Today's he's writing on Thanksgiving, the Constitution, a lot of stuff. He's all over the place, but I really enjoyed this.
… Continentals who grew up on Hollywood movies where the guy tells the waitress "Gimme a cuppa joe" and slides over a nickel return to New York a year or two later and find the coffee now costs $5.75, takes 25 minutes and requires an agonizing choice between the cinnamon-gingerbread-persimmon latte with coxcomb sprinkles and the decaf venti pepperoni-Eurasian-milfoil macchiato. Who would have foreseen that the nation that inflicted fast food and drive-thru restaurants on the planet would then take the fastest menu item of all and turn it into a kabuki-paced performance art? What mad genius!He then discusses the Europeans' love of novelty in their forms of government and finishes that with, "If you're going to be novelty-crazed, better the zebra-mussel cappuccino than the Third Reich".
