I’ve been reading J. Redding Ware’s 1909 book Passing English of the Victorian Era, a collection of words and phrases once used—some by many, some only by a few—during the period of the book’s title. It’s so fascinating, it’s hard to stop reading.

Now that I’ve made my way through the letter C, here are the ones that tickled me so far.

Acknowledge the Corn (American English)

Adroit confession of minor offence to intensify the denial of the major offence: e.g., “Sir, I believe you are after my wife—and you certainly pocketed my meerschaum last Sunday evening at 10.30.” To which the answer might be: “Well, I acknowledge the corn—I took the pipe by incident, so to speak; but as to Mrs H., I’m as innocent as the skipping lamb.” Said to arise from an ordinary horse-lifting case in the West of U.S.A. The victim was accused of stealing four horses from one point and four feeds of corn from another for the said four horses. “I acknowledge the corn,” said the sufferer—but legend says he was lynched in spite of the admission. (more…)

We’ve eaten at Bryan Voltaggio’s Frederick restaurant Volt multiple times, both in the Main Dining Room and the Chef’s Dining Room. But somehow, we’ve never been able to snag reservations at Table 21, the 8-seat counter which wraps around the open kitchen, where you’re served a tasting menu comprised of (what else?) twenty-one courses. Reservations become available at 9:00 a.m. exactly one month in advance , and I guess I just never jumped quickly enough for the days I was seeking.

But last week, serendipity worked in my favor. Old friends who’d long been drooling over my various Volt reports were visiting from out of town, and I’d gotten reservations for us in the Chef’s Dining Room. But the day before, I received a cell from Volt asking whether we might like to move to Table 21, as there were suddenly four available seats.

Who could say no to that?

And so last Thursday, the four of us headed over to Maryland to join four strangers (who due to the intimate nature of the seating would soon become friends) around the kitchen as Chef de Cuisine Scott Muns (recently of Rose’s Luxury) led his team to serve up a delicious and inventive meal.

And so it began … (more…)

Last weekend, I accompanied Irene to the New Jersey Romance Writers conference, but I didn’t hang around there with her. All of my fun occurred outside of New Jersey. And serendipitously, each of the three days of my trip delivered a comics-related delight.

On Friday, I headed to the Comics at Columbia exhibit, which was held in the Butler Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Highlights for me included a George Herriman Archy and Mehitabel illustration, a nostalgia-inducing photo of Chris Claremont taken around the time I would have met him in the ’70s, Jerry Robinson’s sketch of Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne made during class in 1940 when he was supposed to have been taking notes, and this 1970 letter in which Joe Shuster thought he and Jerry Siegel were “very close” to settling the Superman lawsuit.

That last one made me a little sad.

The Columbia University exhibit will continue through January 23, 2015 and is well worth your time. It’s one of the better comics exhibits I’ve seen.

Saturday, I visited the Society of Illustrators to catch an exhibit on Dick Dillin, who was the primary Justice League of America artist of my youth. (more…)

Unlike Mark Evanier, I never met Marcia Strassman, who portrayed Julie Kotter, the wife of Gabe Kaplan’s character on Welcome Back, Kotter. Strangely, though, I felt as if I had, because I wrote two issues of the DC Comics series based on that TV show, and so got paid to put words into the mouth of an actress who never actually got to speak them.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I believe I was given the chance to script that comic because I was a Sweathog. (Don’t believe me? Just listen to what I sounded like back then.) Which meant that I had far more in common with guys from Brooklyn than those who would marry them after they grew up. (Or, to put it more accurately, after they didn’t grow up.) But still, I did my best to channel the character she embodied.

In my first issue, that consisted primarily of her reacting to the antics of those around her …

… which while accurate to the show, was also what, according to Evanier, had her dissatisfied with it. (more…)

Remember the Sansaire immersion circulator I bought earlier this year, which I used to prepare the best steak I ever cooked? I loved all the food it helped me sous vide, but there was one relevant issue which prevented 100% satisfaction.

Food cooked via that method ends up pale and unappetizing on the outside, and requires searing to develop a nice crust. I was using a hot pan to achieve this, but in addition to that being messy, not all food is flat, so it’s difficult to reach all the nooks and crannies of a chuck roast, for example.

Something more was needed. That something is my new toy, the Searzall.

The Searzall, which I’d backed on Kickstarter, is a cone that attaches to a blow torch head, basically turning it into a radiant broiler, achieving much higher temperatures than can be reached in a home oven broiler. Additionally, the Searzall is meant to protect the meat from what’s known as “torch taste” which can sometimes occur with an open torch flame. For both of those reasons, I signed on for a Searzall as soon as I heard of it. (more…)

It’s been two weeks since Capclave, which means I’m violating Edelman’s First Rule of Convention Reporting by waiting this long to tell you about my experience. You remember the rule, don’t you? It’s that all convention reporting has to take place while a con is still happening, not merely after the fact, because it’s not enough that I be having a wonderful time—you’ve got to know that I’m having a wonderful time and be grumbling because you’re not with me having a wonderful time, too.

But bandwidth around here being what it is, I had to wait until the following weekend while I was traveling to upload my Capclave videos, and then we had friends visiting this week who only just left, which means it’s a rule that in this instance had to be broken.

Anyway, here’s what the weekend of October 10th through the 12th was like for me …

On Friday, my first panel was at 4:00 p.m.—”The League of Substitute Heroes and the Inferior Five”—during which we were to talk about the B- and C-level superheroes we loved, and I arrived about a half an hour before it was to begin. The ones I reminisced about the most were The Prankster, a one-shot back-up feature from Charlton with overtones of Harlan Ellison’s “”Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman,” and Brother Power the Geek, about a mannequin brought to life and given superpowers after being struck by lighting, who then lives among hippies. But I also talked up Matter-Eater Lad as well, a hero after my gastronomic heart.

My next panel wasn’t to be until 9:00 p.m.—”Ending Stories – Bang or Whimper?”—and you’d think that would leave me enough time for dinner. But instead, dinner didn’t leave me enough time for my panel! I went with friends to a nearby restaurant where the service was so slow that a meal which should have taken less than two hours took more than three. And since I was a passenger for this outing, rather than a driver, it meant I didn’t arrive back at Capclave until 15 minutes before that panel was to end. Thanks to Twitter, I was able to send out an alert using the Capclave hashtag that I wouldn’t be joining the panel, but still, I felt bad. I guess I learned my lesson—no more dinners at the Golden Bull on Friday nights!

My final panel that day was at 11:00 p.m.—”Why Do We Like Being Scared?” (And no, it’s not the latest panel I’ve ever done. Sometimes I’ve pontificated past midnight.) There was much talk of zombies. I also put out there that it might be my luck in having had a happy, untraumatized childhood which allows for me to be scared without being triggered. It’s a privilege I’ll have to consider in more depth later.

A little past midnight, I headed home. I rarely stay overnight at local cons such as Capclave and Balticon, preferring to pay for hotels only when the event isn’t drivable, even though that can lead to commutes of anywhere from 90 minutes to two hours. So I arrived home around two in the morning, and then by 10:30 a.m. Saturday, I was back on the road again … (more…)

While on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn yesterday heading for a visit with Mirthful Marie Severin (about which more later), traffic came to a standstill. Not really a surprise on the Belt Parkway, but in this case, the reason was.

Up ahead, we could see a police car’s flashing lights, and on the other side of the vehicle, motorcyclists circling, with nothing but clear road beyond them. After 5-10 minutes of blockage, the motorcycles moved on, the police car shut its lights, and we were free to continue.

Then, one exit down the road, it happened all over again!

What was this about? I had no idea, but since since my wife was driving, I was free to search Twitter to see whether anyone had tweeted what was going on. I never did find out whether it was some strange police exercise, a biker protest, or perhaps even (yes, my mind went there) the scattering of a dead friend’s ashes.

After another 5-10 minutes, they took off, and we weren’t stopped again. (At least, not by that. After all, it is the Belt Parkway.) I never did find out had happened, but I did discover that the collected tweets about Belt Parkway paint a pretty noirish picture … one Irene classified as existential angst.

If you’ve never driven the Belt, this will give you some idea what it’s like. And if you have … well … these ought to bring back some pretty crappy memories.

I might as well just live on the belt parkway

— Peter Castellotti (@PeterPdoubleC) October 12, 2014

Belt parkway blows

— JUSTIN (@j_rhoadess) October 12, 2014

(more…)

I had a great time last weekend during my three days at Capclave, and I plan to tell you all about it after I upload the videos of the panels and two readings I recorded. But since bandwidth here is such that tossing those gigabytes up on YouTube will prevent me from doing a single other thing online for 24-48 hours, that probably won’t happen until the weekend is out. Meanwhile, you’ll have to be satisfied with a Capclave highlight that was Capclave without really being part of Capclave—

Pig face!

A couple of weeks back, Range—which I’ve been raving about here for quite awhile—added pig face to its menu. Only on Fridays and Saturdays, and only a few per night. Which meant, of course, I had to get there. Luckily, Capclave was coming.

Some of my friends were too queasy to look at a meal that looked back, but two who were as eager to dig into a pig face as I was were Mike and Beth Zipser, who you can see above, with the 18-hour sous vide pig face lovingly prepared by Chefs Mattie McGhee and Romeo Tivoli on a small platform between us.

We loved it, and quickly stripped it clean, as you can see from the before and after pics below. (For those who are into that sort of thing.) (more…)

Well, here it is, the second week of October, and I still have one final meal to tell you about from my London trip, a restaurant I visited all the way back during the second week of August. What’s up with that?

One reason is that the food at St. John Bread and Wine was just that good. The fact life threw so much at me during the past two months that I was delayed in getting to this shouldn’t prevent me from sharing the experience with you.

But the other reason to write this up even after all that time has passed is to once more praise the serendipitous power of Twitter.

Lisa Gemino, whom I’d somehow managed never to meet before even though we both have many years of parallel convention-going, reached out to me on Twitter (my foodie frenzy had caught her eye, I guess) to ask if I wanted to join her and her merry band of eaters for a trip to St. John, the Fergus Henderson restaurant known for its nose-to-tail menu. And I thought … why not?

It’s far too easy in our field to stick with the known, create cliques, insulate ourselves among our friends, and never make new ones. So I’ve often broken bread with total strangers at conventions. Though if we’ve both come to the same place out of our shared love of science fiction or fantasy or horror (depending on the con), are we really strangers?

So the Friday of Loncon3, nine of us headed to St. John Bread and Wine. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get to the originally planned St. John due to a mix-up—that entire restaurant was closed for a private party, and our reservation had been taken in error.

The dish I’d earlier seen on the menu that I was lusting after the most was ox cheek pie—a dish which was unfortunately being crossed out on the chalkboard just as our server reached us, because another party had moments before ordered the last one!

But don’t worry. What we had was amazing. (more…)

Wasn’t it just three days ago that I bemoaned the absence of any online video or photos from James Beard’s famous TV commercial for Heckers flour? Well, it might not have existed then, but it exists now.

That’s because Elizabeth Federici and Kathleen Squires have launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for their documentary America’s First Foodie: The Incredible Life of James Beard, and their fundraising video includes footage from that ad, starting at :31 below.

You might ask, why is Beard holding a bag of Ceresota flour there, when the other day I showed you a screen grab of him holding a bag of Heckers flour? Turns out it’s a regional thing, and according the the Heckers/Ceresota FAQ—

Heckers Flour is sold in upstate New Jersey, New York and the New England states. Ceresota is sold in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, lower New Jersey, greater Philadelphia and Wisconsin.

—so two different commercials must have been shot for the same company.

Whether Beard pitched for Ceresota or Heckers, what matters is—this is a worthy Kickstarter campaign. And for the next 28 days, you can donate here.