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The Mellow Mushroom
The Mellow Mushroom is a pizza chain founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1974. In its youth all of its restaurants were Grateful Dead themed, but at this remove from the end of the Grateful Dead, it has expanded and employed a creative team designed to make each one unique. I was told tonight by the bartender about her favorite, which was themed on Alice in Wonderland; this one is the one I think of as "the Hobbit" Mellow Mushroom, for reasons that should be obvious. In Gainesville, Georgia, they have occupied an old mansion with stained glass windows and turned it into a masterpiece.
Pizza is an American dish, not much like the Italian namesake, with several regional styles especially including New York and Chicago (and Philly's 'tomato pie'). The Mellow Mushroom deserves to be numbered among this elite as the Southern variation on pizza. The dough is made from spring water and excellent wheat, and is chewy and buttery. Ingredients are numerous and thickly cut, preserving their flavor and texture even after cooking. They prefer a rich tomato sauce, but also make a white pizza named after the Beetles' album, and a good pesto. I've never had a bad one. The one pictured is a small half-House Special, half-Pacific Rim (with both pineapple and jalapenos, as well as thick, applewood-smoked bacon).
They generally also have an ace beer selection, as if there wasn't enough to like about the place already. The wife tells me the salads are fantastic, but my appetite for research has not so far extended to them.
Roanoke to Blowing Rock
Today's ride was shorter than yesterday's, according to my decision to take it easy coming home. After the big, impressive rocks north of Roanoke, the Parkway levels off near the city where I spent last night. It then resumes a climb to the crest of the Blue Ridge, but the climb is steady and gentle and the ridge is wide enough that you might not think you were in the mountains at all for a long time. Several tiny towns, and a few pretty churches, bestride the route.
I spent some of today talking with other bikers returning, or going further out from, Rolling Thunder. One of the vets I met asked after the knife I was wearing, and then showed me the dagger he was carrying on a neck chain. I advised him of the local laws on the subject, so that he could avoid police trouble. His was a lot shorter than mine, but NC is an open-carry state with one of those stupid knife laws that bans concealed knives by name: dirk, dagger, Bowie, etc. I'm working on rationalizing the laws, but I think it will be a difficult process. My first attempt got good responses from legislators, but didn't go anywhere practically.
There's a lodge at Peaks of Otter that looks like it might be fun for a future trip. There's also a "Northwestern Trading Post" where I bought my wife a scarf woven with skulls and roses. She'll love it, I don't doubt, and she's never read this blog so it's safe to tell you.
At one point a hawk flew over my head. Otherwise, unlike the rampant and frequent deer yesterday, there was little wildlife besides songbirds in evidence. The country grows wilder and more mountainous as you approach the North Carolina border, just south of Fancy Gap. Most of the day I had the Parkway entirely to myself, no other traveler in sight in either direction.
I'm spending the night in Blowing Rock, my favorite little mountain town in the north of North Carolina. The picture above is of the countryside from an overlook nearby. It's beginning to get nice, but the very best country lies on tomorrow's ride.
Bilbo Baggins' Global Restaurant (and Green Dragon Pub)
There aren't a lot of great restaurants in the DC area, but there is one in Alexandria, Virginia. Of course, I only thought to try it because of the Tolkien-themed name. That was fifteen years ago, though, and every time I happen back it's just as good as it used to be.
Plus it has a great mural on the upper floor, and an excellent beer, wine, and cider list. Its mead list is limited to only one item, but in fairness, it was the first restaurant I know of to carry any sort of mead at all.
That treatment of the dragon with the hairy back is clearly drawn from the 1977 animated film version of The Hobbit. Sure enough, the restaurant dates to 1980, same owner all that time. I wonder how he ever got permission to use the characters and names? But clearly he must have, since he's carried on doing it ever since.
Plus it has a great mural on the upper floor, and an excellent beer, wine, and cider list. Its mead list is limited to only one item, but in fairness, it was the first restaurant I know of to carry any sort of mead at all.
That treatment of the dragon with the hairy back is clearly drawn from the 1977 animated film version of The Hobbit. Sure enough, the restaurant dates to 1980, same owner all that time. I wonder how he ever got permission to use the characters and names? But clearly he must have, since he's carried on doing it ever since.
Shenandoah
I decided to intercept the Shenandoah National Park's Skyline Drive at the Thornton Gap, and head south from there. It's been years since I took that particular route, but there is much to recommend it. (And one thing to recommend against it: there's a sizable per-car fee, which is only slightly smaller per motorcycle). It is similar to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which begins at the end of Skyline Drive, except that much of it overlooks the Shenandoah Valley.
I had left Arlington at 3:30 AM in order to avoid the heavy, crazy traffic. This was a good decision, even though it entailed rising at 3 AM. The traffic was already heavier than I'd have liked, even at that optimal hour. But by about 6:00 AM, I had escaped to the mountains via Warrenton and US 211. Once I entered the park, I was almost completely alone due to the hour, the weekday, and probably partly as an effect of the aforementioned fee.
It began to rain at Sperryville, and continued to rain for an hour or so. Then it got hot as the day went along. I swapped gear several times as I moved from humid and warm, to cold and wet, to hot and humid. All the same, it was an enjoyable ride through lovely country.
Traffic picked up once I got on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is free to travel; but it was also later in the day. Mostly motorcycles still, even though the long weekend is over. A few more than myself decided to stretch it out, I suppose.
I had left Arlington at 3:30 AM in order to avoid the heavy, crazy traffic. This was a good decision, even though it entailed rising at 3 AM. The traffic was already heavier than I'd have liked, even at that optimal hour. But by about 6:00 AM, I had escaped to the mountains via Warrenton and US 211. Once I entered the park, I was almost completely alone due to the hour, the weekday, and probably partly as an effect of the aforementioned fee.
It began to rain at Sperryville, and continued to rain for an hour or so. Then it got hot as the day went along. I swapped gear several times as I moved from humid and warm, to cold and wet, to hot and humid. All the same, it was an enjoyable ride through lovely country.
Traffic picked up once I got on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is free to travel; but it was also later in the day. Mostly motorcycles still, even though the long weekend is over. A few more than myself decided to stretch it out, I suppose.
Always hatin on the cauliflower
What's a woke folk to do? If we plant cauliflower in our community gardens, we're guilty of colonialism. If we plant yucca and plaintains, we're culturally appropriating. If we plant no community gardens, we're murdering Gaia and propping up Big Agriculture and capitalism, assuming we don't live in a produce desert. What's left? Planting in our own back yards? Elitist pigs! How dare we elevate ourselves over tenement dwellers, us and our land-grabbing culture?
If we grow no food, at least we can watch a culture consume itself.
If we grow no food, at least we can watch a culture consume itself.
Acting straight
This is one of those articles that send you to the thesaurus looking for an interesting new synonym for "unhinged." Greta LaFleur worries that Pete Buttigieg's Norman Rockwell treatment on the cover of Time Magazine represents the triumph of "heterosexuality without women." In this context, being straight has less to do with literal sex than with the awful sort of acting-white contagion that might lead black kids to do well in school in order to improve their lives and the futures of their communities.
We have oreos and bananas and apples as slurs for blacks or Asians or Native Americans who act too white. It will be trickier to devise a slur for gays who act too straight, but I imagine someone's working on it.
We have oreos and bananas and apples as slurs for blacks or Asians or Native Americans who act too white. It will be trickier to devise a slur for gays who act too straight, but I imagine someone's working on it.
Darth Vader takes over the Energy Star
It's hard to imagine a more irritating virtue-signal than Energy Star ratings, which apparently measure the degree to which an appliance lards on a lot of stupid options in an expensive cyborg brain that will only break expensively and often, while doing a poor job of whatever the appliance is supposed to do by restricting its use of water and power.
So I was delighted to see that the Koch brothers' evil plan to take over the universe has now advanced a step by bagging a coveted Energy Star award. In a few days, no doubt, we'll see this award reversed as abruptly as some university department's ill-considered extension of a speech invitation to a wrongthink reactionary.
So I was delighted to see that the Koch brothers' evil plan to take over the universe has now advanced a step by bagging a coveted Energy Star award. In a few days, no doubt, we'll see this award reversed as abruptly as some university department's ill-considered extension of a speech invitation to a wrongthink reactionary.
The smug party
In my distant youth I was taught to associate smugness with Republicans, not Democrats. As Tucker Carleton hilariously put it earlier this year, Republicans always denied they were the party of the rich. "We denied by the poolside, at the club. 'Boy, another bourbon, please!'" I instinctively associated the Democrats with individual rights, dignity, and freedom as well. Somewhere in the 90s all that changed for me.
A Quillette article ruminating on the existential shock of the Australian election included this chart showing the realignment of conservatives and liberals according to educational attainment, which tells us a lot about educational trends in the last few decades:
A Quillette article ruminating on the existential shock of the Australian election included this chart showing the realignment of conservatives and liberals according to educational attainment, which tells us a lot about educational trends in the last few decades:
What the election actually shows us is that the so-called quiet Australians, whether they are tradies (to use the Australian term) in Penrith, retirees in Bundaberg, or small business owners in Newcastle, are tired of incessant scolding from their purported superiors. Condescension isn’t a good look for a political movement.Combine this scolding with the demented balderdash emanating from ivory towers, and you've got a good recipe for people shaking their heads at the Church Lady and switching to another station.
