim Tebow drinking game – while watch college football at any point in the last season, drink any time the announcers mention Tim Tebow.  Two if he’s not on the field at the time.  Three if neither of the teams playing in the game you’re watching is Florida.  You get trashed, fast.

I didn’t make much of it, because I thought of the game near the end of the season, and I figured it wouldn’t work after Tebow disappeared into being a backup on some NFL team for a few years.

I was wrong.

Last weekend, I had a preseason NFL game on in the background, and it happened to be the Steelers vs the Broncos.  Did I mention Tebow apparently ended up with the Broncos?  So, I figured I’d try out the old Tim Tebow Drinking Game again.  It still works.  Really well.  I finished a beer in less than one offensive drive.  In maybe 5 minutes of football, the announces said Tebow’s name 14 times.  Which doesn’t count the number of times that they referred to him simply as “He” (and yes, I’m pretty sure they capitalized it while they spoke), because it was obvious who they were talking about, because he was all they were talking about.  For the entire drive.  Which he didn’t even score on.  For reference, if I had held to the “3 if Florida isn’t on the field” clause, that would have been 42 drinks in five minutes, or roughly three and a half cans of beers.

If you care to give it a try, the Vikings and the Broncos will be kicking off their last preseason game shortly (Thursday at 7:30 pm central).

Part of me wants Tebow to be the starter in the regular season so the drinking game can stay alive.  However, another part of me doesn’t want him to start because that part would like to be with me past 40, and it’s name is my liver.

This is a part of the dino saga, if it doesn’t make any sense, read these.

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After a good night’s sleep, we got up early to go tailgating.  Okay, not that early, it was an 8:00 PM game, but the point here is we went tailgating, and Parker got things started off right.

Does anyone else ever wonder if the beer (Land Shark) was named after this really old Saturday Night Live skit, and for that matter, if they had this particular clip in mind when they got naming right for the stadium where the Dolphins play?

No? Just me? Okay, moving on with tailgating then…

A few hours of tailgating later, night falls, and we learn that Parker can apparently hold his beer substantially better than Sinclair.

Yes, Parker was also standing on the car.  Life lesson?  Never buy a used car that was a rental.  Ever.

So, it was getting closer to game time, and we decided to head into Joe Robbie/Pro Player/Dolphin/Land Shark/Sun Life Stadium, up the giant spiraling corkscrew ramp, which gives a pretty good view of the tailgating festivities.

Now you may be saying, “Kearn, those last two pictures don’t have Parker in them at all, and tailgating seemed to go by rather quickly.”  Did I mention we were tailgating, and I was drinking?  Good, now that we’ve cleared that up, I’d like to point out that arepas may be the best drunk food ever.  It’s like you took cornbread, but made it into a sort of pancake form, and then once that was cooked, you heated it up on a grill with cheese (um, a kind that’s white, I have no idea which kind) between two of these cornbread pancake things until it was all gooey and warm.  Delicious.  They serve them at Joe Robbie/Pro Player/Dolphin/Land Shark/Sun Life Stadium.  Anyway, after that delicious break, we made it into the stadium, and back to Parker.  Luckily we left ourselves plenty of time to get to our seats.

“To be in the Hawkeye section, yes.  And to be on about the 45 yard line on the Hawkeye side, absolutely.”

Now, you may notice that between those two pictures, Georgia Tech went about 40 yards on offense.  This was basically the only time this happened during the game.  This was also basically the only time Parker was watching.  Now, I tend to not be too superstitious, but this was enough to make me convince Parker to stay in my pocket for the rest of the game, thus the lack of more game pictures with him.  Once it was safe again, he came came out to watch some more.

This is a part of the larger dino saga, if it doesn’t make any sense, read these.

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After our time on the beach, Parker and I decided to explore the Lincoln Road pedestrian mall in South Beach.  We were a little slow getting there, as Parker decided to stop for a snack.

And of course the bushes are always greener on the other side of the pedestrian walk way, so, we had to try those too.

I let Parker take all the time he want eating those bushes.  “Aren’t plants delicious Parker?”

“Phew, good.”

“What’s that Kearn?”

“Oh, nothing.”

South Beach – where even the mannequins have implants.

Let it be noted that the store Parker is posing in front of in this picture was selling Hawkeye gear.  And only Hawkeye gear.  No general sports merchandise.  Just Iowa Hawkeye clothes and memorabilia, and nothing else.  In Miami.  There was absolutely no Georgia Tech (the other team in the Orange Bowl) stuff, or any other store like it selling Georgia Tech stuff.  And it wasn’t a sports store that just rotates through whatever team is visiting for whatever game – it was an empty store front on Saturday, it was a full fledged Hawkeye store on Monday.  Apparently word gets out about how well our fans travel.

We had walked a ways, so Parker grabbed another snack.

“And you’re sure you’re okay with just eating plants, right Parker?”

“Oh, good.  I mean, I think we can find you something to drink.  How about that fountain over there?”

So we kept walking down to the end of the block, until finally we found…

After Parker had his fill, we decided to head back to the hotel and relax for a while.  We wanted to be well rested for tailgating the next day, so we decided to turn in early.  I tucked Parker into his little dino bunk…

And we slept with dreams of Hawkeye bowl wins in our heads.

Not to be confused with previous Free Idea Friday Cold Beer, this would be a website that lists bars, and their beer prices, only.  No pictures, no reviews or editorials.  No descriptions of the crowd that gathers there and how cool/trendy/hipster/tattooed/townie/gay bar/dance club/meat market/dive/etc it is.  Just a list of what beers the bar serves.  It would also need to note which are on tap, in bottles, and in cans, and the price of each.  It should also list if the bar ever charges a cover charge.

I’m a little up in the air still on if specials should be noted, or if it should just be the maximum price you will ever pay for a given beer at a given bar.  I’m also a little up in the air on if it should include other types of drinks they have (cider, wine, cocktails, shots), and if so, do you limit it to what’s on the menu, or whatever they’ll make.  I would lean towards including all alcohol that’s listed on the menu (if there is one), and noting specials but not real prominently.

The website should also allow you to search by distance from a given location, by which bars have a particular beer (for instance, Guinness on tap, PBR in a 20 oz can, Fat Tire in a bottle, etc), price for a given beer, and any combination of the above (for instance, find a bar within a mile that has Guinness on tap for $5 or less, doesn’t serve 20oz’s of PBR, and has some kind of hard cider).

I think this would be interesting not only as a great way to find a cheap place to drink with your friends and a handy way to find place that serve any obscure beers you may like, but also for how much you could tell about a place by what beers they have there and the price of each.

Previous post in the dino-saga here and here.  And yes, it took me forever to get around to downloading the pictures from my camera for this episode, so it’s a little behind the times, but it keeps you up to date with the saga.

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Sinclair has been hanging out at my place for quite a while now, and after getting rested up after his long journey from Florida, we started our search to see if we could find Minne.  So far we’ve had no luck, but it appears from her twitter account that she’s planning to come back in the spring.  After much consoling and a few cookies, I got Sinclair to accept that he won’t be able to see her until then.  In the mean time I’ve been distracting him with Hawkeye sports.

Sinclair took me up on the suggestion that we go down to the Iowa vs Minnesota game this year and go tailgating.  Nessie sent me a letter and said that she was going to swim up to meet us there, but that Mississippi current was too strong for her, and unlike Sinclair, every time she asked a barge captain for a ride, he’d scream in fear and mutter something about needing to “cut back” and run away.  However, she told me that she had a certain feeling we’d meet another Iowa fan at the game if we told her where we’d be tailgating, so I sent her the address.

We drove down to Iowa for the game the night before so we could sleep a little there and go tailgating.  We got up early, but Sinclair was pretty restless.

So I told him to go for a little walk to burn off some energy, since he seems to be good at that.

“Come to think of it, Sinclair, are you old enough to drink?”

“Oh, I suppose that makes sense, kind of.  Ready for another?”

“Sure.  Are you guys hungry?  We’re a little too lazy to do actual grilling tailgate food, but we do have some cookies and chips.”

“Sinclair, that’s an awful lot of beer to drink that fast, especially for someone your size.”

And I think we all know where that leads.  About 20 minutes later it was almost time to go to the game…

“Here Sinclair, have some water.”

“Thanks, I think I might stay back and take a little nap.  Parker can use my ticket and go to the game with you guys.”

“Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

“Yeah, though it is a little chilly.  Do you have anything I could borrow to cover up with?  I’m cold blooded and all…”

“Sure, here, hop in the car.  I happen to have an old Iowa Marching Band raincoat that you can cover up with.  It even has the old fuzzy fleece liner in it.  I’ll even tuck you in.”

So, we started walking to the game.

Parker made some friends along the way too.

It took a little while to get in, but we got there just in time.

It was a little quiet for a while after that.

Parker got a little bored during half time…

He takes after the defense.

A little while later, they got ready to kick off the second half, and we’re all lucky Parker was there.

Parker quickly ran down and restrained the unruly fan.  After all, we’d hate to see the Minnesota team catch fire for the first time since Decker got hurt.

The second half was, shall we say, less than photogenic.  But at least one fan in front of us did get pretty excited.

Until we finally arrived at the greatest (if also most blurry) play in football, the victory formation.

A side note, dinosaurs are incredibly slow on steps.  So, it took a little while to get down there and we missed Floyd, but we did get to see…

So, after the meanie security guard, we decided to go meet the band.  They were much nicer, one even let Parker try his horn.

Then we went over to meet the cheer leaders, they were pretty nice too, and seemed to like Parker…

Over all it was a fun game and a great day.

Until next time Mr Kinnick, until next time.

Start a bar simply named “Cold Beer”.  Bonus points if it’s in Minnesota or an equally fridged state.

• Career plans
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• Capitalists
• Elephants never forget

Yes, it’s the guy who does Mr Bean: