Mark Hayward Is My Hero

I have been on an Ebay bender this week, and listed 12 things in the last few days.  Of course my pal Dazzling Dave was all like,

“Bender?!?  With 12 items?  That’s nothing.  I’ve got 586 listings this month.”

Thanks for the morale boost Dave.  Ya jerk.

If you want to see the crazy assortment of stuff I’m selling, check it out here.

If you’re on Dave’s side, check out his stuff here.

photo: Kidjurel  from BloodyDecks.com

In doing a Google Image search for oarfish, I found a really great forum entry with some incredible oarfish photos.  Check it out here.

I just made a new cookie recipe, and the horrible monstrosities that came out of the experience have taught me some valuable lessons about baking… that I already knew.

1. Don’t start a baking project at 11pm. Especially when you just said aloud, “I don’t know why I’m doing this now. I’m tired. I should go to bed.” I guess the temptation of nice, room-temperature butter was too much to bear.
2. Flour is what gives cookies substance.
3. When you already know your oven runs hot, turn it down. Cookies burn when they get too hot.

I have a tendency to start baking a little too late at night. I think it’s because that’s when I most wish I had a cookie. I guess I get so fed up with the lack of cookies in my house, that I just have to do something about it. Normally 11:00 at night isn’t too late for me since I tend to be a night owl, but this time it was.

I found what looks like a great Double Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe on the internet, but I suspect that it is really a much better recipe when you use all the ingredients, and use them in the right amounts. Here is what the cookies are supposed to look like:

The problem is that I only used half the flour (see lesson #2 above), and forgot the vanilla entirely. When you don’t use all the flour, you get something that is more appropriately described as a caramelized Demon Cookie.

Behold:

Not only is it super flat (like it’s trying to seep in to steal your soul), but it’s made up of a basically empty shell, with chocolate and peanut-butter chips hanging out inside their own cookie-sized opium-love-den-of-sin… or something. Despite all the short-comings though, I have to say that they were delicious.

I will try again with this recipe in a few days, and with luck I will actually follow the directions too.

Super-awesome Sea spider. (I’m pretty sure that’s the Latin name)

photo: Paul H. Yancey Ph.D.

Sometimes it’s best to go straight to the source. I just found this page with a large number of very raw photos of deep sea critters. The site is from Paul H. Yancey Ph.D., who is a professor of Biology at Whitman College in Washington State. The pages are a little hard to read, but there are lots and lots of photos, especially of things that you don’t normally get to see like worms, sea spiders, and the cool weird stuff that I don’t know anything about.

Last Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, was the first-ever show by the Happy Hour Heroes. We are: Steve Brown, Mark Hayward , and Aaron Bonk. This group is the brainchild of Steve Brown, who bills himself as the Happy Hour Hero in his solo work. The idea is to be a modern-day Rat Pack with tricks.

The show was part of a party celebrating two years of existence for the thrift store This Way Out that is in the basement of the Beachland Ballroom, as well as the grand opening of Shoparooni, Cleveland’s newest boutique, that is coincidentally owned by Steve Brown and his wife Marlee.

I was pretty nervous for this show because the three of us had never worked together, and Aaron and I had never even seen each other’s shows before. Despite that, and not rehearsing, the show went really well. Of course it will get better as we do more together, but it was a fantastic start.

I was reading up on the original Rat Pack a bit today, and it sounds like they were at the center of a really incredible time in entertainment history. Apparently they would just show up at each other’s gigs and do a group show even if that wasn’t on the bill. The marquees sometimes would read something like, “DEAN MARTIN – MAYBE FRANK – MAYBE SAMMY” That’s pretty cool.

We did two sets, alternating with some bands in the other room, and between sets this exchange was overheard:

“What’s after the band?”

“There’s another set by that guy who looks like Letterman, and the two bald dudes.”

“Oh cool.”

I just got an email today from Jonathan Burns saying that he saw me on Letterman’s website. I didn’t know what he was talking about so I went to the site, and lo and behold, there I am on the front page in the highlights slideshow! (I’m number 3) That is so awesome! Check it out quickly because who knows how long it will last.

In case you missed my appearance on the show, you can see it here.

I LOVE giant squids.  The show MonsterQuest on the History Channel just aired a show all about the quest for the giant squid.  It was pretty fun.  I don’t think I ever want to get in salt water again.  I’m not going to spoil the end for you, but I will say that they find some neat stuff.

The show airs again in 3 1/2 hours, Friday November 16th at 3am.

Over the weekend my wife and I went to a great craft fair in Pittsburgh called Handmade Arcade. One of the vendors that really caught my eye was a t-shirt printing joint called SquidFire out of Baltimore Maryland. They have a great, unusual take on deep-sea creatures, and they have all kinds of stuff with giant (or regular I suppose) squids all over it. There are other images besides sea creatures too….

Maybe living  on top of a hill isn’t so great after all.  Lenore, Vader and I were in the bedroom as a thunderstorm was rolling in last night.  Lenore and I were in the bedroom getting ready to go to bed, and Vader was in there because he was freaking out that the thunderstorm was going to kill us all.  Turns out that the dog may have been on to something.

As we were talking, a particularly loud clap of thunder sounded outside and there was a flash of blue light right above my head.  I couldn’t see it, but Lenore sure could.  She said that there was an arc of electricity that stretched from the window to the ceiling fan that was right over my head.  So that arc went about six feet into the house in order to miss my head by about a foot and a half.  Eep.

Vader freaked out while Lenore and I discussed how crazy it was that lightning came into our house.  Maybe we only think we’re that much smarter than dogs.

My friend Jon Wee just pointed out that I may in fact be the first person to benefit from the current writers strike. Since there is no one to write for The Late Show with David Letterman, they have started doing reruns, and the first one they aired was the one with my appearance on the Stupid Human Tricks segment!

In case you missed it Monday night, check it out here on YouTube.