a burning ring of fire

I came home this evening, wiped out after watching the Sox eke out a major win against the Blue Jays, only to be a little peeved that the neighbors were throwing a bigass bbq without inviting me to the festivities. As if I'm not the most perfect bbq guest ever. Not only do I delight in all things grilled and all things meaty, but put those two together, grilled and meaty, and combine that with a crucial Red Sox victory, and you have one very exuberant and giddy party guest. At that point I don't even need any liquor in me. But of course, I was wrong. It was no bigass bbq, but rather, the smell of smoke was from the fire burning in Topanga Canyon a good ways north of here. LA has now both literally and figuratively sunk to the depths of hell. According to the experts, today was the hottest day of the year here so far, which means absolutely nothing in a city that rarely rises above 90 and rarely dips below 50 degrees. But indeed it was hot, in no small part due to the wildfires which has covered LA in a plume of smoke visible by satellite. As I am devoted to the idea of a glass half full, I will point out just a few positive aspects of this otherwise catastrophic event in which LA might be burned off the face of the earth.

One. High speed car chases no longer dominate the local news. Instead the news has become unseemingly informative. I now know how to evacuate horses, domesticated animals, and lest I forget, human beings. So I've begun my own mental list of emergency evacuation necessities: Bruce Lee film collection (check), Bruce Lee T-shirts (check), Bruce Lee posters and other movie memorabilia (check), and of course, my all time favorite Bruce Lee item ever, my anatomically correct and jointed Bruce Lee figurine with moveable numchucks (check check check!). That should come in super handy if I need to spend endless hours evacuated at the Angels stadium with no one for company.

Uh two. Fires are cool. Have you ever sat by a campfire, mesmerized by the flames? Well, multiply that a thousandfold and you have serious entertainment.

Three. Finally, a fire big enough to bbq the giant squid discovered yesterday (see post). Yes! My chopsticks are poised for action.

Now that we can all rest better, let us head tomorrow to the bars and raise our glasses and hope that either the fire continues to burn uncontrollably or that the Red Sox can manage to take it to the next level, restore peace and harmony in the world, reset the yin and the yang, and kick major New York ass down down down, to hell in a handbasket.

fire up the barbie!

The giant squid lives! Man's worst fears or my greatest hope realized. Is it wrong if this news makes me salivate? Scientific discoveries are progressing at a rapid clip. Next stop... Sasquatch! Dare I dream?

behind every good man a is a better rod

I suppose there are certain things a person shouldn't admit to ever doing. Like peeing in your pants in college. Or dreaming of having a lesbian affair with your mother. These are all purely hypothetical of course. But operating on the idea that confession is one way of cleansing irrepressible and shameful urges out of your life, I am compelled to admit here that I am a regular late night viewer of BassCenter on ESPN. As the title suggests, this half hour program is indeed a show dedicated exclusively to what else... bass fishing. But what is fascinating to me about this show is its very existence. When it was on the table, how did it win out over "GolfCenter" or "SoccerCenter"? Or even "BowlingCenter"? Could this actually be a Saturday Night Live spinoff? From what I learned about bass fishing thus far, I understand that these men love the bass. Maybe more than women or beer. They also love to fish it. I have never seen fishing so exciting. And it's informative too. Who knew, for instance, that hurricane Katrina will have devastating longterm effects on bassfishing nationwide? Screw the humans, it's the fish who are the ultimate victims. Seriously though, if I knew whether or not women were allowed in the sport, the likelihood of which seems pretty slim so far considering they are all paunchy white males with goatees, I would quit my day job tomorrow and buy a pair of rubber pants and try my hand at an exciting new future in the great outdoors.

Bass update: It has been most recently noted that BassCenter is preceded by the equally addictive program called none other than (drumroll please...) "BassMaster"! Yes, a full uninterrupted hour of prime bass fishing for the inveterate insomniac in you. Booyakasha.

