I think I liked the idea of the Berghoff more than the heavy German food there; the history was palpable, with the inner lobby showing an ancient menu and Liquor License No. 2 (the men-only history of the bar wasn't mentioned, and I didn't learn of it myself until I read about it today), and I took too many dates there who didn't appreciate the history as much as I did. Even as trends went away from the carb- and fried-food-heavy cuisine there, the lines continued to be out the door for the huge dining room at lunch. It's a family decision; the third generation of Berghoffs is calling it quits, and the fourth generation wants to turn the place into a trendy bar and opening a catering business on the side. It seems like a poor business decision to turn the lucrative location into a catering business (Tribune; NY Times; LA Times): that's a hundred years of goodwill to throw away for nothing, and the opportunity cost of using a prominent site in the heart of the loop for a catering business that could be located anywhere seems foolishly huge. But freedom of choice includes the choice to make bad decisions.

The return of Ben Franklin High.

I am surprised to learn that the Web has absolutely no pages commemorating Cajun Sparkle, a strange mixture of salt, pepper, cayenne, and MSG that Popeye's Chicken (once? still does?) distribute[d] in little Sweet-N-Low-pink packets, which, when added to the restaurant's side of dirty rice, made the side edible. (I did find an image from a completist, but, alas, no concomitant photo of the back with the entertaining ingredient list.) This makes me think I need to track some down and hoard it for future sale on Ebay. This site claims it's been discontinued, but my best recollection is that I had some at a Popeye's at a Maryland or New Jersey rest area driving up to New Haven within the last couple of years—plus, a 2004 Popeye's manager training guide (!) includes it in the model inventory worksheets.

Update: A commenter scoffed, but never doubt my abilities on a quest, especially when I have a helpful facilitator.

Via Evanier: Christmas letters to Christopher Walken, and the scared-of-Santa photo gallery.

I have no recollection of this, but my parents tell a story of how they were almost lynched in a small-town diner in Pennsylvania when I had just turned three. It was just after Christmas, and we had stopped for a meal en route from Ohio to visit my grandparents in New York. "And what did Santa bring you for Christmas?" the waitress asked in her most cheerful pre-war/pre-Happy-Holidays voice. "Oh! Santa doesn't stop at our house!" I loudly responded with pride. Kids. Can't take 'em anywhere.

I'm off to an airplane.

Via Radosh, the Music Genome Project does a fascinating job of finding obscure music one might like. Enter a song title into Pandora, and the database dissects the song's elements and finds songs with similar elements. I entered "The Laws Have Changed" by The New Pornographers, and got Weird War's "See About Me," a great song by an obscure band I never would've found, and Mates of State's "Ha Ha." The programming did a poorer job of identifying why I like Sleater-Kinney; in response to "Ironclad" it gave me three other Sleater-Kinney songs, a hard-rock mistake, and an obvious Bikini Kill single. But plugging in "Heaven or Las Vegas" gave me the Stars' "Elevator Love Letter"—as well as the poorer choice of Cyndi Lauper. Interesting stuff.

Unrelatedly: Richard Cheese (Mark Davis) lounge version of Nirvana's "Rape Me" and "You Oughta Know." Davis himself seems frustrated by the inherent limitations of his one-joke gig, but the article is worth it for the mortifying interview with his Costanzan parents.

From telephone conversations with Slim and Sari respectively.

Claim: Sororities are outlawed on certain campuses because local "brothel laws" prohibit more than a specified number of females from living together.
Status: False.

Claim: A girl freezes her naked tuchas to her date's car on their first (and last) date.
Status: False.

SCOTUSblog is sponsoring an auction of a Justice Rehnquist bobblehead for charity, the winner to donate proceeds to charity. I'm currently the lead bidder, and my donation will be split between two good causes I invite you to support also: the Benjamin Franklin High School Katrina Reconstruction Fund and the Institute for Justice. IJ's merry band of litigators needs no introduction because of their work on Kelo, so let me talk about Franklin.

I graduated Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans in 1987. Franklin is not only one of the leading academic public schools in the country, averaging 23 National Merit Semi-Finalists a year and sending 99.5% of its graduates to college, but it is one of the few racially integrated schools in the city of New Orleans, maintaining its academic standards in the face of pressure ranging from a legislature that outlawed the teaching of evolution in the 1980s to modern-day school-board racial politics seeking to abolish magnet schools. The school was one of the few pieces of New Orleans that worked.

