Joe's Cryptic Summer 2007 Facebook Statuses, Annotated

Facebook has an option on the left side of the screen called "Memories." If you click on this link, it'll bring you to everything you've ever posted on FB on that particular calendar date. I like checking this out once a day, because I'm a sucker for the window it provides into the life of a dumbass teenager. It's embarrassing and I don't ever want to be seventeen again.

The only thing that annoys me is that, back in 2007, I used to leave these obtuse Facebook statuses on my profile. You know what I'm talking about. I was the kid writing on FB with shit like: "Joe K*** is sad." It was stupid. It is stupid. And the stupidest part of all is that, when I see those statuses now, here in 2018, I want to know so badly what the fuck I meant.

Luckily(?) for you, dear reader, I ALSO kept, during the summer of 2007, a running list of everything I did each day. I was obsessed with the idea of "summer," P.S. So, since it's 2 PM when I started typing this and I had a liquid lunch, let's try to match up the dumb FB statuses with what I was doing while writing said statuses, and see if we can figure out why 2007 was SO DARN EMO.

This is going to be the dumbest thing I've ever done on PoYB (and the bar is set pretty high).

This was a very dramatic way of saying that I graduated high school that morning. My Summer Log of events indicates that my own graduation party was also on this day, and I posted this status at 2 PM, so apparently I left my own party to post some bullshit on Facebook?

I wasn't sober for much of anything during Senior Week, let alone showering. I'm not sure why I had to share this with the world, however.

I guess I was getting shit for hooking up with a girl on Senior Week by another friend (who knows why she had a problem with it). But I hate when friends are mad at me, no matter how frivolous the reason, and so I went full-bore emo and wrote not only this status in the middle of the night, but also this tripe.

Posted at 1:27 in the morning. According to my notes, I was sad and mopey and ended up walking around the neighborhood by myself, smoking Gold and Milds. Hmm. No worries, I wasn't restless the next night, which was apparently the night when we hopped a fence and went for a nighttime swim at a private club pool in Cheltenham.

Okay, yeah, this was that night. We went to laser tag (which was a thing we did when we were eighteen, I guess), Jim's Steaks, and then decided to do a B&E at Conklin Pool. No fucking clue how we didn't get caught (see how out in the open that shit is?). We weren't dicks about it, like we didn't vandalize or anything. We just went for a swim (okay, alright, and maybe stole a couple ice cream sandwiches from the poolside freezer). But I hope 2007 Joe was able to comprehend that life was good after nights like this, and so nights like the one previous, all sad and depressed and etc., were not necessary.

Posted at 12:50 AM, so what I was referring to, it happened on June 27th. According to my notes, we went to see a Rolling Stones cover band at Pennypack Park. Our M.O. for those concerts that summer was to pack a styrofoam cooler fuller of Lionsheads and hope we didn't get arrested. I can't recall that anything particular bad happened that night, I think we just enjoyed ourselves and the nice weather and the cold beer. So I guess maybe we were just blasting Broken Social Scene on the car ride home?

The "show" was Kev's graduation party, where our band Burholme would be performing. Everyone was excited, because Kev had been talking it up all summer so far that his parents were "cool" with his friends drinking at this party. He may have been exaggerating, in retrospect. Still, me and Kev and Mike pregamed the heck out of our performance (or maybe it was just me, surprise!), and it was our sloppiest show by far. It culminated in a drunk Joe trying to do a weird version of "Moby Dick" and drumming on Kev's dad's classic '70s Corvette. I've never seen that many baby boomers stand up and scream in unison.

This was posted at 11:55 PM, which, it's crazy to think there was a time when that was "going to bed early." Apparently I had spent this night at a hookah bar with a few high school friends. Forget laser tag, remember when HOOKAH BARS were a thing?!

I dunno, man, these notes aren't helping that much when it comes to this shit. We're looking at 7/6/07, because this status was posted at 2:30 AM that night. There was a party at a high school friend's house, (the one mentioned at #19 here). Which seems insane to me that this dude had another party, because it had already been raided by the police a couple months prior, post-prom. I don't have a [D] next to this date, which means (according to the key) that I did not get drunk on this night. Who knows, man. Maybe there was a girl there that I had a crush on but didn't have the balls to talk to. Maybe I was just sad that I wouldn't be seeing my high school friends that often in a few months from then. Maybe I'm just always nostalgic at 2:30 in the morning, and I always will be.

Okay, so we were supposed to go to another one of those Pennypack free concerts this night, but it was rained out, so we went to Kev's house instead. And apparently I got drunk and hooked up with a girl there. No indication as to why this made me upset. Maybe I was still concerned that drunkenly making out with women was a form of disrespect? It wasn't a matter of consent, even drunk 2007 Joe didn't do any of that shit without consent. So who knows! (Maybe 2007 had a premonition about the future, when I would greatly upset this same girl seven years later during a regrettable game of Text Roulette.)

No fucking clue. I had work at four o'clock, and hung out with a few people at Kyle's house and Rising Sun Pizza afterward, but this status was written at 2 PM. I wasn't drunk. Was it some type of inside joke that's been lost in the sands of time? I guess I'll never know.

My wisdom teeth were removed on July 19th. On July 21st, in the early morning hours, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released, but I finished it by like 8 AM, even on painkillers. So I had a lot of time to kill, and a lot of time to sit around twiddling my thumbs, sober. Wildly, apparently I went to a keg in the woods this night, still chipmunk-cheeked. No drinking, though I was probably moving through my bottle of percocets pretty quickly.

"Sleepwalking" was the cutesy code we used for "sneaking out of the house." Sometimes this involved hopping out my sisters' bedroom window (which lead to a gently sloping roof), but on August 11th, I was referring to the regular hangout we used to have at my buddy Andrew's house. See, he would often host "poker nights" for the boys, and we'd all hang out in the basement. His parents gave us a wide berth, so we kind of took advantage of that, and got fucking loaded on as many Lionsheads as we could sneak into the basement. On this particular night, we had joining us an old neighborhood buddy who was not only sober, but also had a minivan. So we ended up cruising the neighborhood, all dozen of us and a pillowcase full of alcohol crammed into the back of the van. I think we ended up drinking in the Laf parking lot, only because we figured all the senior citizens who lived there would not wake up even with boisterous teenagers getting drunk outside their windows. Ah man, what a fucking night. A night only a vague, half-assed Facebook status could capture.


Whelp, this has been fun, I guess. Happy Friday, everyone who made it this far. All none of you. See y'all tomorrow.

Thirsty Thursday: A BEER AN INNING

Some drinking games offer complicated and byzantine rules, making your head feel almost as badly as the alcohol you are chugging will make you feel the following morning. Some drinking games, on the other hand, are so simple that they make you wonder why you're not always playing them. "A Beer an Inning" is thankfully the latter.

Since we have baseball on the brain this week, let's talk about my favorite baseball drinking game. To play it, you must be watching a nine-inning baseball game from start to finish. The rules are simple: Drink one, and exactly one, beer during each inning of the baseball game. You must start your beer after the final out of the (bottom half of the) previous inning, and must be finished that beer by the final out of the next bottom half of the inning.

Baseball games are not timed as in other sports (though there is a pitch clock that is rarely violated and is thus not that important to the drinking game). The Phillies, in their history, have played a nine-inning game that lasted exactly four and a half hours. The Phillies have also played a game that lasted 51 minutes.

The baseball teams, in other words, are dictating how fast you are forced to drink. An offensive slugfest might keep you sober, whereas a pitchers' duel might knock you on your ass. That's part of the fun!

In addition, baseball cannot end in a tie, so if the ninth inning itself ends in a tie, then we play extra innings. The baseball clubs duke it out until a full inning ends in a non-tied score. Likewise, we keep drinking one beer every inning until the game is over. Because of this game rule, it is wise to keep at least a dozen beers on-hand, in case the game goes to extras.

