Sure, it's gray out there and the sky is intermittently spitting, but the air was warm enough that my first thought on stepping outside was to go to the river.
Heading east, I ran into a chef at the first corner and another at the second. I spotted an enormous tent set up in the back of Abner Clay Park and wondered about its purpose.
Heading south toward the river, I'd put my umbrella up whenever I began to feel rain on my face but it never lasted long and I'd take it down again. Walking past Penny Lane Pub, I smelled the stale odor of cigarettes and spilled beer, particularly unappetizing before 11:00 in the morning.
Once down on Brown's Island, I found myself completely alone, not another soul on the island. Now that was kind of cool.
Taking the path down toward the silvery river to the pipeline walkway, I was greeted by honking geese and rushing water. The last couple of times I've walked the pipeline, there's been a campsite set up to one side with a couple in sleeping bags but today there was no trace of them.
All good things must come to an end, I suppose.
Walking back through downtown, I was hardly the only one in shorts today, a change from the last few days when people were acting like jackets and hats were in order (they weren't).
But it was when I got to Fifth Street that I knew something was up. Starting from midway down the block between Broad and Marshall, a line snaked down to Marshall, turned the corner and went all the way to Third Street, made a U-turn and wound all the way back to Fifth. What the hell?
I tapped on the shoulder of a guy taking pictures of this mass of humanity to ask. "America's Got Talent auditions," he replied with a rueful smile.
You mean all these people have talent, I asked. "I didn't say that," he said emphatically. "But they all think they do." Or at least their parents did; there were so many children in line with their stage mothers at their side.
Walking on the north side of Marshall, I had to dodge and weave to get around the endless members of the VCU Peppas, brass and drums in hand, and perhaps on their way to join the line. Or maybe just to play for the wanna-be talent, who knows? I didn't stick around to find out.
I kept on walking away from the deluded masses, passing a little girl with too much make-up on (as in any for a child of 7 or 8) and her focused-looking mother who was pulling a polka dot suitcase on wheels.
The child was carrying her balled-up brightly colored jacket. "Didn't I tell you to fold that jacket properly?" he mother said in a voice that would chill your blood. The chastened child looked down at the sidewalk and attempted to please her mother as she walked.
It had been a beautiful gray morning for a walk to the river and "America's Got Talent" was a giant buzz kill of an ending to it. Everybody wants the shortcut to the dream.
Not me. I'm perfectly happy living it. Or my idea of it anyway.
Thursday, November 6, 2014
From Richmond with Love
Now that Zagat has named Church Hill one of the ten hot food neighborhoods around the U.S., it seemed like a good night to remind myself why.
When I pulled into Dutch & Co., there was one regular at the bar and a favorite bartender behind it. He had a quizzical look on his face and immediately said, "I expected you would be at Alton Brown tonight." Too costly, I explained and he nodded knowingly.
He said one of their staff had spotted Alton at Sub Rosa Bakery earlier when she went to pick up bread for the restaurant. And that was after he'd been to Lamplighter, Black Sheep, Saison and Sally Bell's.
Richmond will wear your tail out.
Before long, I overheard two servers trying to decide on the evening's music, pleased as could be when they went with Washed Out. As one server put it, "Kinda mellow, not too loud, sort of druggy."
That's my idea of an ideal sonic landscape for a fine meal.
As he was pouring the house white wine - the crisp La Galope Sauvignon Blanc - the barkeep made a few recommendations for eating and I took him at his word.
I'd already been eyeing one of the blackboard specials - white anchovies with beluga lentils, cucumber, apple and watermelon radish - and his praise of the dish was all I needed. The combination was full of contrasts (texture, sweet/salty) and the glistening tiny beluga lentils were perfectly cooked.
In between our conversations about Fire, Flour and Fork and the dangers of Richmond becoming a big-time food town, it was hard not to notice the bartender adding sugar and mixing a vat behind the bar. Turns out he's working on a batch of root beer to go with the back door dogs next week.
Since I'm a huge fan of root beer, he gave me a taste of the still-brewing liquid, explaining that the sugar at this point was to feed the yeast and aid fermentation, not for sweetening's sake. We puzzled over how root beer is a love it or hate it beverage with few people neutral about it.
"I just assumed everybody grew up with it and loved it, like me," he shrugged. Amen. I have five sisters and they all hate it while my parents and I love it. Go figure.
For my next course, I had a killer plate of jerked blood sausage with plantain cornbread, coconut-braised nuts, Aji dulce peppers and plum slices. An unabashed fan of blood sausage, I was especially taken with the coconut-braised nuts, a unique rendering of something hard and savory into something sweet and tender. Leave it to the D & Co guys.
The pleasure of dining alone is all about the conversations you overhear. One was about Katie Ukrop saying that she'd gone into Graffiato's and not seen a single face she recognized. That dovetails with my Graffiato's experience, where everyone around me at the bar was from the counties, on the scent of a celebrity chef.
Another came from a gentleman approaching the bartender asking when the neighborhood had been gentrified. Um, sir, it's still a work in progress.
Witness the guy on a bike pulling a suitcase on wheels as I walked to my car. Th-thump, th-thump.
My second pit stop of the evening was at Camden's for a screening of "From Italy With Love," a quasi-reality show where three Americans get whisked off to Italy to prove they can live and cook as Italians.
Good luck with that. I've been to Italy and they're a different breed.
The screening began with wine, hardly surprising since the sponsor of the show was Zonin Family Estates, owners of nine Italian wineries. Given a choice of Chianti or Prosecco, I took a few sips of the former before switching to the latter.
A guy near me observed, "I think there's nothing wrong with starting the day with bubbly. If you're going to drink before noon, it should be sparkling." He should know; he said he's woken up in bar in the morning before.
The small crowd who'd gathered to watch the screening was a lively, wine-drinking bunch and wasted no time in mocking the TV show, which began with a very Olive Garden-like look. From there, it showed the three (embarrassing) American contestants as they arrived in Italy and were welcomed into the bosom of an Italian family.
Perhaps it was the wine, but from there, we were catcalling the contestants and mocking their selection since they clearly had no cooking or wine skills to speak of. When told to cook whole branzino, one guy admitted he'd not only never cooked fish, he didn't even like to eat it.
And you got selected for an Italian cooking show?
They went to a jovial butcher in Tuscany who graded their meat cutting and cooking skills, finding them lacking. Their final stop was a Zonin winery where the hapless trio attempted to blend wines. Epic fail.
Not so for those of us watching because we were enjoying Zonin's wine along with house-cured salami, prosciutto and pastrami along with cheeses, pickled vegetables and more of the wines while making non-stop commentary about the show.
As a people, Americans represent so poorly as to be comical.
Twenty minutes after the show ended, two women showed up to join the party, delayed by Alton Brown's performance at CenterStage, bearing pictures and tales of over-sized E-Z Bake ovens and songs about shrimp.
In a typical only-in-Richmond moment, one of the women turned out to be the girlfriend of a long-time music friend, a talented singer and drummer I've known for years. I knew as much about her boyfriend as she did.
One of the guys at the party had me in stitches joking about some of the attendees and their resemblance to the clueless contestants on "From Italy With Love." Meanwhile, we wasted no time sipping the very Prosecco so prominently placed in the show we were watching.
Conversation flowed with the attendees, ranging from William Shatner to Pulp to Dr. Who (who?). A guy told me I seemed "very cool" while some of the attendees did not (he pointed out examples and grinned). One guy leaned in close and asked what I do.
Apparently I go behind Zagat and watch Italian reality TV...and that's not the half of it.
When I pulled into Dutch & Co., there was one regular at the bar and a favorite bartender behind it. He had a quizzical look on his face and immediately said, "I expected you would be at Alton Brown tonight." Too costly, I explained and he nodded knowingly.
He said one of their staff had spotted Alton at Sub Rosa Bakery earlier when she went to pick up bread for the restaurant. And that was after he'd been to Lamplighter, Black Sheep, Saison and Sally Bell's.
Richmond will wear your tail out.
Before long, I overheard two servers trying to decide on the evening's music, pleased as could be when they went with Washed Out. As one server put it, "Kinda mellow, not too loud, sort of druggy."
That's my idea of an ideal sonic landscape for a fine meal.
As he was pouring the house white wine - the crisp La Galope Sauvignon Blanc - the barkeep made a few recommendations for eating and I took him at his word.
I'd already been eyeing one of the blackboard specials - white anchovies with beluga lentils, cucumber, apple and watermelon radish - and his praise of the dish was all I needed. The combination was full of contrasts (texture, sweet/salty) and the glistening tiny beluga lentils were perfectly cooked.
In between our conversations about Fire, Flour and Fork and the dangers of Richmond becoming a big-time food town, it was hard not to notice the bartender adding sugar and mixing a vat behind the bar. Turns out he's working on a batch of root beer to go with the back door dogs next week.
Since I'm a huge fan of root beer, he gave me a taste of the still-brewing liquid, explaining that the sugar at this point was to feed the yeast and aid fermentation, not for sweetening's sake. We puzzled over how root beer is a love it or hate it beverage with few people neutral about it.
"I just assumed everybody grew up with it and loved it, like me," he shrugged. Amen. I have five sisters and they all hate it while my parents and I love it. Go figure.
For my next course, I had a killer plate of jerked blood sausage with plantain cornbread, coconut-braised nuts, Aji dulce peppers and plum slices. An unabashed fan of blood sausage, I was especially taken with the coconut-braised nuts, a unique rendering of something hard and savory into something sweet and tender. Leave it to the D & Co guys.
The pleasure of dining alone is all about the conversations you overhear. One was about Katie Ukrop saying that she'd gone into Graffiato's and not seen a single face she recognized. That dovetails with my Graffiato's experience, where everyone around me at the bar was from the counties, on the scent of a celebrity chef.
Another came from a gentleman approaching the bartender asking when the neighborhood had been gentrified. Um, sir, it's still a work in progress.
Witness the guy on a bike pulling a suitcase on wheels as I walked to my car. Th-thump, th-thump.
My second pit stop of the evening was at Camden's for a screening of "From Italy With Love," a quasi-reality show where three Americans get whisked off to Italy to prove they can live and cook as Italians.
Good luck with that. I've been to Italy and they're a different breed.
The screening began with wine, hardly surprising since the sponsor of the show was Zonin Family Estates, owners of nine Italian wineries. Given a choice of Chianti or Prosecco, I took a few sips of the former before switching to the latter.
A guy near me observed, "I think there's nothing wrong with starting the day with bubbly. If you're going to drink before noon, it should be sparkling." He should know; he said he's woken up in bar in the morning before.
The small crowd who'd gathered to watch the screening was a lively, wine-drinking bunch and wasted no time in mocking the TV show, which began with a very Olive Garden-like look. From there, it showed the three (embarrassing) American contestants as they arrived in Italy and were welcomed into the bosom of an Italian family.
Perhaps it was the wine, but from there, we were catcalling the contestants and mocking their selection since they clearly had no cooking or wine skills to speak of. When told to cook whole branzino, one guy admitted he'd not only never cooked fish, he didn't even like to eat it.
And you got selected for an Italian cooking show?
They went to a jovial butcher in Tuscany who graded their meat cutting and cooking skills, finding them lacking. Their final stop was a Zonin winery where the hapless trio attempted to blend wines. Epic fail.
Not so for those of us watching because we were enjoying Zonin's wine along with house-cured salami, prosciutto and pastrami along with cheeses, pickled vegetables and more of the wines while making non-stop commentary about the show.
As a people, Americans represent so poorly as to be comical.
Twenty minutes after the show ended, two women showed up to join the party, delayed by Alton Brown's performance at CenterStage, bearing pictures and tales of over-sized E-Z Bake ovens and songs about shrimp.
In a typical only-in-Richmond moment, one of the women turned out to be the girlfriend of a long-time music friend, a talented singer and drummer I've known for years. I knew as much about her boyfriend as she did.
One of the guys at the party had me in stitches joking about some of the attendees and their resemblance to the clueless contestants on "From Italy With Love." Meanwhile, we wasted no time sipping the very Prosecco so prominently placed in the show we were watching.
Conversation flowed with the attendees, ranging from William Shatner to Pulp to Dr. Who (who?). A guy told me I seemed "very cool" while some of the attendees did not (he pointed out examples and grinned). One guy leaned in close and asked what I do.
Apparently I go behind Zagat and watch Italian reality TV...and that's not the half of it.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Titillating and Informative at the Same Time
It's probably terribly post-modern of me to write about writing, but here goes.
If, as Benjamin Franklin said, you should either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about, where does that leave writing something no one will read?
I spent a fair amount of my day writing a letter that I didn't send, but needed to capture. Thoughts have been swirling around in my head and in order to make them stop, I needed to get them down in words and sentences, which I did.
But the more I thought about it, the more sure I was that no one needed to read them. But, plain and simple, I needed, really needed, to write them.
The words I wrote weren't about being the 282nd person to vote at my polling place or about the sweet old lady outside it who questioned me intently about whether I'd been challenged when I provided my photo ID to vote (I hadn't).
They weren't about taking my hired mouth and a friend to lunch and having him remind me that we should be getting together for more than lunch, say music or art.
And while it was a lovely meal, my words weren't about dinner at Lucy's where my fellow diner told me about a car chase, crash and arrest on Broad Street this afternoon, snarling traffic westward for hours.
Irresistible was the soup of the day, a tomato-based mahi mahi and potato with just a hint of heat, worth slurping up every spoonful. Then I tucked into the lemon-vinaigrette-dressed winter salad of kale, roasted Brussels sprouts and sunflower seeds while hearing tales of familiar faces showing up in commercials and TV shows (so I'll never see them).
Post-dinner, I made my way to the Speakeasy to see 5th Wall Theater's staged reading of "Writer's Weekend: A New Musical," sharing a table with two women, one of whom turned out to be in the show's band.
I'd seen the first reading of the play last Spring and thoroughly enjoyed the story of six people attending a writer's workshop in hopes of fine-tuning their writing skills or, as the only published writer in the bunch put it, "Jump-starting my literary libido."
A four-piece band of two keyboard players, a bassist and drummer accompanied the actors as they sang of their frustrations and hopes for their writing careers, all in various stages. The sci-fi writer was self-published with cartons of her books crowding her basement, the former TV action star wanted to be a playwright but his concept was weak, the newspaper reporter hoped to use his journalism background writing about crime to pen detective stories, the young technical writer was trying to branch out into fiction, the suburban slam poet still had more attitude than talent and the oversexed romance writer had writer's block but a string of best-sellers behind her. Add in the bitter writer who leads the sessions and the potential for snappy dialog was obvious.
Jacqueline Jones narrated the play, sometimes even helping it along when there was overly-long silence. "I think that's a music cue!" she said cheerily to get everyone back on track.
And just in case the audience was unclear on what being a writer means, it was spelled out in song. "A working writer means a writer who gets paid. Who knows, I might even get laid." Don't count on it, friend, it never got me laid.
I couldn't decide which character I found the funniest, the timid technical writer played by Mark Persinger who was seduced by the older woman ("Old is the new black") or the ebony goddess poet played by Carolyn Meade, all attitude and adjectives.
Like last time, there was a lot that made me laugh out loud (editor jokes, older woman comments) including the written-to-be-awful manuscripts the would-be writers shared with their peers ("Rickets: The Musical").
And like with all his staged readings, director B.C. Maupin had made sure we got a lot more than just actors with scripts reading in chairs. Characters made eyes at each other, moved as if to dance, met at a bar and just generally suggested a lot more staging than some readings deliver.
Even though I knew the story, it was interesting to hear the songs come out of different mouths this time - and there were some excellent voices in the cast - and watch how these actors put their spins on the characters I'd met last May.
Seeing "Writer's Weekend" satisfied old Ben Franklin's directive to do something worth writing about. As to the other part of his wisdom, I'd even go so far as to say my earlier, unsent letter was worth reading.
Didn't get paid, didn't get laid, but there's always tomorrow. I'll probably write about that, too.
If, as Benjamin Franklin said, you should either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about, where does that leave writing something no one will read?
I spent a fair amount of my day writing a letter that I didn't send, but needed to capture. Thoughts have been swirling around in my head and in order to make them stop, I needed to get them down in words and sentences, which I did.
But the more I thought about it, the more sure I was that no one needed to read them. But, plain and simple, I needed, really needed, to write them.
The words I wrote weren't about being the 282nd person to vote at my polling place or about the sweet old lady outside it who questioned me intently about whether I'd been challenged when I provided my photo ID to vote (I hadn't).
They weren't about taking my hired mouth and a friend to lunch and having him remind me that we should be getting together for more than lunch, say music or art.
And while it was a lovely meal, my words weren't about dinner at Lucy's where my fellow diner told me about a car chase, crash and arrest on Broad Street this afternoon, snarling traffic westward for hours.
Irresistible was the soup of the day, a tomato-based mahi mahi and potato with just a hint of heat, worth slurping up every spoonful. Then I tucked into the lemon-vinaigrette-dressed winter salad of kale, roasted Brussels sprouts and sunflower seeds while hearing tales of familiar faces showing up in commercials and TV shows (so I'll never see them).
Post-dinner, I made my way to the Speakeasy to see 5th Wall Theater's staged reading of "Writer's Weekend: A New Musical," sharing a table with two women, one of whom turned out to be in the show's band.
I'd seen the first reading of the play last Spring and thoroughly enjoyed the story of six people attending a writer's workshop in hopes of fine-tuning their writing skills or, as the only published writer in the bunch put it, "Jump-starting my literary libido."
A four-piece band of two keyboard players, a bassist and drummer accompanied the actors as they sang of their frustrations and hopes for their writing careers, all in various stages. The sci-fi writer was self-published with cartons of her books crowding her basement, the former TV action star wanted to be a playwright but his concept was weak, the newspaper reporter hoped to use his journalism background writing about crime to pen detective stories, the young technical writer was trying to branch out into fiction, the suburban slam poet still had more attitude than talent and the oversexed romance writer had writer's block but a string of best-sellers behind her. Add in the bitter writer who leads the sessions and the potential for snappy dialog was obvious.
Jacqueline Jones narrated the play, sometimes even helping it along when there was overly-long silence. "I think that's a music cue!" she said cheerily to get everyone back on track.
And just in case the audience was unclear on what being a writer means, it was spelled out in song. "A working writer means a writer who gets paid. Who knows, I might even get laid." Don't count on it, friend, it never got me laid.
I couldn't decide which character I found the funniest, the timid technical writer played by Mark Persinger who was seduced by the older woman ("Old is the new black") or the ebony goddess poet played by Carolyn Meade, all attitude and adjectives.
Like last time, there was a lot that made me laugh out loud (editor jokes, older woman comments) including the written-to-be-awful manuscripts the would-be writers shared with their peers ("Rickets: The Musical").
And like with all his staged readings, director B.C. Maupin had made sure we got a lot more than just actors with scripts reading in chairs. Characters made eyes at each other, moved as if to dance, met at a bar and just generally suggested a lot more staging than some readings deliver.
Even though I knew the story, it was interesting to hear the songs come out of different mouths this time - and there were some excellent voices in the cast - and watch how these actors put their spins on the characters I'd met last May.
Seeing "Writer's Weekend" satisfied old Ben Franklin's directive to do something worth writing about. As to the other part of his wisdom, I'd even go so far as to say my earlier, unsent letter was worth reading.
Didn't get paid, didn't get laid, but there's always tomorrow. I'll probably write about that, too.
Monday, November 3, 2014
God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise
I know we gained an hour last night, but with a non-stop day and night, it sure doesn't feel like it.
Sunday slipped away in a haze of thought provoking film, noisy dining and mellow music.
I chose "Dear White People" to get the afternoon started, convinced after seeing the preview last month that it would offer a smart look at a still delicate subject.
Of course the crowd was small for a 2:40 movie with a smattering of black couples, but when a white couple came in after us, they chose to sit in the same row we were in, an odd choice given that most of the seats were free. So much potential commentary there.
As the film told the story of being black at an Ivy League school, one of the main characters spouted racial wisdom on her radio show.
"Dear White People, the minimum number of black friends required not to seem racist has just been raised to two." Whew, got that covered.
One of her comments was about how if white people are saying African-American instead of black, they're racist, a point I found especially satisfying. Having always used the term "black," I have been corrected a few times only to insist that there was nothing derisive about the word. Vindicated.
As the credits rolled, the screen showed news clippings from the past few years about colleges that have held blackface parties, a stark reminder that even in a time when the President is half black, we still have a lot of racial issues to address.
The movie was everything I want in a film: smart, funny and thought provoking with well-drawn characters and whip smart dialog. The kind of film I'll be encouraging people to see and wanting to talk about for a while.
The only downside of the entire movie was that I over-buttered the popcorn, something I didn't think was possible. Lesson learned.
With a goal of parking once and partying twice, we made our next stop 821 for dinner and they were busy already and getting busier all the time.
Tucked in a front booth with black bean nachos and 1800, we stuffed our faces and talked about the movie's message, agreeing that a second viewing would be in order.
The usual thrash music played in the background, our server was a friend who knew my order before I gave it and in what seemed like no time at all, it was the appointed hour to walk over to theMosque Landmark Altria Theater.
It seems like it's been closed for ages for renovations but other than moving the box office to the Main Street side and adding fancy lighted marquees, we couldn't tell any difference at all inside.
The crowd was decidedly one that doesn't go out often for shows (I'm guessing most of the people in the room had to get babysitters to attend). They were endlessly restless, too, getting up and down throughout the evening during the performances.
Call me picky, but I find that annoying at a seated show. No one would do that so often at the symphony.
That new marquee had said that the show was at 7 but once in our seats, we had to wait until way after 7 for the opener, Belle Brigade, to come out and begin our musical evening.
A brother/sister band (and she was the drummer!) with two other band members, they made sunny, rootsy music and inserted self-deprecating remarks in between songs.
"This is a song bout having big feelings for someone who doesn't have them for you," drummer Barbara said. "I hope you don't know what this feels like." Oh, but I did once.
"We're from Los Angeles, so we're sorry about this next song," she cracked. "It's a country song." They finished with the gorgeous "When Everything Was What It Was" about being kids and the night was off to a fine start.
During the break I spotted my long-time music buddy and went down to chat with him. Surprised to see him because I wouldn't have guessed he was a Ray LaMontagne fan, he admitted he'd been given a free ticket in exchange for reviewing the show.
Teasing him about what a good seat they'd given him (he was several rows closer than us), he whispered that it wasn't so great because he was seated next to the therapist he and his ex had seen for two years. Awkward.
Ray LaMontagne came out in a hat looking sensitive and intense, beginning an hour and a half of women (and even men) calling out their devotion to him. "I love you, Ray!"
Spare me. No doubt their book groups will thrill to their stories of seeing Ray.
There was a gorgeous backdrop, a big circle surrounded by curved lines onto which were projected colors, patterns and light throughout the set.
Although I love Ray's distinctive and husky voice, I'm not familiar enough with his music to recognize a lot of what I heard (beyond "Trouble," "Three More Days" and "Jolene"). That's not a complaint because there's a certain appeal to hearing music you don't know because it allows you to experience it with no expectations.
The first time I saw Neko Case ten years ago, I knew nothing of her music and I walked away in love with her voice and music.
But many of the fans clearly had a better knowledge of Ray's catalog than me, frequently calling out for favorites. Finally, Ray told them to be patient and asked if parents didn't teach their children patience anymore. Pretty sure they don't. Instant gratification and all that.
One of the best parts of the band's sound was the upright bass player's obvious talent. Ray referred to him as "Zacharias, a good man."
Given the number of amateur show-goers in attendance, we shouldn't have been surprised when so many people rushed out when the show ended. We waited the minute it took for the band to come out for their encore and only then made our move to leave.
Rounding out the night listening to "Dusty in Memphis" and drinking Desert Rose Cabernet Franc, I felt like I finally had time to relax, making for a fine, low-key ending to a non-stop day.
Where exactly did that extra hour go?
Sunday slipped away in a haze of thought provoking film, noisy dining and mellow music.
I chose "Dear White People" to get the afternoon started, convinced after seeing the preview last month that it would offer a smart look at a still delicate subject.
Of course the crowd was small for a 2:40 movie with a smattering of black couples, but when a white couple came in after us, they chose to sit in the same row we were in, an odd choice given that most of the seats were free. So much potential commentary there.
As the film told the story of being black at an Ivy League school, one of the main characters spouted racial wisdom on her radio show.
"Dear White People, the minimum number of black friends required not to seem racist has just been raised to two." Whew, got that covered.
One of her comments was about how if white people are saying African-American instead of black, they're racist, a point I found especially satisfying. Having always used the term "black," I have been corrected a few times only to insist that there was nothing derisive about the word. Vindicated.
As the credits rolled, the screen showed news clippings from the past few years about colleges that have held blackface parties, a stark reminder that even in a time when the President is half black, we still have a lot of racial issues to address.
The movie was everything I want in a film: smart, funny and thought provoking with well-drawn characters and whip smart dialog. The kind of film I'll be encouraging people to see and wanting to talk about for a while.
The only downside of the entire movie was that I over-buttered the popcorn, something I didn't think was possible. Lesson learned.
With a goal of parking once and partying twice, we made our next stop 821 for dinner and they were busy already and getting busier all the time.
Tucked in a front booth with black bean nachos and 1800, we stuffed our faces and talked about the movie's message, agreeing that a second viewing would be in order.
The usual thrash music played in the background, our server was a friend who knew my order before I gave it and in what seemed like no time at all, it was the appointed hour to walk over to the
It seems like it's been closed for ages for renovations but other than moving the box office to the Main Street side and adding fancy lighted marquees, we couldn't tell any difference at all inside.
The crowd was decidedly one that doesn't go out often for shows (I'm guessing most of the people in the room had to get babysitters to attend). They were endlessly restless, too, getting up and down throughout the evening during the performances.
Call me picky, but I find that annoying at a seated show. No one would do that so often at the symphony.
That new marquee had said that the show was at 7 but once in our seats, we had to wait until way after 7 for the opener, Belle Brigade, to come out and begin our musical evening.
A brother/sister band (and she was the drummer!) with two other band members, they made sunny, rootsy music and inserted self-deprecating remarks in between songs.
"This is a song bout having big feelings for someone who doesn't have them for you," drummer Barbara said. "I hope you don't know what this feels like." Oh, but I did once.
"We're from Los Angeles, so we're sorry about this next song," she cracked. "It's a country song." They finished with the gorgeous "When Everything Was What It Was" about being kids and the night was off to a fine start.
During the break I spotted my long-time music buddy and went down to chat with him. Surprised to see him because I wouldn't have guessed he was a Ray LaMontagne fan, he admitted he'd been given a free ticket in exchange for reviewing the show.
Teasing him about what a good seat they'd given him (he was several rows closer than us), he whispered that it wasn't so great because he was seated next to the therapist he and his ex had seen for two years. Awkward.
Ray LaMontagne came out in a hat looking sensitive and intense, beginning an hour and a half of women (and even men) calling out their devotion to him. "I love you, Ray!"
Spare me. No doubt their book groups will thrill to their stories of seeing Ray.
There was a gorgeous backdrop, a big circle surrounded by curved lines onto which were projected colors, patterns and light throughout the set.
Although I love Ray's distinctive and husky voice, I'm not familiar enough with his music to recognize a lot of what I heard (beyond "Trouble," "Three More Days" and "Jolene"). That's not a complaint because there's a certain appeal to hearing music you don't know because it allows you to experience it with no expectations.
The first time I saw Neko Case ten years ago, I knew nothing of her music and I walked away in love with her voice and music.
But many of the fans clearly had a better knowledge of Ray's catalog than me, frequently calling out for favorites. Finally, Ray told them to be patient and asked if parents didn't teach their children patience anymore. Pretty sure they don't. Instant gratification and all that.
One of the best parts of the band's sound was the upright bass player's obvious talent. Ray referred to him as "Zacharias, a good man."
Given the number of amateur show-goers in attendance, we shouldn't have been surprised when so many people rushed out when the show ended. We waited the minute it took for the band to come out for their encore and only then made our move to leave.
Rounding out the night listening to "Dusty in Memphis" and drinking Desert Rose Cabernet Franc, I felt like I finally had time to relax, making for a fine, low-key ending to a non-stop day.
Where exactly did that extra hour go?
Sunday, November 2, 2014
I Love Long Life Better Than Figs
Bootleg: to make, distribute or sell illicit goods. Origin: late 19th century, from the smugglers' practice of concealing bottles in their boots.
Bootleg Shakespeare: annual production whereby actors learn their lines separately and only come together for one night to stage Shakespeare without rehearsal.
Scene: VMFA for the first time, meaning that instead of standing outdoors on a nasty evening to wait in line for tickets, would-be attendees waited in the comfort of heat and art.
I could get used to this.
Once tickets were handed out, everyone beat feet to Best Cafe to wine and dine until showtime. Both Pru and I opted for steaming bowls of beef stew and bread, the better to ward off the chill from tonight's wind and rain.
We joined George and Jo, two strangers who'd been in line behind us, at their table to eat and listen to Bardship Enterprise, an aptly named quartet playing music (Prince, Jackson 5, Bob Marley, Sublime) for our listening pleasure.
Between songs, George, a security guard at the museum, regaled us with tales of drunken debauchery during corporate parties and weddings at the museum. Imagine a couple pitching woo on the Rockefeller bed and you get an idea of the nerve exhibited while on state property.
It was only during our chit-chat that I learned that tonight we turn the clocks back. Woo-hoo, after the week I've had, I could sure use an extra hour.
Then it was on to the Leslie Cheek theater for "Antony and Cleopatra" directed by local favorite Foster Solomon.
"Twelve hours ago, this production did not exist," he explained from the stage. "If you know 'Antony and Cleopatra," you're going to be surprised. If you don't know 'Antony and Cleopatra," you're going to be surprised."
Sounded like a win/win to me.
The play opened with "As Time Goes By" performed by the show band onstage which went on to feature the vocal stylings of Rebecca Anne Muhleman in a bright red wig and Jacqueline O'Connor in a sassy blond wig on vocals doing Lady Gaga and Beyonce.
My full heart remains in use with you.
The always compelling (and quick) Joe Carlson played Antony, getting big laughs with lines such as, "Look here at this imaginary letter" and pulling out nothing.
The world and my great office will sometimes divide me from your bosom.
When he said that line, he stared directly into Octavia, his future wife's, chest.
Octavia is of a holy, cold and still conversation.
Of the 33 actors involved, I recognized many of them. I'm an unabashed fan of David Janosik who played Caesar for his diction and timing, Billy Christopher Maupin who played a white-faced soothsayer for his facility with language and comedic detail, and Kerry McGee for her elastic face and descriptive gestures.
And we are women's men.
I never tire of watching the nuances of an Adam Mincks character, Dean Knight can convey more with a glance or downturn of his mouth than some actors can with entire monologues and Dixon Cashwell was born to play a saucy eunuch.
During the big fight scene in Act II, a screen showed everything from Monty Python to space battles, while the real cast used plastic swords and pillows to fight onstage.
You knew very well that my heart was tied to your ship and that you would pull me along with you.
The delight of a bootleg performance is that even when you're watching a tragedy, humor bubbles up throughout, whether it's an actor calling for his line (and often making a joke of it in the process), missed cues ("Enter Caesar...Caesar?") or improvisation ("Trust no one with Caesar except that guy with the "P" name").
By the end, the lovers were dead and even Caesar had to soften a little acknowledging their love of each other, but not before the inimitable Susan Sanford had the audience in stitches as the asp supplier with a thick Scottish brogue. Hilarious.
After the cast took a well-deserved bow or two, Pru and I walked out discussing how the Bootleg Shakespeare production is always top-notch despite the lack of rehearsals and reliably funny because of the lack of rehearsals.
It was enough to make me drop everything I had in my wallet into the bucket on my way out.
And then, just because I'd found out we had an extra hour, we headed to the Sporty to hear our favorite '80s cover band who tonight were all about some southern rock.
Turning away from the bar after procuring my 1800, a guy asked me to dance before I'd even had a sip or found a place to roost. Sorry, sir, not yet.
