SAL DeTRAGLIA's VIRTUAL TAPAS BAR
Above average home cook, published humorist, endurance athlete, former ex-pat, recovering attorney, doting husband, dedicated dad, non-Italian speaking Italian-American, and endearingly lousy ukulele player. It’s all true. It’s all Sal. This website (www.saldetraglia.com) is my outlet to inform and entertain, on both the personal and professional fronts.
…I’m not brittle.
I took this photo in response to a challenge this morning. The challenger shall remain nameless…but she knows who she is.
Sorry. It’s been a slow brain week, and I had little else to offer by way of new material.
BTW…does anyone have a tube of Ben-Gay that I can borrow?
I am so impressed. Are you a yogi?
I’m impressed too. Wow!
Woah. I can’t even do that. Very balletic and impressive.
By the way, I waited amongst the tartan plaids at Joann’s Fabrics in Ft. Wayne last night until closing… hoping against hope for Sal McTraglia, or whatever he is called, to make his appearance in his famous kilt … or perhaps GC Philo to stop by with bagpipes. There is more than one Joann’s in the greater Ft. Wayne area (we’re a crafty bunch), so maybe I was wrong to visit the Coldwater Road site. Alas. I could have been home watching reruns of Friends.
(Just kidding… I actually WAS home watching Friends reruns… so if anyone actually showed, my apologies.)
Ouch! That’s gotta hurt. And if it doesn’t then you are my idol. I don’t think I could *ever* do that even with a couple of decades of practice.
Oh, and I saw your comment at Karl’s blog about running 5 km almost every day. So you’re saying if I do my 3 mile (4.8 km?) walking tape (45 minutes) 6 times a week and go easy on the pork I can look like you, give or take a few essential bits?
Almendro: I did a couple months of Iyengar yoga last summer, but got bored with it. Much like Tai Chi, I decided to save it for my golden years. No…the flexibility thing arose from several years of karate and kung-fu when I was a teenager. For reasons that I can’t explain, the flexibility never went away. It makes for great fun at parties and bars.
Karl: The best thing about stretching is that you don’t need to wake up early to do it.
Angie: I was at JoAnn’s last night. It’s a shame that you missed it. There were around 450 of us. Toward the end of the night, we all did the Dance of the Seven Veils with a bolt of Winnie the Pooh fabric (GC on the bag pipes…at least, he called them “bagpipes”…it was really a kazoo) and then went out for wings at Hooter’s. Perhaps it’s best that weren’t there. We were all talking about you.
Christina: To look like me, you’d first need to shave off half your hair. I really don’t think it’s worth it.
All: Don’t bounce, breath normally and hold each stretch for at least 30 seconds. No less! Keep your spine straight, your knee locked, your toes straight-up and pointing back, and your heel thrusting forward. That’s really all you need to know. I’ll be expecting similar photos from all you on or before July 1.
Sal
Good lord… the Dance of the 7 Veils with a bolt of Winnie the Pooh fabric… Nothing I could ever come up with could be funnier than that mental image, so I give up!
But I did come up with a new Glamour Shot just for you! lol –>
I studied the pic and it hurt. I closed your site and went away but thought about the pic, and it still hurt … I may need to seek counselling and take medicinal wine to recover from ‘What I saw at Sal’s Site’.
Please post something new so I can wander in without thinking about whether you’re holding onto a bar, or if you have somehow photoshopped yourself.
Regards,
Di
Hey Di:
Welcome to the Comments boards. I know you’ve been lurking for awhile. Let’s see…as to your points:
1. No, of course it didn’t hurt. If it hurt, I wouldn’t have done it in the first place.
2. Hanging from a bar? Nope. Some people may have bars hanging from their bedroom ceilings, but I don’t. No mirrors or disco balls either. Perhaps I ate too many Corn Flakes as a kid.
3. Photoshop?! Noooooo. I do my splits the old-fashioned way–using gravity and, of course, those mind-control techniques that I learned during my 28 years in a Shoalin temple.
These answers notwithstanding, I encourage you to continue with the medicinal wine.
Sal
Sal…
I’d do that on a rug or gym mat if I were you. You’re gonna hurt “the junk” if you’re not careful! 😮
I too am impressed.
