Heartstrings and Chablis

Sapiophile (noun): Someone who is sexually attracted to intelligent people.

"Do you still blog?" the chef who cooked my dinner asked me tonight. Seems I do.

Unexpectedly, I got asked on a date tonight where we wound up at Rowland's and my intentions to go to Balliceaux for storytelling were cast aside like yesterday's underwear.

We were the first customers in, meaning we had our pick of the place, and still ended up at the end of the bar under the ceiling fan.

I'll admit, the music was not my thing - Pandora set to Creedence Clearwater Revival - but our server must not have liked it any better either because she soon changed it, praise be.

Unfortunately, it was to the Jack Johnson station, which is like nails on chalkboard to me, and I tolerated it for about five songs before asking that it be changed.

Steely Dan was far better.

Since it was Bastille Day, I chose a Muscadet for sipping, paying homage to France in my own little way.

Over Rowland's classic butterbean cake, my date told me about his recent building project, what it's like to train a young buck and about how quickly tuna macaroni becomes tiresome.

I countered with tiny houses, a breakup and my favorite Neil Diamond lyrics. Obviously, I was a tad rusty on this dating business.

Given that it had been our request to change the music, it was only natural that we talked about what we were hearing, namely Tears for Fears, America, and Spinners, and the correlations that led Pandora from Steely Dan to them.

When it came time to order food, we briefly considered the three-course tasting menu, but instead chose off the regular menu.

My choice was almond-crusted brook trout over haricots vert and roasted beets, while he wanted the quinoa bowl with pork schnitzel.

At one point, the server raced outside to lower the umbrellas in anticipation of a storm which never really materialized.

Which is not to say that I didn't appreciate the darkened sky and flattering mood lighting.

After a while, the chef came out to chat, taking advantage of the nearly empty dining room - hey, it's July and everyone is out of town - to socialize since there was nothing pressing to cook until a three-top arrived.

I admit, we did our best to derail his good intentions to return to the kitchen, engaging him about his past gigs on luxury yachts (seriously, he worked for both the Scripps family of Scripps Howard fame and the Knight clan of Knight-Ridder acclaim...between the two he'd cooked for major media owners) and the hoops he'd had to jump through.

You know, as someone who has worked for several newspapers, those are major player names right there. And serious money.

To that point, the chef told a story of running out of milk (for half and half) and limes while out at sea. He engaged a private puddle hopping plane to procure the milk and limes, returning them to the ship for a mere $500 in airfare costs.

My goodness, I am so not the 1%.

I insisted he share the saga of how he'd met his Peruvian wife 25 years ago, a sweet story that involved him being both lovesick and seasick, not to mention hungover and out to sea.

Call me a sucker for a good love story.

With pre-Lindsay Buckingham Fleetwood Mac and Gwyneth Paltrow-era Coldplay playing, the chef returned in earnest and we got into an alliterative dissection of Richmond restaurant issues -permitting, parking - and partisan politics.

Before I knew it, my date had been derailed for a discussion of the trouble in Israel and what the US role should be in its resolution.

Not to minimize an important topic, but I was on a date here. Hello, wooing in progress.

On the other hand, sapiophiles love it when our dates start analyzing topical issues.

So much for the storytelling. Date on.

Can't Buy Me Love

Just another Tuesday, wherein I try to see as many friends as possible in one evening.

The first was visiting from Maryland and we met at Pearl, where she marveled at how much hair I had.

Seems she hadn't considered that if we didn't see each other for a few months, it would grow in her absence.

She was operating on four hours sleep, but that didn't stop us from ordering a bottle of La Marca Prosecco to grease the conversational wheels.

Unlike me, she's been in a relationship the past few years and is eager to get to the next stage, namely him putting a ring on it.

Can't relate.

What's interesting about this is that after her first date with this guy, she sent her cousin an e-mail telling her that she was going to marry this guy but that it would probably take five to six years.