Sipping and listening to the band, I exercised my best conversation, which was neither holy, cold or still.
Octavia, I'm not. All about bootleg and '80s covers, I absolutely am.
Bootleg Shakespeare: annual production whereby actors learn their lines separately and only come together for one night to stage Shakespeare without rehearsal.
Scene: VMFA for the first time, meaning that instead of standing outdoors on a nasty evening to wait in line for tickets, would-be attendees waited in the comfort of heat and art.
I could get used to this.
Once tickets were handed out, everyone beat feet to Best Cafe to wine and dine until showtime. Both Pru and I opted for steaming bowls of beef stew and bread, the better to ward off the chill from tonight's wind and rain.
We joined George and Jo, two strangers who'd been in line behind us, at their table to eat and listen to Bardship Enterprise, an aptly named quartet playing music (Prince, Jackson 5, Bob Marley, Sublime) for our listening pleasure.
Between songs, George, a security guard at the museum, regaled us with tales of drunken debauchery during corporate parties and weddings at the museum. Imagine a couple pitching woo on the Rockefeller bed and you get an idea of the nerve exhibited while on state property.
It was only during our chit-chat that I learned that tonight we turn the clocks back. Woo-hoo, after the week I've had, I could sure use an extra hour.
Then it was on to the Leslie Cheek theater for "Antony and Cleopatra" directed by local favorite Foster Solomon.
"Twelve hours ago, this production did not exist," he explained from the stage. "If you know 'Antony and Cleopatra," you're going to be surprised. If you don't know 'Antony and Cleopatra," you're going to be surprised."
Sounded like a win/win to me.
The play opened with "As Time Goes By" performed by the show band onstage which went on to feature the vocal stylings of Rebecca Anne Muhleman in a bright red wig and Jacqueline O'Connor in a sassy blond wig on vocals doing Lady Gaga and Beyonce.
My full heart remains in use with you.
The always compelling (and quick) Joe Carlson played Antony, getting big laughs with lines such as, "Look here at this imaginary letter" and pulling out nothing.
The world and my great office will sometimes divide me from your bosom.
When he said that line, he stared directly into Octavia, his future wife's, chest.
Octavia is of a holy, cold and still conversation.
Of the 33 actors involved, I recognized many of them. I'm an unabashed fan of David Janosik who played Caesar for his diction and timing, Billy Christopher Maupin who played a white-faced soothsayer for his facility with language and comedic detail, and Kerry McGee for her elastic face and descriptive gestures.
And we are women's men.
I never tire of watching the nuances of an Adam Mincks character, Dean Knight can convey more with a glance or downturn of his mouth than some actors can with entire monologues and Dixon Cashwell was born to play a saucy eunuch.
During the big fight scene in Act II, a screen showed everything from Monty Python to space battles, while the real cast used plastic swords and pillows to fight onstage.
You knew very well that my heart was tied to your ship and that you would pull me along with you.
The delight of a bootleg performance is that even when you're watching a tragedy, humor bubbles up throughout, whether it's an actor calling for his line (and often making a joke of it in the process), missed cues ("Enter Caesar...Caesar?") or improvisation ("Trust no one with Caesar except that guy with the "P" name").
By the end, the lovers were dead and even Caesar had to soften a little acknowledging their love of each other, but not before the inimitable Susan Sanford had the audience in stitches as the asp supplier with a thick Scottish brogue. Hilarious.
After the cast took a well-deserved bow or two, Pru and I walked out discussing how the Bootleg Shakespeare production is always top-notch despite the lack of rehearsals and reliably funny because of the lack of rehearsals.
It was enough to make me drop everything I had in my wallet into the bucket on my way out.
And then, just because I'd found out we had an extra hour, we headed to the Sporty to hear our favorite '80s cover band who tonight were all about some southern rock.
Turning away from the bar after procuring my 1800, a guy asked me to dance before I'd even had a sip or found a place to roost. Sorry, sir, not yet.
Sipping and listening to the band, I exercised my best conversation, which was neither holy, cold or still.
Octavia, I'm not. All about bootleg and '80s covers, I absolutely am.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
One and Done
Still firing, still flouring, still forking.
In a repeat of yesterday, my friend shows up at the crack of 9:30 so we can walk over to the Library of Virginia for day two of food curiosity. The weather has turned noticeably cooler and the sky threatens rain so I bring along my umbrella.
Our first course offering today is "At the Counters," a screening of two documentaries about lunch counter sit-ins in the '60s.
"If We So Choose" chronicles the non-violent sit-ins ("You can't put out a fire with fire") at the Varsity Grill in Athens, Georgia.
"The Richmond 34" told a story much closer to home about the VUU students who staged demonstrations and sit-ina (resulting in the first mass arrest of the Civil Rights movement) at Thalhimer's lunch room.
A marcher's protest sign said it all: "Don't blame the police. Thalhimer's swore out the warrants." Truth.
A panel of four - the Athens documentarian, a VUU history professor, a Thalhimer and an original member of the Richmond 34, Elizabeth Johnson Rice - each gave their take on the events for a fascinating look from all sides.
My next stop was "Founding Foodies" with author Dave DeWitt, who took numerous tangents ("And then there was a scandal" about dating a student when he was a college professor) in talking about how Washington (a farmer with money), Jefferson (a gardener with debt) and Franklin (retired at 30 after creating the post office system) all had vigorous interest in food and wine.
Among the interesting food topics he discussed were the history of barbecue (begun as a cheap way to feed crowds at political rallies), how Jefferson was the first to import a pasta machine, and how peacocks were the "feast" bird before turkeys.
Among the tangents he took were Jefferson vowing not to remarry when his wife died (hence the affair with 16-year old Sally Hemmings), how De Witt got a free pellet smoker out of Yoder Company and how using a conventional wood smoker cut into his sports-watching time. Yawn.
Leaving FFF behind, we walked over to Lucy's for lunch where a cheeseburger salad was just what I needed after yesterday's all-day small bite eating. The music was funky, a Doris day movie was on the screen and the crowd was low-key. Perfection.
My last class, "Getting Gnudi," was with Mike Isabella of Graffiato whom I'd never heard because I don't watch TV so haven't seen "Top Chef" (which he claimed was a nightmare fueled by over-drinking by the judges and crew).
His plan was to make a quick and easy meal - Ricotta and goat cheese gnudi with shallot/tomatoes sauce -that we could make at home that would taste as good as his.
Being from New Jersey, he pronounced onion as ung-yin and meatball as meat-bowl. He told a story of a line cook under him using a dull knife to chop chives and throwing that knife in the garbage and telling the guy, "We don't use dull knives here. Get out!"
That line cook now works at the French laundry, for which Isabella jokingly took credit.
His advice boiled down to two things: with cooking, all you need is love and pasta water should be as salty as the ocean. Got it.
Once through with his Italian wisdom, Friend and I made one last stop in the big tent for coffee (her) and chocolate (me) before walking home in a fierce wind, light rain and uncomfortably cold temperature.
It's hard to believe that only four days ago I was in the ocean in a bathing suit.
And so my Fire, Flour and Fork foray comes to a close. I'll give its creators credit, they did a fabulous job of planning, organizing and executing two days and nights of varied and mostly compelling programming.
One thing that came up again and again with people I talked to was that this event is going to be huge next year while this year, everything was manageable, interesting and easy to navigate. The consensus is that next year and going forward will be overcrowded and far less enjoyable as attendance grows.
It makes me glad I got to be an FFF virgin. Hats off to the inaugural weekend of what's sure to become an unwieldy monster with time.
That said, it was a distinct pleasure to be fired up and forked.
In a repeat of yesterday, my friend shows up at the crack of 9:30 so we can walk over to the Library of Virginia for day two of food curiosity. The weather has turned noticeably cooler and the sky threatens rain so I bring along my umbrella.
Our first course offering today is "At the Counters," a screening of two documentaries about lunch counter sit-ins in the '60s.
"If We So Choose" chronicles the non-violent sit-ins ("You can't put out a fire with fire") at the Varsity Grill in Athens, Georgia.
"The Richmond 34" told a story much closer to home about the VUU students who staged demonstrations and sit-ina (resulting in the first mass arrest of the Civil Rights movement) at Thalhimer's lunch room.
A marcher's protest sign said it all: "Don't blame the police. Thalhimer's swore out the warrants." Truth.
A panel of four - the Athens documentarian, a VUU history professor, a Thalhimer and an original member of the Richmond 34, Elizabeth Johnson Rice - each gave their take on the events for a fascinating look from all sides.
My next stop was "Founding Foodies" with author Dave DeWitt, who took numerous tangents ("And then there was a scandal" about dating a student when he was a college professor) in talking about how Washington (a farmer with money), Jefferson (a gardener with debt) and Franklin (retired at 30 after creating the post office system) all had vigorous interest in food and wine.
Among the interesting food topics he discussed were the history of barbecue (begun as a cheap way to feed crowds at political rallies), how Jefferson was the first to import a pasta machine, and how peacocks were the "feast" bird before turkeys.
Among the tangents he took were Jefferson vowing not to remarry when his wife died (hence the affair with 16-year old Sally Hemmings), how De Witt got a free pellet smoker out of Yoder Company and how using a conventional wood smoker cut into his sports-watching time. Yawn.
Leaving FFF behind, we walked over to Lucy's for lunch where a cheeseburger salad was just what I needed after yesterday's all-day small bite eating. The music was funky, a Doris day movie was on the screen and the crowd was low-key. Perfection.
My last class, "Getting Gnudi," was with Mike Isabella of Graffiato whom I'd never heard because I don't watch TV so haven't seen "Top Chef" (which he claimed was a nightmare fueled by over-drinking by the judges and crew).
His plan was to make a quick and easy meal - Ricotta and goat cheese gnudi with shallot/tomatoes sauce -that we could make at home that would taste as good as his.
Being from New Jersey, he pronounced onion as ung-yin and meatball as meat-bowl. He told a story of a line cook under him using a dull knife to chop chives and throwing that knife in the garbage and telling the guy, "We don't use dull knives here. Get out!"
That line cook now works at the French laundry, for which Isabella jokingly took credit.
His advice boiled down to two things: with cooking, all you need is love and pasta water should be as salty as the ocean. Got it.
Once through with his Italian wisdom, Friend and I made one last stop in the big tent for coffee (her) and chocolate (me) before walking home in a fierce wind, light rain and uncomfortably cold temperature.
It's hard to believe that only four days ago I was in the ocean in a bathing suit.
And so my Fire, Flour and Fork foray comes to a close. I'll give its creators credit, they did a fabulous job of planning, organizing and executing two days and nights of varied and mostly compelling programming.
One thing that came up again and again with people I talked to was that this event is going to be huge next year while this year, everything was manageable, interesting and easy to navigate. The consensus is that next year and going forward will be overcrowded and far less enjoyable as attendance grows.
It makes me glad I got to be an FFF virgin. Hats off to the inaugural weekend of what's sure to become an unwieldy monster with time.
That said, it was a distinct pleasure to be fired up and forked.
Food, Glorious Food
Being food curious can take all day and night.
First of all, it starts at the crack of dawn, meaning my fellow Gemini showed up at 9:30 to collect me and walk over to the Hilton Garden Inn and check in for Fire, Flour and Fork's Friday extravaganza.
People were clustered around the coffee station like it was mother's milk. When forced to, I can get up at the butt crack of dawn (though I'd prefer not to) but coffee's not what I'm looking for at that hour. Or any hour.
Our first session of the day was called "Relish Fork" with Paul Virant of Chicago's Vie restaurant talking about pickling and preserving ("Eat what you can and can what you can't") and Jamie Coffey of Williams & Sherrill making jam. Spoon jam, to be precise.
I'd never heard of spoon jam, but soon learned that it's jam made without using a hot water bath, meaning that the strawberry freezer jam I made for decades probably qualifies. Jamie's version was far more nuanced than mine, using raspberries, the juice of an orange, honey, sugar, orange zest and thyme.
Best of all, he passed around a jar of jam and little wooden spoons inscribed RVA for us to taste his beautiful jam with. When the jar was passed to me, the woman next to me told she loved my shoes. "I would wear the hell out of those." I assured her I do. Cute and comfortable wins the race.
As a lovely parting gift, Chef Virant passed out miniature jars of apple butter, pleasing me no end and sparking memories of childhood. Whenever one of my sisters or I would ask Mom for a snack, she always offered bread and apple butter.
You'd think I'd have gotten tired of it by now, but well-crafted apple butter still speaks to me. And I have to assume Chef Virant knows how to make some apple butter.
Our next session was "Biscuits of the South" for two reasons.
One, it was being given by Ronni Lundy, a founder of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and two, growing up with my Richmond grandmother living with us meant she made biscuits at least two or three times a week. Biscuits are in my blood and probably my DNA.
She began by holding up a bottle of sweet sorghum syrup and saying, "I'm gonna show you how little hillbilly children are introduced to it. It's a gateway drug," before pouring a third of the bottle into a bowl where several sticks of softened butter awaited.
Once she'd turned the yellow butter golden brown with sweet sorghum syrup, we received little ramekins of it with a biscuit. My first thought after one bite was how those hillbilly mothers had cut out a step. I always smeared my breakfast biscuits with a thick schmear of butter and then a layer of strawberry jam for sweetness.
A biscuit with sweet sorghum syrup delivers both sweet and salty in one application. Brilliant!
Lundy talked about how sweet sorghum syrup tasted of terroir, like wine, picking up mineral notes and changing from season to season.
"It's hard to make a bad biscuit and it's an art to make a good one," she informed us, saying light hands and soft wheat flour are essential. She critiqued the biscuits we were eating as having too much chew inside instead of fluff. Also, bacon grease makes great biscuits (duh).
Baking lessons aside, she also provided cultural history (cat's head biscuits are called that because they're big, like a cat's head) such as why farmers' wives made small biscuits in the morning. That way, everyone at the breakfast table - family and farmhands- got one biscuit to start eating while the next batch baked.
She talked about how when self-rising flour was developed, the public didn't embrace it, but mountain women did. Before, they'd had to measure their own leavening agents into the flour and now it was done for them.
I know my grandmother, who used no measuring to make her biscuits, took to self-rising flour from the day it came out. When she moved in with us, it was the first time I'd ever seen it.
And I could totally relate when she shared John Edgerton's axiom about how you could always tell a southerner because when biscuits were put on the table and most people took one, a southerner would take two and butter them both at once while the biscuits were still hot.
I am that person despite not being born a southerner. I suppose that comes from having a southern grandmother in the house making biscuits three times a week. I want hot, liquid butter oozing out of every bite of biscuit.
The question and answer period took us all over the place. Chef Colin Perry (and his epic mustache) of Montreal's Triple Crown Dinette (who makes 500 biscuits a weekend) was in the audience and fielded a question about adding pimento cheese to biscuit dough and why the results had been varied.
A guy in the row in front of us with a serious southern drawl raised his hand and observed about things such as pimento cheese additives, "That's not a biscuit." No indeed.
Someone asked about molasses versus sweet sorghum syrup and before she addressed that, Lundy turned to the pimento cheese maker and asked politely, "Was your question answered? Because I'm going to go down a road here."
"It's a dirt road," the southerner drawled and I laughed out loud.
After her explanation, a women told a story of meeting a couple who'd been married for 40 years, yet the wife complained that her husband still ate biscuits wrong.
Seems he would break them in half and spread his sweet sorghum syrup inside the halves while the wife was positive that the correct way was to stick your finger into the side of the biscuit to create a hole and pour the syrup in.
Forty years and that poor woman still hasn't been able to train her man how to eat a biscuit properly. I think there was a life lesson more than a culinary lesson there.
Two classes behind us, we were glad when it was lunch time, taking the secret side door to the giant sampling tent set up on Sixth Street to gobble Belmont Butchery sausage (and watch butcher Tanya debone a whole pig), Gearhart's chocolates, Rapphanock oysters, and a host of other locally made food items.
At the Virginia wine tasting table were Veritas, Pollack, Barboursville, Keswick, North Gate and Grace Estate, the latter two new to me. It's impossible to keep up with all the new Virginia wineries in spite of my best efforts.
