Sunset above central PA

Plus, landing at (brrrrrrrr) Rochester for New Year's Eve.

Patriot's Theatre, Trenton, NJ

Dave on the keys, Kevin, and me.

After much diligent searching...

I actually found some snow. But that's it...all I could find. Kind of a sad little blizzard locally.

Merry Christmas! Love you All!

Hell's yeah, it's almost Christmas!

Time for a handful o' Jesus!

The Christmas Hair Waltz*

Yes...it's...Christmas time,
I don't shower or shave
And my hair's a crime, can't you see
Now it's really tall
And, really, all I do
Is to let it wave free

It's...that...time of year
When my coif wags and bobs
If you strain to hear
I will say,
Merry Christmas
May your New Year's dreams come true
And...this...hair of mine,
As it starts to climb,
Wishes you and yours
The same thing too!

Merry Christmas Eve Eve, everyone, from my hair!


* To the tune of 'The Christmas Waltz', if that wasn't obvious. Yet another in a long line of wonderful Christmas songs by Jewish composers. We WASPS farm everything out, damn...

Sunny outlook

Hey Dad, someone just pointed me at this picture some amateur made using some sort of 'retinascoping' technique to clear away the glare and get a shot of the surface of the sun.  Just freaking awesome.  Even though I thought retinascoping -for eyes, anyway-  involved adding light in order to determine refractivity, and this seems like getting rid of a bunch of light in order to show reflectivity. Who knows. You're the light guy.  :)  Still pretty cool, though.

Blurry pics of Alexandria and the Steps' Christmas Party

That's King St. in Olde Towne; the Steps' party; and Morgan looking pleased because he's sitting next to Lisa.  She is our accountant, and a finer-looking accountant you will rarely see. Morgan and her are not an item, though I don't think he'd mind. But firstly, she's married, and secondly, she already has a crush on me.  Pasty, fat, and old still works if you're funny.  :D

Christmas getting too macho

Quite possibly the world's most festive Sunoco

No more shows 'til Christmas!

Which is good, 'cause probably no more voice 'til Christmas Eve. (hack, cough, sputter, wheeze...)

Naturally...

...ten minutes after I left you a message suggesting you hold off on sending presents, they arrive. Thank you parents! Love y'all! Tough not to peek in this case.

HAPPY KATE DAY!

A movie about a roll of pennies...and his friends

...
$466 - Amazing what you can get done watching a football game on tv. Love the change counter.

Football Day!

As you can see, we had pretty good seats.  The Bucs win! But barely. The Redskins had to work overtime at sucking in order to lose. It rained the entire time and was freezing, but we had rain suits top-to-toe and stayed pretty darn dry.Except for Matt. See how sad he looks not being in a rain suit?  Awww......

Things you may not care about: Jo and I are headed to the Skins/Bucs game

 I'm sure you'll hear more about this than you need to.

Annapolis, MD

Gettin' ready for the big Holiday Boat Parade! Which I'll miss doing a show at Ram's Head Tavern. Rats. Cold and rainy here. Love you guys!

"If you don't shut up," I said, "I'm gonna punch you right in the face."

But he didn't. So I did. Stupid computer.

Since I'm on the top floor...

...this must be The Rapture elevator.

Jews as rednecks

Witness the inflatable lawn dreidel. Can country/western/klesmer music be far behind?

View from the Rotunda Room, the Reagan Int'l Trade Center

Looking up 14th St., the Willard Hotel on the left. Pretty venue.

Queens, New York City

Not going to describe the hotel with my usual crude japes. Will let the lobby 'art' speak for itself.

I completed neglected to put up Thanksgiving pictures....

In no particular order, here all of the pictures that were unfuzzy enough to able to tell what's going on.  Michelle seems especially suspicious of me in the last one. Even more so than usual...

Tell Erica to quit staring at me

...
Just a silly video...Click it, Mom!

Dropped my skull off for a cleaning today

I can pick it up tomorrow, noonish. Meanwhile I can't go anywhere 'cause my head's just a big, droopy,deflated sac. It's hard to tpye...

Carousel of Cash!

See, since every other compartment is unused, if you are out of coin rollers --like I still am-- you can use the little door to shift the coins in a filled bay to one of the vacant ones, then refill the 'official' coin bay. That way, instead of just holding one roll of each kind of coin...

...it holds two!

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The Complete Lack O' Traffic Jam

...
Ok, wide awake, song learned, all better. Weird drive home. Every time I passed a shopping area, there was a huge traffic jam - at midnight and two and three a.m. The Prime Outlets around Gaffney had a mile-long backup in both directions. Naturally, I didn't get a picture of any of that.

And then, conversely, there was a stretch of almost an hour where I drove at 80mph without seeing a single other vehicle. It was the stretch about a half an hour either side of the VA-NC border and it was creepy: no street lights, no cars...after a while I began to suffer the delusion that it wasn't really an interstate highway, it was a private road that someone had mocked up to look like a highway - some weird, demented movie set I'd unwittingly stumbled upon. I started scrutinizing the road-signs for evidence of fakeness. As it got later, I started finding some...

Here's video I took during that stretch. This is all I saw for an hour. I almost wept when I finally happened upon a tractor-trailer flatbed groaning up a hill with a load of gyp-lap.

Two weeks ago in Dayton

Sloth and the press of travel kept my posts to a minimum throughout that period, plus Jon and I were busy doing all kinds of things. Like, for instance, going to an actual local wrestling palace and watching ambitious young Ohio grapplers and evil fight promoters doing their best Hulk Hogan imitations.

 Take this guy, for instance.  He was the local Good Guy Hero wrestler, one Dave Crist. He strutted in, mohawk waving girlishly, the entire crowd cheering, waving signs, and --in some cases-- weeping at his goodness and prowess. Jon --an old wrestling hand-- noted the goings-on and declared the Hero was being set up to lose. Moreover, Jon had already decided that we were going to root loudly for the opposition, since no one else was. He likes to stir up trouble.  I'm glad I'm not that way.

This guy could not believe that there were people there rooting against him.  This is his smack-talking response to Jon telling him he was about to get his ass kicked and thrown out of the ring like a big, whiny baby.

And this is him getting his ass kicked...

...and this is him getting thrown out of the ring like a big, whiny baby.

This has taken 8 years

The 12-inch tall apothecary jar I bought in '02 is finally too full of silver change to close up.  I'm sure I will spend an exciting afternoon counting it at some point to discover I have about $47.35 in usable change, two Susan B. Anthony dollars, and a half-corroded subway token.  I don't even want to go into the giant orange juice jar full of pennies...

If you ever are offered the opportunity to stay at the storied, exclusive Nassau Club at Princeton University...

A storied, historic room at the NC. If you're wondering where the charm is, it's in the same place the TV, working phone, heat, thermostat, insulation, space, quiet, absence of gusting drafts, repaired walls, pleasant scent, and general air of upkeep isn't. It's a closet where you can change into your suit jacket that you'll get kicked out of the dining area without. It's the saddest excuse for elitism I've ever seen. Apparently, the Ivy League feels 'cleaning' is somewhat lowbrow. Or perhaps the dust bunnies have historic import: actual discarded skin cells from Aaron Burr or Donald Rumsfeld or other famous Princetonians may still adhere to the uncleaned walls and carpets.  I found it difficult to be awed by this notion. Disturbed?  Yes. Sickened? Most definitely. But awed? No.

...decline immediately. Respectfully, if you must. But firmly. Very firmly.

,:-(

High Profile locality

With too many empty late-night hotel hours under my belt, I have become familiar --as have so many insomniacal  people-- with the various and sundry Crime Networks that dot the cable landscape. One of them in particular, the I.D. Channel, seems to have a peculiar fascination with.....

Yes. Spartanburg.  Sleepy little Spartanburg, 280,000 souls, most of which seem to be hoodlums, jackanapes, abductors, drunken assaulters, rapists, stalkers, grave-defilers, child procurers, bear-baiters, crooks, thieves, liars, murderers and scofflaws.  Or cops. Or both.

Now, you would think all of these photos were taken from the same program. But you'd be wrong. Two of them are, I think. But Spartanburg and its minions feature far more prominently on the televised law enforcement landscape than they do in any other, broader social context.

Which one would naturally assume is because: a) the Spartanburg Sheriff's Department, besieged as they apparently are by miscreants of every description, have entered into a cozy financial relationship with the I.D. channel and that access skews the national perception of Spartansburg's relative criminality; or b) the county really is a den of dimwitted thieves and murderous, brawling poopheads. Or both.

After a few shows you sort of get to know the officers as individuals...

....and are cheered by seeing them pop up again on another show, chasing some new lowlife rat-bastard Spartanburgian scum.  And almost always in front of this same clump of trees. That must be his press clump.

Hmmm. Now that I look closer, it seems to actually be a different clump of trees in each appearance. Still, he seems curiously fixated on an arboreal-based interview backdrop.

 I suspect the fame of the county is growing. Soon people will come from miles around to be arrested there. And if I get hauled in on the drive down for Thanksgiving, why, it'll seem almost like coming home...

Boar's Head Inn, Charlottesville, VA