It’s a brisk boxing day and I’ve spent the morning drinking coffee, watching Rome, and redesigning AxesAndAlleys.com. I still took a bit of time out from my busy schedule for you dear readers. Here are three links.
Clouds Cover Volcanoes on Mars
You’ve got questions. These folks don’t answer them.
Dave’s Web of Lies
Probably few people know about the tiny neighborhood of Little Egypt, nestled within the much larger neighborhood of Astoria, Queens. To say Little Egypt is tiny, is actually quite an understatement; it consists of one block of Steinway Street, between 28th Avenue and Astoria Blvd, excluding, of course, the two thirds of that block occupied by non-Egyptian related businesses. So, when we say that Little Egypt is a tiny neighborhood, we really mean to say that it’s a collection of seven hookah bars, three restaurants and a store that sells phone cards and Moroccan pop music.
When I first moved to Astoria, many years ago, I took frequent trips up to this block. It was right after 9-11, so the idea of exploring a predominantly Muslim area carried with it a mystique of being accepting of other cultures and taking full part in the brotherhood of humanity. Sure, those back in Georgia might fear or hate the swarthy Middle Eastern immigrants, but here I was ready to buy cigarettes in their delis and sample their cuisine. This soon stopped. Not because I wasn’t interested in promoting the brotherhood of humanity, but because traveling to Little Egypt left me feeling like a black man at a lunch counter in Selma, Alabama circa 1952.
Let’s just say that these Middle Eastern men were not interested in serving white Americans, or treating them with the simple respect due a money-laden customer looking for hot falafel and kafta kebobs, or with looking me in the eye, or acknowledging my existence. Let’s just say they were about as interested in serving me some food as a laid-off Detroit auto-worker is interested in the new line of Toyotas. Dutifully, I would go up to the counter, ready with my order, only to be completely ignored. Arab men, in their over-sized Yankee jerseys and saggy jean shorts would show up after me, and would be served instantly. A few times I would just get frustrated and leave, other times I would stick to my guns and insist on being served my food, only to stand there sheepishly waiting while others came in after me, ordered, took their food and left while I still stood waiting for my lamb goodness.
Finally, and that is to say after about three months of this, I never bothered going in to those shops again. Yes, I voted with my dollars and took my business elsewhere; explored the Columbian, Brazilian, Greek and Eastern European fare to be had. It actually gave me a little satisfaction to see one dining establishment that had snuffed me, El Manara, closed one day as I walked by. And thus, for years, I ignored that block, ignored Little Egypt, and what might have been of its culinary offerings.
Until yesterday, when I was persuaded to give Kebob Café a chance. I’d probably walked by the place a thousand times, but I assumed it was like the others and never bothered to go in, try it or even give it a second chance. Yes, I was horribly, horribly wrong.
To say the Kebob Café is small is another one of those understatements, like saying the universe is ‘roomy.’ There’s enough room for about twelve people to enjoy a meal, though only for six of those to sit comfortably. Other than the size of the place, my first impression was of the smell; exotic and unearthly spices for the highs, heavy with frying meat to the lows, with just a hint of pounded dough and fruit to round out the middle. Secondly, I noticed the numerous pieces of figurative art on the walls, tucked in between antique lamps, esoteric decorations and quietly hidden iPod playing traditional Mediterranean music. Wait a second. Figurative art? Must not be too strict of Muslims I thought. This thought was seconded, voted upon and passed unanimously when the Chef came over and offered us something to drink, pointing out the numerous wines and beers he had on hand.
Barely had I begun to notice how different Kebob Café was from the run-of-the-mill places, the Chef came over, sat down with us and began to go over some of the various menu items he was preparing that night. Not through rote memory, but rather on a journey, he recited the various dishes he was capable of preparing.
Now, I’ve been to places that had the gimmick of not having a menu. Either they offer only one or two entree choices, or they force you to just kind of guess from the waitress’s speech. But, this was different. There’s no menu at the Kebob Café, because I think the Chef doesn’t like it being so clinical. He, and his helper, are the only staff, there are no waiters or busboys or dishwashers, no hostesses or line cooks. And with so few diners per seating, it’s an intimate atmosphere. So intimate in fact, that after he gave us a few options, he saw our bewilderment and stated quite plainly “I have to go prepare someone else’s meal right now, you drink your beers and then we’ll talk through this, find something you’ll like.”
