Dear Peretz-

Hey, you ol' bug-eyed freak. I know David tied you up in the kitchen with Pickles when the cable guy was over. I'm sorry he did that but it wasn't my fault. I'll give you a biscuit later.
Love, Little Lauri

today, after the election...

I thought this was going to be a lucky year but it has hit a slump. Not only did the Republican take Kennedy's seat, a relative of mine expressed happiness at this happening, which made me feel sick. That is the belly I have now, uneasy seasickness that my relative is of such a different ilk than I. Is she against improved healthcare? I scratch my head over it. I would rather stop having any kind of relationship with her than to discuss it, of course. It fills me with wonder that a woman of my generation would have the same political flavor as my father. Whoa.

After the returns but before reading my cousin's fb reaction to my dismay, Husbear, myself and three friends motored down River Road in Nashville to Norm's River Roadhouse where I read in the paper would be a bluegrass jam. We walked in and there was the circle, upstairs in the restaurant-grille area and we were welcomed by Norm and the bartender who asked if any of us played anything and wanted in on the jam and then told us that it was three dollar special night, some beers were three dollars, hamburgers were three dollars, fries were three dollars. We had already gorged ourselves on DbR's pork and ch0w ch0w-filled steamed buns and drank a round along with dinner so we weren't the most receptive group to the three dollar offerings but we climbed into a booth and Emily and I went to order beers. I asked for a coke for DbR and looked at the beer options. I didn't really like anything they had and told the bartender (who was very tall and lanky like a brunette, less-buff Micah) that what I really wanted was something very hoppy, perhaps and IPA and the only thing I could see they had which was anywhere in the county of what I liked was the Sam Adams which I didn't really want. He agreed that Sam Adams was no where near the hop neighborhood and that maybe I would like a beer he could recommend which was downstairs in the other part of the bar, telling me the name of it. I reacted noncomittally, weighing the worth of really getting into it with this guy about the beers. Meanwhile, Norm brought DbR's coke to the table and Chris grabbed it, thinking it was his (Emily told him she would get him a soda whereas I just ordered it without relaying my plan) causing Mr Russell to have to order his own sodapop. Lanky Barman came up and showed me a bottle that seemed to have potential, based on its packaging but I saw the word, Stout. "I don't really like.." "I know you said IPA not Stout but this stout is the hoppiest you'll ever taste, it is really light." He said something along those lines and against my second judgement, I agreed. He handed me the bottle and I unscrewed it and turned away. Emily asked, "Did you taste it yet?" and I realized I hadn't. I did take a sip and it was exactly like he described and I was pleased I had accepted the beer. I turned to tell him and he was back up at the bar.

A little while after that Lanky came back over to where I was sitting and had a huge mug which was very heavy but not from its contents because there was only an ounce or so of beer on the bottom. "Try this," he offered and showed me the bottle of Fat Tire Amber Ale. "That is good." I said after my swallow and felt pleased he would be interested enough in my beer palate to come over unsolicited. "If you like hoppy beer, you know what you should try? Rogue Brutal Bitter."

We discussed the price of a 6 pack of Brutal Bitter at the different beer stores in town and he suggested one we had gone to and he suggested one we had not. I asked him if he knew of it on tap anywhere and he shook his head with wonder as if seeing a dog play the banjo was more likely. I bought a bottle of the Fat Tire without finishing the first. I noticed that the Stout tasted less hoppy as it warmed.

The music was okay. At one point between songs the musicians talked about a recent report that hunters had killed 555 black bears this season in Tennessee. "If that many were killed, imagine how many are out there." One guy said. The other guy said that bear wasn't that good to eat and a third guy said it depended on how you cooked it. The first guy wondered aloud if he had any bear meat in his freezer.

No one spoke about the Massachusetts election.

What Lauri is thinking about

more politics, I'm sorry. A couple of days ago it became clear to me that we (Massachusetts residents) are really in peril regarding this senatorial race! I keep hearing that the fascist Scott Brown is ahead, that we may actually end up with a republican filling Ed Kennedy's spot, which is repugnant to me and i say this with no apologies whatsoever. If my state ends up with a republican senator who hates gays, is against women and who wants us to torture and debase the beliefs that I love this state for, then I am going to do something about it.

But what? I left the state today! I will not be back to vote on Tuesday! Filled with this knowledge and horror, I thought long and hard about my options. At the Sierra Grille Thursday night, I forced myself to go from table to table reminding these 30 somethings to vote Tuesday and for all that is holy's sake, vote demo.
-- I don't love Coakley, she's a putz but what can you do? At least she loves the gays and cares about the poor! --
and around the room I went. Don't you hate it when people try to get you to sign a petition or impede your life's natural flow with their needs, beliefs, politics? I do but I became one of them last night!! People were nice, I mean, I was basically preaching to the converted, it was more of a gentle wake up call "You need to go vote if you can on Tuesday" Can, meaning, registered. Someone told me that I should vote absentee ballot which I haven't done since I voted for Walter Mondale in 1984, my first election. I was at college but was registered in Syracuse, NY and I voted absentee ballot. And we did it. I dragged Husbear to the Greenfield Town Hall at 10 am Friday morning, the last day of absentee ballots (because Monday is MLK, jr day and the town hall is closed?) and we voted for Martha.

Then we drove to Wytheville, VA with the dogs. We gave Pickles some benedryl and he looked at me all day with the accusing eyes and we stopped for dinner in Stoughton, meeting up with Conan, who is very nice to see. Now we have the dogs in a king sized bed in a La Quinta and continue our big adventure tomorrow.

I will continue to berate my Massachusetts friends to vote on Tuesday.

Rogue Brutal Bitter

Today is my last day at work before vacation. I almost don't want to leave Greenfield. There is a part of me that wants to stay home and work on my three zines, all at once. Just take a week and take my 3 ideas and stay at home from Friday Jan 15-Sunday Jan 24 and create all 3 zines at once. Every day at 5 oclock I would leave the house and go down to the Hope and Olive, drink 2 pints of Rogue Brutal Bitter Beer and then come back home to the Bricker and work for another 4-5 hours on the zines, drop to sleep at midnight and then start up again the next morning around 10-11 am.
That would be a perfect vacation.

I think I just realized why I didn't want to leave Greenfield. I'm afraid that I won't be able to find and drink my favorite beer of all time, The Rogue Brutal Bitter. I am seriously obsessed with the flavor of that beer and I don't want to waste my time, the calories or the dough on any other beer. I resent all establishments who do not offer that beer to me. I'm really on a kick.

I am excited to see Shirley, though. She's better than the Rogue. I will work on the zines, too, in my way, while we vacation. It'll be alright.

politics

I listen to a lot of news on the radio, npr,bbc, etc and I think hard about it. Over the weekend I heard a debate between the three candidates for Edward Kennedy's MA senatorial seat and I was really on overdrive in my brain because I found myself agreeing a little bit with each candidate, the republican, the democrat and the nutty "independent". Each one of them had an argument I agreed with a little bit. Of course when the candidate running "as an independent" made a case for cutting the budget, I knew he was talking about cutting aid to poor and disabled folks and I am strongly against that but then when he was making a case for retracting the USA's fussy tentacles from other country's business, I was completely on board. When the democrat lady spoke about the Health care bill I could agree with what she was saying but then when she was talking about the xmas terrorist being tried by the attorney general as opposed to a military tribunal, I wasn't so supportive. The republican guy supported "interrogating" this terrorist for information about what was next for the US which I don't agree with (who really supports such "interrogation"? and, what would this guy know anyway? He's just a tool) but on the other hand I do agree with not necessarily paying for this guy's legal representation and maybe a military tribunal is the place for him.

I think very hard also about the whole war on Afghanistan, which I've discussed on this blog before. Have we ("we" being the USA) really killed more than 1000 innocent bystanders with our drones, as they sought terrorists and Taliban leaders in that country (and Pakistan)? If so, that is not okay. The only reason I support this war (and I want to write "support" in strong quotation marks) is because of the way women are treated by that political system. If we are killing women, then fuck the whole thing! I rescind my support.

