Friday was an ultra-hectic day around Stanford. I awoke at 6:30am ... argh ... to make it to the Cancer Center by 7:30 so i could hear a lecture by our department's visiting professor for 2006, Dr. Paul Harari from the University of Wisconsin. He gave an excellent presentation on the pros and cons of the new wave of molecular-targeted anticancer drugs. I then had a spare half hour, during which i completely forgot there was free breakfast associated with the lecture and thus missed my morning meal, before heading off to our 9-10am monthly radiochemistry meeting in the Lucas Expansion. Then another brisk walk back to the Cancer Center for my group's biweekly journal club, this time attended by Kevin, a Castro Valley high school student eager to get some lab experience. The following lunch at the Linx Café between Ivana, Kevin, and i was accelerated so we could begin our 12-3pm imaging session in the Clark Center promptly. Kevin was awed with our mouse experiments, but perhaps moreso by the group of researchers next to us who were performing dissections. That had him downright mesmerized. We finished our experiments on time, with some very interesting results, and had a quick coffee before bidding farewell to Kevin. I was able to finally visit my office, where i found i had several pressing issues regarding registering for a meeting and finalizing a grant application. I put out those fires by 5:30pm and headed up to the city. Veronica had a couple of pairs of shoes waiting for me, a reward for the plethora of Perl programs i've written for her and her coworkers to analyze their inventory and sales data. I just realized that i now own two pairs of Bruno Magli shoes and one Bruno Magli leather coat. If, god forbid, Veronica is ever horribly murdered then i can blame it on OJ. Oh, i'm gonna hear it for that joke. The two of us then learned that Jenz and Brandon were having din-din at All You Knead over on Haight, so we joined them for a yummy meal (a stick-to-your-ribs plate of fried chicken for me, just like mom used to make).

We didn't hang around in the city for long, as i had to be up at 6:30am again on Saturday. The cause for my repeated loss of sleep was the resident symposium associated with our yearly visiting professor. I somehow made it to work at 7:30am, and miraculously retained lucidity and attention through the end of the Dr. Harari's final lecture (an excellent personalized summary of treatment of head and neck cancer, albeit with some rather gruesome photos) at noon. After a quick sandwich, i went home to change and grab V so we could Caltrain up to the city to fetch her Mini at her work, where she'd left it the previous night as i drove us home in the Jetta. We again hooked up with Jenz, this time for dinner at her favorite Italian place in North Beach, Franchino's. My caprese salad was pretty good, but the pasta and sausage special was fabulous. Afterwards we wandered around Chinatown and North Beach in search of dessert. I was thwarted in my efforts to get pork buns from a Chinese bakery as they were sold out. Doh ... those would've been nummy num num. We headed home around 10pm as my energy after two days of getting up early had completely bottomed out.

Today i again had to rise early, as i was volunteered to give radiobiology faculty meeting this morning. Preparing my presentation occupied the evening time slot after the not-so-Super Bowl yesterday. During that V put on Saturday Night Live from the previous night, which despite Steve Martin's mostly excellent performances continued the show's recent downward trend. Maybe i've passed it by, or it's passed me by, but i just don't find it very funny anymore. The recurring characters are built around quickly exhausted themes, like the Target employee who keeps leaving her register when seeing the cool things her customers are buying. As when i complained that the Simpsons had jumped the shark, my SNL complaints arrive just as CNN is praising the show for its continual reinvention. Dunno ... i think they're glossing over the fact that the show reinvented itself in the mid 90's because the writing had become abysmal. MTV2's indie video show Subterranean was also not so great on Sunday night. Perhaps the Super Bowl just put me in an awful mood.

I've picked up a bunch of great music lately. The advance of the new Wilderness album is interesting, while i finally found the old dark indie rock albums of Satisfact, which are wonderful. Spurred on by an Amazon list, i've discovered a great indie pop band in Human Television, who carry on in the jangle pop tradition of Let's Active and the Bats. I'm trying out the alternative rock/pop of Enon now, their 2002 album High Society is quite good so far. Got a bunch more to listen to ... experimental indie stuff by Thunderbirds Are Now!, Six Finger Satellite, and an advance of what is surely the next lovely Swedish pop record by the Concretes. In video games, i'm hoping that stores receive their copies of Winning Eleven 9 within a day or two of its proper release date tomorrow, so i can check it out. The videos i've seen on IGN are fabulous. I didn't get a chance to pursue Shadow of the Colossus any further over the weekend, but i'm excited to see what other visual goodies it has in store for me. I haven't played much PSP or SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo lately. The gameplay mechanics aren't as smooth as i'd like so i haven't been persuaded to spend a lot of time with it yet. I'm still slowly working my way through my pleasure reading, now consisting of both the Middle Ages-to-present account of conflict in the Middle East Holy War, as well as the much more lighthearted collection of short essays (in many instances bordering on poetry) Soccer in Sun and Shadow. I love the graphic from the cover.

Now it's lunchtime, and i'm ready to have a go at the proscuitto and salami sandwich i made myself with the leftovers of my big sandwich fixins yesterday. Mmmmmm. Due to yesterday's big sandwich, i wasn't able to grill the beef kebabs i bought from Whole Foods last night, so those await Veronica and i this evening. Double mmmmm.

I love a good football game. There's no better way to cap off a weekend than by relaxing around the house and watching the ol' pigskin. Even if you don't care about the teams ... in fact sometimes it's better if you don't care at all about the teams. You sit back and enjoy the matchup, analyze the plays and appreciate the nuances of the sport.

Despite the lack of media interest, the matchup was decent ... Seattle has been performing consistently for most of the season, while Pittsburgh and their "bread and butter" approach of running the ball and defense had shed its recent mediocrity to beat the top three seeded teams in the stronger AFC. I set myself up with a big sandwich (more on that in a bit), a few bottles of Sapporo (not very American, but then i'm not going to drink a freakin' Budweiser), some Doritos, and settled in for the game.

Seattle started off brightly, throwing out routes to Darrel Jackson for the first two or three plays of the game, before sputtering and punting. Pittsburgh and their second year quarterback "Big" Ben Roethlisberger then came out and were mostly ineffective. Three downs and punt. This sort of trend persisted through most of the first quarter, with Seattle looking potent if not capitalizing, and Big Ben failing to find any sort of rhythm. Not a pretty game, to be sure ... a lot of lousy football and weak performances. That's when the real star performers of the game reared their heads ... the refs. Starting with an incredibly weak offensive pass interference call against Jackson that negated a Seattle touchdown, the officials made a series of questionable calls that all favored the Steelers. An iffy holding call negates a long Seattle pass that would've put the ball on the Pittsburgh 1 yard line. What isn't called on the play is offside on Pittsburgh as their right defensive end was across the line a half second early. Another weak holding call negates a long Seattle punt return. Replays show Big Ben getting stopped clearly short of the goal line on a run, but the touchdown is given anyway. Matt Hasselbeck gets called for a ridiculous "low block" when making a tackle after throwing a pick. Hasselbeck loses the ball upon hitting the turf after a bootleg run, when he was clearly down by contact ... only a blatantly obvious replay prevented the refs from letting the fumble stand. For the first time in my sports viewing history, i believed that the refs were actively deciding the outcome of a contest.

To be sure, Seattle let way too many opportunities slip. They completely outplayed Pittsburgh in the first half, and yet were down 7-3. Jerramy Stevens dropped four easy passes ... something you just can't do, especially when you got into a trash talk war with chatty Pittsburgh linebacker Joey Porter during the week. And to their credit, after the game they were quick to blame themselves. But on the flip side, Pittsburgh didn't look like champions. I couldn't figure out who would get the MVP ... Roethlisberger was terrible, the Pittsburgh defense didn't play particularly well (Porter and Troy Polamalu were mostly anonymous), and neither Jerome Bettis nor Willie Parker (despite a 75 yard TD run) really got their ground game on track. It ended up going to receiver Hines Ward, who had decent numbers.

The game in a nutshell for me ... after stopping Seattle's last play on a 4th and 8 with only 3 seconds left in the game, Joey Porter didn't run off to celebrate with his teammates (who were swarming the field despite the game not yet being technically over). Instead, he spent a good fifteen seconds jawing at Jerramy Stevens. Why? You've just won the Super Bowl, you dips@$t. Do you really need to rub it into your opponent like that? Totally classless. Oddly, both teams were rather subdued as the clock struck 0:00. Seattle, well for obvious reasons. Pittsburgh, maybe because they'd just won the championship in the most unconvincing manner possible.

It was a thoroughly dissatisfying viewing experience. However, i did enjoy getting a bit nostalgic in making the aforementioned "big sandwich". Back in my first year of grad school in 1996, some of my classmates and i decided to start a Monday night football party. We held it at my apartment in Oakland. For food, my friends Max and Neel and i went to Safeway and got some deli meats and cheeses, a big loaf of bread, and some veggies and made a friggin rad sandwich. Since then the big sandwich became somewhat of a tradition, appearing at numerous Super Bowl and MNF parties thereafter. I knew i couldn't sit and watch the Super Bowl without remembering those good old days with a loaf of sourdough bread stuffed with fixins. This year, it turned out to be the best part of the game. And i made sure to leave myself some leftover stuff, in addition to some proscuitto i bought that didn't really fit into the motif of the current sandwich, for lunches this week. I bought the deli meats from Whole Foods this time, and i must say they've got some good stuff. The roast beef was out of this world, while the herb turkey was also incredibly flavorful.

Also mitigating the crappy American football on display for the world on Sunday was Chelsea's defeat of their recent rivals Liverpool in a Premiership grudge match at Stamford Bridge. With a goal in each half, and a couple of questionable offside calls negating further Blues scoring, the final tally was 2-nil. But of course the scousers need something else to focus on besides getting bested domestically yet again by the Blues, and it was provided by Arjen Robben. Towards the end of the match, Reds keeper Jose Reina raced out of his box to clear a ball but failed to get there before Chelsea striker Eidur Gudjohnsen. Being held off the ball by Gudjohnsen and unable to return to guard the goal because of a lack of defensive support, he executed a ridiculous scissor tackle from behind that left the Icelandic striker in a heap. As the ref came over to warn or possibly dismiss the keeper, Robben and a number of other Chelsea players were reading Reina the riot act. Robben however must've said something particularly offensive to the Spaniard, as he pushed him in the face. Robben milked the contact and fell over like he'd been shot. Because of this, the ref showed Reina the red card. Voila, a red herring for Liverpool. Why discuss how they got handled again by Chelsea, when manager Rafael Benitez can begin a moral crusade to eliminate such mischievous play-acting from the game? Hell, i don't like what Robben did at all. He probably should've gotten a yellow for his antics. But Reina could've (and should've) been sent off for his tackle on Gudjohnsen alone. The topic is open to debate now because referee Alan Wiley has stated he cautioned Reina for the tackle and dismissed him for the Robben incident. Whatever. At the time Liverpool were 2-nil down and not appearing capable of a late comeback. If it makes you feel better, i, a Chelsea fan, will admit that what Arjen Robben did was disgraceful, unnecessary, and should be punished. I also know that such consolation means f@$# all in the context of the scoreline.