IRON CHEF - CLEVELAND?

The dining room at Michael Symon’s Lolita.

Most people don’t automatically think of Cleveland as Iron Chef territory. New York? Los Angeles? Chicago? San Francisco? Las Vegas? Those are restaurant towns.

But Iron Chef Michael Symon is from Cleveland, which means that, as far as food is concerned, this city is anything but a Mistake on the Lake.

When the Missus and I were there in late June, we had an evening free to sample the Local Provender... giving us a chance to check out Michael Symon’s offerings.

There are, in fact, two to choose from. Lola, his old restaurant in the Tremont district, outgrew its original home and moved to plusher digs downtown, in the process becoming a bit snazzier and more expensive. We opted to try Lolita, the restaurant that superseded Lola at its original location on Literary Road.

Holy crap, was it good.

Lolita has a definite Neighborhood Place vibe. There’s a bar that seats only about six, and spots are at a premium - it’s where you want to be when happy hour starts at five o’clock. But we were not there to drink - well, okay, one Martini for me and a Campari and soda for the Missus - but to see whether all of this Iron Chef hype was legitimate or bullshitimate.

I had a perfectly grilled sliced hanger steak with skordalia, chickpeas, and pickled chilies. For a side, there was no resisting the flash-fried Brussels sprouts with anchovies and capers. Meanwhile, the Missus had the daily fish special... and it was fishtastic. Even the coffee was way better than average... which is high praise for restaurant coffee.

One of the things that impressed us the most was the friendly, helpful staff. Our waiter was knowledgeable, able to describe not only what was in the various dishes but also how the various flavors would work together. None of the snooty, snotty, “This place is owned by a Media Darling and therefore you are beneath us” attitude you might think to expect. It seems that Symon runs his places very much in the family business style: Turnover is low, and most of the staff has been around for many years.

Now - given how much we enjoyed this meal - I suppose we’ll have to find an excuse to come back to Cleveland so we can check out Lolita’s big sister Lola.

WEASEL RIPPAGE

My wine-drinking buddy Pat is a true Renaissance Man, being not only a serious oenophile (he’s the immediate past president of the Sommelier Guild of Atlanta, where Denny, Houston Steve and I get together once a month to get our drink on), but a collector of postcards and - surprisingly enough - a Frank Zappa fan.

At least, this is what I infer from seeing his latest post, which shows the cover of the Man’s Life magazine that inspired the infamous album title and jacket design for Zappa’s 1970 jazz-rock album... the last one to be released by the original Mothers of Invention. Here ’tis:


Man’s Life, September 1956. Clearly much rougher than Boy’s Life.

Supposedly, Zappa went to artist Neon Park with a copy of the September, 1956 issue of Man’s Life magazine, saying, “This is it. What can you do that’s worse than this?” Of course, Mr. Park had an answer:


Weasels Ripped My Flesh, 1970. This cover is familiar to any Frank Zappa fan.

By today’s debased standards, this album cover is pretty tame... but Warner Brothers (Zappa’s distributor at the time) was apparently not happy about it. Shows you how much they knew.

I’d love to get my hands on a copy of that Man’s Life rag. Never mind the cover story, which admittedly has a sort of toothsome appeal as well as historical interest... check out those other stories. “Can Women Justify Their Need for EXTRA-MARITAL RELATIONS?” and “Sin Happy Vacationists Are Overcoming Cape Cod” both sound delightfully breathless... just the kind of overblown shit that people in the mid-fifties would get all in a lather over. I’m surprised there wasn’t a feature story on “Smacking the Crap Out of My Beatnik Neighbor,” or “Ten Easy Ways to Spot a Communist.”

I wonder how many other albums were inspired by tacky magazine covers. Anyone out there know of any?

GOOD EATS

Sautéed sea scallops.

Just in case you’ve been wondering what’s on the menu here at Chez Elisson these days...

Monday
Roasted venison tenderloin with chipotle pepper rub
SWMBO’s Four-Bean Salad

Tuesday
Sautéed sea scallops with lemon zest, pimentón (smoked Spanish paprika) and piment d’Espelette (Basque red pepper)
Arugula salad with pine nuts and walnut oil vinaigrette
Steamed Brussels sprouts with fleur de sel
Heirloom cherry tomatoes with shallots, feta, olive oil, and basil

Wednesday
Grilled bison strip steak with jalapeño-cilantro pesto
Arugula salad with pine nuts, shaved aged Gouda, and walnut oil vinaigrette
Roasted beets with balsamic vinegar dressing
SWMBO’s Four-Bean Salad
Assorted olives
Fresh apricots with Idiazabal cheese

What’s missing? Well, there are not a lot of carbs here... but that’s mainly because I was too lazy to throw a sweet potato in the oven. Besides, who needs a bunch of starch when you’re already stuffed with arugula and Brussels sprouts? So what if I crap green?

[Now, I’ll be the first to point out that, with regard to the venison tenderloin, there is Absolutely No Fucking Way the Missus will ever eat that stuff, no matter how attractively prepared. Oh, well - more for me.]

MEMO TO MEN

When you are in the midst
Of micturition,
Don’t let go of the dick
With which you’re pishin’.

Your stream might become
A trifle wayward
Exposing the walls to
The risk of sprayward.

If you would win
The pissing game,
Maintain your grip
And take dead aim.

UNFAMILIAR TERRITORY

Some time back, I posted a photo of my bathroom scale, which displayed a number I hadn’t seen the likes of in a long, long time.

It’s now a little less than two months later, and Mr. Scale has once again entered unfamiliar territory. Unfamiliar, that is, by virtue of the fact that we haven’t visited it for several decades.



Holy crap - below 170! Fully thirty-eight pounds less than I weighed four months ago.

[Just in case you’re curious, I’m right about where I want to be, with a BMI below 24. As long as my morning poundage is below 174, I’m happy.]

Yesterday, just for shits ’n’ grins, I pulled an old pair of pants out of the basement. Last time I had tried to put them on, I could barely get ’em up over my knees. Now, they fit perfectly.

How old are they? I suspect that they’re the oldest article of clothing I own. Black, with a slight flare below the knee, they have a vague aura of the early 1970’s about them. Which only makes sense...

...because they were the pants I wore to my college graduation.

ANCIENT ARTIFACTS

During my recent New York trip, I had the opportunity to stay with The Other Elisson. A little Brotherly Bonding, if you will. And in the process, I had a chance to rediscover some fascinating artifacts.

One of those relics is the original recipe book - vintage 1953 - that came with our parents’ first Waring Blendor.


The 1953 Waring Blendor Book. Gawd only knows what vile substance created that brown blotch on the upper left.

I remember that kitchen appliance, clear as day. It was a two-speed model (fancy!) with a massive cream-colored base, a thick glass carafe with the distinctive Waring cloverleaf cross-section, and a grey plastic lid. Its power cord was designed for heavy-duty use; the damn thing was like nothing so much as a grey anaconda with copper electrical prongs in lieu of fangs.

When Mom would use the Blendor - Waring’s preferred spelling at the time - the kitchen would be filled with a shrieking sound of whirring blades and the unmistakable pong of ozone. On the “high” setting, it was downright scary. But if you wanted to liquefy something, the Waring Blendor was just the thing.

The recipe book, seen from our vantage point over half a century removed, is quaint and amusing. Cold ham loaf... cream of mushroom soup... Danish fish pudding... gaaaah. There’s even a section containing Special Tricks for Men to Try - testosterone-soaked stuff like orange sauce for wild duck, béarnaise sauce for steak, and baked beans. Also, quiche lorraine!

Some ten years later, we would upgrade to an eight-speed Osterizer. That one came with a recipe book as well, full of equally horrifying recipes. Deviled salmon... Tahitian pork chops... and something called The Noodler!

But wait: There was more. Another recipe book (“Salads and Salad Dressings”) looked like a candidate for inclusion in James Lileks’s Gallery of Regrettable Food. It was chock-a-block with recipes for molded gelatin-based salads (one of the Major Food Groups of the 1950’s, along with Miracle Whip and tobacco), most of which are positively nasty.

“Say, Madge - this Molded Avocado-Kumquat Salad
looks to be Quite the Thing!”

For a brief moment, I thought it might be fun to throw a retro Gelatin Dish Party, wherein each couple attending would contribute a dish made from one of the recipes featured in this book. Think of it: you could start off with a nice Beet Salad Mold, move on to Molded Avocado-Kumquat Salad and Cottage Cheese in Tomato Aspic, and finish the meal with a Desserty Bang by serving a Peaches and Cream Mold. But would anyone really want to eat any of this crap?

The most treasured artifact of all, however, was a possession that, at one time, had belonged to our mother. It shows signs of having been used frequently over the years and it bears the patina of age, but it is still in remarkably good condition...


Yours Truly models Momma d’Elisson’s old colander. Sharp-eyed readers will spot the Star of David motif.

Why, it’s our old Family Colander!

SING REQUIEM FOR MITCH

Mitch Miller, 1911-2010. R.I.P.

Mitch Miller, musical conductor, impresario, and the host of the popular television show “Sing Along with Mitch,” has died at the age of ninety-nine.

Mitch now will be singing along with the Choir Eternal... while those of us left here on Earth will needs consider singing a dirge.

Despite the fact that Miller had already made his reputation as a highly influential record producer and orchestra leader, it was “Sing Along with Mitch” that made him a household name during its 1961-64 original run. The music on his show was old-timey, even a bit hokey - typical songs were “You Are My Sunshine,” “By The Light of the Silvery Moon,” and “Down By the Old Mill Stream” - but America, then only beginning its love affair with rock ‘n’ roll, ate it up. A male chorus would sing while viewers at home were encouraged to join in, following the bouncing ball as it worked its way through the lyrics. It resembled nothing so much as a primitive version of karaoke... with much douchier music.

Miller was no fan of rock ‘n’ roll. Instead of artists like Elvis Presley and Buddy Holley, his tastes ran more to Patti Page, Ray Conniff, and Percy Faith. He oversaw the production of plenty of hits, but had an unfortunate love for novelty records (think Rosemary Clooney singing “Come on-a My House”), nearly torpedoing Frank Sinatra’s career by having him do songs like “Mama Will Bark” and “The Hucklebuck.” You remember that one:

Here’s a dance you should know
When the lights are down low
Grab your baby, then go

Do the Hucklebuck (do the Hucklebuck)
Do the Hucklebuck (do the Hucklebuck)
If ya don’t know how to do it
Boy, you’re out of luck (boy, you’re out of luck)...

Classic... not.

With Mitch Miller’s passing, an era in American popular culture comes to an end. I, for one, will not miss it.

Requiescat in pace, Mitchy. When they play your Funeral Song, we’ll all sing along.

THE BALLAD OF THE BUNWAD

Our Bunwad Stores were getting low,
So to the Market I must go,
Thus to avoid the Wifely Griping
Occasioned by Paperless Ass-Wiping.

I got my Butt into the Car
And drove to Target – ’twas not far.
Unto the Bunwad Aisle emergent,
I now needs must choose my Abstergent.

Look – that one’s Package has a Bear
(How does he wipe, with all that Hair?)
And this one’s Roll is extra-large,
With Squares enough to wipe a Barge.

This Other, extra strong and tough –
Like Garnet Paper on the Duff.
Here’s yet a Third, so extra cushy
It’s like a Pillow on the Tushy.

O, all these Choices drive me nuts –
Why all these Papers for our Butts?
To clean one’s Arse – a simple Job –
One only needs a dry Corn Cob.

No more, no more the Charmin Bear
With Orville Redenbacher there!

AN ENCOUNTER WITH INNUMERACY

A recent post by Kevin Kim - the Big Hominid - told the tale of a Burger King cashier who was only marginally capable of doing simple math.

Kevin’s story reminded me of my own First Encounter with innumeracy, an encounter that took place in coastal Georgia close to half a century ago.

It was springtime, and we were on our way to South Florida to visit with the maternal grandparents - an annual pilgrimage that we were now doing by car rather than by airplane. Back then, of course, interstate highways were thin on the ground; this made the journey lengthier but far more colorful, since you would have to drive through a myriad of minuscule burgs in the boondocks.

One of the wider spots in the road was the small city of Brunswick, Georgia, lying roughly midway between Savannah and Jacksonville. We would cruise through there on U.S. Highway 17, swinging past the nascent resorts of St. Simons and Jekyll Islands... but on this particular trip, the Old Man - Eli, hizzownself - must have been feeling a bit sharp-set, and so we stopped to grab a bite of lunch at one of the local drive-in restaurants.

Drive-in, I say, not drive-through... for back then, you did not pull up to the window at, say, a McDonald’s, and get a burger handed to you in a paper sack. No: You pulled into a parking place, and a waitress on roller skates would zoom up, take your order, and within minutes deliver it unto you, placing it on a tray that she would hang from your window.

Following established protocol, we pulled into our space and a young lady skated up and took our order. Shortly afterward, she brought out our meals. That’s when she started having problems.

This was the early 1960’s, you see, when there was no such thing as an electronic cash register or a computer that would automatically add up your check. Waitstaff in those days would write down your order, add up the various prices, calculate the tax (in those rare places that actually charged a sales tax), and would present you with the total. You, in turn, would check the waiter’s arithmetic, for, like as not, an error or two could easily creep into that total.

Here, though, the poor girl was flummoxed... for though she had written the numbers down right and proper, she had absolutely no clue as to how to add them up.

Eli, gentleman that he was, did the job for her. Then he paid the check... and then we drove away, completely dumbfounded. Not so much that there were actual adult people who couldn’t add a column of numbers - after all, this was the South! - but that such people could get a job whilst lacking such a basic part of the required skill set.

Now, almost fifty years later, nothing surprises me. The younger generation’s reliance on electronic devices is now so total that without their calculators and computers, not a man-jack among ’em would not find himself reduced to the helpless state of that poor, innumerate carhop in Brunswick, Georgia. Kevin’s story is evidence... and I weep to know it.

ENCROACHING PSYCHOSIS, AS INDEXED BY CATS

Cat painting by Louis Wain.

Once in a while, I’ll see a photograph or a piece of art that causes me to flash back upon a distant memory. I had that experience a week or so ago, when my lovely and talented sister-in-law Rebecca posted some images of her Horsy Artwork.

Just as they say to writers, “Write what you know,” that same advice is likewise appropriate for painters: “Paint what you know.” In Rebecca’s case, that’d be horses. Rebecca, you see, is a horsewoman whose side business is breeding Arabians. It’s only natural, therefore, that many of her Painterly Works feature said Arabians. But there was one in particular that caught my eye...

First, though, a bit of history.

Back in my Snot-Nose Days, my parents were great believers in the scholastic benefits of reading. Not only would they schlep me to the library every week, they stocked the house with Educational Literature.

When I was five years old, they bought a set of encyclopedias. Not Encyclopaedia Brittanica, mind you, but something a little more low-rent: Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia. Compton’s would later score an historical footnote by being the first outfit to offer a CD-ROM-based multimedia encyclopedia (multipedia?), but what I remember were those twenty-four heavy volumes, all bound in embossed black faux leather. I read them incessantly.

A few years later, Time-Life got into the educational book business by offering several multi-volume “buy as you go” collections. Chief among these were the Life Science Library and the Life Nature Library, both of which caught the attention of my didactically-minded parents. Written for the educated lay reader, they were well illustrated and completely fascinating - at least, in the eyes of a pubescent Elisson. It’s entirely possible that much of my interest in science was catalyzed by my having that pile of Time-Life books to pore over.

One of the Life Science Library books, The Mind, featured a piece on one Louis Wain, an English painter born in the mid-nineteenth century. Wain’s claim to fame was his paintings of cats. Early on in his career, his work was whimsical, with more-or-less realistic cats, often in anthropomorphic poses. Hosting tea parties, strumming a mandolin, playing cricket - that sort of thing.  Innocent stuff.

But then, things began to change.

  At about the age of fifty, Wain began exhibiting the symptoms of adult-onset schizophrenia, becoming delusional and paranoid.  And his once naturalistic kitty-paintings began taking an ominous turn.

Wain’s cats started to leer at the viewer, staring ominously, paisley patterns floating in the background.  They seemed to radiate paranoia and fear.

As Wain’s psychosis deepened, his cat paintings became more fragmented and bizarre.  Some crackled with mental electricity... others had the aspect of Indian gods, casting a malevolent gaze.

Eventually, Wain’s cats became all but unrecognizable as cats, devolving into intricate fractal patterns.  If you look hard enough, you can see a kitty in there somewhere, but it takes an effort of imagination.

The story of Louis Wain and the way his paintings mirrored the progressive deterioration of his mind made a strong impression on my pre-adolescent imagination.  The story, of course, turns out to be not quite as simple as the Life Science Library presented it: Despite all those psychedelicats, Wain continued to paint completely naturalistic kitties through his entire career as well. But still... that book provided food for thought.

Fast forward to Rebecca and her artwork.



When I saw this - how do I describe it? - Electric Horsie, I felt a nagging at the back of my mind. Why did it look so familiar?

That’s when it struck me. Louis Wain! The Nutty Kitty Guy! That painting looked like Wain himself could have painted it... probably sometime between the time he started hearing voices in his head but before the onset of full-blown visual hallucinations.

Of course, none of this is meant to imply that Rebecca is ready for the rubber room... just that this one painting struck a chord and triggered an old memory! Hell, even Hakuna sometimes reminds me of a Louis Wain painting...

KING RAT

This Friday evening’s dinner, hosted by our friends Barry and Malka, turned out to be a Major Feed.

Seared ahi tuna. Grilled Cornish hens and tenderloin steaks. Fingerling potatoes with dill. Sautéed Portobello mushrooms. Polenta with cannelini beans, grape tomatoes, and basil. And my contribution: a boatload of ratatouille niçoise.


Grilled ratatouille niçoise. Yummy.

Ratatouille, aside from being the name of a popular animated film, is a dish from the Occitane region. Think “South of France” and you pretty much have it. It’s usually a stewed mess of tomatoes, onions, eggplant, zucchini, and bell peppers, fragrant with herbs... but I had seen Bobby Flay make a grilled version on the Food Network just a few days before, and it looked like it was worth a try.

Since Barry and Malka had invited a small army to dinner, I tripled the recipe. The result? King Rat - a king-sized pile of ratatouille, enough to ensure savory leftovers to last the weekend through.

Was it good? Yes, it was good. Most versions of ratatouille I’ve had in the past were on the soggy side, but here, grilling the veggies (instead of stewing them) gave them a nice caramelized overtone while leaving them reasonably firm. And Flay’s recipe, which includes beaucoup garlic and fresh oregano, has plenty of bright Mediterranean flavor. I recommend it... and besides, didn’t your mama tell you to eat your vegetables?

THE FIRST RULE

Sensei: Grasshopper, what is the First Rule of the Water Pik?

Grasshopper: Sensei, the First Rule of the Water Pik is to be sure the irrigator tip of the Water Pik is in one’s mouth before engaging the “On” switch.

Sensei: Very good, Grasshopper. And what is the Second Rule of the Water Pik?

Grasshopper: Sensei, the Second Rule of the Water Pik is, if you ever violate the First Rule, do not admit it.

HUMOR IS WHERE YOU FIND IT

A street scene in southwest Florida. [Click to embiggen.]

A few weeks ago, as She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were headed back home from South Florida, we saw the above street scene somewhere near Naples.

It was the truck that caught my attention.

“BAITMASTERS,” read the legend on the side. “The Bait of the Masters.”

I could not help but be impressed. We were looking at a whole truckload of Master Bait!

AN EVENING WITH HARPO

Or, the Fine Art of Caricature.

While I was in New York last weekend, I had an opportunity to visit one of my Friends of Long Standing, the good Doctor Harpo.

Esteemed readers who have followed my antics for a while may remember Harpo from a piece I wrote last year after reconnecting with him at Princeton Reunions. And if you wonder where that sobriquet came from, you need look no further than the photographs in that post: That shock of curly, reddish-blond hair has always called the Silent Marx Brother to mind.

[The other nickname I have for the good Doctor is “Urethra Franklin” - which makes perfect sense given that his name really is Franklin, and he’s a urologist.]

In any event, Doc Harpo was gracious enough to put me up overnight, and as fate would have it, his place is conveniently located on the Upper West Side just a short walk from Central Park... in a gorgeous old Beaux Arts apartment building that is an official New York City designated landmark.

Logan

We hooked up with Harpo’s girlfriend and a few schoolmates to grab a pizza at one of the local establishments, and then it was back to the apartment. I had already seen Harpo’s elder son Logan - it was the first time I had clapped eyes on the strapping Princeton grad since he was about two years old, and to say he had changed was a minor understatement - but now I had a chance to meet younger son Jensen for the first time.

It was a little like stepping back in time 35 years or so... because Jensen is the spit ’n’ image of his Daddy. You’d be hard-pressed to distinguish a contemporary photograph of Jensen from one of Harpo taken back in our college days. Lookee:


Doc Harpo and son Jensen (Dartmouth ’10). Father and son? Or clones?

This Harpo thing has been part of the Doc’s identity for a long time. Just how long? Recently, as he was going through a box of his old junk and detritus that had been stored at his mother’s place, he found this:


Caricature of Doc Harpo from 1974. [Click to embiggen.]

It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to see that it’s a caricature of the good Doctor. But who is this “Logan” fellow? Harpo’s son wasn’t walking the planet back then.

Why, it’s me! Logan was my nickname in college, a nickname that was bestowed upon me after I made an abrupt tooth-rattling, bowel-clenching two-wheeled left turn onto Logan Avenue in Asbury Park, New Jersey one day in 1972. It’s purely a coincidence that Doc Harpo would later name his firstborn son Logan... but I’ve always taken quiet pleasure in that coincidence. And it’s an amazing little piece of synchronicity that Harpo found that drawing - a drawing that had lain hidden for thirty-six years - until just a few days before I called to announce my plans to visit New York.

UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE

From the irrepressible Dax Montana comes this fascinating piece of computer imagery: an interactive M. C. Escher-inspired panorama.

If you were one of those people who, back when you were a doped-out college student, would get stoned and stare at Escher’s surrealistic lithographs with a thin stream of drool hanging out of the corner of your mouth, then this should provide endless hours of Useless Amusement. Enjoy.


Tribute to Escher in Barcelona

AN AFTERNOON IN LITTLE ODESSA, orTHE VULGAR BOATMAN

On the boardwalk with Toni, The Other Elisson, and Eli. Sharp-eyed observers will spot the old Parachute Jump tower in the distance, right next to The Other Elisson’s head.

Last weekend, as I sat and enjoyed my seafood dinner with Eli (hizzownself), Toni, and The Other Elisson, we began casting about for something to do Saturday afternoon. Toni tossed out a suggestion: Why not take a ride to Brighton Beach?

I thought this was a capital idea. Long a Jewish enclave, a huge influx of both Jewish and non-Jewish Russians beginning in the 1970’s had transmogrified the place into something resembling Moscow West. I had not been to Brighton for something approaching three decades and was eager to see how it had changed.

Brighton - named after the English beach resort where Elder Daughter made her home for close to a year - is sandwiched between Manhattan Beach to the east and Coney Island to the west. It’s right on the Atlantic Ocean, with a boardwalk that runs along the shore. Our mission, however, had nought to do with taking the waters or catching a few rays: We were there in search of Exotic Foods, of which there were plenty.

Once we found a parking spot - not an easy task, but Eli and Toni were more than up to the job - we headed straight to Tatiana’s Café, right on the boardwalk. Eli and I enjoyed bowls of cold, refreshing green borscht made with spinach and dill; Toni had barley soup; we all followed this up with a lemony beet and arugula salad. A light meal, it was perfect sustenance on what had to be the hottest day of the year.

The meat counter at M&I International.

Fortified by our luncheon, we began our real mission: raiding the various Exotic Food Shoppes along Brighton Beach Avenue. Chief among these is M&I International Foods, a rambling, three-level affair where you can buy pretty much anything you might have a mind to eat. Meats, prepared foods, smoked fish, canned goods - it’s all there. You want Russian hot cereal mix? A bottle of ice-cold kvass (the Russian answer to Coca-Cola, a beverage made from fermented bread)? They have that stuff too.

Kvass: Bread in a bottle.

Toni and I were in our element here. While she raided the meat counter, I found a square of prune-nut strudel and a couple of slices of sturgeon. The only thing holding me back - I could have bought the place out - was the fact that I was on the road and had no place to put things save for The Other Elisson’s fridge, and that only for the night. So I was, out of necessity if nothing else, good to go.

Did I mention that Russians were thick on the ground here? Street signage was all in Cyrillic, and the various shopkeepers spoke an amalgam of Russian, Ukrainian, and heavily accented English. Eli and Toni, who have been to Russia, say it’s more Russian in Brighton Beach than in Russia these days, and I have no reason to doubt them. They don’t call this place “Little Odessa” for nothing.

Purchases in hand, we repaired to the third level, where there is a café of sorts. We ordered a few cold drinks and were shortly joined by the Sweetheart of Sheepshead Bay herself, the ever-charming Erica, who lives just a mile or two away from Brighton.


Eli (hizzownself), Toni, Erica, and Yours Truly in Brighton Beach. [Click to embiggen.] Photo by The Other Elisson.

We had a lovely visit there, sipping iced coffee and talking about all manner of things. At one point I had to gently steer the conversation away from some of the events of an infamous Helen blogmeet - events involving an inflatable sheep, a broomstick, and Velociman - items and personages the mere mention of which caused Toni’s eyes to grow very wide - but we had a splendid time together, conversing on Matters Brooklyn. Alas, all too soon, it was time for us to hit the trail and head for points east... whereupon we all managed to cram ourselves into the Elimobile to deliver Erica right to her front door.

All in all, a fine afternoon - never mind that it was hotter than the hubs of Hell. Next time, though, we’ll wait for cooler weather... and it’s gonna be vodka and caviar, baby! Nashe zdorovʹe!

PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES

Union Station main hall, Washington, D.C., as seen in a High Dynamic Range image.

My last Northeastern peregrination was a little different from the usual, mainly owing to my reliance on mass transit for so much of the heavy lifting.

Instead of simply flying from Atlanta to Washington, D.C. and thence onward to Points North, I elected to change things up: I flew to Washington, sure - but from there, it was trains all the way.

Perhaps I was emboldened by my positive experiences with train travel in Japan two years ago... or by the warm nostalgia summoned up by my memories of traveling on the Florida Special from New York to Miami and back, forty-eight years ago. Or maybe I didn’t want the expense and hassle of driving a rental car in New York, or the aggravation attendant upon flying into any of the New York airports, where unpredictable delays are the order of the day. No matter. I decided to fly round trip from Atlanta to Washington, and use Amtrak to get to and from New York. And I’m glad I did.

The only automobile travel I did between last Thursday morning and yesterday afternoon, when I drove myself to and from my usual offsite airport parking lot in Atlanta, was courtesy of The Other Elisson and Eli (hizzownself). Everything else - between Washington National Airport and my various landing spots in D.C. and New York, that is - was via Washington’s Metro, Amtrak, the Long Island Railroad, the New York subway system, or good old-fashioned shank’s mare. Taxis? Pfaugh.

There’s a lot to be said for a conveyance that allows you to sit comfortably sans seat belt, wander up and down at will, stop in the dining car for a cup of coffee or a snack, and even plug in to a 100 volt AC outlet to run a laptop or recharge a smartphone. And there is a grandeur in some of the classic train stations that is lacking in modern airports.

Take Grand Central Station in New York, for example... or Union Station in Washington. The latter has a gorgeous domed ceiling and plenty of marble statuary, just the kind of public space you’d expect to see serving as a Best Foot Forward for a nation’s capital city, back in the day when everybody who was anybody would arrive by train. Now it’s packed with restaurants and shops, making it a perfectly comfortable place to while away an hour or two of waiting time. (Any place with a good bookstore, or with a shop that sells Neuhaus chocolates, is OK by me.)



The best thing about Union Station, though, was meeting Elder Daughter there Monday between trains. We had missed each other on the front end of my trip - since she had been away attending the international AIDS Conference in Vienna, I had gone on to New York rather than staying in D.C. Thursday evening - but now she was back, and was able to pry a few minutes loose from her ridiculously hectic schedule to take lunch with her Old Man. Afterwards, we hoofed it down to the Metro (escalators never work when you have a heavy valise in hand) and each of us caught Red Line trains - she to Silver Spring, I in the opposite direction towards the airport. And strangely, I felt like I had just spent a few moments back in the 1940’s... had I been wearing my Panama hat and a tropical-weight linen suit, the illusion would’ve been complete.

EYE, EYE

One being the eye you see with, the other the Old Brown-Eye.  Yep: this was a day of Assholes and Eyeballs, for between the Missus and me, we had both of ’em checked out.

I am happy to report that the news was good for both of us.  No polyps, diverticulae, or other Nasty Situations were discovered in SWMBO’s nethers, and the recovery of my left eye from its recent bout with iritis (AKA acute anterior uveitis, if you prefer the Fancy-Pants Wording) is proceeding apace.  Lookee:


Notice the dilated pupil on the left - my left eye as seen in this mirror image. Yes, it looks weird, but it’s supposed to be dilated.

Still taking steroid eyedrops, but now I can cut back to three times a day... and I only need to dilate that bad boy once a day.

But if you want photos from SWMBO’s procedure, you’re shit outta luck.

THE OLD GREY HARE

“Ehhh, what’s up, Pruneface?” A grizzled Bugs confronts an ancient Elmer in “The Old Grey Hare.” ©1944 Turner Entertainment Co., a Time Warner company.

There is a classic 1944-vintage Bugs Bunny cartoon - a great favorite of mine from back in my Snot-Nose Years unto this very day - entitled “The Old Grey Hare.” Directed by the immortal Bob Clampett, it flashes us forward to the far future, with the Voice o’ God intoning “Come, Elmer. Come past the years 1950, 1960, past 1970, ’80, ’90... When you hear the sound of the gong, it will be exactly 2000 A.D.!” It is there that we meet an elderly Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd who - in a flashback within the flashforward - reminisce about their childhood and the beginnings of their rivalry.

Watching that cartoon as a child, it was amusing enough to imagine that far future world, and to picture a wrinkled, moustachioed Elmer Fudd... and a grizzled, arthritic (“dern this lumbago!”) Bugs Bunny, complete with white Abe Lincoln beard. But, just as with the science fiction of the Golden Age, reality has a way of catching up with those archaic Future Visions. And as with SF, so with the world of cartoons.

This is a long-winded way of mentioning that today is Bugs Bunny’s seventieth birthday.

Yes! Bugs, the irrepressible bunny with the Brooklyn accent, is officially a septuagenarian... for it was on July 27, 1940 that the theatrical cartoon short “A Wild Hare” was released.

Although several earlier Looney Tunes films had featured a rabbit (“Porky‘s Hare Hunt” in 1938 being the first), “A Wild Hare,” directed by Tex Avery, is the first film to show Bugs Bunny in his fully-developed form, complete with his well-known design, voice, and catchphrase (“Ehhhh, what’s up, Doc?”). And, appropriately enough, it also features the ever-frustrated Elmer Fudd in the first of many fruitless Lapine Pursuits.

