E-Verser David Sylvester is well-known across the country from his commentary on ESPN as well as his inspirational travels. Last year, he biked the entire length of Asia! This summer, he’s biking across the United States (in this heat, I barely get off the couch!). Here he is, in his own words:

“Friends and family came from as far as Montréal to celebrate with me and send me off with a great deal of love and warmth in my heart. Whether you were in attendance or not, your significant presence in my life inspires, girds, and fuels me to do what I do. In a speech I spoke about how the longer that people know me and the better I get to know myself, that the significance of the distance of biking through South Dakota, South Africa, South Philly, Turkey, Turkmenistan and all the other places I have been pales in comparison to the distance of who I was and who I am now. The Let This Be the Moment Tour is already a success- not because I have already organized a biking schedule and a schedule of places to contribute but because others are already gearing up to join me to volunteer or bike in most of the major cities that will be in. Date Place City/State July 3rd Father Joe’s Villages San Diego, CA July 12th Foundation for Blind Children Tempe, AZ July 16th Mesa Valley Hospice Las Cruses, NM July 29th Dismas Charities, Inc. Del Rio, TX August 6th Dell Children?s Hospital Austin, TX August 13th Louisiana SPCA New Orleans, LA August 16th Penelope House Mobile, AL August 23rd Nashville, TN Magdalene House September 3rd Walter Reed Medical Ctr. Washington, DC September 5th Baltimore, MD TBA September 7th Philadelphia, PA TBA September 9th Trenton, NJ TBA September 11th New York, NY TBA Thank you again for everything and I will see you on the road. This is going to be good. Oh yeah the one thing that I need is eyes so please any paper, reporter, TV show that you think would like a good story email them and give them my info. I will be blogging on contribute2.ning.com.”

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Just click on the smokestacks below. And try not to take it TOO seriously.

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Yes! This is a Barbie version of Tippi Hedren’s character Melanie Daniels in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1963 psycho-thriller The Birds, based on the Daphne Du Maurier short story (adapted for the screen by Evan Hunter). It’s a bit pricey for me, but I think it’s very cool. It could use a bit more blood, but it will do. Click on the doll to buy it.

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“Before You Cut Loose,” by Simon Armitage

put dogs on the list
of difficult things to lose. Those dogs ditched
on the North York Moors or the Sussex Downs
or hurled like bags of sand from rented cars
have followed their noses to market towns
and bounced like balls into their owners’ arms.
I heard one story of a dog that swam
to the English coast from the Isle of Man,
and a dog that carried eggs and bacon
and a morning paper from the village
surfaced umpteen leagues and two years later,
bacon eaten but the eggs unbroken,
newsprint dry as tinder, to the letter.
A dog might wander the width of the map
to bury its head in its owner’s lap,
crawl the last mile to dab a bleeding paw
against its own front door. To die at home,
a dog might walk its four legs to the bone.
You can take off the tag and the collar
but a dog wears one coat and one colour.
A dog got rid of—that’s a dog for life.
No dog howls like a dog kicked out at night.
Try looking a dog like that in the eye.

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For the past six years, a group of old warrior comrades (and some new ones) has gathered to form the Metal Council and celebrate an annual, sometimes semi-annual, saturnalia in a sinister fortified compound on the top of the hill in the Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia, across from the VFW (the original house burned down several years back after one of the dark celebrations). Everyone brings some new or old metal, and every viking goes home with an armful of discs. Of course, there is a serious amount of drinking. One long-standing member commented that the he feels two decades younger on metal night and two decades older the following Sunday. The highlight of the evening (aside from E-Verser Keith attempting to screech the high Cs on “Painkiller” by Judas Priest) is the drinking of “Eaten from Within” from a goblet. Also dubbed “Satan’s Tears,” this is vodka steeped in habanero chile peppers. A dram of this hellish concoction sends steam out of one’s ears, and we have seen grown men weeping fitfully and collapsing terribly into the snow like a scene from Stalingrad. It’s even worse in the summer, when temperatures in one’s cranium can reach over 120 degrees. It is a true test of manhood, and, as my dad used to say, it will put hair on your chest. E-Verser Andy may be allowed in as observer to gather anthropological data to be posted on the site. Here is the official flyer:

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