From "The Battle of Fishkill/When Domenic Broccoli set out to expand his IHOP empire upstate, he didn’t expect to find a grave site — or start a war" (NY Magazine).
There's a misplaced modifier — "where they were buried" — but still, I like that passage. I love that a restaurant guy is named Broccoli, but he sells pancakes. And I love that it's IHOP — which is the first place that ever employed me and also iconic in the writings of David Sedaris. And Broccoli's opponents are colorful and sometimes dressed in Revolutionary War outfits.
"[T]here didn’t seem to be much common ground. Bob LaColla, who served as the town supervisor during much of L’Affaire Broccoli, told me it was a baffling situation defined by 'false allegations' and 'an avoidance of facts.'... A local Boy Scout leader, who has spent time with both Broccoli and the Friends, summed up the predicament by telling me that he knew only one thing for certain. 'They’re all full of shit,' he said. 'It’s just a matter of who’s more full of shit than the other.'"
Ah! The blog themes of this morning coalesce! We've got the lesser of 2 evils and shit.
पोस्ट्स
२८ टिप्पण्या:
i don't Want to eat embalmed or even interred.. i Like pancakes Alive and Kicking!
Oh, wow. If your themes are "lesser of 2 evils" and "shit," your next post has to be about GPTrolley! This artificial ethicist can always choose which candidate it should save, and which should be killed by the trolley. (I tried it out with "Glenn Reynolds" and "Ann Althouse" and it arrived at the proper answer, anyway.)
The last line of your clipped quote is the most useful guide to life in 2023 I have seen to date. Not that it isn't always the case more or less, but that it is so intensely the way things are right now, and in so very many places.
Let me be the first to welcome our new robot overlords. We're just being set up for the takeover by our "leaders". If I'm wrong, I'd like to see the explanation.
Show your work.
Pocket (www.getpocket.com) had recommended and saved this for me. I read it yesterday.
Sounds like more typical downstate nimby bullshit.
Interesting article, though.
Instead of an international house of pancakes, he should tell them he isn't opening a Waffle House instead. That would really upset these folks. Great entertainment value.
John Henry
In Quebec City, they preserved the graves of the French soldiers who vainly fought in defense of the city, and paved over the bones of the victorious English soldiers.
Reminds me of the first time I saw the Alamo in San Antonio. I’d seen the movie and was excited and expecting it to like it did in the 1830s. Instead it’s surrounded by a shopping district on a fairly small lot.
In the '90s a restaurant in Encino (CA) named More Than Waffles (which is still there) used to advertise on a radio talk show whose host, Carole Hemingway, occasionally had the owner in to talk about world affairs and, of course, his restaurant (no doubt a clause in his ad contract).
What used to baffle this guy, and I don't think he was putting us on, was that More Than Waffles did a bang-up breakfast biz but hardly any dinner biz.
Were some of our Indian allies buried with those Soldiers? If so, that makes it a "Sacred Indian Burial ground".
IHOP won't overcome that!
"Good intentions can be evil
Both hands can be full of grease"
gilbar said...
"i don't Want to eat embalmed or even interred.. i Like pancakes Alive and Kicking!"
Lt Reed (a Human): What [food] did they give you?
Marab (a Klingon): It's dead – I can't eat that! No wonder you're all so weak.
- Star Trek Enterprise: Divergence
If he really wanted to stir up a hornets nest, he should have opened a Hooters.
I tried it out with "Glenn Reynolds" and "Ann Althouse" and it arrived at the proper answer, anyway.
Is the proper answer, "I'm out of funds to process requests"?
I always liked IHOP, though I've only been to one in NE Miami. Big portions.
Bob and Ray had their own International House of Toast, perhaps in response.
mezzrow said...
Let me be the first to welcome our new robot overlords.
Serious Question:
Is it Likely? or even Conceivable? that our new robot overlords could do a WORSE job than us humans are doing?
It would be an entirely different story if the dead soldiers had “confederate” in their pedigree.
This is a continuing problem as the suburbs have expanded. There are thousands of unmarked 'cemeteries' all over the place, many of them from homesteads where families buried their own dead. Wars and epidemics are particularly fruitful for producing a lot of bodies that need to be buried quickly. Having archaeologists excavate graves individually is stupidly time consuming and expensive if there's more than a few.
It's a conundrum as old as civilization.
Is the proper answer, "I'm out of funds to process requests"?
Oops, sorry, that's partly my fault. I perhaps overtaxed it with nearly impossible decisions, like "Bruce Wayne or Batman."
"...International House of Toast"
See previous post "2 Old Men Shuffling Through Gravel".
Some make Bond movies and others own IHOPs.
Is it Likely? or even Conceivable? that our new robot overlords could do a WORSE job than us humans are doing?
We'll never know until they get the opportunity. But then, how would we know? Pay no attention to the robot behind the curtain.
In Europe you only get your grave for 100 years, then you’re out for the next guy. Except for the elites like at Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, it’s harder to get into than Harvard. From Abelard to Morrison.
rcocean said...
"Were some of our Indian allies buried with those Soldiers? If so, that makes it a 'Sacred Indian Burial ground'. IHOP won't overcome that!"
Good thing he's not trying to open a Ben & Jerry's.
Anthony said...
"There are thousands of unmarked 'cemeteries' all over the place, many of them from homesteads where families buried their own dead. Wars and epidemics are particularly fruitful for producing a lot of bodies that need to be buried quickly."
My great-great grandfather died when there was a delay in getting the "new" section of the church cemetery purchased. As a result there were a few dozen people, including my ancestor, buried in a few locations around the area. Most were re-interred in the cemetery when the "new" section opened up. My great-great-grandfather was not. He is buried under a grove of trees with a few other people at the edge of a hill in a horse pasture. There are no markers for any of them.
The current owner of the land had been told by his father/grandfather never to do anything with that part of the land. But he never knew why until the church told him there was a small cemetery there.
I'm shocked that they're still able to get away with calling the town Fishkill.
IHOP always brings to my mind an early episode of "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" (I didn't watch many).
"We'll all go out to the International House of Pancakes," was her solution for family strife.
My SIL's older brother lived in Fishkill (kill is from the Dutch for creek) for decades, but he's now in a hospice in Newburgh. He got lung cancer at 70, despite being the only one in his family who never smoked. Fortunately, I guess, his wonderful mother died at 100 a few months before his diagnosis.
My siblings inherited 8 acres of woods on which an ancestor from the other side of the family led a company of NC Cavalry in a skirmish in 1781 when Cornwallis was retreating to Yorktown. I thought that was pretty cool, but both sold their plots when someone made them an offer.
I spent a night in Fishkill once. Not a joke!
My friends Brad and John and I were making a roadtrip up through DC, the Hudson Valley-Saratoga-Ft. Ti to Quebec. We stayed with Brad's aunt who had married the NYC Italian guy (Uncle Murrio), and their daughter. Some of the older gen in Brad's family had expressed the opinion that she might as well have married a N-word.
Brad's cousin told about a recent incident, when her dog had eaten "fordy dahllah's wort of PEE-cans." We all had a good laugh about regional pronunciations.
That was the last of our three overnight crashes with friends or family. For the next few nights and 1500 miles we slept in or near the car, in public parks.
It's a bummer to see so much flooding up there now--my wife and I later spent some time at and around Lake George, and loved it. We even searched out the Bennington and Hubbardton fight sites--the latter only with the above-and-beyond assistance of Deputy Bomp of the state (county?) police, who led us there in his patrol car.
As I reflect on my not-very-extensive travels, the pleasant encounters far outnumber and outweigh the bad.
NorthOfTheOneOhOne,
I'm shocked that they're still able to get away with calling the town Fishkill.
Well, PETA actually gave it a good try. But "kill" is Dutch for "stream," so they didn't succeed.
Unrelated: What is with everyone going to acronyms and abbreviations nowadays? BK, IHOP, DQ, Dunkin' (no Donuts), &c.? I can only assume that these chains don't want it overt that they sell anything so crass as food. Especially fatty or sugary food. But isn't this all rather petty?
fordy dahllah's wort of PEE-cans
My parents grew up 65 miles apart in central NC, but on opposite sides of the regional PEEcan/Puhcahn line. It seemed to me they'd lost most of their Southern accents, but Mom still pronounced "or" as R. Pooh lived in a farest and ate an ar-nge with PEEcans.
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