The Art of Building Walls - Villains - Don't Let The Blood Get You Down - 2007

Between the jetlag and the late night, we allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit on Friday morning. By the time we rolled out of the hotel it was already 1230. We wanted to check out a German restaurant and grab some food, so we asked our hotel clerk for a recommendation in the area and she pointed us in the right direction.

The restaurant itself was basically just a tavern and most of the lunch crowd appeared to just be locals who worked in the neighborhood. There was one guy at another table who was eating alone, and was also from New York...but we weren't particularly interested in talking to him and he got the point. The serving wenches were uniformly lovely and took great amusement at our mangled attempts to pronounce the names of their beers.

I had a very fine schnitzel with a side of fried potatoes and something they call bacon beans. Bacon beans are green beans cut into 1/2 inch long chunks and then cooked with an almost equal amount of bits of bacon. So essentially you are eating bacon with some green beans in it. It was damn fine, but considering I still had the UK in front of me, I could tell that I was going to start craving fresh green veggies at some point.

We also had two large steins of beer with our lunch, including Kostritzer Schwarzbier which is a black lager. It looks like a stout, but in flavor it is much lighter than you'd expect. I'd had it here a couple times in the states and it was really no different in Berlin, but it's still a damn fine drink.

After that we were ready to start our museum hop...

This is actually my friend Rance (who actually met us for the UK portion of this trip) and his musical side project. Rance is quite handy with incorporating laptop soundscapes and rhythms into his dreamy guitar pop and this instrumental is a good example of that.

April Showers - Secret Agent Gel - No Floor - 2006

Well, I'm back from my Christmas hiatus in the land of sweatpants and melted cheese and I managed to come back relatively unscathed. However...

For various reasons, I decided to rent a car and drive to visit my parents this winter. By and large this was a good decision that I do not regret, with one exception.

The drive from NYC to Cincinnati is about 11 hours long, and despite getting a late start and the fact that NYC got snow on the day before, our trips were relatively uneventful. 11 hours in a car can be a test on even the best of relationships, but my lady and I managed just fine enjoying the music and the sites and the road food. All was good.

The drive from my parents house in Cincy to my grandparents house in butt-fuck Indiana (Poland, IN, if you want to get technical about it) is typically about 2.5 to 3 hours. Shortly before we got to Indianapolis traffic began slowing down due to the freezing rain on the highway. By the time I pulled onto 465 (Indy's bipass) I was gliding through curves and clutching the wheel to make sure I stayed on track. Just west of Indy I got on 70 and stopped at the rest stop (which would later prove to be a great idea). Within ten minutes we were in completely stopped traffic. Between the hours of 430 and 1130 we moved about a mile and a half. I have to say both of us kept our temper pretty well (and hats off to my diabetic girlfriend for making it through without a potty break...or killing me). It wasn't until about 830 that I really started throwing my shit out the window (so to speak). For the first couple of hours you just sit there thinking "Well, this is annoying, but I'm just going to hang out with my grandparents, nothing that I can't be late for...surely it'll clear up any minute" And then it doesn't...and it doesn't...and it doesn't.

Even when we finally started moving again the roads were so icy that not much progress was being made. The fifteen mile drive to the next exit took an hour, when we finally got there we immediately went flying to the gas station bathroom and then went looking for hotel. Despite the fact that we were only 15 miles from my grandparents house, it was well after midnight and I wasn't sure I could navigate the country roads in the ice. However, the fact that all 4 hotels in the truckstop town were completely filled (People were even sleeping in the hallways and lobby) meant that I had to try my luck.

By the time I finally arrived at my grandparents it was 1:30...so it actually took me an hour longer to drive from Cincy to Poland, IN than it did from NYC to Cincy. But on the plus side, it's all over now.

This is my buddy Corey performing as Secret Agent Gel. His music is a bit more dancey and electronica-y than my usual taste, but I've gotta give my man credit for sound quality on this stuff and, as always, for having the hussle to produce his own work. That's more energy than I generally exert.

Appeasement - J.L. Weill - Tales from the Cold War - 2007

So I went out drinking with my coworkers last night for a couple of birthdays we had last week. After a while I broke out one of my favorite party tricks which is to find the person least likely to turn down a free drink and offer to buy them the most disgusting drink on the menu.

In this case, at The Soho Room, the drink was The Bubbletini...sadly, the drink did not involve Tapioca balls...which I was hoping it would, as this would vastly increase the fun of making the poor guy drink this concoction...but sadly it was just Pomegranite Infused Vodka, Orange Juice, and some other fruity liquer. Which basically raises the question...why call this the Bubbletini? There's nothing bubbly about it.

Additionally, the evening was made more entertaining by the fact that some new rum was having a promotion and we were basically teh only customers in the bar. The shot girls told us that they were not allowed to hand out more than one shot per person, but that they could leave trays of shots on the bar, and if we happened to come up and take them...so be it...

So there were a lot of fruity rum shots in my evening.

Anyway, this is a song by one of my closest friends, (and occasional blog commentator) so I don't know that I can be objective about it. He and his wife Torie sing very well together and the arrangement is really quite good and adds to the melencholy atmosphere that he's aiming to create. I give Josh a hard time that he doesn't "rock" enough for my taste...but I've always respected his ability to write a good melody, and this song is no exception.

All Around The World - The Jam - All Around the World Single - 1977

Sorry to all five of my readers for the lack of updates. It's been a busy week.

Anyway, I was hanging out with one of my lady friends on Sunday playing video games (yes, I am exactly that cool) when I discovered that she gets the munchies like a 14 year old girl. We go on a simple beer run, and I buy one six pack and one bag of chips. She on the other hand bought an entire log of cookie dough, a pack of honey roasted nuts, and a bag of swedish fish.

I'm not sure if there is a fetish for watching tall, skinny vegan chicks eat an entire log of cookie dough, but if you want photos, I could probably arrange that.

Anyway, more of The Jam doing their thing.