The older I get, the more I prize predictable quality over the occasional excellence. Give me the ninety-ninth percentile nine over the ninety-fifth percentile nine point five any day of the week.
[In this week's installment of On Eating at the Bar, Mr. Arsenic offers some advice to all the aspiring chefs, brewers, distillers, and vintners [...]

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[Further reflections On Eating at the Bar from our time traveling correspondent Mr. U. Arsenic. — Editor]

Half-hour five minute waits, the apéritif gone unsolicited, unheeded order-up’s, entrées arriving in the soup. The mobile phone, the mobile phone owner, karaoke, trivia night, open mike. Uncleared flatware, a cleared half-finger of Cutty. Stale bread, unexpected bananas. Medium [...]

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[Being the second napkin from Mister Unsold Arsenic's meditations On Eating at the Bar. — Editor]

“That’s my stool,” I say, and instantly regret the choice of words. No matter. It is my stool. I discovered it. As the Hollywood producer does his starlet.
Bar stools, like all things worth enjoying, come in myriad shapes, sizes, colors, [...]

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A word of introduction on how I came into possession of the the collected writings of Mr. U. Arsenic (for those of you just now tuning in, here’s the first installation of On Eating at the Bar).
A friend works at a used book store in Berkeley, he’s a buyer, occasionally they get calls to buy [...]

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The 9am Astronomy for Poets blackboards rotate away at the base of Pimentell Hall to make room for the 10am stats for the future MBA. Three hundred forty-three burgeoning Byrons shuffle out, three hundred forty-three myopic Milkens take their place. And down on the stage, rotating in as Alex Filippenko rotates out, is a corduroy [...]

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