Wes Phillips

As my readers have probably sussed out, I love to quote. What's not to love? As Mark Twain said (probably—most really good quotes seem to be attributed to Twain, The Bible, Shakespeare, or Casablance), "I get paid the same word rate for quotes as I get paid to make things up."

The best food writing isn't about snooty reactions to snooty cooking, but is like a personal conversation with someone you care about. A.J. Liebling's Between Meqls: An appetite For Paris, Jim Harrison's The Raw and the Cooked, and just about anything by Ruth Reichl all come to mind. And then there's The Great British Crisp Challenge, which is lively and entertaining as all get out.

Already tired of the James Frey and JT LeRoy scandals? Actually, that sounds like a Jeopardy question: Two writers Wes never heard of before they got outed as fakes.

Make mine a Venti? Give me a break! I once asked a Starbucks counterperson why they called their humongous-sized hot-milk drinks "ventis." "That's Italian for twenty," the barrista said. Riiiight, like any Italian I've ever met would slam down 20 oz. of coffee at a time.

Learning rejuvenates the brain; going without sleep impairs cognitive function. That single sentence repudiates my whole strategy for getting through college—no wonder I find myself going, "It's just like wassisname said . . ."

After a week in a Vegas hotel, it was such a relief to come home to real water pressure in my shower, although I do understand why a city in the desert legislates low-pressure nozzles. I'm not sure I am unreservedly in favor of hacking showers, however. I stayed in a hotel in Sicuani, Peru once where the hot water function was a bare 220V wire wrapped around the water pipe. That woke me up—as did the cold shower I took after making sure the wire was disconnected. I think I may have even turned off the bathroom light just to be on the safe side.

NASA announced Monday that Hubble reveals Polaris to be a triple star system.