What Wilford Brimley & Cat Fancy Have In Common

Having four days off of work is leading to all sorts of interesting discoveries.  For one, I have learned about a breed of cat that I never knew previously existed.  I attribute this to being subjected to a show on Animal Planet called “Cats 101″ (and by subjected, I mean that I am not in absolute control and dominion of the remote control at this juncture in the evening), wherein they are interviewing a lady who has dubbed herself “Kitty Cassandra” and paints cats called “Exotics” (which look like Wilford Brimley, but with four legs and fine fur.)  I then looked up Exotic cats on the Internet, and happened upon the Cat Fanciers’ Association (which I shall heretofore name the Association of People Who Have Given Up On Getting Laid EVER).  These are clearly the people who appreciate the kitty centerfold in the middle of “Cat Fancy” magazine (which I personally feel should include an “interests” section – “Hello there, my name is Anna Karenina and I enjoy laser pointers and catnip.  Dislikes:  hairballs and large-breed dogs.  I’m looking for a tom who’s not afraid to show his playful side, cuddle, and lick the hairballs off of me so I can keep a nice clean trachea.  My favorite charity is “Spay One to Know One.”)

For another, I have learned that it takes me only two days to epically fail at updating this blog every day for 30 days.  However, having received both an Amazon Kindle (the bestest gift EVER!) and Rock Band for Christmas, I would consider the fact that I am writing a blog at all to show a considerable amount of dedication and resolve.  (Or it might indicate that I played so much Rock Band that I got a blister on my right ring finger and had to pack in my drum sticks for the night.)

Speaking of which, I haven’t petted my Kindle in the last few hours…I wouldn’t want it to feel lonely, so lonely. . .

The Ballad of the Oculi

Every morning, I come to a mental crossroads — do I read the NY Times and Washington Post online, thereby saving reams of paper, but subjecting my eyes to mean, glaring pixels that want nothing more than to rip my sight away from me at a youthful age?  Or do I print out the articles that I am interesting in perusing in-depth, thereby contributing to worldwide deforestation, but preserving my oculi and therefore keeping them eligible for organ donation down the road?  Oh, the dilemma.

In less neurotic news, I almost fell out of my chair in court today.  While I am always anxious to make a lasting impression on the judges, methinks the graceless splat of my large frame hitting the floor is not the kind of message I’d like to be sending to the local judiciary.  This is why slouching is really bad, kids – not because it could lead to looking like you have Captain Hook’s appendage up your arse later in life, but because it could cause random acts of utter embarassment.  This has been a Public Service Announcement.

Commitment Issues and Illicit Barnyard Trafficking

Watching “Julie & Julia” yesterday made me feel like a very naughty, naughty blogger.  Young Julie managed to get up early, write a blog, work a full day, cook Julia Child meals at night, and maintain a functional relationship.  And I?  I ain’t cooking no Julia Child (butter is the devil, Julia!) and I for sure as hell am not waking up early to write on my blog (as writing on my blog before caffeine might give you the impression that I’m functionally disabled).  However, if the slightly obsessive-compulsive Julie can commit to an entire year of Julia Child’s recipes (and nab a book deal out of it), I feel it is only fair that more-than-slightly anal Snarky commit to updating her blog every day for 30 days (and nab nothing other than a respite from Facebook status updates.  Certainly, it should be far more fun than giving up caffeine (epic fail), soda (moderately successful), carbohydrates (successful in very, very short bursts, like 15 minutes), and salt (you will have to pry my collection of gourmand salts from my cold, dead fingers).

So, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah kids, for the next 30 days it’s going to be all Snarky, all the time.  Perhaps I shall become more pithy in short, controlled bursts.  Or, instead, daily sound bytes from yours truly could be a disaster of John Kerry-like proportions.  Only time and experimentation will tell.

Today, I would also like to note that I am grateful for the awesomeness that is Chipotle.  Fast, cheap, delicious, and requiring absolutely no work from me whatsoever.  And as a bonus, my inner tree hugger (really, there is one, she’s just very, very tiny) can feel good about the humanely-raised meat (until, of course, the eventual lawsuit that proves that Chipotle engages in false advertising to hide the fact that its cows and chickens are the victims of child-labor and illicit barnyard trafficking).  Nom nom.

The Vagaries of True Fandom

I am not ashamed to admit that I am a rabid soccer fan.  Indeed, I am proud to state that my DirecTV bill is often times more expensive than all my other utility bills combined because life is bereft without Fox Soccer Channel, Setanta, GolTV, UEFATV, and ESPN Deportes (who cares about A/C when you can just watch Champions League in your underwear?).  I have been known to stalk Marta and Shannon Boxx in search of autographs and drive for 6-8 hours in order to support the Women’s Professional Soccer League. 

Some may view this as psychosis, but I find it no more psychotic than people who pay mad money for NFL Sunday Ticket and show up to Green Bay Packers games semi-nude in the Winter (it should be cruel and unusual punishment to expose nipples to those kind of temperatures).  At least I’m supporting a sport that (a) is actually a WORLD sport in that it is actually played in virtually every county in the world (as opposed to American football, where the Super Bowl champion claims to be the World Champion every year despite the fact that much of the planetary population couldn’t care less); (b) values true physical fitness (as opposed to a sport where you play for, say, a minute and a half and then get a huff-and-puff break and man boobies are acceptable); (c) is almost impossible to play well on any sort of body-enhancing drug (Barry Bonds and his ever-expanding neck wouldn’t last ten minutes on the footy field); and (d) where the resident players may not be the brightest bears in the bunch, but are generally not knife-wielding street thugs (hello, Ray Lewis). 

Besides, I think it shows an incredible amount of restraint on my part that I haven’t yet purchased either FCBTV or ArsenalTV (which tend to air those few pesky Carling Cup and Deutscher Pokal games that all the money in the world can’t buy on broadcast TV).  On the other hand, Sassyfras and I make sure that we purchase each year’s edition of FIFA Soccer for the PS3 on the day of its release, so we probably aren’t saving too much money by foregoing online soccer porn for PS3 interactive soccer porn.  (But, at least the PS3′s dual shock controller vibrates.  Neither FCBTV nor ArsenalTV can deliver that kind of action.)

And so it has been that I have found myself in the past few weeks, slack-jawed in front of my television, cursing a variety of deities, players, and passerby, for the horrendously poor performance of my beloved soccer team, FC Bayern Munich (aka FC Hollywood).  My team - a once mighty force that comfortably acquired championship hardware with nary an exertion of the pinky toe on their left foot – is but 8th in their league and probably won’t even make it to the next round of Champions League, having pretty much raised their hindquarters in the air and begged the lads of Bordeauxto stick it to them over the past four weeks (for those of you who spent the last few sentences believing that I am speaking some sort of strange, foreign language, NY Giants and AZ Cardinals fans will currently appreciate how I feel).  We have a new coach who is about as effective as the rhythm method and looks sort of like someone who is accused of doing inappropriate things with young boys.  We have a $35 million euro striker who has splinters up his nuggets from riding the pine and a $60 million euro midfielder who seems to be made of highly breakable glass.  In sum, Saturday has become a holy day of grimacing and hand-wringing for me and drinking before 8 am is not out of the question (as German Bundesliga games tend to air at about 6:30 a.m. local time). 

Indeed, it has been so bad lately that not even my virtual PS3 Bayern team can escape the clutches of the Bayern implosion – yesterday, I was virtually fired as the virtual manager of the virtual Bayern team on FIFA10 (for losing fewer games than the current manager of Bayern Munich, I might add) and had to sink my head in shame, put my virtual tail between my virtual legs and accept a managerial job at lowly Exeter City, the only virtual team that would take me!  (This, I suppose, is my just desserts for thinking myself a far more capable PS3 soccer maven than I evidently am…the “Professional” level on FIFA10 is evidently far beyond my thumb-clicking skillz).

And yet, you could not pull me away from my weekly Bayern game with a crowbar and dental floss (unless your name was Sassyfras and Arsenal had a match at the same time – thank goodness for that beautiful invention, the DVR).  Despair as I might (and pull my hair out as I may – I have plenty left), they are still my team and I were I not to stick with them through the rough patches, I would not be much of a fan, now would I?.  I’ve even decided to spend a virtual year as the virtual manager of Exeter City on FIFA10 in hopes that Bayern will see the beauty of my virtual management style and will, once again, come calling.  Until then, FC Hollywood, until then. . .

The Ballad of the Cross-Country Pioneer

I have been very remiss in my blogging obligations, as of late…but the accursed cross-country move, the new job, a spur-of-the-moment work trip to South Carolina, a planned trip to Bora Bora that turned into one of the worst Snarky Snafus in history, and the addition of a new puppy to our freak circus sideshow of pets that perform no special tricks whatsoever has kept me on my toes and my fingers away from blogging. Sad, but true. But now I’m back from outer space and ready to belt it out like Gloria Gaynor.

For all of you out there who are even beginning to contemplate a move of some distance, I have sage words of wisdom for you: either suck it up and pay through the nose and ass to have one company move you, from alpha to omega, loading/unloading/driving/and everything in between OR sell everything that won’t fit in your vehicle and embrace the beauty of being free from material objects. Do NOT under any circumstances hire a local unloading/loading company by the hour to load your stuff onto a freight vehicle that has only a pre-set amount of linear feet available to you based on a faulty computer program, especially, and this is important kids, when you live a mile off the grid off a dirt road that cannot support the weight of a 16-wheel rig. If you do not heed my advice, the following events MAY occur:

(1) Your seemingly friendly local movers, who quoted you a price of $400 for the job (but are paid by the hour), may end up costing almost $900 based on the fact that you have stairs, own more heavy shit than you thought you did, have a foreperson from Romania who does not communicate well with the other two Spanish-speaking movers, and are secretly charged for rolls of tape and "specialized" boxes that the movers used (at $6 per roll and $15 per box) without your permission and despite the fact that you had rolls of tape available for their use and abuse. Screaming matches with moving company management in which fraud allegations and litigation are threatened may follow.

(2) You will run out of your allotted space on the freight moving truck, because although you allowed for two linear feet over what their computer program told you that you needed (because you’re Type-A that way), well, you were a cotton-headed ninnymugins for trusting a computer program (e.g., see 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Terminator oevure, and TRON). You will then either be forced to have a sidewalk fire sale on whatever doesn’t fit on the freight truck or beg and barter with the freight moving company to load and unload a SECOND truck with your extra stuffs, so that now your move is not in one fail swoop, but two rather inefficient swaps.

(3) Your stuff will be broken, damaged, chipped, and dirty on account of the fact that linear space moving trucks require one to follow the "pile high, my son" theory of packing. You may wonder if removing the dining room chair that is sticking precariously out of the morass of furniture about 3/4ths of the way to the diaphanous ceiling of the freight truck will be the "Jenga" piece-de-resistance.

(4) You will have to hire a THIRD moving company (in addition to the loaders and the freight company) to unload the freight truck and shuttle your worldly goods along the one mile of oh-so-scenic-and-yet-oh-such-a-pain-in-your-ass dirt road leading up to your new three acre tarantula-bearing estate. This will inevitably cause the unloading process to last five to six hours, when it should have only lasted two hours under normal operating conditions. However, if you’re smart, at this stage, you will have figured out to hoodwink the unloading moving company into a flat rate job estimate, thereby avoiding problem #1 (because lord knows they won’t anticipate that anyone with two brain cells to rub together would possibly attempt to move in the manner described above).

(5) You will end up paying equal to or more than the estimates you received for total moving solution companies, and will now simply have more headaches and a harder time getting all the bills together for the moving tax deduction for next year. On the upside, if you’re a believer in whatever doesn’t kill you make you stronger, well then, you just paid for an injection of titanium rods into your ego. Congratulations.

Oh, and one last word of advice – never, ever, ever, if you can avoid it, plan a cross-country trip with yours truly. While my laissez-faire, last-minute packing ethos works perfectly fine for in-city moves (where I can slink back to my old place after my friends have helped me move and clear up the detritus littering my floor and closets), it is wholly incompatible with an organized launch across the nation. Sassyfras should be given a medal, or at least a year’s worth of slave labor.

Speaking of Sassyfras – the FUN part of our trip was the part where we arranged our five cats (see above reference to freak circus sideshow of pets that perform no special tricks whatsoever) into five kitty carriers and five sets of kitty-sized leashes and harnesses), ourselves plus luggage, and my 70-80-bottle wine collection into a BMW 335i two-door coupe for our own temperature-controlled cross-country voyage. Along the way, I learned some valuable lessons – (a) I am not allergic to cats unless you place five of them within close proximity to me for four days in an enclosed space less than 14 cubic feet; (b) the Meox Mix "meow meow meow meow" song is NOT entertaining if it persists longer than an hour; (c) organic pet sedatives are da bomb; (d) attempting to walk five cats on leashes at rest stops and restaurants is inefficient, unruly, and would cause a diaper-clad walrus with an alien growing out of its head to look at you funny; (e) Best Westerns allow pets in pretty much every state of the union; (f) Arkansas has six dry counties and a roadside billboard that gives you the number for Satan (which we failed to write down in enough time to call it and see if it rang either of our cell phones); (g) the birth places of Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Andrew Jackson are more or less off the same highway; (h) the United States would get much prettier if we allowed the Western part of Texas to secede from the union; and (i) if your relationship can survive all of the above, you’re probably pretty set for a life of peace and happiness.

Needless to say, we finished the trip with less wine than we started (although, in no event did we drink in any of the six dry states in Arklansas; indeed, we neglected to even stop in any of them), and we are not moving our boot-ays out of this house for a good, looooooooooong while.

New Discoveries of the Recently Liberated

When you're not forced to be at work 8-10 hours per day, there are all sorts of interesting things you can discover:

Example #1 – New and Amusing Ways To Hurt Yourself – despite the fact that I've been playing sports since I was 5 years old, it wasn't until around about the ripe old age of 30 that the body started saying "fuck you" to me when I attempted to throw it around as if it were a lithe, teenage incarnation of itself.  There was the broken forearm playing rec league soccer, followed by the torn shoulder tendons playing rec league softball, followed by bursitis in the knee playing rec league flag football.  Notice that I have never really injured myself playing COMPETITIVE sports…just the "I'm Way Too Old To Be Playing Sports, But I Just Can't Help Myself and my Beer Belly" leagues.  Well, now I've decided to say "fuck you" to my body right back by enrolling in an exercise regimen known as "Crossfit."  For those of you who are unaware of this modern day panacea of pain, Crossfit is a combination of Olympic weightlifting (wherein the weights are heavy and fall down and go boom on the ground often), gymnastics (and you thought that rings were just for short men wearing leotards!), cardio (mostly rowing with a dash of running thrown in), plyometrics (burpee is NOT a carbonated slurpee), and more traditional forms of torture (such as the push-up, pull-up, sit-up – why is it always an "up" instead of a "down?").  Thus far, I've managed to pull my trap muscle twice (oh, the joys of jerk presses), bruise the heck out of my knees (when you start doing 50-70 burpees, they get a wee bit out of control), and make steam rise from the top of my head in 55 degree weather (that would be during THIS workout), but on the positive side, I can now do a double-under (take that, Rocky Balboa!), my vertical in basketball has shot above traditional white-girl status, and I can actually do a pull-up or two (though far less than the former competitive gymnast who is in my class and smokes the rest of us mere mortals on a regular basis).  Here's to hoping my body starts liking the benefits and gives up its pursuit of making me replace every freakin' joint in my body before the age of 50, shall we?

Example #2 – The Shortcomings of One's Wardrobe – as it so happens, a wardrobe full of Brooks Brothers shirts and sweaters is absolutely useless unless you work at a law firm every day.  While my 30-50 shirt collection of Brooks Brothers' famous non-iron hits (pointed-collar dress shirts in every stripe-y color of the rainbow) appeared to make sense when I was wearing them on a daily basis and didn't want to show up at work dressed in the same shirt on any two given weeks (because that would be, like, unfashionable and stuff), now they just sit in my closet like a furloughed army, voluminous and yet impotent.

Example #3 – The Myth of the Perfect Household – when you work full-time, you fantasize that, if you could only take a day, or a week, or a month off from your job, then you could turn to all those nittering details in life that you cannot accomplish when locked inside a glass cage for 8-10 hours a day.  WIth enough time, you muse, the DMV and post office would be a snap, you would always make it to the gym, your e-mail Inbox would be well-organized, your bills would all be paid, your house would be tidy, and dag nabit, you might just have extra time to volunteer at a local charity.  Lies, lies, and more lies, I say!  Perhaps this would happen if you had ALL your shit together BEFORE you stopped working full-time (which seems about as likely as my five cats breaking out in a rendition of "Bibbidy-Bobbidy-Boo" and cleaning my house), but work, or no work, errands and tasks create a mountain faster than you can swing a pickaxe.  While my 3,500 new and unopened e-mail Inbox messages have been whittled down to a mere 1,500, there are always fresh shills, updates, and correspondence to take their place.  While I no longer slave 8-10 hours a day for money, I am now forced to think of more creative ways to fund my Brooks-Brothers-and-BMW-buying lifestyle (recent innovations include paying WAY more attention to my tax deductions this year and pondering the relative profitability of "The Lesbian Cat Lady" webcam).  And while running errands mid-day is far easier due to less traffic and less unwashed humanity in the aisles, the errands seem to take about as long, either because I am less efficient due to the fact that I do not have the allure/guilt of work hanging over my head or because the soccer moms and retirees with whom I am now competing with for my place in the Target Shopping Hall of Fame are WAY slower than their corporate-ladder climbing counterparts.

I Am Handy Woman . . . Hear Me Roar

The denizens of Panera Bread in Fairfax, Virginia at 10:30 in the morning are a motley crew.  Let's just say that all of the handicapped and "Mothers with Small Children" parking spaces are completely full (and yes, in Fairfax, Virginia, not only do expectant mothers get primo parking privileges, but so do those with small children; because not only do we want to encourage rampant reproduction in the suburbs, but we want to show children that walking and exercise are bad, evil things that should be stamped out with mini-vans and higher insurance premiums). Joining the retirees and suburban house fraus were a collection of young hipster types with headphones and computers (perhaps local college students?), a collection of working stiffs on their mid-morning break (aka Second Breakfast in Hobbit-ese), and some single men sipping coffee while reading the paper (I'm guessing alternative shift government workers on their Friday off).  I certainly added a dose of city flava to the human collection of curiosities this morning – a gay lawyer attempting (rather poorly) to author her first book while awaiting the FBI's acceptance of the last 10 years of her life (and hence, the a-ok to start her new job in Arizona). 

Now, creative writing is something that I have loved ever since I started my very first blog post in 2003 (back when Blogger was king and I lived in Brooklyn, New York the summer after law school and saw gay go-go dancers in the store window of the local Borders).  It is rather unfortunate that I didn't actually have a yen for creative writing in college, when I actually could have taken, oh I don't know, a creative writing class or two, but it's not like being absolutely unqualified has ever stopped me from doing anything before (I mean, hey, I made the varsity badminton team in high school without ever knowing what the hell a "shuttlecock" was – pretending you know what the hell you're doing goes a long way!).  However, it appears I will have to get over my own inner editor in order to actually commit an entire book (or even a damn page) to Microsoft Word.  I couldn't write two sentences down this morning without attempting to rework those sentences to make more sense, more fun, more snark.  This may be a long, slow, tortuous process, but hey, so is the FBI background check, so it should work out.

