Alhamdulillah!
I had to accost the mailman across the street, but I got it. A full hour before I have to leave for the airport.
Also, the guy (who is not our regular mailman) admitted the mail wasn’t delivered yesterday. What ever happened to “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night…”? Just one more clue that the US is on its way to third-world status.
Next time I post, I will be smiling, because I am in Andalucia.
Because my long-ago ranting about the f-ing Pistilli development by the park (oooh, it’s called Riverview! Posh!) is still my most popular post ever, I feel obliged to pass on this hilarious tidbit:
Pictures of The Oddity that is Pistilli Riverview East Co-op at 19-19 24th Ave in Astoria (via Curbed)
The photos are pretty shocking. Back before all my old comments got wiped (boo, Yahoo), a few people were kind enough to post their impressions of the interiors. But even the most graphic descriptions don’t quite conjure the heinousness like a couple of random hallway snapshots do. I think Pistilli buys that curlicue font in bulk.
Meanwhile, Pistilli is installing green glass on the monster tower rising in front of my house. I bet that’ll look real classy, with that beige-y-gray brick they’re using. Novel, even.
First, the second episode of my podcast is up–check it at Cooking in Real Time. Don’t worry–the first episode was really short, so you can still claim you got in on the ground floor. It’s like having the second issue of McSweeney’s.
Then: Can I just ask all of you out there in blogland to concentrate very hard for a few minutes and imagine my passport arriving via Priority Mail first thing tomorrow morning?
Because, as I’ve mentioned, I’m leaving for Spain on Tuesday. And I do not have my passport in hand. I’m sweatin’.
I sent it off to the Syrian embassy in DC for a visa back in mid-February. I did this way ahead because I knew I wouldn’t have enough time to get it after I got back from Spain.
Funny to think back now, and remember how I did briefly look into getting a second passport–which they dole out for cases just like this. “Eesh, so expensive,” I thought then, “and I’ve got plennnnty of time!”
Somehow, though, the initial sharpness and efficiency of the Syrians (I’m not even being sarcastic here, people–I’ve gotten my visa from them very promptly in the past) devolved into this nail-biting situation in which my passport allegedly went in the mail just on Wednesday. Ack! All because I admitted I was a writer on my application, so someone helpfully took the initiative to get me a journalist visa. (Let this be a lesson–I don’t like to lie, but normally I write it more sloppily, so people can misread it as ‘waiter.’)
The passport is in a stamped, self-addressed Priority Mail envelope. No tracking number, though, because I couldn’t figure out the logistics to do that in advance. So the uncertainty is now driving me insane. If it doesn’t show up tomorrow…do I panic and shell out mad $$$ for an appointment at the hellmouth they call the US Passport Agency on Hudson Street? (Don’t make me go back there! I saw someone go insane and start screaming and pounding the plexiglas window–and it was an employee!)
Or do I white-knuckle it and just trust it will absolutely arrive Tuesday morning? My flight leaves at 5.30pm from La Guardia.
So, um, a little imaging, please, on my behalf? Imagine my passport, sitting there in its envelope over at the post office on 21st Street, in a soft glow of white light, just waiting to go on the truck in a few short hours. Honest, I will be delighted to be awoken by the doorbell!
It’s all over the news, so I’m sure you know: The Obamas are planting a vegetable garden. Fan-fucking-tastic! (This is not gratuitous swearing.)
Meanwhile, Hook Echoes is revived! Also fantastic. Jefe, teller of many stories, is in Austin, and I am so envious of his general problem-solving and gardening skillz.
And further meanwhile, I’m about to head to Spain, and I’ll be, by the serendipity of Craigslist, meeting up with and staying chez Heather Coburn Flores, the author of Food Not Lawns. Excellent.
And while I’m doing that, my friend Deb will be planting wildflowers all over Bedford-Stuyvesant. Check out the plans for Bed-Stuy Meadow at 21st Century Plowshare. If we had more actual earth in Astoria, I’d suggest we do it here. But we’re pretty paved over. If you live somewhere with even a little exposed earth, toss some seeds in there. You never know what might happen.
Happy spring!
So, Heather over at Gild the (Voodoo)Lily was having some qualms due to her blog stats skyrocketing over some damn bacon-egg-cheese sandwich, when her far more inventive and interesting stuff causes nary an online ripple.
It’s because, sadly, hungry women (and men) are sitting at their desks, or up late at night at the family computer, staring moonily at food they’ve decided they can’t eat. And even if they did, they’d never have the gumption to make it themselves.
People, they call it food porn for a reason.
Staring at pictures of inaccessible food gets you all titillated and salivating. But when you click away, you feel empty inside.
To understand the true insidiousness, let’s look at real porn. (No, wait–not yet! Click back here, you!)
Real porn does not help you get laid. No one ever jumped up from watching a porno and said, “Gosh darn it, I’m going to a bar, and chatting someone up, and telling my best jokes, and then having terrific sex!”
No–they just shuffle off to bed, where the not-dirty-enough-to-wash clothes need to be swept off to one side, and the magazines are piling up.
Likewise, anyone watching the Food Network for more than ten minutes is not going to leap up and start cooking dinner. No, they’re going to sit there, glum, eating Frosted Flakes. And then shuffle off to bed.
“Maybe tomorrow I’ll cook,” they think. “I’ll cook something fresh and healthy, but also really satisfying–something kinda Giada, not all Paula Deen.” Yup, just like the avid porn consumer wakes up the next day and meets the hot chick of his dreams, who’s smart and sweet but just a little nasty.
