my new favorite customer

"can i have a stoli razz, midori and watermelon pucker with cranberry and pineapple?"

no. you can't. go back to manhattan.

be gentle

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that's the fallout from me breaking my t key in the middle of an email. be gentle with your laptop. putting keys back on is a total pain in the ass.

magic has returned

maybe it's because i've just finished reading the magical (and highly recommended) book jonathan strange and mr norrell. maybe it's the perseid summer meteor shower. whatever it is, something has awoken a familiar and still not quite understood power in me.

all of a sudden i don't need to look at the phone to see who's calling. i think of people who've been out of my life and they return. gypsies appear at the bar. i hear my tarot deck calling from wherever it was lost. no ghosts... yet. but i think they're close.

don't mean to creep y'all out. anyone else feeling the same way?

four hands, one guitar

friends of a friend. brilliant.

shimmering night sky

last night i went to the mets game, a great game, the best i've been to this year.

the highlight? the come from behind victory was wonderful. but on this sweltering, humid night, the hottest temp at game time in six years at shea, the highlight was provided by the SNY baseball card giveaway.

when the mets tied the game in the 7th, people started throwing the shiny cards down from the upper deck. the throwing spread quickly throughout the stadium and soon the dark thick sky was filled with glittering cards slowing falling on the fans in the lower decks. eventually the staff in the sny booth threw a huge pile of cards out their window and the crowd roared.

america's pastimes together at last: baseball and littering.

thanks bbc

i try and check the bbc newswire often enough to give myself a break from the propaganda machine that is the american media.

but today, they've really outdone themselves.

thank you, bbc, for these pictures of drunk cats.

what a night

i love sleeping in, probably a little more than i should, but i think it's understandable given that i work past 4 am on a regular basis.

last night i stayed sober, went to bed early and tried to get a good night's sleep, but those of you who live in the new york area know what happened next.

we got rocked. and not in a good, ears ringing, sweaty kinda way. a massive thunderstorm descended on the city. i just read that every single subway line in the city is at least a little flooded, and the basement downstairs is a disaster.

i love thunderstorms. but not at six am. and i think they're a lot more fun with company.

NO REAL THAN YOU ARE (two pictures)

an awesome car accident in moscow. driver amazingly unharmed.



a mysterious giant lego block that appeared overnight on beach in holland.

mystery solved

the craigslist missed connection wasn't about me. sigh...

the anniversary of hiroshima

after months of depressing entries about slogging through drunken dawns, i've made an effort to steer things towards a more humorous take.

but today is the anniversary of the bombing of hiroshima.

just wanted to point something out:

estimated casualties at hiroshima: approximately 70,000.

estimated iraqi casualities since the US invasion: approximately 70,000.

more toothpaste

have i told you about toothpastefordinner.com? only about a million times.

here's my newest favorite:

today's mystery, brought to you by craigslist

who was working?

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/mis/389200041.html

monday picture

what do you get when you mix red hook, a busted fire hydrant, a beach cruiser with bud light detailing and a wide angle lens?

my new favorite picture:

an extremely productive day

i woke up late after closing the bar at 5 am. i've had a couple of pretty good nights this week behind the bar -- always nice to come back from vacation and have fun at work. so i decided to do some shopping today:

the knut diet

since everyone's favorite source for knut-related news is taking a break, i thought i would make sure to post the latest update.

as you may know, knut is the polar bear rescued by the berlin zoo.

big news today: knut is on a diet! he's down from four meals a day to a measly three. and no more croissants! now that just seems harsh. i actually wasn't aware that polar bears liked croissants, or that their snacking habits might be detrimental. he does look pretty portly these days -- you can click here to see video of the lard-ass.

i'm not the biggest fan of zoos; they tend to depress me and make my anarchist tendencies rise to the surface. i still don't think the oakland zoo has accepted my apology for freeing their ring-tailed lemurs.

at the same time, my god, does knut have it easy or what? the planet earth series on discovery had footage of a polar stuck in stew of melting ice cap, struggling to find footing and swimming for miles and miles, desperation and hunger pushing it to eventually risk a fatal attack on a walrus herd.

and knut gets croissants. well, not any more. so maybe some animals can take solace in zoos.

eating a croissant seems much easier than eating a live walrus.

interstate 35w

just so y'all know, it looks like all my twin cities people are safe and sound. how does a bridge just fall down?

mountain of meat

trawling the news, i discovered this tasty morsel:

A Romanian company is accused of dumping 47 tonnes of animal carcasses on the outskirts of Bucharest...
The carcasses are rotting amid heat of 38C, just metres from a main road. Piles of black plastic bags are stacked around the dump, with bits of chicken and even horse carcasses poking through. A strong wind is blowing the stench in all directions, but more worrying is the danger to human health.

