1/18/05: Back to the Sack

RIP, MLK. Every time I see the "I have a dream" speech, I still get moved near tears.  Certainly he was a flawed man, but he made a tremendous contribution to this country and his holiday is well deserved.

The wife and I went to lunch today at the Marquet Patisserie on 12th street.  Good little place there, I'd probably give it around a 23.847 on the VRS. It's got a nice little seating area in the back, and glass cases in the front full of pastries. It's sort of like Le Pain Quotidien, if you've been there.  I had a camembert sandwich with lettuce, tomatoes, red onions and mustard on soft country white bread.  Had some roasted rosemary potato fries along with it.  Warshed it down with some unsweetened iced tea.  A nice meal for a man's day off.  Even if the raw onions are murder on my breath.

The walls there are papered with yellowed pages from the New York Times that look like they've been there for 30 years. It's not an original decorating strategy, but I still like it.  It's a nice effect, and I like seeing old newspapers in any setting. On one page, I noticed two small faded snapshots.  One was a man, one was a woman. I was about ten feet away, but from what I could tell, the woman looked stylish and elegant, and I thought perhaps it was Jackie Kennedy. The man was dressed in a dapper suit as well. I couldn't quite recognize him, but I was thinking maybe it was Cary Grant or somebody. Either way, it was cool to see an old newspaper like that with pictures of the reigning stars of the day.  I decided I had to move in for a closer look. To my disappointment, the two people pictured turned out to be Al Roker and Sharon Osbourne.

Damn Brit writes in with some breaking news from the land of our former imperial masters.  He recently had the good fortune to meet this incredibly talented all-around entertainer, and he now generously shares the website link. It's worth some serious exploration -- you should probably know that the entertainer in question considers himself a Huge Star.

We are pleased to announce the first edition of verbungle.com's cartoon of the week, courtesy of D. Lee.  Here is the premiere installment of Big Yotch.

We also have a review from AJR on a highly rated product we'd all like to own.

Back to work tomorrow.  Not excited about that, but it's a relief that hostboy won't be anywhere in the area.  Man, we had some laughs during that run, but the laughs weren't enough to offset the despair that you feel when you realize that you're part of something very, very bad. I remember a few times when he was screwing up repeatedly, and we'd sort of tolerate one mistake, then two, then three, until they mounted so high that we just had to stop and start over.

"Stop," we'd say in his ear. "Stop. Let's go again."

He'd get this look of surprise on his face, one eyebrow arched, as if to say, "Stop? Are you sure? That was pretty fucking flawless if you ask me."  He was in disbelief that we weren't as satisfied with his home run performance as he was. Then we'd feel obligated to explain the stoppage, so we would just mention the last mistake in the chain, the one that finally put it over the top.  It would go something like this.

"Yeah, well, you just held up that tomato and called it a pineapple," we'd tell him in an effort to simplify things and spare his feelings.

"Yep. Copy that.  I did do that," he'd say, as if this "small" mistake was the only thing that threw the segment off track. It was so sad. I wanted to hug him. I also wanted to kill him. So I did neither.  We just watched our lives tick away and waited for it to end.

Now it's back to the usual shit-sacking, which is somehow just fine with me.

We're going to post one more edition of "Wheredat" above left, then we're going to take a li'l break.  Good luck.