And just as porn fashion has inspired boob jobs and merciless muff waxing, food porn has given every would-be cook the idea that what they make has to be artfully plated and garnished with edible flowers.
I’m telling you, the food porn is soul-killing. You must switch off the TV set now. You must stop idly surfing the twee, pretty-picture food blogs and flipping through the glossy mags. Put it all away, and just go into the kitchen.
Real pleasure of the culinary kind is going to be dull and a little hard to begin with–and, like sex the first few times, it will seem messy and maybe not worth all the trouble. But trust me, it gets a lot better.
And if you happen to have overlapping needs–you’re not getting laid and you’re not eating well–this is actually handy. Not having sex means you have plenty of time to learn to cook. And learning a new skill like cooking makes you confident–hence sexy, hence more likely to catch someone’s eye. (Also, you’ll probably give yourself a couple of burns or scars–also pretty damn sexy.)
And when you cook up a hot meal for that someone–straight ticket to the sack.
This is all leading up to: my new podcast! It’s been a long time coming, but the wheels are finally in motion over at Cooking in Real Time. There’s just a little intro post there now, explaining the premise–give a listen, subscribe and get ready for next week, when I actually cook something.
And you can too–once you put away the porn.
Dear readers! You can probably barely remember when I used to write guidebooks. Neither can I!
Not since last August have I complained, exulted or otherwise ranted about guidebook writing, because I’ve been sitting at home, all domestic-like, writing the cookbook.
But now I’m heading out on the road again, very shortly. Too shortly: the 24th. The amount of stuff I have to get done between now and when my plane takes off for sunny Andalucia is keeping me awake at night.
I’d go into more detail, but Leif Pettersen has deftly summarized the arc of a guidebook gig.
Read that, substitute Andalucia for Tuscany, deduct total sexiness by 10 percent due to my not having practiced my hot lisping Spanish accent, and you’ve got my upcoming gig. Oh, and did I mention my mother is coming?
Brace yourself for on-the-road posts involving ham, ham, sherry and my mother. And if you have any recommendations for me (Granada and Almeria provinces are my beat), let me know in the comments.
Funny, I was just wondering whatever happened to Louisiana’s attempt to promote the eradication of nutria through eating it.
Apparently, it went belly-up, as it were. Now people are just encouraged to shoot them on sight–as I learned from Showdown at the West Esplanade Canal, a piece by Darrin DuFord in the new issue of Perceptive Travel.
Once you get past the gunfire, there’s a bit of info in there about the earlier attempted culinary makeover.
I don’t think I’d be too grossed out to eat nutria; and I think I’ve eaten a big rodent before, and it didn’t taste so bad. I’ve eaten pigeon, which many consider one step away from rat, and it was damn delicious.
But then I don’t have to live with nutria every day. And in the right light, they’re not so much ugly ratty vermin as otter-cute. The twin poles of inedibility, in a single animal. Confounding!
Wow, I know what gadget I’m getting to prepare for my trip to Spain:
Playback is supposedly 35 days. I can tell you from personal experience that if you’re judicious, you can stretch that out to six months.
And definitely download the manual–there are some key troubleshooting tips.
(Thanks, AV.)
As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve got this little strip of suburban plastic at the southern end of Astoria. One of the bigger tenants is an Applebee’s.
And that Applebee’s has a big ol’ freakin’ apple on top of it.
When I saw this, I immediately thought of Campeche, Mexico. Like many Spanish colonial towns, Campeche didn’t have street signs at first. People referred to corners instead, and named them for objects or animals, which were marked with a drawing or a figure. In Campeche, the corner known as “el rincon del venado” is still marked by a somewhat battered statue of a deer (which I can’t find a photo of, unfortunately) atop one of the buildings.
This isn’t unique to Campeche. Most of medieval Europe used this same navigation, and it was handy in colonial towns where new streets were built and named quickly (and unmemorably–the Spanish just used numbers).
So the Applebee’s sign makes sense here in Queens–the streets here are also unmemorably numbered, and there is certainly a polyglot population.
But the bad aspect of medieval signage is that it was really adopted because no one could read.
Is that what’s happening now? It sure seems like it.
Especially because it’s not just Applebee’s.
Chili’s is probably even more thorough in this than Applebee’s is–most restaurants have the gigundo chili on it. And with its logo, Chili’s has gone so far as to take all but one of the letters out of its name:
When I was in Chicago in January, we passed the Weber Grill restaurant. This has perhaps the most medieval look of all, the way it’s sticking off the building:
I can practically hear someone saying, “I’ll meet you at el rincon del Weber…”
I was on the Upper West Side last week, and saw that Dunkin’ Donuts is following the trend too, by affixing a giant coffee cup to its awning. I didn’t get a picture of that, but here’s another version, out in Brooklyn:
What’s funny about this one is that there’s still lettering on the cup. Dunkin’ Donuts is basically admitting that it doesn’t “own” the takeaway coffee market–but it’s hoping that if it just makes its own logo big enough, it will suffice. (And can I add that it’s just plain sad that the more obvious symbol–duh, a doughnut!–is not even an option, due to health concerns.)
I knew standards in the U.S. were slipping–we’re more like a third-world country than anyone wants to admit. But if we’re going back to the illiterate Middle Ages on top of it all, it’s worse than I thought.
Any signs of diner illiteracy near you?
Good article in the Economist: