Should Restaurants Be “No Phone” Zones?

Either the Height of Rudeness or the Depth of Sadness

I recently went off on an epic rant regarding cell phones in theaters. You really should read it if you haven't already. :-)

Now it's time for a discussion of my second favorite place to ditch the device: restaurants.

Okay, before you all develop a bad case of trichotillomania (look it up), let me qualify that statement. As a society, we have gotten so all-fired addicted to our cellphones, especially the “smart”ones, that they've become like a natural extension of ourselves. I saw some sci-fi pic once where, in the future, the damn things would actually be grafted into our hands. For some people, it seems like that future is already a reality.

Brian X. Chen, author of “Always On,” a book about constant connectivity, when asked about phone addiction, says, “There are legitimate concerns for people and their everyday interactions. It’s generally rude to keep looking at your smartphone when you’re at dinner with your friends, for example. When you’re in a relationship, and you’re spending more time with your smartphone than you are with your partner, then you probably have a problem.”

Look, I'm as guilty as the next person of pulling out my iPhone and checking the news or the weather or the sports scores or reading a book while I'm sitting by myself at a table. In the “old days,” it would have been a newspaper or a magazine or an actual book. Nothing wrong with that if you're dining solo. What else are you supposed to do? Stare out the window? And I am equally guilty of making or taking a call when I'm eating by myself in a restaurant. But there are provisos involved.

Proviso number one, when talking on my phone in a crowded public environment, I keep my conversation short and quiet. And for cryin' out loud, I keep it private. The guy at the next table doesn't care, nor does he need to know, about what I'm supposed to pick up at the grocery store on my way home. I don't have to tell the couple seated behind me about the movie I saw last night. And I don't need to inflict my religious and/or political beliefs on a room full of complete strangers. When it comes to such things, my best advice is chiudi il cazzo di boccaccia! (Look that one up, too.) And don't get me started on the morons who actually turn on their speakerphones in a public place. That kind of stupid is beyond explanation.

Proviso number two applies to non-verbal phone usage. I don't play games on my phone, but I recognize that many people do. And I hope they recognize that I don't want to hear the “beeps” and “boops” and “zaps” and “zings” and the annoying music that accompanies most of them over at my table. Mute the sound, please. And if I'm texting or reading and the server comes by to check on me, I put the phone down and interact with the person. The only thing that might qualify as more rude than not at least making eye contact with the individual serving you would be keeping that person waiting to take your order while you finish whatever molto importante business you are conducting on your phone in their place of business. Ignorant, rude, patronizing, condescending, and a whole bunch of similar adjectives. Contrary to what your benighted reconstructed or deconstructed hippie parents taught you, you are not the center of the universe. Live with it.

These provisos apply to solo situations, of course. All bets are off when you're with other people. Regardless of whether it's a group of friends, your family, or your significant other.......keep your damn phone in your pocket! Or in its case, or wherever. To see two people.....or four, or six.....seated together at a table and completely ignoring one another as they peck away at their invasive little devices is either the height of rudeness or the depth of sadness. I haven't quite figured out which. As Chen said, “it’s generally rude to keep looking at your smartphone when you’re at dinner with your friends.”

Let's go back in time thirty years or so. If you were seated at a restaurant with three of your friends and they all pulled out a book or a magazine and sat there in silence, totally absorbed and completely disconnected from you and everything around you, that would have been seen as pretty weird, right? Nowadays, it's the thing. Perfectly normal. The fact that they may actually be texting with other people seated at the same table is considered fully acceptable. That's just freaky. When you can instantly connect with people across town or around the world, they call that “social media.” But how “social” is it when you can't connect with the person or people across the table?

Again, I'm somewhat guilty of being quick on the draw with my iPhone in restaurants and public places when in the company of others. But with restrictions and reservations. If we are discussing something and a question comes up that nobody can answer, I'll pull out my phone and Google it. If we're looking at the sky clouding up and wondering if we need to hustle, I'll bring up the radar on my Weather Channel app. But I will absolutely not start playing games or checking Facebook or texting somebody else. That is so unspeakably discourteous and impolite to the people you are with. It screams to them, “you're not important enough to be deserving of my full attention.”

On another level, restaurant owners complain about all the wannabe food critics constantly running around snapping pictures of their food to post on Facebook and Instagram and the like, often disturbing other patrons who are just there to eat (imagine!) and frequently getting in the way of employees trying to do their jobs. And yet, of course, the restaurants themselves are enabling and facilitating this anti-social social behavior by providing free Wi-Fi access to the very customers they are complaining about abusing smartphones in their establishments. Go figure.

One restaurant, though, is bucking the trend. Okay, it's in Kuala Lumpur, but the revolution's got to start somewhere, I suppose. And, naturally, it's an Italian restaurant. Antonio's Trattoria Calabria is a Wi-Fi free zone. And they inform their customers about it right up front with this droll little note posted right in the middle of the menu: "WE DO NOT HAVE Wi-Fi.” The notice goes on to quote a pertinent newspaper article: “'Malaysians are beginning to find out that their addiction to smartphones can lead to a host of problems. On top of the list are family meals where members hardly talk to each other as their attention is focused on the smartphones.' - The Star (February 12, 2012)" The reason for the policy was explained by the restaurant owner, "Something was very wrong: the sight of a family or a group of friends sitting down to a meal, with each person glued to his or her smartphone. Is that something we really wanted to encourage?"

Bravo, Antonio's! Hai tutto il mio rispetto!

Unfortunately, it's kind of a two-edged sword. By not providing Wi-Fi, a restaurant risks alienating someone like me who likes to sit quietly and read while dining alone. At the same time, providing Wi-Fi fosters continued disrespect in people who are already completely lacking in the social graces when it comes to interacting with others. So what's the answer? Maybe it can be found in the rest of the note posted on Antonio's menu. “While you're at Antonio's, enjoy the simple pleasure of a good conversation. Talk. Laugh. Eat. Enjoy.”

Yeah, I know. That's likely to have as much effect on entitled ignoramuses as those “Please Silence Your Cellphones and Refrain From Texting” notices posted on movie screens. But even if it only inspires a few people to put down the phone and pick up the conversation, it's a good start. And if those inspired few have kids who can be similarly influenced......well, maybe the trend can be reversed. At this stage in our arrested social development, it might be a task that is both Herculean and Sisyphean, but what's the harm in trying? Put down the phone, look across the table, and talk to the person or people you're with. Who knows? You might find that you actually like them.

