My fourth decade

This year I embark on my fourth decade on the planet. Wow, I'm a lot older than I thought. I have to admit I don't remember much of the '80s, although apparently some bad stuff happened, like the Exxon Valdez crash in Alaska, and some good stuff happened, like the release of Michael Jackson's Thriller. The '90s might be my favorite decade so far; my finest moment was winning the MVP award in the 8 and under all-star soccer game--it's been all downhill since. The '00s were a lot of work, and I don't see that letting up anytime soon. And here we are, in the second decade of the 21st century. If we just make it past 2012, we only have to worry about teeny issues like rampant population growth, food and water shortages, nuclear war, economic collapse, and the catastrophic consequences of global warming, to name a few. Sorry, I'm usually not this pessimistic. To make up for it, I'll humor you with a picture of what happens when you cook eggs at the lowest temperature setting on an electric stovetop for 45 minutes:
You might be asking why I cooked an egg like this for New Years brunch. The answer is that I was attempting to make the egg "cheese or cream-like" according to the method of Jeff Porter, author of Cooking for Geeks. Mr. Porter claims that cooking an egg slowly at 160 degrees F allows one to achieve smooth and delicious eggs. I ended up with a rubbery, sticky, inedible mess. Without an infrared thermometer, I cooked the eggs for too long at too low a temperature, causing them to dry out. I'll need a few weeks of rest after this traumatic experience before I try again.

Over winter break I started reading The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip Hop by Dan Charnas and discovered some rap gems made by old school groups like the Sugar Hill Gang and Run-DMC. In the 1980s, rap was just some guys singing clever rhymes over rock music beats--no synthesized voices, gun shots, or vulgar language every other word. These guys were geniuses. Fun fact from the book so far: How did record scratching originate? In the late 1970s DJs wanted to extend the instrumental breaks in songs so that b-boys (called break dancers today) could get their groove on. At that time the breaks were short, less than a minute. To extend the breaks, the DJs would spin identical records simultaneously and alternate back and forth between the breaks of both records. In order to match the beats during transition between records, a quick "rub" was often required. Once people discovered these rubs sounded pretty cool, the rub was expanded to the "scratch." Today there are scratching competitions for DJs.

Below are some pictures from break: