Western Auto Building - Kansas City, MO - February 11th, 2006 ~

Nice work Joey! Joey was a friend of mine in middle school and part of high school. He was a great guy–as friendly and intelligent as any you could possibly hope to meet. I remember him inline skating around a local track with us when we were on our mountain bikes. After a while we’d all stop and time him instead. As this article attests, he’s also hilarious. After all, he’s the inventor of the International Symbol For I’m Laughing So Hard I’m Choking To Death. ~

3D painted rooms. Just goes to show that it’s all in your perspective. ~

Dear Readers…

This is one of those “hold the line” entries that’s so obnoxious, but I’ll do it anyway. You are all owed some entries including one about Bluestem and the 99% wonderful 1% “oh crap I’m stuck in Atlanta” weekend spent in Kansas City. I’ll leave it at that. Until then…

Did you see Dick Cheney’s lost his mind and he’s capping other hunters now? ~

Or that we’re so busy bullying the rest of the world that we’ve started to suck at sports? ~

How about where some nut job tried to bring a mummified human head into Florida in her luggage? She said it was to keep away the evil spirits. Now, I’ve seen a lot of horror movies and it seems to me that having dried human heads around just makes them come around more often, not stay away. First rule of keeping out bad mojo: remove all dried human heads from the premises. I could be wrong. ~

Apropos Of Nothing

I was playing basketball with my brother the other day when I remembered the story about getting lost in church one day and eating my weight in egg rolls.
When I was about six or seven I was in the childrens choir. We were practicing in the gigantic gothic sanctuary, and when practice ended I stayed behind to talk to the organ player. He was a nice older man and I think he was amused by all the songs I could request. (Having been raised in a musical household by liberal intellectuals I had an obnoxious vocabulary and musical taste to match it.) After an hour of name that tune with the organ player I looked up to see that my group was gone and I was alone in this massive room. The organ player asked me if I knew how to get to the choir room by myself, and I lied ‘yes’ because I didn’t want to worry him.
It helps to know that around this time a contingent of Koreans had been welcomed into the “church family”, and had been set up with one of the smaller chapels to use for services and the use of all the common areas. It also helps to know that on this particular day the dining hall was being used by said Koreans for a fellowship dinner.
So, cut to six year old me in overalls and Keds, bopping through this huge church–I mean that literally; it occupies about four city blocks–looking for the choir room. Well, after an hour of looking I don’t find a choir room but I do find the smell of Asian cooking. I wander into the dining hall and am immediately greeted by friendly Koreans milling about with dishes of food and happy faces. I explain that I’m lost, but with a grasp of English not much better than my own we sort of settle on ‘wait here for your parents’. I mean, of course they’re looking for me right?
Finally my mom does find me in the middle of my sixth egg roll. There’s still some choir left but instead we hop into the brown Toyota and go home, where I collapse with a belly full of wonton wrappers and cabbage and sleep for about two days. And that, apropos of nothing, is the beginning of my long love affair with Asian food.

Hey, it’s going to be attending your workout anyway. Why not get your iPod to help out a bit by giving you pointers on your routine? Coolness! ~

Profile of Malcom Gladwell (Blink, Tipping Point) by Rachel Donadio of the New York Times. I’m a huge Blink fan; I think not many theories in modern anthropology match “temporary autism” for the power to, pound for pound, explain combat and police decision making under fire. ~

I keep trying to write a cohesive post about why I hate Sex In The City. Mostly I hate anything that glorifies the childish behavior of a group of selfish people who should know better, treating each other like shit in the service of getting off. There’s something like that already; it’s called real life. Gah. Cheer us up for once, you sick bastards at HBO. I say this because apparently they’re re-packaging the episodes by theme now for DVD ( you know, Greatest Breakups, Greatest Lustings, Greatest Episodes Where It Looks Like The Emotionally Crippled One Might Have Caught Something And You Have To Guess Which One We Meant By ‘Emotionally Crippled’) and everybody’s linking to them, including (mysteriously) largeheartedboy. While I refuse to link to this tripe I feel obliged to vent my spleen about it. I think you have a little on your keyboard. Sorry. Let me get that. ~

