So life continues, as it does. I think that I need to pretty much resign myself to the fact that writing is an impossibility when I'm in production, as it is my denial of that reality that results in my not warning for sudden stretches of radio silence. But if I look it in the eye, then perhaps both this blog will be better and I will be relieved of the sense of responsibility for something I can't reasonably do.
I've had it in my mind to live-blog my re-reading of Les Miserables -- or, you could say, my first reading of the Julie Rose translation -- but this only occurred to me after I had gotten about 100 pages into it. And then both reading and blogging fell by the wayside due to aforementioned production. I think that I might start back at the beginning again at the end of the semester and make it my 2013 project.
So I'll be popping in a bit at the end of December, might be seen occasionally during January, and then will hopefully be back for a good stretch through February and March. After that is the biggest job in my professional career thus far, so my entire life will be going on hiatus for a couple months then.
And that is the state of the art, my friend -- that is the state of the art.
Oh gentle reader, it's been a while, hasn't it? I'd originally had some Ambitious But Sensibly Realistic plan to write one full post per week once school started, but then allergies killed my soul for nearly two weeks, leaving me scrambling afterward as I was swept up in the relentless socializing that is the beginning of the school year. During the course of which I was roped into working a show that had lost their stage manager and ended up being an awesome, epic and absolutely huge undertaking. I was generally working straight from 4:00pm to 3:00am for that last week, with classes during the day.
It wasn't pretty.
But we had a giant snake puppet track all the way across the ceiling of the theater above the heads of the audience. No regrets. Take that, Phantom.
Aside from being debilitatingly busy -- I've been mildly sick ever since we closed this past weekend, running a low-grade fever at night -- there has been one thread weaving its way through from orientation before classes to me sitting here now.
As I was sitting there in the audience of the theater, waiting for the next person to talk to us about IT or turning our receipts into the business office or whatever else we needed to be re-oriented about for the new school year, I saw some of my friends a bit farther down the row crowding around the screen of one person's phone. They were all watching some video, as the owner of the phone pointed out the mechanics of the dance moves happening. I was far enough away that while I could see the brightly colored clothing and energetic movements, I couldn't make out who was performing or hear any of the music. Ah, well, I thought, another trend that I could only hope would be performed at some party or another at some point during the year.
I didn't give it much more thought than that, though I noted its ubiquity over the subsequent couple of weeks, with even the producer for the show I was stage managing telling how she had gone home one night only to find her 18-month old dancing that dance which is all the rage for the babysitter.
On a completely separate track, my Facebook feed had been peppered by some K-pop Youtube video that apparently a lot of people had been watching.
It was only when the "Gandalf Style" parody was posted that I was hooked by geek bait and then, that light bulb slowly began glowing over my head. And it took a while for my brain to integrate the information that this K-pop song and this raging trend that was sweeping through my friends and across the world were the same thing, finally culminating in shock.
The reason was this: based on the limited glimpse that was my first impression, I had assumed that all of the people involved in the song were white.
This blunt realization of my own internalized default status of whiteness was a real bucket of cold water dumped over the head. I'd always felt that I was pretty well at peace with my racial identity, if not my national identity, over which I'd always been very defensive. "I'M NOT KOREAN. I'M AMERICAN. WHY WOULD I WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING KOREAN? STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER!!" Adopted from Korea at a young age -- four and a half months, to be exact, so no, I don't remember anything or anyone -- I grew up in a mostly white family (my mother's grandparents had emigrated from Armenia) in an overwhelmingly white rural/suburban community. At its most diverse point, my 500-student, second-through-fifth-grade elementary school had five non-white kids: me, another adopted Korean girl, one black kid, one Native American girl and a kid whose family had just moved from Japan for business. But my parents had been great, being upfront with me about my adoption, having lots of books, both educational and fun, on hand, and introducing me to Koreanness and the existence of other people like me with a week-long Korean culture camp in the summer that was never forced.
(And as easy as it is to make fun of Korean culture camp, I will never forget bringing the other Korean adoptee from my school, who had never been to such an event, to a visitor's day one summer. She was absolutely gobsmacked. She had literally never experienced simply seeing so many other people who just looked like her.)
And I'm not sure which was the chicken and which was the egg, but I'd apparently been self-aware of race from a very early age. My mom tells me of how, at some point too young for me to remember now, I was watching something on television, when all of sudden I pointed to the screen and declared, "People who look like me!"
Well, my mom said to herself, guess that means she knows she doesn't look like us.
Sure, some kids made fun of my eyes when we were in first grade. I might have threatened them to the point where they told the teacher and I got yelled at for it. But hey, let me tell you, they never bothered me about it from that point onward. And there was one cringe-worthy incident within my family, where my grandmother once scolded me for rubbing my nose too hard, which would "spread it." Deducing from this that a spread nose was bad, I would periodically stick a close-pin on my nose as a preventative measure. But I never said to myself, "I want to be white." I was pretty self-satisfied with my apparent well-adjustedness.
I don't really have any particular point that I'm driving toward with this. It was just an incident that has gotten me thinking. The experience of an adopted minority is a unique, quirky little beast. When your parents are part of that Othered identity, at least you have them to rebel against. I'm not them, you can tell yourself, look at the distance that I'm putting between myself and everything that they are. Now, I'm not saying that that's any field of roses -- there have been enough generational culture-clash books and movies and tragic news stories to that effect. But it's just a different situation when you are the only Other, the only Different. The only person that you have to distance yourself from in this case is yourself: I am not Me.
Over the summer, I'd had a Moment when, in the course of some conversation that I have otherwise forgotten, our Irish (as in, studying abroad from Ireland) artistic director noted how confusing it had been for her at first, coming to America and hearing people saying that they were Irish or Italian or what have you. When I'm back home, she said, and someone says that they're Italian, it means that they're from Italy, as in they themselves traveled from Italy to Ireland. It's not like it is in America.
Hearing that said aloud was like snapping that little metal disc in a super-saturated sodium acetate hand-warmer. It crystallized a realization and peace that I'd been approaching for the past few years now. All of my life-long angsting over my hyphenated national identity -- what it means to be Korean-American, Asian-American -- fell away.
I'm Korean. That's all. Just as I'm short and bespectacled and twenty-seven years old and atheist and a woman. And for all of that, I'm an American. Because that's what part of being an American is. If someone doesn't understand that, thinks that it means that I don't speak English or am forever straining against some overseas roots that are constantly pulling me "home," then that's their problem. I'm secure in who I am and to what I've chosen to belong.
Of course, with the new Red Dawn movie coming out, that might just mean that I'm a dirty yellow Red. (Does that make me orange?) Thank goodness that a bunch of wholesome white kids (plus Connor Cruise) are here to save us.
At the very least, I finally managed to defeat Gangam Style, which had been playing on repeat in my brain to the point where it was disrupting my sleep. Credit for this victory goes to Leonard Bernstein, whose On The Town I was studying for a class, with the "New York, New York" opening being strong enough to displace PSY. It couldn't have been more picturesque, either. I don't have classes on Tuesday this semester, and being currently not on production, I decided to go to New York because I could. I had a soon-to-be-expiring Bloomspot certificate for a badly-needed haircut, so there was simply nothing to be done but to get the hell out of Dodge.
In true autumn in New York fashion, the sun was shining, the sky was blue and everything was perfect. Riding the train into that, with the Columbia studio recording telling me what a wonderful town it was -- it's another time where I've needed to pinch myself to remind me that this is my life, not some movie that I'd magically woken up into.
I batted zero at getting rush tickets for Once, but that was okay. I picked up Groupon-discounted okonomiyaki for lunch. I met up with my friend P. as she was walking a client's dog, and then we went on a mad-cap chase through the West Village when we spotted a couple of small dogs that hadn't been leashed and were running loose through the streets. (Dashing across Bleecker Street, diving through holes in fences, in my stylish knee-high high-heeled boots, trendy skinny jeans, silk shirt and snappy vest? And I'm not living in a movie? What has my life become?) We finally herded the dogs back to their infuriatingly negligent owner and soothed ourselves with bubble tea and Japanese cheesecake before parting ways. I headed back to Midtown, browsed the fashion section in Kinokuniya and fell in love with the Jean Paul Gaultier Paris - Winter/Fall 2012-2013 look before getting my haircut. Fell in love some more while window shopping at Zara, then hung out in Sephora, using the store as my figurative fitting room for putting together future online orders. And then back, back home again.
As wonderful as that all was, I have to say, one of my biggest regrets from yesterday was that I naturally walk at a very fast pace. This meant that by the time the man harassing me on the street had moved on from general heckling (trying to get my attention as I walked in front of him in the way that one might speak to a dog -- "Hey. Heya. Hellohellohello." and some snapping -- which is very flattering, let me tell you) to the oh-so-intelligent-and-charming "Japanese? Chinese? Eh?", I was too far away (and swiftly moving farther) to be able to turn and shout in his face "AMURRKIN, MUTHAFUCKA," as any dignified (upstate) New York lady of grace and refinement would do.
I'd been really looking forward to a leisurely week back at the old childhood homestead, out in the peace of the forest; retreating from the crime-ridden, pollution-stained city to get some real work done with a clear mind.
It turns out that I've ended up being even more allergic to everything about this place than I remember from my last visit here. It's also amazing how much one's productivity and general will to live plummets when one is trapped in a bottomless pit of watering eyes; clogged up breathing; an itching that makes one want to claw one's lungs, throat and ear canals out of one's body from the inside out; and multiple nights of poor sleep.
So if you haven't heard from me lately, don't worry, I'm just quietly dying a slow death of environmental allergies in beautiful upstate New York.
And so the summer season is closed, all of the detritus of production -- sets, props, costumes, electrics -- struck, and I would like nothing more than to sit here and with a stare as blank as the repainted walls and floors of the theater. With an almost comical predictability, I'd been feeling a little off by the time I closed my own show on Saturday night and had that sense of foreboding during the closing party on Sunday night, where I forewent getting ritually smashed by choosing instead to binge eat on two cupcakes, probably half a bag of potato chips and an unquantifiable amount of tortilla and lavash chips that served as vehicles for guacamole, spinach dip, salsa and Trader Joe's five-layer dip on their journey into my mouth. Because let's face it, I have alcohol around all the time, but I don't really keep snacks in the house, especially not carbs. So that night? Yeah, stuffing my face. And the others didn't need my help in demolishing the rather sizable amount of alcohol, so let 'em have it.
