If you live in Orlando, Tampa or West Palm Beach, Florida and are a fan of Asian cuisine, you must visit Crazy Buffet. Billed as an "up-scale Asian fusion buffet," Crazy Buffet offers the convenience and variety of a do-it-your-self restaurant with the quality and ambiance of a mid-range sit down.

As you enter the carefully decorated and detailed interior, a stark contrast from the strip plaza it is housed within, the first and rather prominent fixture you will notice is the fresh sushi and sashimi bar. The sushi bar is worth the price of admission alone with its fifty or so varieties, freshly crafted by skilled sushi chef's right there behind the buffet line. Moving along you come across the made-to-order hibachi grill and wok. Past these items are rows upon row of fresh seafood, including peel and eat shrimp, shrimp cocktail, oysters, snow crab, mussels and scallops. Seafood not your thing? Name a meat or vegetable and this buffet will likely have it prepared in traditional Asian style. Oh, I almost forgot the eight soup selection, full salad bar, fresh fruit and vegetable station and desserts.

For me, the mark of a quality ethnic dining experience is two-fold. First, the clientèle eating at the establishment should be of racial variety, but I do expect to see "natives" dining as well: Chinese at a Chinese restaurant and so on. The second is very similar in that I want to see natives present, but in this case they should be members of the staff. At Crazy Buffet I was pleased to see a healthy variety of both. My logic on this issue is that if it is a true representation of an ethnic or cultural culinary art, then those who are supposedly represented should be there preparing, serving and consuming it as well. They should want to. A notable example of a restaurant to tries so very hard to establish this yet prospers mostly in part to the credulousness and trend wannabe nature of some is the atrocious P.F. Chang's China Bistro. I find that restaurant to be an abomination. But before I pull a Carson Kressley, let P.F. Chang's not steal the limelight away from a place who knows how to pull it all together.

In addition to everything else, Crazy Buffet offers a full liquor bar that you can feel free to eat at, both spacious and cosier dining rooms of varied size, catering, banquets and a live piano musician. The service was mostly unnecessary, but dirty plates were never lingering and my beverage always freshly refilled. Dinner is $17.95 per person and soft drinks are $1.79. It is really an incredible deal considering what is offered. The only thing I would say could use an overhaul at Crazy Buffet is their website. JPEG compression destroys images! Hello?!

Conclusion: Go eat there now!

As promised, there are two new Gallery sections with photographs from Gay Days 2003 online. The first album contains pictures I took, while the other features those taken by Ernie and company.

There are a few more photographs I am still looking to acquire from my day at the Magic Kingdom with Chris and some of his old friends from work. Once I get those, they will be added immediately.

Ok, so I lied. My Gay Days is now officially over and I am tired. Ernie, the gang and I ended up going to dinner at the local Jungle Jim's and then to Disney's Pleasure Island where we danced, drank and checked out the scene until the early morning. It would be out last time to hang out together as their flight left in the afternoon yesterday. Last night I was taken out to dinner by my friend Frankie and then the two of us hung out with Travis downtown. We ended up talking and drinking until late until Frankie realised he needed to get home to bed in order to go to work Wednesday.

In other news:

• I really need to purchase a vehicle before this week is over.
• Chris has been helping me locate used vehicles that might just work for me.
• I have a job interview I am excited about on Friday.
• I have said it before, but XM Radio fucking rocks, especially Channel 81, BPM.

If you take a paper bag, put dog shit inside of it, but then label it "gold," you still only have a paper bag of dog shit. In the same light, the financially faltering AOL Time Warner company has decided to rename their cable television and internet division to Bright House Networks. You have likely seen and heard their television adverts with the annoying whistle and flute solo. I now despise them even more. Their logo reminds me of 1950's war era symbols. In fact, their logo (the second from the left) is rather reminiscent of these other images.

And this thought process led to some quality time with Photoshop.

Speaking of companies I despise, I visited my local Blockbuster Video store recently and checked-out a copy of Life or Something Like It featuring Angelina Jolie. I had only before heard the title, but knew nothing of the plot or characters. I ended up enjoying this movie very much.

It seems like it has been absolutely forever since I last wrote. The truth of the matter is I just really have nothing much to say these days. But before the entries on the main page age to the point where nothing is even displayed, I had better bore you with some recent happenings.

The job search could be going better, but I am remaining optimistic about several opportunities that have recently popped-up. One in particular is with a law firm that is run by the mother of a friend of mine who worked with me (well, more like I took over for her) at Yab Yum. There are also a few others leads I am following from both people I know and positions posted in the paper and online.

I am very excited and eagerly anticipating the final thumbs-up for my new web development and hosting project. The site is for a coffee and ice cream shop situated south of SR 50 (Colonial Drive) on Alafaya, near the Stanton Energy Centre. While the operating manager is very excited about the ideas I have presented, the final approval for a project as involved as this lays with the actual owners. While he does not expect them to question his judgement that this site could only be a very positive thing for the relatively new store, I will learn their final decision tomorrow. I will be sure to write more about this after I get the approval to begin work (oh, and a check).

I recently watched a slew of movies I had never seen before, including John Q, The Mummy Returns, The Foreigner, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and several more which I cannot even think of right now. I was pretty pleased with the lot of them, but The Foreigner was pretty ho-hum. Sad, but every time they mentioned "the package" in the film, I kept thinking about another type of package.

Finally, Black Hole, Florida keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Even worse is the fact it seems no longer confined to gays. I suppose Erik was right in saying I usually become a regular at any place I frequent, which helps this. But I still have to wonder if I would have this problem in a real city. I hope to find out in the next few years.

I think Orlando is collapsing in on itself these days. It seems every time I meet someone new, they have direct or indirect connections to other people I know: friends, ex-boyfriends or ex-whatevers. The worst part is that this trend is getting worse and worse by the day. Kevin Bacon can turn invisible for all I care; that guy has got nothing on my degrees of separation.