Lunch With Giada

We watch a lot of the Food Network in our house. In particular, we like the food/travel porn shows like The Hungry Detective and Road Tasted where the hosts go to a city and pimp restaurants or other food related places. The prototype for this type of show is $40 A Day featuring the omnipresent preternaturally perky Rachel Ray.

Doing one of these shows would be my wife's dream job, because we like to travel and to eat, and particularly like to eat when we travel. Either we have been to the cities they visit and want to know what we missed or we use the show as a guide in case we ever get to that locale. On rare occasions, they hit a particular place that we have actually been to.

That happened on the Los Angeles episode of the new show Giada’s Weekend Getaway featuring, duh, De Laurentiis. Where Rachel Ray goes for bubbly and girl-next-door, Giada goes for sultry sexiness. Her picks tend to trend upscale, so I was delighted to find her at The Sidewalk Café in Venice Beach. I practically cackled in delight at spotting a place where I had dined.

Back in 2003, we spent one morning on our San Diego/Los Angeles vacation (the same where I spotted Angelina Jolie) hanging around Venice Beach. We rented bicycles and rode up to the Santa Monica Pier and back. This worked up an appetite, so we set off in search of lunch. The Sidewalk Café is right on the beach, so it has a great view of the floating freak show that is Venice Beach.

I do have to confess that half the attraction of The Sidewalk Café is that it is right next to Small World Books and I love to visit bookstores while on vacation. I don't remember what I ate, but all the hamburgers there are named after famous authors like Kurt Vonnegut and Sue Grafton. That is a pretty cool concept. We need more literate beachfront bar and grilles. Especially when they serve very tasty pub grub. Don't take my word or even Giada's on it. Check it out for yourself.

Blatant Cross-Site Plugging: I got inspired to add some pictures from the LA leg of that trip to my Flick site. I have to warn the faint hearted that they run the risk of seeing my pasty-white legs.

Bawlmer: Better Than Baghdad!

I normally give editorialist cartoonists a lot of leeway in their hyperbole, particularly Ted Rall who has done more for the “George Bush as a simian tin-pot dictator” meme than anyone else, but today he went over the line. He insinuated that being on a military patrol in Iraq is safer than walking the streets of Baltimore.

I’m sure we can find statistics to support his thesis since Baltimore leads the nation in heroin addiction, prostitution, and STDs, but that is not the point. Every big city has drug crime, failing schools and corrupt politicians. Baltimore is the only one making coin off of its bad rep by parleying its gritty side into five seasons as the host dystopia for The Wire. I’d rather Baltimore be the setting of something more glamorous, but you play with the cards you are dealt.

Baltimore has a lot of great points. For one thing, it is the home of the Rockingest Governor in America. While Martin O’Malley’s Irish folk-rock band, O’Malley’s March, is officially on hiatus while he holds public office, the group has had more farewell/reunion performances that Kiss and The Who combined. And there is more to music in Charm City than muscle-shirted mayors. The Peabody may be not as famous as Julliard, but no place else can claim both Tupak Shakur and Tori Amos as alumni. And John Water’s cultural contributions to cinema can only be hinted at in such a short time.

Baltimore even leads the country in lame civic slogans. We were once “The City That Reads” until all the bookstores closed and everybody kept mispronouncing “reads” as “bleeds”. Then we were America’s Greatest City, which was such a ridiculous claim, nobody even bothered to dispute it. Our latest slogan is:


Which just reeks of desperately cynical optimism. That is why in support of my adopted hometown I humbly submit to the city this new claim to fame:

Baltimore: Better Than Baghdad

Take that Ted Rall. I hereby donate my royalties to the public and I want O’Malley’s March to reunite for the parade in my honor.

Battle Of The Lame Memes

My position on memes is pretty clear. I hate them unless I can twist them into some sort of meta deconstruction on the lameness of memes. Fortunately, just such an occasion has arisen. By some karmic coincidence, two bloggers I otherwise respect greatly recently did different variations on a “20 Questions” meme. This type of meme is the internet version of junior high slam books where you just answer random questions.

