Apologies for the recent hiatus, by the way. Today is my dad's 60th birthday (Happy birthday, Dad!) and I went off to Darkest Ohio to pay him a visit and attend the surprise party that my stepmother threw for him. I won't bore you with the details, but here are a few notes:
--The Parkersburg, WV airport is the smallest commercial airport I've ever flown into. There are four "gates" -- one room with four doors out onto the tarmac. Here's the entire baggage claim area. And here's a chainsaw sculpture of a briefcase-carrying bear, apparently hailing a taxi. (More airports should have chainsaw sculptures on display, I've decided.)
--I picked up a couple bags of the best potato chips in the universe.
--I also picked up some pasta. (Yes, I know that bringing pasta to Astoria is like bringing coals to Newcastle. But it's really good pasta. (Play your cards right and I'll invite you over for a plateful. I'll even put on the Sinatra.)
--While we were in Marietta, Ohio (a charming little town just across the river from the not-at-all charming dying industrial town where I was born), the Delta Queen was also there. She was beautiful, and the biggest sternwheeler I'd ever seen. (I still want to get back to Marietta sometime for the Sternwheel Festival.)

I returned to Noo Yawk just in time for another edition of Blogger Karaoke. Fortunately, no pictures survive. Mr. Chico Bangs did get down with a smokin' rendition of "Hit Me Baby One More Time" that you really should have seen. Efforts are afoot to persuade him to include it as a bonus track on his next album. Mr. Jonmc rocked the mic several times (most notably with "Centerfold"), and Cowboy Sally (+ the elusive K.), Mo Nickels, a less-green-looking Bari (not suffering from food poisoning this time), and of course Miss Lola Belle (who frickin' SHONE on "Total Eclipse of the Heart", incidentally) were also in attendance. Yours truly actually got up to the mic as well (what was I THINKING? Or was the Guinness singing for me?)

The less said about this the better, except for one word of advice: When cursed with questionable (or downright non-existent) vocal "talents", picking obscure Dutch hip-hop from 1994 (which was at best only semi-popular on certain college radio stations) wasn't a bad move.