We went to dinner here last year and it was a great time, so we went again. I just wanted to share a couple photos I snapped last night while our chef was cooking our food, because they came out pretty rad:

Drew (my brother) graduated from UMass today, here is a barrage of photos. Feel free to use them on any site, just throw me a link back and a photo credit if you do please. I will update this post with more photos and a couple of moments of video shortly.

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If you live in New England, and perhaps elsewhere, I haven’t tracked their proliferation, you may be aware of a franchise restaurant chain called “Friendly’s” I guess it’s pluralized because someone named Friendly owns it? Regardless, it’s your standard American fare: Burgers, Ice cream, old people, young children and middle aged rampantly obese people. As a child, I loved friendly’s, I wanted to go there every time I went “off island” and I constantly jonesed for their burgers and reese’s peanut butter cup sundaes. In my adult life I’ve tried to resist it, but occasionally the nostalgic urge comes over me and I make the stop, devouring a nice big ball of greasy food and saccharine sweetness. Yesterday on the way to Umass for my brother’s graduation, my mother and I stopped in at one to grab a bite on the road. After using the restroom, I stepped out into the hallway and was met with a horrific site, pictured below:

How would people get to work? What monstrosity is this? As a child I had fantasized about the book “cloudy with a chance of meatballs” coming true but this was a nightmare in front of my eyes. Upon looking more closely around the restaurant, several such horrors were present: churches with ice cream cones towering behind them, A town hall dwarfed by a grilled cheese sandwich. Good god, it was terrifying. Imagine your town, crushed by several pounds of meat and dairy, all cooked in lard. These poor people. I had to save them. I sprinted out the door to the nearest Walmart and gathered up supplies: Mr. Clean, a mop, and as many trash bags as I could carry. I sprinted toward the bridge waving the mop blindly in front of my face, like an amateur jouster, afraid to be hit and knocked from my horse. I swatted at the burger wildly with the wet end of the mop, trying to ignore the screams and whines of the bacon as the grease cutter sliced through it. The bun knocked me over a few times, but after an epic battle, the burger collapsed to the ground, defeated in a puddle of it’s own juices and melted cheese. I begrudgingly collected up the remains of the hideous beast, grease ruining my clothing, and dumped it into the trash bag.

Triumphant, I carried on. I stopped at a salon and borrowed 2 blow dryers that I then wielded like 6 shooters as I approached the ice cream cone. It attempted to drip into my mouth, but I resisted it’s temptations and fired upon it with impunity until it was nothing but a pink sticky mess on the pavement behind the town hall. Just then I heard a distant rumbling and a few moments later, the hill to the north was shadowed by onion rings, rolling downward toward me. I knew I was outmatched. As they crushed cars and knocked fire hydrants out of the sidewalk, sending jetstreams of water into the air. I retreated, meeting once again with my mother and shouting at her to start the car, drive, drive, before we’re all killed! We drove up the next hill and the onion rings lost momentum, collapsing upon themselves in greasy breaded messes. On the horizon I could see the french fries bursting from the pavement like fast growing trees, then crawling down the street as if they were caterpillars, eating the greenery as they went. These poor people. I did my best to save them, but I was overwhelmed, the food was too much, too prolific, too delicious and fattening. This poor town, off an exit in western Massachusetts, would have to fight this behemoth on their own. Good luck, brave souls.

And now, I’m off to watch my brother graduate.

Photography from the road trip.

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On the way back from NYC this week, several things happened. Our van broke down, smoke pouring out of it on the side of the road. We went to a Goodwill and hitched a ride with a nice, albeit slightly off-her-rocker middle aged woman. I bought political books by famous authors for very cheap. I got myself some framed pictures that I intend to use as future art projects. I was temporarily stranded at a Friendly’s. The curtains in our hotel room collapsed and we had to switch rooms. I had some very good Tiramisu.

In the midst of all this, after purchasing a bottle of water from a starbucks on the road, I decided to spend a portion of the ride taking “experimental” photographs of objects on the side of the road, and of myself. It’s only an iPhone camera, but it beats my last digital camera and has tons of storage space, so I am taking advantage of it. Anyway, one example of such a photograph appears here: a self portrait, taken through the bottle of water I bought. I found myself enjoying the various stretched effects that the bottle had on the camera, and the look of the water as it appeared to rise above the edges of the road. I took several photos that may end up in a gallery here soon. I know my updates have been sparse and far between lately, I plan to try to get back on task and post more often. I guess taking a vacation can sort of pull you away from the all important things, like updating your website, huh?

I hope the next iphone update actually has video, as is rumored, and that I can use it with my current phone, because I would really enjoy that.

I had to take the night off from my radio show this week, but I plan to return in full force next week.

we are trying to get home

Better luck next time, Internet Libertarians. Found on the Harvard Bridge in Boston.

At the Burlesque Expo in Boston Wolfie and I witnessed an oddities fair. I snapped some photos. The oddities troupe is called “Eight Corner Globe.” It’s some freaky stuff, be warned. Here are the photos. Professor Badger was a funny guy and he had a wealth of knowledge, some real, some fake, about the materials in his collection. See below, and visit their website to book them for your town. Oh yeah, they vacation on the Vineyard and would love to do a setup near the flying horses.

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(Feel free to click the comment button and ask any questions you may have about the above images, he gave a pretty decent description of what they all were. Human scrimshaw, live black widows, Vampire slaying kits, etc.)

I informed the Professor about the woman with the invisible arm I’d read about on Boing Boing a few days prior.

I bought an iPhone in Boston yesterday and I am exploring the lovely world within it. One app I discovered was the free wordpress blogging app, from which I’m typing this very post. This phone is pretty slick, I must confess. For kicks, here’s a photo I took from the roof of the hotel. (if I think of it I’ll try to post photos from the floor of the burlesque expo today. There have been some neat sights but the trip has been overwhelming and I’ve had less time to appreciate the show than I planned for.)

This is certainly classy. Saw this in Oak Bluffs a couple hours ago.