I know even less about anime than I know about He’Brew beer; that’s why I put on my costume of a “regular overweight white guy” character and visited the Naka-Kon at the Hyatt where I proceeded to totally blend in. I was surprised by the number of visitors from kids in the colorful costumes, to weirdos in giant multi-zippered human-eating pants who walked their girlfriends on a chain, to some middle-aged child-molester-looking characters. Wide-eyed Hyatt employees where yearning for the days of their regular wrinkled-old-people conventions. My pictures didn’t turn out so great but here are a few that I liked:

It may be hard to believe but on a rare occasion I make myself feel like a rich man and spend more than five dollars on a lunch. So this post is written by the “big spender” me, not the “normal” me who usually pays for drinks with a pocketful of nickels and dimes. Today’s lunch tab at the new Farmhouse restaurant was $12.02 – definitely pushing the limits of my generosity, but that was the price to pay for a lunch with the prominent local blogger and beer consultant to the stars – Bull.E.Vard who is  not accustomed to my usual cheap eats.

The Farmhouse Restaurant is located in the former Delaware Cafe space in the City Market area.

It’s a great location with a roomy outdoor seating area, where we had no problem finding a table. Inside the restaurant decor features exposed brick and various farm touches, like tables made out of an old door, lanterns and waitresses in cowboy boots. Before the restaurant opened for business there was a buzz among the annoying “foodie” community about the new local farm-to-table trend in the restaurant business and other such nonsense. All of this does nothing for me, except maybe waitresses in cowboy boots; the one who was serving our table was the highlight of the hour, and she didn’t charge me for the salad (sorry that was the “cheapskate” me commenting here). Unfortunately my old habit is to tune out people’s names so I can’t recommend her that way, but you will know who I am talking about when you walk in.
The reason we even thought about the Farmhouse was the unusual “Chicken Fried Duck, Sweet and Hot Pepper Relish, Arugula, Egg Bun: $8.00”; this must be the duck season on the farm or something.(that and the phrase:”All Sandwiches Comes with Fries & Pickled Vegetables” which somehow made me think of “all your base are belong to us“).

The sandwich arrived quickly, with the salad (by mistake) and “chilled potato leek soup” on the side.

A duck breast in a crispy fried coating with some relish on top was bigger than the bun.

It was pretty tasty,although it didn’t taste very ducky. If I didn’t say duck on the menu, I probably wouldn’t have noticed, but to be fair I haven’t had duck in years, so I may not remember what it tastes like in the first place. Not tasty enough for a 45-mile round-trip, but still not bad. Potato-soup was average. As another “farm” touch the drinking water was dispensed in the empty wine bottles. I am sure someone will write about great farm-like atmosphere “just like at grandma’s”. All I remember from living at my Grandma’s is the outhouse, I bet that would really enhance the atmosphere in every sense of that word.

Anyway, I liked the restaurant,the food and especially the waitress. In my opinion the place is sorely missing the alcohol, although it just opened so that may be forthcoming; I didn’t feel like inundating the people who work there with unnecessary questions. Speaking of annoying, my conversation with Bull E.Vard centered around the trend of self-obsessed foodies taking all the fun out of dining (just like social-media spammers are killing it for the rest of us). Luckily in this area there are many bloggers covering all things food from cheap to disgusting and from ethnic to traditional, all with the necessary detail and honest opinions. I am generally not interested in the Chef’s name or a paragraph-long name of a sandwich; I am very interested in how it tasted, wait times, general attitude and waitresses’ names.

With that said, I am now going back to my normal spending pattern until the piggy bank I broke today is glued back together and filled with change.

Five Guys Burgers and Fries – decent food priced right. Small cheeseburger (which is actually normal size) and a  ton of fries is more than enough for a hefty lunch. Free all-you-can-eat peanuts and fries are made in peanut oil. Stay away if you have allergies, otherwise not bad for the money.

Burrito Bros.- Burrito can be split in two for a light(er) lunch, only half of a burrito is photographed below. I wish they had an option similar to Chipotle’s burrito bowl. Very nice reasonably priced locally-owned lunch spot.

Reviews courtesy of a human junk food disposer.

The 8th of March is The International Women’s Day – a celebration of women young and old, beautiful and smart, lovely, witty, (sometimes) funny, unique and irreplaceable. Thank you for letting us bask in all that.

My feelings are best expressed by a Japanese Karaoke performer, whose song I was lucky to capture at the St.Louis Japanese Festival few years ago:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTsuGJM9mwE

When I was growing up©, I used to calculate how old I will be in the year 2000. This was my Mayan Calendar of sorts – the year 2000 was so far away and the double-digit age of 31 seemed so unbelievably huge that I didn’t bother to look beyond the year with too many zeroes. Now, ten years on the other side of that imaginary horizon I still can’t believe I made it so far without any outstanding achievements. No lives saved, no cure for cancer discovered, no small town square named after me, no major scientific problems solved, no bestselling books written and no spread in the Blind Playgirl Magazine. The only thing I can show for the previous 40 years of my life is a steady weight gain and a child who is extracting the most aggravating noises out of the Nintendo WII as I type this.
This year started with me trying to decide if that’s what an alcohol poisoning feels like and will end at the same place in another attempt to achieve it. As always I hurt some people, made some people laugh, got fatter but not any wiser. In other words, a pretty average year, just another one in now a long line separating me from that naive age when I couldn’t imagine the life past 31.

I would like to thank many readers of this blog, people who thought enough of my writing to stop by and leave a comment, and many others who know me on Twitter, Facebook and in real life (there are about 4 or 5 of the lucky ones). I hope you all have a great year, stay healthy, employed and sexually active happy.

This is an old (1956) Soviet song – “5 minutes til the New Year”:

httpv://youtu.be/12kPdU6A71o