joel's pub

2010-07-08T15:49:00.001-04:00

Check this out. I'm testing out another in-text network called Sintext. They seem pretty cool. They're more about adult-oriented advertising, though. Interesting.

2010-07-07T10:53:00.000-04:00

If you're a blogger and want to earn money using keyword ads, you should check out InTopic.

2010-07-06T11:18:00.002-04:00

So I just joined a new ad network called InTopic.

One of the things that makes InTopic so unique is our MicroBanner logo ad. I think it's really going to be a game-changer in the contextual advertising industry. So what is it? It's not a banner ad, but an in-text advertisement that allows an advertiser to embed a logo directly into the text of the publisher's website.

I think this is going to be a really cool new advertising product.

You're connecting your brand directly to content, so the branding potential is huge. And MicroBanner ads still behave just like normal in-text ads... when a user mouses over the link, an ad appears on the screen. In Beta testing InTopic says it saw massive increases in CTR for advertisers who use MicroBanners... on the order of 9 times higher than traditional in-text ads.

2010-03-16T11:21:00.001-04:00

Join the Sintext Publisher Network Today and Get an Industry-Leading 90% Payout

Join Now!

Are you leaving profits on the table?

Monetize your adult-oriented site with dynamic and exciting \ the freedom to mix different types of advertising onyour site or generate revenue without using banner/pop-up ads at all. It's your call!

How do I put Sintext's ads on my website?

Sintext's Publisher Network is incredibly easy to join. In just minutes our online registration process will set up your account! And once you're a member of the network, you'll have access to your Sintext Client Dashboard, where you can easily track your site's ad results and get instant usagereports. We also offer two convenient payment delivery methods and numerous ad placement options so that you the publisher are always in control!

2007-01-14T11:56:00.000-05:00

After a very good run (almost four years) at Joel's Pub, I'm starting a new blog. It's called Tomorrow-Land and is going to devoted exclusively to online news. Di and I were talking about my career and I've told her many times about my desire to possibly move into the online news industry. Then we came up with the idea of me putting together a blog as a more professional pursuit -- something that, if it won't necessarily get me a job -- I can show off as a professional accomplishment.

So I hope you'll go over there and bookmark Tomorrow-Land. I will be posting stuff a few times a day, so check back often and post lots of comments. And if you have a blog of your own, please link to it and feel free to quote me as often as you'd like.

2006-12-21T22:27:00.000-05:00

oh, white people.

my favorite part of that is down at the bottom, though:
A first-grade teacher at Stoner Creek Elementary School in Mt. Juliet, Connie Akins has an array of sweaters that she's proud to wear the three weeks out of the year in which she can.

She hadn't heard of "Tacky Christmas Sweater" events before, but said if her 21-year-old daughter ever wanted to go to one, Akins would have to sit her down for a talk.

"I would probably talk to her about it and how it's disrespectful to make fun of other people," she said. "I would be shocked."

uh, your dauhter is 21 years old and she needs to be told not to tease others? is the south just completely retarded at this point?

2006-12-17T23:12:00.000-05:00

bring on the cowgirls!

my beloved eagles pulled off another miraculous victory against the new york midgets today. some little brother named eli got intercepted a few times and brian "dawk-plex" dawkins had a monster game. now we go to dallas next week and invade that god-forsaken patch of earth called Texas Stadium.

2006-11-27T22:59:00.000-05:00

memento
i had my 10 year high school reunion this past weekend. I actually drove down to philly by myself. Di made plans to visit her friend in N.C., so i was flying solo. The reunion was on friday night. I had an absolute blast. i saw a good many people that i hadn't seen in forever: packer, boland, raftery, shevland, alloway, phil ballard(!), etc. there was, needless to say, lots and lots of alcohol being consumed. I'm not going to say i drank too much, but i woke up the next morning feeling like the guy from "Memento" and brandishing odd cuts all over my right hand and a bruise on the side of my hip. word on the street is i didn't get into a fight (thank god)... so who knows what really went down. and no, there were no lewd acts involved. get your mind out of the gutter. we were all very well behaved. it was our livers that were out of control.

2006-11-27T22:56:00.000-05:00

cannon fodder
my buddy john turned me onto True Combat: Elite. It's a completely free online shooting game. basically, it's like being in a war. it's crazy. i get killed way way way more often than i kill anyone else. it's great!

2006-11-18T18:35:00.000-05:00

pimp dionne's ride
the wifey finally got a new set of wheels this week. she settled on a brand new toyota yaris. so far, she loves it.

2006-11-18T18:21:00.000-05:00

a new look
Di managed to redesign her blog. check it out. she got rid of the retina-burning pink motif.

2006-11-13T23:36:00.001-05:00

i watched this like 10 times today. it's still funny.

2006-10-24T23:00:00.001-04:00

check out this great clip: Matthew Le Tissier's top 10 goals:

2006-10-03T22:37:00.000-04:00

how sports are like members of your family
this just cracked me up....
The Intimidation Station: its a family affair

2006-10-03T22:27:00.000-04:00

this goal by brian ching of the houston dynam (mls) is just badass. check out the replay!

2006-09-26T22:13:00.000-04:00

Kasabian's new video for "empire" (also the name of their new) album is absolutely golden. a great song and a great, original video. i can't get enough. unfortunately i missed their concert a few weeks back in Boston. too bad, since I hear their live shows are off the chain.

