Is vacation ever bad? I’m not talking about going to a specific place because you have to. That’s not technically the type of vacation I’m talking about. Not like the visit to the mother in law’s house who you haven’t seen in a long time who lives in a place where you wouldn’t visit unless you had to. I’m talking about a real vacation. Somewhere that is a destination with great weather, or a landmark type place. Is that ever bad? Hell, even Celmatic who went to Spain, came back home, and went to Spain again in a matter of a couple days had a great time even though he was on a plane as sad as could be for half the trip. I think if you plan something out, look forward to it, and are able to spend time with the family, it’s always going to be good. And seeing topless chicks on the beach makes it even better. More on that later.

The only part that isn’t great is the travelling. I guess if you make it a road trip, the travelling is part of the fun. But air travel has to be the worst, especially when you hate planes like I do. I hate planes so much that after our flight from San Jose, CA into Dallas, TX, which I thought was a tough ride, I asked what everyone thought about the flight. It turned my stomach it was so bumpy. Everyone else said they didn’t even notice. Man, I thought it was a bad one. I almost saw my mother in law mouth the word “wussy”, but it could’ve been something else. But the one thing that I hate more than anything else is air travel. If I had to be on a flight with tons of turbulence, or get my wisdom teeth pulled out again, I might go wisdom. At least I won’t be scared of crashing while getting my wisdom teeth pulled out. But then again, I was spitting blood for three days straight after my wisdom teeth were pulled.

We (the wife and kids) went to Cancun, Mexico with Carol’s brother Carlos, his wife Kelley, their two kids, and my mother and father in law. I can see the grimaces on your faces already. But actually, they are all great people and tons of fun. These folks know how to have a good time. Kelley and Carlos were there to renew their vows, on their 10 Year Anniversary and we decided to tag along and make a vacation out of it. Nice excuse huh? Sure, we want to see you guys renew your vows. I’ll admit here and Kelley will probably read this. If they renewed your vows in Omaha, Nebraska, I probably would’ve had meetings all week and not been able to go. But Carol and the kids would’ve been there for support! In all reality, I would’ve gone. But I would’ve brought 14 books instead of the 4 that I did bring.

In preperation for this trip, I had wrote down three goals.

1. Spend time with the wife and kids the entire vacation
   
2. Get some reading done
   
3. Work out as much as possible

That third one is usually the one that doesn’t happen. I’ve been on vacation at other times where gyms are right around the corner, and after the first fired up session, it’s usually hard to go back. I wanted to make sure that wasn’t going to happen. Plus, the resort we stayed at called the Moon Palace was all inclusive so drinks and food were aplenty. If I didn’t workout, I might gain 20 pounds.

When I heard where were were staying (Moon Palace), I thought it was a gay resort. But it wasn’t. Actually the second or third day we were there, I saw a man shoot a stare right through me near the rest room. I hurriedly went to the rest room and got out of there quickly. He glared at me again, but it could’ve been because I was wearing one of my Michael Jordan jerseys and he was simply admiring. Either that, or he secretly wanted to hammer me.

Like I said, the resort was all inclusive. For breakfast, there was a buffet. Omlets, cereal for the kids, all the fruit you would want, chorizo sausage, potatoes, platanos, and shredded beef. For lunch, there was a buffet, or other places where they grilled chicken, steaks, and burgers near the pool. And for dinner, there were several restaurants as well as the good old buffet. If you only wanted a snack, they had nacho bars where you could grab some chips, cheese, salsa, and chili. Everything was just there waiting for you. And of course, everywhere you turned, someone was serving you a drink. I drank mostly pina coladas and banana monkeys and never got even buzzed once, so I think they were light on alcohol. Carol thought maybe they were just watered down. I think my high was 7 drinks in one day, but it was literally like drinking a slurpee. But unlike 7-11, this slurpee machine never broke down.

I’ll have several more posts later this week, but wanted to tell you about my huge dilemma. In Mexico, if you are dark skinned, you are expected to speak Spanish, unless you are African American. Any other dark color, they expect it out of you. And if you don’t, it’s almost like the locals are ashamed. And I’m half Mexican, so you can imagine the looks I was getting. It was as if, I was letting my fellow Mexicans down. I tried to explain to them that I was Mexican American, meaning I grew up in an English speaking household, but it was like Spanish should’ve been encoded in me at birth or something. As someone who is expected to speak Spanish, I either faked it, or tried to play dumb. But neither way worked. For instance, if after I was served, told the waiter, “Gracias,” I was then spoken to in Spanish. Just for saying gracias, I was knee deep in a conversation I didn’t understand. And by that time, they were able to figure out that I was faking it, or just trying to be nice, and would walk away disgusted. However, if I simply acted like I didn’t even know that “hola” meant hello, I received the same disgust. This went on all week long.

