On our first day of vacation, the Ginger Ninja and I enjoyed a simple but tasty dessert that her mom makes: Brownie Thing, which is simply ice cream between two sheets of homemade brownies. It’s 81 square inches of dessert heaven:
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June 2007
It was good to see Berkman Center fellow and Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman at the Berkman Center luncheon. I brought presents for him and his wife Rachel (she, along with AKMA, officiated at the Ginger Ninja’s and my wedding) — Tucows squishy cows. He wasted no time in turning them into fashion accessories:
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After catching danah boyd’s “My Friends, MySpace” presentation at the Berkman Center at Harvard, the Ginger Ninja and I made our way to an old hangout during her days there: Grendel’s Den, a nice little pub in Harvard Square.
We took a corner table and caught up with all sorts of friends — from Wendy’s high school days, her days at a dot-com and from the Berkman Center. A friend of mine dropped by too — Mike Zole, creator of one of my favourite webcomics, the now-defunct Death to the Extremist.
Among other things, Mike’s a musician, and he brought his accordion with him, which meant only one thing: Jam session!
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On the way from Boston to Hartford, the Ginger Ninja and I stopped for lunch in Vernon to enjoy the food of her people at Rein’s Deli…
As with the Clam Box, this is much better road food than your typical fast food place will serve you. I opted for a tongue-and-swiss sandwich on rye with seeds, and shared some potato pancakes, baked beans and a lot of homemade pickles (which they serve free of charge).
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While hanging out in the Boston area last week, the Ginger Ninja’s mom took us to The Clam Box in Ipswitch. The building was built to look just like a clam box, so I couldn’t resist taking photos…
The food at the Clam Box is classic New England fried seafood: shrimp, scallops, fish and of course, clams. You can eat in their dining room or on the picnic tables outside. You probably shouldn’t eat this stuff — it’s all deep fried — every day, but as a special treat, it’s far better road food than your typical fast food joint.
Here’s what I had for dinner: the whole fried clams platter, with a clam cake on the side…
If you ever pass through Ipswich, make sure you pass by the Clam Box.
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[via Reddit] I rather like these interpretations of the characters from South Park…
Click the picture to see it at full size.
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I’ve been a fan of The Economist since my last year of high school (a while back; it’s the year Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was released); it would be the magazine I’d point to if asked which publication was best aligned with my socio-politico-complexo-migraino worldview.
The cover editorial from the current issue, Still No. 1, shows the Economist’s trademarked sensible Americanophilia and is a pretty good summary of where the U.S. — now my home away from home — stands.
Here’s an excerpt; it’s the final paragraph in the editorial:
If America were a stock, it would be a “buy”: an undervalued market leader, in need of new management. But that points to its last great strength. More than any rival, America corrects itself. Under pressure from voters, Mr Bush has already rediscovered some of the charms of multilateralism; he is talking about climate change; a Middle East peace initiative is possible. Next year’s presidential election offers a chance for renewal. Such corrections are not automatic: something (a misadventure in Iran?) may yet compound the misery of Iraq in the same way Watergate followed Vietnam. But America recovered from the 1970s. It will bounce back stronger again.
Good stuff. Be sure to check it out.
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I love this photo, and would love to have a water tricycle:
Click the photo to see it at full size.
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
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Here’s a chart from The Economist comparing per-gram cocaine prices around the world:
Click the graph to see the Economist article.
It would seem that it’s not just prescription drugs that are cheaper in Canada than in the U.S..
For an economic index that’s a little less illicit, check out the Economist’s Big Mac Index.
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If you’ve got an idea for a caption for the photo below, please leave a comment!
Click the picture to see it at full size.
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
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The Party After the Party
I’ve got to tip my hat to my brother-in-law Andy and new sister-in-law Sue. Most newlyweds are happy to vanish into their room after the reception; they decided to throw an after-party. I like a good post-party party as much as the next free-wheeling accordion-playing bacchanalian bon vivant, but even I retired to the honeymoon suite after my own reception. Kudos for Andy and Sue for choosing not to go quietly into the night!
Even better, they didn’t just make do with their hotel room’s decor. There’s nothing wrong with the colonial charm of the rooms at the Avon Old Farms Hotel; it’s just that it needed a little goosing to get it just right for this sort of party. Luckily Andy and company brought decorations worthy of a Phish-head’s VW van including flashing lights, spinning colored lights like the one shown in the photo below…
…plus a couple of oil wheel projectors aimed at the wall to produce images like this:
There were refreshments aplenty: a couple of coolers packed with beer, a few bottles of liquor, some pop, salty snacks of all sorts and a couple of kielbasa sausages.
