Well, this was a Thanksgiving with a shadow. My family experienced a very sad loss, one that I am having trouble accepting. It just doesn't seem right.
So it was a little surreal this Thanksgiving, when one of the things I always feel thankful for, that I come from a family blessed with bright, vivacious people who are generally safe and happy, ended up not being the case.
Life was chugging on persistently, however. Ray and I faced perhaps our greatest relationship test ever: assembling an Ikea wardrobe so that I'll have a closet upstairs in his house for when I eventually trickle all my stuff over. The first day we put it together (TG) was pretty smooth sailing. The next day, when the back of the shelf did not go in the slots in the sides, well, there was some frustration. However, the application of a hammer to the particleboard fixed everything, even though I got a little overzealous and started kind of randomly banging on the wood, causing Ray to shout, "What are you doing?" Just feeling the Thor inside, buddy, that's all.
We went to the McMillans' for dinner on TG. Sheri and Lance were put in charge and holy guacamole did they outdo themselves with the turkey. I am no fan of the big bird, it's cottony and tasteless and generally worthless unless in a sandwich, but this was a smoked and roasted triumph of flavor and juiciness. Also, it was one of those farm-raised organic specialty turkeys. Janice made some fantastic brussels sprouts (I know, shocker to me, too, but I ate two servings). The sweet potatoes, the stuffing, the roasted asparagus, the handmade rolls, all were delicious. The only dishes I passed up were the Splendaed cranberry relish and the creamed pearl onions. Peas, mashed potatoes, cranberry log all found a spot on my plate or sitting a little on top of some other food. Of course there was pumpkin pie for dessert. Janice used a very complicated crust recipe that called for freezing, baking with weights, baking without, ad infinitum, and the crust came out burned looking (but not tasting, it was really very good). She was irked, because she is the pie crust queen. As her grandson says, "Why mess with perfection?"
For work I had to write a story recapping last year's dreadful storm. I swear I have some low-lying PTSD from the thing, I was getting chills just talking about windspeeds with some weather guys. They were saying that the wind was not as fast as people recall it being, which kind of put my back up a bit, because it was more than fast enough. It put my window out, for pete's sake, and there were a couple of points where I wondered if the building was strong enough to not tip over. I mean, this was a really scary storm, and it lasted for 36 hours, during part of which I was driving around covering the blamed thing seeing all the destruction that was in process of being wreaked. As a reporter, I struggled to find a balanced, objective voice that managed to capture the "OMG the sky is falling!" feeling I had. I think eventually sheer exhaustion (I hadn't slept, you can refer to that post to recapture the dramz) managed to sedate my language.
I am still working on that Banjo song for all my loved ones. I hear homemade gifts are really in this year. Just call me a cheap recessionista if you don't like my song stylings. I've been hampered by carpal tunnel/nerve damage in my right index finger and thumb, the "pickholders," if you will.
Also, because I have not been terribly motivated to work out, I have finished "The Dirt On Clean," about bathing habits of the Western World through the ages. When the author says we've really gotten away from our own scents as human beings I think she may need to spend a little time amongst the stinky to realize this is not a bad thing. Trip to the library will cure that longing for a less-bathed America. I also read, oh man this is embarrassing, "The Host," Stephenie Meyers' follow up to her Twilight vampire teen abstinence books. Although I read a lot less into the abstinence thing than the "will her demon lover love her or kill her?" as a kind of DV metaphor. The girl protagonist really feels inferior in every way to her vampire boyfriend (who is booooorrrring), and he makes odd comments about how he could do violence to her, and acts all controlling at points. He has no sense of humor, either. The other thing that bugged me about those books was the crass consumerism — the vampires are ridiculously wealthy so they only wear (designer) clothes once — oh, they're so intent on preventing human misery they don't kill people but sweatshops are fine in vampire political economic theory (and they don't sleep and live forever and do everything very fast so they could be reading up on all this), they kill top predators like bears and lions because it's more "sporting" for their dinner, even though there are plenty of deer, they drive a lot of expensive cars very fast, they just seem like very uncaring characters for a cast of vampires who are supposed to be so humane. I guess the lesson is that vampires are vampires no matter how you slice them.
So with all that in mind, plus the fact that I was compelled to read those Twilight books, I checked out "The Host" and although it was much better, there was the acceptance of casual violence to a woman (because she's taken over by an alien, so it's acceptable when her not-ex slaps her or some other guy trys to kill her). And at the end there was a bunch of disturbing stuff about like three girls in a row who were in their late 20s but looked a lot younger (one who was actually a lot younger) or something and their pairing up with significantly older guys. Weird. Hey, they were in a desert compound, trying to escape notice by civilization, this is what happens out there, young gals marry/pair up with much, much older guys. Or something. There was more to the book, obviously, but all that has been said in other, more comprehensive reviews. I don't bother with the comprehensivity any more, just the bits I think about that other people haven't.
Up next: The wondrous life of Oscar Wao. I think this is a book I need at this point, it's being literary and all.
I'd Twitter the reviews, but really I have to use a little more than 140 characters.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Not good enough for crackheads
So my car got prowled the other night. It was disconcerting to get in to go to work and find my console and ashtray/change drawer open, my visors down and stuff from my glovebox on the floor. My car was messy enough that I didn't really notice right away, and once I started going through my stuff I realized nothing was taken. My old New Yorkers, my atlas, my sunglasses were all still there. The crackheads didn't want any of it.
The only thing missing was a grocery sack from the night before with two 24-oz boxes of FMWs. Apparently even THEY weren't good enough for Harbor crackheads, because they left them out on the street where I didn't see them. Steve found them and brought them in. He and Apt. mgr Mike still apparently think I "forgot" the FMWs (they clearly don't know me) when going inside after a grueling workout and an armload of heavy (think gallon of milk and big things of cottage cheese, because I love my dairy), and that I wasn't prowled. But I was.
The cop I talked to said it was more "cost effective" to do what I do — leave a door unlocked and nothing valuable inside — because no window will get busted. And I guess it was, but sheesh, it's a little disconcerting that my car really, truly had nothing of value to local crackheads.
The only thing missing was a grocery sack from the night before with two 24-oz boxes of FMWs. Apparently even THEY weren't good enough for Harbor crackheads, because they left them out on the street where I didn't see them. Steve found them and brought them in. He and Apt. mgr Mike still apparently think I "forgot" the FMWs (they clearly don't know me) when going inside after a grueling workout and an armload of heavy (think gallon of milk and big things of cottage cheese, because I love my dairy), and that I wasn't prowled. But I was.
The cop I talked to said it was more "cost effective" to do what I do — leave a door unlocked and nothing valuable inside — because no window will get busted. And I guess it was, but sheesh, it's a little disconcerting that my car really, truly had nothing of value to local crackheads.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Healing clams
Well, I had a very big week at work. As you can tell from the comments, there is maybe some big time controversy.
So naturally I turned to the beach to work off some of the stuff that had been building over the week. Thursday night Ray and I loaded up his car with the clam guns, waders, stick and some lights and went straight to Ocean Shores Friday after work. It was a first for us, since we usually head to Grayland, and I worry that we got massively spoiled on our outing.
Although it was pitch black, we had headlamps on and a lantern. Not that they would have been helpful without the tell-tale clam shows (blurps of sand/holes in the beach). And there were clam shows all over the place. We got our limits (15) in almost as many minutes, less than half the time it takes to just get out there. It was crazy. I just threw myself on the beach in a frenzy of clam-gunning over little shows. I was so frenzied I ended up busting about a quarter of the clams I went after. I hate that crunching sound their shells make when you dig wrong.
The clamming was so superb that we went again tonight, even though we spent an hour cleaning the things last night and you'd have thought that would have prompted us to take a break.
