MAGIC         PORK

Fox’s is a Jewish deli / restaurant located in Winton Place, near where I work, so I’ll go there occassionally for lunch and get something to go. Today I had the garden salad with egg and a cup of borscht, but I much more often walk out with the sandwich they call Livers Lane. From their menu:

Livers Lane: Lean pastrami and chopped liver, Swiss cheese, raw onion, and a schmere of Nances mustard, served on rye

I realize from talking to other people that this may not sound too appetizing to many of you, but if you’re okay with liver, you should give it a try. It’s delicious. They also have great beef brisket (thanks to Kashif for tipping me off about that!) and their Dolly Parton sandwich is yummy too:

Dolly Parton: Hot turkey breast, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mayo, smothered with melted American cheese, on a soft roll

Yes, their humor leaves a lot to be desired but fortunately I don’t judge them based on that. They also have sandwiches named Bologna & The Beast, Name That Tuna, Sammy So So Good, L.A. Slaw, Risky Brisket… ugh I have to stop. It’s just too un-funny.

In case you’re wondering, they’re Jewish but they’re not kosher.

Prior to starting my current job back in the fall, I had only been to Fox’s once, a couple of years back. So I was pretty surprised while standing around, waiting for my food, to see someone that kind of looked like me in a picture on their wall. The more I looked at it, though, the more I thought that it wasn’t me. It’s from behind and it’s very small so it’s hard to tell,and the girl across the table could be my ex-girlfriend but again, hard to tell. Just ambiguous enough to drive me crazy looking at it. It’s in an article about Fox’s from the Democrat and Chronicle.

Unfortunately the picture is tiny in the online version of the D&C so it’s completely pointless to even show you, but here it is. Maybe-Me is in the upper left corner. To see the bigger version, you’ll just have to go to Fox’s yourself. As if the Livers Lane wasn’t enough of a reason for you to go!

But regardless, whenever I see that picture on the wall I get mad because it reminds me of this shirt I loved. The shirt in the photo looks similar and that’s enough to evoke the memory of it. It wasn’t anything special, just some cheap golf shirt, but I liked how it looked and it was comfortable. I’m not the only one either. I ran into someone at a party last summer while wearing that shirt and she said her husband had the same one and it was his favorite.

So why does it make me mad? Because a couple of months ago, I was at the laundromat and some idiot left a pen in one of the driers and it exploded all over my entire load of clothes. Blue ink. I tried to wash it again immediately but it was hopeless because it was dried in. I could salvage the jeans but the rest went right into the laundromat wastebasket. Including that shirt, which my ex-girlfriend and I used to call my New Mexico shirt because it looked like the New Mexico state flag.

I never actually looked up the New Mexico state flag but now that I do, it does have those colors, even if the design is completely different. My shirt had horizontal stripes across the chest. So the only solution to this contradiction is for there to be a new New Mexico state flag.

I’m writing today about a practice that must be stopped. Every day, all across this great nation of ours, restaurants and delis are handing out wimpy napkins. I’m talking about the worthless, single-ply ones that typically look like this:

Or even worse, these tiny things, which the manufacturer claims are “ideal for fast food and lunch rooms”:

Those are ideal for nothing. Perhaps they are acceptable for an elementary school lunch room because their hands are half the size of an adult’s, but it still doesn’t make them ideal.

You’re sitting there enjoying a good sandwich, and your hands are getting messy as good sandwiches will do, so you reach for a napkin. Well if you’re foolish enough to only pick up one napkin, you’re in for quite a disappointment. You watch it disintegrate into shreds before your very eyes from one measly wipe of your hands. So you end up using a huge stack of napkins, and still end up with little shredded up napkins, and you feel like a slob sitting there with a pile of soiled napkins next to you.

And good luck to you if you have to get the napkins out of one of those dispensers that someone’s just packed so tight you’ve got to wrestle with it, getting your sloppy hands all over it.

