Every now and then (read: every day), things pop up in life that defy rationality. Today, it's this crap with Dunkin' Donuts and Rachael Ray.

I mean, really?

Really?

Are you fucking kidding me?

My leg has to be getting pulled. This is a ploy to get me to read an article about how the U.S. dollar is tanking; or how the reason gas is so expensive is because Dick Cheney is a collector of rare vintage oil; or the goddamn War; or even, even, that Ashlee Simpson married that bass player from that terrible band and whose offspring will be responsible for the End Of All Music Forever.

Sadly, it's none of those things. Because in this country of ours it's not enough to threaten a boycott of Dunkin' Donuts for their nearly adequate breakfast sandwiches and godawful coffee. No, one must make specious connections between a black on white paisley scarf and Yassir Arafat's choice of headgear.

To say nothing of the unapologetic spinelessness of Dunkin' Donuts that would make a jellyfish blush. But I don't expect much out of my multi-national conglomerates, so I can live with that.

To put a finer point on it, Michelle Malkin is a moron. While Dunkin' Donuts deserves the Cowardly Lion's share of blame for capitulating to this sheer nonsense, I must say that anyone who— for example— defends the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II has to be a outright asshat (apologies to FDR, but that's the way it goes down). She strikes me as the type of person who never outgrew high school (and/or a similar social construct) and is in constant need of some sort of drama to have her existence validated. Or perhaps I'm giving her too much credit. Maybe she just wants to cash in with the big boys: Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Ann Coulter-wannabe Debbie Schlussel...?

Honestly, lady, sophistry is not something to be merely dabbled in. You can't just say Rachael Ray made a poor fashion statement by possibly unwittingly showing support for terrorists. You could do so much more. I mean, why stop there? Why not bring in some questionable evidence to support the conspiracy between the Vast Left Wing Media Conspiracy and fucking Al Qaeda? It's fairly common knowledge that Osama bin Laden loves her Middle Eastern Chicken Pot and Butter-Nut Couscous (the secret's in the extra virgin olive oil).

Why don't you go work on that for a few days and get back to me, eh Michelle? I can wait. I've got as much time as you do (which is a lot, clearly).

Bleh... It's not worth getting angry over cartoon characters.

I'll be nice.



Cheers,
Henry

P.S. ...

Middle Eastern Chicken Pot and Butter-Nut Couscous

Ingredients

* 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (EVOO), eyeball it
* 1 1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs, chopped into bite-sized pieces
* 1 onion, thinly sliced
* 3 cloves garlic, grated or chopped
* 1 cup shredded carrots
* 1 fresh bay leaf
* 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
* 1 teaspoon ground cumin
* 1 teaspoon coriander
* Pinch ground cinnamon
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper
* 3/4 cup chopped dried fruits - pick 1 or combine: figs, pitted dates, apricots, sultanas
* 1 lemon, zested and juiced
* 3/4 cup pitted mixed olives, chopped
* 4 cups chicken stock, divided
* 2 tablespoons butter
* 3 tablespoons pine nuts
* 1/4 cup slivered or sliced almonds
* 1 1/2 cups couscous
* Handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Preparation
Heat the EVOO in a deep skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil ripples add the chicken and brown 3-4 minutes on each side. Add the onions, garlic, carrots, bay leaf and season with spices, salt and pepper, cook 5-6 minutes. Stir the fruits into the chicken and vegetables, add the zest of the lemon, olives and 2 1/2 cups of stock. Reduce heat to low and simmer 10 minutes more. Sprinkle with lemon juice and turn off heat. Remove bay leaf.

While chicken simmers, melt butter in a sauce pot over medium heat. Add nuts and lightly toast for a couple of minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups stock and bring up to a boil then stir in couscous. Cover and let stand 5 minutes.

Serve chicken over couscous, or vice versa, and garnish with parsley.

If last night's Hayburner show wasn't enough, here's some more action this week in the Boston environs:

Thursday: Some more good buddies of ours are calling it a day. Our dear friends The Silver Lining are performing what will probably be their last show ("probably" because they're going on indefinite hiatus and may play again here and there). Thankfully, it's nothing acrimonious (like these things tend to be)... Anna and Matt have an adorable 7-month old to tend to, and judging by their music collection he's going to be the coolest little tot ever. They've got some new songs that are available for download on their MySpace page, and their just-finished second record will be available at this show for free. Anyhoo... Matt, Anna, Greg, Doug, and Ted, we love you guys and wish you the best.

How this show will help save the puppies: This show is a fundraiser for the MSPCA Natural Disaster Relief Fund.

(18+, $10 / The Middle East Upstairs, 472-480 Mass Ave, Cambridge.. w. The Rudds, The Gobshites, Andrea Gillis)

Friday: The Rationales release their CD The Going and the Gone at TT's. I've had the CD for a couple of weeks, actually, and while I haven't listened to it yet (like the true lazy-ass that I am), I have seen them in action live and they're quite excellent. You can buy tickets for it here on Ticketweb.

How this show will help save the puppies: Hugh may not go to this show.

