Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Sunday, December 23, 2007
G. Ryan Faith and I wake up extra early
To talk about Christmas in Darfur on Washington DC's WUSA...
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Monday, November 19, 2007
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Fugging Fugger
So dear old Norman Mailer died. I was always much more entertained by him than by his writing. That said, in 1999 when I was singing in the Eclectics I took his poem "So long as you use a knife, there's some love left" and based a song on it, called, um... So Long As You Use a Knife (There's Some Love Left).
R.I.P.
R.I.P.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Jarvis knows how I think
There's not much time for talking,
all your friends are
going to walk away.
If there was time for talking
all too soon you'd be
lost for things to say.
Don't you know she could break you,
every bone that's inside of you?
Then again she might make you
everything that you want her to,
and if you could walk away,
where would you go
anyway?
And if you've still got the chance,
I know you know you'll stay,
stay.
I don't need your excuses;
are you tired of
trying to stay on top?
so just lie back and enjoy it
and save your tears for
when the kissing stops
oh, you know it's got to stop.
Don't you know she could break you,
every bone that's inside of you?
Then again she might make you
everything that you want her to,
and if you could walk away,
where would you go
anyway?
And if you've still got the chance,
I know you know you'll stay,
stay.
Oh, you'll stay,
oh, you'll stay.
Don't you know she could break you,
every bone that's inside of you?
Then again she might make you
everything that you want her to,
and if you could walk away,
where would you go
anyway?
And if you've still got the chance,
I know you know you'll stay,
stay.
Oh, you'll stay,
oh, you'll stay.
Oh, you'll stay,
oh, you'll stay,
oh, you'll stay,
oh, you'll stay,
oh, you'll stay.
all your friends are
going to walk away.
If there was time for talking
all too soon you'd be
lost for things to say.
Don't you know she could break you,
every bone that's inside of you?
Then again she might make you
everything that you want her to,
and if you could walk away,
where would you go
anyway?
And if you've still got the chance,
I know you know you'll stay,
stay.
I don't need your excuses;
are you tired of
trying to stay on top?
so just lie back and enjoy it
and save your tears for
when the kissing stops
oh, you know it's got to stop.
Don't you know she could break you,
every bone that's inside of you?
Then again she might make you
everything that you want her to,
and if you could walk away,
where would you go
anyway?
And if you've still got the chance,
I know you know you'll stay,
stay.
Oh, you'll stay,
oh, you'll stay.
Don't you know she could break you,
every bone that's inside of you?
Then again she might make you
everything that you want her to,
and if you could walk away,
where would you go
anyway?
And if you've still got the chance,
I know you know you'll stay,
stay.
Oh, you'll stay,
oh, you'll stay.
Oh, you'll stay,
oh, you'll stay,
oh, you'll stay,
oh, you'll stay,
oh, you'll stay.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Zzz
Anybody who ever tells you they've seen Birth of a Nation is a liar.
-Jason
--
sent wirelessly via blackberry
Saturday, October 20, 2007
"Wilburrrr"
I'm not much for "signs," but I do take it as a sign of a good day when the old guy in dreads references Charlotte's Web when handing me my ham and egg sandwich.
-Jason
--
sent wirelessly via blackberry
Friday, October 19, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Sticky sweet
I haven’t really written in a while. I’ve been on summer vacation.
What?
Yes. Summer vacation. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve still been working my ass off at the bar, but this summer has been the first time in years that I’ve had summer days to myself. The past two years I’ve busied myself with internships, and the years before those I’ve been stuck in either a windowless auction house, a windowed auction house (perhaps worse to see summer passing you by), or an over air-conditioned downtown office building.
This lack of the summer part of summers came as a shock to me when I entered the square world. My father always used to tell me, “you don’t know what freedom is until it’s taken away from you.” He wasn’t waxing patriotic, he was referring to prison, and that’s what my first summer spent working entirely indoors felt like. “You don’t know what summer is until it’s taken away from you.”
Now, I imagine that most adult-types can count the end of their academic life and the beginning of their work life as the point where they made the transition from outdoor summers to indoor summers, but I had a peculiar string of careers in my early 20s. After dropping out of school after my freshman year, I helped run my family’s mega-jumbo laundrymat in Chicago’s Little Village. I learned nothing about business, picked up not a lick of Spanish and made my own hours, which often meant driving drunk to the place after the bars closed to do the books and then heading out to play roulette in Elgin. Point is, I was untethered, I spent my days working on my punk rock record label / publishing “empire” and generally did whatever I wanted. Summers were for touring with your band, drinking, making out, and having a good time. Actually, at that point in my life, that’s what I did in most seasons.
Anyhow, my next job also leant itself to summer revelry, working as a bartender at the Fireside Bowl. Now I was doing double duty, see? I was working at the laundrymat, and at the bar. Woah. A regular workhorse. Now, in fairness, I shouldn’t put my work ethic down too much, because, honestly, I have always been prone to working like a maniac, but the catch is that I will work furiously on what I want to work on, and that was the case for my next endeavor, a place where I had some of the best summers of my life, Jinx café.
As of next week, ten years will have passed since Jinx opened its doors, but a lot of the fun came in the months before. Those who knew my crazed, grumpy, occasionally hysterical self during that time would likely offer a single syllable in response to hearing me speak fondly of that period, “ha!” My partner, Michelle, and I worked 17 hours a day trying to whip 1926 W. Divison into shape. Sawing, hammering, welding, cursing, crying, and drinking. We kept the front door open for light and air and for the occasional “what’s going on here,” from the neighbors.
We drank cheap beer with friends who came to help and sat outside on the stoop. I spent at least two days getting drunk and going at the exterior with a propane torch and a scraper before deciding, “fuck it, I’m just painting over this shit.” I remember whipping said torch across a rainy, vacant Division Street in a blind rage about something or other. I was so disappointed when it didn’t explode. I believe it had to do with having potentially destroyed my 1964 Oldsmobile’s engine while trying to drive through a flooded viaduct that I would never have been driving through if the Home Depot closest to me wasn’t out of the black Astroturf I had to have – that day, massive flooding or not.
But anyhow, after a summer of, “we’re opening next week… no, next week… no, next week,” we finally opened the first week of September. The place was a hit. We loved our customers, and they loved us. My seeming lack of desire to actually make money made us one of the coolest cafes ever. We didn’t pay our employees well, but we certainly didn’t work them very hard either. We encouraged drinking while on duty, which led to hilarity and the occasional sliced finger.
Fall was romantic there, feeling the weather change after a long, hot, hard summer. Girls in sweaters. Flirtations. Indiscretions. Winter was cozy: people trudging through the snow to get to the place, peeling off their layers when they got inside. It was perpetually steamy inside. The windows were always fogged up.
But then came Chicago’s notoriously short spring followed by, yes, summer. I had taken to riding a 1964 Vespa (what’s with me and that year?). I wore vintage short sleeve button down shirts, polyester slacks, and ugly Red Wing shoes (when you’re on your feet 14 hours a day, you make some sacrifices). I rode my lanky self around on my little red scooter (or “moped,” as Jinx staffer Andy Moran would call it just to annoy me) with a pair of yellow-tinted goggles on my head. I would roll up and park it on the sidewalk outside, and would get excited when other scooter folks would assemble there. Soon, Michelle purchased a 1970s Honda 550 Four, and the whole place was lousy with two-wheeled motorized vehicle enthusiasts.
On Saturdays and Sundays, I would typically show up at 11:15 or 11:30 (we were supposed to open at 11). The front gate would still be locked, and my employees would be sitting outside on the stoop, waiting for me, along with several patient customers. I’d slide back the big, iron gate and the whole lot of us would wander into the dark coffee shop. Someone would be sliding the gates back from the front windows as the regulars staked out their usual places and I got the coffee brewing. Occasionally, we’d find one or more of the previous evening’s employees still there, passed out on the couch by the pinball machine and the jukebox. I’d grab some money from the till and walk down to D&D to buy some champagne so we could sit outside and drink mimosas. Andy invented a brilliant game one night called, “drink until we can’t see our customers” which didn’t involve drinking yourself blind, rather building a wall out of our empty beer cans on the front counter until we, literally, could not see our customers.
Our mostly male staff would ogle the never-ending stream of gorgeous young women who came through our door. The summer heat made for fantastic states of undress, and we relished the opportunity to wait on these girls hand and foot, and make plans to get drinks later, and then maybe to come back to Jinx late at night to play strip international military aircraft identification (the only deck of cards we had).
I remember nights of late night scooter rides with girls pressed up against me. To the Green Mill. To Finkl Steel. To my horrendously messy apartment which was often without electricity because I forgot to pay the bill.
I was a lush and a playboy and it was summer.
So a few years later when I’d gotten out of the café racket, in and out of a venture into the dying world of video rental, and remembered that I had some skill as a graphic designer, I ended up working at an auction house called Wright. I was 27 years old, and it was for all practical purposes, my first “real” job. I started in April and I loved it. I worked around 60-80 hours a week on average. I treated it as I did every other entrepreneurial venture I’d engaged in, with passion. All consuming passion which destroys relationships and leads you to drink too much.
I would stare out the window of the gallery, located in the West Loop, home to a few art galleries and a whole lot of meatpacking, and watch the summer go by. The white-clad meatpackers would take smoke breaks outside and I would contemplate taking up the habit. Friday nights would bring well-dressed men and women to the area, they would stand outside, schmoozing and laughing, and I would watch them with envy as I sat behind a gargantuan LaCie monitor Photoshopping a missing leg onto a sofa (“it’ll be fixed by preview,” my boss would say.)
A couple years later my summer would be spent, again behind a computer, but this time working on Sunday advertising supplements for the likes of Sears and Linens ‘N Things at the downtown advertising firm of Ambrosi. I would wear a cardigan in the chilly offices, take an early lunch and lie in the summer sun in the grassy area across the street from the Sears Tower. I would sit through muti-hour phone conferences about which way some towels should be folded in the upcoming photo shoot and I would stare out the window and wonder what it would be like if we were talking about something interesting. I wondered how people could live like this. Work so gruel-less that they had to invent carpal tunnel syndrome to have something to complain about.
How did our society willingly, collectively, give up summer? We were raised on summer from childhood, they organized our academic lives around it because they knew that brains aren’t meant to work in summer. So who’s brilliant idea was it to have people work indoors, year round upon graduation? And you’re supposed to keep that up until retirement? Don’t give me that vacation bullshit. Two weeks? Fuck you. And don’t act like “casual Fridays” is supposed to substitute for ice cream and mosquito bites.
Give me sunburn and sand in your shoes. Give me hot dogs and Solo® cups. Give me short skirts and sunglasses and it’s too hot to fuck but let’s try anyway. Give me two-stroke smoke and winding roads. Give me petanque. Give me Slurpees®. Give me summer.
What?
Yes. Summer vacation. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve still been working my ass off at the bar, but this summer has been the first time in years that I’ve had summer days to myself. The past two years I’ve busied myself with internships, and the years before those I’ve been stuck in either a windowless auction house, a windowed auction house (perhaps worse to see summer passing you by), or an over air-conditioned downtown office building.
This lack of the summer part of summers came as a shock to me when I entered the square world. My father always used to tell me, “you don’t know what freedom is until it’s taken away from you.” He wasn’t waxing patriotic, he was referring to prison, and that’s what my first summer spent working entirely indoors felt like. “You don’t know what summer is until it’s taken away from you.”
Now, I imagine that most adult-types can count the end of their academic life and the beginning of their work life as the point where they made the transition from outdoor summers to indoor summers, but I had a peculiar string of careers in my early 20s. After dropping out of school after my freshman year, I helped run my family’s mega-jumbo laundrymat in Chicago’s Little Village. I learned nothing about business, picked up not a lick of Spanish and made my own hours, which often meant driving drunk to the place after the bars closed to do the books and then heading out to play roulette in Elgin. Point is, I was untethered, I spent my days working on my punk rock record label / publishing “empire” and generally did whatever I wanted. Summers were for touring with your band, drinking, making out, and having a good time. Actually, at that point in my life, that’s what I did in most seasons.
Anyhow, my next job also leant itself to summer revelry, working as a bartender at the Fireside Bowl. Now I was doing double duty, see? I was working at the laundrymat, and at the bar. Woah. A regular workhorse. Now, in fairness, I shouldn’t put my work ethic down too much, because, honestly, I have always been prone to working like a maniac, but the catch is that I will work furiously on what I want to work on, and that was the case for my next endeavor, a place where I had some of the best summers of my life, Jinx café.
As of next week, ten years will have passed since Jinx opened its doors, but a lot of the fun came in the months before. Those who knew my crazed, grumpy, occasionally hysterical self during that time would likely offer a single syllable in response to hearing me speak fondly of that period, “ha!” My partner, Michelle, and I worked 17 hours a day trying to whip 1926 W. Divison into shape. Sawing, hammering, welding, cursing, crying, and drinking. We kept the front door open for light and air and for the occasional “what’s going on here,” from the neighbors.
We drank cheap beer with friends who came to help and sat outside on the stoop. I spent at least two days getting drunk and going at the exterior with a propane torch and a scraper before deciding, “fuck it, I’m just painting over this shit.” I remember whipping said torch across a rainy, vacant Division Street in a blind rage about something or other. I was so disappointed when it didn’t explode. I believe it had to do with having potentially destroyed my 1964 Oldsmobile’s engine while trying to drive through a flooded viaduct that I would never have been driving through if the Home Depot closest to me wasn’t out of the black Astroturf I had to have – that day, massive flooding or not.
But anyhow, after a summer of, “we’re opening next week… no, next week… no, next week,” we finally opened the first week of September. The place was a hit. We loved our customers, and they loved us. My seeming lack of desire to actually make money made us one of the coolest cafes ever. We didn’t pay our employees well, but we certainly didn’t work them very hard either. We encouraged drinking while on duty, which led to hilarity and the occasional sliced finger.
Fall was romantic there, feeling the weather change after a long, hot, hard summer. Girls in sweaters. Flirtations. Indiscretions. Winter was cozy: people trudging through the snow to get to the place, peeling off their layers when they got inside. It was perpetually steamy inside. The windows were always fogged up.
But then came Chicago’s notoriously short spring followed by, yes, summer. I had taken to riding a 1964 Vespa (what’s with me and that year?). I wore vintage short sleeve button down shirts, polyester slacks, and ugly Red Wing shoes (when you’re on your feet 14 hours a day, you make some sacrifices). I rode my lanky self around on my little red scooter (or “moped,” as Jinx staffer Andy Moran would call it just to annoy me) with a pair of yellow-tinted goggles on my head. I would roll up and park it on the sidewalk outside, and would get excited when other scooter folks would assemble there. Soon, Michelle purchased a 1970s Honda 550 Four, and the whole place was lousy with two-wheeled motorized vehicle enthusiasts.
On Saturdays and Sundays, I would typically show up at 11:15 or 11:30 (we were supposed to open at 11). The front gate would still be locked, and my employees would be sitting outside on the stoop, waiting for me, along with several patient customers. I’d slide back the big, iron gate and the whole lot of us would wander into the dark coffee shop. Someone would be sliding the gates back from the front windows as the regulars staked out their usual places and I got the coffee brewing. Occasionally, we’d find one or more of the previous evening’s employees still there, passed out on the couch by the pinball machine and the jukebox. I’d grab some money from the till and walk down to D&D to buy some champagne so we could sit outside and drink mimosas. Andy invented a brilliant game one night called, “drink until we can’t see our customers” which didn’t involve drinking yourself blind, rather building a wall out of our empty beer cans on the front counter until we, literally, could not see our customers.
Our mostly male staff would ogle the never-ending stream of gorgeous young women who came through our door. The summer heat made for fantastic states of undress, and we relished the opportunity to wait on these girls hand and foot, and make plans to get drinks later, and then maybe to come back to Jinx late at night to play strip international military aircraft identification (the only deck of cards we had).
I remember nights of late night scooter rides with girls pressed up against me. To the Green Mill. To Finkl Steel. To my horrendously messy apartment which was often without electricity because I forgot to pay the bill.
I was a lush and a playboy and it was summer.
So a few years later when I’d gotten out of the café racket, in and out of a venture into the dying world of video rental, and remembered that I had some skill as a graphic designer, I ended up working at an auction house called Wright. I was 27 years old, and it was for all practical purposes, my first “real” job. I started in April and I loved it. I worked around 60-80 hours a week on average. I treated it as I did every other entrepreneurial venture I’d engaged in, with passion. All consuming passion which destroys relationships and leads you to drink too much.
I would stare out the window of the gallery, located in the West Loop, home to a few art galleries and a whole lot of meatpacking, and watch the summer go by. The white-clad meatpackers would take smoke breaks outside and I would contemplate taking up the habit. Friday nights would bring well-dressed men and women to the area, they would stand outside, schmoozing and laughing, and I would watch them with envy as I sat behind a gargantuan LaCie monitor Photoshopping a missing leg onto a sofa (“it’ll be fixed by preview,” my boss would say.)
A couple years later my summer would be spent, again behind a computer, but this time working on Sunday advertising supplements for the likes of Sears and Linens ‘N Things at the downtown advertising firm of Ambrosi. I would wear a cardigan in the chilly offices, take an early lunch and lie in the summer sun in the grassy area across the street from the Sears Tower. I would sit through muti-hour phone conferences about which way some towels should be folded in the upcoming photo shoot and I would stare out the window and wonder what it would be like if we were talking about something interesting. I wondered how people could live like this. Work so gruel-less that they had to invent carpal tunnel syndrome to have something to complain about.
How did our society willingly, collectively, give up summer? We were raised on summer from childhood, they organized our academic lives around it because they knew that brains aren’t meant to work in summer. So who’s brilliant idea was it to have people work indoors, year round upon graduation? And you’re supposed to keep that up until retirement? Don’t give me that vacation bullshit. Two weeks? Fuck you. And don’t act like “casual Fridays” is supposed to substitute for ice cream and mosquito bites.
Give me sunburn and sand in your shoes. Give me hot dogs and Solo® cups. Give me short skirts and sunglasses and it’s too hot to fuck but let’s try anyway. Give me two-stroke smoke and winding roads. Give me petanque. Give me Slurpees®. Give me summer.
Gemini
It is totally like me to simultaneously feel more excited about life than I ever have, and depressed.
-Jason
--
sent wirelessly via blackberry
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Friday, July 13, 2007
Friday, July 6, 2007
You're like a cyclone
So my attempt to see the hot dog eating championship at coney island was foiled by time mismanagement. Still, my pals Ky, Holiday, Juhi, and myself had a grand time of multiple rides on the Cyclone and wonder wheel and stuffing ourselves with delightfully unhealthy food.
After I woke from a coma-like sleep (I rode in on the train directly from pne of the busiest nights ever at the bar, with no time for sleep), Ky and I took in the fireworks on the Brooklyn rooftop of some Maxim folks. Eerie and delightful. After that we drank lots o booze and played some guitar hero in someone's apartment where this obnoxious girl was excitedly singing every word of every song of the band blaring on the stereo... Her own band. I thought to myself, "Pro Tools works wonders."
Most of the next day was spent pretending I was Ky's roomate. He worked away at his computer while I read Rhona Jaffe's The Best of Everything lying on the couch. Good book this far, sort of a 1950s Sex in the City.
After a late lunch and shoe shopping with Juhi (me, not her), Ky and I headed into Manhattan and began downing whiskey at a bar called Von. Eventually, the alluring and mysterious Ryan Thomas joined us. She is intimidating and stimulating to talk to about art and architecture. Also, she has the most striking nose of all time. I want to kiss it.
Eventually we reconvened with Juhi at Freeman's and had some killer cocktails that pushed me over the edge. All I remember is crowning Ryan the new Camille Paglia as I feasted on trout, hearts of palm, and other delights. She wasn't so taken with the title.
-Jason
--
sent wirelessly via blackberry
After I woke from a coma-like sleep (I rode in on the train directly from pne of the busiest nights ever at the bar, with no time for sleep), Ky and I took in the fireworks on the Brooklyn rooftop of some Maxim folks. Eerie and delightful. After that we drank lots o booze and played some guitar hero in someone's apartment where this obnoxious girl was excitedly singing every word of every song of the band blaring on the stereo... Her own band. I thought to myself, "Pro Tools works wonders."
Most of the next day was spent pretending I was Ky's roomate. He worked away at his computer while I read Rhona Jaffe's The Best of Everything lying on the couch. Good book this far, sort of a 1950s Sex in the City.
After a late lunch and shoe shopping with Juhi (me, not her), Ky and I headed into Manhattan and began downing whiskey at a bar called Von. Eventually, the alluring and mysterious Ryan Thomas joined us. She is intimidating and stimulating to talk to about art and architecture. Also, she has the most striking nose of all time. I want to kiss it.
Eventually we reconvened with Juhi at Freeman's and had some killer cocktails that pushed me over the edge. All I remember is crowning Ryan the new Camille Paglia as I feasted on trout, hearts of palm, and other delights. She wasn't so taken with the title.
-Jason
--
sent wirelessly via blackberry
Saturday, June 9, 2007
D.F. / D.C.
Whew. Back from Mexico City. It was a grand time, friends old and new. The trip nearly ended before it began when I did a flying body flop off some playground ride just off the Zocalo. It's more than a week later, my ass still looks like a plum, but in general, I'm okay.
Aside from the natural and alcohol induced high of a lucha libre match, the highligt of the trip was a Sunday floating down the canals of Xochimilco, drinking bottles of Victoria, eating corn, tacos, or whatever was being offered by the myriad vendors who steered their vessels next to ours. Mariachis, xylophone players, islands of decrepit dolls. Good times.
Back in D.C., however, I'm dizzy, nauseated, and have been able to little else but sleep and tear through Fletch novels. Next time, I think I'll take the safe route and skip the ice.
Oh wait. One other thing I've managed to do is to put some serious legwork into finding the perfect seersucker suit. The guy from J. Press made an offhand remark suggesting that I cut my hair, the Bolivian lady at Burberry offred me a job, even though I didn't like their pleated model. In the end, I think I'll be going with a Brooks Brothers model sold by a kind gentleman who says 'seersucker' with a super sloppy slur.
-Jason
--
sent wirelessly via blackberry
Aside from the natural and alcohol induced high of a lucha libre match, the highligt of the trip was a Sunday floating down the canals of Xochimilco, drinking bottles of Victoria, eating corn, tacos, or whatever was being offered by the myriad vendors who steered their vessels next to ours. Mariachis, xylophone players, islands of decrepit dolls. Good times.
Back in D.C., however, I'm dizzy, nauseated, and have been able to little else but sleep and tear through Fletch novels. Next time, I think I'll take the safe route and skip the ice.
Oh wait. One other thing I've managed to do is to put some serious legwork into finding the perfect seersucker suit. The guy from J. Press made an offhand remark suggesting that I cut my hair, the Bolivian lady at Burberry offred me a job, even though I didn't like their pleated model. In the end, I think I'll be going with a Brooks Brothers model sold by a kind gentleman who says 'seersucker' with a super sloppy slur.
-Jason
--
sent wirelessly via blackberry
Monday, May 7, 2007
Oh, deer
There was a deer in my high-fenced, fully enclosed backyard today.
-Jason
--
sent wirelessly via blackberry
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Friday, April 20, 2007
Crudos
There's an age old bit about writing and drinking. But for years I've noticed that I have a different twist on the experience. I find that I'm at my best when I'm hungover. I can only attribute this to a dulling down of brain activity. That is: my brain and body are so beat up that it takes all of my energy to achieve the task at hand- and that has to be only one task at a time, rather than my usual frenetic, thoughts pulling in every direction at once method of operation.
Hangovers are my ADD medicine.
Hangovers are my ADD medicine.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Saturday, April 7, 2007
The good n plenty
2 parts pernod
1 part chambord
Splash of triple sec
Splash of sour mix
1 part chambord
Splash of triple sec
Splash of sour mix
Enjoy!
-Jason
--
sent wirelessly via blackberry
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Monday, April 2, 2007
In which three guys from Chicago go to Sub-Saharan Africa
Here a little clip from the film I've been working on...