We left shortly after coming back from a field trip. Yeah, that's right. The 7th Street crew took a van of peeps down to Astoria, where the Liberty Theater is. The 660-seat theater manages to be the anchor of a thriving downtown (THREE bookstores! Three!!!) in a town of 10,000 souls. People show up and regularly sell out the place (note — it would be a little harder to achieve that in the 1,100-seat 7th Street Theatre), and the thing makes money and draws enough donations to do a $9-million repair and restoration job. Seriously, the 7th Street wants in on that sort of action. And you can tell in the parts that have been done just how gorgeous the place is, and in the tour we got, we can see just how much work went into it, because we saw the part that is in the final phase of phixing, and it's kind of a wreck (of course, it's a construction site so YMMV).
After that tour we looked at the nearby Hotel Elliott, which is also gorgeous. This is what could have sort of have been the way a group of developers were thinking when they bought and began renovations at the Morck Hotel in Aberdeen, now an eyesore and decaying structure in a downtown full of the same.
Then we had lunch, then we drove back and it was clam time again.
The clamming was possibly even more spectacular than last night's. Our clamming was facilitated by a nice guy from Elma who had gotten his limit but was savoring his clam experience as he rarely gets to do it too much these days due to taking care of a sick relative. I'd pull one out and he'd say, "Here's four more. Get yer limit right here." He also said all the good clams were coming out, but mostly Ray was the one catching those. He got some big old beauts.
We let them soak in a bucket while we fixed up some from yesterday for dinner tonight. Betsy told us on the trip that the recipe we liked — dip cleaned clams in flour, egg and bashed-up Ritz crackers, lay on cookie sheet, cook five mins at 500 in preheated oven, turn and bake another five minutes — was Rich D of KDUX's recipe. He allegedly has a "world famous clam recipe," but the link from Fishgraysharbor.com was dead. So I couldn't vouch anything.
We had clams, plain steamed broccoli (Ray never has/seems to need lemon. I will have to do something about that), beets from the other night and Ray's amazing oatmeal rolls. Those rolls were so delicious it almost assuaged from the pang I felt upon eating beets — I have learned that President-elect Obama is not such a fan of the purple awesomeness. Just give the real things, not the canned things, a try, dude. Or maybe it is to my advantage that he rails on beets because then there will be more left for me when all the followers decide to hate beets because Obama does. Or maybe the American beet industry could go off the rails, I don't know.
In other news, I bought the banjo. It is mine.
This means nobody's getting Christmas presents. Well, maybe I'll write a song. How would you like that?
So naturally I turned to the beach to work off some of the stuff that had been building over the week. Thursday night Ray and I loaded up his car with the clam guns, waders, stick and some lights and went straight to Ocean Shores Friday after work. It was a first for us, since we usually head to Grayland, and I worry that we got massively spoiled on our outing.
Although it was pitch black, we had headlamps on and a lantern. Not that they would have been helpful without the tell-tale clam shows (blurps of sand/holes in the beach). And there were clam shows all over the place. We got our limits (15) in almost as many minutes, less than half the time it takes to just get out there. It was crazy. I just threw myself on the beach in a frenzy of clam-gunning over little shows. I was so frenzied I ended up busting about a quarter of the clams I went after. I hate that crunching sound their shells make when you dig wrong.
The clamming was so superb that we went again tonight, even though we spent an hour cleaning the things last night and you'd have thought that would have prompted us to take a break.
We left shortly after coming back from a field trip. Yeah, that's right. The 7th Street crew took a van of peeps down to Astoria, where the Liberty Theater is. The 660-seat theater manages to be the anchor of a thriving downtown (THREE bookstores! Three!!!) in a town of 10,000 souls. People show up and regularly sell out the place (note — it would be a little harder to achieve that in the 1,100-seat 7th Street Theatre), and the thing makes money and draws enough donations to do a $9-million repair and restoration job. Seriously, the 7th Street wants in on that sort of action. And you can tell in the parts that have been done just how gorgeous the place is, and in the tour we got, we can see just how much work went into it, because we saw the part that is in the final phase of phixing, and it's kind of a wreck (of course, it's a construction site so YMMV).
After that tour we looked at the nearby Hotel Elliott, which is also gorgeous. This is what could have sort of have been the way a group of developers were thinking when they bought and began renovations at the Morck Hotel in Aberdeen, now an eyesore and decaying structure in a downtown full of the same.
Then we had lunch, then we drove back and it was clam time again.
The clamming was possibly even more spectacular than last night's. Our clamming was facilitated by a nice guy from Elma who had gotten his limit but was savoring his clam experience as he rarely gets to do it too much these days due to taking care of a sick relative. I'd pull one out and he'd say, "Here's four more. Get yer limit right here." He also said all the good clams were coming out, but mostly Ray was the one catching those. He got some big old beauts.
We let them soak in a bucket while we fixed up some from yesterday for dinner tonight. Betsy told us on the trip that the recipe we liked — dip cleaned clams in flour, egg and bashed-up Ritz crackers, lay on cookie sheet, cook five mins at 500 in preheated oven, turn and bake another five minutes — was Rich D of KDUX's recipe. He allegedly has a "world famous clam recipe," but the link from Fishgraysharbor.com was dead. So I couldn't vouch anything.
We had clams, plain steamed broccoli (Ray never has/seems to need lemon. I will have to do something about that), beets from the other night and Ray's amazing oatmeal rolls. Those rolls were so delicious it almost assuaged from the pang I felt upon eating beets — I have learned that President-elect Obama is not such a fan of the purple awesomeness. Just give the real things, not the canned things, a try, dude. Or maybe it is to my advantage that he rails on beets because then there will be more left for me when all the followers decide to hate beets because Obama does. Or maybe the American beet industry could go off the rails, I don't know.
In other news, I bought the banjo. It is mine.
This means nobody's getting Christmas presents. Well, maybe I'll write a song. How would you like that?
Sunday, November 09, 2008
On the spectrum?
So last week we saw my Aunt Patti and her main squeeze Klaus. They were in Seattle for a conference, and even went down to the Westport winery but didn't know I was in Aberdeen. We ate at an amazing place Jason had told them about -- the Sunflour bakery. Wow-ee, it was insane. I had a smoked salmon scramble that blew my mind. Patti had french toast with caramel peach sauce. Klaus had eggs benedict with avocado. Ray had a Denver omelet. It was all delish.
During the dinner Patti said something that makes a lot of sense: My dad is ADHD. At least a little on the spectrum. When he gets locked into the computer and can't look up, that's "hyperattention," something ADHD people can get, or something, I couldn't really be bothered to learn all that much because holy Ritalin, I am on the ADHD spectrum too! It explained a lot, like why I'm so easily distracted by passing animals and classic cars and stuff. But dad is really on the ADHD tip, you can tell because he joined Twitter a month ago and only put in one tweet as you can see here. I joined to read (what I didn't know) what was his one tweet. So now I have a twitter feed here.
It also explains why I write about thirteen topics into one blog post, I guess. (this was once a part of my previous blog post but I thought Patti deserves a little more of a pole position than the bottom of a post, if you know what I mean. She's more important than crummy sushi). Not that I have an actual diagnosis or anything, that would require going to the doctor. But Patti said it's incredibly easy to "have" ADHD anyway. She managed to get a doctor to almost prescribe her pills for it after she decided to experiment and see how easy it would be to get the diagnosis. I think that's playing with fire, myself, what with all the weird stuff that could end up in your medical file. I mean, forget the foreign service or running for president after that (yes, Patti should keep all her options open).
Patti said that if I find something interesting, it should be able to grip my attention, even if I have ADD tendencies. That's interesting because I swear I have about a decade's worth of learning about land use and AYP and "concrete is not cement" etc. in my head and I paid more attention to it than times tables because I guess, to keep my job I didn't have much of a choice. Yet my own stuff doesn't flow out of me or grab me the way passive entertainment (i.e. "The Office") or interactive experience (i.e. "Logger's Playday") does. I find this somewhat, oh, boat-rocking since I like to think of myself as creative and independent minded. Really, though, I'm just a hack and my ADD tendencies probably confirm this. I like to work for the money, honey, is what I mean. And not hustlin', but through honest, corporate labor. With health insurance.
Ray is such a sweetie pie, he has cleared out a space in his garage for my car to go. I helped him, choosing to throw away stuff he was waffling on (like a broken buoy, for serious. He does not seem to be a packrat, but all his grandfather's boating stuff is just stuff Ray will never, ever use. He has no boat to repair and, just going by his personality, he never will.) I also have a garage door opener. I am worried he will use this as an excuse to hassle me to wash my car (perish the thought!). But I will accept the hassle and maybe wash the old girl since I should accommodate him in the way that he's accommodating me.
I'm also doing my part, making pot roast for dinner and having whipped up a batch of banana pudding for dinner. Ray is obsessed with banana pudding. I believe he was seriously deprived of Jell-o-based and Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup-based recipes when he was a kid. I need to find my recipe for Coulibiac (includes canned salmon, something of an anathema to any Northwesterner) from grandmommy to convert him fully to Southern style cooking.
During the dinner Patti said something that makes a lot of sense: My dad is ADHD. At least a little on the spectrum. When he gets locked into the computer and can't look up, that's "hyperattention," something ADHD people can get, or something, I couldn't really be bothered to learn all that much because holy Ritalin, I am on the ADHD spectrum too! It explained a lot, like why I'm so easily distracted by passing animals and classic cars and stuff. But dad is really on the ADHD tip, you can tell because he joined Twitter a month ago and only put in one tweet as you can see here. I joined to read (what I didn't know) what was his one tweet. So now I have a twitter feed here.
It also explains why I write about thirteen topics into one blog post, I guess. (this was once a part of my previous blog post but I thought Patti deserves a little more of a pole position than the bottom of a post, if you know what I mean. She's more important than crummy sushi). Not that I have an actual diagnosis or anything, that would require going to the doctor. But Patti said it's incredibly easy to "have" ADHD anyway. She managed to get a doctor to almost prescribe her pills for it after she decided to experiment and see how easy it would be to get the diagnosis. I think that's playing with fire, myself, what with all the weird stuff that could end up in your medical file. I mean, forget the foreign service or running for president after that (yes, Patti should keep all her options open).
Patti said that if I find something interesting, it should be able to grip my attention, even if I have ADD tendencies. That's interesting because I swear I have about a decade's worth of learning about land use and AYP and "concrete is not cement" etc. in my head and I paid more attention to it than times tables because I guess, to keep my job I didn't have much of a choice. Yet my own stuff doesn't flow out of me or grab me the way passive entertainment (i.e. "The Office") or interactive experience (i.e. "Logger's Playday") does. I find this somewhat, oh, boat-rocking since I like to think of myself as creative and independent minded. Really, though, I'm just a hack and my ADD tendencies probably confirm this. I like to work for the money, honey, is what I mean. And not hustlin', but through honest, corporate labor. With health insurance.
Ray is such a sweetie pie, he has cleared out a space in his garage for my car to go. I helped him, choosing to throw away stuff he was waffling on (like a broken buoy, for serious. He does not seem to be a packrat, but all his grandfather's boating stuff is just stuff Ray will never, ever use. He has no boat to repair and, just going by his personality, he never will.) I also have a garage door opener. I am worried he will use this as an excuse to hassle me to wash my car (perish the thought!). But I will accept the hassle and maybe wash the old girl since I should accommodate him in the way that he's accommodating me.
