ANOTHER THING I do for warmth, besides lying in the sun with the chickens or taking a bath on my porch, is I dance like a maniac around my cabin. Walls shake and stuff falls. The floor moves. Structural damage ensues.

One of the best albums for this kind of dancing is London Calling by the Clash. In fact, I'm not a music reviewer any more than a political analyst, but give or take Joseph Spence and Harry Belafonte's Calypso, London Calling is probably the best album ever made by anyone, period.

Something else I danced to recently was the Boston Red Sox putting it to the New York Yankees. Now, I don't know nothing about Election Day as I'm writing this, let alone who wins the World Series, but someone said that if Boston beat the Yankees after trailing three games to none, then John Kerry would beat George Bush. I'm trying to remember who said this. It was someone wiser than me – which narrows the field of possibility to, oh, every human being on Earth.

Being the clown that I am, I would like to add that if Boston went on to win the World Series – a virtual impossibility in spite of their 2-0 lead (as I write this) – then Ralph Nader will have beaten them both.

Speaking of little love triangles, there's the Triangle Cafe in Oakland, which my brother Phenomenon loves. But every time he tries to take me there, they're closed. So last time he tried to take me there and they were closed, speaking of lovely little circles, where did we wind up eating instead? Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe.

Sing, Macho, sing:

Can the Can't Fail fail? That's the first question, so we'll save it for last. First let me tell you about the parking lot. There's a parking lot. You park, you go in, and you eat. Only in the East Bay!

It's kind of done up diner-style, or it has that feel to it. There's the front room, which is bright and colorful, with monkeys and body parts and all kinds of funky doodads under the glass-top tabletops. So that's pretty cool, but then there's a cooler, darker back room, with booths, and another extension off of that. So the place is bigger than it looks. But not big enough, necessarily, to withstand a weekend brunch rush. I think there was a line by the time we left. Get there early on weekends.

Anyway, menuwise, you're looking at soups, salads, and sandwiches. Burgers. And breakfast served all day. They have a specials board, a nod to another great old dancing band, the Specials, with another great Rudy-related song. "A Message to You," it says on the Specials board. Then they list their regular daily deals like "God Save Southern Fried Chicken" on Tuesdays and "Give 'em Enough Meatloaf" on Wednesdays. Nine-fitty apiece.

Unfortunately for me, this was not a Tuesday or a Wednesday. It was Saturday. Morning. So I had me a waffle, without fried chicken. It was great. It was a sweet corn waffle ($6.25), I think they call it, meaning made with cornmeal, the way Just for You makes those oh-so-oh-oh-oh cornmeal pancakes I love. Big plop of whipped honey butter.

I can't remember what Phenomenon got – some kind of omelette. Then he jumped up, mid-bite, mid-sentence (Phenomenon talks with his mouth full), and he lifted the lid off of the wooden bench seat, his side of the booth. It was full of supplies. To-go cups and plates. "I'm sitting on stuff," he said, not without reverence. (Phenomenon is always impressed by efficiency.)

I looked under my seat and I was sitting on stuff too. That's the old-time diner spirit. You gotta use what space you have. Right?

Which reminds me of my cabin. It's one room. There are only four walls to bounce off of! I'm Henry David Thoreau with ants in his pants and a bee in his bonnet, but no pond to jump into.

I do got this bathtub on my porch though. See, we moseyed over to Urban Ore after breakfast, after Rudy didn't fail me, and picked out their rattiest, cheapest, beatest uppest clawfoot tub without claws or feet, and I somehow finagled it onto my porch and plumbed it into the garden with a garden hose. (Fella's gotta take a bath, yes, but no one said nothing about soap.) I fill it from a propane-fired 25-gallon pot like you use for a crawfish boil or turkey fry.

And if you never sat in a hot bath outside on a cold evening, looking at redwood trees, listening to chickens ... scribbling down this restaurant review ... then, well, you ain't me.

Who are you?

Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe. 4081 Hollis (at Park), Emeryville. (510) 594-1221. Daily: 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Takeout available. Beer and wine. MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.

Email Dan Leone

Dan Leone is the author of Eat This, San Francisco (Sasquatch Books), a collection of Cheap Eats restaurant reviews, and The Meaning of Lunch (Mammoth Books).