One Peril of Hamburger Lust

“How many kids do you have?” The raspy feminine whisper caught me completely off guard. I don’t usually let people sneak up on me like that.

“You know very well how many kids I have,” grumbled Yours Truly. Even part-time bookkeepers know everything about their employers. But for some reason they like to pretend otherwise. “And what are you doing here at this ungodly hour, sneaking up on me and rasping inane questions in my ear?”

“No need to get huffy, Boss. You just have that Family Correspondence hunch to your shoulders.”

“I do? What’s that mean?”

“I think it means you feel guilty because you don’t stay in touch with your kids as often you ought to. Just a wild guess.”

“Let’s change the subject back to what you’re doing in your employer’s closed up restaurant at two in the morning. Forget your lipstick, Carlo?” It's juvenile, I know, but I keep hoping that calling the Today Café’s bookkeeper Carlo instead of Carlotta will piss her off. But I doubt if she owns even a single tube of lipstick. Very natural, Carlotta B.

“If you’re trying to piss me off by calling me Carlo, I’ve moved beyond having my serenity disrupted by my boss’s passive aggressive behavior.” She twisted her mouth into that corkscrew of a smile only she can do.

“Two shay!”

“It’s spelled ‘touché’, isn’t it?”

“Of course! But me and French words have a natural disaffinity. I now feel perfectly comfortable abusing them at will.”

“And why is that?”

“Why should I embarrass myself all over again just to entertain an employee who still hasn’t said what she’d doing in the office two hours after midnight?”

“Okay, you tell me your embarrassing story about French words and I’ll tell you my embarrassing story about why I’m not asleep right now.”

“Fair enough. Ménage a troys.”

“Not my sort of thing. And anyway, isn’t it pronounced ‘twah’?”

“No-no-no! It’s the name of a varietal hamburger, not ‘one of those sorts of things’. I was smitten with hamburger lust, but was afraid to order it on account of troys...or trois if you need to know I can at least spell it correctly.”

“But you overrode your very wise fear in this case: all on account of hamburger lust?”

Carlotta B. doesn’t eat meat and waggled her Bigend finger at me as if to say “see what you get for lusting after animal flesh?” Can you imagine being saddled with the surname ‘Bigend’? I keep wanting to ask her if she’s any relation to the fictional Belgian adman in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition.

“They laughed at me. My so-called ‘friends’ laughed at me. The whole damn meal they called me Troy instead of Todd. ‘Hey Troy, would you pass the Dijon? I mean the dyejohn’. Shit like that.”

“But at least you learned something…hamburger lust can get you into big tongue trouble.” That corkscrew smile again.

At that moment the Nameless Cat changed the subject by jumping onto the table.

“You’d better feed the cat and then get back to feeding overdue words to your countless children. I’m just here to pick up my check. I left it in my desk drawer...and the Rutabago and I are driving to Tahoe tomorrow...I mean this morning”

“That’s embarrassing?”

“Nope. When you grow up with Bigend attached to your name, you figure out how to transcend embarassment on account of mere words.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

“I know. Seeya.”

If there’s an object lesson in here somewhere, maybe it’s that old embarrassments never die; they just lose their teeth.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate.”  -- Doug Engelbart

Feel free to follow my lead and jump-start your maturity today.

The Carrot Yumster Reads Again

No, I'm not dead yet. It's just that sometimes, weeks go by when absolutely nothing happens. In times like this, my Today Cafe life seems like an endless Ganges of lukewarm conversations and empty coffee cups. Or empty conversations and lukewarm coffee cups. Take your pick.

The Today Cafe's last noteworthy event was the Carrot Yumster reading incident, which I most definitely should have reported in this blog, but didn't. I'd like to be able to blame this bloglessness on The Singularity Is Near, but I didn't start reading that brain-buster until last week.

So I'm going to blame it instead on acute cognitive inflammation resulting from reading The Annotated Flatland, The Novel and My Life in Orange all at the same time. You try that and see what happens. For me, it's been waking up in a sweat after dreaming (not the same as a wet dream) about the best-selling Pennsylvania Dutch author of a novel in which a two-dimensional Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is visited in a vision by a happily three-dimensional, happily orange, happily one-eyed breast. Same dream, three nights. A first.

So when the Carrot Yumster slinked into the near-empty Today Cafe just before closing last night, I had to wonder if there was some kind of Mystical Orange Thing going on.

"Why don't you just close up early and come see me?" When the Carrot talks, her lips move the way snake charmers would move if they were lips instead of snake charmers.

My thumper did one of those metaphorical backflips, but I just metaphorically buttoned it back in place and stayed calm. "See you? You mean see you someplace other than right here? Like where?"  I can hope, can't I?

"At the Tree, Mister Smartass Counter-Wiper. I'm on at eleven-thirty."

"I thought the Tree had given up on live entertainment, except for tea leaf and poetry readings…stuff like that."

"It has. I'm going to do a reading from my new memoir."

"Oh. You have a new one? What happened to the old one?"

"My agent didn't think she could sell that one. She said somebody already wrote 'The Happy Hooker'. Zav..."

I decided to demonstrate how savvy I am about historical fiction. "Xaviera Hollander. With an 'X', not a 'Z.' These days it would have to be called 'The Happy Sex Worker,' wouldn't it?" I could see somebody like James Woods delivering a line like that and making it work. Even Bill Maher. But not me.

"If you say so." The Carrot rolled her eyes.

"Oh-kay. Is the L4D going to picket this time?"

"You know, I don't think it's right for them to do that. They don't even live here. The last time they came up on a bus all the way from Las Vegas."

"But the Tree invited you back anyway?"

"Promotes constructive interchange with morally-stunted morons. That's just a rough translation, of course."

In other words, it's good for the Crystal Tree's business. Leave it to Solly. I changed the subject, sort of. "Is that what you're going to be doing the reading in? A fur coat? Aren't you afraid the Mother's Uhgainst Fatuous Furriers will protest?"

"No, silly. My Homies [Ed. Note: The Carrot refers to residents of the Licketyville Home for Retired Eroticians] did me up special, just for this reading."

The Carrot pulled open her moth-eaten mink. Under it was a happily orange spandex bodysuit. "Jesus, Lacie (the Carrot's real name is Lacie Campbell). You don't think a bodysuit is a little radical for a, uh, literary event? It looks like it's painted on." One can dream, can't one?

"It is painted on, silly. That's how we got it to match my hair so perfectly." Totally doesn't-everybody-do-it-like-this delivery.

"Oh. Well. I think I'd better pass, Lacie. I really can't just close up early. And I'm trying to get my novel finished, remember?" What I didn't say was, "And besides, I'm too much of a chicken-shit."

The mink coat swung shut and the Carrot cocked her head in that way she does when people do incomprehensibly stupid things in her presence. "Your loss, Mister Counter-Wiper."

Later, after taking psychic counsel from the spirit of Rajneesh, I decided the Carrot was probably right. No, definitely right.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "My mother never breast fed me; she told me she only liked me as a friend."  -- Rodney Dangerfield

Go ahead, dream about oranges.

It's a Thong Way Home

It’s well know around Licketyville that Speechless Henry Cavett has always had a thing about puns, which Doug Larson calls “the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself.” With no larynx, delivering his puns has gotten tougher for Henry. But not impossible.

It’s less well known around Licketyville that Henry also has a thing about leather underwear. His thing is that he crafts it: all custom, one-off items. Sells them on the web, mostly.

Friday, he brought in his latest work in progress. Most of this particular item was a “V” of shiny red-orange leather with a curly letter “H” spelled out in rhinestones and silver studs. The rest of the item was two skimpy bands of same-colored leather attached to the “V” in the usual places.

“Very, uh…nice, Henry.” I had a hundred questions, but didn’t ask any of them.

This morning, Henry showed up with a brand new cell phone, one of those jobbies with a built-in digital camera. Hmmm.

