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There I was.

Sitting in the back of a London taxi cab last night with Lisa Marie Presley.

We were racing across town in the midst of a rainstorm, hoping to arrive at the restaurant before the maitre d’ gave our table to another soggy tourist couple. Our taxi driver—contrary to the myth surrounding “The Knowledge”—had never heard of the street on which Jamie Oliver’s “Fifteen” restaurant was located.

Perhaps London cabbies need a little less Knowledge, and a little more Tom Tom GPS.

We made it to the restaurant fifteen minutes late—which, by Spanish standards, is fifteen minutes early—and were seated at our table without fuss. The food at Fifteen, BTW, was fabulous—each course being adorned with fresh mint leaves.

Lamentably, not a single course was adourned with coconut.

Now, you may be wondering why I was hob-knobbing about London with the King of Rock & Roll’s daughter, eh?

No…it’s not what you think. I could never fill Michael Jackson’s shoes. The truth is…Lisa Marie is, like me, a long-term employee of Acme Low Carb Tongue Depressors, Inc.’s Legal Department. And we were in town for a seminar entitled, “Managing Legal Risk.”

Did you know that 14,000 deaths each year are caused by the improper use of tongue depressors? Well…yesterday we learned how to manage that legal risk: Print “INSERTING INTO MOUTH MAY CAUSE INJURY OR DEATH” onto each tongue depressor. In both block letters *and* in Braille. That alone was worth the price of the plane ticket, don’t you think?

As is often the case with business travel, however, the journey wasn’t all smooth.

I left the seminar at 4pm. This, theoretically, should’ve given me plenty of time to make my 7:50pm flight. I say “theoretically” because my theory didn´t include one fundamental assumption—that my Heathrow Express train from Paddington station would be indefinitely delayed because someone in the next station got clobbered by an on-coming Tube train. How inconsiderate some people can be!

You can probably guess what happened next. All six million travellers on my Heathrow Express train picked up their bags and bolted to the taxi stand. As did Lisa Marie and I (aka, Travellers #5,999,998 and 5,999,999).

And, oh yeah….this all happened during rush hour.

Heathrow Airport is only ten miles outside of London. That’s an extremely comforting thought. Unless, of course, you’re riding in a taxi cab that’s cruising at only eight miles per hour.

We arrived at Heathrow at 7pm. I managed to check my bags and collect my boarding pass fairly quickly and—momentarily breathing a sigh of relief—rounded the corner into the security zone.

I say “momentarily” because there, in the security zone, were at least 100 travellers waiting to pass through two—TWO!!!—metal detectors.

It was a full 45 minutes before I found myself standing before a metal detector. To be honest, I’m not sure why they let me pass. The signs clearly said that no liquids would be allowed on the airplane. And by that point, all the clothes that I was wearing were clearly liquid.

Fortunately, my plane was delayed an hour and I arrived at my gate with twenty minutes to spare.

My plane landed at Madrid’s Barajas Airport at 12:15am. I arrived at the baggage claim area at 12:45am. And when do you think my bags finally appeared on the conveyor belt?

1:45am.

Apparently, all the baggage handlers were still eating dinner. Welcome to Spain, God dammit!

If my evening had a lone bright spot, it occurred when I pulled into my driveway at 2:45am and opened my mailbox. There, in a yellow envelope posted from England, was a gift from our good friend Euro Trac.

It was an Elvis Presley air freshener.

I dropped to my knees and—weeping with joy—tore open the plastic wrap and pressed the six inch cardboard figurine to my nose.

I inhaled deeply and pondered the irony that this Elvis Presley air freshener smelled so strongly of flowers—whereas Elvis himself smelled so strongly of B.O. and fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Or, at least, he did in the 1970’s.

Anyway…I hung Elvis from my car’s rear view mirror and went straight to bed. One of the perqs of working from a home office is that you don’t *really* need to get out of bed until one minute before working hours begin. And this morning, I cashed in that chip.

I muddled through the workday as best I could and—after logging off of my computer—hopped into the car and drove to the grocery store.

And I was stopped at a red light, something caught the corner of my eye. It was my Elvis air freshener dangling from mirror. Or, more specifically, the back of Elvis’s right leg. There, printed across his thigh in block letters, was a message.

“INSERTING INTO MOUTH MAY CAUSE INJURY OR DEATH.”

That Lisa Marie! She’s one helluva lawyer.

Yep, no kidding.

That’s them–the old man and the infamous “Big Mamma”–showing the world why having children at the age of 21 isn’t necessarily a bad idea.

And also showing my brother, sister and me exactly how our inheritance is being spent.

Does the coconut fall far from the tree? You be the judge.

I’m not shy about my passion for coconut.

It’s on my mind nearly every minute of every day. I covet it when I’m awake. I dream about it when I’m asleep. When other teenagers were sniffing glue, I was sniffing Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil.

Of course, I can find coconut in Spain. But my recent travels to Chicago opened my eyes to a disturbing reality: By living in Spain, I am being deprived of coconut in its most exquisite forms.

It’s true! Every time that I stepped into a Chicago supermarket, I felt like Charlie Sheen stepping into Amsterdam’s red light district.

There were Mounds! And Almond Joys! And coconut cream pies! And German chocolate cakes! And Bounty bars! And Brach’s Neopolitans! And Hostess Sno-Balls! And my favorite of favorites…Raspberry Zingers!

And…and…and…I ate them! I ate them all! As often as I could! But it wasn’t enough! Not nearly enough!

Freedom, due process and a well-armed military are fine. But for me, the USA is all about one thing—highly-processed, fat-laden, plastic-wrapped vehicles for coconut.

