wake of shame

well, last night's bacchanalian feast had the weird effect of knocking us both out at like, 10pm. i ended up making a baked brie, which i cribbed from L (she made it at the farm.) it's basically a wheel of brie, encased in pillsbury crescent rolls, baked up, then smothered with pepper jelly (in my case i had cranberry pepper jelly) and scooped up with crackers (whole wheat triscuits here.) it was AMAZING and it has haunted my thoughts ever since.

what better occasion to crack it out then a bacchanalian feast? the dotytron wasn't a fan of the cocktail weenies...he felt you could taste the cost-cutting measures in the forcemeat. i only had a spoonful or two of my chocolate pudding before settling into a well-deserved, earned, and unstoppable slumber.

i've had a humdinger of a week, with barely a moment to catch my breath at work. the upside is, i'm feeling much better now. the downside is i bailed on my plans to hit my friend's birthday party. ah well, sometimes you just need a chance to reset and shake off the work week - that's what friday nights are for.

today i've got a friend-filled, event-filled day. i'm going to do my exercises shortly and eat some breakkie, and then i'm meeting up with dr. rei for a stroll along queen west. i'm after a new knapsack and some bras. and then i'm going to hit up an office supply store because our cheapo filing cabinet from office depot is falling apart and because of the recent pay grade bumps, i have a little extra floosh to drop on some office-grade filing cabinets. i want them to be fire engine red. or cobalt blue. then i'm meeting up with H and baby D and we're going to seedy saturday at the wychwood barns. it's a big seed exchange thing. i'd like to grow stuff this summer aside from flowers. we're also meeting up with my friend L there, if the timing works out.

then home, for a knife sharpening and blog prettying lesson with A & C and then out to dinner with them. we haven't had a chance to catch up with them since they got engaged! we're eating dinner at bistro camino, which has been generating huge buzz and is supposed to offer amazing prix fixe menus by a french-trained japanese chef. AND it's on the east side! AND it's on an otherwise economically depressed strip of the danny. and it's owned by a cute old asian guy which means that it's guaranteed to tug at my heartstrings and sympathies. i'll post a full review with pics tomorrow.

in other not-so-new-news: i love werner herzog. we watched most of 'encounters at the end of the world' last night before being lulled to a cheese-and-carb fueled slumber, and it is extraordinary. sure, herzog doesn't maintain the detached distance of the traditional documentarian, but when you have a personality that's so dry and wry, WHY WOULD YOU? his voice overs are the best. a) his voice and the cadence of his speech is amazing. b) his insights and observations are equal parts poetic, curious, and hilarious and delivered in the most deadpan way.

in this film he journeys down to antartica, meeting the strange, oddball types who all somehow converge at the end of the world, spending time in the largest community there (mcmurdo station) before venturing off into the field to follow various researchers, glaciologists, biologists, and scientists. herzog is desperate to escape mcmurdo, calling the yoga studio and exercise facilities "abominations" lol! at one point, interviewing a well-traveled, starry-eyed adventurer who is rhapsodizing about her many scrapes in guatamala, herzog interjects with a voiceover: "her story goes on FOREVER" lol!!!!!!! speaking to a phd linguist, herzog again inserts himself into the interview: "in the time i spent talking with him, 3 or 4 hours, it occurred to me that 3 or 4 languages had been lost" he also talks about the banality of a world where humans will work tirelessly to save whales, but don't bat an eye at the disappearance of an indigenous language. I FREAKIN' LOVE THIS MAN. why won't he be our friend??? i really feel like we would get along well with werner, ESPECIALLY the dotytron. it's a beautiful, philosophical, moving documentary and i highly recommend it. i didn't even finish watching the thing, but that's how much i believe in the power of werner.

two years ago, the dotytron dragged me to a documentary about tea during hot docs. imagine how thrilled we were when werner herzog makes a cameo appearance in the doc! he's actually friends with the kooky tea dude (of course.)

anyway, the moral of this post is that werner herzog is the best and we're kind of obsessed with him.

fin.

so i might have lied

about healthy eating starting tonight.

the weather (grey february days and rain) and my pms are conspiring to make me want to bunker down, watch torrented movies with the dotytron, and compile a bacchanalian feast of: vienna sausages (cocktail weenies to you) as a kid, i used to eat them by the CAN, sometimes with the improvised, gourmande touch of microwaving them slightly so they got browned on the outside - so gross but so good...also, the dotytron has never had a cocktail weenie! travesty of travesties!, kraft dinner, chips and dip, maybe some kolbassa (i'm craving meat like crazy), and some kind of sweet thing for dessert. maybe i'll make chocolate pudding if we have eggs at home (the roomie is supposed to pick up our re-up from the mennonites, but has been birthing babies left, right, and centre.)

the sundae pie was pretty aight for $1.50. it's got a thin brownie/cake bottom, then an indeterminate chocolate and white topping with more chocolate squiggles on top. the filling tastes like cool whip (so, freon).

anyway, i'm checking out for the night...back to business as usual and non-fat-little-weirdo states of being tomorrow.

fin.

hypothesis:

people of chinese descent have a genetic predisposition to LOVE lesportsac gear. or maybe that's just me. i can't help it! the line manages to combine my favorite things: colours, cute prints, indestructibility, practicality. seriously, if they're good enough to court stella mccartney for two straight years of collaborations, and fafi, and countless other amazing designers, they're CERTAINLY good enough for me. and you really can't beat the price. so whilst my contemporaries routinely blow $300-500 on leather, au courant handbags by the likes of marc jacobs, miu miu, balenciaga and the rest, i'm perfectly content to have something that looks cute, is comfortable, holds and compartmentalizes all my stuff, AND leaves me hands free. look at the "lakeside" print!!!!! *bites pillow*

i actually just bid on that little number on ebay. i think it'd be a great travel bag, with the three tiers and all.

COUNTDOWN TO THE WATCHMEN PREMIERE HAS BEGUN. truth be told, i don't have high hopes, but i'm cautiously optimistic. i also kind of want to go as rorshach for halloween next year...like every other nerdboy out there.

tonight i went to see the dotytron's practicum's school's production of 'aladdin' - it was kind of awesome slash terrifying. the kids were awesome, the parents were terrifying. it was like a sea of old people. wicked old people. who looked hella old and fantastically schlumpy. how do people stop caring!??? what happens?!??? please don't ever let me get that way. i'd love to take a lesson from my mom - don't get me wrong, her home clothes are straight off the grimy street vendors of hong kong, but when she leaves the house, she puts some effort in. they also laughed at s**t that wasn't funny. i was laughing about how AWESOMELY gong-showy the production was...the parents were like, ACTUALLY laughing at the silly puns. please don't let me get like that. the day i laugh at puns (i don't know if 'c**tainer' counts) is the day that i've crossed the line into doddering irrelevance.

my siblings' new word of the past weekend was "apologist." as in: "i'm a chris brown apologist" "you're a c-hova apologist!" "you're a irish jean valjean apologist!" lol!

i'm a fast food apologist. last night i had made tonight's meal, in anticipation of the fact that we were going to just have enough time to stop at home and shovel some food down, before trying to make our way through a mob of enabling parental units to secure some decent seating at the show. i made egg salad and borscht. i also bought smart food because i didn't actually think we'd have time to eat a meal at home, so i knew we'd need something to tide us over. well, we got home, quickly toasted off a slice of bread each and had an open-faced egg salad sandwich (oh egg salad, how i love thee - EGG ON EGG, WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE???). then we ate the smart food at the show - the idea being we would come home and sensibly eat the borscht for a healthy repast.

but no. no sooner had we pulled out of the parking lot than the wicked impulse to pay a visit to my lady wendy's house of artery-clogging repute took up residence in my id. we pulled an audible and pulled up in the fast food drive of burger king instead, except this place had a busted sign that only read "burg" (it's inelegant, but it gets the point across.) the dotytron placed his order, and looked over at me, "i'm not that hungry," i said. as he turned around to tell the disembodied robot-voice that that was indeed all, i frantically clawed at his arm and ordered a double whopper meal with onion rings and a coke zero (concession to health), and then MADE SURE he also placed an order for the hershey's sundae pies. lol! what's wrong with me? i invariably spend $20 at burger king. it's like a talent. an utterly useless, horribly unhealthy and self-sabotaging talent.

this was not made better by my realization that i can't fit into my jeans of yore (like, my favorite jeans from 2 years ago that developed a hole in the crotchal region and that i couldn't throw away but strangely decided to pull out of retirement for my attendance at a CHILDREN'S musical theatre production.) i blame my office job. healthy eating will begin again in earnest tomorrow. i'll also give you my thoughts on the sundae pie.

fin.

duh. me no read so good.

as i mentioned, we saw 'the reader' on saturday. i had pulled it from a torrent. during the climactic trial scene, the disc kept freezing up and stopping. i couldn't skip forward, only back. this was LITERALLY at the apex of the movie (or so i thought.) the holocaust survivor is giving testimony about hanna schmitz (kate winslet's character) in the courtroom. she says something along the lines of: "hanna schmitz chose differently. we didn't know why. then, one day, we found out -" AND THE DISC STOPPED THERE. i was kind of beside myself and tried plying little bro chova's playstation 3 with all the weird, juju at my disposal, only to give up and accept that i would NEVER KNOW WHAT THEY FOUND OUT. ONLY I DO KNOW. BECAUSE I'M AN IDIOT AND THE FILE WAS SPLIT INTO TWO SEGMENTS. lol!

warning: the following review contains spoiler alerts, although if you're actually surprised by the "twist" i think you might want to reconsider your cognitive abilities

anyway, i thought this movie was (to use the outlaw bro's terminology) hokey. cheesy. kind of embarrassing with its' ham-fisted execution of high-minded, literary aspirations. the score was TERRIBLE. it was intrusive, obvious, and so trite. the same supposed-to-be-lilting/haunting piano would come slogging through the moment the scene hinted at "introspection" or "emotionally charged meaningful exchange between characters" or "tears welling" or "a character's distracted, faraway glance out of a train window that suggests all their sublimated emotions."

the film itself wasn't much better. listen: i'm all for a nuanced examination of the banality on behalf of the citizens of germany and europe and the world at large that allowed the holocaust to happen. i'm very much interested in a critical understanding of how people stood by, of the complexities that underlie people's complicity with the genocide, of the mass collusion with the nazis. i'm no german apologist, by any means, but i think there's room within the discourse for a meditation on the subject that doesn't cleave immediately into stark black and white, that embraces the shades of grey. this film is not making room for that discourse.

as a metaphor for the loss of reflexivity and self-awareness of the "everyday" german citizen that allowed the holocaust to happen, i think that hanna's illiteracy could have been an effective vehicle (probably more in text...the story doesn't lend itself to the visual drama of film.) unfortunately, the filmmaker doesn't give the viewer credit for having a modicum of intelligence and sense and decides to bludgeon you to distraction with "clues," lest the already poorly disguised symbolism be lost. in doing so, the filmmaker makes the tragic mistake of making it about hanna's illiteracy in the less evocative, literal sense of her inability to read. by leaving a breadcrumb trail consisting of entire loaves, dumped square in the middle of scenes, and in the stilted, overly mannered and stagy delivery of dialogue, the filmmaker strips away the metaphor and leaves you with the symbol, stripped of its symbolic power - a squat, homely trifle, unable to guide you to a more considered engagement with the material.

the first time the young boy michael returns to hanna's flat after a bout with scarlet fever, she's carefully ironing her undergarments, in a scene that could have been fraught with tense, illicit desire. instead, when he makes a remark about his weakness during his illness, and the he could "barely be bothered to read" - winslet literally FREEZES, and the scene could not have been more lacking in subtlety than if a giant air-horn AOOOOOOOOOGGGAAAA had gone off instead. when michael finally "realizes" that hanna is illiterate, in a climactic courtroom scene - the audience is robbed of the thrill of sharing his discovery because we've been led by a ring through the nose to that same conclusion, seemingly hours (and movie-years) before him. they then drove my outlaw bro crazy but not crediting the audience with being able to remember scenes that had just happened. so the director makes the novice decision to create a short montage of all the scenes of hanna basically going APES**T any time she was confronted with the written word, as if we COULDN'T BE CREDITED WITH PIECING (AND REMEMBERING) THE MOST OBVIOUS MESSAGE OF THE MOVIE TOGETHER.

it was pretty terrible and definitely not best picture worthy. i was kind of insulted at its inclusion. it was so PATENTLY trying to be "heavy," "serious" fare and yet it couldn't present any of the issues in a way befitting the intelligence of the general populace. pap.

bah. i'm going to have to do my book reviews tomorrow night or the night after. phew! so much to tell!!! i've totally been neglecting my rss feeds lately too, so not much to show you in the roll call of awesome (or bunk) department.

tonight i made spaghetti with clam sauce for dinner. i use only 1/4 c. of butter and a glug or two of olive oil, but that, in combination with the onions, garlic, clams, and in this case, chopped yellow tomatoes is enough to make the most aromatic, flavour-packed coating for the pasta. it's so quick and healthy! even though i made a baby spinach salad (with avocado, more yellow hothouse tomatoes, toasted salted pumpkin seeds, red wine vinaigrette) to go with, i ended up eating two bowls of pasta and foregoing salad.

the dotytron LOVED the dutch baby (it was the first time for us both.) he's pretty particular about his breakfast quick breads, so i was shocked. this morning, as he climbed the stairs to find me making my morning breakfast, i was met with the stinging accusation: "YOU DIDN'T EAT THE FAT BABY, DID YOU?????" (i didn't. i had a buttered, toasted bagel.) and this evening, the first words i heard once he had unloaded all the detritus of the day, was: "i love the fat baby"


roll call of awesome:


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.


images from a 1958 USSR pavilion brochure (courtesy of grain edit)


illustrations from italian illustrator bombo!

mexican tissue paper flowers. you know how NOT to spend $200 on a bouquet (that's the price i was quoted to START)? you make your own!!! i'm super excited to make myself paper flowers...that way i can control the colours, size, everything! aren't they lovely?

ça c'est tout

fin.

"i'm really excited about pancake tuesday"

ever since i cottoned on to today being pancake tuesday sometime last week, that's been my diurnal refrain - to the point where the dotytron told me i had to stop saying it. i AM excited about pancake tuesday though! and it's not the kind of thing that i want to or should deny. we missed pancake tuesday last year, and the year before that. as we all know, no one loves a theme meal more than k. lagerfeld, esquire, so i've turned this week into an homage to new orleans (well, two nights anyway.) tonight we had pancakes and bacon for dinnie and friday i'm making oyster po' boys with remoulade. unf!



i got inspired and instead of doing a traditional stack of flapjacks, made us dutch babies instead. dutch babies are like giant yorkshire puddings - made from a thin pancake batter with a higher proportion of egg, which makes it rise all awkward and puffy and will turn into a delicious, crispy, butter-drenched, crusty bottomed, delicate eggy vehicle for fruit, or in our case, a sprinkling of powdered sugar and maple syrup. it's meant to rise up dramatically and then it'll sink, usually creating a depression in the middle that people like to pile fruit into. i made them in our cast iron skillets - i can't remember the last time i used our teflon pans. the great cast iron switchover of 2009 is a grand success...i just have to get a GIANT one (like, 12") to replace my biggest nonstick and then we're good to go.

i know i promised you movie reviews and book reviews, but i've got a lot of paperwork to get ahead of tonight, so i'll leave you with a few short blurbs.

the second is about how the dotytron is a mama's boy but in the very best way - he's super nice to my mum. a few weeks ago when we went to drop off food for my mum after her surgery, we hung out with her for a bit. we sat on her bed (me at the foot, the dotytron next to her) and he read a magazine while i talked to my mum. when we got up to leave, he said bye, and then he leaned over and kissed her on her frankenstein, turtley head! so cute! he's always currying favour with my mom, except not, because he's just nice without thinking twice about it. whenever we go out to eat he always cuts off a piece of his entrée and puts it on her plate without asking (i'm a little greedier about it and a little more reticent to do the splitsies thing with my mom, because if she likes what you ordered better than what she ordered, you get shorted.) yesterday, when we were getting on the subway to go home, she was handing me a token for the subway, but he missed the gesture and thought she didn't have one so he gave her the one in his hand. dawwwwwww.

the third will be after the division when i post the recipe for the dutch baby.

now onto paperwork.

fin.

---------------------------------------------------------
dutch baby
serves 2, can be doubled, tripled, quadrupled, easily

4 T unsalted butter
4 large eggs
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. half-and-half
pinch of salt

- preheat the oven to 425°F. divide the 4 Tbs butter between two 6-inch cast-iron skillets [i used one 10" skillet for each batch], and melt it over medium heat.

- in a blender, whir together the eggs, flour, and half-and-half [i used my immersion blender and a large measuring cup to make for a quicker cleanup]

- pour the batter into the skillets over the melted butter. slide the skillets into the oven, and bake for 25 minutes.

- remove the puffed pancakes from the oven, transfer them to a plate or shallow bowl, and sprinkle on lemon juice, and dust with powdered sugar [or add the fruit topping/pancake topping of your choice]. serve immediately.

slumdog snoozeanaire

predictably and unjustifiably swept the oscars last night. really? it wasn't THAT good. it was decent. an entertaining, distracting, colourful trifle that glosses over poverty and chemistry between the leads and leaves you the moment you step out of the theatre. it's not the kind of film that wows you. that thrills, excites, engages, challenges. it's as easy to swallow as pablum. but whatevs, the academy has been wrong before (hello: 'shakespeare in love'? 'juno'? 'little miss sunshine'?) giving 'slumdog' the win for sound mixing was egregious. did anyone even NOTICE the sound in 'slumdog'? VERSUS 'THE DARK KNIGHT'?!???? i did pretty well in the oscar pool, losing to my sister by one point (i knew i shouldn't have voted with my heart in the best actor race.) i missed the first part but it seemed to move along at the tidy clip. my sister gets really upset when the audience in the auditorium doesn't clap equally for all the people who get mentioned in the tear-jerker "in memoriam" segment - she kept repeating: "clap equally or at the end! clap equally or at the end!" which is kind of true. don't be dicks about it, just because people have no cultural memory any more (or any memory for that matter.)

now the clothes. kate winslet's dress was interesting in concept and colour, but ended up looking like it lacked polish. reese witherspoon's dress was a mess. i really liked miley cyrus' gown, even though i thought it wore her instead of the other way around. at first i didn't like marisa tomei's, but when i saw all the pleating i changed up my opinion - i do wish it had been more of a colour though, the oyster shade washed her out even though she editorial-posed her heart out on the red carpet. SJP's boobs were wrangled, pushed, and prodded up and out as if their very integrity depended on it. i wasn't a fan of her gown. i loved penelope's vintage balmain number and leslie mann's sequined sheath. i thought there was too little colour, overall and that beyonce needs to learn to tone it down and for the love of all that is tasteful STOP LISTENING TO YOUR MOTHER. viola davis and taraji henson both looked absolutely stunning. halle berry's dress was too busy. frieda pinto's number, i don't care if it's dior, looked cheap and was pretty unflattering, and shame on you for doing that to someone who possesses that radiant of a smile.

the biggest upset was the most obscure japanese foreign film of all time winning over 'THE CLASS'. WHAT! i was never more sure of anything than i was that 'the class' would win that category, considering i think it's head and shoulders above 'the reader' (which i saw this weekend, review to come) and 'the curious case of benjamin button' and 'slumdog'. it's best picture worthy, and to lose to 'departures' whatever that is, was a big shock. they really DO hate the french, eh? film friend D was equally flabbergasted. this morning we shared a little tête-à-tête about it. "i can tell you about the german film, the austrian film, the israeli film and of course the french film, but i don't know a single thing about the japanese one. it's not on ANYONE'S radar" lol! also, i LOVED the judd apatow directed 'pineapple express' bit with my beloved james franco. so funny! there's nothing funnier than people pretending to laugh at serious movies. hell, i used the same bit a few weeks ago when i saw '4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days' so i consider myself in good company.

as a strange aside, philip seymour hoffman showed up wearing the EXACT SAME TOQUE I TRIED TO KNIT FOR MY MOM (twice)! bizarre!

so saturday night my back was all messed up still and it started storming so i didn't go to amit after all...the dotyron was on his way to being deep in his cups and flatly refused to drive back downtown in the increasingly inclement weather conditions. so what did we do instead? the kids piled into the family room, and we looked up videos on youtube from the 'les mis' 10 year anniversary "dream cast" special where instead of the musical being fully staged, the singers stood in costume and sang in into microphones. this was put on in 1995. this means that the latter half of my high school years were spent glorying with my sister and the s-dawg over the magnificence of the performances - it was in heavy rotation because pbs caned it like you wouldn't believe (that and 'riverdance' - i think 'les mis' wins the test of time battle there). anyway, all the cast members are like, THE BEST. so we somehow found versions of all the songs on youtube WITH THE LYRICS PRINTED UNDERNEATH which meant that my saturday night was spent prostrate after a delicious home-cooked meal of: arancini, pasta with rosé sauce, baby spinach lentil salad, veal saltimbocca, and espresso mascarpone icebox cake, doing 'les mis' karaoke with my siblings and the dotytron. it was EPIC. and AMAZING.

here's a sample:



the best thing about the 10th anniversary edition, is that there's a FULL choir, and an orchestra behind them, and the GRAND FINALE features 17 JEAN VALJEANS FROM AROUND THE WORLD PERFORMING 'DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING':



i defy you not to get goosebumps. my family's collective attachment to this is a seminal part of our upbringing. it's one of the reasons why we're so close. also: the JAPANESE JEAN VALJEAN IS CHAIRMAN KAGA FROM 'IRON CHEF'. *MIND EXPLODES X GOOSEBUMPS X INFINITY*

recreating 'les mis' took a lot out of me and the dotytron and we kind of crashed out. we woke up to find that the s-dawg, my outlaw brother, and my sister had found THE NEXT VIRAL YOUTUBE SENSATION and were kind of sitting in a state of awestruck stupefaction. ladies and gentlemen, may i present to you, mr. benjamin lind:


BEST. re-creating ben's uniquely atonal, flat, rendition of the 'license to kill' theme occupied a good portion of the remainder of the weekend. nobody loves fan-video evocations of sincerity more than my family. we're ardent tay zonday fans. we genuinely LOVE this shiz. if you could channel this heart and sincerity into like, policy making, the world would be so much more of an a**-kickingly awesome place. lurve!

okay, i've given you all a lot of gifts tonight. i'm going to call it for the evening and go on my merry way. movie and book reviews are coming in the next couple of days.

tonight my mum had a meeting at mt. sinai so she met me at work and i gave her a tour of the library and she read the newspaper until i was done. from there we moseyed over to tacos el asador and had dinner with the dotytron. that's two el asador meals in 3 days!

