the healing power of laughter

as i mentioned yesterday, i've basically been residing under a rock with a man cold. probably everyone has already seen these videos, but i'm posting them anyway. i can attest to the healing power of laughter after watching these. i'll take any remedy i can get.

first - sarah silverman's confession to jimmy kimmel that she's fucking matt damon:



then - kimmel's revenge. turns out he's fucking ben affleck. ben's best acting job in years...

sick and tired of being sick and tired

for the past two weeks i've felt like a cast member in one of george romero's zombie flicks. not one of those bullshit fast zombies you find in more recent stabs at the genre. (i still can't believe the remake of romero's dawn of the dead pushed fast zombies on us.) no, whatever the hell knocked me out left me listless and worthless. i was a tried and true slow-ass zombie who more than once wished some hero would deliver me a fatal head shot and cue the closing credits.

in the beginning of what i often felt was my end, my wife and i sort of laughed it off. she even posted a video clip to poke some fun. incidentally (for those of you who don't enjoy zombie flicks and never find yourself, i don't know, daydreaming about being perched in your attic window with a high powered rifle, eating tuna straight from a can, and staving off a charge of walking dead with bullets to the brain), the british actor in that clip, ed frost, plays the hysterical sidekick in shaun of the dead -- a fantastic zombie spoof that happens to remain true to the slow zombie theme.

as time passed and one week of illness gave way to a second, it became a real drag. suddenly i was half-assing every aspect of my life -- work, parenting, being a husband. to say i half-assed blogging would be an understatement. i straight up bailed on this. not a critical component of my life though, so no regrets. i started thinking about a post from last year in which i debated my ability to care for my sick spouse, and wondered if the same thoughts might be going through wifey's head. she's extremely nurturing and grounded, so i doubt it. if she did though, i would not blame her.

it appears that i am on the mend now, though i shiver superstitiously just typing such a bold statement. a week ago i thought i was better then found myself on the floor with muscle aches and confusion over the whereabouts of the truck that ran me over. at least i am on antibiotics now with a round of steroids waiting in the wings in case i need the reinforcements. the doctor told me last week i might have a case of walking pneumonia. good times..

i have a big guys' weekend coming up, so i'm determined to be healthy. mommy and cole are headed to FLA for a long weekend with family and to attend a wedding for one of her old friends. that means the jackal and i are going to be on the loose, infecting the nation's capital with our good old smarmy ways. fast zombies won't have shit on us.

so, got any plans after the match?

not the highest quality video, to be sure, but the amy winehouse celebration conveys well...

jocking brady, again

i think my criticism of tom brady came off as too bitter yesterday so i figured i'd waste more virtual space with some sort of follow-up piece. i caught an article by jemele hill that brought me back to this topic. it was an interesting take on what i broached yesterday and intriguing to hear a woman's perspective. the fact that she's a sports journalist in a field dominated by men with yellow armpits, beef jerky breath, and fantasies of channeling hunter s. thompson is not lost on me.

so, brady...clearly i don't know the cat, so i can't give any real account as to the kind of guy he is. for all i know, he could be a contagious person who you can't get enough of. as a sports fan, i am tired of him for the same reason people tired of aikman and the dallas cowboys in the 90s -- they win so much that it becomes a bore to watch, but i know that's sort of shallow. as a father, i'm just not so impressed by him due to the fact that he gets a pass for having no relationship with his kid just because he can read a defense or loft air balls to randy moss. sure, on some levels i envy the level of success and accomplishment the guy has attained. who wouldn't? but when i soak up my kids and drizzle occasional tears of joy over the fact that they are in my life, i feel like maybe the guy is short-changing himself.

my father evaporated from my life when i was around 10 years old. he hasn't a clue as to where i am or what's happening with me. it's part of my fabric, and at this stage i would not alter that back story even slightly. to do so would be to redefine who i am, to alter the hue and fit of my own skin. no thanks...the skin fits just fine and i can't afford an exorbitant shrink bill now that i have college funds to build up. still, now that i have kids, i can't even begin to fathom some point in my life where i would not know a single thing about either of my kids. it's incomprehensible, yet it happens.

the good thing is that we're all humans and with that comes hope. sometimes we get the chance to alter the course of time and space to make things right. i suspect tom brady will do that somewhere down the line.

in the meantime, let's gooooooooooo giaaaaants!!!!

confessions of a convalescent mind

greetings from mount percocet. that's where i've spent the last 4 days, shirking responsibility for my words and actions. hernia surgery turned out to be a bigger bitch than i expected, but i think i'm almost out of the woods in terms of recovery. in terms of fogged mind, however, one foot remains in the woods, which is not so bad.

compared to how i usually spend this very same weekend, or for at least the past five years, the situation could not have been more different. usually this weekend i'm up to my waist in fresh utah powder, an ear-to-ear grin on my wind-burned face, as i bomb snowbird's mineral basin. the closest i've gotten to that passion is watching the winter x games on espn. i'm hitting mount snow in vermont with some friends in 6 weeks just to get some turns in and to validate my toleration of yet another winter. it should be a good test for my bionic groin.

in the meantime, here are a few blurred snippets of what i can remember from the experience...

violation - i woke up from surgery to discover that my pubes had been shaved. i guess i should have figured this would happen since i knew they'd be operating in my downtown area, but it still threw me off when i first noticed it. then i got to thinking - that has to fall on the list of world's worst jobs, right? think about if you punched a clock each day (maybe you even got great 401k benefits for it) and spent your day shaving pubes. someone's gotta do it...

threat of violation (unrealized, thank god) - my mother-in-law came to town this weekend to see the baby and to assist with managing the house while was out of commission. potential gross-out alert...the nurses told me that percocet and other pain killing narcotics can cause constipation. as someone who carries around a gigantic bag of bathroom issues on his back, this is the last thing i needed to hear. that first night, high as hell, i remember sharing this with wifey and her mom. it was probably at some inappropriate time. in fact, i am sure it was during dinner. well, my mother-in-law is a nurse, so she already knew this and suggested to my wife, right in front of me, that we might want to give him an enema tomorrow. this did not happen in the end...whew!

life imitating what? - wifey equipped me with a couple of trashy magazines, people and us, which i eventually consumed in small doses. what deep words of wisdom did a glean? let's see. oh, trista lost 30 pounds in 5 months after giving birth and feels sexy again. thank jesus because i was losing so much fucking sleep over this. i guess the mags are running out of new ways to rephrase the same concept of brittney being fucked up, so now they're enticing us with exclusives on irrelevant reality television stars losing pregnancy weight. could there be any more delicious news than this?

bunch of brady - i totally bought into the superbowl hype machine. i'm embarrassed to admit how much of this recycled and sensationalized content i have absorbed via the internet and several sports channels the past few days. the following is going to sound self-righteous, but i don't care. this hit me when i was putting the jackal to bed...brushing errant strands of hair from his forehead, planting kisses on him, and telling him i love him so much. i am sick of tom brady and how the media jocks him and the patriots. aside from the fact that they have won enough and that their bit is tired, i suppose i have a bit of an issue with that guy and perhaps an even deeper issue with the machine that promotes him as this golden boy. for me it boils down to his relationship, or lack thereof, with his son. (in case you live under a rock, brady left bridget moynihan to be with gisele bundchen. moynihan had a baby boy, brady's, not too long after, and she's raising the kid on her own...) at the end of the day, no matter how many super bowl rings he rocks, no matter how many quarterback records he holds, and no matter how often he makes sweet country love to gisele, he still has nada with his estranged baby boy. for someone with what would seem like an overflowing cup, it looks kind of empty to me. but don't expect that side of his story to get much ink. the other day, watching a press conference with him, i wondered if any reporter in the room would get the balls to broach the topic. i think i dozed off at some point, but i doubt anyone did.

house call - i think it was sometime saturday morning that my cell phone rang, and the number did not register in my phone book. since i felt like a feather, i rolled the dice and answered. surprisingly i heard my psychologist on the other end of the line. (back story: he and i had played some phone tag over the previous few weeks of the new year in an attempt to arrange a sit-down. basically i want a mental/emotional check-up before committing to certain paths this year and had yet to nail down a date.) here's how it went:

hello?

RG, it's doctor lincoln.

hey there.

how are you?

i'm high on percocet. you?

oh, why is that? (voice smacks of real concern)

i had surgery the other day. nothing to worry about.

good, because i've heard some stories.

i bet. (giggle...almost lose control)

yeah, so be careful with that.

no problem. i don't really like it. (lying...almost giggle again)

that's good. (seeing through the lie) so when can we get together?

hernia of the brain

tomorrow i have hernia repair surgery. today i am being administered a medical exam by whatever lab company the life insurance company uses. whenever this lady shows up (the window of time leads me to believe she was a cable guy in her former life), i will dispense urine and blood and answer lots of questions related to my health. all of this adds up to a couple of things:

1 - due to drinking water like it's my job, i have pissed 12 times today and wonder if my urine, completely transparent, will register anything when it reaches the lab.

