Go! Go! Raleigh

My friend Dana is again publishing an amazing blog at gogoraleigh.com. He was out of the scene for a while, but is back this year with what I think should be recognized as one of the best, most comprehensive civic blogs I've ever read. Would someone give this guy a Webby?

Everything from the highest level city development plans, to sports (he's an admitted Carolina and general ACC basketball addict) to where the next chain restaurant is opening down to local music events, if there is anything you want to know about what's happening in Raleigh, it's here. Speaking of Raleigh, and the fantastic time we spent there with Caro's friends and our families, if you want to see change happen fast, look at that place. If you think they're only building high-rise luxury towers with downtown loft living in places like Manhattan, Atlanta and Los Angeles, well then think again. With an air of objectivity, the site feeds you some insight into the impact that development is having on economy, civic pride and local activism. Growth (and the sprawl that goes with it) isn't all it's cracked up to be, and this site will give you some perspective to follow the impact of development on a mid-sized city. My aunt, who also lives in Raleigh, tells me developer greed is taking over there at the expense of sustainable and environmentally sound growth. It's in these mid-size cities where you can really see how fast change and growth can happen. Interesting stuff.

David Sedaris, No Photography Allowed.

Caro surprised me with a trip down to Irvine to see David Sedaris read. Front and center! Photography wasn't allowed, so I got this dumb shot of the podium before he came out. He was introduced by a local teen he found at the pre-reading book signing (she was running for Secretary of her school's student council, and pronounced herself a supporter of the Newport Beach Public Library) before launching into an hour of reading. Most of it I've heard on NPR or read before in the New Yorker, but he ended the reading with recent entries from his diary, made while on a fact-finding trip to Japan. Funniest one being about a barber with crap (literally, feces) on his hand, and Sedaris's attempt to get him to reveal his poop-smeared palm.

He read his New Yorker piece about buying weed while home in Raleigh for Christmas. I think at one point, Caro and I were laughing so hard, we started yelling "oh my god! oh my god!" at him, like he was doing some sort of personal reading for us. A consequence of sitting in the front row, just facing the reader and seeing no one in the audience behind us.

Sedaris is special to me and Caro; not because he's from Raleigh, which is cool, but that we were both reading his book, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, when we met.

My Barfy Valentine.

The least of anyone's concerns in buying one's wife a nice Valentine's Day card is whether you should consider having it come from a household pet that shits in a box.

Should this hideous example of feline fancy consumerism completely turn you off of Valentine's, no fear, for just a few rows away was the card section titled, "Anti-Valentine's Day." Alas, all cards in that category were sold out. This was spied at the Kerr Drugs in the North Hills shopping center in Raleigh.

Kitty cats were just the beginning of the Valentine's Day fun. We had booked a table at one of the nicest restaurants in Raleigh, Second Empire. The food was good (although it's one of those places that feels compelled to overstate the quality of the menu by listing too many ingredients for each dish; less would truly have been more) and the decor nice. For some reason they thought it made sense to introduce us to our waiter as if she were a nurse who would be changing our bedpans - "Jessica will be your server tonight and she'll be seeing to your needs," or something like that - but the kicker came mid-meal. That's when a young guy at an adjacent table decided to hurl all over the floor between his chair and the wall. I think he probably would have not even excused himself had I not waited a minute, and then decided to go grab a manager to take care of the situation. Our waiter, Jessica, was kind enough to apologize and tell us that she couldn't tell that he'd been drinking before he arrived, but hey, it really wasn't all about her, now was it? They kindly re-sat another table who had a more unfortunate view of the guy's partially digested meal on the floor, but we never received any sort of interaction from the management. I don't expect free food for the trouble, but I was surprised, frankly, that we didn't receive a complimentary dessert, or even a simple apology. In any case, the meal was pretty good, although expensive even by LA standards. We had a great wine, and one of the best vodka gimlets I've ever had. In the end, Mr. Puker made for a good story, so Caro and I will always have that funny memory of Valentine's Day, and Raleigh.