It’s hard to imagine Bugs Bunny being seventy, but time, like shit, happens. At least he’s younger than Ringo Starr... by a few weeks, anyway.

FISHY FRIDAY

Dinner Friday evening was a perfectly enjoyable affair, courtesy of Eli (hizzownself) and his bride Toni, who treated both Elissons to a fine Fishy Meal at the Legal Sea Foods outpost at Roosevelt Field.

The Other Elisson and I had spent the day roaming about the Island - Long Island, that is - checking out old, familiar neighborhoods and academic haunts. One of the highlights of the day was a visit to the Fairway Market in Plainview, a place that looks like the bastard child of a three-way between Zabar’s, Dean and DeLuca, and the local Safeway. There also seems to be a little Stew Leonard’s thrown in as well.

I had been hearing about Fairway for years, mostly from Toni, who is a huge fan of the store’s organic produce and meats, but I’m not sure the advance reviews really prepared me for what I saw: nothing less than a gourmet supermarket jacked up on steroids.

Of course, the first place I headed to, out of a sense of Professional Obligation, was the cheese aisle, and this one was majorly impressive. Only my reluctance to befoul The Other Elisson’s fridge kept me from purchasing a wedge of Stinking Bishop.

The meat department featured an array of serious beefy protein, including two-inch thick prime porterhouses... and a dry-aging cold-box in which a platoon of mold-encrusted primal rib sections were arrayed. I forced myself to move on, narrowly avoiding slipping in the puddle of drool that had collected at my feet.

There was a kosher foods section that was as extensive as any I had ever seen, and baked goods of all kinds... but it was the smoked fish counter that really got my attention, with a variety exceeded only by Zabar’s. Nova, Irish smoked salmon, Scottish smoked salmon, gravlax, sable, you name it - it was all there, all lovingly sliced by hand to your order. And order I did, with the fish slicer graciously offering samples of the various glistening, salty treats.

But now it was dinnertime, and as Eli and the Other Elisson attacked their desserts, Eli regaled us with a True Story, the kind that could only happen in New York.

A number of years ago, he and my mother had gone with a group of friends to Ratner’s, the famed dairy restaurant located on Second Avenue on New York’s Lower East Side. Everyone was seated; the orders were taken; the dishes were all brought to the table. All, that is, except one: Eli’s.

As he waited for his food to show up, Eli noticed an elderly gentleman at an adjacent table, a sort of gentleman familiar to anyone who spends a lot of time in places like Ratner’s. This fellow had made a meal of the free pickles and sour tomatoes, bowls of which were set out at every table as an appetizer... and he had enjoyed several of Ratner’s famous onion rolls as well. It was anybody’s guess whether he would actually ever get around to ordering a meal at this point, especially since he had fallen asleep after his lusty noshing.

Meanwhile, everyone at Eli’s table - except Eli - had finished dining. As soon as everyone’s plates had been licked clean, the waiter showed up, napkin ceremoniously draped over forearm, with Eli’s meal in hand.

“Take it away,” Eli said acidly. “I don’t want it, now that everyone else is done eating. We’re just going to go home, and I’ll eat there.”

Whereupon the waiter immediately turned, walked over to the table where sat the elderly gentleman, still sleeping away. The waiter smacked the old fellow on the head to wake him up and dropped Eli’s plate in front of him.

“Here’s your dinner,” he announced, and walked off.

Only in New York.

MORONICUS MOTORIFICUM

The Missus and I see a goodly number of idiots on Atlanta’s highways in the course of our meanderings about town.

First off, let me state right up front that every city is riddled with Idiot Drivers: Atlanta possesses no monopoly. In fact, despite the coarsening of society over the past twenty-five years, Atlanta still has a noticeable minority of polite motorists - the kind of people who, say, will actually make room for you to accelerate onto the freeway. It is, alas, a shrinking minority.

Other cities have their own driving personalities. New York? Fuhgeddaboudit. Aggression is the order of the day... and as soon as you cross the rivers that separate Manhattan from the other boroughs, that aggression steps up to a whole new plateau. Yet Manhattan is downright sedate compared to Mexico City, Paris, or Rome.

South Florida is riddled with Elder Drivers, folks with declining sensory and motor capacities who, in many cases, shouldn’t even be walking, much less driving. Put a metric buttload of ’em on I-95 at 70 MPH and your nerves will get so jacked up as you drive along with ’em that your asshole will pucker up tight enough to pull five pounds of cotton batting out of your front seat. Yipe!

We’ve dealt with the moron tailgaters, the ones who will get up so close behind you - at 75 MPH, no less - that you can’t even see their front bumpers. Or the ones that decide, at the last possible second, that they need to get off the freeway NOW, despite the fact that they’re in the far left lane and there are four crowded lanes of traffic to cut across in 1/16 mile.

I’m always astonished at the people who blithely ride along in the front passenger seat with their legs propped up against the dashboard, or even hanging out the window. Comfy? Sure... unless the airbag goes off, in which case that leg is going to be reduced to several pounds of hamburger and bone shards.

But something we saw this afternoon takes the Stupidity-Cake.

As we cruised eastward along I-20, headed toward the Mistress of Sarcasm’s place, we saw a sedan in the lane next to us, packed with a full complement of passengers and piled with luggage. That in itself was unexceptional... except that the package shelf - that flat area behind the rear seat - was heaped with detritus.

Now, it’s never a good idea to store objects of any sort on that package shelf. There have been numerous fatalities caused when even small, lightweight items are suddenly launched forward into the heads of passengers during collisions. Even something as innocuous as a box of tissues can become a deadly missile in the event of a Sudden Deceleration.

But these geniuses had a whole watermelon parked on that shelf.

One good, hard, abrupt braking maneuver - or, even better, a good old-fashioned wreck - and suddenly that watermelon comes flying forward with the force of a cannon shot. Gallagher would be appalled at the results: not all of the red pulp splashed throughout the car’s interior would be from the watermelon...

(AIR) CONDITIONED REFLEX

Years ago, when our family lived in our first home on the south shore of Long Island, air conditioning was a luxury we experienced only at places like the local movie theatre. We certainly had none in our house, and that was perfectly all right. There were only a few days during the year when things were hot enough to be uncomfortable.

In 1967, when we moved to our second home - a grand total of three blocks away from the first one - we entered the world of Climate Control: We now had a house that was equipped with (gasp!) central air conditioning.

No longer did we have to sleep on top of our bedclothes on those sweltering summer nights, with only a fan to stir the sultry air. Now we spent our summer days in electrically generated comfort.

Upon being graduated from college and moving to Sweat City, I found myself living in the sort of climate in which air conditioning was not a luxury, but a necessity. Sure, the hardy settlers of coastal Texas had managed to make a life for themselves in the blast furnace-like heat, but most of the Northerners who, at the time, were migrating to the Sunbelt in great hordes, were in no wise like those old-time Texians. We were, rather, conditioned to conditioning. We had become Temperature-Wimps.

Houston, focus of one of the great surges of population growth in the mid-1970’s, would never have seen one iota of that growth without cheap energy. Cheap gasoline allowed people to drive around the monster-sized metropolis; cheap electricity powered the air conditioners that made the city livable.

Atlanta is not nearly the sweatbox that Houston is. The humidity is a lot more reasonable, and, owing to the area’s 1000-foot altitude above sea level, it almost always cools off after the sun goes down, even on the hottest summer days. Compare that with the Texas Gulf Coast, where you can break a sweat merely walking outside to get the newspaper at six a.m.

That said, Atlanta can get brutally hot this time of year... and we pussified Latter-Day Americans need our A/C. We get cranky without it.

And that, of course, is the situation we found ourselves in yesterday evening. I had gone upstairs to fetch something or other and immediately noticed that it was hot and stuffy. Eighty-seven degrees, well above the 77-degree A/C setpoint. Crap!

