Better ingredients, worse grasp of geography

Papa John's is selling a pair of new specialty pies that they're calling "Tuscan pizzas." So, fine. They sound tasty enough, one with a bunch of different cheeses and one with a couple different meats and fresh tomato.

That second one, though -- they're calling it the "Roma meats pizza." Now, I've never been to Italy, but I've watched enough Molto Mario to know that Italian regional cuisine is rather a big deal. And, see, Rome is kind of right in the middle there, and Tuscany is up above it. And based on what Mario has taught me, they're not interchangeable, and no Tuscan would put "Roma" in the name of his pizza.

Just sayin'.

Continued ...

And you thought he was unintelligible 30 years ago....

Last weekend we went to the wedding of a friend of mine in DC (great party and bitchin' guests -- more on that later), and the night before we went to see Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello at Merriweather Post Pavilion, in suburban Maryland. While I would rather face the fires of Hell than spend time in suburban Maryland, for Dylan and Costello, I made an exception.

My love for Elvis Costello is deep, abiding, and undiminished by the years -- constant since I discovered him in high school (I was kind of late bloomer). He is a genius -- spectacular songwriter, endlessly creative and damn near fearless with the stuff he'll try musically. I have recovered from my mourning period after he married Diana Krall (though it gave me hope that finding happiness and bursting forth with a couple of kids relatively late in life is possible -- plus they seem to be having a nice time), and on Friday night he delivered an excellent (though for my taste, too short) acoustic set that made the drive and the traffic and suburban Maryland worth it.

Dylan, on the other hand...


I've always liked Bob Dylan and respected his genius, his conscience, and poetry and craft that he's brought to everything he's done. I've been a proponent of his new renaissance. I've seen him play an excellent concert, and I've seen him play a set that sucked so loudly that it left the entire crowd's collective jaw dropping to the floor. You never quite know what you're going to get.

The good news: His band ROCKED. Bluesy, hipster, extremely tight, obviously very talented, and clearly jazzed to be playing with a legend. And Dylan's harmonica and organ playing were fantastic.

The bad news: I understood less than 50 words total of his 90-minute set. I wasn't looking for any song to be a replica of the recordings; in fact I'd have loathed that. But it would've been great to get what the crowd of die-hards was cheering about every time he started a song. I'm grateful to know I wasn't the only one with this problem. I started replaying last week's Grey's Anatomy in my head just to stay alert.

The mumbling. The muddy delivery. Good God, the mumbling. In the past I've chalked up Dylan's weird on-stage behavior to being the singing equivalent of Miles Davis playing with his back to the audience. Now I think it's the musical equivalent of those computer-generated pictures where you can see the spaceship if you unfocus your eyes. Or a foreign-language immersion program -- eventually you start to understand French if you're surrounded by people who are speaking it. With Dylan, I started to get scared that I'd lose my ability to understand English if I could make out what he was saying for a sustained period of time. Oui.

The weird news: As Rick and I strained to understand what the hell was going on, he noticed something sitting near Dylan on a cabinet onstage. Is ... that... really? Could that really be the Oscar he won for Best Original Song (on the Wonder Boys soundtrack)? Rick borrowed a fellow concert goer's binoculars to get a better look, and unless we had a simultaneous hallucination, it was either the statuette or a replica. Who does that? I mean really. On the other hand, it's damn near the funniest thing I've ever seen on a stage.

For a long time now, I've been mocking the Rolling Stones for touring -- again and again and again. I wouldn't have wanted to see them on any tour after Tattoo You in 1982. But at least their frontman can still sing. Mick, I promise to (almost) never make fun of you again.

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Turkey for me and a turkey for you

L.A. can have its freeway-side houses. Me? I'll take a flock of wild turkeys crossing about 15 feet in front of me.

Taken along Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park a couple weeks ago. Was too slow on the draw to get the baby bear we saw darting into the woods, and was afraid I'd scare the deer off if I rolled down the window. Suffice to say, not something I saw much of in my old place.

So yeah, we've been busy. Lisa has been hip-deep in promoting civilized debate in society, and I, well, I watch a lot of television. And yet we've still managed to go on drives like this one, and last weekend -- oh, it's a country life we live -- apple-picking. For reals. (Oh, and more wine-tasting. We have like 23 bottles on the rack now.) (And also, we saw Lucinda Williams at the Charlottesville Pavilion last night. She puts on a really fine show.) So I guess things aren't so tough after all.

