This site is based in Atlanta, an interesting and sometimes challenging city, physically located in the South and yet not quite there in all respects. If you’re considering visiting Atlanta, please remember the following salient points in order to make your visit more enjoyable and less stressful:

• The city is not laid out on a grid system. “Blocks” do not exist per se. This makes navigation something of an adventure.
• Almost no one has a Southern accent. Rumor has it that there are fewer than 100 native Atlantans in the whole place. I met one in 1983, but she moved a few years later.
• Atlanta’s I-285 = Washington’s Beltway = Boston’s Route 128. That sign over I-285 that says “Atlanta Bypass” — ignore that — you’ll see what I mean.
• Dress is casual — you can wear shorts almost anywhere. I have friends who wear shorts to work in January.
• It is far easier to find Thai food than hush puppies.
• We’ve had Krispy Kreme donuts for over 60 years now. Glad all the rest of you have finally joined the fold! What took so long?
• Three primary potions constitute 97% of the daily beverage consumption: Coca-Cola, sweet tea, and beer. Ordering anything else may raise an eyebrow. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
• It is humid here most of the time, except every few years when we seem to experience summer droughts. Despite the humidity, there is a perpetual water shortage.
• We have a subway (called MARTA) which people actually ride. Buses, not so much. There’s a new suburban bus line with pretty blue and white buses, but no one ever seems to be riding. I’m not even sure anyone is driving.
• If you want to find a cheap used car, look on Buford Highway. You may not find the kind of car you’re seeking, but you will experience tremendous entertainment value. Being bilingual will land you a far better deal.
• It is fairly obvious upon arrival that large amounts of caffeine are consumed here. This will become self-explanatory once you drive within 20 miles of the outskirts of the outer suburbs of the far reaches of the city.
• Everyone seems to be in a perpetual hurry to get somewhere, regardless of the time of day. Even at 1:03 AM, someone will be in a hurry to get to the local Kroger supermarket. I know — I’ve done it myself!
• Many town names end in “-etta”. This is equivalent to the “-ton” or “-ville” suffixes appended in other regions and carries no other connotations.
• There are numerous automated signs posted above the expressways stating helpful information such as “IT IS A NICE DAY — SAVE GASOLINE — TOMORROW.” Sometimes (and this is for real) the signs only read “.” (a lone period). No one knows what this means.
• We still hold reverence for Moon Pies and RC Cola.
• If you don’t know what Moon Pies are, please visit the Moon Pie website for details prior to your arrival.
• If you don’t know what RC Cola is, then you may need therapy.

When I moved away to college to Chicago, I appeared to have landed in Gastronomia. I had never seen the likes of some of this food — deep-dish pizza, mouth-watering kosher deli sandwiches, and authentic Czechoslovakian delicacies. My circle of friends and their families introduced me to a vast array of new food and broadened my eating horizons in a way that I had never anticipated. Suddenly, there was no better treat than a hand-scooped Italian ice from a corner grocery in Berwyn.

Atlanta is a dining mecca. We can go from country fried steak to foie gras to massaman curry to tandoori chicken to spaetzle all in the blink of an eye. It makes eating out quite an adventure, and many of the restaurants are surprisingly affordable. The diversity of the city’s neighborhoods and ethnicities makes for a schooled palate, if you’re willing to experiment a little.

But despite my affinity for dining out, there is one corner of this world that has never truly captured my affections, and that is the bar. Yes, I know — bars are the places to meet people, hang out, do business, or whatever, but for some reason, I have trouble with them. I’m not saying that I don’t think they have their place, but they’re just not for me. I have no aversion to the concept of alcohol, as witnessed by many of my earlier posts regarding wine and spirits and the dubious stories related thereto, but I’m picky about the venue in which I libate.

For one thing, it is practically impossible to get a drink at some of our Atlanta bars unless you are eight feet tall and can tower over the crowd standing and sitting at the bar. Oh, by the way, sitting…did I say sitting? I actually landed a seat at the bar at a Decatur restaurant this past weekend and almost fainted from shock to find that I was actually seated close enough to the bartenders to talk to them without screaming. In a way, it was nice. Typically, one must speak at a level exceeding ninety decibels in order to be heard.

I have noticed some regional differences regarding bar habits and etiquette. For example, New Englanders tend to gravitate toward the bar at lunch, something which is not so common in the South. Californians seem to be pretty chilled about the whole bar thing and favor a lot of wine, and it’s fairly easy to place your mixed drink order in Chicago or New Orleans — bartenders in those places seem to be up to the task. New York, I don’t know — I don’t recall that I’ve ever been to the bar there, but perhaps someday…after all, I do have a certain weird fascination with the Apple, and servers tend to be attentive there.

