Sunday, August 28, 2011

With Apologies to Epic Mealtime

So, much like most guys who like to compensate for their lack of perceived masculinity by watching a lot of men-children cavort on video screens, I'm a big fan of Epic Mealtime. Their videos are almost always hilarious, and the food occasionally looks good too. Having watched a number of them, it got me thinking of odd food mashups, things that haven't necessarily been done before. And, living in San Diego, home of the best burritos in the world, according to no less an authority than World Champion Judah Friedlander, I wondered if the greatest burrito of all, the California Burrito, could be morphed into another form. Perhaps unrolled, placed on a pizza stone and baked? A California Burrito Pizza? Madness! Could such a thing actually succeed? I had to find out.

So I decided to do it at my friend TJ's bar-completion party. I rounded up all the ingredients and proceeded to Dave and Katherine's house, the site of said party, to start prep.

Ingredients:
4 avocados
2 limes
4 greenhouse tomatoes
1 onion
1 jalapeno
1 Trader Joes package of carne asada
1 Trader Joes package of pizza dough (this blog brought to you by Trader Joes! Just kidding, no one would pay for this)
1 package of mexican mix cheese
1 order of McDonalds french fries

First step: Make the guacamole and salsa. This went pretty easily, as I'm a certified guacamole ninja, as seen here.
Second step: BBQ the carne asada. I relied on my stalwart companion Ashok to complete this difficult task.
Third step: Lay out the pizza dough. Dave Drake's pizza expertise proved invaluable here, as he laid out the stone, peel, and corn meal and proceeded to knead the dough into the proper configuration. We then applied the guacamole, then the salsa, and then layers of carne asada, fries and cheese, in that order.
Fourth step: Pop in the oven! It took a while to cook, because it's a pretty topping-heavy pizza, and most of the ingredients have a lot of water in them. Still, after a while, it was done, and ready for devouring.


And here's a close-up.


It was actually really good overall, as evidenced by my roommate, who fully devoured about a third of it in short order. However, I'll say this: the cost is somewhat prohibitive. I spent about $50 on this pizza all told, which is really not worth it in the long run. It was a fun experiment, and might be good to try again, as I definitely bought more ingredients than I used, but probably not a staple meal, as it were.

Credit for the pictures goes to Florence Lee, who only needed to be poked about three or four times to send them. Just kidding, thanks Flo!

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Comic-Con 2011

Well, it's been a while, I should probably report in.

Comic-Con this year was a blast, as usual! The highlight for me was, as ever, walking the convention floor. The cosplayers were out in fine form this year, but my personal favorite was a mash-up of Darth Vader and Super Mario. It's a complete non sequitur, but that's why it's so amazing.


I also came up with a terrible game to play on the convention floor, which I called 'makeup or skin condition'. I make no excuse for how terrible that is, except I actually had back to back moments of genuine confusion, where I realized that one person actually had fake blood on their face, and not rosacea, followed immediately by making the converse realization about another person. Again, I'm sorry I'm occasionally the worst person. It happens.

My favorite part, however, wasn't strictly a Comic Con event, it was rather Con-adjacent. It was the ever-hilarious, nerdy and moving W00tstock, as put on by Paul and Storm, Wil Wheaton and Adam Savage. The guy who rather stole the show for me was Patrick Rothfuss, the author of two of my favorite fantasy novels of the past couple years. In the video below, he reads an old advice column he wrote for his college newspaper.



So imagine if the whole show was that funny. For four hours. That's W00tstock, people.

Another Con-adjacent show that blew my mind was the recording of the Nerdist Podcast Live, with the normal Nerdist crew plus Wil Wheaton, and then the guests of honor Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, known for their roles on a little TV show known as Dr. Who. The part where my brain exploded was when Wil and Matt started discussing how it was to pilot the Enterprise and the TARDIS. NERDGASM. You can find the whole thing here! Sadly, I did not receive a TARDIS burrito from Matt and Karen after the show. Still, well worth it.

Something that's always been a big part of the Con for me is the swag. I could probably get most of the same stuff online, piecemeal, but this lets me do it all in one go. Plus, it lets me meet a bunch of artists and writers whose work I admire greatly. This year was a pretty minimal haul, but I'm pretty stoked about it.


True to form, I bought a lot of comics! Clockwise from top left, I bought the Questionable Content book (the last one he had!), Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi (whose work I've always loved in the Flight collections), Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, the latest Penny Arcade collection, Orc Stain by James Stokoe (probably the weirdest comic I've read in ages, but it's a hoot), and the second Astonishing X-Men collection (signed! But since the signature is illegible, I don't know who by). Okay, I'm done abusing parenthetical statements, rest easy. The print is the cover of the Japanese edition of the first Scott Pilgrim book, the shirt on the left is a Dr. Who joke on the NASA meatball logo, the middle one is a Game of Thrones bit of swag I got in the redemption room, and the tanuki plumber shirt on the right is from Sam and Fuzzy via Topatoco. Come to think of it, that's actually a lot of swag. So it was a good year!

Finally, the thing that really made my Con this year were my friends. Or rather, the fact that I have friends, and rather more than I thought. Hanging out with Dave and Katherine and Ashok one day, then Raymond the next, then Peter, Hillary, Ruth and Kiana the day after that, and then my dear old friend Thomas who rolled down from LA, I was reminded of the fact that this is not an event to do alone, as I've previously thought. Con is an event that is always enhanced by the company of the people you attend it with, and I'm grateful that I had so many people to hang out with. Oh, and dressing up as Sherlock Holmes was awesome too. Pics to follow.

Anyhoo, this is my Sunday crew as we were rolling out on the trolley. Can't wait for next year!