Few things in the culinary world are more wonderful than a beautifully constructed sandwich that hits the right balance of contrasting flavours and textures. The döner kebab I had in Avignon in 2003 (the tender lamb sharing the pita bread with a cool salad, hot crispy pommes frites, and spicy tzatziki) remains one of the best sandwiches I’ve tasted.
The New York Times reports on seven contenders to overthrow “the mighty meatball parm and the elegant B.L.T.”
Read and salivate and hail the mighty merguez.
The soundtrack to the late 20th century might have sounded very different if not for Albert Hoffman, the man who first synthesised Lysergic acid diethylamide, more commonly known as LSD.
Boing Boing is reporting that Hoffman has died at age 102.
Update:
Boing Boing is now reporting that Hoffman may still be alive. Is this the case of a bad flashback?
Update:
Boing Boing is now reporting that the Stranger is reporting that the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies has confirmed Hoffman’s death.
Update:
The Telegraph’s obituary and then to close with one of my favourite lines in rock ’n’ roll:
“I know to trip is just to fall.”
I’ve certainly had my fair share of stumbles.
Three days of scorching Santa Ana winds have been replaced by a wondrous fog rolling in off the Pacific and blanketing Laguna Beach. I feel rejuvenated.
Has anyone written more eloquently about the Santa Anas than Raymond Chandler?
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
The Telegraph’s critics have compiled a dubious list of the “50 best cult books.”
What is a cult book? We tried and failed to arrive at a definition: books often found in the pockets of murderers; books that you take very seriously when you are 17; books whose readers can be identified to all with the formula “<Author Name> whacko”; books our children just won’t get . . .
I’m not sure what it says about The Wife and I, but we own 17 of the 50. Still, though, should Catch-22 or Gravity’s Rainbow ever be on the same list as The Celestine Prophecy?
Bashing your brother over the head with a shovel’s going a little too far, but I must agree with Michael Garvin . . . shepherd’s pie should never come with tomatoes on top. (And for my US-ian readers, shepherd’s pie is made with lamb, not beef, and never contains corn. Blech.)
My search for a literary agent means more than merely finding someone who will represent me and my novel; at age 42, the search means that I’m finally ready to have a career.
As Mary Shelley wrote in Frankenstein:
. . . [N]othing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
The Los Angeles Times reports on Laguna Beach’s effort to move the town’s homeless off the streets:
“You can’t force them into getting off the street,” [Laguna Beach’s newly minted community outreach officer] said. “It’s not a crime for them to be homeless.” He aims to build trust with the city’s down and out, coaxing them to seek help.
This brought to mind the delightful way my previous hometown, Dallas, dealt with the homeless before the 1994 World Cup. They were simply removed from the central business district and any other high-profile areas lest the world believe Dallas was something other than a city of shiny happy people.