Maybe part of the whole aversion I have is this phrase “belly up to the bar”. Something about that just doesn’t sound appealing to me. It implies that I am going to have to haul myself up there and place my belly against the bar, where more likely than not, something will have just been spilled. Now, honestly…where is the fun in that? Not to mention that, owing to my limited beer consumption, I do not have a “beer belly” in any sense of the word, and that’s just fine with me.

But please do not take my lack of bar enthusiasm as any kind of deterrent to your own enjoyment, because heaven knows, I would not expect everyone to frequent my kind of third world hangouts, where I order my volcanic food and wash it down with martinis or an IPA. We all have different tastes, and that’s what makes it fun. Nevertheless, if you do have any pointers on how to get a drink in under five minutes at a Buckhead bar on a Saturday night without an illegal exchange of cash, I’d certainly be interested to know your secret.

Now excuse me while I try to get this bartender’s attention. Ahem.

Have you ever wondered why on two consecutive days you can go into the workplace, feeling exactly the same when you walk in the door, only to find that one day you are a hero, while the next you are but a lowly protozoan? It is certainly because of the ripple effect. Let’s explore some examples.

Assume that you work in an office building full of cubes. A certain employee, we’ll call him “E” for short, is having a wonderful day. Maybe he purchased a new car over the weekend, found the love of his life, or even just downed the perfect cup of dark roast coffee. Whatever the reason, E comes into the office in a great mood. Before long, because of the proximity of people to each other and the native curiosity we all possess, all those sitting around him become infected with his good spirit. People make random comments among themselves and the vibe passes among the aisles. You, the innocent employee, enter this scenario and cannot help but be swayed by the positive sentiment echoing throughout the floor. People smile at you, say hello, and offer you donuts. That is a good day.

Alternatively, let us assume that E had car problems on the way in, got into a major argument with his significant other, or got bad coffee at the QT. When E arrives at work, he will not be a happy camper, nor will anyone who has to listen to him kvetching. Within minutes, a viral sense of doom spreads around and between the aisles. You, still the innocent employee, walk into this morass and cannot help but be swayed by the negative sentiment echoing throughout the floor. People frown at you, ignore you, and steal your donuts. That is a bad day.

I believe it is as simple as that. If, like me, you are a fairly social person, the ambient sentiment will undoubtedly affect you for better or worse. The trick is to realize it for what it is and go about your business, because this collective consciousness is very much like the weather: it can, and often does, turn on a dime. Basically, we’re all just trying to get along. So bring your umbrella, your sunglasses, a box of donuts, and rock on, you working person.

But lately, I’ve been wondering what’s going through her mind. After all, dogs do dream — we know that because we see them kicking, barking and running in their sleep, chasing after something which only they can see. Yesterday, I watched Copper as she lowered herself gently to the floor to take what must have been her seventeenth nap of the day, and it almost looked to me that she was thinking of something, trying to elicit a memory.

Concurrent with this, my wife has embarked on a massive scrapbooking project, trying to catch up with our lives for the last twenty years, and in some of the pictures, I see a younger, more mischievous Copper. As I watched Copper yesterday, I wondered if she might be thinking of any of the moments in time captured in the old photographs — hanging with her old canine buddy Cody, long since departed, or Tonto, her feline partner in crime all those years ago. I can’t help but think that in Copper’s little mind, some of those scenes are still vivid, and that she calls them back on demand at times, just as we recall the pleasant, and sometimes unpleasant, memories of our own lives. I wonder.

Of course, the sad thing about this, depending on your point of view, is that every year of a dog’s life is worth seven of ours. We dote on our pets these days, buying them all kinds of crazy toys, special diets, and even college team sweaters, but in the end, we can’t extend their lives to match ours, though often we wish we could. So as this new year starts, I think I’m going to add to my list of resolutions a reminder to put myself in my pets’ place from time to time, to try to see the world from their eyes. After all, to our pets, we are the world.

Happy New Year, everyone.

This forty-minute rule is a real problem for those watching TV with me, because invariably, I’ll wake up at about two minutes before the hour (we’re assuming a hour-long program here) and ask everyone what is happening. They, of course, having watched the entire program, will be anxiously waiting to see how the episode plays out and do not have time for needling questions from the peanut gallery. I can’t say that I blame them, but until recently, I have not found a fix.

The obvious solution to this problem lies right in the aisles at Best Buy, those same aisles that are so clearly labeled “TV Shows” in yellow and blue letters the size of Rhode Island. But of course, that’s not the only solution. Hulu, YouTube, and Netflix each offer full episodes for free viewing at any time. I’ve known about all these for a while, but as of late, I’ve become jealous of my friends who have seen everything on TV, so in order to engage in conversation, I’ve had to sample the series offerings, and now I’m hooked on a few.

So what’s the issue with all this, you say? Well, the issue is that by catching up on all these programs (I’m now watching three series, I think), I am not keeping up with FarmVille on Facebook, which in turn is causing me anxiety, because land is lying fallow, crops are withering, and gifts from other FarmVille denizens are piling up to the sky. There are not enough hours in the day to live both a virtual and a real life. Something has to give.

Well, anyway, there it is. I would write more, but I have to go watch another episode of True Blood. See ya!

Recently, our area has been the site for filming of the new CW TV series The Vampire Diaries. I haven’t seen this program, but I must say that the promotional poster for it, which I saw months ago in L.A., is strangely alluring. You have these good looking people lying out in the middle of this deserted field with only a raven for company, and yet, they don’t look at all miserable. The very fact that a brand-new TV series about vampirism can appear in the midst of the Twilight frenzy speaks volumes about our interest in this niche of the supernatural.

A few months ago, friends told me about the HBO series True Blood, so lately, I’ve been catching up on that as well. The premise of True Blood is that the Japanese have managed to create a synthetic form of blood called “True Blood”, which is sold as a bottled beverage…you can even find it at convenience stores. Vampires consume True Blood instead of us, and therefore, they can live out in the open, at least at night. The main character is one Sookie Stackhouse, a petite blonde bundle of energy who, from all indications, appears to be destined for something better than her life as a waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana. As it turns out, there’s not much to do in town, so when razor-toothed Bill Compton appears on the scene, with those brooding eyes and gentle heart, otherwise savvy Sookie is captivated. What a roller coaster ride she’s on now, though. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, because Bill’s friends see Sookie herself as lunch…wait, make that dinner…they don’t do lunch. Oy, veh.

I remember watching Dracula movies as far back as elementary school, which is quite a long time ago, and generations before ours were captivated by Nosferatu. The 1979 German movie Nosferatu the Vampyre was one of those films which was warmly received by the critics but not so by the public. If you want a few laughs, check it out. Nosferatu’s overblown stick-like teeth and the film’s awkward scene transitions (an outdoor dinner party cuts to a shot of the rear end of a horse) are worth the price of the video rental. Of course, for the most part, we don’t seem to laugh at vampire depictions.

This thing just has all kinds of dimensions, and we could spend weeks discussing it, but the central question is: have you seen New Moon? Hmmm…I thought so. As for me, I’m going to continue catching up on True Blood and see what happens to poor Sookie. I’m worried about her.

This year’s Thanksgiving dinner planning for our family was cleverly orchestrated by my wife, a chef and baker par extraordinaire, and it included an email survey to our immediate family regarding the meat of choice to be served at the dinner. The main reason for this, as she stated, was that we needed something to go with the side dishes. You see, it’s the side dishes that we actually crave, that tantalizing two to four (come on, be honest here) scoops of cornbread dressing, or “stuffing”, if you’re north of the Mason-Dixon Line, that sit there next to the turkey or ham.

Let us veer off the course into fashion for a moment. I know, I know…but bear with me on this. Consider that you’ve just purchased the LBD (that’s Little Black Dress, gentlemen), a wardrobe staple, but the ensemble is incomplete until you find the perfect accessories. I mean, it would work on its own, but ideally, it needs just a bit of sizzle. Well, the traditional turkey dinner is something like that — turkey, on its own, is not bad, and in fact, it’s a culinary holiday staple of sorts, but without the right accompaniment, it falls just a tad short of its true potential as a feast headliner. You can put some gravy on it, but it is unfulfilled without green bean casserole, cheesy potatoes, and dressing, heaps of dressing. Oh, and cranberry something-or-other. Personally, I prefer my cranberry in martinis, but that’s just me talking.

So, we did the Thanksgiving vote, and it appeared to work quite well. We ended up feasting on a turkey/ham combination with all these tasty side dishes and a number of incredible desserts that warrant their own blog posting. I will say that one of the “desserts”, a vast array of maple flavored acorn-shaped muffins, has provided me breakfast all this weekend. The side dishes once again ruled at the dinner itself, lending credence to that belief that the best things in life don’t always get top billing.

Like lots of males of the species, I confess that I’m already anticipating the next big meal, but I don’t know if I can bargain for two cornbread dressing treats in a month. I’ll certainly give it that old college try. (By the way, where I went to college, they didn’t even have cornbread dressing — it was “stuffing” — whatever. Call it what you will, it was still the goods.) And all this kidding aside, I think that what I’ll really be looking forward to at that next holiday is actually less about the food and more about just being together with family and friends, because that’s what really accessorizes life. What better time to savor it than now?

So this FarmVille thing on Facebook is getting out of hand. I liked the original incarnation of this game, a scaled back SIM-type diversion that I could actually handle. Those of you who know me know that I am not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination, so for me to even become involved in something like FV is a bit of a stretch, but I admit that at first, I found the game strangely fascinating.

But as with almost everything these days, the developers have not stopped with a good thing. Now we have gentrified chicken coops, random storage sheds, animals that are supposed to move but don’t, and just plain too much work to do, unless you’re sitting at home with nothing else on the agenda. The same thing happened with Microsoft Word back in 2007, when a perfectly good product was dolled up beyond recognition into something that requires an advanced degree to be utilized to its fullest.

Earlier this morning, I saw the most disturbing FarmVille-related thing that I’ve yet witnessed — an online offer for a book called “Farm Domination”, a step-by-step guide which promises to make you the undisputed FarmVille champion of your county, state, nation, and hemisphere. I don’t know about you, but something about that title does not sound right to me.

So FV folks, I say let us have FarmVille Lite, the FarmVille for the rest of us. Oh, and while you’re at it, is there a way we can pick our farm’s location, maybe add some weather, and bring on a plague of locusts so we don’t have to do so much work on the farm? But wait…those would all be enhancements. Forget I said that stuff.

There I was back in 2007, minding my own business and getting along from day to day eating chicken sandwiches and watching Giada de Laurentiis on Food Network, when I discovered Bollywood movies. If you’re not yet familiar with Bollywood, the main thing to take away is that almost everyone in a Bollywood movie is extremely good-looking, and most are probably no older than 39. In my susceptible condition, I had to face the fact that, all else being equal, I was over 39.

It all started when I rented the Bollywood movie Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena, a movie reminiscent of The Italian Job, but with a Hindi flavor. Upon telling one of my friends (from Chennai) that I had seen this exquisite film, she immediately discounted it as a piece of tripe and brought me two other movies which she said were vastly superior. I noticed that in all the movies, everyone (well, almost everyone) was good-looking and less than or equal to 39. I was fascinated. Who was this Mallika Sherawat, and how in the world had I missed her?

At about the same time, a convergence of unrelated personal events occurred which, coupled with this nascent fascination, drew me to the other side of the world, to India — a place where song and dance (and a vast railway network) reigned supreme. I absolutely love Indian food, and my friends were all too happy to encourage me to indulge this passion. What I found was that, if you combine the spice of Indian food with India’s diverse culture and its wildly colorful movies, you come up with something both entertaining and addictive. Before I knew it, I had complete strangers approaching me in the elevator at work, asking if I’d seen the latest Bollywood release. I reached a pinnacle of achievement in this regard when I obtained a DVD of a new movie which one of my Indian friends had seen in the theater only one week before. Yes, I had arrived — where, I wasn’t quite sure, but I was somewhere.

However, there was a price to be paid. I found that I could no longer be satisfied with mere American fare — a cheeseburger here and there might not be so bad, but it was tikka masala that I craved day and night. I no longer saw the attraction of Angelina Jolie, not when compared to Aishwarya Rai. My older daughter had become hooked on chai tea several years earlier, and I started thinking that maybe she was onto something. My friends brought me a kurta from India, and shortly thereafter, I danced for hours on end at a Holi festival, where my hair was dyed pink and teal from “Holi colour” powder, the essence of which is still suspect. I don’t know what was in it, but the color lasted for almost six weeks. In effect, quite unbeknownst to me, I had outsourced my midlife crisis.

These days, I guess you would say that I have begun to put it all into perspective. I still enjoy the occasional Bollywood movie — in fact, I have a respectable DVD library of Hindi and Tamil movies, but I’m also getting back into the American way of life. Last Friday night, I visited my friend Jim’s house, where we did a guys’ night thing, watching motorcycle movies, talking cars, and checking out the new pickup trucks that a couple of the guys had recently acquired. I could almost hear George Strait singing in the background.

One day, perhaps I shall unconditionally embrace the whole North American scene, but my head has always been a bit international anyway, and I think my recent time away has had a lasting effect on me. My favorite restaurant in Atlanta is a cafe down in Decatur called bhojanic (lower-case “b”), which specializes in Indian tapas. My favorite dish is tikka masala, a spicy Indian chicken preparation. One of my favorite movies is Dor, a story about two Indian women who become friends under the most unlikely of circumstances. But perhaps most important, some of my very best friends are from India, and they remind me daily what it was that drew me to the subcontinent. A part of me will probably always be there in spirit, and I thank them for that.

