Thanks a Lot, Shoe Bomber

Thanks a lot buddy. Great job you did there. What with the bomb in the shoe. That was some strong thinking. Enjoy your prison time.

He's Richard Reid, and has any one person ever been responsible for the creation of so much annoyance? So much disgruntlement? So much ill-temper, brown study, disaccommodation and just general inconvenience? I mean sure, you've got Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-tung. But they painted their misery on more of a broad canvas. They were more direct. Richard Reid the Shoe Bomber is a more subtle operator. It's as if he wants to rival Stalin for evil, but he's not going to kill anybody - he's just going to poke you in the ribs and screech a soft, high pitched tone in your ear until the total evil inflicted is the same. He doesn't care - he's got time.

The terrible thing is that when I flew east last week, I didn't even get annoyed when the TSA made me remove my shoes. I'm trained now. I'm acclimated. There's no fresh sting of indignation when these incompetent, moon faced, drooling buffoons order me around. I had made it a point to continue to be aggravated at the requirement, just to remind myself that it truly was stupid and unnecessary. But this time I just gave up. Had to make the flight. Didn't care.

Of course we could also talk about the liquids ban. Some other terrorist plot involved a liquid bomb and now we can't bring drinks on the plane. The dirty secret here is that no one in the aviation industry is particularly interested in having this ban lifted. It forces passengers to make expensive purchases at the gate and on the plane. I'm sure it's been a boon to revenue. Don't look for that one to go away anytime soon.

What scares me though is the thought of where the next terrorist is going to hide his bomb. A book? His socks? What item of necessity will we next be forced to part with or subject to a scan? I'll tell you this, if I ever open the paper to read about the iPod bomber or the PsP bomber, I am officially quitting air travel.

Here's the bottom line. Some day the TSA will lift the liquids ban and the shoe scan requirement. Of course they will. Remember the "3 questions" you used to be asked when you checked in? Have you packed your own suitcase? Have you left it unattended? After billions and billions of repetitions of those questions and not a single justifying event to back them up they were discarded. It will be the same thing with the shoes. But the TSA, in its colossal stupidity, needs a lot of time to figure that out. Have I mentioned that the TSA are worthless? Have I mentioned that their front line agents are dumber than cheese? Seriously. The next time they're confiscating a nail file, ask them who the vice president is. Ask them to name a planet. It isn't normally fair to belittle someone for the crime of being dumb, but when that person is ordering you around like a child and making you surrender a diet coke, you should take the edge off their power trip by reminding them who they are and where they are.



We just happen to live in that unhappy twilight time: The Shoe Bomber is in the past. The TSA realizing that shoe scanning is ineffective is in the future. We're stuck in the middle. Plus, can't they just improve the full body scanners to find things in your shoes?

Thanks Shoe Bomber. And you did it all for God, right? Hope that works out for you.

240 Annoyances

221. Vegetarians who force their pets to be vegetarian.

222. Eddie Murphy's refusal to participate in any kind of SNL retrospective.

223. Songs that reference other songs. Like this recent one that won't go away about "Playing Sweet Home Alabama all summer long." What kind of balls do you have to have to make a song that's about the pleasure of listening to a much better song?

224. When you bump into a friend you haven't seen or spoken to in a long time and they get all petulant about how come you never write or call. Well why didn't you write or call? Why is the onus on me? Isn't a friendship a two-way street? This is particularly annoying when it was you that made the last contact. Your email was ignored or your call wasn't returned - and now she's wagging her finger at you because you don't keep in touch. Man that's irritating.

225. Asking for ginger ale and getting Sprite.

226. People: if you form a big semi-circle around the shopping mall mime disguised as a statue who freaks out the people who walk by, then everyone will know it's not a statue. Disperse! Watch from a distance!

227. People who call tomato sauce on pasta "gravy". Yeah, you're Italian.

228. That oblivious driver in front of you who if he pulled forward just a few inches would allow you into the turn lane.

229. When your friends make a St. Patrick's Day plan to all meet at around 9pm at that one Irish pub that's about 20 minutes away on the freeway - and when you get there, you realize, a) this is the most crowded you've ever seen an enclosed space, b) there's a $20 cover, and c) a portion of the floor has been roped off to feature a live band playing the loudest and shittiest music you've ever heard. Despite not having any fun at all, and meeting outside after 20 minutes to decide where to go next, you will all get amnesia and do the exact same thing next year, and ever year thereafter.

230. What good is a piece of sushi that's too big to put in your mouth? It's not like you can cut it into smaller pieces. Chefs: cut them smaller. Make 10 pieces instead of 8. Especially if its some kind of dragon-pizza-volcano-roll type deal.

231. I hate the expression "It's a glorious day." A "glorious day" means only one thing: that I'm about to get a hard time for continuing to sleep or watch TV.

232. Trivial Pursuit games with ancient pop culture questions. Also: Trivial Pursuit games with way-too-current, why-should-I-be-rewarded-for-knowing-this? pop culture questions.

233. TV shows where the opening credits spoil the surprise of which secondary characters you can expect to see in that particular episode.

234. People at the symphony who clap after the first movement.

235. Denise Richards as Dr. Christmas Jones.

236. Waitresses: if you're out of something, just tell me up front. Don't roll the dice that I won't order it.

237. The gauntlet of questions you have to answer at the Barnes & Nobles counter before they let you buy anything.

238. People who begin a speech with "The Chinese have a proverb: May you live in interesting times."

239. Who made the decision to replace the line "Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow." with "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough"? The original line is much better.

240. Can I get some sort of "Knows How to Navigate a Website" certification? So that I can opt of all these bullshit online training courses that I've had to take at two consecutive jobs wherein I am taught, click by click, how to use a supplier or client website? I mean maybe there are a few people out there who really do need to be shown how to navigate a menu bar and click on things, how to log on and change a password, how to select something from a pull down tab - but can't people who aren't fucking morons take a pass? Can't there be some kind of opt out clause?

Being Told That Your Password Isn't Rigorous Enough

It's been kind of a chore, over the years, to keep track of all my passwords. I don't want them all to be identical, and yet if I had 10 or 20 different ones there would be no way to remember them all. I do have about 5 passwords that I use, and they're all related to each other. So if I forget my log-on for some email account or customer-ID or something, it's a quick question of cycling through the list.

