01.23.12
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:40 am by Administrator
The Broken Yolk, Corvallis, Oregon.
**
Two of Five Stars, but only for comic relief.
I’m a forgiving person. To have enjoyed The Broken Yolk experience, one fraught with staff members yelling near the top of their lungs, a fair amount of Northwest grunge and nearly all of the fundamentals of restaurant stewardship tossed aside, one would have to be, very, very forgiving.
So, yes, when it comes to restaurants, I am very forgiving.
To be fair, the restaurant was short staffed, so short that they closed an entire section. One of the only two waitresses, who also appeared to be the boss/chief-yeller, made the short-staffed situation known to every table very loudly so that every table heard each desperate apology. I suppose I heard the apology 15 or 20 times in the hour and a half it took to get and, quickly, consume my two pancakes (underdone) and two eggs.
Yep, an hour and a half. I timed it. Plus, I got the wrong pancakes.
The hour-and-a-half time was unique to me. In what would have been to most other patrons, disquieting, I watched, amidst the running and banging and frantic panic, like sitting in the middle of an overcrowded and lively fish tank, six different tables served before me who were seated after me (for this delay I was given free coffee by my apparently extremely stoned or extremely hung-over or perhaps extremely bemused and equally fascinated waitress). Whichever her condition, she moved slowly, like a happy, oblivious stop-motion cartoon character pasted into a PBS time-lapse film–picture an Eric Cartman cameo in PBS’s Journey to Planet Earth.
My bemusement at the unfolding food service wreck was not shared by my one-year-old son. Luckily the Broken Yolk has a small children’s play area and though Henry is not always smitten with adults’ conceptions of playable environs, he loved the Broken Yolk’s take and played happily the entire time. Otherwise, and I’d have to have left, which I considered doing a few times.
The food… It looked pretty good at other tables and I would return to the restaurant again to give it a try but on this day my eggs were Cold On Arrival (C.O.A.) and my pancakes were both blueberry–not what i ordered and a buck extra–and pasty white, underdone, almost wet dough.
Probably they deserve zero stars for this performance. But I’m forgiving. And like I mentioned, I would go back. We all have bad days. But if you step in the door and the boss/chiefyeller/waitress with a Hawaii tattoo on her calf is shouting apologies and the other waitress floats by in what looks like a chemically induced somnambulant coma, turn about quickly and run.
Permalink
05.22.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:44 pm by Administrator
I’d like to share my response to this article in the NY times that takes it, as unassailable fact, that genetic engineering is no different from natural sexual propogation practiced by generations of plant and animal breeders:
Inherent in your blog is the assumption, shared by most researchers, that genetic engineering and synthetic biology are no different, essentially, than the natural plant breeding processes man has engaged in for generations.
This assumption allows you to not only research these engineered, self-replicating products, but to also have no qualms about visiting these products and their offspring on the public at large. Research all you want, I say, in your controlled laboratories. But what the researchers seem to lack is an understanding of the vast, limitless and amoral laboratory at Mother Nature’s command.
It is, overall, the most offensive of actions to force your products on me and my family, through gene spread which is inevitable, no matter my reason for not wanting your products. Keep them to yourselves. Is that a difficult concept to understand? Is that not ‘reasonable’ ‘rational’ enough for you?
And, on that subject, please know that every war, genocide, military coup and Final Solution has been started in the name of ‘reason’ ‘rationality’ and ‘efficiency’ for the ‘betterment of humanity’; Started by people who were absolutely certain about their logic, their goodness; their greater, more rational approach to the human condition.
I’m saddened that pure rationality at all expense of beauty, or the ephemeral, unknowable ‘meaning’ of life, has overcome your view of the world. And I wish you could keep your products to yourselves, but you don’t seem to even know why I don’t want them or give me some basic credit, beyond some provincial troglodyte fear, for not wanting your products in my foods and mountains and waters.
Permalink
01.07.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:15 pm by Administrator
Bullhorn Journal is Christopher Dudley, recovering cowboy and multi-media journalist.
Chris spent his formative years on the Big Island of Hawaii, graduating from Ka’u High School in 1986.
He has roadraced motorcycles, captained the UNM College Rugby Club, surfed remote reefs in Hawaii, free-dived alone at night, worked as a professional journalist, managed businesses, took at-risk teens on wilderness hikes for a non-profit, rode bulls and broncs, worked as a bullfighter (rodeo clown in Yankee parlance), and played lots of music (Grand Canyon, Me, Minie Gonzalez Band, Tall Tree Band)
Chris has shot video for PBS, POV, KNME and FRONTLINE WORLD.
If you have a project you wished had a video presence, and the project has a direct positive impact on our community, contact Chris for rates and schedules. Sliding scale.
Permalink
