McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

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Wine and Dine.

August 8, 2012 /

I poked fun at Michael Pugliese a while back for the stiff manner of his onscreen commercial appearances.

“I’m Michael Pugliese,” he boldly intones, “and I AM the president of Platt College.”

The emphatic assertion presumably being forced by a challenge as to whether he truly is the president of that institution. I AM! he says.

Well, I guess he AM doin’ sumpin’ good there.

According to the Tulsa World, the restaurant at the local campus has just been added to Wine Spectator magazine’s “World’s Best Wine List.” In northeastern Oklahoma, only Polo Grill and Fleming Steakhouse joined Foundations Restaurant (the culinary school’s real-customer training ground) on the list. There are plenty of other restaurants in the area with nice wine selections, so recognition from the magazine is certainly a feather in the chef’s cap for Timothy Fitzgerald, who heads up the program and orders in the wine selection.

The article appears in the August edition of the magazine.

McHuston Booksellers & Irish Bistro did not make the cut. In fact, we haven’t even made the soft drink selection list, but all things in good time.

Meanwhile progress continues on the food front: we’re now offering our carry-out menu at lunchtime, featuring soups, salads, and sandwiches to go. Guest seating is intended for the near future, but in the meantime a ten percent discount is being offered on all call-in orders to go between 11am and 2pm.

As the menu is still a work in progress, we don’t have shiny laminated copies to hand out, but feel free to drop by and pick up one on simple card stock. Through August 15th we’ll give you a freshly-baked Otis Spunkmeyer cookie just for stopping by and asking!

The early reviews have been good (thank goodness!) on our Irish Stew and Potato Soup, along with the Ballycue pulled pork barbecue sandwich and Mamie’s Slow Roast, a tender, sliced roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy. Now that’s some comfort food, even during the month of August in Oklahoma!

I’m Larry, and I AM the cook and bottle-washer at McHuston Booksellers & Irish Bistro! (although not quite ready for the Platt College-type primetime TV commercials…)

Fast Company.

August 3, 2012 /

If there was ever a question as to whether the digital age affects writing styles and content, the reporting from the London Olympics should provide the answer.

We are so accustomed to viewing the results of technological advances that we think nothing about the absurdity of what it is we are looking at. For example, the time clocks at the swimming venues.

To record the winner of an event, the swimmer touches an electronic pad on the wall of their lane, which halts an elapsed-time clock for that participant. While competitors may appear – to the naked eye – to have touched at the same moment, the time clock is clear on the separation of the touches. The clock is much like that used at the end of NBA games, which seem to last forever as they wind down, since the digital display shows thousands of a second.

Thousands of a second. 1/1000th of a single second.

With that in mind, here is the AP account of young Missy Franklin’s finish in the 200m backstroke.

Teenager Missy Franklin won her third gold medal here by setting a world record in the 200-meter backstroke, her time of 2:04.06 blasting past the previous record by three-quarters of a second.

Notice how she conquered the old record: she did it by “Blasting past.” What a blast it was, too. 3/4ths of 1/60th of a single minute.

Three quarters of a second. A blink of an eye.

According to statistician William A. Briggs, “a real blink of an eye takes 300 to 400 milliseconds. Since there’s 1000 milliseconds in each second, a blink of an eye takes around 1/3 of a second.”

Based on that figure, Miss Franklin’s margin of victory was 750 milliseconds, or – by Mr Briggs’ calculation – two blinks of an eye.

That’s not so fast, after all.

Observations.

August 1, 2012 /

An aspiring writer told me he never reads books and I immediately imagined my ten year old at the wheel of my car, navigating the one-way streets downtown. His destination will quickly be forgotten in avoiding pedestrians and blind alleys.

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