November 2007 Archives

I have a new addition to my newsroom cubicle courtesy of the Go! section's anti-debt columnist. Her headline Thursday: "Readers are full of wonderful ideas."

Well, sometimes they are. I've clipped the headline and pinned it to the gray felt wall near other inspirational decor. Among them: My "What page are you on?" poster; a 1970s comic book ad in which O.J. Simpson hawks Dingo boots; and a teaser from the Onion that reads "Man Has Derogatory Nickname For Every Neighboring Town."

This week's restaurant: King's Teriyaki, 1175 E. Holt Ave., Pomona.

This is a new place near Clark Avenue and across from Minit Man Car Wash. Until recently it was a burrito joint named something like El Amigazo. I looked the address up in a reverse directory at the library recently and learned the building was originally an Arby's, which makes perfect sense; it's got the same curved-roof chuckwagon design as the Arby's on North Garey.

Anyway, King's has the usual array of chicken, beef and teriyaki bowls and plates, plus shrimp and fried fish teriyaki. For chicken, you could get a small bowl ($3.25), a medium bowl ($3.75), a large bowl ($4.25) or the plate ($5.25), which comes with a small salad and two gyoza. Scanning the menu too hastily, I got the plate, which with a drink cost $7.08 and arrived in a foam container.

Why too hastily? A small or medium bowl would have sufficed. Two people could have split the plate. Decent teriyaki, and I liked the salad and gyoza too. But I got through only half the teriyaki, if that. What was left seemed almost as much as what I started with. Could the teriyaki have been self-replenishing? Well, I took it home, so my $7.08 will have bought the equivalent of two meals, so all's well that ends well.

Odd fact: The napkin was imprinted with the logo/address from an Upland restaurant, Sho Sushi. I didn't have a chance to ask why.

My favorite teriyaki place, by the way, is Posh Burgers and Beyond on East Holt Boulevard in Ontario. There the chicken is chargrilled and I like its crispiness. The King's version is fine, though, and I hope they make a go of it. I'll give a wave in the direction of King's and Macho Pollo (see recent review) when my parade car passes by on Saturday. At least now you have some post-parade dining tips. And don't forget the pho places, or the quite good Chalio Birreria, in an original Denny's on Holt just west of Indian Hill.

(Incidentally, I won't be dining anywhere: The parade ends at noon and Sunday's column, which common sense will tell you has to be about the parade, must be written from scratch and filed by 3 p.m. Yikes! Maybe I can grab a burrito at Juanita's and eat at my desk.)

I spent Tuesday afternoon at the Pomona Public Library, giving myself eyestrain over the course of a couple of hours peering at microfilm copies of the Progress-Bulletin from the '40s to the '70s as I researched the Pomona Christmas Parade history for Friday's column.

Found some amusing and startling stuff. For one, the parade is older than the Jaycees ("56th annual") think it is. For another: the 1976 grand marshal was Donald Duck. I'm following in a grand tradition, folks.

In case you've forgotten, the parade is in three days: this Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon, on East Holt Boulevard from Caswell to East End. Be there or spend the rest of your life regretting it.

On my drive home from the library, I stopped at a red light in Claremont alongside a sportscar presumably driven by a dentist. Its vanity plate: UFLOSS.

Recently I wrote about Langer's Deli in L.A., which makes what has been called the best pastrami sandwich in America. Charles Bentley asks:

"What about a 'best pastrami in the IE' competition? Personally, The Hat was always a big winner with me, although others love Farmer Boys, Grinder Haven, Burger Town (the one on Archibald in Ontario) and even Togos. And is it just strictly pastrami as in pastrami sandwiches, or is it also pastrami as found on pastrami burgers? One friend tells me it’s a completely different requirement, like the difference between bacon for breakfast and bacon for a bacon cheeseburger.

"It’s just something else to heat up your nights and your readers’ imaginations -- not to mention the heartburn, oy!"

I'm a fan of the Grinder Haven pastrami and I admire The Hat. Haven't tried the pastrami at the other places and have never tried a pastrami burger. Readers, what are your favorites?

On Friday I conducted a phone interview with singer/songwriter John Stewart for an upcoming column. Stewart attended Pomona Catholic High School in the 1950s, joined the Kingston Trio and for the past 40 years has had a moderately successful career as a folk singer.

I'll share one bit from the interview that may not make it into print. I brought up "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart. John Stewart mock-groused: "I've got people coming to shows thinking I'm him. They leave after four songs, disappointed. His real name isn't even Jon Stewart. I had the name first!" (It's true, Jon Stewart was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz.) Stewart added: "I think he's hysterical."

The column may run this week, or possibly the next.

The Bulletin on Saturday printed a story about construction in Ontario on Holt Boulevard just west of Vineyard Avenue, said to be the first construction there in decades. Perhaps ever?

What I'm curious about is the location of the former Mural House restaurant, which I'm pretty sure I've been told was at Holt and Vineyard. Was it where Spires now stands? Or the gas station? Or...?

Mural House always seems to prompt fond comments rating it as one of the better, and more striking, old-time valley restaurants. Share what you remember below of the location, decor and menu so we can all be edified.

* Update: Everyone (see comments) agrees the Mural House was on the south side of Holt just west of Vineyard, and thank you for that. No one has yet explained, though, why the Mural House was named the Mural House. Anyone want to tackle that?

This week's restaurant certainly isn't Lela's. It could have been Pueblita, a Mexican restaurant apparently in Montclair city limits (although it's in the Upland Business Center) at Arrow Route and Benson Avenue, where I had lunch early this week. I'd heard good things, but I would rate it only as average. If I worked in the neighborhood, I'd eat there, but since getting there meant driving past several better Mexican restaurants, I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to try it.

Instead, I'll pick a chain operation: Fatburger, in Rancho Cucamonga, across from Ontario Mills.

Fatburger doesn't make my favorite hamburger. That would probably be Molly's Charbroiler, a stand on Vine Street a block below Hollywood Boulevard that is a favored stop when I go to the ArcLight. I also like Pie 'N Burger in Pasadena, which not only makes a fantastic burger but sells you fresh-baked pie afterward.

In the Inland Valley, I'd go for Golden Ox, with three Pomona locations to serve you better. And innumerable small operations make hamburgers far tastier than McDonald's and its ilk.

But Fatburger, just east down Fourth Street from our office, is a convenient spot, and there's an attention to quality and freshness that puts it up there with In N Out. Fatburger's signature item is fat, juicy and cooked to order, and loaded with shredded lettuce.

The skinny fries are pleasantly crispy, the onion rings lightly battered. They even have Cherry Coke in the dispenser. The shakes are a little disappointing and the "fat" fries are mushy for my taste, although friends like them. Fatburger also sells quite good chicken sandwiches and turkey burgers. You can even get a bacon and fried egg sandwich, which I tried once and liked.

The seating is comfortable, moreso than In N Out's, with actual tables and chairs, plus booths. There's a nice vibe to the place. One day my food was brought to my table by an employee wearing silk pants, like he was stopping off before hitting the clubs. The jukebox plays great R&B, rock and soul classics. Friday I heard Sly and the Family Stone, the Coasters, the Spinners and Janis Joplin.

This may reflect the clientele. This Fatburger, at least, is popular with the black community. Sometimes half the diners, as well as a majority of the employees, are black. The place opened in October 2005 and feels like it's made a niche for itself.

If nothing else, it outlasted its next-door neighbor, Mi Tortilla, which closed a few weeks ago.

Continuing my selfless nocturnal work to redevelop downtown Pomona, I dreamed the other night that the Fox Theater was restored and that I, as an impresario, had booked an excellent night of entertainment.

Yes, Boris Karloff was going to perform onstage at the Fox, singing, dancing and telling stories.

I then woke up, and it instantly occurred to me that booking Karloff to play the Fox would be quite an achievement, given that the actor died in 1969. This may be why my career as an impresario never really took off.

... happy Thanksgiving!

My recent column on the impending demolition along Pomona's Second Street resulted in a reader e-mail that looks to be as long, if not longer, than the column that inspired it.

It's full of well-observed details from a childhood spent in Pomona. The author gave his name only as Keith. As it's too long to use in print, at least in full, here's the whole thing, lowercase typing and all:

"mr. allen,

"read your sunday missive on second street in pomona. you brought up the ghosts of my childhood; i am 53 and have lived in the southeastern corner of pomona all my life [cepting college at ou [oklahoma] ; graduated from garey high [that year was the first year minorities in the pomona school system outnumbered anglos; times have changed!]. also attended alcott [when it was one brick building and 2 rows of classrooms] elementary and was in the first 3-year class at simons jr. high. it was great having everything from desks to books brand new.

"i watched the mall being built. my mother worked in the orange belt emporium [2nd and garey, ne corner] . my mother was old school; she never had a driver's license; pomona in those days had a wonderful bus system, a cloverleaf pattern of 4 routes that canvassed the four corners of town, meeting on garey between second and third; i knew most of the bus drivers by name.

"keith"

Let's give Keith a round of applause, and maybe chip in to buy him some capital letters. If there's anything left to say, post away below, readers.

Skipping out on both dinner and the Pomona City Council on Monday night, I instead left work and headed directly to Pasadena to see novelist Janet Fitch read from and sign her second novel, "Paint It Black," at Vroman's Bookstore.

I interviewed Fitch in 2001 for a Bulletin feature story when she taught creative writing for a semester at Pomona College. She was a good interview subject and nice about everything. "White Oleander" was a bit flowery for my tastes but she's clearly a good writer, and I wanted to do a good job on the story.

Of course it's excruciating to write a story about a writer because you know the writer will read it, and the writer is always, always, going to be a much better writer than you.

When you write about a writer, let me tell you, you worry over each sentence, as much as deadline allows. You do your best to write grammatically, to eliminate awkwardness and to not be trite. You show off a little with what you imagine is a literary turn of phrase here and there, but even that little is probably too much. No doubt the writer is reading you with an indulgent smile, interrupted by an occasional wince.

But enough about my problems. Fitch said my story was fine and signed a very nice inscription in my copy of "White Oleander," as well as drawing a sketch of an oleander, which is a poisonous plant, and writing next to it: "Don't pick the oleander."

Her second novel got lavish praise -- "Janet Fitch is an artist of the very highest order," declared the L.A. Times, between drags on a French cigarette -- so I forsook our noble Pomona leaders to see her closest local appearance and pick up a copy.

"Paint It Black" is set in L.A. at the end of 1980, after the suicide of Germs singer Darby Crash and the death two days later of ex-Beatle John Lennon. The main character is an artists' model at the Otis Art Institute, when it was near MacArthur Park, Fitch explained.

At a previous event, "someone said, 'Oh, it's a historical novel,' " Fitch recounted, to laughter. "Well, I guess to some people it is."

Of her dark themes, such as the aftermath of suicide, she said: "My writing is all about how people internalize difficult experiences ... I'm interested in the times of life when people are pushed to the extreme."

When it comes to others' writing, she most enjoys reading, and listening to, poetry; its musicality teaches her to write her own sentences with what seem like the right number of syllables and beats.

(Naturally we do this in the Bulletin newsroom, everyone reading his or her work aloud on deadline: "A man was stabbed at a party in Fontana," "City leaders in Rancho Cucamonga are mulling a smoking ban," "After deliberating three days, a jury reached a verdict.")

Afterward I got in line to have my book signed. Fitch volunteered that she had kept looking at me knowing she knew me from somewhere but unable to place me. Well, it's been six years, so she gets points for even semi-remembering me. She wrote something nice in my book and thanked me for making the drive.

At this point I thought I could catch the last part of the Pomona meeting, so, dedicated Pomona-ite that I am, I didn't linger at Vroman's. When I got to Pomona I lucked out, sailing along down Garey, every light either green or turning green as I approached. But at City Hall, even though it was only 8:55, there was only one car in the parking lot. Must have been a short meeting by Pomona standards. Sometimes by 8:55 they're still arguing over the consent agenda.

Too bad. I could have hung around Pasadena some more. Maybe even had some dinner.

When the downtown Pomona restaurant Lela's closed last summer, the fate of the "Kitchen Nightmares" reality show taped at the restaurant also seemed to be in question. After all, the premise is that brash TV chef Gordon Ramsay would visit a failing restaurant and try to turn it around. Lela's obviously wasn't going to be a success story. Would the episode air even though the restaurant was gone?

That question has been answered. The episode about Lela's is scheduled to air Wednesday. The synopsis, from the "Nightmares" website:

"Chef Ramsay tries to rev up business for Lela's, an upscale restaurant in desperate need of clientele. When Gordon gets in the kitchen and starts criticizing the menu items, the executive chef is less than thrilled and they have a showdown in front of the entire staff. Find out if the changes stick and if the owner Lela will withstand this type of behavior in her restaurant."

That's at 9 p.m. on Fox.