Some have better questions than others, but more importantly, the answers can often relate to stuff I have already blogged about. So here, side by side, are two memes where my only goal is to link to as many previous posts as possible. Here goes:

From Harmonica Man 1. When you buy a greetings card are the words or the picture more important to you? The price on the back. 2. What's your favorite kind of cake? We had amaretto cake for our wedding. I’ve never had cake that good since. 3. Do you ever make gifts for people, if so what, or do you buy them? I made a mix CD for my parents’ anniversary several years ago. That’s been about it. 4. What's your favorite holiday - i.e. Christmas? Thanksgiving because it is a family holiday that doesn’t require buying a gift. 5. Are you going on holiday this year? If so, where? My wife want to goes to China to see our exchange student. We’ll see if that pans out. 6. What was the best party you've ever been to? Not a party person. Mardi Gras in 1988 was pretty wild. 7. If you are married, describe your wedding. If not, what would your ideal wedding be like? That takes a long time to describe. You better just read about it. Read about it again if you already clicked on the link for question 2. 8. What's the most romantic thing that's ever happened to you? I did manage to surprise my wife with an engagement ring. She was not expecting it and I proposed at a very nice restaurant. 9. What's your favorite romantic song? Billy Joel – She’s Always A Woman To Me, which is not very romantic if you listen closely. But I like Billy Joel's sappy music. 10. Favorite heartbreak song? Meatloaf – Paradise By the Dashboard Light. There is a great story here involving my son, but I don't have the nerve to tell it. 11. Which celebrity would you like a dream date with? If Cindy Crawford had gone to my high school, I like to think I’d have a shot at her. Leave me to my delusions. 12. Which female celebrity do you find beautiful? Angelina Jolie is the Hottest. Woman. Ever. 13. Which male celebrity do you think is attractive? I have to defer to my wife who thinks George Clooney just gets better with age. Harmonica Man is pretty much in the same boat. 14. Describe the kind of underwear you normally wear. Damn. I can’t stop talking about my underwear on the internet. 15. If you could be in a television sit-com, which would you choose? I would love to be on 30 Rock just to meet Tina Fey and Golden Globe Winner Alec Baldwin. 16. Which character would you like to be? I like the over-educated black guy, but I am obviously the wrong skin tone for the part. 17. What are your favorite boy and girl names? Boy: Hunter Girl: Gatherer I have been dying to use that joke somewhere. 18. What's your supermarket of choice? Tie between Trader Joes and Wegmans. Neither of which are less than 10 miles from my house. 19. What is your best character trait? Easy going. 20. What is your worst habit? Secret nose picker.

From Blogography 1. Elaborate on your default icon. Did this come from LiveJournal? I haven’t updated my blogger profile, but lately I have been using my Wii Mii. 2. What’s your current relationship status? It’s in the sidebar. Married with a teenager. 3. Ever have a near-death experience? I’ve never even had a near-life experience. 4. Name an obvious quality you have. I’m a natural redhead but you’re gonna have to take my word for it. 5. What’s the name of the song that’s stuck in your head right now? Still that damn VD song. 6. Name a celebrity you would marry. Marry is a big issue. Cindy Crawford has the same birthday as me and she is two years younger, so I’d try to make a go of it. 7. Who will cut and paste this meme first? I would put money on either Mooselet or Impetua. They are good sports and usually game for anything. 8. Has anyone ever said you look like a celebrity? I say I look like Ron Howard. Unfortunately, our hairlines are beginning to match as well. 9. Do you wear a watch? What kind? A Seiko Kinetic with the parts visible from the back. 10. Do you have anything pierced? NO! 11. Do you have any tattoos? NO! 12. Do you like pain? Should I? Tearing my ACL was no picnic. Why should I hurt myself for fun. 13. Do you like to shop? Depends on what for. 14. What was the last thing you paid for with cash? Some sausages for breakfast. 15. What was the last thing you paid for with your credit card? A new digital camera to replace the really cheap one I bought three years ago. I paid with one of the too many credit cards in my wallet. 16. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone? The dad of the girl I tutor in geometry. 17. What is on your desktop background? A picture of a penguin that a friend of my wife took. 18. What is the background on your cell phone? A picture of my wife. There is a connection between the two, but it is an inside joke. 19. What was the last movie you watched? Dreamgirls. Very good, but I am such a Broadway geek. 20. What was the last book you read? You can find out every the first of every month.

