quote of the week

As I think about rustling up some panini this evening I'd like to pass along the Quote of Week from my darling after she enjoyed last Thursday's offfering: "Why is there a chutney in my panini?"

turkey time

I'm going to try to draw a parallel and I'd like you to follow along. If you've bowled in a league at any point in your life than it'll make more sense. I guess if you been to college and worried about a GPA it might make sense. Lets say you're bowling average, based on your history, is 166. You'll generally head out to the lanes and rack up a 500 series every week during your league. Early in the season the average will bounce around a bit as you get used to the lanes, the teammates, and the atmosphere. What you found out very quickly is that it's much easier to see your average drop than to climb. The requirements for increasing your average are more stringent - you're actually excelling above-and-beyond the norm. Do you know what it takes to get that average to drop? Sit on the couch, don't give a crap, and just chuck the ball down the lane. I guarantee it'll drop like a rock. And, just to add to your bowling misery, it'll take even more excellence to bring it back to that 166 after you've spent three or four weeks struggling because you're hungover, stupid, and don't care. Once you everything back in order then moving forward requires even more hard work and thundering scores. Not only that, as the weeks pass and pile up on your league scoresheet it becomes even harder to make up time. You're dealing with a load of crap.

Here's the analogy for all the Democrats and liberals out there who are endlessly complaining. Imagine we're in a bowling league - keep that in mind - and think about how much work needs to be done in order to get back to a balanced point. You won't do it tonight and you won't do it next week. If you want to just throw the ball as hard as you can down the middle and hope for the best, fire away, it won't work...it never does. Otherwise, shut up. Do you really think that over the course of 150 days we'll unfuck the issues this country is facing? Do you really think that over a 24-hour news cycle we'll be able to restore the country's strength and dignity? You know what? There's load of stuff that isn't being moved along as quickly as I'd like but at least I have an inkling that it'll happen - and some point beyond 150 days.

What have you done in the last 150 days? I thought so.

Maybe in another month I can read how Andrew Sullivan - and the Democrats - look back and say, for the umpteenth time, "Wow, I didn't see that coming. Seems like he's always a step ahead of us..."

Good night and good luck.

home depot is anything but home

I was out running errands this afternoon - dinner fixings, a few clothes, water filters, and a new sink spigot thingy - and stopped at Home Depot on a lovely Sunday afternoon. The Home Depot is the herding grounds for all types of knuckleheads; primarily the employees. You've got your weekend DIYers, contractors, people who think they are contractors, people who aren't contractors and yet act like contractors and pay for everything in cash, and the oft spotted married couple (and kids if it's a good day) doing everything they can to not kill each other in public. (I don't qualify as any of the above because I have zero handyman skills and I just let ol' Measuring Eyes sort our stuff. I'm a cook, not a carpenter.) I happened to be wandering the aisle that displays all type of water spigot: kitchen sets, bathroom sink sets, and the crazy mash of shower heads. I'd wrongly assumed that I needed to be in this aisle if I wanted a spare part or two being that it was the melting ground of spigots. Ha. Not a chance. But, as I'm wandering up-and-down the aisle fruitlessly looking for what I need I pass by a couple in their 50s who are clearly in the middle of redoing the kitchen. I couldn't tell if the husband was doing the work himself of if it was contracted, but they were at least responsible for purchasing the sink set and bringing it home. Here's the problem with this scenario: men don't really care. Women care. The wife had a list of set numbers that she'd somehow gathered online or from friends with faucets and she was dedicated to finding each one and analyzing whether or not the brush on the nickel, chrome, or stainless steel was just right. He just wanted to get the fuck out of the entire discussion, buy a goddamned sink set, and get home to watch the soccer and/or read the paper. (I'll freely admit that I spent extra time "looking" at the sets near them even though I'd already sorted out that what I needed wasn't anywhere nearby. When you see something like this winding up you must stay close for the payoff.) After being dragged through the entire list of kitchen sink sets, and some twice (I know, I heard it.), the wife finally grabs a box from the shelf and hands it the husband who immediately pops off with "Great. Let's go." Under his breath you could hear clearly what he was really saying even if my text won't do it justice. I think what I actually heard was, "Thank God! Jessssuuuuuuusss! Can I please get the hell out of this inferno you've dragged me into and wasted away half my Sunday surrounded by people I hate and wouldn't piss on if they were on fire?. And all this sink crap...I couldn't give a shit about it? Who cares? Grab something that costs any amount as long as it dispenses water. I DON'T CARE." Or something like that. I think that's probably about what she heard. That's the opening salvo of the payoff; if you've seen this often enough, or been a part of it, you know it's a call-and-response game. I paused, stood quietly staring at both the two-handled and single-handle faucets, and waited that split second. "Why are you being such an ass?", she replied in perfect timing. I'd had my fun and started to sidle away down the row while looking up at the ceiling hoping to escape. You don't want to stay around once the guns are blazing - frankly, it just gets embarrassing after the first shots have been fired. Knowing that I still had the deathtrap known as the Home Depot checkout line ahead of me I feel that even if I shouldn't have stayed behind to listen, it was sweet nonetheless. I think the only department that might lead to more hatred of loved ones would be meandering through paint samples and those irritating little cards. Maybe next time.

I managed to get everything done and make it home in time for the U.S. v. Brasil football final. Since X is working on some sort of 'review', I headed down to a neighbor's house, who we are dog-watching for, and watch football on an actual big HD TV. Not bad for a Sunday.

Dinner's calling.

what's that you say?

Language. people, and culture. Here's a great read on a theory about the relationship between how cultures think and the affect on language; or vice versa, or vice versa; pick your versa [thanks to Andrew Sullivan]. I've read some Steven Pinker, who knows from language and always intrigues, and this is exactly the type of wonder that runs through my mind every few years - and certainly during my time in Monterey where you made friends who were in myriad language training courses. Some of the differences in how language difficulty was ranked back then were no doubt based on both pronunciation difficulty and some of the psychological aspects of given languages. Spanish and French were grouped together at the lower end of difficulty, followed by Hebrew and others, and it finished at the highest difficulty with Russian, Chinese, and Arabic, among others. When we're exposed to something so distant from our cultural norm, whether a language or a life, we're probably going to struggle not only with the objective language but also with the basis beyond the language; and that's the people. In fact, the most memorable stories that most people have from Monterey (aside from poorly though out and failed marriages) usually revolve around our teachers. All the instructors there are native speakers so the curse and promise of their upbringing and culture had a massive effect on many students results. I'm sure that differing alphabets only add to the worry. Maybe the next time my mind starts to roil with language I'll look at it a bit differently.

The Eastern Market in D.C. is reborn today after two years of restoration following a massive fire in 2007. I was thinking of heading in this afternoon even before realizing the throng of locals and press that may be in attendance; I think I'll step up and head in, regardless. Maybe I'll bring my new camera and pass along some views.

More later.

t

tribute, redux

per TMZ, Jackson has died. Wow, What a strange day. The end of a confused and weird life; but man, the dude could entertain.

tribute

I'm not that old but now I know what it feels like when your childhood icons slowly fade away. Along with Evel Knievel's passing last year there aren't many true idols left from my youth.

beautiful music

In order to offset that last post, here's the gorgeous sounds of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings; or, as Dan calls it, retro.

move along if you don't care

I'm in the midst of a fairly heated back-and-forth left/right political discussion with a co-worker. Well, it's only heated in ideas, not yelling; we get along well but disagree on some serious issues. To some extent it's a repeat of what we all went through prior to the November elections but there's been a shift in the ground particularly as banks, automakers, and others have collapsed and the government has needed to step in to assist; and now the Iran election. There seems to be a load of fears that boil to the surface, particularly on the moderate right. It's been a very smooth step from being in charge for eight years (six in the Congress) and performing poorly to blaming someone else after 150 days. This desire to put blame somewhere, and it's a very strong conservative trait, has actually deepened the abyss between myself and the moderate conservatives. In fact, the more I think about it the more it becomes clear that I even find myself separating from a good number of the liberals (moderate and extreme) who seem to implode on a daily basis at some injustice they feel has been perpetrated because things aren't moving fast enough. That may be an issue for another day.

One of the trunks we debate is origins of principles and it sort of comes down to this input from someone: "I suppose one of my points is that we'll never agree on this issue because of our respective world-views and perception of human nature." What becomes clear pretty quickly is that this devolves into a nature v. nurture debate when that root is elevated to levels of principles (those beliefs we draw from the origin) and further upward into what I call the balloons that we debate every day. Think about it this way: the origin is the core of what we believe, the principles are how we shape those cores into words, the balloons are the yelling and screaming we see and hear on TV. In a real world example you could say that sanctity of life is an origin, not killing another person is a principle, and the abortion debate is a hovering balloon. The debate always centers on popping the abortion balloon that's hanging over your opponent's head; more times than not no one chooses to understand or address the core belief because we all generally believe in the sanctity of life and there's no money maker in that debate.

The huge difference I see, when considering what people want at the core level (happiness and a chance to live a good life), is that the table isn't balanced. Over a very long time I've come to realize that sorting out what's best for a country, as a whole, should come from looking up from the bottom; even if I'm not at the bottom I can certainly start my task by attempting to remedy the problems at that level. The problems that I encounter, as a white, upper middle-class American, are not the starting point for most of America. If my desire is to maintain only what I have then I'm merely mounting blinders on my head and whistling through life. Instead of assuming that humans, and their human nature, are merely choosing to sit in their own shit, or that they don't have any desire for a better life, only furthers the blindness of which many conservatives are guilty. We can debate all day long about choices that may or may not be available but if we recognize that there are choices then it's more of a debate than the simple standard "make the right choices to succeed." It's a far more pontificating position than what liberals are routinely accused of holding. It's just looking down the steep mountain and telling everyone to either hang on or climb harder.

It's enlightening to consider the idea of lifting yourself "up by your bootstraps" in order to make it in this world. If you read Outliers then you'll understand a bit about that; virtually no one (Bill Gates, famous athletes, Sonja Sotomayer, Clarence Thomas, etc.) got to where they are without help; it's help that not every person has access to no matter how well they make their choices. Lives aren't strictly based on choices even if they are a major factor in how the road unfolds before you; but it's easy enough for conservatives to wash their hands by saying that it's only our individual decisions that will determine where we sit or stand at age 40. That's a hallow position that serves to justify their own fears and ignorance.

If I look back over the span of my lifetime there is nothing within the realm of humanity in America, nor abroad, that conservative movement was correct on when history finally judged the results. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to come up with any real economic issue that's been vaguely successful. The pat answer will be Reagan and the Berlin Wall but I don't consider that something that was ended by Reagan (or Bush 41) as much as something that would have happened anyway. But, if I must, I'll allow a feather in their hat and then they can keep on looking for something else. We don't create revolution and Iran right now is a prime example. When a stance is premised on the idea that everything I have, sitting fat- and-happy on the top of the hill, will eventually trickle down to the others who are struggling is to be believed then I only see a people that are fighting against, and not for, a better joint to hang our hats. It always seems to be all or nothing.

t

hiding the magazine under the bed

There was a time way back when that Sports Illustrated had some very good writers. Of course, once upon a time Rolling Stone had great writers. At some point in the last three or four months I got a cautionary e-mail from some such organization that alerted me to a number of "bonus points" that were about to expire. There weren't enough points to trade in for anything of real value - movie passes or a Mercedes-Benz - but enough to get three or four magazine subscriptions. Fine. Even though I'd pared down to the New Yorker and one cooking magazine (gift), I decided to at least use the points for something...anything. Free points! My first mistake was in not hitting myself in the head immediately for even thinking that more magazines is a good idea. Secondly, if the mags are on offer for basically nothing then they probably aren't needed. It's sort of like the Mike Greene theory for choosing wine: always buy the second least expensive. His idea was that the cheapest was the cheapest for a reason and the second cheapest was probably just good enough to get by. The one outlier was a second or third cheapest wine on sale by the case (if you are aware of the previous price). At that point, buying the cheapest is just fine. X goes by the theory that all wine purchased should come from the aisle ends (something recommended by Waitrose in England). I think it's basically the same thing. But, back to magazines. I chose the Economist, Sports Illustrated, and Glamour. One of those wasn't for me. My first problem is that no human can read an entire Economist issue - or part of an issue - before the next one darkens the door in seven days time. I have a hard time getting through a New Yorker in one week - the Economist is a behemoth. The follow-up is that Sports Illustrated has become the Blender of sports mags. There's no quality like Frank Deford, there are no well-written pieces - at all - and every page seems to be an exercise in just how sexy the mag can be. I've probably gotten six or eight issues and I'm just wasting away the environment; I've tried, it stinks. I don't have any input on Glamour because I'm not reading it. (Cue the Seinfeld references.)

I'll give you a quick hit on Obama and the photos, if I may. One of the main clauses when applying classification to anything in the government, or military, is that classification is never to be used to prevent embarrassment. The photos - and a number of them are already out there and they are revolting - aren't an issue of national security; they are a matter of embarrassment and shame. Anyone who's been a part of the machine should recognize the problem with applying classification to any of them. Will they provide fodder for our foe? Yes. Do they fall under national security and the shield that classification provides? Nope.

Consider yourselves warned and counseled. 

truth in a bag

A few notes from a shopping venture. On the way to TJs I stopped at a light behind an Isuzu Axiom; my first thought was that if you could Scrabble© an Isuzu Axiom it’d be worth 27 points with no bonus squares included. (Actually, I just thought about the Scrabble© playing portion, I had to look up the values later on.) My second thought was, Axiom? Per Webster’s, here’s the primary definition:

(noun) a self-evident truth that requires no proof.

I guess we could just call it “Car” since that too would be a self-evident truth. I’ve been torn over the last decade or so between hating either stupid names for vehicles or hating stupid alphanumeric sequences as names for vehicles. You might consider this parallel to whether you like how Chicago titled their albums or how The Flaming Lips managed to come up with demented titles. Considering that the Isuzu Axiom looks exactly like every other mini-SUV/suburban mother vehicle it isn’t really self-evident at all. I think I’d just prefer the car companies, or what’s left of them, to simply put the company name on the car and do away with the model. Just choose your model by the look and nix the name; I don’t think you’ll end up with the wrong shape by accident. "I'll have the 1963 Lincoln." It’s sort of the same with what Apple is doing with its operating systems. They’ve latched, inexplicably, onto the family Felinae: cheetah/puma, jaguar, panther, tiger, leopard, snow leopard. Those descriptions also equate to versions 10.1 through 10.6. There doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to the cat name or an actual zoological classification of the greatness of each cat. (Obviously, the leopard v. snow leopard idea is pure lunacy.) If I can’t remember in what order they arrived, by name, I can certainly remember that I have 10.4. There’s little need to look at me and say, “Oh, you have Tiger”, because I have no feline idea. It’s just 10.4; we all learned to count and we can keep up with numbers. And, if you’ll indulge me, I would much prefer to be a cheetah or puma than a tiger so I don’t see how tiger is better, in the end. Maybe we can start a betting line and choose what we think will be the next four versions. Here’s my fortune from the crystal ball:

10.7   Caracal
10.8   Pumpkin (“somewhat strong, round, and sloth-like”)
10.9   Colocolo
10.10 Oncilla

If I’m going to have to figure out how to equate a version number with a genus then we might as well make it fun.

I ended up forgetting to pick up some shredded mozzarella for the boys’ pizza (on said shopping trip) so I had to make an extra stop at the nearest grocery. I bought only the bag of shredded cheese; the cashier scanned it and began putting it into a plastic bag – as they are wont to do. I told him I’d just carry it with the hands provided. I know…I’ve brought this up before but really, a bag to carry a small bag? It wasn’t too far from me going into a hardware store to buy a single, spare drawer handle and having an employee put my handle into a bag for ease of carrying.

