I can attest to that personally. Manassas, Virginia, where I live, has no fewer than ten (and possibly more) Chinese restaurants, including three places devoted solely to the all-you-can-eat paradigm. This is especially impressive when one considers that Manassas is a medium-sized town which, until not that long ago, was in the middle of a half-rural, half-suburban area. Apropos of nothing, I always judge the quality of a Chinese place's buffet by how well they do the General Tso's chicken, as that's one item that every place that offers a buffet, even if only for lunch, will have on the menu.

>>477 Alas, the real Toronto moose did go after the art exhibition was complete.<<

Washington, DC, had a similar exhibiton some years ago, based on the animal totems of the Republican and Democratic parties (the elephant and donkey, respectively). Apropos (again) of nothing, in the 19th century, the tiger (as in the Tammany Hall tiger, Tammany Hall in New York being the most powerful Democratic city machine in the country) was the Democrats' symbol. Charles Dana Gibson drew a famous political cartoon of the tiger beating up a thoroughly battered GOP elephant in the 1892 election that I hope Kate has a copy of. :)

>>584 Truss did this at the Pizza Pizza in the real Ontario Science Centre. Unlike Kate, he shrugged and ate it anyway.<<

Good man. I highly esteem garlic.

>>642 Boston used to have a Marché, but it closed.<<

I don't think the DC area has one, more's the pity. After all these descriptions, I'd love to visit one.

BTW, there's one Toronto landmark (at least to me) you didn't mention; the World's Biggest Bookstore near Eaton Centre on Yonge Street. I had the occasion to visit Toronto in 1991 (to attend a Stevie Nicks concert) and spent a day going up and down Yonge Street, mostly hitting the multitude of new and used bookstores, and spent a couple of hours in the aforementioned mega-bookstore. At that time, Borders was still pretty new to the DC area, and of course Amazon.com didn't exist, so I was pretty bowled over by the range of what was available there. Considering so many of the UF characters are bibiliophiles, I'd have thought they'd have spent some time there too if it still existed in 2405.

>.2524 All of the stuff Saionji and Utena see while channel surfing, except for the news report about the Psi Act (well, and the robot orchestra), is adapted from an evening of channel surfing Truss and I once did in a Toronto hotel. Including the pimp opera (hence the wildly anachronistic Dr. Dre reference) and the Victorian porn channel.<<

Who says it has to be anachronstic? :D You made a big thing yourself about how much of a fad for late-20th-century things of all sorts there is in the early 25th century.

Overall, I think this is one of my favorite stories in the whole Symphony. Thanks for the commentaries!

-Joe-