I'm also doing my part, making pot roast for dinner and having whipped up a batch of banana pudding for dinner. Ray is obsessed with banana pudding. I believe he was seriously deprived of Jell-o-based and Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup-based recipes when he was a kid. I need to find my recipe for Coulibiac (includes canned salmon, something of an anathema to any Northwesterner) from grandmommy to convert him fully to Southern style cooking.
The worst sushi in the world
For Ray's birthday, I took him to the one place in the Harbor that has sushi (well, maybe there is sushi out in Seabrook or at the Ocean Crest on occasion, but I'm talking a place that bills itself as a sushi place). I used to think sushi was like pizza, there was no bad of it, that is, except for the kind that might take your life or just be off, but I think the sushi we ate was among the most appalling foodstuffs we could have eaten because it wasn't the kids that could kill you, or even give you heinous food poisoning. That I would have accepted. No, this was just the laziest, most pathetic, most irrationally bad sushi we could have ever encountered. Gordon Ramsay would have torched this alleged sushi-chef's tuches, that's for sure. I'm trying to be semi-anonymous but it's hard when there's only one joint in town that matches the description. I'm sure the teriyaki and yakisoba is better. I mean, the place is open, right?
How bad was it? You ask. Well, I say, have you ever eaten Hamachi (yellowfin) that tasted like cod liver oil that has been sitting in the back of grandma's cabinet for a couple of years, what with no one actually buying cod liver oil anymore now that fish oil comes in capsules? No, you say. Well, that is how bad the Hamachi was. If you aren't aware, the flavor of the fish should be smooth and clean and in no way repulsive. The wasabi, I think, left me with sores inside my mouth. The rice was probably a day old and completely unseasoned. The fish was, Hamachi aside, reasonable tasting. But, this dreadful yellowfin madness aside, sushi and sashimi are about achieving the sublime. The Aberdeen sushi place was an abject failure on this front.
One of the ways sushi and sashimi are supposed to get all sublime all in your grill is the presentation. I found the presentation lacking, but then, it's hard for any food to look good under ancient fluorescent lights that are only intermittently on. I'm not going to knock the sushi place for having a Soviet/developing world atmosphere, because that's kind of common on the Harbor. Usually I like it because it means the place is authentic and cheap, just like me.
The mistake was corrected by a DQ Pumpkin Pie Blizzard. Holy diabetes, Batman, they are awesome.
The reason I rail against the sushi place is that last night I had a sublime sushi dinner in Tacoma at Fujiya. It's a restaurant I didn't know even existed when I was down there. Ray and I were in town for the Martin Short show (more on that in a minute), and he was quite insistent we go to Fujiyama even though he is not the biggest Japanese food fan (so why take him for a sushi dinner? His choice out of the two I gave him and also I get to take him out of his "comfort zone" for his birthday. It's just something we've established over the two birthdays of his we've been together). He wanted me to get my sushi swerve back on. He really pulled me back from the brink.
I had an awesome sushi dinner, and the waitress (who was totally gorgeous and VERY professional) even pointed out all the sushis I had for dinner. "That's Hamachi, or yellowfin," she said, pointing to a yellowy-white sliver of fish that was nothing like the gray underbelly cut I ate the week before. "It's my favorite."
That yellowfin saved yellowfin for me. I even gave Ray a bite. "That's what it's supposed to taste like," I said. He couldn't disagree that it was delightful. The maguro was buttery and umami-riffic. And the service was insane. The chefs at Fujiya have a neat trick for staying entertained and keeping you happy — they make little dishes that get passed to your table "just because." It's nothing you've ordered, but it's really cool to have these little plates come to the table. We got two little pieces of spicy tuna wrapped in nori and tempura-fried and a little warm "salad" of octopus bits and taro in a sweetish sauce. The octopus was just melt-in-your-mouth. We got a scoop of green tea ice cream and a scoop of coconut ice cream before we left, and let me just say, these were WAY bigger scoops than you normally get at Japanese restaurants and the coconut ice cream in particular was to die for.
