Well, I'm off to Goldsboro, North Carolina until Sunday, so you won't be hearing much from 'ol Jeff for a few days. I'll be attending the following, though:

Antique Farm Equipment Days, 9AM-5PM , Wayne County Fairgrounds, Adults $2; Children under 12 free, For more information call Jerry McGinnis at 919-735-5503.

Come meet up with me now, y'hear??

Some nights you just ain't got it. Last night I played hockey and I knew it was going to be a bad night even before I stepped on the ice. Stephanie took my car yesterday and about 5 minutes before I left the house, I realized that my hockey stick was in my car. Not a huge problem, really, I figured. You can always use another stick and they have a pro shop at the rink, so I just bought another one and figured while I was there I might as well get my skates sharpened. More on the stick and the skates later.

Upon returning from the pro shop, I started to put my equipment on and was about halfway through that process and putting on my skates when the lace on my left skate snapped. Back to the pro shop. Buy laces. Back to the locker room.

I stepped onto the ice and I knew right away I was in for it. Quick and easy hockey lesson - there's people who know how to sharpen skates and there's people who don't. I'll give you a guess as to which version I got. You see, if your skates aren't sharpened correctly, you can't turn the way you want, you can't stop the way you want, you can't pivot the way you want. It's kind of like someone giving you a brand new car with a manual transmission and you've haven't driven a stick in 15 years. Awkward.

As if that weren't enough, about halfway through, some dude comes up to me after a whistle blows and accuses me of maliciously slashing him in the chest and that I had better watch it because "he remembers those things." Great. Fabulous. First of all, you can probably ask anyone on the ice about the kind of person I am and the way I play - to a man they well tell you that if something like that happened, it was most certainly an accident. Frankly, I don't even remember getting a stick up on the guy, but if I did it wasn't intentional and I told him so.

Finally, the stick. The stick is a touchy subject. Sticks are kind of like old pairs of jeans sometimes - once you get used to one, much like skates or girlfriends, it takes a while to get accustomed to another one. Another little ditty - sticks need to be cut to a fairly precise size in order to be suitable for use. It's based on your height. Since I didn't have much time, I eyeballed it. Of course, I cut the stick way too small and about 5 passes went right under my stick because I was used to the length of my old one. I know - this is all incredibly fascinating.

That pretty much threw me off the rest of the night. Bad skates, angry at being accused and a short stick translated into a frustrating evening. That's the way it goes. Get 'em next time.

In other news, I never thought of this, but it sure is a unique way to go out, isn't it? I wonder if they can pack me into a puck and fire slapshots? Or into a baseball and hit me over the Green Monster?

Speaking of which, I'll be attending my first Red Sox game of the season tonight and I'll be sitting (or standing?) in that new area on the roof of right field. Should be cool. Maybe I'll snap some pics. Finally, word has it that Manny Ramirez, the now affable, happy, goofy slugger for the Red Sox unveiled his new website this morning. I've yet to really dig deep, but I will at some point. Manny Ramirez and website - those two words just don't mix.

Song now playing: Bruce Springsteen - "Darkness on the Edge of Town"

This might be the funniest thing I've seen on the web in years. Nevermind the fact that it's brought to you by Burger King - just go there. Really. Go there right now. The chicken will do whatever you tell it to do. For example, I told the chicken to do push-ups and to jump on one leg - and it did! Trying to think of something that the chicken might not do, I then typed "eat yourself." The chicken then beagn to eat his own wing. Unreal. Go there and try some stuff out. Hilarious.

Sadly, Christopher Lloyd does not come with the vehicle. But, oh, the attention you would get.



I attended a somewhat large networking/advertising event in Boston's Quincy Market last night, one of those deals where everyone wears name tags with their name and company on it. It is the first event of its kind that I have attended, simply because the people who attend these are not really involved in the line of work I perform for my employer. I attended because a few of my co-workers were here from out-of-town and I don't get to see them that often, so I said "the hell with it" and went. Nothing in particular happened with the exception of a conversation I overheard. I was standing at the bar, literally one foot from these two people who were possibly my age or a couple of years younger. They were just going back and forth for a good 3 minutes on how much they hated the company I work for. I mean, it was malicious. The best part is that their assumptions and claims about the company were completely, utterly untrue. It was like they hadn't looked at the site since 1999. Whatever. I couldn't help but laugh at how ignorant the whole thing was and that they actually looked right at me a couple of times during their conversation. All they had to do was look down about 12 inches to see my little name tag. I was kind of hoping they would see, in fact.