This week's restaurant is Casablanca, the Mediterranean place, named for my favorite movie, that opened in the Claremont Packing House last summer. There seems to be a split opinion out there in the blogosphere at the M-M-M-My Pomona site, with comments varying wildly -- even between the couple who moderates the blog.

Well, I liked my meal there. There's an inviting atmosphere and a decor with a lot of dark wood, balanced by copious windows. The service was attentive. A friend and I shared a hummus appetizer that was superior. I had the chicken kabob and was pleased with it. My friend got the lamb shanks and if anything it was better than the kabob, very tender. Why, I could have led a sing-along of "La Marseillaise" but restrained myself.

This post is based on one visit, so your mileage may vary, as others' has. The place was worth my dough. The owner himself came out to ask how things were as we left. A liquor license is pending, he said happily, but in the meantime, they do serve wine.

No matter to me. I came to Casablanca for the waters.

I've written in my column about the NEA-affiliated Big Read drives in Pomona and Rancho Cucamonga and the independent On the Same Page drive in Claremont, in which residents were urged to read "Bless Me, Ultima," "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Cannery Row," respectively.

I finished "Mockingbird" on my lunch break Thursday, completing the trifecta.

(My favorite line is the first sentence of Chapter 10, the daughter saying of her father: "Atticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty.")

Tuesday I heard Steinbeck scholar Robert Morsberger speak at the Claremont Library, the final event in the "Cannery Row" series. Morsberger named "The Grapes of Wrath," "Cannery Row" and "In Dubious Battle" as his Steinbeck favorites. "'Cannery Row' is the book I most enjoy rereading," he said, describing it as funny and poetic. A friend, he added, says Doc is one of her favorite characters in literature.

Thursday I heard Mary Badham speak at Rancho Cucamonga's Celebration Hall about her role as Scout in the movie version of "Mockingbird." Badham, the sister of director John Badham, said she got the part in an audition in her native Alabama. She was honest enough to admit she was too young during filming to remember a whole lot other than Gregory Peck's kindness and the boy actors fighting with her.

She was a real-life tomboy, so the part fit her. But she wasn't especially interested in acting, she said, and thus didn't do much after "Mockingbird," although, among other things, she was in the very last "Twilight Zone" episode. As a first-timer without an agent, she didn't get paid much for playing Scout. "I think the last residual check I got was for 89 cents," she added. No wonder she was charging $20 for her autograph after the talk.

I already wrote about seeing Gustavo Arellano speak in Pomona about "Ultima," which meant I went to at least one book event in each of the three cities.

But only Rancho Cucamonga put me on a poster.

U.S. Treasurer Anna Escobedo Cabral will speak at 9 a.m. today at a (closed) symposium at Etiwanda Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga for educators, sponsored by the Stock Market Game and attended by state education Superintendent Jack O'Connell. They'll hear how to teach students about saving and investing. Cabral will discuss the importance of financial education.

I'd be more interested if she were handing out free money. Attendees could have her sign their own currency, except her autograph is already on it, along with that of the Treasury Secretary. The position of treasurer, I learned, involves advising the secretary on currency and coinage and, get this, is even older than the Treasury Department itself.

Treasurer Cabral, you are so money.

There's a green construction fence around the Sizzler restaurant at Fourth and Vineyard in Ontario, a fact that prompts a wistful sigh on my part.

Not that I'm a Sizzler fan. Even though the restaurant was two blocks from the Daily Bulletin, I ate there only once in my 10 years here.

(I ate at Sizzlers growing up in Illinois. The Malibu chicken, which was breaded chicken with a thin slice of ham and swiss cheese melted on top, seemed like the height of sophistication when I was a boy. That's what everyone eats in Malibu, right?)

It was my sole previous visit to the Ontario Sizzler that brings back memories.

In March 1994, I accepted a job at the Victor Valley Daily Press in Victorville and prepared to move there from Petaluma, up in the Bay Area. This was the job that brought me to Southern California.

My friend and colleague Scott Manchester from the Petaluma Argus-Courier helped me load up a rental truck and drive to Victorville. We unloaded my worldly belongings at my new Victorville apartment and I drove him to Ontario to catch a plane home. My intention was to buy him a good dinner but time was running short before his flight, so we went to Sizzler. It was near the airport, which was accessed then from Vineyard.

So, that's why the closing was cause for a sigh. The Ontario Sizzler was the site of my first dinner as a Southern Californian. Not an auspicious beginning, but we all have to start somewhere.

My colleague Jeff Malet found this online on Tuesday. It's from some outlet called Celebrity News Service. Wait for the local angle:

"Los Angeles, CA (CNS) -- Lindsay Lohan has embraced her clean and healthy lifestyle and is working it into her community service.

"Lindsay has not commented on her road to recovery and DUI punishment. She has nine more days left to serve her community."

According to other websites, Lohan was at the blood center from noon to 7 p.m. The lohangroupie.com site reports that she left carrying a book titled "Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce."

Just like I always say, all roads lead to Pomona -- even the road to recovery.

Well, this blog is apparently accepting comments again, not that anyone left any, so let's go (at least in prose) to Langer's Deli in L.A.

I'd heard for years that Langer's has the best pastrami outside of New York, and possibly even inside of New York, and yet Langer's, even after 60 years at Seventh and Alvarado, across from MacArthur Park, still remains largely unknown compared to Canter's, Pink's, the Original Pantry, Philippe's and other L.A. institutions.

On Saturday I took the plunge, riding Metrolink with a friend to Union Station and the Red Line subway to MacArthur Park; Langer's is a half-block away, a Jewish restaurant in the heart of a Latino neighborhood.

It's old but clean, smaller than Canter's but with a similar stopped-time feeling. I got the No. 44, a hot pastrami with sauerkraut, Russian dressing, and something called nippy cheese, on rye. The pastrami is hand-sliced and thicker than any I've had; reputedly it's steamed for three hours, which makes it so tender it can't be machine-sliced to the usual thinness. The bread is crunchy on the outside and soft inside. I agree with everyone; it's a heckuva pastrami sandwich.

My friend got the No. 1, which comes cold and with cole slaw instead of sauerkraut, and it was no worse, and likely even tastier, than my sandwich.

The neighborhood is said to be much improved over a few years ago, although there are still guys on the sidewalk ready to make you a fake ID. The park and its lake are lovely, even if I can't think of the park without thinking of that awful song about the cake left out in the rain. What about pastrami left out in the rain? Now that would be something to cry about.

My apologies to anyone who's had trouble with this site the past few days. This includes me.

Our online guys updated the blog software on Friday with the result that all of our blogs were knocked offline. My understanding is that spammers inundated the blogs with trash and the server crashed. A way to block the spammers was found that involved blocking anyone from Europe from reading our blogs. I'd say who needs 'em except two former Bulletin colleagues, and current friends, are in Europe for a spell.

My blog was operating again by late Friday but as of Sunday night it's still impossible for anyone to leave comments. I think that feature was temporarily disabled.

In any event, I was going to blog about a trip I took to L.A. on Saturday but instead I'm going to lie low until the blog issues are resolved. No point in posting if nobody can comment.

Before last Monday's Pomona council meeting, I stopped at a place I'd passed by for years: Macho Pollo.

It's a fast-food joint on East Holt near East End Avenue with a drive-thru. Its distinguishing characteristic is the monument sign at the curb featuring, to match the name, a cartoon of a shirtless chicken showing off his biceps. Weird but amusing. This time, instead of smiling as I drove by, I pulled in.

Macho Pollo isn't much to look at inside: a counter, a few booths, a mirrored wall and a couple of tabletop soccer games, the kind with players attached to rods. The menu on the wall was a little confusing: all items appeared to be complete meals, including one with four tacos and one with a hamburger, but no chicken sandwich and no a la carte menu obvious. Maybe I only wanted three tacos.

A bit dazed by the menu, I told the man waiting to take my order, whom I soon judged to be the owner, that this was my first visit and I wasn't sure what to get. A friendly fellow, he assured me "everything is the best" and gave me a plate with a thigh and some tortilla chips, just as a sampler. The chicken was astonishingly good. So I ordered the chicken breast meal, plus a medium horchata ($8.11).

The chicken is lightly spiced, grilled and served on a styrofoam plate with grilled onions. I would say it's like El Pollo Loco but several orders of magnitude better. Rice, beans and tortillas came with it.

Macho Pollo has been on Holt for four years. The sign at the entrance optimistically calls the restaurant "Macho Pollo No. 1"; I don't know if there are others. But there should be. I'm still a Donahoo's man, but for non-fried chicken, this is tasty stuff.

"Tell your friends. Risk-free," the owner joked as he handed me my plate.

Well, you're all my friends, right? Check the place out. Macho Pollo is mighty (get it?) good.

Thursday night I went to the Lewis Family Playhouse at Victoria Gardens to watch a stage version of "To Kill a Mockingbird," part of Rancho Cucamonga's Big Read book event. Before the play started, the theater manager climbed the stage to welcome everyone and warn the unwary about language and themes that might be unsuitable for children.

He also advised everyone in the audience -- which was composed mostly of teenagers and younger children -- to turn off their cell phones.

"That means no texting, no photos, no games," he elaborated. "You have no idea how distracting it is to be in a darkened theater and see 100 little lights. Texting has been a particular problem the last two days. That's why our ushers tonight are being especially vigilant."

I stayed through intermission and didn't see any little lights, so perhaps everyone got the, er, message. (I hated to leave, but I haven't quite finished the book, and besides, I didn't want to miss "The Office.")

Recently, as part of my mission to eat or drink, or at least taste, all 144 items on the menu at Pomona's Mix Bowl Cafe, I ate joke.

Joke is a porridge. At Mix Bowl, it can be ordered with chicken, pork or shrimp. I got it with chicken. It actually wasn't bad.

My only regret is that I didn't spill any on myself. Because then I could have said, looking down at my sleeve in mock sorrow, "Looks like the joke's on me."

With Monday morning off before that evening's Pomona council meeting, I took Metrolink into downtown L.A. to see "Julius Shulman's Los Angeles," an exhibit of Shulman's architectural photos at the Central Library, on view through Jan. 20.

Shulman, who was born in 1910 and is still at it, has watched L.A. longer than about anybody. One of the first photos in the show was shot in 1933 and is described as a view of City Hall "from the Union Station construction site."

There are photos of the Bradbury Building interior, the last two Victorians on Bunker Hill in the '60s, Century City, Wilshire Boulevard, Case Study House No. 22, dingbat apartments, bungalow courts and the Watts Towers. Especially illuminating were a couple of photos that showed how Shulman manipulated the surroundings to show off his subjects in a flattering light.

Let's just say the Case Study House -- the famous image is of two sophisticated women in white seen through a floor-to-ceiling window as the city's lights twinkle below them, one of L.A.'s most iconic photos -- wasn't quite as magical before Shulman got to work.

A couple of local connections figure in for you architecture buffs. Several photos show buildings by Welton Becket, who designed the Pomona Civic Center, and another shows a Wilshire department store by Stiles O. Clement, who's responsible for Pomona's old Sears store.

The exhibit is in the Library's Getty Gallery. Afterward you can marvel anew at the wraparound mural in the adjacent Lowdrick M. Cook Rotunda, and maybe even look at some books. Oh, and the admission price is right: free.

(Incidentally, the title of today's entry is a play on a Ben Katchor book. Extra credit if you look it up.)

Forgoing the Ontario council meeting, I walked to the Claremont McKenna Athenaeum on Tuesday night to hear Elizabeth Kolbert, the journalist who wrote "Field Notes From a Catastrophe," the book documenting and explaining global warming.

A staff writer for the New Yorker whose three-part series on climate change led to her book, Kolbert projected charts and graphs on a big screen, a la Al Gore, to make her terrifying case.

Permafrost in the Arctic Circle that goes back 10,000 years is beginning to thaw, which is scary enough. But as it thaws, carbon dioxide trapped inside will be released, which will only "amplify" the warming. So will having more open water instead of sea ice, since sea ice reflects heat while open water absorbs it.

Forces have been set in motion that we can't stop. If greenhouse gas levels miraculously held constant beginning today, temperatures would continue rising for the rest of our lives.

"We've already determined the climate for our children," Kolbert, a mother of three, said, "and now we're working on the climate of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren and many generations to follow."

Gulp.

While change could be less dramatic than computer models show, she's updating her 2006 book and everything has only gotten worse. Projections were that the Arctic could be ice-free by 2080; that's been cut to 2040.

Kolbert said she's often asked what we should do "to get out of this mess." She said she doesn't know, really.

"We need to cut emissions by 70 to 80 percent. It's going to take everything we've got," she said. Better land-use planning, conservation, a carbon tax and, perhaps, a very different lifestyle are the ideas she offered, and even they won't be enough.

Although it seems hopeless, we have "a moral responsibility...to not just throw up our hands," Kolbert said.

She added: "We really haven't made even the slightest bit of effort. If privileged Americans like the ones in this room don't take action, I really don't see why anyone else on the planet would, either."

