It's a Helluva Town

It's been so long since I checked in here that really, everything clever I had thought of to say (And who'm I kidding? The clever bar's pretty low.) has long since vanished from my head in a haze of sleep deprivation and wedding planning.

I did, however, want to mention our great trip to New York last month. We were both in town for work, and stayed the weekend -- and to the wonderful Jeffrey and Peyton I say (a) thank you for putting us up, and (b) we need to see you guys more. Oh, and (c) I want that recipe for chicken and green olive tagine.

There were many highlights:

I finally got to meet the great Keith Marder. Albeit in what amounted to a windstorm. But can't wait to see you again.

And got to spend some time with the great Mary Hood. That doesn't happen often enough either. And next time I might be persuaded to go to Hoboken with you, Mary. Or to the truck stop.

The Superhero exhibit at the Met. Sweet. And Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler are either insane or brilliant. I haven't figured it out yet. But since I buy clothes at Target, what I think about this probably doesn't matter much anyway.

Rice to Riches. We live right near some incredibly good gelato, but I have to say that if I ever get enough nickels to rub together, I totally want to open a franchise of this place. If you haven't been -- run, don't walk, to Mott and Spring.

Chris Robinson. I am a sucker for a good celebrity sighting, and as I am a proud member of Team Robinson -- even though everyone knows it's always a mistake to join a band with your brother -- this was awesome.

Gray's Papaya. Best recession special ever.

Brunch with the peeps -- including Zev, one of the coolest tiny men I've ever met. Yelling "Hi, Mo Blow!" has now become a daily staple in our house.


Plus, we found some insanely good fares to New York from Richmond -- so we'll be back. And soon.

Continued ...

Come sail away, come sail away

Above, one shot from a very satisfying and fun Memorial Day weekend jaunt to Annapolis, the totally charming old port town on the Cheaspeake Bay that's home to the Naval Academy and the state capital of Maryland. Delicious seafood, beautiful weather and a fun bay cruise.

The whole photographic mess is available for your viewing pleasure on the photo page.

Continued ...

Decision No. 1: It has bears

So it turns out that this getting married stuff is kind of complicated.

We have about a thousand things still left to decide, but we have one pretty big one past us now: We know where and when the ceremony is happening. And as a bonus, it has bears.

We considered several places -- the art gallery space that was a little too hipster-doofusy, the other art gallery that's a better space but has a large-scale installation scheduled for the time we wanted and the really very lovely museum space whose current exhibit, on Richmond's turbulent race relations in the '50s and '60s, prominently features a Klan robe. (From what we saw, it was a pretty responsible and thorough exhibit. But it was just too much for us to take.

But when we saw Maymont a few weeks ago, we pretty much fell in love with it. It's a large, foundation-operated park in Richmond on land donated by the estate of a railroad baron. The gardens are stunning -- the picture above is of the Italian garden, where we'll have the ceremony -- and it contains several wildlife habitats, including an under-construction bald eagle aviary and the aforementioned bears. (I've been to some really cool weddings before, but none of them had bears. I'm really kind of proud of that.)

So that's where we'll be on Nov. 15. If you're reading this, chances are you'll get a more formal notice in the not-too-distant future.

Continued ...

Ring-a-ding

So if you're reading this, you probably already know that we're engaged. We'll have more to say soon, but like good 21st-century nerds, we updated our relationship status on Facebook. This is what Facebook asks you when you tell it you're engaged:

"You are about to add Lisa Todorovich [in my case] as your Fiancee.
"We will then notify Lisa Todorovich, who will have to confirm that you are in a relationship."

Romantic, isn't it?

Continued ...

Your March Madness viewing rules

As I write this, we're but 12 hours away from tipoff of the first round of the greatest three weeks in sports. As with any event of this scope, the millions of fans tuning in will have just about as many superstitions and rituals and quirks.

F'rinstance, I used to pick one snack food and eat only that one while I watched games, and I still won't put a team through to a later round on my brackets until I've filled in all games from the previous round. You probably have your own things, and that's cool: Let your basketball-jones flag fly.

All that said, I think we can all agree on a few basic rules for maximum tournament pleasure. Really, it's just one rule, with a bunch of exceptions.

That rule is:

Always root for the underdog. Upsets -- your Hampton-Iowa States, your Valpo-Ole Misses -- are what makes the tournament the greatest, and in many ways the most American, of all sporting events. We love to see the little guy stick it to the Man -- the little guy in this case being some school with a direction in its name and a home gym that seats 3,500 and the Man being all the big-money, big-conference Programs who dominate the season.

Go by that rule, and you're pretty much set. There are, however, a number of caveats.

Caveat 1: Personal, familial or geographical ties to a particular school may trump the rule. This allows me to root for Texas to make a deep run; my brother attended grad school there and has settled in Austin.

Caveat 2: When both teams in a first-round game are middle-of-the-pack schools from a big conference -- this year's West Virginia-Arizona matchup, which I'll bear witness to Thursday night, is a good example -- the rule is waived. Cheer for whoever you please, or ignore entirely.

Caveat 2.5: Similarly, when two teams from smaller conferences butt heads, you're free to take whichever side you want, since it's a guarantee that at least one mid-major team will make the next round. There are a few of those games this year, and though some of that is the inevitable result of seeding, I kinda wish the selection committee would stop those pairings. We like David-Goliath matchups, not David-David ones.

Caveat 3: It's always OK to root against the teams you hate, regardless of their seeding.

Caveat 4: By the Elite 8 round, when teams seeded 7th or worse are most likely gone, you are free to root for whomever you please -- although hoping for the best possible games in the Final Four is always appreciated.

Corollary 1: Rooting for teams based solely on how you far you've taken them in your bracket is uncool. Unless you're wagering more than $100, just enjoy the ride.

Corollary 1.5: If you're on the verge of winning more than $100, Corollary 1 may be ignored, provided you don't end up also violating Caveat 1. No one likes a fair-weather fan, money or no money.

May the madness be with you. Enjoy.

Continued ...

Bacon and chocolate. Who knew?

I wish I could say the past few weeks had been filled with fabulous and wonderful adventures, and that's why we haven't blogged for a while. I suppose I could say that, but then that would be lying (although we did get to this the other night and had a lot of fun).

Because really, we've kinda been hunkered down with work and general late-winter boringness, and just kind of lazy when it comes to this here.

How lazy? We shared a candy bar with bacon in it more than a week ago, and I'm just now getting around to writing about it.

Background: We went to Richmond two weekends ago to celebrate Lisa's birthday (yay!), where we enjoyed a lovely evening in the Shockoe Slip/Tobacco Row historic areas, eating delicious food and staying in a fancy hotel. On our way home we stopped at the awesome candy store For the Love of Chocolate in Carytown. Words can't do it full justice -- the variety and creativity of sweet stuff on display there is kind of staggering, from Chick-O-Sticks to super-exotic chocolate flavored with chile, rosemary and all manner of other things you wouldn't necessarily think about putting into chocolate.

Which brings me to Mo's Bacon Bar, which, as you may be able to see above, is a combination of "applewood smoked bacon, alder wood smoked salt and 'deep milk chocolate.'" We were both a little trepidatious about trying it, but you know what? Turns out bacon and chocolate is pretty darn good (two great tastes that taste great together, as it were).

The smoky bits of fried pork are a nice compliment to the chocolate, which is darker than your average Hershey bar but not into the realm of the serious dark stuff. But it never gets overwhelming (at least not in the mini-size bar we split). Good crunch too.

More excitement to come -- we're going to the first and second rounds of the greatest sporting event ever in D.C. this weekend, and I plan at least one update from there. I have taken days off in the past to watch the first two rounds, and am doing so again this year, only this time I get to see games in person. This Salon piece from 2001 pretty much captures my feelings about the tournament, and I can't wait to experience it in person for the first time in more than 15 years.

Happy bacon, happy bracketing, and remember to pick at least one 12-vs.-5 upset.

Continued ...

An evening with John Oliver

We shed our proud-townie status for a couple hours last Friday and headed over to campus -- pardon me, "Grounds" -- to hear Daily Show correspondent and real-live British person John Oliver deliver a fine set of stand-up (happily, we were not the oldest people in the room; a fair number of other grownups attended too).

Now, writing about a comedy performance and trying to impart just how funny the guy was is probably an exercise in futility. Even if I had perfect recall or had surreptitiously taped the show, transcribing his bit about how he updated the Wikipedia entries for several political figures ("Sen. Richard Lugar could have been the greatest swimmer in Olympic history but for the fact that he's soluble in water") wouldn't come across quite as funny on the screen.

