"We are professionals, we have to dress nice, but we are paid less than kids who work at McDonald’s."

Says Tammy Williams, a woman pictured in a highly sympathetic light of the front page of the NYT today. The article is "Low Pay at Weight Watchers Stirs Protest as Stars Rake It In." You see, celebrity weight-losers like Jennifer Hudson get big money to lend their credibility to ad campaigns but ladies who hold the little meetings in their homes only make $18 each time they have people over.

Why on earth does Williams think what the stars are paid has anything to do with how much she should be paid? Those stars are selling their reputation and attaching that reputation to a product. Jennifer Hudson = Oscar-winning actress dieting. It costs money to lure someone into making a swap like that.

But more importantly, it's not obvious that the "kids" who work in fast-food restaurants don't deserve more money Williams. Nothing's stopping her from applying for a job at McDonald's. Obviously, she looks down her nose at the noisy, greasy counterwork. She seems to think what she's doing is genteel. That's part of the benefit of the job. She likes it. She can "dress nice," and not in some tacky uniform. She can remain cosseted in her home. She doesn't to  expose herself to the riff-raff that show up for cheeseburgers. That's why she's paid less.

It's absurd to whine about being an oppressed underclass while looking down on workers who do genuinely difficult jobs.

And, by the way, those "kids who work at McDonald's" are engaged in the business of making customers for Weight Watchers. Show some respect!

"As the clerk started to give him cash from the cash register, the thief started to cry, explaining that he only wanted to feed his wife and family."

"After the clerk offered to give him pizza and chicken wings, the man waited for the food for about 10 minutes."

“I’d say the clerk was pretty astute,” [said Helena Police Chief Troy McGee.] “I mean, he knows how to talk to this person. Kind of commiserated with him a little. Talked to him about it and you know actually changed his mind about robbing the place. That was pretty good.”

But didn't he commit robbery by taking the pizza and chicken wings without paying? Apparently, the clerk gave him the food. This reminds me of the famous Calvin Coolidge story:

Coolidge gave him $32, calling it a loan so the intruder would not be a thief...

"Juan Antonio Santacruz says he has sold quite a few tacos to Sotomayor, who frequents his Mexican restaurant, Tacos El Chilango."

"Chix and the Greek Spot are two other neighborhood restaurants Sotomayor has patronized.... Sotomayor sometimes stops by the Greek Spot after work to order the gyro platter, the owner says...."

A WaPo slideshow answering the question how Justice Sonia Sotomayor — who lived in the West Village when she was a federal judge in NYC — is adapting to the "distinctive rhythms" of the neighborhood where she lives in Washington. ("Distinctive rhythms" — is that politically correct? ) Here's the related article:

“U Street is the East Village,” said Sotomayor, who keeps a place in Manhattan’s West Village. “The East Village has been developing in the last 10 or 15 years, and I’ve often said if I was going to buy an apartment now, it probably would be in the East Village. So what did I do? I came to Washington and established a home in the East Village.”

"Welcome to New York, pal — now go to jail."

"An Italian tourist spent his second night in the city behind bars after staff at an upscale East Side steakhouse called cops when he claimed he left his wallet at a friend’s place."

Graziano Graziussi, a 43-year-old lawyer from Naples, is a regular at Smith & Wollensky....

“I was going to leave my iPhone,” he said. “I suggested they bring a bus boy with me... It would have been an easy trip.”

One police veteran told the Daily News he wasn’t surprised to hear that the restaurant wouldn’t take the phone as collateral.

“How do they know that iPhone was his? It could have come from anywhere,” the cop said.

The restaurant is getting some horrible press, but I'm sure people rip off restaurants all the time with the old forgot-my-wallet routine. If you let the guy leave, 9 times out of 10, you never see him again. I made up that statistic for rhetorical purposes. What do you think the statistic is? How much money do you think restaurants lose every year? They'll have to compensate by charging more to the people who do pay. But now they're stuck with the bad PR, because they called the cops on a photogenic lawyer, which means: 1. Focused outrage, 2. Ability to contact and talk to the press, 3. Big newspaper willing to run the story.