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Friday, March 30, 2007
Estoy crudo
Oy, so hungover. Dinner and drinks with friends, DJed and got into a fight, went to a lucha libre party, and ended up dragging my record box on wheels through some sketchy neighborhoods at god knows what hour.
And I owe my roommates a bag of chips.
-Jason
--
sent wirelessly via blackberry
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Scrapple
I am slow today because I just loaded up on scrapple and eggs an my favorite DC diner, the Florida Ave Grill.
To the uninitiated, scrapple is a breakfast meat that is crispy on the outside, and has the consistency of hot, wet construction paper on the inside. It is salty as all get out to mask whatever horrific animal parts it is made of. If you should encounter it in the grocery store, after noticing the it is dark grey BEFORE it's cooked, just walk away. Leave the cooking of scrapple to the professionals so you never have to read the ingredients.
That said, the stuff is so good.
I was first introduced to scrapple in Jacksonville, Florida. I was there with my girlfriend at the time, visiting her grandfather who is the guy who introduced her to the stuff.
"So is this a Jersey thing?" I asked, as that was his home before he retired to the sunshine state.
"I grew up with it, but I think it's a southern thing."
In all my encounters with southern food, I'd never come across scrapple. I asked my Kentuckian mother, and she'd never heard of it. In fact, in the years that followed, the only people I met who knew of it were East coasters who tried to blame scrapple on the south!
Turns out it is yet another great thing that came out of Pennsylvania!
Man, I miss that girl.
-Jason
--
sent wirelessly via blackberry
To the uninitiated, scrapple is a breakfast meat that is crispy on the outside, and has the consistency of hot, wet construction paper on the inside. It is salty as all get out to mask whatever horrific animal parts it is made of. If you should encounter it in the grocery store, after noticing the it is dark grey BEFORE it's cooked, just walk away. Leave the cooking of scrapple to the professionals so you never have to read the ingredients.
That said, the stuff is so good.
I was first introduced to scrapple in Jacksonville, Florida. I was there with my girlfriend at the time, visiting her grandfather who is the guy who introduced her to the stuff.
"So is this a Jersey thing?" I asked, as that was his home before he retired to the sunshine state.
"I grew up with it, but I think it's a southern thing."
In all my encounters with southern food, I'd never come across scrapple. I asked my Kentuckian mother, and she'd never heard of it. In fact, in the years that followed, the only people I met who knew of it were East coasters who tried to blame scrapple on the south!
Turns out it is yet another great thing that came out of Pennsylvania!
Man, I miss that girl.
-Jason
--
sent wirelessly via blackberry
Friday, March 23, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
JTS Brown
Years ago we were obsessed with The Hustler. In high school we hung out in pool halls because they were among the few places teenagers could actually congrgate. I remember that Don Shrader and I shared an affinity for quoting Eddie Felson. Our favorite line:
"I don't rattle, kid. Just for that I'll beat you straight."
But the thing that really struck us was all the talk of this "JTS Brown."
"JTS Brown, no ice, no glass."
What was this mysterious liquor? When we turned 21, we tried ordering it at every bar we went to and people looked at us like we were crazy.
We concluded that it was made up for the film.
Flash forward to 2006 when I started working at a fine establishment in Washington, DC called Bourbon. My first day there I'm examining the 100+ bourbons available, and what do I see?
Too bad it tastes like shit.
-Jason
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sent wirelessly via blackberry
Starting fresh
So I've decided to start a new blog. Not that I ever really had an old blog. I mean, I did blog for Chicago/DC/Tokyo Metroblogging for a while there, and I did maintain (eep!) a Livejournal for a bit. But you see, I just got a Blackberry Pearl, and it has changed my life. When I heard you could blog with just one thumb, I got all inspired to try it out.
Stay tuned for nonsensical, typo-laden ramblings as I stand in line for coffee or try to make it through work shifts....
Stay tuned for nonsensical, typo-laden ramblings as I stand in line for coffee or try to make it through work shifts....
Monday, March 19, 2007
Monday, January 8, 2007
Out of Africa
A day or so after our return from Africa, Jim Milak, G. Ryan Faith and I dropped by the WTTW studios to say hi to Phil Ponce and talk about the filming of "Christmas in Darfur?"
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