The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory

The Christmas Party, Pt. 1

2012-01-18T20:58:00.000-08:00

I was standing there at Bill and Shelley’s Christmas party (our new neighbors two doors up) when I felt something hard bump into my elbow. It was a breast, apparently in a pretty supportive bra, which got my mind going about sizes and cups and all that before I had even figured out whether to say sorry or not. The woman, who was about my height, hadn’t paid much attention to it, and was refilling her drink, holding the arm part of her big drapey shawl or whatever it was back while dipping her cup into the antique silver punch bowl. It had tasseled fringe (the shawl, not the bowl, although I guess that wouldn’t have been too surprising given its vintage) and was kind of hippy-dopey for my taste, but you can’t, or shouldn’t, really judge someone by their scarf, as it might have been a gift or handed to them from a particularly special deathbed or whatever. Scarves come and go, and I had on a stripy black-and-cream number I’d found after a party at Ray’s. It was Calvin Klein, and had a little silver tab that said so, but I was always careful to tie it so that that part was hidden. I don’t like clothing with names. I can get behind a Who t-shirt, but when it’s just an ad for a manufacturer who never wrote Heaven and Hell…you know what I’m saying. Anyhow. There was this woman, and she had a breast, and she was pretty fast and loose with it.

I filled my glass mug thing with some of Bill’s “famous egg nog” and gave it a try. We were all around the drinks table in their nice dining room; there was a fancy silver bucket of ice, with tongs, and pretty good handles of Maker’s and Aviation and stuff. I figured that I could have like twenty dollars’ worth of cocktails for free, and might even fill a Dixie cup with gin for the freezer at home. Work has been pretty scant lately, as not a lot of people are banging down my door wanting half-written guitar intros or untested recipe concepts scrawled on the back of that sticky cardstock paper that comes wrapped around a set of three new pairs of socks (birthday present from Aunt Brezna).

Cornelius had agreed to come along for a bit, which was a relief because I’m terrible at making small talk at parties until I’m kind of flippant from a drink or two. After that I can make jokes about the bathroom or whatever it is people like to chat about at parties, but until then I know I’m a wallflower, I own that I’m a wallflower, and that’s my job at the party. I do my job well. I’m that guy that makes people feel awkward, and they can take comfort in knowing that, as with any perfect party, the universe has provided the requisite awkwardness-making guy. Cornelius is old, and people also like having a guy around who isn’t sexually threatening, so we made a pretty perfect pair. They were lucky to have us.

Cornelius sidled over with his mug of nog.

“Hideous stuff,” he confided in me, putting the rim to his closed lips and feigning a sip. He was really good at it; I tried it a few times, and there are definitely tricks you have to know to take a convincing fake pull. He’s always surprising me with little social courtesy things like that. It’s nice.

“Yeah, look how proud Bill is of this stuff, over there in his big dopey red sweater,” I said, maybe too meanly. Bill was handsome, had his hair combed well, and was every bit the holiday host. His sweater was just red enough for the occasion, and had a nice white collared shirt underneath. He shared a big laugh with a tall guy who wore dark brown leather fashion sneakers, the kind of guy I’m inclined to call a PR-firm prick before even meeting.

“I don’t know how he makes it so damned thick.” Cornelius slid this line over like a snide comment jotted on a bar napkin. It was the eggnog-insult equivalent of a karaoke slag like KARRIE SINGS FIELDS OF GOLD LIKE SHE WAS WIPING HER ASS WITH THE SHEET MUSIC PASS IT ON. Sniggers and smiles hidden by quickly-hoisted green glass Heinekens. Poor Karrie. Poor Bill…his thirty-dollar cream flop was making him a target at his own party. Sure, we were jerks. And it probably cost more than that; cream’s like three bucks a pint and the bowl it was in was the size of a Beverly Hills holiday squash.

“I’m guessing,” I guessed, “...he whips the cream past the soft peaks stage to the point where it squeezes out its own moisture. It’s kind of like overworking a dough, and I don’t know of any way to rescue it.”

“Well, a gentler soul than I ought to pass along an anonymous card with the correct technique. I’m suffering a fool’s syllabub here and I don’t like it.” Cornelius wasn’t usually this grouchy, and I was liking it. Maybe we’d hassle someone later, like two wild dogs gone wrong on grog.

“I’m going to dump this out in the toilet, old man,” I said to him. “You can go next.” I liked calling him old man. It put me in my place.

“Mum’s the word. I shall follow your lead upon your reëmergence.”

I found the bathroom under the stairs, but it was closed, so I waited a minute. I don’t like to jiggle the lock and bug people when they’re exposed; it creates bad energy and I hate when people do it to me. I wish more people knew to leave the door cracked when they’re done. Anyhow, pretty soon the door opens and out comes the woman with the breast, and she gives me a freshly-peed smile or whatever you call it. I like a woman who can make eye contact with a stranger even when everyone knows the score about who just had whose pants down. Maybe she was a painter. I smiled back, hopefully quickly enough so that she caught some of it. I wanted to know more about the breast, I’ll be honest. What was it up to? Having a good time? Had the breast heard the new Vampire Weekend single?

I spent a minute checking my nose hair and gums and stuff, just to be sure I wasn’t about to start up a conversation with a piece of alfalfa sticking out of my eye, or one of those other little social gaffes. All clear, I let Cornelius in to dispose of his fatty, fluffy logjam. I wandered back to the drinks area to try something else.

The woman was there again; I guess she’d had the same trouble with the egg nog, and had moved on to bourbon with ginger ale. I forgot what that was called, which sucked, because I could have used that term when talking to her. Oh well, two fewer words in the universe at my disposal. I’d find a way. I grabbed a fresh glass, clinked in some ice cubes (perfect cubes, not the usual…interesting…it would seem that Bill had some fancy theories about ice cubes), and did a half and half of Grey Goose and that fancy full-calorie Braintree tonic water that comes in the little brown Old West bottle. There were some lime wedges, but I wanted to see if the Grey Goose actually had any of its own citrusy flavor, so I held off. I wondered if she’d notice that I evaluated the limes but then didn’t choose one; any little detail can catch a person’s eye. She might think I had been a lime snob and didn’t see a nice enough one; we might hit a good stride and I’d just be honest and tell her I wanted to see if this fancy vodka had any distinctive flavor that made it worth the extra money. She’d point out that if I really wanted to find that out I shouldn’t have mixed it with anything, and I’d laugh a little, and she’d have the upper hand, and people like that, especially at the beginning of a conversation when it’s anybody’s game and the power is up for grabs. Who wants Canada? What about Alaska? No? Okay, that’s where we’ll put nice people who don’t know what calzones are. Boom.

Oh, I forgot to mention that she’d left a napkin in the toilet. It had balloons on it. There weren’t any napkins with balloons on them at the party. Did she have a kid? And who leaves a napkin in the toilet after flushing? Maybe she’d been picking her nose with it after the fact, or doing one of those secret things ladies do in bathrooms, like wiping her makeup around to make better cheekbones, or hiding the hole where the little alien baby wriggles its hand out. I tucked that one away.

As I said, she was about my height, maybe a little shorter, which explains the breast/elbow thing. She had long mid-back blonde hair and a long flowy gypsy-type skirt thing that stopped just short of her funny boots, which I happened to know were Fluevog Grand Nationals, because I like shoes. Maybe she’d like that I knew that. I tucked this away as well, and had a celebratory big sip of my drink. If I was going to get into Stranger gear, especially with a mysterious woman, I was going to need some help, and I wasn’t there yet.

I found Cornelius in the library off the living room, a little alcove with candles burning tastefully atop tasteful stacks of tasteful books about Giverny and Baroque furniture and all kinds of other tasteful, tasteful stuff like that. Cornelius was looking this all over with his nose delicately clenched in a way that I had come to recognize. With him that was the equivalent of throwing a chair through a window in unhinged disgust.

“An assemblage of conspicuously sourced, unleafed dreck, if you ask me,” he slipped over. “Veblen would be smug as a bug in an ugly rug over it all.” He sipped from what looked to be a Baccarat of light golden Scotch. There wasn’t any Scotch on the drinks table, so I suspected he’d filled it from his flask. He may have even brought his own folding Baccarat tumbler; you never really knew with him.

“Yep, pretty damn tasteful stuff, I have to say.”

Bill came over to us, ever the consummate host, the superheated light of pure hospitality shining out from his collar like a crack in the surface of the sun. I took another sip so that he’d talk to Cornelius first.

“Gentlemen!” he boomed, scarcely able to contain the great good fortune he felt at having found two guys standing around in his house. I think he had pomade on his teeth. “How are we this fine evening!”

“One bump shy of a vacation in Rome, my good man,” Cornelius said. It sounded pretty worldly, but Bill and I had no idea what he meant. Sounded like a stab at bad Italian roads, but also made the party sound kind of like Rome, which generally seems like a good thing, though I hear the place is overrun with feral animals.

Bill slapped Cornelius on the back, holding his own mug of nog in his odd-looking hand. For a guy who was built just a little stronger than average, he had pretty fat hands. They seemed like the kind of thing that would happen to a guy who loves to eat French fries with his friends and then go home to have a baked potato and frothy golden beer. They were starchy hands, puffy with tuber tension. You didn’t get the way Bill was by avoiding potatoes. Cornelius took it in effortless stride and asked him to which year the house dated. I wondered what he was getting at.

“1975!” Bill boomed again. “My, you’ve really got an eye for architecture! You ever check this out?” He pointed at a book about Frank Lloyd Wright. The Masterpieces of Frank Lloyd Wright, or something. All I knew about Frank Lloyd Wright was that he was an asshole, but it was alright, because he made houses that people got F’s about in college.

“Quite a mind,” Cornelius mused. “Vibrating madly, just off-key in the mudroom of genius.” Bill didn’t know what to make of that, so he offered a hard-to-argue-with “Precisely!” and pointed out a few more architecture books, including one by that Le Corbusier piece of work (Le Corbusier is the guy architecture students vainly pretend they’re not directly ripping off by wearing severe little dark-rimmed circular glasses). Cornelius nodded in confirmation, and Bill said something about having to turn down the fire under the nog pot. He didn’t even bother to ask if we liked sports scores, which was kind of a relief. Good read, good play. Tie game.

Bill’s wife Shelley or someone had turned on one of those Pottery Barn holiday CDs in the living room, and some rich people were “getting loose,” inasmuch as there were basically quotation marks surrounding everyone on the dance floor, metaphorically speaking. Women in thin white sweaters and tall leather boots with spiky heels were physically moving around on top of the cream colored carpet in ways that said, “Sex with me will be a painfully one-sided, seven thousand pound letdown after a long, horrible night of lying to yourself.” One particularly wild woman had taken her shoes off. Perhaps she had been at Woodstock, or knew how to hold an ocarina.

Suddenly, a hand landed on the middle of the back of my thigh and crawled up to my ass. It didn’t stop there and, in fact, started looking for change in the space between the cushions, if you know what I mean. Interestingly, I stood stock still. Thinking about it later, I’ve never really formulated a game plan for that situation, because I never really had reason to. But there I was, standing stock still, I guess lest I make the situation worse. That’s how I react to surprises, I found out just then.

Trying to keep my eyes from going wide open, I carefully turned to the side to see who was doing this. Part of me wondered if it was Bill, finally revealing his insatiable appetite for all things sexual and depraved. No, in fact – it was the woman with the breast, and in her other hand she held a stiff golden tumbler of bourbon. She smiled right into me and left me no choice about it. I stood there, helplessly smiled into, and did the only thing I felt capable of: I smiled back, quizzical but delighted. Or at least, that’s what I was trying to convey. I was probably making a face like Tweedle Dum with a bee on his nose.

Continues…

Santa Cruz post #2

2008-05-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

Well, Santa Cruz definitely wasn't the kick-start my brain needed. In fact, I think Santa Cruz needs a kick-start, in the form of a lot of high-pressure hoses and serious laws about okay- and NOT-okay ways to hock your bicycle to strangers on the sidewalk. I spent like ten minutes trying to get away from some spaced-out fifty year-old dude who was chugging from a huge can of Monster energy drink and crying out like an old fashioned newspaper boy about his Trek. I have a question for you: if you needed some money, and you had a bike, would you walk that bike right smack into the middle of downtown and start advertising it out loud? That's apparently how they do things in Santa Cruz.

Also, what's with the sneering righteous people? This group of like twenty scuzzy local college types was having some sort of march (they seemed organized; they even had a few flags of some sort), and when they marched past the bench where I was having a chicken burrito, one of the guys on the tail end did like this:

SCUZZY GUY: Hey man, this ain't politics as usual! Get involved!

ME: What are you marching for?

SCUZZY GUY: What are you, ignorant?

ME: No, just mildly insulted.

SCUZZY GUY: You gonna join in, or just sit there while this happens?

ME: Sorry, I wouldn't want to bring the thing down.

SCUZZY GUY: Jesus! Man, FUCK you! [Turns boldly back to group, thumbs under backpack straps, and walks off]

ME: Oh, wait! Wait for me! [I didn't say this]

Is that any way to persuade someone to join you in doing something that you believe in? Nowhere in How to Win Friends and Influence People does it suggest that if a negotiation is going poorly, you start yelling, "Man, FUCK you!"

That pretty much ruined my burrito, so I dumped it in a trash can, which prompted some busted-face hobo to scamper over the second I was about twenty feet away (is 20' the "radius of honor" among those who eat out of trash cans?). Figuring I'd walk downtown and get a motel room, I crossed a footbridge over an old creek bed that had filled in with ivy, and caught a beautiful view of an old Victorian home perched high on a stone cliff above the crashing waves. I paused to admire it for a bit, and when I turned my gaze downward to see if anything interesting had been thrown into the ivy, I saw a man's face—just a face—peering up at me, wreathed in foliage. I got a very unhappy feeling in my stomach and suddenly realized that if you can't even have lunch without these sorts of things happening to you, it is time to leave Santa Cruz.

Foto-Kwiz #5 (not really a Kwiz)

2008-05-04T20:51:00.000-07:00

I'm Hungry

2008-04-27T21:48:00.000-07:00

Man, there's nothing in the fridge but eggs, tortillas, and some month-old three dollar bags of mixed greens that Chris "bought and forgot" the time he was supposed to bring dinner for his kid's evening preschool class (he did remember to bring the chili and corn muffins, or they would have run him off the property with little terrible paintings). There's nothing you can do with old lettuce but compost it, and I would love to compost, but I don't want to start attracting a lot of skunks and raccoons to the neighborhood. How does composting work? So much wasted food goes right into the trash here, and I have to think it could be put to better use. Is there a composting website? I'm sure there are thousands. I'd check, by my eyes are stinging from the new spring sun and my trip to the beach yesterday (I caught a ride in the back of the Onstads' car). Man, were there some beautiful bohemian women on the beach. I bet every woman in Santa Cruz knows how to compost. I bet every woman in Santa Cruz is fine about smoking pot three times a day. Maybe I need a lifestyle shift. Maybe I need to move to Santa Cruz. I'm going to save up a couple hundred bucks and see if Santa Cruz isn't the kickstart my brain needs.

I think I need to be offensive.

2008-02-13T02:04:00.001-08:00

It turns out that checking my email and playing the guitar on the edge of my bed isn't generating as much revenue this quarter as I'd hoped, so it's time to drum up a gig. I'm tired of designing web pages, brochures, and logos for people who think they need to reinvent the wheel ("what if the text ran right-to-left, and you had to read our website in a mirror?"). I'm sick of getting forty dollars a pop doing blind tastings of freeze-dried coffee or letting college students measure my nipples throughout a showing of Bambi. It's time to take the low road.

That's right: I'm going to write a boorish, controversial column for the local paper. It will be cranky, it will provoke, the opinions will not be carefully considered, and, most importantly, it will run counter to the delicate sensibilities of precisely the sort of person who gets so ruffled that they end up giving me free advertising. It should gain notoriety in no time, and then be syndicated throughout the English-speaking world, hopefully at a hundred bucks a throw.

Here are some of my warm-up exercises. I've chosen especially divisive topics because, like I said, this isn't about doing great work. It's about bringing people apart.

VEGETARIANISM
There’s simply no need for it anymore. In this enlightened age I can buy meat from a cow that was pushed in a pram, wet-nursed by Thora Birch, and flown to Santorini for private pronking lessons. In the wild, this same animal would have been trundled off by a peckish eagle before it had traveled the distance from the womb to the grass below, so what’s there to be upset about? People who can’t stomach the idea of humane slaughter ought to see how inhumane nature is when it’s outside of our control, where Temple Grandin has no say over which end of the emu the dingo pack tears off first. As for the vegans, the vegetarians can start with them — they are no doubt fairly easy to digest, being composed mainly of wadded yarn and rhubarb poop.