Could you say that they are perhaps suffering from a... meat wave?

the best youtube video ever?

no really, you have to watch this right now. 1500 filipino prisoners dancing... come on, just watch it.



did you watch it?

if you're curious, here's a documentary about it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=UWf3y6r0kmA

the dawning of a new age

ok, i'm 28 now. and i'm serious about blogging. that was a long break, wasn't it? sorry! i've been busy.

i had a gigantic birthday party. i'm pretty sure there were 100 people there. and a lot of them were like 19. but luckily the cops didn't come! what a party.

i went to minnesota for my birthday. my folks have a lake house in cass lake. what beauty, what tremendous silence. kayaking at dawn with osprey, eagles and heron overhead. biking the 20 mile loop around the lake through cathedrals of trees. we went and saw the smothers brothers at a local high school. i bid and made a small slam while playing bridge. most importantly, i got some time with my grandparents, who are old getting older. i love them with all my heart. and i'm coming out to california for thanksgiving to see them -- but also to see all of you who might be there for the holiday.

i was home from minnesota for about 10 hours and then headed upstate for my favorite party of the year in cornwall ny. always a joy to take the hudson line, skirting the hazy river with magical castles and sailboat. it's funny to have a group of friends that i see every six months -- every year there's a summer party and a new year's party. what a loving crew and a great scene. i forget how much i love games. playing badminton in a light rain, extreme off-road bocce, ping pong, epic battles of four square. and lots of drinking.

this has been my week of hot tubs. from tuesday through sunday i have taken at least three hot tubs every day.

and now the noise and the grit and the stench of new york has returned, and i'm not sure that i'm ready. part of a fantastic date last night included a ride across the brooklyn bridge in the cool summer wind, and although the views and company were altogether glorious, the shudder shake rattle and clang traffic below was too much for me.

that's the problem with vacations: they end.

please keep an eye on things here -- i'm back and stronger than before.

happy 4th! a story of disaster.

a little lapse there. sorry about that. i hope you've all managed somehow. i had the stomach flu for a while. but i'm better now. i actually started taking it easy for a few days and got totally sick. so from now it's full bore party time. for my health!

day three of the flu bears repeating. i probably shouldn't post this here, but what the hell? it's not like more than five people read this thing anyways.

i was at about 80%, just starting to feel recovered, when i went to bartend at a wedding. let me tell you about this complete and utter disaster. the poor bride, i really felt sorry for her. i arrive and the caterer (and my boss) is nowhere to be found. hmmm... so guests are arriving in 30 minutes and nothing is on ice? excellent. wait, we don't have enough ice? oh, and we don't have any bottle openers. awesome. so i went and found a grocery store four blocks away and dragged a sleeve of ice back to the wedding. but where is the caterer?

turns out HE IS IN JAIL! oops. the bride is his ex, and he's catering the wedding as a favor. but he's in prison. wow.

so we get the bar all set up and then it turns out i haven't been hired to bartend, i've been hired to serve food. ugh. i make my way through the crowd with candied bacon and scallops and other fine dishes but everyone is complaining. where are the rest of the servers? why aren't you serving more food? bitch bitch bitch. this is SO not what i signed up for. the bride is bitching me out. her friends are bitching me out. i'm not running things people! leave me alone. i've got a splitting headache and am feeling weak from eating nothing but chicken soup for the last three days.

i overhear someone come up to the bar we'd scrambled to set up and say, wait, you guys, there's supposed to be another bar on the other side of the room. that was the last straw. i eat the last piece of tuna tartare on my plate, grab my bag and walk out the door. god, it felt good to bail out on that chaos.

so i think the lesson is, don't let your friends cater your wedding.

oh, here's the best part. turns out the guest list was all high-ranking staff at the new york times. check out this article!!