I, Shane › Shane Adams’ personal weblog

For no reason whatsoever, I was reading blogebrity Jason Kottke’s About page and as is often the case when reading Kottke, I was struck with the idea for a post of sorts. Actually, it’s more of a meme of absolutes. The inspired passage went something like this:

I prefer red wine to white, movies to films, jeans to khakis, vanilla to chocolate, Pixar to Dreamworks, the subway to taxis, nonfiction to fiction, and Safari to Firefox.

And it got me thinking…when it comes down to the either/or questions, which do you prefer?

Vanilla or Chocolate? vanilla
Dogs or Cats? dogs
Coke or Pepsi? Pepsi
The Beatles or The Rolling Stones? The Beatles
Microsoft or Apple? Apple
Nike or Adidas? Nike
Coffee or Tea? coffee
Spider-Man or Batman? Batman
Ketchup or Mustard? ketchup
Pen or Pencil? pencil
Soup or Salad? salad
Books or Magazines? magazines
Indiana Jones or James Bond? Indiana Jones
Summer or Winter? winter
New York City or Los Angeles? New York City
Google or Yahoo? Google
CNN or Fox News? CNN
Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune? Jeopardy
Mountains or Beach? mountains
Yoga or Pilates? yoga
Star Wars or Star Trek? Star Wars

The only rule is that you have to choose one. It may be close or you may not like either, but it’s my quiz…NOT YOURS. Copy and paste your responses on your blog if you are so inclined. Or just do so in the comments. It’s your preference, really.

Pass it around.

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
by Anthony Bourdain
RATING: 8 out of 10

Anthony Bourdain is chef-cool for a lot of reasons. He gets mad respect in the community of chefdom, although many may only recognize him from his excursions on the Travel Channel. The truth is, back in the day, he was a chef at Brassiere Les Halles in New York City, the culmination of a food career that is so degenerate and depraved that it would make some sailors blush.

This middle-class-to-well-off lad “with the French name” has held every job in the kitchen, from dishwasher to line cook all the way up to executive chef and now, “Chef-at-large” (whatever that means). Along the way, mistakes were made, mostly due to excessive cocaine and heroin use, but Bourdain somehow managed to come out alive.

Kitchen Confidential is - at its core - the autobiography of one fantastically interesting character. However, along the way, Bourdain manages to skewer, slice, dice and whatever-other-cooking-euphemism-you-prefer the restaurant business, exposing what has been his experience up to 2000 (when the book was originally published). He pulls no punches (divulging the secret to never order fish on Monday and doesn’t like Emeril all that much) and writes lovingly of the debauched behavior of kitchen staffers (sex, drugs, etc.).

People like Anthony Bourdain are truly amazing. Here is a guy who is well-respected as a chef (although he would admit he can’t hang with the Eric Riperts and the Tom Colicchio) yet manages to tell a story that not only totally compelling, but also brilliantly written. You can hear the sounds (usually curse words in Spanish) in Bourdain’s ears, smells the aromas of his kitchen; it’s written so well that you can almost taste the food.

There was a time in my life where I wanted to be a chef. I think it’s one of the most amazing crafts and that great chefs are truly artists of the highest kind because they have the ability to touch every single one of your senses. After reading Kitchen Confidential, I don’t. What a life these guys lead…

I really liked the book a lot. If you like Bourdain or you watch Top Chef (my favorite reality show) or a lot of Food Network programming, I suggest you pick up the book.

Alli and I went and saw WALL·E last night and I gotta say Pixar has once again put together a masterpiece. The way that they’ve taken the small concept for robot tasked with cleaning up Earth and yet turning it into an unlikely love story of epic proportions is nothing short of magnificent. John Lasseter and Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton and Steve Jobs and everyone at Pixar can once again be proud of their little animation studio.

Every year, I look forward to Pixar’s latest release with great anticipation. With the exception of Cars, I’ve yet to be disappointed. (Even Cars is still better than a lot of the dreck that gets thrown up on screen.) When putting WALL·E into the pantheon of Pixar’s pictures, it falls somewhere above Cars and somewhere behind Finding Nemo and Toy Story.

What sets WALL·E apart is that it is largely a statement film, critical of mindless consumerism and environmental carelessness. (Sound familiar?)

Similarities to Short Circuit and Idiocracy aside, WALL·E is a brilliant and beautiful movie, full of stunning imagery on Earth’s landscape of desolation and isolation as well as the vast expanse of space.

Pixar explores some very adult themes with the movie, but presents them in a way that’s approachable, albeit a little bit obvious. They’re certainly not subtle in their criticism, but I found it interesting to be sitting in front of some kids who immediately were able to recognize, “Look at all that TRASH!”

