The more restaurant reviews I write, the more of a strange phenomenon emerges from the fog.

As much as I've always believed and defended my position that food quality is way, way more important than ambience, service, plate decoration, the art on the wall, or whatever else some people judge restaurants on, I find myself sometimes being pulled subconsciously towards giving some restaurant with worse food better reviews that it deserves simply for the food alone, and vice versa. "I just like it better for some reason!" I'll think to myself, and then I'll have to consciously throw that thought away to try and be fair.

Then I wonder if that's the atmosphere (wall hangings, service, you get the picture) creeping in and trying to influence me under the radar without getting judged by my snobby, food-obsessed, conscious mind!

Because consciously, I will go (and have gone) back to restaurants that are gaudy and ugly with uncomfortable stools and loud patrons and just plain mean waitresses who make fun of my clothes with other waitresses behind my back, if the food is fantastic. I wouldn't want to admit doing it the other way around... going back to a place with so-so food just because there's intricate art on all the walls or the waitress and I squealed together about some shared experience or the seats were all lush, plush love seats.

But then how to explain my urge to return to somewhere like the Dushanbe Teahouse, which has consistently proved its food to be so-so at best and awful at worst? Is it just because I like the pillowy corner booths and the rush of the creek alongside the tables outdoors and the fact that 40 Tajik artists painstakingly handcrafted it in Tajikistan and as a result it looks like this? How so shallow and easily fooled, foodie brain? No matter how many times I look at my review and think 'No! This place sucks, remember?' there's a creeping desire in me that hisses, evilly, 'It can't be that bad... it's so beautiful and everyone in Boulder loves it. Look at its menu. Everything is so ethnic! You love the Teahouse. You love it. There is something wrong with you for giving it a negative review. Go on. Give it just one more try....'

Or how to explain my returning 3 times to Marie's, a mediocre greasy spoon (and what good is a greasy spoon that's mediocre??) whose waitresses gave me the sass that I so dearly missed from Chicago? Did I just think, 'ooh, that's right, Marie's waitresses, bathe me in your sweet disdain! I love it when you imply that I'm stupid! Serve me whatever crappy food you wish!' and promptly forget that the food isn't worth it?

These examples are easy enough to deconstruct, but there are little niggling feelings that tug at me when I'm trying to sort out how many stars a restaurant deserves that I can't as easily desconstruct. I sit down at a restaurant some place and just immediately for no reason think, 'This place is going to blow, I can tell!' and even if it turns out not to, I just don't want to give it a good rating. There's something trying to stop me!

I try my hardest to ignore this feeling and be fair to the poor restaurant, and I think that I usually succeed. It's just obnoxious that I can't put my finger on what it is that's trying to influence me. Something subtle about the smell? That it reminds me on some level of someplace I had an anxiety attack in when I was in high school? Did I just happen to feel sick that day? Was I mad at my boyfriend?

It makes me question the validity of all the reviews I read, not just my own. As Ryan pointed out in the comments on my last entry, my reviews roughly follow a bell curve. I didn't do it on purpose. That's just how I feel about most places - most places are average. More are a little bit to one side or another. And only a few are exceptional, whether exceptionally good or exceptionally puke-inducing.

I am the only Yelp reviewer I've come across, though, whose reviews fall like that. Most everyone else has tons of 5 and 4 star reviews and they fall off as the stars get lower. Is this just because I tend sort of towards melancholy and judgment, and the rest of these people are happy-go-lucky and tends towards enjoyment and fun? Or is it because I see a three star review as a place worth going back to and they see it as a horrible, unforgivable smite upon some hardworking small business? Or is it, perhaps, because they take into account the decoration, the service, the ambience, and notice all these small pleasures I'd never think to find because I'm too busy staring with a critical eye at my plate?

In case you were worried about my red X's, people, worry no more, because I have been keeping the red X's at bay by reviewing practically every business establishment in Boulder over at Yelp.com. A link to my reviews can be found on my left sidebar all the way at the bottom, in case you are the type of person who enjoys reading a snobby judgmental person hurl thorns at helpless small business owners.

I trust most of you are aware of the Milgram experiment (or the most well known thereof), but if you haven't, there's a Wikipedia link right there, just ripe for clicking! It's a pretty oft-cited defense of the power of authority/peer pressure/obedience etc., but the more I read about it, the more it seems like we're all missing the point. Hasn't anyone taken into consideration that the people subjected to this experiment have no doubt noticed that their experimenter is himself willing to subject other subjects to 45o volt shocks?

I think it may have been pure brute selfish fear, a better-him-than-me thing, that motivated these poor subjects, way more than just the human desire to acquiesce to authority. I mean, the experimenter clearly thinks it's okay to dangerously shock people. There's nothing that would suggest he would stop at dangerously shocking any dissenter in the experiment.

My psychology text has cleverly anticipated my excuse response by citing predictions, percentages, studies, surveys, and basically good hard raw facts and proof, that prove that no matter how much people deny that they would have done it, they would have definitely done it.

Though my text has discredited me before I even opened my mouth, I do think I would have refused to administer any more shocks until the experimenter at least made a threatening move or comment. And threatening means... threatening. Not, 'you have no choice but to continue'. That isn't a threat, it's an arguable statement that begs to be asked for clarification. But while this may be just my gut reaction/excuse for disassociating myself from these subjects, I feel like, yes, I would have done it in that case, but it wouldn't have been out of fear of disobeying authority. It would have been out of a fear OF GETTING SHOCKED WITH 450 VOLTS OF ELECTRICITY.

Half An Interview

: I'm sorry I'm late.

: They don't? I'm surprised. Who? No, no, don't actually tell me. I mean, I'm at least 45 minutes late and we're not Spain, or, I don't know, Thailand, so... that's rude, right? That's rude.

: ::laughs:: It's just how my family raised me.

: I don't know if it's all that unusual. Just because these freakishly talented families who just squirt out one after another after another are so high profile, doesn't mean that the majority of us just sort of come out of nowhere. I don't mean to call them nowhere, of course. But as you said, my mom's a dentist and my dad's a kindergarten teacher. We didn't even have a TV in the house, actually. The first movie I saw was 'Home Alone', I was 6, it was at a friend's house, and I stopped watching it after the kid threw up pizza. That was just gross. You remember that scene? Almost on grossness par with Tom Hanks puking into his astronaut helmet in Apollo 13. Oh God, I'm sure it's not actually called an astronaut helmet. I just can't remember the right term. But the splattering like it was going to come out of the screen... anyway, I walked out of that one too. Right out of the theatre and sank to my knees in the hallway.

: No, I obviously have a serious phobia of throwing up.

: In Ladies? That was a body double.

: Yes.

: Yes, I really got a body double to puke for me. Why would I lie about that? Actually - am I allowed to say this? I'm sure I am - it wasn't real, anyway. It was oatmeal. With honey and egg or something. Just spitting it up while fake gagging. But still. Couldn't do it. In fact, I don't watch that scene in the movie.

: Okay, good idea. I agree.

: I didn't. I wasn't one of those kids who declares they want to act from, I don't know, straight out of the womb, and then joins all the theater groups in school and gets to play Macbeth or the equivalent thereof for the rest of their secondary school career. I didn't actually act until college.

: No, I should amend that, actually. I didn't act formally until college. When I was a kid I pretended I was different people all the time. My longest standing character, created, I think, when I was four, had emigrated from Russia, played the xylophone proficiently, and spoke an invented-on-the-spot language that sounded nothing like Russian. But I think they don't call that acting. I think they call that lying.

: Of course I didn't! That was the fun of it. But you're good. My mother said that to me once. She said, 'if you want to tell stories, that's fine, but just make sure to tell us they're stories afterwards so we don't worry.' Of course, I listened, and nodded, and then ran off and did not listen to her advice because seriously, what's the point in telling stories if people know they're fake so they can relax? You want to draw people in. You want their real emotions and their real reactions. Or else it's 'that's a great story, sweetie!' instead of 'Holy $#!&, you saw WHAT? Are you okay?' There's a difference. There's a huge difference. Especially to a kid and especially to an actor. Oh, can you write 'holy $#!&' in this magazine? Oh well, too late if you can't.

: In fictional movies? We do the exact opposite. I mean, yes, of course, it's a movie and it's classified as fiction or nonfiction, so its packaging is an inherent caveat. Sort of like saying, 'Mom, this is going to be a lie.' But as soon as people are past the packaging, once they're in the theatre or at home in front of their televisions with the DVD inserted, our very first goal, our first and most important goal, is to make people forget the packaging, and forget the label. Forget we ever said 'Mom, this is a lie.' We want them to believe with every synapse in their brain that this is reality, that it's actually happening. That every occurrence on the screen will impact their world. If Yellowstone does erupt, for example, you know, onscreen, we want people rushing to their underground shelters with Saltines in hand before they realize what they're doing.

: I would. I would absolutely support the idea of people running in droves out of the theatre to take shelter. And not just because they'd have to buy another ticket later when they realized what they'd done. ::laughs::

: No, I think any director's ideal is to achieve that level of realism. Maybe I'm wrong.

: Well, I'm grown up now, but more to the point, everyone knows who I am. I can't make up pasts for myself. I can't say that something happened to me when it didn't. There'd be hundreds - thousands - of people who knew me at some point in my life stepping forward and testifying against me. Well, not testifying. I don't mean to infuse this with such unnecessary gravity. Because obviously, it's not like it's a human right to have the freedom to lie to people whenever you want.

: On the contrary, actually. Sometimes, after acting in scenes where everything's so carefully scripted to be clever, or momentous, or hilarious - real life starts failing to measure up. I mean, no conversation can possibly match a placed plot point in a story. Not every time I talk to a man in a coffeeshop is going to end in a night full of whimsical adventure and mystery. Not any time will. But at the same time, not every time I walk to the bus stop is going to end with my getting pulled, unwillingly, into a murder scheme which puts my life in danger and, ultimately, gets my organs harvested in a bathtub. Not any time will. Hopefully.

: But do you know what I mean? Everything you do when you're not acting starts seeming flat. It starts to seem like it's the unreal part. That it's filler. And that's not a good feeling. Because even though it doesn't feel like it sometimes, the filler is the majority. I mean, I'm sitting here, calling real life filler, instead of, you know... real life.

: No, I wouldn't call it depressed, per se. I might call it dread, but that's being extremely pessimistic about it, and you sort of pointed me in that direction. See, as I get older, the filler may slowly become everything. Because no one can maintain the same level of frenetic working as they age. Even though of course, I'd prefer to. I'd prefer to always be speaking some perfect line of script, or else, at least, to always be a pawn in someone else's grand scheme. But right now... you know, most people who would refer to their real life as 'filler' have nothing else to escape into. Real life is real life and that's their everyday experience, every second of every day. And yeah, I'd call them depressed.

: You mean it's not immediately obvious?

: Of course. Well, the reason I'm different is because my real life also consists of these scripted moments and schemes. Just because it's meant to be a fabricated story doesn't mean I'm not physically doing it. A great percentage of my life actually is spent contributing to these fantastic stories and feeling for all the world like I'm influencing them. I don't have that 'every second of my life having to be my own life' thing going on. If that makes sense.

: I don't know if dramatic scenes are something that someone can stop expecting to just happen. I don't know that I'll ever shake the feeling that my words, the way they come out naturally, will never be as good as a sentence some screenplay writer agonized over for weeks. And why should they, anyway? Why should they?

One of the many signs that I have been watching too much Top Model (any Top Model can probably be argued to be too much Top Model, but we'll leave that aside) is that last night I had a dream about Tyra Banks going on a murderous rampage on a city bus, which culminated in the stabbing of my boyfriend. She stood up on the bus driver's driving platform as the faceless driver cowered. I escaped out the emergency exit, a swing-out window, as she shrieked and brandished a long knife. Dan wasn't so lucky. As only one leg was out of the bus, she teetered towards the back in her ridiculous high heels and stabbed him in the throat.

The scene cut, because dream scenes can just cut, to us in someone's backyard. He was in a yard chair, bleeding from the mouth, though with no outward signs of the stabbing except that. I was reaching my hand through molasses to find my cell phone to dial 911. Although it was in my pocket, my pocket seemed light-years away, and my hand was moving not even close to light speed. And if that weren't enough, the phone, once opened, displayed only vague squigglies that darted around the keypad like tadpoles.

This is why, once I dialed what I thought was 911 and was greeted by a sarcastic guy giving me quiz questions a la bar trivia nights, I thought I might have misdialed, and hung up. But the second time dialing (a repeat, if slower, of the molasses and the space travel and the tadpoles) I got the same guy, and had to dodge his questions before getting down to the case at hand, being, of course, the stabbing, and the blood that was coursing from Dan's mouth onto the preternaturally green grass.

It took the ambulance 20 minutes to show up. I wrote this number down on a pad of paper for future reference: note to self - make sure to always allow 20 minutes before beginning death throes. Oddly enough, I don't remember if he was dead or alive by the time they got there. In the dream, it wasn't material.

Dreams tend to do that. They take things that in life would be of the utmost importance, like whether or not you are wearing clothes, or whether or not there is solid ground beneath you, or whose house you are in, or what country you are in, or whether you even know the person who's currently having sex with you, or whether or not your boyfriend has died from his stab wound, and make them secondary. At the same time, they force you to worry and obsess over the sound of the word 'orange', or whether your teeth might at any time just fall out, or the fact that your fingers are sticking together, or the dinosaur that keeps appearing and disappearing in the long distance.

Honestly, sometimes I just write here out of a fear of a big red X, and sometimes I suspect it's becoming crystal-clear. See, I've been Excel-charting my 5 chart-able New Years resolutions - despite my messy room and unorganized stuff, I like to make pie charts and lists and promises -and the best way for me to ensure that I feel guilty when I don't keep my promises is to have the failure recorded somewhere. (Negative reinforcement, people! The anti-gold star! It works! Screw what those evil child psychologists tell you!) For the last four weeks, I've failed at least one of the five. Usually two. And next to each failed week I insert a ClipArt GIANT RED X. And I have to look at them every time I check up on myself.