ceci n'est pas une pipe

Just when I had lulled myself into thinking that I live in a city like any other, I find myself in the middle of some whacked out scene that should only take place in either a movie, or in this case, on the local news. Tonight, two blocks from my house, I drove right into what must have been the end of a high speed car chase. A fire engine, ten police cars, two guys in a Nissan Maxima, and floodlights galore... you get the picture. I confess, I had always hoped that if I lived in LA long enough I was going to bump into one of these sooner or later. I live so close to the 405 and the Santa Monica freeway that it was just a matter of time before I saw the miracle of a live car chase right before my eyes. Helicopters circle overhead in my neighborhood every night. It's gotten to the point where the sound soothes me and helps me go to sleep. They circle endlessly, looking for a reason to fill soundbytes on the morning news. Churning the sky in a way that evokes what it might be like to live in a post-apocalyptic urban nightmare. Well, the live car chase did not disappoint. You could smell fear permeating the night air. The two guys in the car were terrified that they were going to die and the police were also terrified that they might have to kill them. The floodlights gave it all the unreal quality of a movie set, an image that was only shattered by the sobering sight of police officers getting out of their cruisers with real guns in their holsters. Moments like this in the city remind me of how strangely LA exists within the blurry line between reality and movie fiction. And what is most disturbing about this is not that fake events have become convincingly real, but the fact that real events have become so convincingly fake that something you really did see happen can feel like nothing more than a scene from bad Schwarzenegger movie come true.

rain rain go away

Woke up this morning to rain pounding on the windows, a thunderstorm the likes of which rarely occurs out here. I dreamt that they were wet frogs violently throwing themselves against the windows since I forgot what rain sounds like. It turns out that it hasn't rained in Los Angeles since March 9th of this year, over seven long months ago. When it rains, a couple of things happen. One, people who drive cars crash into each other. This is because of low visibility. Not because it rains so hard that visibility is impaired but because people don't know how to operate their window wipers. Angeleans have yet to master turn signals so you can imagine the challenges presented by wipers. Second, the city is almost paralyzed by rampant traffic light failure. This makes more people crash into each other. Sometimes they even crash into traffic poles which begins the whole sick process all over again in a repetitive cycle of destruction. Because there are so many traffic accidents on a rainy day, it's a good idea not to venture outside. Of course this could only be attempted if you are a graduate student without a care in the world. It is an excellent time to catch up on reading or watching high quality cable TV shows like this:

Coolest most awesome videos! Man in emergency room; Japanese men in the mud; child in sewer hole; out-of-control woman on amusement park ride.

Take note that one Japanese man alone is not what makes this compelling TV but that is "men" plural. And is the woman out-of-control or is it the amusement park ride? Not only does this program offer almost too much excitement packed into a single show, especially for a rainy day, but it also boggles the mind how such a complex medley of topics can be weaved together into a coherent half hour. This artistry is something that is best left up to the professionals. Since most of these very professionals live in LA, I worry now that they are out there crashing into other cars, into traffic poles, and leaving people like me with nothing to watch on the next rainy day. Will the devastation never end? Who knew that rainfall could create so much chaos in the universe. Let's hope that harmony is quickly restored and that it doesn't rain out here for another seven months or children around the world may never be discovered in their sewer holes and women will spin uncontrollably in perpetuum on amusement park rides.

bronzing frogs

The harvest moon did indeed work its magic this weekend as I froze my ass off in the coldest warm weather city on the West coast. San Francisco is much more beautiful than I remembered it though its arctic winds are as biting as ever. I attribute my former dislike of the city to having spent too much time on Haight street where I had to wade knee deep through curbfuls of young homeless kids wearing $300 sunglasses calling me "chink bitch" for not giving them change. You can imagine how heartbroken I was to find them gone. But this time around, the crisp air, tourists hanging off the trolleys, and the icing colored victorian mansions lining its steep streets just seemed so lovely and picturesque. This is the first time I imagined it might be a good place to live. It doesn't hurt that my friend Cameron was a most excellent host and took me to a couple of great bars.

Here he is trying to assemble furniture to fill an otherwise empty apartment. A humble beginning to a soon to be majestic bachelor pad. Boom chicka bow.

His pretty ceilings.

View from his window. Admirable use of space.

The mark of a true friend. He didn't kick me out despite my nasty ass feet. This was the aftermath of walking home from a show in my bare feet where apparently I was lucky not to have stepped on crack vials and broken needles. My only true downfall were my four inch heels.

The zeitgeist. A truly great outdoor bar. The air is smokey with bbq and they have nice beers on tap. In the three hours we spent here we saw a girl flash her ass and then her tits, guys doing things with yo-yo's I didn't know were possible, and some very romantic face sucking. What more is there you can ask of a bar?

This is the last of my summer travels. A good way to end it.

by the light of the silvery moon

As the harvest moon waxes to its maximum fullness, it seems to be only fitting that everything has gone wrong today. Not only did I spend five hours trying to print a picture on a large format printer that took two hours to spool only to cut off an essential two inches off the top, now it seems that I've broken blogger and I can't for the life of me post any pictures. Maybe if I consume an entire box of mooncakes this annoying problem will fix itself. Or maybe this calls for the big guns, like a fist full of zakura balls.

everything under heaven

Omigod. The Chinese invented everything. Most of these discovered thousands of years before they were figured out in the West. What the frack were they doing over there without a rudder and wheelbarrow for godsakes?

Iron plow (5th c. BC)
Wallpaper (3rd c. BC)
Paper (2nd c. BC)
Fortune cookie (2nd c. BC)
Steel from cast iron (2nd c. BC)
Blood circulation discovered (2nd c. BC)
Wheelbarrow (1st c. BC)
Boat rudder (1st c. AD)
Suspension bridge (1st c.)
Compass (3rd c.)
Stirrup (3rd c.)
Algebra (3rd c.)
Umbrella (4th c. )
Toy helicopter rotor and propellor (4th c.)
Kungpao chicken (5th c.)
Matches (6th c.)
Chess (6th c.)
Solar wind discovered (6th c.)
Gunpowder (8th c.)
Paper money (9th c.)
Moveable type (11th c.)
Flamethrower (12th c.)
Bursting shells and mines (14th c.)
Panda Express (15th c.)

taking the high road

When I wasn't drinking a tall cool hefeweizen on an outdoor patio somewhere, or lying on my back in Central Park letting the wind tickle my armhairs, I actually managed to make it to two very cool exhibits in New York this week. One of them was an exhibit at the MOMA called "The High Line", a project undertaken by a group of environmental engineers and architects to convert the old elevated railway on the far West side into a public park. This is just about the coolest agri-tectural project I've ever seen. The idea came about after some people noticed that the abandoned railway was naturally turning into a grassy corridor with full blown trees and vegetation growing the entire length of this elevated space. With the support of the city, the design team are breaking ground this fall to turn this corridor into woodlands, grasslands, and wetlands--a perfect marriage of industrial recycling and environmental revitalization. They are planning to preserve found objects (aka industrial trash) while also converting it into some crazy ass vegetal wilderness. It partially reaffirms my faith in humanity and the importance of creating beauty out of the industrial waste that we leave behind.

The other exhibit, also part of a larger restoration project, was the Ellis Island museum, one of those places that only tourists end up actually going to. And that would be me. Though I find the public fascination with the Statue of Liberty utterly outlandish. Especially considering how most people fail to see the irony of how close it is to Ellis Island where the people who had the best view of the statue were sitting there incarcerated, taken ill, or turned away without ever having set foot on US soil. But Ellis Island is still a must-see landmark. You really get a sense that America at that time was a freaking tower of babel. Thousands of people, crammed into small spaces speaking in all different tongues. And everyone was dressed head to toe in native gear like they were on their lunch break at Epcott center. They say that you could tell a person's ethnicity by the way they knotted their belongings together. The hallways echo with the human suffering that took place there. Creepy.

in new york city

frack you and frack the fracking starship you rode in on!

"I hate Grace Park, man. She's a cylon whore."
"A cylon whore?"

Now really. Them be fighting words.

I was rendered speechless when I heard this earlier today. This is clearly just a symptom of the gaping gender divide. Ever since the new Battlestar Galactica series first began, I have been absolutely smitten with Grace Park, an inspired choice to replace the big black dude that first played Boomer on the original show. I reveled in her unassuming Korean-American beauty, typical enough that she might have been discovered while eating soondubu chigae at the Galleria Mall in Koreatown. I liked her lithe and feminine physique that belies a steely cylon interior. She gives delusional people like myself the hope that anyone can kick major galactic ass given the right outfit and a laser gun. I even love that she kind of sucks at acting. It pulls at my heartstrings. Now despite all this, I admit Grace Park is bad. She's a cylon for chrissakes. But is she a whore? Uh, hello. It takes two to frack. And since when does sleeping with two different men constitute whoring? What we're really talking about here is not whether a cylon should have multiple sex partners, but whether a female can sleep around and also hold the ultimate survival of the human race in her hands. Clearly this is a fact that may be hard for some guys to swallow. But for most women, who are used to swallowing much worse, they should rejoice in this new dietary alternative to the feeble-minded Manolo-obsessed women of Sex in the City, or the gardener-obsessed Desperate Housewives where instead, women can wield an unabashed sexuality and power without having to come in the form of Xena, warrior princess. (Who by the way is making an appearance on the next episode. Coincidence?) Comments like this make me afraid that we may be turning back to the same culture of male fear that once gave birth to ideas of "vaginal dentata" or the "succubus". So let's step back for a second and try to appreciate what the writers at BSG are trying to do here, which I think is to introduce a new order of things, maybe a new feminism, where it's okay for a woman to bury her head into the buff arms of her starpilot lover after unloading six rounds of cosmic ammo into an ill-fated enemy. So say we all.