Oh! A new cat video on Facebook! Sorry, that's much more important than talking to any of you. I'm gonna go watch this. BBFN!  

The Secret to Weight Loss? Exercise and All the Coca-Cola You Can Drink

Just Ask the “Experts” On Coke's Payroll

Let's face it, virtues are no fun. Chastity, diligence, charity, patience, kindness, humility, temperance? BOR-ING! Ah, but vices! Those are a blast! Pride, envy, sloth, greed, wrath, lust, gluttony – especially gluttony. Where would we be as a society today without gluttony?

A few killjoys out there say we'd all be slimmer, trimmer, and healthier. These Debbie Downers would have us believe that we can beat back diabetes and bust obesity by not filling our faces with kajillions of unnecessary empty calories like the kind you find in snack foods and sugar-saturated soft drinks. These spoilsports would piss on our parade by telling us that we can't be healthy if we keep chowing down on potato chips and cookies and candy bars and guzzling gallons of syrupy beverages.

“Pish-posh,” says a new panel of “experts.” “What a load of hooey! Our latest research reveals that the doomsayers put wa-a-ay too much emphasis on diet. Exercise, exercise, exercise! That's the real key. Lots of activity. And if all that exercise and activity makes you a little thirsty, just slug down a couple of liters of Coke and you'll be refreshed, satisfied, and healthy as a horse.”

Did I mention that these new “experts” are on the payroll of the Coca-Cola Company? Yeah.

Well, they didn't actually say the part about slugging down Coke, but it was inferred from what they did say, which was, “Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, ‘Oh they’re eating too much, eating too much, eating too much’ — blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks and so on. And there’s really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause.”

That drivel dribbled from the lips of University of South Carolina professor Steven N. Blair, a so-called “exercise scientist” acting as front man for the newly formed – and Coca-Cola funded – Global Energy Balance Network. This New Age-sounding, supposedly non-profit group cites two research papers that say there is “strong evidence” that the key to preventing weight gain is not reducing food intake, but “maintaining an active lifestyle and eating more calories.” The fine print on each scholarly treatise comes in the form of a footnote that reads: “The publication of this article was supported by The Coca-Cola Company.”

Does this sound the least little bit like the same rhetoric that has always flown around tobacco-related health issues? “Scientists,” operating under the aegis of R.J. Reynolds, who flatly state that there is no “evidence” linking cigarettes to cancer?

So let me see if I've got this straight: decades and decades of research by thousands and thousands of doctors, dieticians, nutritionists, food scientists, and a cadre of other folks with lots of letters after their names is now to be disregarded? Research in which a balance of healthy diet and adequate physical activity are promoted as critical to overall well-being is now being kicked to the curb by a handful of shills in the employ of a major soft drink manufacturer?

Dr. Blair and his cohorts stridently deny being on the dole from Coke. Certainly, the fact that the soda giant donated millions towards the outfit's startup should be irrelevant. As should the $3.5 million in funding Dr. Blair has received from Coke over the last few years to fund his “research.” And should we be in any way suspicious of the one million dollar “unrestricted monetary gift” that Coca-Cola gave to Dr. James O. Hill, a professor at the the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the group’s president? Oh, the money actually went to the University of Colorado Foundation, but when faced with a request made under the Colorado Open Records Act, the school said that Coke had provided the money “for the purposes of funding” the Global Energy Balance Network. And the money that Coca-Cola supplied to Gregory A. Hand, currently dean of the West Virginia University School of Public Health and a former USC crony of Blair? Well, that $806,500 for an “energy flux” study in 2011 and the $507,000 supplied last year to establish the Global Energy Balance Network should in no way be construed as influence. Hand says, “It makes perfect sense that companies would want the best science that they can get.” Would that be the same thing as the best science money can buy?

Nor should it be in any way suspect that the group's website is registered to Coca-Cola's Atlanta headquarters and that Coke is also listed as the site's administrator. President Hill deflects that contention by stating that the only reason Coke is in charge of all that web stuff is because nobody in his group knew how to register a website.

Wait! Wait un fottuto minuto! This guy, this “professor,” this “doctor,” this man who wants us to believe in his pazzo proclamation regarding our health is going to stand there with his cazzo faccia hanging out and tell us that among all the learned gentlemen involved in his endeavor, not one of them has the knowledge and ability that my thirteen-year-old niece has to set up and maintain a website?! What kind of idioti does he think he's dealing with?

And speaking of that website, the Network forgot to mention any affiliation with Coca-Cola or any funding therefrom until somebody pinned their ass to the mat over it. Then they started spouting stuff like, “They’re not running the show. We’re running the show.” And, “As soon as we discovered that we didn’t have not only Coca-Cola but other funding sources on the website, we put it on there. Does that make us totally corrupt in everything we do?”

Short answer? Yes.

Unlike the esteemed Dr. Blair, I'm no scientist. I don't think I've ever even played one on TV. But I do have a BS detector, and it's emitting an earsplitting tone right now. “Virtually” no evidence, he says? How about some literal evidence, then. It takes about an hour to walk off a twenty-ounce bottle of Coke. If you consume a 2- liter bottle – like a lot of people do – that's about three-and-a-half hours of walking. Hey, I've got better things to do with three-and-a-half hours. You know how long it takes my body to process an equivalent amount of water with a little lemon? About as long as it takes for a couple of trips to the bathroom. Come back and talk to me, “Dr.” Blair, after Coke removes its hand from your pocket.

Actually, Doc, I'm thinking of investing in a company that makes screen doors for submarines. I need you and your pals to churn out a couple of scholarly papers citing something other than an excess of water as the reason boats sink. Downplay the whole screen door thing and concentrate on a lack of positive buoyancy and inverse ratios and all that other scientific stuff. You know, obfuscate. Or, in simpler terms, if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.

Of course, Coke has a carefully measured response to the whole imbroglio, citing their “long history” of supporting scientific research related to their beverages and topics such as energy balance. “We partner with some of the foremost experts in the fields of nutrition and physical activity,” Coke's statement says. “It’s important to us that the researchers we work with share their own views and scientific findings, regardless of the outcome, and are transparent and open about our funding.” Uh-huh. Would it surprise you that a recent analysis of studies funded by Coke, Pepsi, the American Beverage Association and the sugar industry found that such studies were five times more likely to find no link between sugary drinks and weight gain than studies not funded by companies with a stake in the results?

