Wednesday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Wednesday

Put the lime in the coconut

If you ever want to get an education, post something just slightly wrong on the Internet. I noticed these Persian limes at the grocery store this evening and put the picture on Facebook, writing something silly like “Persian limes, from Mexico.”

My dear friend Kelly, who is not a horticulturist, but did stay at a Holiday Inn Express near some lime trees once, wrote “Persian limes are just a kind of lime. You know what makes them Persian limes? They aren’t Key Limes.”

One thing led to another and now I have to know all about this particular citrus. Wikipedia tells me they are also called Tahiti limes. Great, another geography-challenged fruit.

They were developed in California. I feel duped.

Kelly, as always, was right though: they aren’t key limes. Wikipedia, and I’ll take their word, says Persian limes are less acidic than key limes and don’t have the bitterness central to key lime’s unique flavor.

We bought the store’s entire inventory of groceries. It was us and the poor gentleman behind us at the checkout line who had to make do with the crumbs we left in the back corner near the dairy section. You’ll be happy to know that we remembered to save the earth this trip and took our canvas bags. (We sometimes forget. Once they made it into the car but not into the store.) The kindly man who bagged our purchase up managed to completely load them up. If we’d chosen plastic there’d be 14,000 bags floating around on the kitchen floor just now.

Those bags, too, have a purpose. We keep a small supply on a hook in the mud room, but eventually it swells out to something you have to bob and weave around, less you take a glancing blow from the big tumor of plastic. You only need so many of the things for storage and secondary disposal.

Really I want to take a competitor’s save the earth bags into our grocery store and see what they do. Would they sack the groceries up without complaint? Would they glare? Would there be a conference? Their big on conferences there. Would they signal in the manager, they are ever-present like you see in the movies set in casinos when the hero makes too much money and the suits get involved. They are much, much, nicer than all of that, but it is remarkable how quickly a manager will swoop in.

Alabama Adventure may be for sale again. This is an amusement park and water park combo near where I grew up. I remember, just after my senior year of high school Larry Langford, who was mayor of Fairfield, a suburb of Birmingham, pitched his plan for VisionLand to a room full of high school kids. It was his dry run. He announced the project publicly a few days later. All the nearby towns, he said, would chip in land and money for land and they were going to build this incredible park. It would start a bit small and grow every year. Langford got the land, got the money, got a lot more money from the state legislature and built his park. He even had a statue inside.

He’d go on to being on the county commission and then the mayor of Birmingham, despite still living in Fairfield. And now he’s in jail.

But the park has struggled since not long after it was created. The current owner is the third owner. It was the second owner, after the park went bankrupt (the $65 million project went for just $6 million), that changed the name from VisionLand to Visionland, and finally to Alabama Adventure.

The entire Wikipedia entry is a sad collection of grand ideas that never came to fruition for one reason or another. The place has earned a bad reputation in some respects, but there’s a lot of that going around that area, too. The best part of the place, to me, was that you could spend a day at a real theme park and not have to drive all the way back home from Atlanta smelling like stale water. Home was minutes away!

I had a few dates at the park, and one company picnic. On a separate occasion I took some nice pictures there. Some of those photographs went into my portfolio which helped me get other freelance work. Here’s one of them that just happened to be floating around in some dusty corner of the site. It isn’t the best one, but I loved the water bucket obstacle course part of the water park:

I scanned that eight years or more ago, which is why it is so small. I’ll dig up the original at some point and do it a bit more justice. (Don’t bet on it.)

I enjoyed the lazy river, and never caught any problem worse than standing in the place where the fireworks debris falls. You never think about that, when you’re watching fireworks, but the cardboard and the embers have to land somewhere. Don’t let it land on you.

In my freshman year literature class I wrote a comparative essay on Machiavelli’s Prince and Larry Langford. I’m sure the paper was dreadful, though I somehow recall getting an A on it. Don’t ask me why I kept that memory. Thinking back on it, though, I’m intrigued by how different parts now apply to Langford’s tale. Some of it was all wrong in the beginning, but he grew into the treatise’s notion of idealism (he was vainly spurring on a campaign to bid for the 2020 Olympics in Birmingham when his political realm fell down around him) and then it all turned into a sad, sad parody, as some considered The Prince.

