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This year's Crazy Man of '07 award goes to Danny!

As many of you know, Danny is the drummer in Seattle's best hard rock band, focuspoint, and my former roommate. He also is just plain crazy.

To the left is a self-portrait by Danny, taken during his nearly 3,000-mile roundtrip to Arizona and back on his motorcycle. Even crazier: Danny rode the whole trip alone. Not only is this wild, it's stupid and unsafe, which makes Danny crazy.

Here's his route:

And he made the trip to hang out with crazy goons like these:

Congrats on the award, Danny. You're crazy.

in

Paolo Does Europe - Sept. 6

Right now, I'm sitting at the lawn in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Just another day in the life, you know?

First off, the fucker does lean. Secondly, it's really not as big as I thought. A greater sight than the Tower and its adjoining cathedral is the spectacle of people posing to "hold the Tower" in a picture.

Families and friends are literally yelling at each other in their native tongues for the right placement for the oh-so-original picture. Afterall, no one else has such a picture, unless you cound the hundreds I've seen already today, and every other tourist since.

I have a bit of a wait before my turn to climb the Tower, so I'm wasting time now soaking in sun and eating gelato. I have become a pro at gelato. Tre gusti = 3 flavors. I usually order fragola (strawberry), limone (lemon) and pesca (peach). I would learn Italian a hell of a lot faster if the end goal of the communication was always gelato. Now more Pisa pictures...

Next: Rome...

in

A couple recent blog posts worth reading...

Over at "Bend There Done That," a note about how meeting the family of a crush. The author writes that after meeting her crush's father she fell for him, too: "Not in the 'I want to date you' way, but in the 'I want to be part of your family' way. Because I know where he came from, the son has moved up a crush level," she says.

And from one of my colleagues, "Mr. Cleantech," a blog post about poop and the need for water-free, compostable toilets. No shit.