Tom Simpson and the Raiders of the Lost Blog

So Chris’s friends were in town this weekend. After getting some soup dumplings at the ever-amazing Joe’s Shanghai they wanted to walk along Canal street to pick up some fake Louis Vuitton bags.

You can always spot them by their big black garbage bags. There will be a woman out with the trash bag with some samples. The woman will have a nextel walkie talkie as well, getting a constant stream of information about the police locations.

We spotted one and went over. She was selling them for $35 each. Once she saw us she led us up a side street off of Canal and showed us the bags. Shelly didn’t find any that she wanted, so the bootlegger brought out a photo album filled with pictures of Louis Vuitton bags and wallets. Once Shelly picked one, she got on the walkie talkie and told someone to bring the bag to us. A few minutes later a man came down the street with the bag and a wallet in a plastic shopping bag.

The crazy thing was how much it all seemed like a drug deal. One person to lead people back to buy the bags, spotters on the streets with walkie talkies to warn about the police, and a stash where the bags are stored with runners to bring the bags out.

Crazy!

Check out 100 Facts and 1 Opinion about the Bush Administration.

Chris and I went to Boston this weekend. We went primarily to catch the Boston Museum of Science’s Lord of the Rings exhibit. You can see all of my Boston pictures in my photo gallery

We left early Saturday morning and drove off to Boston. We took the parkways up to I-684, then I-84 towards Boston through Connecticut. The trees were all in peak leaf season, with wonderful reds & golds.

It’s about a 4 – 4 1/2 hour drive from Brooklyn to Boston, depending on traffic. It was pretty easy getting out to Boston, we found a place in a garage by Boston Commons and parked for the day. We decided to walk along the Freedom Trail.

The Freedom trail is a red line either painted or in bricks that runs throughout Boston and links most of the important Revolutionary War sites. It starts in Boston Commons, and you follow the red line through the city.

The city was buzzing with World Series fever. That night was going to be the first night of the series against the Cardinals. Everywhere you looked there were anti-yankee shirts on display (”My two favorite teams are the Red Sox and whoever’s playing the Yankees”). Also rally socks were on sale, white socks with a red stain like Curt Schilling’s ankle.

Even Paul Revere is a Red Sox fan!

So we walked the trail, it takes a couple of hours. Along the way we stopped and had lunch at the Union Oyster House (see the CitySearch review). Great chowder (or “chowdah”) and great seafood. It’s been open since 1826!

We walked by Faneuil Hall and Quincy Markets. Lots of tiny shops are in these buildings, and other shops are around them. It’s along the Freedom Trail, so fun to see.

The trail ends at the USS Constitution, but we arrived just as they were closing. We went back to Boston from there, got coffee, wandered over by Cheers and saw a great pumpkin festival in Boston Commons.

Sunday we went to the Museum for the Lord of the Rings exhibit. They didn’t allow you to take pictures inside the exhibit (copyright issues, we were told) so this was the only thing you could take pictures of:

The exhibit itself was fun, but not nearly as large as the Star Wars exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum was. They were very draconian too about what you could do inside. No pictures allowed. No cell phones or PDA’s (afraid of camera phones). No water, no gum, no food. They ahd a 10 minute spiel of what you couldn’t do before you went inside.

They had props from the movie, a life size cave troll, swords you could hold, costumes, prosthetics and some fun interactive displays. You could run a motion capture animation, and they had a forced perspective photo booth where you could take the place of Frodo or Gandalf on the cart from the first movie. (I’ll put our picture up once I scan it in).

After that it was time to drive home and watch the Jets lose to the Patriots. We had a fun trip, and a great time.

From Late Night with Conan O’Brien, check out the latest Triumph clip, Triumph Takes on Poop Alley. Triumph was at the third presidential debate and later hit Spin Alley to talk to the crazy spinsters. The original blog posts are Rooftop Report and I’m Just Sayin’.

See a TON of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog clips at Ifilm.com. I love this guy, I was at his live show at Irving Plaza a couple of years back and even was at Conan’s 10th anniversary show here in NYC. He’s a great comedian… for me to poop on!

Update – iFilm is now hosting this clip as well!

From CBS News: Bush’s Top Ten Flip-Flops.

Flippety-floppety.