I was going to post more about the Turkey fest. But, for those of you who don’t know yet, another plane went down in NYC; crashed into a residential section of Queens. No word yet on the cause. While the news wasn’t as numbing as two months ago, I feel a bit more empty. More cynical. Neither shocked nor suprised. And just not in the mood for jokes or storytelling.

For the moment all I want to do is fight the desire to jump to a conclusion about the cause. I don’t want to assume anything.

34 quarts of deep fryin’ action just waiting for a turkey

I did it. Now all I have to do is start following NASCAR and western NY’s conversion of me to a red neck will be complete. Yesterday I became the proud owner of a 34-quart Turkey Deep Fryer/Steamer/Boiler purchased at Home Depot. Over the last two weeks I think I’ve checked out every fryer here in town. The entire process has put me into a strange state of both questioning my sanity and getting really excited at the prospect of next weekend. Why next weekend you ask? Because I’m hosting a “Red Neck/White Trash Thanksgiving Community Meal.” That translates to I’m deep-frying a 20lb turkey yeee-haaw!!!! The excitement around this event has begun to grow. Folks around here are really into the idea. Plus my friends from around the country have started to offer advice and share stories. I just got some great suggestions from Natalie and Cindy had posted some great turkey frying stuff on her blog a few days ago! Invites have started to go out. If you haven’t gotten one and you’re going to be in the Rochester area on Saturday, November 16 drop me e-mail and I’ll get you an evite (Alyson: your evite is in the mail, I know you will stop by for deep fried goodness)! This also will be a precursor to convincing my family to let me deep fry a small turkey as part of our home Thanksgiving celebration. I’ll keep you up to date on that.

my new pen pal

The other news in my life is I have a new electronic pen pal: *drum roll please* Henry Rollins! Yes, sensing my innate hipness during our brief conversation, Henry sought out this page and began writing me e-mails begging me to be an e-mail buddy. At first I pushed him away because he seemed so desperate, but after a while I took pity on him and chose to write back….

     …. what?….

                  … oh, the truth? …

         ……..sigh….. ok….

I’d better tell the truth before I’m hunted down by an aging alternative icon who, though being a very peaceful person, would kick my butt while Slayer blares in the background and then share the story with countless college audiences across the country. At the RIT show we went to he spend a long time talking about a recent trip to India. As part of it he spoke about the child beggars (often who were crippled) that he encountered there. He had mentioned he wondered how/why they became beggars. Being the trivia sponge I am, I knew the answer but when I got the chance to talk to him I wasn’t able to share the info. So on a whim, I dropped a note with the info to his website. Last night while going through junk e-mail I spotted a note from an address I didn’t recognize (not the usual porn services, get rich quick schemes or stock tips). Just as I was about to deleted it, I noticed the subject line “HR” and the e-mail address. One double click later and there it was: a short reply from the man himself thanking me for the info. How cool is that??!!! I had one additional question for him so I replyed to the note. We’ll see if he responds (though I fully expect he will ’cause he’s good like that).

So what have I learned from this experience?

I’m famous ma!

My photo is Picture of the Day today at kodak.com! Go me!

deep fried bits of goodness

Mark’s Car: Just a few updates on past blog issues. The clutch did go in Mark’s car. After 134,000+ miles it really didn’t owe him anything.

Turkey:The plans for the deep fried turkey continue. And before you think I’m crazy, know that Martha’s done it too. I pick up the fryer tomorrow. I think I may even have convinced my mother to let me do one at home too!

Other: I haven’t been to the YMCA to swim in a while. I was supposed to go this morning but I managed to pull a muscle/muscle group in my back last night at Martial Arts and even the though of doing the crawl right now is pretty painful. We’ll be announcing the casting for the plays tomorrow. And finally my lust for Alyson Hannigan continues unabated.

henry and me

An intense self proclaimed aging alternative icon, I dig Henry Rollins. He’s a renaissance man if I’ve ever seen one: punk rocker, actor, writer, storyteller and lecturer. I really only discovered him recently though I known of him for years. It was earlier this year, when I spend 13 hours in a car with him over the course of two days that my admiration took hold. Of course the 13 hours wasn’t spend with him personally, but rather a collection of his spoken word recordings.

It’s pretty normal for me to immerse myself in an artist on the long drive from Rochester (were I currently reside) to Amityville (my home town on L.I.). I listened to Rollins talk of his time as the lead singer of Black Flag during his early 20’s, often reading journal entries he had written at the time. From there it was recordings of his speaking performances spanning the nearly 15 years since he left Flag. It was an amazing experience. I got to listen and understand the factors that created this intense, intelligent, funny and well-spoken individual. With each new CD and tape I heard his views and delivery evolve; how his worldview changed with each year, tour, and experience. Most importantly as I listened I found countless bits of wisdom and different lessons that I could immediately apply to my life.

So when Abby told me that Rollins was going to be at RIT as part of his speaking tour I was there. And to put it in Rollins’ speak “He just hit the stage and killed everyone.” The first thing he did was to wrap the mic cord around his hand. All I could think about was a picture on the inside cover of Get in The Van, his aural history of Black Flag, which features him at about 22 performing with the mic wrapped the same way. And make no mistake; at RIT he was just as intense as at one of his punk performances. Not as loud (most of the time), but just as intense. Once the mic cord was wrapped he went from there for 2+ hours. I can’t remember a single “Um” “Ah” or a lost thought. Some of the material was rehearsed. At other times he just went off the cuff. At time he was side splittingly funny, others deadly serious. It was an amazing night. And it didn’t end there.

I’ve met a number of performers in my time. It’s often a very mixed bag. In part because it’s usually right after a performance and they’re drained. More often than not it’s because they have no desire to talk to me. I don’t blame them. I don’t think I’d ever want to be accosted by people who think that they know me and don’t necessarily have anything to say (or just after I finished 2 hours on stage). Other times I’ve managed to make an ass of myself in the process (like the time that Roger Ebert thought I was stalking him at the Oscars). However sometimes I’ve gotten the chance to really talk to these folks, even for a moment, and they just blew me away. They were just the coolest people. So all of that weighed on my mind after the show, as a few other people and I waited to see if Rollins would come back out to talk with those of us who were hanging around the gym he performed in. I didn’t want to talk his ear off, or assume we would be friends forever, but just say thank you for his part in13 hours in a car that helped me wrap my head around a lot of life issues. So we waited. And waited. And waited. And he didn’t come out. It wasn’t meant to be.

So we started to head back to the car. The walk back to the parking lot takes us right by the ice rink entrance, which is often used to move equipment in to the gym. And standing there, surrounded by a small group of people was Henry Rollins. He looked tired, drained from the performance. He was talking about the works of Werner Herzog. I listened for a bit, and knowing a bit about Herzog I cautiously joined the conversation.

It only lasted a few moments. But it was great. Everyone else must have thought I was a jerk as it quickly turned into Henry and I discussing film. But I didn’t care. We talked about Herzog’s Nosforatu and Jim Jarmusch. And then he said that he had to get going and politely excused himself and was whisked into his ride. I didn’t even get to thank him. But it didn’t matter. We had talked for a moment, and it had nothing to do with him or his work. Just something we both were interested in. I don’t think I could ask for anything more than that.

breakdown blues…

Last night I was out until after 1.00am with a sick car. The complicating factor was it wasn’t my car… So here’s the situation, my parents went away for a weeks vacation and they left the keys to the brand new Porsche… wait, that’s someone else’s story. Mine goes something like this:

My close friend/martial arts instructor Mark has a hobby… collecting Z Cars. Mark has two of these cars so far: one that he wants to use for stock car rallies and the other a “parts” car. As part of getting the one car ready to rally, Mark needs to restore/fine tune the first car.

Yesterday, he had to go to Watertown NY to pick up a motor for the car that was coming down from Canada. There was no way that he was going to be able to fit it in his Jetta. So we arranged that we would swap cars for the day. He would use my Blazer to pick up and transport the motor, while I zipped around town in his Jetta. I enjoy borrowing the Jetta because it’s a stick shift and I don’t usually get the chance to drive them (I learned to drive on a powder blue VW Rabbit stick shift). So everything was right with the world. Mark was off picking up his motor. I was zipping around town. Then it happened…

I was returning from RIT at about 11.20pm after attending some *shudder* student plays there (the horror, the horror). All I wanted to do was go to bed. As I approached Highland Park, suddenly, the clutch went to the floor without any resistance and the Jetta was not shifting. I’ll translate this for those who are not wise in the way of stick: that’s bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad! After a lot of work I managed to get the car into first and trying to keep the tactometer as low as possible, managed to limp the car into the Highland Diner parking lot; all the while thinking: “Great… I killed Mark’s car.”

The next hour and a half was a very lonely time. I tried calling Mark, but it kept rolling into his voice mail. “Good” I thought, “that means there is someone home.” I left a message, a pathetic message what went something like this:

ahh… hi Mark, it’s Matt. Ummm… Got some bad news. Sorry. It looks like the clutch went on the Jetta. I got it into the Highland’s parking lot. Sorry. Give me a call back when you get a chance. Umm…. No I mean give me a call back as soon as you get this. Sorry ’bout this. I’ll be with the car. Talk to you later. I mean soon. Call me when you get this. Sorry about this. *click* — I tend to say sorry a lot. It’s a habit I try to break but can’t seem to do it. Sorry.

I refused to leave the car, in part because it was a long (though not undo-able) walk to my home and more importantly you just can’t abandon a friends car like that. So I sat there, trying to stay awake (I had no desire to spend the night in a Jetta in a parking lot), calling mark every five minutes only to continually get his voice mail. On the plus side I got some great sex tips from Love Lines and then heard the thrilling end of the World Series Game (thank God for Radio). By quarter to 1.00am I was really starting to wonder if I’d be there until morning. It was somewhere around that point that I did fall asleep only to me almost immediately awoken by my cell phone (which is far louder than I remembered it….). Any onlooker must have thought the guy in the Jetta was having a seziure when I jolted awake and did my best to answer the phone.

Mark took everything very well, he was over there within fifteen minutes. He inspected the clutch; we decided that >hopefully< the clutch cable had gone and it would be an easy fix. We stuck a note in the window saying he'd be back the next morning to have it towed and drove me home. Since the motor was to be dropped of at a shop today it was still in the back of my car. We decided that he should keep the Blazer to finish the "Motor Quest." So this morning I'm without car and working from home. Still there is something strange about getting dropped off at your house by you car (or truck in this case) and then watch it drive away...

tonight…