On a beautiful June Friday, Joe, George and I headed to Great Adventure for a day of roller coasters. (At least George and I did. Joe hates heights and roller coasters. Why did he go? Who knows?) It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been and I was looking forward to two new rides: Kingda Ka and El Toro.  George hasn’t been there for several years, so it would be his first time on several coasters.

We arrived at the park right around 10:30 and promptly headed for Batman The Ride. On the way we saw a sign saying Batman and Robin: The Chiller was closed for the day. I’ve never been the biggest fan of The Chiller, but George wanted to give it a shot.

We get to Batman and George and I head for the ride while Joe, despite our best efforts, waits outside. (We’d find out later that the reason he didn’t go in with us was he thought there might be a point inside where he would have HAD to get on the ride.) Batman is my “dear old friend” roller coaster. It’s been around since the early 90’s and I’ve ridden it dozens of times. For a while it was my over-all favorite, but the higher speeds of the newer coasters have left it in the dust. It’s still a lot of fun though because it has one of my favorite features. It’s an inverted coaster (which means the riders hang beneath the track) so on its loops it looks and feels like you can go flying off. I still love it after all these years.

Next we head to Nitro, a very tall steel coaster with a steep first drop and great horizontal loops. This supplanted Batman as my favorite ride because it’s really fast and you really feel like you could fly out of the car. Your only restraint is a lap bar and the sides of the cars are low, so it’s a great effect. Also, the lack of upper body restriction means you can ride it with your hands up the entire time. On the way up the hill, I tried to convince George that this was the best way to ride Nitro. The couple sitting next to us agrees with me and also tells George he has to try it. We try to peer pressure him into it the entire way up with no success. But when we get to the picture booth after the ride, the lady has her hands up, but the guy doesn’t. He rattles off some lame excuse. I love hypocrites.

After Nitro we head to Skull Mountain, the only ride we think we’ll get Joe to go on. Its hook is it’s an indoor, in the dark coaster. We figured if Joe couldn’t see how high we were, he wouldn’t object. It’s a really lame ride.

Medusa was next. Decent ride, but it doesn’t possess the speed of the newer ones or the nostalgia of Batman. Barely worth mentioning.

Now we head to El Toro, my first new ride in years. It’s a new wooden coaster built over, under and around another older wooden coaster Rolling Thunder. As wooden coasters go, El Toro is the third fastest (70 mph) and has the steepest drop (76-degrees) of any in the world. It has great headchoppers and lots of hills with ejector air. The best part of the ride is about three-quarters of the way through when you’re thrown through a series of highly banked turns that throw you from side to side. Nitro is out. El Toro is by far the new champ.

We decide to break for lunch and head for Johnny Rockets for burgers and shakes. We’re waiting in a long line, when I hear a roller coaster going. The only one it could be is the Chiller. I point this out to George and he runs (literally) over to check. Apparently “closed for the day” isn’t. $60 later (thanks Joe) we enjoy our meal and head to The Chiller, which is also not worth discussing. 

We make our way over to Superman, but Joe or George suggests we stop and go through this Houdini thing. It’s really stupid, and… let’s just say they’re both going to Hell.

There’s a long line for Superman, so we go on the Great American Scream Machine, which is a good ride that I hate. For whatever reason I always end up with my head being banged against the restraints. I feel concussed after every ride. 

We try to go on Kingda Ka but George says the line is too long. We go on Rolling Thunder instead and have to deal with an annoying announcer. He’s one of these guys that is always making very bad jokes just because he has a microphone.

Speaking of things that are annoying, now seems like a good time to mention something that drove us crazy. Each train has 30-40 seats on it and each ride has a theoretical capacity of thousands per hour. Of course that assumes that every seat is filled. Sometimes three people sit in a row of four and there’s no “singles” around to fill the last seat. That’s not so bad. Dozens of times we see trains going by with empty rows. Once we pointed to an empty pair of seats and suggested a duo about 10 feet away take them. They looked at us like we had two heads. I hate people. Back to the recap…

I’m dying to go on Kingda Ka, but George is wary (i.e. punking out). We get to the line for the second time and it’s still at least an hour wait. As we’re debating what to do, a guy with a flash pass (an electronic device which lets you bypass the line) comes over and says he can take us in five minutes if we give him $5 each. Joe passes immediately and is followed quickly by George. Since it seems to be the best alternative, I pay the guy the money.

