Live free of your seatbelt after you turn 18.

Well, I'm back. I had five wonderful days down on the farm with my Gram and my dogs. I was on the only on-time flight from LaGuardia to Manch-Vegas on Tuesday night (the drawback was that the plane was pretty wee).

I did take pictures of aforementioned dogs and the beautiful landscape (blanketed in four inches of snow), but it's going to take a while to post them. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, my roundup of this little vacation, to give you an idea of what I was doing with myself for five non-New York days:

- Neck-deep in family, which was fantastic. Little cousins are getting taller and starting high school, older cousins are having kids. I have a cat and some student loans. But they all listen politely when I regale them with stories of laundry pick up and delivery service.

- Puttering. Gram is way better at this than I am, let's just get that out of the way. She caught one of four errant roosters with a fishing net (they are all to be sent to the "pearly gates" courtesy of my 8-months pregnant cousin and an axe before they are permitted to terrorize children or pluck the poor hens bald). I attempted to reupholster the ceiling of Lucille, our old Volvo, and while I did get the sagging and mysterious gross orange dust under control, I also may have driven a staple into something important (like a wire that mysteriously powers the dome light, dashboard clock, and stereo speakers). Whoops.

- Dogs. The family Border Collies rarely let me leave their sight all weekend, if I was permitted to to be out of physical contact in the first place. Mick (soon to be 10) and Josie (soon to be 11), don't act as dogs of their age and size might. Tuesday night I was pinned by both in my twin-size bed. Unlike my asshole cat, though, they didn't need me to be awake to enjoy my company. Also unlike my cat, though, they really like it when I share toast crusts and bacon with them.

- Good Eatin'. It's what Thanksgiving's all about. Gorging oneself is a proud American tradition. We had more than 50lbs of turkey and a marvelous array of sides. I got to take a little bit of the good eating on the road, as Gram supplied me with a dozen fresh eggs and a jar of grape jelly. Also partook of some kickass Thai food on Saturday.

- Driven into the arms of a dear old friend. Ok, so maybe I drove myself there. Newbury Comics, how I miss you when I'm in New York. Yeah, iTunes is great, but nothing beats combing the used DVD and CD selections at Newbury and finding a gem. This time around, I got Dummy (See it! Milla Jovovich sings klezmer. I shit you not.) for $4.99. That's right, folks. And in NH, that means $4.99.

- Stepping out with some of the HS friends. Also fantastic. Though weird, because we were drinking together (I didn't do that in high school, y'see), and a little bittersweet as I'm about to lose them to Illinois and Guatemala for a long while. We marched around Manch-Vegas in the witch-tit cold on Wednesday and Saturday, looking for a warm corner in a public house. The Shaskeen wasn't so great (though there were fisticuffs that ended in blood being spilled), but Strange Brew Tavern has 48 beers on tap and a popcorn machine. I highly recommend the Smuttynose I.P.A.

All in all, the weekend was a resounding success. I returned via tiny plane yesterday afternoon, was screwed by a cab driver, and nearly roasted in my bed. Good to be back.

Pass the turducken.

In T-minus 12 hours, God and US Airways willing, I will be on my way to sunny New Hampshire for a long weekend of giving thanks, seeing family, walking in the woods with Border Collies, and relishing a world with no streetlights (It gets dark there at night! Amazing!).

I have not left these five boroughs since early August, so I needn't point out that this little escape is VERY exciting. Much as I adore Brooklyn, my cats, and my furnace of a bedroom, a change of scenery is welcome.

And since we still travel by horse and wagon and have a gas-powered washing machine, you can bet there's no high-speed connection down on the family farm. Not that I'd feel like blogging while under the influence of tryptophan.

But, if you're very lucky I'll obtain some means by which to photo-document the quaint folksiness, cheap liquor, and lax seatbelt laws of New Hampshire.

Happy Thanksgiving! Back in action on Monday.

Clap Your Hands Say "Play Summer of '69!!"

Yeah. That's a variation on an old post title. Equal opportunity hackery up in this bitch, don't you forget it.

Anyway, I'm at the other side of the Craziest Week Ever. I seem to have made it out intact, for the most part. Wednesday night was the kickass Jeff Tweedy show. Thursday, we joined myriad other nuts for the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It's been several years since I read the book, so I did not suffer the indignation at the changes to the story. As a movie, it was great fun. Ralph Fiennes is an excellent Voldemort. And it's official: I am uncomfortably attracted to Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint.

