finished reading in the heart of america, the collection of plays. the first and last plays were the best, but the other three were definitely interesting. currently reading borges -- knotty, but cool.



cutest nephew ever:

posted by fwc at 9:23 AM

currently ankle-deep in mark kurlansky's salt: a world history (excellent, and not only for the following excerpt):
"Celts did not illustrate their culture on temple walls as the Egyptains did: nor did they have chroniclers as the Greeks and Romans did. The guardians of Celtic culture, the Druids, did not leave written records. So most of what we know of them is from Greek and Roman historians who described the Celts as huge and terrifying men in bright fabrics."
posted by winnie at 10:52 PM

got back from boston monday after watching connie run the marathon. or, more precisely, after being passed by her at one point during the marathon. she did okay. she's alive -- more than i'd be able to claim, were i to run it (which is actually totally, utterly inconceivable). as far as boston goes, there was some eating involved, a bit of fun here and there. even a little sailing. pictures are forthcoming.

DIY day:
today, tim and i made curtains.

and i cut his hair. both hair and curtains are pretty alright.
okay, maybe i'll take another picture of the curtains during the day, since joyce says they're "very motel 8."

i start freelancing at the food network next monday, and i am so stoked.

i should be ashamed:
i was prepping some material for kaplan training tomorrow when i realized i'd forgotten what logarithms are. i had to call my sister and ask, and she was like, "are you stupid or something?" yes, yes i am. i think i'll throw my brass rat away right now.
posted by winnie at 11:38 PM

just a quick note here regarding weird coincidences--- i haven't checked this blog in a couple days:
i went to my first-ever dodgers game last night, and basically had the same exact experience that winnie had. it was ass-freezingly cold. you may think i exaggerate, but if it weren't for my friends' sleeping bags, i think i would have died. okay, it wasn't that bad. but it gave me an excuse to drink hot chocolate. someone told me that since LA is in essentially desert conditions, it drops tens of degrees at night and therefore is cold. so i've learned to dress in layers and layers. i didn't manage to have a dodger-dog though, so i'll have to go back. the entire layout of the stadium was a bit surreal. or, since i went straight from classes, a bit of the baudrillard hyperreal. yeah, whatever. i've gotten into the groove of being clobbered with work and being tired all the time. gee golly whiz, i feel like i'm back at MIT. (the sad part being that this is the easier part of my term) currently i'm sitting in on an undergrad french class that meets at 9am everyday. i AM the bitter cynical grad student in the back w/ my grad-student-y friends. we're not horrid, we just snicker. anyways, i had my first kumquat a couple weeks ago. my friend's parents have a kumquat bush; i kind of overdosed on a large ziplock baggie of them. let me tell you, it wasn't a pretty sight. that's about it for now, methinks. oh yeah, and like winnie a couple months back, i need suggestions on what i should teach for my five minute kaplan audition. i was thinking "how to avoid participating in class" but i don't think it'll go over too well...
posted by joyce at 4:13 PM

updates:

along with reading and thoroughly enjoying artemis fowl as winnie mentioned (which incidentally i appreciated for being less cutesy than the harry potter books and for its occasional sly quips aimed at adults) i've also been reading in the heart of america, a collection of plays by naomi wallace. i first became aware of wallace when mit did one flea spare, which i was really impressed with and reviewed. since then i've found out that she's a fellow kentuckian. i've read the first 3 plays so far, and i really liked one flea spare the second time around as well, and there were parts of the other 2 plays that were really nicely done. one flea spare is set at the time of the great plague in london, while the second play concerns the gulf war and the third play concerns three men watching the mexican-american border for illegal immigrants. i'll give a fuller report when i finish the whole book. i'd forgotten how much i enjoy reading plays.

on the food front, andy and i went to rouge last sunday. for me it was the last straw, b/c the "daily vegetarian offering" was even more pathetic than usual: marinated beets, succotash (i.e. steamed beans and corn), and steamed spinach. how stupid is that?! for 20 bucks i'd rather get chinese takeout for a week. i was esp. peeved b/c andy's fish came with this much more interesting creamy mushroom and greens mix. i'm f*cking sick of high end restaurants that don't offer anything good that's vegetarian. on the top of my list of higher end places where i can actually get a decent meal: hammersley's, troque, and casablanca (although i've only been to each of those places once), and sonsie. sad but true. blu, tremont 647, no. 9 park, caffe umbra, pretty much the majority of places i can think of in boston ... and the majority of places i've been to in new york, are all -pathetic- vegetarian-wise. i told andy that from now i'm not going anywhere unless i'm assured of getting something at least semi-interesting (and that more than likely means something that doesn't just throw together roasted red peppers and basil and the ubiquitous portobella mushroom although most places can't even manage something as simple as that) or unless it's asian in which case i'm sure to be able to get something decent. i'm afraid i was a bit pissy, but i'm sick and tired of eating second rate food and i'm sick and tired of having to waste time complaining about it. so that's that. so much for adventurous eating. i need to cook more anyway. anyway, in case you were wondering, winnie, rouge wasn't that great, bad vegetarian food aside. patty got a chunk of lettuce with a ranchy sauce for an appetizer while andy got the marinated beets salad (i didn't bother getting anything b/c the beets were already coming w/ my entree zzzzzzzzzzz), and patty's entree was pretty much another salad w/ little bits of trout in a sauce with some hushpuppies. andy had catfish, and he said overall the place is pricey for what it actually is. okay, enough ranting.
posted by fwc at 10:46 AM

i finished artemis fowl today, and you're right, fred, it's pretty comparable to harry potter (in the best sense). have you cracked the code yet? it's nice to see smart writing directed towards kids. sometimes i'm really afraid all meaning will be lost in the ever-expanding morass of "like" and "you know" usage. i'm especially afraid for myself. fowl was just what i needed to pull out of my reader's blight, and thrilling tales is proving to be a good follow-up, just 1.5 stories in. i found chabon's intro compelling, and it resonates with the book review in the may issue of harper's, "our essays, "ourselves." the second story of this, the latest installment of mcsweeney's quarterly, is "the tears of squonk, and what happened thereafter," and it is thrilling indeed.

i've had some insatiable craving for saltiness and sourness lately, and i've been indulging at russ & daughters (e houston, near ludlow) and the pickle guys (grand and essex). the pickled herring i picked up yesterday is so, so good. really unctuous and that puckery-mmph taste. yeah. mmph. the PG's have these tasty pickled grape tomatoes which have a nice brightness to them. i'm not sure what they're leaving out of their pickling brine, but most of their wares taste like that. sort of clean. maybe there's a faster turnover so the vegetables spend less time pickling?

in which i dig a little deeper into the new york experience:
went to my first-ever yankees game last night, and perhaps because i came fully expecting to be bored out of my mind, i actually enjoyed myself. we sat high up in the tier behind home plate -- great seats, except for the gale-force winds that immobilized my extremities. (is there some sort of meteorological law that stipulates that it be ten degrees colder and windy as hell within a stadium? methinks so.) yankee stadium is a neat little microcosm. a sort of quasi-ideal version of new york. (yes, including the drunken louts who flail about and heckle to no end. tim claims to be such a lout.) there was a sizeable showing of japanese spectators, out to support matsui, i gathered (so adroitly!). baseball is kind of weird, in the way that all spectator sports are weird. sort of a glib statement, i know, but there's something at once empty and reassuring about america's favorite pasttime, and i can't quite articulate what it is exactly.

does anyone else find this really disturbing?

let's turn it over to farmer winnie now:
as you can see, the herbs are faring well.

i'm not entirely sure if that's a chive stalk on the left, or if somehow some grass seed got mixed into the soil. do chives actually sprout like that? and how come there's only one? i think we've got some tarragon in the foreground and thyme in the back.

