The New England Society for Tea Fetishism

We ordered so much sushi at Gourmet Garden last night that they brought it to the table on a wooden boat. With a little detachable rudder. The sushi was so much better than last week when I went with Tracy after she was kind enough to drive me to my yearly two-minute torture session. We had the usual suspects, California and Philadelphia rolls (and this time the salmon in the Philly roll was smoked, Tracy) Brian's sashimi that he always gets, tuna and scallion roll, and a shrimp tempura roll. Two new things - some kind of deep fried sushi that was very tasty and another thing that was possibly an abomination unto god. I'm used to sushi that I can shove in my mouth and eat all at once (like the last piece of Philly roll in the fridge that will be in my belly come lunchtime) but this thing was at least two inches across and stuffed with rice, two types of unidentifiable pickled vegetable, spinach, egg, carrot, cucumber, avocado, and a piece of crabstick rolled in a substance I can only describe as pink margarita sugar. I could not get past the sugar. Just . . . no. But we did have a delicious (and incredibly fattening, I'm sure) avocado salad made with some kind of seasoned mayonnaise, crabstick, big old chunks of avocado, and topped with a dollop of flying fish roe. And I dropped some of it on myself while eating it with the chopsticks. I always get performance anxiety when the waitstaff is watching me.

Labels: I Like Food

I always have like, ten things to blog about and I forget at least half of them the moment I sit down at the computer. So, what's new and exciting? Let me think.

My mother had last week off (I think she has four or five more weeks of vacation left, and she never takes it all) so there was some shopping and a trip to an Indian restaurant in Beverly and a whale watch out of Newburyport, which is a trip I will have to take with Tracy before the summer is over. Except we'll choose a day to go that isn't stinking hot. (Global warming? What global warming?) After two hours of what we thought was going to end up as a slightly expensive but pleasantly breezy cruise into the Gulf of Maine we ran into a veritable plethora of cetaceans, plethora in this instance meaning five. There were two humpbacks that could be identified by their tail pattens, Satchela (pronounced 'satchel-la') and Flask. The tourguide kept mentioning the fact that Satchela was pooping by pointing out some brown cloud that I couldn't see. Frankly, I think she was making it up because she can. There was also a mother humpback and her calf that came so close to the boat I could see their whole bodies underwater, and a fin whale. Or was it a minke whale? Anyway, six hours at sea and on top of the great photos I also got a rockin' suntan.

Sunday night I got an email from Mare saying that she was going to be in Salem the next day with a few of her friends and would I like to meet her for lunch. After a brief struggle with my anti-spontineity gene, I said sure, just tell me when and I'll hop in a cab. So we ended up at the Salem Beer Works because it's the only place that sprang to mind since I only ever eat out in Salem for breakfast. It was so surreal, like, "Holy crap, I'm sitting across from Mare and eating a spinach salad." I felt like I was back at Hood. It was so good to see her and I'm so glad I picked a restaurant that didn't suck. Her friends were very cool as well. After lunch, since it was once again stinking hot, we went to the Peabody Museum and walked around in the air conditioning and got an eyeful of lots of old china, many an interesting maritime artifact, and some freaky Polynesian war weapons. As I said several times that day, you do what you can with what you have, and what they had was heavy wooden clubs studded with great white shark teeth. After the museum, Mare & Co. had to get going, but I stayed downtown a while longer since I hadn't walked around there in quite some time. I took a stroll through the Charter Street Cemetery, went into a cute new shop on Derby Street called "New Civiliteas" and generally sweated like a construction worker until I decided it was time to call it a day.

And then on Wednesday I had my yearly trip to my girl-parts doctor. This section probably won't make it onto myspace since there are several young men on there that I really don't want to share this with. And, once again, it was so much worse than I remembered it. As an added bonus, there was a very nice female med student in the room who got to watch me tense up and yell like a sissy. Really, I don't consider myself all that tough, but after the cramps and stomach ailments that I've suffered through for a lot of my life, I like to think that my pain threshold is at least a little bit above average. But holy shit that pelvic exam hurts! Thank god it only takes about thirty seconds because that's all I'm willing to do to get my prescription renewed. I realize that for most women, it is unpleasant, but not that big a deal. But for some reason, for me it's like being stabbed. Seriously.

Anyway, I finally sent some stuff off and got some feedback from Roberson so I should be well on my way to getting my thesis done. It's so lovely to have someone tell you that the piece you think you've beaten to within an inch of its life is actually quite good, and please more like this, if you would be so kind.

Labels: Out and About

I am in so much trouble. I just discovered YouTube.com. They have episodes of The State. Guess what I did until one o'clock this morning? They have "Toothbrush" and "I'ma Da Pope-ah" and "Doug" and "Superfriends" and "Eating Muppets" and "The International Sign for Choking" and a boatload of stuff I completely forgot about. Like the "Monkey Torture" interview-- "Get yourself a monkey and torture the hhhell out of it." MTV needs to put that shit out on dvd. Right now I'm listening to a live performance of Radiohead's "How to Disappear Completely." Christ, I might have to add a YouTube link to the bliggety blog.

Have you seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang? Awful fucking title (or completely fucking brilliant?), but a great take on the buddy cop movie and film noir. And my favorite film narration evar. Yes, I said it. Evar. Although it's hard to go wrong with a nice Morgan Freeman narration. Another film to recommend, the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs. (This is the part where I confess to having a crush on Tony Leung Chiu-wai, but only when he sports the goatee) It was on one of the Starz channels a lot last year, but with a hideous English dub that made it unbearable to watch. I got the dvd with English subtitles for Christmas and I finally watched it yesterday. It's about a triad gang member who infiltrates the police force and a cop who's been undercover in the gang for three years, both of them trying to find each other out. Scorcese's doing a remake with Matt Damon and Leonardo Dicaprio called The Departed.

Tracy and I finally made it to the Weathervane where we got sandwiches and clam chowder and generally just ate too damn much. A lady behind us made a complaint about all the "little rubbery bits" in her lobster roll. Also, I don't think she knew it was going to come with mayo. Methinks she may have been from out of state. Like, Wisconsin. On the way home, as I sucked on a mint and related the story of how NYC radio show hosts Star and Buckwild got fired, I nearly choked to death. It went something like, "They got fired because . . . . . . hhhhrraraaaaaghghghghhghhhhhh." And it was incredibly funny, mostly because Tracy had no idea that my trachea had been invaded by a starbrite and just kinda thought it was part of the story.

Hey Amy, I spent a good portion of this afternoon messing around with the monotypes. It took me a while but I found the right amount of ink to roll on the glass (correct answer: very little) and got to it. I think I might try out a multi-media thing since I have all these unused brushes and tubes of watercolors. And a very nice fountain-style pen. I missed having ink under my nails.

Labels: Amatuer Film Critic Corner, Out and About With Tracy