As promised, this morning, at the ungodly hour of 9 am, Steve and I took Blogtown commenter caustic out for breakfast at the finest Denny's Middle-earth has to offer! (It is on NE MLK, and some sketchy teenagers are usually smoking out in front of it, glaring at everyone who enters. For the record, the worst Denny's are all the ones owned by this guy.)

At caustic's insistence, Mercury contributor and comic book artiste Suzette Smith joined our party as well, and she took notes! Will a comic result? We shall have to wait and see! (There better be one, as the Mercury totally bought her the "Hobbit-Hole Breakfast" she demanded, which she then declared to be "cold.")

So how was it? Well, Steve wouldn't shut up about his "Gandalf's Gobble Melt" ("This Gandalf Gobbler is delicious!") and I'm pretty sure he's back there right now eating another one. caustic ordered some "Pumpkin Patch Pancakes," which he informed us "did not taste like pumpkin whatsoever." I got the "Seed Cake French Toast." "You mean the poppy seed toast?" said our waitress, who was clearly already sick of all the dweebs she's been having to tolerate ever since Denny's decided to start calling itself "Middle-earth's Diner." "Yes!" I answered, and it turns out that's exactly what it was, except it also had cream cheese all over it. (Next time you read The Hobbit, keep an eye on Tolkien's captivating descriptions of the feasts held in Hobbiton and Rivendell—you'll notice that he almost always includes the phrase, "And Bilbo then declared that creamed cheese must be slathered on everything!")

Topics of conversation included Steve regaling the entire restaurant with an incredibly detailed and increasingly theatrical retelling of the entire The Lord of the Rings saga. (Note: Steve has never read any of the Lord of the Rings books, nor has he seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies.) We also discussed the sexiest kinds of short shorts and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Our waitress was glad to see us leave.