“Transparent” seems to be a good buzzword here. Coke touts transparency in its statement and the Global Energy Balance Network says it has no problem with accepting funding from Coca-Cola because they are being so “transparent” about it. Of course, that transparency only came about after somebody forced them to wash their windows.

Ever since soft drink sales started heading for the precipice in the 1990s, Coke has been flogging the idea that obesity has nothing to do with consuming empty calories. They would have you believe that if you just go out and run a couple of extra laps, you can swill down all the Coke you want and never gain an ounce. Kind of like smoking all the cigarettes you want is okay as long as you don't inhale. And you can't blame them. After all, they're in the business of pandering to gluttony. Nobody “needs” a Coke, you know. And when people start bringing all that annoying temperance onto the playing field, well......the company's got to do something. And so they've funded a scholarly “network ” of abettors and buffoons to make their case for them, all under the auspices of “science.”

Don't buy it, folks. Don't drink the Kool-Aid.......or, in this case, the Coca-Cola. These are not independent scientists operating with your health and welfare at heart. They are a gaggle of geese honking out a corporate philosophy, a company of marionettes whose strings are being pulled from 1 Coca Cola Plaza NW in Atlanta. They'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony......as long as Coke is providing the melody. And I think their respective universities should all be evaluating their qualifications.

By my calculations, you've spent about seven minutes reading this little rant. I'm sorry to have taken so much of your time, because that's about six-and-a-half minutes more than the lunacy this pack of pandering, money grubbing clowns is promoting deserves.

All About Homemade Mayonnaise

Fast, Easy And Better Than Store Bought

Do you use a lot of mayonnaise at your house? I don't, and used to be I'd go out and buy the smallest jar I could find and still end up throwing more than half of it away. So I recommended to my wife, the family mayonnaise eater, that we start making our own. After all, we make bearnaise, hollandaise, and just about everything else from scratch, so why not mayonnaise?

Mayo has been around for a while. Early references can be found as far back as the beginning of the nineteenth century. Nobody is certain of the real origin story of the stuff and there are several floating around, including the most popular notion that it came from the town of Mahón in Menorca, Spain, where it was known as salsa mahonesa in Spanish and and as maonesa or maionesa in Catalan. It later migrated to France where it became known as mayonnaise.

Regardless of from whence it came, here's what mayonnaise is: a stable emulsion. What's an emulsion? Chemically, it's a mixing of two substances that normally don't mix. Like oil and water. In the case of mayonnaise, it's an emulsion of oil, eggs, and either vinegar or lemon juice. Other ingredients provide added flavor, but those are the essential three.

And that's another reason I started making my own mayonnaise. Above and beyond the cost and waste factors is the control of what I choose to consume. And preservatives and “stabilizers” are generally not among those choices.

Here's a look at the ingredient label of a national brand of mayonnaise. Actually, it's the same label across several national brands:

SOYBEAN OIL, WATER, WHOLE EGGS AND EGG YOLKS, VINEGAR, SALT, SUGAR, LEMON JUICE, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA (USED TO PROTECT QUALITY), NATURAL FLAVORS.

Now, according to 21CFR101.22 of the Code of Federal Regulations, “natural flavors” are defined as: “the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional”.

My. Doesn't that just sound “natural?”

Then there's calcium disodium EDTA, the full scientific name of which is calcium disodium ethylene diamine tetraacetate. See why they abbreviate it? Calcium disodium EDTA is used to inhibit rancidity in salad dressings, mayonnaise, sauces, and sandwich spreads. Considering it's made from formaldehyde, sodium cyanide, and Ethylenediamine, it does a pretty bang-up job of “inhibiting.”

According to the fine folks at the FDA, providing the best protection special interest money can buy since about 1927, calcium disodium EDTA is on the GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) list when used in the small amounts found in prescription medicine, eye drops and food preservatives. However, there is a risk that the stuff can cause cramps, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, low blood pressure, skin problems, and fever. It is not safe to consume more than three grams per day. Too much can cause kidney damage, low calcium levels and even death. Guess it's a good thing I don't eat more mayonnaise.

But you know what? Even if you want to write me off as a health nut, there's one thing that can't be denied: homemade mayonnaise just tastes better than store bought.

As I mentioned, there are a lot of flavors you can add to mayonnaise made from scratch. Once you get the hang of it, experiment away. But what follows here is a really simple, really basic, really easy to make recipe for homemade mayonnaise.

Here's what you'll need:

2 eggs

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 ½ cups canola or olive oil

¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

salt and freshly ground black pepper

About the eggs: use the freshest eggs you can get your hands on. Mine are farm fresh, but if you haven't got a farmer handy, don't use the eggs you bought at the supermarket three weeks ago. Go get some fresh(er) ones. Why? Glad you asked. Eggs contain lecithin, a phospholipid that facilitates the emulsion process. The older the egg, the more diminished the lecithin content, so.......fresh eggs, please.

I should note that using olive oil will affect the flavor profile of your mayonnaise. Not that that's a bad thing, but there may be some dishes you don't necessarily want to have an olive oil flavor. In that case, just use canola oil. It will taste more like “regular” mayonnaise.

There are a couple of ways you can proceed. If you've got great wrists, you can make mayonnaise by hand using a big bowl and a balloon whisk. You can also use a food processor or, if you have a ridiculously well-equipped kitchen like I do, you can use an immersion blender. Which ever way you go, make sure the ingredients are at room temperature. If they are too cold, the mixture may not emulsify properly.

Okay. Warm up your wrists, here we go with the “by hand” method.

In a large stainless steel* or glass mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs and the mustard until they are thoroughly combined. Add the oil in a continuous, thin stream, whisking constantly, until the mixture starts to thicken. Whisk in the lemon juice and keep whisking until everything is thoroughly blended. Season with salt and pepper.

*(The reason for the emphasis here is that aluminum or iron will make your finished product a rather unappetizing shade of gray.)

If you prefer to let a machine do it, here's how it goes.

Put the eggs and mustard in the work bowl of a food processor and process for a few seconds until everything is smooth. With the machine running, slowly add the oil through the feeder tube in a thin, continuous stream. Do this until the mixture is thick and completely emulsified. Add the lemon juice through the tube and process until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

If you have an immersion blender (aka a “stick blender”), the procedure is pretty much the same as the hand mixing method, except you're letting the blender be your “hand.”

