I come before you tonight to admit … I’m letting you down.

While I used to snap hundreds of photos at each science fiction convention I’d attend, now I rarely crack two dozen. Case in point, the recent Chicon7. Though I did have Charlie Jane Anders snap this pic of me and Eileen Gunn aboard the Random House cruise of Lake Michigan. (After which I had Eileen snap a pic of me and Charlie Jane as well.)

Why have I slacked off? Why am I no longer as intent on capturing my friends with pixels?

I can’t be certain, but I’m thinking I may have Twitter to blame, since that’s now the main way I seem to be reporting on cons these days.

It’s far too ephemeral, though, so I’m going to try to remember to do both next time around. Check back during and after the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto and find out if I stayed true to my word.

In any case, head over to Flickr if you want to see what few pics I did manage to snap.

When I’m at home, I tend to eat rather spartanly, but when I travel the convention circuit, I like to make each meal matter. I do my best to avoid remaining in a hotel for a meal, or getting anywhere near a chain, unless my dining companions demand it, and aim for unique eating experiences representative of the particular city I happen to be in. Which is why I’m so often relying on the advice of people like Man v. Food‘s Adam Richman (who led me to my favorite hamburger ever—The Thurman Burger at the Thurman Cafe in Columbus) or on Yelp reviews (such as the ones that got me to Sugar Ray’s Bakery in St Petersburg).

Chicago, which hosted the 70th World Science Fiction two weeks ago, was going to be a bit more challenging than my usual gastronomic adventures, because the two restaurants I most wanted to visit—Next and Alinea, co-owned by three-star Michelin chef Grant Achatz (though of course co-owner Nick Kokonas and chef Dave Beran also deserve kudos)—don’t take reservations.

And by not taking reservations, I don’t mean they’re the kinds of places you walk up to and stand in a long line to get seated. I mean that in order to get in, you need to buy a ticket, the same way you would to the theater or a rock concert.

Why would a restaurant do such a thing? Because apparently, demand was so great that when Alinea would announce a particular month’s block of tables was available for reservations, the calls would crash their Chicago area code, the tables would fill within the hour, and they needed a full-time staff whose only job was to say, “No, sorry, we’re booked.” And at one point Next had 19,000 diners on its waiting list.

To quote Alinea:

Alinea has 3 people answering phones six days per week answering hundreds more phone calls than we have reservations available. It is a disappointing and frustrating process for our customers and staff alike.

And as for what Next has to say:

Unlike an a la carte restaurant with many walk-in customers and dozens of menu items, Next is creating a truly unique dining experience and doing so at an amazing price. By eliminating no-shows, requiring pre-payment, and varying the price by time and day we are able to create a predictable and steady flow of patrons allowing us to offer a great deal more than would otherwise be possible at these prices.

So—tickets, a concept which frees up the staff to do what it does best, create mind-blowing meals.

If you’ve never heard of either of these restaurants, you’re probably wondering why there’d be such a demand. There are two very different reasons. (more…)

As those of you who’ve been following me on Twitter and Facebook already know, I was diagnosed with Shingles on Friday, after having had sore muscles since Monday and a rash since Wednesday. I’ve been taking the antiviral medication Famciclovir since Friday afternoon, but that hasn’t stopped me from feeling … like this.

Well, absent the blood and the alien creature eating its way out through my stomach.

Still, what I have been feeling is a strange abdominal pain unlike any I’ve ever felt before, as if a fist is opening and closing inside me, with muscles cramping and spasming and uncramping and warring against each other in ways they never have before. So much so that I occasionally peer down and wonder what the heck is going on in there.

Several female friends have reported to me that their Shingles pain was so great it exceeded the pain of childbirth, and I am so not looking forward to my case developing in that direction. From what I’ve read, the fact I started on meds within three days of the first appearance of the rash means I’ve got a good shot at it not progressing that far, though my doctor’s anecdote that the only time he ever saw his grandfather cry was from Shingles doesn’t give me that warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Only a feeling of something trying to chew itself out.

Wish me luck!

The universe must really want me to tell you about the collage artist born Burgess Franklin Collins, who became known as, simply, Jess. And who am I to deny doing want the universe wants?

First, while reading the latest issue of the Paris Review, I came across a collage the artist had done in 1956 that made use of comics—and you already know how intrigued I am by collages like that.

Then (I assume because I wasn’t acting quickly enough), up popped a Publishers Weekly review of the book Jess: O! Tricky Cad and Other Jessoterica, which told me more about the former Manhattan Project radiochemist turned artist and informed me that the book’s “publication coincides with the beginning of a traveling exhibition of his work set for 2013 and 2014.”

