Jellyfish and Hot Dogs

Looking back on that title, a gruesome combination, no?

Christmas Eve, my family and I went to the Long Beach Aquarium. While there, I learned some very valuable things.

First and foremost, it's a great place to on Christmas Eve. There's no one there, and one of the drivers wears a Santa wetsuit while feeding the fish in the big tank when you first walk in. Right next to the trains chugging around the Christmas tree. Nearly blew my nephew's mind, a man in the water with the fish AND a choo choo? What?!

I also witnessed the perfect example of the intrinsic difference between my Daily Show lovin' brother and Fox News worshippin' father. There's this great water fountain park near the sea lions where kids can sit on statues of crabs and fish, spray each other with water, or take refuge from the water fight in a little dinghy. In the boat was a kid about twice Carter's size, who, rather than share the captain's wheel with Carter, decided to push him down. To the ground. A nearly two year old. This isn't about the potentially sociopathic leanings of this child though, so back to my father and my brother. My father, he went red in the face, leaned down to scream in the kid's face, came very close in my opinion to punching him. The kid couldn't have been more than 6 or 7. Awesome. And my brother. A few minutes later the kid was sitting on a porpoise, spraying water on Carter until he was soaking wet, and so my brother calmly leaned over and redirected the spray through his hand so it shot back into the kid's face. And right there, that's the difference. That's the difference between my brother and my father.

One more thing: I went to Big Wang's for dinner tonight (yes, size does matter,) and noticed something called the Jon Van Shake on the menu. So I think, oh delicious, something chocolatey, creamy, possibly malty... and then I read the description. It's a buffalo chicken pizza with garlic sauce and blue cheese, etc. This totally grossed me out. Not because I don't like buffalo chicken pizza. Normally, I'm all for buffalo chicken pizza, but because I expected it to be sweet and ice cream based, the reality of it was the most disgusting thing ever. The human mind is a perverse beast.