(18+, $10 / TT the Bear's Place, 10 Brookline Street, Cambridge.. w. AM Stereo, Eric Salt & the Electric City, The Gentlemen)

It'll be nice to get out again at any rate, it's been dog's ears since I've had a week of going to shows (and not playing them). I was dealing with a pretty bad ear infection last week (by "pretty bad" I mean "paaaaaaaaaaaaaainful") and was out of commission for a few days. To pass the time between ibuprofen induced comas I saw a ton of movies and episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and played copious amounts of Mario Kart 64 (had my ass handed to me by Jen more times than I care to mention). Let it be known that Alfred Hitchcock is The Man, even if he has been dead for the last 28 years (or has he?). Can't remember if I mentioned this before and I'm too lazy to check, but Jen got this 4-DVD set with a shit ton of the older Hitchcock movies. The guy was so good.

Oh, and the new Indiana Jones movie is fucking awesome. I don't care what anybody says because honestly, anyone who chooses to debate the finer points of how realistic or not this movie is misses the point completely. I'd say it's better than Temple of Doom, even. I'll go no further, as to avoid spoilers. Just don't go in expecting Citizen Kane or The Unbearable Lightness of Being and you'll be fine. Promise. You don't even have to like George Lucas to like it (personally, I think the man's a hack... a rich hack, yes, but a hack nonetheless).

Anyway, I'm feeling much better now thankyouverymuch, and I've continued to plow through our tour footage. We'll have a little movie for ya'll to watch in no time... and finally the world will witness our wacky antics (like that time I woke Ross up when he was sound asleep... how wacky). I know I sound like a broken record by now, but I really miss touring. In order to placate me, we're doing a little romp around the Northeast corridor in July and are working on a trip through I-90 in September. Might have something delicious happening in November, but it's too early to tell. I hope this all happens. My job's starting to kill me.

Cheers,
Henry

Currently listening : All Things Must Pass By George Harrison Release date: 1990-10-25

I wanted to mention photos from last week's T.T.'s gig are up on our flickr page. These wonderful shots were taken by the even more wonderful Mick Murray who also did our album shoot.

Henry's working on a little road movie about the tour. It's coming along nicely and we'll promise to get those up on YouTube as soon as we can.

More is in the works. Coming up are two hometown gigs. The first is Rock The Runway, a fashion and rock show at the Middle East Down on June 12 followed by our first gig at Church on June 27 with our great pals Johnny Nobody from Buffalo, NY! This night also happens to be the CD release for The Lights Out too!

Check out the details for our mini-tour in July for Philly, NYC, and Worcester as well!

Cheers,

Jen

--

P.S. Hello, it's Henry jumping on this thang.. Also worth mentioning:

Tonight: While there are many good shows going on tonight, I have to go with this one. After months and months of rehearsal, preparation, and presumably a lot of beer Hayburner is ready to hit the town. Hugh Wyman, who produced Leave Your Light On and the upcoming Mesmerines record, is in the band.

How this show will help save the puppies: Hugh is currently holding a collie puppy hostage, and if you come to the show he will not feed it to his much larger dog.

(21+, $7 / O'Brien's Pub, 3 Harvard Ave, Allston.. w. The Bludlows, Dark Martini And The Dirty Olives)

I spent most of last night digging through 3 or 4 hours of tour footage. Tedious, but worth it. Particularly when you wind up with cinematic gems like this:



Case in point, we're working on making this whole tour thing happen again (and again and again). We're hitting some cities up this summer up here in the Northeast (including this Friday at TT's in Cambridge). And while I can't make any definite statements on the matter (though, I could certainly lie about it!), we'll hopefully do some more serious traveling come the Fall.

In the meantime there's plenty for you to do to keep yourself busy. Pleeeeeeeentyyyy...

For starters, if you missed our interview with Phil on The Dweezil Show (on WMFO), you can listen to it as a streaming mp3 over here. We go quite a bit into working on the songs for the album and we share a few tour stories. And, whenever we get a chance, take Ross down a peg or two. That's what he gets for being nice to me; sometimes. If talking's not your thing (lord knows it ain't mine), there's a nice acoustic version of The Last Time that Jen did. It's at the beginning of Part 2, if you must know.

Nächstes, a cool docu featuring an equally cool chick who calls herself The Mixtress features Release at the beginning. Release is that song off Leave Your Light On we don't play at shows merely to let you know who is the boss of you (Us). Anyhoo, the short documentary placed high at the 2008 International Documentary Challenge and took the Best Soundtrack prize, too. Like everything on the planet (including Iron Man, which I saw last week) it's on YouTube. I've posted it below, so.. watch it!

Gah... I've had a headache on the left side of my face, just above my eye, for the last three days. I'm guessing it's a sinus infection of some sort (yum). I'm not a doctor though. So I think I'll do the next best thing and open the floor to comments so that You, the readers, may accurately determine my diagnosis. Who knows, if this works out we could probably solve this whole health care issue in one fell swoop.

Cheers,
Henry

The lot of us went to grab a bite to eat yesterday to celebrate Jen's birthday, then proceeded to dig into a case of beer at home and play a hell of a lot of Uno.

Yes, that's right. Uno. We only really played maybe two games, but it took for-fucking-ever to finish.

We took a look at some of the tour video as well... I can't believe some of the stuff we caught on film haha... We'll get all that up for you guys in some form soon.

Until then, here's a little video about how our new t-shirts are made. And send Jen some birthday wishes, eh?

Cheers,
Henry