Brian Kameoka's blog

Superheroes and Shawarma

Last weekend in Los Angeles a group of us assembled for "Superheroes and Shawarma," a get together I suggested after being inspired by the shawarma joke in the Avengers movie.

If you don't know what shawarma is, it's meat grilled on a spit and served by slicing it off and enclosing in pita. The word shawarma is arabic in origin. Shawarma is similar to doner kebab (Turkish), gyros (Greek) and tarna (Armenian).

HERE BE AVENGERS SPOILERS: In The Avengers, Tony Stark jokes about going out for shawarma after an epic battle. It's a funny, throwaway joke that gets a good laugh, but what makes the Avengers/Shawarma thing so awesome - and so Joss Whedon - is that the cast re-assembled just a few weeks before the US release to create a bonus scene at the very end of the credits showing the team eating shawarma together.  Entertainment Weekly has a detailed account of how they did this if you like that sort of stuff (I do), an article I first learned about from the excellent Whedonesque website. With The Avengers setting box office records, surely shawarma was in the hearts and minds of many moviegoers, but would it be in their tummies?  According to the Huffington Post, shawarma stands are seeing an "Avengers bump."

So, a gathering for the movie followed by shawarma consumption seemed in order, and I do enjoy movies as a communal activity. We had a gang of 16 or so for the movie, and a handful more joined afterward for the shawarma party at Pita Kitchen in Sherman Oaks.

Kenny's shawarma. Check out his blog about the get together.

 Anne eats a non-shawarma sandwich.

 More of the gang, including Dallas, Crystal, Anthony, Aaron and Sarah

We actually took over the entire inside section of the restaurant and nearly spilled out onto the sidewalk seating. The shawarma was quite good here and the guys working there didn't seem to think we were weirdos, so I'm assuming they have gotten used to gatherings of nerds by now.

I learned that the actual place they used for filming the scene is Elat Burger on Pico (via a tweet from Edgar Wright, see below), so perhaps another outing is in order.  Though, word is that their shawarma is a bit dry.

Anyone else go out for shawarma because of The Avengers movie?

 

Bob Odenkirk and Tom Johnson in a Load of Hooey at the Brody Theater

This weekend (March 16-17, 2012) I have the privilege of performing in a very cool show at the Brody Theater, Bob Odenkirk and Tom Johnson in A Load of Hooey. The co-creator of the legendary Mr. Show and a current star of Breaking Bad will be at the Brody to team up with his old cohort, Brody artistic director Tom Johnson, for a night of standup and sketch comedy.

Bob and Tom will both be performing standup comedy and solo pieces, and along with a cast of Brody Theater performers (plus me) will perform in sketches written by Bob. The cast includes Marilyn Divine, Brian Kameoka, Ian Karmel, Kerry Leek, Brian MacMillan. There will be three shows:

- Friday, March 16 @ 8:30pm.
- Saturday, March 17 @ 7:30pm and 10pm.

There’s also a Q&A session with Bob on March 17 at 1:30pm. Tickets are available via the Brody Theater's website and will go fast.

Verizon Wireless: Can you hear me now, Asian voice in my head?

I saw this first commercial a while ago... Asian Guy hears voice in his head:

Note also the brilliant line, "Your wife will love the Dual Core Tegra 2 chipset").  Then today I saw this Verizon ad, featuring Asian Gal who also hears a voice in her head:

Verizon has clearly figured out its target market -- Asians who hear voices in their head.  Birth of a new Asian stereotype?

[While tracking down the clips of these commercials, I learned that Verizon made the first one available in both Korean and Cantonese versions]

Apologies to the Retarded Children

In 2003 I travelled to Slovenia, touring with a show called City Life which performed at the Goli Oder ("Naked Stage) Improvisation Festival.  It was my first time to Slovenia, and I made great friends, performed some great improv shows and represented the United States - which was interesting as it was six months after we invaded Iraq.

Our hosts were wonderful and put on a great festival which included some social and cultural activities designed to get us to learn a bit about Slovenia.  It's not a very well known country, and as it was building its case for inclusion in the EU (which it gained the next year), putting on a good face seemed to be on everyone's mind.

The shows we performed were well-received and the festival as a whole got some great coverage in the media.  If you can read Slovenian, check out this review from RadioStudent.  Both of the daily papers, Delo and Dnevnik had writeups of the fest.  A few days later, while on an excursion to the idyllic Lake Bled, I remember Dražen (one of our hosts, and our lead tour guide) throwing down that day's paper in disgust.  Apparently, the paper mistakenly swapped captions on two photos from adjacent articles.  One article was about the festival, while the other was about a program at a school for children with mental disabilities.  But Dražen's disgust was not at the error, which appeared a few days earlier, but with the paper's printed apology - which was directed only to the "retarded children" and their school for confusing them with an improv festival.  No apology to the improvisers.

Photo: From IYP Slovenia on Flickr, licensed via Creative Commons

Is "Lock down your Facebook" the new "Wear a clean pair of underwear"?

According to news reports, this morning a twenty-something man entered the Roseville Galleria (an upscale mall just outside Sacramento), walked into a store and told the employees to leave.  He then locked himself in and allegedly set the place on fire.  He's now in custody. Luckily no one was hurt, though there's a tremendous amount of damage to the now closed mall.

A few minutes online revealed that I was more connected to the suspect than I thought. Turns out, he was a friend of a friend.

Well, not really.  He was a friend of a friend in Facebook terms. After hearing his Facebook profile mentioned on the news, I did what I think a lot of people did - I looked him up.  I was surprised when Facebook informed me I had "1 friend in common.” Turns out that our shared “friend” (a former classmate, we'll call him/her "Chris") went to the same school as the suspect and based on that had long ago accepted a friend request. The important thing to remember is that Chris didn't actually know the suspect in real life despite the shared school.  

I went to Chris's wall (Facebook terminology for the space on your profile where your friends can post messages) and saw a few people inquiring about the connection, “Chris? You knew the suspect?”  I emailed Chris privately and said, "You should unfriend him, tons of people are going to be looking at that profile and will be asking you if you know the dude."  The suspect has a public profile - so anyone with a Facebook account can see everything he has ever posted.  This has lead to news outlets reading his status updates as part of the breaking news.

Lets take this moment as a good reminder not to friend random strangers.  Surely its not worth risking being guilty by association or having to answer embarrassing questions that might arise in the future. If you haven’t already, as soon as you’re finished reading this, you should check to see if you're Facebook profile is set to private.  

As my mom, and every mom, used to remind us, it’s important to wear a clean pair of underwear in case of accident. A clean and private online presence is the “clean underwear” of the social networking world.

It’s too late for the suspect. He’s sitting in jail right now and can't turn his Facebook page off. His dirty underwear was exposed to the entire world. Surprisingly, Facebook appears to have intervened and cut off access to it. Most likely it’s some kind of automated shutoff due to the number of people posting to the profile. By now, most of us have seen The Social Network and we know Facebook doesn’t care about our privacy.

While TV has broadcast the information in his profile, we didn't need TV to tell us what's on his Facebook page, we can go see ourselves. I wonder if all the people with public profiles who are talking about him know that anyone can see their posts?  (I have purposely not mentioned the suspect’s name, it just didn’t seem right when I was telling people to protect their privacy. However, you can click here to see it, via YourOpenBook.org - and yes, this will give away his name.)

Now, go put on a clean pair of internet underpants! Clean up your Facebook friends and make your profile private. That way, you’ll never have to live with the humiliation of Katie Couric reading your status updates on the evening news.

Photo: Uh Oh... Emergency Underpants by Archie McPhee (it's a real product)