And Your Coffee Was Lousy Too!

The 1999 pop-electronica album "Play" sold like hotcakes and went multi-platinum for Richard Melville Hall, a man known to the music world as Moby.  But his cooking might not be as well received as his music.

People who are used to eating "big and fluffy" pancakes from the IHOP restaurant chain, said Moby, “would be disappointed” with the pancakes he makes.  "I [have] an ex-girlfriend,” said Moby.  "When we were breaking up — one of the few endings of a relationship that was a bit contentious — one of her parting shots was having her tell me she never liked my pancakes."

Mark Discusses His New Book

Mark Jacob appeared on C-SPAN's BookTV recently to discuss the book he has co-written with Stephen Case. Treacherous Beauty tells the generally unknown story of Peggy Shippen, the second wife of the Revolutionary war general (and traitor) Benedict Arnold.

Publishers Weekly writes that Mark and Stephen "detail Peggy's role as go-between (in Arnold's plot) and document her later life in London." The co-authors appeared at Washington, D.C.'s Politics & Prose bookstore in July, where they discussed the new book before a packed crowd.

Replace the Iron With a Tablecloth, and Presto ...

... dinner is served.  Last night at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Ann Romney spoke about her early years of marriage with Mitt, the GOP presidential nominee. Long before her husband's career took off and produced plenty of wealth, the couple sometimes used an ironing board as their dining-room table, she said.

Noisy Nibbles

In a 1951 letter to the editor of Variety, actor-comedian Groucho Marx blamed “popcorn and other noise-making foods” for helping “to drive many people away from the movies.”

Blame the Pasta

By 1928, Al Capone carried 255 pounds on his five-feet, 10-and-a-half inch frame.  “Mountains of pasta and Niagaras of Chianti had deposited layers of fat” on the gangster’s body, wrote one biographer.