It was inevitable that I'd run into people I knew and I did - the former co-worker, the beermiester, the kitten lover, the baker, the low key mover and shaker - and the consensus was that FFF had been meticulously planned and executed so far.
From there we went to the John Marshall ballroom where ZZQ was serving up their Texas style barbecue. Once I'd procured a plate of brisket and potato salad, I found a seat at a table of strangers, only to have the guy across from me ask, "Aren't you Karen? I think Prabir introduced us a few years ago. Don't you write a blog called I Could Go On and On?"
The woman to his left assured me that he has an unbelievable memory and does this all the time. Meanwhile, I had no problem finishing off my plate while chatting with them about their screen-printing business, which sessions they'd attended and where we were all heading next.
I'd found it impossible to pass up "Oyster Fork" with Mike Hutt of the Virginia Marine Products Board, an unabashed cheerleader for Virginia oysters.
I've done several stories on Virginia's oyster industry so while I knew almost everything he told us, a few tidbits were new to me.
The governor has declared November Virginia oyster month.Seventeen tons of oyster shells were collected last year in Richmond from festivals and restaurants (such as Lemaire, Heritage, Saison and Dutch & Co.). They love our oysters in Asia.
After being shown how to open oysters, they let us loose on two trays of bivalves, one of buttery oysters from the Rappahannock and the other seaside oysters tasting like a mouth full of ocean water.
He suggested we begin with the less salty ones, but I already know I prefer saltier so I did my damage there and damn, these were some of the briniest oysters I've ever had. Delicious.
I will give these guys credit, though, the oysters were served with no accouterments - no cocktail sauce, no lemon, no mignonette - so you were just tasting oysters and water, no adornments. If there were any oyster virgins in the room, it was the equivalent of dropping them into the deep end of the pool.
After I'd gorged on the sea, Gemini and I cut out. We weren't skipping class exactly, but we wanted some down time to assess and regroup, finding it at Saison market for a happy hour glass of Vino Verde.
Then she was off to home and hearth and I got cleaned up to go to someplace I never thought I would despite smelling it for years: the inside of the 1911 C.F. Sauer factory on Broad Street.
Walking up to the check-in desk, the woman looked at me and feigned surprise. "You, again?" FFF humor.
Being the punctual sort, I got herded into the first tour group along with a guy who'd been at my lunch table and the oyster class. When I asked what had brought him to FFF, he said simply, "I love food."
With a little probing, he shared that he'd worked in restaurants for years (including with Sean Brock back in the day), although he was no longer in the business. It's an addiction some people never get over.
Our tour guide was Sauer's marketing director and she took us up and down old staircases to see the workings of the company who puts out the spicy scents on Broad Street.
Walking in to the building, we saw a charming, wood-framed window, above which hung a sign saying "Information." I was thrilled when she told everyone to deposit their cell phone in the back room because no cameras were allowed. I was the only one who didn't have to divest myself of a device.
Sauer tours are quite a rarity, it seems.
She showed us a framed collection of awards Sauer's had won, asking if anyone had read "The Devil in the White City," (which I had) set in the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
It was at that fair that Sauer's had won their first award for purity in their products.
Walking past vintage wooden doors, a break room with library chairs and tables and machinery, we heard how Sauer's was the first to bottle extracts and the only company still using glass bottles.
All the equipment was original to the building as was the sign, "Think! This equipment pays your salary. Take care of it."
We learned that in terms of what they produce, it's predominantly pepper, garlic and cinnamon. We heard about how they still cold soak their vanilla beans in grain alcohol while other companies use a sped-up heating process much like percolating coffee.
Speaking of, the aroma of the warm, vanilla room was sublime and while others got overheated, I could have listened to her talk there all night and enjoyed that scent and temperature.
When we saw huge sacks of MSG, we all guessed it was for Asian markets, but learned that MSG is extremely popular in the American southeast. Who knew?
Filing past the president's office, we looked in to see green leather furniture, painted portraits of past Sauer presidents (it's always been a family owned business) and a fireplace mantle with one of their most popular products, jars of Duke's mayonnaise, adorning it.
After that, we stood in the office area for a Q & A, learning that in all its years, Sauer's had never laid off an employee, even during the world wars and the depression. Now, that's impressive.
Outside in Sauer's rose garden, our group was offered whiskey-based Boulevardier cocktails and hors d'oeuvres to accompany them, all under the scenic glow of the Sauer's vanilla sign, which now meant a whole lot more after 28 years in Richmond because I'd learned why their vanilla was such a big deal.
One of the Sauer men sat in a windowsill outside, sharing colorful stories about his great-grandfather's racing car habit, how they got the city to let them replace the rotting windows facing Broad Street and that multiple bands had asked to have their picture taken in front of the vanilla sign.
FYI: The answer is always no. The reason he gave was who knows what their music is like? Or if they're going to be naked in the picture?
Purity, remember?
My final FFF stop of the day was Hardywood for the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts, a dine-around with local chefs.
For this portion of the never-ending FFF day, I was to meet a favorite couple who'd just come from "Spice Poker" at Curry Craft. Clearly their stomachs were bigger than mine.
Arriving before they did, I caught a few songs by Full Moon Fever, a Tom Petty cover band playing tonight as part of the "Night of the Living '70s" bill. It was particularly appropriate since it was the show I'd have attended if my friends hadn't offered me their extra FFF ticket.
When they finally showed up, full of apologies for their tardiness, I wasted no time in going inside to eat from the tables of local chefs.
As I was savoring Julep's goat stew over pumpkin, I was handed the last of Magpie's beef tongue skewers. Heritage's pumpkin gemelli with brown butter, kale and mushrooms impressed even this non-pasta lover. One chef described Metzger's trotter torchon as "an orgasm in my mouth." Blue Goat's rockfish and cooked peanuts was an unusual take on a familiar fish.
But I think my favorite was Secco's head cheese with celery slaw, a pitch perfect marriage of fat and acid.
Although beer was part of the affair, that held no interest for me, so I passed on my beer tickets to a favorite record store owner whose costume resembled a Monopoly character.
Lots of people had come in costumes, and many were clever. One friend started to explain her group's costumes and stopped. "Oh, you don't watch TV, you're out living life, so you won't know about this show."
A guy I once worked with and his girlfriend came as farm to table, him with a table draped over his shoulders, her in overalls with a pitchfork.
The one that baffled us was the girl with romaine leaves on her breasts. We puzzled and puzzled over it until I came up with a guess. Maybe she was supposed to be lett-tits.
Since we had to know, one of us went up and asked her. When I told her what my guess was, she laughed loud and hard. When her boyfriend arrived, I told him my theory and he laughed even harder. Turns out she was going for Bibb lettuce.
"But yours is so much better," she laughed. "That's what I'm coming as next year!" Who knew I was so clever?
By the time I got around to trying desserts -sarsaparilla pudding with toasted pumpkin seeds, tres leches cake, pistachio cookies with dark chocolate and fig, and pumpkin cheesecake - some chefs had already run out of their desserts.
That was okay because we were ready to move on, this time back to Curry Craft for our private after-party.
There I found a music friend at the bar, a beer rep swooning over wine and the dear friend who'd donated his FFF ticket to me tonight. After a while, a couple of restaurant owners.
Everyone wanted to hear about my FFF classes today and I obliged with tales of jam and biscuits, oysters and spices.
At one point I looked over at a friend, who'd been up since 6 a.m. this morning, and pantomimed sleeping. He pointed at me and then himself and nodded.
When I got up to say my goodnights, the male half of my couple date registered shock. Explaining that I'd been up since 8 - unusually early for me - and had another day of early morning classes tomorrow, I was leaving.
"Yea, you look tired and that never happens," he said, clearly surprised. Just this morning, a friend had e-mailed me about tomorrow night, saying, "Your energy is unrelenting!"
Honey, you've never seen me after fifteen hours of being food curious. I gotta say, being out living my life is far less tiring.
First of all, it starts at the crack of dawn, meaning my fellow Gemini showed up at 9:30 to collect me and walk over to the Hilton Garden Inn and check in for Fire, Flour and Fork's Friday extravaganza.
People were clustered around the coffee station like it was mother's milk. When forced to, I can get up at the butt crack of dawn (though I'd prefer not to) but coffee's not what I'm looking for at that hour. Or any hour.
Our first session of the day was called "Relish Fork" with Paul Virant of Chicago's Vie restaurant talking about pickling and preserving ("Eat what you can and can what you can't") and Jamie Coffey of Williams & Sherrill making jam. Spoon jam, to be precise.
I'd never heard of spoon jam, but soon learned that it's jam made without using a hot water bath, meaning that the strawberry freezer jam I made for decades probably qualifies. Jamie's version was far more nuanced than mine, using raspberries, the juice of an orange, honey, sugar, orange zest and thyme.
Best of all, he passed around a jar of jam and little wooden spoons inscribed RVA for us to taste his beautiful jam with. When the jar was passed to me, the woman next to me told she loved my shoes. "I would wear the hell out of those." I assured her I do. Cute and comfortable wins the race.
As a lovely parting gift, Chef Virant passed out miniature jars of apple butter, pleasing me no end and sparking memories of childhood. Whenever one of my sisters or I would ask Mom for a snack, she always offered bread and apple butter.
You'd think I'd have gotten tired of it by now, but well-crafted apple butter still speaks to me. And I have to assume Chef Virant knows how to make some apple butter.
Our next session was "Biscuits of the South" for two reasons.
One, it was being given by Ronni Lundy, a founder of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and two, growing up with my Richmond grandmother living with us meant she made biscuits at least two or three times a week. Biscuits are in my blood and probably my DNA.
She began by holding up a bottle of sweet sorghum syrup and saying, "I'm gonna show you how little hillbilly children are introduced to it. It's a gateway drug," before pouring a third of the bottle into a bowl where several sticks of softened butter awaited.
Once she'd turned the yellow butter golden brown with sweet sorghum syrup, we received little ramekins of it with a biscuit. My first thought after one bite was how those hillbilly mothers had cut out a step. I always smeared my breakfast biscuits with a thick schmear of butter and then a layer of strawberry jam for sweetness.
A biscuit with sweet sorghum syrup delivers both sweet and salty in one application. Brilliant!
Lundy talked about how sweet sorghum syrup tasted of terroir, like wine, picking up mineral notes and changing from season to season.
"It's hard to make a bad biscuit and it's an art to make a good one," she informed us, saying light hands and soft wheat flour are essential. She critiqued the biscuits we were eating as having too much chew inside instead of fluff. Also, bacon grease makes great biscuits (duh).
Baking lessons aside, she also provided cultural history (cat's head biscuits are called that because they're big, like a cat's head) such as why farmers' wives made small biscuits in the morning. That way, everyone at the breakfast table - family and farmhands- got one biscuit to start eating while the next batch baked.
She talked about how when self-rising flour was developed, the public didn't embrace it, but mountain women did. Before, they'd had to measure their own leavening agents into the flour and now it was done for them.
I know my grandmother, who used no measuring to make her biscuits, took to self-rising flour from the day it came out. When she moved in with us, it was the first time I'd ever seen it.
And I could totally relate when she shared John Edgerton's axiom about how you could always tell a southerner because when biscuits were put on the table and most people took one, a southerner would take two and butter them both at once while the biscuits were still hot.
I am that person despite not being born a southerner. I suppose that comes from having a southern grandmother in the house making biscuits three times a week. I want hot, liquid butter oozing out of every bite of biscuit.
The question and answer period took us all over the place. Chef Colin Perry (and his epic mustache) of Montreal's Triple Crown Dinette (who makes 500 biscuits a weekend) was in the audience and fielded a question about adding pimento cheese to biscuit dough and why the results had been varied.
A guy in the row in front of us with a serious southern drawl raised his hand and observed about things such as pimento cheese additives, "That's not a biscuit." No indeed.
Someone asked about molasses versus sweet sorghum syrup and before she addressed that, Lundy turned to the pimento cheese maker and asked politely, "Was your question answered? Because I'm going to go down a road here."
"It's a dirt road," the southerner drawled and I laughed out loud.
After her explanation, a women told a story of meeting a couple who'd been married for 40 years, yet the wife complained that her husband still ate biscuits wrong.
Seems he would break them in half and spread his sweet sorghum syrup inside the halves while the wife was positive that the correct way was to stick your finger into the side of the biscuit to create a hole and pour the syrup in.
Forty years and that poor woman still hasn't been able to train her man how to eat a biscuit properly. I think there was a life lesson more than a culinary lesson there.
Two classes behind us, we were glad when it was lunch time, taking the secret side door to the giant sampling tent set up on Sixth Street to gobble Belmont Butchery sausage (and watch butcher Tanya debone a whole pig), Gearhart's chocolates, Rapphanock oysters, and a host of other locally made food items.
At the Virginia wine tasting table were Veritas, Pollack, Barboursville, Keswick, North Gate and Grace Estate, the latter two new to me. It's impossible to keep up with all the new Virginia wineries in spite of my best efforts.
It was inevitable that I'd run into people I knew and I did - the former co-worker, the beermiester, the kitten lover, the baker, the low key mover and shaker - and the consensus was that FFF had been meticulously planned and executed so far.
From there we went to the John Marshall ballroom where ZZQ was serving up their Texas style barbecue. Once I'd procured a plate of brisket and potato salad, I found a seat at a table of strangers, only to have the guy across from me ask, "Aren't you Karen? I think Prabir introduced us a few years ago. Don't you write a blog called I Could Go On and On?"
The woman to his left assured me that he has an unbelievable memory and does this all the time. Meanwhile, I had no problem finishing off my plate while chatting with them about their screen-printing business, which sessions they'd attended and where we were all heading next.
I'd found it impossible to pass up "Oyster Fork" with Mike Hutt of the Virginia Marine Products Board, an unabashed cheerleader for Virginia oysters.
I've done several stories on Virginia's oyster industry so while I knew almost everything he told us, a few tidbits were new to me.
The governor has declared November Virginia oyster month.Seventeen tons of oyster shells were collected last year in Richmond from festivals and restaurants (such as Lemaire, Heritage, Saison and Dutch & Co.). They love our oysters in Asia.
After being shown how to open oysters, they let us loose on two trays of bivalves, one of buttery oysters from the Rappahannock and the other seaside oysters tasting like a mouth full of ocean water.
He suggested we begin with the less salty ones, but I already know I prefer saltier so I did my damage there and damn, these were some of the briniest oysters I've ever had. Delicious.
I will give these guys credit, though, the oysters were served with no accouterments - no cocktail sauce, no lemon, no mignonette - so you were just tasting oysters and water, no adornments. If there were any oyster virgins in the room, it was the equivalent of dropping them into the deep end of the pool.
After I'd gorged on the sea, Gemini and I cut out. We weren't skipping class exactly, but we wanted some down time to assess and regroup, finding it at Saison market for a happy hour glass of Vino Verde.
Then she was off to home and hearth and I got cleaned up to go to someplace I never thought I would despite smelling it for years: the inside of the 1911 C.F. Sauer factory on Broad Street.
Walking up to the check-in desk, the woman looked at me and feigned surprise. "You, again?" FFF humor.
Being the punctual sort, I got herded into the first tour group along with a guy who'd been at my lunch table and the oyster class. When I asked what had brought him to FFF, he said simply, "I love food."
With a little probing, he shared that he'd worked in restaurants for years (including with Sean Brock back in the day), although he was no longer in the business. It's an addiction some people never get over.
Our tour guide was Sauer's marketing director and she took us up and down old staircases to see the workings of the company who puts out the spicy scents on Broad Street.
Walking in to the building, we saw a charming, wood-framed window, above which hung a sign saying "Information." I was thrilled when she told everyone to deposit their cell phone in the back room because no cameras were allowed. I was the only one who didn't have to divest myself of a device.
Sauer tours are quite a rarity, it seems.
She showed us a framed collection of awards Sauer's had won, asking if anyone had read "The Devil in the White City," (which I had) set in the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
It was at that fair that Sauer's had won their first award for purity in their products.
Walking past vintage wooden doors, a break room with library chairs and tables and machinery, we heard how Sauer's was the first to bottle extracts and the only company still using glass bottles.
All the equipment was original to the building as was the sign, "Think! This equipment pays your salary. Take care of it."
We learned that in terms of what they produce, it's predominantly pepper, garlic and cinnamon. We heard about how they still cold soak their vanilla beans in grain alcohol while other companies use a sped-up heating process much like percolating coffee.
Speaking of, the aroma of the warm, vanilla room was sublime and while others got overheated, I could have listened to her talk there all night and enjoyed that scent and temperature.
When we saw huge sacks of MSG, we all guessed it was for Asian markets, but learned that MSG is extremely popular in the American southeast. Who knew?
Filing past the president's office, we looked in to see green leather furniture, painted portraits of past Sauer presidents (it's always been a family owned business) and a fireplace mantle with one of their most popular products, jars of Duke's mayonnaise, adorning it.
After that, we stood in the office area for a Q & A, learning that in all its years, Sauer's had never laid off an employee, even during the world wars and the depression. Now, that's impressive.
Outside in Sauer's rose garden, our group was offered whiskey-based Boulevardier cocktails and hors d'oeuvres to accompany them, all under the scenic glow of the Sauer's vanilla sign, which now meant a whole lot more after 28 years in Richmond because I'd learned why their vanilla was such a big deal.
One of the Sauer men sat in a windowsill outside, sharing colorful stories about his great-grandfather's racing car habit, how they got the city to let them replace the rotting windows facing Broad Street and that multiple bands had asked to have their picture taken in front of the vanilla sign.
FYI: The answer is always no. The reason he gave was who knows what their music is like? Or if they're going to be naked in the picture?
Purity, remember?
My final FFF stop of the day was Hardywood for the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts, a dine-around with local chefs.
For this portion of the never-ending FFF day, I was to meet a favorite couple who'd just come from "Spice Poker" at Curry Craft. Clearly their stomachs were bigger than mine.
Arriving before they did, I caught a few songs by Full Moon Fever, a Tom Petty cover band playing tonight as part of the "Night of the Living '70s" bill. It was particularly appropriate since it was the show I'd have attended if my friends hadn't offered me their extra FFF ticket.
When they finally showed up, full of apologies for their tardiness, I wasted no time in going inside to eat from the tables of local chefs.
As I was savoring Julep's goat stew over pumpkin, I was handed the last of Magpie's beef tongue skewers. Heritage's pumpkin gemelli with brown butter, kale and mushrooms impressed even this non-pasta lover. One chef described Metzger's trotter torchon as "an orgasm in my mouth." Blue Goat's rockfish and cooked peanuts was an unusual take on a familiar fish.
But I think my favorite was Secco's head cheese with celery slaw, a pitch perfect marriage of fat and acid.
Although beer was part of the affair, that held no interest for me, so I passed on my beer tickets to a favorite record store owner whose costume resembled a Monopoly character.
Lots of people had come in costumes, and many were clever. One friend started to explain her group's costumes and stopped. "Oh, you don't watch TV, you're out living life, so you won't know about this show."
A guy I once worked with and his girlfriend came as farm to table, him with a table draped over his shoulders, her in overalls with a pitchfork.
The one that baffled us was the girl with romaine leaves on her breasts. We puzzled and puzzled over it until I came up with a guess. Maybe she was supposed to be lett-tits.
Since we had to know, one of us went up and asked her. When I told her what my guess was, she laughed loud and hard. When her boyfriend arrived, I told him my theory and he laughed even harder. Turns out she was going for Bibb lettuce.
"But yours is so much better," she laughed. "That's what I'm coming as next year!" Who knew I was so clever?
By the time I got around to trying desserts -sarsaparilla pudding with toasted pumpkin seeds, tres leches cake, pistachio cookies with dark chocolate and fig, and pumpkin cheesecake - some chefs had already run out of their desserts.
That was okay because we were ready to move on, this time back to Curry Craft for our private after-party.
There I found a music friend at the bar, a beer rep swooning over wine and the dear friend who'd donated his FFF ticket to me tonight. After a while, a couple of restaurant owners.
Everyone wanted to hear about my FFF classes today and I obliged with tales of jam and biscuits, oysters and spices.
At one point I looked over at a friend, who'd been up since 6 a.m. this morning, and pantomimed sleeping. He pointed at me and then himself and nodded.
When I got up to say my goodnights, the male half of my couple date registered shock. Explaining that I'd been up since 8 - unusually early for me - and had another day of early morning classes tomorrow, I was leaving.
"Yea, you look tired and that never happens," he said, clearly surprised. Just this morning, a friend had e-mailed me about tomorrow night, saying, "Your energy is unrelenting!"
Honey, you've never seen me after fifteen hours of being food curious. I gotta say, being out living my life is far less tiring.
Friday, October 31, 2014
From the Exquisite to the Exuberant
The entire evening was brought to me by the city's department of multicultural affairs. If we had one.
But it might as well have been because it began with the Scott Clark 4tet at VCU's Singelton Center performing the premiere of Scott's composition, "Bury My Heart."
And the drums relive what once was...
I'd first heard part of the piece back in January 2013 at a show at For Instance Gallery. Then Scott had said he'd been so moved, first by reading Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" and then when he was touring the country with Matthew White and seeing the places in the book, that he'd begun writing music about it all.
That germ of an idea had continued to grow until it was now a full blown composition with separate movements and before beginning, he specifically asked the audience to hold their applause until the end.
I knew I had the perfect seat when I sat down because I was right behind Doug Richards, the man who shaped VCU's Jazz Studies program. The 4tet came out nattily attired, Scott unbuttoned his suit jacket and the piece took off.
In a perfect world, I would have the vocabulary to describe what I heard as Scott and his group - Bob on trumpet, Jason on sax and Cameron on bass - played this dynamic piece of moving music, but I don't.
Through the emotional music you heard the spirit of Native American culture and the violence against them. Scott's drumming had a rhythmic urgency that played out in his handling of the brushes and mallets against every part of the drums possible.
It was both a celebration of and a lament for Scott's native American ancestry and I doubt anyone in the room will soon forget what they heard tonight.
Standing ovation well deserved.
Then for something completely different and just as multi-cultural, I went to see a nine-piece Japanese band, Osaka Monaurail, do their tribute to the music of James Brown.
And lest you think they're a flash in the pan, they've been doing this for 22 years, touring Asia and Europe. This is their first American tour.
Plenty of people had come out to see this oddity, so I had the chance to chat with a former neighbor, a DJ, a guitarist, the record store owner and the woman I'd met at Amuse who keeps showing up everywhere I go.
Even better, there were lots of people at Strange Matter for the first time, including my old neighbor who said she hadn't been in this building since the '70s.
The band strode through the crowd in matching shiny black suits, took the stage and proceeded to show us how Japan has been doing JB for two decades.
It was pretty impressive. Whether because they're Japanese (one friend's theory) or because of their long time playing together, they were all crack musicians and really, really tight.
As expected (and hoped for) there was a whole lot of synchronized dancing onstage, not to mention a lot of trumpet twirling between notes.
"We're Osaka Monaurail and there will be no Japanese music tonight!" the lead singer promised. "You wouldn't like it if we played it! Or would you?" The crowd wanted it, he obliged off key and they went back to what they do best.
The audience went back to dancing. I was up against the bar with all the tall people in front of me, but I managed anyway.
It wasn't all James Brown stuff, either, because they did "Get Ready" and probably other stuff I should have recognized and didn't. Mostly it was just great fun, high energy and dancable as it could be.
"Twenty two years, still working hard, still splitting my pants," the lead singer shouted before doing the classic "Funky Chicken" and whipping the crowd into a frenzy.
Somewhere the godfather of soul had to be smiling down on Richmond at that. And probably thinking, what in the hell?
But it might as well have been because it began with the Scott Clark 4tet at VCU's Singelton Center performing the premiere of Scott's composition, "Bury My Heart."
And the drums relive what once was...
I'd first heard part of the piece back in January 2013 at a show at For Instance Gallery. Then Scott had said he'd been so moved, first by reading Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" and then when he was touring the country with Matthew White and seeing the places in the book, that he'd begun writing music about it all.
That germ of an idea had continued to grow until it was now a full blown composition with separate movements and before beginning, he specifically asked the audience to hold their applause until the end.
I knew I had the perfect seat when I sat down because I was right behind Doug Richards, the man who shaped VCU's Jazz Studies program. The 4tet came out nattily attired, Scott unbuttoned his suit jacket and the piece took off.
In a perfect world, I would have the vocabulary to describe what I heard as Scott and his group - Bob on trumpet, Jason on sax and Cameron on bass - played this dynamic piece of moving music, but I don't.
Through the emotional music you heard the spirit of Native American culture and the violence against them. Scott's drumming had a rhythmic urgency that played out in his handling of the brushes and mallets against every part of the drums possible.
It was both a celebration of and a lament for Scott's native American ancestry and I doubt anyone in the room will soon forget what they heard tonight.
Standing ovation well deserved.
Then for something completely different and just as multi-cultural, I went to see a nine-piece Japanese band, Osaka Monaurail, do their tribute to the music of James Brown.
And lest you think they're a flash in the pan, they've been doing this for 22 years, touring Asia and Europe. This is their first American tour.
Plenty of people had come out to see this oddity, so I had the chance to chat with a former neighbor, a DJ, a guitarist, the record store owner and the woman I'd met at Amuse who keeps showing up everywhere I go.
Even better, there were lots of people at Strange Matter for the first time, including my old neighbor who said she hadn't been in this building since the '70s.
The band strode through the crowd in matching shiny black suits, took the stage and proceeded to show us how Japan has been doing JB for two decades.
It was pretty impressive. Whether because they're Japanese (one friend's theory) or because of their long time playing together, they were all crack musicians and really, really tight.
As expected (and hoped for) there was a whole lot of synchronized dancing onstage, not to mention a lot of trumpet twirling between notes.
"We're Osaka Monaurail and there will be no Japanese music tonight!" the lead singer promised. "You wouldn't like it if we played it! Or would you?" The crowd wanted it, he obliged off key and they went back to what they do best.
The audience went back to dancing. I was up against the bar with all the tall people in front of me, but I managed anyway.
It wasn't all James Brown stuff, either, because they did "Get Ready" and probably other stuff I should have recognized and didn't. Mostly it was just great fun, high energy and dancable as it could be.
"Twenty two years, still working hard, still splitting my pants," the lead singer shouted before doing the classic "Funky Chicken" and whipping the crowd into a frenzy.
Somewhere the godfather of soul had to be smiling down on Richmond at that. And probably thinking, what in the hell?
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Pink Roses and Moose Meatloaf
I didn't know it at the time, but the deer was a sign.
Since I had an interview to do on the Northern Neck mid-afternoon, I invited myself to my parents' temporary cottage for lunch beforehand.
Driving up the winding road toward the Moose Lodge in Litwalton where the three-legged dog used to live, I crested a hill and there, standing in the middle of the road, was a deer. And a deer with a lot of attitude; she was staring at me as if I were the one on her territory.
It wasn't like she was caught in headlights because it was broad daylight, sunny and blue skies.
I slowed, eventually stopping and we faced each other down for a few seconds before she deigned to slowly cross the road and scamper off into the woods.
After eating lunch, my Dad took me down to their real house, still in the throes of being reconstructed after a tree fell into it in May. Proudly, he showed off new ceilings, a column that's been added to the living room to support the library floor upstairs and the new windows and sills that replaced the ones damaged by the tree.
Moving from the kitchen to the family room, we were startled when the master carpenter who's acting as foreman appeared out of nowhere to greet us. As my Dad introduced me, I heard the hesitation when he said, "This is my...daughter," tactfully leaving out the "oldest" adjective.
Richard and I shook hands and he told me what a great guy my Dad was and what a great house it was, asking if it was where I'd been born. No, I explained, my parents had raised me and my six sisters in a house a third the size and only moved to bigger digs once we all left home. My Dad rolled his eyes.
But Richard chuckled and proceeded to one up me, saying that he'd been raised in Maine in a house that only had plumbing to the kitchen sink. In order to use the bathroom, you had to go outside - even in the snow - to his Dad's workshop boiler room. Okay, that topped my childhood woe by a mile.
Before I left, I picked a big pink rose blooming just off the screened porch to take back to Mom and Richard observed, "That's a New Dawn rose, an old heirloom variety before they bred all the scent out of them. It's beautiful."
I guess there's lots of time to read garden catalogs when you grow up in Maine.
After saying so long to the parentals, I headed on to my interview of a boisterous college professor who talked to me about baseball, come heres and come back heres.
Work over for the day, I decided a glass of wine was in order and only had to drive a mile and a half to Good Luck cellars. There was only one SUV in the parking lot, but walking up the wide front steps to the tasting room, I spotted a trio enjoying their wine at a table on the porch.
Nice day for a glass outside, I commented. "Go get a bottle and join us!" one of them called out.
Inside, I got a glass of Rip Rap Rose and as he poured it, the winery guy told me I should go join the gents outside. "They came here to hunt deer with bows but the owners aren't here to give permission, so they're having some wine. They'd probably enjoys some female company."
Ah, so that accounted for their attire. I'd given them such a quick glance, I'd assumed they were military but apparently they were in camouflage to hunt.
Outside, the three men drinking Cabernet Sauvignon welcomed me to their table and told me what I already knew: that their hopes of afternoon hunting had been dashed. Assuring them that they looked very huntsmen like anyway, one informed me he was really a potter. The stoneware wine coolers inside were his, in fact.
Another of the guys was retired military, originally from Brooklyn. He prides himself on answering people who inquire if he's from NYC, "No, I'm from Brooklyn. That's different."
The third guy was a scientist eager to discuss Wallop's Island and how close to it they'd hunted.
As we sat there for the next hour chatting, I found out they've been hunting a lot of places together annually for decades. Like Jefferson Vineyards in Charlottesville, which they've hunted for 30 years. They've only hunted Good Luck a couple of years by comparison.
Then there's their annual trip to Maine to hunt moose which the scientist had missed this year because of a wedding in Italy, where, he said, they had a ten-course meal that included everything that swam, flew or crawled through Tuscany. My kind of meal.
The potter showed me a brochure about his studio and another about the upcoming "Made in Matthews" open studio tour next month, the other two razzing him for doing business.
I have to say, for strangers and hunters, they were smart and funny guys and at one point, one said, "At least now you'll know that not all hunters are rednecks."
When I asked what their first concerts were, the potter was hesitant to share and the others assumed it was because he'd be embarrassed. Brooklyn's first had been Murray the K and the Shirelles in Brooklyn back in the '50s.
The scientist's had been Bob Zimmerman in '63, the kind of show a music lover could keep bragging rights on for a lifetime. The potters's first had been the Kingston trio in '65.
As the sun continued to sink lower over the vineyards, the guys agreed that hunting wasn't going to happen today and finished their bottle of wine.
"Oh, well, I've got venison chili in the refrigerator," the scientist consoled himself. "I'm going home to have moose meatloaf from the freezer," Brooklyn said. I thanked them for the conversation and as they got up to leave, the potter said, "Just one more thing. Take off your sunglasses so I can see your eyes."
Boring brown, but I probably didn't need them anymore at that point in the day anyway.
After they left, I finished up my Rose alone watching the winery hounds chase each other around in the nearest vineyard. The guy inside told me about an upcoming oyster crawl and sent me on my way.
Then it was back across the river where the sun laid out a shimmering streak of gold connecting it to the water under the bridge with just a couple of smaller fishing boats moving through it.
What have we gleaned today? I can't seem to have a bad day on the northern neck. And not everyone who hunts is a redneck.
What are we wondering? What moose meatloaf tastes like.
Since I had an interview to do on the Northern Neck mid-afternoon, I invited myself to my parents' temporary cottage for lunch beforehand.
Driving up the winding road toward the Moose Lodge in Litwalton where the three-legged dog used to live, I crested a hill and there, standing in the middle of the road, was a deer. And a deer with a lot of attitude; she was staring at me as if I were the one on her territory.
It wasn't like she was caught in headlights because it was broad daylight, sunny and blue skies.
I slowed, eventually stopping and we faced each other down for a few seconds before she deigned to slowly cross the road and scamper off into the woods.