(A few years ago, I saw I had fourteen beers in my fridge and decided that I would be safe to play A Beer an Inning, only to see the Phillies go 16 innings, a wild game featuring a shit-grinning Roy Oswalt playing left field.)

The only way to lose A Beer an Inning is by giving up, I guess. Nine beers is a lot if you are a lightweight, especially if the game is closer to the three-hour mark than the four-hour mark. And maybe you are watching a Jamie Moyer-type pitcher who can induce three quick groundouts on three measly pitches. Gotta be ready to chug your beer if you get caught off guard with the final pitch!

(I've never played A Beer a Half Inning, because that sounds perverse and terrifying.)

So if you wanna make a baseball game really exciting and get drunk in the process (and don't have a baby you are responsible for), play A Beer an Inning.

Song Review: "In My Feelings" by Drake

Puke on Your Birthday reviews entertainment every Wednesday, taking a break from the usual inane nonsense and inconsequential bullshit typically posted here. This week, we talk about the country's #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 from this week.

"In My Feelings"
Drake
Scorpion
2018

I want these reviews to be honest. I want to go in with tabula rasa, no prejudgments here. So if it seems like I'm shitting on Top 40 Radio, please know I'm not doing it because I'm fronting. I want to consider truly the country's top song, and consider whether it is worthy of this week's crown. And as much as I can't bring myself to appreciate many of the songs that usually dominate the population's consciousness, I also have a soft spot for Drake due to his Canadian acting past, so maybe it will all even out, even if I can't actually go in with a blank slate.

The song at #1 this week is called "In My Feelings," and I just listened to it at least fifteen times in a row. It has accomplished what all mainstream songs set out to do: it was catchy, and I eventually was able to sing along and appreciate doing so. No matter the faults that I found in the rest of the track, none of it can take away from the fact that "In My Feelings" is an earworm.

The beat layered underneath the lyrics is a form of "New Orleans Bounce." Don't worry, I did my research. According to the Wikipedia page (I feel like Nathan Fielder when I use Wikipedia to explore hip hop subgenres), New Orleans Bounce consists of hypersexual call-and-response vocals over the "Triggaman beat" (really going down the wiki rabbit hole now!). This isn't a new form of rap. "Crunk" rap popularized by Lil Jon also utilized the New Orleans Bounce-style rap (think of all the "mmYEAH!! OKAY!! That's the call-and-response I was talking about!).

Okay, so "In My Feelings" is not as loud or obnoxious (or, honestly, as fun) as the crunk rap subsubgenre, but it definitely has the "triggaman beat" drum loop, and it definitely features some call-and-response lyrics and some shout-out lyrics (his constantly saying the producers name, "Trap Money Benny," for one). And, because rap is ultimately an exercise in recycling other rap, there are samples of Lil Wayne's "Lollipop," and a song by someone named Magnolia Shorty, who (again, according to surface-level research) was murdered in 2010.

All this stuff ultimately adds up to a #1 hit song, so anything negative I say is akin to throwing a pebble at the whales in the ocean from shore.

But why does Drake sound so bored here? The autotune, which I guess is a staple of Drake's music, makes him sound like he's just phoning it in. Like, I specifically have an issue with the way he pronounces the word "riding." Because of the autotune, his vocals remind me of that one episode of Difficult People in which Julie is trying to talk with an American-cum-Australian accent, but everyone just thinks she's mentally challenged.

Further contributing to the "phoning it in" quality of this song is the lyrics. The chorus is like the intro class to a Making a Love Song 101 lecture. Read this and tell me if this is basic as fuck or it's just me:

Say you'll never ever leave from beside me
'Cause I want ya, and I need ya
And I'm down for you always

I can't imagine that there is a listener in America that finds this chorus groundbreaking or in any way creative. Which, okay, again, clearly no one cares about groundbreaking or creative on the radio. This shit is #1. I get it.

But okay, then explain the other problem I have with Drake's lyrics. Please someone correct me if I'm off-base here (which is possible, because it's not like I'm all that intimate with the Drake canon), but Drake sure does talk about himself a lot, right? To me, it seems like every single one of his songs is an exercise in self-reflection and -deprecation and -worth. He does it again in "In My Feelings":

Look, the new me is really still the real me
I swear you gotta feel me before they try and kill me
They gotta make some choices they runnin' out of options
'Cause I've been goin' off and they don't know when it's stoppin'

When Drake was a new rapper, fresh off his starring role as a wheelchaired Canadian teenager, well then at that point of course he had to prove himself. Everyone dismissed him as a joke. I did too! He was a fucking Canadian teen soap opera star!! But now he might just be the most popular musician on the planet. He has three #1 singles this year alone. He was crushed in a rap battle earlier this year, and the defeat bounced off him like Teflon. He can do no wrong at this point. And yet he's STILL trying to prove himself, for some reason. It's fucking tired and fucking tiring. It bores the hell out of me, honestly. But he can't stop doing it. And it's sure as hell in this song, disappointingly.

The aforementioned samples are an overt attempt to spice this song up, because there's only so much triggaman beat a listener can stand. But all it does is create a whiplash between two incompatible verses. We go from the tender pleas of Drake to keep loving him to a dead rapper yelling CLAP THAT ASS. We go from crying tears of emotion into his champagne glass to a might-as-well-be-dead rapper yelling BRING THAT ASS BACK. And samples aside, we have cameos from two unknown(?) female rappers (The City Girls) obnoxiously stopping the song to ask Drake what his net-worth is. Pass.

One final time, for the folks in the cheap seats—this is criticism at its worst, this is punching up at a foe that could never be knocked down, this is screaming into the void and hearing nothing back. Drake created a #1 single, and a mostly catchy one at that, and it doesn't fucking matter that it's a tired and boring display of his talent. It's still #1. Good for him.

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5

Top Five Tuesday: At-Bat Music

We are at the All-Star break, pretty much the halfway point in the MLB season, and I still give a shit about baseball. This feels great! I haven't felt this way since like 2012! The Phillies are currently sitting in first place in the NL East, by the skin of their teeth (0.5 games up). Our team is filled with a bunch of scrubs who somehow have put enough wins together to make a legitimate playoff run. Fuck yeah! I love it!

So yeah, I got baseball on my mind. It's easy to lose yourself in a daydream about playing for the Phillies, isn't it? I have ever since I was a little kid. And the most important thing to me (of course) in this hypothetical alternate universe in which I play baseball professionally is: What my at-bat music would be.

If you're not familiar with the rituals of a baseball game, I'll briefly explain. In the seconds leading up to your turn in the batter's box, i.e. the walk from the on-deck circle to home plate, the music producer for the stadium plays a snippet of music. This music is chosen by the player himself, and so, the music you choose should say something about you as a baseball player or as a person or about your love of the game itself.

Of course, these are professional athletes we are talking about, men who have lived and breathed baseball their entire lives, and ONLY baseball. They didn't have the time growing up to explore the nuances of musical genres. There are no shortstops obsessively reading Stereogum, no left fielders blogging about their yearly Top Tens. And so, the music choices tend to be primitive. Check out this list from 2017 of batters' at-bat music. It's... not pretty.

If I were to make the unlikely jump from overweight social worker to starting second baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies, here are my top five choices for my own at-bat music.

5. The opening guitar riffs of "Queen of Hearts" by Fucked Up

(DJ would start at the beginning)

The raw power of the intro for this song cannot be denied. Sure, the Phillies wouldn't be able to reveal to their family-friendly audience the name of the band who plays the song, and the DJ would have to cut it off before Damian Abraham's cookie monster vocals kick in, but just hearing that guitar riff would get me to launch a few extra home runs for sure.

