misha is in an undisclosed latin american country, i am at an aging computer in the south of oregon in a robe that is covered in cat hair. can you imagine misha in a robe? i bet it would be funny. it is much more natural for me to be in a robe than for misha to be in one, the basic construction of the garment is designed for men long in torso and short in leg – men such as myself. however, i would never take my robe to an undisclosed latin american country, that would be ridiculous.

so i’ve been listening to the subways recently, their music is raw and catchy and indie and garagey and their lyrics are completely vapid. they will be some degree of huge as a result of this combination. i have been thinking a lot about the implications of this realization about the subways, but i’ve also been watching figure skating and eating ice cream for the last twenty minutes and the sharp, coherent digressions on this topic have sunk to the bottom of my brain.

josh has unwittingly become my consultant in the hunt for a new laptop. i know absolutely nothing about computers and he is a lot smarter than i am in general, so this should be a veritable sitcom partnership. i look in a mirror and i know where my lungs are and why they work and to what end, but i still can’t quite fathom it. computers are -in this way and many others – like lungs. it certainly does not help that i smoked the living hell out of every cigarette i could get my hands on for some 12 years. whatever the hell that means. anyway, josh and i both look good in a robe, and i think i’ll make the move to macintosh.

waiting tables in a quaint, reasonably-priced, romantic italian restaurant that does not take reservations makes valentine’s day even more of a fucking bastard than it already is, but outside of that, work is going well. it is more fun to work on exciting new material for the llc than it is to explain to tourists what gnocchi is, so i am grateful that only so many hours of the day are devoted to the latter.

the new material is awesome.

i miss you guys. i promise to write more. i get to go see the scientists in march. i hope everyone is doing well and taking care of themselves. all right, then.

on this day some 24 years ago, a child like no other was born in israel. this child had calf muscles that bulged like ripe butternut squash. butternut squash that filled the ravioli of his legs and was covered with the sage brown butter of his skin. a powerful, comforting, explosive dish of a man, perfect for winter and fiercly coveted by the TLP.

i don’t know where the fuck i’m going with all this, but i should probably stop, and we should all wish nitzan lumer the happiest of birthdays. speechwriters llc is now, collectively, a perfect century, and we should all celebrate the birth of the man who would become the powerful legs of this otherwise round-shouldered, sunken-chested band.

also, for those of you who follow this sort of thing, we’re working on the soundtrack to your lives methodically and yet with barely contained emotion. these new songs will be like surgeons who cannot stop crying. or dancing, for that matter. or performing surgery because, you know, that’s their job.

happy birthday, nitz.