Thursday, April 30, 2026
Goals. I Have Them.
Speaking on My THINGS I LIKE List...
...guess what was on it:
Back in 2014 I extolled the many virtue of the delicious double (as well as revealed the origins of my nickname, Swine Boy! 🤗)
They definitely should've made my Brooklyn@25 series a coupla years ago. I don't ever wanna be an "only in New York kids, only in New York!" guy but I feel like I'll probably never have one again. Man I miss those things.
Nine Years Later On...
...and I have no idea if I was trying to solve a riddle or trying to write a riddle.
Memory Lane, with Xmastime
I guess my iconic THINGS I LIKE list started 4 years ago today, which I added to every single day for an entire year. I haven't really looked at it since, I have no idea what I'll ever do with it OH HEY MAYBE A PODCAST!!! zzzzzzzzzzzz but I'm glad I did it and don't worry I'm sure it'll make me a billion dollars eventually. 🕺
Xmastime's Dictionary
Pronunciation: /ˈbɑrn əˌɡɛn ˈkrɪstʃən/
Definition: A Republican politician who pathetically attempts to burnish his rather threadbare “good ol’ boy” or “farm boy” bona fides in the months leading up to an election.
Usage note: Often used satirically to suggest a sudden, conveniently timed rediscovery of rural identity.
Example: “Three weeks before the primary, he showed up in overalls at a county fair—full barn-again Christian mode.”
Thank You George Martin
The annoyingly-much-too-handsome George Martin delivers beautifully succinct & definitive insights on the making of Yesterday and Eleanor Ribgy (though I wish he'd spent more time on Elanor Rigby!!! 😜🤗❤️🇬🇧).
Goals. I Have Them.
Lovely Jubbly, Gimme the Bubbly!
Every few years, the cocktail pendulum swings from minimalism to maximalism and back again. We’re currently in a maximalism era, but even with the most elaborate, innovative methods a bartender can employ making their drinks, those cocktails still look like, well, liquid. So, many turn to the cocktail’s garnish to go wild. Sometimes, they go a little too wild. During one particular recent bar visit, my cocktail arrived with its own separate bowl of semifreddo, herbs, and various gelées; it took the server a full minute to instruct me on the order in which to sip and bite different elements.WELL well well, WHO do we all know and love that's the Godfather of this movement???? 🤗😜🤣🇬🇧
RIP David Allen Coe
I've only ever known one David Allen Coe song - hell, I didn't know he wrote Take This Job and Shove It until today - but when I think back to the turn of the century & the endless autumn afternoons Op & I spent at The Village Idiot in perpetual scramble for chicks & grievances and usually failing at both there's only one song in my head when my eyes close & I smile at the memory and that song is a David Allen Coe song.
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Xmastime Demands Food Justice!
YES I am moments away from throwing my own Gilmore girls intervention but one more thing about them with food: the meat-to-bun ratio at Luke's Diner isn't bad it's fucking criminal and Luke deserves to have his ears boxed by a fucking cartoon kangaroo for this bullshit; I mean ffs is that motherfucker a bun top or a hat? 😡😡😡😡
15 Years Already???!!?!?!?
(originally posted in real time during the wedding)
Today is the 15-year anniversary of The
Royal Wedding, ie the single greatest day of my pathetic life, so of
course I'm watching the rerun on TLC right now. Somewhere out there my
high school football coach is reading this, shaking his head "I knew
it."
Since I'm feeling generous with you people, here's some Xmastime gems from that day (bold denotes post title if applicable):
__________________________________________________________
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On one hand, I'm miffed he's stealing my future wife. On the other, his
getting married takes him off the market, therein removing my
competition and returning me to my rightful place as The World's Most
Eligible Bachelor. Thanks, King Dickhead!
- I look
forward to the first time someone points out to me that I wasn't invited
to the Royal Wedding, just so I can put on a self-knowing smile and
look wistfully off into the distance before saying "oh, friend...wasn't
I?" and then walk away chuckling to myself.
- Bride's Headlights On When She Gets Out of the Car At Westminster Abbey?
- Someone Cutting Onions in Here?
I admit it - the big overhead shot of her at the end of her walk down the aisle got me a little bit. A little too How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria, wasn't it? HEY - I'M NOT A ROBOT!!!
- Ill be honest: I'll be disappointed if "going into that most cherished, unaccessible part of Westminster Abbey to sign the wedding registry" is not a euphemism. Can't they come out with their clothes disheveled? Camon. Hell, I might use it myself; it's much classier than when I say I'm about to "polish off a tube of Pringles, heh heh heh."
- England flawlessly pulls off the Wedding of the Century while we're egging on a guy with the worst comb-over in the world to careen around the world "wondering" if our President is American or smart enough to go to college without white charity. Of course.
- Sooooo...Who's Gonna Tell Him?
- Another person smarter than me wants to point out the silliness of our coverage of the Royal Wedding:
As you read this, the big three morning shows -- "Good Morning America," "Today" and "The CBS Morning News" -- are continuing to re-hash, analyze and replay the ceremony on tape while going live to various correspondents and experts in England and elsewhere. The morning shows usually run two hours -- more if an affiliate takes their built-in spillover, but for the sake of argument let's just say they did two hours' worth, and add that to the overnight coverage, which ran four hours, bringing the total to six. And then let's ask ourselves this question: When's the last time the top guns of the American electronic media covered an event, any event, for six hours straight without any significant interruption, at any hour of the day or night?I'd say the answer to that is several days up to and including two days ago, when the media shut down to follow Donald Trump around and report and analyze and re-report and re-analyze everything that came out of his mouth, which was probably only until Charlie Sheen decided to start talking again anyway. Covering the Royal Wedding makes our media look like The Algonquin Round Table compared to how it usually looks.
Hey, I have so few victories in this life, I gotta savor the flavor when I get one, playahs.
Anyway, I'm glad I saw it happen live. All the incredible stories of Americans over there, the camaraderie et al on the streets of London, make me feel like I was a small part of it, even if only thousands of miles away via television.
More importantly, there is a generational touchstone to such an event that will be remembered for years and years to come - I remember getting up at 4am to watch Charles and Diana's wedding, and here I am watching his son do the same thirty years later, at what turns out to be almost exactly the same age as my own father was (him that day 38 years, 7 months, and 17 days, me today at 38 years, 9 months, and 15 days.) Throw in the world's collective memory of "I watched this boy grow up, from being born to his mother's funeral and now this morning," and it's easy to get caught up in things. It's also why we'll probably pay attention to Harry's wedding more than we cared about Charles' brothers' weddings - when children lose their mother, their community always feels possessive and wants to help protect them. I've been there, maybe that's why I'm so connected to these boys; meanwhile, their community just happens to be most of the planet.
Of COURSE the whole thing is kind of silly in and of itself, and NO it's not going to change your life, but if one moment can encapsulate everything in this post then that's a pretty good moment, and moments like that can add up to make us happier than we'd otherwise be.
Most days are forgettable at best, willfully forgettable at worst. This was not one of them.
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My favorite h8rs are the guys that claim watching the wedding is stupid because it's people that will never know or give two shits about us, and
then put on their $200 "authentic!" Giants jersey to scream their heads
off for Eli Manning every week. Interesting.Also, isn't part of the fun secretly hoping that the second before the "I do", someone will freak out and not do it? Wouldn't it be good to at least have that to look forward to during the ceremony? Get that out of the way so quickly, and you're basically just sitting around in a suit listening to crappy songs that nobody really cares about.
Happiness is a Warm Gun
I don't know much about Jack Antonoff other than mumble mumble something about Taylor Swift? mumble and I wouldn’t say Happiness is a Warm Gun is an automatic go-to for me (although it easily clears my single-album White Album) but Antonoff does a really great breakdown of the song in just a few moments, which is a rare masterpiece of arrangement (more Bohemian Rhapsody than She Loves You ugh I hate when people say shit like that, even the tone ugh), so I thought I'd share with you people YOU'RE WELCOME, EARF!!
SIDE NOTE: what is it about heroin that makes it so easy to clearly & brilliantly describe in a song; I've never done heroin in my life & somehow after watching Antonoff talk about it I am 100% certain that doing heroin feels just like Happiness is a Warm Gun and, surprise surprise, The Velvet Underground's Heroin (sorry John Lennon I love you but Lou Reed wins this one 😬).
One More Hour
I've never really gotten into Sleater-Kinney but for some reason I was compelled to grab & buy Dig Me Out with my grubby paws at Uncle Buck’s in Oxford, MS when it came out in 1997 even though the only thing I knew about them was they'd had a song on a previous record with Joey Ramone in the title & the new one had a cover that ripped off The Kink Kontroversy.
Long story still long, the opener from the album is still one of my all-time favorite songs of the decade, so it felt pretty good...PRETTY, pretty, pretty good! when this popped up today so I thought I'd share it with you people YOU'RE WELCOME, EARF!