Folks, the beginning of the end is here, for North Carolina at least. I’m not talking about the Mayan calendar, although if that thing carries a curse with it I might be convinced.

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Please feel free to share your thoughts on the tragic shooting today.

I agree with those who say it is time to have “that talk” about guns in our beautiful country. The part of the second amendment that seems to have gone by the wayside is the part that reads “well-regulated” and “Militia”. These terms are not meaningless, yet I can’t see where they intersect at all with our current laws or our culture surrounding guns.

Instead of making appeals to prayer in schools or arming teachers and six-year-olds, we need to all of us, from Obama on down, finally follow through on some kind of action. What that is, I don’t know. But I suspect it is tied not only to gun access but to mental health and the general stress level we all live under in this hyper-reality we have conceived.

The state of Michigan has told the unions representing Michigan’s working men and women that they are now to be run as charity organizations. They can have no more power or influence than the United Way or the Salvation Army. They are being forcibly reorganized. Michigan is the twenty-fourth state to do this. Read More→

Ok, Let me go ahead and say that I’m slightly out of the loop on the latest developments in the water issue. I regret that. This is no time to be slacking off. It shan’t happen again.

What I do know is that there will be a meeting tomorrow at the MSD, and you might have gotten this email: Read More→

Ok, by now most of you will have seen the New York Times’ best restaurant review EVER, in which they proceed to absolutely slaughter, with an infectious snarky joy of unrestrained sarcasm and wit, the newest offering by America’s favorite denizen of dives, Guy Fieri.

And some of you may also have noticed that food journalism here in Asheville is so unrelentingly positive, upbeat and happy that it almost makes one imagine that the entire undertaking is sponsored by the tourism and development people. It could be actually, since they are so incredibly well-funded, and hey, they gotta do something with all that (ahem) dough.

As it happens, the Taste of Asheville event is also happening at this very moment. A good opportunity to sample the wares of many of the big names in local restaurants, and one could come away from that with some definite winners and losers in mind.

But anyway, I’m interested to know what the real stories are. What do the locals think about our local food establishments when they are not busy pumping up the hype for the tourists? Is this really the food mecca they say it is?

Speaking strictly for myself, I’m a hard case when it comes to restaurant food and service because I spent a lotta years in the business, most of it back of house. But I’m not going to chip in with my two cents just yet, because I want to savor what the culinary hooligans out there in Asheville have to say.

So consider this your chance to be the food critic you always knew you could be.

So, How you guys doing out there?

I don’t know about you, but I have family on Manhattan, and friends up and down the Eastern seaboard. Here’s hoping everyone takes the greatest care and comes out alright.

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