Check this out. Remarkably well-written, introspective, with a strong command of language and story-telling. This is why the Internet is so important to improving the quality of the written word.
http://www.mystainedteeth.com
Thanks.
Happy 2007 everyone. I hope it’s the best year for you yet.
I found a lot of happiness in 2007 - met a wonderful girl, worked a lot. Lost triathlon along the way, still looking for a way to get it back.
I also went to Beijing and Hong Kong for work. The cities were definitely night and day from each other. Beijing was a concrete jungle with thousands of years of history. Hong Kong looks like "Blade Runner" And beginning with lost luggage, the craziness kept continuing.
Here are some notes I took while in Asia…
Chinese is a difficult language for Westerners to learn - complicated to pronounce the specific ethnic varieties of the language. This is apparently the same for the Chinese, who have remarkable trouble communicating with each other. After waiting through several discussions only to be met with a confused shoulder shrug - I am convinced the language was made up yesterday.
The crew was one of - if not the absolute - worst that any of us have ever dealt with. Mitch was our production coordinator and interpreter, he apparently had mastered enough of the language to get everyone in the same room. The gaffer and grips were essentially window dressing, as asking them to raise or lower a light became a group experience. At one point they put a hanging silk in front of the camera. Gary commented that it was almost as if they were "appointed" jobs by some authority. And on the day jobs were handed out, the official said - okay, "you’re a gaffer" and you, yeah you, you are an HD camera assistant."
The China of bicycle-riding has diminished since Nixon’s trip. There are still bike lanes and morning commuters, but cars rule the road. Similar to Atlanta in the early 1990s, freeways are being built as infrastructure for the Olympics. Our driver, Henry, said there are 1/4 of the amount of cars in China as in the US. Strangely enough, there are over 100,000 car-related deaths a year. Seriously. The cars drive like they are in a game to see who can kill more people. And losing the game means you will have to be hit by a car.
The taxi drivers also don’t know the city very well. The distance between the Ritz Carlton Beijing and the office we were shooting at is about 10 blocks. And we had a map. In Chinese. With pictures. Leaving the office at the end of the day, the doorman called us over a cab. We got in and said Ritz Carlton. Nothing. We showed him the map. Nothing. We asked the doorman back over. He invited two of his friends. 3 minutes went by as they discussed internally. Again, the language was made-up yesterday. Finally, our audio man, directed the cab to the hotel. He had already done this five other times on our trip. Most recently, from Tianamen Square, which has a Starbucks.
–end–
1:00 p.m. today marked the anniversary of my birth.
Here are a couple of tidbits that are excellent self-descriptors:
- I was born 40 years too late or 400 years to early
- My exceptional childhood was instrumental in offsetting my disappointing adult life
- I will never be as cute as I was at 6 months of age (see below)
Last night I went on a double date to a fondue restaurant called Geja’s. For some reason, in my many years in Chicago, this establishment had escaped my eating itinerary. That’s especially curious since it has a number of elements that I find particularly interesting: hot oil, skewers, meats, chocolate, onions and an unhelpful waistaff.
Our waiter was a cross between Danny DeVito and Tatu from Fantasy Island. He also sounded just like - or was doing an impression of - Truman Capote. I do have to give him credit, he was able to put meat or veggies onto a skewer, put it in the oil, stir it and remove cooked food.
We were not able to come nearly as close.
At one point, while fishing for a potato in a vat of boiling oil, and simultaneously trying to remember if the cooking time for chicken was 2 or 3 minutes (it was 3) … I realized that the table was too high and I was getting terrible leverage. I stood up and stirred.
We were all having tremendous difficulty. I looked around the restaurant and no one else was even flinching. Apparently that had either been instructed by someone who was willing to divulge a dipping secret OR we were monkeys in an experiment. I hope we were/are monkeys.
After ruining several skewers and eating some undercooked chicken, dessert came.
I LOVE DESSERT.
The chocolate fondue had a layer of alcohol on top that was lit on fire. We were given marshmellos to cook over the fire. Hearing that, I immediately interpreted the instructions as to submerge the marshmello in the boiling chocolate. This became a problem immediately as the marshmello caught on fire, and trying to blow it out just blew fire onto the three other people trying to work around my mess.
Here’s what doesn’t taste good during dessert: chocolate covered pineapple; chocolate covered honey dew melon.
Finally, as oil seeped out of our pores and I lamented requesting additional pieces of pound cake, I flagged down the "genius of the waiters." He looked like Brian Bosworth, for those of your who remember the Bos’.
I asked him if there were any stories of casualties or food mishaps and he got an idiot’s grin and started nodding his head "yes."
He told two:
1. Patrons sometimes think that the boiling oil is too hot, so they pour ice water into it. If you’ve ever been in a chemistry lab OR a kitchen before, you know that oil and water don’t mix. Riding a temperature gradient of boiling -> ice is even more bad news. He said that when you pour ice water into boiling oil, the oil shoots up and sometimes touches the fringes of the curtains they have around the booths.
These fringes are highly flammable and tend to send a booth up in flames very quickly.
2. He then said that a man brought his fiancee to Geja’s to break up with her. Why someone would choose such a romantic restaurant to end a relationship deserves what happened next. The fiancee took a pot of boiling oil and thew it in the dude’s face. THREW IT IN HIS FACE.
To give you an idea, water boils at 100°C/212°F - oil boils at 175°C /345°F.
And the interesting thing about oil vs. water, is that by nature, our organic skin is mainly hydrophobic, i.e. we don’t dissolve in water. Water doesn’t seep into our pores and puff us up every time we jump in a pool.
There’s an old addadge, "like dissolves like" - inorganic (water) solvents dissolve inorganic solutes. Organic solvents dissolve organic solutes.
This is why water and oil are immiscible.
However, our skin is organic, as is oil. This meant that at the moment the gentleman decided to break of his engagement (during dinner) the delicate fabric keeping his muscles and bones (I know, I know fascia) and tendos and organs covered was sitting at the table with something that could melt it right off.
You probably know the rest. But here’s how it went down - she threw the oil in his face. It took him a 1/1000 of a second to close his eyes, and 1 second for his eyelids to burn like Napoleon’s cock did when he had syphillis.
Then his face started to melt.
For a moment, I bet she wondered if she wasn’t better of being single. Sure, planning the wedding had been fun, but there was something about her independence that was withering away. And as the cops were called she couldn’t help but realize that this was a blessing in disguise.
Speaking of blessings, G-d bless the patron who tried to help the screaming single guy by throwing water in his face, igniting the curtains above their heads. Did anyone eating a plate of beef, chicken and shellfish ever realize that they had walked into a veritable kill zone. Would that stop them from putting grapes into cheese during the appetizer portion? Probably not.
All in all, the man had third degree burns over his face and neck and his ex-finacee had a room full of engagement-shower gifts that she probably got to keep.
I wonder if anyone gave them a fondue pot.
–end–
That was an exaggeration, it’s actually 9,700 feet. This is my final evening of my Colorado retreat. Everyone in the house is asleep (or close) and the already quiet landscape sinks even farther down the aural hill.
I always spend my last day on the mountain by myself. It gives me a chance to work on technique and try new things without being under a microscope. It always offers some reflexive time. There aren’t a lot of distractions here. The phone doesn’t ring off the hook, email use is at a minimum. There’s a TV, but I’m generally too exhausted from being on the mountain to watch anything without crashing on the couch.
Here’s how today went:
Breckenridge - the system of mountains, not the city - is made up of several peaks, with peaks 7-10 holding the most skiiable real estate. I took a couple of lifts up and made my way to one (ironically) called Lift 6. This lift takes you up to powder bowls and some black diamond and double black diamond runs.
Let me interject myself a moment: I am an intermediate skiier. Somehow my family never skiied when I was younger, so I took up the sport two seasons ago. This is my third year skiing, and my 10th (?) day overall. A combination of basic-athleticism and luck allowed me to progress to intermediate terrain - with some forray into single black diamond runs.
For some reaon, I decided to go up this lift. And it was windy. And cold. The ground below me looked like France during World War II. At the top of most peaks there is something called a "warming hut." There was nothing. There wasn’t even someone manning the lift exit.
One of my dream jobs is to be a newspaper headline writer. Such opportunity for wordplay and irony. Add to that the person who names ski runs. As I found myself standing over runs with names like Vertigo, Psychopath and the like. If there was one named "Fuck Justin" I would have called my Mother.
The end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006 has had some of the sharpest and unexpected and wonderful turns I’ve experienced. Over the past week a couple of really shitty points have entered the page - but the pluses still outnumber the minuses in my life.
