Hi kids just spent the weekend in sunny (NOT) Pittsburgh
And here is what I have learned

Pittsburgh is an excellent place to visit if you say, have a big problem choosing between your two fave foods and said foods happen to be Pierogies and Pizza
Yes in Polish meets, Irish meets Italy Pittsburgh one simply orders a pierogie pizza with a pint of beer of course!

Now let’s say you really don’t have the hands or the plates to tackle a cheese-steak style sandwich with coleslaw and a side of fries, again Pittsburgh your dream town
offers a sandwich by the Primanti brothers that has all of the above inside the bread and oh, do ask for extra cheese whiz.

“It’s gross but delicious” said Nancy our lovely tour guide

Folks who know me, know I happen to love a nice salad with an order of fries, well in the land of the potato, I had it all; a Pittsburgh salad. This is a huge salad, covered in fries, topped with chicken, then topped with cheese and ranch dressing. It was the most sinful salad I’ve ever eaten.
And speaking of sin, there are so many ex-churches in this city that they often wind up being used for other things. One huge Cathedral was turned into the joint that served me the humongo French fry salad and where the altar was, now sits a giant brewery. Well honeys if you can’t worship god, you might as well worship a great micro-brew!

Beer is clearly an important part of Pittsburgh so much so that they held their St Patty’s day five days early on a Saturday so folks had a chance to recuperate before work on Monday. A good portion of the parade watchers were blitzed by 10Am thanks to another Pittsburgh tradition “KEGS N EGGS”!

When I asked Nancy what her fave part of Pittsburgh was, she responded the quirky quaint old town things like a place you can go to watch them make candy canes. Well we had a good dose of this when we passed what I thought was an animal clinic. It was in fact THE TEDDY BEAR HOSPITAL!

Yes if your little stuffed bear is feeling tattered it can be revitalized here.

We also had the delight of dining at a wacko little joint at which the proprietor decided that rather then put the place mats at our tables he would simply staple them to the walls!
He also served us a soup that I would not care to try again which was mostly mushy rice, cheese and tomatoes but hey it’s all an adventure.

The accent in Pitts is also fun. Like the phrase “Yinzers” which I think means something like “you guys.”

I had a little trouble adjusting to the cab drivers. The one who picked us up was friendly, clean, did not talk on his cell phone, let other drivers pass him and did not speed. It was downright irritating!

We adored the Andy Warhol museum and after having checked out the place-mat malls, teddy bear hospital and Yinzers bar, I figured out where some of Andy’s eccentricities might have come from. Did you know Andy had such a thing for taxidermy that he kept a giant stuffed Great Dane and a Lion in his collection.

Here’s a OH MY GOD part of the weekend. At the Warhol museum, you check your coats and nobody watches them and get this, NOBODY STEALS THEM!! My Gf J left her wallet in her coat and it was GASP still there, hours later!?

Just unreal.

Oh and three cheers for C, Nancy’s gal and a fantastic tour guide. My fave part was, “Oh yeah and there’s the park and the fountain. You can’t see them right now, they’re under water!”

So all in all Pittsburgh a great little city with a touch of New York edge and a lot of down-home cooking by way of Poland, Italy and Ireland and certainly, most definitely, a supremely excellent place to down a pint before noon.

Oh I forgot to mention the hot cakes- sorta like if a pancake and a crepe had a baby, covered in blueberries or filled with chocolate chips, Yinzers would love it!

Well I must say I sure did enjoy watching the hurt locker
And more notably Kathryn Bigelow kick the ass of Avatar
And more notably Kathryn’s ex husband James Cameron last night

Hey nothing against avatar I just have not been able to digest Cameron since his KING OF THE WORLD speech
Plus anyone who dumps Linda (terminator) Hamilton
Is an ID YAT!

I do really have I say I guessed all but 2 of the picks
Even best foreign film ..shocking the hell out of my GF who was highly impressed with me
Not so nearly impressed as I was with myself

Loved, jeff bridges winning after such a long great career
Loved Sandra bullock who I never liked before blind side and now adore

Loved Mo’ Nique who I never liked until I listened to her Barbara walters interview and found out she doesn’t shave her legs

So to James EGO Cameron I have this to say
Honey last night your ex wife was the QUEEN OF THE WORLD!
SUCK IT !!

okay kids
i have to say
as you all probably know i’m as liberal a democrat as you can find
well except of course for being 150% pro-israel

but i have to say all the infighting amongst the dems
when they had the 60 vote majority over health care reform
and
all the &@*@*(@(@() republicans sitting there with arms folded
voting NO to anything that they think might help Obama
regardless of whether or not it might help the country

has just made me ill

i say FIRE ALL OF THEM AND START OVER
with a new party
the I AM SIMPLY AN AMERICAN PARTY
no red or blue states
just I’m fed up with all this bull shit states

