Chilltown Bears

After a week of forecasts predicting rain on Sunday, the sun broke out and it turned out to be a glorious spring day in the NY Metro area.  So Joe, Ryan, and I headed up to Hoboken NJ (one town north of us) for their Spring Arts and Music Festival.  It was packed and a whole lot of fun.  Tents lined Washington Street from Observer Highway to 7th Street.  Great food from many of the local restaurants, and hundreds of artists and craftspeople showing their wares.  All the restaurants and their sidewalk cafes and bars too were packed. Lots of live music as well, including Mickey Dolenz from the Monkees yesterday!  What a hoot!  Of course men.  Mostly straight, but still handsome and hunky, there were men everywhere you looked – my eyes hurt as they spun around in their sockets   We ended the day with some gelato and headed on home.  We also enjoy the Italian Festival which takes place in September in Frank Sinatra Park along the waterfront in Hoboken.  Great ways to spend the day. CARLOS

It was a light day for me schedule-wise and I could see Joe was climbing the walls, so we decided to go for a drive.  We ended up at his office in Englewood Cliffs.  Long drive.  He hadn’t seen his co-workers since he went on disability in mid-February.  Not one person said “Oh, it’s You.”  It was all hugs, kisses, and tears.  A sickening display, LOL.  They’re all like, ‘now don’t come back until you’re fully recovered’… meanwhile I’m like, ‘back to work you lazy bastard!’

Just kidding, really, but it is taking every ounce of strength I have not to turn from Florence Nightingale into Nurse Ratched.  Familiarity breeds contempt as they say.  We’re no exception.  Almost 14 years of our almost 18 years together we’ve been in each other’s company 24/7, first co-owning a business for many years, then after we sold it, going to work for the same employer.  I hear people congratulating other gay couples on their years together, and I’m like, honey, we measure our relationship in dog years!

But I digress.  This post is about chicken– spicy saucy chicken.  On the way home, we drove down River Road hugging the Hudson and decided to stop at Whole Foods in Edgewater for lunch.  I glanced past the salad bar and noticed for the first time an Indian Food bar.  The savory chickpeas were nice, so was the eggplant/potato mushy-stuff, but the Chicken Tikka Masala was *delicious*  Better than any I had ordered previously in a restaurant.  I wanted to bathe in the heavenly stew.

So my latest fixation?  Learning how to cook Indian food well.  The test kitchens are open!  I just located dozens of recipes– even found crockpot ones.  Tum, tum, tum, tum… TUMS! CARLOS

I joined a client and some of his staff yesterday at Bar Stuzzichini, a trendy Italian bar/restaurant in Manhattan’s Flatiron District for a business lunch.  I love eating Italian in NYC, be it on Mulberry Street in Little Italy or up on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, I’ve *never* been disappointed with flavor and have never left hungry.  Bar Stuzzichini was no exception when it came to flavor– everything was delicious.

I ordered their version of tapas called Stuzzichini Misti and chose three items for $14 – polpette (meatballs), arancini (rice balls), and caponata (a tomato-eggplant spread for bread.)  When it arrived, it consisted of 6 teeny meatballs, 3 rice balls the size of gum balls, and two tiny bread slices with a thin spread of caponata. They couldn’t be serious.  I thought of sweeping for hidden cameras.  When no one popped out from under the table, I realized this was my lunch.

Getting ready to leave I was wondering where to go for the rest of my lunch.  The waiter brought the dessert menu though, and I was like, whew, that’s better!  I ordered the sfogiatelle – a pastry which I was really looking forward to.  It came, delicious again, but 1/4 the size of any earlier sfogliatelle I’ve ever eaten. Sigh.

We exited the restaurant, said our goodbyes, and I then found a Zaro’s just a block south.  Yeah! CARLOS

Joe, Ryan, and I, along with Luis and his boyfriend Will, headed out to Bears on the Run 2008 at NYC’s GLBT Community Center on Sunday.  We first stopped for a great brunch at Artepasta in Greenwich Village.  The show was totally enjoyable.. the music, the comedy, the camaraderie– I even got to slap Kendall’s asscheeks as part of the performance, and he’s welcome to return the favor anytime.   The show put on by that lecherous creep next to me though – tickling my palm as we shook hands then foisting himself on the two guys in wheelchairs who couldn’t wheel away fast enough – made me want to beat him like a circus monkey.  If I were in one of those chairs, he would have left with a thread mark on his face.  In the immortal words of Alicia Silverstone as Cher in Clueless… AS IF! CARLOS

(Pictured above left to right: Shannon Grady, Kendall, Matthew Temple, Elijah Black, and Bobaloo.)

Seems the Pope is on every major channel right now, just having served communion.  It started out with the Pope serving himself first.  There was an audible *crunch* as he bit down on his wafer and chewed it.  I don’t remember them being that crispy.  Then I thought to myself, this is no ordinary mass, they probably serve gourmet wafers when it’s the Pope doling them out.  Probably a light garlic flavor — they cut to another clergyman walking by the pews handing out something contained in a bowl, one to each person. My guess? Breath mints. CARLOS