4. The group chorus from "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts" by Sufjan Stevens

(DJ would start at the 2:07 mark)

I like the idea that my at-bat music alluding to Superman, because that's what you'd try to be at the plate, lifting your team up with your superhuman strength (and I didn't think "Superman That Ho" would be a good choice for this exercise).

3. The drum fills in "Vincent" by Car Seat Headrest

(DJ would start at the 4:26 mark)

I want to say that this is a selective choice because I feel like the drums are underutilized and underappreciated in typical at-bat music, and I want to support my instrument of choice. But let's be honest, this is just a really cool part in a really cool song and I'd be a cool baseball player by playing it.

2. The refrain from "Four Score and Seven" by Titus Andronicus

(DJ would start at the 7:01 mark)

"It's still us against them!" So goes the refrain at the end of this epic Titus track. Sickles is singing about life in general, but of course, we could easily reappropriate it for baseball. What is baseball if not a battle between Us and Them?

1. The outro of "Powerful Man" by Hop Along

(DJ would start at the 3:01 mark)

A bunch of reasons for this one. One is that it's a great song by a great fucking band. Two is that Hop Along is a local band, and since I'm playing the Phillies in my daydreams, it fits. Three is that great female vocals are absent from most typical at-bat music choices, and so Frances Quinlan could certainly fill that void. I would be fighting against the hypermasculinity of baseball, in other words. Finally, there's a certain irony in using this song. The refrain goes "He looked like a powerful man," which on the surface would fit well with the power I'd be trying to project as a batter. But the lyrics are actually about a guy abusing a child, and the "powerful" part is actually dismissive sarcasm, like, "oh man how POWERFUL you are for punching a child." So the song choice would be self-deprecating. A way to stay humble instead of doing the opposite and projecting steroid-fueled bravado.

Also... BONUS TOP FIVE!

There's another situation in a baseball game where music is integral and chosen by the player. During baseball games in which the starting pitcher underperforms, the manager may choose to call in a relief pitcher. If the relief pitcher is trustworthy enough, then he may even get his own music to run out onto the field to. Think asshole Papelbon running from the bullpen to the hill to the sounds of Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

Music is utilized in this case for completely different purposes than at-bat music. A relief pitcher's entrance song not only should say something about the pitcher, but it additionally holds the responsibility of manipulating the crowd in some way. This music should build suspense, or pump the crowd up, or otherwise ask the audience to buy into the drama that is created by having a bullpen pitcher come into a tight spot and attempt to save the day. Plus, more of the actual song is played, maybe up to like two-minute clips of the chosen tune, versus the four seconds you get for an at-bat appearance.

Were I to somehow find myself emerging from the Phillies bullpen with one out in the eighth and two men on, here are the Top Five Songs I'd like the crowd at Citizens Bank Park to get hype on.

5. The chorus of "Lit Up" by the National

(DJ would start at the 1:03 mark)

The irony tickles my fancy. As a relief pitcher, you do NOT want to get lit up. Call it a reverse jinx.

4. The intro for "Time" by Pink Floyd

(DJ would start at the beginning, when the clock alarm stops)

If I were to use this song, I'd be sacrificing the crowd's excitement in the name of ramping up the drama to the nth degree. The great booming bass hits and the creepy tinkling of the keyboard would strike fear in any opposing batter.

3. The bumrush second half of "Incoherent Love Songs" by P.S. Eliot

(DJ would start at the 1:27 mark)

Maybe the message about love and romance would be inappropriate in a baseball game, but you can't deny the excitement that harmonica riff would bring to the masses. And if you don't think about it too hard, "We keep holding on... And it helps to remain valiant" could totally apply to a save situation on the mound.

2. The second half of "Your Graduation" by Modern Baseball

(DJ would start at the 1:06 mark)

I'm ignoring the name of the band because it would be too obvious. We have the DJ start on that snarling, sneering second verse, and continue on to the soaring guitar solo. It also serves as a challenge to the batter to pick their pitch wisely, because as the chorus goes, I will not let them "walk away" to base.

1. Most of "You! Me! Dancing!" by Los Campesinos!

(DJ would start at the beginning, if he can get the timing right)

You ever see baseball players from opposing teams smiling and laughing with each other? Of course. They are friends, at the end of the day. No matter what sports radio tells you, this is all just a game. It's supposed to be fun. I love that about baseball. "You! Me! Dancing!" is a fun as hell song. It gets people up and moving. And it would keep the fun in the game. It's you (the batter)! It's me (the pitcher)! We're dancing! The crowd could dance around too. Baseball is fucking fun! If I am going to be a relief pitcher, I want to remember that!

Officer Joe

I don't think I could ever be a police officer.

Many readers are scoffing as they are reading that sentence, like it's painfully obvious that I could never be police. I am weak, I am irresponsible, I have issues with authority. All true. But other times, I think, well, maybe. Like, I sincerely enjoy dealing with the general public, even in stressful times, and I think I could bring a measure of civility and calm to those situations. I think I'd be good at that. I'd like to have the opportunity to better my community, and if I was a police officer, I would have the ability to do that substantially more than I can now.

Let's be real though. I could never ever be a police officer. I should stop deluding myself.

I was a few minutes late to witnessing a police shooting right outside my office building today. No humans were injured, but a dog is dead right there on the sidewalk. I'm looking at the scene from my desk as I type.

Allegedly, two homeless guys were tussling, and police were on the scene because Family Court is right down the street. The fight escalated to the point that the homeless guy who owned a dog let the dog loose to attack the other guy (this is all hearsay from my building's security guard, by the way). I guess the one cop felt threatened in some way, and unloaded his gun on the dog. It's not a pretty scene down there, from what I can see. Bloodstains all over the sidewalk.

I'm not saying that there aren't scenarios in which police should shoot a dog. I'm the son of a mailman who has come close to macing my friends' dogs in the past. I get it; personal safety is paramount. And it was a decent-sized dog down there, so if the dog truly did try to attack the officer, I guess it was okay to defend himself. It just seems bizarre to me that it would escalate that much. Are tasers effective on dogs? According to PetMD, tasing a dog could be deadly, but isn't necessarily so. Certainly less deadly than shooting a dog.

Did the police officer use proper procedure by grabbing for his gun before his taser, or baton, or mace? Probably not. Especially considering that you're unloading a gun on a busy city street (the same street that certain wayward bloggers usually ride their bikes down around the exact same time the gun went off).

But I'm trying to put myself in that position, imagine if I was the police officer. Would I have overreacted in the same way? Probably. Like I said, not good under pressure like that. If it was me, I probably would have shot the gun and missed due to incompetency. Probably smash a window or something in the process.

The difference between me and a lot of people who become police officers is that I can acknowledge that I would be a terrible police officer. And I think it's my responsibility to never become one. Even though I think I could bring a lot of positive to the job, the negatives are too great and grave. A lot of young idiots truly believe they are fit to put on the blue uniform, only to find themselves shooting a kid who's holding a toy gun or some shit like that.

I'm not trying to downplay any of that, or minimize the real impact a fuck-up officer can have. I am 100% against corrupt or incompetent police officers, and I 100% support more training for good cops and full accountability for bad ones. I'm really only writing this blog post because the victim here was a dog, not a human, and so the stakes are a little lower.

I wonder if the police officer who pulled the trigger today is going to reflect on whether he did the right thing. I wonder if it will be determined by security footage that he took the correct course of action, or if he fucked up. I wonder, if it's determined he fucked up, but is ultimately unpunished, if he'll still at the end of the day able to reflect on the fact that he killed a dog, took another life, killed ostensibly the best friend of a poor guy on the street. Or if he'll be unrepentant and pose a threat to other living creatures in the future.

Then again, in all probability, this rather large dog posed a sincere threat to the police officer, and he acted appropriately and took the dog down. Maybe the officer didn't have any time to do literally anything else besides grab a gun and shoot. Maybe shooting the gun was the only way to avoid serious injury in the jaws of a pit bull. If that's the case, you can't really blame the officer at all.