thats where i’m at today kids

good lord that shaun white was something last night wasn’t he
oh honeys let me tell you
i have never been a huge fan of the olympics
i get bored watching most sports
but snowboarding?
now that’s something i can sink my teeth into
okay the and only time i tried, my then GF took me to whistler
same place that i’m now watching on the news
and we took a snowboarding lesson
one friggen lesson and they just leave us on top of this mountain and mumble …something like.. see ya
with this one piece of advice thank god
“if you get in trouble just sit down”
so I went three feet, sat down
went five feet, sat down
while people were whizzing by me
i felt like i was hobbling down the center of a freeway
but in the end i reached the bottom of the mountain
with a frozen butt,
drank one beer, ate a plate of nachos
and spent my week in vancouver with the flu
so i have a whole hell-of-a-lotta respect for snowboarders
surfers, skate boarders
anyone who can stand up on these things
but mostly last night
i was thinking
after all those prim and proper ice skaters
except for johnny whats his face..wier?, love him
it was nice to watch a bunch of guys with long hair
who look like they will be smoking doobies soon as the drug tests end
compete in the olympics
i really thought that shaun white
after he already knew he had won the gold
using his victory lap
to show off a new and dangerous stunt
and getting even higher marks
was way classy and cool

you rock man

woo weee that a fun little blizzard yesterday
and I do believe i found a unique way to hold up here in nyc
by trotting off for gay bingo
how did you spend the north east blizzard?

ok
let me say i know nothing
nor do i care about football
and my GF was so heartbroken that the vikings lost
that she boycotted the superbowl
but here’s what i do know
after all the crap new orleans has gone thru with hurricane katrina and the lousy after-math
it just makes me happy when something good happens for N’awlins! so rock on and congrats to the often not quite so Big Easy

ok well i have to say i loved the grammy’s this past sunday
but there was a real low point when Taylor swift..who i kinda like even if a part of me is annoyed seeing a 19 year old with that much success..wound up having Stevie Nicks sing back up for her
i mean HEY
first the duet was fine
but then the image of the rock goddess Stevie
banging a tambourine and singing back up to one of Taylor’s songs. just made my 70’s rock blood boil
taylor you are cool for a kid
but honey
you have not earned the right
nor has any mortal
for Stevie to sing back up for you
NO
NO
NO

Well kids
First of all
What do you think of the excellent re-design by La matrix
CURL POWER RULES!!

Now then
Like many of you, I watched Obama’s State of the Union last night

I thought the dude did a great job considering all the controversial subjects he had to contend with
And I like that he swatted the supreme court for their LAME, ruling allowing corporations to fund ads to their heart’s content

Its’ hard enough to get anything done without big money taking over

Obama is clearly fed up with bi-partisan bull doody preventing good things from happening in this country and so am I!!

You just can’t tell me that every single republican really in his (or her) heart) feels NO is the vote to make NO..not every one of em..
I want to see some republicans stand up and vote YES with democrats
Because their heart and conscience tells them to
To get health care passed and to get other good things passed
And I want to see Dems, stop being such pussies ..show some balls folks!

Like many Americans I’m just sick of all this partisan bull shit
If Dems and Republicans keep it up the whole country will start voting independent and then both sides can just screw themselves.. now that would be fun to see

Hey kids
while i was away in p-town I got to thinking
my damn health insurance is way to high
and then i got home and opened my mail to see that they had decided to raise my rate oh about 20%
for no reason
so i’ve been doing research ever since on finding a better plan
but it got me thinking about obama
i mean the poor guy tried to tackle something that’s been wrong with this country forever
kennedy sure tried
the clintons tried
and to get the damn thing thru the senate
he had to throw out so many great things
like the public option
that he was left with a skeleton plan
but still a step forward
a movement in the right direction
and then i was listening to why Massachusetts when Republican
or rather an independent guy who’s you know sorta Republican
and it was mostly because a lot of them were pissed off the obama
and the dems threw out so much of the plan
now having just hung out with my Mass friends
they all were proud to tell me that they love health care in Mass
because in Massachusetts
they have state run health care that lets them pay according to their income
now wouldn’t that be nice
so since 2009 was such a lousy ass year for everyone
it would be nice if our health care bills went down
not up 20% in my case
anyway
i feel sad that ted kennedy is being honored by having the most liberal state in the U.S. go red
but i also feel sad that so many Dems with all their damn in fighting tore apart this great thing
so what’s the answer now?
well quite honestly i still think giving health insurance to 30 million folks who don’t have it
is a step in the right direction
i am certainly not happy about the cadillac tax if it happens
because after my whopping 20% hike
i’d be getting hit with it probably
i don’t know
sometimes i just wish that Dems and Republicans
could just throw this crap away
and join forces for the good of the country
it makes me ill
that the partisan crap
prevents independent thought
and i think thats what made Mass ill too
so this is a wake up call to Dems
just like Obama should have been a wake up call to Republicans

being out in ptown with no tv and no newspapers
has kept me a bit out of the loop
when it comes to the terrible
terrible plight of haiti right now
but the little bit of news i have been getting
has broken my heart
it feels like the tsunami all over again
i am sooo soo sorry for the terrible pain and loss
in this country that already has so much poverty and neglect
to survive
here’s hoping that help arrives before violence begins
over there