Thinking about it, the oncoming change of the seasons probably helped push along this sickness. The nights have started to take on that deliciously refreshing autumnal coolness, but changes in temperature always can wreak such havoc on the body. Admittedly, some of that might have been self-inflicted. I'd scored a Groupon for a four-person pass to a local year-round ice skating rink, so a crew of us went on an outing on Friday.
It was a huge amount of fun. I took figure skating lessons as a child, and though I'd switched to dance by the time that I reached junior high and have never been able to keep it up regularly since then, I can still keep myself upright passably well and enjoy it a great deal, not the least because it's a highly physical activity where I can actually not overheat.
I am, however, out of practice to the point of not being able to do any "tricks" -- spins, footwork, jumps. At least, not without a good hour of ice mostly to myself, where I can feel free to fall on my ass as much as necessary. For one thing, it's about the safety of others, as a public skating session like the one we attended on Friday often felt like a game of reverse Frogger, with you as the motor vehicle and the swarms of small children as the frogs that you needed to somehow avoid turning into roadkill. It simply takes a lot of focus, skill and energy to keep track of oneself and all others when all others aren't keeping track of either.
But also, something that those little frogs seemed to have that I've come to lack is a complete and utter fear of falling. It is true that my body isn't quite so cavalier in its recovery from gravity as it used to be. That doesn't let me off the hook for my attitude, though. As I said in only the paragraph above this, if you gave me an hour when no one was looking, I'd fall on my ass the entire time, to hell with my ability to walk the next day. What I've always lacked, and do so now more than ever, is the ability not to give a fuck about falling in front of others. Because those kids? Could not have given less of a fuck. And I think that's just something that I need to remember -- that sometimes, the only person of note who actually gives a fuck about your ass hitting the ice is yourself. Sometimes, staying upright out of fear is the greatest thing holding you back.
Anyhow, that's all that my brain can summon for today. I keep spacing out and clicking on more music videos. So I might as well go the easy route and dish on some things I recently threw money at.
First up is Helen Chen's Asian Kitchen Perfect Rice Cooker. I had received a small rice cooker as a gift when I graduated from high school, presumably to keep myself from starving as a college student, but as I ended up on a full board plan, it just got shoved into the back of a closet back home. When I embarked on the first internship of my stage management career, however, I wouldn't have survived without it. After a few years of dedicated service, it finally died, not owing me anything. I then bought myself a larger rice cooker, like the type you see at the end of the rows in all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets. It was awesome -- until it died on me a few months later. So I bought another one. Which also died. And then another. Which also died.
At that point, I resigned myself to stove-top rice cooking, at which I was decent but not free of imperfectly cooked rice, which is kind of a terrible thing. So when I happened to spot this little item on sale at Ideeli, I figured, hey, why not.
It's simple and elegant enough. You put the rice and water -- a one-to-one ratio -- into the cooker, and then you place the cooker into big stock pot with some water, which is then covered and heated, so it's partially a steaming process. It's so easy that it might make you roll your eyes, but the thing is? It works. That shit don't get burned. I've only used it for brown rice so far, which I've started cooking a little chewier than I used to eat it, since I no longer fear burned rice crusting the bottom of my pan. I haven't had a miss yet. It's a little on the pricy side, so I wouldn't recommend it to a casual rice eater, but if the state of your rice is extremely important to you, it's something I'd recommend for consideration. One thing I would caution is to be sure that you have a big enough stock pot. I think that mine might be a 8-quart, just one of those cheap ones you pick up at Target, and I have to remove the rice cooker's bamboo handle in order to be able to put a lid on the pot.
Next up is the PopSugar MustHave, which I decided to try on a whim this summer. It's one of those surprise gift bag subscriptions, where you pay a set amount to receive a set of various curated products each month. It's $35 for a month, and being gainfully employed as I was, I figured that it was worth a one-time splurge to satisfy my curiosity.
The service's blog posted a description of the contents of the July bag after it was shipped, but here they are in quick list form:
-canvas beach bag
-Body Drench Raspberry Gelee Body Scrub
-Body Drench Pomegranate Crush Body Lotion
-2 KIND bars: Madagascar Vanilla Almond and Cashew & Ginger Spice
-2 RGB nail polishes: pale "neutral" pink Doll and pale seafoam Minty
-Ilia lip conditioner in Bang Bang (sheer red)
-Ilia lip color in In My Room (light pink)
I'll admit that there was a very fun "it's my birthday" sort of feeling to receiving a package in the mail and not knowing what was in it, except that it was presumably cool shit. Overall, however, whatever the retail value of the selection might be, I wouldn't call it worth it. I'd been hoping for some really ahead-of-the-curve products, but what I received was simultaneously unexcitingly unrisky while at the same time too narrow to be a guaranteed hit.
As a person with a pretty well-developed personal style, these items fell well outside of things that I would pick for myself. The bag is functionally great, sturdy canvas with nice shoulder straps and a zipper on top that partially closes it enough to keep things from falling out while still being able to slip things inside of it. With the bright pink, vintage-distessed print of the "PopSugar" label on it, it's definitely not my Look. Which is moderately forgivable in a beach bag, since aesthetics aren't my highest priority when heading to the beach, but fact remains that it's something I would never have picked for myself, and not in that positive "oh my, what a discovery!" way.
More useless to me are the cosmetic items, the nail polishes being colors that I basically wouldn't wear in a hundred years and will probably end up giving away. It actually surprised me a lot that they would include something like lip colors, where you're dealing with things like different complexion colors. The lip conditioner in Bang Bang is actually all right, very sheer but nicely creamy. The In My Room lip color, however, looks like absolute shit on me. The color is so pale, it almost gives me a Ganguro girl look, particularly with my summer skin. And while it is also very creamy and feels nice on my lips, the color coverage is pretty poor. If it's hot out at all, it starts to come apart and become almost grainy. Even when it's cool, though, I found it to have a tendency to really sink into the creases in my lips, collecting there while remaining extremely sheer on the rest of my lips, making my mouth look about ten years older than it is.
That they would include food items that contained nuts also surprised me, given allergy issues. I'm actually sensitive to almonds, but ate them one half-bar at a time, since I wasn't about to pass up protein that I'd paid for. They were good, but also not that exciting -- I'm not very impressed by a surprise "trendy" product that I see on a regular basis at the Korean deli on the corner. Granted, it's a Korean deli in a university town that includes multiple prestigious graduate arts schools, but my point remains that it's in the same place that I could pick up a package of Cup Noodles.
I've yet to try the body scrub and the lotion, waiting until I'm through my current scrub and lotion to begin using that as a fruity set.
As for the service itself, while the multiple-month subscriptions bill themselves as being automatically renewing, I have to caution that the single-month purchase also automatically renews. If you order a single month, you will have to go into your account and manually cancel being signed up for the next month. That had soured me to the service, as it seemed rather underhanded. Additionally, I don't know if they'll improve over the coming months, but I didn't receive my advertised "July MustHave" until the first day of August. And when I did get it, I had received a double of the two-nail polish set, with one bottle having leaked, and none of the lip color. I wrote them some rather tepid feedback about the packing mistake, pretty resigned at that point to not getting any fix for it, the late shipping of the product indicating to me that they didn't have their shit together.
To my surprise, without ever having gotten any digital reply to my feedback about my botched package contents, about a week later, I received a box in the mail. In it was an additional nail polish set, the lip color set and a hand-written note expressing their apologies for the mistake. So points to them for that.
So that's the dish on my latest forays into consumerism. I think it might be time for my fifth cup of echinacea tea before a spinach salad dinner and bedtime, honey.
This is a day late, but that's because life happens. Yesterday was a two-show day, including our final performance of the show that I've been running this entire summer, and we all ended up hanging out afterwards for a while. Of course, this was largely due to the fact that the theater's freezer -- it's a dinner theatre -- went kaput before the evening show, and the administration beautifully made lemons out of lemonade and a broken freezer into an informal post-show ice cream party. It was a blast to watch everyone whip themselves into a sugar-fueled hysteria and suddenly come crashing back down. As for me, my digestive system registered its not-unexpected displeasure not too long afterward and I crashed as well, though more from the internal strain of large amounts of lactose -- I've reached a point where I'm no longer completely lactose intolerant (again), but while minimally tolerant of it, my body still doesn't particularly like it -- and, I suspect, rather more fat than my system is used to dealing with anymore.
Would totally do it again, of course.
As for the show itself, last night's wasn't our best -- our last performance last week (the season is three shows in rotating repertory) was, I think, the zenith of the season and a thing of magical beauty -- but it was still good and a satisfying end to the run. I don't get sentimental over the ends of shows, never have, and while I have, in some ways, been ready to let go of this project for a while, it's still a show that I've found exciting (in a good way) to run every night, which is something I know that I won't always get. It was my first time working on a piece of physical theatre without any text whatsoever, and I found the intense focus and synergy required to call it to be extremely engaging and very rewarding.
Our very last performance of the season is tonight, followed by a closing party for which the board has apparently gifted us a large amount of money. It is expected that many people will be very hungover when we begin strike tomorrow. I don't plan on being one of them, but I do plan on being drunk tonight, so that's a thing.
But I'd had a particular reason for wanting to write yesterday. Yesterday was the ninety-second anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Yes, my countrywomen, we've the right to vote -- full citizenship -- for less than one hundred years.
Women have been awesome for a long time, of course. Just a couple of things that have floated by my attention in recent days have included how Renaissance Women Fought Men, and Won [ScienceDaily] ("A three-year study into a set of manuscripts compiled and written by one of Britain's earliest feminist figures [Lady Anne (1590-1676)] has revealed new insights into how women challenged male authority in the 17th century."), Dr. Hawa Adbi, a 2012 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize [NYT op-ed] continues work in a country beset by famine and extremism ("The Party of Islam then attacked with 750 soldiers and seized [her] hospital. [. . .] For a week there were daily negotiations, but Dr. Hawa refused to budge. She demanded that the militia not only withdraw entirely but also submit a written apology."), and Julie D'Aubigny existed ("Julie D'Aubigny was a 17th-century bisexual French opera singer and fencing master who killed or wounded at least ten men in life-or-death duels, performed nightly shows on the biggest and most highly-respected opera stage in the world, and once took the Holy Orders just so that she could sneak into a convent and bang a nun."). But for all of that awesomeness, the state of women today continues to range from "not on equal footing yet but succeeding despite it" to "absolutely horrifying crimes against humanity."
