by Chris Barrus
I’ve had a couple of different black and white cookies over the past year, but the best one I’ve had wasn’t in NYC but today at Ponzio’s in Cherry Hill, NJ.
The chocolate icing was denser and slightly less sweeter (more fudge?) than in the usual black and whites you find in the city and the cake (even though it’s called a “cookie” it’s actually cake down below) was spongier and held together extremely well.
Add a bottomless cup of coffee and you’re done for the day.
Two reasons to go to Philadelphia: 1. cheesesteak sandwiches. 2. The derelict S.S. United States which sits rotting at a pier on Columbus Blvd. across from a giant Ikea store.
Still the fastest passenger liner ever built, she’s not doing much at the moment but NCL is looking into refurbishing it for service in Hawaii.
According to urban legend, you can take average discount crap vodka, run it through a Britta pitcher, and get something relatively drinkable. Of course, bad vodka will eventually taste better if you drink enough of it, but the scientists of OhMyGodItBurns.com hit the store and check out the legend. The results are kinda surprising.
Best Jerry Orbach story ever (found in alt.obituaries)…
About a year ago I was watching the extras on the DVD of “The Hustler” and they were talking about Minnesota Fats. Jerry Orbach was interviewed and told a wonderful story…
While Fats was trying to promote something he appeared on one of the talk shows with Orbach. Maybe Carson, maybe Cavett… One of them. At any rate, it was being taped in NY and Jerry was appearing in a show that night.
So the show was taped in the afternoon and during the show, Fats challenged Jerry to a game of pool and not realizing that Jerry was one hell of a player, he gave him some sort of advantage figuring that he would still smoke the actor.
Fats, as I recall, never got to take a shot because Jerry ran the table.
So Jerry went on to do his show and told the stage hands about it. And one of them went to a bar after the show and with the crowd watched the talk show that was taped earlier in the day, and bet on Jerry to beat Fats with a patron who did not realize that the show was
prerecorded.
The weather held out all the way through except for the last hundred miles in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Apparently it got so cold overnight, that when I hit the front windshield with the defroster, the small crack (that was supposedly fixed) reopened and shot across two-thirds of the glass with a loud “BANG.” At least I got here and it’s not like I have to drive much anymore.
Somewhere near the TX/LA border on I-10
Near as I can tell, the entire state of Tennessee is filled with pyromaniacs. There’s no way that many fireworks stands can stay in business. These two were directly across the street from each other (junction of I-24 and I-59) 
Obligatory World’s Fair site visit. No wig shops though. At least finding a motel room was easy.
On the way up I-59, I just HAD to check out the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama. You can’t beat the appeal of rooting through interesting stuff people left on airplanes, but everything is just worthless (or easily replaced) enough that people never bothered to make an effort to find it when it was initially lost. Not too different than slogging through any other thrift store, only the UBC is immense.
There were some odd things that you never see in a typical Goodwill – dozens of lost PDAs, cabinetfulls of portable CD players, even MiniDisc recorders, shortwave radios, and GPS receivers. Priced to move too. the MiniDiscs recorders were $49, Crate & Barrel flatware sets for $30. Luggage itself for $30-$40 apiece. Didn’t buy anything, and I certainly wouldn’t make a special trip to go there unless you were already on I-59.
Hilariously, the success of the UBC has spawned off imitation “Unclaimed Baggage” shops up and down Route 35 in Scottsboro. The UBC has warning signs about them, and they appear to be just normal rural thrift stores that are all too common in this part of the country along with check cashing and straight-up pawn shops.
New Orleans was the last major American city I hadn’t been to, and I suppose it’s a little anti-climatic. Unless you smoke, drink, gamble, or go to strip clubs there’s not much to do except to look at the architecture. Overall, it reminds me of Las Vegas in the 1980s – there’s a central core where the tourists go to raise hell, a small section of upper class neighborhoods, new exurbs outside of town, and abject poverty filling in everything else.
Of course, being a geek from California my gut reaction was “hey, it looks just like New Orleans Square in Disneyland.”
Grand Isle, LA… Southeastern-most point of the trip.
I ran across Boudreau & Thibodeau’s diner in Houma completely by accident and it turned out to be one of the best meals of the trip. Miles better than what I was finding in New Orleans even.
Disco Rats and the Owl Of Justice. From the “Best of CNN news graphics” collection.