2006-08-17T19:58:00.000-04:00

is it me, or has bush's presidency just devolved from merely evil into a complete farce. check out this lovely quote from a recent bush appearance

DubyaSpeak.com : Fresh Dubya:

"DUBYA: I fully understand, however, that there will be a Russian-style democracy. I don't expect Russia to look like the United States. As Vladimir pointedly reminded me last night, we have a different history, different traditions. And I will let him describe to you his way forward, but he shared with me some very interesting thoughts that I think would surprise some of our citizens. Now that I've lured you into the deal here, you know -- like, for example, how do you promote land reform. So we discussed land reform. You know, one of the interesting decisions a government has to make, particularly this government would have to make, is how do you encourage private ownership of land further than that which has already happened. Anyway, he shared some thoughts with me. Sorry to put -- lay the trap out there for you -- but it was a good discussion. He's a strong man. Look, he's willing to listen, but he also explains to me, he doesn't want anybody telling him how to run his government. He was elected. And so it was a cordial relationship. But he can speak for himself.
PRESIDENT PUTIN: We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly. [Massive laughter erupts]
DUBYA: Just wait.

-- Dubya suffers from a zinger issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin, and issues sad retort: 'Just wait.' Strelna, Russia, Jul. 15, 2006"

2006-08-11T19:53:00.000-04:00

check this out...

2006-07-07T23:59:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the delay, folks. I do apologize for the lack of posts lately. Hopefully now that things are looking a bit up for me, i'll get my blogging mojo back.

2006-07-07T23:58:00.000-04:00

it's friday, you ain't got no job, you ain't got shit to do
so this past few weeks have been real ball-busters. as many of you know, i got laid off from my job... only a few months after starting there. so i was basically back to square one. things were looking kind of rough, but luckily i found another job... one that i'm super excited to start. I'll be working in the archives department of a major textbook publisher (finally i get all that money back!). the job is in boston, actually right across the street from copley square. lovely area. nice office. supposedly a very good place to work.

2006-07-07T23:54:00.000-04:00

return of the sneaker pimp
i ALWAYS want new pairs of sneakers. it's been a while since i've gotten a new pair, unfortunately. them's the breaks when you're unemployed and broke. oh well. i just saw these today and KNEW i have to have them: they're a reissue of a rare puma running shoe that was released only in france in the late 70s... until now. ha.

2006-05-22T22:43:00.000-04:00

we all have iTunes at work and we can play music from each other's mp3 collections thanks to being on the same network. a couple of coworkers have the new madonna album in their collection. i admit to actually liking the song "hung up." but it's another song, called "i love new york" that truly stands out for having possibly the worst song lyrics ever penned:

don't like cities, but I like New York
Other places make me feel like a dork
Los Angeles is for people who sleep
Paris and London, baby you can keep

Baby you can keep (8x)

Other cities always make me mad
Other places always make me sad
No other city ever made me glad
Except New York

I love New York
I love New York
I love New York

If you don't like my attitude, then you can F-off
Just go to Texas, isn't that where they golf?
New York is not for little pussies who scream
If you can't stand the heat, then get off my street

Get off my street (8x)

Other cities always make me mad
Other places always make me sad
No other city ever made me glad
Except New York

I love New York
I love New York
I love New York

I love New York (Get off my street, get off my street) (4x)
(Get off my street) (10x)

i didn't think madge could top last year's embarrassing faux-rap that involved rhyming "pilates" with "moccha latte."

2006-05-11T22:36:00.000-04:00

soul groovin'
sorry for the lack of posting lately. i suck. i know. ok, here's a nice goodie i just found: great soul train footage set to MFSB's "The Sound of Philadelphia," a great soul/disco track. enjoy.

2006-05-02T20:15:00.000-04:00

the ultimate hot sauce
i think i have a new, favorite hot sauce. di brought back a bottle of Pickapeppa red pepper sauce from Jamaica. it's soooo good. it's very hot, due to, i think, the scotch bonnet peppers, but it's also got a sweet side to it from vinegar and tamarind. delicious.

2006-04-21T21:52:00.000-04:00

live and direct
check out some good musique! i've been diggin on radio ABF lately. it's a french internet radio station that drops some GOOOOOOOD electro, house and techno beats. now if only my car stereo had winamp.

2006-04-20T21:30:00.000-04:00

in da brewery
jay just updated our homebrewing website, da brewery. Check out our pictures of each batch we've brewed, plus some videos and pictures of our brewing hijinks.

this is a picture of our second beer ever: a raspberry wheat beer.

2006-04-19T21:53:00.000-04:00

suck it, world!
fifa released its national team rankings today and the u.s. is, ahem, cough, um, errr, fourth best in the entire world. we're now only behind brazil, the czech republic (who we will play in the world cup) and the netherlands. we're actualy ahead of a veritable murderer's row: spain, france, portugal, argentina, england, italy and germany. now i love our team and wish them well, but there's no way in hell we're that good.

2006-04-18T22:06:00.000-04:00

da next batch
jay and i are gonna be brewing again this weekend it looks like. i can't friggin wait. last week jay built a wort chiller to cool down our wort (the boiled malt) to a low enough temperature that won't kill our yeast cells. should be a fun new toy.
we're leaning toward doing a simple ipa this weekend. here's the recipe i came up with:

10 lbs. german pilsner malt
mash at 155
1 oz. chinook at 60 min.
1 oz. cascade at 30 min.
1 oz. whole leaf fuggles at 3 min.
pitch onto yeast cake of
white labs 001 california ale yeast

2006-04-17T21:59:00.000-04:00

green sands
here's a commercial from the 1980s for a french beer called green sands. makes me thirsty... i think.

2006-04-12T21:42:00.000-04:00

madchester
di and i recently got around to watching "24 hour party people," a film about the 80s music scene in manchester. definitely a great music flick. it centers around tony wilson, a record company boss, club owner and local tv reporter. basically, he's the man responsible for bands like joy division/new order and the happy mondays. definitely a good movie if you like new wave.

2006-04-12T21:35:00.000-04:00

the timothy leary of mdma
i stumbled upon a good interview with dr. alexander shulgin, one of the first pyschiatrists to conduct research on mdma, better known as ecstasy. he has some interesting points to make about our popular misconceptions of the nature of addiction and of the social uses of drugs.

Q. There is an assumption by a lot of people that MDMA has tremendous abuse potential and is addictive. Is it?

A. The abuse potential of MDMA is as real as the abuse potential of anything that gives pleasure and satisfaction. This applies to MDMA as much as it does to sky diving, mountain climbing and skiing.

