Tuesday, July 22, 2003 BROO MAN GROUP Our friend the Gaijin writes in to counsel us on being unemployed; However being on the broo (as we call it in Ecosse) every now and then is alright no? I personally love a period of indolence. Until about three months pass that is, then even my anyway slovenly nature starts to hemm or haw now and then. I reckon I can, at a push, squeeze about six months of largely guilt-free broo time. The secret is to look at it like “how often is this gonna happen in life?” and “might as well take it when it's there to be took” outlook. Buy some nice sweats and chill out. Sweats, I find are a severely multifunctional and utterly indispensable broo-man garment. The thrill of feeling the car keys in that big baggy pocket at the video store during a weekday afternoon is not to be underestimated. * * * Monday, July 21, 2003 A CONFEDERATE YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT And as you know, we at Mango Pudding Blues were vegetarians for fifteen years before we finally got wise a year or so ago. Now we’re knee-deep in sweet meat, but you know, we’re sentimental and Ithaca, New York, home of the legendary Moosewood vegetarian restaurant, is only a four-hour drive away and so one day a couple of weekends ago we loaded the Killer into our little grey-black sedan and stuck in a Duke Ellington CD and popped the clutch and skreeeeee away we go to stroll the grounds of Cornell University and admire the quaint countryside and eat some pie and finally take a seat down deep in the delta of the vegetarian dream. Moosewood! Hippie town nexus birthplace of an entire quisine. How many Moosewood cookbooks crossed our vegetarian hands in those years? Moosewood! The Enchanted Broccoli Forest of the exploding tofu alternative. Moosewood! It sucked. * * *