And so the Czar was lucky to have no less a personage than Uncle Jay over to the Castle for a brief lunch. You do read Uncle Jay every day, no?

Anyway, with a rare-enough trip to Chicago in his work plan, the Big Guy swung on by and met the Czar, where copious amounts of liquor were consumed (although the Czar recalls Uncle Jay having only one beer), and glorious food eaten. And even though the Czar is fully comped at the Castle eateries (something the Czar should have mentioned sooner), Uncle Jay insisted on picking up the entire tab. Upon hearing this, of course, the Czar announced “One of everything! And not just the bar!” Uncle Jay must have had quite a lot already, because he didn’t look too good at that point. Heh. Lightweight.

Anyway, with all the hullabaloo of travel, Uncle Jay didn’t get to meet any of the other big superstars. He was, however, almost bitten by a Tcho-Tcho, and the Czar took pity on him, and had him meet Dat Ho. The Big Guy is a big fan of Dat, and he gave the little guy quite the smack.

Uncle Jay, incidentally, is not nearly as big physically as some people who have taken on the Czar, but he sure is Florida nice. We had a great conversation about government, guns, family, and off-color jokes, sometimes all at once. Uncle Jay even keeps an odd little book around into which he scribbles ideas. The Czar looked at it, but all it looked like to him was that Uncle Jay practices his lowercase m’s a lot. How anyone reads that is quite the mystery.

Normally, when you say you are going to pop over to some relative stranger’s hotel room for drinks and light conversation, things end very badly for one of the participants. However, we could not have been more delighted to have met the famous Uncle Jay, Borepatch is right; he has a helluva lot of great stories to tell.

Way better than when Jonah Goldberg crashed at the Volgi’s place and all the change was missing off the dressers.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.