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  • Pier 49 Pizza


    Here’s another half-review.

    I was taken to lunch the other day to Pier 49 Pizza, a new restaurant, somewhere in the Phoenix/Tempe borderland.

    I didn’t get a menu, and didn’t notice the prices, so I don’t have price/quantity information, but as for the pizza, here goes…

    I gotta say, I completely agree with Alton Brown that the crust of a pizza is the essential foundation of a pizza and the toppings are just a covering, sometimes disguising the underlying problems with the crust.

    That said, I love bread, any kind of bread, but not every kind of bread should be made into pizza dough.

    The list of inappropriate bread doughs is probably endless, but for the purposes of this review, let’s start with this one: Sourdough is not pizza dough.

    The flavor and the texture are just wrong, and so Pier 49’s pizza gets off on the wrong foot.

    As for the toppings, both the cheese and the pepperoni were unremarkable. In fact, the pepperoni tasted like the pre-sliced Hormel pepperoni you can buy at the supermarket.

    The sauce was tasty, and I quite liked it, but the pedestrian toppings and light, airy, odd-flavored crust just made for a passable, but easily forgettable pizza experience.

    I can’t recommend the place.


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  • Dr. Milker


    This was just too priceless not to take a picture of.

    Incidentally, despite the awful name, Dr. Milker is the most normal tasting milk I found in Taiwan.

    I’m not an expert on pasteurization, but I couldn’t help noticing that the description of the process on Taiwanese milk usually involved phrases like, “Ultra high temperature flash pasteurization.”

    Consistent with that, most of the milk tasted scalded. We couldn’t get Michelle to drink the milk in Taiwan, it tasted so bad.


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  • Leftovers


    We’ve been awfully busy/sick lately and just haven’t had much time to post… besides, when you’re sick/busy, there’s nothing much really to tell.

    I offloaded my cellphone photos tonight and discovered I had a few leftovers from Taiwan.

    This was one of my favorites. As we were waiting in the airport terminal, in the food court, getting ready to leave, I chanced to go to the urinal.

    In some of the toilets in the airport, they have airplane identification guides pasted over the urinals so you can learn about some of the fascinating jets that ply the skies of Taiwan. (I have to wonder if providing reading material doesn’t increase the puddle on the floor, though.)

    However, in the food court restroom, they have signs like these.

    Certainly, while visiting the restrooms in the food court, while taking a leak, in the airport terminal after you’ve already entered the country and passed though immigrations and customs, is just the right time to remind you not to bring scorpions and cockroaches into the country, right?


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  • Humbug Tree, Part Deaux



    You see? It really is for the kids.

    When I came home today Michelle was all wound up, wanting to decorate the Christmas tree. We had to make her take a nap she was so jittery in anticipation.

    All the while it was being decorated she’d look at each new decoration, or each change in the tree and exclaim, “how pretty!” (In Chinese, as it happens.)

    It’s a simple tree, but everyone seems happy with it.


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  • Humbug Tree


    OK, so I’ve never really come up with a good, non-religious name for the good old fashioned Christmas tree. “Holiday Tree” just doesn’t have much pizzazz.

    Did you realize that Christmas Trees are really not all that old? The first known one in England was Queen Victoria’s. In fact, that whole Dickensian Christmas thing was a cynical ploy to try to stop poor people from rioting at Christmas time.

    The New York City Police Department was established because of such Christmas riots. (It really sucked to be poor during the Industrial Revolution.)

    There’s a fascinating documentary on the History of Christmas that comes on the History Channel (or one of those) every year about this time that really puts the whole thing in perspective. It’s odd how dispelling all those Christmas myths actually puts me in the holiday mood.

    In any case, he we all are with our holiday festive season tree, completely unadorned as we just brought it home today.

    It’s for the kids, really, and it is a live tree.

    In our back yard, we have two other surviving holiday trees. Irene’s and my first tree, and Michelle’s holiday tree.

    The tree on the table behind us is James’ first holiday tree.

    You know, looking at this picture, I realize I should have had everyone stand on boxes. (Actually, Michelle is on a chair.)


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  • Considerate People

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    I haven’t been feeling well the last few days, but we managed to get out for a while today and take Michelle to the park. It was such a nice day that it felt good to get out of the house and breathe some (almost) fresh air.

    When we arrived at one of the playground areas it was empty except for two older people (one of whom is pictured here) going through the sandpit with metal detectors.

    When I was a kid, my dad had a metal detector and, on one occasion, at a park near our old home in Tucson I found nearly $14 in coins. That was at least 25 years ago, and I suspect I was the first person to ever search that park because it certainly never happened again.

    In any case, these people were going over the whole area diligently.

    Of course, I’m not mentioning this to congratulate them on their perseverance. I’m mentioning it because as they detected things, they had nifty sand filtering shovels that made it easy for them to dig up the items and clean the sand off.

    They didn’t find anything of value, just trash and such, which they promptly tossed back into the sandpit. The inconsiderate SOBs!

    I went around after they left and picked up all the stuff they’d uncovered and put it in the trash. It would have been so easy for them, but it probably never occurred to them to do something for somebody else.

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  • Flickr Done!

    I finished upoading the last of my photos from Taiwan.

    Gridman’s Photos

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  • November Flickr Cram

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    It’s the end of the month and that means my flickr upload allotment will roll over on the first of December, so I’m cramming as many of the 300+ remaining photos from my Taiwan trip onto Flickr as I can tonight.

    With the new camera I’m generally getting about 5 photos per 1% allotment of space, so in December I’ll finish uploading all the remaining pictures, which will take about 69% of December’s allotment.