I also gave Brian the goal of reaching 55 stars on his Nintendo DS Mario 64 game. He had 37 to start with and got a few on the flight over, and even met a boy named Christian who was a good 4 years older than him who helped him get the lock to the Luigi door. But he only had a few more stars than Brian. By Saturday, Brian was at 45, and only had 10 to go. I didn’t workout on Friday when we got in, but I did workout Saturday, running on the treadmill for 20 minutes and lifting, so I was off and running. Would I continue? You’ll see …

Read Part 2.

Am I the only one who thinks that this steroid controversey is about 20 years too late? I find it funny that people are thinking that steroids are only a problem now, and that we need to be suspicious of all of today’s ball players. And if the Balco testimony didn’t leak which basically told us that Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, and Jason Giambi did steroids, would anyone even care? Baseball has been so hush hush on steroids for so long, that only now because three key players testified to a grand jury that they did in fact take steroids, that they are going to do anything about it. And it took many players who are probably not on steroids to come out and say to their player’s association that there needs to be testing, for even a more stringent policy to come out. Baseball is so reactive it’s funny.

I think most of the baseball public really wants these guys to be proven guilty of steroid use. And the reason is because it provides clear cut closure. If it was proven that Bonds was not guilty of steroid use (which he could still well be outside of Balco, but that’s a stretch), people would still have their suspicions. The fact that Jose Canseco came out and said certain folks like Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmiero were on steroids has actually provided closure to folks who are probably saying, “I knew it!” The problem with that is the source obviously. You have Tony LaRussa who is saying that Big Mac absolutely did not do roids. And you have Canseco who is saying that he absolutely did them. If you were grading on a believability scale, you’d say LaRussa is probably right. But the fact that Big Mac was an andro user, probably casts a black shadow on his innocence. Andro is a steroid precursor and people who use that probably know what they’re doing. It’s not like Big Mac could go to a GNC and go, “Hmm, that andro seems interesting, give me some of that.” He probably did his research and knew exactly what he was getting into. And he got caught. The fact that it wasn’t yet a banned substance doesn’t really mean anything to me, because not just any Joe was using andro at the time. It’s banned now in baseball and for a reason.

When people bring up baseball records and how the game has been tainted, I find it entertaining because cheating is a part of baseball lore. However, now that you bring performance enhancing drugs to the table, cheating is wrong. That’s fine thinking, but I just find it odd that you can spit on the ball, cork your bat, take speed, use gloves that are bigger than regulation, drink coffee, and do other things that would be cheating (technically), but only when you put something in your body that makes your workouts more beneficial, does anyone care. And it’s not like they care because steroids harm your body. No, it’s because of these hallowed records. It’s an interesting world. I say if you want to put an asterisk next to modern day records, you might as well do it to everyone’s record because you don’t know what has happened in the past 20 years because baseball is just coming around now to this steroid stuff. Everyone is now going to be cast in the same shadow. And this could’ve been taken care of years ago, if baseball didn’t look the other way.

Derek Jeter looks like a skinny guy right? But do you really know what he puts into his body? What if he puts something in his body that’s not technically an anabolic steroid, but is something that hasn’t yet been tested, but will be, and will be banned eventually when baseball gets to it? Is that cheating? I’m not implicating him at all, but that’s where the mystery is to me. Unless they test these guys like scientists would test monkeys, we really aren’t going to know. And you can blame that on baseball. You want everyone to get bigger and stronger in the fastest time possible, pay them more money when they do, even write things out of their contract to make them easier to sign (Jason Giambi anyone?), and then when a grand jury finds that some of these guys weren’t exactly clean, you’re not ready to take any responsibility. It’s sick to me. The players will take responsibility because their name is now dirty, but baseball will say, “We didn’t know, we know now, and we’ll try to fix it.” What a load of crap that is.

Off of the steroid talk for now. But if you’re not watching The Ultimate Fighter, you’re missing out. Think of this show as Big Brother except instead of regular folks, you have mixed martial arts fighters all in one house. And rather than being voted out of the house, you have to fight your way to survive in the octagon. Give them booze, put them on teams creating a competitive atmosphere, and you have a great show. The Apprentice is lame, Amazing Race is over, Survivor hasn’t started back up yet, and American Idol hasn’t yet started it’s competition, so check out Ultimate Fighter. You can’t write what happens on this show any better than it comes out from real, though sometimes inebriated, action.