***

Readers of this blog might be thinking: Smith & Wollensky, where were we just talking about Smith & Wollensky? Was it in "The Great Gatsby"? It sounds like the name of the place that's been around long enough to have figured in "Gatsby," which takes place in 1922, but it opened in 1977. It adopted an old-fashioned image way back then. It was founded by Alan Stillman, the man who invented T.G.I. Friday's.

According to Stillman, there was never a Mr. Smith or a Mr. Wollensky involved. He opened the Manhattan phone book twice and randomly pulled out two names, Smith and Wollensky. The announcements for the opening, however, carried the names Charlie Smith and Ralph Wollensky. Stillman later admitted that Charlie and Ralph were the names of his dogs.

What's the deal with Stillman and Friday's? T.G.I. Friday's started back in 1965. Stillman — Wikipedia says — was a "bachelor perfume salesman [who] lived in a neighborhood with many airline stewardesses, fashion models, secretaries, and other single people on the East Side of Manhattan near the Queensboro Bridge, and hoped that opening a bar would help him meet women."

At the time, Stillman's choices for socializing were non-public cocktail parties, or "guys' beer-drinking hangout" bars that women usually did not visit; he recalled that "there was no public place for people between, say, twenty-three to thirty-seven years old, to meet." He sought to recreate the comfortable cocktail-party atmosphere in public despite having no experience in the restaurant business.

So he kind of invented the singles bar?

With $5,000 of his own money and $5,000 borrowed from his mother, Stillman purchased a bar he often visited, The Good Tavern at the corner of 63rd Street and First Avenue, and renamed it T.G.I. Friday's after the expression "Thank God! It's Friday!" from his years at Bucknell University....

Aw. I'm rooting for this guy, who made his mom happy, by facilitating a million fucks, some of which were his. Ah! Here's a whole interview with him, complete with photos:

NCR: Did your strategy work? Did you meet good-looking girls?

Stillman: Have you seen the movie Cocktail? Tom Cruise played me! I was lucky enough to do it for three years — he only did it to make a movie. Even today, the advantage of being the guy behind the bar is huge. Why do girls want to date the bartender? To this day, I’m not sure that I get it.

Ha ha. But, Althouse, get back to where you were going: that time we were talking about Smith & Wollensky on this blog. Yes. It was 9 days ago, and the story was about some job applicant who was presented in the press as a young guy who used what I called "the old honesty-modesty routine." Posting, I accepted the media cue that he was a gutsy, charming underdog, but — using Smith & Wollensky as my clue — I got suspicious in the comments:

A key line in the letter, as reprinted in the Daily Mail is: "I met you the summer before last at Smith & Wollensky's in New York when I was touring the east coast with my uncle, ***** ******"

Why put the name of your uncle in the letter unless it's intended to influence the hiring? Perhaps this person's seemingly refreshing attitude is just the cheeky confidence of a young person from a privileged background.

Would a guy working his way up from a working-class background ever write a letter like this?

Which guy most nearly won your heart?
	Graziano Graziussi
	Alan Stillman
	The guy that wrote the cover letter
pollcode.com free polls

"The guy said they were sitting at that same table three years ago and some stranger paid for their meal and made them think about kindness and love..."

"... and they’ve been talking about it ever since. They’ve incorporated it into their lives and said there was no other place he could have proposed, it was their most impactful memory."

I think this CafeMom post would have gotten more play if only she hadn't said impactful.

She's all "Has anyone ever anonymously bought you a meal at a restaurant? Have you ever purchased one for someone else?"

But I'm all... have you ever felt enthused about something and then one word killed it?

ADDED: And you're all... enthused....

AND: You're all... you're all....

"In a funny twist, Ed whispers how the man at the table next to ours is feverishly working his prayer beads with his hand."

"The man hears us and laughs. Not prayer beads -- he says in decent English -- this is what we do here when we try to quit smoking. You know, keep your fingers busy!"

In 2010, Greece passed a law banning smoking in restaurants, bars and even enclosed outdoor spaces. Let me assure you, this law is completely ignored....