Maybe I'll just let it go for today.

t

lazy sunday, really.

I'm providing you, generously, with the final lap of this weekend's MotoGP from Barcelona; you can thank me later. The yellow rider is Valentino "the Doctor" Rossi, the eight-time World Champion. His competitor on this fine day is his team-mate, Jorge Lorenzo, who he is now tied with Rossi atop the championship standings along with Casey Stoner; not that any of that matters to you. Since I love just about any type of racing, Formula 1 and MotoGP in particular, I exposing you to a fantastic finish that you never see in auto racing these days. Feel free to overdub the Italian (or Spanish) commentator with your own version of "the door, the door..."



A second video to entertain you comes from some genius living in Arlington, VA. Every place you see in this video is in and around the neighborhood where we used to live - and where WonderTwin #2 and brood still live. I'm not sure this could have been any better. I do think the creator owes about 90% of any royalties to Andy Samburg of SNL.



The house has been cleaned to within an inch of its life - if a house had a life. The lawn, containing the deadly hill - is in dire need of a cutting. I think I'll hold out for closer to sunset and cooler temperatures. Betwixt now and then I'm off to the grocery to gather needs for taco variants: plain, standard, meat-and-bean for the hordes; some sort of fish tacos for the normal kids. Maybe I'll update you later, maybe I won't...

get in my belly

As we've been watching Hulu lately there's suddenly some degree of commercial exposure on The Hilltop. Even when watching online, at least for now, you still get three or four 30-second spots every hour. My question is this: have GM and AT&T been running these horribly patronizing commercials for a long time? The GM commercial, with some hockey player down on the ice at one point, is covered by some bullshit narration about the 'new GM' that crows of a massive responsibility taken by GM to remedy the company's ways. I'm positive that a bunch of the mental midgets that run GM sat around saying to themselves in a meeting one day, "I think we should quit building Hummers." It comes off as a bit rich as they file for bankruptcy protection after getting something like $30 billion. Beyond that, it almost sounds as if they're claiming to have been beaten down by forces beyond their control; they're merely picking themselves up from the mat, dusting off, and are suddenly fighting fit because of the grand visions floating around that boardroom. You can see the commercial below (okay, I 'fess up. The first one you can watch is the actual commercial, the second one comes from some brilliant and gleaming lights in my universe busting on GM - stunning...and thiefs!). I couldn't find the AT&T commercial that outlines their unprompted "decision" to buy clean and efficient trucks and vans because of their great desire to help the American people.
 




This strange "guiding the public with junk input/output" popped into my head yesterday when, for reasons unknown, I clicked on a link at Yahoo! that appeared to discuss restaurant food and its health value. I thought to myself, "We only go out once in a blue moon (to FarrahOlivia) but I'm still curious to know what's going on in the Americana dining world these days." That was the wrong idea. Here's the sub-headline from the piece on food, calories, and fat intake:

"New list shows fried mac-and-cheese isn't as healthy as it sounds."

No way. Actually, it doesn't even sound healthy.

Do I need some crack journalist to break the story, and save my health, by showing that not only is plain mac-and-cheese pretty low on the dietary health table, but that when fried in clumps it's even worse? Fried mac-and-cheese actually screams that it's bad food. Was there really a question? Did someone actually think to themselves, "I need to cut back on all the sewage I'm shoveling into my gullet and try to eat better stuff. Hmm. Let's see. Yeah, I'm going to go with the fried mac-and-cheese grease cubes; but, I'll just have water to drink so I don't counterbalance my healthy selection with a sugary beverage." I really want to break this down - this fried bit - and come to a conclusion. Let's say you have a nice, fresh heirloom tomato sitting on your counter. You're thinking about slicing it up, slipping it on some farmer's bread, drizzling it with some olive oil, and nibbling on it as a nice afternoon snack. Or, you could just deep fry that mother and improve the nutritional value. I didn't think so. So, how exactly does anyone think that frying anything on this Earth could possibly make it healthier? Even if you just rolled out of bed in your shack in the woods, and fired up the Sterno to make some mac-and-cheese, you surely wouldn't suspect that adding a good deep fry to it would make your insides better, would you?