The final score is H-man 11 (I'm not counting the double on the wedding post) versus 8 for Dave2. Your mileage may vary. Do not try this at home. Trained driver on a closed course.

Beta Blogger Blues

I have a confession to make. I use Blogger. In some quarters, having “blogspot” in your url is as big a faux pas as having “aol” in your e-mail address. Blogger screams training wheels and evokes thoughts about people with endless dreary posts about their cats. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I breathed a sigh of relief when Neil Gaiman on a Cranky Geeks vidcast proudly admitted to using Blogger as well. If Blogger is good enough for the author of American Gods, it’s good enough for me.

I own yellojkt.com, but I’m too cheap to actually pay for any hosting. As bad as it is, I’ve never run across any bandwidth problems or had any serious crashes while on Blogger. I like letting someone else worry about back-ups and server capacity. Not that I flatter myself into thinking that I would ever get a Exceeded Bandwidth Allowance in even my wildest dreams.

For months, Blogger has been using some of that Google buy-out money to upgrade the software and enhance the feature set. They even claim to be out of beta, but every time I try to upgrade, I get this insulting message:



They claim my blog is too big to upgrade. My blogs have a grand total of 346 posts. Through the power of BlatantCommentWhoring™, I have bullied my way to over 2000 comments, of which no more 1500 are my responses to real comments and most of the rest are spam I keep around to look impressive. If this qualifies as a big blog by Blogger standards, perhaps I need to rethink my loyalty.

I am hesitant to move to WordPress or MovableType or something “real” bloggers use out of sheer laziness. Those types of blogs look like they take much more care and feeding, and I would rather spend my time putting words on the screen even if the blog itself keeps looking like its shabby self. Besides I kind of like the low-footprint of a web-based interface when I am blogging from places perhaps I shouldn’t be (not that this is an admission that I ever do).

One feature of the more robust blogging software packages I have always been envious of is tags or labels or whatever you want to call them. My blog is so random, I would like to be able to categorize posts so that readers can find just the stuff that interests them without wading through all my other brain farts. I am so covetous of the labels feature, I have even been fantasizing about the ones I would use. So far I have:

Meta
Comics
Foobs
Boodling
BooksFirst
Politics
PopCulture
Tunes
Studio60
Sex and smut
Embarrassing my family
Lame quizzes and memes
General blather

Until Blogger deems me worthy, I will have to keep my nose pressed to the window looking at the greener grass and mixing my metaphors like a Waring® Blender.

Ultra-Mega-Comment Whoring™: What other silly labels should I use? Are Blogger bloggers as lame as their reputation? Have you transitioned to New And Improved Blogger? Did it hurt? Was it worth it? Did it call the next day?

Bad Idea Foobs

This week, Liz Patterson discovered that her "Mr. Right" was fooling around on her. This did not come as a surprise to anyone. I called it back in September. Rather than being infuriated with the slow motion denouement of this fait accompli, I am delighted, because I finally understand how stories from Foob Central unfold.

Last month while I was pounding my head against the kitchen table as Michael Patterson ran into a burning house to rescue a laptop that held the draft of an incredibly cheesy sub-Silhouette romance novel, I came upon an epiphany.

In the R-rated Tony® Award-winning Broadway puppet show Avenue Q there are some characters call the Bad Idea Bears. These cute snuggly Care Bearish tempters give the other characters really awful advice, like to drink five Long Island Iced Teas on a work night or to hook up with the neighborhood slut to get back at your girlfriend. The Bad Idea Bears create all sorts of plot twists when their absurd advice backfires.

In the Foobiverse, there are Bad Idea Foobs that are always whispering atrocious suggestions to the Pattersons. The only problem is that when a foob follows the most ludicrous course of action imaginable, everything comes up roses. Let’s look at Liz as a case study:

Last Summer

Liz: I wish I knew what to do next year.
Bad Idea Foob 1: You got a job at a school where the kids adore you.
Bad Idea Foob 2: Yeah, you let them watch TV and they never complain to their parents.
BIF1: And that cop guy is crazy for you.
BIF2: He would do anything for you.
BIF1: The only thing that makes sense is to move a thousand miles away and hope you can find a new job.
BIF2: Maybe you can even move back in with your folks. April will be glad to give up her room.
Liz: Thank, Bad Idea Foobs. If I were back home, I would have more time to spend with that divorced loser that keeps stalking me.