In each method, I repeated the phrase “thin, continuous stream” when talking about adding the oil. (Well......I think I said “continuous, thin stream” once.) There's a reason: if you dump too much oil in too fast, your mayonnaise will break. That's the word chefs use when they totally screw up a sauce. And instead of having nice creamy mayonnaise, you'll have a bowlful of watery liquid with grainy bits of fat floating in it. You can fix it by beating up another egg yolk and slowly whisking it into the “broken” mixture until it thickens properly. Or you can drizzle in about a tablespoon of very hot water and whisk until smooth. But it's easier to do it right the first time.

A final word about storing your delicious, fresh, homemade mayonnaise: refrigerator. But not right away. After you finish whipping all the ingredients into emulsified submission, leave it out on the counter for a couple of hours. Ouch! All that screaming of the word “salmonella” is deafening. But hear me out. The chance of your egg yolk being contaminated with salmonella is almost infinitesimally small. On the off chance that it was, however, sticking the newly-made mayo in the fridge would only keep that salmonella from breeding. The cold won't actually kill it. However, acid will. And with all that great citric acid in your mayo, the nasties don't stand a chance. But for reasons that still have the white coat and pocket protector crowd mumbling and scratching their heads, acid does its best bug killing at room temperature. So leaving the mayonnaise out for a couple of hours is actually a good idea from an anti-bacterial standpoint. The FDA might disagree, but go back and look at the toxins they Generally Regard As Safe and ask yourself, “who cares?” After a couple of hours, though, it's straight to the refrigerator for your shiny new sauce, where it will hold up pretty well for about a week.

Of course, if the “raw egg and salmonella” thing really terrifies you, you could always use pasteurized eggs or (shudder) a liquid egg substitute. But I won't stand by the flavor.

As I said, there are a lot of variations. For instance, you can leave out the Dijon mustard. Or you can use vinegar instead of lemon juice. You can also scale up or down depending on how much mayo you need. Don't make a boatload unless you're going to use it all within a few days.

Either Amelia Schlorer or Richard Hellman have the distinction of being the first to commercially produce mayonnaise. Hellman supposedly did it in his New York delicatessen in 1905 while Mrs. Schlorer whipped up a batch of her famous homemade mayo in Philadelphia in 1907. She packed twelve jelly jars full of her sauce and sold it at a local department store. The jars were gone within an hour and, for better or worse, the era of commercial mayonnaise in jars was born. Both products are still on the market, although I think Hellman's wins the higher recognition award. But now you can bypass them both in the condiment aisle of your supermarket and make your own. It's fast, easy, and delicious.

The Total Morons On Yelp Who Are Guiding Your Decisions

Don't Whine, Don't Whimper, Don't Cry. And, Above All, Don't Yelp

Anybody who drops by here knows I don't have a lot of use for Yelp and other social media outlets of the sort.  The reason is simple: too much democracy. It's the same reason the Founding Fathers chose a democratic republic for our form of government. In theory, at least, under a republic, ordinary people choose educated and qualified individuals from among their ranks to represent them in the decisions that will affect them. In a true democracy, it's every man for himself. Just throw it all out there and see what sticks. Social media “review” sites operate the same way. Rather than allow qualified, educated critics, reviewers, and guides to provide information on where to go, what to eat, what to see, etc., many people opt, instead, to “Yelp,” thus putting themselves at the mercy of legions of absolute idiots.

I mean, before you go calling me an elitist snob, think about it: how many ordinary people do you know whose advice you would trust implicitly in making an important decision? Oh, sure, some of your trusted friends and maybe a few family members are pretty hip and cool, and they'd be alright to ask. But among the people you meet in the store or pass on the street, how many? The spiky-haired dude on the subway who has so many piercings he looks like he fell face first in a tackle box? The girl with the tattoo of a snake coming up out of her cleavage and wrapping around her neck? How about the redneck biker who lives down the street and blows you out of bed revving up his Harley on Saturday morning? Or the airhead you got behind in line at the supermarket who had to pull out the calculator on her phone to total up the two items in her cart? Are any of these total strangers – emphasis on “strange” – folks you would want giving you opinions on matters of taste? If you're a Yelper, they already are.

CNN recently compiled a bunch of Yelp “reviews” that perfectly illustrate my point. Here are a few of the more mind-numbing ones for your consideration.

A Yelper visiting the Louvre: "Each to their own I guess, but paintings and sculptures just hold little or no interest for me." Then why did you go to........oh, never mind. Same question for the brain trust who went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and commented, “I refuse to pay any amount of money to see antiques collecting dust.” O-o-o-o-k-a-a-ayyyy!

Speaking of experts in antiquities, I really appreciate the opinion of the learned gentleman from Florida who went to see the Colosseum in Rome and came away with this brilliant observation: "Yes, it looks great at night but put some lights up on that abandoned GM Assembly Plant in Detroit and you'd have about the same thing without any long visitor lines.” He's obviously been to a few of Florida's main cultural icons.

While we're in Rome, there's this highly educated “review” of some minor artist named Michelangelo: “After seeing so many other free churches' beautiful ceilings, I was disappointed with the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.” Thanks for the tip, pal. I'll definitely avoid this blatant tourist trap.

You see where I'm going here? These people are amazing!

Boredom is everywhere for these jaded sophisticates. Especially drop-dead dull places like Yellowstone, as described by a Maryland Yelper: "I want to tell you that I am not some nature hating guy. I take my kids hiking. I rock climb. The problem with the place is that it is dull. [But] If you are in the area for some reason it is worth dropping by.” Three million visitors a year and this guy says “it is worth dropping by” if you happen to be in the area with nothing more exciting to do. He's right up there with the guy from Colorado who had a great suggestion for improving the “wow” factor at the Grand Canyon: “As amazing as the views are it is really kind of boring. Every 500 ft a new vantage point of the same thing: a really big hole in the ground...What would [be] nice is segway rentals.” Yeah, that would perk it up for me. People on segways trying to do Evel Knievel. The boredom these jaded reviewers feel even extends to war memorials. Witness this witless wonder from Philadelphia's opinion of the Vietnam War Memorial: “It's a wall with a bunch of names on it. I mean NO disrespect but spice it up a bit. It's kinda boring.” How can it be boring? There are segway tours around there, after all.

I feel like a proctologist. Assholes everywhere I look.