I told her it sounds to me like she's right on schedule...and that she should read that e-mail to him at their wedding.

As if I should be giving anyone romance advice.

Since it had been a while since we'd seen each other, she wanted details about the men and all the dates I'd been on recently and even did some low-level online stalking for the accompanying visuals.

Someone recently told me that I was the only person he knew without a cell phone and I'm beginning to think I'm also the only person who doesn't web-stalk.

Call me old-fashioned.

We managed to do all our catching up before I had to leave her for Pru, who was meeting me for dinner at an undisclosed location.

We weren't in our bar stools five minutes when she told me how beautiful my hair looked.

Clearly I was having a good hair day.

After our meal, we set out for the Grace Street theater to hear New York Times film critic Dave Kehr, a writer known for his concise, clean writing style.

Or as Pru put it when I invited her, "Free NYT film critic? Wow and yes please."

It was part of the VCU Cinematheque series, meaning an auditorium full of students and a smattering of adults.

Kehr started writing for a free weekly before moving on to the Chicago Tribune, noting that it's a particular talent to turn out writing daily.

So I found out when I started this blog.

Many in the audience seemed surprised to hear Kehr say that every time we change formats, roughly half of the movie titles go away, meaning they're not put on to the newer format.

"It's gotten hard to find pre-1990 movies," he said. "Young people coming up now won't have the ability to graze that field like we did."

Considering that few in the room were alive in the '90s, I'm not sure how that surprising statement resonated with them, but it came across as a bit tragic to me.

After a Q & A with the moderator, Kehr took questions from the audience.

We learned that "Fantasia" was his first film at age four, causing him to fall madly in love with movies.

When he began mowing lawns, he used his earnings to buy 12" reels of old silent movies.

He credited his writing style to an admiration of film critic turned dance critic Arlene Croce.

"I loved the way she put sentences together," he explained.

I understood completely; I couldn't fall for a man if I didn't like the way he put sentences together.

He seemed to hit a nerve with the young audience when he said that there were no more film critics like Pauline Kael and Vincent Canby because, "We get the critics the films deserve and we're in a fallow period. Not a lot of good film is being made."

Some students tried to convince him they'd seen good new movies, but as he pointed out, they're not movies that a man of 50+ necessarily appreciates.

Or, for that matter, anywhere near good.

It was funny hearing him trash what they thought were "important" films ("Raging Bull" I always found kind of annoying") while they sputtered their disagreement.

When one asked if he'd changed his opinion about "Alien," a film he'd not reviewed favorably, he stood by his assessment that it was nothing more than a well-executed horror film of its time.

"Who would have thought in 1979 that "Alien" would still be around today?" he asked rhetorically. "No one!"

That's the part that the students couldn't wrap their heads around and it was more than a little fascinating to see them confused at having their false idols toppled.

So besides some great film criticism and discussion, we also got to observe a roomful of confused and self-righteous 19-year olds, making it a well-spent two hours.

After dropping off Pru, I hastened to Rowland's to meet Holmes and his entourage for a get-together.

Chef Virginia came out and said hello before giving me a quizzical look and saying, "Your hair looks very pretty. What's different?"

Hell if I know. Now if only I could get this many men to notice.

My friends were just finishing their meal so I joined them in more Prosecco and lots of banter.

I-95 vs route 301.

Exaggeration vs. deviousness.

Alvin Lee vs. Peter Green.

Poor writers vs. poor restaurateurs.

Best line: "Money doesn't buy happiness, but it buys a lot of other good stuff. You can quote me on that."

I think I just did.

Look in the Mirror, We're Foxes

I officially rang in birthday season tonight.

Because I will not see my Paris-bound friend before my birthday next week, we met tonight to kick off the festivities.

Rowland offered sun streaming through the front windows and happy hour deals of the liquid and edible varieties.

Sitting directly behind us was an eight-top, a family birthday celebration complete with multiple generations and be-ribboned gifts.

