The League of Gentlemen Adventurers

Yesterday, my father was up here in LA, visiting me and picking up his visa for an upcoming trip to Shanghai. Lunchtime was coming up, so naturally I checked the Twitter feed on my phone.

The new rage here in Los Angeles is food trucks that park somewhere in the city, and then tweet their location to foodies citywide. I scanned my list of food tweets – Korean bbq tacos, the Indian Dosa Truck, etc., – and then a tweet caught my eye. “Try our new fois gras burg!” from the Grill Em All truck, parked just a few minutes away in Hollywood.

That seemed to embody the LGA maxim, “If it’s worth doing, then it’s worth overdoing.” So we hightailed it out there. And, wow. Let me tell you – you have not lived unless you have tried the fried egg, potato chip, and fois gras burger they call a Lars (named, I assume, for the esteemed Mr. Ulrich).

Gents, next time you’re in LA, check it out.

Quam bene vivas refert, non quam diu.

Wherein the gents crack open the book, “How to be a Gentleman,” by John Bridges, and discuss its contents.

On the Agenda:

1. Open Discussion
2. Advice from a Gentleman, by Mr. Lee
3. A bit of Gentlemanly history from Mr. Andy

 

 Standard Podcast [43:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (381)

I stumbled on this excellent video of one of America’s greatest bartenders, Dale DeGroff (aka, King Cocktail).  Towards the middle of the video, he offers the same advice that our gent Lee gave during one of our “Drinking” podcasts.  Trust your bartender, and try the stuff you think you don’t like.  Also, check out that technique with the cocktail shaker…

Making a Morning Glory Fizz with Dale DeGroff from Zagat Buzz on Vimeo.

Now that President Obama has had his beer with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, and James Crowley, the police officer who arrested Gates, I think it’s high time I, as a member in good standing of the League of Gentlemen Adventurers, offered some wild conjecture and totally unfounded analysis of their beverage choices.

The media have given no small amount of coverage to the respective brews in which the president and his guests will partake.  For Gates, it will be a Red Stripe.  For Crowley, a Blue Moon.  Obama will have… I can barely bring myself to type these words — a Bud Light.  Why did the pick these beers?

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Are geeks born that way?  Is being a geek a product of nature or nurture?  That’s a question I’ll leave to the scientists.  I know that I began to have geek thoughts in Junior High – collecting Wolverine and Fantastic Four comics, playing “Legend of Zelda” and “Metroid.” Then I had my first real geek experience around the age of thirteen, with the older brother of a friend of mine; I was invited to join his Dungeons & Dragons game.

My parents were supportive when they found out I was a geek, but I could tell they were a little disappointed.  The other kids at school weren’t as nice – I was ridiculed, and made to feel like an outcast.  I reatreated into the closet, and learned to keep my geek life a secret from classmates, friends, and co-workers.  Only after I get to know someone will I reveal that I’m a geek, and even then I won’t go into great detail about what I do.  And I know that there are lots of other geeks out there that feel the same way.

But once a year, there’s an event where geeks get together to be their flamboyantly geeky selves.  That event is the San Diego Comic Con.  The geeks take over the streets; they dress like stormtroopers, or anime characters with oversize papier-mache weapons; they talk loudly and pubicly about the strengths and weaknesses of comic book characters; they get excited about meeting Stan Lee or Lou Ferigno; in short, the geeks make the “normal” people deal with them on their own terms.

So I want to congratulate San Diego on another successful Geek Pride weekend.  It gets bigger, better, and more accepted by the public at large every year.  (I went to my first Con in the early ’90s, when it was a small, furtive event for the most committed geeks.)  The Geek movement has made significant progress, but there’s still more work to do.