So. Des Moines.

Anyone who's reading this knows me, and knows that I know Zach Mannheimer. He's one of my best friends. I also am marrying a lovely Iowa girl, whose family is all in Keokuk, as far south and east as you can go and still be in Iowa. So for Thanksgiving I flew into Des Moines and Zack and I drove down to Keokuk. So I've poked around Des Moines just a smidgen, and intend to do more so tonight.

Zack being Zack and me being me the tour so far has mostly consisted of dinner at the Des Moines Embassy Club and a tour of various bars of interest. I'd already found my way to The Royal Mile, since a good Scottish-themed pub is to me as flame is to a moth.

We then went down for a scrumptious Thanksgiving gorge at Chuck and Carole's house. Zack brough a case of great wine and we strolled over to see the City of Christmas lights in Rand park. Then, Chuck being Chuck, Zack being Zack and me being me we were up until 2 talking theater. Zack even found a potential architect for the space he's planning in Des Moines.

I threw my back out (again) trying to play raquetball the next day, but other than that the trip was a delight from one end to another.

Jarvis Cocker is humming along about Common People on the stereo at Java Joe's. The Subjective CoLab piece is on its way. (The auditions are over but we're still waiting for Brian Corr to update the website with the info about the reading, which is happening Dec. 18. If you click on his email at the website it launches a handy blank email addressed to Brian, and you can tell him yourself how much you're looking forward to seeing the post about the reading!)

Oh, and on a theater related tangent, I had 10 minutes of my play "Down and Out in Paris" read at the POMP (I forget the acronym), a Subjective multi-playwright reading. Went relatively well, although I have to re-write the fuck out of that thing.

I have no idea what I'm doing this evening after this post, although dinner is in there somewhere. I haven't found a theater company in Des Moines that's performing tonight, although there may be a local paper here somewhere that I can dig into. More thoughts on this joint later. But first, in a post I'll respond to in a minute, read how Megan McArdle comes really close to saying that old people should go ahead and die rather than take money from young people for medical care. Scroll down and look for Walter Crockett's comment, which in my opinion pretty much demolishes what there was of McArdle's argument.

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