I’m All Lost In, #88: Where to eat after midnight; why I can’t listen to my favorite podcast anymore; and where’s my tax refund? Also: Crossing the Rubicon in 2025.
I’m All Lost In…
the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week
#88
1) Late Night Falafel at Al Bacha
Let’s discard Dick’s, I said; this sage wisdom uttered as we landed at Denny & Broadway at 11:50 pm en route initially to Seattle’s beacon of late night burgers and fries after a rollicking weeknight music show.
Just one block south of Dick’s Drive-In (why a drive-in across the street from a light rail station, anyway?) there’s now a new haven for mavens of after hours plates: Al Bacha, a neon-lit Middle Eastern gyro and falafel corner storefront with bright white menu boards—veggie sandwiches, meat sandwiches, lunch & dinner, and salads & soups—hovering over the open kitchen, a carefree smattering of tables, and a wall-to-wall line of soda coolers.
With eight items on the veggie menu (which includes French fries and Greek fries as option #4 and #6 respectively, by the way) they’ve got what vegans or vegetarians need at midnight regardless. Try the Falafel Sandwich, or for a dollar more the Arabic Veggie Sandwich; the former comes in a pita and the later is wrapped as a gyro and served with hummus and cauliflower along with the falafel. Both perfect late night snacks are packed with veggies and graced by Levant touches including parsley and tahini.
They’re happy to give you extra sauce too (for the fries in my case) which they handed off liberally in an ad hoc, oversized paper bowl.
Al Bacha stays open until until midnight on weeknights and until 2:30 am on Friday and Saturday nights.
2) I Can’t Bring Myself to Listen to My Favorite Podcast
Anyone reading this knows I’m an Aryna Sabalenka fan boy. It all started when I randomly happened upon her 2023 U.S. Open semifinal match; it was playing on TV at a local restaurant as I strolled by. After that three-set thriller, where I instinctively found myself rooting for Saby from my solo cheering section at the bar, I was subsequently drawn to her discombobulated interview M.O. and to the Peter Parker storm clouds that seemed to hover consistently over her head. A jinxed compatriot.
Her tennis trials and tribulations quickly led me to the rankings race for No. 1 and to everything WTA, including my now daily check ins at the action-packed WTA website. It also led me back to the tennis court. But most of all, my tennis convert zealotry led me to The Tennis Podcast: Snarky Catherine Whitaker, straight-guy David Ward, and boy-genius Matt Roberts
So, consider this week’s entry the opposite of an obsession.
I’m not obsessing about World No. 1 Saby right now. Her funny one liner about “Mykonos, gummies and alcohol” aside, Saby’s boorish meltdown after losing to World No. 2 Coco Guaff at Roland Garros (a sore loser tantrum at best or a pique of convoluted racism at worst) pained me to the point that I’ve been anxiously skipping my daily WTA website fix for the past two weeks. And I’m downright avoiding Catherine, David, and Matt for fear that their rowdy analysis, sardonic wit, and caustic honesty will no longer cast Saby as a flawed Charlie Brown character, but as an execrable villain. This is the longest I’ve stayed away from tennis and the WTA in a year and a half.
As opposed to everyone’s favorite player Coco Gauff, Sabalenka is not a natural celebrity; and like a tilted misfit, she’s been awkwardly forcing the issue all year with a cringe PR campaign. Now, with last week’s Coco fiasco, which she tried to retract, Sabalenka has most likely sabotaged her already-iffy hopes at viral stardom.
As to her tennis form: I feared Coco’s big win at Roland Garros served notice that Saby was about to swirl into a downward spiral. Her garish loss (70 unforced errors) already seemed to nullify her outstanding 2025 form just as the all-important Wimbledon/U.S. Open summer stretch was getting underway. Those fears were momentarily allayed this week: Sabalenka bounced back with a couple of wins at the Berlin Open—including a quarterfinal thriller over 2022 Wimbledon champion and current World No. 11, the admittedly troubled Elena Rybakina. (Coco, for her part, lost in the second round.) But then Saby quickly lost in the semis to World No. 165 (albeit 2023’s Wimbledon champion) Markéta Vondroušová.
