Tea Leaves

Our last night in Paris, we found ourselves at Brasserie Balzar for dinner. This place is something of a landmark (even with its recent aquisition by a large corporation) in the center of the St. Germain area. The place is pretty popular, so it was with a certain lack of wisdom that we arrived sans reservations, much to the annoyance of the manager. We explained in our broken Junior High French that yes, we should have made reservations, but that we would be happy to take any table, perhaps the small one there on the terrace? Yes, that would be fine. Having made friends with the manager, we sat down to dinner and entertainment.

The terrace was being served by a single waiter. He was such a French Waiter that he could have been a stock character in a movie set in Paris where the main story goes through a café. He looked terminally frazzled and successively oppressed by his management and his clients.

There were two particular clients who were the main source of his pain tonight. They looked like an American couple of mixed race (Indian? Chinese?) who appeared to be in Paris for the first time. We heard the conversation in pieces, and it appeared to center around the existence, or not, of a “vegetable plate”. The couple scanned the menu, asked the waiter about some dishes in fast English. The waiter attempted to explain to the best of his abilities, but the couple did not seem happy with this, and asked more questions. The waiter then fell back on just recommending one of a series of dishes on the menu that were salad-like. But the couple was still not satisfied. They did not want a vegetable plate, they wanted “vegetable dishes.” Of course, such things were relatively rare. Through multiple iterations of this, the couple kept pressing until the waiter finally became patronizing and belligerent. But I was on his side. You need to understand two things about France to see why.

First, you have to understand that Balzar, like most traditional brasseries, serves primarily classic French dishes, heavy on meat, with a few seafood items in addition to coffee, dessert and drinks. The emphasis is on reasonably good food reasonably fast (by French standards). This means steak frites, various roast things, cassoulet, and so on. If you go to France, you should keep this in mind. A brasserie is not the place to find something off the beaten track. You go there because you know what you will be getting and you know they will do it well.

You do not go there for salad. Salad is a side dish that you might get along with your veal liver and fries, or your braised saddle of lamb or your steak tartare. What this couple did not seem to understand is that they had come to completely the wrong place for the meal they wanted. There exist any number of other places that will happily serve you a large salad (though generally not a vegetarian one) for dinner. But Brasserie Balzar is not that place. These people should have known this, or, having realized their mistake, should have rolled with it rather than being such a pain in the ass.

The second thing that you have to understand about France, and Paris in particular, is that if you are giving the service people a hard time, they will be rude to you. If you are self-effacing and especially if you admit to speaking bad French after a valiant attempt, they will treat you with some amount of sympathy. But if you blather at them from a position of ignorance, they will treat you badly.

This, in fact, is what happened to our happy couple. After one more iteration, the exasperated waiter started yelling and pointing at the menu. I had no sympathy. In my opinion, they were getting the service they deserved, expecting special treatment at a place they had chosen badly and giving the staff no reason whatsoever to give it to them.

At this point, the two gave in and ordered what he had recommended. He then turned his attention to us. Karen ordered a nice piece of lamb, and I ordered the steak tartare. He looked at me with astonishment.

“You know what this is?”, he asked.

“Sure.”

“It’s not cooked.”

“Yes, I know. A lot of people do not know this?”

“Yes. They order the steak tartare, or the andouillette (a type of sausage), and then they say, ‘Oh, this is not what I wanted’ and send it back. This happens all the time.”

We knodded with sympathy, and assured him that we knew what we were getting. Although, I did misread the menu and I didn’t get the salad I expected. This being my mistake, I snitched green beans off Karen’s plate instead.

C’est La Vie.

The pints of blueberries have arrived. I am happy, until late September.

If you ever find yourself sitting in the F terminal of the FilthyPhiladephia International Aiport waiting for a U.S. Airways Express plane to take you back home to Pittsburgh, you know you have had a bad day. Every single person at the gate had the same story to tell. There was the woman who had been four hours late getting out of Seattle and re-rounted half way around the world and back to the F terminal. There was the Westinghouse manager who pulled into the gate with the only food he had had all day, a large latte, and a story about how his international flight had lost an hour at takeoff. And there were several people who, like us, had been two hours late taking off from Paris and, having missed connections, ended up here.

