Well, that sucks.

A Friend here just posted some pictures from visiting her daughter in Boston over the weekend.

That's not the part that sucks.

No, that would be the fact that I couldn't identify the restaurant from the picture, which got me wondering and guessing from my extensive ::koff:: experience in checking out Beantown eateries over the years.

While I always enjoyed experimental visits to the North End, went "bowling" more than once at the Hong Kong in Hahvahd Squayah, and even endured some chowdah spillages onto my Pooh tie at Legal's Seafood with Moe and his entourage, by far the place we enjoyed the most was a place in the Pru Center called "Le Marche" or "Movenpick" or "you know, the one with the passports."

I first encountered it on an AOL trivia bash in, what?, 1998?, and then it became our meetup place of choice for old friends of both Eleanor's and mine when we visited there in ::checks date on Em in goofy lobster hat photo::



(Yeah, that one. October 2002, so six years ago this month, actually. Note the giant Harry Potter Lego creation to her right.)

Anyway. This was a serious cool concept place. You obtained a "passport" when you arrived, and moved from station to station, getting soups, salads, entrees and some seriously evil desserts, each stamping your passport as you went. Waitstaff took care of the adult and non-adult beverages, and you paid on the way out.

Awesome concept.  Also, for the past four years, it turns out, dead concept:

( From the 10/20/04 Boston Globe: )

Sigh. Something genuinely original bites the dust, while people queue up for hours to get into the fake Cheers bar across the street from Quincy Mahket.

They called him....Irving.

I don't recall having any serious political discussions with my parents in my early years, yet I'm quite sure they influenced the views I began embracing even as a pre-teen and retain, mostly, to this day. Our home contained a fair amount of Liberal Propaganda (reg. ™ of Karl Rove Enterprises under license to Rush Limbaugh d/b/a Excellence in Overdosing Broadcasting Network). We had Profiles in Courage and other books about JFK's life and death; flattering biographies about Lyndon Johnson and unflattering ones about Nixon; and there was even a "Super-LBJ" Great Society comic book, which might have influenced my political thinking back in those campy-Batman days about as much as anything.

Also, the bookshelves next to the downstairs television contained a fanciful novel from 1964 by Irving Wallace, about a black man becoming President of the United States, a reality which took only the entire natural life of Shea Stadium to come to the brink of being possible:

As [the] novel, The Man — written before the 25th Amendment to the national Constitution — begins, the Vice-Presidency is vacant, because of the incumbent's death. Then, while overseas, the President and the Speaker of the House suffer a freak accident; the President is killed, the Speaker of the House dies in surgery. The Presidency then corresponds to Douglass Dilman, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, a black man earlier elected to that office in deference to racial tokenism.

President Douglas Dilman's presidency is marked by white racists, black political activists, and an attempted assassination. Later, he is impeached on false charges for firing the United States Secretary of State. Moreover, racially, one of his children, "passing" for white, also is targeted and harassed.

Sounds like McCain's recent campaign rallies, don't it?

The odder aspect of this "old" piece of fiction, to me anyway, is that nobody's talking about it. Irving Wallace was one of the most respected and prolific authors of his generation, and yet this prescient novel about the nation's first black president is, apparently, out of print.

Maybe, possibly, because his son is a neocon contributing editor to Fox News who wants Obama to gain no sympathy based on his father's characterization of such a man in the office?

Naaaaaaaah.

----

Speaking of fathers and sons: Christopher Buckley, son of conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. and, until recently, a contributor to his dad's conservative bible, the National Review, felt compelled to resign from that publication following his recent off-reservation endorsement of Barack Obama. One should read his piece about this kerfuffle, if only to see just how nutty the right-wing nutjobs are when they feel the need to circle the wagons around their formerly Big Tent: Chris's fellow mostly-right-wing columnist, Kathleen Parker, "felt Sarah Palin was an embarrassment. (Hardly an alarmist view.) This brought 12,000 livid emails, among them a real charmer suggesting that Kathleen’s mother ought to have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a dumpster."

Fundamentalist Christianity, my ass.