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That’s right: grilling season’s back with a vengeance, bitches. It’s time once more to wax grillosophic, and we’ll kick off this season with one of the best damned meat-n-potatoes combinations you’ll ever have. Courtesy of the most grilliant man on the planet – Jamie Purviance – this one rocked TheWife’s world last weekend, and features what is without question the best damned steak sauce I’ve ever enjoyed…

BODACIOUS STEAKS WITH SEXY BBQ SAUCE & GARLIC-ROASTED POTATOES ON ROSEMARY SKEWERS

Ingredients
STEAK
* 1 Steak/person (the quality of your steaks is paramount here… I used some fantastic sirloins, but good ribeyes or porterhouse would also be fine)
* Vegetable Oil
* Kosher Salt & Fresh-Ground Pepper

SAUCE
* 1/2 Cup Red Wine (oh, yes — you’d better open a nice bottle of red for this meal. Just be prepared to sacrifice 1/2 cup to the sauce.)
* 1/2 Cup Ketchup
* 1/4 Cup Dark Molasses
* 1 TB Dijon Mustard (I used Stonewall Kitchen’s Bourbon Molasses Mustard)
* 1 TB Worcestershire
* 2 TB Red Wine Vinegar
* 1/2 Tsp Chili Powder
* 1/2 Tsp Kosher Salt
* 1/4 Tsp Curry Powder
* 1/4 Tsp Ground Cumin

SPUDS
* 1 lb Small Red Potatoes
* 1+ TB Minced Garlic
* 1/2 Cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
* 6 Sturdy Rosemary Branches
* 1/3 Cup Balsamic Vinegar
* Kosher Salt & Fresh-Ground Pepper

Directions
1. Do the sauce before anything else. Combine all sauce ingredients with 1/2 Cup of water in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Mix well and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, until it boils down to about 2/3 cup of sauce. This should take about 1/2 hour. Then let it cool to room temperature.

2. Preheat your grill while you’re letting the sauce boil down.

3. Cut the potatoes in half and place in a medium bowl. Add 2 TB of olive oil and the minced garlic. Season with salt & pepper to taste.

4. Strip most of the rosemary leaves off the branches, leaving some leaves on near the thinner end (presuming one end is actually thinner than the other). Dice the rosemary until you’ve got about 2 TB worth, then add them to the potatoes.

5. Toss the potatoes so they’re thoroughly covered with oil, garlic and rosemary. (You’ll probably have to use your hands.) Then take a rosemary branch and use it as a skewer for the potatoes… you can usually fit 2 potato-halves on each one. Make sure to leave a little room between the halves.

6. When the skewers are ready and your grill is pre-heated, drop the heat to medium-high and then roast the skewers. This should take about 1/2 hour. Be sure to turn them every five minutes or so, to prevent charring. You’ll know they’re done because the skins will be brown and crisp.

7. Take your steaks, brush on a little vegetable oil, then season all sides with salt & pepper to taste. When you estimate the potatoes have about 15-20 minutes left, throw the steaks on the grill. Flip ’em once (at about 5-6 minutes)… cook to your preference, then pull ’em off.

8. Remember the balsamic vinegar from the potatoes? No, I didn’t forget about it. Take a small saucepan (open a window, while you’re at it… trust me) and – over high heat – boil the vinegar until it’s reduced to about 2 TB of syrupy glaze. Then take a small plate and pour a little olive oil onto it. Then sprinkle it with salt & pepper, then pour the vinegar syrup over the top.

9. Presuming that you’ve pulled the steak and potatoes off by this point, take your potato skewers and roll them in the balsamic/oil mix. Then put your steaks on plates, push the potatoes off the skewers and onto the plates next to them, pour your sexy sauce (their name, btw — not mine) into some kind of serving bowl…

10. Steaks. Delicious potatoes. Unbelievable sauce. Red wine. Warm weather. Blossoming flowers. Springtime. Bliss.

From a conversation this morning with a friend who will go unnamed, in which he recounted a recent and pretty much inexplicable hot steak in which he was stalked and taken by a forty-something cougar last Friday night, hooked up with a gorgeous Indian woman on Sunday night, and tomorrow is being visited by another woman who’s basically flying 3000 miles for a booty call:

“It’s like you’re playing musical chairs, and you’re the chair.”

Alright. I’m going to give this another shot. And if Safari crashes again and I lose this post before it goes live, I swear to you: this fucking computer is going out the window. For the sake of whoever owns the little silver Forester in the parking lot below, let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

So.