It’s hard to think of experiences more unpleasant than spending 11 hours on an Airbus A330, but really, that wasn’t the hard part of the day. It was the two hours in that nexus of human suffering that we humans call the PHL International Arrivals area that put me over the edge. I believe that U.S. Airways, the city of Philadelphia, the TSA, and the architects who designed the international wing of PHL all should be given some kind of award for accidentally perfecting the optimally bad customer service experience. It must have taken a lot of work over a lot of years to do this, but they nailed it.

Note: I usually try to keep this a family blog, but the following entry is, as Lenny Henry once put it, the result of all kinds of rude words dancing around in my head trying to get out, so be warned.

Everything started out smoothly enough. Up at 7am, packed at 8am, out into the absolutely perfect warm spring Paris day to get our last coffees at 8:30, back for the taxi by 10. All according to plan. The trip to and through the CDG airport also proceeded without major incident. By 12:45 we were on the plane with all of our toddler toys, videos, extra food and water, and ready for the long haul back to Pittsburgh. By 1:15 the plane was loaded and had started to push back. At this point, we missed a departure slot and were told that we’d wait 15 minutes to get to the runway. Then we were told that the plane had a minor technical problem, then we had a long taxi to get it fixed, then they powered down the engines to save fuel, then they told us we had to wait 30 more minutes for taxi clearance, then they turned the engines back on, then we missed another takeoff slot. Toddlers and adults alike were getting antsy. Finally after two hours on the runway, we took off.

At this point, we should have made a strong decision that the connection we had booked was lost. We all knew this, and we told it to ourselves, but our resolve was not forceful enough. Anyway, nine hours passed on the plane with no major problems. I am here to tell you that if you think you have a good kid, there is no kid on the planet more perfect than mine. This is an objective fact. Name me the last time your toddler sat still on a plane for 11 hours non-stop making nary a peep. Yeah, I thought so.

We landed in Philly at 5:15. We had 45 minutes to get off the plane and make a 6:00 connection. In other words, we were completely doomed. Sadly, the crew planted the idea in our heads that we should hurry because there were 25 other people with the same connection, they might hold the flight, and besides, we needed to get to the rebooking line as fast as possible. As a public service to you dear reader, I am here to deliver the following message: When they say this to you on the plane or at the gate do not fucking believe one word of it because it is all fucking lies.. The truth was that we were more than an hour late on a two hour connection and no power in Heaven or Earth could have brought us to that connection on time. Four great trials stood in our way:

1. Getting off the plane. An Airbus A330 is a big airplane. It feels like a small plane because the seats are so small (and I say this as a small person). But it’s huge. If you have a seat near the front, you can get off the plane pretty fast. We did not have this luxury, and we had to wait for a couple of gate checked items. This means that we sat on the plane for 20 minutes waiting for it to empty, and then another 5 minutes while they actually found our stuff.

2. International Arrivals. Out of the jetway we sprinted to the Immigration line. It’s a couple of thousand feet from the gate down a long hallway with those walking paths that move. We even bypassed the whole crowed to get into the “wheelchair priority” line. But we could not avoid waiting there while the guy in the “wheelchair priority” booth spoke to a nice looking French man, no wheelchair or cane in sight, for 10 fucking minutes about the strange minutiae of PHL.

3. The Great Claim the Bags and Recheck the Bags Dance. By now, if we had been smarter, our will would have been broken. But we kept hope alive, moving through the terminal as fast as we could. We were rewarded with a half hour wait at International baggage claim. But boy I got a good workout.

What I have never understood about dealing with connections on international flights in the U.S. is why they make you wait 20 minutes to pick up your bags so you can put them on a cart, haul them 100 feet past the customs guy who doesn’t even look at them, and then another 100 feet to plop them back down on a belt.

A nice gentleman on the staff at PHL tried to keep us from ruining the rest of our day by putting the bags on a cart for us and taking them to the re-check area. When we reached the re-check conveyer, he tried to fight for the forces of good and tell us that our connection was dead and we should just sit in the rebooking line right there and then. This would have been the rational choice. If we had just rebooked, we could have rechecked the bags and made sure that they stayed together and knew where they were going and when. If we had rechecked, we would have given up the insane idea that we could get through the airport fast enought to make the connection.

