A shout out to another imaginary restaurant, this one so hip it could only be in Austin.
This appears to be the Überminimalist cuisine, and I want all my hipster readers to know about it so that you can say you were into it before it was cool.
In the words of the proprietors:
Check them out at: http://www.abbrevsrestaurant.com/
I found out today that a graphic novelist I have long admired won a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
I discovered Alison Bechdel’s strip “Dykes to Watch Out For” some time in the 80’s. I think it might have been in one of the papers I read, or the paper DARE, which I sometimes helped with. I loved the witty but real storytelling; the sarcastic but wounded characters. It was sort of like Friends, but with human beings instead of characters. They were each unique, but also reminded me of some of my friends I was hanging out with at the time.
However, I was blown away by the drawings–simple, clean, but very expressive, very real. Mellow, not busy, but still full of life. If I could get back to cartooning, that is the way I wish I could draw.
She is also known for the Bechdel Rule, to show how male dominated the film industry is. THE RULE is that:
A movie should have 3 things:
1. At least 2 women,
2. who talk to each other,
3. about something besides a man.
It really is startling how few movies meet those basic criteria.
Ms. Bechdel put the regular strip up on blocks a few years back, to work on longer pieces. She has published two graphic biographies, Fun Home, about her childhood and her father–being adapted as a musical, and Are you my Mother? She is working on a third, The Secret to Superhuman Strength.
Her simple but direct depiction of everyday lives shows how powerful and beautiful a kind of literature graphic novels can be.
We now return you to whatever pop drivel graphic universe you were in.
Oh my gosh! These ramps are amazing! I wonder what I can do with them?
Scott’s strawberries are in! Will the pint even make it home? If I buy two, they will last until I whip whipped cream.
Whoa! Blackberries! Marvelous! I wonder how these would be in scones?
Asparagus? Sweetness! Oh, the little tender ones are the best!
Oh my goodness! Blueberries? Incredible! Ambrosia itself!
Wow! The first peas! I could just sit in the sun, shell them and eat them raw!
The first real tomato of the season. Feel the warm smooth skin
against your lips, the pop as your teeth break through, and then the flood of sweetness and tartness and acid and pulp that fills your mouth. I wonder if vampires feel like this?
Is there another? With some cheese, some fresh bread, some basil and some olive oil, I could live on just these for the rest of the summer and die happy!
Hot Dog! Fresh cucumbers! Amazing how they taste cool even in the sun!
Grand! Corn on the cob right off the stalk! I don’t even need butter. Oh wow.
Hmmmmmm. I had forgotten what fresh watermelon was like.
Apples! They even smell like fall! Incredible!
New wine?!? Fan-freakin’-tastic! Let’s bake an onion torte like in the old country!
Lovely! Just lovely! There really isn’t anything quite like warm apple butter on freshly baked bread and a cup of tea on a rainy day.
Pumpkin seeds! Fresh roasted pumpkin seeds! Brilliant! Better than hallowe’en 
candy!
Oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh!!! Shoe fly pie?
I could live on this! Did you make me two?
Outstanding muffins, if I do say so myself! I’ll have to mail some to Josie.
I couldn’t say which was my favorite Christmas cookie; they are all so magnificent!
Ausgezeichnet! There really isn’t anything that makes me feel as good as stew with friends on a stormy January night.
What shall I bake for Valentine…. yeah. hell yeah. This will be even better 
than last year.
Ramps! Grand! How Grand! What should I do with them?
In honour of Gabriel García Márquez, who passed on this morning.
It amazes me how writing can be new, fresh, exotic and strange, and yet at the same time feel ancient and familiar.
Also, a good friend and great person is running in the Boston Marathon next week.
Along with this, he has a FirstGiving page to raise money for research through the Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA). Huntington’s is a terrifying disease that has touched Jim & his family deeply.
Please consider donating donate, and either way, root for Jim.
https://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/jim-dahlman/bostonmarathon
Also, if you are in town, Jim is speaking at Milligan College tonight at 7;00 on the Wilderness Trail, which he walked this summer, and is writing a book on.
TWO NIGHTS ONLY:
MISTER PARADISE
a short one-act play by Tennessee Williams
A young woman goes to a squalid apartment in the French Quarter to find her hero, the forgotten poet Anthony Paradise. The man she finds is less than she had hoped and expected, but also more.
Directed by Daniel Banks, and performed by Mandy Chambers as “The Girl” and Robert Shields as Mr. Anthony Paradise.
Hey, folks!
Just a quick recommendation: Starting Thursday, the city of Asheville, North Carolina will have its Fringe Arts Festival–lots of intense and alternative live art, including a play by a really cool playwright who is also a friend of the Bistro’s: Deborah Harbin. Stuff will be all over Asheville (the poster above is a link), and the play is part of a double-header at the Odditorium on Thursday and Saturday nights at 9:00pm.
