In 1981, I had a commemorative coin minted to celebrate the fifth anniversary of my marriage to Irene Vartanoff. I was working for Psychology Today magazine at the time, where catalogs would continually arrive from manufacturers of merchandising giveaways—key rings, belt buckles, T-shirts, etc.—that could be personalized. And it struck me—why should companies have all the fun?

So I ordered a batch of metal coins incorporating our names, the dates we’d been married, and—here’s the part that tickled me the most—

… the words LEGAL AND TENDER, a description of our marital status that’s also an allusion to the phrase LEGAL TENDER which appears on U.S. currency.

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When we learned a few months back that the National Gallery of Art would be hosting a massive exhibit on the Pre-Raphaelites, we decided that we’d visit there on my birthday. And when Tim Carman’s review of New Big Wong appeared in the Washington Post just a few days before we were set to go, it seemed like serendipity.

The restaurant was within walking distance of the museum, so it seemed like the perfect spot for a birthday feast, especially after reading that it was “a popular destination for bartenders and restaurant employees in the wee hours,” and seeing that Chef José Andrés of the famed minibar had “eaten there over 50 times” and Jeffrey J. Barrientos, also of minibar, had “dined there 100 times that I can remember.”

So after gorging on the Pre-Raphaelites, my wife and son and I walked a half mile north to New Big Wong, where I expected to gorge far less metaphorically. And also, to be wowed.

I was not.

The dishes we ordered resulted in a bifurcated meal, in that my son and I shared the more adventurous Jelly Fish with Pork Loin …

… and Sauteed Duck Tongue with Black Bean Sauce …

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Whenever I tell people that one of the most joyful parts of the George Formby Society convention I attended two weeks ago was the Thrash, they ask me to explain—what the heck’s a Thrash? And though I tell them it’s that part of a concert during which everyone who wants to is welcome to come up en masse to strum a bunch of songs, it’s hard to really convey the fun of it all.

Much easier to simply show you. And so …

If you scroll ahead to 40:06 on the video below, you’ll see a small part of one of the many Thrashes that took place during the weekend.

Now that you’ve experienced a Thrash, make sure you go back to the beginning and watch the video straight through. Lots of great ukulele playing there!

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The ever-changing Next restaurant is currently in the middle of its meat-heavy menu, The Hunt, which will end April 28, to be replaced by its antithesis, Vegan, beginning May 8.

Those of us who love Next are all wondering what form that new menu will take, and this week, Ulterior Epicure, at the start of The Hunt, was lucky enough to be presented with a single Vegan dish as an amuse-bouche.

And it sure was beautiful.

Wish I didn’t have to wait until my May reservation to find out how it tastes!

I’m about as non-Vegan an eater as you’re likely to find (because everything tastes better with bacon, right?), but when it comes to food cooked at the level that Next can provide—I’m counting down the days.

Back when I was on staff at Marvel Comics and writing the Bullpen Bulletins pages (well, all of it save Stan’s Soapbox), I kept a suggestion box on my desk in which people could drop notes with things they thought worthy of mention.

One day, I opened the box to find this card from Mirthful Marie Severin …

Oh, Marie … I love you!

I was in Blackpool last weekend for the George Formby Society convention, where I met in the flesh friends who’d previously only been virtual, saw some amazing uke players, got a tutorial in Formby-style strumming, and even had a chance to get up and bumble my way through a song in the “Up and Comers” session meant for beginners.

Plus I added a third uke to my collection, on top of the Mitchell concert you’ve seen in all my videos up until now and the Kala pocket uke which I’ve carried as far as Machu Picchu.

But to play George Formby, you need a banjolele, so I headed off to Blackpool hoping to find one I could fall in love with, that fit my budget, and that my friends at the convention would feel delivered both good sound and value. (Believe me, without their advice, I’d never have had the confidence to make a decision.) I was hoping to find a pre-war ukulele, but instead ended up with something as far from vintage as you can get—a new uke completed just a week before the con, handmade by a man named Steve Helme.

Since it was built by a person rather than a company, it doesn’t have a brand name to go with it, but my friends in Blackpool who advised me it was a good deal told me it’s basically a replica of a UB-2.

Check it out below.

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I miss my Dad. And as it turns out, the rest of the Internet misses their Dads, too.

I was checking the search strings that have led people to this blog, and discovered that several hundred people a month have been getting here as a result of looking for words to say when a father passes away.

Here are some examples.

Who knew there were so many variations on that sentiment? I’m amazed. (And there were dozens more.)

I’m not sure whether what people found when they got here helped. But I’d like to think it did. At least a little.

Yesterday, I shared my ragged performance of “When I’m Cleaning Windows” at the George Formby Society convention in Blackpool, and promised that as a reward for enduring it, you’d get to see how the banjo uke is really meant to be played. And so here are eight performers I managed to record before the battery on my Flip camera decided it had done quite enough.

There were multiple concert sessions throughout the weekend, and these performances were all from the first on Saturday.

John Walley started us off in the ballroom of the Imperial Hotel with “Sitting on the Top of Blackpool Tower” and “Mr. Wu’s An Air Raid Warden Now.”

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I returned late Monday afternoon from a magical weekend at the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool, where I attended one of the George Formby Society’s quarterly conventions. I met in the flesh many friends I’d already made through Facebook and Twitter, made many new friends, sung with a group atop the famous Blackpool Tower, bought my first banjolele (which I’ll tell you more about another day), saw some of the best live ukulele performances of my life, and was generally filled with so much joy that my face hurt from smiling so much.

Oh, and I performed “When I’m Cleaning Windows” in public for the first time.

Those who’ve been following my brief ukulele career (it’s only been about 15 months, remember) will have seen my overwrought thrashing out of that song early last year. But playing in front of others was going to be a lot different, even though the folks in Blackpool were about the kindest, gentlest, least judgmental bunch you’ll ever meet.

I didn’t dare do it on the big stage—that will come in the future once I’ve gotten my brain and fingers around the Formby style of playing—but luckily, the convention holds what’s called an Up and Comers session so that those of us who are still trying to figure out what the heck we’re doing can perform just for each other, rather than in front of the uke masters, who can be intimidating even though they don’t mean to be.

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I’ve occasionally left a restaurant miffed with a chef. But Saturday was the first time I’d ever left a restaurant miffed at a food critic.

Back in September, Pete Wells of the New York Times reviewed the reinvented menu at Eleven Madison Park.

In front of Eleven Madison Park, currently ranked the #10 restaurant in the world.

The restaurant, which currently ranks #10 on the list of top 50 restaurants in the world, had recently assembled a tasting menu meant as a tribute to New York and its culinary history. Which meant that the servers kept up a running narrative in order to put each course in context.

Wells didn’t care for this, and wrote, in part:

While people come to Eleven Madison from all over the world, those who live in the city may have to fight back the impatience and urge to interrupt that come with the keys to every New Yorker’s first apartment. The narrative tone isn’t sharp, it isn’t quick, it isn’t wised up, and it assumes the listener knows nothing: in other words, it’s not a New York voice. By the end of the four hours, I felt as if I’d gone to a Seder hosted by Presbyterians.

Ouch!

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