Maxwell is back, y'all! It took eight years, but from first track I am down with this new album, the first in a trilogy. I'm still waiting for the day he and Sade make an album ...

I've been listening to a lot of music lately, and I have to admit that it's the iPod. Like Maxwell, it took me eight years to get on the stick about this thing, but now that I'm here, I'm enjoying the iPod life, all in all. Funny thing is that the day I bought it was when Michael Jackson died, so I imported my MJ music into iTunes and drove to Philly.

Oh, and Happy Fourth, everyone. I ended up back in Philly again for the second straight week.

Went to the Tritone/Bob & Barbara's Independence Day BBQ on Friday to see KeN, Beretta76 and Jukebox Zeros play. Figured this would be the last time we'd really get to see everyone together before Rosemary and I officially stop being Philadelphians. Ate a lot of bad food that day (the BBQ was hockey-puck burgers and hot dogs ... the only really good food was the jalapeno cornbread), drank a lot of specials (PBR and a shot of Jim Beam), chatted up my friends and rocked the fuck out. I'd never spent that much time in B&B's. Then afterward we rolled down South Street to Sex Dwarf and hung out there for a little bit before the day took its toll and we had to sleep. It was nice to see Marilyn and Rob, and I got some real dancing and mingling on the floor.

Saturday was busy in a low-key kind of way. Rosemary and I took my parents to Neshaminy Mall, which they had yet to visit. We all had a day at the movies: they saw "Transformers" and we saw "The Hangover." And my parents recognized Rosemary's dad and his giant honkin' closeup! "Hangover" was pretty good, and I'm glad Zack Galifinakis is getting more play these days. Rosemary was cracking up the whole time, so good for her. It also made me realize I wouldn't want my wedding to look anything like Doug's, though the wedding singer was funny in a white-guys-riffing-on-hip-hop-for-an-easy-laugh kind of way.

Rosemary's a big fan of Las Vegas, so we'll get there one of these days. Perhaps another big trip out West that starts in Vegas, then a drive to LA for abinka, my ESPN friends and Disneyland?

Also got some good finds in the mall: My parents got some new phones from Sears, I got a new polo shirt, and Rosemary cleaned up at Lane Bryant with a whole passel of clothes (and savings).

We had dinner with Rosemary's parents, and played with the dog, before spending the night in and watching "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" as my stomach rebelled against me and my parade of bad meat and booze. People like that Billie Piper, and I can see why. The show itself is pretty good, too, and it indulges Rosemary's fantasy of being a high-price call girl, so how can I not like it?

Sunday I was back to CT for work that night after watching Roger Federer take a 2-1 set lead over Andy Roddick and knowing Fed would take the match. It still took them about two hours, but he did it.

And now I'm back to the grind of packing and preparing to move - 18 days and counting. Yesterday I bought a few more boxes, cleaned out the car, threw a bunch of other things out, changed the cable and electric service. Today I take a bunch of CDs and DVDs to the recycler in Cromwell, and a co-worker's having a birthday lunch in West Hartford, and I may go see Tish in Easthampton, MA for a late-lunch hangout. Oh, and I have to get to bed by 10 because I'm working at 6 a.m. tomorrow. Woo hoo!

Go me!

And now, your moment of zen:

After throwing a bunch of things out, I decided to go through the giant batch of letters I'd saved. During high school especially, I was into writing letters, and I saved pretty much every letter someone wrote me.

This is what we did before e-mail, blogs and Facebook? It used to be this much work to keep in touch with people?

A lot of them are from people I don't even know anymore, whose names are vague and I no longer can picture what they looked like. Even if I had a picture of them, I likely wouldn't know who they were.

Some highlights in corrspondence over the last 15 years of my life:

+My friend Tom and I plotting out a Batman storyline that would be the return of Barbara Gordon as Batgirl. Given what the DC Comics folks have done with Batgirl since 1995, it probably won't work now.

+A lot of folks apologize for not writing me back sooner.

+A librarian at the local library wrote me a letter after she left. She can't believe I turned 15. She and her husband didn't like their time in Philly, so they were planning to move. I last heard from her in '98 when I found her and her husband working at the University of Iowa.

