Chest­nuts roast­ing on an open fire…

Last night a number of us (Abby, Andy, Jenny and Aaron, Tina, and Joel and Hannah) went to the hol­i­day open house on Park Ave. All the little shops on Park Ave were giving away free food and hol­i­day cheer. There were car­ol­ers and people in cos­tume for the kids. But most impor­tantly there were roasted chest­nuts. All my life I’ve wanted to try them. I vividly remem­ber the smell of them being cooked by ven­dors on street cor­ners when my family used to go into Man­hat­tan at Christ­mas time. But I’d never been able to try them. Last night I got my chance. $2.00 and a bunch of junior high level “nut” jokes later, I got my first taste of chest­nuts. They were far softer and chewier than I expected (typ­i­cally roast nuts are kinda crunchy), but I enjoyed them a lot.

lack of segue

George Har­ri­son died yes­ter­day. I knew he wasn’t doing to well but the news came some­what as a shock. Two down, two to go; and why do I have the strange feel­ing that Ringo will sur­vive them all? I wish I had a copy of “While my guitar gently weeps” at work.

in other news

Of course I know what all of you are think­ing: “Screw this talk of hol­i­day cheer and dead Bea­t­les Matt! Where’s the latest makeover???!!!” Well, good reader, there are two today:

From Jenny:

click for a larger ver­sion

Jenny writes: Here is my sug­ges­tion for your makeover… A short sort of spikey cut. Keep the blond… but with some darker high­t­lights. My inspi­ra­tion was British Ford model http://​www.​top20male​mod​els.​com/​1​9.htm">“Francis”. They say “He has a look that evokes a priv­i­leged British aris­to­crat from the 1930’s, yet at the same time he is totally modern.” So you could wear cool tweedy argyly things with a black trench coat over them. Prince William with an edge.

and the newly employed Cindy sent:

Cindy writes: Purge the hell out of your clothes. Get it down to 6 good pairs of pants and 10 shirts or so. Save a really nice suit. Get some really cool pants. But get rid of all the older stuff. It will be much easier to main­tain, clean, and select what you are going to wear. I think you should focus in on J. Crew. You should go for a cool and adven­ture­some look. Get rid of any­thing that looks folksy. Also, try to strive for solid colors and don’t pur­chase prints any­more.

umm, Cindy, it’s going to take more than a hair cut to pull off that look…

Keep those pic­tures comin’

GGG­GOOOOOOOO CINDY!

Rock on! Cindy has a job!

I always wanted cin­na­mon buns for hair

Here’s Joel’s entry for my new look… umm… uhhh…. I don’t think this is going to be it unless I go through some major changes or get stuck in a space melo­drama. To quote my friend Jai, per­haps the best word for this is Sab-​o-​tage. Keep the love and new looks comin’! More info on the Matt 2002 look is located below. I’d like to add one more request for anyone send­ing in a new entry. Could you write a short bit of text (a sen­tence or two) describ­ing how you came up with the idea for the look or why I should adopt it. You know, so we can under­stand how your twisted… umm… I mean cre­ative minds work. ;-)

Check out a larger ver­sion of Heather’s sug­ges­tion for Matt:2002

Wow. Within two hours of the blog yes­ter­day I got the first entry from my friend Heather! She’s def­i­nitely push­ing a GQ thing… She also sent me this pic­ture of the glasses she added to my pic­ture. Any thoughts? Com­ments? (I really need to get that fea­ture run­ning) Or better yet, any other sub­mis­sions? Check the blog below for detail!

not so talk­a­tive robert

Last night I was in Syra­cuse attend­ing a Q&A ses­sion with Kevin Smith! Yup, Mr Mallrats-​Clerks-​Silent Bob-​Daredevil-​Green Arrow him­self. It was a cool expe­ri­ence. Kevin started around 7.45 and finally stopped at about 11.30pm. Half the audi­ence had left (thank­fully it seemed to be the half that asked dumb ques­tions) by the end. High­lights included a call to Jason “the Pimp Master” Mewes (also known as Jay) and Smith call­ing a girl from the audiences’ estranged boyfriend to help them get back together. In both cases the people responses were shared with the audi­ence by press­ing the phone up to the micro­phone. He told a lot of sto­ries, dealt with tons of heck­lers and stupid ques­tions (hour one pretty much was Smith vs. every jack­ass in the audi­ence), and shared a little wisdom. He also showed a video of out­takes from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Or rather he let it play while he snuck out for a quick smoke. All and all the night was a lot like his movies: undis­ci­plined, a little too long, lots of gen­i­talia jokes, a lot of heart and some flashes of brilliance.

While I didn’t get to meet him after the show, I did ask a ques­tion that caused us to have a short con­ver­sa­tion during the show. Thank­fully I stopped before the audi­ence turned on me. Other people who did the same thing later in the night were not so lucky. Last month it was Rollins. This month Smith. I can only wonder what Decem­ber holds.

Audi­ence Par­tic­i­pa­tion: Design my 2002 look!

I’ve teased about this for a while, now here it is: As 2002 approaches I find myself unsure of what I should do with my “do.” My hair is in its usual floppy, a little longer than it should be, state. I’ve had the same glasses for over two years. For exam­ple, here are some exam­ples of old looks I’ve had:

I need a change, to update my image, and I need ideas. That’s where you come in. I’m look­ing for sug­ges­tions from my vast audi­ence. How do you do this you ask? Have some fun with Pho­to­Shop!