Friday, by the grace of God (and coffee), I managed to stay upright at work. Then, at quittin' time, I went right down to the desolation of TriBeCa for the Ryan Adams & The Cardinals concert (the second of two free shows we saw, courtesy of my infinite patience). The wife and I got underwhelming slices at a pizza joint on Chambers St (incidentally, this pizza joint is also the fifth circle of hell). The cashier charged us twice for our drinks. She also had a patchy beard.

Then, it was off to the venue, where we waited 35 minutes in the blistering cold Hudson River wind until we were let in to claim our seats. And claim them we did. In the THIRD ROW. This is the closest I've been to the stage ever (I'm too timid to push through in the standing room shows - also I feel guilty because I'm tall and don't want to inhibit the concert enjoyment of those behind me), so it was pretty freakin' exciting.

It took the man himself a little while to get out onstage, giant tumblerful of whisky on the rocks in hand. But once he did, boy howdy... I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Cardinals are the best thing to have ever happened to him (I'm not ready to say heads and shoulders above Whiskeytown, but I'm thisclose - listen to the new album and you'll see what I mean). This became crystal clear to me when they played "To Be Young" all slow and sad and twangy. Also, Ms. Minnie Driver sashayed out of the shadows to sing backup for "Games." Which was weird. Claire heard her call him "Babe," ergo... new starlet paramour?

The sad thing, of course, was that we did not learn any new dances at our concert, as Josh did. I did learn that I do not play Tetris on Gameboy very well when I've only had four hours of sleep.

Then Saturday night we threw a party (of the much belated house warming variety). Because we're crazy people. And now I'm exhausted. So much for the recuperative powers of the weekend.

ADDENDUM: Go here for some photos of the concert, and another person's take on the show. She and I are in agreement: Mr. Adams has an arse that won't quit.

All right OK all right OK all right.

Last night was the first of two free concerts myself and the wife are seeing this week, courtesy of my infinite patience and an organization called Wall Street Rising.

I should begin by saying that Jeff Tweedy rocked (figuratively, I guess, because the set was acoustic... though I suppose we could open a debate over one can literally rock on acoustic.. whatever). However, to say that the show was free requires some qualification. True, we did not pay one red cent for the tickets themselves. I waited in a long line for four hours to get them, but I am at a stage in my life where I'll readily spend time over money. So, we get in the door for free. Our seats were pretty good. Because there was seating, the crowd was stationary, which was nice (none of the constant press forward in standing-room venues), and since there was no booze, everyone was fairly sedate, making my favorite concert-going behaviors all but nonexistent (more on that in a mo').

However. HOWEVER. We did have to sit through 40-odd minutes of the ear-bleeding make-you-tear-your-hair-and-clothes-in-pain stylings of Wilco guitarist Nels Cline. I thought that the two would play together for the whole thing and it would be pared-down, yet Wilco-y, but I was horribly mistaken. Nels opened. Which is to say, he PLAYED BY HIMSELF.

O Nels Cline, with your knobs and petals and tiny little guitar whose proper name escapes me. Why did you improvise for 20 minutes straight? Did you not know that just because you can make those noises doesn't mean that you should? My dear fellow, I greatly enjoy A Ghost is Born, and after seeing you play last night, I see your "artistic touches" and "signature style" folded (sometimes artfully, sometimes a little shoe-horned, in my opinion) into the album. But O Holy Mother of God, Nels. These are not things that should stand on their own.

My friends, the "music" (clicks, thumps, tones, long stretches of a high-pitched sqweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee) that our friend Nels played for us last night was the soundtrack to a high fever. It was Alice's fall down the rabbit-hole meets what I imagine the scarier scenes of Naked Lunch (the book) would sound like. It was the screams of hell in guitar-torturing form. People left the room in droves to wait politely just outside the doors. There was very little heckling. So paralyzed were we by discomfort, horror and indignation. "He plays with Wilco!" we thought to ourselves, "and they're great, so how is this so horrible?" But few among us could muster the strength to boo (and I don't condone booing at all. An audience, under most circumstances, should conduct itself with a modicum of respect). Indeed, when his set was complete, the crowd applauded wildly, because it was blessedly, ear-ringingly over.