It's not the fact that they were bashing us, hell, everyone's certainly entitled to their opinion, but I was really biting my tongue because I could have slaughtered them with some of the factual innacuracies they were spitting out. A silly situation at a silly event.

Song now playing: Motley Crue - "Livewire"

I hate it when people lie. When you have to be "pain-in-the-ass" persistent in order to just get heard. Then you don't even get taken seriously. Then, when it's all said and done, you're lied to. I know I'm being cryptic here and I hope you know who you are and I hope (however unlikely that is) that you're reading this.

Okay, now that that's off my chest, some news to share. What this guy doesn't know is that the coffee was also 42 years old. Heh.

Yep. It's the same excuse we hear time and time again from the guys - there just ain't enough chicks around.

The Onion's take on why more people are buying music online. Good stuff.

Finally, the strange yet fun game of What's My Name?

Song now playing: Pavement - "Father To A Sister Of A Thought"

Lots of stuff from the weekend:

- Hey, remember my rant about the worst songs of all-time? Well, it looks like Blender magazine agrees with me on my insistance that Starship's "We Built This City" is the worst song ever. You go, Blender! The one major problem I have with their list is the inclusion of Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound Of Silence" as one of the worst songs. What a mistake that is to include that.

- This morning at exactly 5:28, Stephanie and I were awakened by a parade. No shit. A parade! You see, it's Patriots Day here in Massachusetts, the anniversary of the start of the Revoloutionary War in Lexington & Concord. You know, "the shot heard 'round the world?" So anyway, 5:28 this morning we hear very loud drums, marching and flutes playing Yankee Doodle. Unreal!

-While it did contain some great moments and overall I found it to be very much worth my time, Lost In Translation, suffered from over-hype. Slow-paced and mealy-mouthed, it probably also ran about 20 minutes too long. But don't let my bitching prevent you from seeing it - still pretty darn good. Not sure it was worthy of a Best Actor nomination for Bill Murray, either, but I would have loved to see him win it. Anyway, at this time I am far more partial to Sofia Coppola's other widely distributed work, "The Virgin Suicides." A much better film.

- Big news over the weekend: I replaced an electrical outlet. Previous to August, the thought of me hunkering down and doing electrical work such as this would make me, uh, poop myself with fear of being killed or at least dreadfully charred by a mindless mistake made with wires. How hard could it be, right? Other than trying to unscrew some screws that must have been in the wall for at least 50 years, it went off without a hitch. When I plugged something into the new outlet to make sure it worked okay, I had visions of a very large explosion as soon as I flicked the switch. Since I am sitting here typing, that did not happen. No explosions, no sparks, no charring - complete success. Oh, suburban bliss.

Song now playing: Air - "Playground Love"

My letter-writing campaign to several of the Airborne veterans profiled in "Band of Brothers" has begun to pay off. Last week I wrote three letters and sent them, each of which were short and simple - a thank you for having made enormous sacrifices, a mention of my dad (who is a veteran of the Vietnam war) and a quick mention of the fact that I lived the next town over from another of their fellow Easy Company/Airborne members in World War II, a guy by the name of Fred Heyliger, who died last year. I did not expect anything back from these men and wouldn't have been disappointed had I never heard from them - they're all in their 80's now and are probably all receiving a lot of mail and I assume they simply cannot reply to it all. I just wanted them to know that their story moved me to point where I wanted to personally thank them. Anyway, to my extreme surprise, I received a thank you note today from one Donald Malarkey, now 82. Please click the link and read through some of this stuff. It's also been written that the actors and the veterans still keep in touch to this day and while shooting the series, the first time the veterans turned up on the set, everyone dropped everything and just crowded around the old boys in awe. A nice side note.

The text of Mr. Malarkey's letter, written by hand:

Dear Jeff,

Thank you very much for your nice letter. We receive a lot of support in recent years due to an awareness that previously had pretty well been buried.