WATCHING WOMEN PLAY TENNIS FOR THE FIRST TIME
It’s like watching Sylvester Stallone make a sandwich: every action so alien, so unsure...so much wasted movement, so much looking around for approval...your frustration eventually mounts so high that you are forced to leave and wait in the car.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
I, for one, am happy to see the little MP3, that Phylloxera of the phonographic industry, bring Big Music to a halt. More great music has been written than you can ever hope to hear in your lifetime, so stop being fooled by this year's soulless, calculated retreads. And all this tongue-wagging about musicians finally recording for love of music over money is fine and good, but as long as I’ve got my Who Sell Out and White Album, you can keep that amazing new chord progression that no one's ever heard before, and those clever lyrics about a certain condition of the heart.

—Téodor Orezscu.

Thanksgiving appetizers 2007

2007-11-19T18:38:00.000-08:00

Ray's got me on appetizer duty for Thanksgiving at his place, which isn't actually so bad, since I know he'll have a ton of cooktop and oven space ready for my preparations. Still, though, I had to make sure, so I rang him up.

ME: So, can I have a couple burners to prep my apps on?

RAY: Heyo! Who wants to talk to my face? Thrill a minute, bargain at twice the price!

ME: It's me, man.

RAY: That works. What's up?

ME: Can I prep some Thanksgiving apps at your house?

RAY: Apps? Fill me in, dogg. Hella slang. Apartments? Apostles? Appreciations?

ME: Appetizers.

RAY: Oh, right. You got the cooking show vocabulary happening. Yeah, you can cook here.

ME: Thanks for not making me feel like an asshole.

RAY: It doesn't come naturally, but in our friendship, I have developed certain graces.

ME: That's really wonderful.

RAY: So, whatchu makin'!

ME: A toasted pumpkin seed dip, and a crostini with pumpkin butter, cream cheese, mint leaf, and a little garlic chili paste.

RAY: Cool. We doin' a crown roast instead of turkey, just so you dig.

ME: Really? That's a nice touch.

RAY: Turkey sucks the dong. All boring, all crappy drumsticks. Hate that animal. That animal is a crap-face repeater.

ME: Yeah, I've heard people say it was designed by committee.

RAY: You know what else was designed by committee?

ME: What.

RAY: Hitler's crooked one-ball dong.

ME: Wow. Bad committee.

RAY: Worst committee in the world. Look it up.

ME: Won't, but much respect. I'll show up with my apps and a little gear, ok?

RAY: We got gear here, dog.

ME: I like my own gear.

RAY: That is rude, but who can care if a man is rude when life is beautiful.

ME: I was banking on that.

RAY: See you on the day, then.

ME: A curl of clear custard on your doorstep.

RAY: The sign of a crappin' ghost!

ME: Mwaaa-ha-haaah. [HANGS UP]

The Wedding Menu.

2007-08-27T14:33:00.000-07:00

I was having a hard time coming up with a cohesive menu for Beef and Molly's wedding, so I went back to Ray for some pointers. The guys have known each other since early childhood, so I figure that gives Ray a unique inside perspective on foods that would really make the night special. He shot me back this list, via email:

_ _food! _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _primeplayerinc

-=- RAYYYYY'S lissssst =-=

***alright T, here you go some rad nibbles and chin dribbles a la RQS ***

1) Some cheese thing with an extra fried-ness to mack the cheese beyond what cheese is

2) japaleño poppers, but gourmet twist (brie? smoked trout? "slow" movement? call a chef)

3) rack of duck brains ("rack my brains," hella classic saying, pun). Nice-ass toast? Metal thing?

4) pomegranates are aggh i hate those things all seeds poppin

5) main course

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I can almost decipher his semi-cogent appetites and inspirations, but I'm sure he's forgotten whatever he tickled into that text field on that late, long, bleary night. I'm going to spruce it up a bit:

TO PASS:

1. Montasio frico with roasted white anchovy and shaved celery heart rib in paprika aioli

2. Smoked salmon on tempura parsnip planks with dilled sour cream mousse, chilled caper vodka back

3. Crispy duck skin bun, Peking style, with plum sauce

4. No pomegranate dishes

5. Main Course: Spit-roasted Baron of Beef, Yorkshire pudding, neeps and tatties. For light eaters, a choice of the lettuces which are being used to garnish the main plates. I hate light eaters.

Alright, that needs work. I guess I can cook up a vegan "garland of knotted long beans" for Pat and people like him who only eat stuff that punished people have to eat.

I'm Catering Beef and Molly's Wedding!

2007-08-05T21:59:00.000-07:00

Ray came by tonight and asked me a favor that turned out to be a favor for me. He asked if I'd cater Beef and Molly's wedding. Carte blanche, all food and service expenses paid, any new equipment I needed to make it happen out of his kitchen. The wedding and reception are in the back yard, so it's all self-contained. I figure that since it's a blank check, he's not doing it to save money. He's doing it because he knows I want to learn how to cook in volume. Sometimes I think he's some chump eating creamed twenties with a side of ribs, but then he'll pop in with a double-sided gesture like this. As he would say, "Daaamn. I did that god-damned brains style."

Here's how our conversation went. I was in my room listening to old LPs with the headphones on, on my bed, both eyes closed.

- + -

RAY: [Walks in and starts air-tapping on my chest with pretend drumsticks]

ME: [Eyes closed, catches the smell of Marlboro Lights] Ray? Is that you?

RAY: Hell yes, doggie!

ME: I thought you quit smoking?

RAY: I...come on, dude! I ain't here to talk about that!

ME: You have any left?

RAY: [Looks side to side, fishes in his pocket] Let's go outside. A ways.

ME: Cool.

[Soon, outside, walking around.]

ME: [exhaling satisfying smoke] So, what's up?

RAY: [exhaling] Got a favor to ask from you, hoss. Cookin' thing.

ME: Really? What? You working on a sauce? Fish?

RAY: You know Beef and Molly gettin' married, right? You be interested in doin' the cookin'? No mini-quiche and no stuffed mushrooms at all, that kind of thing?

ME: ...Wow. You serious?

RAY: I'm as serious as a...uh...a milk company, dude.

ME: Huh?

RAY: Sorry, man. That one completely fell apart.

ME: Oh. So, I get to do the menu and hire a staff and cook everything myself? Do real volume cooking?

RAY: Yeah, dude. Pretty much. Wouldn't that be cool? Like I said, open budget. Get me a menu tomorrow afternoon. [Slaps my shoulder, stubs his ash, mentions a tennis date he has to keep, and heads for his car, which is parked nearby on the other side of a clump of trees.]

ME: I...cool man, thanks for— [the sound of Ray's Caddie engine turning over] ...for the opportunity.

- + -

So there you have it. He didn't even stay around for the thanks. He just knew I'd dig it, he'd done his thing, and he was off to the club.

Maybe I'll do a tasting menu, with one dish based on each of Beef's main friends. I'll keep you posted. This is going to take some brainpower.

Chris is a book-leaver-arounder

2007-07-31T20:20:00.000-07:00

I guess I hadn't read much about the French Laundry before. I mean, everyone knows that they're the fanciest deal in town (town being the world, fifty years in either direction), and that Thomas Keller is the Agronius Hype (Iliad god-chef that I made up) of the modern age. Before Ferran Adrià split the disbelief molecule, before Bobby Flay wore Vuarnets and Gotcha jams to Pomp and Circumstance at the FCI commencement, Keller was kempt and self-flagellating, the "mad monk" of the gastronomic world. I need to sneak into that kitchen and watch them in action. For now, though, I'm going to finish this Michael Ruhlman book that Chris left on the couch.

Here's a funny bit. The French Laundry is considered one of the most serious kitchens in the world, equal to if not superior to any Michelin three-star brigade. For their first few months in the mid-90s, however, the cooks started every service with a tape of this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L1hD5OlPtw
(George Baker, "Little Green Bag.")

Isn't that great? You can picture Alice Waters, 80 miles away in Berkeley, sautéing morels with the nose of an age-pocked Remington six-shooter she picked up off some blanket sale on Telegraph Avenue. Suede fringe on the arms of her tie-dyed chef jacket. Easier times, man. Rent on every building was six dollars, flat. The Internet? Nah, my sister got pretty confused and bored with Gopher, thanks. San Francisco may as well have been Dubuque. The web was a site with pi to 50,000 places and the AOL "under construction" page. Alice got on the back of Peter Fonda's chopper after service every night and flipped off America until they attained highway speeds, at which point she nestled her cheek between his shoulder blades and dreamed of making love in a mesclun-strewn bed.

From the sound of it, I bet there's a nice set of rafters above the kitchen where I can keep tabs on things. Might even bring a telescoping fork and an insulated burp-bag. Wish me luck.

Bubb Rubb is the Nation's Individual

2007-07-06T21:20:00.001-07:00

Bubb Rubb does not like to think that anything is wrong. If his car is noisy, you should probably be eating breakfast anyway. Woo wooooooo!

Foto-Kwiz #4.

2007-06-26T22:12:00.001-07:00

Beef goes in for the kill

2007-06-19T16:28:00.000-07:00

I guess it was just a matter of time. Ever since Beef paired off with Molly they've been sharing an electron, and it's not like anybody's against it. Well, maybe Spongebath and Emeril. Those guys are the most adamant anti-life-moving-along types I've ever met. They're stuck in some kind of "two bros living in a cheap apartment" stasis that rises and falls by the Pizza Chicago delivery window. Plus that enormous stack of home entertainment equipment they're always adding to. Are they right, or am I wrong? Is that zen? Not everyone's made for marriage, but they could clean up their comments a bit. It's not like you're going to dissuade some dude who's headed for marriage, and if you try, it's pretty much closing the shutters on your friendship.

They're registered for some pretty average stuff, like low-end stamped knives and nonstick cookware. I might go off the registry and get them some good stuff that will actually be fun to use and last a while. I think every new couple should get a cast-iron pan, an 8" knife, and a wood cutting board. In a perfect world, the government would mandate that you receive this when you get married. There's nothing a cast-iron pan can't do...you could roast a turkey in that bastard if you put your shoulder into it. And don't get me started on "knife block sets." How much crap is that. Four shitty steak knives, cheap shears, two paring knives...what?! A carving knife? Please. I hate products that are designed to be sold to people who will never have any idea how to use them properly.

Okay, I'm putting my foot into the stirrup and getting off the high horse. I caught some Rick Bayless on the TiVo and I have about exactly half an hour until Lyle gets home and starts yelling about how "real" Mexicans cook.

Chris is such a Darrylict

2007-05-07T21:59:00.000-07:00

So Chris is a bigshot now, with his subscription to the "Bacon of the Month Club." That fool wouldn't know salty from sweet most nights, the way he gets on with his $1.99 screw-tops from Grocery Outlet (I've seen the receipts). Yeah, I've been liberating a few of his slices here and there for my own purposes. I should probably start my own "bacon blog," where you can read things that actually work. That guy wears a coonskin cap and misses the bus on weekends -- at least I think about what I'm doing while I'm doing it.

Tonight while he was out eating lousy family restaurant food with his family, I cooked down a few slices of his latest jowl bacon. I put it in a hot, fresh-baked baguette with super-slim grilled, trimmed asparagus stalks, shaved Gruyère, mint, lemon zest, and chopped hard boiled egg. Mayonnaise and a romaine leaf moistened it up, and it was complete. Much nicer than the Study in Pepto he worked up for you last week. Stay tuned, I guess. I hear he's getting his next shipment tomorrow, and I bet he doesn't even know.

Foto-Kwiz #3

2007-03-05T20:53:00.001-08:00

Foto-Kwiz No. 2

2007-03-03T18:39:00.000-08:00

Whole Foods Attitude girl

2007-01-23T17:41:00.000-08:00

I had to get some fresh dill, which is actually pretty hard to find around here, so I went up to Whole Foods in San Mateo. It was kind of a schlep, but I'm working on a lobster roll variation that uses west coast crustaceans (read: affordable non-lobstertutes) so I needed it.

Now, you know the kind of girl that works at Whole Foods. Slightly peppy and political, probably with some tattoos and Vans. I like that. I want to roll with that. I actively want to spend time with that kind of girl.

Or, I thought so. While I was meandering down the bulk spice aisle, this gorgeous Siouxsie Sioux-type with tousled bangs and big eyes (and some armpit hair, okay, not a deal breaker) asked if I needed any help. I already had my dill, so I said I was looking for lemongrass...she called me silly and started to pull me by the hand back toward the produce section, where they keep that stuff fresh. I guess no one's pulled on my hand lately -- it felt like an immense come-on.

Once she'd shown me the bin where they keep the lemongrass, she walked away, like Whole Foods was this big toy house where she lived and played and thought nothing of pulling on guys' hands. It was kind of a letdown after the personal contact, so after I suggestively lingered in the produce area I pushed my cart around the store trying to find her again.

I guess she was avoiding me, because after ten or fifteen minutes of wandering the aisles I gave up and checked out. Once I'd paid (JESUS CHRIST ON GOD MOUNTAIN IS THAT PLACE EXPENSIVE) I started to shove off, and there she was at the manager's station chatting with a few of her heavily tattooed co-workers. She glanced at me, made some sort of comment, and then the little batch of them started to snicker. Like there was something wrong with me. I left, kind of pissed off.

Maybe I don't actually like girls who spend a bunch of time looking like a particular downer style, or who work in politically charged low-end leftist jobs. I'm more or less "leftist"; why do leftist chicks drive me crazy? Is it true what they say, that you hate in others what you hate about yourself? Maybe I'll try to meet a tennis chick, with a blonde ponytail, diamond earrings, and an ML 350. Someone with no issues and rad thighs. I think I'd hate that, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm due for a personal breakthrough. Look how great I am, I don't even need specialty books or a padded mat to help me affect positive change in my life.

Stupid Todd and his death wish

2006-11-27T21:07:00.000-08:00

So a couple weeks ago Todd died. He had forgotten to bulk up for winter hibernation, and his body went kaput at the first cold snap (apparently he'd been on an America's Funniest Home Videos bender for a month or so and had ignored his body's primal instinct to gorge itself during autumn). His dying request was that I film me hitting his corpse over the fence with a baseball bat and send the video to America's Funniest Home Videos. I did, and this morning some police came to the door. Apparently squirrels getting clocked with bats raised a few red flags. I guess if I'd thought about it I would have realized that that's kind of a perverse thing to send to anyone...but when it's Todd it just seems like another funny PCP party trick.

Anyhow, Lyle got the door and I listened to his conversation with the cops from behind the couch. It went kind of like this:

LYLE: SooooOOOO! It's YOU again!

COP 1: Sir, are you Téodor Orezscu?

LYLE: Do I look like that fat pussy to you? Tell me now. Say it to my face, asshole shitwad. I fucked your mother and drew a daisy on her ass. [spits]

COP 1: There's no need for this kind of behavior, sir.

LYLE: Oh yes there IS! [sound of bottle breaking] ACE OF SPADES!

COP 2: Sir, have you been drinking?

LYLE: NO!

COP 1: Does a Téodor Orezscu live here?

LYLE: What's this about, mustache-dick? Your partner here put his dick across your upper lip like a mustache? Is that why you're buggin' me? I already have a mustache, so NO THANKS on the lip pedro thing.

COP 2: We're investigating some charges of squirrel cruelty. Does the squirrel in this photograph resemble anyone you know?

LYLE: Nope.

COP 2: And this...[flips page]...is this Téodor Orezscu?

LYLE: Never seen that fat piece of crap before. Get lost. Both of you. Get in your cop car and go to your cop car parkin' spot.

COP 1: Have a nice day.

COP 2: Make sure you clean up this broken glass. It's a hazard.

LYLE: Fuck...YOUUUUUUUUUU! [door clicks]

So, I figure I've got to lay low for a while, and probably change the way I look pretty significantly. Should probably grow a beard...get glasses...maybe do the Hasidic Jew thing with the black suit and stuff...what are those corkscrew sideburns called? I think my great-grandpa Bliklish had a pretty rad set. Okay, off to Jew it up. The next time I see you, it will not be as Téodor Orezscu. It will be as...Herschel Schviz-Meskewicz.

Got kicked out of my one-man band.

2006-11-01T23:23:00.000-08:00

I gave up on trying to learn how to use all that professional recording equipment. Too many dials, knobs, sliders, cross-faders, modalities, and unlabelled function keys. No user interface design to speak of. More Enigma machine than envelope, if you follow me. Every time I stood in front of it, I felt like Dave at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, presented with all those monolithic lucite "buttons." One wrong push and the whole thing might blow up in my face. Suffice it to say, I won't be releasing any album that isn't a YouTube webcam clip of my left hand doing the chord changes to "Free Fallin'." Yes, I will be sitting on my bed. Yes, at the end you will see me get up. Off-camera, I will hit the space bar, which stops the recording. You will hear the first half of the click of the key. VIEWS: 17. COMMENTS: Yah that was good, chek out mine 2 :) [link]

What's new with me...I've been making a lot of bread. I uncovered a bread machine in the garage (a wedding present that had never been touched), and it's great. It takes the crappy part out of making bread (interminable kneading), and leaves you to just throw essentially free ingredients together, wait a bit, and then see what happened. It's like tossing a grenade over a hill, having a smoke, and then climbing over to discover that the grenade has turned into a lovely rosemary focaccia.