That was the payment exacted from Wall Street Rising for the free Jeff Tweedy. We gave our pounds of flesh. And gladly, for Mr. Tweedy's set was fantastic. He stood in his pool of light on the stage, encircled by guitars, and held 900 people completely rapt through an amazing set and two encores. Seriously, the place was silent, hanging on his every word, note, movement. We held our breaths while he changed guitars. We exhaled when someone in the audience screamed out the name of a song, thus engaging him... *whew* like an awkward date when the guy is much cooler than you are, you're happy to have someone else start the conversation. Tweedy then joked that the best way to get him to play a song was to tell him not to play it. And hilarious banter with the geniuses in the audience ensued. My favorite episode went something like this:

Girl in front of us: Don't play Passenger Side!
Jeff Tweedy: Don't play Passenger Side?
GIFOU: Yeah!
JT: Well, fuck you, man. I'll play whatever the hell I want to play.
- scattered WOOs and applause -
JT: It has closed couplets, you know. Have you (sternly peering in our general direction) ever written a poem with closed couplets?

She then proceeded to have some kind of weird groveling, applauding epileptic fit when he did play Passenger Side later in the concert.

All in all, the evening was a success, less the pre-show death march in the cold rain to a Burritoville that wasn't there and the post-show Stolen Cab Incident (I'll find you one and cut your fingers off, biatch... trust me, your uppence will come).

My love for Jeff Tweedy is stronger than ever. He writes lyrics in closed couplets and uses words like "maudlin." *sigh* And that voice. That perfect, effortless, gravelly, bardic voice.

A little line-waiting and some ear-blood were well worth it.

Ok, I get it.

Dear ASPCA,

This has got to stop. If I have to look at this one more time (on my favored web sites, on the subways, driving by me on buses, imprinted on the insides of my eyelids, etc.), I'm going to freak out. I don't WANT to imagine anything involving these three items.

You see, the thing is, I already have eleventy billion cats. I do not need more (nor do I need people thinking that I want more - they judge, ASPCA). And while I am pained by the idea of nice cats living in terrible homes or out on the street, soaked in gasoline and duct-taped to...something... I can't stand any further coercion into taking them to my own bosom. Really. I understand what you're doing, but you're killing me over here. The wife and I took in one of your own foundlings (who has been having full-body convulsion sneezing fits, by the way, what's that about?), and two others. Plus, the neighbor's cats are trying to live with us. Sooo, in short, I'm doing my part. We feed, collar, and distribute 'nip to three cats. I want you to know that. And I want you to stop your reign of guilt and terror.

Respectfully,
Sheena

Understated understatement.

So, I was reading about apartheid on Wikipedia this morning, and came across this picture, meant to illustrate the brutality and injustice of that time. The Wikipedia article was written by a student at Stanford, who apparently really does not want his/her post to be flagged for questions about neutrality.

The sign itself would be funny (don't freak out, stay with me here) if it wasn't real and racially hateful. Talk about your hyperbole. Savage dogs will devour the corpse? Now that's commitment to killing someone until they're dead in an almost Shakespearean manner (though if it were true Shakespeare it'd probably be savage curs rather than dogs or a couple of whoreson dogs at the very least).

The juxtaposition of the sign replete with grinning skull and the "were often treated quite poorly" caption is pretty great.

In case you were curious, I was reading about apartheid because I just finished J.M. Coetzee's Boyhood and was looking for a little more context on the story. The book is a slightly fictionalized account of his boyhood in S. Africa in the 1950s. It's also an incredible account of apartheid (not to mention all the class, religious, and geographic prejudices in play during that time as well) as seen by a child. The story's wicked short, has a beautiful and poignant economy of language, and Coetzee's a Nobel Prize winner. Read it. You can borrow my copy.

La-dee-frickin'-da

Insert wet fart noise here.

I guess I didn't actually think that Ortiz would get it, 'cause of the whole DH thing. Still, the Red Sox and we fans could use a lift.

In happier news, apparently Gabe Kapler feels great, and is hoping to report to spring training.

Is it bad when the IT guy sees a glimpse of the Blogger window on your computer at work?

...I'm guessing yes. He didn't say anything, but I think he could be watching me right now. Um. Hi, Mr. IT guy. Thanks for fixing my Outlook.

Anywho, I'll not make my usual excuses for being absent from the Internets. I've been busy and important with the following things:

Avoidant behavior (i.e. trying not to read things like this and get upset)
Relatedly, I plan to burn Lucky Lucchino in effigy at the height of the next full moon.