As for a sound system, it wasn’t necessary. Most of us at the party had performed earlier that evening at the reception. Among Andy’s many talents are some mad balalaika skills, and his friends from his balalaika group were among us. They — and through a very generous invitation, I — performed a short set of Russian and Jewish tunes after dinner. Other guests at the after-party had also brought guitars and tambourines.
Here’s what the party looked like as it was getting into full swing:
Shut Down
Moments after I took that photo, someone from the hotel knocked at our door.
“We’ve got some complaints from your neighbours about the noise,” he said, sticking his head through the door and looking around. We were about a dozen in total, half of whom had an instrument.
“I know where this is headed,” said Andy to the rest of us.
I started to take my accordion off when the hotel guy said something very, very unexpected.
“You could use the lobby,” he suggested.
I’m sure at least three of us said “Huh?”
“Use the lobby. No rooms near it; the sound won’t carry.”
We asked if we could bring our booze and snacks, and he said as long as we cleaned up after ourselves, it was fine with him.
The group made its way to the lobby as quietly as semi-drunk people with musical instruments who’d stumbled on some unexpected good fortune. I helped in finding a luggage cart and wheeling the booze and food to the lobby.
Lobby Jam Session!
Years of lucky breaks — remember, many lucky breaks are made, not had — have taught me to have a camera ready when they happen. Here are the photos I took:
As you can see, where the hotel room was a bit cramped, the lobby has elbow room to spare.
You can see the front desk in the photo below. The night concierge didn’t seem to mind the jamming, and neither did the very people who passed by on the way to their rooms.
Taking pictures of musicians playing is tricky. Your subjects may be having a good time, but the split-second moment captured by the camera coupled with a musician’s concentration can make it seem as if you’re taking pictures in a depression ward:
That’s Serge on the left, playing the balalaika and Jason on guitar on the right.
I swear, he’s having a great time:
Rick on balalaika.
Really, we’re having fun!
Sascha on balalaika.
Okay, finally a smile:
That’s Judy on the left on balalaika and Andy on the right playing the big honkin’ contrabass balalaika.
Here’s another shot of Andy on the big bass:
Here’s the Ginger Ninja, enjoying the show:
Sue was there too, but after an entire day of cameras in her face, I decided to spare her at the after-party. Don’t say I never did nuthin’ for ya, Sue!
Gin and Juice
We bounced between classic balalaika numbers and contemporary pop in our jam sessions. I decided to shoot some video for posterity. Here’s the video I shot — it’s our performance of The Gourds’ countrified rendition of Snoop Dogg’s classic number, Gin and Juice. Enjoy!
Thanks, Avon Old Farms Hotel!
In closing, I’d like to thank the very nice and very understanding people at the Avon Old Farms Hotel for letting us move our party into the lobby so that we could jam and still not disturb anybody. You rock for letting us rock!
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It may not be the Howard Beale “Mad as Hell” meltdown scene from the movie Network, but I’ll take it for now: here’s MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski refusing to cover the Paris Hilton non-story despite the prodding of her co-anchors and producer. Really, people, of all the things with which we should concern ourselves, that trampy monster of entitlement should be among the last of them…
I had a cynical moment where I thought that this was mere grandstanding in order to cover Paris Hilton by not covering her, but as someone who occasionally tunes in to MSNBC, I think that such subterfuge requires more brain cells than all of their producers currently have. I’m going to assume that Ms. Brzezinski’s refusal is genuine and salute her with a filet mignon on a flaming sword.
For those of you who are wondering what the hell I’m talking about with this “Howard Beale” and Network, here’s a synopsis of the movie, and here’s the scene to which I refer:
The Howard Beale meltdown scene from Network has been borrowed a number of times. The most recent homage paid to it of which I’m aware is from the opening episode of the late and largely unlamented Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip:
Studio 60 was 20% good moments, 80% Aaron Sorkin practicing self-love with a television budget and audience. Life’s too short — if I must endure some egomaniac celebrating his own genius in a showy manner, that egomaniac had better be me.
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The year was 1991, and as a DJ at Crazy Go Nuts University, I was getting a lot of mileage out of this album:
Guess what: Spencer Elden, the baby on the album cover, is now 15 years old.
[via Reddit and The Striker Diary]
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Here’s a graph from a blog posting by Jim “Long Emergency” Kunstler titled Peak Suburbia comparing the retail space per person in the U.S., Sweden, the U.K., France and Italy. If the data on which this graph is based is correct, Americans have 6 times more retail space than the Swedes, 8 times that of the Brits and 18 times the shopping square footage doled out to the unfortunate Italians. I suspect that here in Canada, the retail space per person is similar to the American figure.
Click to read the article that features this graph.
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