I've got a sourdough starter going right now, this yeasty slop that's supposed to sit out for three days and rot. The more I try to figure food out, the more I find that toeing the line between discoloration and dysentery is where real flavor lies. Should we always be eating food that might almost make us sick, in order to keep up digestive strength? There might be some wisdom there.

You know what? I've never had Limburger cheese. Or Liverwurst, for that matter. I'll be stinkin' it up tomorrow. For dessert? You guessed it. I'm going to eat a red onion like it was an apple. You'll know me — I'll be the guy swatting away vultures with a big diagram of Mitteleuropa.

Rough goings with music recording efforts.

2006-08-22T01:01:00.000-07:00

THE USER INTERFACES ON MUSICAL RECORDING EQUIPMENT ARE MANY LIGHT YEARS BEHIND THOSE ON GENERAL-PURPOSE COMPUTER EQUIPMENT OR EVEN BLENDERS. Thank you for listening while I got that off my chest. It's just that all this high-end gear I borrowed from Ray is virtually inscrutable. I go to establish the settings on one input track out of 64, and I'm faced with twelve knobs, two sliders, five three-position buttons, and so many LEDs that I might as well be shining a flashlight into a cave full of bats. I JUST WANT TO MIC MY ACOUSTIC GUITAR WHILE I PLUCK AWAY AT "APRIL COME SHE WILL." SORRY I'M NOT THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC. I'M LIKE A FAMOUS CHEF WHO BOOKED HELL BUT ONLY NEEDED TO COOK A SINGLE HOT DOG. Oh look, I'm yelling again. Maybe it's because I hate everything in my room, including the large stupid machines and the little idiotic man who is sitting on the floor in front of them.

Into the Studio

2006-06-09T23:32:00.000-07:00

Wow. I was in Ray's garage looking for a soccer ball, when what should I find under a sheet but a huge mixing table, a bunch of recording equipment, a big Pearl drum kit, and a bunch of Pro Tools software! He had about fifty grand worth of gear in there, so I asked him if he was planning on doing anything with it, since I've really been itching to lay down some tracks.

RAY: Téodor! Doggie, you find that soccer ball I said about?

ME: Yeah, but it was flat. It looked like a rat had been eating one of the panels.

RAY: [thinks] That's right. Damn. I put that ball away with a slice of sandwich ham stuck to it. I shouldn't have done that. [Shakes head] Man, what if Coach Dan saw me doin' somethin' so—

ME: I saw a ton of recording equipment out there. [Pretends to give Ray benefit of doubt] Are you starting a recording project?

RAY: Don't talk to me about that stuff, man.

ME: What? I'm sorry.

RAY: Hell of annoying, dogg. Bad times.

ME: Bad, huh. I'm sorry.

RAY: Bad, dogg. You want a soda? Amstel?

ME: You don't want to talk about it, do you.

RAY: Well, I got kind of burned.

ME: Damn.

RAY: Yeah. These dudes from East side, you know, they played me this demo with this fat track on it, some real delicious wax, you know, but they said it was produced on equipment that had recently been stolen from them. I said I'd procure new gear and they had this thing where it was getting to be dinnertime, and they kept mentioning dinner, and I was like, I'll get on these dudes' good side, take 'em under my wing, get 'em some dinner. So we went and had steaks down at The Chophouse, and I dropped on some good wines, to kind of start grooming them for the limelight, and then afterwards real quick they said they had to go to bed because of all the food and wine, so I chuckled and they rolled off. I tried their pager the next day but no deal, it was fake, you know, and I played their demo for a friend of mine and turns out it was just the new Krass Medik single that got leaked onto the Internet that I hadn't heard yet. These dudes just burned that onto a CD and pretended it was them. Meanwhile I had ordered all this gear Next-Day Air. I feel like a stone idiot about that.

ME: Wow. Damn. Conniving, you know?

RAY: That's exactly it! They were conniving! Exactly!

ME: So you gonna sell all that stuff back on eBay?

RAY: I don't know. I'm kinda hopin' some new act will come along and need it.

ME: Why don't I take it to my place, and hook it all up, and learn it, and that way if a good act comes along, but they aren't too technically proficient, I can kind of serve as their engineer. A lot of times these guys can't tell an RCA jack from a USB port. All they know is straight mic.

RAY: [gets real quiet for several seconds] Damn. I had about sixteen thoughts just now. But yeah, yeah. That is a real genius idea for a service. A lot of these dudes had no advantages. There is this one guy, Kareem Kara-mell, his whole thing is that he can't use any digital technology, he is so poor. He can only use analog technology. He's warped. He's out there, but his sound is so odd, I can see it in like a Cingular ad. Old Navy at least, or like if Old Navy started to sell ringtones.

ME: Awesome. How can...do you have a flatbed we can use to get the gear to my place?

RAY: I'll take care of it. Business expense, you know. Nice. Thanks, T. This is real smart.

ME: Alright. Let's set that up right now.

RAY: Cool. [makes phone call]

Now I'm here in my room with tons of gear and trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I'm now able to produce studio-quality sound. It's a heavier burden than you'd think. Imagine when Simon & Garfunkel went in to record "April Come She Will," with just one voice and one guitar: that guitar's tone would forever define the feel of the song. Think also of the distinctive Stella that Kurt Cobain used here and there on Unplugged. Do I have a unique instrument like that? One that's got a sound worth recording?

Aw, crap. I'm acting like every note I set down will be angel-kissed. I'm probably gonna toss 99% of this stuff, then re-record later. Simon & Garfunkel probably threw out enough tape to rig a thousand Cutty Sarks. It's such a rookie move to act like every early project is worth saving, like it's going to be featured in a documentary twenty years from now. Do I watch too many "rockumentaries," or do I just think too highly of myself? Can someone please help me plot a realistic Venn diagram.

Beef = new GOF think tanker?

2006-03-30T23:40:00.000-08:00

Man, I've never seen so much online discussion about the GOF. I guess I've never looked for it, but this year, with Ray and Beef calculating a huge B.O.C. surprise overthrow, everybody's on home row at full tilt. I read thousands of threads while the action was unfolding, most of which were based on Barry King's offshore blog, and a handful of which actually made decent points.

I loved the full-level razing of the grounds, and as a fan I'd like to see the concept of the Fight rise up from the ashes in a new format. In fact, I'm surprised it took this long for the contestants to try to overthrow the grounds themselves. Anyhow, for my money, the guys at alt.gof.new have a lot of it figured out: for grandeur and drama, they have to take Beef on in an executive-level advisory role. He clearly knows more about the Fight than any of them, and, as many software security companies have demonstrated, you need to hire your most dangerous adversaries. Why do you think you see so many sixteen year-old Ukrainian kids driving around in Maybachs?

I don't want to be too nosy or anything this year, but I'm sure they're going to call him and I'm pretty hopelessly interested in seeing how it all plays out. You stick around a place long enough, you see things like this happen.

WINE SUNDAY

2006-02-05T00:14:00.000-08:00

I've been commiserating with Cornelius, of all people, about bad wine experiences at Trader Joe’s (I'd have thought he was above buying wine there). TJs has long been of renown for affordable wine, but sometimes it takes a couple guys getting together to compare notes and discover that, actually, hey, TJs is selling some ruined, backlot wines.

Cases in point are:

Their recent $4.99 Meridians (typically $8 at other stores), which basically taste like “wine.” I’m talking about the kind of wine you’d expect at Malibu Grand Prix.

That “Amarone” they are selling, which should be a raisiny, sweet, complex dark wine, but instead tastes like “antler piss” (imagine a rack of deer antlers shooting piss out of the ends)

Their viogniers, some of which taste like simmered Mad Dog 20/20 that has been poured and left to cool among the upraised strands of an astroturf mat that a dog sleeps on.

This information, taken in with the fact that Trader Joe's often puts oversized, funny-shaped, horridly flavored bottles of wine on prominent store-front displays, indicates that they are not the quality broker they originally purported to be.

Here's another weird thing about their liquor aisle: all of the full-pint canned 6-packs (Oranjeboom, Peter's Brand, 3 Horses, Melcher's, Henninger) taste the same. Why carry 5+ different brands? Do they have some LagerBringer machine in the back, and just shoot the stuff into different packaging? Those lagers are fine, but it's weird that there are five of them in a store with limited shelf space.

TÉODOR'S PHOTOSHOP PHRIDAY

2006-01-26T20:40:00.000-08:00

They say to take vitamin D these days

2006-01-22T22:26:00.000-08:00

I had a pretty rotten afternoon. I walked down to Starbucks to get my usual afternoon doppio espresso, and sat outside on the planterbox to take it in and maybe see if I could bum a smoke off of one of the local kids. Nobody was around, though, so I just sat and looked up and down the sidewalk for a while.

Just as I was about to go, this older bald guy approached pretty quickly in my direction. You know how you can tell in an instant that something's threatening you? I couldn't ever put my finger on it, but this guy was trouble. He was walking too fast, and a little too...thinly, his steps getting out of control, and when he was about ten feet from me his feet got all tangled up in each other and he took a pretty good header onto the sidewalk. The shoulder of his navy blue jacket landed square in a coffee-tinged puddle, and he scraped his head. The skin on his scalp was whitish-pale, and looked unnatural. I jumped up to see if he was okay.

"Are you alright? Sir?" I asked.

"I'm fine!" he gasped.

"Can I help you up?"

"I'm OK! I'm fine!"

"Here, let me give you a hand." I reached out my hand to help him up.

Dazed, but processing an enormous amount of information, he missed a beat before reaching for my hand. "I'm a cancer patient. Good thing I didn't have chemo today," he said to the ground.

I didn't know how much that might mean. I helped him to his feet and he, thanking me briefly while brushing off his shoulder, pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, walked a distance away, sat on the curb, and placed a call.

Once I saw that he was fairly engrossed in conversation, I tossed my cup in the trash and disappeared around the corner. He couldn't have been less aware of my departure.

STOP WAKING ME UP

2005-12-12T23:11:00.000-08:00

I swear, if I'm woken up by one more baby bird almost-catastrophe (Philippe), or whiskey yelling (Lyle, Chris, et al), or loud David Lean biopic (Cornelius), or 6:20am nail-clattering in the kitchen (Olive, the damned dachshund, prancing around antsily for breakfast), or Calvados yelling (Cornelius, Chris, Ray) I'm going to put a shine on this place and find an apartment downtown. It's like living in the Tower of Retard Babel around here, waking up to hear Lyle yelling "NO, MAN, FORGET WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT MEDIA-DELIVERED GOVERNMENT. THAT'S ALL JUST COLA WARS -- EVERYBODY WINS. THE REAL POWER IS HELD OUT-OF-CIRCUIT BY A MUDDHIST IRISH MASONIC CLECT BASED IN SNAHOMISH, WISCONSIN..."

I just want some damn sleep. I usually go down around two or three, after I've played a bit and scribbled down some tablature and recipe ideas. Lately I've been woken up about every half hour from six on, as the house stirs into life and people start getting into fights or misusing volume-regulating technology. I'd get earplugs, but I'm paranoid about sleeping through a life-ending fire. I know I'd probably wake up as the flames started to lick at my hide, but ideally I'd have a few minutes first to make sure my high school yearbook had been properly set atop a small pyre of old socks.

I have gotten the hang of "Asian"-flavored slaw.

2005-12-06T21:50:00.000-08:00

First off, there have been no more recurrences of the dream where I choose to abandon the retarded boy. This is a big relief.

Lately, I've been trying to pin down what makes an "Asian" flavored coleslaw tick (don't you just love how since the Blog Quality Bar has been set so low, I can mention this entirely without a segue, and it will seem like high literature simply because there are no misspellings and you can't tell which band I'm listening to?). I like a mayonnaise-based American coleslaw as much as the next guy, but this one travels better and has a lighter aftermath. The secret is fairly equal parts cilantro and mint—herbs you'd never find in the original—which, when paired, give it an exotic quality. Here's a rough recipe (I never measure this carefully, except for the dressing, and it always turns out great).

Salad
1 small handful chopped mint
1 small handful chopped cilantro
1 grated carrot
2 chopped scallions, including green top
3 regular handfuls of paper-thin sliced cabbage (I get the pre-bagged kind)
1 small handful toasted chopped almonds or peanuts (chop and toast these yourself for stronger flavor - they will cut nicely with a sharp chef's knife)

Dressing
2 TBSP canola oil
1 TBSP soy sauce
2 TBSP seasoned rice vinegar (plain rice vinegar OK)
1 TBSP peanut butter (any kind)
juice of 1/2 lemon

Once the nuts have cooled, stir the salad ingredients together and store in the fridge. Shake the dressing thoroughly to dissolve the peanut butter, then dress and toss the salad right before serving, or keep cool for up to an hour.

I made this to go alongside a nice piece of sesame-marinated halibut steak a few days ago. While I was watching the fish under the broiler Ray wandered in, offering to help me throw a few Oranjebooms back. I let him sample a forkful of the slaw out of the bowl where I was storing it in the fridge, and while I was plating the fish he ate the entire thing (about four full servings). When I pointed out that it had been for my dinner he looked sort of aghast at himself, and made this really scared, upset, scrunched-up mouth. He set the fork and mixing bowl down extremely carefully in the sink and walked really quickly out the back door, cursing something inaudible but clearly self-chastising (he also slapped his forehead every few steps until he left the yard).

Finale (hopefully) of the recurring dream

2005-11-18T21:31:00.000-08:00

I was at the desk, and the desktop still had the name "Adrian Rodeo" carved into it, and I knew it was time to open the closed classroom door and see who this was. I walked slowly over, turned the handle, and then I was in the back scullery room of Clown Alley, a hamburger restaurant in my old home town that had shut down years ago. A mentally retarded Chicano boy was washing tall piles of greasy, discolored, oversized woks, and the floor was dirt. An Indian man in a thin, cheap business shirt looked at me and disappeared into an office. Then, loud and clear in my head, I heard it said, "That is Adrian. He needs you." The boy was wearing large white low-top generic sneakers, baggy jeans, and a heavily-weathered sweatshirt with the word "RODEO" barely visible across the chest. I knew that it was time to accept responsibility for Adrian, or I could just run away. I saw that the back door was open, and I felt terrible for doing it, but as I escaped I felt a future of misery disappear. I knew I would always feel guilty for leaving, but I knew I'd done the right thing.

So, I guess the dreams had nothing to do with my future success as a packaged food entrepreneur.

I spent most of tonight just tooling around in the kitchen, working on various risottos. People wandered in and out and ate and were all effusive but I don't think any of the recipes were really hitting. I just didn't have the focus to nail them.

Revisit of the recurring dream

2005-11-11T23:17:00.000-08:00

I had that "Dorian Dareo, CEO" dream again. As usual, I was alone in the classroom, and the big heavy beech-colored door was shut, and I *knew* Dorian Dareo was standing behind it. I had no visual or auditory cues, but my soul was buzzing with the awareness that he was there. The silence was thick, and the fluorescent light rested on my hair with the weight of a napkin. I went through several emotional states while waiting for the handle to turn: fear, anxiety, extreme self-confidence, a drastic reduction in self-confidence, a "jokey" phase where a lot of jokey introductions came to mind, and finally a steady, passive anger. Then, as I stared at the door, I heard the click of the knob being turned, then the protracted squeak of the hinges as it swung open, and the soft bump as the rubber door-guard thing butted against the dark gray wainscoting.

The odd thing was, the door remained firmly shut the entire time.

Then I felt a horrific buzz around my ears, that signal you get when you realize someone's standing behind you. I bit the bullet and swung around: nobody there.

After examining the corners of the small room I looked down at the desktop, only to see that the carved name of "Dorian Dareo" had morphed into "Adrian Rodeo." Just then a rubber chicken-shaped eraser started whining, and I woke up, and Philippe's stray bird pet had waddled into the hallway and was whining outside my door. I put him back in his towel next to the mechanical alarm clock and hot water bottle and after a little while he was asleep again.

Recurring dream.

2005-11-03T10:25:00.000-08:00

I'm my age, but I'm sitting at an old elementary school flip-lidded wooden desk, with a heavily scratched wooden top. Clearly carved in neat letters near the bottom-right hand side is the name "Dorian Dareo, CEO." The letterforms are a tiny bit shaky, as though they had been carved by a child, but consistent enough to imply that they are based on a particular font.

What does this mean? I've been playing around with the idea of selling a "just add water" brine mix recently — a dry mix of salt, sugar and spices that you'd just stir into boiling water and use to soak pork or poultry. Maybe the dream means that it's going to be really successful, and this "Dorian Dareo" will be the Howard Lester to my Chuck Williams. As far as I know, those two have a decent working relationship, and Williams-Sonoma is a highly profitable company, so this is all right.

On that note, I'm going to go work on my brine mix. Recent tests proved that boiling the ingredients in the water first really does help them enter the meat more thoroughly. Picture a handful of dry sugar granules sitting on a favorite sweater — now picture two ounces of sugar syrup being squirted onto the same sweater. The syrup is obviously going to get further into the sweater than the granules.