"Moose" (Heyliger) was a very good officer and not overly impressed with his rank. He attended all Company reunions even when it required a wheelchair. He had an unfortunate wounding in Holland when he was to succeed Dick Winters.

Warm regards,
Don Malarkey

How nice. For an 82 year old man to respond to me personally and so quickly like that is somewhat stunning to me. In reading an article recently about the miniseries, it was said that Tom Hanks (who executive produced along with Spielberg) told these veterans to be prepared to be treated like rock stars. I hope it makes these veterans feel good that they've received such an outpouring of thanks and it's gotta blow their mind just a little bit - after 60 years there are peope writing to them whose parents weren't even alive at the time of the war.

Anyway, I'm not sure anything I've seen on television has been so powerful. As a sidenote, they are currently running the series at 9pm every night on The History Channel and one of the best episodes and some of the best TV you will ever see is tomorrow night's (Saturday) chapter called "The Breaking Point." It will quickly make you realize just how good your life is.

A couple of quick music notes:

- I found a really good music weblog yesterday called Burned By The Sun. Not only is the writing fun to read, but they've got some great links to other stuff. It's what blogs should be about - helping people find cool stuff on the web. I wonder what will happen to all the content on the web after, say, 100 years?

- For those of you who are Elliot Smith fans, here's a bunch of his live shows, each song from these shows is an individual download. Some great stuff here, including the four songs he did for a Kinks tribute in Los Angeles, two of which are a couple of my favorite Kinks songs, "Dead End Street" and "Big Sky."

- You can listen to the new Wilco album, "A Ghost Is Born," by clicking here. As is customary with all new Wilco albums, it'll probably take a few listens to really get a grip on, but there are a few songs that jumped right out at me, those being the first track and the last track. There's one song that's fifteen minutes long. Totally unneccesary.

Finally, I offer you this for the weekend:

You know how the banks are only open from like 10am to noon every day? Yeah. Well, after that, you have to stick your card into the little slot to get in to use the ATM if you're using the indoor machines. I've always been a sheep and just put my bank card into that slot. Well, that has now changed.

Having noticed for the first time that my Massachusetts drivers license actually contains a black magnetic stripe, I decided to see if my drivers license would open the bank door. You know what? It did. I very well might be the only one in the world who didn't know this. However, does anyone find this troubling? I kind of feel like bank cards and credit cards should be the only cards that are opening doors for access to ATM's, not drivers licenses.

My next experiment will be to use my license in other places where black magnetic stripes are required.

UPDATE: This just in. Major League Baseball's all-time hair gallery. As you might expect, this is priceless stuff.

Song now playing: Richard Buckner - "22"

While in New York last week, I managed to sneak away during my lunch hour and take a tour of Theodore Roosevelt's birthplace. A year or so ago I read both of the Edmund Morris biographies on Roosevelt (both nearly 1,000 pages) and found myself amazed at what this man accomplished. He was a State Congressmen, the Chief of Police of New York City, the Secretary of the Navy, Vice-President of the United States and in addition to spending a couple of years as a rugged outdoorsman in Wyoming, also wrote many books on the power of nature and United States expansion in the west. Oh yeah, he did all this before the age of 42! At that time, he became the youngest President of the United States after McKinley was shot and to this day nobody younger has served as President. His life story is simply captivating and I haven't even touched on what the man did during his term as the leader of our country.

So when I discovered that Roosevelt's birthplace was about 4 blocks from where I work, I headed over there for a tour. While the house itself is a reconstruction, most of the furniture and the decorations (murals, dishes, etc) were actual Roosevelt property. It was a hell of a tour. History right before your eyes. The first question I asked the tour guide was if I could take pictures. He said no. I did anyway. You'd be surprised how stealth I can be when the camera flash is turned off!

Anyway, some of the photos may seem random, but I can explain a few of them - the bike you see is his exercise bike while he was president. The desk is his actual desk as Secretary of the Navy. The chair is the one he used for both of his terms as the President of the U.S.A. The typed document you see is the Executive Order which declared Sequoia a national forest (I'm gonna post a bigger version soon so you can read it) and the military uniform is the one he wore leading the Rough Riders to victory in Cuba in the Spanish-American war.