Sadly, a tool of Satan himself was also there. He stood in the re-check area looking calm and competent informing people that if they hurried, they could just put the bags on the belt and make it to their connecting gates. So we stupidly complied.

4. The TSA Shuffle, Remix. So we ran out of the re-check area looking for terminal A. It looked to be pretty close, but instead of hitting a gate, we hit the entire population of the plane we had just exited waiting in a TSA line having all their bags re-screened before they were allowed into the terminal. This, of course, was fucking insane. These bags were already screened before we got on the plane. In addition, the people doing the screening had big guns, and would shoot you if you did anything wrong.

I should be clear here: At this point our checked bags have entered the airport before we have because for some reason those bags don’t have to be re-scanned. But, our carry on items, having been taken off the plane (which, as far as I know, had not blown up) and carried about a mile from the gate to this point, were now suddenly unsafe enough that I had to completely unpack half the bags, take my shoes off, and schlep 4 bags, a laptop, a stroller, my cell phone and a car seat through the x-ray machine because doing this makes our great and strong nation a fucking beacon for freedom and democracy around the world.

I say: fuck that. There is no fate too cruel and no punishment too grisly for the designers of this obstacle course, except they don’t exist. This obstacle course was not designed. It evolved on its own through powers that we cannot control into a being of perfect customer service evil. It was bred carefully by multiple governmental and corporate agencies in the name of security, freedom, mom, and apple pie. But, instead of serving these goals in any way, it simply devours hapless travelers that venture too close to it, digests them and then spits them out on the other side of its gullet no closer to their goals than before entered.

After 1 hour and 20 minutes of frantic sprinting through this vortex of human suffering we finally got into the gate areas of the terminal, where we could find out that we missed our connection and the flight after it. It made me think: If only there were a global network of computers that could gather information about flight times, capacities and bookings and present this information at terminals remote to where it was stored, maybe when we got off the plane we could have already known we were fucked rather than running 3 miles through the airport to find out.

Final result: we boarded a U.S. Airways Express flight from Philly to Pittsburgh at 9:15, which was supposed to take off at 8:30, but didn’t take off until 10:05. We got into Pittsburgh at 11pm, 21 hours after we woke up in Paris. As a bonus, only two of our three bags made it. I assume the third bag has flown back to France. We got home about 12:30, making the total transit time from Rue de Buci to Pittsburgh about 20 hours.

Acknowledgements

At this point, I would like to thank, and say a hearty fuck you to U.S. Airways, The FilthyPhiladelpha International Airport, the Transportation Security Administration, the FAA, and all the other great American organizations that made this story possible. I couldn’t have done it without you. Keep up the good work.

Every so often, I think that I’ve reached some sort of plateau in terms of how much I hate the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Then I make some stupid mistake, like shopping at a Pennsylvania liquor store again, and I discover new vistas of animosity and contempt.

I drove up to Cranberry tonight to get a bottle of Amaro Montenegro, because the PLCB’s web site indicated it was one of the only stores west of the Susquehanna that had any. The Cranberry store is promoted as a “Premium Collection” store by the Liquor Control Board. That means that it supposedly has a better selection, nicer atmosphere, and more knowledgeable staff than the other stores.

The Premium Collection store is better than what State Stores were like when I first arrived in Pennsylvania in the late ’80s. Back then, a liquor store was basically a counter with a catalog on it, and a huge storage room. “Hi,” you’d say to the cashier. “I’d like a bottle of #24601.” The guy would then go into the back room for a while, leaving you alone. Ten minutes later, he’d come back out front to tell you that they were all out of #24601.

So the Premium Collection store is better than that. But since I haven’t seen many advertising campaigns lately along the lines of “McDonald’s! Our French Fries Don’t Have Fingers In ‘Em!” or “Coke! Sucks Less Than Diphtheria!”, I’m going to say that’s a pretty low target to be reaching for.