pillow talk

Sometimes I feel sorry for guys. They likely have no idea how much women really tell each other about their sex lives. Which is of course. . . everything. My first distinct memory of this phenomenon was in high school when Pepper Lindsley described in explicit detail what it was like to give a guy a blowjob. We must have been 14 or 15. She had braces at the time and this presented some major logistical problems with his pubic hair. She also gave me this report with her neck covered in hickeys which was almost as gross as her blowjob story. Well, since that time, all my female friendships may be thought of simply as a long series of giggled confessions of their sexual encounters. As if the act of telling affirmed that something had indeed happened. The first blowjob, lost virginity, the elusive orgasm. And there was the advice too. Don't give a blowjob with braces for starters. Or never have sex in the sand. Girls learn a lot of important stuff from each other in this sort of tribal way. Even as early as fifth grade, my entire class read Judy Bloom's Forever, passing it around wrapped in an innocuous brown paper cover, handed off surreptitiously from one girl to another in the back of study hall as if we were dealing drugs. When it got to be my turn, it was like entering a secret society whose code words were penis, condoms, and sex on top.

By my 20s, not only did the stories get more interesting, but they got more explicit as well. But in all that time, I just sat there listening, nodding conspiratorially, without any lurid stories of my own to share. And even if I did, I didn't have the nerve to talk about it. I don't know why this was. Maybe it was because when I was five, an older neighborhood boy once trapped me in my bedroom and chased me around the room trying to get me to touch his penis. It wasn't particularly traumatic, probably because it wasn't all that "threatening", but I knew it was something I shouldn't tell anyone about. When I finally got around to being comfortable talking about sex, I was already in my mid-20s and it was as if the dam had cracked and all my innermost thoughts began seeping out of me, a little at a time, liberating me and making me wonder why I didn't start talking sooner. But what is it about women that enables us to share everything with each other? Is it chromosomal? Why do we feel comfortable getting naked in front of each other and assessing our tits, which we indeed do? The awful truth underlying all of this is that women totally objectify men, as much as we resist our own objectification. We talk size, we talk shape, we talk performance. We can be ruthless. We cackle. At any given time a women will know the penis size of all of her friends' boyfriends, and even boyfriends of the near and distant past. We then file this information away for future reference. We also talk with a complete vulnerability and transparency that most men will never experience unless with a woman. This is why men need women in their lives. Because though they may not admit it, they want to be a part of this secret society. In fact, I think that maybe men are only able to wholly fall in love with a woman when they acknowledge this feminine part of themselves, the part that has nothing to hide. Unfortunately, women are much more superficial. We just fall in love with the guy with the biggest cock.

ass liquidation. all ass must go!

I love the ass. I want one in my living room.

two fat chicks and a microphone

After reading Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential, I had written him off as a total sellout, partly because of his declaration in the last pages of that book that Japanese sushi was the finest cuisine he had ever had, and partly because of his refusal to try dog meat when he visited Seoul, this from a man who professes that there is no food he will not try. What a wuss. So it was only out of reluctant curiosity that I watched his new show "No Reservations" where he travels the world in search of new culinary adventures. In this particular episode shot in France, he goes into cliched hyperbole about French cuisine being the greatest in the world. Yawn. Though I admit the food looked damn good. But just as I was about to change the channel, Bourdain looks directly into the camera and exclaimed that he was so cold that what he really needed was "a cup of hot chocolate and two fat chicks." Now that's funny. With that single line he has won me back, currying my favor, revealing his deliciously raw side that you don't see from most food critics. This is food porn at its best. Uncensored and straight from the heart.

sweet caroline

The Sox lost 4-2 to a sold out crowd of 44,014 fans at the Angels stadium today. I wouldn't have minded so much if Angels fans weren't such a bunch of pussies. They have a big chip on their shoulder about not being nearly as good and having only a tenth of the personality. At least I got to see some of my favorite players in action today. Damon and Manny were fooling around as usual in the outfield. And Sox fans, are still crazy the world over.


View from left field.


Damon and Kapler shooting the shit, or something.


The worst sign ever.


You can take the Red Sox nation out of Boston . . .

how now brown cow

Last night I learned that I have a Philadelphia dialect. This is something quite shocking to hear. Like someone telling you, "It's so cute how you wear your underwear outside your pants. Do they do that where you're from?" Well, something like that anyway. So we were sitting in this guy's living room, which was totally trashed, with shit everywhere on the floor and in piles on all the furniture so that we had to sit crouching or clean off a clean spot on the floor before daring to settle our asses down. They were in the process of moving out so it was understandable but then his girlfriend says to us, "Hey you guys mind not ashing on the floor?" That's when you do a doubletake and look around and wonder if you're talking about the same room.

Wait, where was I? Right, so as I was saying, this guy tells my friend, who is also from Philly, that she just said something that only people from Philly say, but that it is actually a grammatical flaw. She had said something like "Is she finished her shower?" Subtle huh? More examples: Are you done your homework? Are you finished dinner yet? Can you hear what's wrong? Well I totally couldn't. Apparently, if you're not from the Philadelphia region this will sound very wrong to you, even if you don't know technically why, but it sounds perfectly fine to me. To my reaction he responded in his expert self-assured neuroscientist's way "Exactly". I tried to protest, "But we're not really from Philly, we're from the suburbs outside of Phillly." "Doesn't matter." Wow, the dialect is like a dominant gene or something. Even if you're an immigrant, living in the outlying suburbs, her amongst Japs, me amongst Wasps, you still can't get away from it. So there I was, realizing I had been wearing my underwear outside my pants the whole time without knowing any better. What other atrocities had I been committing unwittingly? Well here are some other juicy Phillyisms, which I may or may not do myself but have certainly heard other people say:

sall
This word is used commonly in phrases such as "I sall that new movie last night." (I don't do this but, cough cough, I know people who do.)

shore
As in "Are you shore you want to go through with it?" (I definitely do this.)

youse
As in "Youse better shut up already." (My next door neighbor used to say this.)

auwn
As in "Come auwn and shut up already". (Everyone who is really from Philly says this.)

anymore
As in "I don't smoke anymore." (Apparently this isn't a real word in England and was originally coined in the Philly area though it's more commonly used nowadays all over America.)

mayan
As in "Hey get away from that cookie, it's mayan!" (Again my next door neighbor.)

The Philadelphia dialect is actually pretty hard on the ears. Hard to imitate but a deep Philly accent is unmistakable. Then there's the South Philly distinctions that we won't go into here. I'm not embarassed to be from Philly or even speak like a Philadelphian actually. It's sort of heartwarming to know that you can leave a place and still have parts of it linger with you, identifiably even to other people, that ties you to a place so clearly and irrevocably. I love the special quirks of any place--like the hoagies and scrapple that you only get in Philly--but sometimes you forget that your hometown doesn't just seep into your memory but that you wear it with you always every time you open your mouth.

More examples to see if you speak like you are from Philly are here and here.