In other news, I have added the title of "Handy Woman" to my list of personal accomplishments . . . since moving into Sassyfras's place in the country, I have installed an under-the-counter coffee mug holder, assembled a Container Store baker's rack, and most recently, installed a new door handle and lock.  I don't think it takes away from my accomplishments at all to admit that in the midst of replacing aforementioned door handle and lock, I momentarily (okay, maybe for about 10 minutes) locked both myself and Sassyfras inside the spare bedroom (a by-product of assembling the lock portion and then closing the door without assembling the door handle portion).  Alas, the cats were of absolutely no use in freeing us from our temporary prison (though one of them did seem to try by manuevering his paws through the hole in the door; I tried to pass him a credit card to pick the lock, but he just started eating it).  I did finally manage to pick my newly installed lock with a delicate combination of banging it with a hammer and jiggling it with a long, flat drill bit just as Sassyfras was contemplating how to escape the third-story room through the window.  Something tells me THAT would not have been pretty.

The Real Housewife of Fairfax County And A Boy Named Trip

So, it’s been quite the little while since I’ve posted an actual blog.  I blame two culprits:  (1) Facebook and the irresistible lure for me to post endless status updates; and (2) flying monkeys.  But, as it’s the new year and I’ve finally just remembered to start writing 2009 on my checks and signatures, I decided that it’s also time to stop blaming flying monkeys for my problems and to start blogging again with snarky zeal. 

And what better environment for it, really, than my current location in lovely Fairfax, Virginia.   For those of you lucky enough not to be subjected to my entreaties for people to help me lift my 1,000 pound dining room hutch, I recently relocated to the suburban wilds of Fairfax – the site of Sassafras’ abode (aka the Country House) – in order to save up money for my upcoming move back to the desert (that would be Arizona, not Northern Africa).  That move shall occur sometime between the months of April and July, depending on when my security clearance is approved, because we all know that a dorky white girl who has two certificates for perfect attendance at public high school could be a serious threat to national security. 

In the meantime, I am a Fairfax housewife charged with the responsibility of cleaning, packing, and getting everything ready for the big move.  I was just getting used to this label when I ventured out the door for a lunch-time Baja Fresh run and saw the REAL housewives of Fairfax County.  Oi!  While I am happily scarfing down a Burrito Ultimo and reading about China’s economic woes in The Economist magazine with zeal, I look around and notice women in pastel-striped sweaters (horizontally striped pastels at that), scrunchies, and hair that has never met a bottle of mousse or de-frizz lotion either cooing at their newborn suburban babies or getting all googly-eyed over the two tables of Fairfax County Firefighters present (all of whom were a fair bit shorter than me and not likely to be featured in any firefighter calendars without their shirts off anytime soon).  I scurried out of the Baja Fresh as quickly as possible just in case Suburbopastelitis is spread through airborne toxin and now firmly claim that I am a “Very Important Independent Contractor Who Happens To Be Stationed in Fairfax While Awaiting Redeployment” rather than a “Fairfax Housewife.”  A mouthful to say, to be sure, but a far less scary prospect.

Speaking of scary prospects, I almost got into a fight last night on the basketball court with a lovely gentleman by the name of “Trip” from the University of Texas.  This particular Texan was such a charming example of Southern manhood that at the end of the first period of play, he rebounded a ball and held it over my head while I tried to smack it out of his hands (an event not likely to occur under the law of physics, given he was easily 6’4″ or above and I’m a respectable, but far shorter, 5’11″).  When the buzzer sounded, he smiled and firmly smacked my ass.  Now, I’m well aware of the common nature of ass-smacking that goes occurs on the field of play, but it is generally reserved for teammates who are each of the same gender.  I, myself, have never been much of an ass-smacker on the field of play . . . it strikes me as a thoroughly ludicrous show of emotional support compared to, say, the fist bump, the hand slap, the head butt, or the chest bump, but I digress . . .

When I informed Sassafras of Mr. Gallant’s slap-happy nature, she kindly informed him that the next time he slapped my ass, she would be sure to hit him hard.  You would think that such protection of a little lady (that would be me, and not 5’2″ Sassafras) would be understood by a good ‘ol Texas boy, but instead, on one occasion on the court when she did, indeed, hit him hard, he remarked within my earshot, “Take it easy.  I mean, I know you’re gay and all, but calm down.”  Now, I don’t suppose I can really expect more from a Texas neandrathal named Trip, but no one, and I mean no one, insults my Sassafras.  You can insult me and slap my ass all day long, but you do not mess with my girl.

Hence, I politely turned around, shoved Mr. My Last Girlfriend Was Probably a Longhorn as hard as I could and said, “What the fuck did you say?”  Not much more happened, as a gathering of referees and teammates ensued.  Indeed, the whole affair ended without me even getting a foul (the ref simply said, “I don’t know what he said, but let’s just play basketball.”).  Regardless, the moral adrenaline was enough to help me score 14 points (and Sassfras nabbed a number of key steals) to beat the the UT (and homophobia) in overtime.  Here’s to Trip, who at the end of the day, went home a loser in all senses of the word (though, on the positive side, with his name, he could be long-lost child #6 of Sarah Palin).

I Heart My Stick

I have found a new way to occupy my time while waiting for a doctor's office to actually get their arse on the phone and make an appointment with me – blog to muzak.  Difference #1 between lawyers and doctors – lawyers are happy to take your money and will generally be amenable to doing it anytime, anyplace, anywhere while charging you an obscene amount of money on an hourly basis; doctors will keep you on hold or waiting in the waiting room for as long as possible to avoid having to see you, but if you are persistent enough to force them to see you, they will then charge you an obscene amount of money on some sort of arbitrary basis that makes no sense whatsoever except to people who lurk in the back rooms of medical office coordinator conferences.  I'd be more than happy to avoid the medical profession in this case altogether – orthopods have the worst beside manners ever and steadfastly squirm if you ask them questions (I can see them ticking off the minutes in their head – if I asked five minutes of fewer questions, that's one more patience they can see and get paid a ridiculous pittance by some insurance company to evaluate.)  However, as my knee has roughly been 1.5 to 3 times its normal size for the last three weeks, I promised Sassafras I would go.  I say no doctors need to be involved until (a) the knee joint fails to work or (b) I grow a knee "baby" with a head and arms, but as I'm currently sitting on hold with the doctor's office, Sassafras has evidently emerged victorious on this point of order.

I awoke this morning to the most dulcet tones…no, not the quiet "brring-brring" of Sassafras' cell phone alarm (I already had a great respect for schoolteachers, but it increased about a hundred-fold when I learned she awoke at 5am Monday through Friday to be at school and grading her students' papers on time), but the rather pleasing tone of someone slamming a car door, saying "it's a stick" in a guttural, urban growl, and then another slammed door along with the rip of tires against pavement outside my bedroom window.  In other words, I think I have the fact that I have an unyielding (and rather unfortunate, at least for DC driving purposes) fascination with stick shift sports cars to thank for the fact that I am not currently the owner of a stolen BMW.  Why they weren't more drawn to Sassafras' super sexy Audi TT than my aged (though spunky) BMW, I'll never know . . . but the experience doesconfirm a theory that I have had since getting burglarized three times over the course of two years in Tucson . . . thieves are irredeemably, irretrievably lazy. 

I mean, why burn the calories of shifting from 2nd to 3rd gear if you don't have to?  Just pass the "it's a stick" and go find a lovely little automatic BMW of which to deprive its owner.  Why walk up two flights of stairs to jack electronics, when there are a bevy of first-floor condos and apartments just waiting to open up their treasure trove of yuppie wealth spent at Best Buy?  And indeed, why get a job that permits one to save the money necessary to buy such things in the first place, when the streets are full of cars and yuppie electronics just waiting to be liberated from their unsuspecting owners?  I mean, after all, morals, much like the color pink, are so very last year.  The only way to defend ourselves, ladies and gentlemen, from this onslaught of self-service citizenry is to drive stick shifts and possess as many flights of stairs as possible in our house.  Sticks and stairs may cause repetitive knee injuries and tv-movie-of-the-week violence, but they are the key to keeping a hold of your valuable possessions.

The Satan Side Of Life

My grandmother has been known, on many an occasion, to see Satan in the details of life that most of us would find rather unremarkable.  For example, she’s utterly convinced that the Harry Potter book series is Satanic.  While most of us infidels see Harry Potter as a blessing from whatever unitary power there might be in the world for managing to make American children read 600-800 page novels sans pictures, my grandmother sees Satan.  After all, witches and brooms and spells, oh my!  (At least this means I can escape the evil clutches of “The Wizard of Oz” when I’m visiting my grandmother…is it just me, or will that idiot Dorothy not stop whining the entire freakin’ movie?  Really, I keep watching it in hopes that the Wicked Witch will bitchslap that woman with her broom.) 

Another example would be her decision to make my mother right-handed as a young child, despite her dominant hand being her left, because, as they say, being a leftie is a sign ‘o Satan.  My mother now writes with her right-hand, but does pretty much every other thing with her left hand, and is perennially mis-directed because she thinks east is west and vice versa.  Evidently, you can make the hand do the work, but you can’t rejigger the pathways in the brain.  Pity.  For years, I have thought this a few close steps away from child abuse, but as I have aged, I have decided that my grandmother was right.  No, not about Harry Potter, but about the evil of the left-handed side of the body.  For instance, the left side of MY body is definitely inhabited by an evil force that I like to refer to as “Gimpy Satan.”

Gimpy Satan started his possession of the left side of my body rather slowly – just a few sprains of the left ankle here and there…nothing unusual for a klutzy girl who insists on playing contact sports.  But, the first time I knew something was amiss in the left side of my body was the night I sprained my ankle AND broke off a piece of my ankle bone playing a particularly hard-fought game of Pictionary on my birthday.  Seriously…who does that UNLESS they are possessed by an evil force from beyond this world?

Of course, I wrote off such shenanigans as merely the byproduct of an unusually weak ankle and an unusually potent ½ glass of wine.  That is, until the left hand side of my body has gone completely postal on me in the last few years.  Let’s see, (a) I broke my left forearm so badly a couple of years ago that my wrist was S-shaped, it healed wrong in the cast, had to be surgically re-broken and then fixed with a piece of my hip bone (if you shake my left hand, you just might hear a Shakira song) and a titanium plate; then the wrist heals just in time for me to (b) tear my left rotator cuff and labrum (i.e. shoulder), which I’m going to physical therapy for at the same time I’m (c) rehabbing my left ankle, which locked on me a few months ago as I was laying supine in my bed with some work (see above story about missing piece of ankle bone), and now, to add insult to injury, I have (d) lost the toenail on my left foot to a bottle of garbanzo beans in the kitchen.  That’s right…GARBANZO BEANS.  Little.  Yellow.  Lethal.

