seriously

Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama's candidacy today. There had been rumors that he would, so it wasn't entirely surprising.

Like many others, I used to really admire Colin Powell, before the whole WMD fiasco. Parts of his statement reminded me why.

From his endorsement (via Huffington Post):

"Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That's not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that he is a Muslim and might have an association with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel particularly strong about this because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay, was of a mother at Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son's grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone, and it gave his awards - Purple Heart, Bronze Star - showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death, he was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the head stone, it didn't have a Christian cross. It didn't have a Star of David. It has a crescent and star of the Islamic faith.

And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was fourteen years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could serve his country and he gave his life."

The picture:


It's a question I've been asking for months...even if Obama were a Muslim (which he isn't), what would be wrong with that, anyway?

In his endorsement, Powell asked that same question, but managed to state it way more eloquently than I ever could have. And, given that he's a highly public figure and a Republican, I'm sure it was much harder for him to raise the question at all.

I'm trying to express something, or several somethings, here. Resurgent admiration for Colin Powell? Regret that he got screwed by the Bush administration (or wrong place, wrong time, rock and a hard place, whatever). Renewed belief in his statesmanship. (Is statespersonship a word?) Hope that he might play a role in an Obama administration?

Put simply, I found his statement thought-provoking, truthful, deeply moving, and most of all, necessary.

eating well in Hawaii (days 3, 4, & 5)

I think when I left off last time, it was mid-September, and we'd been eating up a storm in Honolulu for two days...

We woke up on the morning of day 3 (Friday) and decided to road trip it to the North Shore, to see if we could see some surfing. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate and there were no waves:


So, we just hung out at Waimea Bay Beach Park for awhile. While we were there, one of our friends joined the many people (mostly teenagers and kids) jumping off of a large nearby rock:


We consoled ourselves with some shave ice from Matsumoto's (not quite as impressive second time around) and prawns from Romy's (still fresh and delicious):


After eating, we drove all the way around the island, stopping from time to time to enjoy the views:


Towards the evening, we ventured into Kailua, where we picked up some "chocolate jump cake" from Agnes' Portuguese Bakeshop (looks too sweet to eat but isn't; it's deliciously chocolate-y), and then drove all the way around on the Kalaniana'ole Highway, passing by Diamond Head again on our way back into Honolulu.

For dinner, we went to the Coco Ichiban Curry House, a chain serving only Japanese curry:


We tried the takoyaki, the fried chicken, and the gyoza, but didn't have room for more than that. So simple, so cheap, so yummy. If only they would open a curry house in the Bay Area!

Afterwards we happened upon a street fair on Kalakaua Street, and wandered around watching the performers and smelling all the street food that we couldn't possibly manage to eat:


We met up with some friends from Honolulu at the Westin Moana Surfrider (at their suggestion), where we sat in the lounge catching up and having a few drinks. Very nice hotel and excellent table service, but I'm guessing way out of budget for our trip.

The wedding wasn't until 4pm on Saturday, so we slept in, for once. At the street fair the night before, we had been very surprised to see a sign for Okonomiyaki Chibo at one of the stands. Last year in Osaka a Japanese friend had taken us to Chibo for dinner and we had enjoyed it very much, so we stopped by to inquire, and it turned out that they had just opened a restaurant in a nearby mall, the Royal Hawaiian Center. Of course, we ended up there for lunch, and it was delicious. I've decided I prefer the kind of okonomiyaki where they put noodles into the batter and it turns out a bit crispy.

After walking around for a bit and enjoying a very fruity mango shave ice, we headed to Kaka`ako Waterfront Park for the ceremony. Despite being mid-September, it was sweltering hot that day, especially for the guys in their suits and tuxes. It was a beautiful and intimate outdoor ceremony, but shortly afterwards, during the downtime before the reception, we decided we just had to have some more shave ice (to fight the heat, naturally).

This time we headed to the highly reviewed Waiola Shave Ice:


We had the "Azuki Bowl", which came with milk flavor, azuki beans, and mochi balls. It was very good but reminded me more of Chinese or Japanese dessert than Hawaiian shave ice. A friend added green tea flavor to her bowl and it basically ended up tasting like a modified version of the Japanese dessert of green tea ice cream with red beans.

After finishing our second shave ice of the day, we had just enough time to drive to the reception, which was at the DAV Hall, in Ke'ehi Lagoon Park. At this point I'd been in Hawaii for four days and hadn't actually eaten any real Hawaiian food (except taro chips and poke) so I was excited for the dinner part of the reception, because I knew the bride's relatives (who happen to own a local catering business) were in charge of dinner.

As it turned out, they had the Kalua Pig I'd been craving (and it was excellent), sushi rolls, crab salad, pickled cucumber salad, and glass noodles, as well as some dishes that I hadn't had before: a coconut milk-heavy creamed spinach-like dish, an octopus dish, and a dessert that was kind of like almond tofu but was coconut flavored and was much more gooey. They also had a lot of poi, and well, I still don't like poi.

For dessert, there were four kinds of cake, all of which I managed to try:


I'd never been to a wedding reception quite like this one before. The last time I went to a wedding in Hawaii, the bride had grown up in Honolulu, but she was of Chinese and not Hawaiian ethnicity, so the overall tone of the wedding was much more traditionally American. This reception was very laid-back, and although the ceremony had been small, there were nearly 300 guests at the reception, mostly family. A live Hawaiian band played through most of the night, and various members of the bride's family would get up to do traditional Hawaiian dancing from time to time (and they were all quite good). At one point the groom (who is not Hawaiian) did a dance with the bride's father which he had been learning, and then the bride followed that up with a dance of her own. Overall, it was a very unique and fun wedding to have attended.

Our flight on Sunday wasn't until the late evening, but we had to drop some friends off at the airport before noon. On our way there, by request, we stopped again at Waiola for more shave ice. This time we tried the "Li Hing Mui" (Chinese preserved plum) with custard (basically flan). The combination sounded odd at first but it turned out really well, and in fact I liked it better than the Azuki Bowl we had had the day before.

After doing airport duty, we went to visit another friend from Honolulu. She tried to take us to Tamashiro Market for lunch, but it turned out they didn't serve lunch on weekends. Next we tried Nico's, but they were closed for a private event, so we ended up at Uncle's, which she said was less popular but I had a really decent calamari salad anyway, with large chunks of freshly fried calamari.

I'd already been to Pearl Harbor as a child and didn't remember being particularly impressed, but given that we had several hours to kill, we decided to head over to see the USS Arizona, just before closing. Even after getting there and looking around, I couldn't find any memory of having been there before, so I guess it's good that I went.

I thought this inscription was nice; it's a list of soldiers who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, but chose to be buried with their shipmates later:


(I think the bits sticking out of the water are of the decaying ship.)


Finally, just before heading back to the airport, we stopped by the curry house again for dinner, because I was determined to try an udon dish:


As much as I love Japanese curry, I hadn't ever tried it on udon before. It was very yummy (of course), and I will have to try making it myself one of these days.

eyeballing

I just took this eyeballing test twice and scored 4.15 both times. I'm particularly bad at finding the centers of triangles, and I'm good at midpoints, bisecting angles, and convergence points. I'm amazed looking at the high scores...how does someone score below a 2.0 on this thing?

favorite movies (or, insuring against future data loss)

Back when I signed up for Facebook, I installed a bunch of applications and started to use them. One of the apps was Flixter Movies. I actually sat around rating movies and making a list of my favorites. Then, when Facebook switched over to its new interface, I was suddenly unable to access my movie list (at least on FF/Linux) and it was really freaking me out. I hate data loss of any kind.

Anyway, I guess they finally fixed the app for the new UI, because I checked this morning and I was able to access my movie list. I'm posting my "all-time favorites" list (as of 2007) here so I won't lose it again. It's ordered by date of release.

The Princess Bride (1987)
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
The Usual Suspects (1995)
臥虎藏龍 (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) (2000)
The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (2002)
Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003)
The Incredibles (2004)

I also loved Immortal Beloved, but I think primarily due to all the Beethoven music. Hmm, I realize I do have somewhat generic taste in movies. Ah well.

eating well in Hawaii (days 1 & 2)

I did mention that I'd been eating particularly well recently, right?