According to several doctors (well, Canadian doctors) stretching before exercise can actually be a bad thing, and some people don’t get anything out of cardiovascular exercise. Also, the Canadians spell “exercise” really funny. ~

To ensure a total divorce from reality, this year’s Super Bowl is being broadcast on a five second delay. Take that, would-be accidental boob flashers. ~

Brief piece on Harper Lee, who’s getting a lot of renewed attention due to her rep as pal number one to some other author. ~

An open letter to Ben Gibbard from your pal Nick

Dear Ben,
I’ve been a big fan of your band Death Cab For Cutie for a number of years now. Back in the old days, when you were opening for Dismemberment Plan and providing sig lines for Live Journals, I thought you could do no wrong. Your lyrics were novel and your music was thoughtful, and your stage show was intimate and friendly. When the airwaves became inundated with bands who wanted to be just like The Strokes you stuck to your guns and released The Photo Album, which is still one of my favorite records. Then you did the whole Postal Service thing, which has clearly found some legs.
But recently Plans came out, and I have to say I think I’m done. It’s not you, it’s me. Plans is just boring, and feels like an abandonment of what was good about Death Cab in favor of what was maudlin and dull. I mean, have you read the words to Summer Skin since you wrote them? I know 13 year old girls who wouldn’t write that stuff where it could be read. And now this Franz Ferdinand “co-headlining” show, and the OC soundtrack. This probably hurts me more than it will ever hurt you but please don’t try and call. We had something wonderful. I remember fumbling in the dark with the plastic wrapping on We Have The Facts And We’re Voting Yes so that I could hear your voice. But no more. Atlantic Records needs you more than I do.
Go.
Before I change my mind.

Your pal,
Nick

Thursday tunes!
Rogue Wave - Publish My Love (Live @ The Earl - Atlanta, GA 12-06-2005)
Robert Pollard - The Right Thing

Some notes about this week’s mp3s: The Rogue Wave show is available to download in its entirety from the Internet Archive here. It’s not the only live show there, either. If you have broadband and a few hours to kill there are some great shows hosted there.
The Pollard song hasn’t been released yet but is just so good that I had to share. I still need to tell you about the show on the 27th but my ideas about it are still all splintered and zooming around in the ether. The gist of it is that it was easily in the top three shows I’ve ever seen. This new solo record is one of the greats also.

I’m back from Kentucky well rested after having spent some quality time with a map, a girl and a gas-efficient little Japanese car. While out there it came to our collective attention that apart from the joys of soy milk little that we crave culinarily really exists–Wendy’s does not count, no matter how much we may love it.
One is able however to get some really tasty sushi, which surprised the hell out of me. In fact it surprised us so much that we went twice, enough times to try both the sashimi and the udon. Both were so tasty given the location (which is ostensibly the middle of nowhere as this map attests) that they almost defy description, like a sort of Brigadoon for foodies. I hesitate to talk too loudly about our Ginza experience for fear that other weary travelers may find that it has, in fact, disappeared like a phantom when they try to find it for themselves. Other than that Elizabethtown, KY is a smorgasbord of apostrophe restaurants and drive thru windows–which really isn’t so bad when the company is as good as it was. Besides, most everyone likes a good homogenous burger on a road trip now and again right? (Vegans, I’m being rhetorical.) It’s entries like these that make me ask myself ‘Self, are you a food critic?’ To which I must respond (wait for it) ‘No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night…’
Now it’s back to the world of two jobs and an escape plan punctuated by one more definite recharge trip. And there may be news on the Longing front soon as well. Wow. 2006 is holding up its end of the bargain so far to win Most Kickass Year Ever™. ~