Friday, May 12, 2006  

Apres Moi, Le Drizzle

The rain wrecks me. Ruins me. The medical term, I believe, is Seasonal Affectation Disorder, though I seem to have a slightly different strain of the disease. In my case, it's more like Seasonal Asshole Disorder. I get gloomy, grumpy, and douchey, like clockwork. The longer it's grey, the bigger drag I become.

And since Boston is stuck under a humdinger of a low pressure system, this indicates a fairly unhappy trend for my friends and family.

Not that they're doing much better. The neverending Massachusetts rain is definitely putting the blue in "blue state." I'm trying to deal with it. I am. I'm trying to kick it Seattle Style - sort of a "when in Rome" approach. I drink black coffee and am learning to play the guitar. Kurt Cobain is making a lot more sense to me: sweaters, songs, and suicide. Blame the rain, baby. Blame the rain.

At least Noah got some razzmatazz with his rainstorm. Sturm and drang and lightning and thunder and a vengeful God. We're stuck with perpetual drizzle - a kind of low grade apocalypse. God's no longer vengeful, he's just kind of passive-aggressive. He's moping.

That's a metaphor, of course. The real culprit is climate change, the bastard child of the industrial revolution that the mad scientists on the Bush Administration's payroll say doesn't exist. Really, Dr. Quackenfuck? Because I've got a waterlogged back yard and a pissed off wife that say differently.

So I guess what I'm saying is that global warming makes me a prick.

Lost on Liftoff

Congratulations to Lost on Liftoff, who just won Best New Act in the Portland Phoenix New Music Poll!

I first heard their music when their drummer, Shane Kinney, who is also a kickass standup comic, dragged me into his freezing car after our show on New Year's Eve. We drank our pilfered beers through chattering teeth while we waited for his heater to warm up, and he wouldn't stop babbling about this new band he was in. I knew better than to interrupt him. A drunken Shane Kinney is a force of nature. So before I can politely find a way out of the car, whose heater STILL hadn't come on, he slides in a homemade CD, and cranks it.

And I was blown away. And apparently, so were the fine people of Portland, Maine.

Check them out here.

His success is unsurprising, however, for Shane and I have bathed in the sweaty mojo of the Karaoke Cowboy!

Scamps

Just a tip:

The pretty tiara-stealing boys in Scamper have just released a new 4-song EP on iTunes. Highly recommended stuff. What could be better than homemade green chile stew? Green chile stew with a side of Scamper.

Ole!

Green Chiles, Bitches!

It's too rainy for funny today. Instead, an empassioned plea:

I'm ordering 10 pounds of frozen green chiles from Hatch, NM. I don't need 10 pounds. I'm looking for people to take a pound or two off my hands. I've got 3 pounds still up for grabs. Works out to about $12.50 a pound.

Best green chiles in the world, kids. I'll even copy my Santa Fe chiles rellenos recipe for you.



Who's in? Email me.

Public Service Announcement

There is a wretched little Mexican restaurant in Boston called Fajitas and Ritas. You must avoid it at all costs. Without a doubt, the worst Mexican food I've ever eaten in my life, and I'm counting the time I was drunk and ate uncooked refried beans straight from the can.

I cannot even conceive of blander food. The salsa tasted like old ketchup, and the chips were like tree bark. When I asked the waiter if they had anything spicier, he barely had time to mumble "uh, no" before he went back to staring at my wife's tits. And the fajitas themselves were made with tasteless onions, wiggly-limp bell peppers, and chicken that was the culinary equivalent of particle board. It had no taste whatsoever. The one thing in this world that doesn't taste like chicken is this place's chicken.

It was like eating food that had been marinated in a distillate of an accounting firm's budget committee meeting.

But what more could you expect from a joint whose menu is, literally, a form you have to fill out, complete with checkboxes and lines for entering information. You actually have to do paperwork to get access to this shitty food. No wonder it tastes bureaucratic.

The sangria doesn't even have WINE in it. I think it was vodka they stole from a homeless guy and Sharkleberry Fin kool-aid.

It's inconceivable how inauthentic this food was. I mean, I don't think you could even screw up and have food this bad. I think you'd actually have to try, to sit down with paper and pencil and a five year plan, and make every effort to actually create something so horrible. It's like someone who'd never eaten Tex-Mex found a cookbook at the library with some missing pages and used it to start a restaurant with a kitchen staffed entirely by Swedes.

I mean, according to the Republicans, there are millions of undocumented Latinos just sort of wandering the streets of this country. You can't pull one or two in and let them give you some tips on the chow?

And the service matched the food. Our waiter was some guy who wouldn't even talk to us, he was so busy hitting on the drunken college hosebags at the next table. He sort of tossed our bill to us underhand after we had to beg for it like three times. Hope he enjoyed the buck tip.

I mean it, if you find yourself in the neighborhood and even consider for a second eating in this grimy suckhole, immediately punch yourself in the balls until the idea goes away.