J Larsen

they only put meat on the pizza if you ask for it. True, but most cheese contains meat (rennet, made from the stomachs of calves). I'm pretty sure fresh mozzarella is typically rennet-free (though a quick web search revealed that this is not always the case...), but if you are vegan I guess that is a non-issue - the pizza thing just isn't going to happen. I was a vegan for a while and found that the worst vegan food was the stuff trying to emulate inherently non-vegan food. The one vegan pizza I had was really depressing. I was making pizza a couple of weeks ago and forgot to get a non-dairy cheese substitute for a neighbor who's breast feeding baby's intestinal track doesn't like it when mama eats dairy. I made a pie with red sauce, lots of roasted garlic and some fresh basil, it was very tasty. That's the way to do it. The path to misery and despair is paved with "vegan cheese".

they only put meat on the pizza if you ask for it. True, but most cheese contains meat (rennet, made from the stomachs of calves). I'm pretty sure fresh mozzarella is typically rennet-free (though a quick web search revealed that this is not always the case...), but if you are vegan I guess that is a non-issue - the pizza thing just isn't going to happen. I was a vegan for a while and found that the worst vegan food was the stuff trying to emulate inherently non-vegan food. The one vegan pizza I had was really depressing.

lombardi's is your "neighborhood delivery" place? g_d what a life of oppulence you must live.... I used to live around the corner, now I'm a few blocks up. They haven't been nearly as consistent since the character-killing expansion, but the pies are still often great and never worse than pretty good. This may be a fluke, but in my experience you tend to do much better with delivery than with in-store pies, almost as if they are more careful with orders from regular customers vs. the tourists who constantly mob the restaurant. Overall they still make a nice pizza, but I won't go in anymore unless I'm with a friend of mine that knows the management. Otherwise the high school age hostesses sit you in the back with all the tourist riff-raff. That certainly resonates. You know what I don't get? It was much easier to get a table before they expanded to like six times the size! You always had to wait for a table at dinner, but it wasn't like the line wrapped around the corner or anything. And you used to always be able to walk right in and take any table for lunch during the week. Forget about it now.

lombardi's is your "neighborhood delivery" place? g_d what a life of oppulence you must live.... I used to live around the corner, now I'm a few blocks up. They haven't been nearly as consistent since the character-killing expansion, but the pies are still often great and never worse than pretty good. This may be a fluke, but in my experience you tend to do much better with delivery than with in-store pies, almost as if they are more careful with orders from regular customers vs. the tourists who constantly mob the restaurant.

Robusto is just a size, isn't it? One size smaller than a Churchill? I think they do have several lines, with several sizes within each line.

That's a pretty damn good price for a Cuban Cohiba if you're in the states...

Do you have a Whole Foods near you? The one by my apartment stocks Adam and Fred, two of their flagships brews (and two of the best I've had from the states). They are NOT beers for the faint of heart - they are very, very bold. I slighlty prefer Adam, a darkish, bock-like beer, to Fred, which is a very strong amber-ish Belgian style beer.

Better than The Sidewinder. Guy Yes, that really is a disappointing record for me. I was really bummed when I got that one home.

Wild... I love Cornbread and am always baffled when people inclined to like that type of jazz at all aren't into it (though that is what makes us human...), but I've always found Dippin' to be a little weak. Taste is a funny thing.

The lady made a damn fine Morrocan coucous with lamb tonight.

I saw Cat Power last night... with her new band there is a certain "professionalism" to her sound that I'm not so into. I know this is kind of a messed up thing to say, but as an audience member I truthfully prefered her more eratic/raw phase.

I had Atwater once and thought it was total crap. The Brown ale is the best thing Brooklyn Brewery sells in a bottle. If you ever want to try something REALLY gross, grab a bottle of their chocolate stout if you ever see it in a store. You know where they make really good beer in the US? Portland, OR. No lie. You are hard pressed to find most of the best Portland beers outside of the NW, though - in fact many of the best breweries out there only sell their beers on site.

I was drinking that last night, out of neccesity. I'm not a big fan of their beers (they all tend to have this sour note to them), but the brewery in Williamsburg is worth a visit if you're ever in town. They actually have a couple varities there that they don't bottle or distribute that are muh better than the varities they make commercially available, which I've always found to be quite odd. I'm currently finishing off a bottle of Domaine des 2 Anes Corbieres. Pretty good for an organically produced, no-sulfite wine. A little musty, but I guess that is unavoidable (or so it seems).

My neighborhood delivery place, Lombardi's, is pretty good. Grimaldi's in Brooklyn (right over the bridge) is also very good. John's on Bleecker is often very good. This is somewhat controversial, but I also really like the Patsy's on the UES. I haven't had pizza outside the city that compared to the best pizzas in NYC. I'm not saying it doesn't exist (in fact I bet it does), but I haven't had it.

Lost Sessions was a Conn and has not been readily available in quite a long time.

I used to know more about this from a project I was working on, but I'm fuzzy on it now. As I recall their purpose is to reconcile the fact that various category-specific coding schemes use different formats (e.g. ISBNs are X digits long, the analogous codes for cds are Y digits long, etc.) This would clearly be important for mega-retailers with huge inventories who sell many types of products. I'm sure Kevin can clear this up.

Do teams generally own their stadiums in England? Here the norm is for the hosting city to pay for the stadium and lease it to the team, typically at a rate far below market. Yes, I think so. Many of the football clubs have been around since the late 19th C. MG Right, I knew that, but I thought that they were playing in modern stadiums.

They are unique identifiers for products like books, cds, etc.

Do teams generally own their stadiums in England? Here the norm is for the hosting city to pay for the stadium and lease it to the team, typically at a rate far below market.

Happy birthday!

Friggin' AWESOME Vietnamese coffee. This stuff is one of the greatest secrets in the Western world.

Tonight it's Built to Spill with Cat Power - two of my favorite contemporary "indie" acts. This will be about my 900th time seeing BTS, and I think my fourth time seeing CP.

Great, I'll pick them up this weekend. Thanks for the help.

Interesting... in my experience Get Back records usually don't sound that great in the first place, so I wonder how much of that is really ESP low-fi and how much is the Get Back low fi.

Yes, and a very good guitarist in his own right, from what I've been told.