Reread.

I can't believe I got rid of some of the books I "read" in high school.

I have no idea what I did with them.

I, you, and everyone else we know must... must pick up a copy of something they were assigned in their teens but couldn't have hoped to understand or appreciate.

Then read these things again. Repeat that process.

I read The Sun Also Rises for the second (and apparently the first) time recently. Now I'm repeating that rediscovery dance with some other books. It's worthwhile.

I'm torn on what the hell we should assign 15-year-olds to read. Masterpieces they won't get? Tripe that'll do nothing for them? Fudge? At this point, no one reads anymore, so we should probably just pray that they can get through three pages without sending or receiving a text message.

Kids today. Someone bring me my Metamucil.

Oh.

This has nothing to do with anything I posted yesterday, or ANYTHING I've done in the past few months, but can we talk about this?

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/apr/spies/index.html

Julia Child was a freakin' spy?!?!?!

That's amazing. My world is richer for knowing this.

July 19, I rolled back into Chicago after 2+ months all over the place. My Dad was with me.

4 days after that, my Dad left, and I started to finally feel like I could start settling in.

9 days after THAT, I took off again for a weekend in NC for KegPig. (See previous post.)

On the way down, our muffler fell off and we spent hours on the side of a remote stretch of I-75 in the middle of the night... but that's for another post....

I got back the wee hours of August 4. On August 6, I headed to NYC.

I got pretty sick while I was there, but had a great time. (That'll be yet ANOTHER post...)

After yet more travel mayhem, I got back to the city on the 11th. I've been getting settle in ever since. Again.

It's strange to feel so out of place in your own apartment. Your own bed. Your own skin.

I'm excited to get some sense of normalcy back, but I have plans to leave town again at least once a month for... the rest of the year?

It seems appropriate, really. It feels like the right time for some changes. A little more vagabonding.

Anyway. That's the status. More to come.

KegPig '04: Boone, NC

KegPig '05: Bristol, TN

KegPig '06: Burnsville, NC

KegPig '07: Burnsville, NC
What is KegPig? To repurpose a classic TV theme song:

You take a pig
You take a keg
You cook the pig
and then you'll have
The Keggy Pig.
You'll eat a lotta pig...

(Ok. If you didn't get it on the first pass, go back and sing that to the tune of "The Facts of Life". Stay with me here.)

It's a tradition.

I'm off to KegPig '08. Our fifth annual. Wish me luck.

Just too much.

Well, I'm back in Chicago.

I was gone for two months and three days.

I documented some of what's been going on with me over the past few months, but it's tough to sum it all up.

I'll continue to give some highlights after I get settled back in here in Chicago.

For now, I feel like a total outsider.

Ah well. Here's a picture of me with my good friends Carson and Christy. They've recently moved back to Boone, NC where we all went to school. Boone's the kind of place that makes you want to do stuff like this:

I'm a bad blogger [stop]

Lots going on [stop]

Go see Wall-E [stop]

Back in the day.

Today is my Grandma's 81st birthday. My brothers and I got our hands on some old family photos and scanned them so we could print some out for my Grandma. We're going to give her a disk full of the scans, too.

It's nice to have copies of these old pictures. There are some great shots. I like this one of me, Jason, and Mom.

Witten Wedding

Ah, wedding bells. My old buddy Adam married his lovely sweetheart Nicole on June 21. They got hitched in lovely Sarasota, FL, and I took the trip down for the festivities.

It was a blast.

It was supposed to be an outdoor wedding, and it rained all damned day. But you know what, rain? You can't drown love.

They moved the ceremony indoors. It was the same place the reception was to be held. What's that mean? Break the glass, shout "mazel tov", and start the party.

It was so nice to see all the people at the wedding. Sarah Fried Chicken, Jen, Carson and Christy, Dave and Shannon, the Cliftons, etc. (Know who any of those people are? If not, you're missing out.)

There was food and beverages and dancing. And! Since it was a Jewish wedding (well, half-Jewish anyway...), there was this!

