Today I'm taking it easy, doing laundry, reading, and visiting the fam.

Tomorrow I'm going to an all-you-can-eat pig roast at Bourbon Steak, the Georgetown's Four Seasons restaurant. Fanciness and messiness are going to come in equal portion. The menu looks great. Guests will:

…enjoy as much as they can of a 400-lb wood-roasted Berkawattabaw pig from Eco-Friendly Foods, served with both traditional and non-traditional barbecue sauces. Chef Varley will also offer a host of sides, including Barbecue-baked peanuts, Alan Benton's ham and cheddar biscuits, Country macaroni and cheese, Grilled corn with pimentón and blue cheese butter, and BOURBON STEAK bourbon bacon potato salad.

Guests can also taste one of Varley's winning creations for dessert, Porkeos (chocolate cookies made with lard and filled with whipped lard icing). Other pork-inspired sweets will include Pigalicious cupcakes and Maple bourbon soft serve with bacon sprinkles.

Before going, I'm catching up on the single best pig-based television episode I saw as a child. But you don't have to take my word for it.

A top five unfulfilled childhood dream? Reading Rainbow book reviewer.

Brief: "City Maoist Visits Country Maoist"

Brief complaint: Annual Web subscription for $29.99?

Related to links to Aesop's "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse," translated many times to different effect:

-Harvard Classics version

-Oxford Classics version

-Foreign versions

-Where to buy a feminist retelling

-1936 Disney version: Country mouse gets drunk

-Why a Reading Rainbow kid liked the story

-Why the Reading Rainbow kid was wrong

A commenter on the JTS Bullwinkle page also mentions "The Country Frog and the City Frog." Despite mistakenly ascribing the sketch to Fractured Fairy Tales (it was an Aesop and Son, says Keith Scott's book), the comment nails down the plot. An edited version:

….the country frog gets rich by selling a field full of holes to a golf-course developer for a million nickels and goes to the big city to spend his money…. The country frog falls for a dancing frog named Ann Phibian and after spending countless nickles to please the gold-digger, discovers he's broke. Country Frog: "Honey, I'm nickel-less!" Ann Phibian: "I don't care what your first name is."

Love it.

Also in the Onion this week was "Ask A Jostens Class-Ring Salesman." It brought back memories of my experience with a class-ring salesperson. That dang ring still don't fit.

The other day I had this thought in my head that something was maybe "the new scarlet letter." Then I forgot to write the thought down. Now the thought has vanished. Of what in the world was I thinking? (And how about that last sentence not ending with a preposition?)

For the literate and now piqued, uncaring of randomness, Bartleby offers the full text of the Scarlet Letter. If you only read the book in high school, Hawthorne's rip on the Puritans is much better the second time around. But as Levar Burton would say, don't take my word for it.

In other Levar Burton news, remember how Reading Rainbow was in danger? Apparently PBS ponied up $2 million for more episodes. Burton spoke to onPhilanthropy in July about the funds: "That's great news, but it's the least we've received from PBS in our 20-year history. I'd like to get to a point where we don't have to do this every year, scramble and beg for money. I'd love to find a partner who's interested in partnering with us over the long haul."

"Reading Rainbow" may end production this year if it doesn't get the funding, LeVar Burton says. In its 20th year, his show now has no money to go forward into another season. I'm sure my generation is sad to hear this news. (Read through the episode guide.) Our childhoods would likely have been much emptier without the show. We certainly would have read less.

No Blackstone the Magician. No caterpillars predicting the weather. No Dinosaur National Park. No gila monsters meeting you at the airport. No three days on a river in a red canoe. No powwow. No most digusting foods, like pizza with raisins on top.

No boa constrictor. No chair for my mother. No boy finding a hill of fire in a farmer's field. No Koko. No tour inside the Statue of Liberty. No hockey with the Islanders. No saxophone-playing alligators. No massive radio receiver. No cheese making. No Abiyoyo. No making ships in a bottle.

No turtles on the beach. No paper crane. No duck carving. No Bionic Bunny. No pasta making.

No bartering in Old Sturbridge Village. No rain on the Kapiti Plain.