It appears that Barack Obama and I have more in common than sticky out ears. We’ll both be in Martha’s Vineyard this weekend. You’ll be able to recognize the President by his motorcade and the cavalcade of paparazzi close behind. You will be able to recognize me by my dirty New York flip flops and the strawberry ice cream stains on my T-shirt. Time to pack. The Presidential Peter Pan bus leaves at 7.30 am.

Sometimes I don’t know how my buddy William gets away with it. In his latest installment of Todd and God, The Holy One, blessed be He, is a female house DJ trapped inside a mezuzah. And yet it all seems perfectly natural. Not everyone is amused, though. This from a recent commenter on YouTube:

This is blasphemy. YHWH is not a female nor is He to be imaged in some type of cultural assimilation. He is holy – set apart. It is bad enough that the Gentile church is involved in such Pagan activities as it is, but the Jews, who are a light to the Gentiles engage in making YHWH look like some type of New Age goddess. YHWH is not mocked.

Todd & God: How to Hang a Mezuzah (YouTube)

While browsing a local used bookstore the other day, I happened across a collection of E.B. White’s writings from The New Yorker (1927-1976). Here’s a gem from May 3, 1930:

When he heard about the National Arts Club prize for a book which would “reveal the soul of America,” one of our dearest friends sat right down and got to work. He had a great plot, and seemed, when we left him, to be much interested in getting it down on paper. When, a day or two later, we saw him again, we were surprised to learn that he had given up the project. It seems that when he read about the prize in the newspaper, he thought it said thirty thousand dollars; later he looked up the clipping and discovered it said three thousand dollars. True to the soul of America, he gave the thing up immediately.

Writings from The New Yorker 1927-1976 (Amazon.com)

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals played a great concert in Prospect Park on Friday night. The video above is from the Boston Music Awards last year, but I think you get the idea. (I like their cover of White Rabbit too.)