I am now utterly convinced that I need Father Karras stat, before I manage to contract the world’s only known case of gangrene from a paper cut from a deck of poker cards.  Seriously.

I Am Officially Appalled

I know friends of mine who track their menstrual cycles in order to get pregnant, and even other friends who log their calories and exercise regimen in a bid to get skinny and fit, but before reading this article, I have never before been acquainted with people who measure the frequency and duration of their lovemaking, attempt to divine the hidden messages in their websurfing rituals, track their menstrual cycles just because, and use a variety of other websites to track where they've been, where they'd like to go, and how they feel about getting there.  They've even decide to form a group, called "Quantified Self" in order to swap tips on how to map out their own lives down to the hundreth decimal point.  I suppose to these people, it's not the devil in the details, it's themselves – breaking down the sum of our parts down to minutia.

It's this kind of mentality that actually drove me from the so-called "hard sciences" to the humanities as a fresh-faced (yet acne-prone) college kid - my science professors' desire to break down life's mysteries into the smallest part imagineable (if you can't see it, even with the strongest microscope around, does it really exist?).  Whereas those studying the humanities seemed to believe that humans (and, the world in general) were more than the sum of their bits and bytes, scientists were working on deconstructing life into molecules that could be classified and filed.  And now, it seems, that tech-heads are following in their footsteps  Instead of tracking atoms, electrons, and quarks, these dataphiles are tracking the minutia of their day-to-day life to extract the patterns.  One of those interviewed for the article even suggested that if he knew he was in bad moods after a class on Fridays, and that was his date night, an Excel spreadsheet could have saved his relationship by telling him to move date night to Sundays.

I say that the first person to tell me that an Excel spreadsheet commanded them to do anything is getting the"Don't Let the Door Hit Yo' Ass On The Way Out" speech.  While I admire, to a certain extent, better living through science (i.e. prosthetic limbs, better medical treatments, and even helping the rhtyhm method of birth control go digital), I find these dataphiles' view of the world as appalling as I did my science professors.  No amount of pulling the curtain back on humans' inner lives is going to reveal the whole picture, nor should it.  Bar graphs won't tell you why you fall in love with whom you do; regression analyses won't explain why you persist in loving people whom it makes no rational sense to love; and data points won't fully help you understand why you could be with one person for only three months and another for fifty years.  Humans, just like nature, are more than the sum of their individual, minute parts – while a line graph may tell you that you get gas after eating at the Italian sausage place, it won't help you understand why some humans can eradicate cancer from their bodies in defiance of all medical thought.  Humans are part logic, part intuition and to abandon one in favor of the other is to abandon the human experience, overall.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way…I'm off to go track my conquests online.  Because, after all, notching numbers on my actual bedpost is messy and ruins a perfectly good Pottery Barn bed.  Viva la 21st Century, baby.

I'll Take That Spleen, Oh, And Your Dignity, Too

I'll admit, I'm not much for reading thrillers.  I could blame the fact that I had high expectations from Thomas Harris' novel "Silence of the Lambs" after sitting still in awe for two whole hours (an unheard of feat for me - MRI technicians routinely yell at me for twitching) while watching Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster intellectually parry and thrust on the screen, expectations that were roundly disappointed by Harris' bloated, poorly written book.  Or perhaps, I could blame the fact that few writers probably have the depravity to make a serial killer anywhere near as interesting as the real thing.  I mean, after all, we wouldn't really want many people in the population to actually think like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, now would we?

But I'll admit…I was fascinated by the Washington Post's review of "Sweetheart" by Chelsea Cain.  It was the tagline, "She stole his spleen, then his heart," that really did it for me.  I mean, who would NOT click on that (those saucy editors at WashPo know how to get your attention).  The review goes on to describe an interaction between the two main characters, a minxy serial killer named Gretchen and a seriously sick puppy of a police detective named Archie, whom got seduced, then drugged and tortured in the prequel.  Evidently, during the torture, Gretchen removed Archie's spleen, an event she recalls fondly in Cain's current book, "Having my hands inside you. You were so warm and sticky. I can still smell you, your blood." 

Can you say, "sexually frustrated woman" three times fast?  Sheesh…where are the good 'ol days when women attempted to buck societal norms by assuming the "phallus of power"?  Now they gots to be removing body parts in order to recreate the feeling that men must feel being inside a woman?  Seriously, drop the scalpel and get thee to a lesbian bar.  Meanwhile, I think I'll stick to my ban on thriller novels.

A Penguin Named Atropos

I dare say that I have the odor of salad dressing about me today, not necessarily because I have any sort of genetic abnormality that causes me to secret balsamic dressing when I process carbohydrates, but because my pants are wearing the salad that I had for lunch.  Personally, I think the first explanation makes a far better story and it’s the one I’m going to be sticking with should anyone at the firm attempt to size me up with their nose anytime soon.

I had a glorious 4th of July weekend, mostly because I didn’t do a shred of work.  Now, this was quite possibly not the best idea I had, given that my penchant for tackling pro bono work leaves me short of my billing requirements, but hot diggity dog, it felt good.  It’s simply unAmerican to be at work all weekend, when you could be partying until 4 a.m. at a sketchy nightclub with a friend who later passes out on your bathroom floor, watching La Femme Nikita in your bathrobe from the couch all afternoon, engaging in a little competition Spades before watching the fireworks from the Iwo Jima memorial, (as you can tell, my evening activities can vary greatly, depending on whether I’m hanging with the 20-somethings or 30-somethings), and brunching with my girl gang (which included one dude, but he has skin like a baby’s arse, so he’s in…).

Speaking of my girl gang, in addition to brunching, we made the atrocious decision to go see Wanted on Sunday morning…a decision that I thoroughly regret, as watching two hours of that movie has quite possibly made me stupider.  I literally felt Angelina Jolie’s buttocks siphoning IQ points from my eyes as I sat in the darkened theater.  Forget reading any lengthy reviews…I can sum up the major plot points for you in one sentence.  Basically, an emasculated male who goes through life whining about his place in the world and his inability to do anything about it reclaims his manhood and grows a pair after having Angelina Jolie teach him how to murder random people selected for execution by…wait for it…a loom.  You see…because Jolie’s super-secret crime fighting squad originated as a sect of weavers at some point in the Middle Ages (no doubt when someone’s mind was addled by Bubonic Plague), they receive their kill orders from the “hidden text” that is enmeshed in the premium cotton weave produced by the “loom of fate.”  Seriously.  Personally, I think the movie would have had a shred more credibility if it explained the kill orders as coming from Morgan Freeman’s psychic connection to a penguin named Atropos.  At least that would have had a shred of cleverness.

Speaking of clever, I never cease to be amazed by the shills that I get here at the firm.  Today, it was an “offer” to purchase a piece of “Quintessential Nantucket Living” for between $495,000 and $2.2 million.  The $495,000 is for “bundled fractional” Nantucket living, by the way.  Nothing says vacation like some bundled fractional housing arrangements . . . thanks, but no thanks…I’d rather be surfing in Costa Rica and camping on the beach!

PETA — In Serious Need of Marketing Folk

There are no words to describe this video, other than to say that PETA should stick to what is does best…throwing fake blood on fur coats and getting Hollywood types to get naked with bunnies and leave the spay and neuter talk to the professionals.  Great googly moogly.

The Accidental Runner

While laying here on my couch with a frozen bottle of Stoli Blueberry under my right knee, it occurs to me that perhaps running a 10K and then playing two hours of basketball was not the best idea ever.  Then again, I didn't actually mean to run a 10K.  I showed up at the "Lawyers Have Heart" race in Georgetown fully expecting to partake of the 5K option, because although boots may be made for walkin', this body (most notably, these rather wasted baby-makin' hips) were not made for running.  However, upon asking the race organizers about the 5K option, I was informed that, despite the fact that 5K was on all of the "Lawyers Have Heart" promotional advertising, it was not an option – my only options were to do the 10K with most everyone else or do the 2 mile fun walk with the lawyers and strollers and dogs crowd.  So much for truth in advertising…and in front of a bunch of litigators, too.  Shocking.  Reporting this fact to the rest of the running slackers, whom had all decided to run the 5K together initialy, we ended up deciding that we would just start running the 10K and abandon ship when we keeled over dead from (a) lack of ability; (b) lack of sleep; or (c) lack of ability to withstand high heat and humidity.  I started to have some doubts about my choice of a morning activity at about the point I hit mile 4 (at which point I was alone, because by mile 1, all of my "teammates" had either decided to run on ahead or walk behind me and it was just me and team iPod nano), but by that point, I realized I was about 2 miles from the finish line, and thought, "well, fuck it, might as well finish it now and I might as well get a tan while I'm at it," so I took off my shirt, rocked the sports bra and sweaty stomach look (you could tell the competitive runners from the slackers like me by the presence or absence of a cheese-grating stomach), and carried on all the way to the finish line, at which point I noticed that not only was I not the last person to finish (the ultimate type-A runner's nightmare), but I actually beat three of my fellow co-workers, two of whom have much narrower hips than I.  Let's hear it for woolly mammoth hips!  Hip hip hooray! 

Not content with the fact that I had just run more than I ever had in my entire life (boy, wouldn't my psycho pep squad high school PE teacher be proud!), I decided to make my weekly pick-up basketball game and sprint up and down the court for 2 hours straight (well, by the end of the two hours, it was a cross between a limpy shuffle and a jog, but…).  Not only could I not breathe or walk very well at end of basketball, but I was about ready to hunt, kill, and eat a mastadon raw.  As mastadons are not easily found on the streets of D.C. I settled for a heaping pile 'o Chipotle.  And let me tell you, there was absolutely zero guilt felt about ingesting every last scrap on my plate.  Zero.

