Unfortunately, he was a rather large and hairy man.

That was one of the strangest strip joints ever. The ladies were dancing to such choice stripper bands as Modest Mouse, Radiohead, and The Smiths.

A friend traveled to Portland several years ago and claimed to have visited a strip club with Minor Threat on the sound system. I guess that's the place.

It wouldn't surprise me at all.

Cheeta is 74.

For their computer desktops, neuropathologists do not go for Mt. Fuji or rainforests but bloody gobbets of brain.

at a bar in los angeles last week a woman asked me if i was scottish. perhaps because i was shooting up and going headfirst into a shitty toilet at the time.

Been meaning to applaud your picture there- The Party is one of my favorite art films- it spills across so many genres.

You besotted trainspotter you!

There are a large number of Scots (accent and all) that look very like you.

yes, but do i sound like them? she said i sounded like her scottish boss. i asked if anyone ever told him he sounded like an indian.

the clippers were a miracle 3 point shot away from taking a 3-2 series lead at the time and we were all a little hysterical.

I might be tempted to accuse you of being a lot of things, but Scottish isn't one of them.

I'm not sure if I posted about this before, but I just remembered it for some reason - a spoken italian class was taking place at our neighborhood coffee shop.

One of the students, who had identified herself from being from NJ said: "In my city... eh... I don't know how to say it - teacher, how do you say "there was a body in the water tower" in Italian?"

C'e stato un corpo nel torre d'acqua.

I guess it could apply to some of the 'debris' in the Gowanus canal.

sound of bad (live?) rap music, and worse amplification, whiffing into my living room from the general direction of the farmers market.....
wonder if I should give it a pass today?

There was no rap at the market, at least not between 2:30 and 3:00 or so. It might have been emanating from elsewhere. I didn't see a single bongo player or catch one whiff of patchouli or incense.

There were the new pink clown people, though, making a repeat appearance. Clowns freak me out.

The present incarnation of Mundo's menu captures perfectly the phrase "Interesting, but I don't see what they are trying to do here." I have not been able to put together a reasonable meal from the options there. I want to like the place given that it is close to home and atmospheric.


Oh, and speaking of menu surrealism: from an outdoor menu in Kyoto, Japan:

"Roman-style corned beef and potato pizza"
"Roman-style dried small fish, welsh onion, and cheese pizza"

Have just seen three sets of of fighter planes gliding by in military formation.

Me too! Roy told me it's the Blue Angels, the Navy's stunt pilots. Maybe they're welcoming an aircraft carrier that's in town for Memorial Day.

Phew!

Fleet's in town. Abby, you didn't know?

The townhouse of ill repute in my nabe has American flags in the window.

The Blue Angels are doing their air show over Jones Beach this Saturday and Sunday.

It's fleet week, baby. Lots of sailors wandering around my neighborhood.

I knew, I just never saw da planes.

I see military jets flying along the Hudson frequently. Not just during fleet week.

I did see a bunch of cute sailors on Seventh Avenue last night.

Definitely something going on this morning. A lot of military action in the sky.

Then I read that a huge power failure happened at 8am and Amtrak is out up and down the east coast corridor.

I just posted the word "Brazilian" in the combinations thread, and exactly as I typed it, some people walked by my window speaking Portuguese.

What you don't want is: to be reading Philip Roth's book The Plot Against America and look up from the book and see fighter planes flying over you.

Great book though.

Three peahens and a peacock ambling around Colorado Blvd. and El Molino Ave. in Pasadena Tuesday night. Don't know why.

To get to the other side?

They were not goal oriented in that event.

My partner took Amtrak from Rhode Island to Penn Station today around 2:45. Must have cleared up the problems.

The signal problems were between Washington and NY, not above NY.

She was lucky then!

I took a break during one of the films I didn't like last night and saw a couple of people pointing at something outside. They said it was a mouse, but it was really a mole. If I had more time and something to grab it with besides my bare hands, I would have taken it to the grassy field but it didn't really want to be handled so I left it alone.

I had one in the lawn in my front yard for a while, but it got run over by a car in the middle of the street. That was just really bad timing for the poor thing.

Walking through one of the generic street festivals today, one of the stands was by an asian pastry company called....


Pookiss.

don't knock it till you've tried it.

Scratch 'n' Sniff at the ready?

One of my clients with a restaurant sent me an e-mail he received last night:

At the grocery store yesterday, I couldn't help ogling a really good-looking young guy who was doing the rounds of the produce section. Probably in his late 20's, so well out of my “price range” even if I were looking. But if an old broad like me can't at least appreciate Beautiful Youth from a distance, the battle is lost.

Or so went my thinking until I realized that the guy is the son of an ex-boyfriend from long ago. The kid and I were very close...when he was 10 years old.

Do moles bite? Or do they scratch with those big digging claws?

Whoa! That's almost an "ick."

Every year I look forward to Fleet Week in NYC so I can ogle the boys in those crisp white uniforms. Been doing this since I've been a teen and all through my young and juicy years. It's now a sad reality that I'm inching towards being old enough to be their moms -- so far I'd have to be a jailbait teenage moms -- but I guess I will now have to reach inside for some dignity and stop with the cat-calling.

Damn!

No, I was just being a wimp. I've lapsed so far from my field biology days.

A sensible precaution, as I'm sure moles do something or other to protect themselves. At a big park recently, my five year old asked me "Do swans bite?" and a little later "Do geese bite?" I told her that it was best to assume any wild animal or bird bites. Most of them sure do.

Last night the owner of Sinha Trading complemented me on the colour of my hair.

This month, Alain Robbe-Grillet was honored by NYU. The citation included the remark:

"Equally at home in other media, you have written and directed nearly a dozen films, including your most celebrated, the renowned classic: Last Year in Marienbad."

Not to understate Alain Resnais' contribution, or anything.

Have you seen that film? I couldn't make a shred of sense of it.

I was listening to "Fresh Air" on NPR at work today, and I noticed that the voice of the movie reviewer (he was doing a piece on Cannes) sounded a lot like an old friend of mine that I haven't seen for at least three years. This guy is head legal counsel for a big firm in town. Now, we used to see each other every few weeks, but in the last few years we talked on the phone once and that's about it. I was nowhere near the dining room of the restaurant (my bakeshop kitchen is down a couple flights of stairs and across an alley from the restaurant) when I was thinking about him.

But five minutes later, when I went to the dining room to fetch something, I saw him walking out of the restaurant, and I thought "wow, Eric's really on my mind, I'm even thinking I'm seeing him" and it turns out it WAS him. He'd never been in the restaurant before in his life ("I've never even set foot in here before!") and didn't even know I'd become a pastry chef (I had another career when we hung out). Unbelievably wild feeling. I said that old cliche "I was just thinking about you!" but I literally had been, not five minutes before. And he's an old friend, but not somebody I think of on a daily basis.

Weird but nice. Wonder who else I can think up? I'm gonna try for somebody famous.