I made a bet with myself. If I made it down in one piece - alive in one piece - I would try to make sure the following were on my Spring schedule:
- Learn to enjoy broccoli
- Visit my parents in Texas
- Be nicer to dudes
- Knit hats for friends
- Buy wedding gifts for overdue weddings - seriously, though, you have a year to gift
- Take flying lessons this year
The adrenaline started to pump through my veins. I contemplated my morality and imminent injury. A ski school instructor led his class just past me and remarked (in my direction), "this probably isn’t a good idea, let’s take the easy way down." Fuck it, you want to tell me something asshole, do it somewhere other than on the corner of Agressive Rd. and Passive Ave.
I took a look at the clear blue sky and adjusted my grip on my ski poles. My mouth pushed out a few words of encouragement - although they were mumbly. And then I pushed off the edge.
It wasn’t pretty.
I have always described this sport as feeling so alive and so close to death at the same time. This was definitely both at once. The scenery whipped past me as the terrain shifted from icy to powder, to smooth to moguls. As I hopped over an embankment I looked up at Lift 6, there was no one on it. Are you fucking kidding me?
The mental checklist of how to ski cycled through my mind’s eye: stay standing, lean forward, keep torso downhill, use turns to slow velocity, blah blah blah. My mind’s voice took over, in the form of a very charming scream. I crested small cliffs, just large enough to make it look like there was a steep drop-off coming. There was. Don’t ever accuse a cliff of not coming through.
No one will ever find me - that became my mantra. I wasn’t worried about death, far from it. I was worried about the pose I would be crunched into. Would it be flattering? Would people think that I had skiied heroically or that the fetal position I had landed in was immasculine?
Why was there no one else on this part of the mountain? It’s like when you land in Cleveland and it feels like all the cool people just left the city. It was Friday of President’s Day Weekend, I should have been swimming in skiiers.
Vertigo descended into "Lower" Psychopath and things started looking closer to Kansas than they had in what felt like lifetime. I landed at a lift that looked familiar and started seeing familiar faces - or at least the familiar shapes of other skiiers. From there I shot down 4 O’Clock Run which ends up right on the street at the base of the mountain. Not even the parking lot, the actual street. My ride was there, so I hopped in.
In fourteen hours I will get on a shuttle that will take me from Frisco to Denver International Airport and back to Chicago. That’s it 2006 Colorado retreat.
Now who wants to take flying lessons with me?
This sequence began yesterday when I sent out the below URL to a video called "Brokeback to the Future." It’s very well done, funny and the like. I am also considering it the end of Brokeback Mountain jokes. We’ve heard them all, there are no new jokes, just like there are no new ideas left in the world.
URL:
http://www.youtube.com/?v=zfODSPIYwpQ
My good friend AMR sent back this response, which reminded me of something long forgotten …
AMR wrote:
>For some reason, one of my kitty’s freaks out whenever she hears the
brokeback theme (or any >country music for that matter.) We noticed it
while watching the Golden Globes. Every time the >theme from Brokeback
played she would leap off the couch and stand in the middle of the
carpet >on her back legs with front paws up – Mircat style. Very odd.
Hilarious too.
That passage reminded me of an ex-girlfriend’s dog. Great dog; big black lovable wonderful dog. However, as goes with all domesticated - we are only able to surpress their wild instincts, not eliminate them. This doggie was very friends to women AND men - sometimes dogs with female owners do badly around men.
UNLESS you were a minority. Male or female. So in the discriminations cortex of this doggie’s brain was a programmed hatred of people of color. The tint on their skin could be the same as an overbaked winter tanner - it didn’t matter. Delivery persons, cleaning staff, anyone who was not born in the U.S. was at risk.
Some dogs are xenophobes. Some cats are hung up on sexual orientation.
What are you hung up on?
This morning I registered for the 2006 Chicago Triathlon. It will be my fifth year in the race. It will be my fourth as an International/Olympic distance competitor.
If you have a chance this week/weekend, come and have a drink or dessert with me. Because after Sunday evening (Superbowl Sunday, BBQ central), if it doesn’t involve a whole grain or source of protein, it’s not a friend. There will be exceptions, but they will be infrequent.
More importantly, if you want to train - through February I’ll be focusing on strength training (lifting) and core strength, with some cardio to round out the mix.
But as always, I’d rather train with someone than without.
Any takers?
As most of you know, I love to eat. LOVE TO EAT. And in addition to fanciful, delicate foods, I love my trash food. The fried chicken, the french fries, anything that is ordered and prepared in under ten minutes falls into this category.
I saw "Super-size Me" and skimmed "Fast Food Nation," they just made me want to eat fast food more.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of dining at McDonalds. I’ve ordered the same thing from them for as long as I can remember: Big Mac (ketchup only, no cheese) and large fries. I then put the fries next to the patty and close up the bun. It’s delicious, and apparentely an East Coast way of eating a burger - although everyone from the East Coat who has seen me do this looks at me like I’ve just tried to sell them a TV.
After paying just over $5 for this feast (including a Diet Coke!) I ascended the steps to my apartment and assumed a familiar position over my coffee table. From then to clean-up, the process lasts less than fifteen minutes.
Re: the digustingness of this kind of eating - Ali Faranakian once said that if someone tried to offer you a burger like a Big Mac at a barbecue you’d punch him in the mouth. Yet we fork over cash willingly for food that is barely classified as such - and drink sodas that cost more than gasoline (for now, at least).
I have eaten at the elite spots around the country. I have tried holes-in-the-wall that deserevd Michelin stars. A couple of weeks ago at Moto, was one of the most spectacular meals I’ve eaten - and it cost more I would mention without a lot of prodding (and quid pro quo).
So on this 26th day of January, here are words to express how I feel about such a wonderful eating experience. Please enjoy this three haiku series.
PART 1: ANTICIPATION OF TASTE
Shoes on both feet now
Approach Hispanic sentry
Her eyes wreak of fear
PART 2: To Be Born
We have transacted
Consumed, we die together
Bag in hand, I run
PART 3: When Fires Ignite
Upstairs my sweet go
Approach lips and beg for quick
Start means end too soon
—end—
A friend of mine from high school is a Black Hawk helicpoter pilot with the U.S. Army in Iraq. Earlier today there was a Black Hawk crash and my mind immediately goes to my friend.
I sent him a note and a few hours later I got one back from him that said he was a-ok.
Crazy stuff.
J
Late Sunday evening I found myself standing on the Blue Line train, hurtling toward downtown Chicago. The tail-end of an eleven day spree, culminating in five days in New York, dovetailing into a New Year’s eve celebration.
It’s good to be home.
New York was a nice mix of complete relaxation and bacchanal destruction. My first night was spent with my feet up on an ottoman watching something on television. I say "something" because my eyes closed almost as fast as they opened the next morning when a rather aged pug named Bosco was licking my hand.
I spent the first day - as I spend most first days in New York - shopping. I went straight downtown, Soho/Noho/Tribeca. There’s something about the people in that part of the city that make want to shop. Not because I particularly relate to them, but because it becomes a contest of who can wear the most conceptual piece of clothing. It’s usually a 19-year-old Asian gal, but who’s to say that one shouldn’t even play the game.
That evening we lit Channukah candles and I took my g-dcousin (roll with it) out for her birthday. We are both pretty adventurous eaters, so we tried this vegetarian place that I had been a few months prior. It’s called Gobo - www.goborestauarant.com and it’s really delicious. I’m a big fan of vegetarian/vegan eating (maybe after a few years of dating vegetarians) because the food is so focused on taste. I love a big steak - but there’s something about the inventiveness in flavor that really gets me going. Check out the website for some examples … and I recommend the avocado tartare.
After that, I crashed out.
The next few days followed the "Houston Cycle" - wake up late-morning, visit someone for lunch. Take a little nap. Have a way-too-big dinner, then go crazy.
Thursday evening I went with Jared (he’s a Friendster) and his girlfriend to see a band called "Assembly of Dust" that his sister manages. Their genre is "jam band" which I was a little leery of at first, but these guys are incredible musicians. And they packed Irving Plaza. It was pretty cool to watch them from the VIP balcony and everyone was dancing, and singing along.
Then I met my cousin Bebe - who is amazing - in the East Village. If I’m not finding the kind of people I like in Soho, it’s because they are all in the East Village. Maybe I’m an old rock-and-roll guy at heart, or was a speakeasy owner in a past life, because I love the scene. It’s often a combination of underground (and luxurious) or grungy. Either way, the people there are my kind of crowd.
One of my favorite text messages from Bebe that night was: Come meet us at Nublu on Avenue C. No sign, just blue light out front."
– more to come –
