Liz is Always Right.

Liz is always right.

So this morning we got into a loud discussion about the purchase of a house. I said make a low offer (they are motivated sellers) and then they can counter with a ballpark figure from us to work with. She yelled you don't make a retard offer! I said, its not a retard offer its 'bartering', its 'negotiations' its give and take - 'yin and yang'. She wants out of our current situation so bad that she can't see the forest for the trees (keep in mind we haven't seen the inside of this place). We're starting to fight over and over about it. I can see why, she gave up a career and signed on board as house mom and it’s a handful dealing with the babies and a toddler! But it will be much better once we get our own house... OR WILL IT?

Liz is always right.

Then she starts in on me on a personal level. She mocks my blog about California, and I counter with the fact that just cause her friends tell her about it doesn't mean its about California. She says that she's never read my blog nor cares too.

She is the Anti-California girl. She hates that place more than I liked it. So she says "I want to see you write a blog about how much you love Ohio, and you can title it 'Liz is always right'."

At which point I said, "Well log onto timelinefever.com, baby, and type in a date so far in the future that you can see the blog I write called ‘you’re always right’!"

Liz is always right.
dsaf;l jkdfs aj;ijkl fsd;aj kldfs
(That's me pounding the keyboard cause I'm so angry.)

She hasn't ever read my blog but says everybody says I'm a great writer. I said that's shit cause' all great writers I know are all dead. I tell her that if they all think I’m so great, why are you yelling at me about California when you haven’t even read it! She says ‘It’s the content’ of what I write! In a hundred years someone will look at a file titled "Blogs" and then delete all 154 million of them to make room for some other stupid shit!

Liz is always right.

I walk out the door and yell "I’m going to work now, and when I get there I'm writing a BLOG, baby! And I'm calling it 'Liz is always right'! So log on and check it out!!!"

Then she calls me up on the 'cell phone leash' and tells me Emily just crawled across the floor for the first time.

How am I to argue with that? I missed it, but its still touching...

After all,
Liz is always right.

(photo withheld by request)

Raf's Art Opening

My friend Raf had an Art opening with five other artists from another show. This one really featured his talents in an environment conducive to the characters known as 'the Gumbas'. He ended up selling two of them (marked with red circles)!

To the lady pictured above! There's a large panoramic one that Raf priced high at 250 bucks. I told him it was too low, he should ask 5 or 600. My fantasy was to be able to afford to purchase it anonomously and then frame it in a nice hand crafted cherry frame and give it to him as a birthday gift or something.
He gets his own artwork for a present - well, I thought it was funny.

I took a lot of photos with my 'spy-cam'. This is Raf's wife, Dar (above).

Lots of old and new friends showed up to give their love and support.
When I got there I realized I should've brought a bottle of wine!
There was only one bottle and it was almost gone!

You can see the large panoramic one here.
This was a rare night for us - no kids.
So as usual I took lots of pictures.



The show was at Gallery 3131 on High Street, in Clintonville right next to Nancy's Home Cookin', an OSU staple in good greasy food at ma and pa prices. Students get home cookin' like ma used to for a modest price.


This is Tim (above). He's a blog all to himself.
Someday...





This is me with the last of the wine. If we got there early enough I would've went home and got a couple bottles of "Two-Buck Chuck" (from a case of my private reserve - Trader Joes, La Brea and 3rd, thank you very much!).



After the show we met at the Worthington Inn, an old historic hotel in downtown Worthington. They have a great bar there and live entertainment. The female singer sang and sounded exactly like 'Diane Crawl'. There I had a glass of wine and we toasted our good friend on a successful show. I look around at this place, this best kept secret of the Columbus area and I realize this is where we need to go on a Saturday night with friends.

Then Liz and I went home to the house full of sick and screaming babies.
And we love it!

The Wine Bar

Last week (Feb 9th) was my
friend Erich's birthday, so we
went up to Cleveland for his surprise
party on the weekend of the 5th.

(photo withheld by request)

Before the party, my wife and I met up with friends for a glass of wine. The Ohio Wine Bar is a great little place to get a fantastic selection of choice wines from around the globe.

It was really reminiscent of a little place I went to with my wife in the wine country of northern California. I can't remember the name of it - but I know it was near Paso Roebles. The owners had turned an old barn into a wine tasting facility, and in one of the rooms they refurbished with an old original Saloon, hand crafted in mahogany, from the 1800's. The Bar was in Boston, and was unused for half a century. Some rich dude liked it so much he refurbished it and had it shipped out to California. Here I was catching a buzz and letting my glass of wine catch oxygen in a similar looking local. Sitting there with my friends on a cold gray Ohio day warmed my cackles, along with the Paso Roebles selection I had from a 93 Pino Noir crop.

I got to do this more often, I thought to myself. You see, there are chunks, or pockets, or smears, of Ohio that touch in me things about living in California that made me fall in love with that place. It's like a love affair with a most fantastic woman you had in college. You never forget this women and every women after reminds you of the women you left behind. Behind in your past. Behind in another life. It may not be a huge thing that reminds you of her. A shape of a breast, a smile, a hair style, the tilt of her head, the color of her teeth. But it's something. California is that mistress for me now. The new love in my life is the fridged bitch-state of Ohio and its two main ice cold mistress', Columbus, and Cleveland. But the lady that got away, the one that slipped by my fingers and escaped my grasp -like the single life of a bachelor- is California, and it's retched alcoholic step sister, Los Angeles. From now on Ohio will remind me of her.