I will say, tipsy on Friday night (before the news of Sabalenka’s semifinal loss), I was singing Vondroušová’s catchy name to myself as I walked home after happy hour.
Vondroušová is now up against another surprising (and exciting) finalist: Xinyu Wang. Wang, World No. 49, had an eye-popping run in Berlin this week. She beat No. 16 Daria Kasatkina (another Josh Feit favorite), toppled Coco, beat No. 10 Paula Badosa, and beat No. 20 Liudmila Samsonova in the semis.
Admittedly, I can’t wait to listen to this week’s The Tennis Podcast after either Vondroušová or Wang stuns tennis fans by hoisting one of the season’s first grass court trophies in the run up to Wimbledon.
3) Where’s My Tax Refund?
I used the Juneteenth work holiday this week to set aside the 10,000 hours I anticipated I needed for a phone call with the IRS.
Earlier in the week, wondering where my return was two months on now, I checked the “Where’s My Refund?” page on the IRS website. After entering all my info, including the a-okayed refund amount indicated on my completed tax returns, they said my return had been directly deposited into my checking account on May 30.
It had?
So, I checked my bank records. I did find a direct deposit from the Feds that day. But it was for a partial, much smaller amount than the amount I’d been expecting.
Unfortunately, all I could do on the phone “with” the IRS was talk to an automated voice that requested the same info the website had requested—and it ended up giving me the same half-right answer.
The android voice claimed it could answer any follow-up questions. But it couldn’t. I tried that option in vain and it simply sent me into a loop where I was prompted to repeat my initial inquiry. After saying “No” and pounding the pound key enough times, it gave me another phone number. But that simply led me to the exact same loop. As did a third and altogether different number I found when I googled “How do you talk an actual person at the IRS?”
I’m low-key wondering if I should even bother haggling with the IRS these days. When I think of the shoddy state of affairs in D.C. under Trump right now, I’m reminded of the joke about the old Soviet Union where the workers pretend to work and the government pretends to pay them. Under Trump, it feels like the kakistocracy he’s installed is only play acting at governance as we taxpayers are only phoning in citizenship.
…
Let me close this week’s installment with The Word of the Week.
It’s not tilted, a word you may have noticed above to describe Sabalenka’s conniptions. That’s a slang word I learned a few weeks ago; it refers to the free-fall cycle of making a mistake, getting frustrated with yourself, and as a result, making several more mistakes ad nauseam until you’re a puddle.
Fun word, but the word I’ve actually been noticing all week is Rubicon. Rubicon is showing up regularly these days in the context of the Trump administration’s authoritarian mindset (sending the marines to L.A., defying court orders) and their gestapo tactics (body tackling and arresting Democratic officials, siccing anonymous goons on immigrants), thuggish transgressions that are stressing America’s constitutional norms and traditions.
Rubicon is, of course, part of the phrase “crossing the Rubicon,” which means reaching the point of no return. It comes from an historical anecdote that describes the day in 49 B.C. when Julius Ceasar led his army across Italy’s Rubicon River sparking his successful civil war against the Roman Republic and the ascent of his dictatorhsip and the Roman Empire.
A typical sentence from this week in 2025: “Well, it looks like the Rubicon has officially been crossed,” my friend NF wrote on social media accompanying a video clip of unmarked security guys (and eventually FBI troopers) bullying, tackling, and cuffing U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) for trying to ask a question at Dept. of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem’s press conference. She was praising Trump’s assault on lawful, anti-deportation protests.
It’s no wonder the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” is on people’s minds this week. With a convicted felon in the White House; unbridled racism on the lips of every MAGA politician; widely reported, but apparently not-shocking-enough quid pro quo corruption posing as public policy (i.e., selling off public lands to top corporate donors or accepting gifts from obsequious foreign governments); and right wing U.S. senators promoting false flag conspiracy theories to shift blame away from overt right wing violence, America has sadly lost the plot. Our breached Republic is giving way alongside other alarming collapses, such as zero-to-sixy climate change and insane AI creep.
While I was typing all this: Trump bombed Iran.