Despite the pretense of ours being a birthday celebration, it was really a class A catch-up session.

She began with a jaw-dropping story of a girl crying wolf and the unexpected and potentially awful ramifications of her bad call.

Food-wise we had to order their signature butter bean cake along with another special, essentially a panko-crusted pork schnitzel with an oozing farm egg on top, a tomato Hollandaise and an arugula salad.

Pig with egg? Come on, that's as good as breakfast. Yum.

I heard about the dream screened-in porch she intends to have built and as an ardent fan of outdoor rooms, I envy her the future pleasures of it.

It's with fond memories I recall the one I had for thirteen years when I lived on Floyd Avenue;  sadly, it's the one thing I don't have in Jackson Ward.

And hers is going to have a sleeping couch on it, the ultimate porch indulgence.

With nothing to top that, I told her about some of my recent escapades and she told me about an hilarious trip to a Charleston wedding.

And a dry wedding at that, necessitating her bringing a flask.

I loved the part where a guest asked her if she was a model and, true to her quick wit (and the truth), she quipped, "Only nude," a nod to her college days modeling for a drawing class.

That shut 'em up.

We finished with a chocolate cupcake that was more of a molten cake with a dollop of caramel to push it over the edge.

By then she had to leave to get home to hearth and husband and probably weeding in her splendid gardens.

My next stop was a cocktail/listening/birthday party at Balliceaux for a dear friend.

Playing on the screen behind the stage was a 1929 German silent film, "Pandora's Box."

And really, German is so guttural a language, it's really a prime contender for silent film.

He's a musician with a wide range and I'm always eager to hear what his latest direction is.

But we also talk about life with a capital "L" so shortly after our greeting, he put his hands on my shoulder, looked in my eyes and said, "I met a girl."

This was very good news indeed because he's such a terrific, interesting guy and his last girlfriend was a cereal-stealing alcoholic.

And, as I told him, no one should have to lock up their cereal.

But then he was off to play host and mingle until it was time for the debut of his new song.

I knew a few people at the party, said my hellos and then sat down at a table in the center.

A friend and former soul mate came over to chat, looking exceptionally dapper in a seersucker jacket and bow tie.

Bragging that he'd not only tied it himself but had an extra in his jacket pocket ("Gentlemen always carry an extra just in case"), I challenged him to teach me to tie it using my leg.

Despite several attempts, my lower thigh was never adorned with a bow, nor was my neck, the second location he tried.

You have to appreciate a party where someone tries to tie a bow tie on your leg.

Out of the blue, a girl standing near me said to me, "I work in a gun shop."

It was such a surprising way to start a conversation that I couldn't help but be sucked in.

What did I glean?

She makes $9 an hour, she'd never shot a gun before they hired her, they made her take a gun class and it's the largest shooting range in the country.

Oh, yes, and she's learned to keep her mouth shut when surrounded by Second Amendment-spouting customers.

There was a face painter there and my bow-tied friend came back with a disturbing clown face painted on.

After complimenting what a good job the painter had done, I said he needed to see himself in a mirror.

But the bar's bathroom doesn't have a real mirror, causing him to joke, "They don't need mirrors here because if you're at Balliceaux, you must look good."

Someone else postulated that it wasn't only good-looking people who came to Balliceaux, but that once you crossed its threshold, you were in another dimension that made you attractive.

I wasn't buying either theory but his clown face looked damn good.

Finally the birthday boy got up to announce his new song, "We Are Foxes," but it took the crowd a while to stop mingling and listen.

Someone called out for him to talk louder over the hubbub, to which he responded, "I'm trying to talk loud but I have small lungs."

And, no that wasn't a metaphor.

Unfortunately, he told the crowd that it wasn't like the Listening Room so they could talk over his song, and they took him up on that.

I liked what I heard and I'm looking forward to hearing it when people aren't chattering.

Man-about-town Prabir was there with sampler CDs of the new album he's working on.