Hava nagila, hava, baby. I'm such a gentile. I unabashedly love the novelty of lifting the bride and groom in chairs and dancing them around. (Well, novelty for me...)

Weddings: Fun parties, plus all that forever togetherness stuff. Fortunately, I'll get to go to roughly 6,000 of them in the next few years.

Not for me, so much.

I spent my birthday in Vegas.

I was there for work.

I spent most of my time in interviews and meetings.

About two hours before I left for the airport, I laid out five crisp dollar bills as my gambling allowance. On my fifth quarter, I won fifty bucks. I used that fifty to putter around the casino losing money and drinking ice-cold beer for free. I ended up giving it all back to the casino.

I left Las Vegas two dollars in the hole, a year older, and both wondering and sorta knowing why people love the town so much.

Pawley's

Hey guys. I fell off the blog wagon, but it's time to climb back aboard.

In the interest of continuity, I'll give you guys some info on the next phase of my journey.

The weekend of June 7, my mom, brother Tommy, sister-in-law Amber, and their daughter Bailey all jumped in a car with me and we headed down to Pawley's Island, on the coast of SC.

Pawley's is a great place with beautiful wide beaches and beautiful old houses. The self-described motif at Pawley's is "arrogantly shabby", and even though it's just south of Myrtle Beach, strict zoning has helped it maintain its quaint and homey mood.

The house we went to, which belongs to some close family friends, is well over 80 years old, and has survived hurricanes and erosion and family reunions. It typifies an old breed of beach house that's disappearing. It's simple in its design: Central hallway, bedrooms along the hall that also open onto porches that wrap the house. Scrubbed pine floors. Cypress wall paneling. Boardwalk to the beach.

These days, new construction tends to be bland condos or inflated megamansions. I'd take an old-timey beach house any day.

Anyway, the star of the show, as usual, was Bailey.

She seems really at home on the beach. She's not afraid of the water at all. She's not afraid of anything, really, except for the dark and moths.


We kicked back on Pawley's for the weekend and enjoyed every minute of it. These pictures will come in handy on a stressful winter day. There is such a thing as warmth and relaxation.

Boiled Peanuts

Perhaps my favorite thing to eat on the planet are boiled peanuts. (Then again, there are a lot of other things on that list, but let's talk about the peanuts for now.)

Some of you guys aren't that familiar with these little goobers, so howsabout a primer?

Boiled peanuts are just that: Peanuts that are boiled (in-shell) in salt water. They can be served hot or cold, and are a popular snack in a lot of the South, particularly in the summertime. Because they're boiled, they're soft (not unlike a cooked bean).

They can be made with any raw peanut, but the best ones are made with green peanuts, which are fresh peanuts that haven't been dried. They create these wonderful little boiled peanuts that are fresh-tasting and impossible to stop eating. They're very hard to get out of season or away from where they're grown, so summer time down South is prime time for these little guys.

You can also make boiled peanuts with dried raw peanuts, but these don't turn out as well. I can get dried raw peanuts in Chicago, but because they don't contain their own moisture, you have to soak them overnight before cooking, and then cook them in a crock pot for about a day. Still, beats nothing.

You can find boiled peanuts in roadside stands and small grocery stores throughout the South, but I'll let you in on some of the very best boiled peanuts on the planet.

Seriously.

1) Lakeside Market: Sumter, SC
This is a little market that sells fresh produce and potted plants and such. It's run by an older gentleman that grew up on the land on which the market now sits. He ran several other stores, and eventually moved back to the corner on which his house once stood and built this little place. They boil their own peanuts in the store, and he says they have it down to a science, so the peanuts turn out consistently good, batch after batch. They're a little on the small side, but they are good. If you like your peanuts hot, this might not be your spot. They keep their peanuts in paper bags in a refrigerator.