Click for a Matt with a lot less hair ready to edit :-)

I’ll pro­vide two pic­tures, one of me with hair and glasses (to the right) one with­out (to get to that one click on the pic­ture to the right… I’m not masochis­tic enough to pub­lish it directly on the page). Down­load the pic­tures and go to town. Change the hair, the glasses, throw it on a body with dif­fernt cloths. Then e-mail the results to me. The responses will dis­played right here on my blog. And who knows, the best one might become my new look for 2002 (pre­mier­ing on or about Jan 1). So have fun and get cre­ative (or get seri­ous and help me figure out what to do with my hair ’cause I’m look­ing for good ideas too!)

traf­fic and foul water fowl

I’m back in Rochester after a 10-hour drive. The trip from LI to Rah-​cha-​cha usual takes between 6 (if I push the limit and don’t stop) and 7 hours. Uggg. I was out of the car for maybe 15 min­utes max during the trip. Traf­fic ground to a dead stop at least 7 times during the trip. I sat, not moving, on high­ways in three states. I real­ize that more people were dri­ving this year due to the gen­eral dis­com­fort with flying. But is it too much to ask that they would at least drive well? I passed 15 acci­dents over the course of the drive (often the reason that I was moving at 30 miles an hour for most of the trip). I hope Christ­mas isn’t this bad.

Ok, as for the foul fowl… I got into a fight with a swan while deep-​frying the turkey for Thanks­giv­ing. Seriously… My family’s home on LI is located on a canal and we often get vis­i­tors in the form of ducks, Cana­dian geese and swans. Halfway through the cook­ing of the turkey, a pair of swans came up our boat ramp appar­ently to say “hi” and eat some grass. Or so I thought. I would dis­cover one’s really mis­sion was far more devious.

I was alone near the fryer, preppin’ some sweet pota­toes fries, when I noticed the larger swan start­ing to move towards the deep fryer. At first I assumed he was just going to munch on the grass in front of him. But he didn’t stop at the lawn. He kept going, get­ting closer and closer to the fryer. Sud­denly I real­ized that he was making a run at the turkey and stepped between him and the fryer. The swan stopped less than two feet away from me for a moment. Then it moved to flank me to my right. I stepped to counter. The swan paused, sized me up, and then made a move to my left. I coun­tered again and tried to shoo it away. With that the swan puffed itself up, extend­ing its neck and flexed its wings. I sud­denly real­ized how big a swan could get. “Hiss!” said the swan, which trans­lated roughly as “I want some deep-​fried good­ness! Get outta my way.” Since “Shoo swan” wasn’t work­ing, I shrugged and hissed right back saying “Silly Swan, turkey’s for people. Look, I’m deep-​frying a dis­tant rel­a­tive of yours. You don’t want any of this.” The swan didn’t budge. If the bird actu­ally made it to the fryer (which was less than three feet away from the stand off) it could be burned by the flame, or worse knock over the pot, ruin the turkey and mostly be killed by the 325 degree oil. I didn’t want to spend my Thanks­giv­ing dis­pos­ing of a dead swan. But there was no way I’d risk rush­ing this bird and pos­si­bly knock over the turkey in the ensu­ing melee. Finally, after a tense minute the swan retreated back to the ramp.

Sit­u­a­tion averted, I turned to head to the back door of our house to call one of my broth­ers and tell what had hap­pened. No sooner than I turned my back to walk away, the swan made another run at the pot. For the ten min­utes I was held hostage by a swan. I couldn’t leave the pot unguarded; I couldn’t get help. Finally guests started to arrive and the swan retreated into the canal. He did fire off a final hiss of “you beat me this time Bernius, but there will be another day. I’ll get you my pretty and your deep-​fried good­ness too…”

The turkey, btw, was just about per­fect. And there was much rejoic­ing. I think I’ll have to have people over again, to let them taste the difference.

home

I made it. I’m typing this from Long Island. I made it in last night at 12.30am. Today has been a prepin’ for T2: Thanks­giv­ing Day, the second deep fryed turkey. I’ll be trying a dif­fer­ent recipie this time so we’ll see if that changes anything….

deep fryed pictures

Marvel at oil bub­bling. Wonder how we packed that many people into my apart­ment. See me like you’ve never seen me before (because in the end it’s all about me… after me it’s prob­a­bly all about Tony). Check out the pic­tures from the Redneck/White Trash Thanks­giv­ing Party (note: you’ll need to join oFoto to view them…). Eat yer heart out Cindy.

‘nother quickie

I’m still recov­er­ing from doing one turkey and in three days it’s “T2: Thanks­giv­ing Day” in Ami­tyville, NY. The audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion thing I’ve been allud­ing to should be up tomor­row. I’ve just been too busy to get it up. But my plan is to have it up by tomor­row so that anyone who wishes to par­tic­i­pate can work on it over the week­end. In the mean­time I hope I’m peak­ing your curiosity…. :-)

con­fir­ma­tion

I talked ear­lier today with Keith, my turkey-​frying guru. After some con­sul­ta­tion he did con­firm my sus­pi­cions: I over­cooked my turkey by about five min­utes. Sorry about that to all those good souls who attended the event. The good news is I won’t make this mis­take again. Per­haps this will be an excuse to have a future party…. We shall see….