We have, at least, been taking pictures of some of our little adventures. You can see the latest bunch over here.

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Moving pictures (or, pictures of moving)

Pictures, we got pictures -- a photographic chronicle of our 3,726-mile odyssey across America is now up on the photo page. You can click on the thing over on the right rail that says "Hey -- pictures!" or not move your mouse as much and just go from here.

Not much from my home state, for some reason. But if you're interested, here's a pretty shot of downtown Datyon (not taken by me).

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I think I'm becoming a foodie

As soon as Lisa gets home this evening, we're probably going out to the Market Street Wine Shop in Charlottesville for their free weekly tasting. We did that last week too, and it's fun. And I mentioned free, right?

We've also made a habit of hitting the weekly farmers market that sets up shop down the street on Saturdays. It's tomato season, and we've been going a little nuts with the heirloom varieties -- probably spending a good 50-60 bucks on tomatoes alone in the past three weeks. We also invested in a new wine rack, because, well, we had too many bottles for the other one to handle.

Which leads me to wonder:



Have I become a foodie?

The answer, I think, is a qualified yes -- qualified because I had Wendy's for lunch yesterday, and sometimes I just want to sit on the couch and eat potato chips out of the bag.

But I also get excited by the prospect of cooking dinner a couple times a week, and by the idea of trying a new restaurant -- which, let's face it, is one of the good things about moving. The restaurants are almost all new.

The wine thing, too, is a recent development. Five years ago I probably would never have ordered a glass of wine with a meal. I was a beer snob, sure (and still am), but wine was a little outside my realm of experience.

Funny what a couple trips to Santa Barbara will do for that, though. Now, we have 20 bottles from all over sitting in our new wine rack, and if we try something at a restaurant that we like, we write down the name so we can find a bottle of it later. We spent an afternoon last weekend on part of the Monticello Wine Trail, drinking some surprisingly good (and a couple of really not very good) local wines.

Twice, we have stuffed dates with blue cheese, wrapped pork products around them and baked them.

A lot of this -- including the blue cheese-stuffed dates, which we had during our stopover in St. Louis -- started on the trip. We made a conscious and pretty successful effort not to eat big-box food while we were on the road, and that idea has pretty well carried over once we got here. Charlottesville also seems blessed with an inordinate number of good restaurants for a town its size, so there's probably no need for us ever to set foot in an Applebee's.

So now, I guess, the trick will be keeping this all in check, remaining a food lover while not tipping over into nose-in-the-air territory. I suspect that won't be too hard -- we both love our cheez-with-a-z too much to become true snobs.

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What does your license plate say about you?

We didn't really play the license plate game on our trip per se, but in the 2+ weeks we've been home in Virginia, we've both noticed something what seems to be an inordinate number of personalized license plates.

Now, no offense to those who feel that this is the best venue to express themselves. Wait: I take that back. Really? Dude, get a blog.

I haven't kept a close count...



...but over the course of the past couple of weeks I've counted at least a dozen personalized plates: VA ALUM, WAHOO47, I AM WENDY, URASINR, what have you. Either a lot of people in this area really get a kick out of the personalized license plate, or they're just narcissists.

Today, I hit the laudable Virginia DMV web site, and discovered, in addition to the more than 180 possible license plate styles, that it's only an extra $20 a year to buy yourself a wee billboard for your car. Yay you.

I guess it beats the bumper sticker I saw today on a taxi, proclaiming the driver "Directionally Dysfunctional."

Get hobbies, people.

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Wisdom vs. mercy or, life in a college town

So it's Friday evening, and we're walking to have drinks and dinner at a place called Continental Divide (which, if you're ever in town, has no sign outside that says "Continental Divide" but does have a neon sign reading "Get in here." A little precious maybe, but the margaritas are tremendously strong and the food is right tasty. Lisa had marinated-pork tacos the size of your face, and I had a special of red mole-cooked flank steak that was fantastic.)

We're headed west on Main Street in Charlottesville, and a scruffy-looking dude passes us going the other way and says, "Excuse me." He's got longish hair and a beard and is wearing a big Bob Marley T-shirt; he looks a little like Steve Zahn, if Steve Zahn let himself go a little.



I'm ready to say either, "Sorry, man," if he asks for change or defer to Lisa if he asks where something is. But it's neither, because he says this instead (I'm paraphrasing a little here): "I'm taking a survey. If you could only have one, would you rather have wisdom or mercy?"