There are a number of good seafood tavernas lining the waterfront and we choose one that has the lovely "no smoking" sing on the door. Except that inside, we see there are ashtrays on the tables and both the owner and the waitress are puffing away. Still, the dining room seems free of smoke and so we settle in at a table that seems relatively protected, should someone choose to light up.

A good lesson about law. What makes people follow the law? Surely, a statute is not enough. There are cultural elements. Some law is passed in Athens, but who's keeping track of what's happening on all those islands? How many islands are there in Greece? Depends on how you count. It could be 6,000. It could be 163. The story above comes from the island of Lesbos. The man with the smoking beads was one of 90,643 Lesbians, who follow the law... who knows how assiduously?

"Has anyone ever told you that your high-wattage passion for no-collar American food makes you television’s answer to Calvin Trillin, if Mr. Trillin bleached his hair, drove a Camaro and drank Boozy Creamsicles?"

"When you cruise around the country for your show 'Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,' rasping out slangy odes to the unfancy places where Americans like to get down and greasy, do you really mean it? Or is it all an act?"

3 of the many questions in Pete Wells's now-legendary, all-questions review of Guy's American Kitchen, one of 6 "Must-reads of 2012" in the "food" category, according to the Columbia Journalism Review. Wait — actually, there's one non-question, the last sentence: "Thanks."

Also on the enticing list:

"How the Chicken Conquered the World." ("How did the chicken achieve such cultural and culinary dominance? It is all the more surprising in light of the belief by many archaeologists that chickens were first domesticated not for eating but for cockfighting.")

"Here Are Our Five Favorite Food-Cliché Sentences." ("The velvety-smooth bisque's unctuous mouthfeel is lobster-tastic with its toothsome tidbits. To. Die. For.") I prefer the article upon which this writing game is based: a list of food-writing clichés. ("Mouthfeel: The blow-job-iest of all food words.")

"An Oyster in the Storm." ("[O]ysters... once protected New Yorkers from storm surges [and] played a critical role in stabilizing the shoreline from Washington to Boston.")

"I Was a Cookbook Ghostwriter." ("I know a lot of chefs who write their first book themselves. Then they say "I’ll never do that again." It’s just not worth it.")

"The Twee Party." ("Is artisanal Brooklyn a step forward for food or a sign of the apocalypse?")(By the way: 1.  "artisan" is on that banned clichés list noted above, and 2. art is anal.)

"The passage of right-to-work legislation in the state House and Senate may have Lansing in turmoil..."

"... but residents of Ann Arbor learned yesterday of a more immediate concern."

Krazy Jim's Blimpy Burger, a staple for U of M students and townies alike, is looking for a new home...

Owner Rich Magner said a deal between the University of Michigan and the property’s owner, Patricia Shafer, means he will have to close Blimpy Burger in summer 2013. He wants to find a new location for the restaurant.

Shafer is the widow of Blimpy Burger's original founder, Jim Shafer....

Magner said the University made Shafer an offer "she couldn't refuse."

I was a University of Michigan student from fall 1969 to spring 1973, and in my last summer as a student, I worked at Krazy Jim's — with the original Jim. (I worked with Ruby. Remember Ruby?)

Here's TV's Guy Fieri visiting Krazy Jim's in 2009:



Check out the part where they grind up the meat and then make it into meatballs with an ice cream scoop. That's exactly the way it was done back in 1972. The customers say what they want in terms of the number of meatballs — e.g., a "quad" — and then the meatballs are thrown on the grill, and when they start to soften, they are slapped flat with a spatula, making a patty. I think we slapped them flatter back in 1972, and we didn't make such a messy pile of things then. You used your hands to pick up onions and pickles and so forth to top the meat, but not quite so messily. I remember a girl who didn't care enough getting fired. It was funky, but it held together.

Good luck to all. I'm glad Patricia got her money. And I'm sorry Jim is gone. I understand the "Save Blimpy Burger" ethos: "nearly 60 years on South Division Street."

My mother grew up on South Division Street — about a block south of Blimpy's. My grandparents still lived there when Blimpy's opened in the 1950s. I don't know if they ever ate there, but I like to think they did.

