From an email by my friend Matt:

Here is how I know I’m back in New York, dude:

1. I walk into a 50’s-70’s furniture store on Ludlow. They have an Alf phone on sale for $175.

2. Dude in the middle of 42nd Street, apparently not finding any cabs, yelling, “this is SILLY! This is just so fucking SILLY! So goddamned SILLY!”

I did a Google search today for “Dinsmore,” after looking at my stats and seeing that a few people came to my blog from that keyword. I don’t show up until page 18, which is pretty sad to me, especially considering that I’ve written two books. If you do a search for “Jeffrey Dinsmore” I’m way up there, but c’mon. That’s really stacking the deck.

Coming in much higher than me on the Google list is my dad’s company, The Dinsmore Group. He’s all the way up on page 4. But perhaps most impressive is my grandpa, who is the NUMBER TWO DINSMORE IN THE WORLD, right behind some law firm. My grandpa is a very smart man. He invented the sensor that got him the distinction of #2 Dinsmore. He has explained to me what it does before, but not being a technically-minded person, I don’t really get it. All I know is that it must be pretty darned important if it has made him the #2 Dinsmore in the world.

Read Part 1 of my trip to Flagstaff here.

Day three of my exciting adventure in Flagstaff began on a somber note, as we awoke to find the bear had finally given up the ghost.

A few hours later she would be nothing but a leg.

But this was not our concern, as Josh, Ginny and I were headed to the lava tube. Tucked away discreetly in a random Flagstaff forest is the stone entrance to a cave that was once a conduit for molten hot lava. I had seen a picture the day before at Josh’s newspaper and decided that I had to go to it. Little did I know that inside the lava tube, I would discover a painful secret about myself, a secret that’s so explosive and shocking, I must hide it on the next page.

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In writing the post below, I went to check out my friend Chris Cassidy’s website and stumbled across these amazing portraits of boxers he recently shot. Photography amazes me. How do good photographers capture the personalities of their subjects? When I take a picture, I can capture exactly two different looks: “Phony Smile” or “Eyes Closed.”

Sarah was out of town this weekend, so I went to visit my friends Josh and Ginny in Flagstaff. Josh was my neighbor in the dorm freshmen and sophomore years of college, and my housemate junior and senior years. I haven’t seen him a lot since we graduated, but now that I’m out on the West Coast and I have a car, it’s much easier. Ginny was his girlfriend for almost the entire four years of college. She didn’t go to school with us, but she visited often and I feel as close to her as I do Josh. They are good people.

I had never been to Flagstaff, but it’s a pretty bitchin’ place. I’ve always imagined Arizona to be hot and deserty, but Flagstaff (or Flag, as the people who live there call it) is green and sometimes snowy. It felt to me like an Austin or a Chapel Hill in the making.

I drove for 7 1/2 hours to get there. I can’t remember when I’ve taken a drive like that on my own, if ever. It was very mindless. There isn’t a lot to see between LA and Flagstaff. I needed a new hooded sweatshirt, so I stopped at the Polo outlet on the way. The store was filled with non-English speaking tourists who were buying armloads of merchandise. The woman in front of me bought 10 short-sleeve yellow polo shirts (the style, and the brand). They were all exactly the same shirt. Something seemed very suspicious. I asked the nineteen-year-old girl behind the counter if people bought clothes from the Polo store and resold them. “Yes,” she said. She told me that sometimes people came in and bought $10,000 worth of merchandise. “Oh well,” I decided. “I guess it’s not your problem.” “Nope,” she agreed. I did not buy $10,000 worth of new clothes, but I did get a very comfortable new hoodie that I plan to wear until it is falling apart. (more…)

I have a new nephew. His name is Noah and he’s way cooler than your nephew. Unless your nephew is Ben, in which case I’m legally obligated to call it a draw.

Noah came into the world on Friday, 11/17 at 5:30 PM. He is 8 lbs. 7 ozs fat and 21 1/4 inch long. I asked my sister if he took after her or Mark (her baby daddy) more. She said, “He takes after Winston Churchill.” Here’s confirmation: