Cincinnati E.A.T.S. is a new group that supports independent restaurants by “taking over” a restaurant for a cocktails and a fixed price menu.  Last night was the first event at Lavomatic Cafe in the Gateway Quarter of Over the Rhine.

Last night’s event was a sellout and the place was packed.  It wasn’t as conducive to meeting people as I thought it might be, as people seemed to clump up in groups with people they already knew.  I ran into some acquaintances that I knew, but hadn’t had an opportunity to really speak to, so that made for some ready made dinner companions.  We were joined by one of the organizers and ended up meeting some people in the tables surrounding us.

The conversation was good, but the dinner itself, not as good.  I know that judging the quality of a restaurant when food is mass-produced is not really fair, but I did pay for it.  I felt that the food was pretty mediocre.  The main entree was Amish chicken with zucchini, kalamata olives, and house-made harissa.  The “harissa” is to hard to describe, sort of like a Taro cake that you would get a dim sum.  That was excellent, but the chicken was bland.  We felt a little bad asking for some salt and pepper which was not on the table.  I was thankful that I didn’t get the other entree, the Warm farro with carrot, asparagus, and citrus (Vegan).  Farro’s a wheat.  Hopefully, a filling wheat since there was only a small portion of it with three or four asparagus on the side.  That’s one of those entrees where the dessert needs to be a Big Mac.

I have previously been to Lavomatic once before, but the dish that I got that time was just fair also.  Nothing really special.   I really do want Lavomatic to succeed since it’s the first restaurant in the Gateway Quarter.  If it succeeds, it’ll lead to more restaurants opening in the area.  The restaurant is a beautiful place and a great environment for dinner so I will definitely try it again.  Hopefully, I’ll find something there that I really like.  Any suggestions?

Hats off to Cincinnati E.A.T.S. for putting on an event like this.  It was a fun time and it definitely exposed a lot of people to Lavomatic.  Hopefully, the people will be back and try it again in a more normal dining situation.

From NYTimes.com: For Clinton, Millions in Debt and Few Options

An interesting story about Hillary and her campaign debt.

Otherwise, the most discussed option is for Mr. Obama, now the presumed nominee, to encourage his fund-raising team to help her with a series of joint events.

Campaign finance laws prohibit Mr. Obama from simply transferring money from his war chest to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. But Mr. Obama’s fund-raisers could ask their donors to give to Mrs. Clinton.

This going to be a tough sell to a lot of Obama supporters.  If Hillary had gotten out of the race sooner, when it was pretty clear she wasn’t going to win, she would not have as much debt as she has now.

And in one of the more memorable cases of debt, former Senator John Glenn of Ohio ended his 1984 Democratic presidential bid with nearly $3 million in debt. He struggled for more than 20 years to pay it off until the Federal Election Commission issued him a reprieve.

I didn’t know this.  When you see debt associated with politicians, you just assume that they figure out some way to make it go away.

Some of Mrs. Clinton’s largest outstanding bills are to some of her closest advisers, who might be willing to cut her a deal. Mrs. Clinton, for example, owes nearly $5 million to the firm of her former pollster and senior strategist, Mark Penn.

There’s your problem!  5 Million dollars for that strategy?  He should certainly be offering some of that back.

From Dallasnews.com: Folks duped by ‘Borat’ creator Sacha Baron Cohen in Carrollton are really mad

Last week, at one of those big office parks on International Parkway, a whole bunch of people got really mad.

So mad, in fact, that dozens stormed out of a television taping – even though each had been paid $50 cash for agreeing to be an audience member of what promoters referred to vaguely as a new talk show.

The object of their anger? Well, that was the secret, and apparently few of them knew the identity of the character who got so deeply under their skin and wouldn’t let go. His name is Sacha Baron Cohen, who, when it comes to comedy, is a mastermind of ambush humor.

Sacha Baron Cohen is a genius at creating humor mostly with unexpected participants by exposing their racism, homophobia, and just plain ignorance.  This time Cohen is creating havoc not as Borat, but as Bruno, the gay Austrian fashion model from his Ali G show.  Cohen has an incredible ability to stay in character and improvise no matter how funny or awkward the situation gets.

I’m amazed that Cohen can still pull this off, even as a new character without people realizing what is going on.

This is a replacement for .Mac and now provides push of mail, contacts, and calendars to the iPhone. 

When I first heard about MobileMe, I wondered if I’d be able to keep my mac.com email address.  For the first couple of years of .Mac, it was pretty much the only reason I subscribed to .Mac.  Later on, I did find the sync of calendars and address books to be pretty useful.

