Mark Evanier also prefers Five Guys to In-n-Out after his visit to the East Coast.
For a burger qua burger, the second-best burger I had in Los Angeles was at Jeff's Gourmet. Which is Glatt Kosher, so no cheeseburger or bacon topping or milkshake or food on Saturday, which is certainly a downside for the secularly-minded. (The best was at the now-closed Mo Better Meaty Meat Burger, which probably added to the flavor just by the name alone.)
This review pretty much nails my disappointed opinion on the Albert Brooks movie, "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World," which I had been looking forward to last summer, but didn't get around to watching until it made it to cable. My brother would like it, and perhaps the Esquiver would appreciate the scenes of Indian chaos and State Department bungling.
Officially shut down. This season was meh between the shift in locale to college, a lame mystery arc, a weird budget that meant large swaths of the cast were absent every episode, the dissonant notes of the portrayal of college life, and an abortion-related episode that so offended Slim that we stopped watching the show entirely. The show jumped the shark for me in Season 2 because the utter lack of consequences from the appalling Duncan subplot (with the legal consequences threatened by powerful people to Veronica Mars disappearing for no particular or explained reason), and the unsatisfying mystery solution that made no sense didn't help.
Kristen Bell will return to tv on the CW, however, in Gossip Girl, where she wastefully plays the unseen eponymous blogger narrator. Teen soapers Josh Schwartz and Amy Sherman-Palladino are involved, though I was never an OC or Gilmore Girls fan, so couldn't tell you if that's a good thing or bad; it's unlikely I'll find the time to tune in.
Great night at the weekly 2-5 NLHE poker game I go to once or twice a month; when I made stupid mistakes, I was able to cut my losses to $5-$50 instead of a few hundred; when I got hit with a bad beat (lost to a two-outer on the river in one hand against T4s; had to give up KK v. AK when AQ3 flop hit in another; lost AK v. 43 when the short stack called my big raise from the big blind), I was able to avoid going on tilt, and turn around and take the money back from the same person with a big hand, almost always because the other player was overaggressive.
Example: 6-way pot that had been raised to $25 by the big blind, there was no question I was going to stay in with my 99 small blind. Flop comes J98, two spades. I check; middle position goes all in for $87; cutoff reraises all in for $180 total; I call and everyone else folds; the other two both show KJo, and I win back the money I lost when 43 had doubled up through my pre-flop AK raise a couple of hands earlier, even when the case J comes on the river.
Example #2: lots of limpers, I'm in the small blind with KK, I raise to $71 to clear out the riff-raff, get one caller on tilt. Grrr: flop comes ATA, I bet out so I don't have a chance to get bluffed out, he calls all-in with QJ and is drawing dead.
The game was unusually passive pre-flop, so I ended up limping in a lot of awful hands with tremendous implied odds that paid off with good draws, such as the several hundred dollars I won on 53s (called sizable bet on turn with implied pot odds and 9 outs, third 5 came on river, I get a call on my $150 check-raise), 54s (flush on river) and 65s (two pair on flop, boat on turn, A on river to encourage A6 to go all in).
Big hand of the night: I'm on the button with 77; it's six-way action after middle position raised to $20. Flop comes 573, but all clubs. Checked around to me, I bet $100, original raiser calls, everyone else folds. Blech, I figure I'm beat. Turn, 4 of diamonds. Relatively big stack middle position checks, I'm not putting new money into this hand if I don't have to, so I check. River 3 of diamonds. Middle position all in for $400+. I call instantly, he turns over KQ clubs, and my second-nuts boat takes the pot. Very lucky he misplayed that.
Another lucky hand: I had QQ under the gun, limped, raise from early position, couple of callers, all-in from the small blind, who was capable of doing that with 44 or higher, so it was an easy decision to call that bet, and the original early raiser also called all-in, and I took a big pot when my hand held up against AK and JJ.
I walked by [a little convenience store that sells groceries and liquor] during the riots and saw that it had been burned out and had its windows boarded up. "How sad," I thought...but then closer inspection revealed it was a sham. No one had damaged the place. Its proprietors had put up the boards and rubbed charcoal on the front...and when the rioting was over, they took it all down and washed off the soot. [Evanier]
Tom Poston died Monday. I was surprised to hear that his widow was Suzanne Pleshette, and was curious about the backstory to their 2001 marriage, which I completely missed, but the Internet answers everything (dated in 1959, married other people, reunited after each had been widowed). Though that Star story presents other unanswered questions, such as "If you're having a small wedding because you're afraid of offending people who aren't invited to a big one, why is a supermarket tabloid photographer there?"
My personal Tom Poston anecdote: I was defending a deposition in Los Angeles, and the opposing attorney sent the young associate helping her out of the room to fetch some documents. She turned to me, and said conspiratorially: "We just hired him. He's Tom Poston's son. Doesn't he look just like his dad?" And, yeah, he sort of did. The case settled not much later, and I never saw him again. Google answers that question with a one-week-old LA Times story that interviews him for a "trend" story about contract attorneys.
(Update: Adam Bonin reminds us that Poston was the voice of the Capital City Goofball. The Simpsons Curse continues!)
some 1970s-era Sesame Street trivia in honor of Fred's birthday
Inspired by my brother's investigations, some browsing on the Internet teaches me that Paul Benedict, who had a secondary role on "The Jeffersons," played the Mad Painter. One of his victims (in particular, a #3 on her sandwich bread and a #7 on her purse) was the even-more-later-famous Stockard Channing, of "Grease" and "West Wing" fame.
My brother's post satirizes the latter-day Sesame Street's oversolicitousness of 21st-century youth, but it's based on very real events, such as the ban of Don Music in 1998 or the decision to end the Snuffleupagus gag in 1985. Someone should compile all those for a Muppet Wiki article.
Separately, Tyler Cowen should do an analysis of the Doozers' Sisyphean economy. It only makes sense as some sort of elaborate mating ritual, but that seems to contradict canon.