2 - an enormous hunger headache. two 12 hour periods of fasting within the span of two consecutive days has me listless, moody, and with throbbing head.

i think i'm also edging into delirium, if my noon meeting today is any indication. we were retained by a education noprofit to fill an executive director position. they signed the contract last week, and we planned the launch meeting for today. based on shreds of our conversation and the sound of her voice, i completely assumed the current executive director to be unattractive and decrepit. well when my colleague and i rolled into her office, she instantly became the object of another fleeting crush. she was a cougar, to be sure, but not hard on the eyes for a second. in any case, i had a hard time comprehending the first 5-10 minutes of our conversation and was almost tempted to say, "time out...can we just pause for a few minutes so i can get over the fact that you're hot?"

so basically dinner tonight will be the only meal i consume in a span of 36 hours. i hope i can get through the mealtime conversation without losing my mind.

blue duck tavern

It's probably fair to preface my first crack at a restaurant review by admitting that I went into the experience completely biased and giddy. As I have mentioned, the night in question, Saturday, was the first non-pregnant date night for me and my wife, so I don't believe anything could have spoiled it. We could have been gang fucked by flyblown wildebeests and still called the date a success. That said, I will try my best to be objective on the topic of Blue Duck Tavern.

My wife, whose blog will surely surpass mine in terms of substance and matter into which one might sink teeth, suggested that we do "he said, she said" reviews on the restaurant. Since I'm grazing these days for new material to compliment the banal diatribes on my so called life, I snapped up her proposal.

The usual suspects -- atmosphere, bar, food, service, and bathrooms -- will stand trial in this case.

Atmosphere

Sexy and rustic. Hard to imagine those two words used together to describe a venue, yes? Well somehow Blue Duck pulls it off, and nicely. The bar is sexy and modern while the dining room is warm and cozy. I know it sounds like opposite ends of the spectrum, but when you stroll from the bar to the dining room, the transition is seamless.

The only aesthetic that's sort of hard on the eyes is the uniform worn by servers and bartenders: over sized black suit with a dark t-shirt underneath. The Miami Vice vibe didn't fit, but I won't hold it against them.

Bar

I really dig hideout bars and lounges in hotels around town, and this is definitely one I plan to hit again and again. As the hostess led us the bar, I kicked myself for taking this long to try the place out, and this was before I even sipped a drink or tasted a bite. The bartender greeted us with a warm smile and made one of the most balanced martinis I've had in a long time. She also recommended some great cheeses, the names of which completely escape me, and paired a nice Steele Chardonnay Cuvee to compliment them.

Typically my wife and I like to have dinner at the bar of a great restaurant. Wonderful service is a fleeting glance away since the bartender is right there, and you never have the feeling that you're being hurried. You also can order food at random and not in the standard starter, entree, dessert format. Not to mention, if you go enough times or make good conversation with a bartender, you're more than likely to catch a free drink. It never hurts to know a handful of bartenders around town. In this case, however, we decided to try the dining room so we could get the full experience. But make no mistake, we'll be back at that bar sooner than later.

Food

By the time we were seated at a table, I was buzzed and hungry. In my experience, too much sauce before dinner can spoil the whole affair and leave you stuffing your face without even tasting the $30 entree you ordered. I was not that guy that evening. A quick perusal of the menu stirred butterflies in my stomach and sort of sobered me up anyway. It didn't take us too long to order:

Wifey order the New York Strip, which you could probably cut with a plastic spoon. Everything about it had me dancing in my chair. Still, I think I ordered better by going with the braised barbecue beef "long rib." Honestly, I find myself thinking about it a few days later. The tender meat fell off the bone, and the barbecue sauce marinade found me chewing each bit slowly and deliberately. My wife tells me to slow down all the time, but it took the "long rib" to get me on board with that concept. So damn good.

We ordered finger sized steak fries and creamed spinach as well, but they were completely overshadowed by the red meat gems. Don't get me wrong -- the sides work and I recommend giving them their day in the sun. I will say that I could not suppress my immature perspective of the sexual nuances in the menu: beef "long rib" and finger sized fries? I know, grow up, right?

I can't address the dessert menu since we had no room for it. Maybe next time...

Service

Blue Duck also does breakfast. I learned this when the manager told me I was a no-show at 7:45 that morning. Apparently I didn't pay enough attention when dialing us in on Opentable. She told me not to worry and scored us a table at 8pm and was very graceful about everything.

As I mentioned, the bartender was friendly and owns her domain at the bar.

Our server was just okay. When my wife was kicking around a bottle in the $50 range, he made some comment, which was clearly audible to the other tables in our row, to the effect of "if you're thinking of a cheap bottle, I suggest..." On top of it, he looked to be in his mid-20s and swimming in his dad's cheap black suit. In other words, he was hard to take seriously, so we pretty much blew him off most of the night. Like I said, wildebeests...

Over all, the service didn't blow me away, but it won't keep me away either.

Bathrooms

Some people, myself included, look at bathrooms as multi-dimensional. In other words, they can be so much more than a place to relieve yourself and wash your hands. The graffiti on the wall in this bathroom reads: illicit activity encouraged. Enough said.

On our way home we decided to stop at Buck's Fishing & Camping, a few blocks from our house, for a Macallan 12 year. I so missed drinking Scotch with my wife. As we sipped our drinks and basked in the glow of a truly amazing food and wine buzz, we decided that Blue Duck has entered our top 10 and absolutely falls onto our short list of places to visit again.