Fancy-restaurant-lunch today included a dessert that was known on the menu as "Exotic Asian Fruit Tower." Any guesses as to these exotic Asian fruits? Guess. I'll wait.

Okay, those were some good guesses. All of them. Even yours. But the dessert? Apple pie standing up inside a crispy pancake. Really. Or if it wasn't, it was doing an awesome job pretending. I mean, it was good apple pie. Really was. But I didn't taste no exotic Asian fruits.

Oh well. It was still worth the $9.50 I didn't have to pay for it.

And if the desserts cost $9.50... well, you can only imagine what the main dishes cost.

I'm currently reading "Backstory" by Ken Auletta, which is a collection of the author's long-form pieces mostly from the New Yorker about the business of journalism, behind-the-scenes at the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Post / Daily News wars. It's quite, quite excellent. I wish the postscripts on each piece were longer and didn't try so hard to connect one piece to the next in what ends up feeling like a very forced fashion, but aside from those minor quibbles, it's at times a can't-put-it-down kind of book, and even when it's not, it's a worth-knowing-and-feel-like-I'm-learning-something kind of book. So it's good. Of course, I might just be more interested than most in this stuff, as evidenced by this site being one of my few must-read sites at least a couple of times a week.