The Ohio Wine Bar has wine from the vineyards I visited during my life in California. This time I sit with my good friend and our spouses, in Ohio. Raf and his wife Dar are a welcome site for my weary wine drunken eyes. The spouses exchange stories and its good. The wine is good. The friends are good. Of course Erich can't be there cause he doesn't know we're in town. Ironically, he's the one that introduced us to this place before we were married.

I look out the window and see a street here in Ohio City that is reminiscent of Eastern Europe - old school. Ohio City architecture has that kinda character to it. Nice restaurants and the nice way to access the streets, are people friendly.

Adjacent from the wine bar is the West Side Market. A fresh produce place that's been there when my grandparents were kids. I used to get there, when I was a kid, with my mom on the bus. In the main building, surrounded by immigrants, I found myself lost for the first time. I remember little, but I remember the panic and all the strangers looming over me. I also don't remember how long I was lost but it was long enough to freak my mom out. When she found me I was surprised to find she was not mad at me. Relieved more like. I probably got a spanking, but I don't remember. I just remember taking a strawberry from my moms friends fruit stand (a man she's known for years, and always gave us free samples). I placed the plump strawberry in my mouth and bit a chunk outta it like it was an apple. For me it was the size of an apple. The man turned to me in anger and it was not the friendly grocer who we knew to give us free samples. He was a mad man with evil teeth and mean eyes. He yelled at me and I turned and ran. From that moment on I was lost in West Side Market.

That's all I remember.

Liz and I had an enormously restful evening before the big surprise party for Erich. A well deserved one for her. The twins and Chloe are taking their toll on her. She never gets outta the house, and never has any help. But now the kids are with my Mom in Cleveland, and we have a whole evening of friends and wine to look foreword to. And we do, and we are - all of the above.

The surprise party was a nice way to get together at King Wa and eat Chinese food, and see people you normally don't get to hang out with. Erich had about five factions of friends that normally don't all meet at the same time in the same place. Anymore than two factions appearing in the same space may cause a meltdown in the know three dimensions we live. There were Erich's College band buddies his Garage band buddies, and his current Jam buddies. Of course the thread that weaves through them all unchanged by time (mass expansion not with-holding), was our High School buddy Pat.

I knew some of these guys 'back in the day' and now its weird to see them all with children and spouses. They still rock out, but I think they do it in private now. Their long hair, replaced by the ravages of responsibility. I don't know if Erich was surprised or not - he was 'happy'. I hope to eat there again next time I'm up in Cleveland. The food was almost better than the China Dynasty - a best in Columbus Chinese restaurant's. A place I can't afford to eat, but worked as a bartender in college.

Afterward we went over to Erich's house and, not wanting to take too much advantage of my mother, we stayed long enough to have a couple glasses of wine from Australia - some bottles Erich had picked up on his honeymoon. Erich always has a nice supply of wine and beer for visitors. I am not talkin' cheap stuff either. Erich spares no expense and stocks his fridge with exotic beverages from various micro-brews. Raf and Dar stayed the night in the spare room that has been nicknamed "the fertility room", thanks to yours truly and his spouse. For there is a chance that the twins were conceived in that very room on the night before Erich and Stacy's wedding.

I guess we'll know how fertile the room was in about nine months.

But that as I like to say, is a story for another Blog!

The Starliner Diner

At the risk of The Stone Chicken Blog turning out to be a restaurant critique corner…

There’s a place I know, from my college days, where you can go to get really great breakfast food. It's a Cuban restaurant called ‘The Starliner Diner’. It's on Fishinger Rd. just before Old Hilliard, Ohio. It has one of the best breakfast burritos I ever had - on any coast! (pictured above - half eaten). I would recommend this place to anyone who loves great food and is on a budget.

The Breakfast Burrito is so good, that when I lived in Los Angeles I asked my Brother-in law to pick me up some when he came out to visit. I was in LA, a town full of great burrito places, and I had to go to Columbus, Ohio to get the best breakfast Burrito (Once you've had one, you'll understand).

My wife likes the Regular Lunch Vegetarian burrito better. Not me, give me the big old breakfast Burrito anytime! Now that we’re back in Ohio we started taking our kids there, making it a Sunday morning tradition.

(If this place had pressed coffee, It would be magical!)

Chip K.

Broken Windsheild

Some people asked me about the Trooper Windshield. Here is a "non-blog" photo post to show you what happens when an ice sheet hits your car going 65 on a highway... Enjoy!

Phoenix Urinal

In Lakewood Ohio there is a little cafe' called "The Phoenix Coffee House" (on Detroit Ave.). Inside the men’s room urinal was this sticker of G.W. and it made me think. You talk about free speech, the sentiments expressed on the urinal wall happened to be literally and metaphorically true - at the same time. I was peeing on him and in many ways, metaphorically, he is peeing on me. I wondered what he would think if he saw or heard this sticker was possibly on countless urinals across the country. I mean, how do you bring it up at the dinner table?

I went to 'The Phoenix' over the weekend because they had free wireless Internet access and I needed to access my e-mail away from the 'Tree-House' in Columbus. The bigger corporate place across the street wanted to charge $4.50 for every three hours. I'm sorry, but I’m already paying as much for my Grande' Soy Latte'.

When I' am in Lakewood, I'll give these guys my biz.

Good coffee too.

Chip K.


Coffee in any language is good.