Then, seeing our bemused looks: "I've been asking a lot of people, and I'm trying to get my own mind around it, wisdom or mercy."

So now we're intrigued. Our guard relaxes a little, and we actually start to think about it for a second. We both say wisdom. Because -- at least this is how I see it -- wisdom would allow one to know when to be merciful. And, as Lisa pointed out later, if you're merciful without being at least a little wise, well, then you're just a pushover.

The guy didn't ask us why, though; he just thanked us and went on his way. And we went on ours, shaking our heads. "You gotta love being in a college town sometimes," Lisa said.

I imagine that, rapidly aging as I now am, there will be plenty of times in the coming nine months that I'll mutter and curse under my breath about students making my wait for lunch longer or whatever. But she's right: You gotta love it sometimes.

Continued ...

Klippan-Leksvik-Kviby-Aspelund-Vinstra-Aneboda-Malm-Kramfors-Hemnes-Sval¨øv

Ah, one of the great joys of moving – the classic right of passage: the obligatory trip to Ikea. Which, in our case, involved a two-hour drive to Northern Virginia on our first relocated Sunday. Clearly, we want to assemble some furniture – and we want it bad. And now that we've bought it, eventually we will.


I kind of hate to admit it, but I love Ikea – the goofy nonsensical product names (though, as Rick points out, sometimes they’re not even trying – the name of the grill pan was “Grilla”), the Swedish meatballs, the traipsing through the showroom on the trek to the self-serve bins while I inevitably fill the cart with a pile of stuff I don’t need – but hey, it’s $2, so why not? And over the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at assembling it all – which I admit gives me an inexplicable sense of accomplishment. And a very nice collection of allen wrenches.

Our trip was my first time traversing the interstates, and I got to see for myself the infestation of the “big box” stores. No matter where we were, you could always buy a pair of flip flops or assorted household goods at a Target, buy a book and get a cup of coffee at a Borders, score a flat screen TV at a Best Buy, or satisfy your hardware needs at a Home Depot or Lowe’s. Yes, you can pass from town to town and never really see any local store, or regional chain if you don't look hard for it – and that’s a damned shame. I’m a believer in the mom-and-pops and specialized one-of-a-kind stores. It breaks my heart -- and makes my skin crawl -- when a boutique or small bar is pushed out by a Cheesecake Factory. For every Macaroni Grill there should be three Iotas -- at least.

But I gotta admit: there’s something comforting about knowing you can always find the familiar, even if it’s unoriginal or impossible to pronounce. My kingdom for a world where the big boxes can live side-by-side with the locals without relying on Chinese mega-factories. Because as much as I will always patronize a local, I really love my Target.

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Holiday Road...

Rick was FAR more systematic in compiling his road music than I. He clearly spent a lot of time thinking about the songs, the way they’d fit together, and the rhythm of the CDs. I put together a list that referenced any kind of movement – driving, flying, sailing, walking, what have you –- as well as any possible reference to a place. A haphazard approach at best – and one that resulted in a 352-song playlist. Excessive.

A sample, minus the overlap with Rick:



“Woke Up This Morning (Chosen One Mix),” Alabama 3 (a.k.a., the song behind Tony Soprano tooling around Jersey)
“Jessica,” The Allman Brothers (no movement or place, but one of the best road songs ever – thank you, Dickie Betts)
“Say Goodbye to Hollywood,” Billy Joel
“South of the Border (Down Mexico Way),” Chris Isaak
“On the Road Again,” Willie Nelson
“Me & Bobby McGee,” Janis Joplin
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” The Band
“My Tennessee Mountain Home,” Dolly Parton
“Truckin’,” Grateful Dead
“Ticket to Ride,” The Beatles
“Big River,” Johnny Cash
“Don’t Fence Me In,” David Byrne
“Ramblin’ Man,” Hank Williams
“Tiny Dancer,” Elton John (I know, but come on)
“Take Me With U,” Prince
“Copperhead Road,” Steve Earle
“Hotel Illness,” The Black Crowes
“Goodbye Stranger,” Supertramp
“Wild West,” Joe Jackson
“Can’t Find My Way Home,” Blind Faith
“Highway 61 Revisited,” Bob Dylan
“Thunder Road,” Bruce Springsteen
“Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You,” Last Train Home, covering Bob Dylan
“My Ride’s Here,” Bruce Springsteen, covering Warren Zevon
“Train Song,” Mindy Smith
“Where You Lead,” Carole King
“I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.,” The Clash
“Black Cadillac,” Roseanne Cash
“Move On Up,” Curtis Mayfield
“Mississippi,” Sheryl Crow, covering Bob Dylan
“Into the Mystic,” Van Morrison
“The Apartment Song,” Tom Petty
“Take It Easy,” The Eagles
“Midnight Train to Georgia,” Gladys Knight & The Pips
“This is Where You Ain’t,” Glenn Tillbrook
“Highway to Hell,” AC/DC
“Tennessee Plates,” John Hiatt
“That’s Right (You’re Not From Texas),” Lyle Lovett
“2000 Miles,” The Pretenders
“Panama,” Van Halen
“Begin the Begin,” R.E.M.
“King of the Road,” Roger Miller
“I’ll Take You There,” The Staples Singers
“Pony St.,” Elvis Costello
“Ultraviolet (Light My Way,” U2
“Sin City,” Uncle Tupelo, covering the Flying Burrito Brothers
“Luckenbach, Texas,” Waylon Jennings

