Yo La Tengo Speaks Out on Donuts!

I have a hard-hitting interview with Yo La Tengo over on Blognut:

http://theblognut.net/2008/01/11/yo-la-tengo-on-donuts/

Seriously, Who Wants to Look at Them?

I'm Almost As Sure As I Can Be That This Is One of the Signs of the Apocalypse

WTF??

The Most Wonderful Friends in the World

I just received an email from dear Eaters' Rights pal, T. It was entitled "My sammich" and it went like this:

Let me tell you about it.

Toasted home-made bread
Soppressatta salami
Double cream St. Andre
Peppered turkey
Mustard and mayo
Lettuce

O, lord, please make it last!

Thanks for listening!

xo,

T

Notice his acknowledgment of the poignancy of the last few bites of a delicious sandwich. Has the end of any love affair been so bittersweet as the end of a perfect sandwich?

RAWK!

Feeling a little droopy? Get up and go got up and went? Need a little punch of adrenaline? Go listen to Iggy and the Stooges "Search and Destroy" and you'll be unstoppable. Dang, what a song! A whole lot more would get done in this world if more people listened to this song more often.

Wait, What Century Do We Live in Again?

From a dermatology book, in a chapter on therapies for wrinkles, folds, and other normal things that happen to people traveling forward through time:

“Injectable FDA-approved forms include a non-animal-derived stabilized hyaluronic acid product (NASHA) made through a bacterial fermentation process and an avian-derived version isolated from cocks’ combs.”

Cocks’ combs???

...The Breakfast Biscuit Sandwiches That Are the Staple of the Southern Alcohol Enthusiast's Diet*

I just love that description.
*Jim Ruland, "The Fluffiest Biscuit," The Oxford American, Issue 57, 2007. Photo by ME at the BMD.

Proof of the Existence of a Benevolent God. Or Something.

In the manner of Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica, I offer these several proofs:

1. My colleague H has her grandfather's fiddle, which has a RATTLESNAKE RATTLE inside it!!!!!! He used to play it at barn dances and shake it to get the rattling sound. THAT is punk as fuck.

2. After seeing P play washboard in his Cajun punk band, H wrote him this haiku:

Professor:
I was not aware
that one could shred a washboard
I stand corrected

3. At the company softball game, the pitcher of the opposing team, H&H Bail Bonds: stick thin, flowing mullet, full of body, tight baseball pants. Already smoking a cigarette while doing the "high-five the other team" thing about 5 seconds after the game ended. And my lovely colleagues IMed me first thing this morning to tell me of this joyous sight because they knew it would make my day and it did. [Late Breaking Update: He has black teeth.]

So Much Useless Beauty

OK, This Is Fucking Hilarious

http://jambandfanortaliban.blogspot.com/

Packages (ahem) I Love, Part One: I Wonder What It Means That Three Out of Four of Them Are Stimulants?

Nat Sherman Smokes


It's sophisticated and old-school. A deceptively genteel container for something dangerous and illicit, like a very elegant, handsome man whose eye you catch while sipping a dirty martini at the roulette tables. And it makes you want to smoke them so you can be seen with this box. Oh, and they're delicious.
And the back is almost even better:



Lion Coffee



Three hula-ing, grass-skirt-wearing coffee beans? A lion wearing a beret or some sort of captain's hat? What do lions have to do with Hawaii? And on the back, the lion is wearing a lei and pulling a chariot of coffee beans. This one is beautiful and raises a lot of questions and mixes a lot of metaphors.

Temple of Heaven Green Tea




This one has a romantic austerity, it's probably what they were drinking on the Shanghai Express. The "Special Gunpowder" lettering is like something that might be stenciled on the outside of a box of munitions in a communist country. But then "Temple of Heaven" makes an impossible promise, useless to try to resist.

Baleine Sea Salt


You know, whales, the sea, salt. This blue is color that salt tastes, no? It's just perfect.

Real Gusto, Real Easy!

I Could Do a Really Long Post/Tirade about Everything That's Wrong with the World or We Could All Just Save a Lot of Time and Read This

http://reviews.ebay.com/The-Meatnormous-Omelet-Sandwich-by-Burger-King-Wow_W0QQugidZ10000000000008320

Nothing Says Classy Like...

Because this is a cellphone photo, taken under an awning with bright sun outside, you can't see that this wonderfully-branded refrigerator is that pink color of bathroom tile from the 50s. Thanks to M for having the phone handy when we passed this unforgettable site on, oh, I don't know, maybe 19th St in NYC.

