The meal I had the night I was the victim of an attempted mugging (a friend from high school was in town for work and I went out with her and her coworker to a really nice "small plate"-concept Italian restaurant on her company's tab!) -
- 2 $5 martinis - one lemon and grappa, another gin with orange bitters (my friend and her coworker each also tried one with pomegranate-infused vodka, too).
- an appetizer of thick fried pork belly (so light and tasty! - the fat was crisp and moist, and the meat fell apart in your mouth), with an apple relish.
- an appetizer of fried palm hearts and cherry tomatoes with a lemon juice etc. dressing.
- an appetizer of roasted beets with creme fraiche, hazelnut sauce, and crumbled candied walnuts (the sauces and walnuts were in moderation, and complemented the beets well; they didn't overwhelm the earthiness of the root vegetable, but rather subtly emphasized its pungent sweetness).
- an entree of this great fatty risotto with nice fresh peas and pieces of ham or pork or something, with an egg yolk on top that broke and ran all over it and added this nice fatty flavor to it.
- an entree of linguine with crab and octopus (I'm not a big fan of seafood, but it was well done; sauce was just the right amount to stick to the noodles, the seafood taste was strong but not overwhelming).
- an entree of half a roasted chicken in a pepper sauce, accompanied by a crisp heart of Romaine lightly coated in caesar dressing and dusted with parmesan cheese.
- a dessert of organic yogurt pudding (surprisingly sweet) with red wine-soaked dates and some kind of sauce (it worked okay-well, but only if you got the right amount of everything on your spoon).
- a dessert of chocolate hazelnut cake that was nice and moist, and on a crispy bottom of rich (dark) bitter chocolate.
Everything was very good to excellent (the pudding and to some extent the chicken were weak points), and we shared everything and ordered a little bit too much (though we finished it *all*), and yet the bill ended up only being $120, including tip! And that's for 3 courses and liquor, mind you.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Sex doc on Tues. night: Viagra dependency.
The sex doc on Tues. night was by a 40y.o. Dutch Michael Moore-imitator who admitted dependency on Viagra and went out to explore Viagra's origin, place in society, etc.
Just watching the movie made me hate the Dutch... It seems like that the default Dutch personality is a smug, know-it-all liberalism.
Also, at the beginning of the movie (which was actually a made-for-tv documentary), he went around Amsterdam if they could remember what happened in 1998 (which was the year of the 1st Viagra advertisement, by Bob Dole). He got various answers, including people saying "I can't remember!", and a woman being like, "The queen visited my village!", and then some dark fat late 40s Indian tourist with a thick accent was cut to and the guy was like, "In India?", and the director was smart-assily like, "No" for a cheap laugh, and then they cut to him talking to someone else.
That said, it was fun to hear Dutch (the movie was subtitled). At one point he calls Viagra "the mother of all pills", and the BDSM computer programmer near me kept saying to himself, "De muder, de muder, he sounds like the Swedish chef!"
I would have to say the funnest part of the night was talking beforehand with the BDSM computer programmer and the BDSM activist hostess... The guy was saying that in BDSM circles he's the big non-threatening non-sexual teddy bear, so he went to a swinger party so he could escape the typecasting, but he found it a little fucked up... He said that at the party that bisexual people could get neon bracelets so they could signal their preferences, but he was like one of the only guys wearing them, but people would jokingly force them on women.
"Yeah, there's a lot of fucked-up gender shit that happens in the swinging world," the BDSM activist hostess was like.
The movie started soon, but when there was a glitch and they had to play with the projecting equipment, I started asking the BDSM computer programmer about where the party was, exactly.
"Oh, out at this house in the burbs," he was like. "This couple owns it, but they mostly use it for parties, and I think they make a pretty penny on it. It's all set up for that sort of thing."
"Oh," I was like. "You mean with fuck-swings and stuff?"
"No," he was like, "A pool-size jacuzzi that's half outdoors and half indoors and they can block off for winter, and a basement area with a DJ booth, and mirrors everywhere, and a small buffet
table where there's always some food out.
"It's not bad for what it is," he added.
The conversation after wasn't bad either... The high point was this affable older (black) man who used to work for Pl-yb-y who showed up - he's been there before - and would tell funny stories.
"Men and women need to just get along," he was like, "They each hold up half the sky, though with women it's really more like three-quarters..."
"Oh mi gosh," the museum liaison was like, "I need to have that put on a poster or something."
"It's a saying I heard," the guy was like, "But growing up in the delta, I said that to my mother once, and her hand shot out and she shook her finger at me and told me, it's not one-half, it's three-quarters!"
He also talked about how popular masculinity focuses on "dicks, that go boing, and are *BIG*", and there's no real concept of "making love", and he told the story of how when he was 22 he wanted this girl for months and months, and when he finally got with her, he failed, but she knew what she was doing - "I didn't, I was only 22!" - and they did other things, and 20 minutes later he was back and good to go.
He also said that he and his other friends his age keep in shape, and that for a lot of people exercise is a better prescription for Viagra.
"We all have this joke," he was like, "If we get a little fat in the winter. 'See Willy next spring!'", he was like, and he puffed out his chest and then looked down and waved a fake smiling wave towards his crotch.
Just watching the movie made me hate the Dutch... It seems like that the default Dutch personality is a smug, know-it-all liberalism.
Also, at the beginning of the movie (which was actually a made-for-tv documentary), he went around Amsterdam if they could remember what happened in 1998 (which was the year of the 1st Viagra advertisement, by Bob Dole). He got various answers, including people saying "I can't remember!", and a woman being like, "The queen visited my village!", and then some dark fat late 40s Indian tourist with a thick accent was cut to and the guy was like, "In India?", and the director was smart-assily like, "No" for a cheap laugh, and then they cut to him talking to someone else.
