It is now shortly after midnight here in Parma and another day of Italy has come to a close. The team just stepped on the bus for a three hour ride to our next stop – San Marino.

 Over a year of planning, fundraising, hard work and dedication and finally the dream of the Rutgers Newark baseball team is coming to fruition. On Thursday we will be taking off from Newark Airport for a 10-day trip to Italy.

The Rutgers-Newark baseball team is off to Italy on Thursday for a 10-day tour that will include five games against Italian professional teams. New Jersey Monthly's online readers will get a special view of the trip via posts on this blog by the Scarlet Raiders' second baseman.

The Boss is back home this weekend, as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band wrap up their European tour and play Giants Stadium Sunday, Monday and Thursday. Level 2 seats still available as of last night.

On Treat Place at the corner of Branford Place in Newark, there's a clothing store where what flanks the windows is more interesting--to me, anyway--than what is in the windows. Although they do look nice together.

Much of what you are about to see are known in baking as "laminated pastries."

Sounds like something you would break a tooth on but could leave out in the rain for weeks.

The truth, in this case, may not set you free, but it will melt in your mouth.

Standing today in a spotless room stocked with vital fluids and equipment for delivering them, I had a flashback.

Just five and a half weeks ago, I spent several hours in a strangely similar room, having essential fluids dripped into my body from plastic packs hung from prongs on metal poles just like you see here.

Used to be you needed a long memory to think of Asbury Park as a happening town. But look at all the renovation of classic Asbury places like Convention Hall and Paramount Theater, plus the restaurant scene, chic shopping, and like always, the beach. You see why it’s cool again. Or is it hot? Get both this weekend with the 20th annual Asbury Park Jazz Festival. Performers and schedule here.

Hard job selling insurance ten feet off the ground, day after day.

Aside from the stiff neck, the poor creature can't even turn around to locate the source of that powerful aroma of salami just 20 yards behind him on Branford Place in Newark.

As the New Jersey National Guard gears up for its biggest foreign deployment since World War II, Hobby's Deli in Newark is gearing up to support them. You can help.

Comedian, liberal firebrand, Cornell grad, and River Vale native Bill Maher preached to a sold-out concert hall at NJPAC in Newark on Friday night.

There probably wasn't a Republican in the house, but there certainly were Catholics and plenty of other Christians, plus people who take prescription drugs, heterosexuals, homosexuals, Hillary-ites and Obamaphiles, and most likely some NASCAR fans.

And they all laughed. And for good reason. Maher is an equal opportunity lacerator. But more than that, he's a newshound, and very funny.

Driving along First Street in Newark yesterday,

returning from a doctor's appointment,

came to a red light.

Luck is when you have been struck by a car backing down a driveway (see yesterday's post), suffered a mild concussion, a hairline skull fracture, various contusions and abrasions, and yet are not in such terrible shape that you can't look at your surroundings with interest.

No, this picture is not upside down. But if you are lying on your back on a gurney in a Level 1 Trauma Center, and your neck is in a brace, as mine was, about all you can do is tilt the camera up and backwards.

Let us cross fingers hoping for good spring weather these next three days, because we have found a lot of outside activities for you.

We’ve given you plenty of ideas. Now it’s time for you to give us yours. And you have: restaurants that keep you going back for more.