I had my first cup of coffee in two years this morning. I usually drink (hot) tea, but, as the heat index in downtown NYC was about 110 at 9:30am, I instead went to McDonald’s to get a sugar-free vanilla iced coffee. Three thoughts:

1) I am no stranger to caffeine (see: tea every morning, my ritual diet Pepsi around 3:30pm, two vodka red bulls to pre-game with on Friday nights), but the charge that gave me was closer to “cocaine” than “caffeine”

2) I had to poop before I even finished the coffee

3) My pee smells really weird

That is all.

(And yes, I am actually paid to tell stories.)

(Though not very much, so I guess it works out.)

Pretty much every meal I’ve had in London.

I’m headed to London tonight (and yes, I’m hard). On my two previous jaunts to Europe in November (London) and February (Amsterdam), AT&T was my cell phone carrier, so all I had to do was give them a heads up and boom – I could bring my iPhone to Europe, no problem.

While that part of AT&T was terrific, every single other part was terrible. So in March or April, I switched to Verizon. I don’t want to sound too dramatic here, but it was probably the best decision I’ve ever made. After years of AT&T and Sprint before that, I had forgotten what it’s like to have a cell phone that you can depend on and, you know, make calls with. So no complaints there.

But one thing Verizon does not have is an easy way to use your phone internationally. I was told by other Verizon customers that this was a pain: that they send you a replacement phone which you have to send back and blah blah blah. Being lazy, this turned me off immediately. But on the most recent trip to Amsterdam, which was a 12-man bachelor party, those with phones were kings, and those without phones were left in the dark, sometimes forced to hang around the spots we frequented, waiting for the rest of the group to show up, as there was no way to get in touch with the others. (But hey, at least there were whores and ... read more

Elvis Costello and The Imposters, with big-ass song wheel, at Beacon Theatre, NYC.

God, I love him.

At one point, he did “Alison” into Jimi Hendrix’s “Wind Cries Mary” and, somewhere in a parallel universe, my 14 year old self came and then exploded. Hearing one high school idol cover another…it’s just too much.

(Elvis is still an idol, and while I will always appreciate Jimi, the allure of the whole sexy/exotic-guitar-god-who-died-young-and-fucked-up thing wears off as one grows older.)

Otherwise, the show was very good, but the wheel was sort of a double-edged sword. For those who don’t know, Elvis last travelled with this wheel, a spinning song book of hits, covers, and lesser known cuts, in the 80’s (or maybe it was ’90 or so when he retired it).

Anyway, it was cool that people were plucked from the audience to spin the wheel (and really, who doesn’t love a good wheel-spinning?), but the show was less of a concert and more of a, well, show. There was a lot of talking and EC playing to the crowd and interacting with audience members brought on stage to spin, and this interrupted the flow of the concert – both because of the breaks between songs but also because someone might hit on a faster tempo song, then the next person might hit on a slower tempo song, etc. Whenever he broke from playing to get another person to spin ... read more

Yes, that is veal and pork loaf with a fried egg on top. What?

My all-time favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger moment, and possibly my all-time favorite moment, period.

There are so many great parts to choose from in this video, but the carrot (or celery) fellatio around the 4:30 mark takes the cake for me. I promise you the whole thing is worth five minutes of your time.

I don’t know what’s more surprising: that this guy married a Kennedy and cheated on her by fucking the gross maid or that he was in charge of the world’s eighth largest economy for EIGHT YEARS.

God bless America, man.

(And I have no idea why this video doesn’t have 20,000,000+ views. Really.)