recent life

1. Allen, my younger brother, and I, now inhabit a large 4-bedroom house recently occupied by my older and more famous brother. We have opted for a more spartan decoration scheme, by which I mean that the house is empty save for 2 beds, 2 easy chairs, 1 couch, some bookshelves, and a few appliances. The house is currently the ideal bachelor pad, what with its mismatched furniture, its steady stream of visitors at all hours of the night, the bomb-shelter style stockpile of canned food and instant macaroni, and the seldom-played guitar in the corner which proves that we really are good ol' boys.

2. The third resident of our house is a Himalayan cat. She is morbidly obese and cross-eyed. The name she has traditionally ignored is Polly, but we have recently renamed her Thor. I have decided that I like Polly/Thor because though she bites, she can't bite hard. One's friends should be either powerless or benevolent. Polly/Thor is both. No doubt her benevolence is directly related to the box of kitty treats on the shelf, but one can't be too picky.

3. I have fallen in love with “White Unicorn” by Wolfmother. The music snob in me recoils at the thought of heaping any praise on Wolfmother. The objections are numerous. The band is an unabashed Sabbath and Zeppelin ripoff, they’re still stuck in the 70s, their album cover designer is undoubtedly a pale pony-tailed Dungeons & Dragons expert, their guitar riffs are simple runs up and down a blues scale, their lyrics are truly ridiculous. Well, that’s all true. And it’s loud and stupid music. But it’s delightfully loud and stupid. “White Unicorn” boasts wonderful 3-chord thunder and a trippy organ-flavored bridge. Check it out.

4. I have ascertained through careful research that Richard Russo's Straight Man may be the funniest novel ever written. I'd write you a review but someone more articulate than I beat me to it a decade or so ago.