Wednesday, November 30, 2005

1000% True

The deli on the corner of West 3rd and Thompson is offering a brand-new sandwich. I swear to baby Jesus I am not making this up.

The ingredients are:

Grill Chicken
Bacon
Mozzerella
Oregano
Low-fat Ranch Dressing


The obvious name for such a delicacy: Angel Dust

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

All I Want...

Stopped by Deitch today to see this show.

Jim Drain and Ara Peterson are a couple of the founding members of Forcefield, so basically I knew I was going to be slobbering over the artwork before I even entered the door.

Needless to say I was not disappointed. The show had movement, color and simplicity which when you boil it down is all I really want from a work of art.

While being extraordinary simple, the stuff on display was obviously put together by people who knew exactly how to pare down the vision in their minds-eye to the simplest forms and then execute it. One of the great things about the show was the high production values and quality of the art work. It so refreshing to see young artists rebuke the idea that amateurishness is a sign of talent.

Again With The Mercury

Anyone who has spent more than five minutes with me during the last 20 years knows that I cannot shut up about the planet Mercury going retrograde.

(For a brief refresher course on what the hell I am talking about and a handy Mercury calendar click here)

We are currently in one of these periods and I vowed to myself that I would not bring it up in conversations or in my own thought process as I believe that the power of suggestion can alter the perception of actual events. Or more accurately that my mention of it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That being said, in the past few days I have been forced to acknowledge Mercury's influence. The number of miscommunications has been ridiculous. I don't think I am alone in saying that my level of mental clarity has been especially low. Want proof? Just look at the incoherence of this post

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

What I Am Working On

One of my focal points for 2006 is to mentally get over the idea that "the grass is greener on the other side of the fence".

Although I don't consider myself a particularly covetous or envious person, I often find myself thinking that other people have it "easy". The only basis I have for these thoughts is that the person in question seems to have an easier station in life...I might perceive them as having a better financial, emotional, intellectual circumstances and therefore, in my head, they are "better off" than I am.

Somewhere, some one is needlessly envying me right now.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

The Littlest Things

One of the most profound realizations I have had over the past few years is the idea that while grand gestures are important in life, it is frequently the "little things" that we hold most dear to our hearts...

A couple of years ago I was travelling back to Lincoln to be with my mom while she was in the hospital. Considering the circumstance I was not exactly looking forward to the trip.

After I made my travel arrangements I e-mailled my family in Lincoln to let them know that I would be renting a car at the airport and would therefore not need to picked up after my flight. I knew everyone would be stressed out by the situation at hand and did not want to require any of my siblings to make an airport run. Also, you need a vehicle at your disposal in order to get from point A to point B....no subways available.

My flights to Lincoln were, as usual, quite draining. Couple that with the concept of travelling to Nebraska in the wintertime, and my mom's health issues and needless to say I was not in the best of moods when I de-planed.

As I left the gate and was approaching the baggage claim area I saw that my dad was waiting for me on the concourse. As I approached him I smiled, began to embrace him in a hug, and I stated the obvious "Dad, you didn't have to come and meet me I told you I rented a car". His light-hearted response was "Oh I had to come and meet the Captain at the airport!"

In a split second my mind and heart were blown away. As a kid my dad for some completely inexplicable reason, nicknamed me Captain. At the very least it had been 25 years since he had called me that. So long, in fact, that as an adult I began to second guess my childhood memories "Had he every called me that or did I just dream it up" I frequently wondered. Although I was curious, I never brought the topic up for fear of looking like an idiot if I had created the nickname in my head.

"Oh I had to come and meet the Captain at the airport!"

When those words were spoken I cannot describe the warmth I felt in my heart, in my soul. As an understatement I will say that my dad and I have not seen eye-to-eye on a lot of topics. But in that instant I was transported way back to a much simpler time in my life. An amazingly innocent time in my life. A period where neither my dad nor I was harshly judging the flaws of the other. A point in my existence with significantly less manufactured bullshit in my relationship with my father.

A time when all that mattered was that he was my dad and I was his "Captain".

The Way It Used To Be

As a Halloween gift my parents sent me about a dozen Nebraska grown apples and some caramel for dipping said apples. They also included a print version of this article. Which is a pretty good read and makes you realize that due to the ever so slow "dumbing down" of the red delicious apple, what was once great tasting is now mediocre.

The red delicious apples were the authentic kind, not the factory grown kind that you find in every supermarket and fruitstand. The taste was refreshingly eye-opening...exactly how an apple should taste. But for me the best part of these orchard grown apples was that they did not have that annoying white PLU sticker on them. You know the sticker that you have to gouge a fingernail into in order to get it off the skin of the apple.

It made feel bad for today's kids who don't know there was a time when fruit did not have words or numbers stamped on them.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

More Things I Love...

Corner slices of Sicilian Pizza from Bleecker St. Pizza...getting a haircut...listening to Randi Rhodes...merely the thought of a fresh pair of Vans...when my friend Ana uses Arial in lieu of another font...new issues of Vice magazine... sleeping with an absurd number of pillows and blankets...the latest obscure but hilariously insightful thoughts from Mr. Mickey...

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Out Of Control

I am currrently in the middle of no less than three books on the topic of Iraq.

Couple this my incessant attention to Americablog and other internet and cable news sources and you will realize that I have no life outside of "researching" this completely unnecessary mess that our president has made. A mess that every single day yields a phone call or field visit to a family informing them that their son, daughter, husband, wife or parent is dead.