There was just recently an article in the New York Times, Wed and Tortured at 13, Afghan Girl Finds Rare Justice, that made me so angry and so frustratingly perplexed as how people (both men and women) can view women as being some sort of foreign, sub-human class of beings. And it's just so dangerous, once you make a person an "Other" -- from there, it's so easy to make them be "Lesser," and from that, any number of horrors can grow. The way that whole societies support this is so enraging and discouraging." A new 2009 law to eliminate violence against women was cited in the sentencing of Sahar Gul’s abusers, but the law is still barely applied, according to a United Nations report published in November, and it has not been formally adopted. Women’s shelters are under threat, with a conservative justice minister describing them as "brothels," while a new family law that could make it easier for abused women to divorce is being held up. In such a climate, the fear is that Sahar Gul’s successful rescue may turn out to be an aberration rather than a new norm, and that it will not help those women whose suffering is not discovered."
And even in societies where, though there are battles currently raging over health care and bodily autonomy, women have made great strides legally, women are still often caught in a double-bind when trying to be fully accepted members of society. Of course women will work to rise above it, and many will succeed, in the same way that all people must struggle against the things that factor against them. But it's wearing. It wears on a person. And some people are able to reinforce the areas which have been worn away, become stronger in the places where they've been broken -- but must we break people out of ignorance, arrogance or just plain cruelty? So often, a person ends up being reduced. So we have a society being populated by reduced people. And that hurts all of us, men and women and others alike.
So particularly in a presidential election year, let's think about voting. It was a hard-won right, while at the same time not being safely guaranteed. A New York Times op-ed told of Overt Discrimination in Ohio, where "If you live in Butler or Warren counties in the Republican-leaning suburbs of Cincinnati, you can vote for president beginning in October by going to a polling place in the evening or on weekends. Republican officials in those counties want to make it convenient for their residents to vote early and avoid long lines on Election Day. But, if you live in Cincinnati, you’re out of luck. Republicans on the county election board are planning to end early voting in the city promptly at 5 p.m., and ban it completely on weekends."
What the shit is up with that?
So, yes. I'm grateful for what I have. I'm enraged for the sake of those who have less. I'm conscious of the fact that what I have is not a guarantee and that I'm also still at risk of being reduced as a person. And I am really fucking hungry, so I'm going to get my ass into the kitchen and make me a pizza. For myself.
It's been a good half week of my life flashing before me in various ways, for better and for worse. It started out with a shower of mixed blessings this past Saturday, when I was out at the farmer's market and the heavens, which had been gently raining, verily did open up and dump the floods upon us. But the weather was warm, and you reach that point where you're so soaked that you don't mind getting wet because you've just released all hope of ever being dry. I had the purse-size umbrella that I keep with me at all times, but it was basically just a visibility tool, for all the good it did the rest of me -- if I didn't wear glasses, I would have just abandoned it completely. It was the sort of downpour where the sound of rain is roaring in your ears and the sensation of nature, even walking the sidewalk of an urban downtown, is inescapable and awesome. And hell, people pay good money to go to water parks.
The downside of all of this Romantic transcendence was that my cell phone had been in my backpack, which was thoroughly soaked through from the top but very sensibly had a reinforced bottom, resulting in water pooling in said bottom, in which said cell phone ended up resting. It was completely non-responsive when I fished it out. I found myself suddenly seized by that calm which accompanies emergencies: do what needs to be done. Take out the battery and bury the phone in a twenty-pound bag of jasmine rice. Send an e-mail to my co-workers letting them know that I'm unreachable by phone. Likewise send an e-mail to my mother, also soliciting information for our family's wireless account so that I can go about getting a replacement. Change out of my soaked shorts and tank, into a sharp shirt, mini-skirt, heels and make-up because heavens to betsy, I am like a rogue CIA agent gone off the grid and shit is gonna get crazy around here.
Sleeping overnight in its rice bed restored the phone to the point of being able to turn on and show that its data was all intact, but it was otherwise nonfunctional and visibly damaged. I'd already made plans to go to the city on Sunday, though, and Monday was scheduled to be a day at the beach with friends (and the rest of that day ended up being pretty much killed), so I didn't end up getting my phone replaced until Tuesday.
Granted, I'm not in the thick of things with work right now, but goodness, I did not miss it at all.
I'm not too compulsive of a phone-checker (or, at least, I don't perceive myself as such), but it still felt so freeing not to even have the option. If I was bored, I couldn't use that as a mindless time-suck. There wasn't the slightest feeling of being on-call for work. And it was like a breath of childhood, particularly on Sunday, just the notion that when you were gone somewhere, you were gone. Austin doesn't exist for my generation in the society in which I live today. I was suddenly in an entirely different lifestyle, from which my leaving had been a gradual, unconscious thing.
Which isn't to say that I'm not happy to have a phone again. Even if I am wary because my plan had allowed for me to upgrade my handset and they no longer made the model that I'd been using, with my only options available to me being clearly down or up. And well, only one of those made sense. So, after years of digging in my heels: I now own an honest-to-goodness smartphone.
On the one hand, I do despise myself a little bit for selling out to the demands of a materialistic, interpersonally dysfunctional society. On the other hand, goodness me but is it shiny. I keep reaching over to play with it because it makes me feel like I'm in a science fiction movie. "Hold on a moment, just let me get out my handheld data control doomsday device and page down the beautifully lit color screen to bring up the information that you requested. And also tell you the current weather."
Still, much as I like it, a smartphone is a big step into the future for me, which made Facebook finally forcing all profiles into timeline format on the very same day just a little too much. I hate the Facebook timeline. I really do. I find it counter-intuitive and messy. I also hate the "places" feature because it makes me feel stalked, in addition to infuriating me by its conflation of hometown with place of birth, if the little icon's pacifier graphic is to be believed.
And then, continuing along the line of generational internet hijinks, there's the issue of how my grandfather forwarded me an e-mail encouraging me to watch a linked slideshow of various beautiful nature photos fading from black and white to color in order to show me what amazing gifts God has given us or something. Obviously, the theological aspect was a bit wasted on me, but I love me some beautiful nature photos as much as the next guy, even if my particular angle of appreciation differs from that expressed in the MS PowerPoint text on the photos in the beginning of the slideshow. Anyways, the pictures were nice, thought the last slide fades in a towering Jesus, in that semi-iconic style that brings to mind (for me, at least) the creepier aspects of mid-20th century America, superimposed over the last photo.
All well and good. The thing is, Flash has been acting up in my Firefox lately, so whenever it has a glitch, it flashes -- haha! -- images of the last things that have been viewed using Flash components. As a result, I keep getting random flashes of Jesus in the process of using the internet. Add onto that the fact that I've recently been reading summaries of various Asian horror movies about evil spirits lurking in pictures or the walls or videotapes, and it's honestly starting to creep me out a little in that holy shit Jesus is coming to steal my soul sort of way.
It seems to have gotten better today, largely thanks to my having been staring at the PDF menu of a Japanese restaurant back home quite a bit over the past two days. I really want to eat there. I really want to eat a lot of places. For over a week now, I've been experiencing enormously strong cravings for fried crap. Korean fried chicken, American fried chicken, fried calamari. Also, carbs. Fried chicken and waffles has sounded like the perfect meal for a number of days. I'm not really sure what's behind the fried food craving, as I always want fried food to some degree while also not eating much of it, just as a general lifestyle, but this has been markedly more severe than usual. I have, on conversely, actively been cutting down on carbs this summer, so that craving has a more easily identified source.
In any case, I certainly didn't lack for good food this past Sunday, when my life flashed before my eyes a few times in that "I just had an orgasm in my mouth" sort of way.
The day started off at Hotel Chantelle in the Lower East Side. I'd bought a deal for there some months ago and it was near expiring, so I used the opportunity to meet up with a former co-intern I hadn't seen in a couple years. With the deal providing for two entrees and six cocktails, we both got the saumon fume crepe, while she had some bloody marys and I had a mimosa and two South of Delanceys. (It isn't listed on the website, but you can find a picture of the brunch menu here.)
Brunch is a rooftop dining affair, and it was an absolutely delightful combination with the day's beautiful late summer weather. The food was delicious and satisfactorily filling (if not overly abundant), and the drinks were quite good as well, with my mimosa coming in a charming old fashioned-ish glass and the South of Delancey (Kettle One Citron, Sweet Tea vodka, peach schnapps and lime juice) being good and strong while still being smooth, not sugary and actually not fruity at all. The highlight, however, was the atmosphere, which was both classy and bustling. A live jazz group played for part of the time that we were there, providing great background without ever being overwhelming. And they really did play for a good long while, but it was only part of the time that was there because, in our great cascade of chatting, we ended up staying there for almost five hours. Throughout the entire time, the staff was always attentive but never bothersome, and at no point did we feel rushed. Definitely a place that I would recommend for a small group of friend.
(Coincidentally enough, the day after using up my purchased deal, they released a new offer for the same deal. If you're in town and enjoy a classy, extended boozy brunch, I'd recommend scooping it up! Though I don't know what the experience would be like in less-than-ideal weather.)
After unexpectedly spending so much time talking to my friend, I basically went straight from Hotel Chantelle to Williamsburg, dallying a bit on Bedford Avenue and North 7th Avenue before hitting my next stop: Zenkichi.
This was also the result of an e-mail list deal for me, which was basically a $65 gift certificate for $30. At first, a number of restrictions bummed me out a bit, such as there only being allowed one certificate per table and the special omakase seasonal tasting menu requiring a minimum of two orders per table. But I went through the menu online and figured out a list of things from the a la carte menu that had me quite excited, in addition to figuring that there would be great sake to be had, though they don't have a sake menu on their website.
Much to my pleasant surprise, when I arrived and was taken to my table, I was given a cool towel with which to wash my hands and a menu, on which the waitress pointed out the omakase. Don't you need to have two people for that, I asked her. No, she replied, it's fine! And so I threw my plan to the wind and went with the omakase, plus a premium sake sampler, because hell, why not.