I should also point out that to the authorities, abuse is the use of any illegal drug. It's not how you use the drug. It's the fact that the regulator says you can't use it.

On your second point, addiction, there is a tendency to use the word addiction in an almost pejorative or a socially condemning way. I personally tend to avoid the word addiction because of the baggage it carries with it - social unacceptability, legal involvement, pharmacological dependency. I like the word dependency because for one thing it avoids the addiction word; and secondly, it allows me to define two types of dependency - physical dependency and psychological dependency.

In the case of the former, your body will rebel if it does not get what it has become used to. In the case of the latter, you have the psyche, the spirit, the self image, the good feeling about yourself rebelling if you don't have more of the thing that feeds it. Neither are really addiction.

True addiction has traditionally meant being physically dependent on something, so that if it's withdrawn, you go through a crisis that may be life-threatening. Very few drugs satisfy that criterion, although barbiturates come close.

I remember a demonstration medical school about a cat that was given a barbiturate in a regular IP injection. The cat came to expect its injection and turned up every day at noon time to receive it. This went on for about eight months. One day, the cat got saline instead of barbiturate. Within two or three hours, the cat was dead. That is true physical dependency. That is addiction according to its archetypic definition. You do not have that kind of thing with MDMA. In fact, you do not have that kind of thing with psychedelics at all. For one thing they build up tolerance quite rapidly, or refractoriness. In other words, if you take it on the second day, it doesn't have that much effect, while on the third day, it has no effect at all. Nor is increasing the dosage the answer because of the side effects this causes. So you are almost blocked from becoming locked into a pattern of re-use. Physical dependency? Not at all.

You might have psychological dependency with some drugs in this area, such as Ketamine and marijuana. I know a number of people who use these drugs as a matter of habit and are very uncomfortable if that habit is broken. So there is a psychological component with some of these drugs. MDMA does not have that habit.

However MDMA does have a negative aspect. If you do use it with some degree of regularity, for example every week over a period of many weeks, that remarkable empathic magic is lost. Most people only have remarkable experiences with MDMA the first couple of times they use it. After that, the magic is somehow gone.

2006-04-12T21:23:00.000-04:00

homebrewing heaven
jay and i got around to brewing last weekend while di was out in san antonio for her writers convention. we did our first all-grain beer, which means we mashed our own grains instead of merely using malt extract to provide fermentable sugars. we chose a very difficult beer to "clone". basically we took a recipe for brooklyn black chocolate stout, a high-alcohol dark-colored beast of a beer. despite some worries, it seemed to have come out very well. it's fermenting down right now, so it will probably be a few months of aging before we know the results. our next batch will probably be another all-grain beer... an IPA made with chinook hops.

2006-04-07T21:05:00.000-04:00

behind the supreme court curtains
it's a well-known fact that the supreme court is highly secretive. media people are kept at arms length. thankfully the great book " America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction" features the disturbing firsthand account of what goes on there written down by an attorney named Brian Hicks: "All I know is, everybody is fucking. Everybody. It was nine heads and 36 tangled limbs intertwined in a writhing, whirling dervish of group sex. Some guy, a clerk I can only assume, was twanging a sitar off to teh side. Once in a while Scalia would break off from the orgy to cut hunks off a giant brick of hash with a Bowie knife. Then he remounted Ginsburg."

2006-04-05T22:06:00.000-04:00

this will blow your mind
the muzak corporate headquarters in Fort Hill, S.C. has its music piped into every part of the complex.... except the elevators.

2006-04-03T22:32:00.000-04:00

the rear-view mirror
the first week or so at the new job has been good so far. my new boss is very friendly and actually, uh, supportive.
but i do have to give a big middle finger to my old boss, bianca. ahhhh. that feels good. this is the boss who made a joke of our newsroom on a daily basis. when she wasn't out "sick" with the made up illness du jour, she was doing her utmost to lower morale, flush the quality of the paper down the shitter, shift workload and pin the blame on others around her. the thing i've realized is that it wasn't about me: this was a person who has probably dozens of former co-workers and employees scattered around new england who, to this day, can't stand her. in the 3 1/2 years at the paper, how many times did she EVER tell me I was doing a good job? Uhhhhh...NEVER!!!!
how many times was i forced to work 12 hour shifts to cover for her sorry ass? she's a pathetic human being who's own miserable attitude has resulted in an entire city that hates herr guts. congratulations, you're probably the most hated person in "the bucket." you succeeded in driving me out, so congratulations, but you didn't win. I was the one who parlayed that job into an opportunity and made something happen. You're just a pathetic washup whom no one respects and everyone knows should have been fired long, long, long ago.
I actually think you should find a new line of work: you should excel at any job that requires the complete hatred of co-workers and employees.

2006-03-30T22:57:00.000-05:00

a new look
i finally got around to working on a graphic logo for the blog. the plain ole' text wasn't cuttin' it. i know it's kind of ugly right now, and it's not formatted exactly the way i want, and i need to do some tweaking of the borders to make it a little less jarring when you scroll down to read... i promise i'll keep improving it.

i actually used a program called gimpshop, which automatically reminds me of the gun shop scene from "pulp fiction." it's actually an open source image editing program that's VERY closely based on photoshop. of course, photoshop costs a few hundred bones, while gimpshop is free. no-brainer.

also, sorry about the lack of photos lately. i am in the process of moving all of my photos over to flickr, which offers a lot more features than what image monster has, and as far as i know, flickr doesn't have as strict a bandwidth limit, so no more blue boxes. work has been keepin me busy lately, but hopefully i'll have time very soon to move my pictures over.

2006-03-28T20:10:00.000-05:00

stay tuned
there will be a whole lot of new stuff posted up here once i get the situation with my photos worked out. i baically used too much bandwidth and screwed myself up. i can't fix it right way, unfortunately, so you'll have to wait. expect a bunch of fresh blogging (on my new job, on my old job, on sports, movies, etc.) within the next week or so.

