Hopefully by this time I’ll be whiling away the hours in the French Quarter with my lovely wife. But that doesn’t mean through the magic of post-dating blog entries I can’t be like our President continuing to dither on Afghanistan and voting “present” while it becomes increasingly clear we have suffered our first genuine terrorist attack during his limp-wristed, spineless presidency.

Rather than blather on about how this will soon mushroom into a major congressional investigation featuring beaucoups finger-pointing, thus illustrating the fact that we really haven’t learned anything from the 9/11 attacks and how out of political correctness and fear of insulting radical Muslims we’d much rather allow people to be needlessly slaughtered, I’m going to revisit this at another time and just hope eveyone has a great weekend.

I know (or at least I hope) I will.

Just a little potpourri here as we get ready to blow outta AZ for a few days in “The Big Easy”….

As a Samuel Adams guy, I guess this means that…. well, I’m not sure…, exactly.

From NRO’s Corner blog: Seven questions that keep physicists up at night.

Forget about what all the professionals say, Obama knows best. Talk about dithering. Funny, I never figured him for a foreign policy expert…

Of course, this comes as no surprise, either…

Maybe this is why the nation is in a funk…

How do I love the Mediterranean Fan Palm on my patio? Let me count the ways…

Told you this would happen. For the Episcopal Church things are about to get worse, much worse. That’s what you get when you’ve spent the better part of two decades targeted your ministry to various lesbians, gays, and transgenders in order to make them feel good about the lifestyle choices they’ve made. It’s all pretty pathetic if you ask me. This isn’t about being anti-gay, it’s all about the Gospel of Jesus Christ being replaced by the faux trinity of tolerance, diversity, and acceptance. Basing one’s ministry on sexual orientation is not only cynical and demeaning, it shows the intelligence of a pea-wit. The Episcopal Church is about to reap what it has sown; last person out turn off the lights…

This weekend’s Pats-Colts skirmish ought to tell a lot about the direction these two teams are heading as the NFL enters the second hald of the season.

First of all, let’s get the distasteful out of the way: congratulations to the New York Yankees on their 2009 world championship. They hit great all year long, but in the end it was all about the pitching. Once again, Andy Pettite showed a great a big-game pitcher he was. I despise them more than ever, but what are you gonna do? I’m just glad I wasn’t around to watch them celebrate. I would have puked.

Guilty as charged. The woods and waters around the golf courses I’ve played are littered with the devastation of my lack of craft. Maybe if I wasn’t so bad a golfer, the earth would be a cooler place to live. But then baby harp seals would still be getting eaten by ravenous polar bears.

I would agree with this. Anyone who thought that electing someone who had absolutely no leadership experience - not even so much as a lemonade stand - would fix everything that ails this country simply because he talked a good game has to be feeling pretty foolish right now. The country has never been in more debt, no one is paying attention to the upcoming disasters involving Medicare and Social Security, there’s absolutely no plan for what to do about Iraq and Afghanistan while soldiers are dying, and the Democrats are trying to push through two major initiatives (heathcare reform and cap-and-trade) that will not only bankrupt the country but destroy free-market capitalism. Yeah, I’d be in a funk, too…

Does anyone really think Hugo Chavez is a-scared of what Barack Obama might do if he makes good on his threat of war with Colombia? Mark my words, things are about to get very hot in South America, very shortly. Chavez, Vladimir Putin, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have already sized President Obama up and found him undeniably weak and ill-prepared for challenging any dictatorial brute on the international stage. They’ve already discovered what the country is slowly but surely coming around to realize - that Obama is nothing more than an empty suit who loves the idea of just being President but couldn’t lead his way out of a paper bag.

At least he can sure talk pretty, right? Thank God for that! I’m feeling better already.

OK, enough grumbling. Tracey and I need a vacation. Badly. So here it is: New Orleans, land of Rob.

Four nights starting Thursday at the Hotel Monteleone. Be there or be square. I’m thinking a romantic dinner at Antoine’s, Brennan’s for brunch, and Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville are definitely in order. And we’ll try to squeeze in Cafe du Monde and Mulate’s to boot.

All good. And all very much needed now.

If Tracey wants to sleep half the time there, more power to her - after her week, she deserves it. Me, if there was ever a time to carve out some quality space and time beside “Ol’ Man River”, this is it.

