Mad Props to the Ranfer
This will be something I’m thinking about including in the beginning of The Seasonal Bar. The first part, I’m thinking, will be about my restaurant journey, and goddam, it’s been a long one. If you read this blog, you’ve been privy to a fair amount of my old restaurant stories here and there. Yes, they…
Recent photos
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Movie Review: Sisu
Do you like movies with gratuitous violence where the main character absorbs an inhuman amount of damage? Me too. Movies with pretty much no plot and zero romance but with scenes where there’s lots of clever ways to kill bad guys? If yes to all, then you should see this one. Also, it’s Finnish which…
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New Cocktail: Hooked on Lee
Back to some cocktail shit for a minute. But I’m also going to talk about UFOs. First off, I’d like to thank The Flavor Bible for this little number. Pistachio, honey, fennel work tremendously together, the missing ingredient, was of course the spirit. I had an old tin of genever in the booze closet that…
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The Nannies and Me
Anyone with half a brain will tell you life is weird but if they have any thoughts going on at all they’ll also tell you it’s cruel and beautiful at the same time. That it’s unfair, magical, and finite. I spend a lot of time in children’s parks because I have a two and a…
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To HoJo’s and Beyond
Continued from yesterday’s post. I made a trip down to Massachusetts to see my girl during her spring break and my car broke down while I was there, so I had to stay there a week. Her parents were very impressed. We went to Blockbuster and I insisted we rent The Commitments, a movie I…
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Not Exactly Door to Door
Continued from yesterday’s post. There’s a romanticism about being a salesman. You travel around, no boss breathing down your neck, you show up at people’s houses, do the demonstration, smile, maybe there’s a lonely housewife in there somewhere. For an aimless, skinny kid from Vermont, this was nowhere close to reality. I spoke daily to…
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The Days of Sandwich Artistry
After one semester of college after high school, I dropped out. Maybe it was the straight Fs I received in all five of my classes, maybe it was the feeling of always being broke, maybe it was the drugs and alcohol…Probably a combination of all three. We used to eat a bunch of acid, pull…
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Nocturama
At heart, I’m a sci-fi writer. Jo often says to me, “Why don’t you write a romance novel?” Uh, no. I grew up on a steady diet of Total Recall, Aliens, Predator, Star Trek, and Star Wars. When I think about writing another novel that won’t sell, I think of these weird sci-fi ideas I…
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My Strawberry Romance
Yesterday I missed a post…Again. The resistance got me. Writing at home is a constant battle against the powers that rail against art. If you’re the type of person that wants to complete some sort of project, whatever it is, and you’ve never had the gumption, motivation, discipline, whatever to get it off the ground,…
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Movie Review: Rambo III
The gist here is “The call to action,” a term known mostly to screenwriters. It means at some point in almost any movie the main character will be invited by an outside force to go on his or her particular journey. What usually happens is they end up “refusing the call,” because they’re still not…
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Introduction to The Seasonal Bar
I’ve got to write a better forward/introduction for my cocktail book, so figured I’d work on it and put it here. That way I can kill two birds with one stone. The blog is fun but it takes time, precious time, away from other writing endeavors in the morning. I give myself two hours from…
The Aging Bartender 