2006-03-25T13:49:00.000-05:00

mo' money, mo problems
sorry for all the blue error boxes on my blog, folks. i use a third-party provider for storing images and i used up too much bandwidth with all those big SF photos. they should be back up and runnign in a couple days.

2006-03-23T03:35:00.000-05:00

art fiends
di and i got a chance to visit the extremely underrated san francisco museum of modern art while we were out there. it was art-o-licious. for real. we got to check out a bunch of good stuff: mondrian, miro, yves klein, calder, kandinsky, picasso, matisse and a very nice selection of art by local bay area artists... which was a nice change of pace (frankly, picasso and matisse just don't do knock me out as much...). so there was one piece that really caught me eye... "narkissos" by a local artist named Jess. His real name was burgess so-and-so, but the one name thing is much cooler. anyway, narkissos is a huge 7 by 5 foot collage of charcoal drawings that are absolutely insanely detailed. jess basically spent like 20 years of his life on this one work... and it was the last one he did before he died around 1995 or so. he apparently took all kinds of images from life magazine and national geographic and other sources and painstakingly redrew them. here's a pic, but i'll warn you that it's MUCH MUCH MUCH cooler in person:

2006-03-23T03:21:00.000-05:00

ooh la la
i'm diggin me some goldfrapp lately. it's an english dance band fronted by allison goldfrapp. their sound is sort of a soul, acid jazz, house, new wave and house blend. someone get this cd for me. it's the least you could do for entertaining you so vividly with this blog. pfffffffft.

2006-03-23T03:15:00.000-05:00

1 day til i'm free
well, i heard back from the parole board. they're letting me out of this place tomorrow. that's really what it's felt like at work recently. i'm just dying to get out! in a way i feel bad for my co-workers, especially since the company/evil empire is considering merging a couple offices for greater efficiency, which is never good. but there's a crucial differnce between my experience there and everyone else still there: they've all carved out niches for themselves that insulate them from the direct pressure from my bosses and therefore they never have to shoulder as much burden as I did during my stint as city editor. it was like tightrope walking without a net. every little mistake i made got blown way up and i was at the mercy of my boss's complete craziness. (more on her later, i promise!)

2006-03-23T03:07:00.000-05:00

national team blitkrieged
ugh. all true soccer fans despise the german team. the teutonic robots beat up on the u.s. national team today, winning 4-1 after a three-goal flurry early in the second half.
i watched the game and i'm not too worried. first of all, we brought almost no one who will be anywhere near the pitch come the world cup finals. second, this was played in dortmund in front of 70,000 germans. and there was a bright spot:

bobby convey, who made a name for himself as a teenager with DC united, is now learning his craft with reading FC in england and really picking up his game. his technique is really, really good. unfortunately, he plays the same position as my favorite player, damarcus beasley, left midfielder, so it should be interesting to see those two battle it out for playing time at the wc.

2006-03-21T01:53:00.000-05:00

sneaker pimp
my dope-ass kangaroos are finally getting too worn out. so i need some new sneakers. woo. i know i can't compare to the level of swoon that dionne gets for a pair of shiny jimmy choos or manolos, but I really, really, really like sneakers. right now i've got my silver and orange 'roos sharing the rotation with my suede pony mexico '77s. i've always really liked pumas, and i especially dig the red puma "the suede." the suede is actually the name of the shoe. so don't call them "suedes," sucker.

2006-03-19T14:26:00.000-05:00

mash tun time
jay built our new mash tun this week. basically, he just attached a drain valve and manifold to a cooler that he already had lying around. now we'll be able to mash our own grains for our homebrew, instead of just relying on malt extract. the extract isn't bad, per se, but it takes away some of the flexibility since we can't make up our own grain bills... we're stuck with whatever type of malt was used to make the extract. for all-grain brewers, though, there are hundreds of choices: roasted malts, smoked malts, pilsner malts, rye malts, wheat malts, munich malts, vienna malts, maris otter malts, golden promise malts, belgian malts, etc.

2006-03-11T14:30:00.000-05:00

i really do love using open source software... especially firefox and a cd-burner program called CD Burner Xp. there's also an open source office suite of program called Open Office that apparently is roughly comparable to Windows Office. no more buying windows office xp for me. ha.

2006-03-11T12:53:00.000-05:00

check out iTunes iSbogus. the authors of the site draw out a game plan that would actually let good musicians get paid while giving listeners access to a wide variety of music they want to hear. Here's their plan, which i really like:
"The internet should eliminate exploitation of musicians, not perpetuate it.

There's a simple solution to preserve the cultural benefits of p2p networks and make sure musicians get paid: voluntary collective licensing. Here's how it works:

* Record labels let ISPs license their music.
* Broadband subscribers pay $5/month for unlimited downloads.
* If you pay this small flat fee you won't get sued.
* ISPs collect data on which songs are the most popular.
* The pool of money gets split up according to popularity.
* An agency like ASCAP or SoundExchange distributes the cash.
* All musicians gain equal access to digital distribution."

2006-03-10T03:05:00.000-05:00

a research study found that most people use the web to visit only visit six sites... out of millions upon millions. i believe it. the funny thing is, sometimes I'm bored and literally can't think of another site to visit. then there are those link binges when you can't keep yourself from surfing from random site to random site. damn www.

