Peg and I busted out the fondue set last week. Every married couple seems to own one, being that it's one of those requisite wedding gifts that borders on the cliché (see also the toaster). Despite our avowed love for fondue, in the seven years we've been married, we've only used it once. That's probably because it's a fairly high maintenance meal. I'm not sure what prompted us to break it out last week, but we got a touch of the fondue fever, so we dutifully succumbed.

After dusting off and assembling all the bits and pieces, I set off to pick up the ingredients. I walked over to the East Village Cheese shop on 3rd Avenue (peerless, fromage-heads, peerless) and purchased a 1/2 lb. of Gruyere and a 1/2 lb. of Ementhal. In retrospect, this was barely enough to sustain both Peg and I, so learn from my mistake. Don't be afraid to splurge, as there's really nothing worse than running out of cheese. I then picked up a baguette and some white wine and was pretty much all set. All I needed was the Sterno and we were good to go.

As it happens, procuring a can of Sterno turned out to be a bigger task than I'd imagined. They didn't have the correct type I needed at the relatively new Broadway Panhandler on 8th Street. I started to panic. Why should such a simple item be so damn hard to put my hand to? The entire time I was searching, the desperate strains of "Poison Pen" by Bauhaus kept echoing through the vast expanse of my skull, specifically the line wherein Peter Murphy ticks off the paraphernalia of junkiedom over a prototypical post-punk bass gallop. "The Spike.....The Hose....The Blackened Spoon....THE CAN OF STERNO RED!"

This got me thinking that maybe the ol' Bauhausfraus weren't singing about heroin at all. Maybe the monkey on Murphy's back wasn't his sallow-cheeked reliance on smack, but rather his insatiable craving for finely melted cheese slathered over French bread! I mean, in the very first line, he croons that he's "sprawled face down on this Swiss stained iron bedIn a dismal cheap hotel." "Swiss-stained"? HE'S TALKING ABOUT CHEESE!

Y'know, or possibly not.

In any case, I managed to find some Sterno and all was well (despite not having nearly enough cheese). This all prompted me to dig out my copy of Swing The Heartache and groove to the sinister strains of "Poison Pen" once again, which still completely holds up after all these years. Bauhaus have a new album that's out next week. I've heard it. It's surprisingly excellent, especially the track, "Mirror Remains".

Although there's nary a tune about cheese on it.