The Blog of Many Hats

From The Nietzsche Family Circus:

I took my daughter out on a play date today. Really, this is the first time in 18 months that I've had her all to myself and been completely responsible for her out of the house for more than an hour or two.

Needless to say, I wanted it to go well. Needless for Murphy to say, things didn't go as planned.

The play date host had recently purchased a new pair of shoes. Large, white shoes. They were sitting in the middle of the living room floor. My daughter, who is not yet very coordinated, went careening through the house at full tilt, tripped over the shoes, went airborne, and smashed her face into the wall of the living room.

You can always tell the severity of a child's injury by the type of crying that commences afterward. In this case, my daughter didn't move for a full five seconds, and then commenced to wail at the top of her lungs. She still didn't move. She just lay there with her face pressed against the wall.

I ran over to her and picked her up, whereupon blood began running from her nose all over our host's new white shoes and his carpet. I was completely paralyzed with indecision for a moment. But the smartass side of me surveyed the situation and I said "Wow! She fought the wall and the wall won!"

Well, it looks like Waiter Rant has finally hit the shelves. I've been waiting for this book for a long time.

I've been following the adventures of The Waiter almost since his blog began. It's one of my favorite reads.

I'm kind of annoyed that the press has done their sleuthing and determined that Waiter's restaurant, "The Bistro" is actually Lanterna Tuscan Bistro in Nyack. I'm annoyed because I figured it out two years ago (in January 2006), but I kept my mouth shut because I knew Waiter didn't want it revealed.

In case you were wondering how you could have figured it out yourself, here's the long list of clues that Waiter dropped over the years:

• New York metro area
• Italian Bistro
• Owner with a stereotypical, Italian-sounding name ("Fluvio")
• Owner offers occasional cooking classes
• Restaurant offers take-out
• Restaurant has a web site
• Take-out menu is posted online
• Very close to a Starbucks (I know, they're everywhere, but you'd be surprised how many possibilities this eliminates)
• Close proximity to an Irish pub where you can get your Bushmills, neat.
  

All those clues made me 90% sure the restaurant had to be Lanterna. However, the final clue for me was when Waiter posted that "The Bistro" had "river views". As you can see from this map, Lanterna is right on a big 'ol river.