So I guess I’d better share the image which intrigued me so, or else mentions of Jess will inevitably start creeping into every magazine I read! (more…)

Yesterday, I shared with you a few rather enigmatic videos hinting at Next restaurant‘s Kyoto menu, which has its official opening tonight, and this morning, I posted a pic of the menu scroll itself, which had been tweeted by someone lucky enough to attend the test dinner.

But for those who want something a bit more concrete, here’s the video Next released today which explains more about the food (and the spirit of the food) during the latest incarnation of its ever-changing menu, similar to what was previously released for Paris: 1906, Thailand, Tribute to elBulli, and Sicily. (Oddly, there seems to have been no official video for Childhood, so this footage, uploaded by others, will have to do.)

This is what the lucky first night diners were able to experience earlier tonight in Chicago. (more…)

Tonight, Next restaurant will officially launch its Kyoto menu—and as I told you yesterday, I bought tickets for an upcoming Kitchen Table there even though I had no idea exactly what Chefs Grant Achatz and Dave Beran would come up with.

Well, early this morning, Graham Elliot tweeted a pic of the menu that shows what he was served during the test dinner Thursday night—and what I can expect when I return to Chicago in November.

Can’t wait to experience the umami!

I’ve been remiss in not yet sharing with you my impressions of the visits I made to Next, Alinea, and The Aviary (plus The Office, a speakeasy beneath The Office) during Chicon7, but recovering from the trip while staying on top of Blastr left me with no remaining juice to tell the whole amazing story of the restaurants Chef Grant Achatz has created. Rest assured, though … that will come.

For now, suffice it to say that I was so enamored of his constantly changing restaurant, Next—if you don’t eat there during each cuisine’s brief run. you’ve missed it forever—that I decided my three-star Michelin taste of Sicily wasn’t enough and so booked tickets for Kyoto the moment they became available this evening.

Booked? Tickets? Why, what could Scott possibly mean? What kind of restaurant sells tickets?

Don’t worry, all will be explained later, when I finish my write-up of the above gastronomic experience … this weekend, I hope.

In any case, if you’re wondering what awaits me during Chef Achatz’s Kyoto menu, perhaps the first video teaser he released will explain it all.

Perplexed? Then maybe this second clip will enlighten you. (more…)

Martin Amis was interviewed in the July 2nd issue of Publishers Weekly (as you can see, I’m way behind on that magazine) and had this to say about why he spent an unusually long time (well, for him, anyway) revising his latest novel:

Lionel Asbo took Amis a year to write and a year to revise. “I’ve never spent that long revising before,” he says. “A writer friend asked me, ‘What did you put in that wasn’t there in the first draft?’ My answer was ‘anxiety,’ there wasn’t enough anxiety in it. Books come out of a mixture of ambition and anxiety, and the anxiety has to match the ambition, that’s just how it works.”

I don’t know about you, but when I write, anxiety is far from my mind. When I write, I go to a place of peace, a space of almost spiritual contemplation. I am in that zone runners talk about, in which all the world falls away, and everything’s right with the universe.

But then, that’s just me. Who knows? Maybe anxiety is what’s been missing from my writing all along.

What do you think? Do I need to become a little (or a lot) more anxious to become a better writer?

Here, from playwright and actor Wallace Shawn, is a sentiment you might find … inconceivable.

When I think about my own case, I don’t think of writing as a professional skill. I think of it as an odd thing that I feel an impulse to do. You eat chocolate because you feel a desire to do it. You don’t develop a technique for doing it. You don’t get better at it. And I don’t want to think of writing as a skill I have that I habitually exercise according to a certain schedule of procedures. If it had to be that, I’d possibly feel that I’d rather not to it. Actually, I find the idea of writing as a professional skill somewhat sickening.

I’m not religious, but wouldn’t a religious person find something sickening about it if he were asked to think of meditation, prayer, or adoration of the universe as professionalized skills for which a method could be codified? I guess I am halfway between saying that writing is too personal, intimate, humiliating, and miniscule to discuss and saying it’s too sacred and vast to discuss. And I don’t like to think of it as a thing I do the same way again and again. Who says one instance of writing has anything in common with another instance?

(from an interview in The Paris Review #201)

When I was a kid, I joined the Merry Marvel Marching Society the moment its existence was announced in the pages of the comics. Yes, I was that much of a Marvel fanboy, even though the term fanboy hadn’t been invented yet. But considering how I joined, it’s surprising I ever became a member.

I gathered my pennies, nickels, and dimes, shoved them into an empty Junior Mints box, taped it shut, shoved that into an envelope, taped that shut, and mailed the chunky package off to 625 Madison Avenue. After what seemed like a millennium of waiting, and wondering whether the mess I’d mailed ever made it, my membership kit arrived … including this snazzy button, which I still own, and which I often think of wearing to Comic-Con, stopped only by my fear of the heartache I’d feel if I lost it.

But there’s another momento of that membership I’ve lost over the years … and I’m hoping you can help me regain it. (more…)