Read Gratitude.

via doubleplusgood infotainment

Velociman has returned to the blogosphere after a short stay at the Laughing Academy, where he was supplied with a clutch of “chill pills,” but happily not with an attitude adjustment.

How about a fanfare? No?

A drumroll? No?

OK then. May we have a beer belch, please?

We’re back from a most enjoyable visit to the Casa Stardust Shrink. His huge, outrageously beautiful plain house near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, turned out to be a veritable treasure trove of art, antiques, and most decidedly offbeat decorative doodads.

For example, the dining room contains a magnificent marble bust of Michelangelo’s David that is sculpted from marble taken from the same quarry that was the source of the marble Michelangelo used to sculpt the original David. It must weigh 500-600 pounds. Hanging on the wall over the bust is a pair of old jeans, which, by the location of the large tear in the front, looked as if they might have been worn by a person who had the misfortune of having had an exploding sharona. I didn’t ask what the deal was with the jeans on the wall. Some things are better left shrouded in mystery.

We also got to meet the Stardust Daughter, a gracious, well-mannered, friendly, and attractive teen-ager, who served as the hostess, and who knew all the words to a bunch of Beatle songs and other songs of that vintage. I liked that.

Of course, we again assaulted hell out of our livers enjoyed a few drinks. The drink of choice for a few of us yesterday was beer, as yesterday The Usual Suspects’ signature Traveling Bar included a case of Anchor Steam Beer. If you are a Coors Lite drinker, you might not like Anchor Steam Beer, because you probably have become accustomed to drinking that watery stuff that is only good for a quick electrolyte replacement while mowing the lawn on a hot summer day. Anchor Steam is genuine beer.

Speaking of beer, one of Stardust’s friends, John the Beer Guy, was there, and while quaffing Anchor Steam together, he asked if I had ever tried Russian Imperial Stout, manufactured by the Stone Brewing Company in California. I confessed that I had not, so he promptly took a ride to his nearby house to fetch a bottle or two. The stuff is as black as dirty motor oil, and it is most excellent. We drank it at cellar temperature from large snifters. We definitely liked John the Beer Guy.

Knowing that the Usual Suspects are often easily amused, Stardust bestowed some Christmas gifties on us: an old-fashioned gyroscope, a 60th anniversary edition Slinky (a metal one), and a farookin’ ant farm! Of course, we immediately got to spinning hell out of the gyroscope and even managed to get it to spin on a piece of tautly held string. (An explanation of how gyroscopes work can be found here.) That was followed by a group trip to the stairs to watch the Slinky walk down the steps, something I haven’t seen in decades. (A brief history of the Slinky, a Pennsylvania product, can be found here.) As for the ant farm, it turns out that the company that sells the ant farm will mail you the ants as part of the purchase price of the ant farm. So far, we have not identified anyone who is anxious to have ants mailed to their home. However, we’ll continue to canvass the Usual Suspects to see if there might be a closet entomologist among us.

We transitioned from vintage toys to the modern variety when Stardust (definitely a toy guy himself) demonstrated a radio remote-controlled disc, with a propeller affixed to the bottom, that lights up, spins and zips around like a flying saucer. He and I ended up the evening outside in the freezing cold, without jackets, of course, for a bit of outdoor, night flying. (We were shitfaced fairly mellow by this time.) The damned thing soared to about a hundred feet, leading us to prematurely celebrate the joy of flight and thereby lose control of the widget, causing it to get stuck in a large pine tree, about fifty feet off the ground, where it currently remains. So much for celebrating the joy of flight.

Possibly the high point of the evening came when Stardust absolutely stupefied us with “close-up” magic. It turns out that he is a serious magician, who is a member of the Society of Magicians (I assume he knows the secret handshake), and who has read countless books on the subject and practices regularly. I sat eighteen inches from him as he did the following trick:

He placed a small wooden box (approximately the size of an ice cube) in front of him (we all verified that it was a small, empty box) and placed a piece of paper and a pen on top of the small box. He then asked Mrs. Parkway to sign her name to a playing card and give it to him. A bit of magician’s razzle-dazzle later he opened up the small box, and the card that she had signed was folded in quarters and was inside the box. Amazing!! I swore I never took my eyes off the box, but obviously I must have. Like all good magicians, he is a master at misdirection.

Of course, we did some tunes, which is always fun, and I even managed to remain vertical for the duration.

It was a great time.

Here’s the thing about the Stardust Shrink. He works hard, and he plays harder.

I like that.

Having completed a 24-hour dry out, we are heading west for an overnight at the home of the of the Stardust Shrink, nestled somewhere in the woods of Pennsylvania (not to be confused with his beautiful oceanfront plain house in Cape May) for a bit of revelry with Stardust and some of his friends. We will be accompanied by my bodyguard Ken, the Anal Cruise Director, and Mrs. Ken, the Deckmistress.

We’ll only need a change of clothes, so we can pack light. Besides, we’ll need the room in the car for the Usual Suspects’ signature shitload of booze, wine and beer Traveling Bar. We don’t leave home without it.

Oh, and did I mention that the Stardust Shrink is also a guitar player? Therefore, I will also be bringing along my beloved Gibson dreadnaught, and we’ll be doing some tunes. Based on my experience in having done a couple duets with this infamous Jawja guitar picker armed with his Martin, Stardust’s Martin guitar and my Gibson should sound pretty farookin’ good together.

As long as there is no homemade Georgia moonshine wine on the premises, I should be able to go the distance.

The Christmas Bash was a rousing success. It must have been, because the place looks like the Hessian Headquarters in Trenton must have looked the day after Washington caught those Teutonic mercenaries all beer’d up on Christmas Day in 1776 and gave them an Arsch-kicking, except that I have yet to run across any dead Germans.

We had enough food for Washington’s Army and enough booze, wine, and beer to get both sides in that conflict blitzed. I (along with my bodyguard Ken, the Anal Cruise Director) spent the better part of the day making drinks in the kitchen and doing scullery work. Apple martinis were again the drink of choice for most, even though I was ready for anything, as long as it wasn’t blue shit. As a result, neither of us got to sit all day. Hell, we even ate standing up.

This morning I treated the nascent hangover with a hot grease-bomb (ham, eggs, cheese, toast, lots of butter) and hot coffee. Since then, I have been managing to swallow my own spit and to help clean up the rubble a couple feet at a time.

To those who attended who may be reading this, thank you for coming. And to those who read this but who were not here, I wish you could have been. It was a great shindig, indeed putting the Battle of Trenton to shame.

I hope you all had a great Christmas. We certainly did.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I thank you all for finding this place to be worthy of some of your valuable time, and I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year.

OkieMinnie Me has done some heavy lifting to provide us with a series of posts dealing with the background of many of the Christmas traditions. Here they are:

“Xmas”

Star and Angels

Wreaths

Christmas Tree and Ornaments

The Nativity

Bells, Nutcrackers, Candy Canes

Christmas Food

St. Nicholas & Stockings, Santa Claus

Colors of Christmas and Cards

Gifts ane Wise Men
Lots of interesting stuff there. Thanks, OkieMinnie.

The Final Chapter of The Blog Novella, a project launched by Christina of Feisty Repartee, is up, courtesy of Mr. Helpful. I salute all of those bloggers who conntributed, none of them writers by trade, but one would never know.

Well done!

Fellow Jersey Blogger, Sluggo a/k/a Mike, went here to ask Santa for a Cadillac New Jersey. He specified the “DeCavalcante Model.”

Da guy’s got good freakin’ taste. Yo, Sluggo, if Santa doesn’t do da right ting, give him and his freakin’ reindeer a BADDA BING!

People often send me jokes about lawyers and Irish drunks. I can’t imagine why.

Occasionally, I run across one myself that I had not heard before, such as this one*, which, as my Granny used to say, “handed me a laugh.”

An Irishman’s been at a pub all night drinking.
The bartender finally says that the bar is closed.
So he stands up to leave and falls flat on his face.
He figures he’ll crawl outside and get some fresh
air and maybe that will sober him up.

Once outside he stands up and falls flat on his face.
So he crawls home and at the door stands up and falls
flat on his face. He crawls through the door and up the stairs.
When he reaches his bed he tries one more time to stand up.
This time he falls right into bed and is sound asleep.
He awakens the next morning to his wife standing
over him shouting at him.

“So, you’ve been out drinking again!”

“How did you know?” he asks.

“The pub called, you left your damn wheelchair there again.”

*I normally don’t post jokes, figuring that many of you have already heard or read them elsewhere, and I know that this is the second joke I’ve posted in as many days. Maybe it’s the season.