I suppose these restaurants are just trying to save money but I think it shows absolute disdain for your customers. If you’re trying to save money, I got some ideas for you. These will all be as effective as your so-called “napkins”:

When I get take-out and I open that bag and see those pathetic napkins, I throw them out and grab a real napkin or paper towel.

Unfortunately there are some decent dining establishments that commit this terrible error. For example, the Park & Oxford Deli. They make great sandwiches, but the napkins suck.

Another offender is Cobbs Hill Pizza & Pasta. I like their food, but who’s idea was it to combine some of the greasiest, messiest pizza in the city with the wimpiest napkins?

I can’t be the only one that feels this way. Come on people, who’s with me? We’ve got the element of surprise. We’ll rush in to these establishments as an angry mob, demanding better napkins! They’ll never have seen anything like it.

I was on my way into the East Ave Wegman’s to pick up a few things. (Those of you outside Rochester, Wegman’s is THE local grocery store chain.) Some workers are collecting shopping carts from the parking lot, but really chatting more than anything else. There’s a big truck in reverse waiting for them to get these carts they have out of the way so he can leave, but they’re oblivious to that and just keep chatting.

Fast forward.. I’m now in the “7 items or less” line. The line next to that is the other “7 items or less” line that has two cashiers, one accessed from inside and one from the outside. Those that have been there probably know what I’m talking about, and those that haven’t, it’s not important. Just setting the scene if you will.

I realize as I put my groceries on the belt that I actually have 9 items, but there’s a couple of items of the same type so I think - it’s really 7, right? The cashiers in the next row over are a young white girl, I’d say about 17 years old, and a skinny black boy of the same age, who looks nothing like P. Diddy. They’re talking loudly about whatever, while scanning stuff. The boy yells over to my cashier, who’s helping the customer before me, “What shoe size do you wear?”.

My cashier is a young black man, maybe 19-20. He doesn’t say a word and cocks his head toward the loud kid to indicate that he didn’t hear him. “What shoe size do you wear?”. Again cocks his head. “What shoe size do you wear?”. Still doesn’t hear him. Meanwhile the customer in front of me is waiting for his change which is in the guy’s hands. The girl says “shoe size”. “15″. The girl says to the loud kid, “it’s 15, not 13″. Must be something they were debating about. This was all going on while they had customers too of course.

Now that the guy in front of me is done, I step up. Cashier doesn’t say a word to me or even look at me as he’s scanning my things. Then again I don’t say anything to him either, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect the cashier to be the first to say hi. Doesn’t bother me though.

I scan my credit card and Shopper Club card through the machine. I’ve had that same Shopper Club card for at least a decade at this point. I’ve never had it replaced since I started shopping at Wegman’s, which I’m guessing was back in ‘96 when I was living in the Racquetclub apartments. The card has a yellowish tint on the back, the signature area has been scraped off, but the magnetic strip still works fine. One swipe, every time.

The cashiers next row over now don’t have any customers and the guy starts singing a song to himself. The girl asks him “what’s your name?” At least I heard the girl, but I don’t see her anywhere. Then I notice just her hand on the counter - what, is she bending over to get something? The kid says “Bob, but people call me Diddy”. My cashier starts laughing and shaking his head. Bob says “They do. They call me Diddy Bob.”

More laughing from my cashier. I’m smiling at this point too. Diddy Bob continues “I’m just sayin’… That’s what people call me.”, etc. My cashier yells over to the cashier on the other side, a black girl, “Hey (so-and-so), he says they call him Diddy”. She yells back “he don’t even look like no Diddy!” Kid shrugs, “I don’t know, that’s what they call me! Diddy Bob.”

I take my receipt and groceries. The cashier starts helping the next people and it’s then that I see what the white girl was doing. She’s sitting on the floor inside her cashier-area with her hand up on the counter. She yells something to them too, but I don’t hear what it is because I’m still trying to grasp the fact that she’s just sitting on the floor. Not even squatting, relieving her legs a little - outright sitting, on her butt, examining the nails on her right hand that’s not up on the counter, while shouting to the other cashiers.