Ray's Mind-Menses

2005-10-17T23:07:00.000-07:00

I was roasting some beef bones for stock this afternoon when Ray called me up on my cell phone and started rambling. It went something like this.

ME: Hello?

RAY: The Cure!

ME: Ray?

RAY: The Cure, that's who!

ME: Ray?

RAY: If The Cure is traveling at 76 miles per hour, and the main Cure guy leans out the window, and the wind pulls a teardrop off of his cheek, how long until it hits the ground, assuming that a cubic tear weighs one gram?

ME: Less than a minute.

RAY: YOU HAVE SOLVED THE PUZZLE.

ME: Great, what do I win.

RAY: YOU DO NOT WIN A THING AT ALL.

ME: Not even a little can of Dr. Pepper?

RAY: Oh, alright. You win a little can of Dr. Pepper.

ME: Now?

RAY: Heh. Yeah, comin' your way. Hold on, alright? [hangs up]

About twenty minutes later he was at the front door with a fifth of Glenfiddich and the Braveheart DVD. Our home theatre is pretty humble, but that didn't slow his enthusiasm. True to form, he sat forward and pushed my shoulder repeatedly during the Robert the Bruce scenes, and had to leave the room during the part where William Wallace is drawn and quartered.

Ray is such a moron.

2005-10-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

So he came over for lunch today, Friday, because he wanted to "shoot the shattle" about what to do for his big regular Friday night party. We always have beer when he comes over, because he likes that I get tall 160z cans of Oranjeboom at Trader Joe's. (He says they make him feel like "that guy from Oasis.") It's kind of a thing. Anyhow, I made Galaxy Nachos (a clever recipe of Roast Beef's, can be found in the Achewood cookbook) to go with the crisp lager. While they were baking and we were talking he actually got a plate and a fork and stood by the oven. I'm not even sure he knew he was doing this, because when I pointed out that the table was already set he looked around for a second, real concerned, and then slapped his forehead and laughed. I guess he'd smoked a little before he came over, and when I offered to freshen his buzz he took me up in a heartbeat.

We went into my room and I packed one for him. It's funny - even though the door was shut, Lyle sensed the unsmoked marijuana and let himself in. I let myself out before they lit up because I'm going out to dinner with my Aunt Brezna and she has a dead-on sense for when someone's the slightest bit altered. Before long they were taking turns filling up the chamber and getting rowdy. I swear, whenever those two get near a bottle or a bong it turns into a contest to see who can max the other guy out. While I finished up the food I could hear macho exhortations coming down the hall, like Ray shouting "Can you pull it, sucker? Can you pull it off?!" or Lyle coughing really hard and then victoriously shouting "LYYYYYYYLLLLLLLE!" at the top of his lungs.

Needless to say, they crept out of the room like a couple of secret geniuses and inhaled the entire cookie-sheet's worth of nachos in about a minute and a half. Then Lyle grabbed the six-pack of Oranjeboom off the counter, handed three of them to Ray, and in unison they both yelled "BRADY BUUUNCH!" before shotgunning the whole set. Lyle then said something about "wanting to break most of the rocks in the backyard to see if any were geodes" and Ray thought that was incredible, so they found an old mallet in the garage and spent the next ten minutes hitting rocks.

After I had cleaned up the dishes I noticed it was kind of quiet, so I looked outside, only to find them both passed out on the grass in the shade under the lemon tree. They had taped this little cardboard sign that said "COWBOY OFFICE" to the trunk, and Ray was wearing a pair of red cowboy boots that he hadn't been wearing when he showed up.

As of 3:15 they were still asleep, so I called Dimitri from the beverage distributorship and just had him put a couple kegs and a case of Ketel One handles on Ray's tab for tonight, and hired Buffalo Wing-a-Ding to come cater with their slaws and biscuits and things. It took all of six minutes, but I was kind of annoyed at having to do it.

Weekend's cooking plans.

2005-09-16T21:29:00.000-07:00

Trader Joe's sells ready-made pizza dough that's really top-shelf and easy to work with, so this weekend I'm going to try it in a handful of different ways. Lyle's cousin Stan is in town so they'll be around to eat all the leftovers, and tomorrow night (Saturday) I'm going to give each of them an extra twenty so when they go out they get loaded enough that they puke it all up before they get home. There's nothing worse than getting yelled at for feeding Lyle and his cousin Stan things with tomato sauce.

All of the ingredients in the following recipes can be found at Trader Joe's:

Recipe #1: Pizza with chopped clams, minced garlic, red pepper flakes, part-skim mozzarella, chopped parsley, and tomato sauce. Roll dough thin, top, brush exposed outer crust with olive oil, cook on pizza stone at 500F for 10 mins. (Why skim? Fresh mozzarella in water gives off too much liquid for a home oven to evaporate and I hate watery pizza.)

Recipe #2: Calzone of tomato sauce, part-skim mozzarella, uncooked hot italian chicken sausage, chopped olives, minced garlic. Remove sausage from casing, mash into bits in pan with wooden spoon, and brown deeply in olive oil with generous salt, ground pepper, and garlic or onion powder. Drain. Cut dough in half, roll one, fill, crimp, poke steam holes, brush w/egg wash, 450F for 10 mins.

Recipe #3: Empanada of ground beef, honey, cinnamon, cumin, scallion, bacon. Brown chopped bacon, drain, set aside. Brown beef, minced scallion, cinnamon, cumin in pan until cooked through, drain, stir in bacon and honey. Roll dough thin, cut into 16 pieces, fill. Seal w/fork and pan fry in 1/2" oil in skillet until dark golden (oil at 365F). Dust w/cinnamon sugar & serve w/more honey.

Recipe #4: Khryzshno Blachinda. Same as #3 above, but filling consists of fully-cooked (steamed or baked) and slightly mashed cubed sweet potato, chopped green onion, black pepper, sour cream, chopped toasted walnut, and drained chopped bacon. Dough exceedingly thin. Press to release any air and crimp tightly. Fry at 365F until dark golden.

Anyhow, I'll let you know how these turn out. Dough can be tricky because it can steam on the inside and become gummy while the outside becomes a deceivingly nice golden brown. I guess the best way to get around that is to chill the filled, sealed item first so the fillings never get to the steaming point. Anyhow, anyhow. Can't wait until Sunday to hear what luckless parked car(s) this all slid down the outside panels of.

Why was I chased?

2005-08-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

The weirdest thing just happened to me. I had walked down to Hidden Hills to get some deep-fried artichoke hearts at S.C.T.!'s when all of a sudden this guy across the street ran through traffic and started chasing me. He was a little shorter than me and he had this huge gut spilling over his belt, but he was really fast, so before I knew what to do I had started running from him. He didn't say anything, just kept running as fast as he could after me, so I had to keep my head down and dig in. We ran for like three minutes flat-out, him always about fifteen feet behind me, just scaring the shit out of me. Whenever I stole a glance back at him he'd shake his fist and bare his teeth, so I'd put more gas on the pedal and hope that he faded.

As luck would have it Beef was out charging the Galaxie's battery, so I jumped in his passenger door at the stop sign by Happy Day Chicken and told him to floor it. The cool thing about Beef is that he'll just lay into a quick weird command from a friend, whereas some guys might look around to see what's precipitating the weirdness. He dropped the hammer and we burned all kinds of rubber for about ten seconds. By the time we were safely out of range I looked back to see my pursuer on his knees and barfing all over the sidewalk by the stop sign. What the hell?

Mr. Depressey-Pants

2005-08-16T23:33:00.000-07:00

I was feeling morose on a lonesome walk down along the creek when Famous Blue Raincoat came on the iPod. You know the one — that moody Leonard Cohen tune that at first sounds like it might be about a woman who dies of a heroin overdose in the snow, but upon inspection of the printed lyrics it seems more like it's about a really mean older brother who had to move to New Mexico to get his head straight. Anyhow, the depressing tone gelled pretty well with the sluggish creek and moonlight, and the chilly late-summer air, and the olive drab cableknit I had on, and all of a sudden I realized I'd just overdosed on self-pity and felt myself coming out of the funk I'd been in ever since Circus Penis ditched out on me and called me a "ditherer." For like a week I'd been suffering from such deep seated self-doubt that I hadn't been able to pick up so much as a bar of soap without thinking, "I'm not going to do this right."

So, what do you do when you're coming out of a self-indulgent funk and want to get your spins on, most likely to include several games of pool, loud AC/DC, and a 4am Scotch-fueled viewing of the Braveheart director's cut? You call Ray! So, that's what I did, but as usual I didn't end up getting what I expected.

TÉODOR: [places call]

RAY: [picks up, yelling] Jesus, Gavin! Use the damned leeches already!

TÉODOR: Ray? Ray? This is Téodor.

RAY: Oh, hey, Téodor. Sorry. How you doin'.

TÉODOR: [hoping to diminish his anger with humor] What was that about Gavin and the Leeches? Did you just sign a new band?

RAY: [angry] Oh, it ain't worth mentionin'. Just havin' trouble gettin' through to someone.

TÉODOR: Yeesh. Okay, I won't ask.

RAY: Yeah, it's nothin'. Whatchu call about?

TÉODOR: Oh, I was wondering if you were up for a no-good evening, maybe some pool and Patrón.

RAY: Daaaaaamn. You know, I'm pretty spent. I got really horny this afternoon, man.

TÉODOR: [brightening, as one does for a friend who has recently scored] Oh, you're with a chick! Sorry, I'll call back tomorrow.

RAY: No, man. It ain't nothin' like that.

TÉODOR: [confused] But...what was that about having sex all afternoon?

RAY: Heh. There definitely wasn't any sex bein' had. Not that I knew about, anyway. Maybe at other peoples' houses.

TÉODOR: So...you just got so horny that you got tired?

RAY: Somethin' like that. Anyhow. Man, now I'm all worried about diabetes.

TÉODOR: Sorry. I guess I'll check you later.

RAY: Jesus. Man, how am I supposed to get to sleep now.

TÉODOR: Sorry! I'm sorry I misunderstood.

RAY: Be careful, man. Of diabetes. [yawns]

TÉODOR: Right, I will.

RAY: [yawns, hangs up]

I got the sense he wasn't being completely straight with me, but I didn't want to meet Gavin and his leeches so I minded my own business and made for home. I think I'm just going to have a little red and head to bed with some reading material. I haven't read anything in a while, other than that two year-old New Yorker that's been sitting by the toilet so long it's wrinkled from splatter, so I got some interesting books about product design off the living room shelves, and a book about the history of Levi Jeans for when I get bored of those.

Clowned by Circus Penis

2005-08-07T23:40:00.000-07:00

Man, I should have seen that coming a mile away. That blank stare, the fact that he thought risotto was Mexican, the way the only adjectives he knew were "good" and "fun," ...that guy was so LA. If you don't know what it means to be "LA," imagine if a car salesman and a female car salesman had a baby: the baby would be from LA. I bet that guy has a goddamned white baby grand. I KNOW that guy has a white baby grand in his huge, unused living room, on a black marble-tiled level maybe two steps up from the main part of the white-carpeted living room.

SO! So. That's over. I knew I'd never fit in in his world of guys who can make breezy conversation with twitty women about favorite shoe colors. If you get two LA people in the same room, and there's a bed there, and they have so much as the same favorite sandwich filling in common, they'll be hitting it within thirty minutes. That's how LA is.

Okay, enough venting. I went back and looked at all the old rushes from the cooking show I was working on before Circus Penis showed up, and they look...stupid. I look like a big fool who could just get taken in by any old shiny fad that came along. My stupid hipster pad, my trendy shoulder-held camera style, my whole approach to food...just immature. A total flub.

On top of all that, I picked up my guitar and accidentally made up the cheesiest little three-chord riff you can imagine. I was totally into it the whole time I was working it up, but then when I took a few minutes off and came back and played the finished product it sounded like something a studio guitarist would be asked to play during a sequence on a TV show where a red race car wins a race.

I think everything I touch is just going to be bogus for a while so I'm going to sign off now, on my big whiny blog.

Weird call from Ray

2005-07-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

I was out back watering our new herb garden today (basil, thyme, oregano, mint, chives) when Ray called my cell phone. I almost didn't take it, but you never know what you're going to get with him. Being on Ray's speed-dial is kind of like playing the Lottery: 99.999% of the time he's just calling because he wants to know if Kevin Bacon and Sissy Spacek have ever been in a movie together, but there's always that off chance he just accidentally won a new 63" flat-screen TV he doesn't need and wants to give it to the first person who's home.

TÉODOR: Hello?

RAY: Ray? This is Téodor.

TÉODOR: No it’s not. This is Téodor. Ray?

RAY: Oh, sorry man. I...oh, yeah. Listen, Téodor, I notice that you’ve put on a few pounds lately.

TÉODOR: Thanks! Alright, see you around.

RAY: Wait! Don’t hang up. You don’t know what I’m going to say.

TÉODOR: I’m guessing you’re going to move on to my mother’s parenting abilities.

RAY: What? Your mom was bad to you? I’m sorry, dude. Maybe I should call back later.

TÉODOR: I...if my mother didn’t raise me well, what would be different in a couple hours?!

RAY: This isn’t going at all the way I intended, man. I’m sorry. This is my fault.

TÉODOR: You wanted to call to tell me you think I’m fat. I think this is about as good as can be expected.

RAY: You’re not fat, dude! But your body has reached a certain...believability.

TÉODOR: Look, I know you like to get all 4:20 but I actually have something going on right now.

RAY: Man, I ain’t high! Not for that reason, anyway. Listen, I'm thinking of starting a club.

TÉODOR: A club for fat guys with bad moms? Isn't that club already called "Bowling"?

RAY: Heh heh! Heh hehh[HACK COUGH COUGH COUGH kh-chuck PTOOEY!] Hey, man! Man, you just made shit come outta my nose!

TÉODOR: That's picturesque.

RAY: Oh, shit. Somebody's at the door. I'll call you right back.

So, I guess this call fell into the former category, minus the Kevin Bacon stuff. It's been four hours and I haven't heard back from him, so I guess we're not starting a club about how I'm fat. Not that I'm fat. I don't know what he's talking about. I look the same as I always have.

Penis Maximus

2005-07-13T22:50:00.000-07:00

Work on the cooking show has kind of slowed lately since I fell in with this Circus Penis guy. If you haven't heard of him, and a lot of guys pretend that they haven't, he's kind of like the "main guy" in terms of adult film/porno. I ran into him at Ray's and we sort of clicked. Before I knew it I was the chief designer of the "Circus Penis Army," which is a fanclub-type thing sort of like the KISS Army, except the main idea is to have margaritas and slap womens' asses as they walk past our poolside chaise lounges. Currently I'm developing a uniform that flatters the male body while evoking Roman standards of sexual readiness. It's looking pretty good, it had been a long time since I worked with patterns and forms but it's all coming back to me.

I had him over to look at a few of my insignia and headwear prototypes tonight, and since it was during the evening I asked if he could stay for dinner. Naturally easygoing, he agreed, so I threw together a risotto Milanese with fresh crab, heirloom tomato, and spinach, paired with a rocky pinot grigio.

I guess it surprised me a little when he said he'd never had risotto before, because you'd think a guy like that would have been out to more than his fair share of upscale dinners. He actually asked if it was a Mexican dish, if you can believe that. Forgivable, I guess, if you consider that the rice in a Milanese is colored, sort of like Spanish rice, and that Mexican people use a lot of tomatoes...anyway.

I also noticed that he wasn't touching his wine. I wondered if he hadn't had a rocky substance-abuse background and was restraining himself, but when I asked if I couldn't bring him something else to drink he waved his hand and laughed. "Sorry," he said. "I usually don't do shooters until after!" With that he licked all around the rim of his glass, rubbed on a little salt, and downed the entire five ounces or so that I'd poured him.

He remarked that he'd never had a tequila so smooth and mild. I didn't say anything, because it feels wrong to correct Circus Penis, so I just offered him a beer chaser. He asked if I had any Budweiser, and I thought we might have a can somewhere in the Calcutta of rotting arugula that is our fridge, so I said I'd be right back with one. It turns out that all I had to my name was a Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout, which I poured into two coffee mugs (the only clean glasses in the whole place) and brought back to the table. "Thank you, man," he said, before taking a nice pull from his glass. "Ahhh," he sighed. "I love Budweiser. Maybe the best beer there is."

After the meal, when we went on to the headwear and insignia, he was actually remarkably lucid and insightful, which made our little dinner together all the more bizarre. I'm not sure what to do with a guy who apparently does nothing with his palate other than draw the beef curtains, if I may make a food/cunnilingus analogy. It's sort of eerie. Or maybe that's the reason his tastebuds are dead — did his costars used to use corrosive douches inbetween scenes? Honestly, this could be good logic. Douche science has probably come a long way since he broke into the business.

The Mr. Bear Call-Out!

