biker heaven

Ah, the wind in your hair and Jesus riding pillion. As American as—Bud used to be.

it's so american

The menu: Watermelon, hot dogs, deviled eggs and—seltzer???

standing on line

I'm too old and too spoiled from being a journalist to stand in line with teenagers for a free concert.

doing lunch

Today's reason I can't stop drinking is lunch with Ed. Which typically starts at 1:00 or so and goes on for 12 hours. And it did.

the weather

I keep worrying about the tenants. If it's hot, they might be too hot; if cold, they might build illegal fires in the fireplace, etc. But if there's one thing over which one has no control, it's the weather. And people seem to make do. I asked the last tenants, who had a nice day followed by an awful day how they fared. "Oh," they said. "We all had such hangovers the weather didn't matter."

a century

My father-in-law's a hundred years old. And we're none of us getting any younger. l'chaim!

a dog's life

My mother loves her dog more than her children.

allergies

On account of having been bitten by ticks and chiggers in the past, I may be allergic to meat. WTF! I want my steak and brewski!

off the meds

I'm off the blood pressure medicine you're not supposed to consume alcohol with. . .

you know who

journalism 101

To become a journalist, you have to be able to think, write, talk, drink and smoke—often all at once.

no more wisdom

Isn't this enough to make you want to dull the pain?

it's tax time

Yes, it's that fabu time when I get to see how unwisely I spent my money last year—how much on beer at John's Party Pantry and the Red Bird, how much given to impecunious friends and relations, how much on substandard DSL lines in three states! It's enough to make a person turn to something other than seltzer!

holidays

baby in bar

hellos and goodbyes

boola boola

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Police say someone driving a U-Haul truck into a tailgating area at the Yale-Harvard game accelerated into three women, killing one and injuring the other two. Police spokesman David Hartman says the truck entered a parking lot designated for pre-game tailgating, sped up for unknown reasons and hit the women. The truck then crashed into other U-Haul vans in the lot. He said a 30-year-old woman was taken to Yale-New Haven hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Another woman was seriously hurt, but was in stable condition. The third woman suffered minor injuries.  Police were questioning the driver of the U-Haul.

everybody's doing it

In the mouths of babes. . .

pork futures

LAFAYETTE, Minn. — Here in pig country, the pigs are vanishing. Ryan Bode, whose family has raised pigs for decades, said thieves broke into this barn in Lafayette, Minn., by cutting straight down some ventilation netting. This month, 150 pigs — each one weighing more than an average grown man — disappeared from a farm building in Lafayette despite deadbolts on its doors. Farther north  594 snorting, squealing hogs disappeared last month, whisked away in the dark. And in Iowa, with cover from the vast stretches of tall cornfields, pigs have been snatched, 20 or 30 at a time, from as many as eight facilities, said the sheriff, adding that among other challenges, the missing are difficult to single out.
“They all look alike."
  “This is the hot commodity of the moment, like copper a few years ago and gold,” said Ryan Bode, whose family discovered that 150 of its pigs were missing shortly before they were to be taken to market. The loss was $30,000 on top of the “ungodly high” price of corn that he had paid to feed those pigs until they were fat enough to be sold. “And after all that, they’re not here,” he said. Mr. Bode seemed doubtful about seeing his pigs again.
“My guess is that they’re bacon and pork chops already,” he said.

This little piggie went to market.  I'll take an oink on the rocks with a twist of tail.

Don't drink and make your kid drive?

WOODHAVEN, Mich. (AP) — A 9-year-old Michigan girl is in tears as she testifies about the night her dad had her drive a full-size van in suburban Detroit. Authorities say Shawn Weimer had his daughter drive because he had been drinking. He is charged with child abuse, and a judge is holding a hearing to determine if Weimer will go to trial. Police in Wayne County's Brownstown Township stopped the van in the wee hours of Oct. 8 and found the girl behind the wheel in a booster seat. The girl says she agreed to drive but "felt a little scared." She testified her dad drank half of a bottle of whiskey.

The judge called a recess as she kept crying.