I hate fondue, but I love this trick

So today was the birthday of a friend. She's married to a former cow-orker that's pretty cool to hang out with. She wanted to go to the Melting Pot (eh) for her bday dinner. The Melting Pot is a fondue place, which I'm not crazy about. If I'm going to pay $30 for just my meal, I kind of would like someone else to cook it. I'm lazy, damn it! Plus meat that's been fondued just doesn't taste that good. Perfectly good filet mignon, which should have been grilled was reduced to just another hunk of boiled meat.

My advice: Go to a real restaurant with people who will prepare the meal for you then go to your fondue place for dessert. Even the manager told us that dessert was the best part.

Anyway, when you go to a fondue place, they constantly warn you about not touching the... fondue pots? I'm sure there's some fancy-schmancy name for them to appeal to the stupid yuppies who just walked in from the cigar bar that was a few stores down. I don't know what they are.

"Look how suave and upwardly mobile we are. While Biff went to the cigar bar, I stopped in at the overpiced toy stored and picked up educational toys for Jennniphyr and Teighlor, and then we went and fondued."

They're pots, and they're hot; that's the thing. So right after the first warning, I'm taking off one of my keys from my keyring. I have no idea what it goes to, and I suspect I have it on there just so I can do this trick once every 2 years. It's got a round hole at the top, and if you press you finger into it somewhat hard, it will leave a reddened bump on your finger that looks like a heat blister.

So you act like you touch something hot, give a little yelp of pain, and blow on it. Your table-mates will want to know what happened, and you show them your faux-blister. They'll either sympathize with you or mock you, depending on what kinds of friends they are. At that point, you pick up the salt shaker and put some on your faux-blister (they might yell at you some more - my friends did), and you rub the salt into your wound. The rubbing makes the blister go away, but to your friends, it looks like salt can somehow cure blisters. At that point, you can leave them with that impression or show them how the trick works (I opted for the latter - I like my friends and don't want them rubbing salt into their wounds... when I'm not there to enjoy it).

They all laughed and thought it was a cool trick. Brian, the aforementioned cow-orker, knows when I'm doing a trick even if he doesn't understand how it's done and had a little smile on his face the entire time. He enjoys a good magic trick, even buying himself an Invisible Deck once.

Looking back, I should also have taken the lemon from my drink and squeezed some lemon juice on it as well. Ah, well.

I got this trick from Penn and Teller's book, "How To Play with Your Food." An invaluable guide to fake burn tricks, making Satan's face appear on a tortilla, and making a jello Valentine's Day Heart cake that bleeds when you cut into it. They suggest that you actually carry salt in a little envelope labeled as a homeopathic cure, which you then sell to your "friends" because, hey, if they're stupid enough to believe in homeopathy, then you need new friends.

I Pissed Off Senator Jim Inhofe (Oklahoma)

I've posted this so often to political discussion groups, I just need to blog it.

This happened in 1996. I was goofing around grad school at Oklahoma State University. Homecoming was approaching, and I was in a club called, "Latin Dancing and Cultural Club," which decided to have an entry in the homecoming parade for the first time that year.

Our "entry" was a large pick-up truck with a large boombox on the tailgate playing merengue and salsa, and the club marching/dancing behind it. We won first place in the float competition (no, we didn't).

There were approximately 140 entries in the parade that year, and all the floats and groups were snaked in some sort of pattern in a residential neighborhood close to the beginning point of the parade. We were entry 98 so we had a while to wait. We chatted and danced some. I went over to the bike club ahead of us and rode one of their unicycles. And who did I see close to us? The Young Democrats. So since this was an election year (Clinton Vs. Dole), I went over and got myself a Clinton/Gore 96 sticker.

Republican Senator Jim Inhofe* rode by on a horse five minutes later.

I went up to the faculty advisor for our club who had a camera and told her my cunning plan. "I'm going to lure Inhofe away from his bodyguards (also on horses) into the middle of the street, distract him by asking for an autograph, and slap this Clinton/Gore sticker on him. You take a picture." She was all for it.

Alas! The cunning plan had a problem. An Inhofe campaign volunteer thought I was an actual Inhofe fan and stood next to the lady taking my photo, waiting to give me an Inhofe sticker. I couldn't do what I wanted without being spotted. So I got the picture (will upload later), the autograph (ditto), and the sticker. I shook his hand and quickly went around the other side of the horse and put the sticker on the saddle blanket.

My hope was that he would ride through at least part of the parade stumping for Clinton/Gore.

Alas and alack! That was not to be either, but... But! He rode around a lot, glad-handing different people and groups while on the horse. He was apparently talking to a bunch of campaign volunteers for a republican state senate candidate when they found it. I saw him riding back towards us with a pissed off look on his face - just as it was the club's turn to start moving out.

I hid. Not because I was afraid, but I wanted to watch his reactions.

I got on the other side of the truck and looked through the open windows at him. Inhofe was standing up in the saddle with that pissed of look on his face, scanning the club for me. I would have been easy to find as I was one of the few white guys in the club at the time.

I giggled. A lot. I had tried and failed in my orginal and secondary objectives, but it was still funny. I pissed the moron off.

I thought that would be the end of it. Oh, no.

Two to three years later, I had left grad school unfinished because I was tired of being poor and had secured myself a computer programming position. A friend of mine from work and I went out to a local swing club (swing had made a comeback) because they were having Salsa Night, where they were going to teach salsa and then have a live band play instead of the normal swing music. I joined in the lessons just to see how those instructors taught salsa.

Aside: Thanks to that night and one other, I have since learned that every Latin country (plus either or both the Puerto Rican community or the Cuban community in America) has invented Salsa. If you have a Cuban teacher, salsa came from Cuba. Colombian dude? Colombia invented it. Mexican guy? You guessed it.

Anyway, a woman in the group came up to me and said, "I remember seeing you someplace before. I'm horrible at names, but I never forget a face." Okay... Later on, she came up to me and asked, "Did you ever put a democratic sticker on a republican horse?"

I figured she had been at Oklahoma State and had been in one of the groups around us and maybe spotted me back in 1996.

"No," she said. "I just moved here from Florida a couple of weeks ago. Your photo was in my local paper."

*This "footnote" will eventually have some of the stupid things Inhofe has said or done to give you an idea on what a jackass he is.