2) Allsbrook's Boiled Peanuts: Manning, SC
I grew up on Allsbrook's. This place made the peanuts by which I will always judge all other peanuts. They were made at a little roadside market on the way to Lake Marion, and were sold all over Clarendon County. At some point, the business changed hands (I hear there was scandal involved), the business lay dormant for a few years (known as the Great Boiled Peanut Drought of 19-odd-something) and later the daughter or daughter-in-law of Allsbrook started turning out peanuts (though not under the Allsbrook's name. They were Funny's Boiled Peanuts. They were almost as good, though). Of late, I understand that someone in the Allsbrook family has gotten their hands on a peanut pot again, and Allsbrook's peanuts are back. I haven't gotten my hands on any yet, but maybe soon.

3) The cooler in the back of a pickup truck: Near Eastover, SC
Where highway 378 meets highway 601, there is a little parking lot of an abandoned store. In that lot, a dude has been selling peanuts for at least a decade. He's got signs out on 601 about a hundred yards from his spot in either direction. The signs are hand-lettered on plywood. "boiled p-Nuts". Lowercase, except for the "N" in "nuts". You can get "new crop" or "old crop" peanuts. He has two big metal cookers on a trailer where the peanuts get the business, and I have a suspicion that he might use just a tiny touch of fatback in process, because the peanuts are uber-flavorful. I recommend the 'new crop'. He keeps the peanuts in ziplocks in a cooler to keep them warm after cooking, so warm peanut lovers take note.

This is just a tiny cross-section.

A full book is in the works.

Anyway. Boiled peanuts are good, man.

So, in keeping with the intent of updating you fine folks on my travels, let's review:
1) London
2) Nice
3) Crazy trip from Nice to Charleston.
4) Charleston for Spoleto
5) Sumter to hang out with the fam and roast in the heat.

That takes us up to about May 31, when I went to Wild Dunes, down on Isle of Palms (near Charleston) to celebrate Adam's Bachelor party.

Here's the only picture I took:

There are pictures out there of Adam wearing a sparkly bachelorette tiara, but, sadly, I don't have those.

Rest assured, it was a good time. A little time on the beach. Some fun.

Enjoyable.

Yowza.

For realz.

Kid

So, in between all of these travels, I've gotten to spend a good deal of time with my niece, Bailey.

I talk about her all the time, and a quick perusal of this blog will turn up posts from many chapters of her two years and nine months on the planet.

I last saw her this past Christmas, and the five or six months intervening between then and now have made all the difference. She's moved from Bailey the Toddler to Bailey the Kid.

She's enormous. 99th percentile, heightwise. Her legs are, conservatively, 17 feet long, and she can dunk a basket without lifting her arms.

Seriously, though. The kid's tall.

And talks. I don't mean "makes noises with her mouth". She really talks. Complete sentences and a ridiculous vocabulary and all that. I know these things are pretty standard for most humans, but it's amazing to see all of this coming out of such a young person.

She's funny, too. Sometimes unintentionally. Sometimes totally on purpose.

She's really sweet, too. She's affectionate and polite. She's giving. She's crazy. (In a good way).

As our entire family says, with every bit of love and affection we're capable of, "She's something."

I'll be back soon with more highlights from my various trips.

Chaaaalston.

After all that insanity that accompanied my trip back to the States, I was ready for a little relaxation. Fortunately, that's exactly what I found.

The Fowler Family Radio Hour did three shows at the American Theater in Charleston as a part of the Piccolo Spoleto Fringe Festival. The Harrelsons (some close friends of mine from Sumter) and their sister Lucy are some of the sweetest people on the planet, and Lucy saw fit to let us stay in her beautiful home in Mt. Pleasant.

We sat on porches (the house has 3) and took walks and ate lazy brunches on the porch.


We made trips into Charleston before the shows (which got solid reviews), and hung around after for nice dinners and other diversions.


We also got down to the beach! That was a first for Kevin (pictured below. He's the furry young gentleman between my friends Joe and Shelby .)

Kevin wasn't the only guy who was making a first-ever trip to the ocean. Devin, who was awesome enough to come down and play piano for us, is a Michigander and was an ocean first-timer. I think both he and Kevin dug the seashore.