    Considering how few pictures I’m taking now that I’m back home and nothing is inspiring me to take photos of it, I shouldn’t have any need to do a New Year’s Eve cram.

    Incidentally, I’m not just posting my good pictures to flickr, I’m posting every photo I haven’t deleted outright. It’s my off-site backup, so to speak, so keep that in mind when you’re looking at the awful ones.

    My flickr photos page

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  • Venezia’s Pizza

    Venezia's Pizza

    Things are slowly returning to normal around the house, although the Christmas holidays tend to make everything a little out of the ordinary. Most people had a four-day weekend, but, of course, I didn’t as the State doesn’t close for the day after Thanksgiving. They might as well have, it was nearly abandoned.

    Anyway, it was the holiday weekend that lead me to try Venezia’s Pizza.

    Since my disappointing discovery that all the Round Table Pizzas in Taiwan appear to be gone, I’ve been meaning to go to Phoenix’s one remaining Round Table since we got back. We arranged to meet some friends who live in the area on that far and distant shore. (It’s just before you drop off the end of the planet or hit Albuquerque, whichever comes first.)

    Upon arrival, it was closed. Everything appeared normal inside, it was just closed. (I tried calling them this evening and the phone just rings off the hook. To quote virtually ever character in Star Wars, “I have a bad feeling about this.”)

    We altered our plans and didn’t have pizza until later than evening, far, far away on Pecos Rd at Venezia’s Pizza.

    Before I commit commentary on this pizza, let me just point out that I did not eat a proper control pizza and do not consider this to be an “official” Lone Locust review. We had the pizza as take-away and it was extra-large, two things that always diminish the quality of a pizza.

    For starters, it wasn’t fully cooked: No shock there, no one ever manages to get a 16“ pizza cooked through to the middle, that’s why I review smaller sizes.

    However, the rest of my opinion is favorable. It’s one of the few pizzas I’ve had in a long time that you could clearly tell in the taste that everything was freshly made in the restaurant. OK, I doubt they actually made the mozzarella in the store, but both the crust and particularly the sauce were fresh and didn’t come from Sysco Food Services.

    In that respect, I liked it, and will have to go back for a proper review soon.

    Venezia’s has three locations, all on the east side of the Phoenix metro area.

    The Extra large cheese pizza was $11.25. (Our usual pizza pricing comparison is based on the smallest pepperoni pizza per inch and would have been $0.08.)

    Preliminary conclusion: warrants further study

    [Revision 3/11/2006, Follow-Up Review]

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  • Meriam C. Cooper

    I bought the re-mastered DVDs of the original King Kong, Son of Kong and Mighty Joe Young tonight. That’s something I’ve been looking forward to ever since the announced Peter Jackson’s re-make of Kong.

    (Sometimes that’s the best part about re-makes, the originals finally get released on DVD! Although, in this case, I haven’t yet been disillusioned with the Jackson re-make. If there’s anyone out there that can make it right, it’s him.)

    In any case, I didn’t watch Kong, instead I went for the DVD extras. One of which is on Meriam C. Cooper, the man ultimately behind Kong’s existence.

    In Taiwan, I’d picked up a re-issue of the 1931 novelization of the film, and in the introduction they gave a brief synopsis of Cooper’s life – even from that brief overview, it was amazing.

    The documentary on his life was even more incredible. Sometimes there are people who’s lives you read about and it seems they’ve done more than one human could possible do and Cooper is one such.

    For example, here are just some of the highlights that come immediately to mind:

    • Joined US Naval Academy (pre-WW I) but was forced to resign because of his belief that planes would someday destroy ships
    • Enlisted and flew a bomber in WW I
    • Was shot down in enemy territory. The plane was on fire, his copilot was shot through the neck, his hands burned to the point where he couldn’t hold the stick. he managed to open the throttle wide, dive the plane, controlling it only with his elbow and knees. The power dive put out the fire and he managed to land the plane (again with only elbows and knees) and he and the copilot got out. He spent the last of the war in a German prisoner hospital.
    • After the war he joined an group of American pilots fighting the Soviets who were trying to take Poland. He was again shot down, and spent months in a Soviet concentration camp in Russia
    • Escaped the Soviets in a daring overland escape (Including having to overpower and slit the throat of a Russian soldier
    • Went into natural documentaries and spent years living in Africa, Persia and Siam living with the natives
    • Had a falling out with the studios when he made the film, the Four Feathers and quit
    • Became a director at Pan-American airlines
    • Was brought back to RKO by David O. Selznik in an effort to shape up the studio which was going bankrupt.
    • During this time he managed to get his pet project, King Kong, made (That’s another story)
    • Was the leading “visionary” or advocate of the Technicolor process which he thought would revolutionize the film industry but most others didn’t believe in
    • When WWII started to break out, Cooper was too old for the military, so he joined the Flying Tigers in China, and not only was he their Chief-Of-Staff, but flew in the lead bomber on all their missions.
    • The Flying Tigers ultimately got incorporated back into the US Military and at the end of the war he had attained the rank of Brigadier General
    • Came back to Hollywood determined to make films to show the American spirit in an effort to counter Soviet propaganda films. He teamed with the legendary John Ford and together made some of Ford’s greatest films
    • He was shown and then pushed and promoted the Cinerama process, a three-screen, wraparound process that literally immersed the audiences in the screens. (My father has told me about seeing a Cinerama film, it was apparently quite impressive, but failed to catch on.)

    And if that wasn’t enough, in that time he managed to get married and raise three children, which, when you think about it, represents for most people the sum total of their lives, not just an afterthought in a list of amazing accomplishments.

    Amazing man, amazing life.

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