Kingda Ka, or “Holy Shit” as I renamed it, is the fastest and tallest roller coaster in the world. Hydraulics propel the train from zero to 128 mph in less than 4 seconds. You go straight up 456 feet into the air, turn around and come back down while twisting. While Nitro and El Toro are all about g-forces and turns, Kingda Ka is all about acceleration and speed.  When the car took off, for a split second I started to think, “This isn’t so bad.” I got to the “n’t” part, when the acceleration really kicked in and I yelled “HOLY SHIT!!” Did I mention it’s fast? Five seconds later we were cresting the top of the hill and I got the best/worst view ever. Imagine being 45 stories in the air with nothing around you. Would that be amazing or terrifying? It’s both. Now I managed to just say, “Holy shit.” Then we started heading down. Straight down. 90-degrees vertically down. It’s so steep that as your going over the top, you wonder if they forgot to finish the track. As you go down you twist clockwise horizontally 270-degrees so that you finish traveling to the left from where you at the top of the hill. Now you realize that the worst is over. I say “Holy shit” one more time for good measure. The ride is over and I come stumbling out to meet George and Joe, still in awe. Kingda Ka isn’t long enough to top El Toro or even Nitro (from launch to coasting is at best 20 seconds), but it’s an amazing experience. (BTW, as I’m reading up for this post I find out that occasionally the train only makes it about 450 feet up and rolls back down. Luckily I read this after I went on it.)

We head over to Superman. It’s another inverted roller coaster with a twist. Instead of sitting, your chair is lifted so you’re held in a flying position.

By now, George is tired and cranky but Joe seems fine which is the exact opposite of what I expected. I’m more than willing to stay until closing but that’s not going to happen. We decide to ride El Toro and Nitro than head home. (We added Batman since it was on the way out.)

The worst ride by far is the stupid cable car that takes you from one side to the other. It was also closed early in the afternoon, but since we were tiring and it runs between El Toro and Nitro, we decided to take it. We get on the tram and Joe confirms with the attendant that we’re not too heavy for the ride. Of course it’s only after leaving the station that Joe notices the sign that the weight limit for the ride is 680 pounds. Doing a little math, we realize we’re within 15 pounds of the limit. Now all of a sudden Joe AND George are afraid of heights. Still we survived the day.

All in all, a whole lot of fun.

The day was uneventful until we got to Memphis. George made great time so we made it in time to see the end of the Colts/Chiefs game at the hotel. How did the Colts shut down LJ so completely? Last week I would have bet I could rush for 100 yards against them. Anyway, time to eat.

Of course, we’re starting with bbq. The plan was to go to a famous eatery, Charlie Vergo’s Rendezvous. When we get there, we find out they’re closed for winter vacation until Thursday. DISAPPOINTED! It sure would have been nice if there were someway for them to let the public know this ahead of time. A website perhaps. Maybe I should have checked to see if they had one. Oh. Wait. I did. Was there a big “We’ll be closed soon” banner? Of course not. People suck. So we head to Beale Street.

The walk to Beale was weird. We were in downtown Memphis, but it looked more like a ghost town. If we saw 10 people between our hotel and the immediate vicinity of Beale, I’d be shocked. 6pm on a weekend and no one’s around. It was like one of those Twilight Zone episodes where all the buildings are intact, but there’s one guy walking around wondering where everyone is. Very creepy.

We eat at the Blues City Café where we watch the start of the second playoff game and get the rundown on the rules of Beale. Not only are there no “open container” laws, but lots of places sell booze to passersby through windows. Good deal. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the bars at Beale stay open until 5am. I was expecting 2am like most other places not named New York.

The bbq was much more like what we’re used to. Nice and tender smoked pork ribs with sauce. My only regret is getting a half rack instead of a full. The NC bbq made a good sandwich, but this was a meal. Of course it came with Texas toast. What’s Texas toast? I don't know since it seems like… toast to me. Not sure where the Texas part comes in. We’ll ask in San Antonio.