2006-03-10T02:46:00.000-05:00

jay and i got a chance to brew again last weekend. we happened to have built up a nice supply of beermaking odds and ends, so we tried to use a bunch of stuff on hand for this batch. what came out will henceforth be known as frankenstein brown ale, mainly because it's brown and made out of random bits and pieces... and it's evil. basically we used 6 lbs. malt extract, 10 oz. light munich malt, 10 oz. amber biscuit malt, 12 oz. special B malt in the wort.
hopped with 1 oz. UK phoenix hops at 1 hr. and 1 oz. german hallertauer hops at 15 min.
The yeast strain was the safale S33 dry yeast, which we happened to have sitting in jay's fridge. we'll see how it comes out. our best beer yet, i think, was actually the IPA we made using another dry yeast, US-56. Dry yeasts are generally considered inferior to liquid yeast strains due to the harshness of the manufacturing process, but it's hard to complain too hard when the IPA came out tasting to clean, well-attenuated and hoppy.

our next big project will be to make the transition to all-grain brewing. Basically, right now we use malt extract, which is essentially a concentrated form of sugar. We boil it to make wort (pronouned "wert"). Essentially, someone else is picking out the barley (or wheat) for us, which takes away some control over the brewing process. commercial brewers and many homebrewers, though, mash their own wort. They take grains and soak them in water at certain temperatures to convert certain enzymes that allow you to extract sugars from the grains. Here is a good photo essay on how to do that at home. it's really not that tough. Jay has a good insulated cooler for us to use. We just have to buy a few small parts for the manifold and get ourselves a proper kettle that can handle full 5 gallon wort boils. right now our kettle is a tad too small. So we plan to do our first all-grain batch within the next few weeks. wish us well!

oh, and i almost forgot, the white ale we brewed last month came out great! really has a nice funky belgian flavor and silky mouthfeel to it.

2006-03-10T02:30:00.000-05:00

i've really been slackin off with the blogging lately. sorry about that. between the job search (which paid off, read below), planning our little trip to san francisco, and working out at the gym and our homebrewing adventures, i've been a bit distracted.
anyway, i got a chance to watch fellini's "il bidone" recently. what a great film. it was made in 1955, so it's one of his earlier movies. "il bidone" actually came out between his two classics "la strada" and "nights of cabiria". anyway, "il bidone" is about a group of con men from rome who travel the area ripping people off with various schemes. yet the film is so morally ambiguous that you're thrown from one side to the other when trying to decide who's good and who's just plain rotten. I won't ruin the ending, but let's just say, it's fun and twisty and slightly depressing.... exactly the way a good film should end.

2006-03-10T00:32:00.000-05:00

ok, so here's the big news: I took a new job today. I'm leaving the Times after three and a half years to move on to greener pastures. i'll be working as a technical editor for a company located nearby in Massachusetts. I'll be stationed at the corporate headquarters workign on product sheets describing hardware that is manufactured by the company. I'm very excited about the move. I was really really ready for a change of scenery. In the last month or two, especially, working at the paper was wearing on me. It was the kind of feeling you get when you stay at the party a bit too long - everything gets a bit weirder and less pleasant. Anyway, I'm very relaxed now. Di and I can enjoy our upcoming trip to san fran much more now.
Oh, and there will be a Joel F. Celebrity Roast at the east ave. cafe in pawtucket on march 23. According to the flyer posted on the wall at work today: "Admission is Free (for everyone except Joel)."

2006-03-09T11:41:00.000-05:00

I've got a big, big announcement for you all. stay tuned. wooooooooo.

2006-03-04T03:25:00.000-05:00

check out this wiki on U.S. Route 6... a road that runs right by our neighborhood... and keeps going and going and going. there's even a jack kerouac reference in there. woo.

2006-03-04T01:30:00.000-05:00

breaking news: dionne has locked onto visiting two cupcake shops in san francisco. you heard it here first.

2006-02-28T00:24:00.000-05:00

di and i are heading to san francisco in a little over a week. we can't wait. she has a week off for spring break and i'm taking vacation, so we can take our time out there and relax. di's never been to california... while i've been there twice, but not in the past five or six years. our hotel is in downtown san francisco, on the edge of a neighborhood called the tenderloin district. at first i thought that sounded like some kind of gentrified, bohemian yuppie-ish neighborhood, like the meatpacking district in new york. it turns out it's been called that since the 1800s because the cops who walked that beat were paid bonuses. with the extra dough, they could afford tenderloin steaks. so apparently it's a homeless and drug infested slum. yeah.
i'm not too worried, though. our hotel is in a fairly nice part of town and i've been told we'll be quite alright where we're staying.
once we're settled, we plan to do a few things:
- visit alcatraz
- ride a cable car
- take a wine country tour
- visit the city lights bookstore
- visit fisherman's wharf
- shop (this is dionne's "raison de voyager")
- visit berkley and sausalito
- take a tour of the anchor brewery
that last one is really my idea. shocker. i'm excited about checking this place out:

2006-02-24T09:57:00.000-05:00

hey all my great joel's pub readers... go and take the cool person test. it only takes a little while. keagan, i know you'll do well on it.

2006-02-23T00:59:00.000-05:00

about a year ago or so, the daily show had footage of this dude with CRAZY huge arms coming out of jail in handcuffs. it was insane. i couldn't believe what i was seeing. well, it turns out this is a real bodybuilder...

check out this interview: The Most Hated Man in Bodybuilding."

2006-02-23T00:39:00.000-05:00

i sort of consider myself a bit of a food and drink snob. di and i like to eat at good restaurants (notice i DIDN'T say expensive) and we like good libations. i'm partial to microbrewed beer (or better yet, homebrewed) and she likes riesling and kir royales and mimosas. and yes, we both drink the occasional liquor... i especially like 100% de agave tequilas. but WHAT ON EARTH are people putting back these days? Not to sound like a cranky old man, but some of these cocktails are scary. Accoridng to drinksmixer.com, the highest rated drink on teh site is the Tucker Death Mix:
750 ml Everclear, 32 oz. gatorade, 2 cans red bull, mix in jug and serve. seriously people, gatorade has NO business anywhere near a cocktail, highball or any setting that doesn't involve a whistle and referee. i think there needs to be some kind of rule when offered a drink like this... WWBD? for What Would Bogey Do?
and if you don't know who Bogey is, go rent "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and get back to us.