I’m going to do a little stealing here. Or maybe it’s technically borrowing. My buddy Celmatic has a running list of hot chicks he’d want to be linked to if he were famous. After watching Raw last night and seeing the beautiful Trish Stratus glow on screen, I thought about Celmatic’s list. Here’s my top 5.


5. Salma Hayek- I’m not sure if this woman will ever age. Everytime I see her, she’s in better shape than the last time, and she’s got the best set of knockers in the movie industry. Even made my wife say “Wow”.

4. Roselyn Sanchez- I literally have seen her in one movie. She was in Rush Hour 2 with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker and stole the show. A very hot Latin beauty. And of course, she has some nice rocks.

3. Jennifer Love Hewitt- I’ve always been a huge fan of the original J-Lo. She might be the best “bring home to mom” celebrity in the world.And yes, another great pair of hooters. On such a skinny gal too.

2. Halle Berry- You can really tell the overall hottness of a woman based on how she looks when Hollywood wants her to play a character that takes away from her hottness. Let’s take Losing Isaiah for example. She played a crack head mother of a young infant, and she almost made you want to date a crack head. And when is she going to turn the corner on the age scale as well? Maybe the most perfectly shaped bazooms in the game?

1. Trish Stratus- Just the hottest, best looking chick in the game. Actually, she’s not even really a celebrity, but if wrestling was hot like it was just 5 years ago, she’d be all over. Trish Stratus is the one person that I might have to leave my wife for. But that’s only if the wife was dead or in a wheelchair. Joking, I really am. And lastly, might be the most athletically shaped sweater puppets in the world.

This review was originally posted at Epinions.com.

Just because this is the worst date movie of all time, doesn’t mean it was necessarily a bad movie. In fact, it’s slightly above average, at least to me. There are definitely funny situations, and some decent comedic acting, to go along with a pretty decent script, though awkwardly unsatisfying ending.

The reason why this is the worst date movie of all time, has to do with the premise, which is pretty much three fourths of the movie. Will Smith plays Alex Hitchins whose job is a dating consultant. He helps your everyday guy date the woman of his dreams. Immediately, I thought it was going to be a fantasy driven movie where Alex, known as Hitch, helps losers get laid. But actually, Hitch is there to basically give your regular guys a chance at dating women who probably wouldn’t give them the time of day. These guys are good guys, not only interested in sex, and not overly into themselves, who simply need a chance to show how nice and caring they really are. In doing this, Hitch shows how witty, and caring, and thoughtful guys can be in the dating scene that will send your female loved watching this movie with you swooning over Will’s scheme. For most of the movie, Hitch shows his clients how to date the right way. How to be thoughtful, how to say the right things, how to pretty much do everything that women want their men to do, at least for the first three dates. After three dates, Hitch’s work is done, and the blue print is laid down.

I could see my wife falling for Hitch’s scheme and we had this dialogue after Hitch tries to pick up Eva Mendes’ character Sara Melas, who is a gossip reporter who doesn’t have time for love, and is basically your typical snobby and attractive woman who is constantly picked up on.

Wife: You see what Hitch did right there, that stuff works.
Me: And how would you know?
Wife: I just know.
Me: I didn’t do that.
Wife: Well, you were lucky.
Me: You know guys that have to stoop to that stuff wouldn’t have to if they could just get women in the first place.
Wife: But at least they try.
Me: I’ve never had to practice pick up schemes in the mirror.
Wife: Remember, you’re lucky.
Me: Guys that do that will be 60 years old picking up women in old folks homes.
Wife: But it works.
Me: How does it work if they constantly have to do that? It’s like a realization that you can’t get women, so you stoop trying to knock them off their feet, and then stumble around not being able to close the deal.
Wife: You’re just jealous.

Great. Your wife, girlfriend, good buddy, or whomever you see this movie with will be won over too. But don’t worry, by the end of the movie, you will be vindicated. Don’t see this for Valentine’s Day expecting a nice romantic comedy that you can share with your loved one. It will just start an argument.