After eating lunch, my Dad took me down to their real house, still in the throes of being reconstructed after a tree fell into it in May. Proudly, he showed off new ceilings, a column that's been added to the living room to support the library floor upstairs and the new windows and sills that replaced the ones damaged by the tree.
Moving from the kitchen to the family room, we were startled when the master carpenter who's acting as foreman appeared out of nowhere to greet us. As my Dad introduced me, I heard the hesitation when he said, "This is my...daughter," tactfully leaving out the "oldest" adjective.
Richard and I shook hands and he told me what a great guy my Dad was and what a great house it was, asking if it was where I'd been born. No, I explained, my parents had raised me and my six sisters in a house a third the size and only moved to bigger digs once we all left home. My Dad rolled his eyes.
But Richard chuckled and proceeded to one up me, saying that he'd been raised in Maine in a house that only had plumbing to the kitchen sink. In order to use the bathroom, you had to go outside - even in the snow - to his Dad's workshop boiler room. Okay, that topped my childhood woe by a mile.
Before I left, I picked a big pink rose blooming just off the screened porch to take back to Mom and Richard observed, "That's a New Dawn rose, an old heirloom variety before they bred all the scent out of them. It's beautiful."
I guess there's lots of time to read garden catalogs when you grow up in Maine.
After saying so long to the parentals, I headed on to my interview of a boisterous college professor who talked to me about baseball, come heres and come back heres.
Work over for the day, I decided a glass of wine was in order and only had to drive a mile and a half to Good Luck cellars. There was only one SUV in the parking lot, but walking up the wide front steps to the tasting room, I spotted a trio enjoying their wine at a table on the porch.
Nice day for a glass outside, I commented. "Go get a bottle and join us!" one of them called out.
Inside, I got a glass of Rip Rap Rose and as he poured it, the winery guy told me I should go join the gents outside. "They came here to hunt deer with bows but the owners aren't here to give permission, so they're having some wine. They'd probably enjoys some female company."
Ah, so that accounted for their attire. I'd given them such a quick glance, I'd assumed they were military but apparently they were in camouflage to hunt.
Outside, the three men drinking Cabernet Sauvignon welcomed me to their table and told me what I already knew: that their hopes of afternoon hunting had been dashed. Assuring them that they looked very huntsmen like anyway, one informed me he was really a potter. The stoneware wine coolers inside were his, in fact.
Another of the guys was retired military, originally from Brooklyn. He prides himself on answering people who inquire if he's from NYC, "No, I'm from Brooklyn. That's different."
The third guy was a scientist eager to discuss Wallop's Island and how close to it they'd hunted.
As we sat there for the next hour chatting, I found out they've been hunting a lot of places together annually for decades. Like Jefferson Vineyards in Charlottesville, which they've hunted for 30 years. They've only hunted Good Luck a couple of years by comparison.
Then there's their annual trip to Maine to hunt moose which the scientist had missed this year because of a wedding in Italy, where, he said, they had a ten-course meal that included everything that swam, flew or crawled through Tuscany. My kind of meal.
The potter showed me a brochure about his studio and another about the upcoming "Made in Matthews" open studio tour next month, the other two razzing him for doing business.
I have to say, for strangers and hunters, they were smart and funny guys and at one point, one said, "At least now you'll know that not all hunters are rednecks."
When I asked what their first concerts were, the potter was hesitant to share and the others assumed it was because he'd be embarrassed. Brooklyn's first had been Murray the K and the Shirelles in Brooklyn back in the '50s.
The scientist's had been Bob Zimmerman in '63, the kind of show a music lover could keep bragging rights on for a lifetime. The potters's first had been the Kingston trio in '65.
As the sun continued to sink lower over the vineyards, the guys agreed that hunting wasn't going to happen today and finished their bottle of wine.
"Oh, well, I've got venison chili in the refrigerator," the scientist consoled himself. "I'm going home to have moose meatloaf from the freezer," Brooklyn said. I thanked them for the conversation and as they got up to leave, the potter said, "Just one more thing. Take off your sunglasses so I can see your eyes."
Boring brown, but I probably didn't need them anymore at that point in the day anyway.
After they left, I finished up my Rose alone watching the winery hounds chase each other around in the nearest vineyard. The guy inside told me about an upcoming oyster crawl and sent me on my way.
Then it was back across the river where the sun laid out a shimmering streak of gold connecting it to the water under the bridge with just a couple of smaller fishing boats moving through it.
What have we gleaned today? I can't seem to have a bad day on the northern neck. And not everyone who hunts is a redneck.
What are we wondering? What moose meatloaf tastes like.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Haunted 'Hood
'Tis the season for horror movies, none better than the one considered the first ever made.
Silent Music Revival was showing the 1920 classic, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," with improvised musical accompaniment by Bermuda Triangles, the only quartet I know of with three drummers and a sax player.
Interestingly enough, I'd already seen the film at a Silent Music Revival years ago as well as having seen Bermuda Triangles perform many times, including at a SMR when "Poor Mrs. Jones" was shown back in 2010.
Even so, the combo of the crazy doctor and the pulsing drums was just too tempting, perhaps all the more so since it was at Gallery 5 a few blocks from my house.
With a history of going to the SMR that dates back to 2007, I know the drill: it starts at 8:00 sharp so don't be late. Accordingly, I stopped by Gallery 5 about 7:20 to deposit my bag on a chair in the front row, knowing full well that the place was going to be filled to overflowing tonight.
Seat procured, I chatted with Jameson and Laney who put on the event, all of us asking how it was possible that we'd not seen each other in months. Our conclusion? There are so many things to do on any given night these days that friends can be scattered all over town at multiple places.
It's a great problem to have, we agreed.
Promising I'd be back, I wandered down the street to Tarrant's back door, planning to score a big slice of pizza for dinner. Approaching the back door, I saw a trio of kitchen employees on a smoke break, so bored that they chatted me up on my way in.
"How's your night going so far?" one inquired. Can't complain.
Looking at the chalkboard, I revised my pizza plan and ordered a couple of fish tacos instead. Waiting for them to be made, I overheard the counter girl tell one of the servers that she was letting her go because they were so slow tonight ("Already?" the cut staffer asked). Neither had any idea why the entire week has been deadly. Umm, summer-like weather perhaps?
Dinner in hand, I returned to G5 and my front row seat. Tucking into the tacos, I was pleasantly surprised to find each filled with a tortilla-length piece of grilled mahi mahi under a flurry of corn relish and guacamole. Tarrant's isn't my thing, but this was a better than expected, inexpensive back door meal.
The place kept filling up with more unfamiliar than familiar faces, but you want new people. Besides, I had plenty of people to talk to.
The friend I'd seen at Monday's show but hadn't spoken to, the world traveler thinking of finally making the leap and buying a house here, a guy from Bread and Puppets, in town from Brooklyn working on Halloween parade puppets (and wearing a fabulous black and gold sweater).
So many people came that the floor became the only seating option and I was gratified to see a guy who'd arrived as early as I had to secure a front row seat offer it up to an older woman on the hard, concrete floor in front of him. Somebody's mother raised him right.
When Jameson introduced the film, he talked about its lasting influence on movies and the horror genre, saying we'd see a lot that influenced Tim Burton. It was even obvious in the crazy, angular sets with shadows as much a part of the scenery as objects.
He also said he'd edited out some of the movie to bring it down to under an hour. Excised had been scenes where they think they've found the murderer but they haven't. "So, nothing that changes the story, but that took them like 16, 17 minutes," he said about an era when everything wasn't quick cuts.
As usual, he'd chosen the absolute perfect band for the movie, with Bermuda Triangles' relentless soundtrack only increasing the tension as the story unfolded and dead bodies began stacking up. Three drummers make for a whole lot of intensity.
When the movie ended, the screen was pulled up so we could finally see the band, who'd been hidden behind it, playing for another few minutes. One musician, Jason, appeared to be running a drumstick against the metal grate of a grill, a small mic held up against it to capture the sound. Crazy.
There really is nothing like seeing a band improvise music for a silent movie as they watch it along with the audience.
Or if there is, it's happening somewhere other than where I am. Now, that doesn't seem very likely.
Silent Music Revival was showing the 1920 classic, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," with improvised musical accompaniment by Bermuda Triangles, the only quartet I know of with three drummers and a sax player.
Interestingly enough, I'd already seen the film at a Silent Music Revival years ago as well as having seen Bermuda Triangles perform many times, including at a SMR when "Poor Mrs. Jones" was shown back in 2010.
Even so, the combo of the crazy doctor and the pulsing drums was just too tempting, perhaps all the more so since it was at Gallery 5 a few blocks from my house.
With a history of going to the SMR that dates back to 2007, I know the drill: it starts at 8:00 sharp so don't be late. Accordingly, I stopped by Gallery 5 about 7:20 to deposit my bag on a chair in the front row, knowing full well that the place was going to be filled to overflowing tonight.
Seat procured, I chatted with Jameson and Laney who put on the event, all of us asking how it was possible that we'd not seen each other in months. Our conclusion? There are so many things to do on any given night these days that friends can be scattered all over town at multiple places.
It's a great problem to have, we agreed.
Promising I'd be back, I wandered down the street to Tarrant's back door, planning to score a big slice of pizza for dinner. Approaching the back door, I saw a trio of kitchen employees on a smoke break, so bored that they chatted me up on my way in.
"How's your night going so far?" one inquired. Can't complain.
Looking at the chalkboard, I revised my pizza plan and ordered a couple of fish tacos instead. Waiting for them to be made, I overheard the counter girl tell one of the servers that she was letting her go because they were so slow tonight ("Already?" the cut staffer asked). Neither had any idea why the entire week has been deadly. Umm, summer-like weather perhaps?
Dinner in hand, I returned to G5 and my front row seat. Tucking into the tacos, I was pleasantly surprised to find each filled with a tortilla-length piece of grilled mahi mahi under a flurry of corn relish and guacamole. Tarrant's isn't my thing, but this was a better than expected, inexpensive back door meal.
The place kept filling up with more unfamiliar than familiar faces, but you want new people. Besides, I had plenty of people to talk to.
The friend I'd seen at Monday's show but hadn't spoken to, the world traveler thinking of finally making the leap and buying a house here, a guy from Bread and Puppets, in town from Brooklyn working on Halloween parade puppets (and wearing a fabulous black and gold sweater).
So many people came that the floor became the only seating option and I was gratified to see a guy who'd arrived as early as I had to secure a front row seat offer it up to an older woman on the hard, concrete floor in front of him. Somebody's mother raised him right.
When Jameson introduced the film, he talked about its lasting influence on movies and the horror genre, saying we'd see a lot that influenced Tim Burton. It was even obvious in the crazy, angular sets with shadows as much a part of the scenery as objects.
He also said he'd edited out some of the movie to bring it down to under an hour. Excised had been scenes where they think they've found the murderer but they haven't. "So, nothing that changes the story, but that took them like 16, 17 minutes," he said about an era when everything wasn't quick cuts.
As usual, he'd chosen the absolute perfect band for the movie, with Bermuda Triangles' relentless soundtrack only increasing the tension as the story unfolded and dead bodies began stacking up. Three drummers make for a whole lot of intensity.
When the movie ended, the screen was pulled up so we could finally see the band, who'd been hidden behind it, playing for another few minutes. One musician, Jason, appeared to be running a drumstick against the metal grate of a grill, a small mic held up against it to capture the sound. Crazy.
There really is nothing like seeing a band improvise music for a silent movie as they watch it along with the audience.
Or if there is, it's happening somewhere other than where I am. Now, that doesn't seem very likely.
One Fish, Two FIsh
It might be the best October 28th I ever get.
With a forecast of sunny and 81 (and it actually made it to 84!), I got up resolved to address the last thing on my Fall 2014 to-do list (after having made it to Chatham Vineyards last month): visit Sandbridge for the first time.
As a life-long annual visitor to the Outer Banks, I could never get into the Virginia Beach experience. It just wasn't my thing. But earlier this summer, a loved one had assured me that I'd be happy as a clam at Sandbridge because it had a lot in common with the N.C. shore.
Surely there wasn't going to be another day as ideal for beach-combing this year as today. At least I wasn't going to take a chance on it.
So I packed a bag of essentials for a day at the beach, setting out five minutes after eating breakfast with a handful of past beach vacation mix CDs for my soundtrack. My only stop on the drive down was as a directionally-challenged visitor at the Virginia Beach visitor center to make sure I knew how to get to Sandbridge.
Even so, I didn't hesitate to ask a guy in the car next to me at a traffic light if I was on the right track. You can't miss it, he assured me.
He was right, I couldn't. I found the municipal lot with no problem and joined the mere seven other cars parked in it. Near the back of the lot was a line of tall, white lifeguard stations in off-season storage. Yes, I climbed one.
Doing my best pack animal imitation, I loaded myself up with an umbrella, my beach chair, the bag of supplies and a small cooler and crossed the street to the beach.
A woman was walking toward me nodding approvingly of my day trip supplies. "Can you believe this day?" she asked incredulously. When I told her it was worth driving from Richmond for, she lit up. "Good for you! It'll be worth it!"
I was counting on it.
Since it was fairly breezy, I did my best getting the umbrella in the sand but before I even finished setting up the rest of my camp, a guy walked up and asked, "Can you use some help?" and handed me his stainless steel thermos (I didn't presume what might be in it). "I used to do this a lot as a kid."
As he was working it well into the sand, he shared that he'd seen where a beach umbrella had blown away and killed someone in California. That would ruin my day, I told him. "I think it ruined theirs, too," he said with a grin.
Once he was certain I wouldn't be killing anyone with my shade device, I returned his drink and he walked on down the beach.
I was halfway through my lunch and the latest Rolling Stone when he returned to take stock. Looking at my "Rebuild New Orleans" t-shirt, he asked if I was from NOLA. Nope, I explained that I'd been there the year after Katrina, hadn't bought it then when these t-shirts were everywhere but found it in a thrift store the next year. So it had all worked out.
He praised my foresight in bringing a lunch and asked if I'd be staying on to see the rocket launch tonight. Duh. Could there be a better viewing point than where I sat? "Smart woman," he said and walked on.
After lunch, I did what I usually do after breakfast: left for a good, long walk. I headed north on the beach walking along the water's edge, surprised to find that it wasn't colder. Hell, it's been colder than that in July some years.
I wound up walking a couple of miles north, looking at the houses that lined the shore to get a feel for the area. While it was a huge improvement over Virginia Beach because there were no hi-rises and hotels, just about every single home was a McMansion.
Worst part? I didn't see a single beach house with a screened porch. I guess rich people don't use such things. The most impressive thing I saw was one house that had its windows open. One. Meanwhile, it's so gorgeous I'm out in the ocean up to my waist.
As I was walking back to my campsite, I saw that someone had set up only a few feet from me. Really? There aren't two dozen people on this beach and you're going to put you chair, cooler and three fishing poles within spitting distance of my stuff? Interloper.
Of course I just sat down and took out my book, the one from the ex-cop that I hadn't yet started, while my new neighbor went back and forth between the three lines he had in the water, once pulling in something small and saying, "I thought it was a flounder at first. Dig it!"
It was hard to believe November is four days away as I wiled away the time reading, lounging on a beach towel doing nothing more than listening to the surf and overhearing snippets of people's conversations as they walked the beach.
Eventually I got up and headed south for another walk where I was rewarded with three (small, older) houses with screened porches. By then the tide was well on its way out, leaving a massive sandbar that allowed me to keep going further out without ever getting more than my calves wet.
When I got back, the fisherman offered me something to drink: Gatorade or a PBR, both of which I declined. Suddenly, he spotted something on one of his lines and took off to grab the fishing pole.
All of a sudden, he turned around and yelled to me, "Come quick! Come down here and reel this fish in!" Now why a stranger would presume that I could handle a fishing pole is beyond me, but I was out of my beach chair in a flash and the pole was transferred to my untrained hand.
Like a sensei, he stood nearby coaching me every step of the way. "Keep reeling him in...pull back on the line occasionally...step to your left a bit, he's going this way...that's it, you're doing great...your husband's going to be so proud when you tell him you caught a fish!"