Q. What the $%&^%*$ is Ben/Gay?
NICE.FLOOR.,Skirt-Boy –
Ha. I know what Ben-Gay is. Ben-Gay. Got it.
Will hand it off at the blogger meet in Prague…
I wasn’t ‘lurking’, writes the squirming blushing kiwi, I was merely admiring the aesthetic qualities of your blog in an awed silence.
Mmmmm, something like that. And rudely enough, I link to your site from mine … wishing to learn from a master in giftwrapping life.
Cornflakes … have you tried them as an adult … they’re truly terrifying. Perhaps it does explain your spilt-ablility; a mutated gene from generations of cornflake consumption?
I keep strolling back in, confident the photo will have moved down at least one post, and depart with a traumatised squawk when I see it again. Nederlands class is difficult drunk …
28 years in a Shoalin temple … surely the best years of your life?
Enough from me … waiting to be legal in Belgium, waiting to work, time on my hands, can you tell.
Lovely blog, Mr Sal
Tot ziens.
Wow! Is there no end to your talents?
Maybe next time you could take the same picture, but wearing a kilt??
I’m sorry, but you guys are making me spit my tea all over the keyboard!
Whoa! I’m starting to feel like Santa Claus. Here goes…
Big Finn: “The Junk?!” I like that! It must be a NU term of art. But in making the analogy, you obviously were referring to those ENORMOUS, UNSINKABLE, EVER-RELIABLE boats used by the Chinese…right? BTW…you’ve been linked (see Sidebar).
El Casareño: Ben-Gay is a “soothing ointment” that smells like eucolyptis (I guess) and makes strained muscles feel hot. It’s popular with the elderly and with high school track & field athletes. BTW…you’ve been linked.
Fran: That ceramic tile floor gives parents of youngsters a great piece of mind. If your floors were ceramic, you’d have no fear of Antoine’s daily “christening.” BTW…you were linked long ago, but you already knew that.
Di: Let us know when you’ve become legal in Belgium. We’ll have a VTB celebration. In the meantime, enjoy being 15 years old. You’re only young once. BTW…you’ve been linked.
Euro-Trac: Splits in a kilt? On a cold ceramic tile floor?! Man…that would wake me up in the morning pretty quickly. BTW…you’ve been linked.
Christina: Your keyboard is linking. I mean, leaking.
Dammit, first I was curious about the Ben-Gay stuff … wondering if it was anything to do with the Shoalin Temple years … but I didn’t ask, did I.
But now I have to ask … ‘I’m 15?’
How come …?
Is it the youthful pic I added to one of my posts … but 15 is so young.
VTB … perhaps I should just quietly search all of your blog for that definition of VTB. Is wine involved?
The photo is still there … it hurts me Salllllllllllllllllllll. Write something new.
Diiiiiii:
I’ve posted a new one, with an absolutely painless photo attached to it. Boy…the women in my life are so demanding!
I guess my “becoming legal” joke didn’t translate well from the US to NZ. In US guy-speak, a woman is “legal” if she’s 16 or older. That’s the age when you won’t get sent to prison if a policeman should peek into the back seat of your car at an “inconvenient” moment.
But yes…you do look quite youthful in that post photo to which you refer. Much more so than I.
As for the acronymn “VTB”…I’ll let you in on a little secret. The first two letters stand for “Virtual Tapas.” Can you guess the third? Can ya? Can ya? It rhymes with “So close, so close but yet so far.” :-O
Grasshopper
Sal … it’s my unsullied mind.
And that is the burden of a grasshopper from the land that ranks first in EPI standings … it’s a heavy burden of purity; one that wouldn’t allow me to immediately understand illusions equating my illegal status to being jailbait 😉
Demanding women …? Never, I was merely asking for a release from the vision of you engaged in an unnatural act. I have a nice cup of tea now and will spend the next 24 hours washing the alcohol out of my system.
Alas and alack though, there’s a reception tomorrow night and I will be required to drink from the constantly refilled wine glass so … you can post Sal in a kilt doing the splits as requested.
VBA … okay, so I’m outed as a simpleton. In my defence, there is a cellphone tower a few 100m away when I sit at my desk … I may have slipped from the lofty intellectual heights I usually exist at due to low frequency radiation etc …
But then we’d abbreviate the above to B.S. in my country.