A while later the Today Café received a rare visit from Helena, Hell-for-short, Frome, none other. The Demon Stylist of Licketyville was all smiles as she tucked her compact little self into Henry’s booth. Wasting no time on pleasantries, Hell stuck out her hand. Henry nodded, fished something out of his inside pocket and set it on the table. His new cell phone.

While Hell’s forehead went into Heavy Frown, Henry scribbled something on his spiral pad and handed it to her. The frown deepened, but Hell cupped her hands over eyes and allowed herself to be surprised.

The red-orange thong was the next thing to emerge from Henry’s pocket. No plain brown wrapper, no nothing. Henry tapped Hell on the elbow.

For just a moment Hell stared down at the table.

One hand had crept halfway to the thong when Henry’s cell phone went off. I don’t mean rang, I mean “went off”. Henry’s phone has a ring tone that sounds like a string of firecrackers. I couldn’t follow the flurry of action except for the thong flying off the table and into the aisle.

Everyone in the Today Café saw what happened next. Hell slid out of the booth, bent down and snapped up the thong. As she was bending over, Speechless Henry pointed the cell phone at her, clicked it once and then innocently put it to his ear.

Hell stood up, the tiny thong crumpled in her fist. Realizing she had an audience, Hell bowed, turned back to Henry, kissed him on the cheek, dropped an envelope on the table and hip-wiggled herself out of the Today Café. Whew. Dodged a bullet there.

Meanwhile, Henry caught my eye and gestured. On my way to his table I picked up a ginger sesame scone as a Demystification Offering. As if to clarify, Henry held out the cell phone. The tiny color screen was dominated by Hell’s tidy derriere. About the only other thing visible was her arm reaching toward that overdecorated snippet of leather.

“So? What am I supposed to be seeing? I’m lost here, Henry.”

Henry winked and held out his spiral pad. “Hell, bent for leather” was scrawled there in big letters.

Recalling one wag’s definition of a pun as “a short quip followed by a long groan,” I did my very best to stifle a groan. I hope you would have, too. Any of us could be his next target.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:  “The goodness of the true pun is in direct ratio to its intolerability.” -- Edgar Allen Poe

Be good today.

The Nameless Cat Ate My Post

Normally, the Nameless Cat gets two feedings of canned catfood a day. Some days it's Mixed Grill, other days it's Turkey Giblet Dinner or Salmon Parfait. The Nameless Cat doesn't seem to care. At least it hasn't yet filed a formal complaint.

Normally, the Nameless Cat sleeps in my office chair all day.

Normally, the Nameless Cat doesn't talk to me.

Once you've read something by Jasper Fforde, normalcy ceases to have much meaning.

I just finished reading something by Jasper Fforde; ergo, normalcy has ceased to have much meaning. Or at least it has ceased to operate on my trusty 'ol Titanium PowerBook. I shouldn't have I allowed Something Rotten to rest on its lid when I wasn't reading it. Some of the counter-normalcy must have soaked right through the lid into wherever counter-normalcy likes to go.

My first clue that normalcy had gone missing was the missing cat. I sat down to write about the business of Lizbeth Marvel and the Picture Board and how that got all tangled up with a meeting of the SOFIs. I'd gotten the whole thing written and was looking for a suitable quote when it occurred to me that I hadn't had to dislodge the Nameless Cat from my office chair.

My second clue about the disappearance of normalcy in my vicinity was the Nameless Cat saying "Get me off."

Said Yours Truly to the air of the office: "I beg your pardon?"

"The roof. Get me off the roof. I'm hungry."

Don't ask how I knew that the ghostly whisper was the Nameless Cat. Or why I dutifully trudged out the back door and looked up at the peak of the roof. All you need to know is this: there, seemingly cradled in the barest sliver of a moon was the Nameless Cat, looking down at me.

First, I tried Tough Love. I climb up the ladder to the roof and give it a stern eyeballing. "You got up there, you can just get yourself down. Take all the time you want, I don't care."

"Cats don't have a reverse gear," said the Nameless Cat in a tone that clearly implied that I should have known that already. "And be warned that if you somehow get the better of my good nature and I come close enough so you can grab me by the scruff of the neck, I promise to leave claw marks all over your arms...and possibly even that thing you call a nose. Safest thing for you would be to coax me with words."