2005-06-17T15:50:00.000-07:00

I'll say it, Cornelius has picked up a trick or two in his years, one of which is the art of conciliation. I guess all those weeks he was tucked away in his upholstered wingback, contemplating our situation in the company of leather-bound volumes while simultaneously avoiding me, finally paid off. He surprised me in the kitchen this afternoon while I was trying out a new Stilton/chive soufflé technique, and asked me into his room for a "bit of a chat." I got kind of uncomfortable, because I didn't want to sit and hear a stuffy lecture about respect, but I hit the oven timer and went in anyway. We couldn't avoid each other forever. This house is only like 1100 square feet.

He had two sets of five little glasses set up on either side of his desk, and asked me to sit down. To the side I noticed five dusty old bottles. He started off with an apology that things had been awkward around the house lately, that "two strong heads rutted where harmony should have prevailed." Then he described a ritual that the Frenchmen in Calvados use to settle arguments.

I took a closer look at all the bottles and saw that they were all Calvados, an apple brandy, from a wide range of years, one dating to '61. He had collected them on his various travels in the region and nipped on them only sparingly, he said, watching them improve with age.

The first step was to fill both sets of five glasses with maybe a half-shot of each of the five liquors. That done, we admired their color and differences, and he told me a story about the first glass which involved porking (my term) a farmer's daughter in a hayloft and nearly crushing the bottle when the farmer showed up with a pitchfork and he jumped to the ground below. This was the oldest liquor, which is where we started.

The idea was to toast, and then after draining the stuff and contemplating it a moment the host of the ritual would say one thing he regretted about the problem at hand. The guest would then reply with his regret. "Let us never be that way again," both would say, and then turn the glass upside down where it had originally sat. He taught me the French phrase for "Let us never be that way again" but I've forgotten it by now.

By the fifth glass , the youngest, we were both pretty lit, singing each other's praises and promising to try a book project once my show had taken off. He said his agent would love to see some new work from him, and then the soufflé timer went off, so we went off to enjoy some hot food with a nice Châteauneuf-du-Pape he pulled off the shelf when we were leaving. I can safely say it's all behind us now, and I've never felt better about the cooking show. He was pretty effusive when it came to flattering me, 50% of which I'll chalk up to the liquor.

Cooking show - my rushes

2005-06-02T00:43:00.000-07:00

So I've been taping at Ray's, and Cornelius has been scarce lately. I think that since we never talked about the weird "fight" we had on the set, and he has heard I've been taping without him, he just hides in his room until he knows I've left the house. Sucks for him.

Anyhow, I've got the set dressed the way I want it now. Some electric guitars, a big inflatable cactus, an old beater couch for guests, and this awesome mechanical monkey-on-a-unicycle that rolls back and forth on a trapeze over the set the whole time I do my show. I got it from this old pizza parlor that was closing its doors — they threw in their five-spigot soda machine for another hundred bucks, and I set it up on the main counter to dispense four of the basics: chicken stock, olive oil, white wine, and water. The fifth dispenses the keg beer which I always serve to my guests and myself at the beginning of the show (me filling the glasses is part of the stock intro).

I have the rushes from the first "pilot" episode all shot and ready to edit. The theme was braising so I did osso buco with a fava polenta, lamb shank with white beans and anchovy, all-American pot roast, and a vegetarian braise of artichokes Barigoule. Ray, Beef, and Dr. Andretti were my guests and they actually made for a pretty funny bunch. You'd never think that Dr. Andretti would cut it up but he had this great out-of-office chemistry with Beef where Beef would say something all his own like "dang man uh ain't lamb meat got way much low-density lipoproteins though" and Andretti would pantomime putting a stethoscope on Beef's chest while saying "Nurse, it's...it's... [grimace] low-density lipoproteins. Push two units of morphine and call the Chaplain." And then Ray would pipe in with some more medical nonsense because he watches so much ER: "Doc Andretti! His tests just came back positive for bad spaghetti! I think he munched on bad spaghetti at S'Barro which he thinks is a good restaurant! Oh craaaaaaap!"

I'm editing this all in with some highbeat old bumper tracks from The Byrds, since they'll add a nice multi-influential retro feel. My intro/outro song is Time Between, which has great energy.

Cooking show playalong

2005-05-16T02:02:00.000-07:00

I think I can outlast Cornelius in terms of our clashing visions of what my cooking show should be. He wants me to prance around like Graham Kerr, that dandy TV cook from the 70s whose Galloping Gourmet epitomized the chauvinism, social conservatism, and culinary naïveté of that era. Anyone with a tie and a good haircut was a slap-on-the-back chap of the highest order, and food simply did not come alive until it swam in a bath of hot cream and singed brandy. Often times he treated us to his thoughts on those who opposed the established social order (he opposed them) and it was not atypical that at the end of his opening joke a female protagonist was set adrift on a boat that took her far away from good men.

When someone's dead-set on their vision for you, the best thing you can do is try on the sweater and show it doesn't fit. I put the dumb outfit on and "huzzah'd" my way around the set, hamming it up like the old episodes. Instead of a monolog, I smiled directly into the camera and quipped "I feel like an absolute fag!" before dashing over to the fridge and getting out two sticks of butter, some heavy cream, and a shrimp. "I also love to salt this dish!" I bubbled, as I made my way to the prep counter. "Un Scampi alla Onda di Grasso, dal chef Téodor!"

I threw the cream, butter, and a dash of salt into a hot frying pan before showing off by chopping up an onion without looking (I pushed the minced onion onto the floor and danced on it like an Italian woman crushing grapes for wine). "Oh look," I said as I jumped, "I'm an old Italian bird making wine for her battore!" (I have no idea what "battore" means, if anything.)

Cornelius was starting to get the picture by this point, and stood there with his arms folded. When the butter and cream rose to the boil I took the shrimp, butterflied it, and held it above the hot liquid. In my most charming of voices I looked at it and said, "My darling, why couldn't you have had better tits!" before dropping it into the pan. I immediately started clapping for myself and hurrahing and that's when I remember Cornelius dropping his clipboard and storming out.

He left some message on my voice mail about talking about what happened, but I'm not really sure we need to work together. The camera is at Ray's house, and Ray's kitchen is at Ray's house, and I know how to turn the camera on and work the editing software. The camera also has this cord that the actor can use to start and stop the recording.

Cooking show, possibly.

2005-05-09T23:26:00.000-07:00

Cornelius got me all riled up the other morning about starting my own cooking show. I have to admit, it could probably work. I've been absorbing food knowledge for years and have cooked on a semi-professional basis several times. I've also seen about fifty thousand episodes of Emeril Live! so I know how butter up an audience (no pun intended). He handed me a note this afternoon with these absolutely awful possible titles:

1) The Savoury Saviour

2) Téodor's Temptations

3) Hip Lad Kitchen With Téodor Orezscu

It's kind of like having your dad name your rock band — every single word he says is going to sound like the worst possible idea that ever floated out of a mouth. I'm not sure how our dynamic will work out if he's producing my show, but hopefully I can manage it so that we stick to our respective strengths and no one's ego gets hurt.

What am I thinking of for the name of the show? I'm going to keep that a secret for now. I have it, and it's perfect, but I want a few more things to be in place before I lay that one down.

Beer Class Fin / Letter to Cook's Illustrated

2005-05-03T21:36:00.000-07:00

I wrapped up Beer Class last weekend and bottled all my ale. It took a while, and my arm got sore from all the various movements it takes to get beer into an atmosphere-free bottle and pop a cap on it. I screwed up some of them and they're flat but for the most part I have a sizable quantity of imminently quaffable bottled beer. Not enough to throw the party I was thinking of, but enough to always have some on hand for the next few months. It's a nice feeling. An Amish kind of feeling.

Also, while I was making dinner tonight I came up with a technique that I felt was worth sending in to Cook's Illustrated, for their Tips & Techniques From Readers section. See if you spot this gem in their next issue:

Dissatisfied with drizzling and brushing as methods for getting olive oil onto bruschetta bread, I now pour the olive oil onto a dinner plate and rub the bread around in it. This gives me a perfectly even coating that is ready for grilling.

This technique also applies well to the bread for grilled panini.

Best Regards,
Téodor Orezscu
Achewood, CA

As soon as I came up with that I knew it would be perfect for their mag. Usually it's just filler from housewives who think it's brilliant that their biscuit cutters do double-duty as cookie cutters. My bruschetta technique is kickass.

Beer Class II

2005-04-14T00:43:00.000-07:00

I had beer class at 10am on Saturday morning so Friday night I took it kind of light, didn't go to Ray's and just hung back watching "Deadliest Catch" on TV (this show about the horrible life of Alaskan crab fishermen, many of whom die every year). I was up bright and early Saturday and decided to walk to the class, which was about a mile away. Felt great.

When I got there no one was around, but the door was open so I wandered in and pretty quick this guy wandered out to meet me. The place was decorated like a really expansive two-level frat house, and smelled like a party. As it turns out the guy was the owner and I was the only dude on the roster who showed up for the class. I guess Saturday morning is not the best time to schedule an event for the alcohol enthusiast.

The dude was super cool and we set about getting a kettle of water hot enough to steep the ground barley mixture into. I had wanted to make a Belgian white ale but he poured me a mug of their blonde ale and I was pretty amenable to that, so I decided to make that. Their beers were strong, around 6-7%. It was a pretty stiff breakfast after the granola bar I had munched on the way up.

We threw the ground barley recipe into a ladies' lingerie bag and let it steep in the hot water for like forty-five minutes or so. After that we removed it and mixed in some syrupy thick stuff, I forget what it's called 'cause we went outside for a smoke and a mug of their California ale, kind of a lighter thing, under 4%. Extract or something. We talked about his tricked-out Ford Fairlane. Apparently it can go 186.

I think immediately thereafter we dropped some Dextrose and some other substance in and mixed it up pretty well. Then it was time for the hops. We mixed in three different kinds of hops that looked like little fish food pellets. I got to grind them up in my hand. If you ever wonder, hops seem like the main thing that ales get their flavor from.

After that we did a lot of stuff but most of it was pretty scientific and not a lot of fun to read about. The basic idea is that he's gonna crash the brew soon and kill the yeast, and in two weeks after that I can pick up all five cases. I'm thinking of throwing a party when I get 'em all back -- no reason Ray can have the only parties around here. My theme is gonna be stuff I made, from the beer, to the sausages, to the salsas, to the lemonade, to the potato salad to the guacamole. I'll prep for three days and get it all planned out, from paper towels to cutting surface area to lawn games. Nice. Maybe I'll do it for my birthday.

Beer Class

2005-04-08T23:45:00.000-07:00

I saw in the Underground community news bulletin thing that some local brewery is having a "brew your own beer" two-part seminar where you get hands-on experience making your own batch of brew. You get to choose from most of the major styles, and take home a case and a half, completely bottled and ready to drink. The first class is tomorrow and the next one is in about a month when the fermentation or whatever is done. I'm hoping to do a belgian white beer-type thing.

It's been a long time since I took a class of any sort, and my main worry just now was that I'd have to be paired up with some dumbass. Oh, shit—what if Ray's in the class and we wind up as partners? Nah, if Ray wanted to learn to brew beer he'd fly a dude in from the Pacific Northwest and basically ignore me. Wait, that already happened. Sorry, sore subject.

I'm sure I'll have something to tell when I get back. Going to a beer-making class at 10am on a Saturday is a blog entry just dying to come into the world kicking and screaming. Maybe I'll hang out at the 7-11 next to the brewery before class and see how many of the aspirin/MGD customers toddle over to the seminar (or teach it).

There is a baby around

2005-04-01T00:16:00.000-08:00

So Chris and Liz finally had their baby girl, and it's been pretty topsy-turvy in the house since then. It's hard to get any solid sleep, but I'm not considering moving out or anything. Chris says the baby's schedule evens out and it starts sleeping through most of the night within a few months. I think he felt kind of bad—he actually thought to buy me a bottle of Dalwhinnie at Trader Joe's, to help me stay asleep through the constant minor disturbances in the house. He's never done anything like that before. Maybe this baby is humanizing him a little bit. In the past we didn't really get much out of him other than occasionally watching Mr. Show DVDs together or drinking a bunch of beer and shooting his pellet gun at expired eggs, but lately he's seemed more...accessible. Maybe the veil comes down with enough sleep deprivation.

Whoah. I just walked into the kitchen to get a Diet Pepsi and he stormed in, the baby screaming its head off in the other room. He reached into the silverware drawer, pulled out a chopstick, and broke it furiously over his knee before throwing it into a corner and storming back out. He didn't even notice me.

I'm going to lock my bedroom door tonight. I don't think he'd actually use me as a thing to kill, but it at least might keep him from coming in and snapping my Giant Sequoia novelty pen in two (when you lean the pen over, the car rolls through the car-size hole in the giant sequoia).

Pat's "Oscars Party"

2005-02-28T01:06:00.000-08:00

I saw Pat on the sidewalk this morning and he asked me if I would like to go to his Oscars Party. I hadn't heard anything about it, but didn't have plans so I agreed. I told him I'd bring some 7-layer dip and Fritos but he told me not to, that everything was taken care of. I forgot that Pat is weird about processed foods.

I got there around five but no one else had shown up yet. Pat's TV was playing Noam Chomsky videos, even though the red carpet coverage had started, and he was talking quietly with Nice Pete in a corner. There was a lot of paperwork on the table, but I didn't see any snacks. Maybe they were in the fridge, I thought. I didn't want to be rude and go opening doors, so I sat on the couch.

They kept talking while I sat there, and I couldn't switch over to the Oscars coverage because (a) Pat hides his remotes, and (b) the channel selection buttons on his TV have little metal panels krazy-glued over them. After about twenty minutes they were still engaged in what was an increasingly heated whisper-discussion. At one point Nice Pete slammed his opened palm really, really hard against the wall and ran upstairs. I figured I had about three and a half seconds before he came back down and murdered something, so I jumped up and walked past the table towards the door. I got a quick glance of a bunch of clipboards full of petitions to "permanently cancel the racist, classist, and obviously fixed" Oscars.

Pat was facing silently into the corner as I let myself out and ran like the wind back to our place, where I locked the door and turned on the tube just in time to see Chris Rock take the stage. Was I the only one in town who didn't know about Pat's "Oscar Parties"?

Garden State

2005-02-25T01:42:00.000-08:00

Well, I was pretty jilted after we watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but then we watched Garden State. It was like going on a roller coaster where you got your life dumped out at the end and among the peanuts there was that one tin whistle. And when you blew on the tin whistle, it made that one pure sound. The one that makes German boys drop all the onions into their carts and scurry for home.

Eternal Coin Sorter of the High Concept Movie

2005-02-19T00:50:00.000-08:00

We got Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind from Netflix and I have to admit I'm not very good with movies like that. I held my ground and didn't give up after fifteen minutes like I did with Memento, though, and it did pay off. It's one of those movies that will probably keep paying off for a few days, while my mental coin-sorter fits it all together and makes sense of it. I got the general gist, but I felt like I missed about 80% of the mise-en-scène's loaded guns. Maybe that's the mark of a great film, that you can watch it a dozen times and still not feel done. If I were an artist, I'd want people to revisit my work and find more in it, not just throw it away like some single serving Whip-It of "Friends." Sadly, I'm not an artist. I sit around in my room and bang out chord progressions that sound like stuff The Edge threw away thirty years ago.

Porn house moved

2005-01-23T14:43:00.000-08:00

Just like that, they were gone. Roar, Self Made, the chubbies...not a trace. I looked out the laundry room window today and noticed that all the blinds in their rental were up, and all the furniture and posters were gone. When did they move? I haven't been away for any significant stretch of time, and I think I would have noticed such a big operation. Things like this make you feel like you're crazy.

So much for my catering business. How am I supposed to come up with next month's rent? If I have to freelance-design any more business cards and stationery for bullshit little businesses I'm going to hit my writing hand with a hard mallet. Where's Ray? Maybe now that the sun has come out it's time to hit the links. At the very least, we can set up a PuttPro on his living room carpet and throw some money around until I'm solvent again.

I got one of those little things for coffee.

2005-01-09T17:53:00.000-08:00

You know, those little blender-stick things that you stick into a cup of milk and sugar to froth it. After dicking around with coffee drinks for a while this afternoon, I stuck it in a bowl of olive oil, lemon juice and egg yolks and made an excellent mayonnaise. Feeling clever, I stuck it into a bowl of smoked salmon, cream cheese and chives and made a nice spreadable mousse. At that point I felt pretty unstoppable so I used it to blend up a double grapefruit margarita. The tequila and coffee combo put me in the zone and soon I had used it to carve a pretty decent Ben Franklin in the side of a pineapple. This thing is awesome.