That said, it was fun to hear Dutch (the movie was subtitled). At one point he calls Viagra "the mother of all pills", and the BDSM computer programmer near me kept saying to himself, "De muder, de muder, he sounds like the Swedish chef!"
I would have to say the funnest part of the night was talking beforehand with the BDSM computer programmer and the BDSM activist hostess... The guy was saying that in BDSM circles he's the big non-threatening non-sexual teddy bear, so he went to a swinger party so he could escape the typecasting, but he found it a little fucked up... He said that at the party that bisexual people could get neon bracelets so they could signal their preferences, but he was like one of the only guys wearing them, but people would jokingly force them on women.
"Yeah, there's a lot of fucked-up gender shit that happens in the swinging world," the BDSM activist hostess was like.
The movie started soon, but when there was a glitch and they had to play with the projecting equipment, I started asking the BDSM computer programmer about where the party was, exactly.
"Oh, out at this house in the burbs," he was like. "This couple owns it, but they mostly use it for parties, and I think they make a pretty penny on it. It's all set up for that sort of thing."
"Oh," I was like. "You mean with fuck-swings and stuff?"
"No," he was like, "A pool-size jacuzzi that's half outdoors and half indoors and they can block off for winter, and a basement area with a DJ booth, and mirrors everywhere, and a small buffet
table where there's always some food out.
"It's not bad for what it is," he added.
The conversation after wasn't bad either... The high point was this affable older (black) man who used to work for Pl-yb-y who showed up - he's been there before - and would tell funny stories.
"Men and women need to just get along," he was like, "They each hold up half the sky, though with women it's really more like three-quarters..."
"Oh mi gosh," the museum liaison was like, "I need to have that put on a poster or something."
"It's a saying I heard," the guy was like, "But growing up in the delta, I said that to my mother once, and her hand shot out and she shook her finger at me and told me, it's not one-half, it's three-quarters!"
He also talked about how popular masculinity focuses on "dicks, that go boing, and are *BIG*", and there's no real concept of "making love", and he told the story of how when he was 22 he wanted this girl for months and months, and when he finally got with her, he failed, but she knew what she was doing - "I didn't, I was only 22!" - and they did other things, and 20 minutes later he was back and good to go.
He also said that he and his other friends his age keep in shape, and that for a lot of people exercise is a better prescription for Viagra.
"We all have this joke," he was like, "If we get a little fat in the winter. 'See Willy next spring!'", he was like, and he puffed out his chest and then looked down and waved a fake smiling wave towards his crotch.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Karaoke emptiness.
This Monday my thoughts turned to krunk karaoke, and how much I miss it, so I texted my one (white) friend from Mississippi:
Do you remember when they chanted my name at krunk karaoke? That already feels like a different lifetime.
In like five minutes he texted back:
It could happen again.
Do you remember when they chanted my name at krunk karaoke? That already feels like a different lifetime.
In like five minutes he texted back:
It could happen again.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
St. Louis flashback.
My one Dutch friend's one Fijian friend wanted to make a pot roast on Christmas day, so like the 23rd or 24th we went to the supermarket to do shopping, but for the life of us, we couldn't find a pot roast in the meat cooler.
"Excuse me," I was like, to this older short (white) Missouri woman who was moseying on by with a shopping cart, "Do you know what a pot roast looks like?"
"Excuse me," I was like, to this older short (white) Missouri woman who was moseying on by with a shopping cart, "Do you know what a pot roast looks like?"
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Conversation with my one British friend.
The other day I met my one British friend for lunch on campus, and when we went to the cafeteria, we sat down with his brother-in-law (who is also a ph.d. student on campus and who I also know) and one of his classmates...
Since I hadn't seen his brother-in-law in a while, I was asking him how his language coursework was going (he's currently studying Coptic, Syriac, and Greek b/c he's studying the rise of Islam; he already has really good Arabic).
Anyhow, because of that, somehow we all got talking about languages and differences between them and cultural effects and language, etc.
"What I want to know, though" I was like, "Is why Arabic has more than 50 words for different kinds of war and hatred, but no word for peace?"
Since I hadn't seen his brother-in-law in a while, I was asking him how his language coursework was going (he's currently studying Coptic, Syriac, and Greek b/c he's studying the rise of Islam; he already has really good Arabic).
Anyhow, because of that, somehow we all got talking about languages and differences between them and cultural effects and language, etc.
"What I want to know, though" I was like, "Is why Arabic has more than 50 words for different kinds of war and hatred, but no word for peace?"
Monday, February 7, 2011
Kitchen catastrophe.
The other day, I was wiping off the long, thin spoon that I use to scoop out coffee and put it in my espresso maker, when the spoon flew out of my hands and fell behind the stove! And, because my stove is wedged into an alcove between my fridge and the counter and neither the stove nor fridge have much space underneath them, I can't get at it at all.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
I wonder if I was foolish...
...not to leave campus earlier the day of the blizzard. I really wanted to get my upper-body work in at the gym, though, and I was paying attention to updates on public transportation, and I figured that the worst that would happen is that I'd be stranded in my (old) neighborhood and have to call up a friend to stay with them.
Now, though, I realize that I could have had to get off the subway 2-4 stops early, and then I would have been fucked. I couldn't have walked home (which'd have been 30-35 minutes in good weather), and I would have had to wait for a shuttle bus, however long that would have taken.
Now, though, I realize that I could have had to get off the subway 2-4 stops early, and then I would have been fucked. I couldn't have walked home (which'd have been 30-35 minutes in good weather), and I would have had to wait for a shuttle bus, however long that would have taken.
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