At its most basic, WALL·E is a love story between two robots. As far-fetched as that may seem, it works on every single level and you walk away with an elated feeling, maybe holding your spouse’s hand a little tighter, but definitely smiling.

Go and check it out.

Today, People Magazine posted a story online (I got the link from CNN, I swear) in which Vanessa Hudgens (she of High School Musical fame) shares the “secret to her great relationship with co-star Zac Efron.”

There are so many things wrong with this story, but I’d like to tackle her “secret.”

“If you really love someone, you shouldn’t have to work at it,” the actress tells Cosmo Girl! for its July/August issue, reports Entertainment Tonight. “You finish each others’ sentences and have the same sense of humor.”

First of all, it should be assumed that we all know this is a 19-year-old talking about the secret of her great relationship with her 20-year-old co-star. It’s beyond ridiculousness. Hudgens and Efron have been dating since October of 2007. For those of you that are bad with math, that’s less than 12 months.

While a great relationship should not feel like work, you still have to work at it. If I’m going to take a celebrity’s sage advice about relationships, I’ll stick with my boy Will Smith who said:

“Counseling, individual learning, books, conflict resolution,” Smith confided. “It is a full time job to try and be happy. People tend to think that they can go to work for 50 or 60 hours a week and then come home and their relationship is just supposed to work.”

That’s the truth. Why would you spend less time working at your relationship than you do on your career? I know that People’s business is selling magazines and driving traffic to their site, but it’s really irresponsible for them to prop up this lackadaisical attitude toward relationships, especially from a teenage pop star who has been in her supposed “serious” relationship less than a year.

Over the past several months, Alli and I have been doing some pre-marital counseling for a couple that I will be marrying in late July. It’s been a terrific experience because out of all the things I’m good at, I think I’m probably best at being married. It’s not a skill that will necessarily lead to a long, illustrious career, but it sure makes my life a lot more enjoyable.

One of the things that I’ve found is a constant in the couples that I look to as relationship mentors in my life is that if you want to make a relationship or a marriage work, you should work harder at your relationship than you would in your career. When you do, it won’t feel like work. You’ll be happier, your significant other will be happier, and you’ll find that working at a relationship can be the most rewarding thing that you’ll ever do. If I had but one piece of advice to give to couples, that would be it.

That, and don’t get relationship advice from 19-year-olds in People Magazine.

Maybe I haven’t been paying attention…when did personal injury lawyers and ambulance chasers become cool again? You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? Those awful attorneys have managed to skim millions of dollars from unsuspecting clients by promising big payoffs for Vioxx usage and miscellaneous injuries. That’s the only explanation for the deluge of advertisements we’re subjected to on a daily basis.

One of the ones that makes me laugh every time is the one from ambulance chasers Peterson & Company. These are the guys who use the awful URL to pimp their class action lawsuits out to the masses. The ones with THIS GUY talking about 816lawfirm.com. Is there a more embarrassingly generic web address?

What they don’t tell you is that they get you to sign up for a larger class action lawsuit and then when they get millions and millions of dollars from the offending company, the reward is split up among the thousands of folks attached to the class action while the attorneys recoup their nice fat commission on the full amount.

Companies like this seem to be spreading like the plague. It seems like a new commercial pops up every other day.

However, the worst offender has to be Brown & Crouppen. You know them… A sophisticated legal weapon. The fat guys in their commercials just seem like mobsters. “I’m Terry Crouppen. I’m a lawyer. I fix problems.” “We kept our word. We made ‘em PAY!” That’s my favorite one…with the guys sitting around the table talking about how rich they made their client and all that. “He’s a good guy. He didn’t deserve this.” And you’re right. He didn’t deserve to be canonized on your cheesy TV commercial to boost your ego.

Now, Brown & Crouppen have a new awful ad with the Crouppen son talking about how they’ll call them back in 24 hours guarantee or they can call him personally. Just a question, though…how do they do that? You don’t put your number up there LifeLock-style. An empty promise, it seems.

I have a proposal. It can be like McCain-Feingold’s Campaign Finance Reform…the government should mandate that these lawyers are required to disclose the amounts that they themselves received for each winning case and put that on screen as a comparison to what their clients actually walked away with.

Maybe then we’ll be able to fast-forward through their awful commercials in peace.

What a crazy few weeks it’s been.

It started with Alli taking off for drill team camp at Emporia State for a few days. They had a very successful camp and Dreyfuss and I held down the fort. As soon as she got home, her sister took the dog with her up to their parents’ house. Dreyfuss struggles with kennels, so we send him up to Grandma and Grandpa’s where they can spoil him.

