Rural Iowa is beautiful -- if you are lucky you will get to see one of Louis Sullivan's banks. Sullivan was Frank Lloyd Wright's first employers and a stunning architect in his own right -- he basically helped to invent the skyscraper as we know it. After he became a lush, the only jobs he could get were doing little banks in the Midwest but each is a bijou masterpiece.

Enjoy!

That is the last green food you will see until you get back. Time for iceberg lettuce!!

Hey, Jube, I'm gonna google pronto the legacy of Grables that dominated IOWA (read:NCAA) wrestling in the 80s (GrecoRoman and freestyle i believe). HAWKEYES! or is that ISU?

Did anyone catch SEAL serenading Yamaguci and other skaters today on Nbc? Very cool gig, I've dug that singer since the year he won best song grammy (96?) for the great great composition, "Kiss from a Rose."

Rural Iowa is pretty, but not so much in the winter.

oops, Dan GABLE etc from Iowa. he might approve that salad for maintaining a wrestler's weight class. Plain lettuce for me, but I usually shot for a class one beyond below that was healthy for me. Stupid teen, oh well, don't think i 'learned' much since then.

In Iowa a green salad is likely to be made with lime jello.

@6 Lime jello and marshmallows.

It depends on where you are in rural Iowa as to whether it is ugly. The western bluffs along the Missouri river are handsome, as are the Mississippi bluffs.

Generally speaking, it's rolling farmland, and quite different from the flatness of the plains states (although the wide open spaces of the plains have a certain charm)

Enjoy Council Bluffs. There's some nice casinos and a really good adult bookstore down by the county line. And the Hy-Vee on the east side of town (the one by the new mall) has a really hunky butcher.

Rural Iowa farmland, in January, in the dark in the middle of the night. Why, I just can't imagine a more picturesque scene. So sorry I can't be there with you.

Yes, post a picture? I can't wait to see what -10 degree Iowa farmland looks like at 3 am. Might take your shot and frame it and put it up next to my photos of Half Dome, Firenze and Marlborough Sound.

You lucky lucky man. Remember these three words?

John Kinsella: Is this heaven?
Ray Kinsella: It's Iowa.
John Kinsella: Iowa? I could have sworn this was heaven.

three more words:

Pork
tenderloin
SANDWICH

You'll need to ingest animal fats to keep you warm. I suggest oatmeal for breakfast, with a side of bacon. (Mmmm.... Bacon!)

But if you want something else, Chinese buffets are rampant all over Iowa.

Freakin rad that you are goin on John Edwards' tour! I wish that I could hit the road with him right now. My decision is made - he's the most progressive and the most on top of the issues I care about.
I want accountability in Washington - he's the most likely to deliver.

Eli, what restaurant was that photo taken in?

Uh, to be fair, unless you're in CA, this time of year, you actually SHOULDN'T be seeing a green salad this great. Wrong season people.

By the way, Iowa can be really beautiful, especially with all the snow they've been getting lately.

Eli,

Nobody gives a shit. Save it for Chris Crocker you useless piece of high school yearbook staff fucktard

@15 -- The more you bleat on and lead us to understand nothing (while Eli contributes to helping us understand a very important political event)...the gap of relevance between you and the effect you have on our lives widens.

You, sir, with any luck, will be falling into that gap as soon as possible, never to be heard from again.

However, should you continue your complaining about Chris Crocker all the way into 2008, I'm sure your obsession on that arcane piece of mid-2000's cultural jetsam will prove to be increasingly shrill and increasingly pathetic, and it will be the only thing you have to cling to in your angry sea as the SS Slog and its cargo of cogent and multi-faceted interests disappears over the horizon.

Happy New Year, observance!