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We needed a new couch last summer, and wanted something that would last a little bit longer than the disposable Ikea stuff we’d been living with for years. Our old L-shaped Ikea couch had been relegated to my studio after it collapsed, the cause of which became obvious as I dismantled it for repair — a key structural point where the two parts of the couch meet, allegedly designed to support the full weight of actual human beings, was entirely supported by, wait for it, a couple of wood staples. I kid you not.

So I found myself in unfamiliar territory, the world of furniture stores, where hungry-eyed salespeople attach themselves to you as you walk through the door, and where fake cardboard tv sets are frozen on news screens whose crawl announces that “the economy is doing GREAT!” (Wish I’d thought to snap a picture of that one.) And the one thing that stood out was how goddamn BIG all the furniture seemed. Comically, oversized big, as if designed for some wacky comedy sketch in which adults are playing the roles of small children.

The New York Times yesterday confirmed what I’d already observed: this is, in fact, an actual trend. The article suggests it was a response to the (pre-crash) rise of McMansions, but I can’t help but suspect that it’s also a response to the increasing girth of Americans themselves.

… adding, my point here is not to mock anyone for their weight, it is that in super-sized America, unhealthy weight levels have become entirely normalized, and I don’t think that’s a positive development. But I’ve edited this post slightly to remove a potentially insensitive comment, to which a reader justifiably objected.

So this happened:

Thanksgiving weekend saw a rash of burglaries in Burlington’s Old North End. Among the victims was Ben Hardy, a Seven Days freelance music critic, who returned from a ten-day vacation last week to find his house had been broken into and burglarized.

The thieves got away with a veritable studio’s worth of musical items, including five guitars, two amps, a sound system and a turntable, as well as some clothing. But they also made off with something invaluable and irreplaceable: A Fender Telecaster signed by the members of Pearl Jam, given to Hardy’s late older brother, Joshua, when he was a teenager.

In 1991, when he was 16, Joshua Hardy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. The following year, he was granted a wish by the Make-A-Wish Foundation to meet his favorite Seattle grunge bands …unquestionably, the highlight of the trip was receiving the signed Tele from Pearl Jam. Joshua Hardy died a few months later.

But wait, it gets suckier. The guitar was recovered, but the thieves had sanded off the signatures — presumably to make it less recognizable.

So this is how the band responded when they heard about it:

Just before heading home to Durham, N.H., for Christmas, Hardy was surprised with an unexpected delivery. “FedEx delivered a new guitar,” he said. “In a note Pearl Jam said they’ve been following the story and this is what they decided to do. It’s an amazing gesture of goodwill. It exceeds expectations … They went above and beyond.”

Ben and Josh’s mom, Donna Hardy, said, “It’s a blessing for our family to have all this happen. This is our Christmas story. Pearl Jam is amazing and to think that they remembered Josh after all these years is incredible.”

I know Ed a lot better than I know the rest of the band, but I’ve dealt with all of them enough to know that they’re genuinely decent guys. This is just one more example of that.

I’ll be on Kelly Carlin’s podcast live tonight at 8pm ET on SMODcast.com (downloadable starting Friday). Tune in, you never know what the hell I might start ranting about. Bonus cool: Kelly is George’s daughter.

Updated: can be downloaded here.

The Herblock Foundation has issued a whitepaper (pdf). Haven’t had time to read through it all, but I think the overall answer is “depressing.” Though having spent the last year creating and overseeing an entirely new, paying comics section at Daily Kos, trying in effect to rewrite the online paradigm that cartoonists are paid in “exposure,” I might have had a few thoughts on the subject, had I been asked.

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December 21, 2011
Year in Review One

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December 28, 2011
Year in Review Two

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Very best wishes to all of you, for whatever holidays you celebrate and/or wage war on. Or just have a great weekend, as the case may be.

Or not.

I had a friend once, who fell for that street hustle in which the mark is left holding what he believes to be a brick of cash wrapped in newspaper, in exchange for which he has given the con man something of value as “temporary” collateral — in my friend’s case a camera. When the newspaper is unwrapped, of course, it turns out to be … carefully wrapped, currency-sized strips of newspaper.

The Politifact “Lie of the Year” is something like that. What the Ryan plan proposed handing you would have been called Medicare, and you might even have believed that it was — until you unwrapped it and found that you’d been left holding an entirely worthless package.

You can cut up old newspapers and bundle them up and tell the mark that they’re cash. But that doesn’t make them legal tender. And the Ryan plan, though still using the name “Medicare,” would not have been Medicare.

Katha remembers Christopher.

For some reason Paypal is not sending me notifications, so I just noticed that a bunch of you responded to the post below about donations. Many thanks to each of you! That kind of support means a lot.