But I do have to gripe just a bit about these passwords at work. At any job where they give you a computer and a log-on, you're going to have to create passwords. Back in the olden days, you could pick whatever password you wanted. Then they started to tighten the rules. It had to be at least 8 letters. Fine. It had to contain at least one number. Well, okay. It had to contain both upper and lower case. Errr. And it had to be changed once a month, and could never be replaced with a previously used password.

Well Jesus Christ. So it has to be Mnz8sJk9, and you have to change it once a month. Putting aside the ridiculous notion that anyone would a) want to hack my work PC, or b) be thwarted at the last moment by my ingenious use of upper case, consider the following:

We are not robots. We cannot memorize multiple nonsense passwords, and then start fresh every month. I brought this up to my boss, who said, "Oh, just use 'Password1'. And then next month, 'Password2', and so on. It's what everyone does. It's easy." Good idea. And that's exactly what I do now.

But you just have to note the irony. This ultra secure, super fool-proof set of password requirements that was put in place to guarantee impenetrable ciphers of dazzling complexity... has instead resulted in everyone, EVERYONE, using the most obvious password you can possibly think of. Don't you just love that? Isn't this a great argument for just leaving people the hell alone?

New Blog Update

I had one or two other topics to go here that were poker related. But I'm starting to think that poker is a bit of a niche issue, and not everyone would be interested in my complaints about specific Las Vegas poker rooms. So I'm starting up a new blog called Poker Advice of Dubious Value. It will cover all the poker topics I want to talk about, and that way I can stick to general subjects here. If you're a poker player and want to check it out, the address is www.dubiouspoker.blogspot.com. The plan will be to update it every Sunday. As for the Petty Annoyances, I'm tapped out at the moment. I got nothing in the hopper.

But I do have a great quote from the author Jonah Goldberg, where he discusses his own petty annoyance. Read and enjoy:

Another useful ban would be to bar people from using foreign words when English ones work just fine. My favorite example of this, if memory serves, was a piece in the American Spectator in the mid 1990s by, I believe, Michael Vlahos who in the course of a perfectly insightful and intelligent article used the German word Konzept instead of the English "concept."

Even today a friend of mine will over-pronounce the word Konzept (spitting on the final "T") like a Disney movie German scientist whenever one of us comes up with a fairly banal idea or suggestion. For example, Me: "Some buffalo wings would be really good right now." Friend: "That is a fascinating Kooooooohhhhhhnnnnnzzzzzzepttttt!"

The Undeserved Reputation of the Bellagio Poker Room

The Bellagio Poker Room in Las Vegas is seriously overrated. It coasts on accolades like these year after year, without any real critical scrutiny. Yes, Bellagio hosts the biggest games. Yes, Bobby's room is cool. Yes, it's the place to go for poker celebrity sightings, and yes the Bellagio has made a big commitment to poker. But....

Have any of you actually tried to play there? At any given time there's 25 games going. Most of those games are not high limit, they're the same 4-8, 5-10, 1-2 and 2-5 games that you see everywhere else. They're the bread and butter of the poker room. And Bellagio's service is terrible. Let me outline what we commoners have to put up with:

1. The Tables Suck

One of the most irritating things a poker room can do is play ten handed holdem on a stud table. None of the Bellagio tables are big enough. No cup holders or wood border either.

2. And There's No Space Between Them

Good luck getting to one of those tables in the corner.

3. Drink Service Disappears When the Room Gets Crowded

4. The Brushes are Surly

5. They Use a Retarded Clipboard System for Lists.

Look, you can make an argument that the electronic lists are buggy and problematic and maybe there's a certain nostalgia factor for keeping an old-timey chalkboard list, but a pencil-and-clipboard list just doesn't work.

First, no electronic list, no remote monitoring of the list. That means you can't get it on your hotel room TV. Second, if you can't see the list, you can't decide what you want to do unless you're already talking to the brush. At Caesars, or the Venetian, or anywhere else, I can view the list at a distance, and I don't need to actually talk to the host until I know which lists I want to be on. The clipboard system means I always have to be crowded around the front desk craning my neck to see what's going on.

6. There's No Technology on the Tables.

There's no "seat open" button that the dealer can press, which means that Bellagio is one of the last houses in town where little old lady dealers still have to shout "I've got 2 on 15!!!" at the top of their lungs.

7. "You're going to table 8. Go and purchase chips first over there."

Thanks friend. Where's table 8? Oh, it's the one under the TV in the general direction where you're waving? That's helpful. And I'll go wait on the cashier's line first, I get it. Can I pick up some trash on the way?

Other poker rooms actually seat you and get your chips for you, but hey - this is the Bellagio.

8. They Won't Page You.

So what are you supposed to do if you're on a list that's a mile long? Just stand there awkwardly for an hour? Which leads directly to:

9. Where are Players Supposed to Wait?

Seriously. If you stand more than 10 feet from the brush, you will miss your call. If you stand in front of his face you clog the tiny space that people use to circulate in and out of the room. There is nowhere to sit. There is no alcove. The magazine rack is mysteriously on the other side of the room. If you wander even as far as the sportsbook bar, you will be out of earshot. This system of having players bottleneck the entrance by standing awkwardly against the wall is so poorly thought out that I'm surprised anyone puts up with it.

10. There are no Loyalty Rewards of Any Kind.

No swiping in, no points, no jackpots, no bad beats, no high hands, no drawings, no deli coupon, no monday night football square... there's bubkus. Absolutely nothing. Nada.

Although... it needs to be said: #10 is the reason why I do still play there. Not that I don't want a bad beat jackpot, but the lack of any kind of loyalty rewards keeps the poker zombies far away. The cranky, savage, nitpicky, liver spotted retirees that clog poker tables in Vegas like cholesterol. You know these guys. They're the ones who play one hand and then take an hour break. The ones fighting over who gets the next seat change button. The ones requesting setups. The ones more interested in enforcing obscure rules than in actually playing poker. At Bellagio they earn nothing for their play, and so they withdraw like Dracula from sunlight and actually make the games more playable.

But I digress. Have I painted a clear enough picture of what to expect at Bellagio at the lower limits? A sardine-packed space with crappy service? Even for all that, it's not a terrible experience. They have lots of games going all the time, which is a crucial plus. The quality of the opponents is a little lower than average (counter to conventional wisdom and due, I think, to the loyalty reward factor I noted above). And they make a good orange julius.

But let's be honest. Wynn has the best room in town, and Venetian isn't far behind. It's time for Bellagio to take inventory and sort a few things out. And it's time for the poker media to stop giving them a free pass.

