The No Touching Party in My Head

Scott Woods was in my dream. We were talking about monster Australian Chardonnay. Someone, Joe The Poet, or Jory, was drinking one the week before. It was called Mer-Soo, an Aussie version of the French Meursault. Then Scott asked me how much the Mer-Soo cost. I said it should be about $20-25. The actual price was $39. When he told me, he sounded disappointed.

Then we went to Bonotogo Pizza and there was cartoon art on the wall. The Lockhorns were drawn up as the Righthorns, and Ziggy was using his non-dominant hand. The owner, Bill, was drawing up the strips in the opposite of how they are.

And, no, I do not know what this means.

Back in the real world, Bonotogo is back. We went last night. It's taking up part of a carry out on Northwest and Chambers and all is well. I wrote an acrostic about it.

Pieacrostic

Bill wears two hats, inside a cowboy
Outside, he dons a captain's hat
Now, the sound of a breaking plate
on the floor in the kitchen,
takes the breath out of the six
of us waiting for our pizza
Gasping, Bill yells
out he's doing the server a favor while she's on
parole
In jest, of course. Bill is
Zooming to and fro', finally our
zesty pies arrive
Always hot from the wood fired oven

Before the pizza we went to see An Education. A film that is getting a lot of attention due to its breakout star, actress Carey Mulligan.



The attention is well founded. Mulligan is outstanding in portraying an intelligent sixteen year old who wants more to life than being sheltered in Twickenham. The film is a well detailed period piece of pre-Beatles England. My wife was impressed by the attention to detail, and the car Peter Sarsgaard drives is bitching!



A Bristol 405, in maroon.

Back to the film. It's a very sensitive coming of age movie, as the two leads have a significant age difference. She's 16, he's about twice that. Emma Thompson has about five minutes of screen time and blows Mulligan out of the water. Olivia Williams has a poignant role as a schoolteacher. As always, there are secret lives, betrayals and the film moves to an ending that is worthy of the Nick Hornby screenplay, which is based on a memoir from Lynn Barber.

Almost made me go, postal

Two weeks ago today I mailed a letter to the UK. Two weeks later, it has not arrived. This past Tuesday, I mailed out the same form, just in case. Wanted to mail it so it would arrive quickly, and so it could be tracked. It would have cost $28.

Thing is, the clerk needed to know the STATE or PROVINCE. There was also a list of Shires. I had no idea where this was going, and the postal code did not provide an answer. I did this a few months ago, when I sent a form overnight, there was no problem. No need for a STATE or PROVINCE. Normally, I give the USPS a pass, my Stepfather worked for them for over thirty years, they fed us. Whatever happened to sending out a letter, putting a damn stamp on it, slapping an air mail sticker on the envelope, and sending it on its way?

Ended up sending it Priority, no tracking. Cost $12. We'll see when it gets there.

It was a good holiday. Went to dinner with friends at a local place. Ate well. Ended up back at their house for a nightcap.



Constant readers and lurkers, that is some fine Whisky.

No much happening today. Should be going to a movie, a couple of errands, no getting into fistfights shopping for three dollar slow cookers.

This Thursday Holiday

I'm thankful for my life, child, wife, family, friends and the support I've received.

We're off to dinner in a bit. If you honor this day, have a happy Thanksgiving.

It's not even green anymore

So one of these came in the mail today. Not for me, and it does not quite match this picture.



The process took fourteen months, which is a reasonable amount of time considering we dealt with the Department of Homeland Security. We were never called in to interview either. No separating us and asking about toothbrush colors or what the other likes on their eggs. Our long national nightmare has ended. Or, another has begun, who really knows?

A couple of books have been read: First up.



I've been rather jaded about memoirs these days. People are writing that fiction is dead and that memoir is the new literature. Screw that, and double for James Frey. This one, however, is a couple of cuts above the drivel that's being published. Take a true crime, add some drug use, S&M and a very screwed up childhood - Stephen Elliott has created a non fiction work that's part In Cold Blood, part Hunter S. Thompson at his finest and part, well I'm not sure what and that unknown is what makes this one worth seeking out.



I had no idea he was working on a book before he died until a friend pointed it out on Facebook. Carlin was collaborating with Tony Hendra, who did a good job assembling Carlin's thoughts to the page. It provides some great details on his stand up days and a very frank use of his drug use and how it affected his family life. Not a pretty story, but it ends on a high note. It's a shame his heart could not hold up long enough so he could put his story on the Broadway stage. That would have been worth seeing.

Since I have not poated any pics of him for a while, here's one of the boy in the pool. He's been going into the deep end. No knowledge that it's twelve feet deep. No fear. He's been swimming the length of the pool, twenty five meters and back, reaching forward for speed.



We're also up a bit late tonight.




My daily reports tell me this site has been getting lots of recent hits. I don't track from where, unlike other bloggers, and am really not concerned with that. It's always good to see people reading though. Anyone want to say hello? There are a couple of new 'followers' here too. You're welcome to stay, but isn't participation fun? Thank you all for reading.