2006-02-22T22:33:00.000-05:00

best. athlete nickname. ever.

2006-02-22T12:16:00.000-05:00

ask any real hockey fan... fighting is a great part of the game. i don't care what the pantywaists in the NHL offices think, hockey fights are great. check out hockeyfights.com for other anti-social misfit sportsfans like myself.

2006-02-14T10:27:00.000-05:00

here's a great blog about soccer/football/futol/fussball/calcio/etc. written by an american, so it focuses quite a bit on the U.S. national team (go beasley!).

2006-02-13T10:34:00.000-05:00

i read this rolling stone story on sam brownback, a truly despicable republican senator from kansas. basically, he's involved in a covert group called "the fellowship" that basically acts as a right-wing christian illumanati. the use "cells" as the basic unit. four men who swear allegiance to each other and promise not to bother themselves with the niceties of democracy.
growing up in america, you're taught a few things about democracy and our values.... we have to permit free speech, we must respect other peoles' right to dissent. we must respect the rights of others no matter what their views. but as i get older, and i witness the utter insanity of the right wing fascists in this country, the more i realize that those of use who want universal health care, an end to racism, and end to theocracy, an end to empire-building and endless war, and end to religious hypocrisy... we CAN'T EVER really live with these people in the kind of nation we want. i say fuck plurality. fuck getting along with these people. fuck respecting their views. i don't respect their views and i don't "respect their right to say it" (i hate that phrase!). i don't respect their right to live in a country that could be fair and just WITHOUT them here! we must must must stop these people from instituting a neo-fascist theocracy in america. unfortunately, most panty-waist liberals and Democrat wimps won't confront the problem head-on.

2006-02-13T09:27:00.000-05:00

so "dick" cheney accidentally (or idiotically, to call a spade a spade) shoots his millionare lawyer crony-boy while hunting on the ranch of a fellow halliburton crook and republican scion who just happens to be quoted in all the papers and on TV that the incident is no big deal. and notice how long it took them to, uh, report the incident to police. is there really no end to the absurdity of these two bush terms?

2006-02-12T20:06:00.000-05:00

keagan got di a purse while he was over in the middle east. it's bright gold with very bright beadwork and these dangly things all over it. it looks good. but the best part of it would have to be the tag... apparently the purse was made in china... it says "MANUFACTURING IN CHINA" in big bold letters. my favorite part would have to be the write-up, though. i can't decide whether it's just bad translation or some sort of beatnik acid trip poetry.
this is EXACTLY how it's written...

"Ming Luo embroadier of the bead Series pursues the tasty to large female and character of a outstanding contribution. The original design did win fine the work to emerge well Ming Luo of bead light treasure spirit with elegant qualities. The high-quality behind is meticulous and respect-work with to persist beautifully. Persist, however not proud complacence. Ming Luo precious companion in anticipation."

I almost want to send Ming Luo a letter suggesting a more english-friendly tag, but i'm not sure if the postman would be able to get my letter to Ming Luo's address, which is, i'm not kidding, listed as the following:
ADDRESS: The north road in liber ation in Guang zhou city god hundred million skin has a layer.

2006-02-12T02:01:00.000-05:00

well, we're waiting for the big blizzard. they're forecasting snow for early this morning, though none has fallen yet. you know you're in trouble when the lady on the weather channel says something like "notice the tight bands of low pressure air on this storm front. this one's gonna be really bad." i actually like snow, so i don't mind the weather, but unfortunately, we had to cancel plans to go snow-tubing with a group of friends somewhere up in the mountains on sunday. damn.

2006-02-12T01:11:00.000-05:00

keagan got back from his hajj to mecca recently. it was a great trip, he said. apparently, they were featured on the front page of a saudi newspaper, then taken to qatar and given tours of al jazeera and introduced to dignataries. while he was there, he was cool enough to pick up a few gifts for di and i. he got me a soccer jersey for the saudi arabian national team. it's bright green with a curious mountain design in white on the left front side. very cool. he also go dionne an arabic tea set, which she loves. she now has tea sets from china, saudi arabia and thailand.
keagan also got me a keffiyah, it's a black-and-white checkered cotton scarf that's commonly seen in the middle east and especially palestine. it's my little way of expressing a little solidarity with the palestinians, who are routinely brutalized by the racist, colonialist cartel of israel and the u.s. that's not to say that israeli and u.s. people are all bad, but these two governments have orchestrated a 50-year program of land theft and apartheid. hopefully the resistance will continue and not allow the hilltop youth and the likud zealots and the goons of the IDF and their evangelical christian pimps in the u.s. to win. so don't believe what the u.s. media tells you. the only solution in israel proper, the west bank and gaza is for a single nation made up of arabs AND jews.

2006-02-07T23:35:00.000-05:00

i really want to check out this book: "National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer."

2006-02-07T23:32:00.000-05:00

jay and i have really got da brewery up and runnin!
we brewed again last weekend. two weekends ago we brewed up a witbier, a belgian-style white ale (similar to hoegaarden, a brand available virtually everywhere now). we used bitter orange peel and coriander to spice it up a bit and white labs WLP400 belgian yeast strain. this past weekend, we finally racked the beer over to secondary so that it can condition nicely and maybe ferment down a few more points. but then we also went to the store (the hoppy brewer supply co. in seekonk!) and got ourselves a bunch more ingredients.
we end up brewing a clone of a belgian beer called st. sebastiaan ale. it should turn out a brown/amber strong ale with a nice belgian spiciness. here are the two belgian babes in the fermentation room (aka jay's basement).

2006-02-05T22:56:00.000-05:00

di has a whole collection of more than 200 wedding photos that she put up on-line here. enjoy.

2006-02-04T03:46:00.000-05:00

one of the first websites i ever checked out back in the day was Hyperreal, a sort of on-line rave collective. the site seems to have pretty much not progressed one bit. geez. you'd think they could keep up with the times, ya know, being high-tech ravers and all that. the other site i used to check out in the early days was "streetsound," but sadly that one is loooong gone. it was cool, though. had old-school message boards for music, art, fashion, etc.