I'm not here to make the case either way, simply because I don't have all the necessary information. And that's not really the point of this blog post (is there ever a point?). I'm just trying to say that I know if I was in the officer's position, I probably would have fucked up big time. And so I'm really glad I'm not a police officer, tasked with life and death scenarios. Every time I foolishly believe that I would make a good Philly cop, I'm going to think back to the dead dog I saw this morning, because it has finally convinced me to put that very bad idea to bed once and for all. I will never be police.

Also, I can't be a cop because I don't want to shave my beard. But that's another blog post for another time.

Only a cop on the stage, never in real life.

PoYB from the Vault: Another Fucking Restaurant Review

Since we're spending so much time with the Collegian this week, let's add to the archives this old restaurant I wrote from a joint called CinCin in Chestnut Hill. As you can tell by Wednesday's review of Hungry Pigeon, I don't really know how to be Craig Laban. This review is insufferably meta in that regard.

Yes, they actually used this picture to accompany my review. CinCin, serving poop with a French flair since 2004!

CinCin offers tasty food with flair

By Joe K***
Collegian Editor

      I needed a respectable restaurant for a date. I couldn't bring her to McDonald's—no, not again. It needed to be somewhere with class. An establishment with good taste and perhaps even an appetizing menu. We live and spend our time in Olney, so was the task even possible to achieve? I desperately asked friends, relatives, and my mailman for advice.
      Thankfully, a coworker at the Connelly Library came through in the clutch. "Oh yes, sir, I know the perfect place for you and your lady friend." And she told me about the wonders of Chestnut Hill, and a cozy little eatery in it named CinCin.
      So, after cleaning my car out for the first time in months, my date and I drove to what the Internet called a "sophisticated casual restaurant" featuring "Chinese and pan-Asian recipes with a refined French flair." Only the best for my female companion.
      We arrive and right away ordered a glass of their finest house wine. Well, okay, at $27 a glass, we didn't get too crazy. Tap water would be fine. It was CinCin's food that we were here to enjoy (that, and pleasant conversation, of course).
      First, though, I want to commend CinCin on the perfect atmosphere for a date. It was a comfortable size, and with music playing low and the lights dimmed even lower, it seemed as if all the patrons were enjoying themselves.
      The menu was varied for an Asian restaurant—of course, I could just be too used to the Lion King local Chinese takeout. They had everything from an Oriental salad to roasted lamb to duck. It was the best of the best from the Far East (though, as my date and I quickly noticed, it offered nary a hint of the promised "French flair").
      While the taste was great, it's the presentation of the food I feel the need to nitpick. I ordered duck, so I expected to get, ya know, something that looked like a duck. Instead, the bird came in little tortillas with lettuce and soy sauce. It looked like they ran across the street to McDonald's and picked up a snack wrap. Like I said, it tasted great! I was just expecting more than what I got in terms of style, however. Look at me—Joe K***, food snob!
      Prices were affordable, which is pretty important, being a poor college student and all. Our tasty meal did not put a dent in my bank account. Service was excellent (I don't think it's possible to run low on water, since the waiters refill your glass every few seconds), and the staff was pleasant and efficient.
      Of course, like any respectable Asian restaurant should do, we were given fortune cookies at the end of the meal. My fortune read: "A modest man does not talk about himself." So does this review make me arrogant?
      This is the point in a typical review where one would normally say something cliché like: "I had a great time and I recommend that you go to the restaurant I just spent 500 words talking about." But as you may be able to tell, I have no idea how to write a restaurant review. I am an eater, not a writer. CinCin was a great place for someone like me.

The Top 100 Songs of the '00s (Part 2: #75-#51)

They say whatever music you listen to when you're eighteen is your music for life. Here's the next portion of our Top 100 list. (For #100-#76, click HERE.)

75. "Get Free" by the Vines

From trashing David Letterman's set to "smoking banana peels," the Vines were for sure the most interesting of the bands that came up in the "Garage Rock Revival." And Highly Evolved miiiight just be a flawless album, even all these years later. Nothing on the album matches the raw power of "Get Free," though. Not much in this decade matched it, honestly.

74. "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" by Cocktail Slippers

I really don't know anything about Cocktail Slippers (though, they seem pretty cool!). All I know is I heard this fun little song played by Little Steven's Underground Garage at 5 AM on a Christmas morning, with all its whirling pipe organs and uproariously entertaining sing-along outro, and I fell in love.

73. "Objects of My Affection" by Peter Bjorn and John

"Objects of My Affection" at #73 is what happens when "Young Folks" all of a sudden becomes annoying as FUCK after a decade. Anyone can write a hook while whistling, but can you also write a hook over war-time snare drums and guitars turned up so loud that they basically become a gust of static wind? Peter Bjorn and John can.

72. "Formed a Band" by Art Brut

This is our generation's "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," and it's fucking hilarious. Making such claims as being such a great band that the Middle East conflict would be solved and that people would sing their songs on birthdays, Art Brut was almost too much of a force to be reckoned with. Writing an Origins Story song is a trick you can only pull once; this perhaps explains why subsequent Art Brut albums just didn't have this same manic energy.

71. "The Magic Position" by Patrick Wolf

Oh lordy, the many, many times me and Kev listened to this joyous little track as we drove around Wildwood in the summer of 2008.

70. "The '59 Sound" by the Gaslight Anthem

I know I already burned through my requisite once-per-post Springsteen reference two songs ago, but I should've saved it for this song. Bruce Springsteen agrees, clearly, since he has on multiple occasions accompanied the Gaslight Anthem in performing "The '59 Sound." Any song referencing a grandfather in the chorus is gonna tug at those heartstrings, ya feel me?

69. "Lazy Eye" by Silversun Pickups

If my high school Class of 2007 had picked a song to be their Official Graduation Song, I would hope it would've been this one. It's a song about finding what you've always been looking for and finding that it's not quite as perfect as you thought. We had looked forward to graduation for four years, and when it arrived, and that summer of '07 curdled into fall, and we all went our separate ways to college, I think in some ways there was some regret that we had thought graduating would be the best thing to happen. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Tough to tell with a lazy eye.

68. "Take Off Your Sunglasses" by Ezra Furman and the Harpoons

I had mentioned there was only one song I discovered in 2018 on this list, and here it is. I had never even heard of this chick before this year, but thanks to recommendations from a couple friends, I have seen the light and now worship at the altar of Ezra.

67. "MakeDamnSure" by Taking Back Sunday

I remember quite clearly hanging out with my friends and watching this video on a big boxy TV and making fun of it endlessly. From the whiny emo vocals to the way the lead singer held the microphone (and choked himself with the cord), everything was amusing to me. But sometimes, what you mock becomes what you love, and I cannot deny that this song makes me feel some pretty strong feelings.

66. "Fashion Coat" by the National

"Fashion Coat" is the great unsung classic in the National's discography. It features none of the flair for dramatic that a typical National tune shows off. It's over in a quick and dirty two minutes and two seconds. There's a female backup singer, there's a bouncy keyboard riff, I mean I could go on about why this is very un-National-y. Maybe that's why it doesn't dominate "Best National Songs" lists, because it's practically not even a National song. But fuck, man, it works.

65. "Get Me Naked 2: Electric Boogaloo" by Minus the Bear

I keep downloading Minus the Bear albums, and I keep getting disappointed that nothing else in the Minus the Bear discography reaches the highs of "Get Me Naked 2." The combo of stabby guitars and that classic chorus ("You said: 'My life's like a bad movie'...") never fails to get me pumped for a fun night.

64. "Fat Lip" by Sum 41

What can I say about "Fat Lip" that I haven't drunkenly spewed all over PoYB already? I will say that, had this song come out even a year earlier or a year later, it would not have stuck to me at all. But twelve was the perfect age, and when I hear this song, forever twelve I'll be. (Sidenote: this is surely the only song on my list whose genre Wikipedia describes as "rapcore.")

63. "Bushels" by Frog Eyes

No idea what Carey Mercer is singing about, but he sings the FUCK out of it. Not really sure what else to say about this nine-minute epic; I get too awestruck every time I listen to the whole thing.

62. "Lisztomania" by Phoenix

Sometimes, mediocre and somewhat inaccessible bands stumble into writing an all-time great rock song. We are all pretty lucky that Phoenix happened upon this fucking gem in between all the sloppy synth rock that they've made before and after 2009.

61. "This Love Is Fucking Right!" by the Pains of Being Pure at Heart

If we're judging songs by only their titles, this one has to be Top Ten All Time. The love isn't just right, it's fucking right, and that makes all the difference. It could've been one of the greatest love songs of all time if it wasn't for the "You're my sister!" preceding the sung title. Oh well. (The band, for their part, has insisted that "sister" is meant figuratively, like "hey sistah" and whatnot.)

60. "Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ" by Titus Andronicus

I've already written enough about how Titus Andronicus' first song ever basically yells "FUCK YOU" at God. I've been smitten with the band ever since. But yo, can we get a shout out for that fretboard-tapping, horn-blasting outro? It doesn't get enough love around these parts.

59. "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance

My goodness, this is embarrassing. Who put this My Chemical Romance song on my hip, savvy, very serious blog? **2006 Joe SMASHES through the wall** "HAHAhahaha 2018 Joe!!! You thought you could escape this song, but you can't!! You never will!! My Chemical Romance's attempts to make an emo version of The Wall will haunt you for the rest of your life!!!"

58. "The Sublimation Hour" by Destroyer

Every time I hear this song I just picture Dan Bejar in full Elton John garb, feather boa and what have you, sitting at a piano, kicking one leg out as he hits the hook after each of those big snare drum flams. In this alternate universe, the mad genius of Bejar is as popular as Elton John himself. He needs to be. This shit kicks ass.

57. "A Postcard to Nina" by Jens Lekman

Every time I ever write about Jens for now until eternity, I will always mention what a humble and unassuming person he appeared to be from his spot on the stage when me and Pam saw him in concert last year. You have to know this about Jens Lekman to appreciate this song, which tells the story of Jens having to pose as his friend's boyfriend to hide from her stern Catholic father that she is really a lesbian. You have to be able to picture Jens, shy and quiet Jens, being caught up in the charade. It makes me chuckle every time.

56. "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Want me to prove just how clueless I was about music in 2003? Okay. The first time I heard "Maps" was playing it on Rock Band for Wii. YIKES. But it is possible to retroactively appreciate a song for what it is. This song is so vivid that I no longer think about hitting the correct color-coded key on a plastic guitar; instead, I hear "Maps," and I picture myself in Brooklyn in the early '00s, and I'm close to the stage, and I'm watching Karen O rule the world.

55. "I Feel It All" by Feist

CAUTION! FRAGILE! Contained in this package is the sound of your heart bursting with emotion. Please open while sober.

54. "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" by Rufus Wainwright

I thought I was the shit listening to this song back in high school. Here was a song that spoke to me, telling me it was okay that I was getting drunk and becoming a mess. It was okay that I had cravings, addictions, needs! And that was okay for a while, and I was happy, for a while.

53. "Weed Party" by Band of Horses

Band of Horses are of the straight-ahead Heartland Rock tradition (infamously described once by a friend as "the Blue Moon of Rock"). Infinitely more so than their big hit "The Funeral," "Weed Party" is the sound of Band of Horses leaning into what they do best. Simple, clean, fun. (And, of course, the "Parents aren't enforcing the laws" line absolutely slayed me as a teenager.)

52. "Sister Jack" by Spoon

Spoon is all kinds of bands, but this Spoon is the best Spoon. The rollicking bar band Spoon. But Spoon, of course, ain't just a fucking bar band. You think a fucking bar band could handle all these time signature changes? You think even the bar band's fucking tambourine player could handle it?

51. "Nine in the Afternoon" by Panic! at the Disco

So far on today's portion of the list, you've made it through Taking Back Sunday and My Chemical Romance, so let's say we throw one more into the mix? The Black Parade:The Wall::Nine in the Afternoon: Sgt. Pepper's.

See you next Saturday for #50 through #26 of our countdown!!

FUCK ADAPTATIONS

(Spoilers for various books, movies, and TV shows below, please read with caution)

I've always fucking hated when my favorite books are adapted into movies or TV shows, because they are very rarely (if ever) faithful adaptations. Why would I love a book and then subject myself to watching a bastardized version of something that I love?

I don't even fucking understand why screenwriters and directors would change anything about a book, let alone the crucial aspects of the plot that usually are twisted and mangled in these types of things. The most infamous example I can think of is the total perversion of Dumbledore's character in the Harry Potter movie series. Gone is the kind, gentle, calm, wizened old wizard, and replacing him is an abrasive jerkoff. This gif says it all. FUCK the Harry Potter movies.

The worst specific example I can think of is The Silver Linings Playbook and its movie adaptation. In the book, a central scene involves Pat and Tiffany performing in a dance competition. Except, they are the only adults performing, and the stakes are pretty low. The whole point was that Pat was opening himself up to being with and sharing experiences with another person. It was growth in just being able to dance in the first place. However, the movie fucks this up terribly. The dance competition still exists, but it's a LEGIT dance competition, and the stakes are HIGH. And somehow, Pat and Tiffany pull off the win?! It completely fucking defeats the purpose. Winning the competition isn't the point, and winning proves nothing about Pat's progress as a person, it just means he is an unrealistically good dancer for some reason. FUCK Silver Linings Playbook. (And FUCK Robert DeNiro's portrayal of Pat's dad.)

All that burying of the lede to say that I am currently going through the frustrations of watching one of my favorite books being mangled beyond recognition on the screen.

Stephen King's 11/22/63 is the best time traveling book I've ever read. In it, our protagonist, Jake Epping, travels from 2011 to 1958 (via the "rabbit hole") to attempt to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Jake is methodical and ingenious in how he goes about this process, fighting all odds, stalking Lee Harvey Oswald and plotting how to change the world by preventing a murder that is destined to happen.

Except, Jake travels to 1958, not 1963 (the year JFK is killed), and so he has five years to hang out before stopping Oswald. And our protagonist is a kind and caring man, and so he gets wrapped up in the small-town life of (the fictional) Jodie, Texas, while he awaits his fate. He teaches English, changes students' lives, and falls deeply in love with the school librarian, Sadie. King expertly handles the whiplash between the will-they-won't-they in Jodie and the preparations for preventing calamity in Dallas.

The whole point, in my opinion, the main message Stephen King is trying to tell us through the incredible tale of Jake Epping in the Land of Ago, is this: The small changes we effect in our lives are infinitely more important than any large changes we attempt to effect. It's more important to be improve the lives of those around you than bully your way into worldwide celebrity. Jake, despite all the love and joy he finds in Jodie, TX, still foolishly considers JFK's safety to be his ultimate goal. It's not until he completes his task that he finds that it doesn't fucking matter. JFK could live for a thousand years, and that still couldn't replace the loss of someone close to you.

Pam and I read this book to Willow, since you're supposed to read books to children as soon as they are born, and because we thought that a Stephen King book would be a hilarious "Child's First Book," and because, well, 11/22/63 is a fucking masterpiece. I was tasked with reading the final chapter aloud, and man, it took me like an hour to read the damn thing because we both couldn't stop crying. I'm tearing up now, just writing about the book.

We started watching Hulu's TV adaptation, 11.22.63, and rather than cry, all I'm doing is rolling my eyes.

FUCK it's so goddamn frustrating to watch this goddamn show. There's no other word for it—it's just plain ol' fucking stupid how many plot points and characterizations they are changing and adding and removing.

Probably my least favorite is how dumb and dickish James Franco plays the part of Jake Epping. Our protagonist in the book holds dear the responsibilities of time traveling, and holds even dearer the friends he has around him. Our protagonist in the TV show is pretty shitty to most people he encounters (that fucking patented James Franco Smirk has never and will never convey an ounce of empathy in any on-screen appearance). AND he is so stupid and careless about everything. I'm surprised to see by the third episode that the entire city of Dallas doesn't yet know he's a time traveler, since he seems to just blab about it to anyone who asks.

To illustrate both the point that TV Epping is a fucking imbecile and the point that the TV show swerves wildly from its source material, I point you toward the end of episode two, where an auxiliary character (at best) from the book suddenly becomes a main character on the show. This guy, Bill Turcotte, played a small role as an antagonist in the first quarter of the book, but now in the TV show, the trip to Dallas to hunt Oswald turns into a Buddy Comedy featuring Jake and Bill. It makes no sense for the plot to do this. Fucking NONE.

There are so many other instances of this tomfoolery (race relations are suddenly integral to the story for no reason; Jake meets Sadie years earlier; an integral trip to Derry, ME, to test out of the consequences of time travel is completely changed, and the outcome is completely irrelevant in the TV show anyway). It's gotten to the point where I'm thinking this might even be the TV showrunners trying (poorly) to illustrate, in a somewhat meta way, the concept of the butterfly effect. Just as one little action by Jake has vast effects, so too does one little change in the adaptation of the book affect the vast majority of the book's plot as a whole.

That's a stretch, though, to believe for one second that anyone has that keen of a handle on this. What this really is, I know for certain, is just some dumb fucks taking a wonderful novel and turning it to shit. It's a tale as old as time. I will never fucking understand how someone could say, "I love this book, and so to adapt it I'm going to change everything." What does this accomplish?

11.22.63 is a hackneyed time travel television show that pays the novel 11/22/63 no respect whatsoever, and the people that created it should be ashamed of themselves. FUCK this show.

The Albums That Matter: Are We There

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

Are We There

Sharon Van Etten

2014

This is a slow album. What exactly is it about Are We There that made me fall so deeply in love with it? Because I typically like my albums fast and tight, and this is neither. So why Are We There? Pam and I had this discussion just the other night, relating to how she tends to glob on to certain albums throughout the year and listen to them over and over, and ignore other albums in favor of listening to one of her favorites again. I asked her, why these albums? Is it ineffable? Can we really explain the nuances of our musical tastes? I'm not sure. I don't know if I'll be able to adequately explain why I'm so fond of Sharon Van Etten's 2014 effort. But I suppose I'll try, or else why am I even here?

THEORY #1: Maybe classifying this as a "slow" album was slightly imprecise. Yeah, there's a bunch of sluggish songs and slinky songs, but Van Etten brings the fire to those, no matter the tempo. "Our Love" is a good example. It may be lullaby speed, but it's not putting anyone to sleep; just listen to her jump rope with the chorus that consists of her repeating "It's our love" over and over, but different every time. "Tarifa" has the perfect horn-section flourishes that elevate it above your typical waltz-style ballad. "Break Me" has a chorus with one of those piano players that plays the same note over and over (I wish I knew the name for this style of playing), which I love and which really raises the stakes in a song and makes it exciting. The opener, "Afraid of Nothing," could practically be a National song if the vocals were different; it starts with a musical "we're all waking up slowly" section, before doing a very National-like trick of switching the time signature mid-song. It's cool! All of this is great!

THEORY #2: The album touches on the theme of "relationships are hard," which is a universal theme that anyone can empathize with. Various interviews from 2014 indicate that Van Etten was going through a rough breakup around this time with a guy who couldn't handle the fact that she was away touring for nine months out of the year. I can imagine that was a tough situation; I can literally imagine it because those conflicted, consuming thoughts are splattered all over every lyric on the album. I mean, look no further than "Your Love Is Killing Me," in which Van Etten's soaring voice expresses the hurt and the shame in such lyrics as "Break my legs so I can't run to you / Cut my tongue so I can't talk to you." This is self-torture made literal. Sometimes love and loss really does feel like burning your skin or stabbing your eyes. Sharon Van Etten draws the listeners in by reflecting on her own pain, and the listeners see themselves.

THEORY #3: A perfect final song makes for a perfect record. This is perhaps a weak theory in general, but with a finale like "Every Time the Sun Comes Up," it might just hold true in this case. It comes off like a late-night stoned-out session in the studio (e.g. the lyrics "I washed your dishes / But I shit in your bathroom), but that's a good thing here. It's refreshing after ten songs punching you in the gut repeatedly. Over a "Be My Baby"-style kickbeat, Van Etten reflects on the carnage she may have caused by laying all her shit out on the table. "I'm in trouble" ends the chorus' repeat. And yeah, that might be true, but the song ends with a laugh. Sharon Van Etten is brave for being so open. Every time the sun comes up, she's a fucking badass.

