live pod blogging

we're in a pod

360deg podcam

which certainly beats being anywhere else in heathrow airport

for dougie, and for sally

genius

music and cholesterol

We haven't posted any food pictures in a while, so here you go. This little concoction has many recorded names - our favorite is probably the "one-eyed egyptian sandwich." That said, around these parts (ie, our apartment) it is known exclusively as a "pirate in the hold." The ship on the right is armed with sausage cannons.

the only real events of note, aside from it being Lebkuchen season, is the ridiculous abundance of concerts at the moment. Berlin has a fairly good music scene, although it tends to come in spurts. We are now mid-spurt. Last week was Grizzly Bear, who were awesome. Not much more to say, other than we also got to learn about the autoharp over the course of their set, which was cool. More interesting, at least from a blogging perspective, was the opening act St. Vincent, who in addition to rawking, inspired a number of hilarious comparisons: "the artist formerly known as the female prince," "indie-rock björk," "mary timony with a perm," and something else involving mark knopfler. Monday was Do Make Say Think, who had moments of brilliance, and got bonus points for having four trumpets on stage at once. However they sounded a bit muddled at times, perhaps because there were 9 people crammed onto a very small stage. Next up: Yo La Tengo on Monday, followed by Great Lakes Swimmers on Tuesday.

I'm off to watch Liverpool try and repair an absolutely dismal run of football. Will they beat Man. City? Will they?

belated halloween spirit

Kate was recently away in Chicago for a week-long neurobiology conference (which she'll tell you all about). I tried to make the most of her absence by spreading out 15 years of photos across our living room, making a massive mess in the process. The master plan being to organize, scan, and back-up everything.

It was an audacious plan. And while some level of organization was achieved (instead of one big box, there are now 8 piles), the scanning and backing-up remains a bit of a pipe-dream. But hey, in the process I found this gem from a Halloween long ago.
I'm particularly fond of the rope belt/shoe combo that I'm sporting.

Me! All about me!

Kate has been working very hard the last few months - a serious nose-grindstone situation. Which explains why it's fallen primarily on me to update this wee corner of the internet.

In keeping with the current state of things, I present you a completely self-absorbed post. First up, the link for the Nokia commercial I was in.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=53997861

For those of you who haven't heard the story, I fell in with a very nice Finnish director who thought I had the right "look" for a commercial he was directing. See above. We got on like a house on fire, and proceeded to hatch a diabolical scheme involving him shooting a documentary following my travels across the U.S.A. en route to the Beard and Moustache and Championships in Anchorage. It didn't pan out for a number of reasons involving work, broken elbows, and global financial crises - which is a real shame because that would have been awesome. Way better than some Freddie Mercury look-a-like at the planetarium.

And here are some pictures of me and my new glasses...

The ball on the stick in the background is what I like to call local flava.

Pupster Down!

Hi blog friends!

A brief, but sad update.

Maggie, the Stear family "hound" for the last 14 years, took a one-way trip to the big doghoue in the sky last week.

Here are some pictures of her in happier times.


(that first picture has the added bonus of being one of the first digital photos I ever collected)

She copped a lot of flack for being, in essence, a fluffy white football who yapped a lot. Which is fair. But I'm still going to miss that little pooch.

dum dee dum

It's a lazy sunday here in Berlin; so in lieu of writing anything real, here's a picture of me eating a hot dog in Copenhagen.

UPDATE: Warning! Bad and/or scary things will happen if you enlarge this photo. So don't click on it!

The danes do enjoy their hot dogs - perhaps explaining this:


In other news, the Premier League started up yesterday, and the Stools have made their first ever foray into the world of fantasy sports. My team is called "the chops," while kate's is "now that's mediocre." As you can see, expectations are low.

Is anyone else surprised that the Indians have begun playing reasonable baseball again? It just befuddles the mind.