+This woman I used to have a crush on who worked at a comic book store in downtown Philly. She was great with crafts and darn cute. Too bad she was 10 years older than me. We saw "Escape from L.A."

+Another friend from high school theater who cheers me for getting over this girl we both knew, saying "you can do better than that." Once I went to Villanova to see her in a production of "The Wiz." Yes, an all-white production of "The Wiz" at Villanova aka Vanilla-nova because it's so white. It was ... surreal.

+A friend attending Johns Hopkins asks me, in 1997: "Do you have e-mail? If you do, would you send me your address? It is so much easier and faster than regular mail. I must check my e-mail about 20 times already." She also thanked me for asking her to be my prom date (that's right, I had the balls to ask a college girl to go back to my prom), but she couldn't make it and was sure I'd have lots of options. If I had to choose between her and whom I did take to my junior prom, I'd have picked her. She also told me a bit about college and how it's more fun that high school. "The guys, of course, can be very big jerks. Please don't ever turn into a jerk, OK? (I know you won't.)"

+A letter from another high school theater girl who'd graduated. We had one year together since I was a freshman when she was a senior, but we used to call each other "life-mate." Weird, huh?

+Postcard from 1997: "Did you catch 'Batman and Robin'? I liked it, although others have said that they did not. But how can you argue with Arnold, Uma and Alicia in a Batman film!"

+Only a handful of letters are from people I still really know.

+A girl I met on a college recruiting bus trip recommended that I read "Tom Jones." I did, years later.

+A letter from a priest at my high school at the close of freshman year. Unfortunately, he was caught up in a molestation scandal, pleaded no contest and was sentenced to prison. He used to take kids on skiing trips (including Switzerland), and one time he took a friend and me to see the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music. It still saddens me to this day.

+My teacher in middle school's mentally gifted students program, was one of the many second mothers in my life. She called me "weird stranger ... huge heart." We stayed in touch even after I left middle school, all the way through college, and once in high school she and her husband picked up my parents to go see me lead in "Fiddler on the Roof."

+Another girl from the previously mentioned college recruiting trip told me to take my girlfriend to see "Titanic." I've still never seen that movie, and I intend on keeping it that way. We hung out one time when she visited Boston while I was in college.

+A letter in 1998 from Arlen Specter's then-speechwriter who, as a Princeton alum, chided me for choosing "Brand X" at Harvard.

+A series of letters from someone I met at a friend's high school graduation party. We had this very weird, super-tight connection from the get-go, and I talked her through how much she missed her dad, who'd died of cancer before she graduated.

+Another letter fulfilled one of the most awesome things I ever dared someone to do. It's so awesome I can't say what it was, except that it likely made the baby Jesus in the Christmas stamps cry.

+A birthday card from my parents for my 18th birthday, my first year in college. It had a bunch of smiley faces on it, and my brother drew a muscle dude under one face and called it "Mr. Happy Diesel."

+Letters from peopel I had met online back in my chat room and ICQ days, including a girl in Philly that I used to be friends with, a Chinese girl living in Wales, and someone in Toronto. The Philly girl sent me a friendship bracelet from the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York, and she said not to let "stupid girls" get me down. "Have you ever wondered maybe it's that they are threatened by your intelligence and they know you are so cute they don't want to take any chances of really falling for you 'cause you're such a nice and sweet guy they don't want to chance it? I would, damn it!!! They're losers!!!"

+An ex-girlfriend I met in the same chat room, who used to draw pictures in the margins, had a girlfriend nicknamed "Fur Shorts" and a tiny dachsund puppy in Houston.

+An ex-boss from a college job really loved giving me cards and things. I think this happens when you're the young guyu in an office full of women. I was the office son!

+Mail from comics artist Missy Kulik, whom I met at the Small Press Expo in 2001. She draws tons of cute comics.

+Rob and Alison's wedding announcement. That was a fun wedding, two weeks before Christmas in a greenhouse full of roses. And the procession was to "All You Need Is Love," and they walked out to the theme from "Star Wars."

+And about 8 billion cards from Rosemary. Yes, I've kept all of them. Sometimes I have a heart.

I was going to write about how awful the BET Awards was with its fake-ass tribute to Michael Jackson, but DJ Crystal Clear did it for me on Forces of Geek. Enjoy!

This bit from the latest Savage Love column really speaks to me and my opinion that we're not made for sexual monogamy, despite how much it's forced down our throats as the one true way:

At the bottom of all these sex scandals—Sanford, Ensign, Spitzer, et al.—is our unnatural fixation on monogamy. Human beings—male or female—aren’t wired to be sexually monogamous, and the feigned shock with which we’re required to greet each new revelation of infidelity on the part of an elected official, a reality-show star, or a sports figure would be comical if the costs weren’t so great. Elevating monogamy over all else—insisting that it, and it alone, is the sole measure of love and devotion—destroys countless marriages, families, and careers.

Which is not to say that people shouldn’t honor their commitments or that there aren’t folks out there capable of remaining monogamous over the five-decade course of a marriage or that the hypocrisy of assholes like Sanford—who called on President Clinton to resign during Monicagate—isn’t worthy of censure. But think of all the people who’ve cheated and gotten caught. Now think about all the people who’ve cheated and gotten away with it. Our idealized notions about sex—within marriage and without—are at war with who and what we are. Sex is powerful; relationships are fragile. Why on earth do we insist on pitting them against each other?

And Maureen Dowd and I finally found something to agree about. If you're a politician's wife who is cheated on and the world finds out about it, basically, don't act like a crazy bitch or a stoic doormat. Stay out of the media, cut your losses or chalk it up, and move on. And, for God's sake, don't bring the children into it. My favorite parts:

Even if you’re a clever, competent woman, you risk sounding like a stereotypical harridan if you use the kids as a bludgeon and tell the press, as Jenny did: “You would think that a father who didn’t have contact with his children, if he wanted those children, he would toe the line a little bit.” When kids are involved, it’s best to chill when dishing out revenge. ...


High-powered women like Hillary, Elizabeth and Jenny who give up their careers to focus on their husbands’ ambitions feel doubly betrayed. But it’s not your husband’s fault if you sacrifice more for the relationship than he does. Like an investor in a down market, you took a risk without a guarantee it would pay off. If you make your husband your career and you lose your husband, you lose your career, too.

What, it's July?

My move to the Love Grotto in West Hartford is in 27 days.

Packing is going along. Much of it so far has been dropping dead weight and stuff I no longer want. And importing a billion CDs into iTunes and getting rid of them. I'll probably pack up the bedroom last since I don't see that being so much effort, especially since the movers said I can leave the drawers full in my dresser. At least I'll have the keys to the new place a day before the movers come, so I'll spend that whole day carting stuff back and forth.

But this past weekend I took off from packing and went to Philly for what essentially was a do-nothing weekend. Exactly what I needed, getting in some major relaxation time with Rosemary, hang with the parents, see the stone-stupid "Transformers" sequel with my brother (2 1/2 hours of that incoherent mess, and I still can't tell you what happened in it other than dumb jokes, robots and shit blowing up), walk the dog, eat at Sweet Lucy's BBQ.

I also met up with a college friend that I haven't seen in seven years. We used to be in a spoken word group together, saving the world with poetry. In this photo, she's second from the right. Now she's in grad school, finishing up some master's stuff at Penn before heading back to California after spending five years as a community organizer. So we met, each of us a bit older, she considerably thinner and married. It's always funny how my college friends and I commiserate about our times at Harvard so much; the social awkwardness, the buttoned-up conservative liberalism, lack of dating or variety in career options (we didn't want to be doctors, lawyers or business people).

So now I have been squeezing in more packing, because it looks like I'll go back to Philly again this weekend. Hit the road Thursday, go to the Tritone/Bob & Barbara's Independence Day BBQ and Sex Dwarf on Friday, cold hard chillin' Saturday and back to CT on Sunday. My godmother in New York might be doing a boat party, but I'm not sure about all that back-and-forth driving, and may just see her later in the summer. The big thing about this trip down is that Tish might come along. We'll still hashing out details, but so far it looks a go.

Ok, back to packing and all that jazz.

Michael? Michael. Michael. Michael?!?

Really? Michael Jackson is dead?

Just, wow.

I'm not shocked or saddened, but bewildered. I grew up with "Thriller" and "Off the Wall" and "Bad" and "Dangerous," had the glitter glove, everything. He wasn't even a human being by the end. He was like a unicorn, a leprechaun or something. A man like Michael Jackson isn't supposed to just die like a man dies; he's supposed to vanish into thin air or take an Elven ship to the Undying Lands.

Jackson was such an angering, weird mash of absolutely show-stopper and fragile, depressive, never-convicted-but-apparently-so child molester. We never knew his whole story, and we never might, but I think it's a miracle if anyone who grew up the way he did and didn't turn out thoroughly fucked in the head.

But he made "Thriller." There won't be a record like that again, and we won't see someone like him again. Tish and I were talking about music at the time of "Thriller"'s release, and it was such an interesting time and confluence of style. You have Michael, who grew up in the James Brown-Jackie Wilson R&B mold, matured into disco, and then brought in rock and pop with a producer, Quincy Jones, who was known at the time only as a jazz arranger. Listen to "Billie Jean": The beat and bass are disco, the synths are pop, the guitars are R&B, and the horns are jazz - to say nothing of Michael's voice, which was all of those styles into one.

Michael Jackson made "Thriller," goddammit. No one sells 40 million copies any more. Do you understand what came out of that record? "Billie Jean," "Beat It," "P.Y.T.," "Human Nature," "The Lady In My Life" and the title track, the greatest music video of all time. People even liked the lame "The Girl Is Mine" with Paul McCartney.

And before I hear any more "he was just a man" celebrity death backlash, just remember what he had accomplished - his massive fame and his equally massive ignominy. The breaker of racial barriers as a black kid in the public eye that a whole generation grew up with, among the first black kids in the teen idol mags, the first black artist on MTV, and then a gigantic, worldwide superstar the likes of which we may never see again. He built MTV, he built the music business as we knew it, and my generation of pop artists are all writing checks out of his bank. Remember all of that, and that when we die, we can hope for a room of people to talk of us. Jackson has the world talking of him. And he earned it.

The King of Pop is dead. He's on no pedestal for me but for the one in my record collection, and that's good enough for me.

OK, I have totally fallen off the face of the earth!

What the hell have I been up to? Last week was a bloody mess of discombobulation. Packing all day, working all night, sleeping very little and doing it all over again. My shifts have been moving around, so I don't know when to sleep, but it's all good.

Last week's days off were good, though. Friday I got some good sleep in, and ate myself to death with Five guys for lunch and Chinese for dinner, and an entire six-pack for the night while watching "Superbad" and "The Prestige."

Saturday I saw "Drag Me To Hell" with Tish and her friend Art. Sam Raimi still can put on a shocker, though here he relies more on music/fright cues than gore, and lots of vomit stuff. Definitely had some creepy stuff to it, but not a straight-up scary movie. More like a meditation of a good old-fashioned ghost/curse story. Had another delicious, delicious dinner at the Apollo Grill.

I spent Saturday night checking out '80s electro-dance party Shag Frenzy and the industrial-fetish sister party Outre, both of them at The Warehouse in Hartford. All in all I had a good time, and there was no cover. Dance dance dance.

After last week's feeling of slumpy non-accomplishment, this week I decided to redouble fully recharged and kick some butt. And I did! Some very good wins at work this week.

Now I'm back in Philadelphia, hanging out with my dad watching "The Young and the Restless" and about to meet a college friend for coffee. Maybe I'll make a comic book store run, and then hang with Rosemary at a happy hour if I feel like it. Though I may just go back and hang out with my dad since mom's away at Atlantic City with my grandmother and uncle.

Enjoy your weekend, folks!

Andy Dick dressed up as Ronald McDonald at a PETA protest of McD's:

Late night of can't-sleep + early-morning road work right outside my window = awful start to a day off.

But it's still a day off. Like orgasms, there aren't really any bad ones.

I am run down! Out of sorts at home and at work. When home, I've been packing/trashing/organizing. At work I've been planning/headaching/quasi-supervising/BottomLine redesign training. My boss told me to take more breaks and find some ways to simplify and turn the brain off. Maybe I should go to the movies today.

It looks like no Coney Island Mermaid Parade for me Saturday with all this rain about. Driving two hours to stand in the rain all day doesn't sound like a good time, though I normally would do that. But with the rain, I won't be able to shoot any photos.

My friend Kim invited me to go with her to see Harry and the Potters if I hit up New York. They might be too much geeky preciousness for me.

And now for a story of customer service fail: I was awarded a special bonus at work back at the end of January, and I used part of the money to order an iPod from this gift certificate company. Only I never received it. I called them several times over the past few months since I ordered it in February, and no one ever gave me a straight answer. They promised to call back with an order number and some info, which they didn't. And the merchandise department was always in a meeting. Eventually I just told them to give me a gift card to Best Buy instead since no one can tell me where the iPod is. I call again next week, and there's only an automated message saying they're having trouble sending out gift cards.

So I got the company HR on the case, since this company probably doesn't want to lose ESPN as a client, right? After hunting them down for several more weeks, the HR person got an answer this week. They shipped the iPod in February via FedEx, here's the tracking number. What the fuck?!?

Check the tracking number. The iPod was shipped to my place, yet I don't have an iPod in my possession. I call FedEx, and they tell me that it was dropped off in the foyer of my apartment because no signature was required. Yep. FYOOR-EE-US.

But I'm OK. Iran's on fire, North Korea is acting up, some of my dearest friends are going through the wringer, Jon and Kate might be separating, Speidi's run amok, Obama's trying to fix the health care system and the financial system at the same time, a song called "Birthday Sex" is heating up the radiowaves, and "I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!" is on about four nights a week.

But ...

Look ...

Bobama says it'll be OK.

The Coney Island Mermaid Parade is this weekend in New York?

Should I go?

I relaxed for a few hours Saturday before going out to U Party.

It moved to this gay club in New Haven, Partners Cafe. The dance floor was big enough, had a stage and walls of mirrors, but no ventilation. Total hot box!

I met up with this girl Sarah, whom I met at the U Party in April, was there to celebrate her birthday, so I hung out with her and her friends. In honor of Sarah's birthday I wore my leather pants, which were PERFECT for how hot it was in there.

Turnout was low - with school out, I guess it's to be expected - but we had a good time. The DJs played too much Depeche Mode, though. Also danced my ass off with this tall Romanian girl who was built like a tennis player. She wants me to go dance with her at this '80s dance night some 75 miles away in Stamford - shyeah, right.

We'll see. I do like my fun. But if I'm gonna travel that far, maybe I should just spend Friday night in New York catching some burlesque at the Slipper Room, or get a woman friend to go with me to one of my college friend Peter-Charles' shindigs?

Feh. Chances are I'll stay home and go see a movie with Tish - 'cause that's how I roll :)

OK, I got my fun.

I missed out on a birthday party for someone I know at work, but Friday night I just didn't much feel like going out and was happy getting some stuff done at home.

Saturday was all kinds of nuts. Monster Mania was cool, even though it was in CT. I had no idea that many nerds were here, but I saw them. Oh, I saw them. And smelled them. And it reminded me that while I'm a big geek, I look put together in the real world. And I really lucked out in finding Rosemary so that I am dating a good-looking, grown-up geek; they're hard to find!

Meeting Bruce Campbell was cool. I heard that at the real Monster Mania in Cherry Hill, NJ, the line was outside the hotel and onto Route 70. After waiting in line for an hour or so, Tish and I got into the little room where he sat, signing away. Talked with him for a few minutes, and I got a photo signed for Rosemary.

"Say hi to your gal," Bruce said. "Your gal-pal." That's right, Rosemary, Bruce says hi.



He has a firm handshake, as expected. He wasn't doing posed photos, so that's why the shots look all "documentary-style." And Tish didn't get her boob signed. Oh well.

I had the most fun at Monster Mania watching Tish reconnect with her horror movie roots, talking to guys and finding her classic movies such as "The Frozen Dead." And the Q&A with Sid Haig was hilarious, enlightening and funny. Wonderful man.

We were in the main room for a hot minute. This show was big because it had reunions of the casts from the first "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "The Evil Dead." Derek Mears, the new Jason, was a HUGE, powerful-looking sort. Saw Heather Langenkamp, who still looks pretty much the same, just mid-40s, though I didn't get to tell her how much I used to watch "Just the Ten of Us" (with it's quintessentially '80s opening sequence). Charles Fleischer and Chris Sarandon are not aging well. I missed Ricou Browning, who played the Creature from the Black Lagoon,and we missed Robert Englund, but that's OK. I was there really to see Bruce, and I got what I came for. Tish and I bagged on the rest of the day after seeing Sid Haig, even though we wanted to see the Q&A's with the "Evil Dead" girls and Bruce Campbell. We were hungry and tired from standing in line, so we had a lovely sushi dinner in Southington.

I gawked at a lot of cool stuff at the dealer tables. This one guy, Frankie, was crazy - shaved head, swilling a can of Bud. He had all kinds of stuff: Conan's helmet, Captain America's shield, a Batman katana sword, Link's sword from "Legend of Zelda."

But I seriously considered buying the freaking Sword of Omens from "Thundercats" that he had. Lion-O's sword, just chillin'! Holy shit!* I also looked hard at a Freddy Kreuger glove that really worked, with real, fucking sharp knives. But then I figured, what would I have these things for? Yes, this nerd's gone practical. But I could have made one kick-ass Lion-O costume.

Otherwise, I felt inundated with stuff. Lots of cool things to look at and think about, but so little I really wanted to own. Yeah, it's gotten to this point. Even the belts made of bullets could make me bite, nor the cool T-shirts and everything. Bought some magnets for the fridge in the new place, and a cameo pin for Rosemary.

But Frankie did say he would send me some batarangs when he gets his next shipment. Those I totally will buy.





*Did anyone else ever pick up on the Freudian messages at work in "Thundercats"? Lion-O was this man-child with this powerful magic sword handed down to him. His father's ghost would guide him and warn him not to lose the sword, and another crusty old man kept trying to steal it. The sword was magic, granting him ESP and shit. And whenever he was in trouble, he'd fling it around, and it grew and grew until it shot out a signal for his friends to help him. Yeah.

I am in need of some naughty fun.

Anybody got any ideas for tonight? I don't want to spend the night packing and downloading CDs into iTunes. I'll save the trip to S&M chateau La Domaine until when Rosemary moves here.

I have some fun planned for Saturday.

The Monster Mania convention is branching out from its usual Cherry Hill, NJ spot and rolling into Hartford this weekend. All kinds of folks will be there, including Bruce Campbell! I'm gonna meet him tomorrow. Tish and I are gonna go - maybe Bruce will sign her boob?

I'm not sure about going tonight, though a screening of "The Evil Dead" with all the women from the cast doing live commentary sounds fun. There's a 25th anniversary reunion of the original "A Nightmare on Elm Street." Robert Englund, John Saxon, Heather Langenkamp ... everybody but Johnny Depp will be there. I can shake hands with the man who was the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I just hope there are enough freaks in their costumed finery to shoot photos of, too.

And after Monster Mania, I'm off to New Haven to U Party. My friend Sarah will be there celebrating her birthday, so I'll have to get my spanking/punching arm ready. Definitely could use some dancing!

OK! Back to packing and other chores! I've made a list, and I'm crossing shit off it!

The moving fun continues. Since I am getting rid of a bunch of things, I decided to try to recycle as much as possible. So today I took my old desktopand a bunch of unused electronics to a recycling center in Cromwell, then off to another recycler with a box of books. I probably can take another box or two of books, I have so many.