"Words? You mean I should say something like 'Come on, Sweet Nameless; time to come down from the roof and have some nice Salmon Parfait. Or Mixed Grill, if you'd rather.' Or,'That great horned owl up there is thinking you look a lot like a full portion of Mottled Fur Stew'."

"Silly human. What makes you think I am as stupid as a dog or as timid as a mouse. Now you're pissing me off. I want words, I want them now...and not just any words. Yesterday at the Thrice Read Zine, I ate the cover of a dusty old thing called True Confessions; now I find I would like to eat an article about Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson wannabees. In fact, that post you just wrote would serve nicely."

"No way."

Piece of advice, Dear Reader. Never say "no way" to the Nameless Cat. It has Ways.

Next thing I know, the Nameless Cat is on the ground, nibbling with dainty abandon at a small mound of what look to be moist ones and zeroes next to the dumpster. If dainty abandon is entirely a contradiction in terms, feel free to substitute a more appropriate expression and let me know what it is.

So I climb back down the ladder and approach the Nameless Cat, who darts away. I toss a half-hearted curse after the Nameless Cat and go back to the Titanium and my post-in-progress.

Gone. The whole thing. Nothing on the TypePad screen but a blank post form. You would have liked that one, too. Sigh. I think I'm going to complain to Jasper Fforde. It's all his fault.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." -- Winston Churchill

Go ahead, have a normal day.

In the Blink of a Nano

On his way out after today's special Peak Oilmen meeting, Fred Hutchins-Licket showed me a new iPod Nano.

I cringed as unpleasant three-part harmony went off in my mind's ear: air raid sirens, ooh-ooh-gah dive alerts and that bleeping noise that ready-mix trucks make when they're backing up. Couldn't have said why at that particular moment, but this one single adverb exploded into my head: "dangerously."

Am I being melodramatic? Possibly, possibly not. The Nano struck me as dangerously petite, dangerously sexy and dangerously powerful. I read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, you know. On account of that book I've learned to trust my hunches, at least more than before I read the book. That much dangerously in one place oughta be against the law. Or at least have a warning label printed on it. I just knew it.

"Be careful with that thing, Fred. It's got 'dangerously' printed all over it."

Fred gave me his trademark "I'd be scratching my sleek, silver-maned head if I didn't already have my hands full" look and went out the door.

After what happened a little later over at City Hall, I feel obliged to deliver this warning to husbands who have the notion to give an iPod Nano to their wives for a birthday present. Don't. Give her one of the other iPods instead.

Just after 8 pee em, Fred Hutchins-Licket slid between the cracks in the Today Cafe's front door like some kind of ectoplasmic misery. I was telling a booth full of adventurous just-passing-throughers that they oughta leave Anomaly Road at night to locals who are used to strange events, when Fred walked straight up to me, tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear, "How'd you know?"

How do you explain symbolic nuance or the dangers of spurious perceptions to somebody who is the heir to a concrete fortune? You don't.

On my way to not telling the third husband of the 40-something Mayor of Licketyville about symbolic nuance and spurious perceptions, I got the people at the booth one of those gaudy pictorial maps of Anomaly Road put out by the Chamber of Commerce, excused myself and took the crestfallen Fred to the Privacy Corner.

"You want to tell me what happened?" The usually silver-tongued Fred opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no sound came out. Just a bubble or two.

"Okay, let me take a wild guess. You presented that dangerously petite, dangerously sexy and dangerously powerful gadget to Mayor Madge at her City Hall birthday party this afternoon. You thought you were going to be a hero on account of her Steve Jobs crush that she's always publicly joking about. How am I doing so far?"

Fred continued to do his imitation of a silver-haired guppy.

"So I'm guessing that Madge opened the Nano package, blushed a little, gushed a little, gave you a perfectly political peck on the cheek and went back to doing Boss-at-the-Party. And after it was all over she refused to speak to you on account of your embarrassing her in public. And now she's at the Planning Committee meeting and you're here."