"And if you’ve been having trouble accessing your room with your key card, it means you’ve pissed off someone at the desk..."

"... and they’ll re-activate your key card when they see fit. (It’s called 'key-bombing.')"

A new book purports to be to hotels what Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential" was to restaurants, but the author doesn't seem to have Bourdain's style and charm or the enthusiasm Bourdain had for his subject. This character sounds like a disgruntled employee, out to hurt the employer he hates, and he's no longer even in the business.

How many times do you want to hear that there's probably semen on the bedspreads? Wasn't that revealed in countless local TV news reports decades ago?

The guy worked for 10 years in a 3-star hotel in NYC. I'm sure that place was quite disgusting... or not. Who cares?

Playing Hive at Graze.

Here's the game we were playing. Here's the restaurant.

A WaPo writer "searching for the 'authentic America'" is delighted to travel to Madison, Wisconsin.

"We’d always heard about that mythically quirky place called Madison, a free-spirited land with far fewer chain stores and BlackBerry addicts than Washington," enthuses Emily Wax. Man, living in Washington, D.C. really lowers your standards of authenticity.

Influenced by the 2011 documentary “Wisconsin Supper Clubs: An Old-Fashioned Experience,” Wax goes to the restaurant called Old Fashioned, which is fairly new, and not one of the funky old places I think of as "supper clubs." She eats some fried cheese curds and says she has no idea how to tell whether cheese curds are especially good. (Answer: They squeak. Except they don't squeak if they're fried.)

She drinks the cocktail called an Old Fashioned, and then on another day she has another Old Fashioned and proclaims "How Madison!" On another day, "my husband and I headed for a romantic dinner at the sexy, dimly lit Tornado Steakhouse," which supposedly "has a wonderful menu."

And so did she achieve it, that sense of authenticity infusing the city, of delight with mythical quirkiness all around her, of free-spirited energy rushing through everything alive? Myself, I'm over-indulging in deep-fried prose tonight and wondering if I need to see a surgeon to get my neural pathways reconnected. I'm losing it somehow, as I gaze out on the treetops of Madison.

"I am not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God...."

Somewhere in America, I stopped to take a photograph of a collection of signs...



I wanted to take a photograph of the café itself, and I needed to ask this man if it was okay if I included his motorcycle in the picture, and he was happy to pose for the picture...



... to display his vest for closeup photography...



... and to tell me he is not ashamed of the gospel.

Here's the website for the Black Sheep, a Christian ministry to bikers.

Somewhere in America.

(Yesterday, lunchtime.)

Obama's cookie controversy.

Asked by a girl to name his favorite Girl Scout cookie, Obama says "“I’ve gotta say that I’m pretty partial to those mint..." and somebody booed....

"I didn’t mean to create controversy here,” Obama responded. “Did you hear, there was somebody booing? What was your choice? Who was booing up there? He had a different opinion. What are you, oatmeal? Peanut butter is quite good too. But I’m going with the mint.”

But isn't it refreshing — as we fight about everything — to fight over something inconsequential? To play-fight. It's like sports and games. Keeps us from getting too frustrated and mean.

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said:

He's lying about the mint. He lies about everything.

Imagine if he told the truth:

Cookies! I don't eat cookies. You see how skinny I am? I was a pudgy kid [like you], and I ate plenty of cookies in my day, especially in those days when I was chooming. But now I smoke the right stuff: good old tobacco cigarettes. The kind of cigarettes that don't make you want to eat. The kind that keep you thin. That's the secret.

I know, you expect me to say "Thin Mints," because that's the favorite Girl Scout cookie, but I'm not going to lie to you. It's ridiculous to use the word "thin" in the name of a cookie. Cookies make you fat. I am skinny. I don't eat cookies. I smoke cigarettes. It's a choice you make, and I decided a long while ago that it was worth the risk, the risk of lung cancer, to control my weight, because weight'll kill you too. Plus, it's hell on your political career. The fat Barack Obama would not be President Obama. That's just the way it is.

And by the way, if I did eat cookies, I'd eat better quality cookies. I mean, I've got an executive pastry chef in the White House. This guy used to be the pastry chef at Montrachet Restaurant in New York City. Can you picture the cookies I have access to?