I guess I'm just being unfair because my standards aren't high enough. Obviously, aristocratic people from elite Alpharetta, Georgia who say the Eiffel Tower is "crowded, overrated, and ugly from up close” operate on a totally different plane from the rest of us lower beings. That would be the same plane upon which the San Francisco Yelper lives who offers this sage comment about another Frenchman's work, this one standing in New York Harbor: “As a proud American I wanted to love this, but was grossly underwhelmed... Old Lady Liberty is just that... old.”

And then we come to my favorite Yelpers; the restaurant “reviewers.” The ones who bring their elevated palates all the way from Arcadia, California to Copenhagen to dine at Noma. Of a place with two Michelin stars that has been ranked as the best restaurant in the world four times by Restaurant magazine, our California critic had this to say: “One of the courses literally made me gag but in NOMA, spitting into your napkin would be a like crime so I swallowed it like a bitter pill.” OMG! Somebody tell René Redzepi, International Chef of the Year in 2008 and one of TIME magazine's “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2012. He'll be devastated.

There's the California girl who one-starred a restaurant after a five word “review:” “Could use some vegan options.” My GOD! How shortsighted! How dare this restaurant not anticipate her personal dietary preferences? I'll bet they didn't offer “gluten-free” options either, the swine. This place should be forced out of business and the owners covered in tofu and ridden out of town on a rail. It's obvious that one star was generous.

I'm inordinately fond of “reviews” like the one put up by somebody who looked at the menu posted in the establishment's window and opted not to eat there because “the food didn't look good.” Or the ones that trash an eatery because the “reviewer” didn't like the décor.

And I liked the one slamming a Kosher place in Boca Raton. The Yelper got all exercised over the fact that the “bacon” wasn't really bacon and the “American cheese” wasn't really cheese. They accused the owners of dishonesty and when the traditional Jewish nature of the place was explained to them, they huffed and puffed about going to a restaurant, not a synagogue and finished their one-star “review” with an asinine comment: “Since when is it a sin to go to a restaurant, be a Christian, and expect to get the food you ordered? I WILL NEVER RETURN. FOR GODSAKE PASS THIS ON TO THE FOLKS YOU CARE ABOUT!!!”

And then there was the brilliant Yelper who one-starred a Jewish restaurant for being closed on a Jewish holiday.

I've written my fair share of negativity regarding Olive Garden, but the “review” posted by a Yelper from Cerritos, California truly humbles my best effort: “A while back, our little family went with our $50 gift card to the Cerritos Olive Garden, had some piss-poor salad, some pasta that tasted like ass, some meat that tasted like ass, and some bread that was probably good when it was baked, but had gone tough in the last billion years and now tasted like ass. The service was actually really good, and I felt bad for the young man who had to carry that shit around and pretend it was anything but ass. 'Excuse me, sir, how was your serving of ass? Did you enjoy the ass tonight? Would you like me to box the leftover ass to take home?' Poor guy. Don't nobody give us another Olive Garden gift card. I'll fucking kill you.” Definitively proving that the only ass involved here was the one writing the “review.”

And Yelpers often write helpful “reviews” aimed at assisting the common folk who eat at fast-food places. Like this one for Wendy's: “This place is BAWLIN' yo. Chicken nuggitz be crispy like you never SEEN. I tasted one and I was like 'WHAAAAT! Are you serious Wendy?' Mean girls workin the friers, tho. This one chick wouldn't even let me holla. I was like 'please you ugly anyway.'” That just says it all, right?

Coffee shops get “reviewed,” too. “Hmm… Where to start. The joint’s cool until I got banned for making a pass at one of their barista. Apparently asking their co-worker if she (the intended) was gay, was a big no-no in their java world. Oh, and I asked their Asian-looking chick, if she was Asian. That too; was a violation. Yawn !!”

Yelp gets millions of such submissions a month. These educated, erudite, intellectual paragons of taste are the people to whom you are turning for guidance and advice. I can't wrap my head around it. It's like giving millions of children boxes of crayons and telling them to create fine art. A few might get close, but the vast majority will turn out stuff of a quality you won't even want to display on your refrigerator much less in a gallery or a museum. Substitute a computer keyboard for the crayons and you are essentially allowing the same group of people to dictate where you're going to go, where you're going to stay, what you're going to eat, and what you're going to see.

I recently stayed at a nice hotel where I enjoyed a long weekend. The only negative came from a couple of selfish idiots ensconced across the hall with their duo of yapping little mutts. The hotel staff was practically apoplectic with apology and did their very best to ameliorate the inconvenience, which only lasted until the selfish miscreants checked out after one night. The little critters were quiet during the overnight hours and the time I was subjected to their yodeling and yapping was brief because I didn't spend a lot of time in my room other than overnight. No harm, no foul. The management offered to relocate me to another room. They tendered generous discounts. They apologized incessantly and were extremely grateful that I had brought the matter to their attention. All because they feared I was going to be one of “those people” who would take to the Internet and trash the entire hotel because of an isolated act of ignorance on the part of a pair of fellow travelers. Hey. The management called their cellphone. They knocked on the door of the room. And when they finally caught up with the cretins, they told them to control their dogs. What else could they do? Call in the local animal shelter's SWAT team with tranquilizers and cages? So, no, I'm not going to go on Yelp and trash the hotel. There was nothing wrong with the hotel. Just with some of the idiots in one of the rooms. But unfortunately, Yelp brings out the worst in petty whiners and empowers them to express their footling concerns to the detriment of businesses already struggling in an uphill battle to please an increasingly demanding public. The results are often higher prices and scaled back services as owners and managers strive to provide the least risky options directed at the lowest common denominator. Thanks a lot, Yelp.

Bottom line, as everybody in the service industry will tell you, if you've got a problem with a hotel, a restaurant, or an attraction, bring it directly to the attention of management. Don't whine, don't whimper, don't cry. And, above all, don't Yelp.

Portland Diner Owner Yells At Screaming Tot “This Needs To Stop”

And All I Can Say Is “Brava!”

Next time I'm in Portland, Maine I am going to make it a point to eat at at Marcy's Diner. And if owner Darla Neugebauer is around, I plan to shake her hand.

Marcy's is a relatively small place over on Oak Street that seats around eighty people and only takes cash payment for typical diner fare – a breakfast of two eggs, bacon or sausage, toast, and hashbrowns for six bucks. Soups and sandwiches for lunch. Nothing extraordinary.

What is extraordinary is all the virtual fur flying about the Internet over a recent interaction between Darla and a customer. A two year-old customer. Okay, technically the toddler was not the “customer;” the parents were. But the toddler was the problem. Or was the problem the parents?

