The Genuine Brooklyn Egg Cream

January 20, 20141 Comment

Tom’s Restaurant, Brooklyn, NY

I can still taste them. The chocolate egg creams we had at Tom’s in Brooklyn. (View way better photos at that link.) Purported to be the best, the most genuine, in all the land. I was there in December with my LOSH (Long-Suffering Husband) and we met up with my VCFA classmate and friend, the author of YA novel FROST, Marianna Baer! So keen of her to join us.

Anyway. We drank, and it was good. The server was very friendly and even gave us a free vanilla egg cream to share–3 straws! And you know what? I think I might like the vanilla ones even more.

So now I have a baseline for how a true egg cream should taste–and I must say, Chicago’s Eleven Diner gets it right. They’re going to be hard to beat in my Chicagoland search.

Quint-essential

January 15, 2014

Quint-essential

The Dionne quintuplets, mentioned in my novel, RADIO GIRL, were real-life superstars back in the ’30s. Back then, triplets were extremely rare and even twins were not common so these five girls from Canada really captured the public’s attention. They even starred in their own movies!

“Plastics!” or “What is Bakelite?”

January 14, 2014January 9, 20141 Comment

Child Actress Shirley Temple wearing Bakelite sunglasses (I think)

In Radio Girl, Cecelia packages promotional Bakelite sunglasses for listeners of the radio program, Our Gal Sunday. So what is Bakelite? It’s one of the earliest kinds of plastic.

Bakelite, or polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, is an early plastic that was quite sturdy and could withstand high temperatures. It is a thermosetting phenol formaldehyde resin, formed from an elimination reaction of phenol with formaldehyde, usually with a wood flour filler. (WikiAnswers, Science)

Can’t imagine life without plastic.