fin.

there but for the grace of robaxacet

i would not have come into work today. i'm so effin' sore! what the hell? what did i do to deserve this?

this has also been a bit of a piggerton day. i stayed in bed way longer than i should have, because i physically couldn't get UP without twinges of pain in my shoulder and neck (i hope it's not meningitis!) the dotytron packed me a robaxacet care package but cautioned me against dosing before eating. i didn't have time to eat breakfast so i had a bacon and egg bagel from the caf (only my 5th ever caf meal, in almost 2 years of working here). then i had pre-existing lunch plans with my friend M at the indian buffet close by. now i have dinner plans at tacos el asador with L and her bf N. it's nice seeing people but i really want to go home and lay the eff down and regain my full range of motion.

i didn't get to watch 'the reader' last night because A was in a chatty mood so we ended up talking most of the night. it was nice. i like him!

in the happy files: i managed to score some discounted thakoon stuff from target while in the states...because the line is old (in target time) i got some sick deals. a skirt for THIRTEEN DOLLARS! a spring coat for TWENTY! what a scoop! apparently alexander mcqueen is doing the next designer line. i love you target! don't ever make the mistake of coming to canada and getting sullied!

in the sad files: my clunky, cheapo winter boots that i bought for sixty bucks like, 5 years ago have sprung a small leak. heartbreaking. luckily, i scored an equally ugly, no-name (i'm NOT spending $150 on sorels, thanks) cheapo pair from sears for $40. sweet! i believe in sacrificing form for function sometimes.

in the happy files: i made the discovery that the chicago architecture foundation offers tours of the lakefront by SEGWAY.



...



has it sunk in yet?!???? BY SEGWAY PEOPLE!!!!! the dotytron and i have a mild obsession (me: mild, dotyron: raging) with segways. it's kind of expensive and you have to wear helmets but in the grand tradition of us taking on outlandish modes of transportation while on foreign soil (the tandem bike in bruges, anyone?!???), i think it'll be worth it for the hilarity alone. my prediction is more time spent taking pictures of each other on the segway than in listening/paying attention to the tour.

dearest readers! i have such a backlog of stories/events/reviews/random musings with which to regale you! and so little time!!!

i'm filling out my oscar ballot right now...i think i'm going to fill out two. one of who i think SHOULD win, and the official one of who is GOING to win. that way i can reconcile my heart and integrity with my more mercenary interests.

tomorrow i'm going to be up bright and early to accompany the dotytron up to markham to await the arrival of my sis and outlaw bro and the kids. they're in town for my grandpa's birthday dinner tomorrow night. i'm going to spend the day there, make dinner, then head back downtown to hit this show: amit @ el mocambo i'm mostly in it for chrisc64's (of C&C friend factory fame) old skool set with the gunnderson. it's going to be boss (if he plays it dancefloor friendly, otherwise known as "tunes that lagerfeld wants to hear" - i represent the dancing desires of the masses).

i'm excited! this weekend is going to be so fun!

in other news...i find some of the food peeps on this messageboard i still stupidly post on to be hella irritating. they're like the kind of people who made canada debase itself for obama yesterday. like, totally swept up into the food zeitgeist like, 10 months (or in some cases, years) too late. and they don't KNOW anything! but they preen like you wouldn't believe! they're almost a-critical. you can almost graph the fall out --> toronto life and/or now post a foaming at the mouth review --> 10 weeks later, they whip themselves into a frenzy discussing how much they want to eat there --> 2 weeks after that, they do, and are A-CRITICAL! they're like the worst kind of upwardly mobile n00bs. gah. i don't know why i go on there (i know why: habit/procrastination)

as an aside: the obama coverage bordered on embarrassing - seriously canada? HE'S NOT YOUR PRESIDENT. HE'S ALSO PRETTY CENTRIST. HIS STIMULATION PACKAGE IS MEH. it's just embarrassing to be canadian and watch them go buck like that, prostrating themselves out of adulation for THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT (because that's how you're supposed to perform when he's around?) it's cringe inducing. i don't know what i prefer more, the rabid 'twilight' fan or the rabid canadian obama fan. i might have to pick the 'twilight' fan. at least they've done their reading (at the very least it can be said that few can match prepubescent girls for their obsessive research skills when it comes to the objects of their hormonal outpouring.)

sorry peeps, i got a little ranty there. i blame the robaxacet. and that i'm super-full but wish i was super-not so that i could suck the marrow out of el asador (who am i kidding? i'll probably go whole hog and then end up filled with regret. and by "filled with regret" i mean: "crawling out of bed to hit the pepto at three am") upcoming posts will include reviews of the YA fiction i've been filling my brain with lately, as well as a dramatic account of my initiation into a ponzi scheme!

fin.

believe in the restorative power...

of pancetta. that's another credo.

this is going to be a shorty...i messed up my shoulder lifting weights (!!!!!) as part of my new regimen to turn back the hands of wii age time. actually, i've been doing it for two weeks (reluctantly). anyway, my shoulder is all messed up and i'm stiff and sore and consequently confronted what ended up being a rather busy day with a considerable amount of ill-will and disgruntled short temperedness.

anyway, we had our buddy A over for dinner. i really like him. i made carbonara pasta with penne picolo. like the subject line says: when in doubt, believe in the power of salty carbs to bring you round the horn. i added some peas, and gussied up the standard formula of egg and parmesan sauce with some onion and garlic sauteed in the pancetta fat. we had an olive garden salad alongside. now i'm treating myself to a night off. i'm going to watch "the reader" and knit and unplug.

fin.

america the beautiful

as usual, upstate new york was good to us this weekend. we cruised down in our borrowed pt cruiser listening to our traditional road trip soundtrack of equal parts heart's greatest hits, les mis original broadway cast, assorted jazz, and hits from the radio. we got there late on saturday and scarfed down pizza paul's (pizza and buffalo wings) which was made all the more appetizing because my sister picked it up for us, fresh. delicious!


even though brian's u.s.a. diner is advertising for cooks in the penny saver, you wouldn't know it from the delectable (and mountainous) portion of breakfast i had the next morning. this is real-deal diner-style breakfast. $6.99 for the "belt-buster" pictured above. that's corned beef hash, 2 eggs, toast, and you choice of meat (sausage patty ftw!) i always get my toast dry, which is my small and meaningless concession to stemming the tides of fat about to be coursing through my veins. i never eat the toast anyway.


then we came home and played rock band (accompanied by my niece, who rocked out like whoa) and watched mtod and played around on the wii fit. i totally failed the initial fitness assessment on the wii. my bmi was in the normal range, but because i did so poorly on the balance/centre of gravity/reflex tests, my wii age was the oldest out of anyone there (49!!!!!!!!!!) epic fail!


for dinner we by-passed our usual burger go-to, red robin, in favour of "five guys burgers and fries" where i had the best not-made-at-home burger of my life. hands down. no question. they're a chain and if you ever happen to come across one in your travels and DON'T stop, you're a colossal fool and will rue the day the next time you hunker down and bite into a flabby, insipid, spongy, hero burger-type patty.

the surroundings are pretty bare bones...stark white walls with red-lettered testimonials, indifferent, mass-market chairs - red, black, and white colour scheme. let it be known also: they ONLY do burgers and fries (and hot dogs). no gravy. no onion rings. no milk shakes. no chicken. no fish. just the juiciest, most delectable patties (the "hamburger" comes with 2 patties, standard, the "little hamburger" means only one patty), sizzling full of beefy flavour and with the textbook 100% ground beef crumble that is a textural stamp of purity - no fillers, no soy, no gluten, here! i had the cheeseburger and went a little hog wild with my toppings: ketchup, mustard, mayo, lettuce, tomato, grilled onions, and grilled mushrooms. see how soft and yielding that bun is??? perfect. this is a hamburger with an expiration date. you have to commit to eating that thing lest the co-mingling of juice, toppings, and condiments vaporize its tender carbohydrate casing. the fries are pure potato, from russets, fried to a limp, salted, mealiness (that's a good thing.) i'm actually overcome with pangs of sadness when i think about how long it's going to be until i can eat another one.