12 songs for 12 months:

JANUARY
January’s Little Joke — Trashcan Sinatras
It’s hard to believe it’s been 18 years since the Trash Can Sinatras released their wonderful debut album Cake — and honestly, I can think of few albums that have held up nearly as well. This song captures their appeal in a neat 4:48… chiming guitars, heavenly harmonies, playful lyrics (“I knew what argue meant/and I knew what punish meant/and I knew what embarrass meant/but I never found out what achieve meant”), and a touch of melancholy underlying music that can otherwise be described only as a pure expression of joy.

FEBRUARY
Sometimes — My Bloody Valentine
I had to cheat here, as my iPod is bereft of songs with the word “February” in them. That being said, is there ever a bad reason to listen to a little My Bloody Valentine? As I’ve noted before, the first time I ever heard Loveless I thought my stereo was melting. I love that.

MARCH
March of the Chogokin — Ee
D’ja ever wonder what happened to Sooyoung Park from Seam? I did. The Pace is Glacial and Are You Driving Me Crazy? are two longtime slowcore favorites of mine, and after waiting years for something new to pop up under that band name, I finally googled Mr. Park. The answer: he moved to San Francisco and joined Ee just in time for their big hit smash album For 100 We Try Harder. The vaguely Avis-esque title is appropriate, as the band comes off as something of a second-tier follow-up to Seam. This particular song isn’t the best representation of their sound, as it’s a 7:41 instrumental (and not a terribly interesting one at that), but if you’re a Seam fan… it’s worth a coupla bucks to hunt down a cheap used copy of the album. (Avoid their first album Ramadan, btw — which is 100% Sooyoung-free, and sucks more than a little.)

APRIL
April 5th — Talk Talk
This song, taken from The Colour of Spring, captures a band in transition. There are still elements of the Talk Talk most people recognize – in particular, the fragile, reedy vocals of Mark Hollis you know and love from “It’s My Life” and “Life’s What You Make It” – but you also begin to see glimmers of what was to come on their genre-defying follow-ups, Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock: a profound sense of atmospherics, an almost jazz-like (or Van Morrison circa Astral Weeks-like) willingness to experiment with song structure, unexpected juxtapositions of unexpected instruments, the trademark organ of frequent collaborator (and frequent Catherine Wheel guy) Tim Friese-Greene… in short, the birth of something truly new.

Which is appropriate for springtime.

MAY
Sluttering (May 4th) — Jawbreaker
I already said pretty much everything I wanted to say about Jawbreaker and their tremendous swan song Dear You, but that doesn’t make this song – a caustically funny diatribe against the girl who chose someone else – any less fun an exercise in tuneful post-punk bitterness.

JUNE
A Death in June — Stephenhero
D’ja ever wonder what happened to Patrick Fitzgerald, the phenomenally talented singer and lyricist from beloved 90s shoegazers Kitchens of Distinction? The answer is a number of things, but most recently he assumed the nom du band Stephenhero (a Joycean homage) and released several albums, culminating in last year’s wonderful 57 Stars of the Air Almanac. This brief piano ballad gives you a taste, but if you were ever a fan of KOD’s remarkable sound, imagine it with piano replacing Julian Swales’ soaring wall-of-guitars… and then hunt down a copy of the album for yourself.

JULY
1000 Julys — Third Eye Blind
A guilty pleasure confession: I love – and allow me to bold and capitalize that to suggest added emphasis, LOVE – Third Eye Blind’s second album, Blue. Yeah, yeah, I know — they basically came up with one guitar riff and then repeated it across every other song they ever recorded (including this one), but what can I say? It works for me. There’s something about this album that feels like summer to me… something energized and buoyant that makes me think of driving somewhere – anywhere – with the windows open and the sun shining down, hot and brilliant and blinding with possibility.

AUGUST
Light in August — Early Day Miners
Early Day Miners are one of the best bands you’ve never heard of. From their 2002 debut Let Us Garlands Bring – featuring this song, apparently not inspired by the Faulkner novel of the same name – to 2006’s wonderful Offshore, they’ve created a remarkable blend of atmospherics, whispered but thoughtful lyrics (“The light in august hides/the distance in our lives”), and slow-building dynamics to create something pretty remarkable. Well worth seeking out.

SEPTEMBER
September Gurls — Big Star
Yeah, if you’re an indie music buff this is probably pretty obvious. So shoot me. In any case… a great song.

OCTOBER
3rd of October — Matthew Ryan
Ha! You thought I was gonna be obvious here, too, didn’t you? Suckers. Yes, I know and love that U2 song/album as much as you do, but there was no way I was gonna pass up what may be my favorite Matthew Ryan song for my October entry. And yes, I realize that some of you have expressed skepticism about Ryan in the past, but if something this anthemic doesn’t move you… well, you probably wouldn’t have been happy with U2, either.