The atmosphere there is comfortingly closed, with seating being in small groups of booths down short hallways. The booths are shielded by roll-up shades, which the server raises and lowers each time they arrive. The table sports a small button, which you use to call your server, should you need them for something other than them bringing your ordered food. (The doorbell-esque sing-song ding-dong of the button was initially a bit off-putting to me -- you can hear it when others nearby press their button -- but I blocked it out after not too long.) Classic jazz music plays in the background and the lights are dim. I saw in a small hallway with a booth filled by a young couple who got started shortly after I did, and it was actually quite pleasurable to be able to both enjoy my food on my own and hear them discuss their experience of it with each other.
I'd skimmed the sake menu and was a little bit overwhelmed by the selection, which wasn't anything compared to the wine selection you get at a restaurant that's known for its wine but was by far the most extensive sake menu I've ever perused in the states. I'm very fond of sake (and Irish whiskey; not really a fan of grape wine) but have never really had the chance to explore it in depth, let alone with guidance, so the sampler seemed like a great opportunity. There were three levels: basic ($19), premium ($24) and whatever-I-don't-remember ($32). The premium sake sampler featured three varieties.
I'm usually a big nigori fan, but I actually wasn't so into the Dai Shichi Yukishibori. It was sparkling and very light, so I couldn't really enjoy the creaminess that I usually like with nigori. The others were also summery and light, but in a more grounded way. I'd say that I liked the Kohakko Nama best, with it having the smoothest flavor of the three.
First up was miso soup, which came out at the same time as the sake.
It was somehow the perfect temperature, hot to the point of needing just the slightest blow to the spoon but never burny. Straightforward with a moderate body, featuring some yummy cabbage.
Next was the chilled plate, which had a few different components.
The sashimi of the day was fluke and the walnut ohitashi of the day was asparagus. Both were fresh and delicious. The asparagus was slightly cooked but still crispy, and the walnut sauce was divine. And I have to admit, as much as I avoid any sushi roll that includes cheese, the nuta miso ae -- which was basically like a philadelphia roll without the rice, or maybe a breakfast salmon sandwich without the bagel -- was delicious because salmon and cream cheese are soulmates and the plump, juicy roe topped it off with the perfect burst of rich liquid saltiness.
The Zenkichi salad was next.
Greens with a cube of fresh, soft tofu on top and light dollop of nutty dressing, it was a great mix of textures. The green actually had a bit of fiber to them, certainly not tough but also not the flimsy things you usually get when someone serves you baby greens. In contrast, the tofu was pure creaminess. I don't think that I'd ever had homemade tofu before this, and it was the perfect combination.
The sumer kara-age, a fried soft shell crab, came in a charming little basket.
I'd actually never had soft shell crab before, and while I didn't think that I would be put off by the shell, I also didn't know exactly what to expect. It turned out to most remind me of taking a bite out of a baked potato, skin and all, from which most of the softer insides have already been removed -- a little tough but entirely chewable and all the more enjoyable for the grounded texture. Also, it was fried. Delicious.
The sumer kara-age came to my table while I was still working on the salad, the only overlap between courses. I did have a momentary wondering if they were trying to rush me, but then decided that I would eat how I wanted. In hindsight, I think that it was just timing where a fried little thing like the crab wants to be served immediately and that's just how the cooking time worked out, as I was not rushed at all in actuality.
The saikyo miso cod and roasted duck were served together.
If there was one plate that had my life flashing before my eyes, it was this one. The roasted duck was actually plain and, if you just ate it on its own (as I foolishly did for one bite), a little dry. But that was because it was meant to be coasted in the mushroom sauce, which turned the dish into a rich, meaty heaven. And the cod, slightly sweet and smooth as butter, actually had me sliding back into my seat a little, eyes closed. It might have been slightly pornographic.
And then, the donburi, which was rare tuna on top of rice. I forgot to take a picture of this one, because let's face it, I was pretty drunk by then and I was also just that eager to get it into my mouth. In addition to the fish being delicious, fresh and rich, it came atop a pile of short-grain white rice. Don't get me wrong, I genuinely do love my brown rice and quinoa and whatever other unrefined or whole grain that you throw my way. But oh my stars, white rice is delicious and I didn't realize how much I'd missed it.
You have a choice of desserts, so I went with the one that I'd seen people raving about in the reviews that I'd skimmed back when I'd been trying to decide which a la carte dishes to try.
The frozen black sesame mousse looked like two moderately-sized scoops of gray ice cream with a sesame cracker stuck into it. And it was delicious. Creamy but light, and not sugary, with a rounded sweetness that had a somewhat starchy quality to it, and the cracker was like a rich ice cream cone in wafer form. It was accompanied by a single malt truffle, about the size of a peanut M&M, that was simply a delicacy.
All in all, dinner on my own there took about an hour and forty-five minutes, with not a bit of that time due to unwanted waiting. I definitely want to go back, though probably just for some sake and a couple a la carte dishes.
Monday was then the day of reckoning, as I felt like crap.
It had actually started mid-day Sunday, with my back starting to kill me by early evening, though I thankfully carry painkillers everywhere I go. I'd attributed it to my three-cocktail afternoon, since alcohol sometimes does lead to musculoskeletal pain for me, and wondered, not for the first time, if my attempts at a healthier lifestyle were killing my body's tolerance for vice or if I was just getting old and, if anything, being in better shape was maybe helping to slow a depressing and inevitable decline. When I woke up on Monday, I also had that swollen sore throat, which I attributed to both the drinking and, you know, a five hour-long one-on-one conversation. I also felt a bit ill in general -- still do now, in fact -- though in hindsight, I think that I probably just got sick from Saturday's downpour -- I'm having flashbacks of a game of frisbee in the rain in the first days of my arrival for my freshman year of undergrad, followed by a case of the summer flu for all of orientation -- and it didn't begin to manifest until a day later, growing worse, though fortunately not too bad, over time.
I very nearly backed out of going to the beach at the last minute on Monday, but I made myself suck it up and am glad that I did.
There ended up being only three of us, two co-workers and me, and it ended up being the perfect beach day. Sunny and just edging from warm into hot, with a pleasant breeze and low humidity. It was the last chance to hit the water before the summer season comes to a close and we're all thrown into the chaos of the school year. I'm not quite ready to let go of summer yet, but that did help to put a nice cap to it.
It also gave me a pretty extreme bikini tan, as I fell asleep in the sun for a while. I was all sunscreened up, but I can only hope that it was sufficient. I'm lucky in that I don't burn, have never had a sunburn in my life, but that also means that I have less immediate reinforcement for good behavior and have to rely on reminding myself to shield from the invisible cancer rays in the sky.
But it was a great fall-asleep-in-the-sun sort of day. There was no cell phone connecting me to the rest of the world. I had nowhere to go afterwards. My friends and I talked about travel and families and The New Yorker versus Harper's. And life was just pretty good.
Even if I did have a blood sugar crash later that day that left me passed out on the futon in a heap of too-mild-to-complain-about-but-gosh-I-want-to misery. Still, I couldn't help but smile.
My dreams lately have been of the dead. Earlier this week, I was accompanied by the pet dog with whom I spent most of my formative years as I settled into a dorm room (renovated to the state of something I wouldn't mind having as a studio apartment) at my undergraduate alma mater. Last night, I went on a very strange mountain hiking trip through varying light and dark, eventually meeting my father at a stop along the way.
In an unsurprising trajectory, the funk into which I'd been slowly slipping over the past week or so culminated in a neurotic existential panic a few days ago, at which point I took a few days off from life (excepting my employment obligations), avoided whatever social interaction I could and indulged my menu-reading habit. It's a thing that I do, reading online restaurant menus in the same way that you picture a drugged-up fifty-something housewife in bunny slippers with pink rollers in her hair compulsively watching QVC. It's worse than porn. Porn, at least, wants to give its viewer a good end. My menu-reading habit is just torturing myself with food that I'm not actually going to eat and from which I really can't get any vicarious enjoyment. There is zero satisfaction involved. It's a problem.
So anyways, it was a few days of not accomplishing much of anything. Until, that is, I started cleaning out the apartment. I find that cleaning -- going through everything, throwing out what I can, reorganizing what remains -- helps to set my mind straight when things get stuck in a rut. And I figure that as I will inevitably be moving when I graduate in less than a year and will also inevitably be extremely busy with school and work, why not start the process now?
In other news, the Chick-fil-A cluck-up continues to be frustrating. Another sum-up essay that I found is probably the last that I'm going to use someone else's words to say on the subject, but no guarantees:
"The narrative was framed as, Dan Cathy is asked how he feels about gay marriage and gives his honest response. When he expressed his opinion, gay rights activists got angry and decided to boycott his business. [. . .] It’s not about Dan Cathy’s opinion - which I do not give a flying fuck about - it’s about the fact that Chick-Fil-A donated over $5 million to anti-gay hate groups. Hate groups which have been listed next to the KKK, hate groups which try to cure gay people like it’s a disease, and hate groups that have disseminated information claiming that gay people are pedophiles. [. . .] But no, the national media went with the "freedom of speech vs. mean gay people trying to silence them" narrative because it was shiny and pretty."
It's also reached the point where people are sick of hearing about it, which is the dangerous time. "Ugh, I can't believe that we still have a problem. Clearly, what we should do is proceed to ignore the problem because we don't want to deal with it anymore and we also have the attention spans of fleas." Which isn't to say that I don't understand issue fatigue -- the picture of a woman holding a sign reading "I can't believe I still have to protest this shit" comes to mind. It really is wearing. But there are different sides of being tired of an issue. There are those who can get tired of an issue and just let it drop. Then there are those who can get tired of an issue and still have it impact their lives whether they want it to or not. Going back to the previously linked essay:
"Which brings us to the last kind of people who decided to wade into the Chick-Fil-A debate for no other reason than the fact that they own a computer and can read. [. . .] These are the righteous people who take it upon themselves to be the peacekeepers and try to reconcile what they see as simply two sides who can’t seem to come to an agreement.
And I’d like to thank them.
Thank you, straight person who is completely unaffected by anything Exodus International, Focus on the Family, or the National Organization for Marriage will ever do. Thank you for reminding me that gay rights and LGBT acceptance is, for most of America, just a “hot-button” issue that causes controversy and is better to be avoided all together. I don’t think that’s a privilege enjoyed solely by non-LGBT people at all!