verbile:
i like the word "morass".
the adjective form of "morass" is "morassy". how great is that?
posted by winnie at 11:42 PM

hippy-dippy dinner:
i cooked some quinoa with onions, sort of pilaf-style, i suppose. this is my first foray into the "other grain" category (if we don't count barley, which we won't), and i have to say, i'm a fan. the tiny little grains are a bitch to get off your hands (they're super cling-y), and i could really use a tip on rinsing them without pouring them down the sink, but with a little toasting, a little stock, they develop a neat translucence. sort of like fish roe or tapioca, but there's this opaque little tail, the germ i think, and it gives the grain a lovely al dente quality. it reminds me of the crunchy pop you get from chewing flying fish roe. i made some chicken 'n pea curry to go alongside. yum.

on the bookshelf:
i'm plowing through the very amusing artemis fowl, as per fred's recommendation. but i've also got mcsweeney's mammoth treasury of thrilling tales, ed. by michael chabon, and salt: a world history, mark kurlansky's exploration of our favorite edible rock.
posted by winnie at 8:48 PM

after a long, losing battle against the mullet overtaking my head, i gave in and got a haircut. this one only warrants a blog mention, as it resembles my nicois coif somewhat. and yes, i prefer to take pictures in really crappily lit environments.

i'm dying to see joyce's 'winnie' haircut. bring it on, j. lee!

posted by winnie at 10:19 PM

just to prove that i'm not completely rotting my brain on xmen, i thought i would announce that i finished reading to the lighthouse. below is the blurb i posted about it on my site.

definitely an interesting read. rather slow in general, but i liked the themes and the ideas and some of the stream of consciousness style, and how the three sections were set up and connected. allegorical but subtle and multi-dimensional.

still haven't found a really amazing book lately ... read doctor zhivago, a high wind in jamaica, and love medicine fairly recently. i'd say the count of monte cristo was the best i've read recently, and that was last summer. going to read some borges next and i plan on picking up the glenn gould reader that my sister bought for me way back when but which i haven't read yet. um, yeah ...

posted by fwc at 12:29 PM

in contrast: my latest daily blog is polyglot: the many languages of dissent ... it's catfoo, aman, and dan chak's mostly politically-minded blog. catfoo has always been my link to what's going on "in the real world", so now i don't have to hang out w/ her to get this info, i just have to read her blog (j/k catfoo -- we should hang out soon). yah!
posted by fwc at 1:59 PM

current favorite blog:
wil wheaton. yes, it's wes! badass! i haven't given the guy much thought since my junior high interest in STNG faded, but i'll admit, i had a crush. (you know you did too!) he actually seems pretty grounded, normal, and sincere, for a celebrity. self-deprecating, nerdy -- witty, even. it's all very endearing, actually. i think the onion a.v. club actually interviewed him a month or two ago. i love that his website is kind of homely and homemade-looking. i also love that his porn link is for boobiefarm.com. i feel like he would've fit right in at mit. how cute is his dorkiness? can you believe the kid's 30?
posted by winnie at 9:30 PM

i dunno what's going on up there, but it seems like someone needs to be reminded that it's mid-april already, and we could use a little more sunshine and a lot less snow. goddammit.

fortunately, my wee herbs are faring just fine, thankyouverymuch. in fact, look how well the cilantro's doing in its six-inch peat moss pot:

they're about 1.5-2" high above the soil surface now, but below is a whole 'nother story:

(the root end starts just below where i'm grasping the plant.)
sort of scary, really. and no, i can't replant it once i've uprooted it. i was thinning out the sprouts because they were getting a bit crowded, and for some reason, they like to grow thisclose to each other. i'm always surprised by how much growth occurs down below, how much of a root system is required to support the exposed parts of the plant. i guess there's generally more going on below the surface than we usually notice. there's more than meets the eye, if you will. i don't think i'm talking about plants any more.

sunday night, i caught the walkmen at the bowery ballroom. they totally rocked. that hamilton leithauser is a mighty fine frontman indeed. and his trust-fund name has such a great indie irony to it. wonder of wonders, i managed to leave the place without reeking of smoke and without cancer-stick detritus gumming up my hair and my pores. i think i love this new smoking ban. opener moving units was excellent. they sound just like the rapture, but with a more consistent sound. that is, their set sounded like one protracted song. a very good song, i hasten to add, but these guys are definitely a one-trick pony.