Taking the kid to the doctor with the wife.

Watching a star be born.

Developing a new addiction.

Nursing an old one.

Continuing with the usual vices.

I'll have more to say soon, as I'm entering into a week of crazy hellish fun. At the moment, she must work hard for the money.

I've posted the picture of Mr. Ortiz, because we're finding out about MVP soon. Fingers crossed, people.

What makes a 'rita (not pictured) bonzer?

No mountain of salt at the bottom of the glass!

That's right. From the geniuses who brought you Binge Eating at Red Lobster's Endless Shrimp Barfaganza, the usual suspects were rounded up last night for dinner and onions of the bloomed variety at Outback Steakhouse, bizarrely located in Chelsea.

Now, since I don't have a digital camera or the comedic stylings of the Gilhouse or Carpathian variety, I'll leave most of the recounting to others (update: Josh has posted his assessment and Will's got the photo-documentation with captions). However, I feel a little comparative round-up is in order.

The [Marga]rita.

Red Lobster: It's the size of a swimming pool, has a pile of salt AT THE BOTTOM of the glass (which was startling, to say the least). To add insult to injury, the rimming was piss-poor. Also I think they only pretended to put tequila in it, and it cost an arm and a leg.
Outback: In a beer stein, with a half-decent salt rim. Actually had alcohol in it. Had two for the price of the aforementioned salty swimming pool. It was bonzer, as advertised.

Food

Red Lobster: Full-on gross. At the beginning it was good gross (except for the coconut shrimp which were bad-gross all the way through), but it took a dangerous downturn once the scampi arrived. I still have shrimp-related nightmares. Cheesy bread was good, though sparse.
Outback: The Bloomin' Onion was pretty great. I heard good things about the Bloomin' Leavin's in the dip afterward. The food itself was decent, if unremarkable. Points off for iceberg lettuce in the salads...

Venue

Red Lobster: Big, two floors, festooned with fish-related paraphenalia, neon lobsters, etc. Took a glass elevator to our table. We were seated in the section where they put the ugly/crazy people... waaaay in a corner on the second floor. However, our chairs moved freely from the table so there was no awkward sidestepping and attempting to free your bloated abdomen from the booth.
Outback: Not so big, on street level. We were at a booth, but space was tight. I am bruised from getting up from the bench and colliding with the corner of the table (note: this could be my fault). Overall, it's funny to see a big suburban chain like Outback crammed into a Manhattan-sized space. There is not room for distended bellies full of bloomin' fried food.

Other

Red Lobster: Lobster tank. They sell a drink called a "Lobsterita."
Outback: Mambo No. 5 was playing in the ladies room. 'Nuff said.

Overall, I think Outback, as a (less-ridiculous) ridiculous chain wins due to the limited nausea following the meal (no cold sweats or post-traumatic stress dreams, either).

There's talk about going to a place that is NOT ridiculous next time. Are we growing up or what?

Is that your flagella or are you just happy to see me?

I derive daily amusement from the headlines on Yahoo!. I desperately want to meet the brain trust behind what gets prominence in that little lavendar box. This morning I logged in to read The Boondocks, check the spam accumulation in the old email account, and Yahoo! News did not disappoint. Behold:

I know what you're thinking: Do they have a video of that? Hot! Before you reach for the keyboard-side hand lotion, though:

The fossils are tiny swarm cells, a stage in the development of the fungus myxomycetes, also known as slime molds.

The cells reproduce by "fusing," Ranjeet Kar of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in Lucknow reportedly told PTI. Once the cells fuse, long, threadlike appendages known as flagella, are lost, he said.

Finding the fossils in a fused position and with their flagella shed, is evidence that the two cells were having sex, Kar said.

Slime molds? Sigh. Yahoo!'s a terrible tease.

If you're a slime mold fetishist, get your jollies here, you naughty beast.

Only tangentally related: when I arrived at the office this morning there was an enormous Larry Flynt's Hustler Club billboard trailer, replete with cowboy-hat-wearing, scantily-clad young lady, parked across from our building. To get all the computer and gaming magazine folk all twitterpated? To make me barf up my coffee? Little of both? Or perhaps the driver of the billboard-trailing vehicle is a devotee of The Chicken Deli's coffee and breakfast offerings. Either way, it was startling.