Areas of Unrest

3 November 2000 - Another Week, Another Business Trip

QOTD: "Winter is icummen in / Lhude sing goddam." - Ezra Pound

Reading: Reginald Hill, Arms and the Women

Listening to: Malavoi, She She

I have a ton of stuff to write about, so my ISP is being troublesome just to add to the frustration level. Which means that I'm not sure when I'll actually be able to upload this, sigh.

Anyway, I was half-watching some TV program on Wednesday night (i.e. I had it on but was reading the newspaper and not really paying attention - something I do only in hotel rooms) and heard the line, "I'm from New York. I'm not going to be impressed by the best restaurant in Boulder." Seeing as I'm from New York and I had just had an incredible meal at Redfish in Boulder (potato-crusted mahi mahi, mixed vegetables with mint, sweet potato mash, and chocolate mousse for dessert), you can imagine my amusement.

As for the rest of the Boulder food pornography report, I had dinner at Rhumba Monday night. Their chowder remains incredible; it's almost certainly one of the ten best soups in the world. The marlin special I had didn't work quite as well, with an overly sweet pineapple salsa, but the cornbread stuffing it came with was delicious. I also tried two new places. On Tuesday night, I ate vegetarian spring rolls and fish with sweet basil leaves at Viet Hoa, both of which were excellent, although the latter seemed more Thai than Vietnamese. Thursday night was the disappointing meal, at a recently opened Mexican restaurant named Cancun. It had gotten good reviews, but I found the food bland and uninteresting. Mexican food in Colorado tends to remind me that the state is part of the Plains, rather than the real Southwest, and this was no exception. I had to satisfy my unmet spice needs by having lunch on Friday at Zolo, before heading to the airport.

I ran into a wonderful United Airlines Catch-22 on the way home, by the way. I got to the airport early enough to have a chance of getting on either the 2:25 or the 2:28 flight. Naturally, these two flights are at gates so far apart that one has to choose which of them to stand by for. Now, when you put your name on the standby list, they check you in for your scheduled flight. In this case, they didn't manage to get any standby passengers on. I thought I'd be clever and call to get confirmed on the 4:50 flight. Which is where the Catch-22 comes in. The reservations agent insisted that had I not been checked in for my flight (which was scheduled for 5:55), she could have confirmed me on the 4:50. But, since I was checked in, she couldn't do anything and I would have to try the standby list. What this amounts to is that standing by for one flight can actually decrease your chances of getting home earlier. By the way, they claimed to roll over the standby list, but there is no evidence that they actually did. I went over to Customer Service and insisted on getting a standby card, since I've heard gate agents in the past claim they can't roll over standby lists. And I did get on the 4:50, so I probably shouldn't whine nearly as much as I just did.

After food and travel, my other obsessive subject is celebrity deaths, so I feel obliged to note the death of Steve Allen. I wonder if anybody as intellectual as he was could ever become so successful in television nowadays. Not to mention all the songs he wrote and all his books and so on. Truly a multi-talented man.

Actually, I have another celebrity death to comment on. Namely, that of Ring Lardner, Jr., the last of the "Hollywood 10." His father was probably the better writer, but Junior did write the screenplay of "Woman of the Year," one of my all-time favorite movies. More to the point, as survivors of the 1950's blacklists die off, it will be easier to reinstitute that sort of censorship.

In other news, I'm excited about the space station being occupied now. I'm less excited about the Source of All Evil in the Universe having gotten a ticker tape parade, but it did make me wonder something. Isn't stock trading pretty much all electronic now? Do they even use ticker tape for anything other than parades?

Finally, the amazingly useless trivia department reveals that the pirate, Jean Lafitte was Jewish. Apparently, he was one of the biggest contributors to the building of one of the earliest synagogues in Louisiana and is buried in a Jewish cemetary in Metairie.