Quiet around here

2005-01-05T11:02:00.000-08:00

There's been a really bad cold snap around here lately, so Roar took his crew down to Mojave to film until it warms up again. Too bad, I was really enjoying cooking for them. Lyle's not around and Mr. Bear and Philippe aren't big eaters, so I don' t have anyone to make chuck roasts or chickens or anything large-scale for. It's back to grilled sandwiches and little fish filets for a while. Maybe I'll head up to the funny Asian markets in San Bruno and try to learn something new. I've always wanted to make Peking duck, maybe I'll give that a spin. No, scratch that. The whole point of Peking duck is the crispy skin, which is worse for you than bacon, and I need to lose this winter weight. Bears usually lose winter weight while hibernating, but we don't really hibernate anymore, and it's a rough transition. We all look like mouth-breathing fatsoes in our Christmas pictures, but come Memorial Day we all look like Scott Weiland. Well, not exactly, but we don't look so much like furry little Paul Prudhommes.

San Bruno

2004-12-29T23:41:00.000-08:00

Pat got me this gift certificate to an obscure used book/record shop up in San Bruno, so I took the NSTL up there tonight to see if there was anything I wanted. Honestly, I think he re-gifted the certificate from that Arthur guy, since neither of us would ever have any reason to be in San Bruno, but so what. It was an excuse to get out and see someplace new. As it was, I'm pretty glad I went.

San Bruno has an underground kind of like ours, but it's closer to San Francisco and more working class and more mixed-ethnicity. I got off the NSTL and after a few minutes I realized that there were absolutely no chains of any sort: no McDonald's, no Starbucks, no major groceries, not even a major gas station. It was like the entire downtown strip was locked in 1973. I saw two Korean bbq places, innumerable Chinese joints, a big A-frame pizza place, vacuum cleaner repair shops, Mexican mercados and taquerias, a red-checker Italian place, one of those shops that rents school band instruments, a kids' furniture outlet...I need to get back there. It reminded me of the kinds of streets dad would cruise down when I was a kid, taking us to pizza at a place that I so dimly remember as to not be entirely sure it ever existed at all.

Anyhow, I went to this used book/record shop and poked around a while. It was mostly self-published leftist literature from the 60s and 70s, including a physics textbook called Physics Needs an Enema! I flipped through Physics Needs an Enema! for a bit, but it quickly revealed itself as a book about how only published physicists get listened to and how to get published you need to tell a politician what they want to hear or be from "old New England money." It seemed like pretty personal invective, like the guy was a physicist who just wouldn't "play the game" and spilled his anger into a five-figure vanity printing project. He used a lot of Crumb drawings for which I'm sure he didn't have licenses. When he needed to illustrate a principle for which he had no Crumb drawing he had drawn his own in an approximation of the Crumb style, and it made me really uncomfortable.

I got sick of the scene pretty quick and tucked the gift certificate into the breast pocket of a log-sawin' Bolshevik. The counter guy, a jawless fuzz-faced old hippie who looked like an anutritional Marx in sweatpants, looked up as I walked out, but I figured he didn't have the local pull to sic the cops on me for Non-vocal Disrespect.

I picked up a hot bowl of birria at some place called Tacos Dos Tallarines, complete with chopped cilantro and onion, and hopped back on the NSTL.

Téodor's Temptations

2004-12-19T15:13:00.000-08:00

Alright, I didn't actually name it something corny like that, but I did start up a craft services table at the porn set they have going next door. I'd never done anything like this before, and I didn't really know what I was doing, so I made a big pot of chili verde, which I served with spanish rice, black beans, corn tortillas, guacamole, sour cream, and flan for dessert. That went pretty well; people just ate what I had and stopped eating when I ran out of food. I cleared a couple hundred and Self Made (yes, that's what their crazy little Thai cameraman wanted me to call him) even helped me carry the pots back through the fence to our place. He works like he's cranked on speed but he's not shaky at all. I think he really just likes what he's doing. If his English was better we'd probably hang out after shoots. As it is, he makes a call on his cell phone and one of a rotating schedule of ruined 80s Nissan sedans m-m-mutters up (their mufflers are always shot; do they park in saltwater puddles?) to claim him.

I got the gig through Roar, who is kind of the main honcho at the set. I ran into him a few days ago at Trader Joe's and with nothing better to say I said "Oh hey, I think you guys just moved in next door to us. I'm Téodor." I figured he'd be personable, what with the porn gig and all, and he came through as predicted. "Oh, yeah, I been meaning to say hi," he said as he shook my hand. "Nice to meet you, T." He said it in that L.A. kind of way where you know he hadn't really been meaning to do anything, but since he immediately gave you a nickname you felt close.

I asked him if he ever needed any catering for his set next door, and mentioned that I was trained in catering and would be happy to set them up. He said to stop by sometime, and I did, and a few bowls later I had an unspoken contract for today's set. I'll be back tomorrow. They film a lot of footage every night, it seems.

Boogie Nights neighbors

2004-12-13T22:34:00.000-08:00

Last week a little porn company moved in next door. They also rented out an office in this small-timey industrial complex around the corner, and every night all these chicks in new Mustangs show up, the kind that have the low-rise jeans and big old handlebar tattoos over their asses. They've already started filming at the house, which has a pool and hot tub, and I guess they rent the office so they can have a separate business address for when perverts stalk them. Seems like S.O.P. for a porno outfit. So far it looks like they do mainly BBW gonzo, with really skinny studs. Must be kind of a niche thing. I want to run across one of them casually one day and offer to cater the sets. It'd be a nice excuse to do some good cooking, get paid, and have a really weird afternoon.

Rat in the garage.

2004-12-05T01:50:00.000-08:00

I was lying in bed on the "cusp" of sleep at around 2am when all of a sudden there was this horrible gushing noise in the garage. I figured the hot water heater had burst a hose, and if that was the case then a lot of my storage boxes were going to get ruined, so I jumped up and ran in there.

Apparently some rat had jumped across the faucet of the laundry sink and pressed on the hot water lever, because hot water was shooting out of it at full tilt. Shaken but relieved, I turned it off and made a mental note to make handle-clips out of old coat hangers. If that happens again while no one's around, there could be real damage. I also got the Rat Zapper out. The Rat Zapper is this little shoebox-size thing with four double-A batteries and an electrical floor that electrocutes rats who wander in after the bait (we throw in dog kibble). It looks sort of dumb but it really works. It killed a rat the size of a corn cob last time I set it up. I prefer the Rat Zapper to traps because it's bloodless and instantaneous. Sometimes when you use traps you just snap off like half the head and they wander around for a while, spreading bad karma and jammy thick blood.

Okay, back to bed. While I was up I put some phyllo dough in the fridge to defrost. I thought that maybe tomorrow I'd bake a Napoleon of phyllo, roasted red pepper, mozzarella, and chopped kalamata.

I'm allergic to brandy; lost hat

2004-11-25T02:35:00.000-08:00

I went down to the Corner-Sav to get some Corn Nuts and an egg sandwich and behind the counter I saw this row of liquor bottles. Thanksgiving was here and there was a chill in the air so I thought hey, why not get some brandy. That's an autumn/winter type drink. So, I picked up a bottle and it gave me the hiccups immediately. This stinks. I've had the hiccups for almost two hours.

When I was walking down there I saw this baseball cap on the darkened sidewalk. I examined it and it said AMICI'S, the name of this local thin-crust pizza chain. I walked about ten feet past it and then thought that there might have been a dead body in the hedge along the sidewalk, you know, that belonged to the hat. I walked back and peered into the hedge but didn't see any feet or hands or anything. That's when it dawned on me: I watch too much Law & Order.

Is Thom Yorke a douchebag?

2004-11-15T02:21:00.000-08:00

He's the guy from Radiohead. I read a big interview with him today and he sounds like kind of a wiener. "Politically active vegan," that kind of thing. Like Moby but with singles that don't rely on Gwen Stefani. I've always thought that he made pretty sweet music but now after listening to his self-indulgent whineliners he comes across more like the mope who quit high school to lose weight and work on his pallor.

My dad always said that Jay North got famous too fast. In 1959, at age eight, Jay played Dennis the Menace, and from that point on was apparently typecast and unhireable. He explored a life of drug addiction and weight gain and now works as a prison guard in Florida. Thom and Radiohead hit the big-time right out of college and apparently their mentality is suspended in the early-20s aspic: a lush death-ambrosia of emotional fear, inability to use Microsoft Excel, and terror at the prospect of waking up the next day lest they be a robot with a large black rubber differential instead of a neck.

I guess I don't need Radiohead to explore the depths of micro-personal despair any more. It's great stuff, and they're unparalleled in pulling it off, but quit being the Beastie Boys, you know. I don't want to watch a snowy-haired MCA chiki-cha'ing a mic and pronging like a land-elf. I want him to be reading about epidemiology in an upholstered chair on the upper west side. He's old enough to be my extremely young father, for christs's sake.

Chris did not move to Spain.

2004-11-10T13:32:00.000-08:00

Chris didn't move to Spain, as threatened, but he has been considering taking a vacation at the cabin (his family has a place up in the gold country) soon. He grew up in that area and gets kind of nostalgic for it when it's snow season. Maybe I'll tag along and do some hiking and fishing. Or maybe I won't, and just sit around eating things out of bags and using the computer instead.

In other news...Cornelius wrote me. His big romantic adventure was kind of a flop (duh) and he's headed home in about a week. Says he's bringing me one of those big furry hats and some kind of rare vodka that we can't get here. It'll be nice to have him back around -- the place has been kind of a frat house since he left. He has this normative effect on the place, where people aren't as inclined to leave dishes and dirty magazines around. Except for Lyle. If we had the Pope coming over, Lyle wouldn't think twice about wearing his old "CHOAD MAN" t-shirt and drinking MGD out of a vase.

Election Night

2004-11-02T15:14:00.000-08:00

It's pretty tense around here. It looks like Kerry's leading by a marginal amount, with four hours left in the vote. Chris is pacing around the house making all kinds of bold claims about moving to Spain if Bush wins. His thinking is that people always threaten to move to Canada if they don't like the outcome of an election, but why would you want to live in Canada? Spain has a lovely climate, a great food culture, and topless beaches. Canada's national dish is "poutine," which is french fries baked in gravy, and it's so cold there that any exposed nipples immediately harden into pebbles and fall off of the breast, leaving only a small spot of blood.

Brew Company Update

2004-10-19T11:31:00.000-07:00

I spent about fifty hours pro bono making beer labels for Ray to look at. I expensed a bunch of those $3-$9 boutique beers, some domestics like Bud and Coors, and a few antique labels off eBay. I like to do a bit of research, let the ideas settle into my subconscious, and then stay up all night a few times when it's silent in the house, just letting the mouse go wherever it wants. I had some really nice vintage woodcut techniques going on, and even created a new typeface that evokes Copperplate but isn't obviously based on it. You could have seen any of my comps on any shelf in any liquor store.

I dropped them off in Ray's mail slot, since he wasn't around, and figured I'd hear from him later that night or, at the latest, the next day. I even skipped a few trips down to The Smoke with Beef (The Tenmen were the house band for a week) just because I figured he'd call and want me to come over so he could talk about getting the artwork into production. A week passed, no dice. I didn't contact him because I don't like to force people to say things about the work if they're still thinking about it. The ball was in his court.

After another week I started to worry that he hadn't gotten the package of comps, so I stopped by and knocked on his door. It swung open, so I wandered in. I heard him talking with Petey in the kitchen, so I headed that way, but then something in the living room caught my eye: huge stacks of cases of beer. Excited that he might have used my labels and just forgotten to tell me, or wanted to surprise me, I went and popped one of the boxes open.

I couldn't have been more shocked if I'd found my own disembodied head staring back at me. There they were, twenty-four gleaming brown bottles of beer, with...with the ugliest, most amateurish labels imaginable. The thing was, he and Petey had spared no expense: there was intricate die-cutting, foil embossing, even a hologram. I'll try to describe it.

In the center was a 3D hologram of a log cabin, about the size of an egg, and when you turned the bottle a little Abraham Lincoln came out and waved. On either side of the hologram were these low-res GIFs of eagles and barley that Ray had obviously gotten off the Internet and enlarged, and around these were gratuitous gold foil circles. There were typos in the copy about "authentic micro-brewwed flavor" and "rich, sophisitcated aromas." The thing that really killed me, though, was the typography of the title. Or rather, the lack of it. You know how sometimes a computer will replace a missing font with a version of Courier? That had happened to them here, so instead of whatever it was supposed to say, the text had overflowed the printable area and just said "HONEST AB."

I was so pissed off that I walked into the kitchen and glared at Ray. He acted like nothing was up and went, "Hey, Téodor! Long time no see! How you like our new bottles?"

I bit my lip, took the high road, and asked him if he'd gotten my label samples. He looked at me quizzically for a second and then said "Oh! Those other beer labels you scanned for me? Thanks, yeah! They gave us all kinds of ideas! How you like our new bottles?"

I didn't know whether to be flattered or to hit him on the head with a pan. Apparently my labels were so authentic looking that he'd assumed I had just given them to him for reference. I eyed a hefty skillet that was hanging from the ceiling rack, but felt the temper ebb. After a bit of explanation, he realized that they had all been for him, and he laughed and slapped his forehead while cutting me a check for two grand. I figure my stuff will get used after they sell out of this first batch, but the way things go with Ray, he'll probably win some sort of conceptual design award with those horrendous hackjobs and keep them in production.

Brew Company

2004-10-02T02:06:00.000-07:00

Just got back from Ray's. He's really got something on his hands with these incredible new concept beers he and that Oregon Petey guy have been brewing. That Belgian fig/nutmeg lambic, Meyer lemon weissbier, crisp fennel/mint ale, roasted plum/brown sugar stout, chokecherry caramel barleymead, even this incredibly subtle toasted sesame single-wort that goes amazingly well with sushi....

He showed me this horrible logo he and Petey had sketched up. First off, the name they chose for their brewery is awful: "Rayle." Like "Ray" and "Ale." That was misstep number one. Secondly, it's set in the Copperplate font. Weinhard's wore that one out about fifty World's Fairs ago. Thirdly, well...who cares. It has no legs and it's not gonna fly. I'm going to set up some billables and creatively consult for them until they have a first-class ticket to slap on their packaging. This is good stuff and it shouldn't look like first-generation hackery. Given their druthers, these guys'd probably suggest a tie-dyed label concept and approve some second cousin's shaky line drawings of a jester riding a penny-farthing.

Jesus Philippe

2004-09-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

Philippe managed to brush his teeth with someone's tube of K+Y jelly and needed me to get a new one before they found out. The other day he was about to wipe a rubber all over his sandwich. I need to find out where he's getting this stuff before he shows up with his head stuck in a Christy Canyon Vibrating Life Size Butt.

Clams

2004-09-28T15:24:00.000-07:00

Last night Chris was making a homemade pizza with chopped clams and tons of garlic. When canned, chopped clams are cooked, they have a nice mild flavor that mixes well with a lot of things. I'm surprised we don't see things like clam salad sandwiches (like tuna salad) or clam rolls (a la lobster rolls) etc. I guess it's because so many people have horrible seafood experiences when they're kids, they get turned off to most forms of seafood for life. It's kind of a shame that we feed kids fish sticks and rancid cafeteria salmon when they're young and forming their first impressions of the stuff. I didn't like seafood until I was an adult and I could drop a few extra dollars at a nice restaurant that actually had fresh fish and knew how to cook it.

For dinner tonight I think I'm going to make a clam hash, with steamed new potatoes, scallions, garlic, chopped clams, fontina, and parsley. That'll be good with buttered toast and a poached egg.

Thanks for the warning

2004-09-26T01:33:00.000-07:00

It was maybe five AM last Friday and I saw Chris madly packing his bags. "Going on vacation," he yelled, running all around the house for camera batteries and suntan lotion. "You're off for a week."

It would have been nice to know this ahead of time. You'd think he could tell us this stuff, since presumably he hadn't just discovered at five AM that he was about to hop on a plane to Hawaii. I could have taken some of my golf winnings and gone to Manhattan. I could have gone to see a GBV show in whatever cloakroom they got booked in Des Moines this week. As it was, I just dorked around with my music equipment and did some cooking.

Oh, I did spend an afternoon record shopping over in the Berkeley underground. I picked up some old 45s that are probably one of a kind by this point: Rubber Rodeo, Miracle Legion, Wire's "Outdoor Miner," Multicoloured Shades, that old Ministry "Every Day is Halloween" single, even a Lime Spiders EP. I like that about Berkeley: you can find virtually any album that ever existed in the musty, creaky aisles of Amoeba, Rasputin's, etc.

What I don't like about Berkeley:

1. People who have made the decision to get tattoos on their faces

2. People who have had body art practitioners put small beads in a row under the skin of their forehead

3. People who have had their teeth sharpened to look like vampire teeth

4. People who ask you for spare change and say "fuck you, yuppie scum!" when you don't have any

5. Like San Francisco and Santa Cruz, it is OK to poop anywhere you want. I saw one guy pooping through the bench grates at the bus stop. He had really crazy eyes and a red corduroy sport coat. I didn't complain for fear of public censure by hairy-pitted vegan midwives interrupted from doing amniotic shooters and placenta poppers in People's Park.

Okay, so: no thanks to Chris, screw "liberal" communities, and I am going to listen to some old albums in my room. I'll probably walk down to Jack in the Box later.

