A truly wonderful meal is a combination of good food and good conversation. So talk about the special people featured here. Talk about the contributions that these people have made to the world. Talk about how everyone can be great in his or her own way. Talk about how we can each make a significant contribution if we model the same principles and beliefs of those that have gone before usThe walls have large printed quotes and quips of famous theoreticians (Franklin, Twain, Thoreau), the tablecloths are paper, and crayons are present. In addition to all of this, each table has a set of Trivial Pursuit cards or cards from other games that intend to invoke conversation. Our table had cards of questions to ask the entire group, such as "Give three adjectives to describe the people at the table." All of this was largely a gimmick, naturally. It's a bit pretentious to buy into the owner's philosophy, and I'm not sure if black turtle-necks can even do so. Rather, they'd probably find the idea shallow and pedantic.
The food was pretty good, from what I remember. I had the cilantro chicken, and the lady had the portabella stack. Hers looked great and tasted proper when I got a sample.
The whimsy of the place is backed up by the acceptable food; otherwise it would have been a gimmick-restaurant with a confusing motif that tried too hard. You won't walk out of here with a critical analysis of society, but that's not their purpose. That's the purpose of Google Scholar, a likely neglected tool outside of finals-week computer labs.
Google Scholar searches through academic journals and bibliographies instead of the public internet. Unfortunately, I only learned of Scholar.Google.com in my last year of undergrad. Had I been aware of it sooner, research for my History of Art courses would have been substantially easier (no more diving through the dusty archives of the Tappan library, finding books that were 50 years old and disintegrating in my hands as I read through them). Also, if Wikipedia had been in existence before then too, life in general would have been simple, especially in biology.
It wasn't until I was on my way out the door at UofM that it dawned on me that without the .edu host, I would not have access to journals found on Google scholar. Hopefully one day I'll befriend a college kid who can grab my weird articles on pop culture topics.
Try it for yourself. Type in some of your hobbies, favorite films, restaurants, music, anything. Academics will write on really strange things (The Three Stooges as Environmentalists?).
Chances are that you are not on an .edu network. As such, you will only get the abstracts or limited views of articles. If you have a friend in college, ask them to download and send you the PDF, perhaps even in Google Documents (embrace the cloud). Google scholar search results will also link to scanned-in Google books and citations, two things which may not be what you want, so click your results wisely.
Example papers I found:
Die Hard
Talking Heads
David Lynch (a lot of Lacan analysis comes up with a search for Lynch)
Dreaming and David Lynch
Edward Scissorhands
The Godfather
Another Godfather essay
Nip/Tuck
Nip/Tuck (on how the graphic surgery is used to attract viewers)
Miami Vice (Baudrillard and Miami Vice!)
College football
College football statistics
Olive Garden
Cartoon physics
Family Guy
Pee Wee's Playhouse
Seinfeld
George Costanza
Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm
Arrested Development
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