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Man... This just sucks...

Jerry Orbach 1935-2004



Oh Jerry, no matter where you are - Just remember: Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner...

It's too late to stop now...
- Van Morrison

I'm frustrated. I keep seeing all these whining liberal PC-thug types crying about how offended they are that they have to experience anything that has to do with the Christmas holiday.

Me? Personally... I'm disgusted by the fact that people start selling and shopping for this one day mere moments after Halloween is over. I'm disgusted by people who treat the event like it's a massive burden. Mostly, I'm just disgusted with the way people treat a perfectly nice holiday.

You get a day off.
Peace among people seems so obvious.
For one day people get to stop worrying...

Or do they?

Nope. Sadly, many do not. See, I'm disgusted, but I'm also amazed at how someone can go to court to make sure their lazy-fat-assed kid is guaranteed NOT to see or hear or experience ANYTHING that even comes VAGUELY close to having religious connotations. Sure, sure... I understand Separation of Church and State. But we're not talking about a Judge telling a murderer that God told him to hand down a sentence. We're not talking about a teacher telling kids Creationism is THE one true way life started.

But that's not good enough, huh? Like all good liberals, they need to filter and homogonize till it's completely bland and void of any meaning so that no one gets offended in even the slightest...

You know what offends me? Whiney soccer-moms who complain about their kids hearing "Silent Night" in school, when there are kids who will wake up on Christmas morning and not even get breakfast. But that's not as important, when you think about being faced with the dilemma of your ADD-Fuckhead kid coming home asking you who Jesus was...

But hey... We need to live in a non-offensive "A-for-Effort" world where there are safety-covers on all the electrical sockets and no dirty words and no conflicts or competition whatsoever. Won't it be great? A gallery for every artist! No veal or Foie Gras! Free love will reign on forever!!!

Ah, fuck it... Why bother?

When I see you my love,
I see what's in your mind...
You love me?
Yes you do...
- Pizzicato Five (Baby Love Child)


For those of you piecing my life together through the various blogs I am mentioned in, probably don't know how bad I've felt this week. I caught some seriously haggard shit of a cold and it's been making me miserable.

But, and there is always a "but", I've had Kerrie there to take care of me this past week. I am seriously blown away by this... Through all my bitching and whining, hacking, coughing, running nose, sinus pressure, fatigue, sore throat, pale skin, and general cold-related Grossness - she has been right there.

No one has ever done that for me before. No one.

She is amazing. End of discussion.


So, the election kind of sucked. What can I say? Half the people in this country want one thing, the other half want something else. We were screwed either way, but it all came down to who was going to give us a reach-around once they got elected. (Hint: NOT GWB...)

So, here... To take your mind off of our collective impending doom, check out these great sites:

http://www.anthonybourdain.com (My hero...)

http://www.wd-50.com/index.html (Features brilliant Pastry Chef Sam Mason and all his fucked up food-related concoctions. So Cool!)

http://www.black-market-babies.com (So damn funny...)

http://cooksmuse.com/index.html (Cool AND useful...)


Music I'm Listening To This Week:
D-Fuse - People
MixMag presents Disco D'N'B
GO Soundtrack
Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back
The Clash - London Calling

What we're dealin' with here... Is a COMPLETE lack of respect for The Law...
- Jackie Gleason


Kristy and Tom came to the Grill today and after they left, I suddenly was hit with the blinding light of the obvious.

See, I think my life's calling is to become an Evil Leaper. For those of you not in the know, Evil Leaper is a reference to the show "Quantum Leap". In the show, Scott "I'm now part of the Star Trek dynasy" Bakula would jump in and out of peoples lives and fix problems they were much to pathetic, lazy, slothful, or just plain stupid to handle by themselves. Near the end of the series, they introduced the Evil Leaper, who was basically jumping in and out of peoples lives and fucking them up beyond all repair. I should SO be an Evil Leaper...

And seeing as today IS election day, I regret that Travis and I didn't embrace our inner-Evil Leaper, take the day off from work, and go out and disenfranchise voters. And I'm so into it! Basically, if you're too stupid to know that voting DOESN'T get cancelled or moved, you're too stupid to vote. Kristy brought up a good point though: Everyone has the right to vote. True dat. But thanks to my twisted cynical thinking, I kinda-sorta-maybe remember a point in time where people had the "right" to own slaves.

Just because you have "the right" to do something doesn't make it a great idea. I'll quote Chris Rock here and say: You can drive with your feet... That don't make it a good fuckin' idea!

I've never voted. Back in the good ole days, voting lead to jury duty and, well, my time is precious. You know?

But now... man oh man... I refuse to get involved with this fist-fuck you people refer to as an election. We -the obviously well-informed people- let one ass monkey TAKE the White House, and the best they could do was put up Kerry as the opposing candidate? Well, at least if he wins I can walk around saying: "At least we've got Edwards in the White House..." (Tee hee hee... Miscreant...)

"Fuck this weird shit..."
- Billy, listening to 88.1FM

They said: Yes, she's been here...
But their memories weren't clear...
Was it yesterday?
Or the day before?
- Elvis (Kentucky Rain)

This week has been all up's and down's. I've decided that I don't really have "good" or "bad" days, per say, rather I just have days with LOTS of Drama or very LITTLE Drama.

Life is good though. I have Kerrie, and in effect tons of great ideas and lots of restless ambition to cook, write music, travel, and work hard.

Last week was Kerrie's birthday, so we went to Ann Arbor for dinner. It was a great trip. We hit Cafe Felix and the food was spectacular as always. There was a Brie Plate, their Balsamic marinated filets, stuffed chicken breasts and lots of other great stuff. After dinner we went to Espresso Royal for dessert and I revealed the legend of the Sack Cookie and other great Cosmo's moments. The rest of the evening disappeared with burning candles and a mix CD with the likes of St. Germain, Massive Attack and Oakenfold...

Wednesday pissed me off. Larry was a jerk and a half over all this stupid shit and it seriously pissed me off. But Wednesday night was great. I made dinner for Kerrie and I think she liked it. I did a nice salad of tossed greens with provolone, Sopressata, shredded parmesan, marigold saffron flowers and a nice saffron alioli. After the salad I busted out the Moutarde et herbe Filets en croûte with the garlic mashed potatoes. I was irked that my mustard gravy didn't turn out but the filets were nice, as they went really well with the Two-Buck-Chuck merlot. For dessert I made my mayo-bundt with a pear-confit and homemade vanilla bean gelato. Again, I was inspired. Can you dig that?

Friday, Kerrie and I went to Toledo to have dinner with Baxter and his wife at Kevin and Jack's house - Which was really nice... For dinner there was a delicious Beef Burgundy with a side of broccoli and a lot of fun at the expense of Baxter's Wife. (Apparently she doesn't like "nuts"...) There was this massive dessert pizza after dinner and it was utterly rich. I must be getting older because I used to freak out on that kind of stuff and after like three bites I was sure I was going into a diabetic coma. (So good!)

Yesterday was a long day, but a pretty good one. I was behind on prep all day, but I made some great chocolate chip muffins and the day did go by relatively quick. Last night was great though. Like, REALLY great. Kerrie and I went to Poco Piatti for dinner and it was SO good. We had a spread of great food, including shrimp baked in marinara with provolone and garlic, a dinner torta, calamari, lamb and pork and chicken skewers, pizza with spicy sausage, and that really good dish they make with the cheese that they set on fire. Dessert was equally enticing as I am a huge fan of Turkish coffee and baklava. Last night was, hands down, one of the best meals I've had all year.

Today has already slipped by and I haven't even gotten started yet. I had breakfast at Panera and today Kerrie and I are going out for a while. Kohles has some Calphalon shit on sale dirt cheap and I'm hoping to get a few pieces from Pier 1 for new years eve, and tonight the Dawn of the Dead remake is showing in Maumee so I'm hoping to hit that...

Speaking of NYE, my menu is shaping up quite nicely. Jeb is against the Foie Gras but I'm thinking it just has to be on the cheese plate. I'll get to all of that later though. I need to go take a shower and clean that stank-ass Panera smell off of me.

Five Song for a Sunday:
The Five Stairsteps - Ooh Child
Elvis - Kentucky Rain
Johnny Cash - I've been everywhere, man
Tricky with Anthony Kedis & Flea - GIRLS
Jim Carroll Band - People Who Died


"Later Losers Whom I've Never Liked..."
- Bender (Futurama)
"Are you allergic to nuts?"
- Question asked to Katie (Baxter's wife)
"AMERICA!!! FUCK YEAH!!!"
- From Team America
"What do your balls taste like?"
- A question overhead at Poco Piatti referring to the deep-fried risotto balls

No matter what you are... I will always be with you...
- Badfinger

The walk to work this morning was exhilarating. A bounce in my step, so to speak. I trotted along listening to "Genius of Love" by the Tom Tom Club while thinking of the past week and pure excitement of having a girlfriend again.

With that in mind, the day went by pretty quick. I made an amazing Apple Crumb pie this morning and we had this really good slow cooked pork for lunch today. I spent the day thinking about Kerrie and about working on music with Jeb.

After work, Jeb came and got me and went BK-Core. We decided to skip working on the vocal booth because it was raining and instead rewired the studio-space in the basement. Everything was going great until we brought in the bass-cabinet and the damn cat slipped past us out the back door. We looked around and couldn't find him ANYWHERE so we decided to go over to BG Music & Sound instead. I picked up some new cables and a few adapters and we came back to the house. Billy, by then, had found the little fucker hiding under our neighbors car.

With that little fiasco behind us, we started working on music. We finished one song and started working on a thump-thump Acid Techno version of No Matter What by Badfinger. Since neither Jeb or I can sing for shit, we decided to vocode our voices and it turned out really cool. Robot-vox are sweet. Oh yeah, we went there...

"(Sigh) People really need to stop trusting you..."
- Jeb to Me
"The only way to explain how great she is to say that she is the COMPLETE opposite of everything Hannah ever was..."
- Me to Jeb on Kerrie
"WELL SOMEBODY'S GOTTA FUCKING GO!!!"
- Kerrie yelling at the other cars at a 4-way stop