Good food. Hospitality. Some sun and salt and sea and sand.

It was exactly what I think we all needed.

We hope to return to Spoleto next year. I, personally, only stayed away from Charleston for a couple of days. We left on Tuesday, and by Friday night I was on Isle of Palms near Charleston yet again.

More on that later.

Hard to leave.

It was hard to leave France.

Seriously.

Not "I'll miss the moonlight on the Mediterranean" hard.

More like "there are strikes and solidarity strikes on top of those strikes, and I can't actually make my flights" hard.

First: Transit workers strike in France. They're not Sarkozy fans over there. I mean, in case you haven't noticed, we have a somewhat unpopular president in the good ol' USofA as well, but he's not eliminating 35,o00 gov't jobs and divorcing his wife to marry a hot 20-something. Sarkozy on the other hand... less shy on both fronts.

Taxi drivers were largely striking, too. There were some cabs, but not many. Plus I was trying to get to the Cote d'azur airport in Nice, and it was the week between the Cannes film festival and the Gran Prix in Monaco, so that airport was the spot.

When I got to the airport, my plane hadn't taken off, but the flight was closed. They wouldn't let me on.

Well, I was trying to get to London in time for my flight from London to Washington, and on to Charleston. It was Thursday, and I had a show Friday night at Spoleto.

So? Time to catch another flight to London, right?

Well?

Second: An air traffic controller strike that started just after my first flight left delayed every flight by a couple of hours. No hope of making Heathrow in time for my flight. I rescheduled for the first flight out Friday morning.

I snagged an EasyJet flight to London (couldn't get to Heathrow, so I had to hit Luton, and then take a bus between the two airports. That was kinda cool. I was the only one on the bus, so it was like having a giant cab all to myself. )

I got to Heathrow around 11pm (after getting to the Nice airport around 7am...) and found a dark spot in a corner, unfolded my garment bag and used it as a mattress. I caught a couple of hours of airport sleep, and then grabbed my flight from Heathrow to Dulles.

There were no flights from Dulles to Charleston that day. I got one to Columbia instead. My brother Sam picked me up in Columbia and we drove down to Charleston. We hit a big wreck on I-26 and my car started to overheat while we were stuck in traffic.

We ended up getting to Charleston around 5:30pm (11:30pm Friday, Nice time. 40+ hours after getting to the airport in Nice, according to my math....). I was several hundred dollars poorer from the fees and fare differences associated with my changes.

I got a shower and headed hit the stage by 7pm for the first night of the Fowler Family Radio Hour at Spoleto in Charleston.

Crazy.

Seriously.

Nice, if you pleace.

After London: Nice.

If you haven't been to Nice, or any other spot in the South of France, you should know that it's really beautiful. It's an amazing mix of French culture with other Mediterranean influences. Lots of Italian touches (especially in the food). Some Spanish flavors creeping in, as well.

An event I attend annually takes place in the main convention center in Nice. Though Nice is a two-hop flight for most North Americans, it's an easy journey from most European cities. I generally fly through London, but others opt for Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, etc.

The architecture is pretty neat there. I posted a lot of it in my blog post about Nice last year (which I'll link later), but it's a cool mix of the above influences, plus a weird sense of past-its-prime modernism. The whole city looks a little mildewed in spots and rough around the edges, but it's an amazing place, overall. There are Roman ruins, casinos, yachts, beachfront hotels, and other ridiculous bits and pieces.

My activities this year included a black-tie gala, a beachfront party, a rooftop party, and a late-night pool hall session. And the food! The food was amazing. A sort of French-Italian-world-foods amalgamation of deliciousness. All great stuff.

Most of the trip, though, was just work. Meetings. Conferences. Nothing too exciting.

Here's a photo of the outside of the tiny little hotel I stayed in. It's basically a bed and breakfast. It's one floor of an apartment building, and I love the place. I stayed there last year, too. This year I got the Dali room.

The window just to the left of that top balcony was my room. This was the view.