we closed out our stay with an obligatory dinosaur bbq visit. i had the platter that comes with ribs and 1/2 a chicken, and picked as my sides fried okra, and the goopiest, cheesiest mac'n'cheese i've ever had. so so so good! this is after we split an appetizer of fried green tomatoes and cajun boiled shrimp and before we split a dessert of peanut butter pie, chocolate icebox pie, and key lime pie. heavens! effin' rochester is like my freakin' mecca.

in between all that caloric blitz there was an incident with my nephew getting into my sister's lipstick, and a hilarious bedtime story reading courtesy of the dotytron to little ze (they're seriously best buds - probably because little ze's word for his favorite treat [donuts], dodo, is what he calls his unky.) anyway, the dotytron read this epic long story which little ze, in his little 2 year old brain, punctuated with "okaaaaaay" every 10 seconds. "once upon a time-" "okaaaaay" haha.

the dotytron is kind of losing his s**t right now. the night before he began his teaching block at his placement school, he did homework until wicked late and then huffily climbed into bed, mad at how little time there is in a day, how early he had to get up, that he wasn't asleep already, and generally at his lot in life. the cats jumped up on the dresser to nip off with one of those rubber "hope" bracelets that the dotytron had gotten from a student for valentine's day. he turned over in the bed, and not getting up, hissed at them, "guys! gimme the bracelet!" the cats, being cats, ignored him and continued batting it around. "GUYS! give it here. giveit. bring it to me. giveit." obviously they didn't listen, at which point, he flopped back over, screwed his eyes shut, and hissed, "you guys are F**KS." lol!!!

tonight for dinner i took another suzanne goin recipe for inspiration (i effin' LOVE suzanne goin) and made a butternut squash and radicchio risotto. because i live by the basic credo that all things are improved with the addition of a poached egg, i topped each portion with one. it was so very tasty. it was easy too. start to finish it took me an hour. i'll post the recipe some time.

fin.

firm but fair

so today i took a carriage ride down indie lane. i mean, i spend a good chunk of time slagging indie, but i haven't listened to much per se. i'm going on my preternatural ability to know what something is about and formulate a startlingly accurate appraisal without checking it out. it's a gift that i have (a gift that tends to drive people who are proponents of whatever i happen to be slagging INSANE.) anyway, i started on this mission by checking out she & him. i'm a bit of a zooey fan (faithful readers will remember that a couple of years ago, i took her on as a style icon) although i find of late that she's just been too twee for me to not find her saccharine girlishness and wide-eyed stare a little off-putting. it's obviously a calculated effort to appear adorably precious and while sometime it does work, there's something disturbing about a grown woman being precocious. it's the same reason why i can't deal with miranda july, even though i quite enjoyed her movie, "you me and everyone we know" and found her book "no one belongs here more than you" equal parts astute observation, mystery, and confounding attempt to be provocative in a contemporary art kind of way.

anyway, i listened to some she & him. her voice, reminiscent of rosemary clooney, has a gimlet clarity and sweetness befitting the 40s and 50s stripped down, MGM tar factory crooning the pair blatantly reference in their material. i give her points for not over singing - overall her vocal delivery is restrained and winning. the actual songs though, aside from their blatant references to a bygone era, are rather unmemorable. my favorite numbers were the covers (i do my research on youtube.) her version of "dream a little dream of me" is a perfect match of material to the voice, but it's not enough of a individualized take to warrant seeking she & him out (the uncanny old fashioned quality of her voice means that she could just be any other piano bar crooner taking a stab at a winsome little ditty.) she also does a version of "you really got a hold on me" and well, we all know how i feel about that song. truth be told, i much prefer smokey's version.

from there i decided that it was about time i listened to death cab for cutie. and then i made a brief stopover in the postal service territory and finally ended up at bloc party. this stuff is THE BORINGEST. basically the anti-thesis of memorable. completely forgettable regurgitations of indeterminate, noodley pop music with some weird, throwaway synth bits. SNOOZEFEST! i gave it a fair shake! you can't say i didn't try. after i finished my experiment (i conducted it at work) i called dr. rei to catch up. after the preliminaries i said, "i've been listening to death cab for cutie and the postal service"
dr. rei (obviously taken aback): "...?"
me: "it's because i wanted to finally know what it was all about"
dr. rei *deafening silence*: "and?"
me: "i hated it"
dr. rei: "phew. for a second there, i thought i might have to reassess everything i know to be true." lol!

last night on our way home, we were listening to this awesome rochester radio station that played all kinds of rock. we finished "interstate love song" by the stone temple pilots and then heard a nirvana tune and then an alice in chains number. when you compare that stuff against the kind of rock music that exists now and what existed just before it - grunge was actually an ORIGINAL musical movement - a repudiation against glossy, overproduced (but still awesome) hair rock and metal. deliberately sludgy, fuzzy, stripped down...it's cool to have experienced that first hand. i can't think what kind of original musical moments exist now and it makes me sad. when you think about the early 90s and all the stuff that was going on musically - the rise of gangster rap, the whole funk and roots flavoured tribe called quest sound, the pop, industrial, electronic music, grunge - it really was an apotheosis of creativity, and arguably the last kind of truly innovative and inspired cultural moment that we've had in a generation.

from there we naturally segued into the "is it just because we're old?" analysis. i can truly say that i don't think that's the case. music for the last little while has been a recapitulation of what has come before (for the most part.) we're in a period of revival, of revisiting material and mashing it all together, but nothing that signals a radical departure. it's kind of sad. i feel sorry for people who love death cab for cutie. i feel like they kind of live a half life of unmemorable material. maybe that's what a culture of entitlement deserves? maybe that's what we get when we make a concerted effort to celebrate mediocrity? lol! i know i kind of sound like a jerk, but seriously, those tunes are the epitome of generic (obviously this is all bracketed by a big, fat, IMO)

look at me - yammering on and i haven't even gone over the weekend yet. i'll post a full review tomorrow. for now, i'm going to treat myself to a hot shower to work out the muscles and some reading and knitting (i think i've gotten my knitting zeal back.)

tonight for dinner i made a chickpea, sweet potato, kale and kolbassa soup. we had it with fred's bread's green olive chipotle bread and butter. i felt a little guilty buying olive bread when i've been doing such a good job of keeping us in artisanal sourdough, but i was away all weekend and didn't have a chance to bang out a loaf. it's not bad, but you can't taste the chipotle at all.

finally, in the last week or two (before the whole chris brown fiasco), miley cyrus got into hot water (again) for taking a picture with her friends that was construed (rightly) to be trading on the slanty-eyed asian racist discourse. notwithstanding that miley cyrus ends up in photo-related drama on a seemingly quarterly schedule, and notwithstanding that from her self-presentation and media depictions she appears to be a spoiled, stupid, mean-girl kind of a slag - is it wrong that i actually kind of find this photo a little funny? the expression on the asian dude's face is kind of classic. the problem is that it's miley doing it and she hasn't really done enough to convince the world at large that she's NOT racist. if it was margaret cho or dave chapelle, or heck, even andy samberg or the cast of 30 rock, i'm sure it would have barely registered on the interw3b radar. unfortunately for miley, between her and her dum-dum papa billy ray, and their hollow-sounding christianity, and her petty feuds with other disney factory moppets, she couldn't pull it off.

fin.