I’m thinking if this keeps up we’re just going to have to change the name of this blog from Sal DeTraglia’s Virtual Tapas Bar to Sal DeTraglias Virtual Harem!
Good lord … I was comments-trawling while checking for a new Sal-post, and read of harems.
Christina, I’m a Kiwi, a pure and virtuous virtual soul … I can’t even conceive of myself as part of a harem, virtual or otherwise.
(Note: I wrote something highly amusing but saw at least two weak points where Sal would feast, keeping his ‘illegal’ comment in mind. I have opted for respectability, and therefore, deletion.)
You’ll just have to take my word that it was witty and intelligent and and … well, I’m too modest to continue 😉
Tot ziens from the bored one.
Di:
I regret the omission of those “two weak points,” but at least you were kind enough to leave the word “conceive” in the second paragraph.
Regards to all from the Harem Globetrotter,
Sal
ahhhhh ‘conceive’ was so small on the scale of ‘comment i could have left myself open to’ that i didn’t see it …
globetrotter, she writes, ignoring the ‘harem’. are you doing interesting things in these days?
sincere regards
the kurious kiwi
::roaring with laughter:: I’m trying desperately to catch up from missing 2 weeks and this is messing up my schedule!
spitting tea – Better than milk huh?!?!
bedroom ceiling decor – I’ve always wanted to hang a basket with a hole in the middle from a rotating cam from mine… ::smiles sweetly::
Ben-Gay – that lovely fragrance is WinterMint. Wintermint is also the ingredient responsible for the “heating” sensation. Wintermint is also a poison. Wintermint was the key ingredient of “Fletcher’s Castoria”, a children’s medication my Nanny kept that I would sneak around and drink. It was a laxative…
Junk – hmmm… not my husband’s… ;o)
WOW I’m impressed!!!!
Not that any of these apply to you, but for the rest of us old farts:
— I felt like my body had gotten totally out of shape, so I got my doctor’s permission to join a fitness club and start exercising. I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors. I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But, by the time I got my leotards on, the class was over.
— Reporters interviewing a 104-year-old woman: “And what do you think is the best thing about being 104?” the reporter asked. She simply replied, “No peer pressure.”
— The nice thing about being senile is you can hide your own Easter eggs.
— Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came up to the very elderly widow and asked, “How old was your husband?” “98,” she replied. “Two years older than me.” “So you’re 96,” the undertaker commented. She responded, “Hardly worth going home, is it?
— I’ve sure gotten old.! I’ve had two bypass surgeries, a hip
replacement, new knees. Fought prostate cancer and diabetes. I’m half blind, can’t hear anything quieter than a jet engine, take 40 different medications that make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts. Have bouts with dementia. Have poor circulation; hardly feel my hands and feet anymore. Can’t re member if I’m 85 or 92. Have lost all my friends. But, thank God, I still have my driver’s license.
— A 97-year-old man goes into his doctor’s office and says, “Doc, I want my sex drive lowered.” “Sir,” replied the doctor, “you’re 97 Don’t you think your sex drive is all in your head?” “You’re damned right it is!” replied the old man. “That’s why I want it lowered!”
— An elderly woman decided to prepare her will and told her preacher she had two final requests. First, she wanted to be cremated, and second, she wanted her ashes scattered over Wal-Mart. “Wal-Mart?” the preacher exclaimed. “Why Wal-Mart?” “Then I’ll be sure my daughters visit me twice a week.”
—My memory’s not as sharp as it used to be. Also, my memory’s not as sharp as it used to be.
—It’s scary when you start making the same noises as your coffeemaker.
—The good news is that even as we get older, guys still look at our boobs. The bad news is they have to squat down first.
—These days about half the stuff in my shopping cart says, “For fast relief.”
—I’ve tried to find a suitable exercise video for women my age, but they haven’t made one called “Buns of Putty.”
— Don’t think of it as getting hot flashes. Think of it as your inner child playing with matches.
— Don’t let aging get you down. It’s too hard to get back up!
— Remember: You don’t stop laughing because you grow old, You grow old because you stop laughing.
— THE SENILITY PRAYER: Grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.
Keep up the good work — DJG