But good for you, little Girl Scout, good for you trying to better yourself by getting some door-to-door sales experience selling cookies to the bitter small town folks who cling to their Do-si-dos and Tagalongs. As they say in the Girl Scouts: Thank U Berry Munch. Barry Munch... would've been a great nickname for me, back in my chubby, chooming youth.

"Depression-era green was the enduring color scheme."

Remembering Drake's Sandwich Shops.

Through the Great Depression, World War II, the Baby Boom, the Beatles, Vietnam, Watergate, disco, and Reagan, Drake's sold chocolate cordials, orange marmalade sandwiches, pecan rolls, and limeade (fresh-squeezed, with the rind in the glass) to three generations of University of Michigan students....

When the Michigan Alumnus solicited memories of Drake's from readers, a surprising number said they had dated their future spouses there.

I know I did. I'm no longer married to my old Michigan classmate, but we loved the limeade, and now I'm with l.meade.

"A Kentucky man's family was able to satisfy his dying wish this week and give a local waitress an emotional surprise when they gave her a $500 tip on a pizza."

I loved this story — which includes a viral video of the delighted waitress — until I got to the part about the website using this video to collect donations which will purportedly be used to give more giant tips to unsuspecting waiters and waitresses. Yes, it's charming at first, including the dead guy's will:

“He left us a will full of his personality,” his brother Seth wrote in a July 9 post on a tribute website. “He asked that any debt he owed his parents be repaid should he have money in the bank at his death, but also had the following request: Third, leave an awesome tip (and I don’t mean 25%. I mean $500 on a f***ing pizza) for a waiter or waitress.”

I have no idea how sincere or trustworthy these people are, but they're getting massive publicity of the kind that can unleash torrents of donations. Remember all the pity in the form of money that flowed in to the bus monitor lady who had no idea how to monitor her bus? (Did you know she rejected the apologies the kids offered?)

Money sloshes around all over the internet. People get a kick out of tossing a few dollars into something that made their heart swell. The kick is real and probably better than the kick people get from buying a lottery ticket. Why raise suspicions when it's all about feelings? You might give money to a guy on the street who tells you a sob story or just asks for money in a way that amuses you. What's the difference? It's a free market.

Do you want more rationality in charity? Or is it all about feelings? 

"Kill this portmanteau now..."

"... Breastaurant."

ADDED: At the link at the link, there's talk of Tilted Kilt, whose CEO Rod Lynch who complains that the word breastaurant "implies that the company's success is based purely on sex appeal."

Rose Dimov, a 22-year-old waitress at Tilted Kilt, says her job is no different from any other waitressing gig; make guests feel special and ensure they have a good time. As an aspiring ballroom dancer, she also says she's not fazed by the revealing outfit that comes with the job. "Going to a restaurant should be an experience," Dimov says. "We're entertainers."

Tilted Kilt — yes, we were talking about kilts yesterday, but remember when Tilted Kilt popped up in the Wisconsin protest story?  Here's a Business Insider article from February 18, 2011.

"Skunk that bit person at Maryland restaurant was rabid."

Oh, good lord.

And I was just reading some Zagat article called "Worst Meal Ever: 21 Tales of Disastrous Dinners." Most were about things like a tuft of hair in the food or insects in the vinegar. Just a skunk in the restaurant is worst than all that. But the skunk in the restaurant bites you. And then on top of all that it's rabid!

Maybe we should eat in.

Wisconsin protests of the all-you-can-eat-fish-fry kind.

"We asked for more fish, and they refused to give us more fish."

"Nothing bores me more than to be in New York and have a dinner in a big fancy restaurant, where you have to sit for three fucking hours."

"You know and people will have drinks before, wine after, then three courses, then they want coffee and someone is going to ask for a fucking French press and all the rest of this crap. To me my idea of what’s good is to drive here and go to Waffle House, get a couple of eggs and waffle. When I see the first Waffle House, I know I’m in the South. That’s good."

Stephen King, talking to Neil Gaiman. Lots of nice stuff here. (Via Metafilter.)