Oh Wherefore Art Thou, Juliet?

I read a very disconcerting figure the other day — that only 2.9% of American people 18 or older identify as lesbian, bisexual, or gay. As a single woman over 18 who tends to identify herself as a lesbian when such identifications are called for, I found this new stat rather alarming. After all, I had been under the delusion since coming out that I was working with about 10% of the population, or well, since I only date women, 5% of the population based on the woefully outdated (and thus, I presumed, rather inaccurate on the LOW side) Kinsey Report. Either people in the 50s and 60s were a lot freakier than I gave them credit for, or the gay population is either (a) dwindling; (b) going back into the closet to hang out with the monsters of our youth; or (c) leaving the country in large percentages thanks to President Bush. Any which way you slice it, it looks like my relative dating pickins’ are slim. Think about it — if there are only 2.9% LGB people in America, then I could only possibly be interested in 1.45% of the total population. Let’s remove half as being partnered (because I ain’t down with the three-ways and open marriages at my advanced age). We’re at 0.725%. Now let’s remove another half because I have to be physically attracted to them (here’s where the mullets, NASCAR dykes, and Birkenstocks with black sock wearers fall out). Looking good at 0.36%. Now, for the final cut…we need to remove another half on the basis of intellectual wit. (Yes, I’m a snob. I’ll go to a 12-step program for it just as soon as you start it.) That leaves me 0.18% of the population as my dating pool (and I haven’t taken off percentage points for ageism, discrimination against bisexuals, or the ever elusive presence of chemistry.) Sheesh.

Think On Your Meat

There is a great article today on the horror that is factory farming (and by horror, I’m talking about animals being treated inhumanely, which in turn, produces disease – can you say antibiotics and shit in your meat?; greenhouse gasses – tons of shit equals tons of waste that goes to the environment, rather than being used for compost, as on a real farm; and the wholesale dehumanization of factory workers – industrial slaughter ain’t pretty folks). 

I made a decision about a year ago to try to only buy grass-fed, free range, and to the extent possible, humanely slaughtered, meat (yes, that includes at restaurants when I can get it).  Granted, this coincided with a generous income raise, as grass-fed and humanely slaughtered meat tends to be a bit more expensive than the industrially-processed, corn-fed stuff, but it was also a product of my exposure to the books "Fast Food Nation" and "The Omnivore’s Dilemma" and my reflections on being both an animal rights supporter and meat eater.  The conclusion I came to is that it’s not ethically wrong to eat meat, but it is ethically wrong to treat any animal, even my food, with disrespect.  If an alien being that happened to think that human rump roast was a delicacy and wanted to farm human rumps for consumption, I would hope at least that the alien would let me live life as I was intended to live it before slaughtering me and lopping off my butt.  Animals deserve no less.

So, I encourage everyone to seek out humanely raised meat products.  They can be found at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and even Safeway these days.  Also, check out local butcher shops and CSAs (Community Sustainable Agriculture).  Then, not only will you be supporting the humane treatment of animals, you’ll be supporting local farmers.  The more people that turn their backs on the factory farming industry, the more that humane options will be available and the more that factory farms will realize that they will have to change.

Getting Jiggy With Viruses

I thought that this article in the New York Times about doctors helping those with congential and progressive blindness by injecting their eyes with genetically-engineered viruses was the coolest thing since wheat Wonderbread.  It was also a further testament to the fact that I chose correctly in going to law school instead of medical school, because while I can dream up new ways to interpret the Constitution in my sleep, I definitely lack the imagination required to think about sticking a microbe into my ocular canal in order to cure a genetic defect.  There should be a Bud Light commercial for these guys — "Here’s to you, Mr. Congential Blindness Virus Eye Injector."

Zapping the Crayola Crayons From My Body

So, in honor of my impending 31st birthday, I have decided to shed a few mementos of my misguided youth — my tattoos.  Now, while some people had a misguided youth filled with hypodermic needles and large swaths of tribal and skulls and crossbones tattoos, mine was mainly filled with diet coke, chocolate milk, and ill-advised teddy bear and Tasmanian Devil tattoos.  Cute?  Perhaps when you’re 15, which is how old I was when I got my first tattoo (I’d blame my parents, but if they had said “no,” I probably would have gotten it anyway, I’m stubborn like that), but they don’t match so well these days with a professional cami-and-skirt set, nor an evening gown.  There’s just something about having a Superman symbol on your right deltoid (with my initial, of course) that undermines your ability to be taken seriously while billing $450 per hour.  Luckily, my significant preference (dare I say obsession?) with oxford shirts generally precludes my secret shame of colorful, dancing ink on my shoulders and back.  But, in an effort to escape the inevitable explanation of childhood stupidity the next time some lucky lady disrobes me and to reclaim my right to wear tank tops loudly and proudly, I embarked last Wednesday on the months-long process of eradicating the ink from my skin with finite laser bursts.

Actually, the procedure sounds far worse than it actually is.  My laser technician (a lovely Asian woman who could do with a pound less cover-up base on her face) numbed me up quite nicely with Lidocaine prior to firing the thoroughly boring-looking laser at me (I had hoped for some Star Wars action, but alas, even the goggles I had to wear to protect my eyes looked more high school wood shop than sci fi), so there was little to no sensation from the procedure, and when there was, it felt akin to have an errant sparkle from a July 4th Sparkler drop on your finger.  All three tattoos took approximately an hour to scorch.  Total cost for that hour?  $1,100.00.  Aesthetic surgery is quite the racket…it makes my firm’s billing rates look reasonable.

So, the actual procedure was no big deal, but the aftermath is quite another thing.  I mean, quite literally, you are “burning out” your tattoo with a laser beam of light and within 24 hours of having the procedure done, my shoulder and back was en fuego.  Luckily, my tattoos did not blister (as I was told they might), but they are looking pretty red and scabrous.  More disturbing, the face of my teddy bear now resembles the molten face of a demon teddy bear from hell bent on sucking my soul slowly through the pores of my upper left scapula.  Let’s hope the scab falls off before he succeeds.  Today (four days later) is the first day that my back has felt normal, and a cursory inspection of my back reveals that some of the color from both my teddy bear and my Taz has gone away, though much remains.  It’ll be interesting to see what all has gone a’missing when the scab finally falls off (in between 2-4 weeks).  In approximately another 5 weeks, I get to go through this whole process again, for as many times as it takes to actually remove the entirety of the tattoo.  Just a little something to think about this bathing suit season in case you’re thinking about adding a cute little dolphin to your ankle or bum.  $100 for something that last forever seems like a good deal…until you decide that your commitment issues extend to your tattoo.

Speaking of painful removal processes, I decided to give Bliss Spa’s Poetic Self-Waxing Kit a go in honor of my trip to Miami (in which a bikini was worn, and hence, a bikini line had to be sent packin’).  Having had only one prior experience with a self-waxing kit (two words — hairy and bloody), I had pretty low expectations.  I have to say, however, I was impressed.  The Poetic wax was ridiculously good at pulling out my short and curlies, follicle first, and I managed to make short work of my bikini line.  Had I stopped there, everything would have been just peachy.  But, oh no, I was feeling good about my beauty aesthetician skills, and just had to go for a little Brazilian bikini wax action.  Let me tell you, DO NOT use this product on any part of your anatomy that you can not pull absolutely taut.  Let’s just say that it took me 30 minutes, a half-bottle of supposedly wax-dissolving oil, cuticle scissors and many curse words to get myself out of the sticky situation I had gotten myself in to.  A little pre-bikini self rip-rip action is just fine and dandy, but leave the Brazilian waxing to the experts, folks.

The Virtues of Eating Ass and Puck

My evening last night could not have been more perfect, which was a relief, since my day, and indeed most of the days preceding yesterday, have been perfectly horrid.  I had originally set aside most of my working week to bust ass on a death penalty brief that I have due at the end of April.  One can accomplish many great things in 30-40 hours worth of time, no?  Alas, the powers that be decided that this would be the sort of wonky week wherein my paying case load happened to need a great deal of unexpected attention.  Consequently, I have been billing roughly eight hour days, and then attempting to spend the time between 7 pm and until my brain gives out (sometime between midnight and three in the morning, depending on the mix of caffeine, sugar, and adrenaline present in my system) working on the death penalty brief.  Needless to say, I am at the office today with caffeine and sugar in hand for a weekend of “appellate brief smackdown.”

But I digress…the point of this post is last night, which was an outing to celebrate my friend M.I.’s birthday.  We started the evening taking in the comedic stylings of Miss Margaret Cho (and her opening act, Liam Kyle Sullivan of “Shoes, Betch” fame).  I had never seen Miss Cho live before, and I have to say, she is one side-splittingly funny, dirty, dirty girl.  For anyone who might think that I have a blunt, risqué humor, I invite you to sit through one of Miss Cho’s performances (which involved such topics as how much she likes to eat ass, her imitation of attempting to orally please a penis that would just not get hard, which she likened to a baby bird trying to pull a worm out of the earth, and her attempts to reform her sagging, overused labial lips).  Afterwards, I will seem approximately as tame as a Girl Scout attending an abstinence-only education course.  The highlight of the evening, however, was the presence of a sign language interpreter in the front row.  I now know the sign language for “two-way dildo,” “eat me out,” “pussy,” and “dick.”  I would feel bad for the poor interpreter, except she really seemed to be getting into the performance.  She was signing “eat me out” (which involves a sign akin to making an “L” with your hand and then miming licking from the crook of your thumb upwards) like nobody’s business.