entre les murs

i much prefer the french title for "the class" - "entre les murs" (between the walls.)  it's much more evocative and indicative of what the film is actually about. this film is EXTRAORDINARY. for once, cannes got it right (it won the palme d'or).  i can always tell if i loved a film by if we're obsessed with talking about it for hours afterwards...this was certainly the case - we were desperately trying to find a place where we could grab some tea and talk some more, but nothing decently priced in the yorkville area was available.  

warning for jenny calendar: the following review contains spoiler alerts (kind of)

i don't even know where to start.  it follows a school year in a urban school in france.  it's hard to use words like "urban" and "school" in close proximity in reference to film because it immediately conjures all those poor articulations of the above.  those films that show you the christ-like teacher who faces the initial struggle with the kids, only to win their hearts and help them rise above their socio-economic limitations are all too prevalent - they've become their own genre.  if the teacher has faults, they're movie-land faults: racism, drug addiction, etc.

what is so fantastic about this film is that it approaches documentary in the restraint and limitations of the narrative structure.  you see episodic events linked together because they occur between the walls of the school - you see what happens at disciplinary hearings, in the teacher's lounge, in the school yard, in francois marin's class.  francois marin is played by francois begaudeau and the film uses his screenplay, which in turn is based on the book he wrote about his experiences teaching.  it's a testament to his reflexivity that his own "character" is conflicted, uncertain, and all too human.  everyone in the film (and special attention must be paid to the kids who play the teenagers, who i understand to be all untrained, first-time actors) is resolutely human.  your sympathies move amongst them; you empathize, disagree, judge, and negotiate their actions along with them and see the intricacies of the power dynamics of the class room, where institutional power and discourses of class, race, aptitude, ability, and interaction all collide.

it is so stimulating and intellectually engaging.  the film makes you so present in the classroom dynamic.  you experience the difficulties in managing a room full of personalities from both the teacher and student perspective -how tenuous the divide is between the two roles and how much the division between pedagogue and learner in the school system is predicated on nothing more substantial than title and age.  how easy it is for authority figures to slip up, how quickly things can escalate in an exchange with teenagers - how they're so smart and confused and self-aware and selfish and oblivious - and how their states are mirrored by their authority figures.  race and class and gender and the inevitable slippages in education are all depicted with honesty and authenticity - the film doesn't try to pull any punches, it doesn't try to take the cheap, easy, shortcut route to your sensibilities.  i can't say enough good things about it.  i want to see it again - i feel like i missed so much.  go see it now.  it's one of the best of 2008 for sure.  

that was the good part of the evening.  the other part wasn't as good but the company made it good and the fact that we were all in it together.

the interior of moroco chocolat looks like it was designed by someone who graduated from the bowmanville school of cliched design (with prop rentals from urban outfitters).  it was TERRIBLE and tacky beyond all measure.  purple, with grey accents, black and white highly lacquered crap everywhere - like a nouveau alice in wonderland's parisian boudoir (but someone who has clearly never been to paris) by way of versailles.  it was horrendous. i mean, we can all agree that versailles is breathtaking, but it's not actually in good taste, per se. it's gaudy as all f**k.  and the soundtrack was INSANE!  they played all-4-one's "i swear"  which would probably be fine (at a lower volume) - i get it...kind of po-mo pastiche.  but then they followed it up with SARAH MCLACLHAN! at that point, the pastiche theory gets thrown out the window and you're dealing with someone manning the decks who just doesn't know better, or is a cultural r-tod.  

i'm willing to overlook all that because there aren't that many places to go have a nice dessert in toronto.  unfortunately, this place wasn't that hot.  desserts were expensive...most hoveringi n the $14-16 range and for what you get, not worth it.  big time beard fail.

i had the chocolate sticky toffee pudding, served with salted caramel and gingerbread stick. this was the size of a golf ball. i'm sorry, i know what the food costs are on pastry items and i know the rent is probably insane in yorkville, but that's not my problem, it's yours. GIVE ME SOMETHING WORTH FOURTEEN DOLLARS. the flavour was aight - sticky date cake was suitably tacky, but it committed the cardinal sin of sticky toffee puddings in that the thing WASN'T SOAKED THROUGH WITH THE CARAMEL SAUCE. so it was sticky on the outside but kind of dense and dry on the inside. the chocolate mousse accompaniment was a bit of an afterthought.

the dotytron had the brownie. this place also does that stupid thing where they give the menu items names that are embarrassing to say out loud in mixed company, when there are no children present. also, the names had no relationship to the actual items and featured inexplicable spelling. so the brownie is called "brownie and clyde" and there's a menu item called "kiss me kake" (a chocolate cake w/ cream cheese frosting) anyway, this was also MINISCULE. it was about the size of a wagon wheel snack cake. and was thin (you can see it's resting on blackberries). it was okay...like a fudgy, egg-heavy flourless chocolate cake. but as you can see, there's not a hell of a lot sitting on the plate.

i'm not the biggest fan of tromp l'oeil food. i don't generally find it that impressive. making food that's relatively malleable look like other stuff isn't all that impressive to me - it's a lot different in terms of skill set then when say, wylie dufresne makes a "fried egg" out of emulsified carrot juice and coconut. in the above example, you have a sponge cake "bun", a chocolate mousse "patty", lemon gelatin "mustard", shortbread cookie "fries", strawberry coulis "ketchup", and some green stuff that i didn't taste that's supposed to be "relish". in this case, making the food look like stuff seemed to have more to do with "what can we make this food look like?" as opposed to "what will actually taste good together and make sense from a textural/flavour standpoint?" this didn't taste that bad but it wasn't very wow. the cake overwhelmed the burger flavours and the lemon and chocolate didn't make sense. the lemon also ended up tasting kind of artificial and way too gummy - it was reminiscent of black forest cake with the fruitiness and the chocolate. incidentally, this is probably the best value for the buck as you get a crapload of shortbread cookies and the sponge cake bun is pretty substantial.

zorak got the trio of brulee's (chili chocolate, caramel ginger, and vanilla.) i didn't get to taste them but brulee is brulee and they looked alright from where i was. if this was $8-10, i'd think it was worth it, but it was also fourteen bones.

so finally, it's a waste of your time and money. don't go there. they also sell the MOST EXPENSIVE MACARONS EVER. and the MOST EXPENSIVE CANDIED ORANGE PEEL EVER. THE ORANGE PEEL IS THE PART YOU THROW AWAY. the stuff is nicely packaged and i get what they're going for...but you my friends, are no fauchon.

i sound like a colossal complainer but it was awesomely fun and amazing because dr. rei and hanbo are the best. we (mostly i) managed to make hanbo turn quasi-apocalyptica because i don't believe in modeling and i don't believe that you can ascertain the intrinsic value of a company. hanbo thinks that i don't know what i'm talking about (this is true.) also, it was revealed that dr. rei has spent almost 10 years doing engineering and engineering related work but isn't an expert on anything related to engineering (civic, mechanical, electrical, chemical). in fact, the look of dismay/fear when asked to explain something engineering related was probably worth the ONE HUNDRED AND TWO DOLLARS WE SPENT ON 4 DESSERTS AND 2 POTS OF TEA. lol!!!!!! it was so funny and fun!

i did all my errands yesterday so today is my day for doing sweet f**k all. i got to go to the beer store and do some tidying around the house and maybe apply for that job and do some yoga...but otherwise i'm going to loll around on the couch reading and knitting until the dotytron comes to whisk me away to geneseo. i think we're getting pizza paul's for dinner tonight. pizza paul's is THE BEST!

fin.

