I quit smoking last year and it did ramp up the whiskey consumption for a while. The piss test at work precludes most everything else, but really I was always an alcohol/nicotine/caffeine kind of guy. Now that I've knocked out one leg of that tripod I probably do overcompensate with the other two from time to time.

On Saturday:
The Messenger - good, and Harrelson was surprisingly excellent in what I thought would be a one-note role.
Dinner for Schmucks - pleasantly fun and Carell and Galifianakis were damn good. I watched the SNL opening montage right afterward too.

Cigar Store Indians
A friend gave me a 2' tall cigar store Indian head as a present in 2002 when she graduated. She said she knew I'd love it because of something I said a few years prior while we watched a re-run of this episode together in the dorms. I don't even remember what that was but apparently it was funny,…

@ Miller - I know the feeling. I have a lot of old VHS tapes of British comedies (Red Dwarf, Blackadder, etc.) I recorded from PBS when I was in junior high on into high school. The quality is pretty bad but I still love going back and watching them.

First listen of This One's On You: I really like it.

Damn, White Castle after a night of drinking… There are no White Castles where I live so I'd only ever tried those shitty frozen ones they sell at the supermarket (for some reason my dad loves them). A couple years ago I was down in Chicago visiting an old college roommate and we went to White Castle at 3:00 AM. I…

I cover the Upper Midwest for work and travel fairly extensively. In my experience I've found that proximity to the Interstate tends to dictate the availability of local restaurants. If a town is a mile or two from the actual off-ramp there will only be the usual bevy of chain fast-food with the occasional truckstop…

I spent the Sunday morning after the Rose Bowl in LA rewatching all of Season One and part of Two. Then we found a bar nearby and watched the Packers-Bears game. It was a good day.

I loved McColgan on Do Or Die and I like the Street Dogs as well. He was just in WI playing with Tom Morello and Wayne Cramer at the protest rallies in Madison. Still, I really have enjoyed all of the Murphys' albums with Barr with the exception of The Warrior's Code, which has just too many stupid songs for my…

It was about a year before I really liked Sufjan Stevens "Illinois" album. Like a lot of people at the time one of my best friends was absolutely enamored with the record and kept insisting it would change my life Shins-style. He burned it onto my laptop and it made its way onto my iPod but I only gave it a few…

I watched Observe and Report Saturday night after dinner plans fell through. I thought it was pretty funny but I had torn into the Famous Grouse during the movie and that makes everything better.

I like the videos now but the podcasts were always great for long trips.

Can I call you a cab?
Sure, and I'll call you a COCKSUCKER!

Yeah, the Souls S/T didn't hold up to well as a whole but I still unabashedly love "Kate Is Great" and jumped around like a teenager when they played it at Riot Fest last fall.

I loved those Hellcat comps and I went through a Rancid reggae phase too. The best thing about those comps was that they introduced me to Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros which led me to the Clash. It was a completely backwards way of going about it but that's kind of the way shit worked back then. A year later we…

Baby Spring Mix: a combination of romaine, greenleaf, chard, spinach and arugula - now that's where it's at! It comes in a hard plastic container, not a bag.

I've done the vinyl conversions on most of my old 7" and 10" records. Some are from obscure and long-departed local bands, and rest were probably easily available online. It's time-consuming but I really enjoyed it mainly since it required that I go back and listen to all of the stuff I was listening to a dozen…

Speaking of pretzels, I didn't go to the show but I was out in the area, on vacation with my family visiting old friends in Rochester. On the drive back to WI we stopped at a rest stop somewhere around Erie and I struck up a conversation with a group of exhausted-looking dudes from Benton Harbor. I'd heard about the…

I caught up on some of the Thursday night shows on Hulu, then I watched "Windtalkers" and kind of wish I hadn't. But I was pretty well in the bag at that point so it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Every friend, relative or acquaintance of mine that has traveled abroad has said something along the lines of "You just cannot get a glass of ice water at a restaurant in _______." I know I said that same thing when I came back from a HS trip to Germany. This stereotype is apparently true: Americans love to stay…