Living in fear of more red X's drives me to this page five days a week, and I am not afraid to admit it. But today something else drove me here, and that something is Haruki Murakami. Haruki Murakami is a big tease. He wrote a compelling novel full of dripping imagery and believable, intense relationships. He filled it full of well-placed objects that I THOUGHT would come to be of importance later in the story. He weaved three stories together seamlessly and set the stage up for what I THOUGHT was going to be a climactic symbol crash of all these well-placed objects, relationships, and storylines.

Wrong! Just as I was gearing up to cover my ears and be blown away, THE BOOK ENDED. I spent 7/8 of the book buried in it, ignoring my drivers at work, putting off using the bathroom, making my already too late bedtime later and later. I was spellbound, but also I was reading extra carefully to catch all the details so I wouldn't be confused when everything came together. It read like a detective novel - everything of the utmost importance. Since I'm not used to reading detective novels, I had to teach my brain to read that way.

And then what does Murakami do? He (spoiler, if you can count this ending as a spoiler) ends the book by putting a phone that keeps spewing murderous threats on the shelves of a 7-11, its murderous threats un-carried out. The main character goes home and sleeps next to her sister as the day breaks. Many of the major characters just sort of disappear and we never find out what THEY'RE doing.

Now, I'm actually not a climax junkie. I am perfectly happy with books having no discernable point as long as they're fun to read. But this book was set up like the most climaxy thriller ever. It had the creepy foreboding feeling. The seemingly pointless alternate storylines that you figure must be eventually relevant when they smash into the main storyline at the end. The lurking Chinese mafia (WHO NEVER ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING). All the characters having extremely creepy backstories.

And then... nothing. My cultural parameters have failed to expand wide enough for the Japanese style of storytelling, I imagine many Japanese majors would tell me. Maybe true. But he (Murakami) is still a giant tease.

Yesterday was one of those conflicted days where, hey, it's 67 degrees in early February and you've got three hours to kill. You have your bike. You have your book. But you're really tired. You have a class from 6:30 until 9:30 and then have to work at 6:00 the next morning. What do you do? Bike-ride or nap? Read in the lounge chair of the sunny quadrangle, or nap?

I napped with my window wide open and felt that was a fair compromise. What does Boulder reward me with? A next day even sunnier and warmer than that one, with no obligations to meet and no naps to take! I might go out on a limb here and say that this is the first time that nature has ever rewarded me for being lazy. (Or global warming has just gone on a total rampage with no regard either way for my laziness.)

In non-weather-related blog news (ah, if only ALL blog news could be such!) I am currently having an awkward etiquette problem that I'm pretty sure couldn't even exist until last year at the earliest. See, I'm a Scrabulous junkie (and I continue to call it Scrabulous despite the whole legal kerfluffle with Hasbro, etc) and I've been known to carry on 10 or 12 games at a time, playing them at work while my buses circle placidly around town, evenly spaced and happy.

Now, our network has always blocked Youtube and celebrity gossip rags and porn sites and things of that nature, but never bothered to block Facebook or any of its applications, probably figuring that it was OK if its employees wasted time in innocuous ways. Yesterday, though, Scrabulous (and Facebook) suddenly became blocked. Solidly blocked. Neither switching browsers nor going through tunnel sites nor adding s' to the http's worked at all.

The day before yesterday, I played an exciting, extremely evenly matched game with a stranger. She asked me for a rematch. I accepted and started the game, saying I'd play consistently the following day. Following day comes, Scrabulous is blocked. I can't even get ahold of her via Facebook to tell her what's going on. Having had this happen (players disappearing on me suddenly after starting a game), I know how frustrating this is.

Now my quandary has several solutions, but Miss Manners not having covered Scrabulous etiquette in any of her manuals yet, I can't decide which is the best:

a) Using the Scrabulous chatbox when I get home to apologize for my situation and offer to gallantly resign the game if she chooses not to play a one-move-a-day game;
b) Using the Scrabulous chatbox to apologize for my situation, but expect her to keep playing;
c) Decide to not care because this is the internet and there are assholes on the internet and everyone expects assholes on the internet and besides, Scrabulous games aren't promises signed in gold so I should just play when I wander by my computer and to hell with what she thinks about me because we will never meet; or
d) Demand that our IT guy unblock Scrabulous because my work is on-demand and rare, and the nature of it is that there cannot be extra work, really, so Scrabulous couldn't possibly be affecting my output, and risk being laughed at and having Blogger blocked as well.

Ideas?