it was. . . this. . . big

Okay. So it looks like a freaking sardine. But check out the spots and the coloring. Isn't it a beautiful fish? If anyone tries to tell you that fly fishing is difficult, the first thing you should do is spit in their eye. They're lying to you. I'll tell you the real truth. I walked two miles up the side of this mountain, hauling a pack weighing 40 pounds or something at 8,000 feet above sealevel so that I thought my lungs would pop out of my face. And when I got to the top of the mountain, there was a beautiful lake, blanketed in a fine mist that could have been terrifying if it wasn't so damn beautiful up there. I dropped my gear, had my pole deflowered with line and flies and then I hurled that thing, ignorantly, flies and all, into the glassy water. On that throw I thought, "Oh shit, I just got snagged on a rock," but that "rock" turned out to be the first (and my last) catch of the day--a reddish green, stripey cutthroat trout that is apparently an endangered species because retards like me come up and fish them out of the water. Well I'll be damned. Of course, if not for the magical scene created by the mist, fishing might have really sucked the big one because quite frankly, it was cold as ass out there. It was raining. The fish were small. And I wasn't catching a damn thing after the initial 5 minutes had elapsed. But it was indeed beautiful. We had a good bottle of wine with bread and cheese because, it's all about the details. And of course, it was fun whipping that thing around my head in the air. Yeehaw. Alright so I think I can admit it now. Fly fishing is very very difficult. Most of the time my line was so long that it was flapping around getting caught in the long grass. I even nearly snagged a duck. Having thus worked up a significant appetite, my comrades and I trudged back down the mountain four hours later, soaking wet and chilled to the bone, trying our best to make it down safely without sliding on all the horse manure on the the trail. You have to keep all your wits about you to survive in the wilderness.

gone fishing

Hopefully by this time tomorrow I will be knee deep in a river somewhere in the Rocky mountains, fly fishing for the very first time. Is it unrealistic to think that I'll catch something this big? And puhlease, don't believe anyone who says it's the 'motion of the ocean' because as girls the world over all know, it's all about size! Mwuhahahaha. Take out the tape measures gentlemen. Here's to hoping all those years of watching 'Rod and Reel' on PBS will finally pay off. I will also be staying two nights at the Stanley Hotel, the very hotel on which Stephen King based The Shining and which is presumed to be haunted to this day. Rumor has it that the most supernatural activities take place on the fourth floor, which was once the servant's quarters, but unless this involves some serious ectoplasmic bedevilry, I refuse to be convinced. I plan to be back on Monday, but if no one hears from me all next week, you will know that I'm still at the hotel, riding my bigwheels up and down the hallways, talking to my index finger, and gurgling "redrum redrum redrum".

venetian rhapsody

Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy?


Caught in a landslide. No escape from reality.


Open your eyes. Look up to the sky and see.


I'm just a poor boy. I need no sympathy.


Because I'm easy come easy go.


A little high a little low.


Any way the wind blows, doesn't really matter, to me.

Only in Venice. God bless.

foshizzle that a pizzle?

Back in the day, when the illustrious Sixers, Eagles, Phillies, and Flyers still dominated televised sports as we knew it, I lived on the ouskirts of Philadelphia where there was only one Korean grocery store located in the sketchiest part of North Philly a good 45 minutes away from our house. Like on a hallowed pilgrimage, our family would make the weekly trek there to stock up on necessary items of survival: kimchi, tofu, bean sprouts and other sundry perishables that were still unknown to the produce aisles at Shoprite and Acme. And there, bored out of our skulls, my brother and I used to play a game, a game where we would roam the aisles pointing out misspelled food labels with our uppity and culturally assimilated prep school snobbery that would leave us breathlessly clutching our bellies with laughter and sometimes rolling on the floor in between shelves of dried seaweed and ground chilli powder. There was of course, no winner in this game. We were both winners in that we suspended for a brief moment the kind of restless dread that comes with doing any obligatory family chore. And for these small snatches of time we could forget about the smelly interior, our uncomfortable church clothes, or the fact that outside this strange world we were normally at each other's throats 90% of the time.

Well some things never change. Ever since I've been following the Hanscoms to church, ostensibly to tame my bankrupt soul but admittedly for the Chinese food afterwards, I've had the unexpected pleasure of wandering the aisles of a Chinese supermarket with them, reliving this childhood memory of mine. There is a rush of excitement walking through the doors, as you're flooded with the unfamiliar smells, the weird packaging, all of this opening up an entirely new universe, one that is just begging you to run around laughing at some of the crazy shit they put on the labels. But now, I display proudly our greatest find yet. Indeed it is a masterpiece of cultural mistranslation, or transliteration. I present to you a grocery item that illustrates what happens when two distinctly different gastronomic cultures collide. I present to you the awesome, the enigmatic, the utterly frightening. . . cow pizzle. Hundred bucks to the first person who identifies it on the bovine anatomy correctly. Of course the Hanscoms and I already know the answer so we will be ineligible for the prize. And please note, the alarming lack of expiration date on the pack of pizzle. Ewww.

(Photo courtesy of the honorable Mr. Hanscom and credit should really go to the missus for discovering the pizzle in the frozen food section.)