I don't know which theory is correct. Maybe it's all three. Maybe it's something different. Music is weird and wonderful in the way that it hits you from different and strange angles all the damn time. Maybe if you try Are We There you'll like it too. Put it on in the middle of night, maybe play it softly when it's 3 AM like you're the last one left at the sleazy European wine bar where you got drunk at after your girlfriend left you for good this time. It'd be a good album for that. And other situations, of course.

~~~~~~~~~~~

If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Taking Chances"

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Stray Observations

• In an interview for Exclaim! (a magazine that takes its punctuation marks very seriously), the lack of a question mark is explained by Van Etten: "I ask myself that question all the time, for my work, for my love, even for my friends. It's just really good to check in with yourself and it's a play on words, about touring and about traveling, being in transition." Err... I'm not really sure that this answers the question at all.
• Hey, Sharon Van Etten was in the indie music press recently. Apparently she was part of the "surprise lineup" at a music festival, and unfortunately was "extra-rusty, with false-started songs and off-key vocals." You won't find any of that shit on this album, believe me.
• FRONT COVER: A female, let's assume Van Etten herself, is driving a car and has her head out of the window. She is possibly indicating that she is "free" from the chains of a relationship and is now on the open road to new possibilities, but that's all conjecture.
• I did not listen to this until after 2014, which is why you won't see her if you go back and read my 2014 Best Music list. Were I to re-rank the albums, this would go as high as #2. Look for Are We There to seek revenge by rapidly climbing the 2010s Best Music list in December 2019.

NEXT TIME: Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience

Restaurant Review: Hungry Pigeon

Puke on Your Birthday reviews entertainment every Wednesday, taking a break from the usual inane nonsense and inconsequential bullshit typically posted here. This week, we reflect on a dinner at a top-tier Philly restaurant, Hungry Pigeon.

Hungry Pigeon
Queen Village, Philadelphia
Open seven days a week
Make a reservation online

I love life every goddamn second I'm with the baby, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to step away occasionally. To enjoy a night with Pam as "wife" and not "baby momma." And plus, my parents have been consistently bothering me for months at this point about when the fuck they can babysit please. So we got out of the house last Friday, put on some decent, unstained-by-formula clothes, and went on a date night.

Hungry Pigeon was the perfect place for such a night, as it turns out.

First, we got pretty lit up at Southwark down the street, but this isn't a review of Southwark so I won't say too much more about it (and also because the happy hour featured a clumsy, tipsy Joe spill discount red wine all over Pam's dress, so I guess the less we harp on this experience the better).

Let's point out here that Hungry Pigeon is sitting pretty as the #1 rated restaurant in the city right now by Philadelphia Magazine. Typically, this would be a deterrent for yours truly. I have a feeling that the #1 slot is usually reserved for snooty, overpriced chophouses and the like. The type of restaurant where I'd feel out-of-place in. Not so with Hungry Pigeon, I was assured. The atmosphere was comfortable and boisterous, I was told.

And it's all true. That atmosphere was pretty great. We had a seat right by the large window up front, and so we got a lot of natural light, even as the summer sun disappeared. It was a little loud in there, but then, so were we I'm sure (happy hour does that to new, alcohol-deprived parents). It felt more like a family atmosphere than a noisy nuisance. Family meals are supposed to be loud, aren't they? It's more fun that way. Please don't take me to a restaurant where I feel like I have to whisper.

Is it time to gush about the food yet? Because I'm ready.

We chose the option on the menu where you just let the cooks make some shit for you. They even choose your drinks to accompany each course. Honestly, I wish every good restaurant had this option. There's always the possibility that you are getting fucked, pricewise, like maybe the cooks are specifically making sure that what they are giving is worth less than what you are paying. That's my frugal paranoia speaking, and it has no place in a joint like Hungry Pigeon. Clearly, the food is prepared with the customer in mind, not their wallets. I have no problem with trusting these folks to just do what they love to do.

The first course was three different appetizers (served with a fruity rhubarb whiskey type drink? It was the perfect summer cocktail). We had your cucumber and zucchini salad with toasted nuts (I think? Jesus, I'm terrible at knowing what to call fancy food). We had your roasted root vegetables with a jalapeño chipotle sauce to complement. And then we had your seared scallions on top of a fresh corn salsa. No sure which was better, but there were no flaws to find in any dish. The waitress gave us one of those "wow you sure WERE hungry based on how clean the plates are aha aha" looks when she came to collect the dishes.

I think the rhubarb whisky might've put Pam over the edge, because she was adorable at this point. Conversation ranged from laughing about her ex-boyfriend still takes pictures of his meals for Instagram, to tearing up when we discuss whether there is an actual afterlife. The waitress questioned at this point why Pam's eyes were bloodshot, so I explained that it was our first night away from the baby, and we were getting a little wild. She understood.

Second course was this pasta thing. And honestly, this review is about to go off the rails, because asking the waiter to repeat what exactly the food is made of is rude as fuck and we didn't do it, we just shoved that tasty shit down our gullets. And it was fucking fantastic. I think it had gnocchi cheese in it, but don't quote me on that. We also got a beer to wash it down. It was a good beer, let's say a light, airy IPA of some sort. We drank them out of mason jars because it's 2018 and we are still looking to Pinterest for inspiration.

I was pretty drunk too at this point and I gotta say Pam looked A+ in her summer dress and I did my usual thing where I try to persuade her to accompany me to the unisex bathroom and she did her usual thing and rolled her eyes but still smirked because she secretly likes when I proposition her with public bathroom sex.

ANYWAY, the main entrée was a swordfish and a vegetable that I don't remember. Fucking bangin'. It was so fresh, and so impeccably cooked, it fell apart without the assistance of a knife, and melted in your mouth. I could've gone for a little more seasoning on the thing, if we're being petty about it, but I think that speaks more toward my deficiencies as a cook (Overseasoned Salmon Night every Tuesday at the K*** household) than toward any fault of the Pigeon chefs. There's no denying that it was tasty, seasoning or no. And I honestly had to put something negative in the post, right? What's a food critic without impossibly high standards?

The dessert course consisted of a thicc piece of carrot cake, with a scoop raspberry sorbet and a scoop of moosetrack fudge ice cream on the side. The drink for this course was limoncello, which was warm and pretty sweet (too sweet?), but it went pretty good with the succulent cake.

And the cake even had a candle burning on it when it came out, since the waitress wanted to celebrate with us our first night out without the anxieties of a baby. It rounded out a night of fucking excellent service. We were tucked in a corner all night, but it never felt like the waitress forgot about us at any point. It felt like she gave a shit, I guess? Which I know is a low bar to clear, but as a former awful waiter myself, a lot of people can't even clear that bar at all.

Now, the question you've all been waiting for: Was it expensive? The answer to that is yes. This is a "special occasion" restaurant, through and through, for us working class folk. But I can honestly say it wasn't prohibitively expensive. We were comfortable with the price. And yo, it was sooo fucking worth it. Great food, great experience (and great company, it's worth noting again).

I guess you can take this review with a grain of salt if you want. I mean, we were a little drunk and it was the first night out without the baby, which was a relief despite the fact that we missed her. And even though me and Pam rarely go out to dinner anywhere above the level of "Decent Bar Food," I have been to enough of these highfalutin, Philly Mag-recommend, Laban-endorsed, so-called Top Tier Philadelphia Restaurants to know when one is worth the hype. Hungry Pigeon is worth the hype, trust me.

GRADE: 5 pukes out of 5

An Oral History of My Bike Ride to Work Yesterday

I ride my bike a short 25 minutes to work every morning that weather allows me to. It's nice. The ride wakes me up, and I get to start my day with some exercise, which my body appreciates.

There have been more than a few incidents in the past year or so in Philadelphia in which bikers died because some jerkoff made a right turn in his car without yielding to the bike next to him. Because of the possibility of this happening to me, and because I do not want to die just yet, I assume that every car is making a right turn, and make sure that they have enough space to do so even they choose to do it without even putting their goddamn blinkers on. When cars do this, is it shitty of them? Yes. Do I yell at them and call them an asshole as they speed away? Yes. But I'd rather be the beta and let them go than be a hardass and then die.

But there are times when I'm not in danger, and I'm following the law, and still someone decides to be a jackass to me from the comfy interior of their vehicle. Those are the times when I get really angry. And that's what happened yesterday morning.

Here's exactly what happened, and I mean exactly, no exaggeration whatsoever, with points occasionally tallied to determine who was in the wrong and who was in the right.

The final stretch of my ride takes me from 6th to 16th along Arch. The street is two lanes wide. The left lane features, once a block, a large bike symbol, indicating that cars should share the road with bikers. I ride in the right lane, because eventually I will be making a right to get to my work building, and also because often the left lane gets back up with cars turning left who are yielding to pedestrians.

The bike symbol on the road does not mean that bikes can ONLY ride in the left lane. The law states that you can ride in the middle of any lane of your choosing (even when there are bike lanes!). This is what my antagonist took offense to.

On the 900 block of Arch St., a middle-aged white man in a sleek black vehicle pulled up and started driving my speed. He yelled out his passenger side window "You have to drive in the left lane!" He is wrong on this count. Point Joe (Bike: 1, Car: 0).

I immediately escalated the situation, which is probably not great. I yelled, "The law states that bikers can ride in either lane!" Point Angry White Man for allowing him to draw me into verbal sparring while riding a bike (Bike: 1, Car: 1).

He tried arguing with me on this point. I said how about we pull over and wait for the police, to see what they say about it. He said "what would that accomplish?" I said that I'm not trying to get him in trouble, "I'm just trying to educate" him. I wasn't paying attention, and rode through a fresh red light, luckily before opposing traffic had the green light. I heard him yell "You can't ride through a red liiiiight!!!" Point Angry White Man for me being haughty about the police and for breaking the law right after I told him I'm not breaking the law (Bike: 1, Car: 2).

I rode the 1000 block of Arch Street with my middle finger in the air. By the time I reached the 1100 block, he was back, yelling the same bullshit. We called each other pussies. I stopped my bike, and said, "if you have something to say, how about you get out of your car and say it to my face? Get out of your fucking car." The guy did not get out of his car, he just kept calling me a pussy. I said, "You're a fucking coward for not getting out of your car, you have nothing to say," and kept riding. Point Joe for proving who the pussy was (even though, c'mon, there's no fucking way if the situation was reversed would I EVER get out of my car) (Bike: 2, Car: 2).

I made it to the 1300 block, and he's still yelling, and I put my middle finger up again. Except now he's driving behind me, and I'm thinking this is for one of two reasons: 1) He's making a right onto Broad St., and needs to get into the turning lane; 2) He's planning on running me over in cold blood. I crossed Broad Street with my finger up, alive, and he made the right turn. In my mind, he was driving away from the conflict. Point biker with his finger up (Bike: 3, Car: 2).

I was so out of breath from pedaling and yelling while pedaling that I felt like I was going to die when I got to work. Point Car for getting under my skin (Bike: 3, Car: 3).

Okay, so it was tied. One might even give him the win, if you feel like I'm being so petty about it that I had to tweet and blog about this relatively minor incident.

But you know what? Fuck that guy. I could hypothetically see the frustration in a biker blocking a single-lane street, but there were two lanes on Arch Street, so all he had to do was get in the other lane and pass me. But instead he chose to be a tough guy and confront me. On top of that, he was fucking WRONG about the law. So the perceived crime on my part was false, and so the guy in the two-ton murder machine still wants to pick on a biker over nothing.

I guess I could've handled it differently. I was extremely lucky that he didn't call my bluff and actually get out of his car to fight me, because I can't take anyone in a fight, especially not some 'roid-raged jabroni in the middle of Chinatown. I think next time I should just ignore a driver if they say that bullshit, even if afterward I'll feel like such a fucking pussy about it. I'd rather be an alive pussy than a dead tough guy.

I guess there's a chance too that I will meet this particular asshole on the road at some point in my travels (I see the same people ever day on the way to work, just ask the large guy standing at Frankford and Girard every day with an XXL Slurpee). I think if he ever slows down next to me again and starts yelling, I'm going to immediately pull over and call the police.

And if he decides to forgo the argument next time and just hit me with his car, well, I'm asking you, dear reader, to please hand over a copy of this blog post to the police for their report, since I'll be a little tied up at the hospital or the morgue.

More Collegian Memories

Copying and pasting all those "comics" yesterday got me reflecting a bit more about my time as an editor of La Salle's college newspaper, The La Salle Collegian. Being the editor of the fun-and-games section ("Kicks") meant that I was a tertiary member of the staff at best. As far as my own priorities regarding extracurriculars went, the newspaper probably ranked third behind Jazz/Pep Band and the theater program (the Masque). But still, regardless of my level of involvement (I still spent a night or two a week in that dungeon of an editors office!), I felt like part of the team.

An important team, at that. It was a real newspaper, getting the real news out to the hundreds (dozens?) of students who picked up a copy. It was pretty cool being a part of that.

Still, when I think back, the things I laugh about most are when the cracks in the facade showed a little bit. We were a REAL newspaper, but still, it was a college newspaper, and mistakes were made. Some bigger than others.

Two of my favorite fuck-ups were right there on the front page. The first one, I no longer have a copy of, to my great regret. The front cover story was about (don't quote me on this) a symposium that La Salle held about being respectful and civil in the media? Something like that. It had to have been the type of discussion forum where they were going through what NOT to say in certain situations, because the large, front-page-featured picture was that of the speaker at a podium, and behind her, in bold letters, the word CUNT.

No one caught this before it went to print. Not the News Editor who pasted the picture. Not the five copy editors, including the Editor-in-Chief, who had to sign off on a page before it was submitted (and I can include myself in this, because all editors were expected to occasional play copy editor and sign off on a few pages). Not the printers. Who knows, maybe not many of the readers picked up on it either. But to those of us in the Collegian office, the boner was clear as day. The front page had the word CUNT on it. Amazing.

There had been another blunder on the front the previous school year, and this one was probably better, in my opinion, because it was less blatant. It was only the suggestion of an insensitive screw-up. The story in the left side column on the front page was a solemn story about a guy getting stabbed to death by his girlfriend at an off-campus house. Gruesome shit, but definitely a story that is worthy of the front page.

In the lower left corner of every issue, the editor would usually put a picture related to a story further on in the issue, perhaps to entice the reader to continue on past the cover page. So the picture had nothing to do with anything on the cover page, but rather the caption would direct you to open to the page in the issue to "read on" about the story that the picture actually related to.

Only in this particular issue of Collegian, in the Entertainment section, there was a review of a recent local Philadelphia production of Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's bloodiest play (no, not the band). And whoever put together the front page decided that this would be the article previewed on the front page with a picture.

And that picture featured someone holding a bloody knife. And that picture was placed directly below a morbid story about someone getting stabbed to death at La Salle.

To someone with a twisted sense of humor (like me), this is fucking hilarious. And lucky for you, dear sadistic reader, I actually have a copy of this one.

So yeah, we were college kids, we weren't always perfect. But now let me tell you about a time when Collegian's front page WAS perfect. Sincerely perfect in every way. It was fucking legendary.

The story starts, as all good stories do, with some strippers. There was a kooky business professor, employed by La Salle, who decided that a good way to illustrate a point about supply and demand(?) would be to hire strippers to come to class and give lap dances to the students in his class. His name was Professor Rappaport. The class itself took place at La Salle's Bucks County Campus, but still. I mean, not to belabor the point, but Professor Rappaport did something that was, um, very against La Salle's Code of Conduct. And it was fucking hilarious.

Our Editor-in-Chief got a tip early on that this absolutely bonkers event had taken place, and so he wrote up a front-page feature about it. He was going to fucking break this absurd story before the fucking Inquirer!

Except, it's La Salle, and you should know by now (if only from my constant insane ramblings on the subject) how strict La Salle is, how draconian the establishment is, how dumb and rigorous the rules are, even if (or especially if) it fucks over a student somehow.

And La Salle pays the bills for the Collegian, and the paper and the staff are owned by the Deans, and so the Dean of Students put the kibosh on the whole thing. No front page feature. No breaking report of this incredibly wild story. Their excuse: "La Salle wants you to hold off on your story until its official investigation is complete." Fucking bullshit, but EIC's hands were tied.

Collegian is a weekly paper, so we had to wait a whole 'nother week to publish the damn story, and by that time City Paper broke it instead. Collegian was ready to print the next week, but by then, every Philly publication had gotten their hands on the story, and Collegian was left to pick up the crumbs.

And! Even after all this, the next week rolls around, and the La Salle Higher Ups are STILL being dicks about it. First they said "No" to the story again. After EIC ostensibly got on his hands and knees to beg, a compromise was reached.

The compromise was that the Collegian staff was allowed to put the news article on the front page, but it had to be "below the fold," i.e. where you couldn't see it if the newspaper was in its folded stack in the distributor bins around campus. It was Family Weekend, you see, and La Salle didn't want mommy and daddy to be greeted with stacks of newspapers telling them about how their sons and daughters were receiving lap dances from strippers on campus.

Below the fold. Okay.

Sure enough, that week's issue featured a Breaking News story about how there were strippers on La Salle's campus. It was below the fold, as demanded.

Except, the entire portion of the front page above the fold was blank, save for four small words in the center that read: "See below the fold."

I'm cracking up even now, years later, just writing about it. What fucking brass balls EIC had in this stunt. I fucking love it. He had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stick it to the man and take a shit all over the La Salle's administration, and he fucking took it.

This shit was so legendary that the Inquirer followed up on their stripper coverage with a story about Collegian's coverage of the story. Please read the article, because I'm hesitant to put any of my friends' names on this public blog, but EIC's name needs to be known. In fact, now he's actually writing for the Inquirer himself, covering Philly's suburbs (including the same PA county where those infamous strippers gave lap dances in a La Salle seminar hall).

I did a lot of fucking around in my section of the newspaper, and wrote a lot of shit that I imagined was calling La Salle out for their bullshit (I'll spare you any more of it, you've already read enough). But I couldn't touch that legendary Collegian front page.