Sometime after the second owner of the theme park came along they removed Langford’s statue. It was the preface to Langford’s version of Machiavelli’s Mandrake*.

Who comes here for obvious references to 16th century Italian comedies? You can raise your hand. It is OK. You’re among friends.

I trimmed the bushes today. Well, one bush. It was so hot that I’d broken into a sweat by the time I’d gotten the extension cord untangled.

So, one prickly shrub, scoop up the trimmings and remember that old saw about discretion being the better part of pruning.

When The Yankee came home she didn’t even notice the trimming. Subtlety is an art form, friends.

We rode our bikes this evening. Or I did. She tried, but had a flat close to home. We are out of tubes, so we’ll have a stock-up trip to the bike shop tomorrow. I got in 19 miles and was not pleased with any of it, really. Seems 10 days off is too many. Now I must recover my legs again.

But I cruised down a road I’ve never been on before, so that was a nice treat. Well, I’ve gone the other way, the uphill side, of that road before. Today I got to see how the road should be attacked: from its highest point.

journalism / links / Wednesday — Comments Off
17
Aug 11

Things to read

This is great video. What a country:

More details here. Hard to imagine that happening in a lot of other countries. At the same time, I suspect that people on the rope line will be a little more thoroughly screened in the future. There are reasons campaigns and politicians like to work friendly crowds. But, still, how great that there is occasionally the opportunity to just maybe have a fleeting conversation on something of substance with which you disagree about your president.

And good for President Obama, too, in briefly engaging with the guy. He blows him off at the end — there are a lot of people there to meet and greet — but he didn’t ignore him like you might imagine a politician doing. That’s nice to see.

Obama also reportedly said this, elsewhere in Iowa. Pretty sure everyone wishes he hadn’t:

“Democracy is always a messy business in a big country like this,” Obama responded. “When you listen to what the federalists said about the anti-federalists … those guys were tough. Lincoln, they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me.”

This was during a Q&A with an “invited guest” (See?) who asked how he deals with his congressional critics in the GOP. The writer’s of that story then gleefully called up every Lincoln scholar in their office that day to disabuse everyone of this notion. Sometimes ad libs are bad.

Here’s a tale designed to chill you. Should you see a traffic stop gone wrong, think twice about pulling out your camera. That video could get you
sued:

The amateur videographer with the colorful vocabulary who memorialized the alleged 2009 police beating of Melvin Jones III during a traffic stop may be charged with illegal wiretapping.

One of four police officers disciplined for the incident on Nov. 27, 2009, Michael Sedergren, has filed an application for a criminal complaint against videographer Tyrisha Greene. Sedergren, who was suspended for 45 days, claims it was illegal for Greene to videotape him without his consent.

Greene made a 20-minute film that included Jones, who is black, being struck repeatedly by a white officer with a flashlight while a group of other white officers stood by without intervening. The video also included an expletive-filled commentary by Greene, 29, who sounded alarmed by the scene that unfolded on Rifle Street.

The suspect who was beaten has a record and apparently went for one of the officers’ sidearms. So, yes, he was going to be stopped. The officer who lost his cool, and his colleagues who stood around, should have also stopped.

You’d think with dash-mounted cameras, and more than a few of these stories making the news every year or two the officers would do well to pull the guy off, but that didn’t happen here.

The suspect’s mugshot — he was beaten badly — and the video are in that story, along with a thorough detailing of the legal aspects. The story comes down on the side of the videographer, who the plaintiff-officer claims “improper interception of wire and oral communication.” That makes no sense in this circumstance, as far as the stories go.

Oh look, a newspaper stealing a photo from a casual photographer. This never ends well. A woman took a picture of mannequins at a clothing store, made a clever comment and that generated some interest from various publications. The Washington Post asked for permission to use it, and she gave them her approval. The Daily Mail asked and she turned them down.

In the comments, however, there is a great debate about copyright, if you’re interested in that sort of thing. If this were an issue in the U.S. you could say Daily Mail basically followed the guidelines and precedent in place, using a thumbnail, and that was asking to use the private individual’s photo and being denied. Everyone is right, so everyone feels wronged. Given that this all took place in London, I’m not entirely clear on the etiquette and copyright details. More importantly, how did that woman take a picture in a mall without the mall cops giving her the Spanish Inquisition?

