The Big BM

…that McCain had chosen Michael Palin.

In the September issue of GQ, I interview Michael Strahan and report on eating in New Orleans. Now available on your finer newstands.

I’m guessing they were out of “Support Our Troops” magnets.

The interior at Murray’s, in downtown Minneapolis, matches this awesome facade perfectly—all mirrors and fabric and crowded tables. It looks like photos of where your parents got married, right down to the blurred lighting, though maybe that was the old-fashioneds talking. The steak isn’t half bad either—carved tableside, natch.

Well, apparently I haven’t got the discipline for this blogging thing. In fact, I kind of suck. Now I’m off to exotic Minneapolis for a few days. But I wanted to leave you with a happy story about gorillas, of which there aren’t nearly enough. (Stories, that is. Or gorillas.)

There are many charms to the Chateau Marmont, including tiny, decorative details like this one. But, honestly, you could charge me $1,000 per night for a broom closet filled with pig shit, just so long as you kept the stationery coming.

Just another gratuitous pork video. Happy Independence Day!

Wong Kee Restaurant, KL

This is a continuation of the feature once, with some misfortune, titled Similars.

Penang, Malaysia

San Diego, California

With levees back in the news, it occurred to me that, until a few weeks ago, I really didn’t have a mental picture of what the hell a levee really was. I’m no expert on the mechanics of the Katrina flood, but below are a couple of pictures of the rebuilt levee wall separating the Inner Harbour Navigation Canal (which connects to Lake Pontchartrain), on the left in the overhead shot, from the Lower Ninth Ward, on the right. (Experts please correct if I’ve gotten this wrong.)

I guess I always knew it was just a big wall, but I somehow still imagined something more technologically intricate—something that made the levee’s “failure” more complicated than the simple triumph of the brute strength of water.