Now, our upstairs A/C unit is marginal at best, inevitably going down at least once every summer. It will need to be replaced sometime in the next year or two, but we’re trying to squeeze as much life out of it as we can. Was this it? Was this the death knell for our Cool-Machine?

No. Not yet. Our HVAC service came out and established that the problem had been caused by a short in the control circuitry... possibly resulting from one of the myriad storm-related power surges we get here in the Land of Thunderstorms. One replaced part and we were good to go.

We had to endure one night without aircon. It sent SWMBO over the edge... or, at least, downstairs to sleep on the sofa in our still-cool den. But it didn’t bother me too much. Maybe it reminded me of those long-ago summer nights in our first home, when the heat was a pleasant reminder that it was still summer, with school a far-away concern.

’KUNA WAS HERE

Is it just my imagination, or is this photograph of Hakuna with her head peeking out from her Circular Bed reminiscent of a well-known World War II-era graffito?


Kilroy, by Patrick Tillery. From Wikipedia.

Update: Friday Ark #305 is afloat at the Modulator, with our own Hakuna in pole position yet again. And this Sunday, don’t forget to drop by Three Tabby Cats in Vienna for the 332nd edition of Carnival of the Cats.

A TISHA B’AV TRADITION

Tisha b’Av, the most mournful holiday of the Jewish calendar, begins this evening at sundown.

Observant Jews will keep several traditions, among them fasting for at least 25 hours (no food or water); abstaining from marital relations; and not wearing leather shoes. As night falls, we will gather in synagogues to hear Megillat Eichah - the Book of Lamentations - chanted in its ages-old, dirgelike melody by the light of flickering candles.

And I, following my own ridiculous tradition, will post the following Irreverent Poem:



Hey, it’s what I do. No need to thank me.

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN MIND

From Houston Steve comes this amazing video of one Stephen Wiltshire (another British Steve!), a man with a remarkable eidetic memory. Watch as, after a single forty-five minute overflight of Rome, he draws an astonishingly accurate panorama in pen and ink, by memory alone.



The human mind is capable of marvelous feats. As for me, I’m perfectly satisfied to be able to remember what I had for breakfast this morning.

FROM THE ELISSON ARCHIVE

The Mistress of Sarcasm and I have a little Photobooth Phun in this picture taken in Destin two years ago.

THE BUTTERFLY BUSH

When I was a young Snot-Nose growing up on Lawn Guyland, one of the features of our backyard was a nice-sized buddleia - a butterfly bush. It must have been about six feet high, festooned with purple blossoms that attracted butterflies like a lap dance attracts politicians.

I was an Intrepid Butterfly Hunter back then. Armed with my stupid-ass butterfly net, I would capture those wingèd beauties by the dozens.

No trap-and-release for this boy, not back then in those environmentally insensitive days. My captures would immediately be transferred to a killing jar, where carbon tetrachloride vapors would put the quietus to them in moments. (Gawd only knows what those same carbon tet vapors were doing to my genetic material, or how many brain cells they were killing... but who thought of such arcane concerns back then?) The now-defunct butterflies would then go into a relaxing box, where a moist environment would soften them up enough to permit unfolding and flattening out the wings on a mounting board, there to dry thoroughly. At the end of the process, you would have a lovely preserved specimen, suitable for display in a mounting frame or for shoving in a shoebox until it gradually decayed into a desiccated pile of Butterfly-Dust.

Our buddleia was a powerful attractant. Butterflies of every variety would flock there, along with enormous hummingbird moths and fat bumblebees. And no butterfly was safe from my youthful depredations. Tiger swallowtails, regal fritillaries, admirals, yellow sulphurs, monarchs - all of these were grist for the Elisson Butterfly-Mill. I still have a few of those dried-out sumbitches, even after all these years, moldering away in a shoebox... a reminder of lazy, wonder-filled summer days of long ago.

I recalled our old Butterfly Bush a few days ago when we stopped by for a visit with my cousin Diane and her husband Charles, just outside of Tampa. They live in a butterfly-friendly environment, hard by a wildlife refuge - with a yard filled with buddleia and bordered by milkweed.

Take a walk in that yard and you just might stumble upon some hot monarch-on-monarch action:


Monarchs in the grass, alas.

Or you might see a giant swallowtail supping upon that sweet, sweet nectar:



Big fella: The elusive Giant Swallowtail.

All of this nectar-sipping pleasantness is just fine, but one thing I have learned in those many years since I chased those fluttering, elusive creatures around the back yard fifty years ago: Beautiful as they are, butterflies are still flies.

INDIFFERENCE IN THE FACE OF COMPUTATION

Hakuna feigns indifference as SWMBO, elbow visible at right, toils away on her laptop computational device.

Hakuna, though she is mostly a cat who appreciates her solitude, will occasionally cozy up to her pet humans. No, she is not quite as cuddly as the late Matata, who would climb all over SWMBO and me... but she does have her moments.

Perhaps she is wondering when she’ll get a whack at the machine. “Hey, how do I get to the Friday Ark?”

Update: Getting to the Friday Ark is simplicity itself - just go to the Modulator, where the 304th voyage has already begun.

Sunday evening, When Cats Attack will host the 331st edition of Carnival of the Cats, the blogosphere’s longest-running Kitty Kollection. Be sure to stop by and tell ’em Elisson sent you.

Update 2: CotC #331 is up.

FRIDAY RANDOM TEN - EVIL EYE EDITION

The ol’ Stink-Eye: Notice the whacked-out, noncircular pupil on my left eye. No fun, this iritis business, I assure you.

It’s Friday, time for yet another installment of the Friday Random Ten. You know the drill: ten randomly-selected cuts from the Cheese Aisle-Pod, posted for your listening pleasure. (Assuming you have the same songs in your Musical Library, that is, which is unlikely given my bizarre taste.)

Today’s selections are not, however, random. Instead, we will explore the themes of Vision and Eyes, since my left one is, (how can I put this delicately?) all fucked up. So, let’s see what’s playing today:

1. The Eyes of Fate - The Incredible String Band
   
   
2. Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles - Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band
   
   I look at her and she looks at me
   In her eyes I see the sea
   I can’t see what she sees in a man like me
   She says she loves me
   
   Her eyes
   Her eyes
   Her eyes are a blue million miles
   
   Far as I can see
   She loves me
   
   Her eyes
   Her eyes
   Her eyes are a blue million miles
   
   Far as I can see
   She loves me
   
   I look at her and she looks at me
   In her eyes I see the sea
   I can’t see what she sees in a man like me
   She says she loves me
   
   Her eyes
   Her eyes
   Her eyes are a blue million miles
   
   
3. I Believe My Own Eyes - Tommy, Original Broadway Cast
   
   
4. Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison
   
   
5. Reting’s Eyes - Philip Glass, Kundun
   
   
6. You Won’t See Me - The Beatles
   
   
7. I Can See For Miles - The Who
   
   
8. Sound and Vision - David Bowie
   
   
9. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes - Stéphane Grappelli
   
   
10. She Blinded Me With Science - Thomas Dolby
    
    

It’s Friday. What are you listening to?

STINK-EYE

(Or, Stop that, or you’ll go blind.)

Sometime last week, I had noticed that my left eye appeared to be a bit irritated.

My eyes will occasionally get slightly bloodshot, especially late of an evening. A drop or two of anti-redness eyedrops, and bingo! No more red.

But this was different. The redness was persistent. Nevertheless, I thought little of it until last Saturday, when we arrived in South Florida. By that time, my left eye - the oculus sinistrum, as the Eyeball-Croaker would call it - looked like a golf ball made of lean bacon, and it felt as though someone were shoving icepicks into it.

Oy.

We ate dinner alfresco that evening - SWMBO and I, accompanied by Aunt Marge - at a place in Hollywood called Argentango. The specialty there is a humongous skirt steak, grilled Argentine-style; I had the junior version, half the size of the original, yet still weighing in at 14 ounces. Buried in chimichurri, it was superb... but I was having a hard time seeing it, owing to the fact that I was wearing my sunglasses despite the sun having gone down.

The next morning, I stopped in at one of those drugstore walk-in clinics, figuring that I had come down with a case of conjunctivitis: the old Pink-Eye, scourge of elementary schools the nation over. And that’s the diagnosis the Doc-in-the-Box arrived at, using her handy-dandy Computer Diagnostickal Questionnaire. A bottle of antibiotic eyedrops, and I was on my way.

Not so fast, podnuh.

After several days of instilling drops every four hours, my left eye still looked like boiled shit... and felt worse. A filmy haze obscured my vision, rendering me useless for the trip home: SWMBO drove the entire 750 miles unassisted. (I don’t call her Iron Woman for nothing!)

First thing today, I went to see my own ophthalmologist. The good news was that, no, I didn’t have conjunctivitis. All of my paranoid anti-contagion measures were unnecessary, because what I have is not contagious.

I’ve got iritis, an inflammation of the iris and its surrounding tissues. Ouch.

All I can say at this point: Eyedrops - and dark glasses - are my friends. And I will be spending a lot of time with my friends over the next few weeks.

TAG, YOU’RE IT

One of the time-honored ways She Who Must Be Obeyed and I pass the time on long road trips is by playing the License Plate Game.

It’s not anything that requires a whole lot of brain power. You look at the various license plates you see on the highway, make a note of what states or provinces they’re from, and tally up the total at the end of the trip. Simple stuff.

There’s even iPhone software to help you keep track of the tags you’ve found. Yep - there’s an app for that! (Because sometimes pencil and paper are so... archaic.)

One of the things we could not help but notice was the incredible - nay, ridiculous - variety of Florida tags. There is a profusion of different license plates, allowing Sunshine State motorists to proclaim their love and allegiance to any number of causes, be they sports teams, colleges, or favorite ideologies.

Just how many different plates are there? To find out, I went to Florida’s official license tag website, where I discovered that, in addition to the two “standard” license tags (one with the traditional Sunshine State motto, the other with the pandering-to-the-religious right In God We Trust motto), Florida offers an amazing 115 - count ’em! - specialty license tags. Here’s the breakdown...

Environmental: 20, including “Save the Manatee,” “Sea Turtle,” and “Save the Whales - Collect Them All - Win Valuable Prizes”
Miscellaneous: 49, including “Live the Dream,” whatever the hell that means, and “NASCAR”
Professional Sports Franchises: 9
Universities: 36

Holy fuckamoley, that’s a lotta different tags! But is that an anomaly? How about Georgia?

Well, Georgia currently issues 109 different specialty tags, including those for universities, various branches of the military (and specific conflicts), and other “special interest” plates. So maybe Florida is nothing special...

...except nowhere else have we seen so many people actually driving around with all those different tags. In Georgia, you see ’em... but they’re not, seemingly, on every other car. And you don’t see the sheer variety you do here in SoFl.

What’s the License Tag situation like where you live? Inquiring (and easily distracted) minds want to know.

Update: SWMBO had a theory about why Florida specialty tags appear to be so numerous: In most states (e.g., Georgia), the specialty tags carry more-or-less the same color scheme as the basic tag... but in Florida, the designs are all completely different - as though a rainbow had thrown up on ’em (quoth SWMBO). And I think she has a good point.

SECRET: A 100-WORD STORY

Gary Greyhound was unprepared for the strange, unfamiliar desires that began to occupy his mind. At first he attributed it to the one-year itch, but after a while he realized that there was more to it than that.

This was different.

This was… exciting, in a way he couldn’t explain.

Gary had always felt secure in his sexual identity. His bitches loved him, and he returned the favor. That would never change.

But what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, would it?

The nights he spent frisking about town with Danny Dachshund would be his secret... living on the down-low.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I are on the road again, which fact accounts for the relative paucity of posts here over the past few days. We’re in South Florida - a place that She Who Must Be Obeyed characterizes as being “a mishmash of gold and shit” - visiting Uncle Phil and Aunt Marge.

Phil has been having a rough go of it these past several weeks. Healthwise, he is what the medical community calls a “hot mess,” with two nonfunctional kidneys and a ten-year-old case of prostate cancer that has metastasized into his bones. But radiation treatments have brought relief from the pain he had been suffering when his cancer manifested itself, and lately he has been eating well enough to put on a few pounds. That’s Phil: the Energizer Bunny (keyn ayin hara).

This evening, we smuggled an apple knish into his room. His eyes lit up like those of Charlie Bucket upon seeing the innards of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory for the first time, and he snarfed up that knish (the half of it we gave him, anyway) with ecstatic delight.

(An apple knish is, of course, the bastard child of a potato knish and an apple pie.)

When we’re not visiting with Phil, we’ve been trying to keep Marge entertained. Last night, SWMBO and I fixed dinner for her and a few old friends. We had raided the Whole Foods in Aventura for the necessaries, in the process running into Aria Kagan, one of the contestants on “The Next Food Network Star,” a very personable young lady in the midst of a family shopping expedition. The menu included roasted sockeye salmon with chimichurri, avocado-mango salsa, sweet potato purée with roasted garlic, braised bok choy, arugula and spinach salad with shaved Parmesan and lemon - all thrown together in a mere couple of hours, to Marge’s astonishment and delight.

This afternoon, we ran off to Pompano Beach, site of the infamous Festival indoor flea market. SWMBO and I had been there back in September; the only thing that has changed since then is a general diminution in Shopper Traffic. The place was just this side of desolate... a function of a miserable economy, a reflection of slow mid-Monday mall activity, or both. But it was the perfect encapsulation of SWMBO’s description of South Florida, and so a perfect place to spend a few hours.

We’ll be back on the road in a couple of days, headed home. Posting will be unpredictable and intermittent. Like always, eh?

FROM THE ELISSON ARCHIVE

Hakuna and the late Matata get in some sisterly cuddling in this photo from sometime in the early 2000’s.

I’m not sure whether Hakuna misses Matata, gone now for over two years. But we sure do...

Update: Friday Ark #303 is afloat at the Modulator... with our girls in pole position! This Sunday, be sure to check in with Nikita at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat for Carnival of the Cats #330.

Update 2: CotC #330 is up.

THEY SAY IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY

I wandered over to my buddy Ivan’s site this morning, where I discovered that today is Ringo Starr’s seventieth birthday.

How terribly strange to be seventy! (Whoops! Wrong artist.)

Back when I was still in high school - and the Beatles were still a functioning enterprise - my then-girlfriend gifted me with a copy of the original edition of Alan Aldridge’s wonderful book, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics. Aldridge, a talented graphic artist and illustrator (among other things, he designed the record jackets for Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy and The Who’s A Quick One), had assembled a remarkable collection of images - his and other artists’ work - that managed to capture the essence of every published Beatles song.


The Beatles as oldsters: painting ­©1969 Michael Leonard.

One of the images in the back pages of the book was the above illustration by one Michael Leonard, a speculative portrait of the Beatles as elderly men.

Alas, John Lennon and George Harrison never made it to “elderly.” But Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are still walking the planet with us, and they are, with today’s Happy Occasion as witness, Getting On Up There. As are, I suppose, many of us.

Ringo and Paul look pretty good, though... a stark contrast to, say, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, both of whom look as though their blood was replaced by a blend of embalming fluid, caffeine, and Reanimator Juice years ago.

Happy birthday, Mr. Starr! Long life and good health to you.

SIX YEARS OF SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT AND TIME-WASTAGE

Upon examining the calendar, I realized that today is my Bloggy-Versary: I put the very first post up at my old site exactly six years ago.

Dayum, that’s a lotta water under the bridge.

Looking back on that first post, I see it includes references to both Food and Shit, two of my favorite topics. And despite my having moved to these shiny new digs, nothing much has changed, more’s the pity...

ON CYLINDRICAL MEATS

Truck stop hot dogs share the Hot Rollers with some cylindrical impostors: frankfurter-shaped hamburgers. Horrors!

One of the long-standing traditions of American Independence Day celebrations is the grilling of meats. Hamburgers and beefsteaks are popular choices, but the quintessential Fourth of July comestible is, of course, that most American of foods: the Hot Dog. And hot dog is so much more American-sounding than frankfurter sausage, a name that reveals the Germanic origins of this Cylindrical Meat-Food.

Hot dogs are just one of a vast family of sausages, concoctions consisting of meat, fat, spices (and sometimes non-meat components), packed into a casing and then cured or cooked. The original casings, of course, were animal intestines, which come in a convenient hollowed-out tubular form. Alas, many modern sausages have dispensed with the casing. But I submit that a frankfurter with a natural casing that pops when you bite into it is the only authentic kind.

Sausages! They are manifold, from the porky delights of the Italian salumeria to the garlicky kosher salamis that inspired the famous sign in Katz’s Delicatessen (site of the Fake Orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally): “Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army.” Liverwurst. Bratwurst. Boudin. Cappicola. Sopressata. Knackwurst. The scary French Andouillette. And the humble Frankfurter, king of them all.

Growing up in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, we had hot dogs frequently; they were an inexpensive source of protein and were easy to prepare, to boot. In school, nasty porky hot dogs would appear once a week, served on a (gak!) buttered bun. At home, hot dogs and beans were also regular menu items, except there we would have all-beef dogs. (Not that my notoriously nonobservant parents had any objection to pork, mind you. They just didn’t think it belonged in a hot dog... and, to this day, I agree.)

Frankfurters were generally not restaurant fare, with one notorious exception: the Big Bow Wow, the completely unhygienic source of the finest grilled hot dogs on Long Island’s south shore. And that brings me to the real point of this post.

How should you prepare a hot dog?

Some will steam them, others boil them. The now virtually defunct Lum’s chain used to steam them in beer. But me, I like ’em charcoal grilled.

Get hold of some good beef hot dogs, preferably dinner size. Kosher dogs, like those from Hebrew National, have a nice dense, salty, beefy, garlicky flavor and texture - everything else is an also-ran. Slash those dogs on the bias, then put them on a hot grill until they char; that’s how to do it. Whether you serve them minimalist-style with mustard only, or whether you pile on the sauerkraut and relish, that’s up to you. Chicago dog, with cucumber spears, fluorescent green relish, sport peppers, and celery salt? Be my guest. Ketchup? Be ashamed.


The Real Thing: char-grilled Hebrew National beef franks. Yowza!

Bite into one of them - man bites dog! - and you are not simply having a meal. You’re having a bite of America.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

SWMBO’s patriotic dessert: an American flag composed of raspberries, blueberries... and Greek yogurt.

Independence Day - the day on which we Americans celebrate our country’s having become independent from the British crown - is a joyful day for most of us. I have wonderful childhood memories of annual Fourth of July clambakes and outdoor grilling spectaculars at the home of Al S., one of Eli Hizzownself’s business partners. Al’s place had two major attractions: (1) a huge, two-acre lot, inconceivably spacious to a typical South Shore kid like me, and (2) an honest-to-Gawd built-in swimming pool. We would swim all day, gorge ourselves silly on char-grilled burgers and hot dogs, and then set off every firecracker, Roman candle, and aerial bomb we could get our hands on as soon as the sun went down. Happy days.

As a certified Propulsion Engineer and lover of pyrotechnics, I’ve gotta love any holiday on which fireworks are part of the officially sanctioned celebrations.

But the Fourth is a bittersweet holiday for She Who Must Be Obeyed... and, by extension, for me. Has been for a long time... for it was on this very day thirty-five years ago that SWMBO’s sister Polly was struck by lightning and killed instantly.

All the grilled hot dogs, picnic goodies, and fireworks displays in the world cannot erase that memory.

I never knew Polly. I met SWMBO almost six months after that terrible Fourth of July, at a time when the psychic wounds of the family’s loss were still fresh and raw. But I know that even today, thirty-five years later (more than twice Polly’s entire span of time on this planet), not a day goes by when SWMBO does not think of her lost sister.

A few days ago, as we were cleaning out the contents of our old bedroom furniture to prepare for the arrival of the new, She Who Must Be Obeyed happened upon several faded snapshots of Polly, photos that had been taken in the last weeks of her life and that had been tucked away in her nightstand, unnoticed, for years. She sat on the floor and wept, then... and I grieved, too. I grieved for the sister I never knew.

So if SWMBO or I seem a little subdued on this happiest of our National Occasions, we’re just thinking about our family’s Missing Piece. SWMBO has her memories to fall back upon; I, having none, must imagine the sister I never got to know.

TEXAS TOOTSIE

Our niece Madison models the latest in Cowboy Chapeaux.

COOKING WITH CRS

Disposable aluminum roasting pan (with clear plastic lid): $2.59

Assorted vegetables (cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, parsnips) for eleven people: $15.35
 
Convection oven: $3,200
 
Elisson realizing that he put the fucking vegetables in a 400°F oven without detaching the plastic lid from the bottom of the aluminum roasting pan: Priceless

* * *
Yes, this really happened.

My Dinner-Party Assignment was pretty straightforward: Prepare roasted vegetables for eleven people.  I filled two pans with cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and parsnips, oiled ’em up and seasoned ’em with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, and threw in a whole head of garlic.  With the oven cranked up on full convection at 400°, all I would need to do is roast those bad boys for about twenty minutes or so, turning them occasionally.  Easy peasy.

Good thing She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were astute enough to notice the distinctive pong of hot, smoking polystyrene wafting through the kitchen before things got really serious. There was a puddle of molten goop on the floor of the oven, and it took a moment before we figured out exactly what it was. D’oh!

Fortunately, no real damage done... and the veggies were deemed especially tasty after we finished them off in JoAnn’s oven later in the evening. Hey, maybe I’m on to something here!

Maybe I should call the Food Network and pitch a new show: “Cookin’ with CRS* - Recipes for the Memory Impaired.” Whaddayathink?

[*CRS = Can’t Remember Shit]

FRIDAY RANDOM TEN

It’s Friday, time for yet another installment of the Friday Random Ten. You know the drill: ten randomly-selected choons from the Little White Choon-Box, all listed nice and neat.

What’s playing today?

1. Cheap Reward - Elvis Costello
   
   
2. Shake Ya Ass - Richard Cheese
   
   
3. Mix Tape - Avenue Q, Original Broadway Cast
   
   
4. Reminiscing - Russell Garcia, The Time Machine (1960)
   
   
5. Soma - Smashing Pumpkins
   
   
6. On The Run - Easy Star All-Stars
   
   From Dub Side of the Moon, a reggae cover of the Pink Floyd classic.
   
   
7. Time Out For Fun - Devo
   
   
8. Three Is A Green Crown - The Incredible String Band
   
   
9. In The Wee Small Hours Of Sixpence - Procol Harum
   
   
10. Haqq Ali Ali - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
    
    Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan:
    If you like qawwali, he’s your man.
    
    

It’s Friday. What are you listening to?

DEEP THOUGHTS

Hakuna sits at the top of the stairs with one of her classic Inscrutable Expressions, thinking Deep Thoughts. But what is she thinking?

Perhaps she is wishing the Mistress of Sarcasm a happy birthday. Not likely.

Perhaps she is thinking about the Mistress’s new kitty, Bernadette. “They better not even think of bringing that damned cat over here...” Unlikely as well, since Hakuna does not know of Bern’s existence.

Too bad for Hakuna. Bernadette, in her first week with the Mistress of Sarcasm, has shown herself to be a sweet, affectionate cat. She’d be a wonderful companion for Hakuna, if not for Hakuna’s extreme distaste for feline companionship.

What do you think she’s thinking, deep within the convolutions of her Kitty-Brain?

Update: Friday Ark #302 is afloat at (where else?) the Modulator. For even more Cat-Bloggery, visit Mind of Mog Sunday evening to catch the 329th edition of Carnival of the Cats.

Update 2: CotC #329 is up.