About a month ago, I went to Hawaii for a week. (For another wedding. Yes, poor me.) After last year's experience, I knew that the food in Honolulu varied wildly, from the overpriced tourist traps around Waikiki to the delicious hole-in-the-wall bento box type places further from the beach, so I did some research in the days leading up to the trip, which paid off handsomely...

We got off the airplane around 7pm on Wednesday, met up with some friends, and promptly headed for a Japanese BBQ place called Gyu-Kaku. It's actually a chain but has only spread to New York and Los Angeles so far, unfortunately. The four of us ordered two set meals, with interesting side dishes like cream cheese salad (good, but a bit heavy in large amounts) and a rice bowl resembling bibimbop, as well the omnipresent ahi poke. We then added a bunch of meat, doubling up on the happy hour special of "harami", or skirt steak in miso sauce. Both the service and the meat quality were quite good, and I would have ordered another rice bowl if I hadn't been way too full already. Then, for dessert, there was a grilled pancake with red bean paste, which is right up my alley.

The next morning, we stopped at a Foodland for some poke:


Then, we headed over to Mitsu-Ken to find the garlic chicken that we had enjoyed so much on our last trip. Even though it was mid-morning, we had to stand in line for a good 10-15 minutes to get our chicken. We took the poke and the chicken and had a picnic of sorts in a random park. I think I really started to feel like I was on vacation when we spent all morning just driving around town assembling lunch.

My friend, an avid quilter, had mentioned before arriving that she was determined to go to Fabric Mart while in Honolulu, and we just happened to drive by it after lunch, so we had to stop by:


I haven't bought much fabric myself since high school, but apparently the prices were about half of what they are on "the mainland" and it certainly looked like the selection was good.

After some sightseeing (Iolani Palace, then Diamond Head again), we decided we wanted sushi for dinner. Luckily I had read online about a place called Mitch's Fish Market, so we called for a reservation, and headed over shortly afterwards.

We were a little surprised upon arrival, as the "restaurant" appeared to be tucked into a row of dark warehouses, and was not too inviting itself. We proceeded anyway, and pushed open the door, only to find a tiny room with a fish counter and maybe three tables seating two or three people apiece. I told the person behind the counter (a bit hesitantly, since I wasn't sure where they were going to put us) that we had a reservation for four, and he cheerfully led us across a dark alley to another building, where we found four cozy tables of four. This room looked much more pleasant, so we relaxed and began to order.

The food was AMAZING. We started with a "ume kurage" appetizer; jellyfish with plum paste. I love sour plum paste, and this dish was very, very strongly flavored with it:


Next up, spiny (Pacific) lobster and toro sashimi:



The toro was strangely cold, and at first I didn't like it too much, but it was very good after getting to room temperature. The lobster was excellent; I am very fond of lobster sashimi in general but I think it may have been the best I've ever had.

Then came some of our favorite nigiri sushi, rolls, and chirashi/sashimi specials for the (still hungry) guys:




I distinctly remember someone saying the negitoro rolls were "sinful" because they were so fatty and delicious. The ume shiso rolls were excellent as well; I wouldn't have thought that I would have liked a vegetarian roll so much.

Finally, the cooked-fish-eaters wrapped up the meal with some hamachi kama:


I myself admired the size of the portion but left it for others to enjoy the taste.

The entire meal came out to about $75 a head, including tax and tip, which is actually very reasonable for sushi, especially given that we stuffed ourselves silly and ordered things like lobster and toro.

More Hawaiian food doings to come...

dinner in "The Dining Room"

I'd been to The Dining Room at The Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco once before, for my mother's 50th birthday, but I hadn't been since they changed chefs and started serving their famous "Salt and Pepper Tasting Menu". So, I was super excited when I was invited by a friend to dinner there a few weeks ago.

The Salt and Pepper menu consists of eight courses, each with a different kind of salt and pepper. The theme extended even to the amuse bouche dishes and the dessert!

The Rundown:

- First amuse: tiny fried mushroom ravioli. I had had them before, but they were still delicious.


- Second amuse: some kind of fish w/ crispy skin. As always, I redistributed any cooked fish dishes to others.


- Third amuse: caviar & egg w/ cedarwood smoke. This was one of the highlights of the meal. I always love caviar, but this dish was really creative. They had burned cedarwood and trapped the (very clean-smelling) smoke in a glass dish, and then covered it with plastic wrap. There was a small hole in the wrap, which was covered with a spoon. When I lifted the spoon to eat the caviar, small wafts of smoke would come out, so the experience of eating the caviar was strongly flavored with the sweet-smelling cedarwood smoke. Amazing.


- First course: kindai sashimi w/ prawn & yuzu gelee. This was my other favorite dish. The sashimi was fresh and yummy, and the prawn heads were fried and served with sauces made of shiso salt (!!!) and pink pepper. Yum!



- Second course: Giant "stupid" clam w/ cucumber and two types of jelly. I was not too fond of the jellies; they were too gooey and not "crunchy" enough. The clam was pretty chewy but the flavor was very good.


- Third course: foie gras on crouton. The foie gras serving was *huge* and in fact I gave half of it away since I always feel like foie gras is wasted on me. The crouton was soaked full of foie gras juice and other sauces and I enjoyed it very much.


- Fourth course: lobster & a thin slice of meat. Unfortunately I remember very little about this dish, four weeks later. I have a vague idea it was good but unremarkable.


- Fifth course: young chicken (poussin?) w/ quinoa and foam on top. As I've mentioned before, I am not a fan of foam, but the chicken was crispy and tasty. The salt was lemon flavored, which I liked.


- Sixth course: ribeye w/ asparagus. I was pretty full at this point and wanted to be able to enjoy dessert, so I only had a bite of the ribeye, but it was nicely cooked (properly medium rare) and I always like pepper on beef.


- Seventh course: sorbet & gelee. This felt like a palate cleanser but was supposedly one of the eight courses. It was a strawberry sorbet and citrus gelee, I think. I liked the yuzu ones better. Even this had salt and pepper in it! The salt was citrus flavored, to match the gelee.


- Eighth course: white chocolate mousse & rum(?) cake w/ fig. I thought I would like the cake better but it turned out too liquid-y (meaning full of liquid, not that it was dissolving). The figs were good but the little chunk of white chocolate mousse was the best thing on the plate. It was served cool, wasn't overly sweet (as often happens with white chocolate) and had good texture.


- Petit fours: At the end the waiter came by with a cart of petit fours and we were supposed to choose which ones we wanted. Since there were four of us, we ended up with one of everything (which was probably like ten or twelve pieces) and then went around round robin until they were finished. There was a pistachio cake-y thing that was quite good and a couple of chewy candies, but I still preferred the white chocolate from the dessert course.


Overall, it was quite an excellent meal. Service was great, as is befitting The Ritz-Carlton, the creativity of the various dishes was really impressive, and I was still raving about the sashimi & prawn course to some friends last weekend. Very memorable evening!

the cheese-eating gene

Last weekend I went back to Marin to stay at my parents' house, since my grandparents are visiting for the month. At breakfast, I noticed my grandmother (mom's mom) was eating her toast with big chunks of blue cheese. My mother, my brother and I are all quite fond of strong cheeses, especially compared to the average Asian/Asian-American person, so I was amused to discover that my grandmother was also a fan.

Incidentally, we've long suspected that this grandmother is partially Dutch (or other European), due to her very light skin and eyes, persistent family rumors, and the fact that strangely mixed ancestry is common in Taiwan (for instance, we know for certain that my father is one-sixteenth English). Maybe we've been passing down a cheese-eating gene for generations! I wonder if there's a way to find out for sure.

4 x 10k relay

I ran in a 10k relay yesterday afternoon, along with 3 of my co-workers. We finished in 52:52, which translates to an average of about 8:30 per mile. I think I was probably slightly slower than average, so probably about 8:40 or 8:45 per mile, for 1.55 miles. That would make it my fastest run since junior high, for distances between 1 and 2 miles. Yay me.

geeks go shopping

This xkcd comic is so descriptive of me that it kills me:


I've referenced it like two or three times in conversation already over the past few months, but it's really hard to explain a comic out loud.

who's serving the country, anyway?