Stubs through the years

I've been going to shows for about thirty years now. My first show was on November 28th, 1980 at the Nassau Coliseum. The Cars were the headliner and their opening act was an English combo called XTC. I have no idea where the ticket is, or if I still have it. I've tried to hold on to most of the stubs and hunted around a little this afternoon and did some scanning. Could not find the McCartney ticket from Cincinnati in 1993, it's around somewhere.



Check out the price of that Who ticket!



Top left is a Peter Case/Brenda Kahn show. Underneath that is Elton John. Fifteen bucks for floor seats. Times have changed. Quarterflash opened that show.



A couple of Joe Jackson shows nearly eight years apart. The Fredonia show killed!



That NRBQ in the middle is signed by Terry Adams and Joey Spampinato. My friend Chris interviewed them between shows. Very cool guys. Their other guitarist Al Anderson walked through. That man is huge.

The Ghosts of Columbus Past

It has been about twenty years since I left Fredonia, New York, for the lights of the city of Columbus, Ohio. Three wives, ten jobs, seven cars, and three abodes later I'm still here - and should be for a very long time. In seven years, I will have lived in Ohio longer than New York State.

As part of the 30/30 project I put together a list poem.

Twenty Things I miss About Columbus After Twenty Years of Living in Columbus

1. The polkas and good old time music of accordion playing Esther Craw
and Glenn Wilson on stand up bass at Deibel's
2. Seeing the fireworks at Cooper Stadium while eating dessert
at Christopher's on top of the Riffe Center
3. Watching the flames shoot out of the Tiki Gods at the Kahiki. Having drinks out of skull mugs there. Not the food.
4. Big Bear grocery store, when it was a local chain run by people who lived here and before their farmland in Powell became a condo development
5. Nickelby's, Fireside, Little Professor, Readmor Books along with other independent bookstores and news stands
6. The little coffee shop at the corner of Hudson and Indianola. It's been so long I forget what it was called.
7. Billy Inmon camping out on the Statehouse lawn because Governor Voinovich would not debate him
8. City Center between 1990-1994, when downtown shopping was still available
9. Kenneth Branagh's Henry V at The Drexel North Theater and nearly turning around to watch it again
10. Seeing the Ohio State Hockey team play in the old ice rink. The Schottenstein Center is nice, but when 2,000 people watch a game in a rink that seats 17,000, it's a tomb
11. The Columbus Chill fighting their way to eighty three straight sellout crowds and mediocrity at the Fairgrounds Coliseum
12. The view of downtown from the seats on the first base line watching a Clippers game
13. Firdous restaurant on campus, cleanest place in town
14. The wire strung between telephone poles on High Street on weekends nights to keep the kids from staggering into traffic
15. Stache's/Little Brothers because the small rock and roll club has not been replaced
16. The Giant L tank on the roof of the downtown Lazarus lit up at Christmas
17. The months in 1990 when Buster Douglas was heavyweight champion
18. Watching the rise and fall of the Buffalo Bills at Michael Dominic's on Wilson Bridge Road
19. Katie Smith leading the Quest to two straight ABL championships
20. Nancy's Diner, but it's going to be off this list soon when it reopens!

That would make a cool photo blog, if I had the pictures to match up with each item. Some I may, somewhere. It would involve a but of hunting and scanning.

It took a long time, but I've become accustomed to this place. I'm still not sure if I was dragged here kicking and screaming. Can't even remember when exactly I moved in here. Was it before or after Thanksgiving? That's been blocked out, and the only person who might be able to answer that is no longer speaking to me. There's certainly been a lot of loss, which has been countered by gains. Has it smoothed out? Not quite, I think I'm in a better place now though.

Swedish refereeing, the luck of the Irish, bad slam judging

One of the main rules of football is that players, except the goalie, are not allowed to touch the ball with their hands.



This hand ball, by France's Thierry Henry, was knocked to the ground and coolly flicked over to the head of William Gallas, who deposited the ball into the Ireland net - and France beat Ireland to go on to play in next year's World Cup.

If the goal had been disallowed would Ireland have won? We will never know that now. Henry is saying he did it, but it's the Swedish referee's call. It's a very sad way to decide a crucial game. Yes, in the end it is only a game, yet when such a visible and blatant breaking of the rules is allowed I think it funnels down to the rest of us.

I'm not saying France should demand a replay, but maybe an apology to the Irish team should happen. If not, I'm boycotting French wine this holiday, and that includes beaujolais nouveau.

Continuing the topic of bad officiating last night WoW qualifying poetry slam had one very questionable judge. I've seen a lot of strange scores in slam, but last night's was a topper. The one woman was gave out a 2, 1.8, a 3.5 and a 3.6. Sure, it's her prerogative to not like a poem, but to score that low is a bit insulting.

This is why the low score (and high) is dropped in slam and her judgment did not have much weight on the results. Gina won last night. Vernell came in second and Marie, who I had not seen before came in third. There are going to be six women in the Grand Slam, which will determine who will represent Writers' Block at the Women of the World Slam in March right here in Columbus. The Grand Slam is going to be on December 2nd and it will be a battle!