Hey! What happened to Architectural Digest?

I remember when it was about, you know, architecture. Gerard Butler, eh? Who is he, and am I really supposed to believe he relaxes like that, curled up in that velvet chair, in tight jeans and bare feet and a shirt opened just so? Plus! Sting and Lance Armstrong!

So, it's all about people now. And why are they all guys? I guess this is the real architecture we magazine readers (women) are looking for these days. It all coheres if you think of the right word: erection. It's what we want: a house and a man.

But something seems... off. It's so blatant. The bearded "Joy of Sex"-type guy. His name is Butler. I need a butler. And a lance. And a sting. Ha. Or is it that little girl's watch he's wearing?

Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?

Our beer taste test.

We're comparing:

1. St. Bernardus Abt 12, our classic favorite over the last year.

2. Trappistes Rochefort 10, the new upstart. New for us.

I tasted blind. Meade, having set up the test, was non-blind. Meade picked the St. Bernardus. I favored the Trappistes Rochefort, for its fascinating extra dimension of flavor. It's been made by monks at he Abbey of Notre-Dame de Saint-Rémy since 1595. "There are approximately 15 monks resident at the monastery. The monks are very secretive about the brewing process, and the brewery is not open to the public...." Good work, secretive monks! "[T]he beer is only sold in order to financially support the monastery and some other good causes." Well, then! I feel like a real humanitarian.

***

And no jokes, please, about us (or me) being blind drunk. We attended a play last night, and, in that play, blindness was batted about:

I am blind.

Perhaps he can see into the future.... 

I woke up one fine day as blind as Fortune. Sometimes I wonder if I'm not still asleep.

And when was that?

I don't know.

But no later than yesterday—

Don't question me! The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.

Well, just fancy that! I could have sworn it was just the opposite....

Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

"Real couples are satisfied with making love for between 3 and 13 minutes – and can find anything over 10 minutes tiresome."

Less than 1 or 2 minutes is, however, "too short."

How do you manage the day's last spurt of energy?

"The way I do it, there are still 56 minutes left to watch two episodes of The Brady Bunch on TV Land and I [have] enough energy to go downstairs and make a ham and swiss with horseradish, tomato and lettuce on artisian bread during the first commercial break. If I watch The Brady Bunch first, and Marsha's in it a lot, then we're down to two minutes."

"There are surprisingly few hours in the middle of the night, if you get up at say 1am and start working on something."

Said rhhardin, in the comments to the last post, the one about stopping at the welcome center in Pennsylvania.

It's a sound observation, and it got me thinking about insomnia and whether it's worse in the winter when the nights are longer. If you're not going to sleep at all, don't you think it's easier in the summer when the night is over quickly?

Midnight.

Writing under a deadline.

Did you feel that?

We just sprang ahead!

UPDATE: What? The springage occurs at 2 a.m.? But I felt it here, where I feel everything.