NOVEMBER
November/December — The Brother Kite
Yeah, I’m not giving you a direct link to this song, if only because it’s a 0:34 instrumental that largely serves as a segue to their insanely catchy Get On, Me. Instead, I’ll just take this opportunity to once again implore you – for the love of God – to find a little room for The Brother Kite in your life. You’ll be a happier and better person for it, I promise you.

DECEMBER
Saviours of Jazz Ballet (Fear Me, December) — Mew
I have absolutely no idea what this song – or this album, for that matter – is about. “Fearless heroes of kick and spin?” Uh… yeah. But honestly, it doesn’t matter. This album – the equally strangely titled …And The Glass Handed Kites – somehow manages to overcome what is without question the worst cover of any album released on either side of the Atlantic since (at least) the 1970s (no, I won’t post it… you’ll have to follow the link to see) It’s… well, it’s like nothing else I’ve ever heard. I think I love it, and I think you’ll love it too. Plus, they’re Swedes! Just like ABBA! And Ingmar Bergman! That’s it exactly: they’re the post-rock equivalent of ABBA-meets-Ingmar Bergman. If there’s a surer formula for commercial success, I can’t imagine what it might be.

(Please join me in praying – for the sake of my sanity, this computer and the Subaru awaiting below – that this posts successfully.)

That’s the sound of my head exploding, as a result of 2.5 hours of me putting together a music post (yeah, like you were all excited about that) and then my Safari freezing and, as a result, me losing the entire freaking thing.

If you’ll excuse me, I have to go put my fist through a wall.

Scene: a Thursday morning at Castle TwoBusy, where TheWife is attempting to fill out a medical form in preparation for the twins’ first visit to the dentist next week.

TheWife: “They’re asking about allergies. What’s Rabbit allergic to?”

TwoBusy: “Penicillin, and pretty much the whole family of related antibiotics.”

TheWife: “How do you spell penicillin?”

TwoBusy: “P-E-N-I-S.”

TheWife: (scribbling away, waiting for the next letter, then figuring out what she just did.) “You realize that I just wrote that on the form.”

TwoBusy: “I’m so glad I married you for your looks.”

TheWife: “That’s great. I’m sure the dentist’s office is going to be thrilled with this.”

TwoBusy: “I’ll make sure you’re the one who hands it over to the staff.”

TheWife: “I still don’t know how to spell it.”

TwoBusy: (grabbing the paperwork, crossing out TheWife’s illegible handwriting and jotting down the word w/proper spelling) “It’s not like it’d be the worst thing in the world if we found out in another ten or twelve years that she was allergic to penis.”

TheWife: (looking pointedly at the jackass she married) “Tell me about it.”

Do you remember where you were at 12:01am on April 7, 2003? I sure do.

Happy birthday, buddy.

Somehow, I’m guessing the Volvo driving soccer mom in question might be a little surprised by the way most of my office interpreted this license plate.

(Btw: The real answer probably lies here… but you never know.)

Butterfly (running into the living room, wearing a pink tutu and some kind of crown): “I’m a princess!”

(runs out of room, then returns ten seconds later)

“And I’m bossy!”

(launches into celebratory dance, while TheWife and I look on in a mix of acknowledgement and growing horror)

I have to admit that, at times, I’ve been guilty of the sin of jealousy. I’ve read the accounts of other parents with young kids, and I’ve found myself jealous of the way those kids love music — not kids’ music, but real music. They sing along, they go to concerts, they bust some badass moves… it all sounds very cool, and despite ongoing attempts to indoctrinate my own kids on the same, I’ve had no success whatsoever.

Until now.

Just this past weekend, my kids discovered the joys of modern rock. They found a song simple enough that they could remember – and repeat – the words. They found a song that would allow them to laugh at TheWife and I bouncing our noggins along in time with the beat, and perhaps even motivate them to do the same. They found a song that they’re now happy to sing on their own – without prompting – as they walk around the house (albeit with some minor lyrical modifications).

They discovered Band of Horses . And that, in short, is how I found myself driving to daycare this morning and listening not once, not twice, but three times to three small, bloodthirsty mammals hollering at the top of their lungs:

“I could poo…
I could poo-ooo…
I could poo…
I could poo-ooo…

When I lived alone
is there a poo in my house?

When I lived alone
is there a poo in my house? My hou-ouuuuuuse?”

(commence headbanging)