When I booked the airfare for our recent vacation way back in September, I knew that we were going to play Easter Island dining by ear, but I intended to leave nothing to chance during our time in Santiago before and after. I made reservations at Boragó and Osaka the day a list of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants was released, showing those restaurants as #8 and #48, and the only two restaurants from Chile to make the list. And I booked a dinner at Astrid y Gaston, because we’d had a wonderful meal at the Lima branch during our Machu Picchu trip, and I wanted to be able to compare.

I’d made no dinner plans for our first night in Santiago, though, because I assumed we might be destroyed by our overnight flights and want to do nothing more than snack on street food (if that) and crash. But then Raul Esteban Yañez Campos, a food critic I’d made contact with during the search for food guides I already told you about, recommended Picada Ana María as his favorite restaurant for traditional Chilean cuisine. So we decided we needed to push our way through whatever exhaustion we were going to feel&#8212because, after all, when were we likely to get to Santiago again?—and had Raul make us a reservation.

The food—what we got of it—was delicious, but we didn’t get to try all we would have liked, partially due to the restaurant being out of certain recommended dishes, but also thanks to our embarrassingly poor grasp of Spanish.

When I asked Raul what we absolutely must eat while there, the first thing he mentioned was something called Table of Warm Sea (which I assumed would include Ana Maria’s sea urchins which others have raved about), followed by the deer, wild hare, and quail. Sadly, the restaurant was out of those latter meats, and as for the Table of Warm Sea, no matter how many times I asked for it in English or Spanish, I couldn’t make myself understood by the server. (more…)

I’d mentioned earlier that there are two sites you only get to visit once during your time on Easter Island, but didn’t get into the details. So here’s how it works.

Once you exit your plane at Mataveri International Airport, but before you get your luggage, there’s a booth where you can buy the ticket which allows entrance to all of Rapa Nui National Park. The ticket is good for five days, starting not at the moment of purchase, but from the time it’s stamped at one of those two sites with limited entries, either Ranu Raraku or Orongo. You can revisit any other site as many times as you want—and there are several Irene and I did return to—but those two, being the largest and most popular, are restricted.

Ranu Raraku is the quarry from which almost all of the island’s moai were carved, and contains hundreds of them, some upright, some fallen or buried, some never completed or moved—such as “El Gigante” above, the largest moai ever, nearly 72 feet tall. (more…)

Before I tell you more about Easter Island, I’d like you to meet my new Chilean friends Karla Lodis and Carlos Reyes. That’s us below squinting into the morning sun at Santiago’s La Vega market.

I met Karla and Carlos due to my desire to eat at a hard-to-find restaurant on the outskirts of Santiago—Rancho Dona Maria in Chacobuco, about which more will be revealed later.

As you likely already know if you hang around here, I visit the foodie site Eater at least once each day. Coincidentally, two world-traveling bloggers there—John Sconzo and Bonjwing Lee—included Rancho Dona Maria’ pork ribs on their Top 10 lists for 2013 just a few weeks before Irene and I were due to head to Santiago on our way to Easter Island.

Well, you know that that meant. I had to get to Rancho Dona Maria! (more…)

I never noticed this while watching any of Mel Brooks’ movie or TV appearances, but apparently the man has pointy ears, just like Mr. Spock. And Brooks even got his at the same time as Leonard Nimoy!

If you believe what he had to say in a February 1975 Playboy interview, that is …

Playboy: Tell us about your ears.

Brooks: My ears are very much like Leonard Nimoy’s—you know, Mr. Spock on Star Trek, the guy whose ears come to a point. It happened like this: One night Leonard and I went out and before dinner we had 35 margaritas. We woke up in a kennel. There were four great Danes, two on each side of us. Their ears had already been clipped. And so had Leonard’s. I reached up, felt my ears and, alas, mine had, too.

Now you know.

Plenty of other fun—though highly suspect—anecdotes there. But you’d better bring your own Raisinets.

It’s once more time to collect all of a month’s dream tweets in one place to see what they can tell me when rubbing up against each other in one place. In January, I dreamt about Ben Gazzara, Samuel L. Jackson, George R.R. Martin, Justin Bieber, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and more.

JANUARY 2014


I dreamt I worked as a waiter in a @Gachatz restaurant and was TERRIBLE at it. I woke while being chastised by customers for being inept.
 Jan 31

I dreamt I doing my old job, getting content live on @Blastr, then suddenly realizing — Ooops! I’m not supposed to be doing this any more!
 Jan 29

I dreamt I was on my back on the floor and wanted to stand, but couldn’t. A baby had fallen asleep on my arm and I didn’t want to wake it.
 Jan 29

I dreamt I was hanging with friends beneath a highway overpass near a beach, and dancing around to dodge waves when they threatened us.
 Jan 29

I dreamt three female game developers were sharing with me horrific stories of the discrimination they faced. Was I researching an article? 
Jan 28

I dreamt I was invited to a mysterious gathering, attended with hundreds of others I did not recognize … and woke before the presentation.
 Jan 28

I dreamt I visited a grandmother (dead IRL), and grew concerned I couldn’t find my mother. Prodded, she admitted she’d been hospitalized. 
Jan 28

I dreamt I was reading in a quiet library when Justin Bieber, trailed by hundreds of shrieking teens, entered and held a press conference.
 Jan 27

I dreamt I was surrounded by Revolutionary War reenactors who acted as if I was one of them … but I had no idea who I was supposed to be.
 Jan 27

I dreamt Paul Di Filippo told me to read the latest Locus, where I saw an announcement for a new collection of mine I’d known nothing about. 
Jan 27 (more…)

I’ve been finding myself surprisingly uncertain how to write up our trip to Easter Island in a way that will properly convey its wonders. And so I’ve decided that rather than attempting to create a single, all-encompassing post that will do so, I’ll just share random memories over the next week from our time there, and hope that together they’ll give a good picture of what it’s like to visit place. So let’s start with our three visits to Ahu Tongariki.

Ahu Tongariki is the largest moai platform on Easter Island. Though its 15 moai are upright today, they were toppled during internal conflicts that began in the 18th century, and then further damage was done by a tsunami in 1960 that swept the artifacts inland. But it was restored during the ’90s, and it’s now one of the island’s most-visited sites, followed only by Ranu Raraku, the quarry from which all moai were carved and transported, and Orongo, a ceremonial village important to the Birdman cult, with views of the smaller islands Motu Nui and Motu Iti.

But visitors to Easter Island are only allowed to visit Ranu Raraku and Orongo once during a visit, while all other sites may be returned to again and again, which meant that when we were in the mood for more awe, it was Ahu Tongariki that pulled us back. (more…)

Sam Maronie, who recently sent me a photo I’d entirely forgotten of the only costume I ever wore to a con, has turned up two more. According to Sam, these were taken at the 1974 New York Creation Convention at the Hotel Commodore.

In the first pic, I’m dueling with fellow fan Dave Simons.

A heavily cropped version of this was published in F.O.O.M. back when I edited the magazine for Marvel. (more…)

We’re back home from our trip to Easter Island and Santiago, and I’ve got a ton to tell you about the amazing sites we saw, the great food we ate, the wonderful people we met, and more. But rather than start at the beginning, I want to share with you the strange way our trip ended.

None of the four flights that took us home from Easter Island went the way it was supposed to, and though the first flight went awry in our favor, the others—hoo-boy!—did not.

We were scheduled to return to Santiago from Easter Island on Friday … but didn’t. Our flight was cancelled because the inbound plane intended to carry us back to mainland Chile had to turn back two hours in after a passenger reportedly had a heart attack. Which meant that we got another day in paradise thanks to LAN Airlines, which paid for our hotel room Friday night, transported us there and back, and gave us vouchers to cover our lunch and dinner.

Here’s the view we had into a caldera from the patio outside our hotel room.

We were thrilled. Stranded on Easter Island for another day? Bring it on!

Unfortunately, our luck did not hold when it later came time to leave Santiago … (more…)

I head off for Santiago this afternoon on the way to Easter Island, and on the recommendation of Chilean food critic Raul Yañez Campos, I’ll be having dinner Thursday at Picada Ana Maria. I trust his taste, so without doing much research, I took him up on his offer to speak to the owners and get us a reservation.

But this, according to the Ulterior Epicure blog, is what we’re in for:

Ana Maria has become an institution of traditional Chilean cuisine, one that focuses heavily on fresh seafood and roasted game. I went twice, once with Guzman, and once with Foods From Chile.

They don’t do small at Ana Maria. When you order quail, three whole birds arrive in a brothy stew of vegetables. When you order wild boar, you get three, large, fists of meat in a sticky, ginger glaze (one of my favorite dishes here). Giant Patagonian pine nuts arrived in a bowl. Spliced lengthwise, each pine nut was at least an inch in length. The texture of cooked chestnuts, they were simply sautéed with some herbs.

And, when you ask for sea urchin, they bring you a whole plate of them: fat, creamy, sweet.

Locals disagree on how to eat their sea urchins on toast – whether to dress them, or eat them plain, with little more than salt and lime. At Ana Maria, the owner’s son, who ate with Guzman and me, prefers sea urchin on toast with a smear of butter, some salsa verde, lime, salt, and a spot of extra virgin olive oil. I tasted both versions, and I prefer them dressed the way the owner’s son likes them.

For dessert, we were served a smattering of Chilean fruits, including a cup of diced quince, which I especially loved for its tartness.

And here are some pics.

Sounds like I’d better do plenty of walking tomorrow in Santiago to earn that dinner …

Today was supposed to have been my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Sadly, my father passed on January 27, 2009, three days after their 55th. My brother and I made a short film to celebrate their 25th anniversary back when I was 23 and he was 19, and I’ve been watching it and getting weepy.

And why keep that weepiness all to myself?

Back in 2010, when I had a YouTube limit of 10 minutes or less, I uploaded the first two-thirds of it. Now that I’ve been freed from that limit, I’ll upload the whole thing someday, but for now, here’s most of what my brother Lee and I screened for my parents and their friends at the surprise party we threw for them in 1979.

This was made way before digital editing tools came around, so my brother filmed and animated it all, using equipment he borrowed from Brooklyn College, and we then created the soundtrack by speaking into a cassette tape recorder while playing records in the background.

I know that my mother is thinking today about what should have been. So am I.

And now, so are you.