I Hate the "Clock Manipulation" Portion of the Football Game

In my opinion there's just something unsportmanlike about it and it diminishes the game. That's probably an extreme position to take on it, but come on. There's something lawyerly, something unfriendly about those last two minutes where people are spiking balls, calling time-outs, running out of bounds, taking a knee, doing goofy things on the field for no other reason than to manage the clock.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. The rules of a sport exist to serve the sport. It's not the other way around. Football is an athletic contest. It's offense versus defense, broken down into discrete plays. The rules should be structured to promote the finest and fairest possible contest, so that pure athleticism is the deciding factor. If a running play is called for, but clock considerations force you to run a passing play instead, then you've got some flawed rules. The rules should always promote best play, all the time.

I don't think this is a hard line position. I've been complaining for years that I think there's something ugly about a basketball team running out the clock, and I've always faulted the rules of bridge for arbitrarily penalizing a 4 contract in the minors and a 5 contract in the majors. But football just takes it to a whole other level. Now, I come to football as a really casual fan. I don't watch a lot of it. I didn't grow up with it. When I sit through a game, there are always a few questions that come up for me about penalties and technicalities. I don't know all the rules.

But I know enough of the game to see that there are really 5 quarters. There's quarters 1-4, and then there's the really unfornutate final 2 minutes which can often last longer than a full quarter. Now, I don't fault the players or the coaches. They're just doing the best they can under the given rules. It's the governing body that's at fault. They've created a game which is doomed to always conclude with 10 or 20 minutes of pointless micromanagement. They've created time-outs for one purpose: extra time to confer about the next play, only to have coaches use it for a different purpose: stopping the clock. They've created distinctions about which plays cause the clock to stop and which kinds of plays cause the clock to keep going, that end up determining which plays players have to run.

As a spectator those last two minutes of gametime offer a completely different football experience, one that's not so much about great athleticism as it is about efficient coaching and a creative expoiting of the rules. Longtime, passionate football fans don't see this. To them, the whole micromanaged, litigous conclusion to the game is just part of the fun. To me, it's just kind of crass and it doesn't have anything good to show about the sport.

Do I have an alternative? Well, I don't have any well thought out plan - but clearly you need to rethink the clock, and some of the ways it can be cleverly manipulated. Baseball has no time limit. Other games like hockey and soccer manage to have time limits without the game turning into molasses at the end. Maybe you need to need to have a "last possession" rule when time expires. The clock ticks down to zero, at which point it's officially the last possession. Then you could see some real football because the team with the ball wouldn't be burdened with a time limit.

I don't know how many great, historic football coaches are now spinning in their graves, but I stand by my heresy - these rules are no good. I've got other suggestions as well: why should the winner of the overtime coin-toss get such a huge advantage? but that's an argument for another day.

I Am Tired of Hearing that Samus Aran is Some Kind of Videogame Feminist Icon

I don't get any pleasure out of saying this - but don't you think it is patently clear that the Metroid protagonist Samus was made female as an afterthought and as a joke? I mean, isn't it plainly the case that the Japanese programmers who made the original Metroid in the mid 80's made Samus a girl so they'd have a Ha-Ha twist ending? You win the game... the hero takes off his helmet for the first time... and surprise! It's a girl!


I have to bring this up because in the 20 years since the surprise ending of Metroid, Samus has evolved into a bona fide Videogame Feminist Icon. She's constantly trotted out as a prime example of how videogames provide strong female protagonists and role models for girls, and have been doing so since day one. And the more I read these gushing homages (like this one) to a great shattering of the videogame glass ceiling, the more of a fraud I think it is. I mean, isn't it clear she wasn't conceived as female?

It's actually a serious point. If she wasn't intended to be a female character, and her female identity was thought up and added as a postscript for a cheap "gotcha!" moment, then where does that leave the people who say that she represents gaming's first strong female protagonist?

Here's the original Metroid director, Yoshio Sakamoto, talking to IGN.com in 2007: "We were partway through the development process, when one of the staff members said Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned out that this person inside the suit was a woman?" Exactly. The character had already been designed and scripted, and then they gave her a gender. And let's remember, this was a game that had a secret password to let you play as Samus in a leotard, and a bonus ending showing you Samus in a bikini. This is not the Marie Curie of videogames. This is joke territory, replete with 8-bit titillation.

Apparently I'm not the only one who feels that the empowered-woman reputation of Samus is sort of at odds with the way she's actually shown in the game. Here's Gamespot editor Greg Kasavin in the article "Samus' Suit Was Made by Men":

"Metroid, the perennial favorite sci-fi series from Nintendo, has a female main character. This was first discovered by surprise at the end of the original 1986 Metroid game, in which, if you finished the game having met certain special conditions, you'd see a brief cutscene of Samus Aran's red and gold armor magically disappear to reveal a shapely, scantily clad woman, who then waves at you. It comes as a bit of a shock, and why shouldn't it? Samus doesn't sound like a woman's name. ... While I wouldn't go so far as to say that I disapprove of this--I like the series, after all, and it's targeted at people like me--it also rubs me the wrong way. I don't appreciate that Samus being a woman is a punch line. Ironically, Metroid is often cited as one of those games that's quite progressive in its portrayal of women. It's obvious, I hope, that I happen not to think so."

Yes yes, this is all a big nitpick, but I've had to listen and read about the historic nature of Samus and her inspiration to girl gamers everywhere for 20 years. I've had to listen to how videogames were ahead of their time, morally serious responsible citizens because Nintendo had strong female protagonists like Samus Aran. And you know, if some young person out there is genuinely inspired by the example of Samus from Metroid, a retroactively designated woman, then shucks, I have no desire to piss on their parade, but how about we set the record straight for everyone else?

These Entertainment Weekly Best-Of Lists

This year, Entertainment Weekly published a whole issue of lists. Best 100 Movies of the last 25 years. Best 100 books, music albums, TV shows, etc. We all know that magazines use lists like these to sell copies (because if nothing else they allow you to show any celebrity photo you want, without the annoying burden of reporting any actual news) - but I had never seen an entire issue that consisted of nothing but lists.

In general, I like best-of lists. They're good conversation starters and fodder for debate. They're good old, empty calorie fun to read. So I'm reading these new Entertainment Weekly lists, and I'm enjoying them, but.... something wasn't quite right. There was that nagging little tingle on the back of my neck. That slight, barely perceptible sound of fingernails on blackboard or a violin out of tune. I knew that something about these lists was seriously wrong. And now, I think I've got a good grip on it.