Continued ...

What we listened to on the trip

The short answer to that is: A lot. We covered a lot of ground during those 10 days, and there was a lot of boring scenery outside the windows. So we had Sirius (primarily Outlaw Country, Left of Center, 1st Wave and the '80s channel), we had NPR -- I came to dig Day to Day over the course of the trip, we had Lisa's iPod and its treasure trove of driving songs.

And, of course, we had CDs, from a fantastic Stax Records compilation -- you haven't lived until you listen to the "Theme from Shaft" on a pitch-dark New Mexico highway -- to The Hold Steady. Our friend Chris gave us a really cool disc of L.A.- and Virginia-themed songs. And I played mixmaster too, putting together three CDs of songs about traveling, songs about vehicles and songs that just sound good in the car. They're after the jump.



Volume 1

"Ramblin' on My Mind," Robert Johnson (that's him up there)
"Drive My Car," The Beatles
"Dakota," Stereophonics
"Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," Lucinda Williams
"Utopia Parkway," Fountains of Wayne
"The Distance," Cake
"Radar Gun," The Bottle Rockets
"Can't Get There from Here," R.E.M.
"Drive South," John Hiatt
"Diner," Martin Sexton
"Calling All Friends," Low Stars
"Hot Rod Hotel," Billy Bragg & Wilco
"Bring the Noise," Public Enemy
"One O'Clock Jump," Count Basie Orchestra
"Popity Pop," Charlie Parker
"The Weight," The Band
"Midnight Rider," The Allman Brothers Band
"Now We're Getting Somewhere," Crowded House
"Left of the Dial," The Replacements

Volume 2

"Tear the Roof Off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk)," Parliament
"In the Street," Big Star
"Kiss Me on the Bus," The Replacements
"Car Song," Elastica
"Try a Little Tenderness," Otis Redding
"Nervous Breakthrough," Luscious Jackson
"Ruby Soho," Rancid
"Roadrunner," Modern Lovers
"I'll Fly Away," Allison Krauss and Gillian Welch
"It Ain't Me Babe," Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash
"Get On the Bus," Royal Crescent Mob
"Sister Havana," Urge Overkill
"Lawyers, Guns and Money," Warren Zevon
"Jill Can Drive," Trip Shakespeare
"Fast Cars," Buzzcocks
"Laser Show," Fountains of Wayne
"Let Me Ride," Dr. Dre
"Let's Go for a Ride," Cracker
"The Road Goes on Forever," Robert Earl Keen
"Polyester Bride," Liz Phair

Volume 3

"Come On, Let's Go," Los Lobos
"Green Onions," Booker T & the MGs
"Folsom Prison Blues," Johnny Cash
"Brown Sugar," The Rolling Stones
"Theme from Shaft," Isaac Hayes
"Keep on Moving," Bob Marley
"I'm the Man," Joe Jackson
"Rudie Can't Fail," The Clash
"Pumping On Your Stereo," Supergrass
"Singing in My Sleep," Semisonic
"Time the Avenger," The Pretenders
"Paradise City," Guns n' Roses
"Boom Boom," John Lee Hooker
"Whole Lotta Love," Led Zeppelin
"Runnin' with the Devil," Van Halen
"Sweet Jane," Velvet Underground
"Good-bye to Carolina," Lyle Lovett
"The Long Cut," Uncle Tupelo
"Layla," Derek and the Dominos

Continued ...