I found the Montenegro in short order and then remembered that sometime last year I had bought a very nice 3 point Tokaji Aszu at the same store. I looked around a bit, but couldn’t find it. That’s when the fun began.

I approached a clerk. “Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for a certain Tokaji.”

I got a blank stare in return.

“Tokaji,” I said. “It’s a Hungarian wine. It’s spelled t-o-k-a-j-i.”

“Hmmm,” he said, leaning against the computer on which he could check his inventory to see whether he had any of the bloody wine, “I don’t think I’ve heard of that. I don’t think we have it.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, how about Amaro Nonino?”

“Is that foreign, too?”

Now it was my turn to give him a blank stare.

“Yes,” I said, very slowly. “It is, as a matter of fact, foreign.”

“Well then, we don’t have it.”

I gaped in disbelief.

And then I gave up. I spent another 10 minutes or so searching the store, found the Tokaji I wanted, and left. Later, a friend suggested “You should have asked them if they had any Scotch. I hear that’s foreign, too.”

This is what is so frustrating about the PLCB: the problem is the people. I’m always hearing people phrase the problem in terms of state-owned stores versus “free enterprise.” But that’s not it. Ontario has state-run liquor stores that are a pleasure to shop in. The LCBO is exactly like the PLCB in every way, except it doesn’t suck. The stores are beautiful. The staff are helpful, and care about the product. You can taste selected wines in some stores (for a price, of course, and in strictly limited quantities).

No, the problem isn’t that we have a State liquor system, but that we have a State liquor system that employs people who could not care less about satisfying customers. I don’t care that this guy doesn’t know what Tokaji is. In a store with thousands of products, I don’t expect every employee to know everything about every product. But when a customer asks a question, I expect the employees to give a damn. I expect them to want to try to help. Or, at a bare minimum, at least pretend to care.

Are there good employees who work for the PLCB? Sure. I’ve met a couple. But they are outnumbered by the thousands upon thousands of slack-jawed know-nothings whose only purpose on this earth is to make me rue the day that they ever got a job.

The PLCB, which claims that part of its mission is “to provide the best service to [their] customers,” is an utter and complete failure when it comes to retail liquor sales. It’s too late to save it. It should be dismantled, shut down, annihilated, and then cut up into seven parts, which should then be buried in remote parts of the State and left to rot.

The PLCB monopoly on liquor sales has to go.

Additional Resources

• To see what a State liquor system that doesn’t suck looks like, visit the Liquor Control Board of Ontario’s web site.
• The Tokaji I was referring to is the Hétszóló Tokaji Aszú 3, which I reviewed last year. The PLCB State stores are carrying it now. Even though it is foreign.
• If you don’t know what Amaro Montenegro is, consider reading about the Tea Leaves Amari tasting: part 1 — part 2

In 1988, LSD was popular among some people at Carnegie Mellon. So much so that when a number of people had “bad trips,” the administration released a public service announcement warning people: “The acid with the picture of the sunshine on it is bad, and has been causing bad trips. Stay away from the ‘bad acid’“. Then, of course, for the rest of the academic year, absolutely everyone on campus used “Whoah, bad acid!” as a catchphrase.

The April Fool’s edition of the school paper that year published an article talking about how the Dean of Student Affairs, whose first name was Brad, was offering to “test” any drugs that students should come across, free of charge. The (fake) article concluded with the ditty the Dean urged students to remember at all times:

Drugs are yucky
Drugs are bad
Take all your drugs
and give them to Brad!

I was working as a computer consultant for the general computing department at the time, as was my acquaintance Chris Rapier. The graveyard shifts were always a strange mixture of mind-numbing boredom punctuated with moments of transcendent weirdness. There were the people pulling all-nighters to finish their assignments (they bathed), the people who just hung around the computer clusters all the time (they didn’t), and people who would wander in and out for various other reasons. Meeting friends. Eating pizza. Picking up printouts.

Chris and I were working a graveyard shift once, and some Birkenstock-wearing types were wandering through, obviously baked out of their skulls, giggling and pointing and ahhhing over everything in that supercilious tripster way.

