Hosive

as the magical fall descends, we will finally be able to travel as zoe has hit that critical three month mark. we passed on many a wedding and opportunity to travel in between her birth and this past weekend. up first, we have maryland on our mind.

again, here are spots that are not necessarily the best or whatever superlative…just places we go to regularly when we are in your town. here’s one we go to when the conditions are right….

this is the fancy restaurant at the country club that my in law’s are part of. they signed up because of the access to 2 golf courses on the premises but membership also comes with a certain amount of food credits to use either at the pub or here. since theresa’s parents are so busy, they occasionally have a lot of  credits to burn toward the end of the month and when they do, they send us. usually, we just go to the casual dining area but they must have had an unusual amount as the insisted on us going here. so we obliged them…..

i got the cream of crab soup and a lump crab cake sandwich….premium items…and you know that you can trust baltimorians with the crab….its part of their culture…

since theresa was pregnant with zoe, she skipped the shellfish and went with a somewhat healthier chicken club……wait?? pregnant?? when was this??

here are a few clues…..

…it was a long, long time ago….let’s just say we were not seated outside for this meal.

btw, the food was very, very tasty. send us whenever you need to, mom and dad!

maybe its because the tour is going to start here in the states in under two weeks. maybe because after listening to the new album for the better part of the year, its starting to make sense for me. maybe i’m delirious after a long, long stretch of preaching, ministering…and waking up at 4am to feed zoe. but i can hear the music….and the songs are about zoe. at least this one is…

here are the lyrics…they all apply…even the line about her tongue…..

“No Line On The Horizon”

I know a girl who’s like a sea
I watch her changing every day for me
Oh yeah, oh

One day she’s still, the next she swells
You can hear the universe in her sea shells
Oh yeah, oh

No, no line on the horizon
No, no line

I know a girl with a hole in her heart
She said infinitys a great place to start
Oh

“Time is irrelevant, it’s not linear”
Then she put her tongue in my ear
Oh, oh

No, no line on the horizon
No, no line
No, no line on the horizon
No, no line

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

The songs in your head are now on my mind
You put me on pause
I try to rewind, love, and replay

Every night I have the same dream
I’m hatching some plot, scheming some scheme
Oh yeah
Oh

I’m a traffic cop, Rue du Marais
The sirens are wailing
But it’s me that wants to get away
Oh

No line on the horizon
No, no line
No, no line on the horizon
No, no line

viva chicago!

three real guitar heroes get together to talk about their craft, their motivations, their histories and the magic of electric guitar. its led zepplen’s jimmy page, u2′s the edge and jack white of the white stripes and a few other bands.

i wish they talked more with each other or made more music during the film. but they wind up talking to the camera or to other folks on screen. so there are these lightning bolts that zip across the screen but the bolts rarely hit each other creating even greater electricity. it happens a few times but i would have liked to see more.

i identified with jack white the most even though i am so closely aligned with the edge. but it was jimmy page that had the line that did it for me: he doesn’t know if he chose the music or the music chose him. but it doesn’t matter because he loves it either way. throughout there are these musings on life that transcend the discussion of nuts and bolts and riffs.

i would watch it again to catch more but i would only buy an extended version of the film. i am sure there was more footage that likely got cut for the theatre version. theresa may watch parts of it but would likely find a lot of it too talky.

this might be worth seeing in the theatre to hear and see some of the music on a crazy big system.

i suspect that tivo would not decrease my television watching time but increase it. so alas, i still watch commercials but find fewer folks to discuss them with. i often get blank looks when i ask…have you seen…..?

i realized that if i posted commercials, my audience may actually be watching them for the first time…but then we can talk about them!

alcohol ads usually take one of two paths…clever funny is one.  alcoholic behavior is the second with a possible third way being a hybrid. but most follow the play book of  “hello, i am an alcoholic…and this is my life.”

these ads are the opposite of the clever dr. pepper ads i’ve been posting and even the snarky funny dos equis ads i will be running an extensive feature on in the near future. so i’m not anti-get your drink on.  i’m anti-dumb@$$.

these ads reek of jobless i’ve got nothing better to do. the opening starts with slackers sitting on a couch brainstorming about ???? and ends with an adolescent declaration of being witness to “history”.

you should have gone to your aa meeting.

ps. third world country guy is watching with interest on the eve of 9/11. he’s getting hot.

it is hot and i don’t like it.

i await the coolness, the briskness of the fall.

i find my safety and my salvation in the fall. the fall has conditioned asians for renewal…school reboots, new blood, new classes, new life, new possibilities.

i fear the summer. some of the hardest, darkest days for me were in the summer.

but i have remembered wrong. some of the most joyous, electric days have also been in the summer. i have let a few blackouts ruin the almost overwhelmingly good: my wedding day. the efcon summers. the cbc wave after wave of service and missions. and this summer, when my zoe was born.

and not all septembers have brought life….i think back to that sept all new yorkers think of nearly, 8 years ago when there was a cloud on the new york skyline.

and not every fall is magical..some come and go.

i do hate the heat though….i haven’t misremembered that. nor the humidity.

but the weather may have broken…..so i await.

the days of leography are coming to an end…as promised, a new column will rise in its place in the late fall/early winter as we explore different permutations of patty to honor our friend, patty.

like with leo…we have enough to start but not to finish…as of yet! so submit your best and favorite patties…..

i will start off with the famous peppermint patty!

so i asked our friend leo chen one day, if his name is short for anything or is it just leo? he said….just leo. it got me thinking where that name came from. then we just started making up origins of the name. and started calling him permutations of leo.

at this point, we have enough for 52 weeks…a whole year! but some of them are not as good as others…so the door is still open. if you see one that is lame and you had a better one…then shame on you slacker! get it in before we unleash not as good ones!

this week…. i will call my friend leo, the clio awards, as suggested by the great justin

look at what i’ve called my friend leo so far

leonardo

leopold

for christmas, noel

leotard

leopatra

leoben(for bsg)

leometro

bibliotecha

fileo fish

leodis

leodore

leonazi

leopard

diosleos!

le occitane

speleology

leo and behold

leona helmsley

leogeo

leolithic

hustle and fleo

leonidas

los angeleos

liopleurodon

l-eon flux

the kings of leon

chameleon

jaleo

galileo

teleological

leophyte

leopolitan

nucleon

leonheart

john mayer leo

paleontologist

when people come into the city, we are always surprised by where they want to visit or to go eat. they are equally surprised that we do not frequent those places or want to go eat there. no. i do not want to eat at ruby tuesdays , bennigans or tgifridays in times square. then they ask where we go……so here are the places we like…not the best or the cheapest or whatever category….just where we go and go on a regular basis…

when i offered to get kentucky fried chicken to satisfy my wife’s fried bird cravings, she frowned and declined. i reasoned that kentucky was on our way home. she blurted out…i don’t like kentucky fried chicken; i like ghetto fried chicken!

as in the fried chicken right by our abode…the other kfc. the knockoff that sells fried chicken not to suburban minivan megamall moms but to the local common person in my neighborhood. like theresa.

theresa’s family has owned several eating joints that catered to the hood; influencing her tastes.

so off i went to kennedy fried chicken. kenny chau also loves this place.

though nyc has banned all trans fat frying, i have my suspicions. i got some big chicken pieces and of course, the money food….chicken wings. i must admit, they do taste like you fried them yourself….in a good way. meaning its like home cooked chicken. not my home….but a friend’s home. of a certain ethnicity.

pc police ruin all the fun.

she does not need 11 original spices for her chicken. theresa mixes ketchup and hot sauce and she is good to go.

and happy.

my friend jon moy tagged me on this…but i was unsure of the rules except what was in the title. he wanted to do a version of the random 25 that was not as pretentious. in my continuing efforts to descend the ivory tower that seems to be my lot in life, i did this too. i promised to periodically post videos of the songs i picked as a public service to people who want to hear the soundtrack in my head. today’s track as done by the beatles who are about to introduce and reintroduce their catalog to the world and a new generation via rock band in the fall.

this is my favorite beatles tune.

these are songs that i chose for a mix of reasons….some define me…some played crucial roles at turning points in my life…some continue to shape me….some i can listen to over and over…some i would jump to hear live…and many if not most, encompass all these reasons.

here’s the complete list:

U2 bad
U2 all I want is you
U2 stay
Radiohead let down
Rolling stones under my thumb
Beatles in my life
Arcade fire wake up
Killers all these things that I’ve done
Stone temple pilots plush
Frank Sinatra new york, new york

that’s ponyo, not porno. though the japanese are good at both that(i’ve heard) and animation…this is an all ages affair. that doesn’t mean a children’s movie because there are millions of adult fans of hayao miyazaki worldwide with spirited away, howl’s moving castle and princess mononoke to his credit.

this is a new adaptation of a hans christian anderson fairy tale…i won’t say which one because it will color the new direction…and its best to enjoy it on its own trajectory than constantly comparing it to other productions including a very successful one done by disney.

and where miyazaki takes it is a trippy exaltation on the possibility and energy of youth. that anything is possible, let’s save the world and love, love, love vibe floods the screen and the theatre. this is willy wonka stuff.

a young boy befriends a girl fishie who decides she no longer wants to live underwater but on the surface. daddy is not amused. the struggle of youth ensues.

i had a good time and so did theresa. she thought the lead looked like zoe and was missing her the whole time. i may buy this but mostly for zoe…and then i’ll have to watch it over and over. but i would likely watch it again by choice at least once.