This is what joy looks like

This is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Monday night in Washington, DC. The house lights are up, they're chugging through Born to Run, and tens of thousands of people -- including a couple of shirtless guys we saw jigging down on the floor -- are singing along at the tops of their lungs.

COOL.

We caught both the Sunday and Monday shows in DC -- and it was spectacular. These were my 19th and 20th shows, Rick's first and second. Yeah, yeah, I know. I don't even want to think about the things I could have done or the trips to Europe I could have taken if I hadn't spent the cash on Bruce Springsteen. But you know what? I really don't care.

Regardless of where you stand on the guy -- whether, like me, his rear end hung on the wall over your bed when you were in junior high, or you've thought the man-of-the-people thing has worn thin -- when you're there it's hard to deny that it's one hell of a show. The guy's 58 years old, and he was jumping up and down at the end of the 2-hour-and-20-minute set in a way that had me exhausted just looking at him. I've seen him from the back of football arenas and from the front row, mashed up against the stage, and it's safe to say I've never seen anyone play a room quite like him. Famously anti-war, he marked Veterans Day here in DC -- and last night he brought some wounded vets from Walter Reed to the show. Talk about altering the dynamic in a basketball arena.

The new album's not easy -- it's filled with familiar imagery of people struggling and disillusioned, trying to live decent, honorable lives in the face of bitter disappointment and not knowing which end is up. But it's also about making connections and finding meaning in each other -- nothing's ever perfect, but in the end we're all we've got. The songs are also catchy, filled with pop hooks, and taken as a whole, the thing rocks.

And live, you can't help but walk away feeling a little bit better connected to humanity. I took my parents to see Springsteen a few years back -- and bought them tickets to see him a couple of weeks ago in Chicago as a Christmas present -- and it sounds loony, but I seriously think it brought us closer. I may drive them up a wall, but now at least we can talk about Bruce Springsteen. (Incidentally, Mom, there's a rumor he's coming to Milwaukee in March -- so Happy Birthday.)

Do I sound like a sermonizing goofball? Yeah. Is the crowd at a Springsteen show whiter than any you'll see outside a standard-issue NHL game? Yes. Have I spent more time than I care to admit perusing the setlists online and trying to figure out what he's going to play in the rotating song spots (2, 7, 11, 12, 13, and the second song of the encore, by the way)? Definitely. Do I do these things furtively? Hell no. Embarrassed? Sure. Ashamed? Never.

Tramps like us...

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Things I'm liking right now

Bits and pieces of things and stuff that are good and cool:

This list of the most terrifyingly inspirational songs of the '80s. Of the "You're the Best" song from Karate Kid, the author has this to say: "It is completely acceptable to do any damn thing you want to this song. Whatever it is you’re about to do, Joe Esposito took seven weeks out of his life back in the '80s to write a little ditty about just how badass you are at it." Well, yeah.

Straight Cash, Homey -- a collection of unfortunate jersey choices by sports fans across this great nation.


The awesome birthday present I got from Lisa, which includes some of the greatest screwball comedy of all time.

Season three of Bones. I don't know if it'll end up in the pantheon of great shows, but the folks there seem to nail the balance of character development and crime procedural better than just about anyone at the moment.

Seasonal weather. Yeah, I freaked out a little when I heard the local radio folks drop the phrase "wind chill" this week, but the leaves are pretty, the air is crisp and I like wearing long-sleeve T-shirts. Plus, I got a new winter coat a couple weeks ago, so I'm set.

Friends preparing to have children.

Pie. But really, who doesn't like pie?

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Is it adult ADD, or am I just a spazz?

It's getting increasingly difficult to know. According to my not-in-any-way-extensive-Internet research, symptoms include:

• Distractibility
• Impulsive behavior
• The inability to remain focused on tasks or activities

So far, yes, yes, and yes.


Well, maybe not so much with the impulsive part -- unless you count stalking new bath and hair products during every trip to the CVS. Mostly it's just this creeping feeling that I really am beginning to understand what my grandmother meant when she used to go on (and on and on) ... OK, I forgot what I was going to say as I was writing this... oh yeah: when she'd talk about how quickly time goes by, and how it gets harder to keep up. Or, frankly, to recall what it is you were saying. Either way, lately it seems increasingly difficult to remember birthdays (I just couldn't be a bigger loser on that front -- sorry, friends and family), appointments, and to keep up with the laundry. And usually, all I really want to do is hang on the couch and watch Ace of Cakes.

Am I geezing? Has the fact that my hearing is fading after years of Bruce Springsteen shows started to creep in and distract from real life? Am I doomed to a future of never finishing another book, or being unable to tackle the towering pile of of New Yorkers mocking me from the corner? Do I just need a drink?

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Beer, Barbecue and Birthday

Just got back from an all-too-short weekend in the Outer Banks, where we attended the first annual PigStein -- a beer and barbecue festival thrown by our friends Chip and Tammy of Chip's Wine and Beer Market and High Cotton. Whole hog cookoff, more than 100 beers for tasting, and staying with friends at an insane beach house. Happy 36th birthday, Rick!



We hit the highway on Friday afternoon, and in just 4 1/2 hours we arrived in lovely Kill Devil Hills -- the site of the Wright Brothers' inaugural flight, and if you want to watch Rick quietly seethe, just bring that up as part of a conversation about North Carolina's "First in Flight" license plates. At Tammy's recommendation, we had dinner at a great Frenchy restaurant, and then headed back to the beach house they rented for themselves and their friends for the weekend. When I become a cult leader, I fully intend to do it in a house like this -- 14 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms, roof deck, volleyball court, pool, 3 kitchens, and 2 hot tubs, even though it was too cold to use them. Right on the water. The opposite of tough to take.

The beer and barbecue festival was the first of its kind, and we look forward to many more. Particularly fabulous, in addition to the many, many, many beers we got to sample, was High Cotton's "'Cue Cup" -- a savory parfait in a cup that started with baked beans, had a cole slaw middle and a barbecue top -- completed with a cornbread stick. Brilliant.

The rest of time we hung out with friends, visited the Bodie Island Lighthouse on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, slept late, and watched the Red Sox win. Oh, and drank a lot of beer.

Now if we can just get the mega millions to come in...

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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'.

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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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