In more retreading of topics past, I had some great further conversation with a friend about our respective experiences with theatrical productions dealing with race in casting. Her anecdotes spurred me to think further on the subject.
I know that, particularly with local amateur efforts, demographics can be a major factor in casting. But I think that companies need to look reality straight in the face and say "Oh, hey, guess what -- we're limited in what we can do. Because of this factor, it might not be possible." (Whiteness being a barrier to doing something? Say it ain't so!) And if it is decided that colorblindness can be used with artistic integrity, then it actually has to be full colorblindness -- i.e., no racial make-up.
(Mentioning stereotypical racial indicators makes me think back to an incident when I was an intern a few years ago. My supervisor had just seen Ponyo, an animated Miyazaki film, with their young child, and part of their reaction to the film when they were telling me about it was their surprise and confusion at why all of the characters were designed with such big eyes and not "Asian" eyes. I had no response at the time. I could have a response now, but it probably still wouldn't be something to be given to my supervisor while at work, so it all evens out in the end.)
While all POC experiences are not created equal and therefore not perfectly comparable, it still does make me wonder about the perception of the black body in performance in comparison to the Asian body. The King and I is actually even more racially specific than Ragtime, if we're working on a level of ethnic origin, with all of the non-whites of King and I originating from the same country, where that country's national identity and politics are an issue in the plot, but I've seen multiple school and community productions where the race issue apparently isn't even given a second thought. Blackness seems to be a real thing in many cases, at least. But "Asian-ness" seems to live in a much more abstract land as just a marker for "exotic" and "foreign."
Of course, it's been a good decade since I've been active in the local high school musical circuit, so I actually have no idea what the current trends are. Is it something of which schools are more cognizant these days?
In any case, I've been continuing my bastardization of Asian things in the kitchen, this time with Korean pork chop with stir-fried summer squash on brown rice.
Continuing my great sauce laziness, the star here is CJ Korean BBQ Kalbi Marinade. I actually just about never use it to actually make kalbi; instead, I use it to make anything delicious.
I marinated four small boneless pork chops in the sauce overnight, with a bunch of chopped green onion. The next day, I set the brown rice cooking. About a half-hour into that, I turned on the broiler and started on the summer squash. Sliced up a whole zucchini and whole yellow squash, then chopped up three big cloves of garlic. At that point, I put the pork in the broiler to cook for about 10 minutes, since the chops were boneless and so small. I tossed the garlic in the wok with some sesame oil and started that heating. I also poured the excess marinade into a small pan and started that boiling so that it could be used as a sauce.
When the garlic was just on the verge of starting to brown, I added the squash, stir-frying it. About 5 minutes into cooking it, I added some more chopped green onion. A few minutes later, I tossed a spoonful of low-sodium soy sauce in.
You know what's been missing from this blog for a while? Chicken, that's what. This was mostly due to my having been out of town almost as often as not over the past three weeks -- Williamstown, then New York, then Williamstown again -- so I haven't been cooking as much. But I picked up some beets, tomatoes, corn, scallions, sheep's milk cheese and a jalapeno pepper at the farmer's market last week, and I ended up turning most of them to the service of some chicken.
There's been some chicken out there more famous than mine, though.
I've eaten at Chick-Fil-A twice in my life, back in the year that I was interning at a theatre in Orlando, where I learned a lot of things, including that I never wanted to lived in Orlando. Their food was pretty good for a fast food chain, but I also learned in the course of that year that the company was aligned with and financially supported some principles that I found to be morally disagreeable, so I decided that an easy right action would be not to spend my money there. Over the past weeks, Chick-Fil-A and the publicly professed principles of its president Dan Cathy have gotten a lot more press, and the issue has moved far beyond the questionable quality of life in central Florida.
If you want a coherent, comprehensive summary about what this ridiculous outcry -- let's face it, guys, the central images of this are fried chicken sandwiches and advertisements with barely literate cows -- really means, I'd like to direct you to this articulate essay on this issue. If, on the other hand, you'd just like to read me being angry, please do continue on here.
One of the reactions to Chick-Fil-A's declaration of opposition to marriage equality was, of course, the statement by Boston Mayor Thomas Merino that Chick-Fil-A had no place in Boston and that that he'll make their license process "very difficult" unless they backpedal. He also sent an open letter to Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy. These actions have gotten a lot of kneejerk liberal rejoicing, conservative backlash and moderate hedging. I'm usually camping out in the moderate hedge club, but I have to say that I'm finding myself pitching my tent with the liberals on this one. Do I want Mayor Merino to violate the Constitution in order to keep a fast food chain out of a city? Hell, no. But do I think that he was out of line for what he did? Based on what I've heard reported about his words and actions: no.
Nowhere have I seen Chick-Fil-A being outlawed from Boston. I saw a company being told that they weren't welcome in a place because they conflicted with the values held there. It was a statement of principles. And it was, in a representative government, the representing of a city's character and ideal and of its citizens, particularly those citizens who are often marginalized -- not the representation of dollar signs and business deals. Do we need those dollar signs and logistics to run a city? Of course we do! But we also need the other side of it, the reasons that we're running those dollar signs in the first place, and that's the side that seems to get lost so often. And maybe that representation didn't represent the view of all citizens. In that case, by all means, get up and let it be known that you're not being represented -- that's what the rest of us have to do, after all.
As for the conservative backlash, I'll just link to The Least Subtle Tweets From Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day. While not something to be read on an emotionally fragile day, I believe it to be important to occasionally give myself a wake-up call about what's really out there. The world is not a friendly place. There is a lot of work to be done.
So was Mayor Merino confrontational? Yes. Was there a backlash? Yes, apparently. You know what? I don't care. We definitely need cool heads and tactical action, but there is also something galling and tiring about always having to play nice with those who see you as being lesser and even actively work to keep you in a lesser place. It brings to my mind the image of a dog being made to sit up and beg for a treat: "That's it... that's it... good boy... just a little higher... wait for it... wait for it... Ah-ah, not yet, I've still got it...!"
And to those harshing on the people hopping on the Chick-Fil-A Boycott Bandwagon, claiming it to be an ineffective drop in the bucket, I must disagree. It definitely has an impact, if only by letting other people know that you support their right to dignity and equality. Will boycotting Chick-Fil-A change the world by directly creating just laws and saving innocent lives and sending double rainbows all the way across the sky? Nope. In that sense, it is just a drop in the bucket. But just because something is small or easy, does that mean that we shouldn't do it? That logic just doesn't make sense to me. "Oh man, why are you not letting that door you're going through close in that person's face? That doesn't take, like, any effort. If you care about people so much, shouldn't you be building schoolhouses in rural Africa right now?"
It's okay to do small things. We should be open-eyed and realistic about what they are -- small and easy things, not great high horses for us to go galloping around on -- but that doesn't make them without value. And maybe while we're paying attention to not giving money to certain businesses that go against our values, we're still ignorant about others, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't make any effort. (And if you are interested in that sort of thing, there is a Human Rights Campaign Buyer's Guide to help to look at companies' performances in regard to treatment of GLBT employees and communities.) I remember almost burning myself out in a great conflagration of activist enthusiasm as a kid when it hit me: one person can't do everything. Learning about the world was overwhelming, because there was just so much to be done, but thinking logically, it seemed to me that the best thing was to narrow it down. Concentrate your energies to where they are most suited and can be most amplified by your passion. The world is not your burden alone. There are other people in the world upon whom we must depend to make it better, which makes it all the more important to be mindful of others.
Of course, the lesson about burnout wouldn't completely sink in until almost a decade and a half, countless blood draws and a Christmas Day hospital trip later. It was a start, though, for someone who wanted to do all of the things.
I also believe in the inherent value of doing the right thing.
But back to my chicken.
First up was BBQ chicken with spicy grilled summer squash and corn on the cob.
Sauces are an area in which I readily admit my weakness and desire to do better. My mom always made pasta sauce and BBQ sauce from scratch, but I use pre-made/bottled. I think that I'm frightened of them. I aim to overcome that fear, but that's something for the future, not this summer, I think.
When it comes to pre-made BBQ, my go-to is generally the Bull's Eye brand. It's cheap, readily available, relatively low in sodium and contains no high-fructose corn syrup. I marinated a chicken breast overnight, then broiled it in the oven for about 10 minutes (cover your smoke detectors for this shit -- the sugars in the sauce will get burny), also heating up some extra sauce to toss on top. The result was pretty much perfect. I've mentioned before that I hate dry chicken with a passion, but this was deliciously juicy.
Earlier in the day, I'd sliced up a zucchini and a yellow squash and tossed them in bowl with olive oil, black pepper and half a chopped jalapeno. I then covered the bowl and let it sit in the refrigerator for a few hours before throwing the sliced onto the hot grill pan while the chicken was cooking. The corn on the cob was boiled during that time as well, for about 6 minutes.
I'd been unsure about what a little bit of chopped of jalapeno just sitting in the same bowl as the squash would do, but it actually did give it a nice warm spiciness. Nothing even approaching excessively hot, but you could definitely feel that there was a heat to it. I also liked mixing the little pieces of charred pepper from the grill pan in with the rice.
Next came chicken with roasted tomatoes.
This was mostly from this Epicurious recipe, though with my usual M.O. of altering as needed due to not having shit. Red wine vinegar? As if. Let's throw in some balsamic. "Herbes de Provence"? Parsley and tarragon? What the shit? How about I just toss in some green things that I have on my spice shelf, which I think are rosemary, oregano and thyme. And for the tomatoes, I cut two medium-sized regular tomatoes into eighths. I also lack an oven-safe skillet, so I transferred things back and forth between a skillet on the stove-top and a roasting pan in the oven.
Tossed it on top of a pile of brown rice, heated up my leftover veggies: voila. Deliciousness. And then yesterday, I roasted my beets as the side veggie, which was also deliciousness.
Even if it's a little rough around the edges, it just tastes better going down when you're comfortable with what went into it.
Let's live together in harmony, guys. Just like Taylor Swift and T-Pain.