I read a blog post recently about the demographics of US military servicepeople that surprised me. Apparently , enlisted recruits in the American military are disproportionately upper and middle class. Furthermore, whites and blacks are about equally represented (with respect to the general population), while Hispanics are underrepresented. Somehow I had the impression that more of our soldiers were minorities from low-income backgrounds. I'm kind of happy to have been wrong.

further adventures in food

There have been many adventures in food recently, and I'm way behind on blogging about them, but I'll start at the beginning anyway.

A few weeks ago, I finally made it to Chez Panisse. I'd been too lazy to make the effort, but my friend starting calling at 9am exactly a month before our desired date, and managed to secure a 9:15pm Friday reservation after calling for about 30 minutes.

Anyway, Friday evening we trekked out to Berkeley, where we were fed a four-course prix fixe. The menu changes every day (and there is only one menu per day) so we didn't know what we were going to get until a few days before. I unfortunately forgot to copy down the menu so this is from memory...

The first course was a salad of greens, tomatoes, and beans. What struck me about this salad was the amazing variety of ingredients; every tomato was a different type, and there were at least three kinds of beans. I'm not a huge tomato fan but I ate all but one (the largest).


Next up was (unfortunately for me) a salmon dish, with lemon and capers. I had them replace it with the vegetarian option, which turned out to be a zucchini. All reports were good, though. In fact, one person said this was his favorite dish of the evening.


For the third course, we had squab with figs and mushrooms. I sometimes don't like squab, but in this case it was very well prepared, and this was my favorite dish. The sauce was surprisingly light considering it had fig in it, and the figs themselves were very flavorful.


For dessert, we had a raspberry clafouti. I think I am just not that fond of clafoutis. I feel like they should be poufier, either like a puff pastry, or like a bread pudding. Alternatively, they should be more custard-y. As far as clafoutis go, this one was pretty good, and the ice cream was yummy.


Overall, it was a very satisfying meal. Although it might have been more awe-inspiring to have gone years ago, when not every restaurant in the Bay Area was serving locally grown organic seasonal ingredients, it was still great to have finally experienced the restaurant which invented California cuisine.

No on 8

I am a big supporter of allowing people to do whatever they want as long as they aren't hurting other people, so of course I support gay marriage.

I was commenting to a gay friend that he should realize that if he's legally allowed to marry, then he'll be subject to all of the parental and/or pressure that the rest of us face about marriage. Which, for the record, sucks. Then again, why should gay people get an exemption? Maybe we should all have to deal with our fair share of parental nagging.

All joking aside, I'm very happy for him, my other gay friends, and the entire pro-marriage gay community. On the downside, now that gay marriage is legal, my whole "I'm not getting married until everyone can, in solidarity with the gay community" spiel is totally busted. Ah well.

close calls

Several members of my family were (and are still being) pretty badly affected by Hurricane Ike.

Those living in Galveston were recently able to return to their house, only to find flood damage to about five feet. Photo albums, documents, and childhood memories were lost, along with all of the electrical appliances, including a fairly nice living room TV setup. They are currently living with relatives in Houston until the structure can be inspected for safety and salvageability.

Those living in Houston escaped with only inconveniences. For days, there was no electricity, paved roads were flooded, gas stations were out of gas, and many supermarkets were closed. Even now, millions of homes in Houston are still without power. The good news is that everyone is safe, has food and water, and is in good health.

After hearing the news, I was thinking it's not uncommon for disasters affect people only one or two degrees of separation away. For instance, I recently heard that a friend's mother was a regular commuter on the route of the train that crashed last weekend in Los Angeles. She in fact got off the train one stop before the crash.

Another friend was at home in Sri Lanka during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and barely escaped by clinging to a tree. Two of his other friends survived as well, but one was lost to the waves and never found.

And, of course, there were the 9/11 attacks. Living in California, I was less affected than many, but even I knew of some friends of friends who died on those airplanes. One of those cases was particularly sad: I was originally supposed to go to my second cousin's wedding that year, but it was postponed because her maid of honor was on Flight 11, on her way to the wedding, and never made it.

I'm not sure what this means. Are the people that I know are lucky (in the close call cases), or unlucky, or is the planet (or country) just that small? Maybe there are only one, two, or three degrees of separation, rather than six, for most of us in today's interconnected world.

blue-green blindness?

Apparently I just love online tests. Here's a hue discrimination test I just took. I scored a 4, with all the mistakes falling in the blue-green border:

the cynical fan

I missed watching the Niners game last weekend because I was in Hawaii at a wedding. This conversation took place shortly after I arrived back in California on the Monday morning redeye:

D:	Did you see the score for the Niners game?
me:	No. I don't want to.
D:	They won.
me:	Very funny.
D:	No, really.
me:	Really? What? Let me see!

fringe benefits

A friend of mine recently changed jobs and came to work at my company. She actually switched from being an engineer to being a project manager, but here, lots of non-engineers wear jeans and T-shirts too. Paraphrased from a conversation we had over the weekend:

"Not only am I wearing jeans and T-shirts, I'm wearing a backpack again! Now, when someone on the street asks me for money, I can say that I'm a poor student and he'll believe me!"

we're winning!

The following conversation took place at a dinner party last week after we'd discovered that yet another friend was pregnant:

friend #1:	Omigod! Not another one! Okay guys, remember, this is not a competition.
friend #2:	Of course it is. It's like "Survivor". We're winning.

Now I have "Another One Bites the Dust" stuck in my head. Heh.

3.5 years to go

Looks like Ma Ying-Jeou's approval rating has fallen to below 40% in the five months since he became president. That's what happens when you venerate former dictators and undermine your own country's sovereignty in the international arena.

I wonder how many of those 60% of disapproving voters voted for Ma during the election, believing his campaign promises not to sell out Taiwan? I wonder if any of them realized how stupid that was and attended the 100-day rally against him, which drew somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 protesters?

There's a lot of "I told you so" floating around in my head in a pool of bitterness. Sigh.

(vice) presidential politics

I don't watch the Daily Show on a regular basis, but I have friends who do, and they send me clips like this. Brilliant, but almost not funny. More like "WTF???". Bleah.

Honestly, I think John McCain is a good guy and a war hero (although I don't think he should be president) but his VP pick Sarah Palin is really creeping me out.

First there was the whole ethics investigation into whether Palin fired the state police chief because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband.

Then we heard about her book-banning episode. That's two points in the "abuse of power" column.

Next up, de-separation of church and state! Apparently Palin thinks that the war in Iraq is God's plan (sound familiar?).

To top it off, she thinks that God wants us to drill for oil in Alaska. Really? I mean, I'm not religious, so I could be totally mistaken and maybe the Christian God cares about all sorts of trivialities, but that sounds pretty darned specific to me.

I also find it ironic that she line-item vetoed funding for a program that provides a transitional home for teenage mothers. I guess the message is that it's laudable to be a teenage mother ("We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby..." -- Sarah Palin) but only if you have parents who will pay for your housing.

fun and games

Over Labor Day weekend I went to a games night at a friend's house, where we played several of the usual games (Settlers, etc.), and then followed those with a round of Taboo and a round of Trivial Pursuit, Millenium Edition.

Usually we play Taboo with guys against girls, and the girls have a pretty high winning percentage. However, the last time we played I accidentally sabotaged my team while trying to describe the word "pregnant":

me:	Hmm. If you're a girl, sometimes after you have sex you become...
teammate:	(confidently, no hesitation) sore!
me:	???
same teammate:	chafed! irritated!

At this point we all turned around to look at her boyfriend accusingly, before collapsing with laughter. As I recall, our scores deteriorated horribly after that.

This time, there was no such disturbing episode, the girls beat the guys soundly, and we decided to mix up the teams for Trivial Pursuit.

Around 2am we were still nowhere near done, and one of the girls wanted to go home to her two kids, so we played a "sudden death" round where each team tried to answer all six of the questions on the same card, and then we compared to see who had the most correct answers. In the end it came down to me correctly guessing "Marcus Allen" as the oldest active NFL running back in 1997. Yay for useless sports trivia!