This nerdy man really knows how to roll a burrito

Wisecracks aside, I have a lot to learn from people like Ben Kurtzman. My burrito-rolling skill set isn't what it should be.

I survived the Suffocator!

We conquered the mighty Wenatchee this weekend, a group of three dozen people and I. A few of us pitched in to get a CD with 60 photos of our trip, so I'll hopefully be able to replace the picture above, a generic image from the rafting company's site, with one of our group. Also look for a rafting photo album soon on my Facebook page. Trip highlights: playing with friendly dogs, eating S'mores, having Käsespätzle at Cafe Christa in Leavenworth, and experiencing a wave known as the Suffocator. Good times.

The new Guy Maddin film

Looks like a winner.

Oberlin does an alumnus proud

I know I'm always proud of my alma mater, but here's yet another reason to be.

In other news, I saw the new Werner Herzog documentary, in which the director -- whose droll, kindly, German-accented narration is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food for me -- makes good on his promise to present images of penguins quite different from those on display in March of the Penguins. Also, there's a big volcano and a woman who can fit in a carry-on bag.

Congrats, Barack

Well done.

A man and his (borrowed) pug

Know thine enemy

From a hot-off-the-presses New York Review of Books article:

[Cliff] Schecter, a freelance liberal commentator who contributes frequently to The Huffington Post, recounts, for the first time, a tale—confirmed to him, he writes, by three Arizona reporters—that in 1992, after Cindy McCain teased her husband about his thinning hair, McCain snapped at her, in front of the reporters and two staffers: "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c—." One wonders if on such occasions she reminds her husband who it was that made his political career possible. She has recently called the idea that her husband has a temper "a concoction."