Now Chris — well, it’s hard to describe Chris, especially because I didn’t know him that well at the time. He had a mohawk, and wore the punk rock attitude, but somehow it wasn’t annoying because you could tell, deep down, that he knew that he was just as full of crap as the guy wearing a suit and working at the bank. He understood that the regalia wasn’t proof of a lifestyle, but just a costume with pretensions. He wore it well.

But Chris was always doing crazy, stupid things, because they were fun. And seeing the tripsters wander through made me wonder about something, and we had the following conversation:

Pete: “Hey, Chris?”

Chris: “Yeah?”

“I have a question. I’ve been wondering — have you ever done acid?”

“No, why?”

“How come? I’m not criticizing you for not doing it or anything, but it seems like the sort of thing you’d do, just because it would cause chaos.”

Chris took his feet down from the desk, got up, and began to file some printouts.

“You know, Pete, that’s an excellent question. It does seem like the sort of thing I’d do. Let me explain the reason why I don’t do hallucinogens. On the one hand, it’s true that they might lead to interesting experiences and open my mind to new vistas. On the other hand I have to balance the fact that tripping people annoy me. They drive me nuts, and I always want to freak them out and scare them and make them have a bad time. And so I know that if I tripped, after a little while I’d start to irritate myself, and then I’d decide that I should freak myself out, and I’d go up to a mirror and try to convince myself that my face was melting, or that my brains were leaking out my nose, and then they’d have to admit me to the psych institute the next day.”

This, it seemed to me, was a truly excellent answer to my question, and I went on with my shift, satisfied. I’ve always remembered his response, and thought about it from time to time.

And it is upon remembering that conversation again, recently, that I was inspired to come up with this simple thing: a list of songs to play to throw irritating hallucinogenophiles into bad trips.

Picking songs that accomplish this is trickier than you might think, because depending on how completely obliterated your target is, he or she might not actually have enough functioning neurons to listen to the words of whatever songs you’re playing. So your choices need to not just have a liminal message that will mess with the addled mind when they think about the words, but also need enough power, dissonance, or force in the music to shake up the dumbest of droppers.

Listen to them. Love them. Keep them loaded on your portable music device at all times.

And by all means — suggest your own additions to the list.

1. Pixies - “All Over the World” from Bossanova (lyrics - iTunes)

The only question with the Pixies is which Pixies songs won’t cause a bad trip. But “All Over the World” is the king of the castle. Evil vocoder processed voices? Check. Enigmatic lyrics with mysterious radioed-in messages like “Better call the ranger…got a train derailment”? Check. Aggressive yet addictive guitar riff that will echo in your target’s head until they are doubled over in anguish, trying to claw the invisible spiders out of their eyes? Check. This is my pick for “Most likely to require several years of psychotherapy to recover from.”

2. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - “Jangling Jack” from Let Love In (lyrics - iTunes)

“Jangling Jack” is a harsh song on a harsh album. Both the music and the lyrics are nasty, brutish, and full of malignancy. I think it’s a great song, but more so than any other song on this list I have to warn you that I’ve never met anyone else who likes it: it seems to repel people on an almost subconscious level. But it’s high on this list because underneath the driving noise is a pop song riff that will pull your high-flying victim down to earth to investigate. At which point they’re toast.

3. Crosby Stills Nash and Young - “Cathedral” from CSN (lyrics - iTunes)

This one is a beautiful sucker play. It wins on several levels. First, it starts off gently, floating and melodic. You could close your eyes and bliss out to it. Second, the narrator in it is (it is implied) dropping acid. So there’s a self-referential loop that will begin to disorient your el-salvadoran-non-exploitative-coffee drinking friend. Then the tone changes instantly to a full on religious-crisis panic, as the narrator starts obsessing about all the people killed in the name of Christ, so if the tripper has any cultural connection to Christianity, they’re instantly punched in their spiritual solar plexus.

4. Negativland - Christianity Is Stupid (lyrics - iTunes)

A driving mechanical drone. A sampled repeated voice declaiming: “Christianity is Stupid. Communism is good. Give up.” Look, I’m an atheist and this song somehow creeps me out (while at the same time, making me laugh). Fire it up and test out just how open a mind can be.