Full confession: I got awfully verklempt this morning when I read about Gabby Douglas' Olympic gold medal in the women's gymnastics all-around. I don't have television in my apartment (I do have a television, but it serves solely as a video game monitor), so the last thing that I'd heard about Douglas before the headline of her victory was how people have apparently been being haters about her hair. And then, not gonna lie, when I watched the video recap of her showing in the all-around competition, much to my surprise, a single tear might have threatened to fall from my eye.
I am a huge Olympics fan. Yes, yes, there's corruption and corporate meddling and a shit-load of jingo-ism -- and sometimes, let it never be forgotten, horrific, shameful tragedies -- but the thing that the Olympics are never lacking is great stories. And my stars, but do I love a great story. And I'm really fucking weak for Inspirational Sports Movies and Burning Shounen Spirit, and the Olympics basically provide a 24-hour, real-life Inspirational Sports Movie for over two weeks with a shit-ton of Montages Set To Rousing Music, which are another extreme weakness of mine.
Getting into the spirit of things, when I was restarting Firefox because it had become a memory black hole, I noticed that there were various Olympic browser themes available and decided to change things up a bit in the spirit of the Games. The obvious choice seemed to be the United States theme, but there was also a South Korean theme available. Dilemma!
Now, in my younger days -- i.e., before I was on the internet -- I would have jumped at the chance to be decorated in something Korean because you didn't find much Korean shit where I was from so you scooped that shit up when you had the chance. In the years after that, it would have been American, no question. And I mean, no question. You aren't questioning me, right? Because I am so totally American. I'm here courtesy of the red, white and blue! U.S.A., ALL THE WAY!!
I've calmed down a little since then. Amazing how being more secure about an aspect of yourself -- such as my American-ness -- results in you being a lot less rabidly defensive about it.
Racial politics and national identity are a whole other can of worms into which I intend to dive headlong at some point -- just imagine that delicious squishing noise in your head now -- but today is not that day. That requires way too much work and it's hot and I have a fucking headache and I have some serious online gaming to do later tonight. But it does bring me to the doorstep of something that I've had on my mind for the past month or so.
In early July, I heard about a production of a new musical called The Nightingale at La Jolla Playhouse. The show was based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Emperor and the Nightingale, which amused me greatly, as the first production in which I participated following my undergrad graduation was a different new musical based on the same story.
More disappointingly, the way that I heard about this production was through the blog post Moises Kaufman Can Kiss My Ass & Here's Why, where the writer points out a very glaring, facepalming-ly idiotic thing about the show: in a story explicitly set in feudal China, out of the eleven people in the cast, only one was Asian.
Since then, the outcry about the casting has been addressed by the creators -- which, to their credit, is more than can be said of many others guilty of the same artistic gaffes -- and in late July, as noted in an update to the original blog post, "La Jolla Playhouse decided to have a talk back to discuss the casting. [. . .] I would hope that the people who wrote anonymously and bitterly of the notion that Asian Americans would and should speak up, would pay particular attention to the fact that both the Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse and the Director of the play itself, Moises Kaufman, apologized."
There are a number of articles linked in the edit to the post, as well as links to video of the casting talk with the creators.
Kaufman's apology is in the second video (above), and while it's great to really get a thoughtful, articulate and sincere apology, he follows it up with an explanation of the thought process that's pretty bewildering to me, such as how in order to make the story mythical, they decided that they needed to make the cast "multicultural" (i.e., have a lot of white and otherwise non-Asian actors playing Asian characters).
This YouTube comment gets it: "How do we create a mythical land? How do we create the suspension of disbelief that will allow you to believe that a bird is real?" They have already done so by making this a musical theater piece and casting a human as a bird. They don't need to do much else to convey fantasy. This should be a given.
Shouldn’t it be a priority, if you’re trying to tell a believable story about a Sino-American future, to include Asian characters? Isn’t it marginalizing to fantasize about a “mixed Asian” world completely absent of Asian people, especially when you live and work in a city that’s almost 1/8th Asian? [. . .] The issue isn’t Joss Whedon. It’s the blinders. All the blindspots that make it tough to understand problems that you’ve never or rarely ever had to personally deal with. The blindspots that make it tough to understand why, sometimes, race should influence casting decisions. That sometimes it should be a mission statement–or, at the very least, a priority.
But let's back up a bit.
The first non-children's album that I can recall listening to was The Premiere Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection, one of my parents' CDs that I would later confiscate as my own. My grandmother had a small library of records of original Broadway cast recordings, from which she'd make me cassette tapes. The first professional musical that I ever saw was the touring production of Meet Me In St. Louis when I was seven. I'd been going to community and high school productions before that, and while I was pretty much limited to what happened before the mid-1970s (with the exception of the ALW), my depth regarding that field was great.
I was a Broadway baby, through and through. When asked by my kindergarten teacher whom I'd like most to meet, I answered Andrew Lloyd Webber. When invited by my first-grade music teacher to sing a song in class, I hopped up and belted "We Need A Little Christmas" from Mame. I was determined that I was going to be a Broadway performer. And by the time I was in elementary school, I'd figured out how I was going to do it.
Step One: find a production of The King and I.
Step Two: get cast as one of the King's children.
Step Three: reach adolescence and be promoted to the ingenue role of Tuptim.
Step Four: eventually age out of that and hang out in the chorus of the King's wives for a while.
Step Five: reach a respectable middle age and take on the part of Lady Thiang, the head wife.
I mean, that makes sense, right? After all, I was really young, so Miss Saigon was too new and risque for me to learn that I could also play a Vietnamese prostitute; Pacific Overtures is a relatively obscure and rarely-performed show with an all-male cast; and even I wasn't desperate enough for South Pacific, the only other show that I actually knew at the time that had Asian characters, and where the Asian ingenue role is non-speaking and my body type is such that I would never be fat enough to be Bloody Mary, who was a lot older than I was anyways. But The King and I? Chock-full of Asians! For all ages!
Then, when I was eleven, I saw something that changed my life. Turning on PBS, there were a bunch of people in costume standing at microphones and singing. As fate would have it, I had stumbled upon the Tenth Anniversary Concert of Les Miserables. I was intrigued by what I saw and later caught the entire show -- and would go on to become obsessed with the musical, and then obsessed with the book, both of which have had a deep impact on my life.
But in addition to being my first exposure to that story, that specific performance also affected me in another way. Because I turned on the television and saw some Asian woman as part of the cast, just like everyone else. And it opened my eyes and forced the realization: that could be me.
Of course, that didn't end up being me. I would eventually discover my place backstage, where I'm happiest. But I don't think it's coincidence that it was at that point that I began to explore more "contemporary" theatre. Theatre was no longer some strange combination of historical artifact and charming if somewhat slightly hobby. It could be something relevant and truly great.
After graduating from college, I had decided to give up theatre for more responsible pursuits, figuring that I would be able to toy with community theatre on the side. As it turned out, a dear friend of mine had written a musical for a local children's theatre troupe called The Emperor and the Nightingale, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. I jumped in, had a blast and learned that doing amateur theatre would drive me out of my mind and that I needed to go pro.
It also provided me with the joke that the first theatre gig I landed out of college was being cast as a Chinese noodle cook. Which isn't so much a joke as a statement of fact, but I suppose that statements of fact can sometimes be jokes.
Still, it's with chagrined amusement that I note that our completely volunteer amateur theatre troupe (that performed during school hours, eliminating anyone with a traditional job) from white-bread upstate New York state managed to have the same amount of Asian-ness in its cast as La Jolla Playhouse. It's interesting to me to note the differences between the "colorblind casting" that changed my life with Les Mis and the "multicultural casting" that makes me want to bang my head through a wall with The Nightingale.
There are a few things that I consider when looking at the casting issue. The first is generally if race matters in the show. For some shows, race is an important, significant element in the plot; examples that come to mind include Ragtime, Memphis and Flower Drum Song, even Bye Bye Birdie. An exception proving the rule is that classic case of Hairspray, where an amateur community kids' production was done with an all-white cast because their local community was really just that white. But that was, again, an amateur production done after the fact, and the creators of the show still addressed it, allowing the production to happen but acknowledging and addressing the issues it raised. And La Jolla, a well-respected professional theatre, certainly doesn't have the excuse of local lack -- even if they couldn't bring in anyone from anywhere, they're in San Diego, California for pete's sake!
Now, back to our two examples. In Les Miserables, race is close to a non-issue. I say "close" because although the story takes place in France and we never see a character who isn't French, there is one character who is, in fact, a member of an ethnic minority, a bit of background that is mentioned in the book. That character is Inspector Javert, whose mother was Romany -- and who, interestingly enough, despises his ethnic roots and becomes a stalwart champion for the society of which some would consider him not to be completely a member... and he's the villain. But as interesting and full of potential as that is, it's given the weight of a relatively minor detail in a 1000-plus-page book, so it was rather sensibly one of the many things lost in adapting the story to the stage. So in the end, overall, Les Mis is not a story where race plays a role at all. Colorblind casting would therefor not affect the story.
The Nightingale is set in feudal China and we never see a single character who is not Chinese. In that way, race doesn't play a role in the story -- everyone is on the same page as far as ethnicity and nationality, so it's not a character issue. But then again, The Lion King is set in Africa and we never see a single character who is not African, and while a couple of roles of "outside" type characters are traditionally cast as white, it is, overall, a show with a black cast. While race is not a factor between most of the characters, what would the presented story look like if Simba were to be played by a white man? What is the gut feeling provoked by that image?
Of course, some people might say that the China presented in Hans Christian Andersen's story isn't really China. And of course it isn't, no more than the Japan of The Mikado is actually Japan. Andersen's China and Gilbert & Sullivan's Japan are both appropriations of other cultures in order to create an exotic "other." And if the creators of The Nightingale had wished to be true to the story's imperialist roots, then they were free to do an historical show fully embracing that good ol' chinoiserie chic. But when what is being created claims to be something relevant and contemporary? It doesn't fly.
It especially sinks like a lead balloon when looking at the creators versus the source material. Now, nothing will get my eyes rolling like endless refrains of "Write what you know!" We have imaginations, and thank goodness for that or else the Twilight series would skeeve me out even more than it already does. But it's one thing to put yourself in another person's shoes and another thing to steal another person's shoes and say that it doesn't matter where they came from, it just matters that you're the one wearing them now. If you're taking things from someone else, be mindful and considerate of where they came from, even if you're getting them second-hand.