While it wasn't the whole album, it did come with a sheet inside the CD case with a listing of how to say "breakfast" in every language.

I may have pointed out that he has too much time on his hands.

We got off on a tangent about how proudly weird Richmond is (he put caricature-drawing on a  Wednesday night at a bar in that category), an element that seems to have become part of our citywide identification.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Lauren, the caricature artist, was doing impressively good drawings of anyone willing to sit for a few minutes.

I saw one of my music buddy Andrew on the wall, looking exactly like him, only with a much bigger head.

Nearby talking to a girl was a guy whose hair was pure Rick Astley, causing the funny guy near me eating meringues with fresh cream and fruit to jest, "He's never gonna give you up, honey."

Maybe you had to be there (circa 1987) but I found that hilarious.

But the final treat was a song from Capital Opera Richmond singer Sarah.

We'd been promised ponies, too, but I was more than happy with a new song, a bunch of friends and a classic bit of opera.

Or, as the invitation stated, "All this and the possibility that you'll get some if you kiss good."

I hate to sound like the voice of experience here, but there's always the possibility that you'll get some if you kiss good.

True story, kids.

An Evening Not Rued

Remember a time when everyone had a favorite poem?

Yea, neither do I.

My Monday night began at Rowland where, when I pulled up, I saw Chef Virginia picking herbs from her many herb beds outside the restaurant. Does a person good to see a chef picking fresh sage and rosemary. She followed me inside with her handful of herbs, asking what I'd like to drink, even suggesting something organic.

I'm as groovy as the next person, so I said yes to the Musaragno organic Pinot Grigio, a lovely crisp yet rich white, ideal for this beach-like weather day.

To go with it, I ordered lamb meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce over cous cous, one of the happy hour specials where you get way more flavor than you should for the price. I had to scarf them down in order to go pick up one of my favorite literati for the James River Film Festival.

We took seats behind a row of what looked like students, a surprise since I expected to find the audience full of poetry lovers of (ahem) a certain age. And there were some of those, too, for  "Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World," an Academy Award-winning documentary from 1963.

The title comes from what he wanted written on his tombstone, "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." Now that's seriously poetic.

The beautiful black and white film showed Frost on his Vermont farm during the year before he died, along with several clips of readings and events he attended. First of all, my mental image of Frost was that of the man who Kennedy had asked to read at his inauguration (something no president had ever done).

In other words, old.

So I was completely unprepared to see pictures of him as a young, handsome man. I mean seriously handsome. My girlfriend and I were both shocked to learn that he'd been born in 1874, since we'd both thought of him as a twentieth-century man.

There were many scenes of a reading Frost was doing at Sarah Lawrence College, with him surrounded by scads of young female college students, none of whom wore a lick of makeup. As the camera panned the girls watching and reacting to Frost, it was obvious how engaged they were in every word the man uttered.

Their eyes never left his face, they laughed at every witticism he uttered and not a one seemed the least bit bored. I couldn't help but wonder if it'd be the same if a poet read at a college today. In another scene, people were asked their favorite poem and many of them cited Frost's "Birches."

Again, I posit that if you stopped 100 people on the street and asked them their favorite poem, most would be unable to name one. And, yet, in 1963, poetry still mattered enough that random people could name their favorite.

There were several shots with JKF, not surprising since Frost was an early advocate of the candidate.
"I was born and raised and stayed a Democrat, but, oh my, I've been worried since 1896," he said.

Watching him putter around his rustic house and surrounding farmland at 88-years old was impressive for how self-sufficient he was, but also fascinating because of his solitude at a ripe old age. But it was clear how much he enjoyed the talks he gave ("Hell is a half-filled auditorium") and how sharp he still was when students questioned him or challenged him.

One poem, "Dust of Snow" he not only read but then recited, the better to make his point that sometimes a poem is just a poem.

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of the day I rued

Forget black birds and hemlock, it's just a poem about the beauty of the random.

By the end of the documentary, I was totally charmed by the man, as no doubt people had been for years before me. "You work on your poetry and your life," he says. "And love for a season."

Sigh, the man couldn't open his mouth without sounding poetic. No wonder those girls were enthralled. I'm with them.

Meanwhile, of the three students sitting in front of us, one was sleeping, one was texting the entire film and the third looked bored out of his mind as he kept twisting in his seat.

Try asking them what their favorite poem is.

My only hope is that eventually they'll rue the day they had a chance to see a giant of a poet filmed while he was still alive in a beautifully-shot film. I know it gave my heart a change of mood - an appreciation for a time when poetry still mattered.

Or as Frost said, "A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom." My evening began in delight and moved right through to wisdom.

I'm just working on my life.

The Luddite Version

It was a pizza and comic book kind of night. Well, sort of.

A friend was in town from Maryland and wanted to catch up over happy hour.

Conveniently, Wednesdays are half-priced wine by the bottle nights at Rowland's, which meant they were practically giving away Pocco Prosecco.

She and I are what her boyfriend calls "fast processors," meaning we often only have to allude to a thought before the other one gets it.

It not only saves time, but allows us to cover so much more ground given our infrequent meet-ups now that she lives somewhere other than Richmond.

I heard about her recent trip to Las Vegas and an artery-clogging meal at Gordon Ramsay Steak while they were there.

Having eaten half of a massive steak at lunch today, I was looking for something a tad lighter tonight, so we agreed to share one of Rowland's new iron skillet pizzas.

I'd have chosen the pizza blanco, but Friend wanted the Plain Jane of Roma tomato marinara and Mozzarella.

Except we couldn't leave well enough alone and added applewood bacon.

And crimini mushrooms, Bermuda onions and roasted garlic.

Suddenly our plain Jane was pretty elaborate but extremely tasty.

By the time I finished hearing about her upcoming trip to Jamaica, it was time for me to cut out for culture while she moved on to Buckhead's with some mutual friends.

She was making the rounds while she was in town.

Tonight's mental stimulant for me was Richmond Shakespeare's Bawdy Bard staged reading at Capital Ale House.

In a unique twist for live theater, the audience was granted permission to tweet and text as long as they did so about the play.

But instead of a staid Shakespeare reading, we were in for a much more recent play tonight.

"Rough Magic" was a laugh-out-loud look at what would happen if the characters from "The Tempest" came to life and decided they wanted to destroy New York City. 

And it was the kind of reading where the actors leaped on and off stage, slid down brick walls and removed a severed head from a grocery bag, not the kind with actors in chars reading lines.

The best kind, in other words.

The author writes Marvel comic books and the story very much felt like it had been torn from the brightly-colored pages of comics.

Because Richmond Shakespeare is currently doing "The Tempest," tonight's production used actors from that along with an energetic cast of young Richmond talent.

The story of a young woman named Melanie with the super power to pull characters out of books and into real life and the posse of oddballs who got along for the adventure had some funny dialog.

Working at Morgan Stanley is like committing suicide slowly.

This is New York. I think we can handle a fairy.

Even better, there was so much theater humor that relied on the audience knowing their Shakespeare.

When Melanie needs to pull a character from Shakespeare who will be fearless in the face of the wrathful Prospero, she immediately knows what kind of man she needs: Coriolanus.

"Dumb as a stick and a total Mama's boy."

Yep, just the type a woman can control with no problem.

Luckily, Melanie's posse has her back for all the action.

They're three Greek furies who carry a Nerf gun, a Nerf bow and arrow and a spear of destiny to handle the bad guys.

The only thing they lacked was Batman-like subtitles saying "KaPow!" and "Bam!"

Feet were cut off (and black socks worn to indicate missing feet) and reattached (a zig-zag pattern showing reattachment) and a 17-year old drank a margarita (gasp!).

It was all highly entertaining.

But no doubt you've already heard that from the tweeters and texters.