i'm sort of housesitting for someone for the next week and a half, and i quite like it. his place on orchard is directly across the street from il laboratorio del gelato, just around the corner from congee village, five blocks from kossar's bialys and the doughnut plant. (not to mention 71 clinton, the pickle guy, little italy, chinatown -- you get the picture.) we're strictly speaking of proximity to food here, if you haven't realized. but what better indicator of a neighborhood's vitality and desirableness?

bollocks, i say:
apparently some canadian (which explains everything) lass has put up a site featuring testicle recipes. yeah. i know there's a special appreciation for them in italy. and in ohio, where they hold a testes fest. i'm certainly willing to try, but this sounds somewhat less appealing than sweetbreads or tete de veau. especially when the recipe for "ranch fry" specifies:

Toss the balls on a hot stove.
When they explode, they're done!

i mean, what kind of balls are we even talking about here? i guess we're supposed to assume this is a cattle ranch.
those turkey nuts might be okay though.
posted by winnie at 6:55 PM

first off: it's been a year today since andy and i met ... !!!! happy anniversary, bootsie xx ;)

latest eating adventures: on saturday andy and i and a host of andy's friends went to blu, which winnie and andy (and the people we went with) think highly of. andy was disappointed this time, though. here's the rundown on what i got:

cocktail: peach, champagne, and vodka. forget what it was called. fine.
appetizer: onion tatine with goat cheese on top, came with frisee and some light slices of tomato. the onion was caramelized and a little gooey, but not too mushy. pretty good, actually.
entree: potato gnocchi ... light red sauce with asparagus and a sweet goat cheese in a bready half shell. ended up being rather bland and boring.
dessert: apple/pistachio cake-y thing. pretty good.

all in all i thought it was pretty good, but i wasn't bowled over by it, esp for the price. in comparison, i enjoyed my semi-recent trip to hammersley's more, where i got this really strong, garlicky mushroom "sandwich" (although it was super oily) and andy got this beet/goat cheese tart that was nicely done. at blu andy said that this time around his steak was "only about 55% of where it needed to be". one of the people we were with who also got the steak agreed. patty got the rainbow trout, which was the special, and which came with two sauces and which she though was quite good. one of the other people we went with got the three "fish" entree, which was calamari, a fish, and scallops in three different sauces, and she liked it.

yesterday andy and i went to the jae's on columbus, me for the first time. it was about what i expected. andy got sushi, but i got the "korean" black bean sauce with buckwheat noodles. needless to say the food was about as korean (or asian for that matter) as the cheesecake factory. i think in general though i prefer cheap and greasy chinese food to any americanized asian food, although the mee krob at sonsie has been the best american asian food i've had, in recent memory anyway. the other noteworthy event at jae's: andy ordered coffee after dinner and got the cheesecake which was labelled as being pumpkin cheesecake. our server completely neglected to tell him that the cheesecake was not going to be pumpkin, it was actually coffee cheesecake. andy prob wouldn't have gotten coffee and coffee cheesecake, and our server didn't apologize for his oversight. bastard.

lastly, andy and i went to rouge for brunch the weekend before last, which is a few doors down from the jae's on columbus. apparently this is owned by the same guy as tremont 647 (which is low on my list of destinations mostly b/c of outright bad service), but with a more "creole" sort of slant. anyway, we just went for brunch. andy got eggs and bacon and i got the beignets (a little doughy and thus heavy, but not bad) and we both got the sweet potato fries (3 thick wedges of sweet potato w/ a really powerful mustard). i thought it was all right, but andy was more approving, pointing out that a lot of places can't even get eggs and bacon right. we plan on going back for dinner sometime. we checked the dinner menu on our way to jae's, and apparently they have a vegetarian entree every night. hmm. more to come prob sooner than later.

oh, one more thing. went to casablanca in h square, i think around brattle st, the weekend before last. pretty good, although again it didn't bowl me over. i liked it, though. our waiter was obliging, although our hostess was a bitchy snake with bad posture.

geez, i hope winnie appreciates my lengthy report ;)

posted by fwc at 12:49 PM