Now don't get me wrong, my Dad was an enthusiastic surf fisherman long before I came along and cut into his leisure time and as my five sisters and I got older, he continued to fish. Some of my sisters joined him, learning the intricacies of bait cutting, throwing and reeling. I was not among them.
My first fishing lesson learned today was that I needed to anchor the pole against my body because this fish was seriously challenging me. I put the end of the rod on my hip bone and hoped that would keep it steady.
Second realization about fishing was how much strength it was taking to hold the pole in my right hand against the moving fish and constant surf. And, honestly, after the first ten minutes, even my left hand was getting fatigued with the constant reeling.
I'd have thought I had a bit more fishing skill in my DNA than was proving to be the case. Sorry, Dad.
After what seemed like eons, I pulled in a great big, wriggling stingray, its tail whipping side to side menacingly. Well, that was a lot of work for nothing.
But my teacher didn't see it that way and quickly pulled the hook out of the stingray's mouth and directed me to get my camera so he could take a picture of me. Although I'd looked for it, I hadn't brought my camera because I couldn't find it. "Well, get your phone," he said.
When I explained that I didn't have a cell phone, his jaw dropped. "Really? You don't have a phone? I mean, that's cool. Really, no phone?"
His solution was to grab his own phone and instruct me to stand, pole in hand, next to my catch. He was pleased as punch that he'd gotten to see someone make their first ever catch, saying over and over again, "That was so great seeing you reel that in!"
But everyone has their talent and when it came time to e-mail the picture to me, he had no clue how to do that. Oh, sure, he knew how to text it to a cell phone, but I had to walk him through the steps to get it sent to me. "There, now you've got proof!" he said, as proudly as if I'd caught something worthwhile.
Hardly surprisingly, he was a local who'd played hooky (ha!) today to fish. He was impressed that I'd driven down from Richmond and understood my distaste to Virginia Beach, saying despite living nearby, he hadn't been in Virginia Beach for 25 years.
"Now this, this place, is a different story," he said, spreading his arms to encompass the wide beach and bright blue ocean and sky. His ten-year old dog, a white-muzzled sweetie who got worried every time her master ventured too far out on the sandbar to cast, looked like she enjoyed it just as much.
When I mentioned I'd be staying for the rocket launch, his face lit up and he thanked me. He'd forgotten about it and immediately began calling friends to tell them to come down and join him for the spectacle.
I tried to go back to reading but apparently reeling in a fish for the first time gets your adrenaline going so I gave up and went down to the ocean, trying to stay out of the way of the several fishermen around me.
It was already after 5 but people were still arriving at the beach despite the sun heading lower in the sky. As I stood in the water on the edge of the sandbar, my shadow was distinct on the relatively placid ocean surface, stretching all the way to the breakers.
As I was marveling at its length, the fisherman came down the beach toward me and when I looked over, he told me to stand still, shooting a picture of me against the blue of the ocean with the golden light of sunset illuminating me from behind.
When I came back up to my chair, he hurried over to assure me that he wasn't a creep who collected pictures of strangers. "The sunlight looked so beautiful and I thought it might be a nice reminder of your day here." Assuming that he wasn't a weirdo, I also sent this one to myself.
I've never known the pleasure of a late October afternoon with ocean water drying on my legs as the sun sets, but I gotta tell you, it's pretty magical. Clearly the salt air and sound of the waves had been just the thing.
As it got close to 6:00, friends of his began arriving (including a guy who used to live in Richmond), many with beers in hand and everyone faced northeast for the rocket launch. When we'd seen nothing by 6:24, someone started hollering that there'd been an explosion and the mellow group on the beach thought it was a joke. Sadly, it wasn't.
I started packing up my stuff, saying good-bye to the people I'd met, giving a chaste hug to the man who'd given me my first fishing experience and making a stop in the PortaPotty to change out of my damp bathing suit.
On the way into Sandbridge earlier, I'd noticed a little place called Margie and Ray's Seafood and my new friend had mentioned it unsolicited as a terrific place to eat. A day on the beach had given me an appetite.
I'd been told that the restaurant had begun its life as a general store and tackle shop on a dirt road in 1964 and become a restaurant in 1997 (with a paved road and everything).
It was bright, it was loud and it was full of locals. Plenty good enough for me.
I took a seat at the bar next to a couple eating fat, steamed shrimp. After ordering fish and chips, I asked the bartender what the fish was (telling him it didn't matter, I was just curious) and he said it was pangasius, a warm water fish from the Gulf. Very tasty, he assured me.
"Pangasius?" the man next to me said quizzically, looking at me and the bartender. "That sounds like a Greek god not a fish!" I suggested that it was the god of fish. Soon the three of us were chatting up a storm about political correctness and Halloween.
The problem was that they always chose "couple costumes" for Halloween parties. Last year they'd gone as Sonny and Cher, but since he's taller, he'd been Cher. Yes, I already liked these people. This year, they'd planned to be a priest and an altar boy but friends were saying that wasn't PC.
We talked about how half the comedians that came out of the '50s, '60s and '70s wouldn't be acceptable today. And how you could make yourself crazy worrying about offending people now.
Oh, and the bartender was right, pangasius was perfectly delicious as was the obscene mound of fries that accompanied it, all of which got dipped into housemade cocktail sauce.
When I finished and asked for my check, the couple offered to buy me a drink and continue our conversation. Much as I hate to turn down perfectly good tequila, I knew it was time for me to hit the road.
There were so many ways a day by myself at the beach could have turned out. Mine couldn't have been better. Sometimes the best thing you can do is take direction from a stranger.
Dig it!
With a forecast of sunny and 81 (and it actually made it to 84!), I got up resolved to address the last thing on my Fall 2014 to-do list (after having made it to Chatham Vineyards last month): visit Sandbridge for the first time.
As a life-long annual visitor to the Outer Banks, I could never get into the Virginia Beach experience. It just wasn't my thing. But earlier this summer, a loved one had assured me that I'd be happy as a clam at Sandbridge because it had a lot in common with the N.C. shore.
Surely there wasn't going to be another day as ideal for beach-combing this year as today. At least I wasn't going to take a chance on it.
So I packed a bag of essentials for a day at the beach, setting out five minutes after eating breakfast with a handful of past beach vacation mix CDs for my soundtrack. My only stop on the drive down was as a directionally-challenged visitor at the Virginia Beach visitor center to make sure I knew how to get to Sandbridge.
Even so, I didn't hesitate to ask a guy in the car next to me at a traffic light if I was on the right track. You can't miss it, he assured me.
He was right, I couldn't. I found the municipal lot with no problem and joined the mere seven other cars parked in it. Near the back of the lot was a line of tall, white lifeguard stations in off-season storage. Yes, I climbed one.
Doing my best pack animal imitation, I loaded myself up with an umbrella, my beach chair, the bag of supplies and a small cooler and crossed the street to the beach.
A woman was walking toward me nodding approvingly of my day trip supplies. "Can you believe this day?" she asked incredulously. When I told her it was worth driving from Richmond for, she lit up. "Good for you! It'll be worth it!"
I was counting on it.
Since it was fairly breezy, I did my best getting the umbrella in the sand but before I even finished setting up the rest of my camp, a guy walked up and asked, "Can you use some help?" and handed me his stainless steel thermos (I didn't presume what might be in it). "I used to do this a lot as a kid."
As he was working it well into the sand, he shared that he'd seen where a beach umbrella had blown away and killed someone in California. That would ruin my day, I told him. "I think it ruined theirs, too," he said with a grin.
Once he was certain I wouldn't be killing anyone with my shade device, I returned his drink and he walked on down the beach.
I was halfway through my lunch and the latest Rolling Stone when he returned to take stock. Looking at my "Rebuild New Orleans" t-shirt, he asked if I was from NOLA. Nope, I explained that I'd been there the year after Katrina, hadn't bought it then when these t-shirts were everywhere but found it in a thrift store the next year. So it had all worked out.
He praised my foresight in bringing a lunch and asked if I'd be staying on to see the rocket launch tonight. Duh. Could there be a better viewing point than where I sat? "Smart woman," he said and walked on.
After lunch, I did what I usually do after breakfast: left for a good, long walk. I headed north on the beach walking along the water's edge, surprised to find that it wasn't colder. Hell, it's been colder than that in July some years.
I wound up walking a couple of miles north, looking at the houses that lined the shore to get a feel for the area. While it was a huge improvement over Virginia Beach because there were no hi-rises and hotels, just about every single home was a McMansion.
Worst part? I didn't see a single beach house with a screened porch. I guess rich people don't use such things. The most impressive thing I saw was one house that had its windows open. One. Meanwhile, it's so gorgeous I'm out in the ocean up to my waist.
As I was walking back to my campsite, I saw that someone had set up only a few feet from me. Really? There aren't two dozen people on this beach and you're going to put you chair, cooler and three fishing poles within spitting distance of my stuff? Interloper.
Of course I just sat down and took out my book, the one from the ex-cop that I hadn't yet started, while my new neighbor went back and forth between the three lines he had in the water, once pulling in something small and saying, "I thought it was a flounder at first. Dig it!"
It was hard to believe November is four days away as I wiled away the time reading, lounging on a beach towel doing nothing more than listening to the surf and overhearing snippets of people's conversations as they walked the beach.
Eventually I got up and headed south for another walk where I was rewarded with three (small, older) houses with screened porches. By then the tide was well on its way out, leaving a massive sandbar that allowed me to keep going further out without ever getting more than my calves wet.
When I got back, the fisherman offered me something to drink: Gatorade or a PBR, both of which I declined. Suddenly, he spotted something on one of his lines and took off to grab the fishing pole.
All of a sudden, he turned around and yelled to me, "Come quick! Come down here and reel this fish in!" Now why a stranger would presume that I could handle a fishing pole is beyond me, but I was out of my beach chair in a flash and the pole was transferred to my untrained hand.
Like a sensei, he stood nearby coaching me every step of the way. "Keep reeling him in...pull back on the line occasionally...step to your left a bit, he's going this way...that's it, you're doing great...your husband's going to be so proud when you tell him you caught a fish!"
Now don't get me wrong, my Dad was an enthusiastic surf fisherman long before I came along and cut into his leisure time and as my five sisters and I got older, he continued to fish. Some of my sisters joined him, learning the intricacies of bait cutting, throwing and reeling. I was not among them.
My first fishing lesson learned today was that I needed to anchor the pole against my body because this fish was seriously challenging me. I put the end of the rod on my hip bone and hoped that would keep it steady.
Second realization about fishing was how much strength it was taking to hold the pole in my right hand against the moving fish and constant surf. And, honestly, after the first ten minutes, even my left hand was getting fatigued with the constant reeling.
I'd have thought I had a bit more fishing skill in my DNA than was proving to be the case. Sorry, Dad.
After what seemed like eons, I pulled in a great big, wriggling stingray, its tail whipping side to side menacingly. Well, that was a lot of work for nothing.
But my teacher didn't see it that way and quickly pulled the hook out of the stingray's mouth and directed me to get my camera so he could take a picture of me. Although I'd looked for it, I hadn't brought my camera because I couldn't find it. "Well, get your phone," he said.
When I explained that I didn't have a cell phone, his jaw dropped. "Really? You don't have a phone? I mean, that's cool. Really, no phone?"
His solution was to grab his own phone and instruct me to stand, pole in hand, next to my catch. He was pleased as punch that he'd gotten to see someone make their first ever catch, saying over and over again, "That was so great seeing you reel that in!"
But everyone has their talent and when it came time to e-mail the picture to me, he had no clue how to do that. Oh, sure, he knew how to text it to a cell phone, but I had to walk him through the steps to get it sent to me. "There, now you've got proof!" he said, as proudly as if I'd caught something worthwhile.
Hardly surprisingly, he was a local who'd played hooky (ha!) today to fish. He was impressed that I'd driven down from Richmond and understood my distaste to Virginia Beach, saying despite living nearby, he hadn't been in Virginia Beach for 25 years.
"Now this, this place, is a different story," he said, spreading his arms to encompass the wide beach and bright blue ocean and sky. His ten-year old dog, a white-muzzled sweetie who got worried every time her master ventured too far out on the sandbar to cast, looked like she enjoyed it just as much.
When I mentioned I'd be staying for the rocket launch, his face lit up and he thanked me. He'd forgotten about it and immediately began calling friends to tell them to come down and join him for the spectacle.
I tried to go back to reading but apparently reeling in a fish for the first time gets your adrenaline going so I gave up and went down to the ocean, trying to stay out of the way of the several fishermen around me.
It was already after 5 but people were still arriving at the beach despite the sun heading lower in the sky. As I stood in the water on the edge of the sandbar, my shadow was distinct on the relatively placid ocean surface, stretching all the way to the breakers.
As I was marveling at its length, the fisherman came down the beach toward me and when I looked over, he told me to stand still, shooting a picture of me against the blue of the ocean with the golden light of sunset illuminating me from behind.
When I came back up to my chair, he hurried over to assure me that he wasn't a creep who collected pictures of strangers. "The sunlight looked so beautiful and I thought it might be a nice reminder of your day here." Assuming that he wasn't a weirdo, I also sent this one to myself.
I've never known the pleasure of a late October afternoon with ocean water drying on my legs as the sun sets, but I gotta tell you, it's pretty magical. Clearly the salt air and sound of the waves had been just the thing.
As it got close to 6:00, friends of his began arriving (including a guy who used to live in Richmond), many with beers in hand and everyone faced northeast for the rocket launch. When we'd seen nothing by 6:24, someone started hollering that there'd been an explosion and the mellow group on the beach thought it was a joke. Sadly, it wasn't.
I started packing up my stuff, saying good-bye to the people I'd met, giving a chaste hug to the man who'd given me my first fishing experience and making a stop in the PortaPotty to change out of my damp bathing suit.
On the way into Sandbridge earlier, I'd noticed a little place called Margie and Ray's Seafood and my new friend had mentioned it unsolicited as a terrific place to eat. A day on the beach had given me an appetite.
I'd been told that the restaurant had begun its life as a general store and tackle shop on a dirt road in 1964 and become a restaurant in 1997 (with a paved road and everything).
It was bright, it was loud and it was full of locals. Plenty good enough for me.
I took a seat at the bar next to a couple eating fat, steamed shrimp. After ordering fish and chips, I asked the bartender what the fish was (telling him it didn't matter, I was just curious) and he said it was pangasius, a warm water fish from the Gulf. Very tasty, he assured me.
"Pangasius?" the man next to me said quizzically, looking at me and the bartender. "That sounds like a Greek god not a fish!" I suggested that it was the god of fish. Soon the three of us were chatting up a storm about political correctness and Halloween.
The problem was that they always chose "couple costumes" for Halloween parties. Last year they'd gone as Sonny and Cher, but since he's taller, he'd been Cher. Yes, I already liked these people. This year, they'd planned to be a priest and an altar boy but friends were saying that wasn't PC.
We talked about how half the comedians that came out of the '50s, '60s and '70s wouldn't be acceptable today. And how you could make yourself crazy worrying about offending people now.
Oh, and the bartender was right, pangasius was perfectly delicious as was the obscene mound of fries that accompanied it, all of which got dipped into housemade cocktail sauce.
When I finished and asked for my check, the couple offered to buy me a drink and continue our conversation. Much as I hate to turn down perfectly good tequila, I knew it was time for me to hit the road.
There were so many ways a day by myself at the beach could have turned out. Mine couldn't have been better. Sometimes the best thing you can do is take direction from a stranger.
Dig it!
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Rocket Replacement
Sometimes the best dates are couple dates, especially music-loving couples.
Once we'd established that we were all going to the same show, and a particularly good one on a Monday night, the only thing left to decide was where to eat beforehand. My suggestion -agreed to immediately -was 821 Cafe.
They were already same side-sitting in a front booth when I walked in, but they'd left me the side with a view of Cary Street, meaning a non-stop parade of students and assorted Oregon Hill regulars. Crazy Nate rode by on his bike twice, either grimacing or smiling, I wasn't sure which.
When it came time to order, my girlfriend got her standard PB & B while I asked for my usual half order of black bean nachos, which apparently sounded so appetizing that her husband ordered the same. Our server made it clear that the kitchen would be much happier if we just split a full order. Easy enough.