Unfortunately, Franklin was located on the New Orleans Lakefront, one of the lowest-lying areas of the city, and suffered $3 million in physical damage from the storm and flooding. Dedicated parents, faculty, and alumni are undertaking heroic efforts to re-open the school as a federal charter school with many of its pre-hurricane teaching staff on January 17, 2006—the tricentennial of Benjamin Franklin's birth. Federal and state funds are expected eventually, but there is an immediate need for money to pay for faculty salaries, startup costs, and instructional materials.

The Benjamin Franklin Alumni Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has set up three funds: the Katrina Recovery Fund provides money to twenty needy families of Franklin students; the Franklin Reconstruction Fund goes to reopen the school; or one can sponsor a specific distressed family.

100% of your tax-deductible donations go directly to help families or the school, with no administrative fees. (Paypal may be charging a transfer fee, but one can mail a check directly.)

I know that I make many of my charitable donations at this time of year, and hope you consider the Franklin Alumni Association's efforts among your other choices. Click here to donate and let them know I sent you.

(Cross-posted at Overlawyered.)

I was precociously pugnacious. Made militant in resentment of the public-school kindergarten teacher who read the class the story of Jesus and the first-graders who insisted my Santa Claus skepticism was a reflection of my Judaism, by the second grade I was refusing to participate in the Christmas pageant. I wasn't even happy with the proposed compromise solution of letting me sing the dreydel song with the fourth-graders: I knew the qualitative difference between a token song about a toy and a song about the three wise men. This wasn't even a Newdow situation; I think my parents were mortified that I was causing problems when it was hard enough to avoid penalty for taking Yom Kippur off. A legitimate attack of the flu, however, prevented me from being disruptive and getting a mark on my permanent record.

I disliked the season. The malls were ridiculously crowded, every tv show (in the three-network era, at least) was about Christmas, every PA system and commercial was playing the same damned infernal tinkling twelve songs, and newscasters and other adults who showed no concern about my Judaism the other eleven months of the year were suddenly wishing me a happy Hanukkah. The day itself, my friend Greg would get all sorts of cool presents, and I would free-ride off the surplusage of new Atari games, but otherwise, I couldn't stand it.

Years later, I was dating a smart Gentile lawyer with a sexy Texan accent. Very nice woman who's gone on to be quite successful, but there were four separate incidents that made me realize that we just weren't going to be compatible, all of which are of a Seinfeldian eating-peas-with-a-fork quality, and one of them was the December date where she showed up at my door in a sweater with a reindeer-sleigh pattern to take me to a Christmas movie that wasn't "Gremlins."

Somehow, this incident didn't even occur to me when I got married nine months after first meeting my first wife in a February, and quickly found the absence of a Christmas tree to be a source of conflict where I really should've been the one to give in. Or not, because it's really for the best that my stubbornness on that issue probably accelerated the end of that ill-considered marriage.

The interesting thing about the overstated Fox News pounding of the drums in defense against a fictitious attack on Christmas is that it's pulled the Christmas-haters out of the woodwork. Or, perhaps, created a controversy where none was before, emboldening the press to publish "both sides" of the issue, and we now see a lot of anti-Christmas writings where before we wouldn't see any.

So, I give you: Christopher Hitchens on Christmas as a dictatorial blot where the US briefly turns into North Korea ("an insistent din of identical propaganda and identical music"); Steven Landsburg defends Scrooge; and Amber Taylor condemning the coniferous aspects of the holiday. And, for equal balance, how Hanukkah screwed up the Jewish psyche, though I would've preferred seeing something criticizing dreydels as a choking hazard.

Yet somehow, I'm looking forward to this December 25 more than any other I can remember.

Speaking of Seinfeldian, have a Happy Festivus for those of you celebrating it today.

• C-SPAN2 taped my Monday panel, so I'll be on Booknotes some indeterminate weekend in the future. (They must really like Martin Grace, as his presence on the panel is a perfect predictor for whether the tv cameras show up.) I hope I wasn't too scowly; I haven't looked at the AEI video yet.


• My predilection for being the last person to leave Washington for the holidays pays off, as I once again benefit from the have-to-resort-to-the-fifth-string-talking-head factor: I go to the NPR studios tomorrow to pre-record an interview from which a soundbite or two will be selected. Don't know yet if it's for Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, or All Things Considered, but I'll post a link on Point of Law.

Speaking of leaving Washington for the holidays, I head out to Chicago and BBQ country for Hanukkah week, dragging work and Lethem's "Fortress of Solitude" with me.

Via Shani, the Calvin and Hobbes Snow Art Gallery. The snowmen strips were always my favorite ones.

Also via Shani, who I should just hand the blog over to, Eric Mulkowsky fights the good fight against New York Times favoritism in its book reviews.

In the words of Josef Stalin, "God, schmod, I want my monkey-man." (via ALOTT5MA)

Serenity Alliance Trooper Helmet contest.

Stick figures in peril.

Roger Ebert's top ten, via ALOTT5MA. I've somehow missed all of them, though I'll probably see "King Kong" (which also has the Bamber seal of approval) and begrudgingly see "Munich." I gave up on Woody Allen movies long before my brother did, and didn't even watch the last few when they were TiVoed off of HBO, but honorable mention "Match Point" may get me back in the theater.

Some people really do buy a Lexus for Christmas, and the car company does stock giant red bows. I just need to figure a way to get it on to my Amazon wishlist.

You're too late to enter the Domino's Black Leather White Elephant Contest, with a set of requirements only a Nigerian scammer could love, but the web page is still up.

Shani took a birthday-party photo of me and Slim.

The power of Mentos.

This, incidentally, is a definitive list that saves you the trouble of looking at any other list. Assuming you share my idiosyncratic tastes.

1. Mountain Goats, The Sunset Tree
2. Kaiser Chiefs, Employment
3. Hard-Fi, Stars of CCTV
4. Sleater-Kinney, The Woods
5. The National, Alligator
6. Death Cab for Cutie, Plans
7. The Decemberists, Picaresque
8. The New Pornographers, Twin Cinema

Honorable mentions for singles not on above albums:
1. Kanye West, "Gold Digger"
2. LCD Soundsystem, "Tribulations"
3. Franz Ferdinand, "Do You Want To"
4. Sufjan Stevens, "Out of Egypt, Into the Great Laugh of Mankind, and I Shake the Dirt from My Sandals As I Run"
5. Madonna, "Hung Up"
6. Rihanna, "Pon de Replay"
7. Danny Elfman, "Augustus Gloop"
8. Mike Doughty, "The Gambler"

Bonus 2005 I've Got A Fever And The Only Cure Is More Cowbell Award: Kaiser Chiefs, "Modern Way"

I owe a certain professor an edit of his paper that I'm very late with, and got distracted this week between the Vioxx mistrial and the Philip Morris decision and Monday's panel, and haven't been blogging because he reads the blog and I'd have to explain how I found time to blog but not to edit his paper. Which I'll make myself do Saturday.

Speaking of which, which one of you left the following comment on Kevin Drum's blog?

AEI has a number of very good events like this, and Ted Frank is quite good. It's not all neocon wackos over there.

I almost felt compelled to defend my honor and explain that I am a neocon wacko, dammit, at least in the standard leftist sense whereby "neocon" means "Jewish" and "wacko" means "believer in the free market."

I'm also disappointed that noone has tried to pin the Kennedy assassination on me yet. I thought for sure that one of my alt.conspiracy "friends" would've gotten to that by now...

More Showtime and Arrested Development rumors. Also ABC.

1. The turducken breast was tasty; the 22-pound box was indeed the Complete Calvin & Hobbes; other gifts included the new Lincoln biography and DVDs of Dodgeball and the fifth season of the Simpsons; we went through three bottles of excellent wine and over a pound of superb cheese (Humboldt's Fog, Roomano, an aged Mimolette, and a forgettable and forgotten Spanish cheese) and a good time was had by all. Thanks to those who came, and it was a pleasure to see diverse groups of friends from different sources getting along so well.

2. Slim and I went to Cityzen (L'Enfant Plaza) the night before. I won the coin-toss so I got to be the one to blog about it. The service was exceptional, the food was... very good. Slim had a loin of venison that was a beautiful deep red and quite tasty, and I had a snapper that was somewhat overwhelmed by the gratin it was served on but was very good. Slim won the appetizer derby as well, with a salad of fish and apples that put my clam/artichoke/bacon mixture to shame. They made the mistake of describing two different butters to us with our bread service, which raised our expectations unduly for a condiment I wouldn't have been able to distinguish from the good stuff at Trader Joe's. A cute touch was the wooden box of platonically pure bite-sized dinner rolls; a misstep was a small cup of an eggy custard-with-olive-oil that we agreed was positively foul. I wasn't happy with the glass of Riesling I ordered (at a ludicrous double-digit price), but they made up for it with, in honor of my birthday, a complimentary Moscato d'Asti that was the best dessert wine I'd ever had (I need to call them for who made it). All in all, a very good experience, but, given the opportunity cost, I'd want a great experience: I can get equally good or better meals with only a slight degradation of service and environment at any number of DC and Virginia restaurants at half the price; I can get a much better meal for only slightly more at Maestro; and my dining budget is no longer expansive enough to encompass an American contemporary restaurant that isn't Pareto efficient.

