After yet another movie at the Metrolux, the final installment of the three-year Christmas tradition, I left Loveland where the rest of the family will be until new year’s. It was nice to have cousins and their kids running around, all four of whom were much more communicative this year than last, even if they […]

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So says the window of a building in downtown Loveland, painted with the same window paints supermarkets use to celebrate the holidays, or used car dealers use to advertise their low, low prices.Another Christmas in Loveland this year, with the requisite trip to Boulder, where we stopped in the Boulder Bookstore, and I watched the […]

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I love overhearing conversations between people who are obviously totally immersed in a very specific world that most people never join. I suppose it wouldn’t be as interesting to me if it were something really foreign to me like neurology or fluid mechanics, but I was in Tealuxe today and heard two guys talking about […]

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Today I got one of the stranger spam messages I’ve received, from someone named “Schooner E. Unsuitably.” It contained, among other things, the following sentences:• “taking note immediately existence well using long medical”• “growing aid member window wanted modern office”and the best one of all,• “last central has christian reached while physical she.covered away established […]

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Aimee and I went to New York this weekend to find museums, photo booths, and “Christmas,” the elusive feeling of holiday cheer that lies somewhere between the crush of camera-mad tourists thrashing their way toward the tree at Rockefeller Center and the drunken mob of cheerful Santas on their blitzkrieg through Greenwich Village. We found […]

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Just returned from seeing the Trachtenburg Family Slide Show Players at the Middle East, and they were just as inspired, un-polished, and bizarro as ever, with dad on keys and guitar, more Rick Moranis than even Rick Moranis, mom on the slide projector with her new red hair (or at least new since I saw […]

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Aimee and I set up the stunted little tree in my apartment, which means flattening the branches from the two years the tree has spent in a box, and decorating it with the classic “Harley-Davidson” Barbie ornament, the mouse and roll of 35mm film ornament that is now in two pieces, as well as the […]

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I made my first trip to the Wang tonight, for a presentation of The Nutcracker, in its last season there before being replaced by the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.The show was fun, highlighted by one of Aimee’s former students in the role of Clara, and with the chatter of explanation and kids in the audience […]

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So says the Virtual Model (TM) from Lands’ End which I discovered looking for Christmas gift suggestions. Other fashion advice from this apparently English advisor: • Tops, bottoms and belts in contrasting colours will make you seem shorter.• Stay away from cuffed pantstrousers with turn-ups.My dude looks more like that guy from Felicity than anyone […]

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Is it just me, or does it seem like nothing else happens when there’s a snowstorm here? Oh wait, it’s just that nothing else gets covered on the news – instead, we have budding meteorologists undergoing weatherman hazing, standing in the wind and snow in a parking lot in Scituate or East Worcester, waiting to […]

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Another night at the Enormous Room, perhaps the only place in Cambridge to sport both a line out the door and a cover (“What are we paying for, really?”)Multiple birthdays were celebrated by multiple parties, and the djs, encased in brick and only locatable using the international sign for djs (tilt neck like you’re cradling […]

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So I managed to finish the great Mediamark Inquisition of 2003 tonight, thanks to the fact that I watch no tv, have no children, don’t speak Spanish, don’t own my own home, and eat out a lot. That combination of factors made it easy to ignore most of the questions, especially ones as detailed as: […]

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The Washington Social Club were in town tonight for the first night of their three-night residency on Brookline Ave. in Cambridge. Tonight and December 15 they’re at TT’s, and December 8 they’ll be at The Middle East next door.I’ve got to thank Mediamark for the twenty bucks that got me in and bought me two […]

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Aimee and I went to Jillian’s last night. It’s never that fun when you really hope and expect it to be, but when you’re wandering through its alternatingly high-tech/old-school environment, watching grown men break sweats dancing on DDR games, crashing a Wellesley High School reunion, and finding the photo booth stuck back by the kitchen […]

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My eighth Thanksgiving in the last ten years with George in the Poconos. All the elements were there: the extended family, the bad movies, the lazing around and sleeping in. The two guys not in a band:

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