Oh so Fraaaaaainch.

Getting to Nice was easy peasy. Staying there was lovely.

Leaving?

That's a post for another day.

It was.... rough.

Fog not included.

Man! It's been an intense week. I'll tell you all about it as we go, but I'm going to break it up into a few small doses.

First dose: London.

Saturday (5/17), I boarded a flight at O'Hare around 6pm. (Kudos to my buddies Matt and Virginia for taking me to the airport. Big ups.) I took a little valerian root (Merz Apothecary recommended it. It was a big help. Better than narcotics or hormones.), ignored the terrible movies they were showing (Oh boy! 27 Dresses AND National Treasure: Book of Secrets! Followed by The Golden Compass?!?!?!?! Is this a flight to LONDON or HEAVEN!?!?!?) and spent most of the flight either sleeping, reading, or talking to my awesome seat-neighbor. (Part-owner of a Sri Lankan tea plantation. I want that job.)

I arrived in London the next morning. (The local clocks said 9am. It was still 3am in Chicago, but getting a little sleep convinced me that I had time traveled.) My buddy Liam gets the award for awesomeness for meeting me at Heathrow. We took the train into Paddington, and then hopped a double-decker for the ride to his place over by Canary Wharf. That took us right through the thick of things. Not the quickest route, but certainly the coolest.

We grabbed some Carlsbergs and made our way through the super-modern bank complex that is Canary Wharf. (Watch 28 Weeks Later. That's it. Isle of Dogs.) Liam lives right by the O2 Dome and the Reuters Building (which was the CIA hq in 0ne of the Bourne movies).

Here's Liam in front of the building where he works.


And a shot of me with the O2 Dome in the background:


We hopped on a boat and made our way up the Thames to Embankment. Along the way we spotted the Traitors Gate at the Tower of London:


Tower Bridge, of course:

And some more modern bits and pieces of London:


After getting off the boat, we puttered around town. We hit Trafalgar Square (the first pic in this post), Covent Garden, Chinatown (below), SoHo, Five Points, etc. We popped up to Harrod's. We went all over.
We made our way up to Camden to check out an area with a different feel. We walked through the crazy market stalls and into the all-too-hip stores, surprised that people still buy rave clothes. Who goes to raves? It's right by a really pretty section of canal, though.


There's a cool set of manual locks right on the canal. I was too close to get a good picture, but these houseboats will motor right up to the locks and a dude from the boat will hop out (drinking a beer) and begin the process of opening the locks for an incoming boat. There's no one on duty. No control booth. I have a feeling that wouldn't fly in the States.



We had a few pints in Camden and hopped the tube back to Liam's. We had some grub (frozen pizzas, boyee!) and hit the sack. I had to grab a taxi for Liverpool Station, then a train to Stansted Airport, and a plane for Nice very early the next morning. (Cab left at 4am. Yowza.) I made it, though. London was very good. It was even a nice day for us. A tad cloudy, but really warm. Thanks, London.

Next stop: Nice.

So far!

I'm writing this from a cafe in Nice. I don't have my camera USB cable, so I can't post pictures yet. I will say, however, that London and Nice have been lovely.

I hope to head towards the States tomorrow, but there are rumors of an airline strike.

We shall see.

A few highlights that I'll tell you more about later:

- I won a fancy bottle of wine at an event. I didn't drink it yet.
- Food, food, food. Everything I've eaten has been delicious. In Nice, anyway. London? Less so.
- I NEED to get more than 3 hours sleep some time soon.

Hey dudes.

So I'm about to embark on a few months of travel and such. I'm leaving Chicago tomorrow (Saturday the 17th), and will visit the following before returning:

London
Nice (for work)
Charleston (Fowler Family at Spoleto!)
Various other locales in NC and SC
Sarasota, FL
Some other area of the Gulf Coast of FL
Vegas

... I think that's pretty much it. My bags are packed and my Pops is taking care of my cat. We're all set.

I'm going to start blogging again during the trips.

Stay tuned.