Other than that, I haven't been to new restaurants in the last few months, sticking with old standbys Sushi Taro, Bombay Bistro, and the secret Thai restaurant, saving my nickels for a Martin Luther King Day weekend in Las Vegas.

3. Sesame Street biography on A&E Dec. 21-22.

1. The disadvantage of the Amazon wish-list is revealed to me today. I get my early birthday present from Slim. The box is quite compact and heavy. I can thus deduce which item I have been gifted from approximating the weight. Either that, or she got me a rock. Still, cool. I'm sure it'll be one of the nicest birthday gifts from someone I've dated in recent memory. Certainly the heaviest.

2. (In a whimsical moment my freshman year in college, I persuaded my next-door neighbor to help me roll a 100-pound+ boulder from outside up the stairs for a centerpiece in my second-floor dorm-room. This aggrieved my roommate when he came home upset later that night and decided to kick it, not thinking that anyone would be so foolish as to put a real rock in the middle of a room. But this may have persuaded him to move out at the end of the semester, giving me the room to myself spring semester, so it all worked out.)

3. I had a crew of maids in today, and the condo looks so nice I want to sell it.

4. In a further sign of my imminent OCD, I color-coordinated my tie-rack and alphabetized my DVDs and Xbox game cases. I'm amazed I've gone four years without organizing my bookshelves. There are pockets of organization, but I'm about one bookcase short at the moment, resulting in a warehouse-aesthetic for book display. I may have inherited this packrat trait from my grandfather.

5. The one request I received asked what PC games I play. My PC is a pathetic 333 MHz, so not much: I've played Civilization III a few times on my Mac, and various titles from Jim Gindin on my PC over the last few years; graphically poor, but very well designed for gameplay. (I burst out laughing in surprise when my star linebacker was suspended for the 2017 season for violating the NFL's anti-tobacco policy.) On the Xbox, no surprises: Halo and Halo 2, Madden, and Grand Theft Auto had the most replay value. None of which I was very good at. I gave up at Halo 2 in the falling elevator level because I'm not coordinated enough to handle 360-degree combat in three dimensions at close range (and had probably blown through too much ammunition in previous levels as I kept running out), and got hung up on a racing mission in San Andreas that kept me from unlocking the second city.

6. I simply don't have the time to be a dedicated gamer. I coveted the mostly-sold-out Xbox 360, and I enjoy the idea of an impulsive quest to lots of different stores to find a rare commodity, and had been frugal enough lately that I could afford $500 of impulse purchases, but Sari persuaded me that all I'd be accomplishing is guaranteeing some poor kid who wants the 360 more than I will won't be able to get one for Christmas, whereas I would likely buy it and have it sit unused. This perceptive reasoning dissuaded me from my search.

If only there were some sort of mechanism by which consumers could easily communicate to sellers the strength of their relative preferences for scarce goods.

A shoebox I discovered with approximately three dozen unopened, but eight-year-old, 50 ml bottles of Canadian Grade A maple syrup. These particular bottles, which were imported November 15, 1997, have been moved from Washington to Los Angeles and back to Washington again and, by some measures of cost-accounting, are the most expensive bottles of maple syrup in the world. Couldn't tell you if it's still any good: any food scientists know if maple syrup goes bad?

BBC4 radio program on Woody Allen's early standup.

Make your own Big Mac on the Web.

Nellie McKay melts down.

LA Times has a nifty piece on Simpsons guest stars (which I meant to blog, never got around to it, and then Shani nudged me in an e-mail today). Great quote:

"My kids and my father are very excited," Chabon says. He's not kidding. Reached later by phone, his father, Robert Chabon, said that he always expected Michael to win a Pulitzer (which he did in 2001 for "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"). "And I still think he's going to win the National Book Award," said the Kansas City, Kan., pediatrician. "But him being on 'The Simpsons' is beyond my wildest dreams. You envision certain successes for your children, but this kind of success — I never envisioned."

Where to buy American blue cheese in LA.

LA has lots of great food. Not sure I'd include BBQ in that category, but if you're inclined to test that hypothesis, the BBQ Junkie blog has posts with sporadic quests.

Up 2.3% for the month vs. 3.5% for the S&P 500. For calendar year 2005: 6.4% vs. 3.1%. For the last twelve months: 15.6% vs. 6.4%. And, yes, I did have a 9.5% increase in December 2004, so that's going to kill my twelve-month average when that number scrolls off. This month, BBI and KMX dragged down the rest of the portfolio.

The WaPo covered the story of an 18-year-old arrested for robbing a Metro denizen of an iPod; in a stunning self-parody, the paper felt it needed to include a 77-word description of what an iPod is. This is why the Onion is still occasionally funny.