Back specifically to my experiences of Les Mis and The Nightingale, there's also the direction of the colorblindness. Colorblind/multi-cultural casting is intended to overcome our biases that viewed white as neutral or default or preferable when that was not, in fact, the case. Its intention is not that not only can white people play "white people" roles (even if those roles, when you think about them, don't actually have to be played by white people), but they can play all of the other roles, too! Granted, in Nightingale, the multicultural casting wasn't only white actors playing the Asian characters, but I think it's pretty fair to say that Asians are some of the least represented in American media and that us lovely "POC" aren't actually interchangeable -- if we're going to divide people up, the divide doesn't actually end at "white people" and "not-white people."
Finally, there's always the risk of that annoying Might Whitey trope. [WARNING: LINKS TO TV TROPES. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY LOST TIME.] Yeah, yeah, we get it, white people come in and do our culture just like us, only better. What the fuck ever, your ex-wife still beat you at the Oscars, so suck it, James Cameron.
I have no real conclusion to this, except that it continues to be relevant food for thought. The very show that I'm working this summer had me doing some artistic soul-searching, as it's an original movement piece "inspired by Japanese folk tales." Out of everyone in the rehearsal room -- the director/conceiver/choreographer/set designer/puppet and mask designer, the dramaturg, the four white actors and one half-Asian actor -- as well as all of the other designers and staff, I turned out to be the one most knowledgeable about the culture and language of our source material. I would even feel slightly uncomfortable at times, as I would witness those much more directly responsible for presenting the material onstage mangling the language or not even attempting to use it.
But you know what else? Our show isn't fucking set in Japan. For the most part, the actors themselves aren't even characters -- they're moving bodies, operators of the masks and puppets. The pieces within the show grew out of the feelings inspired by the stories. More than many other efforts that use the word "inspired by" to mean "carelessly stealing from," I feel that these pieces are truly expressions of what was actually inspired within this individual people by hearing and reading this particular collection of stories from Japan. A Japanese-inspired aesthetic can also be seen in much of the design, but it seems natural that the result would retain something of its source, even as it passes through us without that conscious intention.
In any case, we know that we can count on Asia for many things. South Korea will continue to supply the coaches for Olympic archery teams around the globe. China will show you how a person with a tiny paddle and a ping pong ball can actually be fucking terrifying. People will forget that "Asia" doesn't mean just the countries along the east coast of the continent. And Japan will go ahead and really build GIANT MECHA.
No really, you can buy your own controllable giant robot and pretend that you're a gundam pilot
If I think way, way back, I can remember when New York City was a tourist destination for me. I have memories of getting onto a Wade Tours bus, day-tripping with my parents and other tourists down to that big, bright city. Had to make sure to wear those comfortable walking sneakers. Know which landmarks you're going to hit. And don't forget the map!
It didn't begin to change for me until near the end of the undergrad, when it became just another place where some friends lived. And then even more so a few years after that, when it went from day-trip distance to commuter distance. I'm no native, but I'm more familiar with the parts of the city that I frequent -- pretty much all of Midtown, as well as Union Square, NoMad, the West Village and Chinatown, plus Borough Park in Brooklyn -- than I am with the cities within a half-hour's driving distance of where I grew up.
That doesn't mean that it's not still a fun place to vacation.
It wasn't something planned out too far ahead of time, but it turned out that my friend A. from Florida was going to be vacationing in the city for half a week, so I did my usual thing and crashed with her in return for providing my charming company. By which I largely mean a drinking companion and a garbage disposal for whatever food she didn't eat. And we drank and ate at a lot of places.
I'm actually not really into aggregate review websites. I find them most useful for more service-related things, where what the most basic content of the experience is might be a question, for getting clarification about what you're really getting for your money. It can be so easy to get buried in other people's opinions, when there's so, so many. For restaurants (general expectation: I pay money and receive food to eat), I'm still more of a fan of the old-fashioned "Did someone I actually know go there? What did they say?" or "I'm standing outside of the place right now and I feel like I want to go in" approach. Or reading actual reviews -- you know, the ones that are more than three sentences long, whether they're in a newspaper or a magazine or a blog or wherever. Some nice comprehensive, considered thoughts about the experience from a person with presumably some amount of knowledge or at the very least, some sort of specific interest.
These things here? These aren't reviews. These are just me having opinions about things. Which I should probably do more often, as I do tend to Do Things on a semi-regular basis and often have opinions about them.
So here's a piece of new news on the internet: hotels in Manhattan are fucking expensive. We stayed at the Best Western Plus, Prospect Park, which was pretty great and also in Brooklyn. The location was very convenient, being literally on the same block as the 25th Street station on the R line. Which is slow if you're actually in a hurry to get anywhere, because it's a super local line with more stops than I knew existed, but it's pretty easy to transfer to something quicker.
The hotel is relatively new and pretty good value for NYC standards. By which I mean that the entire room plus the bathroom combined was smaller than the living room in my apartment, but it fit a bed, an armoire, a desk, two night stands and a dresser with a mini-fridge. The lobby featured an included continental breakfast in the morning, with Dannon Light & Fit yogurt, dry cereal, scrambled eggs, sausage, muffins, bagels, bread, juice, black tea and coffee available. The breakfast room itself was pretty cramped, so A. and I would grab food and bring it back up to the room.
They had a 24-hour fitness center in the basement, which featured an elliptical, a reclining bike, a treadmill and a weight machine, as well as a full-wall mirror. There was also an exercise ball bouncing around, though no free weights. The equipment seemed relatively new and functional. A couple of water fountains in the room, as well as a stack of towels -- though no equipment cleaning supplies. Also, probably due to the "24-hour" thing, the light in the room worked on a motion detector. The downside to this? Apparently, at least the elliptical was positioned outside of the range of the detector, so after ten minutes, I would be plunged into darkness.
In an otherwise empty basement.
Just a little bit creepy.
One thing that was also kind of weird was that on Monday morning, when I was heading back to the room from the fitness center, there was a localized loud beeping in the hotel. Almost like an alarm. But not quite. But close enough to be slightly worrying. I called the front desk, and they apologized for waking us up and said that they were just testing a system. I didn't bother telling them that they hadn't woken us up, but I personally found it more troubling that I hadn't been sure if the building had been on fire or not. One would think that "testing a system" that produced a repetitive mechanized beeping noise loud enough to be heard in the guest rooms and wake people up would be something that was perhaps deserving of some announcement (which I recognized might not have been practically possible) or at least performed at a different, less crowded time of today.
That's actually mostly skipping ahead, though. When we got in on Saturday night, A. and I just dropped our things in the room and then headed out to Williamsburg. My first trip to the fabled land of the hipsters! To whom I'm not sure if I'm related or not. It recently underwent some serious soul-searching when I received an e-mail from one of my trend/style lists telling me about some hot new restaurant, and my reaction was, "Oh, yeah, I heard about that place a month ago, I've been meaning to check it out." And then I hated myself.
It did turn out to be useful, though, when A. realized that she'd be able to make it to New York this summer, and I was able to come up with way too many places to eat. We hit Parish Hall for dinner that night. On the pricey side, especially if you're getting drinks as well, but good quality stuff for a nice night out. The atmosphere is a little hipster-minimalist, but if you get seated in the back, it's more like an actual restaurant with a traditional table set-up.
I was feeling mighty hungry, so I got the chilled corn soup (squash seed oil, blackberries, basil) and the duck (seared salt-aged duck breast and braised leg, carrot puree, summer squash, plum, granola), as well as a Winnie Palmer (Bourbon, black tea, lemon, Regan’s orange bitters, fresh mint). And also ate half of A.'s dinner. Portion-wise, you aren't going to come here to stuff yourself -- particularly if you're a big eater like I am -- but while I'm certainly not saying that you'll leave still hungry, it's definitely an instance of paying for quality rather than quantity. It was all quite good! The corn soup was delicious, the corn flavor extremely strong and punctuated nicely by the tang of the blackberries. I found it to be a touch on the salty side, but most food that I don't prepare myself tastes salty to me. Everything was fresh and delicious. I've never been a big fan of summer squash, but the vegetables that came with the duck were mouth-watering. The duck breast was presented simply and straightforwardly, but the duck leg was actually minced up and wrapped in a thin slice of summer squash, kind of like some cross between a spring roll and a sausage. Only squashier.
Recommended as a splurgier night out! The menu is apparently very seasonal, keeping things fresh, so I'd recommend checking it out if you plan on going. They also appear to participate in a variety of local food events, so you can keep your eyeballs peeled for that.
One thing about our trip to Parish Hall, though, was that they were out of the one dessert in which we had been interested. So we headed back up Bedford Avenue, having passed a number of places on our way down, just seeing what caught our fancy.
We ended up at Fabiane's Cafe and Pastry Shop [WARNING FOR EMBEDDED MUSIC], which turned out to be an excellent choice, despite how unfortunate their website is. It was heading on 11pm by the time we got there, an appealing little cafe that opened up to open-air street-side seating, and they were still doing table service. Which was a little slow and not particularly friendly, but that wasn't a big bother, since we were just getting casual dessert. I got the chocolate mousse and A. got the caramel cup, and again, I ate half of her order. Both of which were amazing. It was one of those "orgasmic dessert" sort of situations -- you know, stick the spoon in your mouth, have your eyes roll back into your head and make some sort of embarrassing noise. Again, not a cheap place, but so, so worth it.
The next morning, we were meeting our friends P. and M. to use a Groupon deal that we'd gotten for brunch at The Pan-American. I'd made reservations a few days ago, pretty much for right when the place opened, but we had a busy day planned out, so we wanted to get an early (for a Sunday) start.
So we got there and the place was locked up like Fort Knox, with a sign in the window from the city health services saying that the place was closed down for operating without a permit.
That was a surprise.
I've since gotten a refund (store credit) from Groupon.
Luckily, what was very nearby was The Public, which my friends whom we were meeting had been saying that we needed to attend someday. Well, no day like today, right? We all got the set price brunch: one entree, one brunch cocktail, coffee or tea. The value of that varies, as there's a pretty good range on the prices of the brunch entrees. But I'd call it a pretty good deal for most things.
Following my friends' recommendations, I went with the black pudding waffles with red wine poached pears and whipped foie gras butter, with a cocktail that was some sort of bourbon apricot iced tea and some jasmine green tea. You get a couple of sturdy waffles, maybe about five inches in diameter -- not huge but very rich, particularly with all of the butter. And the tea comes in a little individual pot that contains a couple of servings. Very much worth it. And also just a great atmosphere for spending a couple of hours gabbing away over brunch. We'd managed to get a street-side table, with the front windows all opened up on a beautiful summer day...
...though I was still the only one with a big hat. I've told them multiple times that we need to work on that.
A big hat also seemed appropriate for hitting up our next stop, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We were only spending a couple hours there, so my plan was to hit the three special exhibitions in which I was most interested. You see, A., M. and I all have very different museum speeds. A. walks through almost without stopping. I like to read all of the accompanying material and take a few minutes to contemplate each object. M. is somewhere in the middle.
So we decided that it was best for our friendship to just agree to meet in the gift shop at a pre-established time.
My hits for the afternoon were Designing Nature: The Rinpa Aesthetic in Japanese Art, The Printed Image in China, 8th-21st Century (through 7/29) and Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations (through 8/19). All were wins, in my book. I've always liked the Asian Art wing at the Met as it is, and both the Rinpa and the Printed Image provided amazing looks at specific practices. It's difficult to describe them in any sort of decent way without finding myself facing the impossible task of describing the entire exhibitions, so I will simply state my pleasure at viewing them. The Printed Image, especially, was astoundingly extensive and pretty mind-blowing in the history that it contained.
As for Schiaparelli and Prada, I liked it a lot better than 2010's American Woman: Fashioning A National Identity. The latter had felt like a very superficial overview to me, more of a publicity draw than something actually informative or insightful. In contrast, I found the current fashion exhibit to be accessible but also interesting, creative and educational. It featured a number of short videos of imagined conversations between the two designers (with an actor playing Schiaparelli, her words drawn from Schiaparelli's own) along with displays that compared and contracted their work in different design contexts. Yes, the exhibit was packed, unpleasantly so at some junctures; yes, it emptied right into a mini-gift shop. Don't care. It was good stuff.
I'm not sure if this is an always thing, but there was a good amount of sale merchandise in the gift shop. I struck gold and found a coffee table book of Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo for $18 -- normal price, $85. Japanese print art has long been a love of mine, so I am seriously considering getting a real coffee table so that I have a proper place to display it. I also picked up a discounted 2013 calendar of the Schiaparelli/Prada exhibit. This is a big win for me, as I usually don't get calendars until either about a quarter into the next year when they're heavily discounted or when I get the free academic wall calendar from my undergraduate alma mater in the mail. I am moving up in the world.
Our plan was to head to our favorite bar that night, but since it's a lounge that isn't really a place for getting real food, we stopped at BonChon Midtown first -- not the Koreatown one, the one up between 50th and 51st. The Koreatown BonChon was what had introduced me, late in life, to the wonder that is Korean fried chicken (I'd been a devotee of American fried chicken for as long as I can remember), and we'd tried the Midtown location on a Groupon once. In contrast to the two-story, two-steps-above-fast-food type place in Koreatown, the Midtown location feels like your average tiny Hell's Kitchen restaurant -- maybe about twice the size of my living room, half of which is taken up by a bar, a sleek and mod aesthetic. Three flat-screen televisions grace the wall, actually relieving you of the awkward situation where you know that the person sitting across from you is half-distracted by the television behind you, but that's okay in this case because you're half-distracted by the television behind them, which is playing the same channel.
As for the food, it's cooked to order, piping-hot fresh and completely delicious. I ordered a small side salad so that I would be eating something other than fried meat, and it was only a little bit smaller than some other places' entree-sized salads. M. and I split a fried chicken combo with the soy garlic glaze, and I also at most of A.'s Asian pear salad with grilled chicken, as well as one of M.'s delicious crispy friend potstickers. And a gingerman cocktail, which is basically bourbon plus ginger plus more alcohol and which was just a strong as the last time I got it.
But mostly, it was about the chicken. I might have eaten a lot of it. Just maybe.
We met up with P. again at The Dove Parlour, where we're about as regular as people who live out of town (or regularly congregate with said out-of-towners) can be at a bar and where it's easy to spend a huge amount of money. Their happy hour is totally worth it, bringing most of their specialty cocktails down to $7. I had my stand-by, an Olympia (you guessed it: more bourbon). P. and I split a cheese tier, getting the brie, manchego, sottocenere, cabra romero and my sorrow at having developed an allergy to almonds. And I finished things off with my also usual, some traditionally prepared absinthe, which is what will really kill you, not because of the alcohol but because it costs $15 for a teeny-tiny glass and is also delicious and okay fine, it can get you hammered.
But more to the point, we hung out here for about three hours. It being a Sunday night, the place was pretty much ours, too, for much of the time. The background music got a little loud -- and a little weird -- at some points, but I find it to be a great hang-out bar. Dimly lit, with Gilded Age decor, it's a place to drink and talk, without any bar games or televisions. I've definitely had some of my favorite evenings there.
On Monday, A. and I visited the Museum of the City of New York. It's a cute little place! Emphasis on "little." It's a two-story building, with four one-room exhibitions, a 20-minute video presentation and a couple mini-exhibits. As long as you're not expecting anything huge, though, I would recommend it. The two special exhibitions currently running are well put-together: one about banks and another about activism, both in the context of, of course, their history in New York City.
A. then proceeded to make me a very happy woman by humoring my quest to get lunch from the Okadaman food truck, which is located at 48th Street between Park and Lex. I got myself a seafood okonomiyaki and a very blissed-out expression. It was very near the end of their lunch hours, so it wasn't very warm, but it was still entirely delicious. At $8.50 per okonomiyaki, it's a little on the pricey side, but it is dense and delicious. With the seafood option, mine had squid rather than pork, and it was perfectly tender. And I can speak from experience and say that okonomiyaki is fucking work-intensive.
We then got A. some food at St. Andrews, another stand-by of mine if I need a solid bite in Times Square. A Scottish bar, save for the haggis, the food isn't the most adventurous, but it's very good. Because I have to eat everywhere, apparently, I just got a cock-a-leekie soup, which turned out to be like chicken noodle soup without the noodles, which is actually really, really good.
After that, we headed back uptown to meet M. at Alice's Tea Cup: Chapter II. M. got tea and a savory scone; A. got tea, grilled cheese and a cookie plate; and I got tea and the golden afternoon beet salad. Both of my items were good -- the cholestea was green tea with ginseng and a couple other things, and it had a pleasantly spicy, herbal taste to it. The beet salad is actually a warm chopped beet salad with orzo over mixed greens. While certainly not a meal I regret -- and their tea menu is impressively extensive -- it's probably not somewhere to which I'll be rushing back. The atmosphere is probably part of it for me -- it's pretty much the definition of "twee," which isn't quite my bag. And while the food was good, it wasn't as excellent as some more substantial plates that I could get elsewhere for a comparable price.
The next day, A. took off back to Florida, so I hit up my college-mate J., who is in her last month or so in the West Village before heading back upstate. It turns out that the two of us can talk a lot: YA literature, the mechanics of moving, the New York City educational system, undergrad nostalgia. I abandoned her for a short while to hit up NY Dosas, a food cart on the southeast side of Washington Square Park, where I got the special pondicherry (a lentil/rice crepe containing vegetables and potato). I've heard from P. that the dosa guy has increased his prices over the past few years as he's gotten famous, but it's still within reasonable foodcart-but-more-than-a-hotdog-stand range. It even felt healthy to eat -- the vegetables are fresh, pretty much a salad. For one of my appetite, it's not the most filling, but I was planning for a big meal that night, so it actually worked out perfectly.
In any case, I returned to J.'s place, and we gabbed more before she took me to David's Tea on Bleecker, which is apparently a huge Canadian chain and is kind of amazing. The tea selection is extensive and creative, and the staff was so friendly and enthusiastic. I got a cup of hot Gyokuro Yamishiro, a straight green tea. It brewed to a beautiful bright green color but the flavor was actually quite smooth, not nearly as grassy as some green teas that I've had. There was a small seating area in the back, so J. and I took over that for a long while, with me getting a refill of hot water for a second steeping.
It began getting busier once people began getting out of work, so we relinquished our seats and returned to her apartment, to where her husband also soon returned after a day of the bar exam. We all got rather engrossed in the 1990s at that point, but I soon had to leave for the final stop on my epic adventure.
That stop was meeting P. at Sparks Steak House, to which we'd bought a killer Groupon a while back, which was basically almost 50% off a meal for two. The deal had, in fact, been advertised as dinner for two, but in actuality, it was a gift card that was valued at what dinner for two was approximated to cost, though it could be spent however you liked. I'd made a reservation, but apparently that doesn't guarantee you to have a table ready right when you arrive -- somewhat understandable, as the place was packed and is apparently like that everyday, all the time. It worked out in the end, as P. had a delay, and we ended up being seated not more than five minutes after she arrived.
And then dinner. Oh, dinner. Given that we are classy ladies of the highest caliber, that could mean only two things: bourbon and medium-rare sirloin.
We each got a Manhattan with Maker's Mark, which were delicious and stunningly strong and amazing. After asking our server about the size of the appetizers and being told they were shareable, we decided to split a lump crab meat cocktail. He was absolutely right: totally shareable. And they even brought it out to us individually plated, which was characteristic of the wonderful service we received the entire night.
For the main course, we got the creamed spinach and mushrooms to share as sides to go with each of our prime sirloin strip steaks. First of all, the creamed spinach and mushrooms were both delicious, with the spinach being fresh and rich and the mushrooms being immensely buttery.
But the meat.
Oh, the meat.
Seared beautifully on the outside, with that salty-sweet char, the medium-rare was actually closer to the rare side of things, which is perfection in my book. Just a giant chunk of tender (though not tenderized) meat. I ate the whole fucking thing. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that it was probably about half the size of my head.
In an act of understated wizardry, our server changed our tablecloth between the meal and dessert, for which we ordered raspberries with whipped cream to split. Again, it was plated individually for us, and the portion size was great. The choice itself was also wonderful -- the delicate tartness of the raspberries was a perfect finisher for the grand sweeping gesture of the meat.
Have I mentioned the meat?
And then P. and I had been at dinner for almost three hours, and it was Good.