So then we went to the Pantages for the Martin Short show. He called it his "I should have saved" tour. Bwa ha ha ha. Saw former boss George in the foyer. He seemed happy. Said there were seven people in the newsroom at the Gateway. That's more than when I left, and considering that the economy has been brutal to papers and McClatchy has all kinds of layoffs makes me wonder how the paper is managing it. Maybe he's counting Hugh?
But anyway, there were a couple of drunk lady hecklers. What did they think this was, a Ren Faire bawdy juggler show? The opening act was a folk singer who sang some depressing songs, including one about a wedding called something like, "Let's get on with the illusion." Geez, we're not living in the fifties anymore, you can aim a little higher in life nowadays. It kind of inspired me to use my banjo skills to write songs, but about stuff I'd want to hear about: Robot overlords, Ultimate Frisbee, why aerobics instructors have to have perfect hair while they lead class at the GH YMCA and, uh, you know, anything that happens underwater. Like a seamonkey celebration parade, or a bottom-feeder get together at the local underwater bar. I guess if I wanted to write a love song it would be abou two little emo kids finding love, but their bangs get in the way if they make out.
So Martin Short is pretty much exactly the same person he's always been except he's a little older and his picture looks like he's had some work done (which he denied, saying "No one says, 'ooh, who's the 35-year-old,' they say, 'Who's the 58-year-old whose face caught on fire?' " so maybe he just had some photoshopping? Or his eyes are just really that big and twinkly?) and maybe his weird dance with the knees stuck together is one tenth of a second slower. But his mind is still fast, and he's just so hilarious. I love his mixture of kitschy old-timey Hollywood bombast and the kooky creative stuff. Some stuff, like the video of him being Hillary Clinton, didn't work so good (even though, dang, when made up he looks a LOT like her). But the Jiminy Glick stuff (with Drew Carey cast dude Ryan Stiles, also of the Whose Line is it Anyway series of shows I find pretty unfunny) was awesome. And he was Ed Grimley for a minute, even though Ray has no idea who that is. Best joke of the night, when a theater lady came out to give him a champagne — "Asti Spumante with three Sweet N Lows, just how I like it! (sip) I like my women like I like my champagne — compliments of the theater!"
On the ride home I kept Ray awake by playing "This American Life"'s podcast of part two of their look into the financial crisis of '08. Sadly, I did not make more than 30 minutes into it before I just nodded out. This is in spite of heroic amounts of green tea we had consumed earlier.
How bad was it? You ask. Well, I say, have you ever eaten Hamachi (yellowfin) that tasted like cod liver oil that has been sitting in the back of grandma's cabinet for a couple of years, what with no one actually buying cod liver oil anymore now that fish oil comes in capsules? No, you say. Well, that is how bad the Hamachi was. If you aren't aware, the flavor of the fish should be smooth and clean and in no way repulsive. The wasabi, I think, left me with sores inside my mouth. The rice was probably a day old and completely unseasoned. The fish was, Hamachi aside, reasonable tasting. But, this dreadful yellowfin madness aside, sushi and sashimi are about achieving the sublime. The Aberdeen sushi place was an abject failure on this front.
One of the ways sushi and sashimi are supposed to get all sublime all in your grill is the presentation. I found the presentation lacking, but then, it's hard for any food to look good under ancient fluorescent lights that are only intermittently on. I'm not going to knock the sushi place for having a Soviet/developing world atmosphere, because that's kind of common on the Harbor. Usually I like it because it means the place is authentic and cheap, just like me.
The mistake was corrected by a DQ Pumpkin Pie Blizzard. Holy diabetes, Batman, they are awesome.