– End scene –

*** SPOILERS from last night’s Lost ***

I liked last night’s episode of Lost, although the flashback story with that woman was a little reminiscent of David Mamet’s House of Games. Except that in House of Games, the woman was a psychiatrist so it makes a little more sense why she would be fascinated by the art of the con. Mamet must like stories about con artists because he also wrote The Spanish Prisoner and Heist, and possibly others that I haven’t seen. I haven’t seen Wag the Dog, but I know it’s about some people that try to fake a war so I guess that can be considered a con too.

If Mamet had written this episode of Lost, he would have had at least two more levels of deception going on, like the woman would have really been a con artist too but Sawyer knew she was a con artist and planned on her double-crossing him, and so on. Plus every other word would have been bleeped out and Mamet’s wife Rebecca Pidgeon would have been in it.

If you really dissect these movies, they aren’t very realistic. The whole plot might depend on some character anticipating the behavior of some other character that would have been impossible to predict - but it’s fun to watch nonetheless.

Mamet also made State and Main which stars Oscar-nominated Philip Seymour Hoffman!!! Sorry, he grew up here, so it’s been all over the news. It is kind of cool, but come on, it’s just making us look lame that we’re going ga-ga over this. It’s not like he still lives here. It seems to me like all this excitement over Hoffman just draws attention to the fact that to make something of himself, he moved out of Rochester.

It’s not like he’s some new star either. It’s his first Oscar nomination, but he’s been doing great work for years. For a while there, it seemed like he was in every other movie I saw. Anyway… State and Main’s a good movie.

OK, back to Lost. Part of me feels like Charlie’s acting a little out of character, but I’m willing to go along with the writers because:

1. He seems to be going a bit insane what with the wacky dreams & sleepwalking.
2. You’d probably go a little nuts too if you were deserted on an island perhaps for the rest of your life and you had a chance at sealing the deal with some really cute blonde chick.. she’s even got a funny accent like you.. hey you think, maybe this deserted island thing won’t be that bad.. and suddenly the weirdest guy on the island is taking your place. Guess it’ll be listening to old records with Hurley the rest of your life instead. Ouch.
3. Monaghan makes some awesome creepy facial expressions. If he gets to do that more often, all the better.
4. I trust that the writers are setting up something really good with this new dark turn in his character.

Some people are getting antsy because they want more answers to the show, but I say keep it going nice & slow. I love it. I wouldn’t feel that way if it seemed like the writers didn’t know where it all was going (like on X-Files where it started to get frustrating), but I think they know exactly where it’s all going and I say let them tell it and have fun watching how all the pieces fit together.

So I’m sure you’ve all heard about the riots and protests over some cartoon published in Denmark that depicted Muhammad with a bomb for a turban. I’m still having trouble getting my mind around the fact that this is all because of some stupid cartoon. The news articles I read on the subject didn’t show the offending cartoon. One of them said it was “out of respect for Islam” (translation: “we don’t want them to come after us too”). How can we have a true discussion of this cartoon if we don’t actually see it?

But I’m not going to criticize them too much for that, because I’m sure as hell not going to show it. All I need is some extremist Muslim to see my site with the cartoon of Muhammad right underneath a giant piece o’ pork. No thanks. But do a Google Images search for “Muhammed danish cartoon” and you should find it.

I saw the cartoon and I’m not even sure what the artist intended. Was he making some ridiculous statement that all Muslims are terrorists? That was my initial reaction and it seems to be how most people are interpreting it. But after thinking about it some more, I’m not sure. Was he possibly saying that these terrorists are hijacking the religion and claiming ownership over its interpretation - using the religion as a weapon and a means for delivering their violent message? Or was he simply commenting on the state of the Middle East: the Muslim world is like a bomb about to go off? If anyone has any links to articles where they actually discuss what the cartoon might have meant, or the artist himself talks about it, I’d welcome that in the comments section.

Maybe it is just some stupid, bigoted cartoon, like the way Asians and blacks used to be depicted in Warner Bros. cartoons. Whether it’s offensive or not, I was happy to hear the Danish prime minister refused to apologize. The government didn’t publish that, an independent newspaper did. If the newspaper wishes to apologize, then fine, but it simply doesn’t make sense for the government to apologize for something it had no hand in. What would they be apologizing for - allowing free speech??

It’s also good to hear that President Bush expressed our support for Denmark. Can you believe that the first mention of Bush on my site was a positive one? Who’d have predicted that? Bush supporters cherish it, because it won’t happen often.

I was listening to my iPod on shuffle and “Hearing Voices In One’s Head” by MC 900 Ft Jesus came on. The lyrics of that song are so good. Yes, they’re creepy, and really silly, but good nonetheless. Believe it or not, I couldn’t find the full lyrics online anywhere (oh Google why do you mock me?!) so I typed all of it in myself from the liner notes. I hope you appreciate them.

I know you. I know all about you. You see things that other people don’t see and it makes you nervous. If your hands would stop shaking, you’d wipe the cold sweat off your brow. It’s hard for you to think but you don’t need to very much because the voices in your head usually tell you waht to do. You consider yourself to be invisible and it’s true in a way, because everybody can see right through you. Other people can even read your thoughts, although they’ll never let you know it for sure. But when you leave the room, everybody discusses you and then has a good laugh. You used to have some friends, but they don’t come around much anymore; probably because it’s hard for them to keep a straight face in your presence. When you go out you need to be very careful. Things always seem to happen too fast. If someone accidentally brushes against you, you jerk away in a panic that you foolishly hope no one will notice. When you go into a place of business and see a security camera, you try to beam pleasant, innocuous thoughts at it. You make a feeble attempt to be nonchalant until you are out of its range. If you see a book or magazine, it usually has a picture of yourself on the cover, one taken by such a camera. These pictures are skillfully retouched to look like someone else in order to mock you. You never read books or magazines because they all contain secret messages hidden in multiple layers of meaning that make you do things you can’t remember later. Nights are rough. You stay in your apartment with the shades drawn and all the lights off, watching television. You keep the sound turned off and try to be very quiet because you want everyone to think you’re asleep. And all night long, a disembodied voice in the back of your head sings over and over: “Somewhere, there’s a place for us…”

A few months back, I Googled my name just to see what would come up. Lots of men with my name but nothing about me, which was to be expected because I’ve kept a low online profile. But now I tried again, and after 4 links to some other guys (some fisherman from Florida, a teenage tennis player from Virginia), there’s this: (The links are to snapshots. Sorry, I tried to put the images right on this page but they had to shrink down & look crappy.. Still figuring some of this stuff out.)

Google Search #1

I wrote a letter to the editor of the Insider, a free Rochester publication, about a woman who says she can communicate with the dead. Well that didn’t make it on Google but someone’s angry response to my letter did. Google cuts it off right before she starts ripping into me. I’ll post the links if anyone’s interested, but moving on… Next was:

Google Search #2

This is of course the awesome props that my friends Pat & Fran gave me on their mega-popular site. I have to laugh at the snippet of text that Google shows though. If I go on an interview some day and they refer to me as Piggie Smalls then I’ll know who to blame!

Then there was a link to some golfer dude, then this:

Google Search #3

Even though FoodMike also posted about magicpork.com, Google is showing something he posted a while back about that letter to the editor I was talking about. So now people know I’m a die-hard skeptic, which I am, so no problem there.

But it wasn’t until I got to the bottom of the 3rd page that I saw Magic Pork listed:

Google Search #4

This was a snippet of a fake newspaper article that I put on an earlier post. Taken out of context, that doesn’t sound too good, especially since it cuts off where it does.

Maybe if I just repeat my name a lot here it’ll push this post higher in Google’s results and no one will even see that one. Kevin McMillen Kevin McMillen Kevin McMillen Kevin McMillen Kevin McMillen Google Google Google.

For all of you who fell asleep from my Inherit the Wind post, I’m following it up with some more lively movie news. Hopefully that title got your attention.

Terrence Howard was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for Hustle & Flow (warning: site plays music so if you’re at work, put on those headphones!). He did a great job in that movie. He was in pretty much every scene so he really had to carry it.

Also, the song “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” was nominated for Best Original Song. That was a really catchy song. I saw old white women bopping their heads to that in the theater. If that song wins, it will be the second rap song in recent years to win - the other being of course Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” in 2003.

When I went to see it, there were people guarding the door, taking cell phone cameras and patting you down. Besides being silly, I thought “how racist!!”. They weren’t doing that for any other movie. This was at the Little Theater, an independent film theater that has a predominantly white audience. This film was about a black pimp trying to make it as a rapper. But then I realized it was because it was a sneak preview of the movie so must be, nationwide where it was being shown, they were taking precautions like that. Because, you know, I could have sneaked out some high quality images from my dinky < 1 Megapixel cell phone. So I was relieved to find out that the Little hadn’t suddenly, inexplicably, become racist. Turns out the majority of the audience was white, and I was surprised at how many older people were there. I didn’t think it would appeal to that demographic.

Roger Ebert has a series of articles called Great Movies. Every other week, he’ll add a movie that he considers “great”. These writeups are different than his typical review. It’s more of a discussion of what makes the film so good, which sometimes means discussing the impact it had, its influences, things that can be determined better now that some time has passed. I usually don’t read them unless I’ve seen the movie because (as I discussed previously) I hate spoilers and he’ll sometimes discuss key events in the movies that I wouldn’t want revealed. He doesn’t do that for his recent reviews, but for some movies, you can’t really do an analysis of why they’re great without talking about them in detail.

His most recent “great movie” is Inherit the Wind and his writeup about it is quite good. The movie is about the Scopes monkey trial. I didn’t see the original until years later, but I happened to see some made-for-TV version of it when I was 13-14 years old and it had a pretty big impact on me. It made me think about things in ways I hadn’t thought of before at that age.

Then one day I was bored in study hall and saw a copy of the play on the bookshelf next to me (my English teacher’s room) and I read through it over the course of multiple study halls. Kind of like how I read the entirety of Al Franken’s first second book (thanks FoodMike) at Barnes & Noble over multiple visits without purchasing it. I still feel a little guilty about that, but it got to a point where “why purchase it now when I’ve already read most of it?”. I’m an extra big jerk now because I didn’t even bother to link you to Barnes & Noble’s website for a description of the book, I linked to Amazon.

But back to my story. At some point later on, I watched the original version. Both movies followed the play very closely, at least with the courtroom scenes.

Anyway, I’m boring you. The point is, Ebert doesn’t just discuss the movie, he contrasts the Scopes trial with the recent events in Dover, PA when evolution basically went on trial again. Ebert wonders if it would be harder to make a movie like this in 2005 than it was in 1960:

Brady and Drummond essentially engage in a debate between fundamentalism and the possibility that if God did create the world, he did so in more than six 24-hour days. What is astonishing in this 1960 film is the gutsy way it engages in ideas, pulls no punches in its language, and allows the characters long and impassioned speeches. There are a lot of words here, well-written and spoken, and not condescending to the audience. Both Tracy and March vent an anger and passion through their characters that ventures beyond acting into holy zeal.

I wonder if a film made today would have the nerve to question fundamentalism as bluntly as the Tracy character does.

Ebert is spot-on when discussing why creationism shouldn’t be taught in science classes:

Central to the case for “alternative” theories is a misunderstanding of what a scientific theory is, and isn’t. One thing it cannot do is depend on supernatural elements. That is the role of religious belief. By asking that creationism be given a place beside the theory of evolution, its supporters are asking that their beliefs be given equal standing with the scientific method. That violates the separation of church and state, as Judge Jones ruled; in claiming their science was not faith-based, he said, they lied.

Once again, if you still feel like reading it, here’s the link.