Here's the thing. You've got the Academy Awards, right? Or the other top tier film award societies. The groups that genuinely try to reward the best films of the year. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you've got something like the People's Choice, or better yet, the MTV Movie Awards, where someone like Tom Green can win Best Tongue or something like that. So you've got two completely different standards of seriousness.

The question is, where on this continuum of seriousness does Entertainment Weekly purport to be? Where is their disclaimer? I think the problem I have with them is that they clearly are claiming membership in the A category, putting on airs of total seriousness, while making B category choices.

Let's lay it all out on the table. And just to be clear, I have no problem with the B category. I have no problem with the MTV Movie Awards and handing out golden popcorn buckets to rappers and teenagers and Eugene Levy. My problem is solely with Entertainment Weekly's posturing.

EW is actually playing a very artful game here. I give them credit. I'm sure if I pressed them on naming "Speed" as the 40th best film of the last 25 years, they would respond with something like this: "Of course our standards are different than the Oscars. We don't dismiss all popular entertainment out of hand. Other critics won't consider the Matrix, Spiderman 2, Steven King, etc. because they reject crowd pleasers. We strip away that pretense and analyze everything on the merits. We're not afraid of looking at mainstream entertainment and calling it high art." That, I think, would be the EW retort.

And it's such a sensible, smooth, compelling explanation that it almost fools me. It sounds true, doesn't it? Think about it. Movies like The Dark Knight and Lord of the Rings - big blockbuster movies really can be high art, right? Maybe EW really does have the right idea?

But no. It's a lie. Here's what's really going on. And now that I've figured it out, I'll never be fooled by an EW list again. EW, when making these lists, is limited to pop culture product that the average Joe has heard of and seen. And that's it. They have to choose popcorn blockbusters to round out these lists because that's all they will permit themselves to consider.

Roger Ebert has a list of his own best movies of all time, and it's chock full of films you're never heard of. In his top 10 is something called Aguirre: Wrath of God. Now, maybe Aguirre: Wrath of God actually is one of the top 10 films of all time. But Entertainment Weekly could not ever, in a million years, acknowledge that. Why? Because you've never heard of Aguirre: Wrath of God, and if a magazine told you it was the 5th best movie of all time - then you'd feel just a little stupid. 'Cause you consider yourself a little bit of a movie buff. Hell, you subscribe to Entertainment Weekly after all - clearly you're into movies. And the 5th best movie of all time is something called Aguirre: Wrath of God? Kind of a let down. Kind of makes you feel dumb. This is the taboo that EW can't break. They can't risk making you feel dumb in this way, and so all risky and obscure choices are off the table.

Now that you understand the logic of the EW list, you can look at every category and finally understand the choices. The only category where I can bring any personal expertise is the best video game category. And looking at this list, I can say with certainty that each one of these 50 games is a mainstream, blockbuster best-selling hit. Every game there is a super safe choice. There are no misunderstood masterpieces. No brilliant Japanese imports that never found a US audience. Instead there are games like Guitar Hero, whose greatness lies solely in the immense number of copies it was able to sell. This isn't a list of the 50 greatest games you've ever heard of, it's a list of the 50 games you've ever heard of.

Look, EW is welcome to this shitty approach to the ranking of film and TV and music. It's nice that there's someone out there validating my enjoyment of Ghostbusters. But we need a disclaimer EW. We need you to acknowledge that you are limiting the candidates for these lists to movies found in the surplus inventory stock room at Blockbuster.

Oh my God, did they really list The Bourne Supremacy as movie #29? Was that the middle one? Man, I'm feeling a little nauseous now.

Seasonal Potpourri

What Use is a James Bond Blu Ray Boxed Set that features 6 Completely Random Bond Movies?
This happens all the time. You get six random Bond movies, jumping across decades, with no unifying theme. No particular reason for the pairings. You don't (with this set) even get a sample of one movie with each Bond actor. It's totally, bafflingly arbitrary.

If you're a completist, then you're screwed. How how are you supposed to assemble a complete James Bond Blu Ray collection? Even if the other 17 or so movies do come out later, how do you make sense of the scrambled order? Why do they do this? Why?

It's not just Bond, it's any multi-movie boxed set. They all do it. I've seen Woody Allen box sets that have a collection like "Annie Hall, Hannah and her Sisters, Interiors, Another Woman, Bullets over Broadway and Small Time Crooks. And I'm like... "Wha?" I mean, you could do "The Comedies of Woody Allen". You could do "Woody Allen: the 70's". You could do "Woody Allen: the Mia Farrow Collection". There's lots of way to creatively package his 80 feature films. But to write each of his films on a ping pong ball and then have a lotto machine serve up a random six... that's just infuriating.

I guess maybe the strategy with these blender-style collections is that you get to package a couple of stinkers in with a couple of known favorites, but man - my logical collector's brain just starts steaming when I see these boxed sets.


Ladies: Please Put Away the Goddamn Camera

What is it with women and their need to take a thousand pictures? Why must every fun or spontaneous moment be stopped for documentation? Let me distinguish between female photography and male photography, since both kinds exist and there's a distinction I'm trying to make. Guys who are into taking pictures are different. These are loner guys with full beards and an unkempt appearance. They get up early to take pictures of the sunrise and they carry thermoses. They have one of them fancy cameras and they can tell you about the lens. They would much rather get a candid photo of you putting on your shoes than get you and two others to huddle in for a group picture. They like working in black and white and they have their own darkrooms. These guys are inoffensive and they aren't the problem.

The problem is the women who actually make everyone stop what they're doing in order to get a group picture. Not once, or once a day, but every 30 freakin minutes. "Oh oh! Can we stop for a picture!" So you stop, and you pose. And you force a smile. Then you have to wait to make sure she likes the photo, cause if not, well then you do it again. And again. Then she wants to get in the photo too and you have to "Ask the Stranger". I hate asking the stranger. And I hate putting other, innocent pedestrians in the position of having to pause and walk around us so they don't get in the picture.

And all for what? To create a scrapbook? Who cares? Who's going to look? Why not just do what the rest of us do and rely on your brain to remember what happened? Sure, take a few pictures - but keep it low key. Don't interrupt the momentum of whatever's going on to get a group photo.


When Did 5 O'Clock Shadow Get so Hip for TV Professionals?


The other guy that comes to mind is the cop from Heroes, the telepathic one who does everything in his life: work, leisure, family time, with a perfectly unchanging coat of 18-hour stubble. I couldn't find a good picture though. Watch the 1st season episode where he plans the perfect date for his wife, and he's dressed to the nines and serving a candlelit meal - but he still doesn't shave! Are other cops besides him allowed to show up for duty with a 1-day beard, let alone a perpetual one?

Try showing up for work at your job with a 1-day beard and see what happens.

Wait, looks like someone has beaten me to the punch here and is already chronicling a list of TV characters who sport perpetual 5 O'Clock shadow. Here's the link.


My Secret Vestibule Trick

For anyone reading this far, I'd like to offer you a little secret bonus that is guaranteed to make your life a little more pleasant. I've been doing this for years and it's never let me down. It's my secret vestibule trick. Say you are walking towards the entrance to a place of business. A restaurant, a hotel, a Starbucks, whatever. You notice another person is on a trajectory to arrive at the door at roughly the same moment as you will get there. Whichever one of you gets there first will clearly end up getting served first, and the second person will have to wait in line. Furthermore you know that the other person is perfectly aware of this too.

Now traditionally, there are 2 things you can do in this situation. 1) You can preemptively forfeit. You don't want a confrontation, you don't want any bad blood, so you hang back for a minute and let the other guy get there first. 2) You speed up, pretending not to notice that it's a race. You get there first, but the punishment is that both of you know that you're an enormous prick.

These are both bad choices. Here's what you can do instead. Look inside the building and see if there's a vestibule. That is - a small space with a second set of doors after it. You've probably never considered it, but many, many businesses have these vestibule entrances. If there is a vestibule, here's what you do. Allow yourself to awkwardly arrive at the front door simultaneously with the other guy. Give him a smile full of brotherly love, and graciously open the door for him.

My friends, you'd better believe you'll be sampling ice cream flavors with the little sampling spoon first and that other guy will never know what hit him. To him it will all be a blur of politeness and smiles and vestibules, but the next thing he knows he's standing in a line, and you're getting served. That is the secret vestibule trick. Share it only with those you trust.

Now, if there's no vestibule, you're back to square one. I would suggest whipping out your cell phone and pretending to be engrossed in a call. It makes your fast-walking seem more plausible, and you can pretend to be totally oblivious to anything around you.

Scientists: Lets Move a Little Faster on Immortality

Why is no one talking about immortality? How come it isn't on the agenda? How come all this progress on decoding the genome and sequencing our DNA is going on all around us, and the cutting edge of speculation on future gene therapy all revolves around changing our babies eye color, and stuff like that? Aren't we really close, theoretically, to being able to fool the body into not aging?

My layman's understanding of aging is that our cells are all capable of regenerating, but after age 25 or 30 or so, some genetic instruction kicks in and tells the cells to start failing at reproduction every once in a while. Eventually, the failure rate increases and we start to show visible signs of aging. Finally, some major organ fails catastrophically and we die. In theory, if we could suppress the genetic instruction that causes aging, we could generate healthy cells forever and be perpetually 25.

Is it really that simple? Probably not. But where the hell is the research? Where are the foundations? Where are the charitable trusts? The clock is ticking over here. I need this now.

Here's the truth of it, and it's been bugging me for a while. For some strange reason, there's a social taboo against pursuing this goal. The pursuit of immortality - it's uncouth. It shows poor character. It's a moral failing.

Well no. No it's not.

At what point does "I don't want to die." go from being a reasonable and universally shared feeling to being a tragic character flaw? 60? 70? 80? You know those movies where the old man on his deathbed has a twinkle in his eye and comforts the child by saying "Don't worry son, it's my time." That's some Hollywood bullshit right there. I think Woody Allen had the right idea when he said "Rather than live on in the hearts and minds of my fellow man, I’d prefer to live on in my apartment."

There is nothing wrong with wanting to keep living. The naysayers caution "Do you REALLY want to live FOREVER? Wouldn't that be boring? Wouldn't life lose all meaning?" Well, I'll let you know. Or probably I won't, cause you'll be dead. Suicide is always there if I change my mind, right? Let me tack on another 100 years to my current lifespan, and then I'll reassess the situation.

Again the naysayers: "What about the overcrowding of the earth?" Me: If a vasectomy is the price, then sign me up. No problems there. After those two arguments are rebutted, the anti-immortality guy realizes most of his ammunition is gone, and the remaining arguments he tries to field are really vague and wishy-washy. "What about the hubris? What about tampering in God's domain? What about the need to refresh the species with new blood? What about death giving meaning to life? What about..." And here is where I just slowly turn the volume dial down to mute. So, really, there's no ethical problem with a pursuit of immortality.

Which brings us back to the original question: why aren't we all over this shit? Why isn't there a Newsweek cover story on this all the time? Shouldn't we be talking about it? Do you have any idea how significant a development this would be? This is a real monkey-throwing-a-bone-upwards moment in the history of our species. Conquering death! This is evolution man! If we achieve immortality, (and don't just insist, categorically, that it isn't possible) then I will argue that it is the third most important moment in the history of mankind, after 1) the dawn of civilization and 2) Enlightenment. This would be the third milestone on the road to wherever it is we're going. And theoretically, it's within sight. It could happen in our lifetimes. And no one's talking about it! All because of this foolish social taboo.

I've looked online in the past for any guidance on this, and the difficulty is separating the legitimate thinkers from the cranks who want to sell you miracle tonics and stuff like that. Here is one organization that I think is fairly legit, and it provides links to other good sources.

The champion of the current legitimate immortality movement seems to be this man, Dr. Aubrey de Grey.

You see, immediately, my pessimism. To me, his beard and shirt say only one thing - that I may as well shop for a casket and burial plot now. And this is his publicity photo! Do you realize that he appears to be lying down? I'm screwed, man!

Look, Dr. Aubrey de Grey could be a genius, I don't know. But if he wants my donation, if he wants to get his act together, he'd better take some cues from 1960's NASA to set my mind at ease. How about a lab coat? A starched shirt? A tie? A shave? A crew cut? A clipboard? Anything!

I'm not usually in the habit of making predictions. My political predictions for this year (see the January 2007 archives) were spotty. My digital piracy prediction (that one day all music and all film will be free and there's nothing anyone can do about it) is still in the balance. But I'm ready to make a new prediction: immortality will eventually be the most important issue on the planet. Because the power to achieve this isn't in some distant future - it's coming soon. Mother nature never anticipated humans achieving this level of fundamental meddling. We're going under the hood of human existence and we can make whatever changes we want.

You heard it here.

Toilet Closets

At first they were a curiosity. A novelty. They popped up in the bathrooms of the rich - I don't know how long ago - and have since been trickling down, so to speak, to the bathrooms of the common man.

I speak of the toilet closets. These bathrooms within bathrooms. You enter a bathroom, you say "Hey, where's the toilet?" and then you see a door leading to an even smaller chamber that contains the commode and perhaps a little picture of flowers hanging on the wall.


I'm not knocking the rich here. God bless the rich homeowner and the pathbreaking service he provides, trying out all kinds of wacky new home design ideas, and occasionally stumbling on something genuinely useful, like wall-mounted TV speakers, or remote control drapes. But this innovation process can lead to trouble too. Take the whole island kitchen fad. It used to be that the appliances and the counters were on the perimeter of the kitchen, and the center was reserved for some family space, like a breakfast table. Now, when the rich folk want to fundamentally rethink a classic room, like the kitchen, the goal is really just to figure out how to make it bigger. How do you make a kitchen bigger? If you double the size of the room, that's going to be one huge breakfast table. That's no good. So say hello to the "Island kitchen". Now, all the important appliances are in the center. Now, the center is a "workspace". Efficient use of space? No.

But that's still fine with me. It's your money, it's your house. The problem is when, in an effort to boost the value of a modest house, the builders install an extra-large island kitchen for no other reason than to lend the house the appearance of wealth, at the square-footage expense of other rooms.

Which brings me back to today's annoyance: the toilet closet. All these new houses I've been visiting have a toilet closet in the extra-large master bath. It seems like the toilet closet has become a permanent feature of the 21st century house. Well that's a damned shame in my opinion. Let me lay out the case against the toilet closet.

First let's dispense with the one argument in favor of the TC. This is the argument that it permits someone else to use the bathroom while the first person uses the toilet. I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally do not want anyone, even a loved one, standing 24 inches from me, brushing their teeth on the other side of a closed door while I attempt to get in the state of mind necessary to relax the bowels. I don't want to hear the sink running and the patter of footsteps. I don't want anyone out there. I don't even want anyone in the bedroom beyond. Ideally, no one really should be in the house. In fact I sometimes play a little game with myself on the toilet. "It sure does suck to be the last man on earth," I say in my head, "Oh well, at least it means I can take this shit in peace." Solitude, really, is what I'm looking for at that moment.

But the main problem with the toilet closet is much more serious. The toilet, frankly, is the whole point of the bathroom. Don't think so? You see restrooms with toilets but no showers all the time, right? When have you seen a bathroom with a shower or bath but no toilet? Never. The toilet is the whole point. Let's stop pretending that it's not. The problem with the toilet closet is that it relegates the act of shitting into some kind of secondary concern. It shuffles shitting off to the side, forcing you to enter this cramped, unappealing space. It's as if the bathroom is saying: "Oh, you want to take a shit? You don't want to sit at the vanity and powder your nose? You don't want to take a shower that also has a flip down seat? No? You really just came here to take a shit? Well... I suppose you can if you want, we have a little space for that over there."

No, that's bullshit. Think about it. Think about how fancy the shower has gotten. All the granite and the ceramics and the misted glass, and the shower head with all the settings, and the waterproof iPod docking station, etc. Now look in the toilet closet. You get nothing! The message is that you should be ashamed to even be in there.

Let me tell you about the bathroom I would like to see when I open the door. First, to even approach the bathroom, I ascend a staircase to the highest level in my house. Then, when I push open the door, I am greeted with a stunning visual composition. A long, bright, tiled hall. As I walk down this hall I pass the shower and tub on my left and right. I pass the sink and the vanity. And then friends, I ascend a final 3 steps into an open rotunda, a circular space with wide open windows in all directions and all spangled with natural light. The cross breeze blows this way and that, filling the room with a constant rush of fresh air. And in the middle? The toilet. As you take your seat on the throne, you can see everything. The backyard. The setting sun. The distant forest. Or the cityscape, the skyline. Or, in my perfect world, the inky blackness of deepest space. On your left hand side, toilet paper - the strong stuff. I like Scott Original. Toilet paper with some bite. Beside the roll, a small water fountain for optional dampening of the paper. On the right hand side you'd find a small side table with the appropriate, customizable miscellany: a book, a magazine, sudoku. And of course a remote control to activate some music if the mood is right.

Now that is a compelling shitting experience. Compare that to taking a thankless dump in a space no larger than an airplane john, and with no ventilation to speak of. I don't want a toilet closet, I want a toilet command center. Now, really, I just have to become rich myself, so that I can realize the whole Rotunda Bathroom. And then it'll catch on as being all nouveau-riche and popular, and then all new starter houses will come equipped with one. That's the dream.

My Attempt at a Thomas Friedman Column

I was off in an exotic and dangerous part of the world when an extremely mundane thing happened to me. Maybe a hotel waiter gave me profusive thanks for a gratuity, or I saw an impoverished man using a cell phone. This event suddenly and vividly gave me an entirely new understanding of how the world works. Such was my dumbfoundment and surprise that I realized a new term or phrase was needed to succinctly describe this vital new lesson. So I coined one and am introducing it here.

This new Coined Phrase explains a lot. It explains why Americans are losing their competitive edge, and why Europe is leading the way in green tech. As I explain this is detail, your mind will wander back to the original mundane event, wondering a) if such a thing really illustrates what I am claiming it does, and b) why all of my vignettes seem to occur during the taxi ride to the hotel or the airport.

Now that I am returning to the aftermath of the mundane thing that happened, I will repeat the new, Coined Phrase in a tautological attempt to validate it. Do you really want to leave your children unprepared in a world that has ignored the clear signs of what I've been talking about? Look at the clever citizens of the country I am reporting from... do they look like they're unprepared?

To put it all in perspective, consider what links the Coined Phrase insight with the events of 9/11. Haven't guessed it? What links them are my own puns and facile alliterations. Such as: "While we're scrutinizing our ocean ports, they are busy upgrading their computer ports."

Friends, make no mistake - the time for change is now.

The Petty Annoyances Guide for Selecting a Second Language to Learn

Like many Americans, you've long thought about learning a second language. Perhaps you're a college student and want to take a language course as an elective. Maybe you're an adult with some time on your hands and a desire to broaden your horizons. Maybe you're just tired of being monolingual while those around you speak other languages. Or you may be like me. In which case you think there is really only one good reason to learn a second language, and that's to lay 90% of the groundwork for getting laid in that country.

I refuse to believe that I am the only person who has ever considered sex as a primary motivating factor to learn a foreign language. Quite the contrary, I think that it crosses everyone's mind as they scan the list of languages, deciding which one to attempt. Sure you might consider the number of countries where Language A is spoken versus Language B - but don't try to tell me you aren't also considering the possibility of mind blowing coitus with an endless supply of young women who are all stunned that an American is actually fluent in their native language.

Because no one besides myself will publicly admit that this plays a role in second language selection, it falls to me to actually analyze the languages out there, and determine where it is that the least amount of effort expended will yield the highest return of eager young women bouncing on your face.

Here are some of the factors we will be considering:

• Difficulty of the Language
• Hotness of the Women
• Local perception of Americans
• How sexually open the culture is
• The relative rarity of an American / White man speaking this language

Because the overall analysis here is so complicated, maybe we should start with the last one first:

Rule #1: No one will be impressed if you show up in Paris speaking French.

Discussion: In France, you are expected to speak French. The French assume that their language is global and cosmopolitan and that if you visit Paris you must have already taken the time to learn a few words. There are a few other reasons why French isn't a great choice, but here's the question to ask yourself: Who is going to be impressed when I show up speaking language "x"? French obviously fails this test. Spanish does too. No one will be impressed anywhere by an American speaking Spanish.

Basically, if you are white, and the native speakers of this language are also white, you are at an immediate disadvantage in the quest to have a woman laugh with delight at your courageous attempts to speak her language at the conversational level. Like say, Italian. Now, if you're an African American, then by all means, go with Italian. But for us white dudes, Western Europe and even South America isn't the most fertile ground to impress anyone.

Now if you showed up in Addis Ababa and start speaking fluent Amharic, cars will screech to a halt and jaws will drop. You might be the first Amharic-speaking white American they've ever seen. Does this mean that Amharic and Ethiopian babes are the way to go? Not remotely. This leads us to:

Rule #2: If the female population isn't already sexually liberated and open, then you're wasting your time.

Discussion: Ask yourself - are they religious? Do they have intensely strong family structures and family bonds? Is this the sort of country where in order to take the girl out for a soda you need permission from the parents, the grandparents, and all uncles older than 16? We're talking about the Middle East here. Many African countries. Some Asian countries. Places that have no casual sex culture. You may impress the hell out of everyone with your mastery of their obscure tongue, but be prepared to live with a dry dick.

Rule #3: On the other hand, there's no point in learning the language if they're going to fuck you anyway.

Discussion: Thailand. Russia. The Balkans. You're an American and you show up with cash? They're going to be breaking down your door to fuck you! No need to learn a single word. Let them struggle with their English. Let's eliminate these countries and languages. We really only want to focus on countries where the knowledge of the language is going to make a huge difference, and in a society with loose morals to begin with.

Rule #4: You're looking for the widest gap between female hotness and male unattractiveness.

Discussion: We're looking for countries where the women are smoking hot, obviously. But less obviously, it's a big plus when the local men are ugly, uninteresting and charmless. It'll make you stand out as an exotic prize. Here I want to be sensitive and not hurt anyone's feelings, so I won't name any of these countries except for South Korea.

Rule #5: Some languages are far easier to learn than others. Don't break your back here.

Korean turns out to be one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn. Which is a pity, since it scores great on our checklist in most other respects. Here's a website that gauges the relative difficulty of foreign languages for English speakers. All things being equal, why choose a more difficult langauge?

Conclusions

So which countries and languages are we talking about then? Here are my thoughts.

#1 Greek

Hottest of all Bond girls - the Greek one from For Your Eyes Only

I keep coming back to Modern Greek as being the best choice. Greek women: beautiful, passionate, sensual. They're looking for an excuse to sleep with you. Give them one. And name me one non-Greek American dude who speaks Greek. There aren't any! You'd be the first! Greece is great to spend time in anyway - food, climate, culture - it's a fantastic country.

#2 Something Nordic


I think Norwegian, Swedish or Finnish aren't bad choices. Again, these aren't languages anyone bothers to learn who doesn't a) have some family tie to the country or b) have a really compelling reason to be there. Nobody picks up Finnish for fun. And the women? Gorgeous. The kind of women you'd take on a spaceship to colonize a new planet. Now, according to that difficulty website, Finnish isn't easy. Maybe Swedish is the way to go.

#3 Japanese

Ya ta!

Then you've got Japanese. It's one hell of a hard language. But the rewards are potentially staggering. I've never been to Japan, but if all that violent, wild-ass-crazy tentacle-porn-cartoon stuff is even remotely grounded in truth, then I can't even fathom how awesome it would be. And you can't beat Japanese women for strange, exotic hotness. Those schoolgirls outfits. Those tomboy haircuts. That small, supple physique that's so intoxicating that you can't help but think NAMBLA may be onto something. These girls already love you because you're American. Now you can really blow their minds.

So have I missed anything? By all means add some suggestions.

Carnevino is in Trouble

Mario Batali Update



Loyal readers know that I intensely dislike Mario Batali the chef. His sin was that he composed the most asinine, incoherent, treacly piece of pious bullshit I've ever seen on a Starbucks cup. I mean, all of those Starbucks cup quotes were bad, but the Mario Batali one towered over the rest for its 100% pure-cut Colombian stupidity.

Then I actually bumped into him at the Palazzo in Las Vegas outside his new restaurant Carnevino. Not initially realizing who he was, I missed the opportunity to grab his ridiculous hat and run away.

I had meant to eventually eat at Carnevino but I never got around to it. I had actually wanted to sample the food of a man who, according to his Starbucks cup, was no more than two generations removed from a guy who shook hands with another guy who picked the peas of the first guy. But the word now is that the restaurants at Palazzo are tanking. Apparently you can walk in and be seated immediately at any of them, any time of day, any day of the week. Just yesterday I read a scathing review of Carnevino and I'm glad I stayed away. Oh, this is awful. I almost feel bad for Mario. Almost. Check it out (courtesy of Eating Las Vegas):

And speaking of not-so-nice prices, be prepared for some serious sticker shock and some seriously over salted food, should you or your dining companions mindlessly insist on enduring a meal at Carnevino. This Mario Batali meat emporium has all the charm of a bus station, and is so massively overpriced that you’ll feel like one of Adam Perry Lang’s overstuffed cattle being led to slaughter when you get the bill. For example: I just returned from New York where a prime, well-aged steak for two, at Wolfgang’s Steakhouse on Park Avenue South that gives Peter Luger’s a run for its money, cost $82.50….at Carnevino it’s $150.