John and Tara Carson were vacationing in the Portland area and, with toddler in tow, decided to drop in at Marcy's. They ordered pancakes for the little girl and then inexplicably refused to feed them to her, opting instead to place them in the center of the table out of the child's reach. Well, guess what? The kid started screaming. The problem developed when the kid kept on screaming for the better part of an hour. The owner, Darla, was working the grill, heard the noise and dropped a subtle hint that is sometimes employed in restaurants to hasten the departure of certain customers. She called out loudly, “Has that table gotten their ticket yet?” This is restaurant shorthand for “don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.” But, alas, such subtlety was wasted.

A more direct approach was tried next. Ms. Neugebauer took “to go” boxes over to the table and asked the Carsons to pack up and leave or to at least take the child outside. That got no more reaction than did the subtle hint.

So in a final act of frustration, Ms. Neugebauer, after enduring the unendurable for forty minutes or so, turned from her station, slammed her hands down on the counter, pointed at the red-faced screaming child and shouted, “this needs to stop!” At which point the kid abruptly shut up.

Ah, but now the outraged parents enter the fray. They indignantly demand, “Are you screaming at a child?” To which the put through the mill owner replies, “Yes. I am.” And the battle is on. Oh, nobody came to blows, of course, but the parents immediately established the front line on Facebook, citing the whole brouhaha as “the worst experience” and going on to taunt Neugebauer with the comment, “who in their right mind would behave like this unless you are deranged?” I won't comment on the grammar of that statement. And Ms. Neugebauer replied with an expletive laden response, and on and on it went until the press got wind of the whole thing and battle lines were drawn and sides were taken.

But you know what? The sides are weighted almost three-to-one in favor of the beleaguered owner. A poll conducted on one website following the story had 72% of respondents saying “someone should thank her.” The same poll cited 25% who thought Neugebauer “should have gone about it in a different way,” while a mere 3% thought the response was “totally inappropriate.”

All I can say is “brava!” Can diner owners be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize?

You can call me a curmudgeon – and I'd be pleased if you would – but I've had it up to my eyebrows with brats in public places. Not the little ones, mind you. They don't know any better. It's the big brats, the thoughtless, ill-mannered, ignorant, self-centered, self-important, overly-indulgent, enormously entitled so-called adults who spawn the little ones and then steadfastly refuse to discipline them or try to integrate them into the realities of polite society.  They are the ones at fault in every case. The only thing I'd have done differently had I been Ms. Neugebauer would have been to have directed my anger and ire where it belonged. The child was merely a product of her lack of upbringing. Darla should have screamed “this needs to stop” directly at the benighted parents. In case you need clarification on the term “benighted,” it means “in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance.”

You want to talk about pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance? Try this; Mommy was later heard whining to the press, “I turned to my daughter and I was like ‘Listen, this is how I’m raising you not to be as an adult. Like, you will never be like this when you get older.' I felt helpless as a mom that, you know, I couldn’t do anything to help her, because I can’t explain why there’s crazy people in this world that behave like that.”

Excuse me while I swallow my gorge. Was there even a coherent thought in all that stumbling, immature rubbish?

In an orderly, civilized society, your right to be a thoughtless, ignorant, disruptive boor ends where my right to the reasonable expectation of a peaceful, quiet dining experience begins. Especially when there are more of me than there are of you. As eloquently expressed by Mr. Spock, it's the whole “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few – or the one” concept. In a room where seventy or eighty people are gathered to fulfill their need for peace and quiet, by what possible authority can you demand your singular right to be an undisciplined, disorderly idiot? Or to sanction disorderly behavior in those under your alleged control?

And before you ask, yes, dammit, I've been a parent. Two boys about two years apart. And they never, ever, ever misbehaved in restaurants or other public places. In fact, I used to get compliments on their behavior from relieved diners who surely thought, as I often do today, “there goes the neighborhood” when I walked in with my two potential meal disruptors. It. Never. Happened. And it's not because I beat them to within an inch of their lives, because I didn't. I taught them cause and effect, action, reaction, and consequences at home before they ever ventured out into the wider world. They understood that screaming and demanding would not be rewarded and that misbehavior would not be tolerated. And as a result, they didn't do it.

I'm a baby boomer and perhaps “boom” is the operative word. I was never afraid to lower it. Unlike the wishy-washy, touchy-feely, “timeout” and “let children express themselves” hip pocket child psychiatrists masquerading as parents of the “me” generation, I was not averse to enforcing discipline. My kids learned to respect a stern look or a firm tone of voice. Beating them simply wasn't necessary. And both of them are fine men today with fine families of their own, so apparently their mom and I did something right. Hope the “parents” of the screamer can say the same thing in thirty years.

Okay. Off the soapbox and back to the issue. Was the restaurant owner correct in defending the rights of her other patrons? Without question. Could she have handled it less dramatically and less confrontationally? Probably. But if you read her Facebook posts you'll quickly figure out that restraint is not one of her personality traits. Should she have been placed in such a position in the first place? Never. It's a restaurant, not a day-care. She's a cook, not a babysitter. The parents were on vacation. Were they supposed to leave their 2-year-old at the hotel? Of course not. Should they have allowed her to scream incessantly in a public place while they selfishly filtered it out and reduced it to background noise? You know the answer as well as I do.

So, again, brava, Darla Neugebauer. Don't worry about the three percent idiot faction. Or even the twenty-five percent who think you could have done things differently. The seventy-two percent of us who back you to the hilt thank you for your actions on our behalf. And if I do get the opportunity to visit Marcy's Diner in person, I'll bring my granddaughter. I guarantee you won't have to yell at her.

Recipe: A Decadent Croque Madame

I Know It's French; It's Still Delicious

I am breaking new ground here. The “View From My Italian Kitchen” is going to veer toward France and bring you a recipe for a decadent sandwich, the Croque Madame. (I am part French, after all.) I suppose I could try to Italianize it by calling it a “croccante signora” or a “tostata signora,” but that would translate to either “crispy lady” or “toasted lady,” neither of which would be too appropriate.

My wife got one of these classic French delights at a place called La Farm Bakery in Cary, North Carolina, where it is a signature item on their breakfast, brunch, and lunch/dinner menus. She fell head over heels in love with the dish and I have been making it for her regularly ever since. I know it's French, but it's still delicious. You can find my review of La Farm here: http://ronjamesitaliankitchen.blogspot.com/2015/04/review-la-farm-bakery-and-cafe-cary.html

The Croque Madame is a variation of another French classic, the Croque Monsieur. Basically a fancied up grilled ham and cheese sandwich, the Croque Monsieur traces its origins to French cafés and bars in the early 20^th century, first appearing on a Parisian café menu in 1910. The name derives from the French croquer (“to bite”) and monsieur, French for “mister.” The Croque Madame variation came along later, supposedly inspired by the addition of a fried egg, fancifully resembling a woman's hat, to the top of the sandwich.

One thing you should know: it's pronounced "croke mah-DAHM," not "crock MAD-am." Yes, I actually heard somebody say it that way. A "chef," no less.

It's a super simple dish that you can knock together in minutes. Here's what you'll need for two sandwiches:

2 tbsp unsalted butter

2 tbsp all-purpose flour

1 cup milk

¾ cup coarsely grated Gruyere cheese, divided

salt and freshly ground black pepper

½ cup shredded mozzarella (optional)

4 slices hearty white bread

¼ pound thinly sliced sliced deli ham (Black Forest ham works well)

2 lg eggs

The only complicated part, if you can call it that, is the mornay sauce. So let's start there and get it over with.

To make a mornay, you have to start with a béchamel. Or as I prefer, a besciamella. It's really not that hard. It's all about ratios and proportions. You need three basic ingredients: flour, unsalted butter, and milk, plus salt and pepper for seasoning. The ratio for a simple béchamel is 2:2:1 – 2 tablespoons of flour, 2 tablespoons of butter, and 1 cup of milk. Scale up or down as required.

Begin by warming the milk. It's not strictly necessary, but some chefs swear by warm milk. Others don't. Personally, I just pop the milk in the microwave for a minute.

While the milk is warming, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and cook it in the melted butter for a minute or two, stirring constantly, until a paste forms and the raw flour flavor is cooked out. Stir in the milk, briefly bring to a boil, then lower the heat and cook, stirring frequently, until a thick, bubbly sauce forms, about five minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Some people like a little nutmeg. Your choice. Now you have a béchamel.

Turn your béchamel into a mornay by adding cheese. Gruyere is most common, but Emmental, white cheddar, or Parmesan work well. You can mix and match for extra flavor, or just go with Gruyere. Whisk about half of the grated cheese into the sauce until it thoroughly melts in and becomes smooth.

You can make the sauce a little in advance and either remove it from the heat and put a piece of plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the sauce to keep a skin from forming, or you can hold it over very low heat, giving it a frequent stir to keep it smooth and to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. You can hold it this way for about a half hour without having to worry about the sauce hardening, lumping, or overreducing.

Next, lay out your sandwich. Use a good, hearty country bread. Gummy white sandwich bread will be totally overwhelmed. Place as much ham as you like on two slices of the bread and top it with the remaining grated Gruyere and maybe a little shredded mozzarella. Spoon on enough of the mornay sauce to cover the ham and cheese and then complete your sandwiches, covering with the other slices of bread. This is where your kitchen equipment will play a role. I have a sandwich press in my kitchen, so I can throw my completed sandwich on there, close it up for a minute, and I've got a perfectly toasted sandwich. You might have to use a broiler, a grill pan, or some other toasting medium to get the same effect. In any case, toast the sandwiches.

Now you need to get a couple of sunny-side up eggs going. Spray a nonstick skillet with a little cooking spray and heat it over medium heat. Alternately, you can melt a pat of butter, if you prefer. Working low over the pan, so the yolk doesn't break, crack an egg into the heated pan. If you're afraid of breaking the yolk or of getting shell fragments in the pan, simply break the eggs into cups or small bowls and gently pour them into the pan. I have 4-inch egg rings; nice if you've got 'em, but not essential. The pan shouldn't be too hot. You don’t want the whites to start solidifying the second you drop the eggs in. The whites should stay clear for several seconds before they start to really turn white. If a drop of water sizzles when it hits the pan, you're at about the right temperature. Let the eggs sit there and happily cook slowly until the whites are completely set and the yolks begin to thicken but don't get hard. You want the yolk very runny. Takes about 4 or 5 minutes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and they're done.

Time to bring it all together. Put your toasted sandwiches on plates, spoon a generous quantity of the mornay sauce over each, and top them with the fried eggs. At La Farm, they serve this with brunch potatoes, a mini scone and fresh fruit, but the sandwich is wonderful all by itself.

There you have it. A wonderful French dish that is easy to prepare, but will still impress your family and friends. And I don't really mind that it's French because everybody knows that the Italians taught the French how to cook in the first place, so........enjoy!

Buon appetito! 

Cellphones In Theaters: “Arrogance and Defiance”

Patty LuPone Is My New Hero

I have a cellphone. It's a bright, shiny iPhone and I never go anywhere without it. That said, I also have a brain, common sense, and good manners, all of which put me one up on a lot of cellphone users and abusers.

Okay, in the first place, I'm old. So old, in fact, that I remember the days before cellphones existed. Wow. A real dinosaur, huh? Back when I was a radio guy, I actually carried one of the first portable cellular phones. It was the mid-'80s and the device was essentially a telephone handset attached by a curly cord to a huge battery pack. The whole apparatus weighed ten or fifteen pounds, but, by golly, it was portable. Its major feature was that it enabled you to make phone calls. And that was its only feature. It didn't light up and play loud annoying music. And when you pushed the buttons, you were dialing a phone number not sending a “text message” because there was no such thing. Since the Internet did not yet exist – at least not for the masses – there was no 'net surfing to be done. All you could do was call somebody. And at a dollar a minute you were pretty discriminating about making those calls. All in all, cellphones were rather difficult things to become addicted to.

Enter the “smartphone.” Whoa! It does everything and it fits in the palm of your hand. Well, yeah, you have to have pretty big palms for some of the new ones, but you know what I mean. It's more than just a telephone, it's a wireless connection to life. Unfortunately, it's also a social crutch for people who don't have a life. The real problem is not with the “smart” phone but rather with the stupid user. Nowhere is this more evident than in the theater. Movie theater or live theater, take your pick. 'Net surfing, game-playing, text messaging morons inhabit both. They are like alcoholics or drug addicts; they have to get a “fix” or they start to tremble and shake.