(Update: The story has been pulled altogether from the Daily Mail site, but the conversation on Boing Boing continues.)

About that Miami football scandal, here’s a nice look at the presentation from many of the online outlets, via the always outstanding Fear the Hat. Surprisingly ESPN’s site has been incredibly late to the party, as you’ll see in the screen caps.

I took a look at the front page of the Miami Herald this morning. They ran the story as a lead piece on the front page, but there was no color and no art.

NBC 10 in Philadelphia is flexing a little social media muscle:

The local NBC station in Philadelphia has started reporting news on location-based social network Foursquare. Initially, NBC 10 will pick one lead story a day and have a reporter check in on Foursquare from relevant locations and leave text and photo news updates. Later, this will extend to multiple stories and individual Foursquare accounts for each reporter.

That’s a fine idea. And since the Poynter piece didn’t do it, I’ll add that in addition to working Foursquare, they should also run a similar program elsewhere. You want to have some say in your distribution? You have to know, and go, where your audience is. Expand this program to Facebook Places, Gowalla, and, really, wherever their audience gathers.

adventures / iPhone / Samford / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
10
Aug 11

Travel day

We are on the road again, but this time only for a short trip. And our flight was in the late evening, which was a change. Usually we have the up early and rush-rush-rush itinerary, but with the 8 p.m. flight I could sleep, finish my presentation, eat, pack the day of the trip, run errands and so on.

So I bought stamps, which made me consider the wisdom of alternatively putting the destination address in the return address spot. Would that really work? I mean, aside from convincing the recipient that your a cheapskate? If you put an envelope in the mail and the to address was local and the return address was across the country, do you think the postal machines would catch on? Or does that just become the letter that is finally delivered 35 years from now that you occasionally read about?

Visited the bank, where I learned that the precise point of parking in front of the ATM is the exact spatial section of land not covered by satellite radio. And by satellite radio I mean terrestrial repeaters. We blame Washington and NASA for “killing the space program” when really they only mothballed the shuttle. But I think we should blame Sirius/XM for ruining us on space. Even the space radio people are grounded. Or not. They have between 700 and 1,500 repeaters in North America, depending on whom you believe. There are maps. And the system is in place to mitigate dead spots in tunnels, foliage cover and buildings. There’s four inches in my garage where I can’t get a signal and then at the ATM. What a country.

Even still, the satellite radio can’t find me in this age of wonders. How will I ever cope? I guess I could plug in my own recording of the song I was listening to. But what medium will I choose? The trusty CD or the ones and zeros I have tucked away on my phone and iPod? And is this going to lead to the massive music project that requires I store every song I’ve ever heard on one my mobile platforms?

These aren’t problems. And yet the letdown is still disappointing. You’re telling me I can’t hear that song while I conduct my banking business? My transactional experience will be forever ruined by the nice brick facade my bank has erected that affords me shade and multiple blindspots.

So, yes, there was time on my hands before we left town. And we left. Made it to the airport, where we passed through security, but the metal detector emitted a subtle beep at it’s human companion as I walked through, not the “you have aluminum foil and chewing gum in your pocket” beep, but a different tone, encouraging him to select me for random additional screening. My hands were swiped with a thin cotton swab and that was put in a Star Trek machine that made noises and featured flickering lights. Twenty seconds later the guy was assured I had not been fertilizing my lawn earlier in the day.

There could be several paragraphs here bemoaning the TSA process, where I generally accept the people that work in front of a frustrated and bored populace are doing what they can — bad apples notwithstanding — while basically being hamstrung by what is given them from above.

I could complain about the comfort and design of the plane seat, or the poor quality of the burrito, or just my thoughts on air travel at this stage of society in general. They all sound about the same. But that would make it sound more tedious than necessary.

Instead I’ll just leave you with this.

I’m traveling with my lovely wife, going to a place where we’ll see friends and do things we enjoy. It was a lovely day, on the whole.

cycling / iPhone / journalism / links / overwriting / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
3
Aug 11

The bike, rhetoric, the economy, journalism, politicians, link bait

Twenty miles this morning, which was the rough equivalent to midday on Venus. The heat index was 102 and I learned a very important thing on this ride across an eternal purgatory: shade is important.