The ultimate bass player’s song. And, I might add, one of the great psychedelic songs of the ’60s. It was this tune, and “Something” from Abbey Road, that made me want to learn how to play bass.

You cannot listen to either without realizing just how freakin’ great a bass player Paul McCartney was.

Or listen to Ringo’s drums and not think just how much these guys were at the top of their game and had it goin’ in 1966. The so-called music of today (spelled “N-O-I-S-E”) can’t hold a candle to this stuff.

Like the murky-sounding guitar that underscores Rain’s background? It’s the result of the band deliberately playing the song faster in studio, then producer George Martin oh-so-carefully slowing the tape in playback. Pretty low-tech to be sure, but it sure sounds great.

Oh, and don’t miss Lennon’s backwards vocal at the very end. Priceless!

See, here’s the way I see it: everybody loves polar bears, right? And everyone wants to save the habitat of polar bears, right?

And everyone loves baby seals, right?

The unfortunate thing is, polar bears also love baby seals - for dinner, that is. And everyone knows that’s not cool in this multicultural, tolerance-loving, diversity-accepting day and age, right? I mean, what threat does a cute little baby harp seal pose to a big lumbering polar bear? None, right?

So back off, Mr. PB - that’s what I say. Back off!

OK, so here’s why I think global warming is not only important, but necessary: if we can get the Arctic permafrost to warm up enough so that we can plant, oh, I don’t know, arugula, red leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, scallions, maybe some celery and carrots, maybe we can convince polar bears to become vegans and eat slads instead of baby harp seals.

Sure, there might be some issues with the resulting decline of the arctic ice, but over time polar bears will see their start to fur thin out because they won’t need heavy fur coats anymore. And that will be good for them, because then people would be less likely to want to use their pelts for living room rugs. And there’ll be no need for them to winter in Florida anymore since it’ll be plenty warm enough up there.

To me it seems like a win-win situation all around: more bears with less fur, more baby harp seals, less meat-eating on the planet. Good more everyone, right?

…now back to my veal cutlets.

Even though we’re running temperatures in the 90s here in the Valley of the Sun (October ran about ten degrees above average) you can tell the area has gone into fall mode:

While picking up Friday night dinner at the pizza joint down the street they were welcoming a couple of snowbirds back who had recently arrived from Canada. Given the economy the way it is, having the snowbirds back makes a huge difference.

When the temperature hits the 80s you actually see people wearing long pants and sweatshirts. I’ve never quite understood that…

Time to start working the ScaleTec into the pool chemical cycle. With the water temp at 62 degrees, no one’s going to be swimming anytime soon.

The lime and lemon trees got a much-needed trim, courtesy of Carmelo, landscaper extraordinaire. Seems this fall he’s picked up two more houses on our street, giving him a total of at least seven I know of. He’s tells me our front lawn is the best advertisement he can run.

Picked up some pine logs for the chiminea. Although some people have already started burning wood at night it’s still a little too warm for me. Heck - we’re still having to run our A/C just about every day. Not going to realize too much savings on the utility bills doing that.

Our rabbit Ginger leaped up into Little Half-Pint’s cage in the middle of the night last night. All I heard was a thump and some major commotion, so I leapt out of bed and found them starting each other down. Not that that has anything to do with fall, it’s just that busy bunnies know no season.

It’s been a long hard week in a string of long hard weeks. Lots of negative vibes blowing all over the place, in various directions.

It was only two hours after I had just touched down in Phoenix on Tuesday that we learned Tracey’s dad had passed away. The fact that he had been ill for a while, and that Tracey had been estranged from her parents for the better part of two decades, did little to offset the shock and sadness of the news. After all, he was still her father, and there was this not-so-minor issue of having to communicate the news to her twin sister given her situation and her fragile state of mind. So, we got permission to drive over to the psychiatric hospital where Tam was staying to see her after visiting hours were over and break her the difficult news.

When it rains, it pours.

What is truly tragic about their father’s passing was that the last communication he had with either of them was while Tam was still in Florida, and just out of a psychiatric hospital with nowhere else to go. At that time, she had just been released from a psychiatric hospital there and was looking for a place to hang for a week while we took our then-planned vacation to New Orleans. It was at that time that her dad told her in no uncertain terms that, not only was she not welcome to stay with them, that she should not even try to contact them by phone because they couldn’t afford her reversing the charges. I mean, we’re talking a pretty desperate situation all around.