After a few minutes he did come back, returned to his seat and plainly asked “What do you like?”
We rattled off a few notions and he took the bait, hook, line and sinker. Immediately, he began to prepare a meal in his head and describe it to us “First we’ll get you some falafel and some hummus, and a salad. What do you like better: beets or artichokes? Beets? Okay, we make you a beet salad with some peppers and onions- you don’t like onions, it’s okay I know the Chef, we put in some other stuff then, mix that up with a little oil and vinegar. Then you need something like a main course; you like meat, are you vegetarian? Meat, eh?”
Then, he proceeded to rattle off the numerous meats he could prepare for us delicately roasted and served over a bed of rice; a zoo, a menagerie; beer, lamb, chicken, duck, fish (of various types), rabbit, quail, yes quail, and, while I’m not certain, he may have mentioned kangaroo, bald eagle and ibex. Indeed the Chef is half of what makes Kebob Café worth visiting and returning to. Like an old Vaudevillian, you know in your heart his banter is well rehearsed, heavily practiced and that with you, it’s the fifteen thousandth time he’s done it. But it’s good, it’s professional, and he’s a master so you can’t help but appreciate it.
You know you can trust a chef when in the close atmosphere of their restaurant you can watch then nibbling at the food they’re cooking. Once you’ve seen them do that it’s okay that they come over to your table and pick up individual pieces of a dish and show you, with their fingers, how best to combine them. When this Chef picks up, with his bare fingers, a piece of food off the platter, dips it into the sauce for you and puts it on your plate, you’re appreciative of the suggestion.
And the food. Oh yes, this is a restaurant review, so what about the food? Kebob Café is one of those places where they bring you huge plates of various foods and while you may not be able to accurately identify what exactly the particular food item is, specifically, you don’t care. It’s just big heaps of delicious food. Our meal consisted of a beet salad (beets mixed with other things we couldn’t quite identify), a huge plate of hummus, baba ganoush, fresh apples, roasted peppers, steaming hot pita bread and various other touches, which again were not identifiable but were nonetheless delicious. To top it off, we had roast lamb, stuffed with, yes, more lamb. The inside lamb was finely chopped and mixed with walnuts, spices and again, various other bits. Did we know what they were? No. Were they good? Yes. And was it lamb stuffed inside of other lamb? Yes, and it was quite good.
Kebob Café is an excellent spot for delicious food and in a good atmosphere, cooked by a Chef who knows how to make a meal a great experience. It’s intimate, it’s good, you’ll laugh, you’ll get stuffed and, if you can get a chair, you’ll have a great evening. It’s a little pricy, but well worth it. And I recommend it, because, hey, I know the Chef.
Kebob Cafe
25-12 Steinway St., Astoria, NY 11103
N or W to Astoria Blvd.
The attractiveness of Russian girls is pretty well-known. Also their avarice. Otherwise Russian bride web sites wouldn’t be so prominent and our Russian émigrés here in the States wouldn’t have the well-founded reputation of looking for “rich American husband.” Every Russian girl I’ve ever met in New York examined my wallet pocket first. Except for Uki, who was a rich nuclear physicist and didn’t need my money. Just a good lay and some vodka.
Now, I come from Georgia (the U.S. one, not that one roundabout Armenia) and we’re definitely known for our Southern belles. More beautiful and more fiery than Vivienne Leigh could ever hope for. Still, while we were 14 and spending the humid Summer days masturbating in the woods, we were always jealous of those Russian lads. They grew up with hot, loose Russian girls.
Because our girls at that age look like this:
Don’t get me wrong. If I were 13 I’d be all about the chick with the braces. But here’s the rub: Russian girls hit puberty at six or seven years old. Wendy up there is great, but look at what 14 year-old Russian boys had to fool around with:
Wouldn’t you feel cheated? I did.
Of course, when you get older this causes its own problems. A couple of weeks ago I brought a Russian girl home with me from a bar. Wouldn’t you know she was wearing Hello Kitty panties. Not ironically. We had a good conversation about Sanrio products once I got her to put her clothes back on. Here’s where my first suggestion comes in: Russian girls need a born on date.