5. Nina Simone - “Sinnerman” from Anthology (lyrics - iTunes)

Finishing up our trio of religion-related songs, Nina Simone delivers “Sinnerman” with an angry intensity that can’t be mistaken as anything but hostile, even if you’re not paying attention to the words. If you’d like a secular choice instead, you could safely substitute Simone’s rendition of the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill class-warfare saga “Pirate Jenny.” For some reason, no one else has ever done this song justice, in either English or German. Simone captures the raw, unbridled, impotent hate in the libretto perfectly. (lyrics — iTunes)

6. Richard and Linda Thompson - “Shoot Out the Lights” from Shoot Out the Lights (lyrics - iTunes)

After recording Shoot Out the Lights, Richard and Linda Thompson divorced. If you make a happy tripping couple listen to this song, there are good odds that they’ll divorce too.

7. Rollins Band - “Obscene”, from The End of Silence (lyrics - iTunes)

This one is almost too easy, and I feel bad including it. But, y’know, what can you do? You just gotta have some Henry.

8. Roy Orbison - “In Dreams” from various albums (lyrics - iTunes)
This one really only works if the soon-to-be-cowering scapegoat has seen the movie Blue Velvet. It’s the song you might remember as “The Candy Colored Clown They Call the Sandman.”

9. Bob Mould - “Anymore Time Between” from Bob Mould (lyrics - iTunes)

Bob Mould plays every instrument on this incredible album, and despair just oozes out of every note: but the amazing production values will keep the dazed and confused mesmerized while they succumb to it. You could also substitute, more or less, any song by Mould’s old band Hüsker Dü, but that might also be considered “too easy.”

10. Jane Siberry - “The White Tent The Raft” from The Walking (lyrics - iTunes)

I’ve always had a soft spot for Toronto-area musician and songwriter Jane Siberry, who knew so little about production back in the day that she wasn’t averse to just continuing to pile on layers of sound until the listener was drowning in them. Like “Cathedral,” this is another song that will lull the target into a false sense of security, with its pastoral, almost lyrical opening. It’s unlikely that they suspect that they’ll shortly be jerking spasmodically, unable to make the pain stop as the syncopated schizophrenia of Siberry’s music (and stream of consciousness, emotion-filled lyrics) fill their brain and leave no room for restful mandalas. The other nice trait of “The White Tent The Raft” is that it’s about 8 million minutes long, so you can make the deep hurting last for a while.

Now, I’m not suggesting that anyone who ingests mind-altering substances should necessarily be subjected to this treatment. I’d probably save this sort of abuse only for those people who really deserve it. My rule of thumb is that if you use the word “entheogen” in place of “hallucinogen”, or if you’re wearing one of those stupid multicolored produced-by-indigenous-peoples knit caps, you’re fair game. Everyone else is mostly safe.

That’s my list. What’s yours?

Additional Resources

• Chris Rapier now does networking research. He’s still brilliant.
• Entheogen is a euphemism used by fans of hallucinogenic drugs to try to dissemble about the substances they enjoy (”I’m not hallucinating! I’m finding the God within!”) It’s especially adorable when they use the word in the context of giving such drugs to people without their knowledge or consent.
• If you’ve got a weblog of your own and want to join in the game, post your own list of bad-trip-inducing songs and track me back (or comment), and I’ll link to it here. Maybe this could be one of those “meme” things I’ve heard so much about, that those crazy kids with their hamburger sandwiches and their french fried potatoes are into.

Today I saw the first hour and 40 minutes of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

Instead of sharing my incomplete opinion of the part of the movie I saw, let me ask you: is it worth going back to see the end, or should I just wait for it to come out on DVD? Due to unforeseen circumstances, I left shortly after Anakin formally became Darth Vader.

So how about it? Shell out a few more bucks to see the end, or just wait until I can rent a DVD?

I’m still not ready to give my full review, because I’m still evaluating the game.

That being said, I have spent the past 2 hours saying “well, just one more race,” and my heart is pumping in a way that it hasn’t been since the San Francisco tracks of the original Project Gotham Racing. So I would be remiss if the last thing I left you with for the weekend was my cryptic “Hmmmmmmm” from yesterday.

