So, listen. I apologize for my lack of attention to your addiction to my tender, bite-sized bits of buttery bitchiness or buttery bits of tenderbitch or whatever the hell it says up there in my ages-old "banner". It's just that I've been otherwise disposed lately, and have these things the kidz these days call priorities. Which is actually bunkum — not the priorities themselves, but the kidz calling it that, because, really, kidz these days have only one priority, and that, friends, is using safety scissors to cut out construction paper clothing for their paper dolls ... that and licking LSD off of commemorative Elvis stamps. But, really, I've been otherwise disposed, so I've let what should be my most important concern — keeping you supplied with fresh, side-splitting, pants-wetting, venti-skim-fuccacino-spitting entertainment — fall by the wayside. So until such time as I create (because, really, that's what I do ... I create!) something new for your reading enjoyment, please enjoy this "guest blogging" entry prepared with love by prolific commenter "Ds".

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Ds - Guest blogging for the wayward Wandering Jew

I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati isn't all that different from New York. We don't have mega-scrapers, subways, or guitar-playing naked cowboys. But we do have Jerry Springer as a former mayor writing rubber checks to prostitutes. We don't have Broadway shows, but we get traveling versions of the ones that opened on Broadway six or seven years ago. We don't have the Yankees, their poor bastard cousins the Mets, the Giants or the Jets. But we have the best minor league baseball team money can buy - the Cincinnati Reds. And the best high school football team in the country - The Cincinnati Bengals.

So you see, we're not really all that different.

Except when it comes to food.

It seems big cities like New York attract an ethnic mix that just bubbles with tasty delicacies. In the Midwest, we eat steak and potatoes. We eat them grilled out in our backyards. We eat them in chains like Tumbleweeds, Lonestar, or Texas Roadhouse. Given the opportunity and the means, I have no doubt we'd walk into a field in Iowa, armed with only a four-pronged utensil of our choosing, and with nary a thought fell ourselves a large, uddered quadruped, which we would then proceed to eat raw right there on the spot. A little bovine on the hoof, as it were.

Until last Thursday. Last Thursday was the day Pak Ho opened his Thai Palace Restaurant on Madison Road. Synonymously, it was also the day my taste buds awakened from a long slumber like Rumplestiltskin on Nytol.

My first foray into Thai was a tasty moo pat prik gaeng. Roughly translated, that means stir-fried Pork with Curry Paste. Now I like Cajun food. Hot wings make my eyes water. I’ll drink tobasco sauce like Coca-Cola if given the opportunity. So when my diminutive host offered me a scale of 1-10 on the spicy scale, I opted for the 10. And I went down in a Blaze of Glory faster than Jon Bon Jovi. Met Johnny Cash and his infamous Ring of Fire. I had HazMat crews following my every movement, bowel and otherwise, for 48 hours fearing the mere possibility that I might break wind and potentially instantly incinerate 2.3 million people in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio combined.

In short, it was the best damn (and only) moo pat prik gaeng I’ve ever had. And I owe it all to Jodi and her tofu-laden blog of New York’s tastiest tidbits. I can no longer sate my palate with a tasty T-Bone sided by a baked tuber. A filet with french fries just doesn’t cut the honey dijon. Give me my yam sai grog, my nok gra-jok-tet pat prik tai da, my gai hor bai dtoie!!!

Now if I could just get that with sour cream and bacon bits.