Look, I’m no fan of the Budweiser. I think it’s weak and smells worse than old piss when it’s dried into your hair. But the Budweiser folks had a great idea in that born on date. I propose that all Russian females be implanted with an RFID tag indicating when they were born. A simple scanner would’ve helped prevent me from almost tapping jailbait and I could’ve skipped to the conversation about those delightful Badtz-Maru sunglasses Sanrio makes.
Now let’s say your wallet’s fat enough to bag you that Russian babe with the smooth thighs, perky breasts, and viciously-beautiful face. You’re probably thinking you’re set with decades of the hottest sex every night, years of dumbfounded stares of appreciation from other men, and a reason for people to talk to you at cocktail parties. As the Russians mockingly told the Germans one cold winter in 1944, “Ein minuten, bitte.”
The Russian boys have it good, but you wouldn’t want to change shoes with the Russian men. Not only is there bear wrestling, the Russian mob, and the occasional polonium poisoning, but your average 27 year-old Russian woman looks something like this:
While your 15 year-old Russian counterpart could gloat about the “nice piece” he was fondling behind the Iron Curtain, your 30 year-old Russian compatriot is stuck in a sexless hell of dentures, swollen ankles, and saggy boobs.
The tragic irony is that when a Russian woman looks like this:
is when she’s finally developed a personality. Usually an interesting one at that.
So my second proposition is that the RFID tag mentioned above also include a countdown in years, days, and hours to that Russian girl’s expiration date.
For blonde Russians, the rapid decline begins at around three months out from her 27th birthday. For the brunettes, approximately one month out. Strangely, for the rare redheaded Russian lass, the expiration date is quite unpredictable, so a concrete expiration at 26 years of age is in order.
Look, I know some people will find this offensive. I too am suspicious of RFID technology, so I totally understand. But, the fact remains it’s effective. With that out of the way, it’s also the best solution for all parties involved.
American men won’t feel deceived when they’ve hit that true, manly gravitas in their late twenties where women begin to find them the most attractive, yet be saddled with Grandma Davidova for a wife. She might offer some great insights into life, but there’s much better ass to be had out there.
It’ll spare those Russian women, too. No longer will they have to deal with cheating husbands, the loss of their income when their rich American husbands leave them jobless and with no skills or money, not to mention the daily embarrassment of him seeing those crow’s feet all over her legs. No doubt when rejected by the scan she’ll return to Russia where she can find an older man more suitable for her. Preferably a 70 year-old news stand attendant with Mommy issues.
Don’t get me started on the Poles…
There are only a handful of places I hate more than IKEA: the gypsy slums of Rome, my gangbanger friend’s couch in Compton, Las Cruces in New Mexico, South Carolina’s lovely North Augusta, and the 34th Street QuickStop DMV. That last one may actually be a tie with IKEA (and more on it in a later story).
Recently I came into some extra cash. I won’t tell you how, but it was exciting and nefarious. Having also moved into a new apartment without any furnishings it was clear to me that I must make a trip to the holy grail of middle class whitey: IKEA.
I don’t hold any guilt for that because I’m Jewish and middle management. So while I should be running the world and rich, I’m pulling in less than many waiters every year and inputting purchase orders every couple of days. Really I’m an underachiever, no matter how big my equipment is.
My first frustration with IKEA was that directions to their store were rather vague. Basically “Go to Brooklyn, we’re there.” Being a Queens boy I took the F to York street and expected to be in IKEA. Then I walked down to the Water Taxi, which I had been assured was a location from which I could take a ferry to IKEA. Turns out that all that stuff about a ferry from Brooklyn to their location was a lie. I did get to see some Asians taking wedding photos in mini-skirts and short sleeves in 25 degree weather, so I wouldn’t call it a total loss.
I did remember that there was a free shuttle from Court Square to the store, so I headed up that way. Now, again, IKEA’s instructions were basically “Go to Court Square and you’ll magically arrive at our store. Because IKEA is magic.”
What I did find, after about a half hour and several text-messages to friends from the area, was a bus stop that was two inches wide and camouflaged to look like Brooklyn. I actually only noticed it because I was sending a text message to someone and walked into the bus stop pole to which the IKEA sign was affixed with scotch tape. Very classy.
When the bus finally arrived, it was this hulking teal thing. Think the Incredible Hulk, but gay. And a bus. And driven by a guy who REALLY didn’t give a shit. Which is fine. I’ve worked several shitty jobs in the past, but I made sure to clean the spittle from my chin after the boredom got to me. Have some self-respect.
The one high point of the trip was that everyone getting on the bus was incredibly polite. It was all “No, you can go first” and “Would you like this seat?” I even ended up with a woman named Jillian in my lap, things were so friendly. She was from Norway and liked many of the bands on the label for which I work. Normally I hate Norwegians, but she smelled good and was sitting in my lap.
Speaking of Scandinavia, IKEA is supposed to work on some model of Swedish efficiency in America. This was the first thing I noticed about it. You walk in and there is only one escalator going up. There is one person at the bottom of this escalator whose job it is to scream at the top of her lungs that there are bathrooms on the first floor (our second floor, silly Yooropeens), and the second floor (our third floor) has many of the things you need to furnish your home. There is also a woman with a bowl of candy. She has no teeth.
Black arrows guide your path throughout the store. Not that anyone pays attention to these. And most of the price tags in the store include an aisle and bin number you can write down. Not for when you check out and it just gets sent to your house, but so you can check out, get a print out, then go down to the Self-Serve furniture area and put your heavy items on a cart. THEN you can check out. And then you can go pick up the extra parts of your furniture. Oh, and THEN you can take your 500 pound cart (no exaggeration, my receipt says 473 pounds) to the home delivery section. Which is 300 yards from the checkout counter.
The obvious problem with this Swedish efficiency is, of course, that there are no actual Swedes involved. I didn’t even detect a hint of Dutch or German accent in other shoppers, so clearly there is no one in attendance who could offer anything close to Swedish efficiency.
Instead people go the wrong way, no one travels in a straight line, everyone is from a different ethnic group or socio-economic class, and maybe two people in the entire store listen to Metal. At least the signs were bilingual in Spanish. There were several Jews, which is promising, but mostly I wondered how squirrely nebbishes who looked like that could land women who looked like THAT.
My friend Johnny described it as walking into a UFO. If so, it’s an alien spacecraft populated entirely by the denizens of Steinway Street in Astoria and the Russian section of the boardwalk at Coney Island. He mentioned how it’s podlike, with all of these sections set up to look like what your house could look like with these goods in it. That would be true except for the absurd panoply of human waste occupying each pod.
These were truly alien. There was the mother changing her baby on the quite sexy red couch, which was selling me on the bending a woman over it possibilities until the moment I noticed mother, shit-cheeked baby, and diaper changing. None of which was taking place in a bathroom.
I also saw a room with elegant wood paneling, underlit shelving, and fifteen Russian girls in their early 20s with pot-bellies who completely negated my other article on how hot Russian women ten to be (for a short period of time). I’ve never seen so many moles, many cancerous.
Another example was the sexy bachelor pad setup, with a combination chaise lounge/sofa, entertainment centre, and hot hot heat media shelves…with the seven year old girl attempting to be sexy on the bedding. I think my sex drive is still suffering.
Even the purchasing system was Byzantine. You grab a pencil and this tiny form they give you. Then you see a thing you want, write down what it is and the price. And most of the time you write down an aisle number and bin number after this. Unless, of course, none is provided. In which case you have to go ask the “Co-Worker” at a register (if you can find one) about it.
The “Co-Workers” are “Over-Worked” and barely paying attention. So if they miss a couple of items out of your list…oops. Which brings me to this self-service furniture pick up. After you visit a Co-Worker, you’re supposed to go downstairs and grab your own stuff. Only then do you get to a cashier. So I head on downstairs to get my stuff. I’m a young man, strong like bull as a cute Russian girl told me while I struggled with an entire couch. But, as the couch just spoken about attests, there’s only so much I can do when the couch is ten feet long and I’m not.
So it’s entirely unhelpful when the IKEA spokesgrunt with the backbrace looks me over and says it’s lighter than it looks. Then he looks over my friend Jillian who’s only a shade over five feet tall and 95 pounds (most of which must be her breasts) and says she could’ve helped me. Yes, she could’ve, if I was trying to use her to seduce my way out of a concentration camp in World War II. The irony of this will play out in a couple of paragraphs.
I have had a pair of shopping experiences that were worse. In 1986 my Mom accidentally left me in the changing room of a Mervyn’s department store where I was briefly accosted by security who mistook me for a very small woman attempting to steal a rather large brassiere and some ruby red pumps.
There was also the time I stopped in the aforementioned Las Cruces, New Mexico to fill up on gas at a Sonoco gas station while moving my mother’s home from near Austin to near San Francisco. Of course any visit to Sonoco gas stations ends in a half hour bound and gagged in the storeroom after an armed robbery. Really, all I wanted was some gas, a couple of sour fruity straws, and a pack of Camel Wides to last me until Bakersfield.
After all of this, my night would not have been complete without being called a Nazi. To my surprise, I was called such just as I boarded the complimentary bus back to Borough Hall. While I contemplate my status in Hitler’s genocidal machine, I can at least rest tight in the fact that my living room will soon be furnished…if they get my address right.
Many users of computers, perhaps even you, the reader, have been frustrated by what is seen as a malfunctioning program or operating system. Frustrating error messages, unexpected stops, strange loops, spinning beach balls and blue screens of death make our blood pressure rise, and in extreme cases, can lead to increased slide rule and type writer sales. But, the frustrations don’t arise from malfunctioning computers. Instead the computer is actually functioning just fine. It’s just programmed at its very core to be incredibly annoying.
Everything in a computer is controlled by basic binary. Either there is electricity flowing through a circuit or there isn’t. One or off, nothing in between. So, when you give your computer a command it follows its programming and sometimes an error occurs because for the binary brain something either can be done or it can’t. There’s absolutely no grey area for these machines. There’s no process to sort of open Minesweeper or almost save a file. No, either an operation can be performed or it can’t. It’s annoying to us users when something can’t be done, because we’re human and our thinking isn’t done in binary. We have ideas like ‘sort of’ and concepts like ‘almost.’
Our brains aren’t built for tasks. They’re built for survival. Animals that are the best at improvisation tend to live longer and leave more offspring than those which live according to hard-and-fast rules. When confronted with a problem, our brains naturally attempt to solve it by any available method. Indeed, in our natural lives the only binary is that you’re either alive or dead. Nothing else is that black and white, especially not our problem solving skills. Over the millennia, the harsh reality of existence has forced us to adapt, creating the idea of the desperate, improvisational fix.
Thus, when a system, a structure or a plan starts to fail, humans tend to interrupt the failing trajectory and improvise something, anything new. And if the unplanned jury-rig isn’t as good as the original planned idea, we learn to live with it, with something that sort of works, barely works or almost works. We’ll even take pride in an ingenious solution to a problem that allows a system to barely work. We’re even happy if something is the worse possible solution, except for all the others that we’ve tried.
We’ve all had our MacGuyver moments, where radical improvisation prevented a total failure. Mine involved my old beat up VW micro-bus, a veritable fountain of improvisational repair opportunities. One day, as I was driving, the clutch cable broke, snapped in half. The clutch pedal couldn’t communicate the user’s instructions to the engine. That car was, in the common parlance, broken down. As a human, I surveyed my surrounding and found a metal guitar string which I used as a jury-rigged clutch cable, enabling the car to function again. A human can think that way. No, a guitar string is not a clutch cable, but did the car run? Let’s say it barely ran, it barely functioned and I barely got the car to a garage where a proper fix could be done. Luckily, for a human in the real world, barely is good enough.
Computers don’t understand that concept because we don’t program them to understand that. In the same scenario the computer would probably alert the user that the instructions weren’t reaching the engine. If you were lucky. It might also just give you a message that the car was not operable. And it would do the same for a software or hardware problem.
Any deviation from the standard commands and the computer will simply not be able to complete an operation. It can’t just about run Photoshop if it can’t locate the exe file. No, something either can be done or is impossible. There’s the source of our frustration; two different methods of thought, one rigid, one flexible.
In truth, an error message, or a freeze up or even a death screen actually mean the computer is operating perfectly. After all, it’s been programmed to display that error message when it encounters something that deviates from the standard process. That’s its job. It does precisely what we’ve programmed it to do. Just sometimes we don’t like what the programs tell it to do. So next time you see an error message, don’t get angry with the computer, no get angry with the people who built and programmed it. Take your frustrations out on them, with a baseball bat if necessary. Then they’ll learn to start making better machines.
