General

So, I spoke with my friend Edo last night and he pointed out that this blog is kind of boring right now. I love that he can be totally honest with me. Anyway, for the couple of you who know about this site, a note:

Eventually there will be a more formal “Blog” section to this website with more in-depth, and hopefully interesting, entries. There will also be a “Reviews” section that will contain my thoughts on restaurants, hotels, books, movies, etc.

This “weblog” section will always be for random links, thoughts, quotes, events, etc. Much more on the fly.

Anyway, so stay tuned as the other sections will go live soon.

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Google SMS is my new favorite thing. Thanks to Gaper’s Block for the tip. I am absolutely addicted to their SMS service.

You can use your mobile phone to get information by text message direct from Google. As Google explains, “Send your query as a text message and get phone book listings, dictionary definitions, product prices and more. Just text. No links. No web pages. Simply the answers you’re looking to find.”

For example, send a text message (called an SMS) to 46645 (GOOGL) that reads “China Garden Chicago, IL” and you get a message back that says “China Garden 2256 North Clark Street Chicago IL (773) 477-3219.” You can even be more general and send “Chinese food 60614″ and see what they recommend.

I’m a bit of an NPR junkie. I also love food. So when NPR does a story about food - well, you can imagine.

In any case, Fresh Air interviewed Ruth Reichl, editor of Gourmet Magazine and the excellent Tender at the Bone. She was also the former restaurant critic for the New York Times. Not a shabby resume, eh?

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This is a word-for-word transcript of a voicemail message I received from my friend Simon. I swear to God I am not making this up.

I had this epiphany, like, you know we could write a theme song for you. And I’m thinking about it like, ya know sorta a la Shaft. Ya know, the first opening chorus could be:

Who’s the bad-ass banker that makes all the women swoon? And in the background we’ve got like an Isaac Hayes-kinda guy goin’: Gerakasae. And you can be like: Daaamn Straight. And I think it could be really cool and I’m thinking that maybe it’s something that, like, on first dates and stuff like that you can just play in the Z3 you know while girls are with you and stuff. I think theme songs are really under-rated and more people should have ‘um.