A pretty sad way for a father to leave this world, if you ask me.

Of course, coming from the totally loving and supportive family situation I have been blessed to have always been part of, I can’t imagine my parents ever turning their backs on me. However, seeing the kind of state Tam was in psychologically when I extracted her from the hellish situation she was in back in St. Petersburg, and the way things kind of degenerated after she came here, who am I to judge? Maybe everything just works out the way it was destined to work out.

We all have our faults and our weaknesses we will have to account for after our time on this earth is through.

Anyways, I’m back in action again, not sure for how long. After the way this year has gone, all I can say is we’ll see how it goes.

This is a post about Mexican food, prompted by a comment the other day by my old Top Priority bandmate and keyboard player Jerry “Keys” Palma. He remembers me and my brother Mark and I driving around after band practices or the rare public experience (keep in mind, this was before our televised concert at Che [Guevara] stadium) in my old 1969 Pontiac Tempest listening to The Beach Boys and Pink Floyd on 8-track tapes while munching on Jack-In-The-Box food.

Back in those days - I’m talking the years 1975-77 here, we’d wolf down Jack Steak w/Cheeses and tacos (the former a long-since departed delicacy, the latter still tasting exactly the same) late at night or in the wee small hours, since JITB was the only fast-food joint that stayed open past midnight back then.

Those JITB tacos must have triggered some genetic defect inside me - or perhaps it was a combination of JITB tacos and growing up listening to Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass because it wasn’t long after that, that I began looking for the real thing. The first authentic Mexican restaurant I ate in was while on vacation in Santa Cruz, California back in 1978, called Tampico Kitchen. I still remembering ordering my first taco/enchilada combo platter, and it was like an instantaneous crystal meth addiction: Mexican food became a comfort food that could make everything seem right with the world, no matter how bad things might be.

A few years later, I found a Mexican food soulmate in my old friend Mike “Doc” Frechette. The Doc seemed to know, or be able to locate, every Mexican restaurant in New Hampshire, and we tried everything from awesome to awful. Two restaurants - Tortilla Flat in Merrimack (their oven beef quesadilla is still not to be missed) and the Tio Juan’s/Margarita’s chain of restaurants became immediate favorites, and remain so to this day.

Even after we moved to Kentucky we found some great Mexican food there. My friend Jerome and I enjoyed many a tasty lunch at a little hole in the wall called Los Aztecas on Taylorsville Road, and I fondly remember going in there on Saturdays for takeout (beef enchiladas for me, huevos rancheros for Tracey) after a few hours of baseboard repair courtesy of our rabbit, Marble Junior. There was also good eating to be had at Ernesto’s on Shelbyville Road, where we’d occasionally lunch with our friend Jana. Ernesto’s chicken tortilla soup was to die for, and their spinach enchiladas were pretty damned fine too.

Here in the Valley of the Sun, finances and work schedules being what they are, Tracey and I don’t really go out much, let alone search for Mexican food. I mean, they’re ubiquitous with the landscape, so much so that it would be difficult to pick one that might stand out among the many chains and taco stands. But Los Olivos in Scottsdale has an outstanding red chili, and their guacamole is excellent once you add an additional twist or two of lime to it.

What makes a good Mexican restaurant to me? First of all (besides the usual cleanliness factor, of course), it has to feel like a vacation from the world. It doesn’t have to be brightly decorated like some Pancho Villa interior decorator gone loco - as far as I’m concerned the darker the better. And the salsa and chips are a key indicator - after all, if the owner doesn’t take pride in first impressions, what follows ain’t gonna be any better.

As a “feel” kind of guy (as opposed to a technician), so as long as the place feels right, I’ll put up with almost anything. Usually, a combo platter of taco/enchilada/refritos/rice is good enough for me. I’m not much of an experimentor when it comes to Mexican food. I don’t need to be - after all, for me this is comfort food, not fine dining. What it is, is the kind of food that no matter how often I eat it, my mind in some way goes back to that very first time at Tampico Kitchen, and back to those late-night joyrides munching on Jack-In-The-Box tacos with Mark and Jerry.