The fad in trendy restaurants is small plates – "tapas." I recently took Uncle Nunzi and his friend Vito to one of those hot new spots and they were less than thrilled. The waitress told us the portions were perfect for three to share. Maybe if you are Calista Flockhart, Posh Spice or Nicole Richie.
Uncle and Vito got into a fight over the last shred of wild boar prosciutto, which looked like it was from "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." I dropped my portion of the raw blue cheese and Uncle caught me licking it off the table. It was when the waitress brought out the bone-marrow crostini I knew we were really in trouble. The tiny dish could have been dabbed with toothpaste for all we could tell. Then, Vito bit his finger trying to eat one. We dropped more than $60 a piece. Uncle decided "tapas" means "is that all there is?" Vito was just glad when he used the restroom the toilets weren’t tiny, too …
My take on the Rush Limbaugh-Viagra deal: You mean somebody is actually doing it with Rush? Ann Coulter?…
Here’s my tip for the Phillies organization: Ditch the entire team and save $95 million in payroll. For the rest of the season, just have giveaways, fireworks and the Phanatic at the ballpark – without bad baseball to ruin the fun. With the money saved in players’ salaries, you can hold more dollar-dog and bobble-head nights and, if you must have some baseball, you can invite Little League teams to play. And just think: you won’t have to sit through any more stinking Phillies games in order to see the fireworks.
Another sports-related idea: Owners of professional franchises should stipulate, if they don’t get to the playoffs in a 10-year period, the team will be taken over by the League and sold to the highest bidder. Just think how much more motivated the Phillies’ owners would be to win …
Moving on to more important matters: I don’t view the recent missile testing by North Korea as negative. Frankly, North Korean missiles are only slightly less impressive than our feeble attempts to make Americans believe we could intercept one. The big story of the tests is it pretty much fizzled out and, by the time they develop one that can land in Hawaii, Pyongyang will be just a bad memory. But was your confidence bolstered by Dubya’s assertion he was "reasonably sure" we could have shot it down?
At the same time North Korea was testing its long-range missile, it was opening up to tourism. You can now travel to the country this summer, but, as an American citizen, you still can’t go to Cuba. You can probably pick up an "Axis of Evil" T-shirt while you’re there, but don’t try to buy a Cuban cigar and bring it to the States. As a friend reminded me, she can buy a blouse made in China, but it is against the law to buy liquor in New Jersey …
The right wing has gone absolutely nuts. They don’t know what they hate more: The New York Times or the Supreme Court. The Times I can understand because it doesn’t have a comic strip, but the Supreme Court? Here is a place loaded with justices appointed by Republican presidents, which put George W. Bush in the White House in the first place. But, for the crazy right-wingers, it’s "what have you done for me lately?" And lately, the Court has the temerity to shoot down Bush’s authority to make up the law as he continues to use 9/11 as rationale. Three separate-but-equal branches of the government can be a terrible inconvenience …
Here’s a question for the president: if, as you say, we are fighting in Baghdad so we won’t have to fight the terrorists here, then why isn’t there a shortage of plots to attack us? Did we forget to tell the terrorists they are supposed to be preoccupied with fighting in Iraq?
Incidentally, since the war is just six months short of World War II, when does leaving stop qualifying as a "cut and run"? Should we still be fighting in the jungles of Vietnam? Did we settle for a truce too soon at the 38th parallel in Korea? Did the South run when Lee surrendered? I’m just asking for guidelines.