The reason I rail against the sushi place is that last night I had a sublime sushi dinner in Tacoma at Fujiya. It's a restaurant I didn't know even existed when I was down there. Ray and I were in town for the Martin Short show (more on that in a minute), and he was quite insistent we go to Fujiyama even though he is not the biggest Japanese food fan (so why take him for a sushi dinner? His choice out of the two I gave him and also I get to take him out of his "comfort zone" for his birthday. It's just something we've established over the two birthdays of his we've been together). He wanted me to get my sushi swerve back on. He really pulled me back from the brink.
I had an awesome sushi dinner, and the waitress (who was totally gorgeous and VERY professional) even pointed out all the sushis I had for dinner. "That's Hamachi, or yellowfin," she said, pointing to a yellowy-white sliver of fish that was nothing like the gray underbelly cut I ate the week before. "It's my favorite."
That yellowfin saved yellowfin for me. I even gave Ray a bite. "That's what it's supposed to taste like," I said. He couldn't disagree that it was delightful. The maguro was buttery and umami-riffic. And the service was insane. The chefs at Fujiya have a neat trick for staying entertained and keeping you happy — they make little dishes that get passed to your table "just because." It's nothing you've ordered, but it's really cool to have these little plates come to the table. We got two little pieces of spicy tuna wrapped in nori and tempura-fried and a little warm "salad" of octopus bits and taro in a sweetish sauce. The octopus was just melt-in-your-mouth. We got a scoop of green tea ice cream and a scoop of coconut ice cream before we left, and let me just say, these were WAY bigger scoops than you normally get at Japanese restaurants and the coconut ice cream in particular was to die for.
So then we went to the Pantages for the Martin Short show. He called it his "I should have saved" tour. Bwa ha ha ha. Saw former boss George in the foyer. He seemed happy. Said there were seven people in the newsroom at the Gateway. That's more than when I left, and considering that the economy has been brutal to papers and McClatchy has all kinds of layoffs makes me wonder how the paper is managing it. Maybe he's counting Hugh?
But anyway, there were a couple of drunk lady hecklers. What did they think this was, a Ren Faire bawdy juggler show? The opening act was a folk singer who sang some depressing songs, including one about a wedding called something like, "Let's get on with the illusion." Geez, we're not living in the fifties anymore, you can aim a little higher in life nowadays. It kind of inspired me to use my banjo skills to write songs, but about stuff I'd want to hear about: Robot overlords, Ultimate Frisbee, why aerobics instructors have to have perfect hair while they lead class at the GH YMCA and, uh, you know, anything that happens underwater. Like a seamonkey celebration parade, or a bottom-feeder get together at the local underwater bar. I guess if I wanted to write a love song it would be abou two little emo kids finding love, but their bangs get in the way if they make out.
So Martin Short is pretty much exactly the same person he's always been except he's a little older and his picture looks like he's had some work done (which he denied, saying "No one says, 'ooh, who's the 35-year-old,' they say, 'Who's the 58-year-old whose face caught on fire?' " so maybe he just had some photoshopping? Or his eyes are just really that big and twinkly?) and maybe his weird dance with the knees stuck together is one tenth of a second slower. But his mind is still fast, and he's just so hilarious. I love his mixture of kitschy old-timey Hollywood bombast and the kooky creative stuff. Some stuff, like the video of him being Hillary Clinton, didn't work so good (even though, dang, when made up he looks a LOT like her). But the Jiminy Glick stuff (with Drew Carey cast dude Ryan Stiles, also of the Whose Line is it Anyway series of shows I find pretty unfunny) was awesome. And he was Ed Grimley for a minute, even though Ray has no idea who that is. Best joke of the night, when a theater lady came out to give him a champagne — "Asti Spumante with three Sweet N Lows, just how I like it! (sip) I like my women like I like my champagne — compliments of the theater!"
On the ride home I kept Ray awake by playing "This American Life"'s podcast of part two of their look into the financial crisis of '08. Sadly, I did not make more than 30 minutes into it before I just nodded out. This is in spite of heroic amounts of green tea we had consumed earlier.
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