Can you tell I’m an intellectual?

It has been a while since I’ve been on my bike. My legs felt like goopy clay, churning sometimes, freewheeling at other moments and never answering the call as they should. When the heat kicked in I think my brain went beyond non-autonomous functions like shifting gears and concentrated on things more important like perspiration and demanding I take a drink.

We had here, though, a type of asphalt cement that was being baked again. The county, should they feel compelled, could do road work for half price this month because much of their equipment could be left at the office. The sun is baking everything, including the brains of the road workers. And people foolhardy enough to be riding their bike at the you-should-know-better hour of 8 a.m.

I noticed that the sun was killing me, but when I got under trees, everything felt significantly better. Like a good scientist, I continued observing this phenomenon until I could state for certain that a pattern had emerged. Of course my brain was a hunk of melted chocolate by then, but I had my answer: shade = good. Problem: this road has little shade.

And so I called it a ride, because how much of this do you need, really? (I did get a new picture for the front page, though, so that’s something.)

Which is when I decided to stop at a gas station for a Gatorade where something unusual and unexpected happen. And I will tell you that story below, but I must say this first: I live in a lovely town. Counting the years I attended undergrad here I’ve spent six years in residence. It is a fine college town. The people are friendly, generally decent and helpful and, I think, it is because we all know we’re lucky to live in a nice place. So that’s six years, and aside from the occasional town versus gown thing, and whatever condescension — which was never much, mind you — I received as a student by the locals, I don’t recall having ever experienced a truly snooty moment from anyone. (At least when I didn’t deserve it.)

So the story: I go into this gas station, who’s initials shall remain nameless, but the acronym stands for Quick Trip. There’s an older lady and a younger man working there. I’m going to say they were related, but I have no idea. This is a nice clean place. Good location, all of that. They have two full walls of beverages. I wander in and in my dazed, sizzling brain state look for the Gatorade that will hopefully give me the electrolytes of life.

The young guy walks the length of the store and starts eyeballing me. Not in a subtle way, but in a serious and obvious looking me over way. Like he’s going to ask me if I have any needles, drugs or weapons on me before he pats me down sort of way. I grab my drinks and start navigating up to the counter to pay for my beverages. This takes a little effort because I have my bike with me and don’t want to knock anything off their shelves.

Now, I took my bike inside because I don’t ride with a lock, there’s no place to tie it down anyway and I’m not interested in watching my expensive machine disappear with someone else. Also my phone and other important things were on board today. So I take my bike inside. I’m trying to line the front wheel and the handlebars off so I don’t knock off a can of Dinty Moore with the drops and this requires a pause, a steer and a come-on-brain-work moment. My shadow over here has noticed I’ve stopped, has turned and walked back to study me again.

I get it. And, look dude, I’m wearing bike shorts and a bike shirt. You think I’m stuffing a sleeve of crackers somewhere on my person?

I make my way to the front and my conversation with the lady staffing the register goes like this:

“Ain’t never seen that before.”

What’s that?

“Someone bringing their bike in the store.”

Well, it is expensive and I’m cheap and I don’t want to lose it.

“This is a good neighborhood …”

I know, it is. I live just down the road.

A fine neighborhood, to be sure. And yet you’ve got your boy giving me long hard looks. Lady, don’t judge me. I’m riding a bike. I have on a helmet and an iPod. I’m sweating like Zeus being confronted by Hera. I feel for the hard-working African-American man who kindly held the door for me as I exited and he entered. I can’t imagine what she thought of the young Hispanic male who walked in after that.

“This place is just going to Hades.”

Yes, I’m sure she thinks this, is scared of it and can blame the heat on the confluence of so many undesirable things, sweaty white guy and two men who do not fit into her expectation of a nice neighborhood.

I stood there thinking, I should go clean myself up and come shop here in a more respectable manner, just to see if they recall this visit. But then I thought, No. You’ve been judged and found unworthy. By a gas station attendant. You need not spend any more money here.

I refer you to Smith’s First Rule of Commerce, Marketing and Entrepreneurship: Do not make it hard for me to spend my money with you.