God bless America!

After years of believing that pulled pork is something made in a crockpot, I decided that my family needed a reality adjustment. And my recent trip back to Chicago seemed the perfect opportunity.

So, my brother and I decided to pull a pulled pork all-nighter.

My brother may not have a Salivator per se, but he does have a propane-powered Great Outdoors smoker. Sure…a grizzled, Carolina pitmaster might scoff at the notion of propane-powered Q, but I’m not one for pretention. Besides…that which the smoker lacks in authenticity, it more than makes-up for in convenience. And convenience is exactly what’s needed when you’re pulling a Q overnighter, but don’t really want to stay up all night.

We slapped 12 lbs. of spice-rubbed pork butt onto the smoker at 11pm–about the same time that it started to rain. We then–in a stunning display of psychic, harmonic convergence–both woke at 4am to adjust the temperature and replenish the supply of wood chips…a task that not only took place under a heavy downpour, but also in nothing more than our boxer shorts.

That should be an interesting topic for discussion at the next homeowners’ association meeting.

Then, finally…we woke again at 7am to oversee the home stretch.

The butts hit our target internal temperature of 197F at noon–a comfortable three hours before the rest of the family arrived.

And the verdict? Well…let’s just say that nobody thinks I’m a crack-pot for dissing the crockpot, anymore.

[BTW…I know what you’re all thinking, and it’s true. This entire post was nothing more than an excuse to publish the above photo.]

Wow! You guys are good. You correctly guessed seven out of ten songs in the VTB’s “Name That Mystery [iPod] Meat” challenge.

I must say that I’m impressed…particularly with our friend Harsh, who likely destroyed all future prospects of picking up chicks by correctly guessing the LazyTown song.

And yes…I *do* have several LazyTown songs on my iPod.

The winner of the contest, however, was The Big Finn. He correctly guessed three songs…and did so despite his exhausting luxury vacation schedule. As for his prize, he wins a closet full of XXL Tommy Bahama shirts which–coincidentally–are already in his closet.

So, what of the three songs that nobody guessed? Here are the answers:

#1. “Chalkdust Torture” by Phish.
[It rocks…but, don’t EVEN try to make sense of the lyrics.]

#2. “Hot Smoke and Sassafrass” by Bubble Puppy.
[What?! You’ve never heard of Bubble Puppy?! Well…that’s them pictured above. What?! You’ve never heard “Hot Smoke and Sassafrass?!” Well…you must (absolutely MUST!) go HERE and listen for yourself. It’s one of my favorite songs. Euro-Trac will love it. Lady Di will hate it. Angie will be both confused and frightened.]

#4. “My Back Pages” by The Byrds.
[…albeit written by Bob Dylan.]

Great job, kiddies!

Excuse me while I steal an idea from Mr. and Mrs. The Big Finn…which they, BTW, stole from someone else.

The idea is this…I crank-up my iPod Shuffle and write the opening lyrics to the first ten morsels of iPod meat that come screaming from the ear buds.

You, gentle readers, must correctly guess each song and its artist.

And, oh yeah…you are NOT allowed to Google.

Whoever guesses the most songs correctly will win a valuable prize. Bear in mind, however, that winning a prize and actually collecting it are two very different things.

And so, without further ado…let’s play “Name That Mystery [iPod] Meat!”

1. [Oh, dammit! Wouldn’t you know it! The first song was “Pressure Cooker” by Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. It’s an instrumental. Let’s try again.]

1. Come stumble my mirth beaten worker/I’m Jezmund the family berzerker.

2. In the mist of sassafrass/Many things will come to pass.

3. Well, I’m standing next to a mountain/And I’ll chop it down with the edge of my hand.
[Caffe Franje guessed “Voodoo Chile” by Jimi Hendrix. Technically, that’s not correct. “Voodoo Chile” is a different song on the same album (Electric Ladyland). The song whose lyrics I quote above is actually “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).” But…since I made the same mistake for nearly twenty years, I’ll give Franje credit for this one.]

4. Crimson flames tied through my ears/Rollin’ high and mighty traps.

5. When the truth is found to be lies/And all the joy within you dies. [Kudos to The Big Finn (TBF) for correctly guessing “Somebody to Love” by Jefferson Airplane!]

6. When I move, I’m feeling alright/Bing, bing, bang and I’m ready to go.
[If anyone guesses this, then I’ll personally fly to their house and eat the insole of their most smelly pair of shoes. And I’ll eat it without ketchup.]
[Oh damn! Harsh correctly guessed “No One’s Lazy in LazyTown” by Sportacus. I sure hope that Harsh has small feet.]

7. It’s been such a long time/ I think I should be goin’.
[If anyone DOESN’T guess this, then they must eat the insole of my two year old running shoes.]
[TBF strikes again, by correctly guessing “Foreplay/Long Time” by Boston! Guess I’ll have to let Jasemine eat those shoes.]

8. When I get off of this mountain/You know where I wanna go.
[Lady Di’s main squeeze, Gert, correctly guessed “Up on Cripple Creek” by The Band. Lady Di remains unamused.]

9. A cheap holiday in other people’s misery!
[TBF shows is punker roots by correctly guessing “Holidays in the Sun” by The Sex Pistols!]

10. Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup.

[Euro-Trac emerges from her hermetically-sealed cocoon in France and correctly guesses “Across the Universe” by that band that need not be mentioned.]

My scholarly dissertation on the Spanish liquor “Anis” is now published in The Spirit World.

Check it out by clicking here.