The Cookblog by Brian Cook

I haven’t listened to your mixtape yet, but I’ve yoinked the MP3’s and will give it a go soon.

I, too, enjoy the crisp air of the autumn months, and often think back to days as a child going to gather hazelnuts in Enfield with my dad, or playing touch football in jeans with other kids in the apartment complex, all while wrapped in the cool air that doesn’t give you shivers, yet doesn’t let you sweat.

I’ve always enjoyed the Rushmore soundtrack as a fall anthem. Its back-to-school Mothersbaugh instrumentals dance lightly like an oak leaf hemming and hawing it’s way down to the lawn, and the classic rock documents bittersweet tales of loss and change. More than once I’ve thrown this in my car stereo while driving home from UConn amongst the red, yellows and oranges of Rt. 44.

So, you’re one of those people, are you? You like fall? Well, let me tell you something, sonny, fall is all well and good if, by some miracle, it is followed by spring – and we all know that cannot happen don’t we, unless we board a craft of some kind and boost ourselves with fossil fuels across a significant latitude to salvation.
But, you’ve got a point, I’ll grant you that; the aroma of woodsmoke, the darker nights, the rainy aerosols moving through the air and nesting in the crooks of our <a href=”http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/b.htm” rel=”nofollow”> boat-races</a>, and the profusion of colour, looming and exploding on the hills and dales all around. But it’s shit. Face it. It’s not the fall itself that horrifies me, certainly not, I, too, am something of a miserable bastard in a melancholy-yet-intelligently-thoughtful-yet-artistic-yet-serious but-not-too-serious-but-definitely-serious-enoough-to-be-taken-seriously-kind of way, no, no, no; it is what fall represents that I don’t like. The descent into New England winter, the sub-zero wasteland that honestly makes me wonder what the hell apes are even doing living at this latitude, and of course the excessive boozing every time a proper blizzard is forecast. I see them, the Yankees, clustering in the superdoopermarkets, gathering their Yankee provisions, gabbling in that strange tongue I have come to know and love, while I skulk around the liquor section, loading my basket with the correct materials for the job. It’s as if, because I emigrated from a country with a milder winter climate which bestowed upon me education enough to understand that I could be literally anywhere in the world I wanted to be right now, I <i>deserve</i> to be allowed to get pissed as a fart, even during the day. Oh, and don’t forget to call in at the local pizza house, too, and load up on that. A quick trip to the DVD rental place for a whole season of the Sopranos, or Goodfellas, or Sin City, or whatever, and away we go. But now I’ve gone and made winter sound like a lark, and it’s not. It’s hell. And you, young Cook, simply know not the joys of living in a place where winters are much milder, yet still there’s fall, and “soccer”, and chilliness, but not as bad, and not as good (in the colours of fall). Doesn’t stop us moaning though.

[...] make it there by 10:00, but that seemed to be just out of our grasp. Fueled by breakfast sausage, Genius playlists and block-letter HOPE, we hit the Mass Pike at an eighty mile-per-hour clip. Just two and a half [...]

[...] make it there by 10:00, but that seemed to be just out of our grasp. Fueled by breakfast sausage, Genius playlists and block-letter HOPE, we hit the Mass Pike at an eighty mile-per-hour clip. Just two and a half [...]