Then, we were off to Negril, Jamaica via Memphis for Jake and Kelly’s wedding. Four days in Jamaica, then a day and a half at home before we headed up to Council Bluffs to get the dog. We spent the weekend with Alli’s parents, celebrating her mom’s (belated) birthday and then returning home about 7:00 this evening.

Now, we’re parked on the couch, I’ve got the DVR remote in hand and we’re catching up on some TV. Sure, I’m back to work tomorrow, but it’s nice to have everyone home.

(All apologies to my friends that work at Sprint…this is a rather long post and it’s not exactly complimentary of the Instinct…)

Sprint and Samsung are really putting the full court press on with the new Samsung Instinct. They’re promoting the heck out of it and have given it a terrific price point and coupled with their $99.99 Everything plan, they’ve got a compelling reason to take a look at the phone. The press has even been complimentary of the phone, calling it a “decent iPhone competitor.”

Unfortunately, Sprint bought into the iPhone comparisons and continued to tout it as a competitor to the iPhone. This was their first mistake. If you compare the two phones solely on features, the Instinct probably comes out ahead right now. However, when you factor in the iPhone 3G coming on July 11, some of those features (like true GPS) become irrelevant.

I spent about 30 minutes playing around with the Instinct on Thursday after receiving an e-mail invitation to preview it in stores. Many things came to mind…here are my most significant thoughts:

GPS - From what I can tell, this is a great feature. I didn’t go anywhere, but the interface was nice and easy to use. Again, it’s irrelevant to compare it to the iPhone once the 3G comes out, but right now, Sprint has the edge.

Interface - With the way they’ve advertised it, I expected the interface to be comparable to OS X on the iPhone. Not so much. It was pretty clunky and not terribly responsive. Not only that, but since the touchscreen on the Instinct is pressure-sensitive rather than heat-sensitive like the iPhones, I found that I had to push pretty hard on the screen in order to get it to do what I wanted. As someone who has played with the iPhone as well, this is a big disappointment.

Web browsing - This was probably my biggest disappointment with the Instinct. One thing that’s great about the iPhone is that it will adjust portrait-to-landscape just by turning the screen. All applications work both ways (with the exception of the included YouTube app, I think), including browsing. On the Instinct, you can only browse (and type) in landscape mode. Couple that with Mobile Safari’s ability to zoom and its far superior navigation capabilities, the iPhone wins this one hands down.

Form factor - This one’s a wash. They are about the same size and they feel the same in your hand.

Keyboard - This is kind of a duplicate complaint, but the pressure-screen makes typing kind of a chore. Not only that, but the iPhone has auto-correct built in while the Instinct only suggests misspelled words. The typography of the Instinct is far inferior to the iPhone’s (to be expected) as is the color saturation, making the Instinct’s screen a lot harder to read.

Lack of sync - I’m not sure why I should be surprised with this. As someone who has made the choice to live better in a Windows-less world, it’s difficult for me to find a phone that will synchronize with my Macbook. Windows Mobile-based phones OBVIOUSLY won’t do the trick, so I’ve got very few options - Blackberries (ew), Palm-based devices (I like the Centro, but HATE the typography) or iPhones. Everything else just kind of sucks. The amazing thing to me about the Instinct was that it doesn’t even sync with Windows. That makes no sense to me. Synchronization is one of the key reasons to have an advanced phone like an iPhone or a Blackberry. The fact that the Instinct doesn’t even sync with Windows is a HUGE failure by Sprint’s project planners. Sure, you can view your mail on there, but if it doesn’t synchronize, what benefit is there?

Bells and whistles - There’s no doubt that Sprint made a lot of effort in making sure that the Instinct was packed with features. That gives them the ability to point to lists like this and say, “SEE, our phone has more features.” The problem is that with a lack of a good platform, the Instinct’s features don’t feel cohesive and they are all difficult to find (the technician at the Sprint store on the Sprint campus spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to add an e-mail account). I’ll admit, the Live TV function is cool (although I can’t for the life of me find where the list of channels is) and the addition of Visual Voicemail is great. But with the opening of the iPhone App Store, the applications built for the iPhone will all be vetted by Apple’s developer standards and are going to be sweet. The applications I saw for the Instinct fell far short of anything on the iPhone.

Summary

I really wanted to like the Instinct. I really did. But there were so many places where it was so far inferior to the iPhone that it was laughable. Even the Sprint employee that was checking out the Instinct said that it “didn’t hold a candle to his iPhone.” That’s just sad.