Even the Kids Are Cooler in New York

In addition to all the cool stuff A posted about, this happened in NYC this weekend: A, B, and I were in a cab, going to eat at Supper. Cab is stopped in traffic, I look out and see this perfect 14/15-year-old skater kid, complete with lank shoulder-length hair, long shorts, skateboard, totally sparking up a bowl on the steps of an apartment building. I leaned over (I was in the bitch seat, obv.) and gave him the thumbs up through the window. You could see him get that feeling you get when you realize you're being watched, and then he notices us watching him and jumps up, startled, and walks very fast down the sidewalk. Traffic starts to move, we pull even with him and we yell out the window "Party on, dude!!!" and he smiles big, flashes us a cool little skater hand signal/peace sign/gang sign and keeps walking. Hopefully we taught him a valuable lesson about...something.

We're in 6th Grade

What's your favorite song? Someone asked me that and my mind reeled, of course. Belatedly (let's stick to rock for now):
How about, for starters:
I'll Come Running--Brian Eno
Blue Sky--Allman Brothers
Cemetery Gates--The Smiths
Center of Gravity--Yo La Tengo
What's So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding--Elvis Costello
Roadrunner--Jonathan Richman
What Goes On--The Velvet Underground
Headmaster Ritual--The Smiths
When Will You Come Home--Galaxie 500
Bobby McGee--Janis Joplin
Radio Free Europe--R.E.M.
Three Little Birds--Bob Marley
Rebel Jew--Silver Jews
Drunk by Noon--The Handsome Family
California Stars--Billy Bragg and Wilco
What's great about this question is it makes you remember how many fucking great songs there are and how there could never just be one or a hundred.

Our Lives, Still Being Saved By Rock and Roll

Doesn't my iPod look a little stricken? A little under the weather? It might be malingering. It's jealous b/c I listened to the awesome college radio fundraising rock marathon shows all weekend. A bit overdramatic, drama-queeny pose, no? Get over it, iPod. You're wonderful and life-changing, but you're not college radio, with DJs and spontaneity.
It's comforting that as time goes on, the stock of music worth listening to just gets bigger and bigger. Sometimes it makes you feel panicky, like I Can't Keep Up! But that's just from all the years of schooling, you think you're going to be tested on it or something. (My friend M declared defeat a few years ago, said he wasn't going to try anymore. At least he decided it, admitted it, it seems to be a passive circumstance with a lot of folks.) Mostly, though, it just makes you feel bountiful, like one of those cornucopias with Fela Kuti, Johnny Cash, XTC, Dylan, De La Soul, DJ Shadow, Belle and Sebastian, Television and everyone else all spilling out and making it worth going on. How corny and mushy I feel about it tonight, apparently.

A.J. Leibling Is My Boy

"...I asked the waiter to recommend a small inn among the vineyards, where I might eat and drink well between long walks, or take long walks between heavy meals. Pedestrianism was always my balance for voracity; they were countervailing joys. Walking, I consumed what I had eaten, built up appetite for more, had noble thoughts, and spotted likely-looking restaurants."

From Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris , 1959

So comforting to find that something you thought was a sort of secret shame in yourself is a proudly espoused way of life in someone else, someone older, someone so New Yorker-ish.

And This Year's Award for Best Trenchant Political Commentary from a Chinese Chinese-Food Delivery Guy

So last night, 3 days after the election and 1 day after Sen. George Macacawitz Allen finally took his toys and went home, making it bearable to be from this state again, the Chinese Chinese-Food delivery guy at my door says "Congratulations--Webb!" and points to my Jim Webb sign in the front yard. I say yeah, isn't it great. And he says "Why Allen always have football?! He play football for four years, long time ago, badly, why he always hold football?! If Tiger Woods run for president, will he have golf clubs? Michael Jordan, basketball?! And he never do anything, get behind big issue, just sign onto little things!" Tell it, oh Delivery Guy Who Sees So Clearly.

So there you have it, pundits and bloggers, time to hang it up. Dude said in a few sentences, in the course of carrying out his day job and feeding hungry ping pong players, what everyone's been taking forests of trees and bazillions of electrons or pixels or whatever the hell we're using, to say all election season.

Haiku of the day, for a post-election weekend:

George, with your football
You thought we were all stupid
Good riddance, tosser

The Things I'll Do to Placate That Monkey

As my friend A would say, what a waste of your vision to look at this blog. But there's so much in the world to waste your vision on! Where to even start?
I hope I'll meet some people who say funny things and are willing to take to the streets to change the regime and who will turn me on to the best new swedish bands and twangy sounds and direct me to ecstatically delicious sandwiches. Oh, such fond hopes!