Back on the links, finally.

2004-09-14T20:19:00.000-07:00

I finally lured Ray away from his new brewery obsession for a couple hours, on the condition that we bring all his new beers and talk about them while we golfed. I have to admit, he's managed to come up with some really quality brews. Not just simple ales, but a full range of ports and lambics and pilsners. He's got this Belgian fig lambic with nutmeg that absolutely drives me crazy it's so well balanced. You see the Raspberry and Strawberry ale now and then, but fig and nutmeg? It reminds me of that Pete's Wicked Christmas ale, but it's got about ten floors more depth of character. I think it's mostly this brewmaster Petey he flew down from Oregon, but Ray probably had a hand somewhere in the brainstorming process. I could see this new line of gourmet beers getting really popular, like how food faddists are all hopped up on infused oils and other exotic permutations of the basics.

I won $2700 in nine holes (he was anxious to get back to his worts and yeasts). It wasn't too much fun since his mind wasn't really on the game and he kicked about half his putts in, but I guess $2700 is $2700.

Peanut Sauce

2004-09-09T13:56:00.000-07:00

We had these frozen Trader Joe's potstickers in the fridge, so I got those going at lunchtime today. While they were frying I thought "what the hell" and made a peanut sauce. The first one I made was way too salty, but in the second one I balanced the soy sauce with more honey. Here's what I used:

(all measurements are really loose)

1 tbsp peanut butter
1 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp sriracha hot chili sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil

I microwaved that for a few seconds to get the honey and peanut butter soft, then mixed it all together. It makes a tasty, thick little sauce. Maybe this weekend I'll explore some Asian cooking, pick up some ginger and shrimp and herbs and stuff. I'm going to see if Ming Tsai has a website.

No word on Ray's new brewery yet. This means one of two things: either he forgot about it, or he's about to unveil a state-of-the-art two-story glass-walled brewing facility where his tennis court used to be.

Mr. Beer

2004-09-06T17:04:00.000-07:00

So my dad popped into the picture again, this time sending me a plastic beer-making kit called Mr. Beer. No card or anything, as usual, just his return address on the packing list. Looks like he's living in Omaha now. Anyhow, I read the instructions and set the thing up and made some beer. You make ale when you're a beginner, nothing too complicated. It was alright, but it tasted kind of like the plastic tub it fermented in. Maybe I should have washed it first.

Naturally Ray took one look at the kit and decided that we needed to open a full-scale microbrewery. I am 100% certain that he will want to use Copperplate Gothic for our logo. He's over at his place right now "drawing up plans," by which I mean trying to draw eagles holding hops and barley in their claws. At any rate, it will result in more beer around the place, which is generally a good thing. Maybe we'll make some money.

Oh great

2004-08-31T21:07:00.000-07:00

Last time I blogged I bragged about how stoned I was and how much I enjoyed eating food. Fantastic. I'm not going to delete that post, I'm going to leave it there to serve as a simmering and stinging reminder not to do it again.

Let's see...have I done anything redeeming since then...I left the front lawn sprinklers on for five hours and about fifty thousand frogs showed up. It's been a good week so far, yeah. The best I have to say for myself is that I didn't shoot any families.

oh damn so good

2004-08-30T02:41:00.000-07:00

Alright I take back everything I ever said about Chris being a mild- to bad jerk. He just made us the fattest late night snack. Hash browns, sausages, beans, eggs, toast, it was fucking gluttony. Awesome. It completely helped that me and Beef got ripped in my room earlier. I ended up calling Beef's passed-out ass on my cell phone from the dinner table (he was laying in the middle of my carpet). He stumbled in and just put his face in the feeding pail. I don't even think he opened his eyes, he just sucked his way around the plate and took in sausages and beans and all the rest.

WHOOOOOOOOOO so good

Email downer

2004-08-27T15:00:00.000-07:00

You ever have one of those mornings where you wake up, find twenty emails in your inbox, and then one by one you start deleting the spams, and when you're done deleting the spams you realize that no one wrote to you? By the time I had deleted the last spam this morning, I was sort of depressed, so I went on eBay and bought a Titleist visor. I think I need to get out more, I can't wait for the Olympics to be over so that Ray will hit the links again. Bitch and moan, bitch and moan...at least it's Friday and I can go for drinks and dancing at Ray's. I wonder what theme he'll have cooked up this time. Earlier in the week he wanted to do this Donald Trump theme, which I guess meant that he would fly away in a helicopter while the party went bankrupt, but hopefully he'll have changed his mind.

Quiet

2004-08-26T13:41:00.000-07:00

Things are kind of quiet during the Olympics. Everybody just holes up at Ray's and watches the simulcasts. Lunch each day is determined by who took the most memorable gold the night before, so today it was Greek food in honor of Greek sprinter Fani Halkia, who took gold in the Women's 400m hurdles. When Paul Hamm won the gold in the gymnastics all-around, he ordered a big baked ham with Paul's face carved into the side of it like Mt. Rushmore. It looked like a horrible burn victim, so I went home and had a bowl of chili. Who did he hire to do that? He has the strangest resources.

Paul the club "Pro"

2004-08-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

Ray isn't playing any golf while the Olympics are on, so I've been hitting the course by myself. Particularly the practice trap, since as I said I'm bad out of sand. This should give me a leg up on Ray since he has like this secret sand wedge designed by the government to use against golfing terrorists or something. That course pro he's always talking about came by and made a little assessment of my form—boy, what a schmuck. It's like he's so used to giving pointless lessons to rich people who aren't listening that he just mumbles things about "opening your stance" and "right elbow like a perfect L" and all that other golf magazine crap. After a few more lame pointers he could see that I knew his trick and offered me a smoke. We shot the breeze for a bit, he handed me some pro shop gear coupon and left. He called me Ted. That always annoys me.

Am I Blind?

2004-08-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

How do I not see these things?

I met Shannon at Grass last night, that new nightclub with the sod floor and eleven-dollar drinks. She looked good, and she already had a cocktail, so I got an Amstel from the bar and we sat in a quietish corner to talk. She's training for a marathon, she likes that convertible Jaguar, she's looking for a bigger place, she's not much for cooking, etc. She looked great, in some new jeans and a black turtleneck sweater with fresh running shoes. I had on a Livestrong jersey and olive cargo shorts with flipflops, playing it upscale casual. Not that it mattered. All she could talk about was her law career plans and different countries she had visited that I had not visited, like France.

About two and a half Amstels in (I remember looking at the meniscus on #3 and thinking HELP) a few of her friends showed up, probably on cue. It wasn't any of her friends from Ray's, it was a bunch of Jennifer Aniston clones and even a couple guys in blue work shirts and loosened ties. It slowly dawned on me that I had no business there, particularly when the guys shook my hand with those no-contact eyes that say "I already forgot you." I went to the can, drained my beer, tipped the attendant a buck, and ducked through a thick bar crowd on my way out. My last glance was of her completely immersed in her Banana Republic set, giggling and looking healthy.

I shuffled pretty despondently over to Ray's, pitying myself for being the object of a rich girl's slumming. I was pretty sour, so I just hung out in the kitchen and had some Cookie Crisp. Later I went into the living room and tried to read a coffee table book about limousines, but just got depressed and went home.

We're at base camp.

2004-08-11T02:41:00.000-07:00

The call went well. Huge relief. I called around 8:13, and she picked up after just a couple rings but the music (My Bloody Valentine!) was really loud and she had to go shut it off before saying anything. That done, it went kind of like this:

TÉODOR: My Bloody Valentine!
SHANNON: Hello?
T: Hey, this is Téodor, from Ray's party?
S: Ray?
T: The flaming robot?
S: Oh! Téodor! Hi! I was just...how are you?
T: Good! I've been meaning to call you, but things have been—
S: Oh, I know. This week has been ridiculous.
T: I've got this client from hell right now—
S: I know. I'm prepping all these cases for—
T: Prepping cases?
S: Oh, sorry. Yeah, I'm at my uncle's law firm this summer.
T: Wow!
S: Yeah, I finish law school this year.
T: Wow! Where at?
S: Hunter. I—
T: What branch of law are you into?
S: Oh, you know, media law...film industry, music, that sort of stuff.
T: Nice. So, I—
S: Do you—do you want to meet for drinks on Friday? I've got a bachelorette party at 7, but maybe we could hook up at Grass at...hold on...6?
T: Sure! I'll...I'll see you there.
S: Great! Bye!
T: ...bye!
[she hangs up first]

So Grass is this trendy new nightclub in the Underground. They have an entirely new sod floor installed every night, and you sit on big picnic blankets in largeish groups. Good thing I skinned Ray this week, I read that the drinks are like eleven bucks each.

Sore and sunburned

2004-08-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

Went for too long of a run this morning and I think I hurt my knee, but not bad enough to keep me from meeting Ray for lunch ("Burger Buddies" served in the original packaging, with shoestring curly fries, fried shrimp, and skirt steaks with mashed potatoes) and a round of golf. Due to the heat we got a cart today (I was already feeling heatstroke from earlier) ...I don't know if I could have lasted 18 in the full afternoon sun. I'm pretty woozy even now and have a wet bandana wrapped around my head.

What with the sore legs my downswing weight transfer was a little behind, and I was skulling it something awful, hitting the thinnest tee shots you ever saw. It didn't help that Ray had decided to play the entire round in traditional attire, including tasseled spikes, argyle knee socks, baggy knickers, sweater vest, and tam-o'-shanter. He was even calling his clubs his "mashies," "niblicks" and "spoons," sort of at random. He did at least manage to call his putter his "putting cleek," though, which was historically accurate for his getup. I guess he'd been trying to learn more of the history of the game as a way of lowering his score, which definitely doesn't work.

Ray insisted on driving the cart, which was fine with me, except that he kept dipping into this cooler full of icy Amstel Lights and by about the ninth hole he was pretty saucered. On the way between the 9th green and 10th tee the scorecard blew out of the cart and he said the second half of the round would just be "drinkin' golf." That was fine with me, as I was pretty parched and hadn't thought to bring any water. Plus, I was already up $580, not bad for a couple hours' work. He handed me a cracked Amstel and we clinked.

Alcohol definitely doesn't do anything for my swing. You'd think it would smooth things out but it just throws my timing off. It did wonders for Ray, though. By about the 12th hole he was swinging like Bobby Jones, and making some beautiful shots. That lasted for about one hole, at which point he started having to close one eye and stick his tongue out every time he tried to focus on the ball.

Then things got ugly. After the 13th tee there's a big downhill slope that leads into a lake, and at the top of it he looked at me and said, "Think I can jump this?" I said no, because there was no ramp, just a slope leading down into a lake.

"I think I can jump this!" he said, laughing.

Before I knew what was happening, he had floored it and we were shooting down the hill directly at the lake. There was no physical way for us to achieve loft and fly over it. We were going too fast to jump out, and pretty soon we were going too fast to turn or hit the brakes.

Needless to say, we did not manage to jump the lake. We slammed into the water and flew over the hood at about fifty miles an hour. While we were under I looked over at him—through the murky water he was looking at me with a big smile and yelling, "Let's look for some shrimps!"

After we pushed the cart out of the water and let it dry for a while, we got it started and I drove us back to the clubhouse. Next time we rent carts, I'm getting my own.

Now for something completely stupid.

2004-08-08T17:15:00.000-07:00

Agh, I forgot about this "waiting" part, where you don't call for a while after you get her number even though that is what you want to do. Don't want to look like there's nothing in your life but her, now do you. You want to look like you already had plans to go inner-tubing Sunday, go visit a friend's movie set Sunday night, go hiking in the desert Mon/Tues...aw bullshit. I knew not to call her the day after but now it's Sunday and I'm just bumming around playing online poker and reading The Onion.

I guess it's not too much of an a-hole move to call her Tuesday evening. I think that's the logic. You want to call early enough in the week where she hasn't solidified her weekend plans, but not like 8am Monday morning, like you're standing in a glass tower with a headset mic, looking out over the Seattle skyline while putting her in your Palm. Tuesday at, say, 8pm. Okay, it's a date then! To make a contrived phone call.

What else...this morning Philippe had the hiccups so I made him a glass of sugar water, but that just made him a hyper hiccuper, so we practiced running around the yard while holding our breath (I find that can work, too). Three times while we did sprints across the lawn my shorts fell down. I'm not really a belt guy but I think it might be time. Maybe I've been eating too well lately...after winning all that money from Ray (with more on the way tomorrow) I started experimenting with all kinds of different meats. Squab, quail, Niman Ranch beef and pork, lobsters, whole baked fish, oysters, stone crab, even Kobe...yeah, looking over that grocery list I've been eating too well lately. Only, I don't feel like it. I'd better start running again, I don't want Shannon to see a big Newman coming at her next time we meet.

Wow

2004-08-07T02:25:00.000-07:00

I don't know that tonight could have gone any better. I showed up at nine, an hour after Ray's thing officially "starts," and Shannon was already there, sitting with some of her friends over in the gazebo. I made like I hadn't seen her yet, and set myself talking with Beef and Molly over beers. A little while later she came walking by and I caught her eye and we started chatting. She said she was sorry she hadn't made it last week (out of town at her grandma's birthday) and I said she hadn't missed much. I didn't really have it in me to play the big smoother I was last week and she wouldn't have been into that anyway, it was too early.

We made nice chitchat for a while but then her friend's boyfriend broke up with her over her cell phone and she had to go console, but we promised we'd talk more in a little bit.

I chilled with Cornelius and shot some pool. He's a wizard, and I didn't stand half a chance against him, but it was fun to watch the ways he chose to win. Some games he'd play only double-bank shots, some games he'd use heavy English on every shot. He was pretty glum though and didn't seem to be having much fun.

Maybe an hour later the festivities were going full-on and Ray got up onto this little stage he had set up, with a huge Phil Collins poster behind it, like two stories tall. He had one of those headset mics and yelled, "and now then for the main attraction! Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome...Phil Collins!" Shannon and I found each other in the crowd and stood side by side. “Can’t Hurry Love” fired up on the PA.

Then he pulled a curtain aside and this terrifying creature stumbled out. It had a suit on, Elephant Man type head and hands, and it acted like it had just been maced. It was slapping its own face like crazy, and pretty soon it fell on its side and tried to tear its head off. Then it started smoking and shooting sparks and erupted into flames. First I shielded Shannon from the sparks, and when they subsided I ran up onto the stage, tore down the curtain, and rolled the creature in it until the flames died.

It turned out to be one of those Honda robots, thankfully, but the party kind of died down after that. As Shannon’s friends were loading up to go, she kissed me on the cheek and wrote her number on my hand. I’m flying pretty high right now, and not entirely sure what my follow-up act should be.

Here we go again...

2004-08-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

Alright, I have no idea if Shannon's going to be there tonight. I hope so, maybe she'll have some excuse about how she didn't show up last...nah, I don't need an excuse. Guys who want excuses at this stage are way too wrapped up in their own heads. She'll be there, I'll be there, it'll be cool, it'll work out. What to wear...last week's outfit was pretty perfect but if I wear that again one of her moat-dwelling friends will probably point it out and laugh until cheese comes out of her nose. Think I'll go with this old Nixon-style golf shirt and white plaid pants with white patent loafers and a Hercules-band watch. Red Sox ballcap. Should I wear the Livestrong bracelet? Is that too trendy now? I can't tell. I shouldn't wear it. Yeah, I'll skip it. I should bring a knapsack with some conversation pieces in it...iPod, books, sketchpad...I'll put some of my rough demos on the iPod in case she wants to hear any of them. Okay, I'll hide a jimmy in the secret pocket...maybe two...some Altoids...I need to go do this, not type about it.

Round 2

2004-08-04T18:16:00.000-07:00

Ray called me up around noon and said we had a tee time in an hour, and that I should come over for lunch first. Not wanting to miss another round at Seven Pines, I wrapped up some tablature I'd been writing down and hoofed it over there.

Waterbury had made broiled salmon with puréed peas, which normally I wouldn't be so hot about but the fish was incredibly fresh. Apparently Ray's doing a lot of research about salmon right now: he had all these maps pinned to the wall, with different e-mail printouts connected by yarn to the maps. He also had a bunch of ichthyology books he'd just gotten from Amazon sitting around. Anyhow, lunch was great and then we headed to the course. He even gave me a nice set of head covers for my woods, which matched my bag.

We started on the back nine this time, hole #10 being a crazy 4-par that dog legs around a lake. Ten bucks was the wager, since he was feeling bold after some lessons he'd taken. There was a stiff breeze going, so I hit a nice 1-iron under it, up to the lay-up area. Ray has low irons in his bag, but he didn't even look at them. He went right for that oversized driver of his, took his stomach-turning swing, and managed to loft the thing pretty high. The wind caught it and carried it right to the middle of the lake. He instinctively went into his pocket for a mulligan, but then remembered there was money on the table, so we heaved off.

He took relief where his ball went in, and slapped a gross fairway wood about ten feet from the green. My second shot landed in a pot bunker behind the green, and I’m bad out of sand, so it looked like he might actually take the ten.

He set up with his pitching wedge and went into his pre-shot wiggle/coma routine. Then, to my surprise, he pulled the club back in slow motion, taking a full backswing. He did the downswing in slow motion too, and chipped the ball about two feet. He even followed through in slow motion, including a slow-motion “aaaaawwww craaaaaap!” He repeated the routine until he was on the green. I don’t know what he thinks his instructor is telling him to do, but it can’t be that.

We’ll go over his putting at some future date, but suffice it to say he’s doing that thing now where he puts both index fingers down the shaft. Anyhow, I was three over for the round, owing to the harsh wind, and up $1190. Waterbury made us salmon pasties with chips for dinner, and we watched Braveheart. He started to watch it again, but I wanted to get back to my tablature.

Seven Pines

2004-08-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

Waterbury called me today to see if I'd like to play with Ray in a twosome at Seven Pines, and I was pretty amenable to that. Seven Pines is based on courses designed by Robert Trent Jones II, and it's private, so it's about the best grass you can get onto locally. I'd never played it before. It's a links-style course, which I really enjoy (as opposed to those municipal sod farms I usually play).

Ray's one of those guys who has those graphite-shafted, perimeter-weighted, custom irons, and those grapefruit-sized titanium Big Bertha metal woods, and the high-tech putters you can only order out of like Playboy. Naturally he has one of those gi-normous white leather Ping bags that looks like it should be in low-earth orbit, and all the little plastic iron covers and the obnoxious two-tone Ping balls. My set looked pretty poor compared to his, with my simple old purple canvas bag, old Wilson Staffs (they were my dad's), and actual wooden woods. When he saw that I just had an old tube sock over my driver, he went silent for a little while, like he was worried the guys at Seven Pines wouldn't let me on the course.

I wasn't expecting him to want to bet on the round, so it was lucky I still had a little roll that Aunt Brezna had slipped into my pocket while I was visiting her. I was a little worried on the first tee, since I can't afford to lose much, and by the looks of it my annual budget was probably what he spent on lessons every week.

Anyhow, on the first tee he won the toss and set up to go (we agreed to a starting wager of five bucks). It took him maybe thirty seconds of ass wiggling, foot shuffling, and mini-knee bends to even get the driver head down to ground level. Then he stood perfectly still for what seemed like five and a half minutes. Just when I was wondering if I should go over and check his pulse, he launched into the grossest swing I have ever seen in my life. His head bobbed, his shoulders were all over the place, he didn't turn his hips, his left foot came off the ground three times...the overall effect was that of a desperate person trying to chop down a giant sequoia with one axe swing. Fortunately, the club head being the size of a shoebox, he made contact with the ball and several decades of golf club science sent it more or less straight down the fairway, a good two hundred and fifty yards.

I followed up with a slight fade on a decent two iron, and we were off. I was a little nervous heading into the green (Hole 1 at Seven Pines is a long uphill par 4), thinking that I stood to lose some big money. When he was setting up for his second shot I slyly counted the roll in my pocket and figured out what I could afford to bet each hole.

His second swing was as ugly as the first, and despite a fifty-pound divot the ball landed just a few feet off the green, about pin-high. I matched up with another long iron, about five feet from his. I didn't like how things were turning out at all.

No amount of perimeter weighting and "Sensicore" shaft technology can make up for a lack of finesse around the green, however, and Ray lacked finesse in spades. I think I watched him chip over the green three times before one beleaguered ball bounced off a bench and came to rest ten feet from the pin. My lead growing, I rolled a pitched 8-iron to within three feet and marked my ball. Seven putts later, Ray was down, for an even octuple-bogey, and I was down in par. He huffed something about "gettin' the kinks out" as we headed to the next hole and he handed me a five.

I'll spare you the abominations Ray showered over the course for the rest of the day, and observe only that the angrier he gets, the more he likes to bet. I cleared six hundred bucks off him, and a great dinner at the clubhouse besides (bacon-wrapped filets mignon with blue cheese sauce, turned potatoes, baby carrots, that sort of stuff).

Surprisingly, he wanted to play again later in the week, so I'm down. I suppose that'll give him time to take some short-game lessons.

No show

2004-07-31T02:30:00.000-07:00

Ah piss it, Shannon didn't even show. I tried to say hi to some of her dumpy friends but they gave me the lumpy cold shoulder. I hung out for hours, breaking my neck to see if she was about to come through the gate, but no dice. About the only good thing that happened to me tonight was that Ray's new butler Waterbury complimented my trousers and made me a drink called like Pimm's Cup or something. Not Winner's Cup, something sweeter.

Now it's gonna be a crappy week while I wait and see if Shannon will be there next Friday. Yeah, she can't live her whole life around this dumb party, maybe I shouldn't either. I'm hesitant to ask Ray to put some feelers out, though. The last thing I want is Ray intervening in my romantic life. Hell, I'd rather talk about it with Waterbury. At least he makes eye contact.

Balancing Act

2004-07-30T14:00:00.000-07:00

Maybe typing it all out will help me decide...I want to wear something that's slick but not overly nice, so Shannon doesn't think I'm trying too hard. A more casual outfit might help me relax, too. I think I'm going to wear that Evian bicycle jersey with my new Kangol, and some full-cut tweed trousers with a tall cuff, and these really simple, waxy Doc Marten oxfords. That's a nice mix of formal and casual. Maybe I'll even wear that heavy silver bead necklace. I'm getting kind of anxious about what we're going to say...last time I played it real suave and she was into it, but I can't keep acting that way...how do you bridge the gap between your "player" self and the you that people could live with every day? Agh. I hate this part. What am I going to do for the next four hours?

Shannon

2004-07-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

Last week I said something about there being a new and unusual girl at Ray's lately. She was there again last Friday, and since I had set myself up as the bartender, we finally crossed paths.

Ray had told me that he was doing a "NASCAR" themed party, which I'm not into and I'm sure no women are, so I hid some bottles of gin and tonic in my backpack before I went over, thinking that if she was there I could hint at a secret stash and maybe make a connection.

I got that electric feeling in my stomach when she walked into the yard with her friends, and tried to keep it on cool. Most of them were happy to take a red cup of Natural Lite or a margarita, but when she got to the counter I could tell that she wasn't really into the selection. I leaned forward as though to tell her a secret, right close to her ear so I could smell her hair, and said "if you'd like something else, meet me in the kitchen."

She smiled, and I got that rush you get when you're decisive around women. I played it cool as I filled a few surplus cups with Natty Lite and margaritas, then I wiped my hands on the towel, looked around, and strode into the house with my pack.

She wasn't there yet so I got out some nice glasses and ice, and I trimmed some limes. I started making the drinks in case she was watching me through a window, and sure enough she came in as soon as I'd finished mixing them.

I offered her one of the tumblers and we toasted. "I'm Téodor," I said. She said her name was Shannon. I apologized for the corny bar situation but she said she had come to expect it from Ray's parties, which we laughed about.

One of her friends got really sick a little way into our chat, and she had to go help, but I got the sense that she'll be back. She gave me a really apologetic smile and looked over her shoulder at me as she left. I finished her drink and remembered the smell of her shampoo. I had mix tape pangs and I can't wait for tomorrow night.

Complicated Couture

2004-07-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

When I was shopping with Aunt Brezna I got all these "new fashion" belts that are in right now, flimsy colorful nylon things with D-ring belt buckle systems like you get on army surplus gear. I guess I don't know how to fasten them right because tonight when I was prepping some couscous ingredients for dinner my pants fell right down around my ankles. Fortunately no one saw, so I hiked them back up and now I have a safety pin keeping the belt closed just in case.

Nuts, late for Ray's

2004-07-23T21:10:00.000-07:00

Ray busted Lyle for cutting my hair at his new taco stand yesterday, but he did manage to pitch tonight's party pretty well before he left. He has his usual stable of mall hoochies scheduled to show up around 11, and normally that's no big draw for me because I don't get off on talking about where I like to buy pants, but the last few times there's been this one friend of theirs along who's really intriguing. I haven't actually talked to her, but I know we've seen each other. It's that thing where you see a girl and you immediately fall for her, just by seeing her face. You start thinking about Thanksgiving at her parent's place. You know what I'm saying, don't act like you don't. You think I'm corny, look at yourself.

Anyhow, all I'm saying is I hope she's there. I'll ask Ray to break the ice, he's really good at that and he's absolutely never into the same kind of women I am. He'll chat her up, introduce me, and then disappear while we commiserate about what a doofus he is.

Visit to Aunt Brezna's

2004-07-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

I forgot I had planned this trip since I was so caught up in that risotto thing...anyhow, I've been at my Aunt Brezna's for the last week, up in the city. I try to spend a week with her every year, enjoying the good life (her late husband, Uncle Artie, was J. Artemis Call, heir to the Call Salt empire). She's not some lonely old spinster pining away in a SoMa single-occupancy hotel; she's got a big house in Seacliff and keeps a pretty active calendar. She's on the board of the opera hall and a few museums, etc. I think all the other old-money crows like her style -- she's a no-bullshit Slav with a thick accent, but what she does say usually cuts right to the quick of things. Plus she's really funny. I remember one time she took me to Quadrillon, this coat-and-tie place on Nob Hill, and we were having dinner with some bigshot city attorney and his wife. Aunt B took a grape off the table centerpiece and stuck it in the mouth of the fox fur the woman was wearing. "He has his mouth open all night this fox, and no-one feeds him!" she laughed. I had to bite on a lambchop to keep from busting a gut.

Anyhow, she loves to dote on me (she never had any kids of her own) and we always go shopping to set me up for the year. We'll hit Nordstrom, Neiman-Marcus, Wilkes Bashford (now that I'm older) along with a nice set of old-school tailors and shoemakers she's known forever. This time we did pretty well but when I got home I realized that almost all of the casual stuff I got was EXACTLY like the stuff Jamie Oliver's wearing in that new cookbook of his! You know, the one I wrote about a couple weeks ago, which is more Jamie's modeling portfolio than it is a set of recipes. I guess it had a pretty big influence on me. Thin white Adidas tennis shoes, dyed and sanded jeans, camouflage turtleneck with an orange safety vest, Simon & Garfunkel shoes, babbley Japanese tshirts...etc.

So I just pulled in and am catching up on email and all of that. I guess I could start doing that risotto thing to Chris again but I'm kind of over it.

That jackass.

2004-07-11T22:47:00.000-07:00

So Chris got up and left the house before I could even turn on the stove today. Since when does he get up at seven in the morning? Oh well, tomorrow's Monday so I'll be able to put my plan into action. Maybe I'll sandbag him with a rum and coke so he stays up kind of late tonight. I don't want this tuna to go bad, it cost ten bucks.

Iron Chef Risotto

2004-07-11T02:40:00.000-07:00

I don't have too much going on tomorrow so I'm going to put Chris on a Total Risotto Beat-Down, putting a finale on this risotto revenge and completely breaking him. The stuff does by its very nature take a long time to cook, and it's taken a lot out of my free time lately, but it's been worth it. I've come up with a lot of new recipes, plus I've got Chris pretty sorry that he made that crack in the first place I'm sure.

Tomorrow's risotto schedule:

9AM: Wake him up with a creamy Risotto Florentine, a spinach/risotto base topped with a poached egg and Bernaise (my upgrade over the basic white/cheese sauce)

11AM: Risotto Interlude. At 11AM he'll be doodling around in his robe and coffee, looking out various windows of the house to see which plants he should have watered earlier in the week. I'll surprise him with a tuna/toasted sesame seed tartare quenelle on a large spoonfull of pancetta risotto. The richness of the egg yolk in the tartare will marry it with the crispy chunks of pancetta.

1PM: I present him with a Risotto Monsieur, a risotto with minced ham, concassé tomato, black pepper, and a sprinkling of Gruyere, broiled until the Gruyere is toasted. Champagne.

4PM: Just when he thinks it might be over, I walk in with a simple artichoke risotto, served in the heel of the Ferragamos he just paid $52.50 to have repaired. In the heel of the matching shoe: a Ziploc bag with an ounce of Sambuca in it. I spray him with seltzer water and let him draw his own conclusions.

6PM: Dinner: a photo of him in the shower, among a bed of mixed greens. It looks like he's crying/singing.

'Mad World"

2004-07-08T22:57:00.000-07:00

There's this new cover of Tears For Fears' old song "Mad World" going around now, sung by some trembly pussy with about 1/5 the arrangement and recording talent of the original band. He's probably half my age and sitting in his bedroom crying to pictures of Clara Bow. Anyhow, I thought I'd rant about the lame phenomenon of dudes whose greatest and only hits are cover songs, but then I decided that if everybody else can cash in on it then I can too. I'm going to buy a nice mic, hit myself in the nuts with a hammer, and do a really cookin' version of Rock the Casbah.

Jamie Oliver

2004-07-07T15:06:00.000-07:00

So Chris went to this Jamie Oliver book signing at Williams-Sonoma a few months ago and picked up his latest vanity project. 330 pages, 12 recipes, 95 spreads of Jamie looking young and British and ultra-hip in front of spray-painted walls and old VW buses. I exaggerate, but come on now fella. Some really neat recipes in here, and a really nice vinaigrette ratio that I love. Maybe for dinner I'll make the sauteéd scallops wrapped in pancetta, I know Chris can never get enough of either. That'll be nice along with some provencal-style risotto; he complains that I always "fall back on risotto" but he never complains when it's on his plate. Dork.

INXS

2004-07-06T00:51:00.000-07:00

I wonder what INXS are up to these days. The main guy Michael Hutchence choked his own chicken in a rock'n'roll closet like seven years ago and when your frontman goes, the rest of the band is essentially hosed. Same way with DK, Echo & The Bunnymen, etc. Imagine The Smiths carrying on with a new guy instead of Morrissey. The singer is the identity of the band and there's no use kidding yourself otherwise. I guess it's because the voice is far and away the most distinctive instrument in rock music, what with most guitars/synths/drums sounding essentially the same to the layman.

Anyhow, INXS' Listen Like Thieves was the first tape I ever bought with allowance money, and I still have it out in the shed. I can remember the smell of it, the way I sat and stared at the cool handwriting all the lyrics were written up in, marveling at how three of the guys in the band were apparently brothers (Andrew Farriss, Jon Farriss, Tim Farris), all of that.

My very *first* tape was Tears For Fears' Songs From The Big Chair, but mom bought that for me. I can name all the guys in that band too, but I'm not going to do that here, except for Manny Elias just to prove a fine point.

Alright, now I'm just talking about old tapes. I'll go.

Dinner tonight...

2004-07-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

Should be interesting. We have a bunch of fresh fava beans from the farmer's market, avocados, heirloom tomatoes, some basil oil that Chris picked up in Paris, white anchovies and some fresh ciabatta. I'll probably make us a nice bruschetta using all that plus some of the gorgonzola we have as a base spread. Chris'll hem and haw about the anchovies but they're pretty mild so I'm sure he'll end up liking them. He's been on this big kick about trying all sorts of food ever since he got into Anthony Bourdain. The guy's base tastes are pretty ghetto (he could eat Ore-Ida shredded hash browns three meals a day) but you've got to give him credit for trying. His big breakthrough lately was that he would eat the tentacles part of the calamari, not just the rings. He's all, "more surface area for the batter!" Great, Chris. This from a guy who owns $23,000 worth of cookbooks and enough copper cookware to re-stock the French Laundry. He even has this 12" Henckels that he uses like once a year to cut sweet potatoes. Whatever, I'm rambling.

Bizarre Love Triangle

2004-07-02T03:52:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I didn't go to bed when I said I would and I doubt I'm going to be much help at Philippe's campaign meeting tomorrow, since I'm not going to show up. I've just told myself that it doesn't matter since the meeting isn't going to happen unless I go and remind him about it. Whoo hoo.

I found a pretty good tablature site that has all kinds of Substance-era stuff, including Bizarre Love Triangle (New Order, if you don't know it you should start with their 1987 album, it's a great jumping off point for the stuff that comes both before and after). I was picking away at that for a long time until I realized how late it was. Anyhow, I think Peter Hook gets way less credit than he should as an innovative bassist.

Oh, crap. Philippe's making some horrible noises in his room. I bet he ate too much again. Time to grab the Nature's Miracle and a trowel. Straight face, Téodor. Big brother.

These blog templates are corny

2004-07-02T00:55:00.000-07:00

Wow, the first thing I think I'm going to do when I have some time is make a less dorky template for this thing.

Anyhow, for breakfast today: a boneless chicken thigh that I had cooked extra last night, and a Hansen's Black Cherry soda. I put the chicken thigh on some nice Olive bread from Bay Bread (farmer's market) and sprinkled it with some kosher salt and extra virgin olive oil/arugula.

Alright, I've got to go. I have a meeting with Philippe tomorrow morning to try to make some sense of his campaign. This whole thing is a total mess, but Ray's putting up a ton of money so I have this weird sense that I have to take it seriously. We're even going on a retreat in a couple weeks.