Last weekend I found myself on a comfort food quest. Three local greasy spoons in three days. A craving for pie spurred this. Chocolate pie.

You see I am one of those weird people who like fruit and like pie but do not like fruit pie. Pies made from secret recipes by people’s grandmothers being the exception to that rule. But from most diners what I am searching for is chocolate pie.

When you are seeking comfort, convenience is important. You don’t want to go out of your way to be comfortable. Driving through the small towns around Hood Canal is very relaxing. The scenery is gorgeous, the towns quaint, and there is no traffic to speak of. So why not stop at a diner or three?

Even if you haven’t been to these particular locations, if you’ve ate at any small town you’ve been to these diners. All have a few factors in common: the walls are held up by kitsch, the paint is old, the staff is friendly but not interested in serving your every whim, and there is always a smattering of local folk who know the staff by name.

The menu features burgers, fries, chicken strips, and cheese-stuffed hotdogs wrapped in bacon. No, these are not organic dishes. It’s the kind of food Anthony Bourdain would say “died screaming”. And unless you are certifiable don’t under any circumstance order the “vegetarian burger” even if they should happen to have one. If you must, get a salad instead. Also be sure to look for that rare treat the SLT, as in spam with lettuce and tomato. It’s a sure sign you’ve come to the right place.

Pictures rarely help this type of food. That’s because it doesn’t belong on a magazine cover. It belongs in your tummy.

The main event for me, of course, is the pie. I tried three chocolate pies last weekend. And no, I don’t recommend this as a habit. They varied in consistency from pudding to spackle. Now if you live in Seattle, Portland or anywhere outside of a ten mile radius of Hood Canal I wouldn’t urge you to drive to these spots. Two of the three pies were nothing to write home about. And yes, forcing myself to eat chocolate pies was a hardship.

However, if you happen to be driving through a little town called Brinnon on the Western side of Hood Canal and you happen to be craving chocolate pie there is a joint with the dubious name of the Halfway House. The pie is worth stopping for, and according to Jenn so is the berry cobbler when the fruit is in season. And like my wife’s fried chicken, it provides the type goodness only comfort food can.

The city of course is never the same. At least until the next film when it is miraculously rebuilt. But when you watch Godzilla movies you’re not focused on the city. Godzilla’s personality is simply to big to allow anything else on the screen. And don’t give me the digital Godzilla, that phony coopted film with Mathew Broderick, I want the real thing because sometimes there is no greater joy than watching a man in a rubber suit knock down buildings.

Because it’s Godzilla’s Tokyo.

In many ways it was Rohannon’s house. Although the runt of the litter her personality was that big. She came with her own sound effects. When she roared it sounded like Godzilla. It’s how the nickname of “Baby Godzilla” came about and it was the first greeting all visitors received. She was letting you know you were walking into her house.

She was the matriarch of her domain. Organizing all the other cats, including her two brothers Cha’lar and Midi, into their places. The living room was arranged by where she wanted to sit that day. And if that spot happened to be your chest (she had a certain fondness for large boobs) well then you were part of that arrangement. Rohannon would grumble, fuss and roar until her seat was properly arranged.

And more than the days of actor’s in rubber suits I will miss her something fierce.

Rarely do I read a novel straight through. Often I will lay down a book for several months before finishing it. This was the case with Ian Banks’ The Bridge. I had set it down not because of lack of interest but because it got misplaced in the shuffle while I was traveling. This occurred somewhere between Seattle and SXSW. I found it again while going through my swag from Austin.

By that time I had nearly finished Brian Morton’s Breakable You. Never having read Morton before I had picked it up at random during the binge that is the Seattle Friends of the Library Booksale.

Maudlin is good word for the book. It’s a story that revolves around the New York literary scene and set of broken characters that are in transition. The book is full of awkward moments in the character’s lives, you know the way pivotal moments in life really are.

Morton’s style is problematic. He keeps having the character’s give these introspective asides. He’s trying to let the reader into the thought processes of the character and he’s also purposefully slipping in some philosophy. I don’t have an issue with that. I have an issue with the construct.

Milan Kundera, for example, constantly breaks the fourth wall in order to communicate directly to the reader. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being he stops the narrative to describe how one of the characters was born out of something he ate. That’s because Kundera is less interested in plot then he is in detailing a novel of ideas.

Morton is interested in plot. Every aspect of Breakable You works like a moving sidewalk moving the reader forward. Every time an aside is thrown in however it’s like someone toggled the moving sidewalk’s power switch. It completely takes you out of the story. What should be ferociously moving moments in the story: a child’s illness, a mother’s inability to cope her baby, are blunted by the way Morton wields these monologue length asides. Which is unfortunate because there is a strong story here.

Which brings me back to The Bridge. When I picked it back up a funny thing happened. The timelines for both novels essentially intersected. Both contain nearly identical scenes of characters dealing with infidelity and of a car crash due to driver’s fatigue. While neither author does a spectacular job with these scenes it is amazing how much better Banks’ writing is because he can relate ideas without having his characters monologue.