The bookshelves are nearly empty. My desk is bare. The action figures are off the shelf and in boxes already. Gotta take down all the photos on the kitchen wall.

And then there are the roughly 300 CDs to pack. Put them all in a box, and realized that I don't want to move all this stuff. So I'm importing a lot of the CDs into iTunes.

It's funny to go through all this music. Coming of music-buying age in the mid-'90s, I have an overabundance of "Alternative Nation" stuff from groups that aren't around any more such as Luscious Jackson and Cibo Matto. Also downloading one-off R&B/neo-soul records such as Lina and Olu.

While doing this, I've been checking up on a few of these artists that I haven't played in a long time, or people with one CD and then I never heard from them again.

One of them is Lamya. Remember her? Probably not. But if you watched a lot of VH1 around summer 2002, maybe you saw this video for her Bjork-sounding "Empires." The world love a hot Omani-British princess banging on a drum. I liked this song a lot, and others from the disc, especially "Black Mona Lisa."

So what happened to her? She died, this past January. Heart attack. She'd been working on her second album. Damn.

Downloading my Hole CDs now. Courtney Love is still alive, somehow.

A co-worker and I saw "Up" yesterday. Why not? It's Pixar. Even movies of theirs I don't much care for ("Finding Nemo"), they still are good.

But within the last few years, Pixar is marrying its fairy-tale sensibilities to affecting psychology. The more out-there the concept, the closer to home the drama gets.

And that's "Up." Couldn't get more bizarre - an old man and a chubby Asian-American scout in a floating house to South America, dogs with collars that translate their thoughts. Shit, seeing an old man carry out the physical feats of strength and agility you will see in this movie are crazy enough.

But the pacing, plotting, simple directing and score are bang-up solid, giving us Beckett-like comedic dialogue, tear-jerker happenings of everyday life, broad-gags-turned-smart (the "talking dogs" are cleverly done), and strong action. It's sentimental without being cloying, simple without being simplistic. A bizarrely whimsical, entertainingly sophisticated movie that leaves a lump in your throat several times over. And the 3D is wonderful: no flying-at-the-screen gimmicks here, only breathtaking depth and life to every frame.

If anything, "Up" is a tale of love and grief, its moral simple and beautiful: Love invites grief. Hang on to grief, and it invites mania. Let go of grief, and new adventures can begin. And that's a good fairy-tale lesson for anyone to hear.

They finally posted the photo of the Phillies' visit to the White House on the WH photog Flickr.

I got the acceptance letter for the apartment in the mail yesterday.

I now know my new address.

And the property manager wrote "Marvin and Rosemary" in the salutation.

My current apartment sent their letters acknowledging the end of my lease.

The action figures are packed.

It's happening. It's really happening ...

We got the place at Westgate Apartments!

Success! Huzzah! We have a place to live!

I got the call yesterday. And thanks to working for a preferred employer, there's no security deposit AND the leasing agent sneaked us into their latest promotion so we get the first month rent-free.

That's $3,000 back in our pockets. We think we'll take a grand for a living room set and maybe a Wii.

The lease is on its way to Rosemary for her to sign, and then it'll be waiting for me when I move in July 28. I'll drive to Philly on the 29th, and the next day we're outta the City of Brotherly Love. I'll still have the 31st to finish up things at my place in Bristol, and then it's bliss.

So, maybe we throw a get-together for Rosemary's last night in Philly?

So looking forward to this! On the phone Rosemary and I discussed walking down to West Hartford Center and catching dinner and a movie our first night there. And then we realized that for groceries we have Stop and Shop and Whole Foods within walking distance, and Trader Joe's a short drive away. We'll go for walks every day, Rosemary will use the apartment complex's pool, find a local restaurant to eat in once a week. Yes!

We have to find a credit union for a joint account, look for furniture, find Rosemary a gym, figure out what goes into storage, figure out how we'll design the place, get Coffy a new cage, all of that. It's gonna take a while - as soon as we move in, I'm off to Tampa for NABJ and then Rosemary's back to Philly for business - but that's half the fun.

Woo hoo!