shook one

i don't know what happened to me...one minute, i was a competent and adept knitter, flying through projects with the greatest of ease. now, i put the finishing touches on my mom's hat (the do-over), took it off the needles, and found that i had a giant unraveling HOLE that was growing bigger by the second. i couldn't believe my eyes - i kept tugging at the hat incredulously, watching the tiny loops unfurl and the hole widen and gape like a yawning abscess. disheartening to the max.

one of the things on my to-do list today is to "figure out knitting" (seriously, that's how it appears in my day timer) do some grocery shopping, visit a florist, pick up lobsters and then come home, do yoga and exercises, sit my butt down on the couch, watch movies and knit the (hopefully) now figured-out knitting.  i think i have to accept that i'm horribly behind on my gift-giving knitting and just start a project that feels right.  hand-made knits are always appreciated, right?  even if they're years late???

tonight for dinner we're having a family valentine's day dinner. i'm doing steamed lobsters with butter for dipping, cheddar-scallion-sage biscuits, and spanish green beans braised in a smoked-paprika kicked up sofrito.

then we're going on a double date with dr. rei and hanbo. we're going to eat dessert at this new chocolate shop/dessert place called moroco chocolat. i took a peek inside the other day on my lunch. the decor is very baroque parisian lounge (for someone who's never been to paris). everything was also REDONKULOUSLY expensive. like, $3 a macaron expensive. like, $16 for a box (beautifully packaged) of chocolate dipped candied orange PEEL expensive. ORANGE PEEL! THE PART YOU THROW AWAY! i worked with the pastry chef at sen5es...she was the one who actually hired me and oversaw the commissary. she also low-balled me on my salary. some of the stuff is similar to stuff i saw at sen5es and i also recognized the general manager of moroco - he used to do front of the house stuff at the restaurant too. anyway, dessert is going to be our one valentine's day concession. we usually go out for a meal, but considering that alinea is going to be the equivalent of all our eating out for a year, we're trying to be restrained. the place is also across the street from the cumberland, which is where the movie is showing.

i'll post a full review tomorrow and update this with dinner pics later.

fin.

odds and sods

- i have successfully answered two final jeopardy questions in a row. tuesday night's was ridiculously easy...wednesday night required a bit more deductive reasoning, and i wasn't confident, but it ended up being right in the end.

- my mug of milk last night smelled strangely and inexplicably of human b.o., but because i'm a creature of habit and because i believe strongly in the sanctity of the union between sweet cakes and milk, i doggedly kept at it - i have to admit, it wasn't entirely unpleasant. i think the source might be that the roomie does the dish washing in our house and not only insists on natural (read: ineffectual) dish washing detergent, but also won't wear rubber dish washing gloves, which means that - lacking the insulating protection that the gloves offer - she ends up washing our dishes in lukewarm water. it's kind of gross and sometimes i have to put dishes that still have a greasy film back into the sink for a second go around.

- i applied for a gold visa with my bank online because i wanted something with no annual fee, that had collision damage waiver insurance for when we rent a car (CDW ends up doubling the cost of a car rental.) when i didn't hear back, i called visa and found out i got declined. this was VERY troubling for someone like me who prides herself on her fiscal responsibility, unnaturally high osap repayments, and fastidiously prepares a monthly budget months in advance, leaving myself a spending allowance of like, $50 every week because i'm crazy like that. i went into the bank and tried to figure it out and immediately reverted to kid-in-the-prinicpal's office demeanor, desperately trying to decode the customer service rep's body language to figure out why i was declined and shamelessly prostrating myself for assurances that i was in good standing with the bank (i am, i ended up getting approved, i probably filled out the form wrong.) i'm not going to lie, it was quite an unbecoming display of neediness - whatever the financial institution equivalent is of grade grubbing. i wanted good credit rating gold stars and i was willing to stop at nothing debasing myself to get them.

- faithful readers of this blog know how insane i am about sorting and vigorously maintaining the cleanliness and appearance of my garbage, recycling, and the receptacles that store the aforementioned.  nothing stresses me out more than having a dirty green bin, and at that, nothing makes me more distraught then when the raccoons get into the green bin, knock it over, and the first thing i face when i leave the house to go to work is a pile of rotting vegetable ends strewn about our walkway.  it guts me.  to this end, i've devised a system whereby we encircle the green bin with heavy things on all sides so it can't get knocked over, and then weigh down the lid with no less than 3 bricks so that they can't open it up. the emphasis isn't unintentional. for some reason, toronto raccoons have such brute strength at their disposal that the odd times when the dotytron or the roomie only stacks 2 bricks on top, we're inevitably met with food waste armageddon the next day. to this end, i've developed the saying: "2 bricks are an invitation, 3 are a deterrent!" which i repeat like some daft, urban detritus sage as a reminder when the green stuff goes out. i'm crazy. I'VE DEVELOPED A SAYING ABOUT BRICKS ON MY GREEN BIN.

tonight for dinner we had leftover spicy grain and black bean soup (frozen and defrosted) with cheddar cheese quesadillas and salsa and sour cream. super simple, super easy. the dotytron is having no less than 50 stress related meltdowns a minute. poor little guy. the antidote for that is a long weekend spent in upstate new york watchimg M-TOD, playing with the kiddies, and making your colon asplode at brian's u.s.a diner (my sister is freaking out because they've been advertising for cooks in the penny saver - i say: bring on the penny saver talent!!!)

because we're being fiscally responsible, we don't TRULY get the benefit of the long weekend and my FOUR DAY WEEKEND because the dotytron has to work on saturday. this is HELLA bogus but it's the right thing to do considering he missed a couple of days of teaching when he had the flu. i'm a little gutted about it...i'm not gonna lie.

the watchmen is INCREDIBLE. a game-changing comic that is a dark, swirling, thick and sludgy descent into the depths of pessimism, cynicism, and cold war tension. alan moore is kind of a notorious brilliant curmudgeon in the comics world, and no wonder...the dude looks like this:

the watchmen is DENSE. there are about 4-5 different parallels stories that are interspersed within the main narrative, one featuring a comic a periphery character is reading, a treatise on owls written by the night owl (the second), journal entries from rorshach, letters, an autobiography - and the world is so vividly realized that it's hard to see the connection between the standard comic parts and these collage elements. it has a mystery type main narrative arc, following a group of former vigilantes in a united states that has banned masked vigilanteeism and is continually teetering on the brink of nuclear apocalypse with russia. the psychology of the characters is twisted, real, and conveys a certain tired, gritty world-weariness. this is not the fantastical, glittering metropolis that meets superman and spiderman with open arms. this is a dirty, seething, roiling, troubled nihilistic world beset with decadence and deviance and the watchmen all have different answers to the problem (ranging from dr. manhattan's quantum physics, the contemporaneousness of the past/present/future approach, to rorshach's absolutist violence, to the night owl's everyman idealism.)

i can't recommend it enough. it's rich, satisfying, laden with intertextual references, and captures the moment when it was written (mid 80s). i'm worried that the film won't be able to do it justice...i can't imagine that it will. bringing something like that to the big screen and satisfying the core fans is a herculean task. it's also not something that franchises well...i'm not sure hollywood and the director (the dude who did 300) is up to the task. we'll see. the viral marketing campaign is off the chains though.

k, that's enough out of me for one day.  i can't believe i don't have to go back to work until tuesday!  can i say again that my earn-day off is THE BOMB?!???

roll call of awesome:


it's really wrong to love a chair as much as this...but the herman miller eames recliner with ottoman is a touchstone of design. it's like visual opium - so soothing, so warm, so clean.  

fin.

in case you were wondering...

little ze, singing beyonce's "single ladies (put a ring on it)" on the phone is as cute/awesome as you imagine it would be. apparently he does the dance, too. i'm not a fan of that tune, but i'm definitely a fan of the little gaffer's rendition. his version was pretty garbled, running on the strength of the fact that the kid looks like this:

but was calling out to all the single ladies, all the single ladies. my niece, never one to be outshined, insisted on coming on the phone and KNOCKING IT OUT OF THE PARK.


