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Most weekly email I get is from woman prisoners, students, and other shut ins who either are proposing marriage (I’m taken, ladies!), emphasizing my love for run-on sentences and split infinitives (it’s an informal composition al style!) or otherwise mostly miss the point of whatever admittedly tenu ous thread I weave, and comfort themselves with hounding me to explain the hidden meaning behind the impenetrable column titles. Instead of telling them that some readers like to puzzle over them, or to read the col umn’s every fifth sentence backwards for the secret messages, as I usual ly do, I’ll take pity this week and note that the title of this week’s column, of course, refers to The ‘Oo’s rarities, B-sides, unreleased tracks, and odd ities collected on “Odds and Sods.” You know, in reference to there being four short ruminations here, instead of the usual one long rambling one. The Fifth Taste April 27, 2001

After the four tastes of sweet, sour, bitter, and salt, there is a fifth taste.

Hypothesized, postulated, tested, and then finally verified in 1905, this fifth taste is called "umami."

Umami is why a frosty Corona tastes better with a wedge of lemon stuck in the bottle. Umami is why a shot of whisky hits the spot even when you're bandaging your skinned knee and bemoaning the loss of your favorite pants in somebody else's bathroom. Umami is that sprig of mint, that dash of cinnamon, that icing on the cake.

It is that quality of deliciousness that makes things just... well... better.

I've been going to comic book conventions since I first made my poor par ents drive me from our home in rural Vermont to Albany, New York, for FantaCon '79. I've gone to at least two shows a year since then (many more per year when I was in college), and you have to admit that that's a lot of comic book con ventions to go to in those 22 years. The last six years or so, I've been attending cons with a professional eye. This puts a bit of a different spin on things. I never attend panels anymore, unless I'm on one, as I'm usually manning the AiT/Planet Lar booth. If I get to walk the floor at all, it's usually because I'm taking the long way back from the bathroom.

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