FEASTIVAL

As in most Mays since 2007, Your Humble Narrator spent this past weekend in Palm Springs, at the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival...

...now in its 25th year; its late founder and namesake, mystery novelist and Palm Springs City Councilman Lyons, was still presenting when I first went there. Like every year, I got to see a couple of obscure gems at the Camelot Theatre this weekend.

More about these movies later, but first: food! Here is some of the yummy stuff we enjoyed. First, mushroom barley soup at Sherman's Deli...

Then sand dabs in lemon sauce with fettuccine at Sammy G's...

Then Rigatoni Capri at Kalura Trattoria...

Then back to Sherman's for knockwurst and eggs...

Plus cookies from Sherman's, and a date shake, as is traditional in that town. For the sake of both our health and our finances, it's probably just as well that we don't have access to these places year-round.

On a column near Sammy G's, we saw this beautiful local...

Some variety of spiny lizard, I think. My miserable photographic skills do him no justice. He looked pretty worn and battle-scarred, and his tail appeared to be stumped; it clearly wasn't his first rodeo.