At home I got cleaned up, stretched out, denied aloud that I was going to sleep and then promptly took a three hour nap. My body ran hot the rest of the day, it does that some time, and I took on the task of the daily reading.

The message for politicians who now find themselves adept at the art of brinkmanship: your upcoming vacation may not be as pleasant as you’d like. Even for Congress, people are displeased:

Nor has the spotlight in the past few weeks helped Congress: Nearly one in five independents say they think less of both congressional Democrats and Republicans as a result of the budget negotiations. Not a single one of the independents interviewed now thinks more highly of both sides.

Every now and then the electorate pays attention. And on some of those occasions they peer beyond the soundbites, dismiss the rhetoric, look to their children and they form opinions on you. And that must give you cause to tremble. I’ve had some very interesting conversations and heard still more from several demographics talking about elected representatives lately; there’s a lot of displeasure that can’t solely be blamed on unemployment rates.

My representative’s office did send out a Cut, Cap and Balance email about a week after the legislation was dead. You can imagine what the replies must have been like.

Want an electric car from Chevrolet? No one does, it seems. Sadly Weekly Standard is not allowing comments there. They would no doubt be an entertaining read.

Look. I know who Maureen Dowd is. I know what she does and why she has the pulpit she does. Hasty, red meat rhetoric doesn’t bother me because it is easily dismissed. Curdles the moment you write it and leaves the author with the worst sort of legacy. If that’s what you’re after, good for you. I’ve read this stuff for years, studied it studiously and written about it professionally. But, really:

Most of the audience staggered away from this slasher flick still shuddering. We continue to be paranoid, gripped by fear of the unknown, shocked by our own helplessness, stunned by how swiftly one world can turn into a darker one where everything can seem familiar yet foreign.

“Rosemary’s Tea Party,” an online commenter called it.

If the scariest thing in the world is something you can’t understand, then Americans are scared out of their minds about what is happening in America.

Every view is fine, and every semi-organized group needs yipping attack dogs, too. It gives people a role to play, and maybe a nice seat at a correspondents dinner. That’s great. My visceral problem with op-eds such as these are that, 80 years from now, someone is going to pull this up off that old dusty — What did they call it back then? Interweb? Worldtubes? — and see things like this in the paper of record during a period supposedly beyond yellow journalism, written by those flush in the glow of those would do good with their pen, comfort the afflicted with their FTP and afflict the comfortable with their retweets. And instead of some good copy, or even a nice argument, you get:

Tea Party budget-slashers didn’t sport the black capes with blood-red lining beloved by the campy Vincent Price or wield the tinglers deployed by William Castle. But in their feral attack on Washington, in their talent for raising goose bumps from Wall Street to Westminster, this strange, compelling and uncompromising new force epitomized “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and evoked comparisons to our most mythic creatures of the night.

They were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in “Alien” flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner’s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones. (Conjuring that last image on Monday, Vladimir Putin described America as “a parasite.”)

Remember: The New York Times created something called Times Select because they thought all of America would plunk down $50 to read such gems from Maureen Dowd et al. That lasted exactly two years, and was successful for almost none of that time.

And so, because we need perspective, we must once again turn to a comedian:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Dealageddon! – A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Compromise – The Super Committee

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

No matter how you feel about it, there’s a reason people trust the guy. It doesn’t take a day on hot asphalt to realize that. Well, maybe it does.

And now we must go buy birthday cards. Because we have a host of people to recognize in August and nothing says “We respect and love your kind and generous contributions to what make us who we are” like a midnight trip to Walmart. More on that tomorrow.

adventures / books / iPhone / links / overwriting / photo / Wednesday — 1 Comment
27
Jul 11

Writing retreat, Day Five

This was the last day of the retreat, which has the goal of arriving with a work in progress and leaving with a finished paper. Some people do this. The Yankee did this, though she said there is a bit of editing to do, which is terrific.

My project, which had something of a learning curve involved, isn’t finished, but is probably two-thirds of the way there. A few more long sessions of concentrated effort could get the thing to the editing stage. So that’s progress.

