Slumberland

Jason and I visited Stellar Pizza and Ale in Georgetown the other night, but, unfortunately, the experience didn’t live up to the name.

Here’s the background: I had just gotten back in town from a trip. I was very hungry, thirsty, and tired. So we thought, hey, pizza would be good, and there would be beer for Jason and a friend of ours who would be there with us. (I’m not a beer-drinker.)

We arrived at the restaurant and had a seat. The place smelled of delicious garlic. Soon the waiter came by and took our orders. I got a 1/2 pie and the guys got a whole pie. They ordered beers and I got a diet Coke.

We waited quite a while before the drinks showed up, but eventually they did. However, more than 30 minutes after we ordered our pizzas, the waiter came by and said “We are out of jalape?os. Would you like something else instead?” We were surprised that they hadn’t even started the pizzas yet, but we chose replacement ingredients for both pizzas.

Maybe 1/2 hour later, the waiter showed up with the boys’ food, and said to me, “We’re giving you a full pie after all!” and set a pizza down in front of me. I thought for a second that they were making up for the delay. WRONG. It wasn’t my pizza.

We tried to get her attention for a while but the waiter was doing the patented eye contact avoidance technique so common in restaurants with bad service. Finally with much arm-waving we got her back and she took the pizza away. Remember, I was completely starving at this point. I couldn’t just eat the other pizza, because it contained stuff I don’t eat.

She came back a minute later with a 1/2 pie. “Here’s yours.” Oh. I guess I don’t get the full pie after all. Well, at least the food was here. The pizza was OK, though their sauce is sweet and bland. With better sauce, the pizza would be quite good.

The guys soon ran out of beer and the waiter did not seem to notice. The same thing happened when I ran out of my diet Coke. Eventually we did get refills, after much waiting.

We got no discount or any acknowledgement that the service had been poor. Most restaurants probably would have given us an appetizer or a dessert to make up for the wait, but nothing like that happened here. There was no sign that the restaurant was understaffed or extra busy. There seemed to be lots of waiters running around. It was just lousy service. I don’t particularly want to go back — which is a shame, since the place has a great jukebox. (I played 18 songs on it. And my songs were playing for less than half of the time we were there, which gives you an idea how long we were there.)

Slacktivist has a post discussing a 1946 classroom film on “Despotism”, which included some interesting narration:

“If a community’s economic distribution becomes slanted, its middle-income groups grow smaller and despotism stands a better chance to gain a foothold. …

“If this condition exists over the nation as a whole, so that the control of jobs and business opportunities is in a few hands, despotism stands a good chance. …

“A community rates low on an information scale when the press, radio and other channels of communication are controlled by only a few people, and when citizens have to accept what they are told. In communities of this kind, despotism stands a good chance. …

“If books, newspapers and the radio are efficiently controlled, the people will read and accept exactly what the few in control want them to.”

All of this, of course, is more than a little chilling in today’s climate. You can view the film online here.

Bubble tea has developed into a major fad in the Seattle area. Certain neighborhoods have multiple bubble tea shops, all serving hundreds of sweetened fruit and tea drink lovers. It’s good stuff, though if you’re not a tea-drinker, don’t worry — many flavors have no tea at all. (I just drank a strawberry bubble tea that was essentially strawberry milk. But who doesn’t like that?) And if the tapioca pearls scare you don’t worry about that, either. You can get the drinks sans tapioca.

My favorite bubble tea shop is Honey Moon Milk Tea in the Uwajimaya food court, followed by Yunnie Bubble Tea on the Ave. But if I’m looking for another place to try, there is always BobaFind.com, a site with a database of tea shops. Type in your zip code and you’ll find where this delicious drink can be found in your area.

Miller Brewing is suing Nordstrom for selling some t-shirts that say “It’s Mullet Time” and “Mullet Low Life.” They claim the shirts are “nearly identical” to the trademarks “Miller High Life” and “It’s Miller Time.” Yeah, that’s because it’s a PARODY, stupid. Good luck winning that battle in court, if it gets that far.

I didn’t find an image of the shirts online, but I did giggle a little at the results of my Google Images search for “it’s mullet time”.

(Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I was out of town for a week and mostly offline during that time.)

An old suitcase in an Australian flea market has been discovered, which contains a bunch of old Beatles memorabilia as well as “previously unheard” material by the band.
Of course, it’s worth tons of money if all of this is genuine.

What I can’t figure out is how the seller wouldn’t have realized what he had.

Mei Wah is a series of lessons on how to read Chinese characters — but not just any characters. These are the ones you’ll need to read menus and restaurant signs. Very cool and lots of fun, too. (via Anita Rowland.)