Nor could I do justice to his story about the moment that he realized he would be a comic, and not an athlete (it involved a 400-meter race, a cool breeze and a flap on the front of his shorts) . Because you still couldn't have seen the look on his face as he recounted the horrible tale, coming off like Harry Potter's hangdog older brother.

And I really don't know how to describe his partner-in-comedy Andy Zaltzman, with whom he hosts a podcast for The Times of London and did a show for BBC Radio called The Department.

What I can tell you, though, that if John Oliver comes to your town, you should go see him. Dude was really, really funny.

Continued ...

All the old familiar places

It's been six months and a couple of days since I was last in Los Angeles. That's not that long, really, but in that time I've managed to forget just how freakin' big this place is. I'm on the plane, maybe a half-hour away from landing, and I look out the window. Hmm, I wonder if that's Big Bear down there.

Turns out it was -- and then I just kind of sat there for the rest of the flight and marveled at the unbroken spring of urban/suburban/industrial development that stretched from Lake Arrowhead all the way to the coast. Living in L.A., you sort of tend to stay in your bubble, and while you bitch about the traffic and know sort of implicitly that all those people live somewhere, it's easy to forget how the Southland stretches on and on and on.

So, yeah, it's nice to be back. And also a little odd.

Not in a bad way, though. More in this kind of way: Driving in from LAX, I take note of the old hotel on Lincoln that's been boutiqued and see that Playa Vista looks even more monolithic and out of place than when I last drove by. A couple new facades on the little shops near the office, a new shmancy blonde-wood door on the entrance to our suite.

As I leave, I remind myself that I'm driving to my hotel in Marina del Rey and not my old apartment. I've already sussed out a back way to avoid the traffic on Lincoln; it works. Pavilions still has the sandwich I like, so that's dinner. I sit and watch Super Tuesday returns in the state where I no longer vote; my primary is next week, and it looks like it'll still count, which is cool.

Nothing is all that different, but still it feels a degree or two off. Maybe it's a location thing -- I'm in a perfectly nice but nondescript hotel in Marina del Rey for the next six days, eating at places I haven't visited since I was fighting monsters. It's going to be great seeing my friends here again (already has been, with regard to my co-workers). And this will be my home again soon enough. Right now, though? Just passin' through.

Continued ...

Surviving a cold, gray Sunday

Sometimes it's just about hangin' out.

Today's recipe:

• Re-runs of America's Next Top Model, Cycle 3


• NBA: Lakers v. Cavaliers


• Frosting the red velvet cupcakes I made yesterday


• Tasting the rum-raisin brownies I also made yesterday


• A Duraflame log (the 3-hour kind) in the fireplace


• laundry (OK, so something got accomplished after all)


• The Sunday Washington Post


• The Sunday New York Times


• Mocking my (possibly now formerly) beloved Joe Jackson for selling out the great "One More Time" for a Taco Bell commercial. Oh, Joe -- really? You break my heart.


• Later: leftovers of the beef and butternut squash stew Rick made the other day

Yeah. I could live this day over and over.

Continued ...

Things to do

Not off to a blazing start in 2008, but any year that starts with kissing your awesome girlfriend at midnight, staying in bed till about 11, said girlfriend making delicious waffles and then watching football all day has potential, I think.

But since I still have a full year's worth of days (thanks, leap year!) to get stuff done, I figure a lazy opening can't hurt anything. And there is stuff I plan to do this year (I mean, how can one not be inspired by the likes of the image above? Seriously). Like:


More reading. Made significant progress on one of the great political novels of the 20th century, The Gay Place, over Christmas. On tap: Some Ross MacDonald (why this guy, one of the really great crime novelists, is not easier to find in bookstores baffles me), The Night Gardener (my first foray with George Pelecanos), Charlie Wilson's War (saw the movie, now want to read the full story).

Lisa and I have also talked about starting a two-person book club, where we each introduce the other to books we love. I'm thinking maybe The Drowning Pool (there's that man again), possibly some T.C. Boyle. Not sure yet.

Some travel. Nothing huge, probably, but it's nice to get away every now and then. Maybe somewhere in here, possibly here, very probably here for at least a couple days.

Another marathon. Been stuck on four for a couple years now, and it's time to climb back on that wagon. This one's on my birthday. Do I want to spend four or five hours running the day I turn 37? I dunno. But it's a thought.

And now, it's time to bookend this day by eating some chili cheese dogs and tater tots. Like I said: This year's got potential.

Continued ...