What this experience has taught me is that for some people, midlife may be confusing, but for me, it seems more like an ideal time to truly broaden the mind, to think outside the box, and maybe, just maybe, to see oneself and one’s world from a whole new perspective.

Namaste, everyone.

Of course, one can only assume (rightly in this case) that my return to blogging after such an extended hiatus would open with coverage of a radical issue, and one would not be wrong in that assumption. For the topic at hand is mannequins. Yes, you read that correctly…mannequins, the kind you see in stores and shop windows.

As an employee of a major national retailer and a self-affirmed male clothes horse, I will freely admit that I spend more than the average amount of time shopping, particularly for a guy. This can be a blessing, especially if you’re one of my female friends and need to have me tag along while picking up something during the lunch hour, because I guarantee that I’ll shop for just about anything, as long as you feel the need. On these forays and others, I’ve begun to notice an endless variety of mannequins, and before you start with the guffaws, just remember: a lot of your ideas about common things change as you get older. Anyway, here we go.

It all started back in the winter. As you may recall from an earlier post, I was given a small doll in the image of Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra for a Christmas present last year. It took several weeks for the doll to arrive, and it now occupies a place of honor at my office. Well, at least it did, until it was stolen for the second time yesterday, but I digress. The likeness of the doll to the real Priyanka was somewhat questionable, but it was the thought that mattered. It occurred to me that in effect, my Priyanka was a tiny mannequin of sorts, 11-1/2 inches, to be exact.

On Valentine’s Day, as Karen and I were shopping at a local antiques store, I noticed a rather aloof, yet strangely attractive, blonde mannequin seated on a chair next to a stack of vintage suitcases. Although I must admit that at first, the figure seemed quite unapproachable, I determined upon closer examination that she was indeed rather pleasant in a quiet sort of way, but possessed of a modicum of social anxiety. Perhaps this was owing to the somewhat absent-minded nature of antiques shoppers who, intent upon finding the perfect side chair, can be quite remiss in doling out compliments regarding one’s personal appearance. Essentially, this poor fake fashionista, who looked splendid, by the way, was a victim of sheer neglect.

On an April evening some weeks later, we spotted a scantily-clad mannequin hiding behind a table of tank tops at our local Old Navy store, presumably reaching up to the table to steal an article of clothing. This was quite unexpected. I know the store has security people somewhere on the premises; therefore, I was surprised to see this kind of thing transpiring in the open, not to mention the indecent exposure factor it introduced. As you well know, many impressionable young children shop at Old Navy, and I think this sets a bad precedent. It’s one thing to shoplift, but quite another to do it au naturel.

Then in August, we were browsing through a major department store mall location which was closing, and I noticed that all the mannequins had been stripped and sequestered into one area of the store — females on the left, males on the right, and much to their collective chagrin, they had been separated by a makeshift wall of discarded shelving. I found this rather puritanical, to say the least. Who are we as a society to put up barriers between the sexes? Are there not already enough such impediments? Does an action such as this not strike at the very heart of our personal freedoms (regardless of how much plastic we may contain)?

Perhaps the pinnacle of my mannequin fascination, yea even the mac daddy of all mannequin encounters, has to be my visit to the Hollywood Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, where I was able to sit at a cafe table with a likeness of Audrey Hepburn, who was delicately perched on the front of her chair, eating an artificial bakery product. I must admit that, even though I knew that she was crafted entirely of wax, I was a bit starstruck being in such close proximity to Holly Golightly.

But then to bring things back down to a more earthy level, here we are shopping the other day in a local women’s clothing store in a very nice designer shopping mall, and upon entering the mens’ room, I found to my great surprise that the rest room was full of half-naked female mannequins. Even though this might not have been appropriate, I just had to take a picture. Folks, this just isn’t fair. This isn’t the kind of thing you count on seeing in a major retail establishment. The shame of it all.

And so there you have it. Like it or not, we’re surrounded by these artificial likenesses of what people think we should look like in new (or in some cases, no) clothing. It reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode that I saw years ago as a child. The episode title was “The After Hours”, and it chronicled one night in the life of a shopper who saw mannequins come to life right before her eyes. I must say that at such an vulnerable age, that was scary. And so, perhaps, is this fascination of mine, but for now, I’m going to keep on snapping pictures whenever the occasion arises.