John & Belle Have A Blog

I Knew This Day Would Come

Last night at the fine Italian restaurant La Nonna (warning, flash page wth stupid camera-shutter noise) two humorous things ocurred. One, Zoe can actually read now and said "Oh my God restaurants are so expensive!!!" with genuine horror. Which, yeah, pretty much. Which is why we don't eat there all the time, but my kids have no doubt eaten in expensive restaurants approximately 500 times as often as I had at their age, and are generally rather blase about things like that. This restaurant used to have wild boar ragu with penne, which the girls loved and would split. They removed it, and there was nothing perfect for a while, but they have now insituted a one free pizza per child policy (of a reasonable, thin, 8-inch in diameter pizza) and have oxtail ragu with pappardelle, making for the perfect combination, since Violet and I can split pasta and John can eat Violet's pizza. House-made pappardelle, they are super-tender and good. Secondly, somehow it came up that I didn't know what Kirby Krackle was. Zoe turned to me with perfect seriousness and said, "have you read Kirby's 'The Demon'"? I was dying but, what could I say but yes? And it turned out Kirby Krackle is perfectly obvious and I would have figured it out myself eventually, but to have a 9-year-old be like, Mom, you know, in the spash page of the Demon Etrigan?, where...etc. A child of mine! I told John he is raising cute girls that will break the hearts of nerds of whatever gender, but he seems OK with that. I guess the only way it could have been worse would have been if it were Devil Dinosaur.

Cut-Up

Sometimes I feel like spam is starting to demonstrate the possibilities of Brion Gysin's cut-up method, championed and practiced by William S. Burroughs:

it?, and Dead it was? Beauty filled with Spice Christ. It is in the familiar with steel pipes to read it?, and Dead it was? Beauty filled with Spice Christ. It is in the familiar with steel pipes to read it?, and Dead it was? Beauty filled with Spice Christ. It is in the familiar with steel pipes to read

Some kind of Dune fanfic or something, right? How mentats feel about the kwisatz haderach?

Greedy

This is a funny story of blogger hubris run wild:

A young food blogger who demanded that he and his three companions be given free meals at an upscale restaurant in the Joo Chiat area has sparked a huge furore online. The group of four had walked into Private Affairs, a small but exclusive eatery in Joo Chiat, for its Sunday champagne brunch promotion that costs S$68++ per person. The blogger in question, Brad Lau, who runs a food blog called ladyironchef had informed the management on Friday that he would be coming down to review the Sunday Brunch promotion. On the day itself, he and his partner came down at about 130pm, followed by his two other companions, each of whom came down half an hour apart. According to Private Affairs’ operations director Ross Valentine,  the four of them had brunch until 430pm, even when the restaurant’s official brunch hours was from 1130 am to 330pm. Brad and his partner also enjoyed two glasses of champagne each. 

When presented with the final bill of $435, the blogger initially refused to pay and repeatedly told the restaurant’s chef, “I never pay for food in any restaurant.” The restaurant eventually offered to waive off the cost of the meal for him and his partner as well as the cost of the champagne out of goodwill, thus lowering the bill to $159. Still upset but finally relenting to pay, the blogger then threw his credit card onto the bar counter in front of the cashier before storming out. 

His site is down and the newspeople can't get him. To the brave belong the fair, and all...but I can't imagine trying this stunt.

Looking Bad

This post from Lawyers, Guns and Money reminds me of something Zoe said the other day (and btw, Scott, would you please stop posting Mad Men spoilers on the front page? I'm only on season one.) The girls and I were watching some animated movie about an awesome stallion in the American west, teaming up with a Native American kid to resist the depradations of the U.S. Army. "This really happened, right?," Zoe asked, as the soldiers messed up a village. I told her, pretty much, yes. She is conscious that she's a white American rather than anything else, and so she spent the rest of the movie saying, "cut it out, Army dudes. You're making us look bad!"