Ouch.

The Greatest Martial Arts Moments by Maxim. They're fantastic! (LINK)

Waiting for baby...

I can't believe that the baby could be here any day now. The due date is in only 11 days! I'm a little nervous, but mostly very excited. Of course, I'm not the one with the baby in my tummy. Joanne has done such a great job with the pregnancy. She definitely got lucky dodging a lot of the sickness, but she mostly has handled it all so well. I know she's had some rough nights of sleep lately.

Our bags are packed and my cameras are charged. I'm ready to go. What have we been up to? Setting up the swing, the bouncer, the toys...it's crazy. Just when I thought 'C' and 'D' batteries were worthless. We've also been putting the finishing touches on Jack's room. It's all ready to go! Check it out!

As you can see, we went with the jungle theme. Hard to say no to all those great animals. We're pretty proud of the new room and Buster is especially fond of all the decorations. We just hope he doesn't get too jealous when Jack arrives.

And Joanne just loves the new glider. I think we'll both be loving it once Jack shows up. Just can't wait for the hourly wake up calls!

Hockey at its worst.

Painful to be Patrick Stefan. The Stars had a one point lead prior to this play.

Holiday Haps

Like everyone else, we had a real busy holiday vacation. Joanne began her vacation early since she had her last day of work on December 18th. She's so happy. The days off were action-packed, and we had lots of fun visiting with everyone.



We spent Christmas Eve at Joanne's cousin's house where we had the famous "Yankee Swap" type of gift exchange. Lots of gift stealing made the night tons of fun.


Christmas Day was with my relatives at my parents' house. Look at their new room addition! We had another great gift-stealing game and tons of food to eat. Thanks for coming down to visit everyone!


Later in the week, we hung out at Eddy and Steph's house to do our "Secret Santa" gift exchange. Everyone got great gifts! Thanks for coming down to visit, Alan, Chang, and Gina!


Lots of games were being played on this vacation. The DS Lites saw quite a bit of action as did my GameCube, but the most popular game for us was Rummikub. Do you know how to play?


And on New Years Eve Eve, we had Tea Party Fight Night with Joanne's girls. What is Tea Party Fight Night you ask? It's your normal tea party with sandwiches followed by an evening of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC 66) and pizza. Is that strange? Good work to Chuck Liddell for taking down repeating loser Tito Ortiz (Hi, Lara). Thanks Ryan for bringing the beer!


New Years Eve brought on the UCLA game versus Washington. Washington WAS ranked #14 until they dropped to #24 this week. OUCH! UCLA went on to win 96-74, keeping them undefeated 13-0.

We got Preston a sweet ride for Christmas...a Li'l Sasaki Power Wheels. It was a Li'l Kawasaki, but a little modification changed it to his own last name.


We went to New Years service at Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist temple. Probably my first visit to church this year. :)


The first part of New Years Day was spent with Joanne's family and her relatives from Japan.


We spent the evening with my family and my relatives. Thanks for all the fun!


Hope your holidays went as well as ours. On to the new year...

Masi Oka on Leno

Here's a clip of Masi Oka (Hiro from "Heroes") on Leno last night. There's an exclusive clip from the next episode of "Heroes" at the end. And if you don't understand the "gift" at the beginning, check out the SNL reference here.

It's Baby Shower !

Sorry that it took me so long to post up these pictures, but two weeks ago Joanne and I had two simultaneous baby showers. I had a great time at the Men's Baby Shower. It's the new tradition we've started. We went to check out UCLA basketball at the Wooden Classic at the Honda Center. They took on Texas A&M (ranked #6) and defeated them in a nailbiter, 65-62. UCLA is still ranked #1 and is one of four undefeated teams in the Top 25. Go UCLA!

Eddy started off the party right. He had T-shirts made that the guys wore all day long. It's our baby's name...UCLA style!



Eddy got us great seats on the baseline. We got to see them play up close!







The best part was the postgame tailgate. We set up camp for all of 10 minutes in the Honda Center parking lot and then realized that we'd probably get kicked out. We moved the party to a nearby park.



The true highlight of the party was our barbecue. Truly ghetto. That barbecue is originally a propane barbecue with legs. The legs were removed for transportability and we threw charcoal in it. Those uneven logs were used to hold it up. We had burgers, ribs, wings...the works! At one point we noticed that we had flames blowing out the back! Here's a shot of Daniel cooking while Glenn puts out the fire in the rear.



The positive result was the pile of meat that we had to grub on.



The negative result was the gigantic hole we burnt through in the barbecue. Lesson learned: Don't use charcoal in a propane barbecue. Sorry about the BBQ, Jimbo.



To some of you, this sounds like a disaster, but I think we enjoyed every bit of it...from the park ranger coming to tell us that we can't be drinking beer in the park to the old man who complained about the mess we made on the concrete. Thanks guys!



Meanwhile, back at my parents' house, Joanne was enjoying a completely different experience. Everyone nicely dressed, enjoying carefully prepared dishes amongst flowers and baby decorations. Joanne had a great time.

They played all sorts of great games, too! Measure Joanne's tummy. Memorize all the baby gear pinned to Joanne's shirt. Guess the melted candy bar in the diaper?

Thanks for the great parties. And check out the baby cake!

Stationery Movies

Check out this game where you guess the name of the movie based on its depiction using office supplies. I got 12 out of 20. (LINK)

New Transformers Trailer !

Check out the new trailer for the Transformers movie! (LINK)

Fight! Fight!

Nothing like bringing a little hockey to the basketball court. After this mess, 7 players were suspended from both the Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks. Carmelo Anthony, Denver's leading scorer, was suspended for 15 games. Ouch. Check out that sucker punch!

Good ol' 80s.

Flashback to the 80s. Do you remember these horrible commercials? That's what makes them so great. If you don't remember any of these commercials then you are probably too young to be reading this blog.

And vote for your favorites on the right --->

I've fallen and I can't get up!


Clap on. Clap off. Clap on, clap off...The Clapper.


Encyclopedia Britannica...annoying!


Where's the beef?


Joe Isuzu...how long did he do these commercials?


Lazer Tag...just hearing that sound again brings back memories.


California Raisins


Eat Breakfast!


Transformers...I had Omega Supreme!


Frosted Lucky Charms...they're magically delicious!


Nintendo!


Micro Machines


It wasn't until I saw this commercial again that I remember Chargertron.


Star Wars Figures!


Of course they always shoved the My Little Pony commercials in between the cool Transformers and Star Wars ones.


This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?

Los Angeles Auto Show

Yup, it's that time of year again. If you haven't already, you have to get over to the LA Convention Center this weekend to check out the Auto Show. I go every year, except we only had 2 hours at the show this year (I've spent about 12 hours at the Auto Show in the past). Of course, there are always ups (!) and downs. Here's an up...the Audi R8.



And here's a down. The Spyker D12 Peking to Paris (what kind of name is that?)



They had some of my favorites:

Mini Cooper


Aston Martin V8 Vantage


And some old school classics:



They even had one that looked like the next shoe from Nike:

But nothing hurt more than the smashed up Porsche Carrera GT
they had on display for the new "Redline" movie. Ouch.



For a quick slideshow of all the pics, go here.

It's not moving.

These images always kinda bother me...so I'm passing it to you.

USC is going to the Rose Bowl !

Isn't that great news? The best part is that they have UCLA to thank for it. What a great game! Unbelievable. The USC reign is over and UCLA's one-game season is successful. Final score: UCLA 13, USC 9. Did you watch the game? Did you see that interception?

Richard Simmons

Richard Simmons' steamer explodes on the David Letterman show. (LINK)