If maudlin best describes Breakable You, haunting best describes The Bridge. This novel reminds me in many ways of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind especially in tone. There is a scene in that film where Jim Carrey’s character is walking through a library and suddenly every book and cover goes blank. The scene was chilling to me (and not just because of my addiction to books). In The Bridge there is a scene where workers show up to a man’s residence in order to move him. Since he is a ward of the state who is being demoted they go about repossessing every item he owns including the clothes he’s wearing. Equally chilling.

Through most of the novel there are two main characters: a man who is lost and a construct which the book takes its title from. The Bridge as a character serves as a metaphor, a place, a society, and a connection between multiple timelines. The timelines involve the lost man’s past and future and sense of self. It’s a story worth exploring.

Through my consulting company Custom Tailored Marketing I am the OPM (Outsourced Program Manager) for the following:

• Jones Soda
• Keen Footwear
• Core Performance
• Intelius

I am also the Managing Editor of Revenews.com as well as a founding member and evangalist for PopShops.com

They say the lightning never strikes twice. Sometimes they’re wrong. On January 29th, 2009 I was fortunate enough to win my second Pinnacle Award for Affiliate Manager of the Year  from Affiliate Summit.

The first time I won the award was as the affiliate manager for Onlineshoes.com. It was essentially my rookie year, thankfully I had a lot of guidance from the community at ABestWeb. The program I had taken over received a lot of focus for the massive cleanup underwent initially to parasites from a channel that had been on autopilot for the four years prior. After the cleanup we achieved (pdf) 110% growth year over year, rare for a clean program.

With Jones Soda the experience was very different. Not simply because the products and audiences of both companies were different but because their cultures were so different. While a great place to work, Onlineshoes is a prototypical corporate online retailer. Jones Soda, while also a large corporation, had built a strong brand around a very grassroots counter culture following.

Having carte blanche is a consultant’s dream. Jones Soda gave me that kind of freedom. I got to do some very creative campaigns with ICanHasCheezburger.com and the Graffiti application on Facebook. Plus where else do you get to promote Barrack Obama and Ron Paul soda?

No matter how creative the campaigns in the corporate world the numbers trump. The ICHC campaign was so successful that Jones Soda placed lolcats offline in retailers like Target during the Fall of ‘08. We also posted (pdf) 42% growth year over year which in 2008 as the economy was dovetailing isn’t bad at all.

I am not sure it was intentional, but one of the kids just happened to look exactly like Michael Jackson…and I don’t mean kind of, or sort of, but such an exact caricature of a post multiple operation Michael that often the passengers in my car as I would drive by this masterpiece would comment on it. “Why do they have a mural of Michael Jackson sitting with a bunch of kids?” usually followed by “That’s kinds of creepy.”

As proof that bad press can affect a lot of things, word must have reached who ever is in charge of  the Cheesy But Happy Murals for Public Benefit for the city. Because Michael’s head has been replaced with someone’s idea of a less offending face. How good of them to care…

Dress it up in a cold place with pews not designed for reverence, where the staccato of the receptionist’s high heels against tile taps out the message that this is formal grief. Dress it for around the house, where nervous friends who don’t know, cannot know what to say flit between vegetable trays in the dinning room and drinks on the patio. Dress it down at a tea house as you watch Jasmine Dragon Pearls unfold their legs in scalding water and pretend that small talk is all that’s going on. Dress it for long walks on the beach at night when the sand looks like moonscape and white noise of the waves sets your tempo as you cry in the shadow of a lifeguard tower.

What are these goodbyes? We do not know how to hold them, how to console them, how to tell them it will be okay. With each goodbye we are tired and weary, searching for that moment where we can begin to shape our lives again and wondering what form we will choose.

Then there is the long drive through the San Joaquin Valley. Then there is the house filled of memory and echo. And then this too shall pass.

I have always equated times like these to sitting at a greyhound bus station, waiting for a bus whose schedule I don’t know surrounded by people whom I don’t want to approach and can’t really talk to. Boom city is my bus station. And I find myself pacing.

Pacing because I am anxious for news from Mercy Hospital in San Diego. Pacing as I manically peel back the bubbles of paint rust has caused on the side of the trailers. Pacing as I hear that the blood that keeps seeping into his brain is at least not any worse than it was since the last CT scan. Pacing as I find myself replanting a small blade of grass that on one fibrous root has forced its way out from under the hot gravel parking lot to seek air and sky. Pacing because as I hear that although responding to physical stimulus he now hasn’t woken up for seven days. Pacing as I blow on a spider web, which works like a doorbell, so that its sea shell colored in habitant comes out to visit with me. Pacing because Jenn’s father is in the hospital and all I can do is hold down the fort.

I don’t remember the time in between the pacing. It is filled with the buzzing of negotiation and numbers being yelled out as fireworks are bought and sold wholesale. I imagine this is like a pyros wall street.

Today as my neighbors exchange salvos of roman candles, mortars and brightly colored artillery shells, the bus I am waiting for still has not come into the station. I wish I knew what its schedule was, I wish I knew that its passengers were okay.