As I said, I carry my phone with me everywhere. It's on my hip or in my pocket eighteen hours a day and on a bedside charger the other six. But just because my phone is constantly attached to me does not mean I am constantly attached to it. Believe it or not, I can function without my phone for two or three hours at a time. The idiots who light the damn things up in darkened theaters apparently can't function without theirs for two or three minutes.

“I'm bored.” I'm sorry, but there are worse things in life than being bored. Being a thoughtless, self-centered, discourteous, entitled twit, for example. Just because you are self-important enough to believe that you have to share every moment of your exalted existence with everyone else on the planet doesn't mean that I have to watch you do it.

I admit it: when it comes to theaters, I am an avowed phone Nazi. You light that sucker up anywhere I can see it......and in a dark room, that's pretty much everywhere except directly behind me.....and I'm gonna call you out about it. And I won't be quiet and I won't be polite. Hell, if you're stupid and rude enough to be flashing your phone around in a room full of people would couldn't care less about your “right” to do so, I'm stupid and rude enough to make sure you and everybody else knows it. After all, you've already disrupted everybody's enjoyment with your stupidity so my yelling, “Put that damn thing away” isn't likely to disturb anybody any more than they've already been disturbed, right?

Most of my bad phone experiences lately have been in movie theaters, but live theater gets its share of the boorish, ignorant, loutish behavior as well. And that's where I'd like to introduce you to my newest hero, Patti LuPone. To begin with, the multi-talented, multi-award-winning actress is Italian. Score one. And she's got a definite handle on how to deal with inconsiderate boobs who think they are the alpha and the omega of all things in life.

A couple of years ago, during a Broadway performance of “Gypsy,” she stopped the show......literally.....to take down an idiot snapping pictures. What part of the standard pre-show announcement “the taking of photographs and use of recording devices is forbidden by law” don't these goobers get? Or is it that they are so important that the rules don't apply to them. They paid for their tickets, dammit, so they can do anything they want. Or so their pea-brained logic dictates.

Recently, Patti was performing in “Show of Days” at New York's Lincoln Center. And there's this clueless airhead sitting in full view of both the audience and the stage texting blithely away throughout the entire first act. And when she started up again after intermission, Patti handled it. She simply stepped through the actor's imaginary “fourth wall” and snatched the phone right out of the miscreant's hand. Yaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy, Patti! Way to go, girl!! (Unfortunately, the fool got her phone back after the show. If I'd have been Patti, I'd have done my best Peter Frampton imitation and hurled the thing into the rafters.)

"There's an arrogance and defiance to these people," Patti said. "I think it's gone too far. Audiences are as upset as actors. It's only between two and four people a night, but the minute [a phone] goes off or a screen turns on, your attention is shattered."

Shattering an audience member's attention in a play is annoying. Shattering an actor's attention can be dangerous. Been there, done that. You might be up there doing something tricky or intricate that demands your full attention and here comes some clod with a camera or a blazingly bright cellphone screen exercising his “right” to ignore whatever rules don't suit him. You lose focus and somebody loses an eye or something. And “Miss Entitled To The Full Experience” is right there to record it and/or text it to all her Facebook “friends.”

And it ain't real safe to piss off an audience member in a movie theater, either. Hey, I'll just yell at you. Remember the fella in Florida awhile back who pulled a gun and put an abrupt and final end to some guy's texting? You never know. You may be ignorant and rude, but somebody else could be just plain nuts and possessed of a really short fuse. Personally, even though it's probably in bad taste, I think that instead of putting up polite “reminders” on the screen or showing funny clips of a camel saying, “It's movie d-a-a-a-a-y!,” theaters ought to consider just posting that dude's mug shot up there. Might get the point across.

I don't get it. A person shells out between ten and twenty bucks for a movie ticket or an average of about a hundred bucks for a Broadway show, and then they sit there and “entertain” themselves by playing games or texting friends for two hours? What's the point? Why not just stay home? Does everybody born in the Information Age have ADHD that they can't sit for two minutes without checking their frickin' phone? And if the show is that bad, get up and leave. You can probably get your money back and the rest of us will be glad you're gone.

Of course, the real problem is there's no enforcement of the rules, so rule benders don't take them seriously. I've been in movie houses where they actually sent in an employee before the show to make a deadly serious announcement about cellphone use. Then the employee left, the movie screen lit up....and so did the cellphones. These cretinous clowns know that theaters can't afford to station “phone police” in every auditorium, and since they don't really give a flying flip about anybody's “rights” other than their own right of self-entertainment, they don't care. They just light up and go about their business. If you don't like it, well, bad on you.

The problem's not going to go away until the industry gets serious about it. In live theater, Patti LuPone says it's not fair that performers have to play the bad guy when it comes to cellphone abuse. "I'm a hired actor – it's not my job.” She says the actors complain to the stage managers, then the stage managers go to the house managers and the house mangers go to the ushers, who may or may not be able to effectively deal with the issue. “It falls on us to be the police," Patti says.

Same thing applies in movie theaters. Aggrieved patrons can get up and go out to the lobby – missing half the movie they paid ridiculous amounts to see – and try to find a manager. That manager will then likely instruct some teenage usher to go in and take care of the problem. Riiiiiight. If that works at all, it will only work until about sixteen seconds after the usher has left the vicinity. Patti has the ultimate solution: "They should just eject you with no refund." Then you can stand outside the theater and text all your “friends” about how badly you were treated.

Let me try to give you clueless nitwits a clue. Sure, you paid big bucks for a ticket. But guess what? So did a couple hundred other people. People who aren't just hanging out in your living room, you know? People who actually want to see what they paid their big bucks for. And that doesn't include being distracted by the strobe-like flashing of your phone every ten seconds, something that happens because you don't have the brains, the manners, or the self-control to think about the other people with whom you share living space on this planet.

Get a life, spoiled simpleton. Or at least get some sense of perspective. Unless you're a doctor on call or some sort of emergency responder, you're just not so important that you can't afford to be “out of touch” for a couple of hours. And if by some legitimate chance you are expecting an important call or message, take a seat on the back row where the luminescence of your phone screen won't provide a blinding distraction to everybody seated behind you. Surely nobody is so oblivious as to think that sitting in the front or middle rows of a dark theater auditorium and then effectively turning on a flashlight is not going to bother the people sitting in the seats behind them. If you've got to be on your phone, whether for reasons legitimate or narcissistic, for cryin' out loud, sit in the back where you'll only piss off the people on either side of you. And hope that none of them has a short fuse and a gun.