Now for something completely stupid.

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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"

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

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

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...

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

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

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.