Song now playing: Townes Van Zandt - "Greensboro Woman"

Now, I must tell you all something - this story I am about to uncork on this site is purely coincidence. I've been on a bit of kick lately with the whole Band of Brothers/World War II thing, so that's been on my mind quite a bit. Now.....the story.

I walked off the plane last night about 8:15pm in Boston, tired from a few days in NYC, quite hungry and ready to get home. You know how they don't let people wait for you at the gate anymore? They make everyone wait just past the security area. So anyway, we all de-planed and I turn the corner and there's a horde of people waiting, clutching signs, holding hands and looking genuinely excited. There's also a TV camera with it's lights on (Channel 5 news, for you locals). So I'm wondering just what the heck is going on here and as I get closer, I notice that a young child has made a sign with the American flag drawn on it, awkwardly in child-like penmanship and art. Very cute. I decide to stick around, because it's clear a military veteran is coming home from Iraq and his family and friends are here to welcome him.

So I yank out my camera, because hell, if this family is letting channel 5 broadcast this, they're not gonna mind if I snap a photo, right? Right. Anyway, after about 2 minutes, the crowd breaks out into complete, utter hysterics because they now have him in their sights. What transpired was one of the more emotional scenes I've witnessed in person in my whole life. The mother and son literally ran into each others arms, laughing, crying and holding on for dear, dear life. The soldier, who couldn't have been more than 23 or 24 years old, then made the rounds, hugging everyone, joking with friends, patting kids on the head (probably nieces, nephews, etc). Then he hugged his father. This wasn't as hysterical as the mother/son embrace, but it was as powerful a moment as you'll ever see. A very quiet, long hug and you could see both their shoulders shaking as tears flowed. They stayed in their embrace for what seemed like ten minutes - frozen in what I can only assume was, perhaps, one of the happiest moments of their lives.

Do I support war? No. Not at all, in fact. I feel like this moment should have never even happened, frankly and each time I hear about more people dying (American, Iraqi, whoever) it just gets more puzzling and senseless to me. But I'll tell you what, we should never overlook the huge sacrifices (sometimes the ultimate sacrifice) our soldiers make when they put their lives on the line. Aside from war, the army, etc, this moment at the airport last night was not emotional because he was a soldier. I suspect I would have been equally moved if this boy was coming home from the peace corps after three years.

What moved me so much was the intense love on display. The initial anticipation, then the overwhelming, sheer excitement of seeing your boy again. Your son. Your uncle. Your best friend.

So, did I get any pictures of this? I managed to snap the picture right at the moment the son fell into the arms of his mother. Sadly, some businessman in a hurry stepped right in front of the shot and blocked most of it. I'm still deciding if I want to post it.

Song now playing: Mark Lanegan - "I'll Take Care Of You"

So I'm back in New York for the week. In keeping with tradition, I only seem to fly on days when winds are above 25mph. Our landing into New York on Tuesday morning felt like there was a huge hairy giant holding our plane and thrashing it back and forth. Why is the giant hairy? I do not know.

I still love this city, though. Coming here never fails to excite me. There's just something about all the pavement, everyone hustling and bustling and tall buildings almost as far as the eye can see. I just love the energy. I love walking down 5th Avenue, with cabs zipping by and the majestic Empire State Building hovering above me. I love just looking at everyone going about thier business and I love picking up bits and pieces of people's conversation as it all flies by me. I love the large windows of all the gyms that show rows and rows of people on treadmills and elipticals, their legs up/down/up/down/up/down in what seems like a synchronized show for the people on the street. There is truly nothing like feeling so alive in a place like this, especially having recently moved to a fairly quiet suburb of Massachusetts.

Anyway, now that it's playoff season in the NHL, I found myself in a bit of a pickle here. It's not as easy as one would think to find a place to watch an out-of-town team, in this case, the Boston Bruins. Of course, I know I could go right to Times Square and sit my ass in the ESPN Zone restaurant and pay $6 for a beer and $10 for a turkey burger and take in the game. But I want to find a small corner bar that's owned by a displaced Bostonian who has the game on, where I can cheer with other displaced Bostonians or something like that. No luck, though. Right around the corner from my hotel is the Park Avenue Country Club, a big-ass bar with many many TV's. So I go in there - no Bruins game.