A sigh, a pair of rolled eyes. "That's pretty close to what happened. Who told you?"

"Nobody told me. Just guessed. A hunch. Gut feeling. Read a book called Blink."

Fred just frowned his concrete frown.

"Let me see if I can put it another way. Petite, sexy and powerful. I think I used those words to describe the iPod Nano gadget you showed me. Right?"

"Right."

"Two out of those three words are perfectly accurate descriptors of our wonderful Mayor." Fred may have concrete in his blood, but I figured that maybe appealing to his arithmetic sense might do it. Wrong.

I gave Fred one last hint. "Our Mayor who is always on a diet..."

Silence drained what color was left in Fred's face.

"Oh."

Fred couldn't bring himself to say anything more on the topic...and who could blame him?

In fact, the only thing Yours Truly could think of to say at that awkward moment was the following item from one of the wisest living men of Modern Times.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid." -- George Carlin

I wish I was smart enough to believe that George has that wrong, but I'm not.

Junior Achievement for Future Billionaires

"I'm thinking of starting something like Junior Achievement in Licketyville."

That was Big Jim Kandorski's opening volley. It was just after two pee em, which made it just after this month's Chamber of Commerce luncheon wrapped up. If Big Jim is at the Today Cafe after a C of C meeting, it means he's too aggravated to go back to his office and needs to bend somebody's ear. Lucky me.

I metered out a mug of industrial grade Global Warmer Blend and set it down, pretending I didn't hear his opening volley. "You need cream today, Big Jim?," I asked. I've learned from experience that it's better not to take the bait.

"Half-and-half, if you've got it. I'm on a diet today. And don't think that if you pretend not to hear me, you're going to escape. I gotta get this idea off my chest…and you're Licketyville's Official Listener. Besides, you're going to like this idea; it's cynical."

"C'mon, Big Jim. I'm trying to quit...haven't touched a drop of cynicism in three days."

"Cheer up, Shorty. Life's hard, then you die."

Big Jim finds it entertaining to call a six-footer Shorty (probably for the same inversionist reason he calls his Mickey Rooney-sized self Big Jim). "Okay, lay it on me. But don't bad-mouth the C of C today. Please."

"Deal. They're about as much use as a wax teapot in Death Valley, but I'll stay away from bad-mouthing them. I promise."

I rolled my eyes; Big Jim winked. "You gotta learn to accept reality a little better, Shorty. Anyway, here's my idea. It came to me this morning after reading about the Billionaires for Bush organization. After sitting through the Chamber of Cretins rubber chicken hoo-hah, I figured I had to get serious about it." I gulped.

"It's all about honesty. Why be such hypocrites? If we're going to teach kids about business, let's not waste time on trivial nonsense like double-entry bookkeeping, inventory control, budgeting, product development, quality circles...you know what I'm talking about. Let's teach them what REALLY matters if what you wanna do is make big bucks. Let's give 'em workshops on bribery and lobbying, spin-meistering and half-truthing, collusion and creative ethics, plus loophole-finding and legal intimidation. Let's teach environmental degradation for fun and profit, show 'em the ten best places to hide toxic waste, how to blame the victims, outsource customer service to people who can't speak English, get out the axe and do layoffs for instant profits...all the GOOD stuff."

When Big Jim paused to catch his breath, I interrupted. I just had to. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! It's one thing to be a harmless amateur lower case cynic like me, but it's entirely something else to be CYNICAL in all caps. Next thing, you're going to escalate up to being CYNICAL in all caps AND 72 point bold type. You can't let the C of C push you over the cliff like that, Big Jim. It's just not worth it."

He put that Rueful Contrition twist to the left corner of his mouth and dropped his voice down a couple clicks. "You're right, Shorty. Better to do what my grandpa always wanted to do with all the lawyers and real estate agents. Invite 'em on a free cruise to the South Pacific. Free banquets, free drinks, free erotic companions, the whole burrito grande."

"I guess I don't follow you. You're saying turn the other cheek?"

"Hell no, Shorty. I'm saying you pull the plug right around the Tonga Trench. Except for the crew and the erotic companions. They get airlifted to Samoa."

"Oh. Dare I ask what the C of C wanted to do that got you so aggravated? They trying to persuade Madge to subdivide the Eight Farms for tract housing again? Repeal the No Franchise Ordinance?"

"Naw, nothing like that. They were just being THEM, you know? You oughta go to these things, Shorty. You're still a member, right?"

"Yeah, the Today Cafe is still a member. But my heart can't take all that much concentrated excitement in the middle of the day."

"Got it. You're a coward. But don't you like my cynical idea for educating our youth about REALITY?"

"There you go, speaking in ALL CAPS again."

"Okay, go ahead: stonewall me, Shorty. I can take it. But at least go back in your office and check out www.billionairesforbush.com. It'll brighten up your day. And along those lines, I've got a rampartism for you: A penny saved is worth two in the Bush. Capitalization intended. Think about it."

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain; and most fools do." -- Dale Carnegie

Just foolin'.

The Truth About Nude Book Readings

Maybe you can help me decide.

Seven of the Scandalites were at it this afternoon over a doozy of a rumor. Or is it "doozie"? Anyway, they all had salads. Every one of them. Seven succulent, svelte and slimmish salads instead of their usual Friday fare: seven LicketyChick burgers with all the trimmings and seven Cocoa Blast malteds with real whipped cream and flaked dark chocolate on top.

The doozy/doozie is not that they had those salads, per se. It's because of they ordered those salads not thirty seconds after Lissa Flaymore dropped her bombshell: there are going to be nude book readings in the Licket Mansion. That's what Mork Fanzer said, at least. And Mork was in a perfect position to eavesdrop, being in the next booth pretending he was dozing during his usual mid-afternoon lull.

After Shonni, the afternoon chef, jammed a plastic bucket over my head to try to squelch my hysterical laughter, Mork worked really hard to convince me that there's a connection between eating salads and nude book readings in the Licket Mansion. As in, these seven Scandalites were getting themselves in shape, just in case they got invited to a nude book reading. That's Mork's theory, and although he's not really from the planet Ork (and his real name is Harold), our Mork's mission in life is a whole lot like the Mork's (the Robin Williams character) from that old sitcom, Mork and Mindy: to observe the bizarre customs of the earthlings and then report back to his great Orkan leader, Orson. Except that the Today Cafe's Mork reports back to Yours Truly, not Orson.

Thing is, I know EXACTLY where that bizarre rumor got started. My brother, Scott. Yes, the very same Scott who did such a magnificent job of programming the new look of this blog (he's a software engineer as well as a writer, near-futurist and reverend). Scott was up from LA to check on the restoration of the Licket Mansion. The third floor, in particular, which is where The Story Loft is going to be.

"I sure appreciate your patience, Mr. Ellison. It's going to be worth the wait. You can trust me on that." Lissa Flaymore was doing the talking. Lissa the realtor and leasing agent. Lissa the Scandalite...the very cute, very single, very raven-haired Scandalite.

"I'm absolutely certain I can trust you on that, Miss Flaymore," said my spot-on courteous brother. "But can I trust you with a little secret? We've got a whole bunch of celebrities who are going be coming up here to help launch our new book reading program. I don't know if we'll be able to get Tom Cruise, but we're trying." He was just kidding about Tom Cruise.

So here's where I need your help. Should the proper category for this post be "The Scandalites", or maybe "You Didn't Hear It Here?" Or something else?

While I'm waiting for your ideas, we're taking up a collection to buy Lissa a big box of Q-Tips.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true." -- Winston Churchill

Go ahead: hear what you want to hear today. You deserve it.

How I Learned to Sniff the Blue

The Today Café’s extremely popular scampi recipe is called Don’t Call It Scampi. If it had been up to me, I would have called it something fancier. Something like, like…damn, I’m drawing a blank here. Maybe I’ve been in Licketyville too long. Maybe I need to go scampi-hopping in Beverly Hills with a fist full of Franklins.

No matter. This recipe is called what it’s called because I promised Louie that’s what we’d call it. It’s his recipe, after all. I just transcribed it between bug-eyed gurgles. For the full story, you’ll want to consult your handy copy of Recipe Rangers in the West, starting on page 164. Don’t have one? Or your old copy has been rendered illegible from loving overuse? No prob. You can get a fresh copy at Amazon.com. You know the drill.

But if you’re not yet an adventurous Type 3 type and need your book-buying pump primed (and because I have more heart than brains), you can download the recipe and the whole remarkable tale for free at www.reciperangers.org. It's number 9 on the free samples page, which also has a link to Amazon.

But this isn’t a commercial, after all. This is a mystery.

In our restaurant-sized recipe for Don’t Call It Scampi, we don’t just use white cooking wine. We use Liebfraumilch...Blue Nun, in fact. Why? How about the possibly provocative fact that it literally means "milk from the Virgin," "milk of our Lady" or "milk of our Blessed Mother" in German? Not culinary enough for you? Maybe it's that we like the sweet, fruity bouquet that brings the stronger, sharper flavors together in joyous ecstasy. Or something like that.

One of our cooks had an emergency a while back and I had to make up the scampi sauce myself. I was in a hurry, but I did all the right things right…except sniff the Blue Nun before pouring just the right amount. That’ll never happen again. I promise.

Lillian Gaspode was the first to comment. “Did you change the scampi recipe? Something seemed…different.” Lillian is nothing if not diplomatic.

Hank Mendoza’s comment was more direct. “Wal, podnuh, I b’lieve some critter mighta done somethin’ unpleasant in your scampi today. I hear the greasy grunts in the Corona brewery used to…”

“Thank you, Hank. I know where you’re going, but this is a G-rated blog. I’ll check into it, though.”

Both Lillian and Hank got marked down for free meals. You don’t like it, you get your next meal free. Whatever you want. That’s the official, unwritten, known-by-everybody-in-Licketyville, Today Café guarantee.

When three other regulars got free meals on account of scampi, we “ran out,” meaning that what was left of that batch was history, not food.

Yeah, the customer is always right. But in this case, they actually were. The scampi just didn’t taste right. Not gut-wrenching awful, but not right either. Definitely missing something. Every ingredient in that recipe checked out…until I gingerly put my lips to the Blue Nun. Nothing but about a cup of fragrant water in a magnum bottle.

I’ve heard of establishments watering their wine, but really! This was almost like the Holy Savior’s trick of turning water into wine, but done in a mirror, or by a dyslexic, or by somebody standing on his head.

Do I know who did it? Yep.

Do I know why? Yep. A certain somebody felt an urgent need to down the contents. And in the barely half-lucid state that followed, this certain somebody figured water would cover up the crime well enough. I’ve seen that somebody pull the wool over his/her own eyes like that way more than twice. Mystery solved.

What am I going to do about it? Nothing…except make sure that all of us cooks check the bottle before pouring.

Yesterday, I asked Hank Mendoza to test our latest perfect batch of Don’t Call It Scampi. Naturally, I also had to tell him my little detective story.

If you don’t know Hank, he’s a Licketyville old-timer. Used to be a real cowboy, and he’s got way more than his share of cowboy anecdotes. Hank leaned way back in his chair, tipped his battered straw hat forward, stuck a toothpick in the gap between his front teeth and gave me that one-eye squint of his. “You know, podnuh, us ol’ cowboys have this sure-fire method for tellin’ a horse from a jackass. Works like this. You go lead the critter down to some water. If it drinks, you got yerself a horse. If it don’t, it’s a damn jackass.”

Sometimes I hope I get reincarnated as a cowboy.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
- - Euripides

What can I say after that?

The Wedding, Part Two

“Where is Solana Beach, exactly?”

I got asked that question by a handful of night owls when I dropped into the Today Café at around ten pee em this evening to do a little Purple Samovar testing. Yes, I finally made it back from the wedding. Or was it the movable feast? Or both? Whatever. More importantly, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to Dana Scanlon for carrying on so well during my extended absence.

Why was I testing coffee when I should be recovering from driving a gazillion miles? To finalize this post, of course. Or could it be that a delightful new coffee flavor sensation is its own reward? Down around Solana Beach somewhere I’d bought a couple triple espressos and a pound of Purple Samovar Roast from a little drive up coffee place called The Fast Drop. I never go into coffee drive-ups unless I’m desperate.

I was desperate. We were desperate, actually. The other half of “we” was my brother Scott. Or Brother Scott, or Reverend Scott; take your pick. It was nearly midnight Friday night and the program booklets for Saturday's wedding weren’t printed yet on account of yours truly only having wrapped up the final edit and design a few minutes prior. We figured a nice triple espresso might keep our eyes open long enough to find an all-night Kinko’s with the wherewithall to get it done in the nick of time, or sooner. Unfortunately, Kinko's is Kinko's. But fortunately -- or unfortunately if you're the driver -- there are a lot of Kinko’s.

That triple espresso was way better than an eye-opener. It was lucky. It was like having a pound of fresh rabbits’ feet and a pound of four-leaf clovers compressed into a tiny cube hiding under the cinnamon-colored foam on that little paper cup. Not a pretty picture, but I’m giving that triple espresso full credit for making the impossible happen: the first Kinko’s we found handled the project. The father of the bride and the uncle of the bride were heroes.

Actually, the uncle was the hero. The father-of-the-bride was only required to avoid slipping on the golf course grass while walking the beautiful Tosha to the altar. Well, and propose a toast to Peter and Tosha’s future, with a little help from Ben Franklin. It was the uncle who wrote the ceremony from scratch and delivered it. No doubt about it; Brother Scott handled the reverending with humor and twinkly-eyed wisdom. But don't take a brother's word for it. In the aftermath I overheard such 3rd party kudos as “that was the best wedding service I’ve ever heard,” and “where is your church, Reverend Ellison?”

I’m not the only one telling him he ought go pro in the reverending business.

But back to our question of the day: Where is Solana Beach, exactly?

First answer: By the ocean, of course. The Pacific Ocean. And it’s not too far from Oceanside and Carlsbad. And Leucadia and Encinitas and Cardiff-by-the-Sea. Just up the hill is Rancho Santa Fe and just down the hill is Del Mar, famous for its race track. Unfortunately for Solana Beach, it’s also just around the corner from everywhere else in San Diego County, which is looking more and more like today’s clone of yesterday’s Orange County. In other words, mushrooming suburbia.

Got road rage? I saw road rage on I-5 and I-15 that makes our local road ragers look about as nasty as a milk mustache.

Makes me truly thankful for Licketyville. No ocean and no Purple Samovar Roast, but we’ve got Lake Bigollie, which is plenty wet and large enough to drown in. And we’ve got Midnight Thunder Roast, which is strong enough to keep your eyes peeled almost as long as that gadget they used on Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. It’s enough.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.” – Christopher Hampton

Enjoy whatever truth you can find today. ;-)

The Wedding, Part One

Forgive me, Dana.

You're probably not Dana Scanlon, so you don't need to bother with forgiving me. Dana needs to bother because she's running the show at the Today Cafe while Yours Truly is way down in Solana Beach, California for The Wedding.

I'm hoping Dana will forgive me for forgetting to call Licketyville Coffee Roasters to order a quantity of their special Strikebuster Roast last week. Must have thought about it a hundred times between last Monday and when I left Licketyville for Solana Beach yesterday. Oh well. Let them drink Sunday Succor for another day.

The Wedding. First one in the family in years. And not only a knock-your-socks-off celebration, a genuine family reunion. Today is the rehearsal, and while Tosha and Peter are treating their hangovers after last night's bachelorette and bachelor parties respectively, some of us are tending to last minute preparations. Yours Truly and Brother Scott (the Minister) are two of the some.

For more on the wedding, visit www.peterandtoshawedding.com.

If you should happen to drop into the Today Cafe today and see Dana, please encourage her to forgive me. Thanks.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "'A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way."
- - John Tudor

Enjoy your Friday.