The issue may be bigger than politics can deal with, as she said John McCain told her. She said the average person doesn't seem especially concerned and the news media isn't sounding the alarm loudly enough. There are welcome signs, she said, that religious leaders are beginning to treat climate change as a moral issue.

"If it's not a moral issue whether we're going to have a planet that's habitable in 50 or 100 years, I don't know what is a moral issue," she said.

She got a hearty round of applause. As far as I could tell, nobody rent their garments and wailed, threw themselves off a parapet or sacrificed a goat to the gods, although frankly those would have been sensible responses.

Thoroughly dejected, I went home. Under the circumstances, I was relieved I'd walked the half-mile instead of driving.

I wrote in my column Friday about a young Frank Zappa's appearance in 1963 on "The Steve Allen Show," in which Zappa, who then lived on Ontario's G Street, and Allen play a pair of bicycles as if they were musical instruments. A real pop-culture treasure. I noted that I'd seen the video clip on YouTube but that it had been removed before I could get the column into print.

This prompted notes from two readers who offer links to other sites where you can watch the video. First, here's Dawayne Bailey:

"I used to live in Alta Loma, CA in 1987 when I first joined the band Chicago as their new guitarist at the time. I lived near Carnelian Street. I'm also a huge Zappa fan/collector and have written songs with Jimmy Carl Black from The Mothers.

"Enjoy!!"

That link takes you to the full video. And I also got a note from Dominick, who sent me a link to the first half of the video, which you can view below:

"As a Zappa fan, I love it whenever you write about him in your column -- it makes my day.

"One little piece of Zappa/Ontario history I found interesting is in the book Zappa by Barry Miles. In one chapter he explains a time where he stole a Christmas tree from 'The Sav-ons around the corner.' This is when he lived in Ontario on G street, so I'm guessing it's referring to what is now the Rite-Aid near Euclid. I also wonder if he had to do anything with Ontario Music as I'm pretty sure it was around in the mid '60s. Just some random thoughts."

Dom, I've heard tales he used to buy guitar strings at Ontario Music, but that may just be local lore.

Thanks for the links, guys. The video has to be seen to be believed.

I like Wes Anderson's movies ("Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums") but haven't really been entranced by them, and the last one, "The Life Aquatic," was a mess. Happily, his new one, "The Darjeeling Limited," now playing at the Claremont Laemmle, is pretty good stuff and one of the better movies I've seen in 2007.

To get in the spirit of the movie, which is set in India, my friends and I first ate at the nearby Delhi Palace Expresss. The buffet fare was only so-so, but with mango lassi and chicken tikka masala still perfuming our breath, we were primed for "Darjeeling."

It's probably Anderson's funniest movie to date, and his most colorful, literally. The inclusion of three melancholy songs by the Kinks, my favorite band, certainly didn't hurt its standing with me. Watching Adrien Brody run for the train in the beginning in slow motion will make you want to run in slow motion too.

Every once in a while I'll use this space to peel back the newsprint for a glimpse at the (ugh) inner workings of one of my columns. How about if we start today?

Today's column and Friday's were both primarily composed of canned material, which I put together on Monday and Tuesday so that I could take the next three days off.

Friday's YouTube column was written last spring, put aside as an "evergreen" and updated last week. (Sadly, the Zappa video that was the column's focal point had vanished from YouTube in the interim, but that's the way YouTube works.)

Meanwhile, the bulk of Sunday's column was also penned quite some time ago. The literary references were compiled in the spring, I believe, while reader James' message about the Pomona Market in London came in around June and was written shortly afterward, along with the Noosa Hinterland addendum.

Why the delay?

Fearing being caught short one day on deadline, I tend to hoard column material the way a squirrel hoards nuts. Well, except that I hoard it in computer files, not in my cheeks. What I'll do on occasion is spend a free afternoon writing up potential items from reader letters or e-mails or my own stray bits of research cluttering my desk. If they're not timely, these finished items are often set aside for later use.

Sometimes, um, much later.

I haven't missed a column since May 2005 and pride compels me to keep the streak going as long as possible. My feeling is, these evergreen columns aren't my best, but they're better than nothing. If readers are looking for my column on Wednesday, Friday or Sunday, I'd like there to be a column there for them to find.

With the Friday after Thanksgiving looming, when I'll have two columns due on a Wednesday, expect another visit to my vault.

OK, that's enough peeking into the guts of these two columns. Suture, please, nurse. Let's sew 'em up!

I don't usually list in this feature all the new places I visited in the past week, just my favorite. But as I've tried several new-to-me restaurants since last week's entry, let me mention them all.

First there was Lily's Tacos, on North Garey in Pomona, the little stand with the vinyl rain guard near M&I Surplus, where I had a superior al pastor burrito. Second came Bua Thai, a new Thai place in the Claremont Village Expansion, which had a line out the door but to my taste was only average. ("Thai food for people who don't like Thai food," one friend remarked.) Next came Sushi Shiro, in Upland, in the former Cafe Provencal space, where I had a decent sushi lunch and saw a rarity, a woman training as a sushi chef.

But I'll tell you in detail about the place I had lunch Thursday: Pondok Salero in La Verne, perhaps the valley's sole Indonesian restaurant.

Pondok is in a storefront on Foothill Boulevard, in the strip center with Shogun. It teeters on the brink between fast food and sit-down, being wider than it is deep and with a steam table at the counter, and yet with table service and an inviting gold-painted walls and tasteful art. (There doesn't seem to be a buffet; the server dished up my food from the steam table.)

I'm a novice at this, so I got Paket Rames Ayam ($7.25), which is a piece of chicken simmered in coconut milk. It came with rice, a spicy egg (a hardboiled egg with red chili), cabbage with green beans and a small mound of chopped green chili. The menu also lists serundeng, but as I seem to have accounted for everything on my plate, I'm not sure what this is.

The side dishes were too spicy for me, but then, I'm not good with spicy food. The chicken was tasty, and the rice and cucumber cooled my tongue from the rest. I wouldn't be opposed to trying Pandok again. It may be catching on; although only one other table was filled at 1 p.m., a sign near the cash register proudly reads: "Now we open 7 days/week."

After lunch I walked three storefronts up to O-Lime, one of the innumerable Pinkberry knockoffs, where I got a pomegranate frozen yogurt with strawberries and pineapple ($3.45). Very tasty.

Out of all these places, the one I'm likeliest to revisit is Lily's Tacos. But I love that stolid La Verne has an Indonesian restaurant and a Korean frozen-yogurt place about 20 paces from each other.

Writes reader Bob House regarding Bono's speech Tuesday evening at Bridges Auditorium in Claremont on Africa and debt relief:

"Save your Bono program ... There’s already one on Ebay selling for $40 opening bid."

He's not kidding. Here's the link.

Forty bucks, eh? Maybe the seller has some debt-relief issues of his own.

Oh, and I love how, hours after the speech, the program is already described as "rare."

My kitchen sink faucet has been steadily dripping for the past few weeks. I timed it at one drip each seven seconds, and that was a month ago; the drip increased since then to every five seconds. Plink, plink, plink, collecting in whatever plate or bowl might be in the sink.

At last, sheepish as I always am when it comes to these matters, I included a note with my rent check about the drip, candidly assessing my capabilities in the matter of plumbing and asking if, in the near future, a plumber could be called to fix the drip.

Two mornings later, and hours after being awoken by the plink, plink, plink in the night, word arrived that the plumber would be visiting later that day. Speedy service, eh?

I happened to have the day off, meaning I would be home to greet the plumber. First things first: I washed the dirty dishes piling up, the better to make a good impression, and besides they needed to be washed anyway.

A couple of hours later, two advance scouts of the plumber came by to assess the problem. I led them into the kitchen. And noticed -- no plink, plink, plink. The sink was dry as a bone. "Um, it's been dripping every five seconds for weeks," I assured them, feeling like a dope.

They said the plumber would be by in a half-hour, maybe 45 minutes. It was 11:30, and I figured, OK, I'll hold off on going out to lunch until he arrives. Ditto with starting a load of laundry, in case he needs to shut off the water.

Shortly after 1 p.m., with no sign of the plumber, I made my own lunch at home. At 2:30 p.m., I started a load of laundry. At 3:45 p.m., the clothes now in the dryer, he arrived.

Still no plink, plink, plink, but being prepared this time, I explained the situation deftly. A man who knows intimately the vagaries of plumbing fixtures, he gave an understanding smile, took the assembly apart and replaced the washer, then bade me farewell.

There's no plink, plink, plink now, just as there was no plink, plink, plink before. The test, of course, will come at 4 a.m....