Handbill Handout

I was flipping through the news feed of a Popular Social Networking Site, wait, I guess the proper term is “scrolling” through the news feed, “flipping” being something one does with the physical pages of physical media. Physical media is dead; at least that’s what I read all the time in the electronic media. So now let us reset. I was scrolling through the news feed of a Popular Social Networking Site and came across the following update from a friend who is in fact, a friend in real life and not just a friend on the Popular Social Networking Site: “My hatred of local carnivals officially knows no bounds. Just had to walk a mile or so to cross the street due to a silly fair thing. Funnel cakes and carny folk for all!!” Ah, carnivals. Back in the last century before “quality of life” initiatives made the consumption of alcohol on the streets of this town a Serious Crime (or rather, a crime serious enough that not only do you have to pay a fine but you actually have to show up in fron...

The other day the Mrs. went to A Large Chain Bookstore That Shall Not Be Named For Fear Of Attracting The Corporate Blog Searchers. We’ll just call them LCB for short. Oh, and the Corporate Blog Searchers I refer to are those folks whose job it is to monitor word of mouth on the World Wide Web and try to counter any negative WOM about their company. I had one of those folks come right here a couple of months ago, remember? Then again, maybe it is nice to have strangers drop by. So let’s just call LCB “Barnes and Noble” instead. The Mrs. asked me if she should pick up any of the books from my Amazon list (another corporate name, another potential visitor, whee!) and I gave her a list of three titles, all fiction. Normally I like to be reading two books at once, one fiction and the other non-fiction and I pick what to read at a given moment based on my mood, the surroundings and how much time I have. I just started a non-fiction book so fiction was the way to go. One of my trai...

Stolen from Ken's Playlist .

"Your real friends tell you when your fly is open." "It's in the script." "Always wear dark pants, that way nobody will know if you ever piss yourself." "Now you're in the hands of the Philistines"

Not “Hi, I’m Chef Wylie” or “Hi I’m Chef Dufresne”. Just “Hi, I’m Wylie”. This is how one of the best chefs in the country greets visitors to his kitchen. When you have as much talent as he does you don’t need to try to impress anyone with pretension or honorifics. I’m not often star-struck, but I must admit I babbled a bit. The wine surely helped with the babble. I tried to be as respectful as I could but it was one of those “you’ve got two minutes to ask this guy anything” brain freezes. I told him he’s the only guy in the world who will make eggs that I’ll actually eat, and then I asked him questions about technique and ingredient sourcing. He was gracious and answered all of my questions save one. I’ll get to that when I go through the menu. The service was amazingly gracious and friendly, as was pastry chef Alex Stupak who, despite being in the weeds took a few minutes to meet us as well. When we were talking to Alex Wylie yelled over “you guys hang around in here much longer I’m ...

They changed the damn bus schedule on me. Not the printed schedule, at least not that I know of and I hardly ever look at that damn thing anyway. No, I’m talking about the real schedule, the times when the bus that I need actually shows up at my corner. For weeks I was on a roll in the morning. If I left the house when the cable TV box clock read between 7:13 and 7:16 in the morning I would be at the bus stop between 7:15 and 7:18 am and would seldom have to wait more then two or three minutes for my bus. On particularly good mornings I would hit the corner just as the light turned so I could cross and my bus would just miss the light so it would be halted just short of the stop giving me time to cross in front of it right before it rolled into the stop. Heady times indeed. Some mornings I would just make the light and it would turn green the other way just as I reached the far curb so I would amble right onto the bus without even breaking stride. Alas, as it always happens, tho...

There is a new emoticon making the rounds. That emoticon is “ this , the emoticon is sometimes sincere and sometimes not which in my mind sort of defeats the point of using an emoticon (and I loathe using them anyway). My impression has always been that emoticons are used to clarify the meaning of text that might be misinterpreted, usually in the case of sarcasm or possibly to defuse a situation that might arise when words that are “just kidding”, or “JK” as the youngsters prefer, might be taken seriously. So now we have a type of communication invented with a specific purpose for the Internet age having said specific purpose undermined by a shift in usage. It figures, but all of that is beside the point I’m making today. The first time I saw the brings back a very bad memory. It brings back the memory of my first academic failure. Back in the mid 1970’s New York was in the depths of a financial crisis. The city was crumbling, both physically and psychologically. And I was still of si...

I had cataract surgery on both eyes. Both times the surgery was followed with several pre-op visits and post-op visits at a day, a week, a month, 90 days and finally a year following surgery. All that time in the eye doctor’s office means you begin to develop opinions about things you wouldn’t ordinarily even think about. For example: the font on an eye chart. Having had to “read the smallest row I can make out” innumerable times over the last two and a half years I can tell you with absolute certainty that I find the font that my eye doctor uses to be quite annoying. His office does not use the traditional font that you’re all accustomed to from your own optic adventures or driver’s license exams. Instead they use a font that, digging around on the Web I have found is actually named “eye chart ” This font is quite annoying. When viewed at a distance, the difference between an “8” and a “B” is minimal and the “Y” and the “V” look more similar than the picture lets on. As a result when ...

For those of you not linked on the Mrs.'s Fakebookery page, this is our temporary assistant tomato farmer. He's a senior citizen engaging in a late in life career change.

This is far more interesting than anything I might have had to say today. Or any day, for that matter. I recommend reading all of Grant's articles. He is a genius.

We lost one of the great unsung heroes of America in the 20th century last week. So unsung in fact that he doesn’t even merit a Wikipedia entry which here in 21st century America indicates that you are a true nobody. Hell, I didn’t even know who he was until I read his obituary. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you fictitious regular readers out there that I am a dedicated reader of the New York Times obituaries. Not that I read them all start to finish of course; but I generally read the first few paragraphs of most of them to see why each person merited inclusion in this most lofty of American obituary sections. What I’ve found of course is that there isn’t a fixed criterion for this particular hall of fame. In fact I’ve read entire obituaries without figuring out why the hell the person was there. In any event, sometimes it pays off with a satori, a glimpse of reality, a full expression of the truth of our lives today. The obituary I’m about to talk about is one such revel...

You gotta love the Facebook parodies

June is the Kevin Maas of months. The Blaine Lacher, or the Bob Grim if you will. The month that comes up as the outstanding rookie with so much promise and high expectations that develop into much, much less than you would expect. This occurred to me as I was sitting outside yesterday, cold pilsner in hand staring up at a baby blue sky watching far-off jets arc and turn toward and away from the local airports. It was a perfect day. Warm but not too warm. Breezy but not overly so. Just the right amount of humidity. It was, in short the sort of day that makes you think you love the summertime. The sort of day that makes you say “Wow, I can’t believe we’re doing to have three or four months of this great weather now!” The sort of day that is, ultimately, the total fakeout for the young and inexperienced. The people that haven’t seen this movie before. Anticipation is high this time of year. It’s been warmer for a bit but not terribly hot and humid. School is winding down and...