From Miss Cho, we skedaddled over to Wolfgang Puck’s new restaurant, The Source, which is housed in the brand-new Newseum (dedicated to the First Amendment and all the news that’s fit, or not-so-fit, to print).  Little known to us, it was the Newseum’s opening gala ball, so our flip-flop wearing selves stood out in stark contrast to the rather regally attired milieu.  No matter, as soon as we met up with my friend M.C. inside, we were greeted by none other than Mr. Puck himself (who, much like his mythological namesake, looks like a very tiny ball of trouble), who shook our hands effusively and then asked whether I had brought him a bottle of wine (I had brought M.I. a bottle of birthday wine from my collection – a delightful single vineyard pinot noir that I had shipped back to myself from New Zealand — Mount Difficulty’s 2005 Long Gully).  We were seated on the terrace (it was a warm Spring night) and immediately jumped into a bottle of 2004 Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs (dry on the nose, sweet on the finish, with an essence of cotton candy meets honeydew melon – a very distinct sparkling wine).  The sommelier who brought our champagne then noticed the bottle I had brought and we got into a good 15 minute discussion about the virtues of pinot from New Zealand, Oregon, and France.  (A quick look in M.I. and M.C.’s direction revealed two sets of rolling eyes.)  He was a fan of Mount Difficulty, though he had never tried this particular wine.  I invited him to have a glass with us later.  A couple of glasses of champagne and an amuse bouche later (string beans with candied walnuts and Asian spices), the heavens quite suddenly opened up and began POURING on us.  I will credit The Source staff — they were immediately outside and they saved all of our glasses of champagne (I saved the bottle of pinot, of course).  We were immediately re-seated indoors and the plucky waitress even recalled whose champagne was whose. 

We then dove into some delightful appetizers — a crabcake with a fiery Asian peanut sauce, lobster and daikon rolls, and scallop and shrimp sui mai.  The appetizers were spectacular, and indeed, overshadowed the meal a bit.  I ordered filet “Szechuan” style which a caramelized shallot-peppercorn sauce, and though the cut of meat was beyond compare, the sauce was overly salty.  M.C.’s Kobe short ribs with Indian spices were also a bit of a let down.  The ribs were a bit dry (when they should be juicy and succulent) and the Indian spices were an odd departure from The Source’s overall Asian theme.  M.I.’s 10-spice Pork with fennel-pear marmalade, however, was a hit.  The pork was cooked to perfection and the flavor combination was exceptionally novel and delightful.  The wine, however, was a knockout (yes, my arm is broken from patting myself on the back).  The wine was smooth enough to go with the pork, but also bold enough to stand up to my steak, which honestly surprised me.  Subtle berry fruit and an earthiness, with a long, smooth finish.  The sommelier did indeed end up joining us for a glass, and he seemed to genuinely enjoy the wine (although, at a nice restaurant, if he didn’t enjoy the glass, what is he going to do, spit it out on us?)  We finished off the evening with some coffee and a variety of desserts (despite our protuberant bellies).  M.I. had the raspberry soufflé, which she pronounced “fucking delicious” and I had a trio of ice creams/sorbets (a 50-bean vanilla ice cream which was fabulous, a white chocolate ice cream that sounded better on paper than execution, and a raspberry/lychee/rose sorbet that is honestly the best sorbet that I have ever put in my mouth).  During dessert, Mr. Puck once again visited our table, a glass of white wine in hand, a generally red tenor to his face, and thoroughly unaware that he had already shaken our hands.  He’s definitely very L.A. — it’s obvious he likes to work the room.

Overall, the Source is one of my new favorite dining experiences.  Although the food sometimes missed the mark, it never ceased to be interesting, and the times when the food hit the mark, it hit it out of the ballpark.  The staff was genuinely friendly and accommodating, and the wine list, though I didn’t make much use of it, was phenomenal (I will warn you, however, the wine list is marked up three times, whereas many high-end restaurants only mark up their bottles by two.  The corkage fee, however, at $25 is eminently reasonable.)  I highly recommend a visit, even in a downpour.

Sir Hiss Goes To Debtor's Prison

Is it any coincidence that the Social Security reserves are set to expire the year before I become eligible to go on the Government dole?  I think not.  Indeed, it is a vast right-wing conspiracy to deny benefits to those of us born in 1977.  The Year of the Snake is getting the shaft.

This Blog Has Moved

Sasquatch has taken up in a new forest.  Please check for new posts at http://snarkysays.typepad.com

The Gustatory Contrarian

I feel that I must stand up for all that is holy and good in this world by being one of the evidently few people in this country to say how perfectly AWFUL Chef Michel Richard’s new restaurant, Central Michel Richard, is.  The food, much like the name, is perfectly unimaginative French — buttered into such a state of oblivion that all sense of flavor is lost.  I have been to Central twice.  The first time, I ordered a dish that I believed could only be a win-win proposition for me and the restaurant — they got $29 of my money for lunch and I got a lobster burger.  What could be better than a big pile ‘o lobster between some buns ?

As I would shortly learn when my food arrived, there were plenty more fetching options in life (including a date with a hippie girl who hadn’t washed in two weeks).  The lobster was relatively tasteless, except for the butter than they obviously slathered the lobster, bun, and pretty much everything else on the plate with.  Chef Richard should have named the item, Butter Burger with a Side of Flavorless Lard.  I didn’t finish my burger and looked longingly at my lunch companion’s salad, which presumably, escaped death by butter.  And let’s not forget to mention the perfectly inattentive staff.  I realize the place is French, but that does not mean that I want a side of attitude and lethargy with my meal, especially a place that caters to politicos and lawyers (people who generally have time-restricted schedules) at lunch.  Evidently, a side of "hurry the fuck up" is a special, non-menu item.

Despite my first impressions of the place, I dared to visit again after reading many stellar reviews of Central, thinking that perhaps my lobster burger disaster had been a deviation, rather than the norm.  Perhaps my lobster patty had been accidentally thrown into a vat of melted butter when the sous chef tripped over Ratatouille in the kitchen, but they served it to me anyway because it was the last lobster they had and didn’t want to disappoint me?  (Obviously, I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.)  This time, I brought my chef-in-training friend with me for a second opinion and I ordered a plain jane burger — something that even a truck stop restaurant couldn’t fuck up.

Evidently, I should have found a truck stop.  Central’s burger, at a whopping $16, was thoroughly underwhelming.  The meat did not taste distinguishable from $2 buck chuck that I could have purchased in a grocery store (again, perhaps the overpowering presence of butter on the plate drowned out all the food’s natural good taste), and once again, the service was snooty and non-existent (and this time, we were one of two seated tables, so it’s not like the server was busy; rather, the server, much like my food, simply sucked).  I will say that my friend’s Fish and Chips were pretty darn good.  The breading on the fish was light and airy, with a nice, delicate crunch.  (So, if you MUST go to Central to see and be seen, I recommend the Fish and Chips.)

Despite the tastiness of her own mean, my friend’s opinion was pretty much the same as mine — if you can’t cook a burger, then you pretty much suck, Central Michel Richard.

So, if you enjoy the idea of tasting two sticks of butter with your meal and having service that seems to be moving at the pace of a dead minnow underwater, I recommend Central Michel Richard.

I Heart 2005 Argyle Brut Rose

I’m a bit bitter this Valentine’s Day, but for all of you lovebirds who still believe in love and all that jazz, I highly recommend Argyle Winery’s 2005 Brut Rose to celebrate the day.  A pleasingly pink-hued concoction, this sparkling wine is clean, crisp, and has an undercurrent of both straberry and vanilla.  Impress your sweetie by offering the champagne as an apertif with sliced strawberries around the rim, or make it your dessert wine and pair it with a strawberry shortcake, vanilla and caramel-based ice cream, or a light chocolate-strawberry concoction.

Tasting Note:  As the sparkling wine is pink and bubbly, this Valentine’s Day ruse is likely to only loosen the zippers of the female sex.  As delectable as this champagne is, it’s hard to get guys to admit that they dig pink bubbles, even if you catch them in the middle of lathering themselves up with a pink washcloth in the middle of a Sesame Street bubble bath.  If you’re looking to appeal to the more masculine side of life this V-Day, I’d recommend pairing a glass of Glen Garioche 15-year single malt scotch with a chocolate-caramel dessert.  Yum yum.

The Secret Lives of Shoes

So, those who know me understand that I am not the world’s most tidy person.  My parents often referred to my room as a “dungeon with hidden trap doors underneath all the clothes” until I reached the age of 12, at which point, they realized that no amount of verbal cajoling and  weekly stipend could motivate me to actually clean my room.  Not much has changed in the 18 years since, other than I now pay a pretty penny for the floor upon which my clothes and shoes rest.

At my office, however, I don’t generally throw clothes willy-nilly around (papers, pens, highlighted, and curse words, yes; clothes, no).  I do, however, have a pile of work shoes in the corner, wedged between the end of my desk unit and the air conditioning/heating unit.  As I walk to work, I often opt for comfort over couture, pairing my preppy barrister slacks with athletic shoes until I get to my office, whereupon I slip into a pair from my shoe pile.  The other day, I happened to look at my shoe pile and notice a shoe that I had not previously seen…a black sandal pump that looked like something that I would actually buy, but did not think that I actually had.  I look at it quizzically for a few minutes, because it kind of looked like a heel that I used to have (assuming that the sparklies on my front of old shoe had fallen off, and well, that I hadn’t thrown out those old shoes).  I then pick it up and match it against my foot and figured out that it was at least two sizes too small for my foot.  I searched in vain for the interloping shoe’s soul-mate, but alas, there was just the single, lonely shoe that had somehow wandered into my shoe pile from unknown origins.  I have only one thing to say — “What the fuck?”

Even possibly more disturbing, I explained the appearance of a random Naturalizer shoe in my shoe pile to the fashionable, blond co-worker who sits next door to me, and her response was, “Oh, could it be mine?  I have lots of shoes.”  She did not seem particularly disturbed that a SINGLE, RANDOM AS ALL FUCK shoe ended up residing in my office, only that one of her shoes had perhaps gotten waylaid.  Evidently, if you are willing to pay a few hundred dollars for a pair of shoes, they come with little shoe-residing grasshoppers who have high heel drag races in the middle of the night while you’re sleeping.  C’mon!

The Secret Link Between Female Chest Hair and Vegas

Why is it exactly that I have 362 messages in my Gmail Spam folder, a good third of which promise to enhance my lackluster manhood?  Are small penises really that big of an epidemic, that I need 20 e-mail messages a day reminding me to pump, shoot, massage, and orally imbibe a variety of penis-enlarging concoctions?  And how do I break it to my spam stalkers that their various snake oil creams and pills will have little effect on me, a member of the Va-J-J crowd?  I might get hair on my nipples, but that would be about it.  I have yet to see spam addressing the underserved population of those who relish female chest hair ("Amaze the Girls with Your Bountiful Chest Bush!" perhaps, or "Nipple Hair Really Does Matter!  Get Short and Curlies Everywhere Will Nipple-Gro!").

But I digress…the point of this post is Vegas, not my penile-enhancement-friendly spam.  You know the adage, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas…well, I think that’s bunk.  I mean, my money already stayed in Vegas, so I feel that I can share the rest of it here.  This obviously means that I stayed sober enough the entire trip to actually remember the details.  Some of you will view this as proof that I did not truly enjoy Vegas, but I beg to differ.  Although, if the alcohol could selectively erase my memories of Vegas-ostitutes (sprinkled along the strip, or found en masse in the nightclub Tao in the Venetian, a common species in Nevada noted for its lack of bra support and covering, insufficient leg cover, curious orange coloring, and odd four-inch heel shuffle), the Treasure Island Siren show (aka a bunch of lip-synching Vegas-ostitutes using their curiously orange-colored goods to engage in battle with a bunch of skeevy-looking Vegas himbos dressed in pirate drag in a spectacle that seems designed to set the women’s movement back to the days of Christopher Columbus), and the moment when I went all-in at a poker tournament at Caesar’s with a full house and LOST!  (Insert much Yosemite Sam-like cursing here), then I would say, bring on the blackberry mojitos and bloody marys!

Now that we’ve addressed some of the trip’s low points, let’s get to the goods.  First, T. Rex and I stayed at the Wynn, and I have to say that it fucking rocked (indeed, our mode of transportation to the Wynn was decidedly Vegas-like — we had a rather corpulent cab driver attempt to ingratiate himself to us by offering to take us to male strip clubs for free, or even better, to drive a private male dancer named “Jordan” to our hotel room in 20 minutes or less).  Perhaps I’ve been living on the East Coast too long and have suffered the evils of New York hotel rooms (aka a full-sized bed precariously perched between two brick walls with an afterthought of a bathroom for $300+ a night), but the Wynn did not seem like a bad deal at all for the price we paid.  The room was huge, had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the strip, and had a separate bathtub and shower, both big enough to fit me plus a sumo wrestler (alas, one of the few things I did not see in Vegas).  Better yet, the Wynn prohibited smoking and strollers in almost all areas of the hotel, which meant that my lungs and my shins were safe!  T. Rex and I hit the Wynn’s buffet on Sunday morning, and engaged in the time-honored sin of gluttony.  We paid roughly $35 a piece, but at morning’s end, she had managed to snarf down four plates of food along with constantly refilled mimosas and ice tea, and I came in second with three plates of food, ½ of a candy apple, and a fair number of mimosas, myself.  Needless to say, we spent most of the rest of Sunday laying flat on the bed in our hotel room, processing our gluttonous repast while watching football-themed movies on TNT.  (And here is one of the many moments in which I knew that I was beyond old — the scene where Ali Larter attempts to seduce James van der Beek in her whipped cream bikini came on while we were watching “Varsity Blues,” and all I could think is, “Eww…she looks so young, go put some clothes on!”  Oh, middle age, here I come!)  Alas, we never did invite “Jordan” over.  Funny that.

The best food we tried in Vegas was “Alex,”an elegant restaurant in the Wynn that had a delightful, well-traveled sommelier, and scrumptious food.  T. Rex and I parted ways from the birthday girl (my home slice, DC) and her girl gang for the night (alas, they headed out to Toby Keith’s restaurant in Harrah’s…yeah, not so unhappy that I missed that excursion).  Décor-wise, Alex was probably the fanciest restaurant I’ve been to (yes, it’s even more fancily-decorated than “French Laundry;” after all, there were freakin’ silk roses sewn onto the drapes).  The wine list was, however, eminently accessible, with bottles from pretty much everywhere in the world and reasonably-priced ones to boot.  And the food?  Well, it was spot-on.  Not as good as French Laundry, but on par with Le Bernardin in New York (though I prefer Alex’s wine list).  You could choose between a 3-course tasting menu and a 7-course tasting menu; given our buffet gluttony earlier in the day, we opted for the 3-course tasting menu, which was quite divine.  I chose a butternut squash risotto, roasted wild turbot (which is evidently pronounced turb-o, not turb-ot, silly me), and a selection of cheeses, all of which was paired with a delightful syrah from Santa Barbara, California.  T. Rex went with a butter-poached lobster (served with actual black truffles, which p.s. by the way, taste kind of like earthy rubber), venison chop with a pomegranate sauce (if Bambi’s mom tasted this good, I can’t really blame the hunter), and the cheeses as well.  Only possible complaint?  The wait staff kind of looked like they had brooms implanted up their arse on their first day of work.  Lighten up…good food doesn’t have to be so damn serious!

Still, the wait staff at Alex was a dream compared to the waiter at Bouchon, where the whole gang dined on Saturday night.  Being an ardent fan of French Laundry, I convinced the birthday girl to give Thomas Keller’s lower-priced fare a try.  It was, well, disappointing.  Don’t get me wrong…the food is good, it’s just that it’s horribly French, and by “horribly French,” I mean that it’s thoroughly unimaginative and heavily saturated in both butter and cream.  Whereas French Laundry was a delight of the senses, where I could taste every fresh ingredient used in the dishes, Bouchon’s ingredients had drowned in so much butter and cream that the it was hard to taste the ingredients for what they were.  My day boat scallops (a whopping $48) were cooked well, but their taste was blunted by the sauce (even though I opted for what I thought would be a lighter olive oil sauce, the taste was still all sauce and no scallop).  Alas, the oysters we ordered as appetizers did not have any cream, but they were thoroughly uninteresting.  And the waiter…oh my god.  First, he took a good 15-20 minutes to even come to our table.  If I’m paying $48 for scallops, your ass should be at my table to tell me either (a) that you’re super busy and will have to come back or (b) take my drink order within the first 10 minutes.  Second, if we ate everything on our plates, he kept saying, “Oh, I take it you didn’t like it very much?”  He did this five separate times to us throughout the course of the meal.  I desperately wanted to inform him, “Well, to tell you the truth, the food is perfectly average, but I ate light all day to prepare myself for something really good, so I’m damn hungry and this is what’s in front of me, so I ate it,” but he never actually stayed long enough at the table for me to get that whole sentence out.  The wine list was decent, however, and T. Rex and I split a delightful selection of ports for dessert.  All’s well that ends well, but the honest truth about Bouchon (in Vegas, anyway) is that plenty of cheaper restaurants are better.

For example, Mario Batali’s new Enoteca in the Venetian was a definite high point.  A complete contrast from Bouchon, Batali’s Enoteca San Marco is a wine-centric restaurant that offers small plates (pizzas, salads, and pastas) in a delightful setting inside the Venetian that makes you feel as if you’re in a Piazza in Venice.  The wine was excellent, and if you weren’t sure what you wanted, the staff was happy to give you a pour of everything for you to try.  The food was very yummy (T. Rex had a pasta that was little more than pasta and cheese, but which was seasoned so well that it melted in my mouth in a fit of orgasmic pleasure), the service was friendly, and the price was eminently reasonable.  Definitely a must if you’re in Vegas.

One thing I will probably not do on my next trip is to scarf down another Eiffel-tower sized strawberry margarita.  DC thought it would be simply delightful to have our picture taken with each of us drinking out of an Eiffel Tower-sized drink (procured at the Paris Hotel, of course).  The drink is roughly equivalent to 5 or 6 actual drinks.  T. Rex and I decided to split our strawberry margarita, despite the rest of the crew labeling us “pussies” for our share-and-share-alike attitude.  About two hours later, however, when sugar shock had grasped those who consumed the Eiffel tower on their own, we were upgraded to “smart pussies.”  I can live with that…

And I can also die happier having seen Cirque du Soleil’s “Love” at the Mirage (my 11th Cirque show!).  Although I am not what you would call a big Beatles’ fan (indeed, I am more of the “why the hell were the Beatles exactly so important?” camp), the show was masterful.  The set design and costuming were the best I have ever seen at a Cirque show and the music was actually pretty good (though I’m convinced that many, many drugs were involved in creating that music – “I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’ garden with you?”  C’mon!)

Speaking of lyrics that were created under the influence, we managed to create the first line of a few new songs while on our trip…

BP — “I want a pink one!”  (sure to be heard in a Victoria’s Secret near you soon)

MC — “I have a very flexible mouth, it’s one of my attributes.” (could be either Jim Carrey or Jenna Jamison’s personal anthem)

Snarky — (in reference to an ad on one of the hotels) “Diet Pepsi sponsors Toni Braxton’s twat!” (‘nuff said)

Sketchy Cab Driver — “I have the catalog to the Bunny Ranch…” (a new version of Old McDonald had a farm?)

Okay…so that wasn’t everything that happened in Vegas, but then again…some things that happen in Vegas stay there

Spitz, Don’t Swallow

For the past couple of days, I have felt the beginning of an uncertain malady in my throat.  My throat is not exactly sore, per se, just consistently dry, despite its rather lugubrious production of mucous.  Beyond that, I cannot seem to get my arse out of bed in the morning for anything (or, well, certainly not for my hungry cat or all-too-easy to quiet cell phone alarm clock).  I would chalk it up to mere allergies (though I rarely have them) coupled with the fact that (1) I’m having a bad reaction to the daylight savings time switch (I’ll vote for whichever President campaigns to eliminate that woefully idiotic institution) and (2) I’m having significant difficult sleeping (I am evidently doing the four-step grief process in reverse — I already hit up “depression,” which was wonderful for getting some shut-eye; now that I’m on “anger,” not so much), except for the fact that I have been exposed to (a) pneumonia; (b) stomach flu; (c) respiratory flu; and (d) the common cold within the past week or so.  My friends are worse than zombies, who might only shuffle slowly toward me in hopes of getting some corpus callosum niblets (to which I say, if you can bit through my hard noggin’, feel free to eat my fleshly bits); my friends appear to be happy hosts to a legion of easily-transportable and fast-moving bacteria and viruses.  I officially proclaim March, “Pick Your Friends on the Basis of Their Immune Systems” Month (which is certainly no sillier than some of March’s other celebratory offerings — March is both Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month and Play the Recorder Month, and host to such celebratory days as If Pets Had Thumbs Day on March 3 and the Birthday of Girl Scouting on March 15).  Indeed, the Ides of March are on March 16, which may be when my friends’ collective maladies might run amok and assassinate me.  Hmm…I wonder when National Paranoia Month is?