What's the air and soil telling you now, fat boy?


The Dark Knight: A Fictional Story

Did anyone see the Dark Knight? Yeah? So did I. Skip this section if you don't want spoilers. The always dependable Moriarty wrote one of the best Dark Knight reviews on aintitcoolnews.com. Moriarty doesn't bat 1000 - he enjoyed The Love Guru for instance, but he's a capable reviewer and I agree with his take on Batman.

But hold the freakin' phone. In the review, he discusses the scene on the ferries where each group of passengers is given the option of blowing up the other group to save their own lives. He mentions the part where Tiny Lister (big, imposing black guy, here playing a convict) takes the detonator and throws it out the window. Moriarty writes:

When he steps forward and demands the detonator, I did exactly what Nolan wanted me to do: I judged Lister on his appearance. I looked at him, and I knew full well what he was going to do with the detonator. Nolan really milks the suspense, too, as Lister talks about the difference between someone strong enough to make the awful moral choice and someone who is too weak to do it. He takes the responsibility and the detonator out of the hands of the warden... and then throws the detonator out the window and returns to his friends so they can pray. It’s not a moment I would have ever expected to see in a summer blockbuster, but more than that, it’s a moment that made me realize that no matter how enlightened I like to think I am, I harbor prejudices like anyone else. I leapt to a conclusion I had no business making, and the reversal made me feel terribly guilty.

Um, Moriarty... a couple of white, non-convict screenwriters wrote that scene. Tiny Lister, an actor, was hired to play a fictional man who does a fictional thing with a fictional detonator, with hundreds of fictional lives at stake. In other words Moriarty, IT DIDN'T ACTUALLY HAPPEN. Therefore, it does not present some kind of striking counter-example to challenge your conventional prejudice. Tiny Lister's behavior in the scene does not reflect the behavior of an actual person, and thus does not create a basis for your self-doubt and introspection.

[Necessary disclaimer: there are of course REAL reasons to not be prejudiced against big imposing black guys like Tiny Lister. His Christopher-Nolan-scripted behavior in The Dark Knight is merely not one of them]

American TV and film are relentless in the way they purposefully defy racial stereotypes. If some group has a stereotype of being lazy, Hollywood will portray them as industrious. Poor? Hollywood makes them wealthy. Criminals? Virtuous. Not so smart? Geniuses. Greedy? Generous. etc. etc. But what I don't usually see if someone pulling a "Moriarty": citing these fictional portrayals as actual evidence that the stereotype is unfounded. Now that takes stupidity.

My Pistachio Story

Here's the story. I really really like pistachios. They're definitely in my nut top 5. They share elite space with cashews and pecans, and they easily beat other high-profile premium nuts like walnuts and macadamias.

The only problem with pistachios, as we all know, is that they are a bitch to get out of the shell. Only about half the nuts in the bag will open easy. Another 40% will be a real hassle, and the final 10% impossible. We've all been there. And yet prying open a stubborn shell and claiming its salty reward has a certain satisfaction that is undeniable. When I eat pistachios, the dilemma is usually: eat this single nut now? Or open three more shells so I can pop four of them into my mouth at once, peanut style? It is a subtle but serious test of my will power, because the desire to eat the nut in hand is always so strong, but the pleasure of having a mouthful of pistachios is that much better.

And that's the thing. I've never experienced the bliss of stuffing my face with mouthful after mouthful of de-shelled pistachios. I've crammed many a mouthful of cashews into my maw, believe me. I've grabbed and eaten peanuts by the bowlful. But pistachios? No, I've never known the experience of grabbing a handful and stuffing my face - due to the labor factor.

And so for years, I have dreamed of doing just that - stuffing my face with de-shelled pistachios. Maybe you, reader, have different dreams. This one was mine. And every time I would visit a supermarket, I would casually scan the produce and nut section, looking for the elusive holy grail - a bag of de-shelled pistachios. But in years of looking, I never found it.

Until last weekend, where at a trip to Trader Joes I spied what I had searched for, at long last: a bag of raw pistachio nutmeats.


Now, a word on Trader Joes and hippie supermarkets in general. I'm of mixed mind here. I like the product that they sell. But I have two issues. Why do Trader Joes shoppers have to be so insufferable? And secondly - why the exclusivity? Consider: I like Chef Boyardee mini raviolis. I like fruit loops. And, I also like local artisan cheeses and Orangina. Why can't I have both at the same place? Which is to say, why is it not enough that Trader Joes carries a great stock of organic, local, environmentally safe hippie food - why do they also have to exclude doritos? Whole Foods has the same problem. I like Whole Foods, I really do. But I also like Diet Coke. Why can't I have a one stop shop? But anyways....

Back to the holy grail of nutmeat. I had my de-shelled pistachios, finally. Courtesy of Trader Joe. You really have to imagine the excitement as I got home and poured a generous helping of the de-shelled kernels into a broad and deep nut bowl. I switched on the TV, grabbed a soda, and prepared to do what I had never done before: stuff my face with huge handfuls of pistachios, with no labor involved at all.

And now here is where we get to the point of the story. For believe me, I did indeed stuff my face. Over and over. I was barely graduating the previous mouthful of nuts before I was introducing the next freshman class. As Fat Bastard said in Austin Powers: "Get in ma belly!"

And then it hit me: this doesn't taste that great. I mean, it was all right. They weren't bad. But the explosion of flavor from a single nut fresh from the shell didn't seem to translate well to the face-stuffing experience. It was a bit like drinking a cold can of cream soda. The taste is exquisite on the first sip, but then rapidly loses flavor on each subsequent sip, until the bottom of the can just tastes like carbonated sugar water. (Maybe I'm the only one who experiences cream soda that way). But it was the same with pistachios. Now that I finally had my unlimited supply and could scarf them down to my heart's content, I discovered that the flavor doesn't hold up at all. In the end, eating these things became a crunchy chore.

Apparently, some foods are enjoyed best in small, dainty quantities. The pistachio shell, which to me had always been an annoying speed bump in the pistachio experience, turns out in hindsight to have been crucial to the enjoyment. I would have never guessed that. From now on, I'll enjoy my pistachios the old fashioned way: one at a time.

(But I'll still stuff my face with the spicy jalapeno-lime cashews. I can fucking drink those things.)