Bryan Voltaggio, the celebrity chef behind Volt, where Irene and I recently celebrated the 38th anniversary of the day we met, opened a new restaurant in Frederick, Maryland at the end of June—Family Meal, named after that meal eaten by restaurant staff before or after a shift. Unlike the tasting menu meals of Volt, Family Meal aims to serve comfort food. And since we were heading over to Maryland to run some errands and see our son, we decided to check it out before that new restaurant shine rubbed off.

After seeing some folks over at Yelp complain about long waits, most of which seemed to occur over dinner, I decided to check whether a reservation was needed for a Saturday lunch. When I called, I was told that they were recommended when possible, and that 25% of tables were set aside for reservations. So we made one for 11:45. We arrived a few minutes early, and were taken to our table immediately. (During the course of our meal, I never noticed more than one or two parties at a time waiting briefly, so there seemed no problem with long lines, at least not during lunch.)

Family Meal is housed in a former car dealership, and as you might expect, that means there’s plenty of parking.

But more important than that—there are crispy pig ears on the menu!

And when there are crispy pig ears on the menu, you eat crispy pig ears! (more…)

A few years ago, Irene and I visited Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, and while it was an amazing experience, I don’t remember our meals being anything like the spread shown in this image from the Christmas 1914 issue of The Graphic.

There’s no indication of exactly which “unimportant tomb” was being invaded for lunch.

Considering the dramatic surroundings, I don’t think I’d have had much of an appetite anyway. I’d have been much too awestruck to eat.

Guess these tourists had no sense of wonder.

I arrived home safely from Readercon this afternoon. Or perhaps I should say … I was delivered home safely.

If that distinction (and the photo above) confuses you, this should clear things up. And this will reveal the story so far.

But here are some further photos to let you see how much fun I had at Readercon. (more…)

It’s “This Season’s New Game”—but what is it?

While flipping through my 1914 bound volume of The Graphic—the same newspaper with those intricate aviation infographics and that ad with endorsements from now-forgotten celebrities—I came across an ad in the December 5th issue for a game called Joy-Ball, an ad which gives no indication of how the heck the game is played.

Oh, sure, it sounds like fun, because it promises—

Strokes like billiards.
Play like Fives.
Speed like Ping-Pong.
Score like tennis.

—but what the heck does that mean?

Any of you have ideas for how one would play the game based on the image above?

No amount of Internet searching on “Joy-Ball” or “John Jaques & Son” or “The Graphic” or “1914” or any combination thereof yields an answer, so it all falls to you.

Can any of my UK pals help a Yank out?

Biff!

I was recently contacted by Ruth Littner, a friend from SUNY Buffalo whom I haven’t seen or spoken to since the ’70s. (Ah, the wonders of Facebook!)

She said she was taking a writing workshop with Jonathan Maberry in which my name came up, and mentioned that she had a photo of me from those days. This stunned me, because I don’t remember ever posing for any, and the only pictures I have of myself from back then are but small head shots on my student IDs.

Better think twice before looking below. Once seen, it cannot be unseen. (more…)

ComicCon and Readercon are now over, and surprisingly, I still managed to have fun at the latter even with the sad conflict that kept me away from it while working the former.

How is that possible? I had a solution.

Check out the fun I had, as dear friends and colleagues did their best to help me forget I was missing my first Readercon ever.

Rose Fox

Thank you, committee, for providing me with a name badge! (more…)

I’ve taken restaurant advice from Man v. Food plenty of times. Last year, I took restaurant advice from Food Wars. But it wasn’t until Comic-Con 2012 that I ate at a restaurant I learned about from boingboing.

Slater’s 50/50 is known for its signature burger made of 50% ground beef and 50% ground bacon, but what attracted my attention was the Burger of the Month for July (covered with astonishment by boingboing, The Huffington Post and a ton of other sites)—The ‘merica Burger!

Why were they all so aghast? Because The ‘merica Burger—as you can see from the sign below, which is hung between the restaurant’s restrooms—is composed of “100% ground bacon plus thick cut bacon, a sunny side up egg, our new ‘bacon island’ dressing all topped with bacon cheddar cheese.”

Yowza!

When I read the article, I wondered where the restaurant serving this limited-time burger was located, and after seeing it was in San Diego, I thought—Wait a minute! I’ll be in San Diego this month! So you know I had to try one. After all, when Kraze Burgers, a Korean hamburger chain, opened its first location in the U.S., I was there.

So late last night, once I was able to take a break from covering Comic-Con, I headed off to Slater’s 50/50 with frequent foodie adventurer Mike Willmoth at the wheel and his artist friend Franchesco riding shotgun. (more…)

Those of you who know that I’ve attended every Readercon since the first in 1987—I believe I’m the only person to have done that save for a few of the committee members—will understand the sadness I felt when I learned that in 2012, it would conflict with the San Diego Comic-Con, which I cover each year on behalf of Blastr.

A Readercon without Scott Edelman? Inconceivable! (Well, to me, at least.) Something had to be done … but what?

This!

One of those two men above is now in San Diego, filing copy, while the other is whooping it up in Burlington. I leave it to you to decide which one of us is where.

If you run across me at Readercon, you’ll see I’ve asked attendees to snap photos with me and either email them or tweet using the hashtag #ReaderconScott.

And what do you know, the first sighting of Edelman in the wild has already occurred … (more…)

Considering I spent about 13 hours yesterday either in my hotel room or the hotel lobby prepping Comic-Con stories for Blastr, it’s amazing anything strange was able to happen to me, since what kind of strange stuff could likely happen while I’m alone in my hotel room? (Please … don’t let your minds go there.)

In any case, when I finally made it more than 100 yards from my laptop and over to the Random House party at Bootlegger, I ended up in a conversation with Vladimir Verano of Third Place Press, who at one point looked at my badge and wondered why he knew my name. Then the proverbial light bulb went on over his head, and from his bag he pulled a galley of Sean Howe’s upcoming history of Marvel Comics in the ’70s, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.

That’s coincidental enough, but the really strange thing? From the placement of his bookmark, I could see that he’d just, and I do mean just, gotten to the part where I came in.

At Vladimir’s request, I autographed the page where I first appeared, even though my desire to read Sean’s book and find out what really happened back then when I was too busy living it to pay attention is so great that I’d rather have created a distraction (Look—George R. R. Martin!) and then dashed from the bar with it under my arm. But I behaved.

So is that serendipitous enough for you?

I’ll be heading off to Comic-Con tomorrow, which I’ll be covering on behalf of Blastr, as I’ve been doing since 2007. (Covering Comic-Con, that is, not covering it on behalf of Blastr, since at times I was doing it for the previous incarnations of either SCI FI Wire or Science Fiction Weekly.)

Each of those years gave me the gift of an encounter that stood out above all others, a special moment that had to do with the kid inside of me, and not with the me who was there reporting to the world what was going on in San Diego. (Not that those two me’s can always be separated.)

Here’s a photo a year, capturing those moments.

2007

Catching up with former boss Stan Lee, who dubbed me “Sparkling” Scott Edelman back in the ’70s when I worked for him in the Bullpen—because everyone who works at Marvel needs a nickname, right?

(more…)