Neal Patrick Harris is My Lord & Savior

It started in "Harold & Kumar Go To Whitecastle," when NPH played himself. I thought, wow, that guy is a total dilligaf. He's funny as all get out and dosn't take himself seriously. But his acting there was just him playing against type and being snarky.

In Dr. Horrible's Sing A Long Blog, he reaches some kind of Zenith of cool, with the help of Josh Whedon and some really great sidemen. When are the Coen brothers finally going to get it and cast Harris? This little movie is so good, so smart, and so funny. And watch NPH's nuances as the Mad Scientist/Blogger who's too shy to talk to his true love, Penny. Good lord this is the best thing on the web.

Dr. Horrible

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.

Monday is Manday

My friend Dave and I were sunk into a couple of wingbacks smoking some illegal cigars and drinking 21 year old Bushmill's when someone mentioned a local restaurant that makes great meatloaf. They make it in muffin tins and call their result a meatmuffin (which is the nick name of my third girlfriend). There was a long pause wherein Dave and I stared off into the thick smoke while we absorbed the genius of a meatmuffin and allowed the image to rattle around in our craniums and we suddenly realized we could improve this thing by lining the muffin tins with bacon.

You're welcome.

Monday is Manday!

Ah, Manday. Nothing like it. Prop up your feet, grab a beer, and weld some stuff. What compliments a man better than high powered argon slag generators? A nice welding mask and some kick ass gloves. Just what I need for my very first Manday Feature:

THE BEER REPORT: Ah, beer. Here's to the genius that looked at a wheat field and thought, "I could drink that."

This weekend I was forced to consume the noble beverage for the sake of research for this blog (I do it for you, gentle reader), and in my concentrated efforts to secure the best possible hop for my dollar, I came across Chimay premium trappist monk beer. Beer made by monks. Men of God, doing God's work--what better indication could there be that beer is a gift from the Divine?

This beer cost $12.99 a bottle. I had seen it lurking there in the cooler next to the Porter and the Rasberry Beer and I'd looked at it and thought 'What a crappy label.'  Yeah, well, I'm a snob on many levels and graphic presentation is a sticker for me. But I'd read an article about Belgian beer and I'd had a nice Tremulens Nocturne once and a hacklebock in New Orleans that actually made hair grow on my fingernails--and I'd been writing all frikkin week (which is a lot like working, I swear) so I was in the mood for a really, really great beer. Chimay delivered.

If I were so inclined as to release them from their basement cages, you could ask my kids about my first sip of Chimay. They actually paused the DVR to watch me fade outinto beerphoia. I'm sitting down getting ready to watch the game (no, not the incredible Cubs victory, I missed that because I am stupid and I don't pay attention and I forgot they were playing St. Louis and I only found out



they'd won the division when I went to the carwash and they were playing the victory drunk at Wrigley on the courtesy TV. I am idiot. No, not that game. I'm talking about Sid Meire's Civilization Revolution on Xbox 360. Yes, I am that juvenile.) Wherein I lead Rome to reconquer the world and while my first city was generating warriors at a decent clip, I knocked back my first gulp of Chimay and lost touch with reality.

For what seemed like an endless moment, the perfect golden, dark brown, guilded flavor of this beer swirled around in my mouth and I swar to you, I am not making this up, I heard the voice of God as he leaned in close and said "Yeah, that's right, I made that beer."

Monday is Man Day: Pork and Blood

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="386" caption="My new girlfriend."][/caption]

Oh pork, you're so bacon. I don't know what to say. I'm speechless. I'm saturated. I'm enporkenated. I'm in heaven.

I visited the Butcher & Larder and had their Pig's Head Hot Sandwich and fell in love. I am now dating their slicer.

Imagine eating a delicious, freshly butchered pork sandwich while standing at the counter watching them fill sausages and slice bacon to order.

If only they served beer.

Monday is Manday: Hot Shave and a Haircut

For weeks I've been impersonating a homeless Ben Franklin, letting my hair grow long and tattered and kicking myself in the arse for not getting  haircut. This weekend, as my hair started to gain classification as its own ecosystem, one of my oldest and dearest friends came to Chicago so I elected to get shorn. I went to my buddy, MJ, who owns Fades R Us by MJ, and he attacked my shaggy dome.

Three minutes into it MJ started grumbling and threw his clippers into the wall. He grabbed a chainsaw and chewed through my eyebrows (which, prior, could only be described as Gandalphian) because they were so big they were trapping my cut hair, making me look like I had a forehead wig.

Then MJ draped my face with a hot towel for my shave and I fell asleep. Look, the review is on Yelp. He's worth every penny. Two weeks from now, I'm going in a for a facial.

Monday is Manday: Smoke 'em if you Got 'em.

Saturday. A sacred day for men. We cut the grass. We work on our car. We drink beer.

We also smoke cigars. I spent Saturday sunk into my favorite fleet of leather armchairs with my knuckles wrapped around an Uzi.

In this specific incident, that Uzi is a cigar named after the Public Enemy song, is the private blend of Drew Estate owner and cigar hero, Jonathan Drew.



If you smoke, you know Drew Estate. They're bringing swagger back to cigars the Goorin (more on them later) is bringing some panache back to fedoras. Here's how the Stogie Guys describe the guts of an Uzi:

Uzi (or MUWAT, as Jonathan Drew of Drew Estate calls it) is made at the Joya de Nicaragua factory with leaf mostly from Drew Estate, including a San Andreas maduro capa wrapper, Connecticut capote binder, and Brazillian mata fina filler. Also used as filler is Nicaraguan leaf from Joya de Nicaragua’s tobacco stocks.

I know this: the guys around me were sort of jealous and all walked into the humidor and bought their own.

 

Possible Books for Precocious Children

I'm always trying to come up with new things to procrastinate over. Today, my writer's bug got to me and I decided I needed to write some children's books for the precocious set. Here's a list of potential titles:

Alphabet Cassulet:

A is for acidophilus
B is for bactracious
C is for contrapuntal
D is for dipsomaniac
E is for existentialism

•    My Pet Giant African Land Snail
•    Everybody Poops: Academic Review of Fecal Humor in Early Educational Literature.
•    Goodnight Bassoon
•    Where the Wild Things Are: Statistical Analysis For Establishing Social Boundaries
•    Why Are You My Mommy?
•    Where the Sidewalk Ends: Jungian Archetypes and the Loss of Urban Micro Social Cultures
•    Spurious George
•    Schrödinger’s Cat in the Hat
•    Green Eggs & Ham: Sustainable Agriculture and Carbon Footprint Reduction in Breakfast Food Production Techniques
•    My Two Mommies: An Argument for Human Egg Cloning