Good for what ales you.

Not much going on lately of note, but lots coming up. While the search for a job that doesn't suck continues we've been keeping busy interesting projects and mini-trips around the area. Here's a quick look at semi-interesting things that are on my upcoming calender just because...

March 29 - a guided walking ghost tour of the supposedly haunted parts of the Lower East Side/Village area in Manhattan. Should be interesting.
April 11-13 - drive to Canada to see my family and back. Hooray!
May 13 - Mike Ness plays Irving Plaza. Contains both honky and tonky.
June 13 - IRON MAIDEN at Madison Square Gardens. Color me stoked.
June 27-29 - Flashback Weekend in Chicago (We weren't going to go this year for fear that it'd be too expensive but I used some airmiles and we get to fly return for $10. That made it very doable).

We took Alison's son to Central Park on Easter for a horse and buggy ride before going to visit her mom in the hospital. Doing things like this with what has essentially become my NY family makes me miss my PDX family and my Canadian family as well, so it'll be great to see the Northerners in a couple of weeks and to check out my brand spankin' new nephew for the first time (my sister tells me he screams and poops a lot so we're obviously related). It'll be a belated Easter/Patrick's birthday celebration and while we won't have a ton of time, at least I know I can come back in a few weeks time. It's nice being closer geographically and knowing I can drive down whenever I feel like it, though I miss PDX Manly Movie Nights and Happy Hour at the Lucky Lab with the crew in P-town.


But NYC is a lot of fun so far. New Yorkers aren't nearly as rude or unfriendly as people make them out to be, they're just blunt. That's not a bad thing at all, and in fact, after the passive aggressive behaviour I saw so often in the work place and outside my little circles in the Northwest, it's actually pretty refreshing. At least you know where you stand with people most of the time.

In other news, lots of writing continues and more side projects involving the TV show and a few other media related bits and pieces are shaping up. I recently had a publisher ask to quote from an interview I did in an upcoming biography of John Holmes (!!!) and I've secured a connection with Paramount to get DVD Manaics (soon to be AV Maniacs...hopefully within the week) some mainstream screeners. We're not going to stop covering the fringe stuff at all, if anything we're ramping it up, but it can't hurt to cover worthy mainstream titles like There Will Be Blood or Sweeney Todd, both of which I've tackled to surprisingly successful results (and traffic).

What else is new.... oh, music. The new Willie Nelson CD is pretty rad. Fairly stripped down and simple but most of the time country music is better that way. The new Nick Cave album is mediocre and sounds pretty phoned in, unfortunately, and the new Danko Jones CD has yet to really grow on me despite a couple of really solid stand out tracks.

And last but not least.... a picture of the Weng Weng Pale Ale that fellow Filipino midget spy enthusiast Todd Jordan home brewed specifically for the Monster Mania Convention we attended a couple of weeks back in New Jersey.

'Tis truly a thing of rare beauty.