I will point out that this particular feast of fitness is available at...The Cheesecake Factory. I'll let you ponder that.

Love, kisses, and mac-and-cheese to all.

t

wally world

It can be difficult to gather up the small victories in life. I think I've mentioned in passing just how much I admire both Radio Shack and Walgreens for finding and holding fast to their niches. We have Radio Shacks all over NoVa and D.C. but we are just now getting some Walgreens on-board. To my utter shock I came across the new Wallys in Clarendon this afternoon. The Eleven used to frequent Clarendon during our Ballston days but now it's nothing by a bi-monthly pass through on the way to somewhere more important. There was some legal bullshit that was keeping Walgreens from the area - at least that's the rumor I vaguely remember - and we were instead littered with boatloads of CVSs and Rite Aids; both send shivers down the spine. I can't place my finger on the difference between the chains but a good Midwestern boy wants nothing more than a Walgreens. I'll let it go; it does really seem a smallish title belt. 

It didn't hurt that I was in the area for either; a quick stop at the grocery store, a pop-in at the excellent gelato place, to pick-up my election gear for tomorrow's Virginia democratic gubernatorial primary (and a few democratic delegate primaries), all of the above, or any combination of the above when I stumbled upon the mecca - I'll let you choose.

Summer is here and the humidity is just perfect. No fear of drying out when you live on a swamp.

grinding away

The Blonde said she could smell smoke. Smelling smoke at 30,000ft is one of those unnerving harbingers of modern life. Like having your Harley Street heart specialist insist on cash. Hearing someone muttering in Somali while rifling through the knife drawer in the kitchen at five in the morning. Or finding half a mouse in a pasty and wondering where the other half went. I said, “Don’t worry.” Men do that. We say “Don’t worry” to take away the worry, as if the phrase itself was a prophylactic to worrying. But in all the years we’ve been saying don’t worry, no woman has ever turned to us and replied: “Thank you for saying that, I won’t worry now.” I think we assume that panic is gender-specific, like pain, flu, football and crying in films. (All male.)

AA Gill strikes again. This was the opening to his restaurant review last Sunday. I'll never again say "don't worry." The entire 'review' is another great piece of writing. If you have some spare time you can wander through it here.

I managed to get out yesterday and resolve my pepper mill issues. I picked up a Peugeot Hostellerie which was one of two on my list. I was particularly interested in a Unicorn Keytop but I would have had to order it and I'm too impatient for that - at least in this instance. I've had a poor man's Peugeot knockoff before and it wasn't my favorite mill; this one got off to a much better start during last night's session. While I was in the kitchen store yesterday I reaffirmed my cooking theory that your cooking methods and frequency are inversely proportional to the number of trinkets hanging about the kitchen. Even though I love wandering the cooking device meccas there's load of kit that is merely space filler.

We, or I, are off for some theatre this afternoon. We've got tickets for Lincolnesque which is being staged by my favorites at the Keegan Theatre. They have a second stage in Arlington that I haven't been to so we'll get a first look at that space; I am fan of their Church St. stage in D.C. so this'll be a measure of the secondary digs.

