"But, are they organic?"

When I go somewhere, I like to linger for over a week in the same area – as opposed to globe-trotting – because experience has taught me it takes a good while to get one’s bearings. The first week in a new location is what I call the “expensive week”, because you end up spending a lot of money before you learn how to do things like a local. It’s important to plan ahead and be aware of this: no impulse buying for the first week, and remain flexible for meal planning and lounging locations; most importantly of all, ask as many locals in whatever location you are for where they go, what they eat, what they like; it never fails that, without emphasizing your interest in their preferences, you are going to be led to the same few tourist traps all outsiders are, and they'll be an expensive shadow of the real thing.

Here’s some red-flag words: plush, decadent, local-style, distilled, anything served on ‘skewers’. These are buzz-words that may alert you to the fact that you have been caught in a tourist trap. DON’T PANIC! If it’s too late to leave, just keep ordering down to a minimum (you can always eat again afterwards) and for the love of God, don’t buy anything you can wear (especially if the price tag looks ‘home-made’), or purchase anything you can clean/perfume your body with (beware of soap bars cut into irregular shapes!), or condiments that come in a tiny jar, i.e., raw honey with truffle, jasmine sugar pearls, or virgin priestess eyelashes candied in unicorn mustard.

Absolutely not.

I think that's it's been well over six months since I last did a sticker gallery. Not a price tag gallery, but a promo sticker gallery.  Some of these stickers are clearly the label interfering with the artists intentions, others are clearly part of the artists design, but all are clear...

Tuesday was tough. I woke up early, voted without having to wait in line (my polling place has always been quiet) and spent the bulk of the day thereafter feeling like I had been physically rendered into ragged shreds of mixed emotions that mainly resembled a patchwork of grief. Being confined to the registers at work, restless, while polls across the country closed at their designated times, the ague that wracked my body and mind increased as the day sank heavily into night. On my dinner break things started looking up; I spent the hour with a politically like-minded coworker (and dear friend) at a local sports bar so decorated with festive balloons, streamers and flat-screen televisions that the effort needed to focus on what might really constitute "news" distracted my mind away from any results I didn't want to see, but nevertheless felt somewhat prepared to receive. When it was projected that my home state of Virginia was going to "go red," as red as a Virginia cardinal, my nerves slackened into an uncomfortable numbness.

Given the option to leave work early, I fled and hopped a bus to meet up with some friends at a bar I'd never been to or heard of. Trying to find a place unknown on such a night was absolutely frustrating and just when I was knitting my brow in consternation, bent over my cellphone feverishly texting queries to inebriated friends, a girl at the front of the bus began to squeal like a steam leak. Suddenly strangers were hugging, kissing and high-fiving me, dancing and falling all over each other on a crowded, careening Haight street bus with a horn-happy driver at the wheel. Images alike to those photos taken during the block parties that erupted at the end of World War II flashed to life in front of me and, maybe for the first time in my life, I felt the news. Everyone here would remember this night, the night the streets of San Francisco went wild for Barack Obama's victory and the end of eight years of  George W. Bush.

I remember when I was like 13 some friends of mine rented "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)" by Woody Allen. They were really disappointed and told me not to bother watching it. I think they thought it was really gonna be all the things they always wanted to know and I am sure they were not familiar with the humor of Woody Allen. I sort of think music and its history is sort of like sex. Everyone pretends to know everything about it and nobody ever wants to ask questions about it. So they remain in the dark about certain bands or styles of music simply because they are afraid to ask about it. I have always been the opposite of this. I love asking people about music and I don't pretend to know about things I do not know about it. I feel like Heart is also one of those bands that most people secretly like. Or maybe I just love them so much that I assume everyone likes them at least a little bit. The great Ann Wilson (who is the lead singer of Heart) has just released a solo album this week. This is her first solo album! It is called "Hope & Glory." It is all covers and features a lot of guests on the album. Nancy Wilson, Wynonna Judd, Alison Krauss, Rufus Wainwright, Elton John, K.D. Lang, & Gretchen Wilson all appear on the album. She covers songs by Pink Floyd, The Animals, Led Zeppelin, Creedence, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and John Lennon. It is for sure worth a listen. I am not really saying you won't ever want to take it out of your CD player and you probably will not even want to put it on your IPOD. But the girl deserves your love and respect. This lady has been at it for a long time now and has had a quite a musical career. So I thought I would break down all the Ann Wilson and Heart albums for you. Just in case you were afraid to ask...