Lileks posted more regrettable food.

I should also note that this is a test to see how many double-entendres you can find. Men will excel at this.

Let me put it this way: if you go to a doctor and tell him you have a pain in your Squirt-Kebab, he’ll know where to look.

 

In other news. I keep getting a little rash on my medial canthus.   Using the web I have diagnosed it to be either Lyme disease or Scarlett Fever. Either way I am keeping it real

Ok, this isn't 400lbs, but if it were, I could still lift it. Or at least I could a week ago.  I had hoped the camera man would get a close-up of the now famous Impala T-shirt that Lauren gave me. Everyone who sees it wants it.  Instead he got me making one of those wierd faces I seem to always make whenever someone takes my picture.    Oh well.

 

Anyone reading Lileks these days? He's best around the hollidays.

I saw Weezer and the Foo Fighters this weekend.  Last sunday was the Broncos Game in Denver,  Tuesday was the Steady/Constantines show in SF, and Saturday was Weezer/Foo in Long Beach.   My throat is worn out.

I have allways been curious about the Foo Fighters. Their singles have allways seemed a cut above other cuts.  This concert was good, but I no longer feel like I have been missing out on something: They are  a cut above  but the constantines would kick their ass.  

Weezer's too. But Weezer has become something of a standard bearer of rock. And I don't just mean Dork Rock. They've got "Say it Aint So", kitty pride and all of that.    The other day I was at the park and some youngish college students came to play ball, listening to the Blue Album the whole time.   That put things into perspective.

When that album came out some a decade or so ago we used to listen to it in the Cavalier driving to Kareoke out on Alps.  And we used to clap on cue while singing along to Buddy Holly, but we sang loudest when we sang "My Name is WAKEFIELD!", and all the other high points of 'My Name is Jonas'.  That song is their greatest, even if 'Say it Ain't So' is their best. (I'm not saying it is, but it very well may be)

Once we made it to Kareoke, Rip would sing Sinatra songs with his snifter full of grape juice, giving an occasional leg kick cue to imaginary band near the end of 'New York New York". I don't know if brandy and leg kicks were purely Sinatra, but it seemed to work.  Brian Lee never complained, and Brian Lee knows Sinatra. 

Speaking of Dorks--  Yes, I was speaking of Dorks: Weezer, Rip, Brian Lee...---    I just finished the latest Robert Jordan book.  This elleventh book makes the series length 9000 pages, and counting.  These particular 800 pages were great fun. If all the books were half as eventfull as this one, the series wouldn't have lost precendence to that upstart George Martin. 

As it stands, I can't recommend Jordan to anyone who won't be in traction for 3 months.  But I can't say enough good things about Martin's "Song Of Fire and Ice" which continues with book Four in two weeks. I wonder which main characters he'll kill this time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I went to Denver this weekend to see the Bronco Game.  The trip was Ed’s idea, and he met me there with Sandip.. 

 

All trips to Denver are going to pale in comparison to the one Rich and I  took 5 years ago.  On that trip we ran around the Old Mile High stadium. Took some chairs from the it. Rode in an elevator with the Bronco Cheerleaders, got in a fight with a Lucent Lackey, met a bazillion locals, watched Denver Kick KC’s ass, got a dozen signatures including those of Bill Romanowski and Ed McCaffrey, and escaped detection at the Rental Agency.  I had removed the front bumper performing an intricate maneuver in the hotel parking lot as I returned from a early morning trip to Kanarado to see Grandma. Monday morning we had tied the car back together using shoelaces, but we still ended up dragging the thing 30 miles to the airport.   The clerk at National Car rental didn’t notice the damage in the pre-dawn light but I didn’t have the heart to let him walk away having to explain it later that day.

 

“Hey, wait up!”  I said after exchanging complex looks with Rich behind the departing clerks back, “I need to show you something”.

 

“What did you scratch it or some----HOLY CRAP” he exclaimed, as I brought him around the car mid sentence.

 

So yeah, it was  great trip filled with great stories.  This trip was less eventful but we did get to see the Broncos whup New England.  Ed's a NEw England Fan so everytime he and his Brady Jersey stood up to clap, two guys behind us a few rows would yell "Down in Front!". 

 

And I did manage to find the bar, since renamed, where I had the altercation with the Lucent Lackey. Ed didn’t understand my fascination with the place but I had told that story so many time before….

 

“…. And then Rich, finally seeing that the guy isn’t going to let the matter die, walks over and says ‘Excuse me, do you work for Lucent?’ The guys says ‘So what if I do?’ and  Rich replies ‘SELL!  DUMP IT ALL! GET OUT NOW!’  and the guy then knew he’d been had."

 

 

Going to see the Hold Steady and the Constantines Today.

 

 

Here is NPR on The Hold Steady.

 

That NPR  keeps calling it a concept Album.  It ‘s as much a concept album as any ever written, I’ll give him that, but I had never thought to call it one.  Heck, the songs on their first album focused on the same three characters so really you would have to call them a concept band. 

 

The second album has two of the coolest moments of recorded rock I have ever heard.   Flak Magazine notes them both here:

 

On "Charlemagne in Sweatpants," Finn decides how to best tell his song's stories:

Do you want me to tell it like it's textbook history/ Or do you want it like a murder mystery?/ I'm gonna tell it like a comeback story,/ 'Cause when we left we were defeated and depressed/ And when we arrived we were ripping high./ We had a gun in the glove box./ We had some sweet stuff tucked into our socks./ We had Jesus Christ in all his glory.

