From William Safire’s wonderful 1980 book On Language:

“In the United States,” reports Phil Shea, public relations director of Sheraton hotels, “with only one exception, an order for ‘regular coffee’ would produce plain coffee with sugar and cream on the side.

“The exception is Boston. An order for ‘regular coffee’ in the coffee shop would produce coffee with cream already added, and sugar on the side. In the hotel restaurant, the waiter would question the guest to clarify the order.”

I may be sort of talking out of my hat there, lemme move on to another subject, movies. I remember when the AFI produced their list of the 100 greatest comedies, a lot of people, when talking about it, used the terms “greatest comedies” and “funniest movies” interchangeably, and that’s just wrong. I remember The Graduate was on the list at #8, and I read a report saying that The Graduate had been declared 8th-funniest movie of all time. Now, that’s just absurd. 8th-greatest movie that is a comedy, sure, I could see that. But it probably wouldn’t make my list of the top 200 funniest movies. Funniest movie would be, maybe, I dunno, Airplane! or Freddy Got Fingered. But I wouldn’t put them at the top of a general list of greatest comedies.

In re #3: I really like Lynda Barry’s stuff. Back when I had a cubicle, I decorated it with her strip titled “Lord Love A Lungfish,” in which (as I recall) the boy vampire Skreddy-57 documents the lifecycle of that odd animal. “For Better or For Worse” is obviously much more than a gag strip, and the ongoing story has been strong for years, whether or not its hilarious on a given day.

1. It always bothered me that at Tommy’s, they just called their chiliburgers “hamburgers.” Like, as in, one of the standard toppings for a hamburger there is chili. In my book, that makes it a chiliburger.

2. I wish I could get brown gravy on fries. When I visited Canada I got poutine — good stuff.

3. I never got Ernie Pook’s Comeek. I don’t think “Life in Hell” has been funny in about 20 years, either. Come to think of it, there were a lot of “alternative” comics that I thought just sucked. Well, a lot of non-alternative comics suck, too. But not as many as people think. No comics on the comics page are good 100% of the time; the very best are maybe good 75% of the time. Marmaduke is good approximately 0% of the time. People will dismiss things like Blondie because it seems like such a throwback, but there are some good gags in there. There are a lot of comics that people like because they like the characters but aren’t really all that funny. I guess For Better or For Worse is the canonical example there, but even Get Fuzzy skates by on its characters being likable more than they do on good jokes.

4. “The Soul of Starbucks.” Hah! I don’t drink coffee, so I scoff whenever I see people debating the social significance of Starbucks and the associated addiction. I got a $4.00 Starbucks gift card for filling out a parking survey at work, and it took me something like 5 months to use it, and even then it was for pastries when I was on the road and needed breakfast.

But not Miss Florence — too glitzy. I’mfairly certain it had less signage than that.

Here are some pix of the Miss Florence. I didn’t find any of the Bluebell.

And it’s a WOMEN’S COLLEGE. Not a girls’ school.