Even sadder was that when I asked one of the people in the Sprint store (REPEAT: this is the Sprint store on the Sprint campus) why I shouldn’t just leave Sprint and go get an iPhone, his response was, “Well, if you’re on the Employee Friends plan, that’s why.” And it’s true, but not for the reasons he thinks. The Friends part is the important thing to me. As many problems as I have with Sprint (small by comparison to my problems with Comcast), I won’t leave their network because I’m a loyal person who wants to support a local company that employs about half a dozen of my friends. The cheaper plan is nice, but the friendships are more important. I just wish that the company wouldn’t rely on my friendships for my loyalty and instead provide me with great phones and great service.

The Instinct’s failure is not entirely Sprint’s fault though. The media who touted the phone as “a viable iPhone competitor” really sealed its fate. Sprint would have been better off to not believe the hype and just sell the phone for what it is - a touch-screen phone with media features. They should not have tried to go head-to-head with the iPhone for a lot of reasons, but they certainly got some great press out of the deal. Unfortunately, the phone doesn’t live up to the hype. There are some neat features for sure, but if you want to compare it to the iPhone, well…you just shouldn’t. Compete with Blackberry or Palm…don’t compete with Apple. For an example, see the Microsoft Zune. Microsoft has TONS more money than Sprint and they still can’t compete in the MP3 market.

For me, I’ve been waiting for this phone to come out before using my hardware upgrade that Sprint offers every 18 months. I’ll probably now use it to get a Centro because it at least will synchronize with my Macbook. I wish that I liked the Instinct because there are some great features there…I just felt like using it was too much of a chore.

Playing for Pizza
by John Grisham
RATING: 7 out of 10

Remember back in the day when the world clamored over when the next Grisham book would come out and how great it would be? I remember reading A Time to Kill and The Firm years ago and devouring them as I marveled at Grisham’s ability to make legal proceedings accessible and to make lawyers seem a little less…um…lawyer-y. For about 6 years during the late 80’s and early 90’s, he dominated the book world. His books now come a little less often, but are still putting plenty of coin in his pockets.

Grisham has written 16 legal fiction books and 4 non-legal fiction books (as well as a single legal non-fiction book). Playing for Pizza falls into that second non-legal fiction category and focuses on an American football player who has managed one of the single biggest failures registered in the history of the NFL (think Lin Elliott).

Rick Dockery is a typical anti-hero…lazy, physically gifted, a real schmoozer. But he’s also tainted goods. No one in the NFL will sign him so he flies the coop off to Parma, Italy where they play real American football (not that silly stuff we call soccer). Apparently, Italy has a league that allows 3 American players per team (Grisham apparently discovered American football while researching another book in Italy) and the competition is probably equal to that of large-high-school football.

The title of the book comes from the way that most of the players in the league get paid…with pizza and beer. Most of the Italian players are athletic guys who just enjoy the game. Oh, to have players that enjoy the game…

Anyway, you can imagine what happens. But predictability is not the biggest sin of this book…the story itself is interesting and Grisham’s descriptions of the food and the cities of Italy made me miss it very much. The story is light on character development and it just made too many leaps where there were opportunities for great storytelling. The book reads more like a screenplay and, frankly, it will probably be better as a movie. Actors will (hopefully) be able to capture the nuance and subtlety of the characters’ feelings, which was one of the major omissions from the book.

Still, it’s a quick, enjoyable read; it just leaves you wanting a little more. It certainly could have been longer, only clocking in at less than 250 pages, giving Grisham more room to develop the characters, but like I said, it’s something that actors will be able to overcome in a movie (as long as they are decent).

Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret to a Man’s Soul
by John Eldredge
RATING: 6 out of 10

I’ve been “reading” this book for quite a long time. I started it sometime in January and it took until June for me to finish. This was not necessarily the fault of the book (although it could be improved), but more the fault of it not being what I wanted to read.

Normally, I would have given up, but I really wanted to actually get through the book because I love the concept behind it - it delves into exactly what the title says. It talks about the spiritual aspect of how men need to be men…we’re built to be wild and passionate people and the world has emasculated us in a way that keeps us from reaching our full potential.

It sounds a little new-agey, but Eldredge has some excellent points in the book. Unfortunately, he struggles to string them together into coherent chapters. The ideas are there, but the book really needs some editing. (Mr. Eldredge, you can email me shane at this domain dot com if you need an editor.)

Over time, I felt like the book was repeating its key concepts instead of focusing them into specific sections. And while I wanted to really like it, I just couldn’t get over the organization of the book.