Six Months Later

Liz: My ex-boyfriend that never got over me has just offered me a ride to see my current sweetheart. There is no way he could have an ulterior motive. What should I do?
BIF1: Take the ride. You’ll get there a day early.
BIF2: Just make sure you don’t bother to tell anyone. It’s better as a surprise.
BIF1: That way if your lonely boyfriend is shacking up with your replacement, you can catch them in the act.
BIF2: Yeah, that would make her your replacement in more ways than one. Tee hee.
Liz: Then I would have to take the bus alone all the home from Mtigittinlucky to Milborough. The only person I can confide in is Anthony.
Bad Idea Foobs (in unison): We’ve always told you he was the right one for you!

Once I recognized the paradigm of the Pattersons, I can now read For Better Or For Worse in it’s proper context. Stupid people do the worst thing possible and it all turns out for the best. It all makes sense. In a disturbing Bad Idea Foob sort of way.

Update (1/31/07): See this entry for my Michael Patterson revelations.

Blatant Comment Whoring™: Which stupid Patterson will do something idiotic next?

Heroes and Villains

It's filler quiz time!

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 80% Superman 80% Green Lantern 70% The Flash 60% Hulk 60% Supergirl 50% Robin 49% Batman 45% Wonder Woman 40% Catwoman 35% Iron Man 35%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...


The Flash was my favorite superhero because he had such a dweebish personal life. He was married way back in the Barry Allen days. He had a real job which would be called CSI nowadays. Plus he had very cool villains. And speaking of villains.

Your results:
You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom 83% Lex Luthor 76% Mr. Freeze 75% The Joker 69% Apocalypse 63% Magneto 61% Green Goblin 61% Riddler 55% Poison Ivy 51% Venom 49% Dark Phoenix 48% Kingpin 48% Catwoman 44% Juggernaut 41% Two-Face 37% Mystique 33%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz


From this list it seems that DC has better heroes, but Marvel's villains are more iconic. I only read DC comics as a kid because they had simple stories that I could follow with having ever read every issue ever. I hated all those Stan-isms where he reminded you about events that happened way back in SuperGiantCrossover #32.

SuperCommentWhoring™: Feel free to geek-out in any way imaginable. Give your quiz results. Talk about your favorite hero or villain. Explain how your comic collection kept you from getting a prom date.

Ear Worms Are For Everybody

The other night, as my family enjoyed an after-dinner conversation, the subject of failed vasectomies came up for some reason or another. My teenage son had no idea what “being snipped” meant and we had to explain the procedure to him. I was aghast at his ignorance. I didn’t sign four years worth of Family Life permission slips to have him not know all the ways of avoiding families. It seems the public schools in my areas focus largely on the methods most likely to actually be used by high school students: condoms, birth control pills, and joining the math club.

My son at least had taken away the message that condoms are the best choice since they prevent STDs. I then started waxing nostalgic that back in my day, it was called VD or venereal disease. VD back then was also easily treatable, so the emphasis was on prompt detection and treatment instead of prevention. I started humming the jingle to a very popular public service announcement that played continuously on the base AFRTS station:

VD -- is for everybody
Not just for the few
Anyone can share VD
With someone nice as you.

VD -- is for everybody
Darlin' have no doubt
That anyone can get VD
That's what it's all about

For those of you not old enough to remember Laverne and Shirley as first run television, the accompanying video was a soft focus montage of a wide cross section of the general public that could get VD including a little baby, a grandmother, and a token minority. In all, it’s a good message that anybody can get VD, but I am a little skeeved about the transmission vector for the horse.



My son then went over to his girlfriend’s house for the evening to “watch a movie” or “study accounting” or whatever the kids are calling it these days. When he came home, I had the YouTube video cued up on his computer just to drive the message home. The downside of this Teachable Moment is that I have had that damn jingle stuck in my head as a tune cootie for three days now. Everybody sing along:

VD is for everybody
Not just for the few…

Condi and The Brain

CNN Headline:
Intelligence Chief to Move to State Department


"What are we going to do tonight, John?"


"Same thing we do every night, Condi.
Try to take over the world."


I know. I've done this joke before. Sue me. Narf!