Lagniappe: an unserious blog
World's most open secret
Slim revealed her identity deep in the comments thread of a blog with many more readers than this one. But why spoil the fun here by linking to it?

In other news, it took four and a half years, but I think I finally killed the housewarming-gift plant my realtor gave to me. It was a hardy monster, but was no match for my gardening incompetence.

In other other news, I'm going cold-turkey on AEI cookies. To provide appropriate short-term economic incentive on this commitment, I hereby will provide a $20 bounty to anyone who catches me eating an AEI cookie (or other lunchroom dessert) between now and Memorial Day.
On C-SPAN2 tomorrow
I'll perhaps only get in a few sentences edgewise as moderator, but the AEI program on The Cutter Incident will be broadcast live on C-SPAN2 at 10 am tomorrow.
Elsewhere in Levitt-town
Family "favorite" Steve Sailer, taking a break from arguing that Jews should be barred from US foreign policy positions, confuses a weekly Guardian satire with a regular book review, and names Freakonomics' British publisher, Penguin subsidiary Allen Lane, as the "author" of the Guardian piece.

Update: Shortly after an Illinois reader hit this blog doing a technorati search for "Freakonomics", the following post appeared.
Gangster Disciples and spiral notebooks
An interesting critique (and part 2) of the Freakonomics chapter.
Kids today, no sense of history
This blog (via my brother) has the gall to claim that "Family Guy" stole the idea of a Grim Reaper from "South Park." Anyone that ignorant has no business commenting on pop culture. "South Park" got the gag from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life," which got it from Woody Allen's "Love and Death," which post-dated the 1968 short film "The Dove" (where Death is challenged to a game of badminton) and all three were satirizing Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," and Bergman got the Grim Reaper idea from German folklore. Oh, and the Grim Reaper pops up in a 1929 Mickey Mouse cartoon. Stolen from South Park, indeed—reminds me of the alt.tv.simpsons poster who said that a rooftop concert performance in one episode was an allusion to U2.

The funny thing is, the Family Guy episode with the Grim Reaper did "steal": the idea (Death stops harvesting souls, havoc reigns in the real world) came directly from a 1930s movie, "Death Takes A Holiday."
Cajun restaurants
Coincidentally, Tyler today posts his list of Cajun restaurants, but hasn't been to two I recently attended.

Bardia's (Adams-Morgan) had a friendly and helpful proprietor, but is hit-or-miss. The fried foods were meh, the jambalaya bland. The creole was pretty good for the DC area, but the price point was too high for what it is, especially given the bare-bones atmosphere. If I'm in Adams-Morgan, I'd rather have Ethiopian or Cashion's. And I'm in Adams-Morgan much less in my thirties than in my twenties.

The new Acadiana (9th and New York) is a beautiful space; I went with Shani for lunch Restaurant Week. I agree with the assessment of too much butter and not enough chile, but the presentation was aesthetically pleasing. Decent gumbo when served at Restaurant Week prices. But I've never been a big fan of the Passion Food Hospitality chain of restaurants, so your mileage may vary.

Isn't it sad that my favorite Cajun in the area is the Popeye's at the Pentagon City mall? (It's the one branch of the chain locally that serves jambalaya.) And even in Pentagon City, I'd just as soon get drunken noodles at the Thai place next door to Popeye's—no line, because noone seems to trust food-court Thai.
The churrascaria trend
Slim and a couple of lawyer friends and I went off to Fogo de Chao (downtown DC) a couple of months ago. Meats placed on sword-like skewers, grilled with Brazilian spices. Definitely a quantity-over-quality kind of place, but the quality was relatively good—but, at the same time, if I'm going to pay that much for food, there are just many more pleasant options in the area. On the quantity side, even with the variety of the meats and the quality of salad bar and service, it's not three times as good as, say, BD's Mongolian BBQ, even though it's more than three times as expensive. (In contrast, I'd say Maestro is three times as good as Tosca.) Not that we didn't leave stuffed and satisfied, and not wanting to eat for a day. Worth going to once, but perhaps not more than that.

Tyler Cowen reviews a couple of other churrascarias, and it's not clear I went to the correct one for a full-fledged churrascaria experience. While Fogo had eleven or so cuts of meat, they were of the beef/chicken/pork/lamb variety; Green Field in Rockville, however, also offers "duck, rabbit and other." Mmm... other. Of course, Tyler would say I'd have to go to Brazil to get the real thing.