CHINESE government officials are planning a Bruce Lee theme park, complete with a rollercoaster that emits the martial arts actor’s signature grunts and screams on high-speed bends.

According to local reports, the park will be patrolled by Bruce Lee “mannequin robots”, radio-controlled from within a giant statue of the late star. Read More…

I’ll have to make a trip out there before the micro-chips in the manneguin robots go haywire. Speaking of Robots, we have a new category at 423 - yes you guessed it - the ROBOTS category. Enjoy.

Banania was always THE brunch place. I would come all the way from my native Kensington (so far that most of you have probably never heard of it!) and friends would come from the city just to meet there and enjoy a delicious omelet with goat cheese, or eggs benedict, or any of their other great dishes, along with the terrific accompanying home fries, salad, and basket of crazy-good breads.

As we all know, the place we renovated and renamed - to “Porchetta,” perhaps a bad sign of things to come - but the brunch menu remained the same. So I kept eating there happily.

However, two weeks ago I convinced two former Brooklynites to make the trip from the city for a Banania/Porchetta brunch, promising that even though the name was changed, the menu remained.

I was in for one of the worst changes since Han shooting first.

The menu was completely different. No more eggs benedict. No more omelet. Instead, there was hamburger (WTF??), sausage, etc. And to top things off, the home fries and salad were gone, sadly replaced by mediocre french fries. (Move on to the next paragraph when you’ve regained oxygen after gasping…okay ready?)

So I ordered the “pancakes.” Pancakes, plural. What I got was one huge pancake, about an inch thick, with apples and ricotta on top. I took a few bites and realized something was oozing out of the pancake. What was it? Ricotta mixed in? No. Some kind of cream? No. It was raw pancake batter! Yay! Needless to say, I lost my appetite and sent it back.

Now, to give credit where credit is due, they did take the pancake off the bill, and apologized. Hell, they even still provide the free basket of really good bread. But it’s too little. And far too late.

Banania is truly dead. I won’t be going back, and I’m sad to say that.

(from friend of Jesse)

Valentino hangs out at one of the old school realty places on smith. They’ve only had him for 8months but the fellas at the store seem taken with him. As evidence by the huge cat bed and number of toys under one of the desks.

A number of my friends are having babies, and time permitting I’ll generally make a blanket as a gift, but I’ve decided to try my hand at stuffed animals. Here is a quick look at my first effort. The duck has a swimming tube around him (incase you were wondering what the blue part was). I figure he is a little uncertain in the water. Now I just need names for them. Any thoughts?

I was chatting with my friend Lillian about corny duets with great Karaoke potential and I came up with this oldie but goodie.
Please enjoy. No really ENJOY!

Halloween is probably a distant sugar-glazed memory for most of you but, since we don’t have much else to post I thought I’d drop in a little shameless self promo. We created this little online voo-doo lounge thing-a-ma-jig as a digital complement to our company’s (orangeyouglad) annual Halloween project (voo doo dolls). So, if you are bored at work and feel like hexing your boss (so long as that boss isn’t me!) with a surge of chest hair. Or if you feel like hexing yourself with a psycho secret admirer (who doesn’t), then check out our voo doo lounge.

Bonnie hangs out in a pet store in the west village. Ok, it isn’t brooklyn, but she is a cute and chubby shop cat worthy of a post. I was pretty amazed at Bonnie’s casual attitude towards rush hour foot and car traffic.