How Much Is a Dragon Worth?
For aspiring knights and dames and hobbit-adventurers, Forbes staff writer Michael Noer does the analysis.
Click over for the point-by-point analysis if you wish.
Last year, to quell lingering suspicions that we simply “make-up” the net worth numbers for the Fictional 15, our annual ranking of the richest fictional characters, I decided to publish the calculations behind my evaluation of Smaug’s fortune, the dragon from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (See “How Much is a Dragon Worth.”)Taking into account a variety of factors including the estimated length of a dragon (64 feet), how many scales he has on his belly (822), the percentage of air in the treasure mound (30%) and the price of gold, silver and diamonds I estimated the ancient wyrm to be worth $8.6 billion.
The Internet disagreed.
Citing errors in everything from the value of the “Arkenstone of Thrain” to the price of mithril armor, Fictional 15 fans critiqued nearly every aspect of my calculation, usually concluding that I had vastly underestimated the old flamethrower’s net worth. One reader, gvbezoff, pegged Smaug’s wealth to be $870 billion, calling it a “conservative estimate.” For context, that’s about 12.5 times richer than Carlos Slim Helu, the planet’s richest non-fictional being.
Still, I am man enough to admit to making a few imaginary errors. So I carefully recalculated Smaug’s net worth taking into account the comments on last year’s post. And the Internet was right. He is worth a lot more than $8.6 billion. $53.4 billion more in fact. Let’s go point by point:
Click over for the point-by-point analysis if you wish.
Worst places to live
Someone has figured out the worst towns to live in for all fifty states. Most of them are pits for the usual reasons of poverty, joblessness, and crime, but some states, like Nebraska, apparently are so uniformly liveable that all the surveyors could find to complain about is that residents didn't have ideal access to fresh produce. The case against Derry, New Hampshire, is particularly thin: the cost of living is high in this well-employed, safe little town. In one Utah town--horrors--the nearest hospital was 10 miles away. I wish.
At least no one mentioned limited Starbucks accessibility or the over-prevalence of Chick Fil-A. Two other subjects studiously avoided were demographics and politics.
At least no one mentioned limited Starbucks accessibility or the over-prevalence of Chick Fil-A. Two other subjects studiously avoided were demographics and politics.
Nothing But Process Crimes
Byron York says what I have also been thinking: Mueller's failure to find a single plausible Russian agent, or even coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, largely puts paid to this saga. Most of the convictions were guilty pleas that weren't court-tested; many of them were for process crimes, that is, crimes that didn't exist until the investigation itself created them.
The "obstruction!" talk is an attempt at another process crime. There's no underlying crime whose investigation could be obstructed (to say nothing of the glaring absence of formal and even legal modes of obstruction, such as the exercise of executive privilege vs. Mueller). Impeachment is a political process, and you can in a sense impeach for anything you want, but it makes no sense to impeach a President over allegations of a process crime.
I am beginning to think that the Republican congressman who joined calls for impeachment is really working for Trump. It'll be even harder to ignore calls from the hard left base with a Republican siding them, but on the House side where his apparent defection doesn't change the math. Either the Democrats give in and spend the 2020 election season failing to remove the President in the Senate trial, or they refuse and demoralize/split their base going into the 2020 election cycle. Either way, Trump comes out ahead.
They should bury this and "Move On" as quickly as possible. But maybe they can't, with the flipside investigations into how the investigation came to be coming due.
The "obstruction!" talk is an attempt at another process crime. There's no underlying crime whose investigation could be obstructed (to say nothing of the glaring absence of formal and even legal modes of obstruction, such as the exercise of executive privilege vs. Mueller). Impeachment is a political process, and you can in a sense impeach for anything you want, but it makes no sense to impeach a President over allegations of a process crime.
I am beginning to think that the Republican congressman who joined calls for impeachment is really working for Trump. It'll be even harder to ignore calls from the hard left base with a Republican siding them, but on the House side where his apparent defection doesn't change the math. Either the Democrats give in and spend the 2020 election season failing to remove the President in the Senate trial, or they refuse and demoralize/split their base going into the 2020 election cycle. Either way, Trump comes out ahead.
They should bury this and "Move On" as quickly as possible. But maybe they can't, with the flipside investigations into how the investigation came to be coming due.
The View from Hornyhead
No trail to the summit, just a long push through the brush to reach this summit at the southwestern corner of the Middle Prong wilderness, Nantahala National Forest. The last hundred plus vertical feet are a real fight, bare stone precipices rather than anything you can walk upright. It's a long way from anywhere. Too bad there aren't more places left that are.
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