Apple answers the question of Mac.com email:

As a MobileMe subscriber, you can continue to use your mac.com address for email. You will also be issued a me.com address with the same user name that you can use if you prefer. The choice is yours.

UPDATE: The new 3G iPhones prices shown below are AT&T subsidized prices with a two year contract

UPDATE: New 3G iPhones with GPS.  Otherwise, no other major surprises.  A 16GB iPhone will now cost you only $299, an 8GB $199.  At these prices, the iPhone should attract a lot of new buyers.  But, the question that I have is whether or not the $299 16GB phone is worth the upgrade from my original iPhone.  The main new features are 3G, GPS, and twice the storage capacity.  I think this will be one of those wait and see situations.

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference begins today in SF with Steve Jobs’ keynote address.  Big news expected is the announcement of the 3G iPhone and lots of new applications for the iPhone.  I’m excited for the applications, but I’m afraid that once I see the new iPhone with all its new features, I’m going to be wanting one of those too.

The keynote is 1:00pm EST and I’ll be following it through a live blog at Macrumorslive.com.

From ESPN.com: Nadal’s fire and emotion propel him to fourth French Open title

Roger Federer is one of the greatest tennis players of all time, but Rafael Nadal thoroughly  dominated him at the French Open for his fourth straight French Open title.

It’s amazing to watch the power and spin that Nadal gets on his forehand.  It’s a freakish shot.  No one else in tennis can hit a ball like Nadal does with the amount of topsin that he has.  It seems almost impossible for one of his balls to go long because the ball just “dives” back down on to the court like it’s attracted by a magnet.

There was no secret to Nadal’s approach to Federer.  Attack Federer’s backhand. As the chart showed during the TV broadcast, Nadal hit 100% of his first serves to Federer’s backhand.  Nadal didn’t even bother changing direction once in a while to mix things up.  On clay, Nadal’s shot bounces so high after it hits the ground that Federer had difficulty coming over the ball with his one handed backhand.

Now, this makes Wimbledon that much more interesting.  Federer has dominated Wimbledon like Nadal’s done with the French Open.  But, after watching Nadal play, I think he has a strong shot at unseeding Federer if Nadal can get through to the final.

From CNN.com: ‘Freakish’ online searches inspire play

A new play in Philadelphia is based on the real life searches of an anonymous AOL subscriber, User 927.

The story’s central clue is the real-life online search log of an AOL subscriber — identified only as User 927 — that was released to the public two years ago in a well-publicized privacy gaffe.

Alltop said he was astonished when AOL intentionally released some 19 million search requests made over three months by more than 650,000 subscribers.

The logs were meant to help academic researchers, but they were posted on a public site and quickly circulated once a blogger discovered them.

Although AOL had substituted numeric IDs for the subscribers’ real user names, there were enough clues for The New York Times and The Washington Post to track down two of the users and identify them by name.

The identity of User 927 is still unknown. But Alltop was fascinated enough by that subscriber’s freakish queries, including some disturbing sexual imagery, to commission a 90-minute play around the search log.

The searches of User 927, culled from the AOL search logs are pretty frightening and strange.  Definitely a hint of mystery and kind of makes you wonder what kind of person this is.

From Yahoo News: Japanese woman caught living in man’s closet

A homeless woman who sneaked into a man’s house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing.

Stories like this just freak me out.  I can’t believe the woman actually lived there for a whole year without being detected!  If it were my closets, I guess I could understand.  Hmmm, maybe it’s time to be cleaning out the closets this weekend.

NYTimes.com: Continental Cuts 3,000 Jobs as It Grounds Planes

Continental Airlines said Thursday that it would cut 3,000 jobs and retire 67 Boeing aircraft from its fleet, becoming the latest airline to announce capacity reductions in the face of high prices for jet fuel.

Today, it’s Continental.  Yesterday, United.  Other airlines have gone bankrupt.  Airlines are trying to curb losses by cutting back on employees and reducing size of their fleets.   Airline troubles are being blamed on rising fuel costs and a slowing economy.

Can the airline industry recover from this latest challenge?  It seems to me that this time things may be spiraling out of control.  Lower capacity and higher fuel costs means higher fares for passengers.  Higher fares cause a decrease in demand as passengers seek alternatives or reduce travel.  Lower demand means excess capacity.  Airlines cut capacity, causing the cycle to continue.

At some point an equilibrium will be reached with fewer airlines, fewer cities served, and higher costs.  With fuel costs high it may be prohibitively expensive for new startup airlines to emerge in the future to service routes that have been dropped by the existing airlines.  Perhaps this is the breaking point for the airline industry.