"You should go over to 40/40, I'll bet they have it," the bartender says. This, naturally, means nothing to me. After asking where it is and being told it's over on 22nd or 23rd on the other side of some park and that Jay-Z owns the bar, I hop in a cab and give them those very instructions. I don't care that Jay-Z owns the bar. The cabbie says "you don't have the exact address??" I said no, that's why I'm in the cab. He says "don't you have a cell phone??" Right away I wonder to myself if cabbies have gotten so lazy that they don't know where anything is anymore. Then I almost went on a diatribe, right then and there; I was on the cusp of telling the guy to go pound sand - that for once I decided to leave the damn cell phone in the damn hotel room so as not to feel tethered to the thing for once. A night of true freedom, you know? Instead, in a clear sign of maturity (hah), I politely ask him if he knows where it is and he says he thinks he does and I know right away while sitting in that cab that I'm wasting a few bucks.

He drops me off at the end of 22nd and Park Ave and says "it's down there on the right side." I pay, knowing he's full of shit, get out and walk and it's not down there on the right side. Of course. Having already set my expectations that it is not, in fact, down there on the right side, I walk a bit. Maybe it's around somewhere. It's not.

So what do I do? I hail another cab. Ten minutes later, I'm sitting in the bar at the ESPN Zone in Times Square, sitting directly in front of the TV, watching the Bruins whack around the Montreal Canadiens and having a $6 Bass Ale and a $10 turkey burger. Not what I wanted to do in NYC, but just knowing I could fall back on it was somewhat comforting. Of course, there were plenty of displaced Bostonians in the bar, cheering along with me, but it wasn't the same as my wish for a small watering hole somewhere down on 7th and Avenue A or something.

Either way, just knowing that I'll be here next month, taking it all in, seeing SLOAN and being overwhelmed by my variety of lunch options is a fine feeling.

You know what else I love? Free continental breakfasts. It's never anything special, but the fact that it's free makes me eat more of it. You know, you're eating for free and you feel like you really oughta stack up the 'ol stomach since, hell, it's free. What's wrong with filling yourself up on a bagel, OJ and a hard-boiled egg or two, then taking an extra banana and shoving two granola bars in your bag for later? Nothing wrong with that. No siree.

See ya tomorrow night, Maynard, MA.

Some questions on this Monday morning:

1) Why is it called "Breaking News?"

2) What does "alligator lizards in the air" mean?

Thank you.

Song now playing: The Jayhawks - "Life Floats By"

So I was in Cambridge for a dentist appointment on Tuesday and then to pick up Stephanie from work. The dentist appointment was overwith earlier than I had anticipated (darn, huh?) so I headed into Harvard Sqaure to poke around. Yes, there was some cash burning a hole in my pocket. First thing I had to buy was the Stephen Ambrose book "Band of Brothers." I don't need to speak about this again and what being exposed to this story has meant to me (see below), I just know that books tend to have far more compelling detail. Since I'm now on a mission of sorts to find out more about Easy Company, it was a no brainer. Not sure where this current obsession will lead, but I got out of the coop as soon as possible after seeing what appeared to be many books featuring first-hand accounts of the war.

Secondly, cementing the notion that I am not all about war lately, I found something that shocked me my core. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with those small, hand-held electronic sports games. You know - the ones with the little red blips? Yeah, the ones whose technological boundries stopped cold at low or high pitched "whistles" to denote scores or misses. I loved those things. I mean, loved them. I had them all - hockey, baseball, football and yes, even basketball, which is the most boring, unexciting sport I can imagine.

So yeah! I'm in Urban Outfitters and I come across these Mattel Football games! Old school, baby! But brand new. I couldn't resist.........I've been playing every day!



Oh, one more thing. If you see me anywhere in the area and I am just calmly or angrily breaking things, rest assured I am now proudly licenced to be doing so. Yes, breaking stuff is cool:

This is about as fine an example as you can get of how NOT to write a headline. For those of you in journalism school, please take note.

UPDATE: They changed the headline! The headline I was referring to was: "Winner claims $239 million jackpot; retired truck driver said wife "got down on her knees."

Song now playing: The Kinks - "Days"