If this movie was a guy movie about how to pick up babes, it would’ve been really entertaining. Hitch’s biggest job is to get Kevin James’ character, Albert Brennaman a date with Allegra Cole, who is basically a 35 year old classier version of Paris Hilton. She’s rich, goes to parties, and has a quirky side to her as well. Albert would usually have no chance in hell to even get her to think twice about him, but with Hitch’s help, he makes his fantasy a reality. Hitch helps transform Albert from a chubby and goofy accountant nerd, into a sophisticated guy who turns out to be smart, entertaining, and sort of cool.

Kevin James On Oprah

If the movie had to do with Albert’s chase of Allegra, the movie would’ve been far more entertaining that it was. What killed it for me is when Hitch, the date doctor, falls for Sara. Now I don’t really think much of Eva Mendes as an actress, or even just from a looks standpoint. I’m sure to most people she’s attractive, but everytime I hear her talk, she’s just turns me off. So when cool, hip, and witty Hitch falls for her rugged character, all reality is lost to me. The entire movie, Hitch is the man. Until he meets Sara. I could see if Sara had genuine attractive qualities about her personality, but she doesn’t have much, so I can’t buy the attraction, let alone why Hitch falls over himself for her. Most guys will do anything when the right girl comes along. But I just didn’t see Sara as the right girl.

There are a few good plot twists including Hitch’s consulting gig, which was a secret gig, coming out into the open, and he being ridiculed for the shallowness of his profession, even though it wasn’t really all that shallow to being with. Think about it. If you’re a guy and you have trouble with the women, wouldn’t a “date doctor” be what the actual doctor ordered? Someone who can help you with your smoothness? Someone who can teach you how to be witty around women? Someone who can help you be more of yourself around women, then trying to be what you think they want you to be? Isn’t that a mystery in itself? But if that guy was out there, he’d be making a lot of money today.

Will And Eva On Oprah

Will Smith plays Will Smith. You’d probably expect Smith to be fairly smooth in real life and this is probably not a total stretch for him. Same for Kevin James. I haven’t seen too much of his television show, but I’m sure much of his comedy here is similar to his character on his show. He’s great, and most of the great parts of the movie are when he and Hitch are practicing for his date. If the movie dealt more with Albert and Allegra’s relationship, I think it would’ve been more entertaining. Eva Mendes to me was very annoying, and while there were a few things I liked about her, the entire movie I’m wondering why Hitch wanted to be with her. It just wasn’t all that believable to me.

The end of the movie is set up to actually be fairly realistic, but they go for the Hollywood ending and it was just sour to me. The reason to go see Hitch is to see Smith and James ham it up. The reason not to go see Hitch is if you expect it to be a great date movie. Plus, you might have an argument.

Inspirations come and go, but the impulsive inspirations are the best. You know the ones that make New Year’s Resolutions the worst kept secrets in America. My wife is great with impulsive inspirations. I’m all for helping out the Tsunami victims, but after watching Oprah, my wife was ready to send them paychecks until I reminded her that we too need to have home before we can help someone else with theirs. But her best impulsive inspiration has to be from watching the final episode of Amazing Race. I won’t talk too much about the show itself, but it is probably the best put together reality show out there. Everything about that show is done right, and there’s no wonder it continues to win awards for reality TV.

As the finale ended, I was nearly asleep from the two hour marathon episode, but the wife was bright eyed. And we didn’t watch this as it happened. With Tivo, we were able to watch it about an hour late. She was so inspired watching Freddie and Kendra race to victory and talk about how each other was the perfect mate. Though I thought I was going to die when I saw Aaron propose to Hayden after they lost, and this was 2 seconds after he was about to throw her off the cliff for quitting on him. After the show was over, my wife was ready to be the next contestant on Amazing Race. This coming from someone who hates working out, isn’t a fan of running nor hard labor, but sees it as a way to see the world. What she forgets are the competitions which involve little sleep, tons of patience, and good planning. These are all things that I wouldn’t say are her strong points. Now, I figured she’d be over this by the time we woke up the next morning, but she was just getting started. She read up on the auditions for the 8th version of the Amazing Race and noticed that it was more family oriented. It wasn’t just two people. She immediately thought of my mother, the woman of high blood pressure, and my father, the owner of bad knees. And while I think we are a decent looking couple together, I thought back to who won the show, Freddie and Kendra who are engaged models. And they beat out engaged actors, formerly dating trainers, and married pro wrestlers. I’d probably need to formulate the pecs and get some bodacious biceps while the wife would probably need to get a boob job. Maybe even two.

So let’s hope that her impulsive inspiration will go by the wayside like her cooking inspirations of the past have.