George has a heavy rooting interest in the Seahawks-Cowboys (he hates Dallas) game so we head to Jillian’s so we can hear the rest of the game. We find ourselves surrounded by Cowboys fans that George riles up, but of course they love him anyway. That George… making friends everywhere we go. One sitting next to me decides we are his new best buds and tells us all of his dumb jokes and his opinions on the game. I hate people.

The game, however, was absolutely amazing: lead changes, great plays, bonehead plays and a ridiculous ending that leaves George ecstatic and the ‘Boys fans crying in their beers. Triumphant (at least George was) we head out to explore Beale.

Beale Street is a very odd place. It’s only three blocks long, with maybe 15 places. Most of the places are blues joints so there was not a whole lot of variety. I can only think of one bar we went into that didn’t have some sort of musical act and of course it was pretty empty.

Not much in the way of highlights…

Wet Willie has a decent five-piece blues band and only served frozen drinks. George buys us the two strongest: Attitude Improvement and Call-A-Cab. The band was good but the drinks tasted like shoo-shoo.

George sees one of the street bartenders reading “Angels and Demons” and commends him on his choice. A while later we buy some drinks from him and discuss Dan Brown a little, saving him from the pain of his other books. He repays us later by getting us into his club avoiding the line, the bouncers and the $15 cover. Since he will be spared “Deception Point”, we’re more than even.

(Side Note: We’ve been driving through Mississippi/Louisiana today. We passed 3 abandoned cars in the first half hour. George insisted I write about it in the blog. I refused since I didn’t think it was that odd, but we’ve seen 20 more since then, so I yield. You’re welcome.)

There were only two really good places. Silky’s and 152 (or was it 125? The place with the $15 cover, whatever it’s called). Silky’s had a cool “dueling piano” thing going. The pianists were funny and played some good bar music. 152 has three floors with different music on each one. The first floor was our hangout with a good live band playing dance and hip-hop. 152 was by far the busiest place on Beale, with a long line to get in at 2am. Because it was the busiest, it was also the most diverse. They had hicks, thugs and wiggas, the middle aged and young punks all hanging out together. Pretty impressive.

Knowing we had to get an early start the next day, we did not stay out until 5 am. On the way back, there were even less people than on the way in. We heard loud dance music coming from what looked liked a club, but there was no one inside. Like I said, creepy.

On to more sobering matters, it’s hard to be witty while driving to New Orleans. I remember standing at our office windows and staring down into the hole at the WTC.  Now we’re heading into an even bigger disaster area. It’s been over a year and I know a lot of the damage has been cleaned up (or at least made pretty for tourists) and the French Quarter was the first area to be restored, but it’s still kind of scary to think about what we’ll be seeing.

Our first foray into the bbq triangle was a success. Neil, George and I go to Lexington BBQ where we each get "coarse chopped on big bun" sandwiches. NC bbq isn't into sauce, using a much thinner, vinegary concoction than we're used to. Also, they put cole slaw (which I'm not usually a fan of) on all their sandwiches. It's far from what I think most New Yorkers would consider bbq, but it's pretty good.

After bbq, we try to go out. Not 'we go out'. We try. Winston Salem is one dead town. We have a drink in one place that's about a tenth full, and then pass by seven bars. They each have three people in them. I didn't understand why they didn't close down six bars and just have one happening bar. The eighth bar has about 10 people in it, but requires  - not a cover – but a membership fee. One dollar per year with unlimited guest privileges. George, or "Billy Smartass Guy", as his new membership card says ponies up the buck. After 10 minutes the bar has six people in it, including one androgynous individual that prompts a he or she debate in my mind as George discusses skydiving with some weird guy. Did I mention Winston Salem sucks? 

Neil goes to work Friday leaving George and I to fend for ourselves. We go to what Neil described as the hot spot for breakfast, but it's really more luke warm. 

(Side note: Do you think the people of Carthage, Tenn know about Carthage? Do they call themselves Carthaginians? We need to know these things.)

Next stop is the Verizon store to exchange the car charger for George's cell phone wasn't working. We walk in, explain the problem and the nice southern boy tests the charger and confirms it isn't working. Unfortunately, he can't swap it with us since George bought it in NY. We'd have to go to the local "central" store about 4 miles away. George asks if it's an easy 4 miles with only a couple of turns or a tough one with lots of turns, explaining that we're just passing through. The guy thinks for a second, says "Fuck it", grabs a new charger off the wall, hands it to George and puts George's broken charger in the case. "I'll sell it to the next chump that comes in. That's how we do it in North Carolina," he says as he hangs it up. Sweet hook up except we end up passing the central store anyway later and we're forced to endure this guy's stories about his 5,000 sq. ft. mansion for which he pays $1500 a month, his car detailing business and his grandfather, the king of Nascar.

Lunchtime. We debate several places before deciding on East Coast Wings. We peruse the menu and see the following heat index: Mild, Medium, Hot, X-Hot, Lava Flow, Magma, and Insanity (Patrons must sign disclaimer before consuming). Of course we inquire about the disclaimer. The young lady behind the counter explains that Insanity can cause a lot of pain in your mouth and throat, and there might be some burning when you go "shoo-shoo." Shoo-shoo becomes the official phrase of the trip. (Side Note: BIG ass sign on the side of the road with the Ten Commandments. Gotta love the Bible Belt.) The have a one wing sample of the insanity for $1.29. If you finish all the meat of the wing, you get your picture up on the "Wall of Flame" George considers it for a while, before punking out. Neil calls and we agree to meet at his place at 4:45. At 4:40, when we're on the way to Neil's, he calls to say he's at ECW. Why'd he go there when he knew we shouldn't have been there? Not sure, but it might be time to get him out of NC.  

Back home we make plans to meet up with a couple of Neil's female coworkers later that night. I decided to take a quick nap. George and Neil, scumbags that they are, wake me up first to take a shower, when neither of them has showered or is anywhere close to ready. So instead of sleeping an extra half hour, I get to sit and watch tv while they get ready. Scumbags.

We go to the first bar we'd visited the night before to meet up with the girls: Julia, Amanda and Cathy. The waitress we'd spoken to most the previous night, welcomes us back, says she'll be our waitress for the evening, and chats for a few minutes. I guess I tuned her out for a second because she uses my name to get my attention. I was shocked she remembered my name. The girls show up and the evening begins for real. We end up at a nearly empty dance club. George is the life of the party of course. He tries to dance with a heavy, older black chick only to get rebuffed by "That's not a good idea. You'll probably get your ass kicked," as her man approached. The other cool thing is the bartender knew what a 'Flaming Dr Pepper' is. I started explaining it to him, and he said he knew it. Very impressive for a small city.

Anyway by the end of the night, the trip has a new official phrase: Stupid .
 

Ok… The trip has officially begun. George and I got on the road at ~5:20am, an hour I usually only see when I've been out drinking. Now, I remember why. It's really fucking early. In any case, the wild adventure has begun and the Buddha wants breakfast.

So here's the deal. Every one has heard of the Philly cheesesteak, right? Two restaurants in Philly claim to be "the best." (Ok. Now George and I are arguing over what qualifies as a restaurant. He says these two "cheesesteak places" don't qualify. I disagree and since it's my blog, I win.) As luck would have it, these places are literally across the street from one another, so most people who try one, try the other and fight about which is best.

We made great time to Philly, but Geno's immediately loses points when we get lost because their website gives us the wrong directions. Seriously, the internet had been around for 20 years and people still can't get the simplest things right. Pat's is going to win. I can feel it. The upside of this is we get to see a lot of South Philly. We get a parking spot right next to Pat's about a quarter after 7. I will have consumed two heros before 7:30. My stomach hates me. 

Visually, you can't compare the two. Pat's looks old-school. It has a plain white façade and a simple red on blue sign. (Side note: An older chick, I'm guessing 45-50's is checking me out and smiling as I'm writing this on I-95. What's up with that?) It has old faded pictures up of lots of people I've never heard of, so I assume they're old. Pat's just looks like a place that has been making the same thing for years

Geno's looks like a Vegas casino, with lots of neon and bright colors. It also has pictures but, even though I don't know who these people are, I assume the pictures are recent. Even the t-shirts they have for sale seem awfully garish. Simply put… Geno's is ugly (George thinks gaudy is a better word. I defer.)

First stop: Pat's. We're there so early, they have to start the cooking just for us. There are signs all over instructing you how to order. Apparently it's harder than you'd think. Luckily, given the hour, we don't have any problems. George opts for provolone. I go with the more traditional, and possibly disgusting, cheese whiz. I must say, my sandwich looks pretty bad. They slather loads of this oozing, yellow slop all over my hero and god does it taste good. Seriously, it's amazing. The meat and the cheese and the ooze meld together to form a wonderful mess of flavor. Excellent start.

Geno's is a bit of a disappointment (surprise, surprise), albeit a tasty one. George, wisely, opts for the whiz. Two big differences. First, Pat's chops their meat up and stuffs it into the bread. Geno's uses flat steaks. Also Geno's speads the whiz on the bread under the meat. It still tastes pretty good, but can't compare with the texture of Pat's.

So we have a clear winner: Pat's. However, for all their direction problems and garishness, Geno's makes a very tasty sandwich. In fact, had there not been a Pat's, I might be praising them.

Back on the road. More later.

George makes me stop in Lynchburg of all places. Thanks George!!! 

Ok. Anyone who is a sports fan has their hallowed halls. It could be Wrigley Field or the old Boston Garden. There are certain places that have such a storied past that just walking into them can invoke feelings of awe.

I'm lucky enough to have two: Yankee Stadium, home of… you know, and Cameron Indoor stadium, home of the Duke Blue Devils. Obviously I've been to Yankee Stadium many times, including a World Series game (the Clemens/Piazza bat throwing game) and, arguably, the greatest baseball game ever, the Aaron Boone game. But something has always been missing

Today, no only did George and I get to see Cameron Indoor and go inside Cameron Indoor and walk on the court at Cameron Indoor, we shot hoops at Cameron Indoor. We played 1-on-1 at Cameron Indoor. We took free throws at Cameron Indoor, standing in the same spot as Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill, Shane Battier and JJ Reddick (not to mention Michael Jordan, Vince Carter, Tim Duncan) had before us.

I can't begin to describe the feeling of walking onto that court. I've watched so many amazing games there over the years and never really thought that I would ever visit the building, much less be on the court.

Ok, a little backtracking… We got to Cameron Indoor at about 2:15 and were told we couldn't go on the into the actual court area. Unfortunately, Penn was practicing there, even though Duke wasn't on their schedule. We could go walk around, look at pictures and see the Hall of Fame, but that was it. We decided something was better than nothing and took a quick tour. (Side Note: We just saw a sign for all you can eat KFC buffet. Needless to say we almost crashed the car, even as our bodies screamed, "Please, no more.") We are able to peek inside the gym and see the court and the National Championship banners. At about 2:45, we give up and head outside. I realize that the bus parked outside is probably Penn's and ask the bus driver when he's supposed to be leaving. "3pm" Sweet. We ask if they're usually on time. "Never more than a few minutes late." Sweeter. We go back inside to wait the 15 minutes. 40 minutes later, they're still shooting free throws and we're aggravated. We decide to give it 5 more minutes. After that passes, George says "When I come back from the bathroom, we're out of here." When he returns, we look inside for one last time and start to leave when the coach blows the whistle to end practice. (Anyone who thinks there's no god is nuts. Only an intelligent being can have this sick a sense of humor.) So we run around the stands taking some pictures and then it's down to the court. No one was around so we did whatever we wanted.

I spent yesterday afternoon playing on two different courses in Long Island.

The first was the Peninsula, a 9-hole par 37 and relatively short course. It's pretty cheap at $16 for the first 9 and $13 for the second round of the day. Despite that, it was in surprisingly good shape. It was in better condition than every course I've played this year except Bethpage. The other good thing is it has a lot of yardage markers, which makes Frog happy.

One very weird thing. It had a number of bunker shaped depressions that only have sand in 1/5 of the area. The rest of it is covered in grass. Luckily I didn't find any but they looked tricky to play out of. (Twice I had balls going right at bunkers. Once it took a hard kick to the side and it bounced over on the other.)

Since it was only 9 holes, I decided to walk it and to make it a bit easier I trimmed the number of clubs I was carrying to 11. Turned out to be a good decision as my hybrid was working off of the tee, my chipping was good and I would have posted a 48, except for one hiccup. I was playing with three guys, two of which were riding. On the seventh hole, I hit a great tee shot down the right side. Unfortunately, it hit something and kicked into the right rough. The other walker tee off last, flubbed his shot, took off immediately after it, flubbed his second shot into the right rough near mine. (Guess where this is going.) I spent a couple of minutes talking with the two riders before we all made our way down the fairway. Obviously, I'm behind everyone else when I arrive at the spot where the two balls are, one five yards ahead of the other. When I get there, they point to the closer ball and say, "This is your ball." I look down and see the "TE" at the end of Top Flite, confirming this is my ball, because the other guy was playing Titlelist. So I grab my club make a great swing and the ball ends up four feet from the pin. Excellent. Not so much. The other guy goes forward and realizes, that this ball is a different model of Top Flite ball that he had apparently started playing 2 holes ago. I go over and see, to the surprise of no one, my ball. So to recap: They were all there at least two minutes before me. They said quite clearly that one ball was mine indicating, at least to my ears, that they'd checked. One of them said it was mine even though he was playing the same brand of ball. And who gets stuck with the two-stroke penalty?

Anyway, that 48 on a par 37, would have equal ~95 on most courses we play and that would have been my second best round ever.

The next course is called Heartland Golf Park. It was about a 20-minute drive from Peninsula so my legs had a little time to recover from the 3000-yard walk. Its main feature is that is replicates 9 famous par-3 holes from around the world, including what is arguably the most famous (and intimidating) hole in the world, the 17^th island green from the TPC-Sawgrass. This was the ninth at Heartland and I was really looking forward to it.

Since it was dark and late fall, I had the pleasure of playing the round by myself. That meant I could take multiple shots whenever I wanted which was often. I took two tee shots on every hole, landing both shots on the green three times.

The one thing that is counter-intuitive is that this course is actually a little easier than the other par-3 courses we've played for one important reason. Everything for me was a full swing. A 40-yard shot is a lot easier to navigate if you've never played golf. Once you have a reasonably repeatable swing, the half swings are, in comparison, much more difficult. Five of the holes play right around 115-120, which is a smooth 9-iron for me. It's not surprising that my score ended up being a respectable 35 with 3 pars.

As for the island… I had been very good with my 9-iron all day and this one was 115 to the center of the green. Of course, I hit it a little fat, but it still looked like it had a chance… right up until the splash two yards short. My next shot found the middle of the green and I two-putted for a five.

All in all, a great day of golf, which is a pretty good way to end the season.

Some random stuff on the NLCS.

The NL is HORRIBLE. I know the quadruple-A thing has been floating round for a while, but it's really true. I wouldn't give either of these teams more than a puncher's chance against the AL.

My prediction before the game was that the Met's will prevail. Historically home teams win game 7's. Then I realized that it was a match up of Suppan, who owned the Mets in game 3, and Oliver Perez. This might be bad.

Is the fact that the Mets are still playing with starting pitching like Mayne and Perez more indicative of how good the Mets are or how bad the rest of the NL is?

I watched none of this game until the sixth inning, one pitch before the "Endy". I don't think "Holy Shit!" is strong enough. If the Mets win this game 2-1, we'll be seeing that play 50 years from now. Best play ever in a game that matters? (More AAAA… how do you get doubled off on that? Why on earth is Edmonds more than halfway to third? It's either a home run or an out. You're either trotting or retreating.)

Perez goes six innings allowing one run. Did I mention how bad the NL is? I'm sure this is a tense pitcher's duel for NY-StL fans, but my guess is for everyone else it's awful.

Home run by Molina after LaRussa moves him up a spot in the order. This is like Torre staring Vizcaino.

WTF?? Where is Isringhausen? Note to self: Pay a little bit more attention to fantasy baseball next year. A rookie closer? Can we trade them Mariano for the night? My only solace is Beltran bats 6^th this inning. (That sound you hear is Fate laughing at me.)

Two singles, a walk, a strikeout and a bullet right at Edmonds later and guess who's coming up with the bases loaded and two outs. Could this be scripted any better? This at bat could go down in history… or not. A 0-2 curveball and Arod, um…  Beltran leaves his bat on his shoulder. Shouldn't you be ready for that pitch since it froze Floyd one batter ago?

Painful loss, but since they didn't have Pedro and would have gotten smoked by Detroit anyway, it shouldn't hurt TOO much.

What a blast!!! Here were my highlights.

After much internal debate, I decided I was better off missing George Lucas. If I had been at that taping, it would have been all about him and not Stephen Colbert. Also, the monitors are pretty small and pretty high, so the green screen clips would have lost something.

One of the crew standing outside looked exactly like a younger SC and I did a double take when I saw him outside the studio. He had glasses and dark hair with the same haircut, and I can't imagine how many times everyone has referred him to as 'Stephen Jr.'.

It seemed like everyone on the crew was funny. The starter, the stage manager, and the welcoming hostess all got genuine laughs everyone except Stephen Jr. who seemed peeved the entire time. My guess is he's one "Hey Jr." away from a killing spree.

I went with three friends and each of us got some abuse from the starter. Here is mine: A minute after he came out he pointed to a guy and said, "You! Come down and touch the desk." A little while later after we started a 'Colbert! Colbert!' chant, he commented on how pumped we all were and joked, "Everybody come down and touch the desk." Finally, a little while after that, he asked, "Where are the republicans? There are always a few." Then he looks at me and says, "Well, you're black, so you're not." My friend immediately said, "Actually, he is." I don't think saying I was the love child of Alf and Lynne Cheney could have produced a more confused look on his face. He asked, "Really? A black republican?" a few different ways, and after I swore I really was, he said, "Screw the desk. Everyone come touch HIM."

The set is nice. Even there we couldn't get close to it, it was cool to see all the interesting stuff adorning the walls.

The Governor of Montana is either a really down to earth guy or a phenomenal politician. I wasn't within 20 feet of him and I'd still bet after 5 minutes he'd have your vote, regardless of party.

And finally to Stephen: He was very funny, of course. Unfortunately, we didn't get a "The Word" which was the segment I most wanted to see. We got a quick glimpse of him out of character before the show when he was talking about his role on L&O, but I wished we'd gotten a little more Steve instead of Stephen. Still I was far from disappointed.

 
All in all, a highly recommended experience.

So you'd think today would have been an emotional day. Thinking back to how I felt on that day…

The shock of the second plane hitting and the realization it wasn't an accident. My "spider-sense" tingling telling me to leave the area (which is the only reason I wasn't covered in dust, or worse, minutes later). The wonder as I heard the rumbling, looked up and saw the first tower coming down. The fear as I ran. The numbness as I walked across the Manhattan Bridge, even as the second tower came down, seemingly on top of my head. The pain in my legs as I walked. The relief as I found a dollar van to take me most of the way home. The exhaustion as I collapsed in my bed. The sadness at the loss of live and knowing that the world was never going to be the same again. And mostly, the anger.

I can't imagine what I would have said if asked "What will you be doing 5 years from today?" I probably wouldn't have been the world would still be turning. Nuclear bombs, anthrax, weaponized ebola… All of them would have been floating around my mind as I was convinced the worst was yet to come.

And today… there was nothing. No emotional response what so ever. I didn't feel sad or angry. It could have been the 10^th or the 12^th and it wouldn't have made any difference to me.

Does this mean I'm in the "I forgot" stage of "Never forget" or am I just "better"? ?

So George and I stop at White Castle after a night out drinking. A homeless guy is standing outside the door and asks George for help getting something to eat. George says ok and walks into White Castle. HG says "Hey. Do you mind if we go to McDonalds?" George says, "I want White Castle." HG says "C'mon. I really wanted McDonalds." George, in an uncharacteristic display of self-control, manages not to tell HG to 'Fuck off' and says, "I'm eating here, so it's this or nothing." (Why George can show restraint to homeless guys and not to girls in bars that might be considering sleeping with him is a question for another day) HG gives up and proceeds to order the most expensive item on the menu. (Not that it's a soup versus lobster thing. It's 79¢ versus $1.79, but still.)

I really hope I'm never in a situation where my next meal comes from the 'kindness of strangers' (or the British), but if I was, I think I'd be appreciative, not upset that I'm getting a Slyder instead of a Big Mac.