Right now I am listening to the radio and there is an interview about the Tea Party and there are folks on the radio who are teabaggers and I have to say that I haven't heard one thing from them that I do support. I feel pretty firm in my total dislike and repugnance of this organization.

I love this, I love that

So I watched Neil Patrick Harris doing his thing in that 2 and a half minute musical number during tonight's episode of the best sitcom currently airing on blah blah tv right now. I had no idea that there would be a big song and dance number until it started playing on the tv this monday night.

The song was about suits and there is a huge group of people dancing and doing an elaborate choreographed routine. Toward the end there is a brace of people, all holding suits and swinging them around which tickled my fancy. "Hey, that looks like that scene during the Buffy musical." I pointed out to DbR. He agreed. There is one scene during "Once More, With Feeling" where people out on the street are dancing with their laundry while the lead guy sings, "They got the mustard out!" Those laundry folks are doing the same moves as the suit people did.

I started searching around the internet and found the name of the choreographer was Zach Woodlee who hit the big time. Right now he is doing the dance design for GLEE. I looked him up on IMDB and guess what? Yeah, he choreographed "Once More, With Feeling". I glanced through a few tv blogs and briefly read over them and no one mentioned this interesting fact. Maybe only I find it interesting.

grand ole opry

We're going to Nashville next week for the wonderful Shirley's Seventieth. I had no idea what we could get Shirley, she has almost everything she needs. If she does need and want something, we would never be able to figure out what it was. I am a little bit obsessed with Nashville in a funny way and did a little research and I find that the Grand Ole Opry is performing at the old Ryman theatre while we are visiting.

I'm not super crazy about country music -I like old time music and bluegrass, generally and whenever we go to Nashville, I try to find fun and interesting places to go and music to see. Last time we saw this hella great band, Aquavelvet, which is a Burt Bacharach cover band. They were great. The time before I found a weird wayside bar where there were people doing that bluegrass jam thing. David was offered some moonshine by the proprietor (He didn't give me any!)

I've always been told about the OLD, original Grand Ole Opry and how the new one doesn't have the history of the old one blah blah blah and sure enough, I don't need to be told which one is in the movie NASHVILLE or COAL MINERS DAUGHTER. I would like to go to the original one and when I saw that the yearly stint in the old Opry was during our visit there I immediately wanted to go and it wasn't hard to convince David that it would be the perfect thing to gift Shirley. No one else would ever take her to a scene like that. I wish I could take her to see Aquavelvet, though. After we went last year I raved about it so hard that she almost wanted to go see them.

Laughing out loud a cheesy Dick Van Dyke Show jokes.
Go get a goo goo-it's gooooooood

boring

hanging around the couch with DbR and the dogs. No news on the refi yet, working on it. Meanwhile, he is enjoying Dr Who and I am enjoying my laptop. Its amusing to be exposed to this show but not really understanding all of its ins and outs. On this episode people's fat is sloughing off of their frames and becoming little white poptart creatures. Oh, dear, poor Stacy.

A more interesting thing to write about is my date last night with M. We went out to the H+O and drank Brutal Bitter Beer. It was a lively night, Jim and Val were at the bar being friendly. Val mentioned Howard Stern and I expressed my sympathy regarding Artie Shaw and she hadn't known about it. Little Maggie's moms were there and I told them about my new favorite tv show-The Wanda Sykes Show. At one point a crowd came in, Veronica and her two boyfriends and the bar became delightfully filled with the familiar. At one point Ms. Riley came in to greetings of joy them very soon afterwards she wasn't there anymore and someone told me she had lost her phone and was overly distracted. I just texted her on the phone and she didn't respond so I guess it is still lost. As we crawled our way through three beers each, I felt like I couldn't talk to M enough-we both had interesting things to say to each other and although I liked the other people hanging around I almost resented their interference. She told me about some family moments recently and encouraged me to do a comic strip of "Hangover Mom" and she and I came up with two strip plots and then Jim came over and after we told him about "Hangover Mom" he helped come up with an idea for a third strip. funny. He and M spent sometime discussing the Rufus vs. Henry saga which is fairly entertaining. We each were given a sip of Crème de Violette which smelled like an old bath but tasted like sweet yummy but that wasn't as yummy as when Lori and M both agreed that my hair was beautiful and indeed looked lovely at present.

I got some nice news at work today and I am having a nice Friday. I am happy about the whole weekend thing. We will be going on a drive south soon with the dogs. It should be very interesting.

refinance remortgage, etc

for the last few days, since Monday, I have been exchanging emails and doing online research regarding obtaining a better interest rate for the Bricker's mortgage. I also have a home improvement loan i would love to smush in and just pay less. Of course I have held onto the mindset that paying less per month is what is desired, for a shorter period of time. after a discussion with that smart guy, my husband, i see that a 15 year for only a tad more a month is actually a great option. im getting it through my head. the math, the math hold onto the basics.

i guess i always imagine the eventuality of being alone and how a lower payment is always a better payment. What if we decide we don't want to work any more and figure we can get by with the $789/month mortgage just by collecting returnables? We'll never be able to do that if the mortgage was $989, right? Husbear explained that I would never be alone again to pay that monthly mortgage and it is a given that we are way too mainstream to quit our jobs so, paying more for less time is a good option. Ok, let me at those closing costs!!

Dick Van Dyke and the JFK assassination

happy new year and such. Opted for an eve in Northampton with friends instead of the planned eve in Greenfield with other friends. It was a nice change. Happy to have Br + Ka all to myself and David. I successfully bullied people once again into a late night game of marticelli. David and I won. Turns out we are a good famous persons game team.

Last night I downloaded new movies, etc into our roku list and after Husbear went to sleep indulged in the documentary made in the late '80s about the Kennedy coup d'etat and sitting alone watching two pieces out of the four got me totally spooked and freaked out. I adjusted my curtains and turned off lights to call less attention to the house and huddled under a blanket with Peretz. I was as scared as a stripper whore who shared a table with Lee and Jack high on phenmetrazine in one of those Dallas "dance clubs". Before I went to bed I had to break the mood by watching an episode of The Dick Van Dyke show.

I really love the DVD show. I always have loved Mary and Rose Marie is a study in alternative womanhood, circa 1961. Fascinating. Another fascinating coincidence is that this show was popular and in its heyday when Kennedy was assassinated! Of course the season I am watching is the first one. The humor is so old and outdated, I smile bemusedly. Even Dick's physical humor isn't as funny as it was back then, I think, and it isn't even as good as Donald O'Connor in Singing in the Rain but all is forgiven, especially when a dose of corn is needed to dispel the fear of my gov't and its evil trappings.

This morning I vacuumed up the pine needles after the ousting of xmas tree. I had named the tree but I forget the name now, unfortunately. After cleaning up as many bits of debris from my living room as possible with David's old shopvac, I rewarded myself by watching the second half of the documentary. I now want to revisit JFK and check out RUBY. I again followed up the viewing with a DVD episode or two. During the episode where Mary and Dick set up Rose Marie and Mary's Lab Technician cousin, well, first of all, Jamie Farr has his first appearance (awesome) and secondly I became interested in the side dish of the meatloaf meal which Mary is serving. It seems to be a poached something or other which they lift carefully from some serving dish unlike any I see these days.

I had the idea that someone could write a book with interesting illustrations (photos) of food served on popular tv shows and the book would feature interviews with prop people who talk about what the characters are supposed to be eating and what the "food" actually ended up consisting of (I'm sure different types of filler and whatnot.) I think that would be fascinating. Has anyone written such a book yet?

I was inspired enough by this white people food to make meatloaf for Husbear and myself tonight with a side dish of macaroni salad and another side dish of garlic'd broccoli-rabe. This vegetable was available and eaten in the early 60's and on Long Island, I know for a fact, but I bet not by the NYC writers and their wives in the whitest neighborhood of New Rochelle.