On the final track, "How a Resurrection Really Feels," Finn sings about one of his "desperate characters," Holly/Hallelujah, a girl caught between the impulses of youth and the strictures of religion:

The priest just kinda laughed/ The deacon caught a draft/ She crashed into the Easter Mass/ With her hair done up in broken glass/ She was limping left on a broken heel/ When she said, "Father —/ Can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?"

           

That last song continues on to acknowledge the audience:

Holly was a hoodrat/ and now you finally know that/ she’s been disappearing for years/ today she finally came back”

 

You simply can’t get any better than that.   Or this.

she said don't turn me on again. i'd probably just go and get myself all gone again. holly was a sexy mess. she looked strung out but experienced. so we all got kind of curious.

 

 

Here is a video here: www.dirtypicturesinc.com  (They aren’t as dirty as they sound)

 

 

 

 

Last Wednesday I met some colleagues for dinner at House of Nan King.  Nan King backs in as my Favorite Chinese Restaurant because I have been to  so few others.  The place is best when you go with Masha, who recruits Mr. King himself to do the cooking.  Otherwise he patrols the small space with a jewler’s eye, asking for patron’s order seconds after they sit down, often while they’re still removing their coats.

 

He’s not as bad as his servers though. One of them likes to balance plates of food on the edge of your table when you aren’t looking. I think they figure they can turn the tables over more quickly if the people just drop the food, instead of eating it.   I, however, eat food faster than most people can drop it, so their strategy, if realized, would backfire.

 

On the way there I stopped by Impala for drink.   I accidentally sat in some bloke’s chair. As he and his two friend returned I corrected my error before they could say anything. Or so I thought.   As the guy, lets call him Chip,  was saddling himself next to me when he turns to me and says that his friend “Just hit me in the knee”.

 

“I’m sorry” I say, thinking he was saying that I had hit him in the leg as I was moving out of the way.

 

“Not you.  My friend.” He replies, “He is warning me not to fuck with you, since you are a big guy.     Do you fight?”.

 

“A little”  I respond, trying to get my bearings. Chips is about my size, though shorter. 

When some punk asks you if you are a trained fighter, its probably a good idea to answer in the affirmative.   In retrospect I should have tried Poorly Feigned Ignorance.   You know,  tell him no, but make him worry that I was holding something back.  Like Swayzee would do, if they ever made a sequel to Road House. Like maybe I Killed a man once, and was trying to put all that behind me.

 

But since I answered his opening gambit truthfully, Chip spent the next 10 minutes trying to size me up.  

 

Enough of that Story.  Last night, I went to Dolce to pester some friends who were bartending there for the night.   (I don’t like to make ‘Bartender’ Plural  for some reason, so can’t I simply say “Guest Bartenders”) 

 

Anyhow, the last time some friends were guesting they resisted the challenge of making me an  Old Fashioned.  Amanda, however, was game last night. Unfortunately my plot was foiled by a lack of oranges.  Then the  dillweed house bartender tells me that there is no orange in an old fashioned repeating in his malformed Regan English “You put a cherry! You put a Cherry in an old Fashioned”.

 

I left, shortly after.

 

If you want a good bartender, go to The Last Supper Club out in the mission.  Dude with the Jesus belt buckle doesn’t seem like much at first glance, but he can make some refreshing beverages.   And he can talk shit too:  I blanched after he told me that the Vodka concoction he just served was a Negroni.  Maybe I harumpfed too.  Yeah, there was blanching and harumpfing.  So he had the whole bar calling me a curmudgeon.

 

Which I am.

 

But I think I have a right to upset about this. I have learned to accept that people are going to screw up the present. But do they have to go back in time and screw that up too?   Did people sit around with a bartender’s bible looking for old drinks they can put Vodka in?

 

You watch, my old Fashioned is next. 

Oh, and Andy and Heather had a baby boy on Friday!  His name is Aiden.  Congratulations are in order. 

 

And I am thirty years old.

 

Aiden, as you get older you will realize that you cant  watch all the good sporting events.  This weekend, for instance there was Castillo-Corrales 2,  Georgia-Tennessee, Denver-Washington, Falcons-New England, and The Braves Division Series.  I chose the Georgia and  Denver games, as well as the  Second 9 innings of the Braves.  Follow your heart.

 

I was showing Heather around the city.  We made it to

 

For Breakfast: Java Jive (Scrambles) and Thumbs Up Diner (Salmon Omlette)

Lunch:  Fat Macks (Ribs), Buckhead Diner (Peach Bread Pudding), McCrays (Footbal games and beer)

Finer:  One.Midtown (Squash Blossoms), Two.Licks (Wine from Casks), Pashals (Collard Greens).

Drinks:  Loca Luna (Salsa), Bazzaar (People), Halo (Design)

Dance: MJQ (Music)

 

And of course I took her to the Cyclorama!  (Big Painting) 

 

Dad suggested, upon seeing Corned Duck on the menu at One,  that Corned Duck is what happens to Ducks in Midtown when they don’t watch their Ass.

 

Halo’s 250lb Camero-driving bouncer, who I once backed mine into, now has my umbrella.  Getting it back should be fun. Remember him?  Brad  cannily neutralized that situation by looking gout of my window and exclaiming, “At least your not a big guy”.

 

There is something of a blight between my Condo and Midtown.  There is no pretty way to walk it.  The west side of Peachtree street is your best bet.

 

On the walk I realized that for 10 years I had been incorrectly calling the the Pleasant Peasant the Pleasant Pheasant.   Crap.

 

Until Dave creates his own web site, I am honored to host his weekly college football rankings. Enjoy.

Ok Ok, somewhere a long the line I became a terrible subject to photograph. But look at all the other buautifull people at Ed's wedding.

Yep, its official. Brad + Staci.  October 22nd.