Visually, the game is unrivalled. Even though it obviously borrows a lot from Gotham 2 in terms of the game engine, it looks better. A lot better. The palette is richer than in PGR2, which was a game that was unremittingly swathed in the dark gray concrete of street racing. Good use is made of different times of day and sunlight and shadow. The cars are lovingly modeled, although they can look a little plasticky, at times.

Part of why I’m liking the game more than GT4, so far, has nothing to do with the game itself, but with the controllers. The Xbox controllers are a joy to use in driving games. The buttons on the PS2 controllers, while technically “analog” have so little feel that they might as well be digital. The Xbox has long triggers with deep throws, that are perfect for feathering through sharp corners. I’m convinced that the Controller S is the best possible hand-held controller for driving games.

The music sucks. But fortunately, it supports soundtracks, so I can drive to Los Straitjackets or Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, instead.

But at this point, I think I’m on the verge of saying too much when I haven’t played enough to be sure that I’m accurate. Rest assured, I’ll be spending the weekend driving and writing, to give you the full scoop next week.

I just won a Lancer Evolution VIII from a hill climb race, and it’s time to take it for a spin.

Well, it’s better than Gran Turismo 4, but…

Hmmmmmmmmmm.

I’m not feeling terribly optimistic today. I’ll play it for a few more days before going in to more detail.

Yes, I’m desperate for the sixth book in the Harry Potter series to be published, already.

I realize that in some circles this marks me as a rube, a sucker, someone sucking at the mass-market teat. The type of person who, if he wanted Chinese food, might go eat at P.F. Chang’s.

I don’t care. If Roger Ebert gets to like monster movies, I get to like Harry Potter.

I actually do agree with A.S. Byatt that J.K. Rowling does not, in fact, write beautiful sentences. She is not a writer’s writer. She is, however, a superb storyteller who is crafting an intricate tale that is true enough to its archetypes to bestir recognition in most readers. And I like that she can flit back and forth between light humor and earnest seriousness so smoothly: that’s a trick that other writers stumble over regularly.

So yes. I have the book pre-ordered at Amazon, and whenever I encounter an article about it, I read it. But that’s not quite enough to fill the time, and the new branch of the Carnegie Library in Squirrel Hill just opened, and it turns out they have lots of books.

One of these books I picked up because Christina recommended it: Sorcery and Cecilia. Apparently, Susanna Clarke’s Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell must have struck a nerve (or being cynical, must have sold fairly well), because suddenly you can’t shake a stick without accidentally whapping a book about magicians in Victorian or Edwardian England. Thwap! Here’s Sorcery and Cecilia. Smack! Here’s The Bartimaeus Trilogy. One wonders what the next trend in light genre fiction might be. Religious cult leaders in 1920’s Hollywood, perhaps?

In any event, I’m finding it an enjoyable, if somewhat silly, read. I’m often critical of fanfiction because I find it intellectually lazy: it feels to me like fanfiction writers are substituting someone else’s developed mise-en-scene, characterizations, and overall setting and then grafting their plot onto it. And plot, generally, is the least interesting and unique part of a novel. To some extent, I feel like this epidemic of neo-Victoriana is similar: really, there are only so many Elizabeth Bennetts I can take before succumbing to despair. The fact that your Elizabeth Bennett is, say, evading a sinister spell in Covent Garden, or, let’s see, having tea with Arthur Conan Doyle in Nevada, while helping Calamity Jane track down the murderer of her lesbian niece, Annabel Lee doesn’t really improve the quality of the writing.

But, of course, I’m not reading Sorcery and Cecilia because I’m looking for superb writing. I’m just waiting for Harry. And in that respect, it fits the bill perfectly.

I’ve also been dipping into David Brin’s Uplift novels, mostly because someone mentioned to me that they were the inspiration for the Star Control games. I’ll have more to say about those another time.

Tonight, we began playing with book titles, rewritten to include references to food. Or videogames. Or both. We very quickly settled in to a groove. Here are the results.

93. The God of Small Things That Taste Like Chicken. [peterb]


92. The God of Stupid Console Savepoint Systems [psu]


91. Love in the Time of Super-sizing [peterb]


90. One Hundred Years of Solitaire [peterb]


89. The Moor’s Large Fry [agroce]


88. Haroun and the Sea of Splinter Cell [magus]


87. If On a Winter’s Night a Deep-Fryer [peterb]


86. The Decline of the Civilization [fpereira]


85. Perdido Street Savepoint [magus]


84. Waiting for the Barbarians to Cook my Chicken [agroce]


83. The City of Cod [fpereira]


82. Pilgrim’s Pancakes [magus]


81. The Book of the Long Island Iced Tea [agroce]


80. The Two Tacos [magus]


79. You Shall Know Our Cholesterol [peterb]


78. A Tale of Two Fritters [agroce]


77. Goodbye To All Fat [peterb]


76. To Saute A Mockingbird [magus]


75. For Whom the Taco Bell Tolls [magus]


74. A Clockwork Orange Julius [magus]


73. The Malted Falcon [magus]


72. Julia Childs and the Goblet of Wine [peterb]


71. Atlas Lunched [magus]


70. Imperial Chicken Earth [baird]


69. The Island of the Meal Before [peterb]


68. Slaughterhouse Fries [magus]


67. Name of the Rose Tea Cafe [peterb]


66. A Passage to India Garden [magus]


65. The Unbearable Lightness of Souffle
[sdavis]


64. As I Lay Frying [magus]


63. The Remains of the Snack [peterb]


62. To Serve Man [agroce]


61. Love in the Time of the Coleslaw [fpereira]


60. Finnegan’s Clambake [magus]


59. Pride and Bread and Juice. [baird]


58. The Postman Always Brings Rice [magus]


57. Lord of the Fries [fpereira]


56. The Buns of August [magus]


55. Remembrance of Wings Past [fpereira]


54. In My Father’s Torte [fpereira]


53. Do Androids Dream of Eclectic Sweets?
[sdavis]


52. Romaine and Julian Fries. [baird]


51. Oryx and Cake [magus]


50. Jerky Park [fpereira]


49. For Whom The Boule Tolls
[sdavis]


48. The Archipelago of Goulash [fpereira]


47. Mansfield Pork [agroce]


46. The Mixer and Margarita [fpereira]


45. Sandwich Personae [magus]


44. Six Easy Peaches [magus]


43. Tao Te Chicken
[sdavis]


42. Zen and the Art of Bakery [peterb]


41. The Elements of Stirfry [magus]


40. Twelve Hungry Men
[sdavis]


39. Fast Food Nation [tmwong]


38. The Story of the O [tmwong]


37. The Da Vinci Coke [magus]


36. The Fridge [fpereira]


35. The Da Vinci Cod [fpereira]


34. Live and Let Fry [peterb]


33. From Russia With Borscht [peterb]


32. License to Grill. [tmwong]


31. Life of Pie [magus]


30. The Pizzan Cantos [agroce]


29. In Search of Ancient Anchovies. [baird]


28. The Reuben on the Rye [magus]


27. R Is For Ratatouille [magus]


26. A Candycane for Leibowitz [magus]


25. The Latke of Heaven [magus]


24. More Than Hunan. [baird]


23. Free Liver Free [agroce]


22. They Eat Horses, Don’t They? [peterb]


21. The Adventures of Sharkleberry Fin [magus]


20. Starship Tapas [magus]


19. Planet of the Grapes [jch]


18. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Sous-Chef [magus]


17. Rendezvous with Ramen [agroce]


16. The Bostonian Creams. [baird]


15. The Book of the New Dumpling House [magus]


14. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad “Chicago-Style”
Pizza [peterb]


13. Green Eggs and Ham on Rye [magus]


12. Alice in Wonderbread. [baird]


11. The Bread Zone [magus]


10. Harry Potter and the Half-Caf Latte [magus]


9. The Lunchback of PF Changs. [baird]


8. The Sandwich of Monte Cristo [peterb]


7. The Three Musketeers Bar [peterb]


6. The English Pot Roast [magus]


5. The Polar Espresso [magus]


4. Oliver Twist Bread. [baird]


3. Cryptoyumicon [peterb]


2. Burgers of Infinity [magus]


1. A Civil Canape [magus]