The Roku box arrived and is up and running.

doctor doctor

I'm a bit late to Internet radio, via Pandora, which is strange in many ways. I've been a listener and supporter of The Current (MPR) since they swung open their doors about five (?) years ago. With the iPod touch app and/or a laptop we can have great music pumped through the living room speakers whenever we want. The only frustrating bit of listening to The Current is hearing about all the stuff happening in the Twin Cities that you can have no part in. Beggars and choosers. They've got great DJs that hump the bins to find great music; and in the end, I actually like to hear a human voice every now and again. Pandora, even with its missing human voice, is pretty damn amazing. It was created by the folks behind something called the Music Genome Project. Their mission - feel free to read about the details here - is to map every song over multiple specifics in order to match songs to songs for the listener. What's interesting here is that I've had any number of discussions about songs and music (with X and via e-mail with one of my favorite artists) and I have a really hard time explaining what it is that draws me in. Considering that both my daughter, back when she was about 6, and Christine find my favorite music to be, let's say, repetitive, it shouldn't be hard for me to verbalize. Not surprisingly, when I start a Pandora station by inputting a single artist it only takes the scientist inside my computer about three seconds to overload my playlist with all the bands I already own. But, the beauty of Pandora is that I can just let if roll for hours, via different stations (I have ones called Slobberbone, Steve Earle, and Noah and the Whale), and rarely come across anything I don't like. I don't have to swap out CDs (ha!) or make multi-hour playlists from my music collection. The pitfalls? No human voice which makes me feel a bit disassociated after a few hours and there's no real ability, via this genome project, to suddenly pitch some Otis Redding into the middle of my alt.country. The DJs at The Current are excellent at slipping in songs that are tangential to the artist you just heard: something a scientific approach will never do. Mary Lucia and Barb Abney at the Current are particularly good at surprising you by their mood, not yours.

** On a quick sidenote, Internet radio, whether associated with a broadcast station (The Current) or not (Pandora), is struggling. The royalty cost per song played is about .019 cent. If you like and want to keep Internet radio strong then do your part. Support the broadcasters and keep it active and growing. Pandora offers a yearly membership for $36 a year and that'll cover about 160 songs a month. Obviously, you can listen to way more than that and it's costing you nothing more even if it's costing them more. As for The Current (or something like KEXP in Seattle), become members. Thanks.

What about my pepper mill, you ask? Well, the one I've been using for about four years (it was a gift) finally broke. The pepper mill purchase falls into the same hunting style as my bag: seems I've had hundreds of both and I'll never find the perfect one. I'm happy enough with my Yak Pak and now I'm back in the game for a pepper mill. I've hit the Internet and have a good idea of what I'm going to buy - I just need to find it locally or I'll be waiting a week for it to arrive. How does one cook without a pepper mill? Don't tell me to use something other than freshly ground pepper or you'll be sent away, post haste.

I'll pass along results from our journey.

Hey to all.

t

musik

(photo: Keith Berson)

A couple of things: Hulu/Roku and music. I ordered a Roku box over the weekend so we can watch streaming movies from Netflix on the the big TV - unlimited along with my normal three DVD membership. The box is a one-time purchase that will eventually (fingers crossed) also allow us to watch Hulu.com on the big screen. For those wondering, Hulu allows you watch a good number of shows and networks on-line the day after broadcast, for free. We can pick-and-choose what we want to watch - which isn't a lot - and not worry about cable or satellite. You know what my cable / sat bill was last month? Zero. How about next month? Zero. How about in January? Zero. Point made. We don't need eight million channels because it doesn't fit our life. 

Music. I'm streaming the Dave Matthews Band right now from the Beacon Theater in NYC... on Hulu. A precious few comments: I'm not a big Dave Matthews fan but I do dearly love a great live band. I've said it before and I'll say it again - a great band, of any ilk, in full flight is a beautiful thing. These guys are tight and deserve just rewards. Of course, I've seen the Justin Trawick Band any number of times here in D.C. (they are local) and DMB isn't any better. In fact, Trawick at least gives me a band dancer and a little more funk. Either way, great music is well-worth the effort. Now that I think about it, go get yourself some big funk with the Delta Nove Band. Now I'm running some Delta Nove in my head. I first saw them at the Fallon Cantaloupe Festival in 2004. They were booked in out of SoCal by the owner of the great local coffee shop owner (and Cantaloupe musical director), Corie. I spent the afternoon sitting on hay bales under the rickety roof in 90 degree heat drinking cantaloupe margaritas and jamming to these cats. A great, great band.

I'll let you go for now. I'll drag you back in, shortly.