After things wrapped up this evening we stopped to smell the roses:

We went to Portland’s International Rose Test Garden — the sun stays up until about 9 p.m. out here this time of year, so we took advantage of the daylight to do one last bit more of sight-seeing. Some 700 varieties over more than 4 acres, including annual winners dating back to the 1940s. Neat place, and you can find more here.

When you start telling people you’re about to go to Portland they tell you “Oh, you have to go to Powell’s!”

You don’t go to cities and have folks tell you to visit a bookstore often, so you pay attention. With good reason; Powell’s is unique. It is a regional chain, but the original spans a city block, has two buildings, mixes new and used and is full of sensory overload. (Likely no one knows how many titles are in the Powell’s system.) There’s that beautiful pulp smell and also the feeling you get when you walk into a big cave — you’re inside, but everything is oversized enough to suggest you’re outside, and yet, there’s a roof over your head.

Seeing Powell’s was great, but also it made me a bit sad. I keep my Amazon wishlist as a way to keep track of books I want to pick up one day. I checked that list against every book Powell’s had in stock. Every great-looking book that caught my eye on the shelves I looked up on Amazon. Powell’s lost every time. They got close in one book, after you figured in shipping and handling, but that was it. (I was not really shopping today, this was a tourist trip because I’m not lugging books across the country, but I did add a few things to my eventual reading list.)

The used books at Powell’s are mixed in with the new, but they are high quality used books. And, at Powell’s, you can buy a quality used hardback for the price of a new paperback. But you can buy the same book for pennies on the dollar online.

Still, aside from the joy of being in a bookstore, and the random chance of discovering some gem on sale or an intriguing book cover, it is difficult to find a book that is cheaper in a store now. And that makes me a bit sad. Borders, which had been using a flawed business model for years, it seems, is as symbolic as it is as damaging to an industry. Shame so many people lost their jobs in that company’s demise, but as an indicator of change it is just as unfortunate. So there will be less distribution, thus fewer books, and fewer publishers pushing new authors (self publish!) and prices will go up and quality will go down a smidge.

We’re buying digital versions of media or not consuming them at all anymore. As such that atmosphere that we’re losing is also painful to contemplate. This is relative. When record stores went away we mourned, moved on and bought the new stuff in malls and online. After a while you forget the feeling. I fell out of my biggest music habits just as the digital download became the medium. When newspapers and television finally had to grudgingly accept the notion that there might be something to this online thing, I was already working there. In time, people will overlook the psychic benefits they once received from the old style in favor of their new cerebral download of water skiing squirrel features they get daily.

On books, I’m old school. I buy actual books online and have them shipped to my home because I like books. I like shelves and art and big fonts and running my fingers along those beautiful spines to find the tome I want. I like my own little personal library. I sincerely want a home library stacked so high I need a library ladder on rails to reach the top shelf. At the risk of sounding old, I can’t get that in a digital reader.

A bookstore as big as a city block can’t compete with a warehouse jammed to the rafters in a cornfield somewhere who can get me that book before the weekend. There’s little hope for bookstores. Which means books are in bigger trouble from the model than from their formatic opposition like Kindles and iPads.

See DVDs, Blockbuster and Netflix.

There will always be a need for some of these type places. Just fewer of them, and farther between. My argument for why I could live in the middle of nowhere so long as they had a decent grocery store (and good Internet) is because you can get anything shipped. (Arts, culture and medicine, as a service and experience, seem to be the biggest outliers.) But, then, maybe this changes things:

Falling mail volume and soaring red ink may soon doom Saturday mail delivery and prompt three-day-a-week delivery within 15 years, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe warns.

Donahoe wasn’t specific about how soon he would like to reduce service but said he thinks Congress, struggling with the federal budget, will be more open to the idea now. He said a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll last year helped move the discussion along. More than half of those polled had no problem with losing Saturday mail.

The Postal Service estimates the move would save $3.1 billion a year.

So pick your spots ship on Monday for a Friday arrival, I guess, or hoof it to town.

Also, in that same piece: “On Sept. 30,” he told the USA TODAY editorial board Tuesday, “I won’t be able to pay my bills.”

Better leave your mail person a tip.

We had dinner at Good Taste, an almost-dive in Chinatown. It was very good. This was my fortune: