Question– Dear Jake…
I was watching Simpsons the other night when Homer posed an interesting question. Could God microwave a burrito so hot that he himself couldn’t eat it? What do you think?

Name: Sosj

Answer– Well Sosj, It is good to know that you are still watching TV. It seems like last time I saw you, you were still hiding behind the TV. PS, I really missed seeing you last time I visited. Seems like every time I’m in town, you split. It is quite clear that a burrito would incinerate before it was too hot for God to eat it. I actually wanted to try to do an experiment once too see exactly at what temperature a burrito would incinerate, just to make sure that the theory was correct, but then the handle was missing from the microwave, so I wasn’t able to finish the experiment. But I’m pretty sure that God could probably handle anything colder than about 300 Kelvin. Obviously the microwave itself would incinerate at a much lower temperature, so I feel like it is safe to say that answer to your question is no, but not because God isn’t all powerful. It is just because when you reduce him to using man-made Earth inventions, purchased with Earth Dollars, the premise becomes physically impossible.

Tell Homer if you see him, Jake

I received a letter in the mail the other day with a banner at the top that read “Important Retirement Plan Information.” When I opened it, I found a pretty lame excuse for a US Mail phishing scam. The cover letter included my name and address, and vaguely inferred that I have some unclaimed 401-k money sitting somewhere, but that they need some additional info from me to cut the the check, since the last one was returned (even though they some how managed to correctly address this correspondence). The following page asks for my SSN. Hahahaha. What!?? The return envelope goes to a PO box in TX. No where on this correspondence is there a phone number, a physical address, or anything else, besides the most generic fake company name ever: “FRANKLIN.” It is kind of sad for me to imagine some innocent unassuming little granny falling for this thing. I hope that scenario is limited to my imagination.

Reagan and I had both heard about this guy, but we hadn’t seen him in person until Saturday night. He rolls a piano into the subway, via handicap elevator and ramp, at W. 4th Street. In addition to his piano moving skills, the guys is also gifted on the keys. While we were waiting for our train he played “too late to apologize” (Timbaland/One Republic) and “Clocks” (Coldplay). The best part about the former song, was the way it was requested. This dude comes up and puts a dollar in the bucket and says “hey, do you know that one Coldplay song? The one with the pianos?” Hahahaha.

Reagan’s sister Erin and her husband JR came to visit us over the weekend. We had a really great time with them. In addition to the visits with Piper, we were able to pack in a lot of fun activities into 48 hours. Saturday, we visited PS1, in LIC.  This is my kind of museum. Although I will admit that a lot of the art was a bit over my head (like the Bingo installation, above), the size of the museum was manageable. The pics below are of piece in the museum. It is a swimming pool, that is hollow underneath.

We were able to see everything in a couple of hours. On our way there, we ducked into a small local gallery and checked out some the nearby street art.

We ended up in the East Village at Lil’ Frankies for dinner. We sat outside (first time of the season, for me), there was overhead heating, which made it very comfortable. It was a pretty good time. Normally I try to avoid dumping massive amounts of photos into a single post. But here I go anyway:

(at dinner)

I was rifling through morning email and came upon this news:

“Party People your dreams have now been fulfilled.” -Run DMC -1986

OK, maybe not so much, but to celebrate the spring season we are reissuing Check Your Head. Along with the original, we’ve put together 16 bonus cuts, rarities and assorted nonsense. All digitally re-mastered to the highest technical specs of course.

There will be five different steelos avail: from a digital-only package to a limited 4 LP vinyl, fabric-wrapped hardcover book case edition. Very exclusive and V.I.P. It’s available for a limited time at a special discount at http://checkyourhead.beastieboys.com/buy.

All of the above come with immediate digital downloads and are also available in lossless formats (FLAC and Apple lossless). You’ll also find band commentaries, videos, original album art, and a Wave Skater game. Kinda hot hot heat mixed with burning molten lava!

For further investigation go to www.checkyourhead.beastieboys.com.

Thanks

The management

Since this is probably one of my favorite albums, of all time. I’m pretty stoked.

I debated about not even including a photo of these guys in the post, because, well… look at them. I did, though. So, there it is. NOFX is one of my favorite, if not my very favorite bands in the punk genre. They are definitely my favorite punk band that is still producing music. A lot of people find their puns and political lyrics corny. If they are, I eat that corn for dinner. I love their cover of “Vincent”  by Don Mclean, which is about Van Gogh. If you haven’t heard it, listen to the Josh Gropin’, excuse me, Groban version first. If you are still awake, listen to the NOFX version. Or if you fall asleep, make sure that the NOFX version is cued up to follow, and it will wake you up. They also do an tasty cover of  French classic, “Champs Elysees.” Not like they need to do any covers to fill a set, since they have about 5000 (slight exaggeration) original songs padding their repertoire. The beauty of it is, that no matter how coarse the song is, the average length of song is probably under 2 minutes. They have such a great way of creating harmonizing heavy guitars and adding in the occasional horn for effect. If you love punk, you probably love NOFX. If you think the entire genre doesn’t even classify as music, then feel free skipping this track all together. The song I’m sharing is “Whatever Didi Wants.” It is a fairly well known song, as far as NOFX goes. Here it is, for your listening pleasure.

Piper had a really fun visit from her Aunt Erin and uncle JR, this weekend. She was in great form. She showcased pretty much her entire bag of tricks. We were able to spend several hours visiting with her on both Saturday and Sunday. More photos our our weekend visits with Piper can be viewed here.

…and many mo’

Reagan informed me that during her visit with Piper today, she found out that Piper will most likely be moving to a long term care facility in NJ, in the coming weeks. I still don’t know how I feel about it. It isn’t like we didn’t know it was coming. It is also really good news that she will be going to NJ, instead of Smithtown, in Long Island. I’m sure that Reagan will give more details when she writes about it. Anyway, it got me to thinking about what the transition might be like.  I was looking at some of the old pictures of Piper, and it is strange how just seeing them brought back memories of so much fear, worry and stress. It really is amazing how far along Piper has come. I love that little girl, like crazy.

Go to Earthhour.org for details. NYC Landmarks will even be shutting off the lights for the event. It should make for one wicked game of “sardines.”