"Red wine with fish... Well, that should have told me something." (Bitchy Vegetarian Girlfriend)

I hold quite a few unpopular opinions, ranging from what tastes good on a sandwich (peanut butter, cheddar, and shaved carrots) to the exact level of Snoop Dogg's latent homosexualness (here's a hint:  it's as high as he is).  For the most part, I'm pretty OK with knowing that I'm in an army of one when it comes to spray cheese (delicious), karaoke bars (the opiate of the masses), and hand-laundry (don't mind doing it at all).

But there is one thing that I will spend minutes upon minutes of my time and energy defending:  I think that Tommy Lee Jones should be the next James Bond.  There, I've said it.

I’m perhaps singularly qualified to make this assertion because I, unlike you, have read the Ian Fleming novels.  Not all 12 of them, but enough of them to be snooty about it.



Anyway, my reasons are as follows:

A discretionary license to kill is pretty much wasted on the British.  Please, their police don’t even carry guns.  No offense, but have you even seen "Rolling Thunder?"   Come on! 

The thing Bond for which is most famous -- ordering his martinis “shaken, not stirred” -- is just a lame affectation; as Auntie Mame says, “it bruises the gin.” Further horrors, Bond prefers his martinis made with vodka.  A backwoods Texas hillbilly may like them like that, though, and since Billy Bob Thornton is not in the running, Tommy Lee Jones' Bond will drink his that way, although he’d much prefer whiskey.  Which, if you’ve read the novels, you’d know that Fleming's Bond also prefers.
Point and match right there, friends.  But let me continue…

Bond is a highly educated man, having gone to Cambridge ad Oxford and all. Tommy Lee Jones went to Harvard.  He knows things.  Things a spy would know.

The “Bond, James Bond” intro line is oh so passé.  Needs to be updated for the ‘80s, I mean the ‘90s, I mean new millennium…  just imagine TLJ hopping out of a stealth helicopter, donning his Stetson, straightening his bolo tie, and saying with a smile, “Name’s Jimmy Bond, nice to meet ya.”
David Niven once played Bond.  TLJ could beat Niven in a fistfight any day, but wouldn't.  It’s a scientific fact.

Bond is permanently “8 years shy of retirement” – which could be anywhere between 32 and 62, really.  TLJ can play the upper half of that range with ease, making him good for another 4 films at least.  In revisionist history, though, Bond received his double-zero ranking in the Second World War.  Jones can play a WW2 veteran with grizzled ease.

James Bond hates tea.  Tommy Lee Jones would rather take “cup of coffee and a chocolate doughnut with some of those little sprinkles on top” any day.

I don’t know much about the sentiment of an invisible omniscience, but I know what I like (Bitchy Vegetarian Girlfriend)

A friend was grading papers the other morning and ran across a blatant misspelling of panopticon.  It was “Pacontpicon” or some such.  Now, I don’t expect everyone, or nearly anyone, to be conversant in the finer details of panoptic theory, but if you are writing a college-level paper that dabbles in it, you’d best spell it correctly. And if you can’t spell it correctly, at least try to incorporate the misspelling into an amusing offshoot.  Consider the following:

• PantsOpticon - the all-seeing, all-knowing mystical trousers.
• Pan-Conniption - wherein the entire globe throws a huge hissyfit all at once.
• PamOpticon – oh wait, that was my derby name, but it reminds me of …
• PamOptician – the best ever mangling of my derby name.
• Co-opticon – wherein everything within view is taken for one’s own use. 
• Synopticon – wherein everyone has pretty much the same point of view.
• Subopticon – everything happens below eye level.
• PantsOptionalCon – like the fabled Pants-Off Dance-Off, only better. 
• Fiberopticon – now, this is just getting silly.

The Neverending Menu Spiral (Bitchy Vegetarian Girlfriend)

Most of us learned to read left to right, top to bottom.  It’s above and beyond second nature, really; it's just How We Do It.  With menus, though, I have found that I tend to read in a spiral.
I first noticed this habit when I was tagging along on restaurant reviews on a regular basis, and even though that’s not my thang anymore, anytime I peruse the offerings at someplace new, this is how it goes:

First, I glance at the appetizers. If there is one meatless starter, I have a little bit of hope, because then there is hope for the app-as-an-entrée thing.  It’s not ideal, but it will do. It’s my backup plan in case the rest of the menu fails me.

Then I look at the salads.  It’s sometimes sadmaking, the salad choices – nowadays they all have chicken and bacon and here’s the thing…  I’m a cheapskate, and I hate when menus list “add chicken… $3” to meatless salads but will not subtract $3 if I order a chickened-up salad without it. It's small and petty, I know, but so am I.

I should probably point out here that I really do try to keep things on-menu and keep my special ordering to a minimum. If there is something I can pick off the top or get on a separate plate so that I can share with my table companions, I’ll just do that rather than add on two or three or four special requests.  There was a time when one of my brunching companions ultra-specified her entire order, from the doneness of her toast (“just a light golden brown, please, not darker than my hair”) to the green-onion-to-bacon ratio in her omelet (“I know the kitchen knows what they are doing, but I’d like a bit more on the chivey side. It tastes fresher”).  I could almost taste the spit in her food with my eyes.

But I digress. After the salads, I’ll check out the kids menu, if there is one.  When all else fails, there is usually a grilled cheese/cheese pizza/spaghetti with marinara option that I can ask for.  Saying please and thank you and smiling nicely goes really quite far when you want a peanut butter sandwich and you are not 12.

Sometimes pasta will be a separate listing; this is an easy section in which to find a meatless entrée, albeit one with on beyond 20 grams of fat.  I’m not sure why, this is another lazy chef thing, I think, but in pastavalia, meatless means cream sauce, and cream sauce means death.  Delicious, velvety, succulent death.  It could come in the form of fettucine alfredo, or macaroni and cheese. (I'll say more about the mac and cheese plague in another post.) Some places will try to fool you with a butternut squash ravioli, but be wary – that usually comes with a creamy sauce, too, and the filling is oft-augmented with lots of bleu cheese.  And butter-fried sage.  Oh, and don’t forget the garlic bread.

The buttery, buttery garlic bread.

This roundabout trip takes me pretty much all around the outside edges of the menu.  If I can whip up a meal from the outskirts, that’s good enough. I sometimes allow myself to have high hopes, but I don’t ever expect to be able to find something for me in the center of the menu.