2006-02-04T03:27:00.000-05:00

get your cold, dead hands off my drink, sissy boy!

2006-02-02T11:37:00.000-05:00

sorry about the problems with the "comments" function. di told me yesterday that she was unable to post comments under the posts, so i changed a setting in blogger and now it appears to be fixed. if you try to post a comment, but it doesn't show up, please e-mail so that i know there's a problem.

2006-02-02T01:34:00.000-05:00

this is some radical shit... and it written by, get this, the former chief of the seattle police department.

2006-02-02T01:26:00.000-05:00

the last few weeks have just been a one endless punch to the head for anyone to the left of general pinochet. coincidentally, while the democrats show just how weak they are in resisting king george, bush himself comes out and delivers his most mean-spirited and partisan state of the union speech yet.

2006-02-01T12:24:00.000-05:00

comments please!
one thing i really like is feedback on the blog. so if you have suggestions, please please please post them in the comments section or e-mail them to me (i finally put up my inbox address at the left hand side). i've been thinking about trying to design some type of logo for the site or changing some of the colors/fonts/etc. and i may try to re-do some of the photos i put up along the right hand sidebar, they just look all, as we ravers would say, "cracked out."

2006-02-01T12:16:00.000-05:00

di and i joined a gym last week. we're now dues-paying members of Health-Trax, East Providence. woo. i've already been in a handful of times to work out, and i'm really impressed with the place. very, very clean. well-maintained and top-of-the line equipment, friendly staff, clean locker room and showers, etc. today i had my appointment with a personal trainer. She really didn't tell me a lot of stuff i didn't already know, but she did take my body fat and hydration measurements. well, i've got way too much body fat and not nearly enough water in me. shocker. fortunately, my six months or so of working out with andy (who moved to portland with his wife and daughter last year) has really paid off. he taught me a shitload about how to get a good circuit training regimen down and how to use the weights properly (and even some good nutritional advice)... so basically the personal trainer told me today that I seemed to have a pretty good grasp of the fundamentals and was ready to dive right in. cool. she wants me to do an absolute assload (yes, that is a real word!) of cardio... like 45 min. of it 3-5 days a week. fine, but you just don't look as cool on the elliptical trainer as you do pumping iron in front of a mirror-wall.

2006-02-01T00:08:00.000-05:00

a few years ago for his birthday i got keagan a great book on cocktails and mixology, "Esquire Drinks: An Opinionated & Irreverent Guide to Drinking" . of course, he later converted to a certain teetotaling religion and no longer needed this excellent book. so i "re-gifted" it to myself. sorry, keagan.
anyway... the book has a very old-school approach to cocktails - they should be nicely balanced and not too sweet (obviously, the writer flat out HATES all of the corny pseudo-cocktails that people consider trendy nowadays (ahem, sour apple martinis). anyway, the book basically considers the "old fashioned" to be the pinnacle of good taste and wise imbibing.

The old fashioned
place 1 sugar cube in bottom of tumbler
wet sugar with 2-3 dashes of angostura bitters
add a splash of water or club soda
crush the sugar with spoon
rotate glass to coat inside of glass
add 1 ice cube
add 2 1/2 oz. rye whiskey
add twist of lemon

- i REALLY want to try this one. the only problem is i'm always too nervous to order one when out at bars. i just wonder if bartenders these days know how to make them....

i'd also like to try a "sazerac," a legendary new orleans cocktail that's similar to the old fashioned but involves bourbon and peychaud's bitters, a bitter that's native to louisiana.

2006-01-30T10:35:00.000-05:00

so we hit up the car show yesterday. i liked some of the stuff there. for instance, it was cool to see the Ford GT supercar up close. and a few 2006 vehicles are interesting to get a look at. I also spotted this new limited-edition retro Ducati motorcyle there. i want it baaaaaad. it's got that old school 70s look, but has all modern equipment. here's a look....

2006-01-29T20:56:00.000-05:00

i managed to catch the u.s. national team's friendly against norway today, played in southern california. the u.s. team won 5-0, with a hat trick by former maryland fwd taylor twellman. one thing that really did impress me was the play of clint dempsey. the guy just gets his legs moving and has an incredible quickness and some very fluid step-over moves with the ball. he seemed to be really "involved" on offensive chances. here he is playing for the MLS' new england revolution.

2006-01-29T13:38:00.000-05:00

jay, mark, steve and i are hitting up the northeast auto show in providence today. woo. i definitely wouldn't consider myself a "car guy" (i don't even change the oil myself!), but i have to say i'm excited to check out some sports cars and whatever crazy concept cars the manufacturers bring out. and if someone out there really loved me, they'd buy me the nissan z....

2006-01-29T00:06:00.000-05:00

i don't know whether to laugh at this or be disturbed. the last paragraph is particularly interesting.

2006-01-28T16:48:00.000-05:00

read this expose on a writer who has been posing as nasjidd, a navajo author. fascinating.

2006-01-27T23:40:00.000-05:00

for all you pennsyvlanians visiting this site, there's a great guide to pennsylvania's breweries, brewpubs and bars written by the excellent lew bryson (click on his link at right). lew updates his guides often, too, so you know you're getting the most up-to-date info.

2006-01-26T23:00:00.000-05:00

call her lizzie from now on...

dionne left to run an errand a few nights ago. unfortunately, while backing out of the driveway, she smacked her car right into the concrete steps to our back door. she actually broke THE STEPS in half. note, these are VERY sturdy professionally-built cement steps. when asked what happened her answer was apositively lizzie grubman-esque "I don't remember!"
here's her next car....

2006-01-26T21:53:00.000-05:00

king george HAS to be stopped. read this great article in slate about bush's wholesale disposal of the constitution. here's a chilling excerpt: "As Andrew Cohen, a CBS legal analyst, wrote in an online commentary, 'The first time you read the 'White Paper,' you feel like it is describing a foreign country guided by an unfamiliar constitution.' To develop this observation a bit further, the nation implied by the document would be an elective dictatorship, governed not by three counterpoised branches of government but by a secretive, possibly benign, awesomely powerful king."

2006-01-26T01:23:00.000-05:00

check out this amazing artist....
Sand Art

Watch Video

2006-01-25T13:30:00.000-05:00

14 things i'm diggin' right now...

1. macka diamond
2. the soul train line (see below)
3. you tube
4. long trail
5. colbert report
6. bode miller, aka "miller time"
7. brown rice... no link, it's just low in carbs
8. picasa 2
9. ikea restaurant
10. mylo
11. big ben
12. the puma "sprint" sneaker
13. "fire coming out of a monkey's head" by the gorillaz
14. soba noodles

2006-01-25T13:14:00.000-05:00

i finished reading pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49" a few weeks ago. i really liked the book (it's basically a novella, only like 150 pages). anyway, it's written in this very surreal way and describes a woman in southern california in the 1960s who thinks she has stumbled across a secret society. very paranoid. i dug it and highly recommend it.

2006-01-24T22:29:00.000-05:00

jay and i brewed on saturday, our first brew session since december. each beer takes approximately 6 weeks from brew day until each bottle is ready for consumption, so it requires some planning ahead and managing of the schedle. (click on the "da brewery" link on the right for more info. and notes about our various beers). anyway, this beer we're doing now is going to be a belgian-style white ale, similar to hoegaarden or allagash white... it's actually a wheat beer that uses a belgian yeast strain, coriander and bitter orange peel. it should have a nice "clovey" spicey flavor, velvety body and cloudy yellowish "white" appearance. the eventual goal with this beer is to build a nice yeast cake so that we can brew a high-gravity belgian ale for our next batch in a few weeks. we're excited. here's a movie jay made of our belgian white ale... notice the extremely active fermentation.

2006-01-23T23:08:00.001-05:00

hey now... is there anything better in the world than the soul train line? seriously. i think it may possibly be america's greatest contribution to human civilization. i mean, could ANYTHING possibly be more expressive than a couple rockin afros and the LOUDEST clothing ever sewn together while funkin it down the stage in these impossibly-chreographed disco routines? watch the clip... a lot of them look like they're actually wearing roller skates. but no, they're rocking PLATFORM SHOES!

2006-01-23T21:09:00.000-05:00

there's actually a website dedicated to sleeping in airports. it's important information to know next time you're stuck in papua new guinea and have to sleep on the floor. apparently the world's best airport for sleeping is singapore's changi airport, followed by schiphol in amsterdam (which i can attest, is like the disney world of airports). worst in the world is port moseby, new guinea (you stand a good chance of witnessing a stabbing), and freakishly, logan airport in boston.

2006-01-23T20:09:00.000-05:00

farewell, BLACK TABLE. we hardly knew ye. well, actually, we knew ye well, and you could publish some downright scary stuff at times. the web-zine black table has been on the scene for the past few years and has always been really fun to read. unfortunately, they're giving it the terri schiavo treatment and saying "adios." hopefully they can AT LEAST find a new home for "this week in craig," possibly the funniest column on the internet. wow, that's saying something....

2006-01-23T20:06:00.000-05:00

i updated a few little things lately to make the blog look a little better. hopefully you like them. first, i added a bunch of new photos of me, dionne, family and friends. The picture of di with the painting was taken on our honeymoon in mexico. others are from the wedding reception and rehearsal dinner.

another thing i did is fixed up my perma-links on the right hand side. I used a button maker to do them. i think the site looks much cooler now.

last thing i did is added a feature called "Mapstats," which tracks the geographic locations of visitors to joel's pub and puts them on a google map of the world. To view it, just click on the blue button that says "BF Mapstats" on the right hand side.

2006-01-22T23:10:00.000-05:00

here's a good onion-esque spoof of a typical pointlessly-contrarian skip bayless column. i laughed.

2006-01-22T12:00:00.000-05:00

i did talk to keagan today for a while. he just got back home after a loooong trip from qatar to amsterdam and from there to philadelphia. he said the trip to mecca was the most amazing experience of his life. there hopefully will be some pictures coming soon and i'll post them when i get them. cheers.

2006-01-20T01:52:00.000-05:00

here's some background on the dudes behind the infamous "lazy sunday" music video on SNL. (which still cracks me up, even after watching it about 50 times.)

2006-01-19T23:18:00.000-05:00

i just wanna say one thing....

+

=

crazy delicious!

2006-01-19T23:12:00.000-05:00

keagan is due to return any day now from his hajj to mecca. he was lucky enough to get any oppurtunity to make the pilgrimage due to generous benefactors. He spent time in mecca, medina and qatar. from what i hear, the sheer number of people there is just mind-boggling (check the photo below). also, we did worry about him when we heard about the 350 people who were trampled to death in mecca last week, but he was not in the area at the time. actually, the stampede occurred at a sorta side function that involves throwing stones at pillars representing the devil... not actually part of the main pilgrimage.

2006-01-13T12:43:00.000-05:00

check out stephen colbert's show "the colbert report... click on where it says "stephen vs. conan" for a great clip of him going on conan's show.

2006-01-13T11:45:00.000-05:00

our allies in the u.k. are apparently none too happy to be working with the u.s. military in iraq. here's the take from a british brigadier general. he claims that the u.s. military in iraq is too "gung-ho," too blindly optimistic, too quick to take offensive action and too institutionally racist to succeed in counter-insurgency in iraq.
this is what happens when the army becomes an all-volunteer force apart from the rest of society. those countries with mandatory military service are onto something.... (note: I never would have supported that when i was 18.)

2006-01-13T00:30:00.000-05:00

slate has also had a bunch of good stuff on just how fascist alito really is.