tonight for dinner i made a baked penne dish. i cooked off some penne (more than al dente because i didn't want it absorbing too much sauce and turning out dry during the baking part) and tossed it with frozen (and then defrosted) tomato-basil sauce i had made ages ago with some leftover small meatballs i had cooked off and frozen and defrosted and cut into quarters. i plopped on some ricotta and topped it all with a haystack of shredded mozzarella and baked it in the oven until the edge bits got all crusty and browned and the top was chewy. we had it with caesar salad and for dessert i'm treating myself to more caramel cake and a half mug of milk.

i finished reading "the watchmen" recently and a YA book...i don't have the energy tonight to do the watchmen justice. suffice to say that it has deservedly earned its' "one of the best comics of all time/groundbreaking/visionary" credentials. i'll get into more depth tomorrow...i want to be away from the ordinateur right now.

fin.

the performance

okay, i feel like i should address the elephant in the chapel. why do i insist on calling it a performance and not a wedding? who do i think i'm fooling, right? i'm not an idiot. i KNOW i'm getting tied to the hitching post. i know that i'm getting married. i'm not 100% sure what being married means to me. i'm a child of divorce, i'm not kidding myself that anything lasts forever (mortality kind of takes care of those delusions, even if i harbored them), but i know that i've built a pretty high-functioning, continually stimulating, laughter-filled partnership with the dotytron. and i know that i want to throw a party and be surrounded by people we adore. and well, throwing our lot in together seems as good a reason as any, right? (and infinitely more palatable than the other reason people gather - new marxist reading circles)

to me, getting married is quite different from having a WEDDING. people say that they're open to you doing whatever you want to do, that it's "your" day, but in my experience (and as has been evidenced repeatedly in the past few months), that's actually a load of bollocks. some people have VERY SPECIFIC ideas of what a "wedding" has been, is, and should be, and look askance at you for bucking "tradition."

never mind that there's no ONE "tradition" that spans all cultures, times, places. never mind that the wedding industry is a relatively new phenomena, that the stuff we associate with "wedding" (the white dress, the white cake, something borrowed, something blue) is stuff of the last 100 years, if that. never mind that there are people who've gotten hitched jumping out of a plane, scuba diving, caving, by elvis impersonator, etc...no no, tell them that you're getting grillz instead of rings and people get a little weirded out.

first of all, i don't kid myself that we're all THAT original. i'm 100% sure that we're not the first couple to forgo the ring and go the grillz route (paging FLO-RIDA and HOTLANTA!) second of all, me wearing a ring is about as unnatural and uncharacteristic as me suddenly deciding to follow the tragically hip on tour or me treating my contributions into the employee pension plan with any emotion OTHER than dizzying glee. i'm sure in the long and storied history of people getting hitched, what we're doing is going to be pretty standard, by comparison.

so instead, in the face of the anticipated (and experienced) reprobation of others, i call it a performance. to prepare people, ease them into the idea that we're not doing the expected. because when you say wedding, people go bananas. sure, it's a small matter of semantics - it doesn't really mean much at the end of the day. but it's a small step, a reappropriation and rearticulation (and well, people who know me know how much i believe in the malleability of language to re-form and conjure our realities) of what we want this to be. it's a performance of "wedding" and it seems like it's a much more accurate description of what we're doing - which isn't going to be the usual thing.

except that it is. because the usual thing is having people that matter to you surround you on a day when you're kind of being stupid in lurve and drunk with happiness at all the joy in one room. because if there IS any one tradition, the most common denominator might be the impetus to eat and drink and dance and laugh and hug and kiss all the people you care about and to have that energy of them surround you in a maelstrom of human connectivity.

i should say that i personally don't care what you do on your wedding day. if you're someone i know and love and you're going full-tilt martha stewart weddings, then i support you! do whatever you want to do! i don't care if it's a vegan spread, if it's dry, if it's just cookies and milk in the parking lot of a didier IGA, if i know you and love you, i'll be happy no matter what and give myself over to the experience, because you know what? i know that 10 years from now no one is even going to have the foggiest memory of the details - of how it went down, what the invites looked like, what food was served, that it rained, that i didn't do the garter toss (KILL ME), that i didn't slow dance once (I'M NOT SLOW DANCING AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME)...all they're going to remember is that it happened, they were there, and it was fun.

i should also say that some people are TOTALLY on board. nany dotytron is BEYOND pleased (and really, if we're doing it for anyone, it's the grandparentals - even above and beyond doing it for us.) she thinks that whatever we're going to do is the GREATEST EVER! my dress colour, the location, the menu - she's just beaming with excitement and things everything we decide is just peachy.

it's like amy sedaris says...there are certain responsibilities of you as a guest. the chief one being to be happy that you're invited and to accept people's hospitality with grace, good humour, and sincerity.

anyway, enough of that rant. i just thought that i'd clarify why i doggedly insist on calling it a performance piece. that's why.


tonight i put together a mezes spread. roasted garlic and eggplant dip with tahini. warm chickpea salad with lots of lemon, parsley, and sauteed onions and garlic. baked feta with grape tomatoes, chili oil, rosemary and olives, all served up with warmed torn up pita for sandwiching and dipping. the baked feta was a last minute audible - i wanted haloumi, but a downtown toronto-scour on saturday revealed that the ONE thing i wanted, was nowhere to be found, and at one place in kensington, i was informed that they wouldn't have haloumi until MARCH! wtf?!??? i LOVE mezes meals though.

as promised, here's the pic of the caramel cake (aka my new best friend.) i've included the recipe below. it might become my new go-to recipe for golden cake - i loved the texture, crumb, and flavour of the cake alone that much.

i also did my exercises and yoga today...yay!

fin.

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caramel cake
adapted from gourmet magazine, january 2008 (i doubled the recipe and baked it in a 9x13 pan for about an hour)

for the cake:
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons sifted cake flour (not self-rising; sift before measuring) - i actually went to the trouble and did this...i don't usually
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature 30 minutes
1 cup well-shaken buttermilk

for caramel glaze:
1 cup heavy cream (i didn't have heavy cream so i used 50% whipping cream, 50% 2 percent milk)
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tablespoon light corn syrup (i also didn't have corn syrup so i made it up with brown sugar)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

equipment: a candy thermometer

- preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle. butter an 8-inch square cake pan and line with a square of parchment paper, then butter parchment.
- stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, then beat in vanilla. add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. at low speed, beat in buttermilk until just combined (mixture may look curdled). add flour mixture in 3 batches, mixing until each addition is just incorporated.
- spread batter evenly in cake pan, then rap pan on counter several times to eliminate air bubbles. bake until golden and a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. cool in pan on a rack 10 minutes, then run a knife around edge of pan. invert onto rack and discard parchment, then cool completely, about 1 hour.
- i didn't bother taking the cake out of the pan because that seems like a colossal pain in the butt, and their method for getting the caramel on just dirties more dishes, a big lagerfeld no-no

make glaze:
- bring cream, brown sugar, corn syrup, and a pinch of salt to a boil in a 1 1/2-quart heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved. boil until glaze registers 210 to 212°F on thermometer, 12 to 14 minutes, then stir in vanilla.
- this took nowhere near as long as 12-14 minutes...closer to 5 from the time it started boiling
- put rack with cake in a shallow baking pan and pour hot glaze over top of cake, allowing it to run down sides. Cool until glaze is set, about 30 minutes.
ignore these instructions. i took the butt end of a wooden spoon, poked it all over the cake to make holes, and slowly poured the glaze all over the cake, taking time to let it seep in.