In other news, India is pioneering the art of making babies for bucks (aka surrogate motherhood).  Evidently, for approximately $25,000 to $30,000, gay couples (or presumably, non-gay couples, but since this was in the New York Times, a gay couple was the main focus) can contribute a bit ‘o sperm and have one Indian woman donate an egg, while another Indian woman literally acts as a baby-making machine.  I must admit that I was a bit shocked (a) that this was completely legal and (b) that it wasn’t much more expensive than adoption these days (which I’m told can run $15,000 easily).  Of the $25,000 to $30,000, the surrogate mother makes about $7,500, which is 9 or 10 times the average YEARLY income for some women in India.  I guess I find this wrong for the same reason that I find “giving” plasma and other organs in exchange for money is wrong — there are just some things in life that should be free (ahem, such as sexual intercourse, Governor Spitzer!).  On the other hand, this would solve my dilemma — how to have children without necessarily incubating the alien myself for nine, nutrition- and body shape-sucking months nor tussling with government administrators over my right to adopt children given my “lifestyle.”  There is definitely a market for this service; the only question is whether there should be.

On a last note, I would just like to say that I am waiting for the day when at least one political wife will refuse to stand by her man when he makes public speeches regarding his adultery, whether with prostitutes (Governor Spitzer), gay men (Governor McGreevey), or presidential interns (President Clinton).  I long for the day when one of these political women will turn around and bitch-slap the jackass, or better yet, serve him with divorce papers at the press conference.  At least the process server will know where he will be.

The Game of Life

Did you ever wake up one morning and just realize that you were bad at life?  Incomparably, immeasurably bad.  It’s funny, because when I was a kid, I always invariably won at the Game of Life — I managed, with a few rolls of the wheel ‘o life to graduate college, climb the corporate ladder, find a wife and 2.5 kids, and wind up in the mansion before any of my competitors.  Yet, in real life, I find myself amongst the minority of my friends, most of whom are married, have children, own a house, and seem to have obtained a general level of happiness, while I am a single renter who can’t get her shit together enough on most days to clean her cat’s litter box, let alone be responsible for raising a baby or maintaining a healthy relationship.  Somehow, my friends have managed to figure out something I haven’t…how to play the game of life when it doesn’t come with pre-assorted, multi-colored spaces and an instruction manual.

Granted, I’m not exactly at the beginning of the board — I got the college degree and then some, and I’ve climbed the corporate ladder high enough that I don’t save up for months to afford Brooks Brothers non-iron shirts (which, in all honesty, are money savers compared to dry cleaning bills), shiny black cars, and hotel rooms at the Wynn Vegas.  Yet, the Game of Life never told me exactly how not fun being successful can be.  Not having to worry constantly that I may have overdrawn my bank account (a constant game in college, when I can recall making do with peanut butter and Ramen during finals time when the financial aid started getting thin – no wonder I gained the freshman 15 and then some) is a bonus, but my essential position in life is as a small cog in a giant legal wheel, which moves forward slowly, moving money from bank account to bank account ad infinitum.  There’s nothing particular special about what I do — a hundred different lawyers could do it and many of them could probably do it better or quicker or in high heels.  Sure, a few hours of each year, I get to do something that really matters in life — a pro bono case that argues on behalf of the constitution or attempts to save a man’s life.  These are the high points, and they almost make it all worth while.  Except for the fact that every hour I spend on one of these cases is an hour I worry about not billing to a client willing to pay my employer for my work, lest I not make my billable hour requirement two years in a row.  My life has become a series of counting to eight every day…eight units of my waking life that require either (a) a singular focus, which I’ve never had (I’ve always been the kind of gal thinking 10 different things in her head at once) or (b) excellence at time management, which I also don’t have (I would pretty much make the worst personal assistant ever).  This probably explains why I’m at work on a Sunday night at 8:30pm not doing work.  The Game of Life never had a red-colored space for “Yuppie Life Crisis.”

Despite all the above, there was someone in my life, up until recently, who kind of colored all the above a wonderful shade of “content and happy,” but in the end, I’ve never really gotten the hang of getting anyone I ever dated to want to stick around very long.  Certainly not long enough to make it to the 2.5 kids and the mansion.  Maybe they’re playing on a completely different game board with a different end game, or maybe they just don’t like the idea of me hanging on too tightly when they’d like to let go.  Either way, I seem to always end up playing the same 10-15 game steps over and over again and the result never seems to differ.  Perhaps the Game of Life should have a path for “Not Marriage Material and Should Consider a Life of Polyamorous Lesbian Debauchery.”  However, not only do I think that would get Milton Bradley slapped with a lawsuit from the Christian Right, but it’s never been a particularly attractive or viable life path for me.  I’ve always been more enamored of the idea of sleeping with one person the rest of my life than someone new every year.  I guess you could say that I’m an old-fashioned romantic that way.  Too bad I wasn’t born when “Leave it To Beaver” was popular.  My romantic sensibilities are rather useless to me in the day and age of “Tila Tequila” and “The L Word.” 

In the Game of Life, you achieved happiness by being the first little widget to enter the mansion, thereby earning the right to gloat over your fellow life competitors (until they beat you at Sorry or Chutes and Ladders or Candyland or some such).  In real life, I kind of feel like the caboose that got accidentally detached from the back of a train — I don’t have the foggiest fucking clue how to achieve lasting happiness…I just keep on the track hoping that one day I’ll connect to something that sticks.

The Gustatory Contrarian

I feel that I must stand up for all that is holy and good in this world by being one of the evidently few people in this country to say how perfectly AWFUL Chef Michel Richard’s new restaurant, Central Michel Richard, is.  The food, much like the name, is perfectly unimaginative French — buttered into such a state of oblivion that all sense of flavor is lost.  I have been to Central twice.  The first time, I ordered a dish that I believed could only be a win-win proposition for me and the restaurant — they got $29 of my money for lunch and I got a lobster burger.  What could be better than a big pile ‘o lobster between some buns ? 

As I would shortly learn when my food arrived, there were plenty more fetching options in life (including a date with a hippie girl who hadn’t washed in two weeks).  The lobster was relatively tasteless, except for the butter than they obviously slathered the lobster, bun, and pretty much everything else on the plate with.  Chef Richard should have named the item, Butter Burger with a Side of Flavorless Lard.  I didn’t finish my burger and looked longingly at my lunch companion’s salad, which presumably, escaped death by butter.  And let’s not forget to mention the perfectly inattentive staff.  I realize the place is French, but that does not mean that I want a side of attitude and lethargy with my meal, especially a place that caters to politicos and lawyers (people who generally have time-restricted schedules) at lunch.  Evidently, a side of “hurry the fuck up” is a special, non-menu item.

Despite my first impressions of the place, I dared to visit again after reading many stellar reviews of Central, thinking that perhaps my lobster burger disaster had been a deviation, rather than the norm.  Perhaps my lobster patty had been accidentally thrown into a vat of melted butter when the sous chef tripped over Ratatouille in the kitchen, but they served it to me anyway because it was the last lobster they had and didn’t want to disappoint me?  (Obviously, I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.)  This time, I brought my chef-in-training friend with me for a second opinion and I ordered a plain jane burger — something that even a truck stop restaurant couldn’t fuck up.

Evidently, I should have found a truck stop.  Central’s burger, at a whopping $16, was thoroughly underwhelming.  The meat did not taste distinguishable from $2 buck chuck that I could have purchased in a grocery store (again, perhaps the overpowering presence of butter on the plate drowned out all the food’s natural good taste), and once again, the service was snooty and non-existent (and this time, we were one of two seated tables, so it’s not like the server was busy; rather, the server, much like my food, simply sucked).  I will say that my friend’s Fish and Chips were pretty darn good.  The breading on the fish was light and airy, with a nice, delicate crunch.  (So, if you MUST go to Central to see and be seen, I recommend the Fish and Chips.)

Despite the tastiness of her own mean, my friend’s opinion was pretty much the same as mine — if you can’t cook a burger, then you pretty much suck, Central Michel Richard. 

So, if you enjoy the idea of tasting two sticks of butter with your meal and having service that seems to be moving at the pace of a dead minnow underwater, I recommend Central Michel Richard.

I Heart 2005 Argyle Brut Rose

I’m a bit bitter this Valentine’s Day, but for all of you lovebirds who still believe in love and all that jazz, I highly recommend Argyle Winery’s 2005 Brut Rose to celebrate the day.  A pleasingly pink-hued concoction, this sparkling wine is clean, crisp, and has an undercurrent of both straberry and vanilla.  Impress your sweetie by offering the champagne as an apertif with sliced strawberries around the rim, or make it your dessert wine and pair it with a strawberry shortcake, vanilla and caramel-based ice cream, or a light chocolate-strawberry concoction. 

Tasting Note:  As the sparkling wine is pink and bubbly, this Valentine’s Day ruse is likely to only loosen the zippers of the female sex.  As delectable as this champagne is, it’s hard to get guys to admit that they dig pink bubbles, even if you catch them in the middle of lathering themselves up with a pink washcloth in the middle of a Sesame Street bubble bath.  If you’re looking to appeal to the more masculine side of life this V-Day, I’d recommend pairing a glass of Glen Garioche 15-year single malt scotch with a chocolate-caramel dessert.  Yum yum.