25 Years

It was a mere quarter century ago - almost to this very moment - that the Remarkable Marcy and I were forever joined in holy matrimony. That's the happy couple above.

Actually, it was a civil service that day for reasons I will explain in a longer post some other time. But we had our union blessed in church for our 10th anniversary, so now we are wed in the eyes of the law and the Lord. Never hurts to cover all the bases.

It's been an enjoyable 25 years, not always easy, but never dull. I can honestly say I love her as much and have as much fun with her now as when we first met. Maybe even more.

Vote for Jason

Jason at Jason's BBQ Adventures has his own Food Network video in which he shares his recipe for stuffed jalapenos. Check it out and give it a good rating at the end and we might end up seeing it on Bobby Flay's show.

Well done!

Beer, Bourbon and BBQ

Earlier this week, when I first heard about the “Beer, Bourbon and BBQ” show, my gleeful reaction was, “They’ve finally come up with a show just for me!” It turns out that it was a show for me and what seemed like 100,000 others like me.

The show, at the 4-H building on the state fairgrounds in Timonium today (Saturday, 4/5/08) drew a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd of beer-swigging, bourbon-sipping, bbq-chomping humanity. Most of that humanity was male and in what seemed to me to be the 20-35-year-old range. I wasn’t surprised that it was mostly male and I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at how young the crowd was. For the $35 entry fee, you could get samples of beer and bourbon from the exhibitors, limited only by how much those exhibitors brought with them. The food at the show cost extra.

It took about 10 minutes of shuffling in line to get into the building, where after paying for entry you picked up a glass for sampling. It was by the door that I also saw the first of a few long lines of people waiting to get into the restrooms. This was the point at which I decided to forgo the beer and stick to bourbon.

I believe I hit most of the bourbon booths that still had samples available, and by the end of my day I had sampled five small-batch brands. Three of them I had had before – Bookers, Wild Turkey Rare Breed and Woodford Reserve. Two were new to me – Buffalo Trace and Evan Williams. I was very pleasantly surprised by the Evan Williams, which I found to be very smooth and not too sweet. The Buffalo Trace, a brand I had gotten good reviews about from a co-worker but have found hard to find, was a little too sweet for me. The others, all of which are among my favorites, didn’t disappoint.

In between the bourbon samples, I wormed my way through the crowd. In addition to the food and beverage booths, there were other exhibitors pushing salsas, spices, t-shirts, brand new windows and other odds and ends. The only booth I saw with no action whatsoever was for the National Guard. Almost out of pity, I stopped to talk to them. They said things tend to pick up for them after people drink for a while, once they start to become less inhibited, one of the guardsmen said. I asked if guys try to enlist their drunk buddies as practical jokes. They explained that they’re not allowed to actually enlist people at the event, but if a name winds up on their list, they do indeed follow up a few days later with a phone call.

After an hour and a half at this four-hour event, I started to see the first signs of trouble, as a few people were starting to stagger. I had spaced out my five shots, wolfed down a delicious pulled-pork sandwich from Kloby’s and was feeling like I’d gotten out of the event what I’d wanted. Being smart enough to know better than to drive myself, I phoned my wife, who was my pre-appointed designated driver, and she came and picked me up.

Am I glad I went? Yeah, I think so. If I hadn’t, I would have just moped about not going. Would I go back? I don’t know that I would. It’s one of those things that would be a lot of fun for someone in their 20s (21 and up, of course) and 30s – and there were plenty of them there. But for an old fogey like me, I think I’d prefer to line ‘em up on the bar with an intimate gathering of friends or loved ones.

Fick

When I was in the fourth grade I created a cartoon character named Fick. Fick was a little boy with a big nose that had three nostrils. What was amazing about Fick (if the big nose and three nostrils weren't enough) was that he could blow enough air out his nose that he could fly. He discovered this one day after a sneeze. Before then, all the other kids used to make fun of him. But once he took wing (nose?), he was not only cool, he was something of a super hero.

Our youngest, MoJo, is now in the fourth grade and I recently shared Fick's story with her. Now she has picked up pen and has started to draw her own adventures of Fick. She came to work with me today and did the drawing posted here. You might have to click on it to enlarge it so you can read it. A very talented young one, she is.

Spring

It's officially spring today. For me, anyway. Today, my current hometown team, the woeful Orioles, play their first game at spring training. But today they're not woeful. Not yet anyway. No teams suck yet and everybody has a chance.

The other day on the radio I heard two baseball analysts saying the Cubs and Indians could be in the World Series this year. And they weren't kidding! If that happened, it could signal the end of the world, or at the very least lead to the end of my marriage (Marcy is a cradle-Clevelander and I've been a Cubs fan since the mid-1960s).

On this day, it's not far-fetched to consider a Cubs-Indians series match up. Heck, you could even be optimistic about the chances of the Orioles on this day. No losses yet.

Hooray for baseball!

Five Easy Pieces

Erika at Tummy Treasure tagged me for a meme. She was working off two of her own, so I took the easier of the two - the "Five Little Bits Meme." So, here are five things about me, and five other bloggers I'm infecting with this thing.

1. I didn't know what a meme was. I had to look it up, which was a little humbling for someone whose job is steeped in multimedia and webby things. I wasn't sure if it was pronounced "me-me" (it isn't), "meem" (nope) or "mem" (yep). For those of you whom I've tagged who might find themselves in the same situation, your charge is to list five things about yourself, then "tag" five more bloggers by naming them in the post, then leaving a comment on their blogs to let them know they've been tagged. If they don't want to play, that's fine. No jail time, no tickets, no public humiliation. Just drop them from your Christmas card list next year.

2. I'm bald thanks to a Portuguese barber. I once had a full head of long, thick, brown hair. When I hit my mid-30s, it began to thin on top, but there was enough there that it was still serviceable. This was at a time when I worked in the Tribune Tower in downtown Chicago. Tucked away on an upper floor of the tower was a two-chair barber shop run by a Portuguese man named Alberto. Alberto charged only $8 per cut, but nobody really went to him for the haircut. His claim to fame was an electric massager he strapped onto his hand that he would run over your head, neck, shoulders and arms for about 10 minutes after the haircut. Once I discovered Alberto, I started booking appointments on a weekly basis. It was probably after the third consecutive week that the top of my head was cut so short that I officially and undeniably passed into the category of bald guy. It was quite a shock when he spun me around to look in the mirror. And I think it may have been more of a shock for the Remarkable Marcy when I got home. The shock was short-lived. The baldness, however, is still with me. We've been out of Chicago for 11 years now and of all the things that I miss, Alberto is still near the top of the list.

3. Some movies make me cry. But they're mostly sports movies. When those guys are running on the beach in Chariots of Fire, I'm verklempt. And when Kevin Costner has a catch with his dad in Field of Dreams, I sob like a baby.

4. I invented a natural lava lamp. It was a total accident, but very cool. Chill some diet Sprite or 7-Up in the fridge. Take it out and pour it in a glass with no ice. Add some green seedless grapes. Wait a couple of minutes and voila!

5. I worked with a clown. My first job was at a TV studio in Columbus, Ohio, where I had the privilege of working with Flippo the Clown. Flippo was legendary in Columbus and anybody who lived in the city or went to Ohio State in the '50s, '60s and '70s spent afternoons watching his afternoon movie show. Flippo was like a Vaudeville comedian dressed in a clown suit and he hosted a studio audience and did wraparound segments for whatever movie happened to be on that afternoon. Nobody watched for the movie. In the late '70s, Flip was hired away by the QUBE cable system, an interactive cable experiment that was the world's first interactive anything. I was hired there following an internship and spent the first four years of my career there. One of my most enjoyable assignments was working on an interactive game show in which Flippo played the viewers' hand in card games with local celebs (it's a little hard to make that any less abstract in this amount of space. Perhaps a longer post at another time). In the name of research, we used to play cards all day, and Flippo - out of costume during this R&D stuff - was still spouting out the jokes. It's hard to believe I was getting paid (but not much) for that sort of work. Flippo, aka Bob Marvin, also led a jazz band and his band played at the reception at our wedding. Flippo died in June 2006. I can only imagine the fun they've had in Heaven since then.

Okay, now it's your turn. I'm tagging...

Chef JP at the Chef From Hell blog, whose recipes are in large part responsible for the weight I gained last year.

Natural Woman at Thinking Out Loud, who offers a great spin on life, family and technology.

Pete at My GPS Camera Phone, a great photo site which has recently undergone a redesign.

Olga, The Traveling Bra, my favorite travel blog because it makes me laugh.

My buddy Alan, author and animator at Adventures in Pond Scum.

Sorry for assigning you the work, but am looking forward to reading what you come up with.

My What?!!

Every now and then something will jump out of an innocent conversation and smack me up side the head like a baseball bat.

I just had one of those conversations.

Brother Dave was talking about the impending birth of his daughter, Emily's, and her husband, Dave's, first child. I wrote about this a few months back when the happy news first broke.

Anyway, tonight big bro referred to the incoming family addition as my "grand niece."

My what?!! Holy crap! I'm going to have a grand something! I've never been on this side of the grand thing. When did I get this old?

Ugh. I need a stiff drink to help me deal with this.