While we ate, conversation centered around how the kind of parties you go to in your 20s lose their appeal with time and meeting the right mate. Case in point, their Halloween plans involve other couples and board games, very different from the costumed debauchery they once practiced on All Hallows Eve.
Noticing how dark it was getting and how early it was, we lamented the shortening days. I said that at this point, all I want is to get to winter solstice so the days can start lengthening again. "That's exactly how I feel!" my friend agreed. This country is too far removed from an agrarian society to bother with the nonsense of changing the clocks anymore.
By then it was time for a change of venue.
We met up again at the Camel for a four band bill with Laura Stevenson and the Cans headlining. My girlfriend had put Laura's album as one of her favorites on her end of 2013 list and from what I'd listened to, with good cause.
The show kicked off with Tracy of Positive No thanking us for coming out on a Monday night. "Since the rocket didn't happen due to a stray sailboat, you get bands to listen to instead!" Honestly, I'd take music over rockets most nights.
As many times as I've seen Positive No play, tonight was significant because it was drummer Willis' last show with the band. And while the crowd was still fairly small when they played (it was an unusually early show for the Camel), most of the faces were familiar to the band.
That's probably why practically every song was dedicated to someone in the crowd like Tess, Sadie, Melissa and Ryan.
Tracy also took a moment to warn the other musicians in the room about the soft spot on the stage, likening it to the soft spot on a baby's head and recalling that she once went through a stage floor. "Okay, it was a pallet in the basement, but still..."
Really, it's not hard to imagine her going through a flimsy pallet given the energetic pogoing she does while singing lead. It's all part of a vibrant stage presence.
"I can't believe it's our last song," she said, high-fiving Willis and looking a little sad. For my part, I know his energetic drumming will be sorely missed.
Next came Eli Whitney and the Sound Machine, touring behind their new album "Reasons to Leave," which they characterized as "full of happy songs."
The trio was young, high energy and brief with songs clocking in at about three minutes tops. They even took the glammy Killers' song "Mr. Brightside" and made it hard, fast and fun.
They also looked like they were having a ball up there, the guitarists and bassist trading off lead vocals, both of them hopping around and playing off each other. "Really, we're from Long Island but we moved to Brooklyn. But not to be cool," they claimed.
When their set ended, my girlfriend summed it up perfectly. "It makes me so happy that there are still bands like that so full of energy." She was right, of course. It was young man music of the highest order.
During the break, I heard about my couple date's Aunt Nancy, a colorful-sounding woman who's had four husbands (seems she was big on Christian Mingles for a while), is a terrible but prolific painter and excels at making jello salads.
Fortunately for me, they not only had pictures of her bad art but pictures of Aunt Nancy and pictures of Aunt Nancy's self-portraits, making for a lot of laughter during the break.
Then came Helen Chambers in a green plaid shirt and black skirt, who began by telling us she'd come quite a long way to play guitar and sing "Little Demons." Only after the first song did she explain that she was English, as if we hadn't noticed the accent and lilting warble characteristic of British songbirds.
Written when she was exceedingly hungover, "Kiss the Floorboards" was about a resolution to give up alcohol, one she'd clearly abandoned given the drink at her feet. "But I really meant it when I wrote it!" she said. I thought British singers were required by law to drink.
We noticed that a cluster of guys had formed right in front of the stage, no doubt drawn by her incredible voice, friendly demeanor and short skirt.
She sounded very happy to be touring the U.S., mentioning that she'd had her first root beer today ("It tasted a little medicinal") before singing "Little Blackbirds" with Laura Stevenson coming up to add sublime harmonies on the song.
Sharing that she'd played for her uncle "Veronica Pearl," a song about her grandparents' house being bombed during WW II, she said he'd cried so hard when he heard it that his false teeth had come out. If she were a country singer, I'd say there's a song in that, too.
The crowd grew noticeably larger just before Laura Stevenson and the Cans began playing, as well it should have given the talent on stage. Along with Laura's voice and guitar were a guitarist, bassist, accordionist/keyboard player and even a female drummer, always a treat to see.
From the first notes, their sound was an interesting amalgamation of genres, part folky, a little pop and definitely rock and roll with a crack band to execute. And a whole lot of sad songs, such as the compelling "Runner," a song that thrilled my girlfriend.
Hearing a story on the radio in the band's van today about a woman being tested for Hodgkin's disease after two relatives had it, Laura said she cried at the woman's dilemma of waiting for a diagnosis. "It's kind of like this song, "The Healthy One," except mine's about AIDS." It was sad and beautiful.
It didn't take long to see why my girlfriend had fallen in love with Laura's voice, which while sweet and clear was also powerful and melancholy, particularly on love songs and sad songs, of which there were plenty.
Glancing at the drummer, she observed, "I just realized we're wearing the same outfit," she said of their brown t-shirts and jeans. "You look good!" I found it intriguing to hear so much humor from her between songs since the music leaned toward emotions laid bare.
Songs like the heartbreaking "The Move," for which the band left the stage so it was just her and her guitar. Or "Nervous Wrecks," which she sang with Helen doing harmonizing payback.
The band returned for one last happy song, rocking out as Laura's vocals soared over the heads of the adoring crowd.
What do you do when your couple date finishes with such a stellar band? You thank and hug your girlfriend for all she's worth and tell her to pass it on to her husband.
But you don't get kissed. Some things just aren't meant to happen on couple dates.
Once we'd established that we were all going to the same show, and a particularly good one on a Monday night, the only thing left to decide was where to eat beforehand. My suggestion -agreed to immediately -was 821 Cafe.
They were already same side-sitting in a front booth when I walked in, but they'd left me the side with a view of Cary Street, meaning a non-stop parade of students and assorted Oregon Hill regulars. Crazy Nate rode by on his bike twice, either grimacing or smiling, I wasn't sure which.
When it came time to order, my girlfriend got her standard PB & B while I asked for my usual half order of black bean nachos, which apparently sounded so appetizing that her husband ordered the same. Our server made it clear that the kitchen would be much happier if we just split a full order. Easy enough.
While we ate, conversation centered around how the kind of parties you go to in your 20s lose their appeal with time and meeting the right mate. Case in point, their Halloween plans involve other couples and board games, very different from the costumed debauchery they once practiced on All Hallows Eve.
Noticing how dark it was getting and how early it was, we lamented the shortening days. I said that at this point, all I want is to get to winter solstice so the days can start lengthening again. "That's exactly how I feel!" my friend agreed. This country is too far removed from an agrarian society to bother with the nonsense of changing the clocks anymore.
By then it was time for a change of venue.
We met up again at the Camel for a four band bill with Laura Stevenson and the Cans headlining. My girlfriend had put Laura's album as one of her favorites on her end of 2013 list and from what I'd listened to, with good cause.
The show kicked off with Tracy of Positive No thanking us for coming out on a Monday night. "Since the rocket didn't happen due to a stray sailboat, you get bands to listen to instead!" Honestly, I'd take music over rockets most nights.
As many times as I've seen Positive No play, tonight was significant because it was drummer Willis' last show with the band. And while the crowd was still fairly small when they played (it was an unusually early show for the Camel), most of the faces were familiar to the band.
That's probably why practically every song was dedicated to someone in the crowd like Tess, Sadie, Melissa and Ryan.
Tracy also took a moment to warn the other musicians in the room about the soft spot on the stage, likening it to the soft spot on a baby's head and recalling that she once went through a stage floor. "Okay, it was a pallet in the basement, but still..."
Really, it's not hard to imagine her going through a flimsy pallet given the energetic pogoing she does while singing lead. It's all part of a vibrant stage presence.
"I can't believe it's our last song," she said, high-fiving Willis and looking a little sad. For my part, I know his energetic drumming will be sorely missed.
Next came Eli Whitney and the Sound Machine, touring behind their new album "Reasons to Leave," which they characterized as "full of happy songs."
The trio was young, high energy and brief with songs clocking in at about three minutes tops. They even took the glammy Killers' song "Mr. Brightside" and made it hard, fast and fun.
They also looked like they were having a ball up there, the guitarists and bassist trading off lead vocals, both of them hopping around and playing off each other. "Really, we're from Long Island but we moved to Brooklyn. But not to be cool," they claimed.
When their set ended, my girlfriend summed it up perfectly. "It makes me so happy that there are still bands like that so full of energy." She was right, of course. It was young man music of the highest order.
During the break, I heard about my couple date's Aunt Nancy, a colorful-sounding woman who's had four husbands (seems she was big on Christian Mingles for a while), is a terrible but prolific painter and excels at making jello salads.
Fortunately for me, they not only had pictures of her bad art but pictures of Aunt Nancy and pictures of Aunt Nancy's self-portraits, making for a lot of laughter during the break.
Then came Helen Chambers in a green plaid shirt and black skirt, who began by telling us she'd come quite a long way to play guitar and sing "Little Demons." Only after the first song did she explain that she was English, as if we hadn't noticed the accent and lilting warble characteristic of British songbirds.
Written when she was exceedingly hungover, "Kiss the Floorboards" was about a resolution to give up alcohol, one she'd clearly abandoned given the drink at her feet. "But I really meant it when I wrote it!" she said. I thought British singers were required by law to drink.
We noticed that a cluster of guys had formed right in front of the stage, no doubt drawn by her incredible voice, friendly demeanor and short skirt.
She sounded very happy to be touring the U.S., mentioning that she'd had her first root beer today ("It tasted a little medicinal") before singing "Little Blackbirds" with Laura Stevenson coming up to add sublime harmonies on the song.
Sharing that she'd played for her uncle "Veronica Pearl," a song about her grandparents' house being bombed during WW II, she said he'd cried so hard when he heard it that his false teeth had come out. If she were a country singer, I'd say there's a song in that, too.
The crowd grew noticeably larger just before Laura Stevenson and the Cans began playing, as well it should have given the talent on stage. Along with Laura's voice and guitar were a guitarist, bassist, accordionist/keyboard player and even a female drummer, always a treat to see.
From the first notes, their sound was an interesting amalgamation of genres, part folky, a little pop and definitely rock and roll with a crack band to execute. And a whole lot of sad songs, such as the compelling "Runner," a song that thrilled my girlfriend.
Hearing a story on the radio in the band's van today about a woman being tested for Hodgkin's disease after two relatives had it, Laura said she cried at the woman's dilemma of waiting for a diagnosis. "It's kind of like this song, "The Healthy One," except mine's about AIDS." It was sad and beautiful.
It didn't take long to see why my girlfriend had fallen in love with Laura's voice, which while sweet and clear was also powerful and melancholy, particularly on love songs and sad songs, of which there were plenty.
Glancing at the drummer, she observed, "I just realized we're wearing the same outfit," she said of their brown t-shirts and jeans. "You look good!" I found it intriguing to hear so much humor from her between songs since the music leaned toward emotions laid bare.
Songs like the heartbreaking "The Move," for which the band left the stage so it was just her and her guitar. Or "Nervous Wrecks," which she sang with Helen doing harmonizing payback.
The band returned for one last happy song, rocking out as Laura's vocals soared over the heads of the adoring crowd.
What do you do when your couple date finishes with such a stellar band? You thank and hug your girlfriend for all she's worth and tell her to pass it on to her husband.
But you don't get kissed. Some things just aren't meant to happen on couple dates.
Sunday, October 26, 2014
All Along
With my limited budget and insatiable appetite for culture, I'm an unabashed fan of Richmond's free film series.
For the most part, both show foreign and arthouse films that never made it to Richmond, providing a chance to see award-winning and festival quality works on the big screen as they were meant to be seen. The only downside? No buttered popcorn because they're on school property.
The difference is in the audiences and the process. The VCU Cinematheque series at the Grace Street theater is full of film students with a smattering of film-loving adults taking advantage of a well-curated program with an introductory analysis before the film and usually a Q & A afterwards.
University of Richmond's international film series attracts a predominantly gray and white-haired crowd of mostly couples -alums, for all I know, or maybe just near West Enders - providing handouts about the film and a limited bit of information conveyed beforehand orally.
At tonight's screening of "Watchtower" at UR's Ukrop Auditorium in the Robins School of Business (can't you just smell the money?), we were forewarned that the cinematography would be exquisite, the acting as naturalistic as a documentary and that in all likelihood, the child in the film probably belonged to the actress playing the mother.
"I'm not going to give it away, but you'll see," our host said cryptically. "Also, you will write the last scene yourself."
In a scene where a bus driver tells her he used to write poetry in his youth, he goes on to say sagely, "High school, that's the time to write poems...before life gets in the way." Take heed, young poets.
During a scene where the female lead began going into labor, squatting and screaming, the older man in front of me leaned over to his wife and stage-whispered, "Do you think she's going to have a baby?" One man got up and walked out at that point. Obviously, he didn't want to see any babies being birthed realistically.
But I think it was the scene where the woman puts the crying newborn to her breast and it begins to eat that had convinced him that they were related. Perhaps he'd never heard of a wet-nurse.
Much of the film's appeal was how unlike American films it was. No love story or even suggestion of one. A mother who not only shows no interest in her baby but consciously rejects caring for it. Characters who don't smile. No musical soundtrack.
The movie was basically a character study of two people who end up together (in the watchtower of the title where the man is a fire spotter in a ruggedly beautiful area of Turkey) and learn each other's dark secrets, at least until the last scene when all we see is him leaning against the doorway looking pensive and we have no idea if she and the baby have left or if they're downstairs.
On another campus with a very different audience, we'd have chewed over that ending for a good, long while, discussing every possibility, every cinematic clue.
Like a good read, I'll be thinking about this one for a while.
For the most part, both show foreign and arthouse films that never made it to Richmond, providing a chance to see award-winning and festival quality works on the big screen as they were meant to be seen. The only downside? No buttered popcorn because they're on school property.
The difference is in the audiences and the process. The VCU Cinematheque series at the Grace Street theater is full of film students with a smattering of film-loving adults taking advantage of a well-curated program with an introductory analysis before the film and usually a Q & A afterwards.
University of Richmond's international film series attracts a predominantly gray and white-haired crowd of mostly couples -alums, for all I know, or maybe just near West Enders - providing handouts about the film and a limited bit of information conveyed beforehand orally.
At tonight's screening of "Watchtower" at UR's Ukrop Auditorium in the Robins School of Business (can't you just smell the money?), we were forewarned that the cinematography would be exquisite, the acting as naturalistic as a documentary and that in all likelihood, the child in the film probably belonged to the actress playing the mother.
"I'm not going to give it away, but you'll see," our host said cryptically. "Also, you will write the last scene yourself."
In a scene where a bus driver tells her he used to write poetry in his youth, he goes on to say sagely, "High school, that's the time to write poems...before life gets in the way." Take heed, young poets.
During a scene where the female lead began going into labor, squatting and screaming, the older man in front of me leaned over to his wife and stage-whispered, "Do you think she's going to have a baby?" One man got up and walked out at that point. Obviously, he didn't want to see any babies being birthed realistically.
But I think it was the scene where the woman puts the crying newborn to her breast and it begins to eat that had convinced him that they were related. Perhaps he'd never heard of a wet-nurse.
Much of the film's appeal was how unlike American films it was. No love story or even suggestion of one. A mother who not only shows no interest in her baby but consciously rejects caring for it. Characters who don't smile. No musical soundtrack.
The movie was basically a character study of two people who end up together (in the watchtower of the title where the man is a fire spotter in a ruggedly beautiful area of Turkey) and learn each other's dark secrets, at least until the last scene when all we see is him leaning against the doorway looking pensive and we have no idea if she and the baby have left or if they're downstairs.
On another campus with a very different audience, we'd have chewed over that ending for a good, long while, discussing every possibility, every cinematic clue.
Like a good read, I'll be thinking about this one for a while.
You Know You Need It
It's like when you start craving salads and veggies and you know your body is telling you something.
As I sat in my sunny front room working this afternoon, it was easy to ignore the sounds of people outside enjoying a gorgeous fall day, but it was impossible to ignore something pushing me to go to the VMFA.
Admittedly, it had been far too long since my last visit, so I did what my mind (heart? soul?) directed and changed clothes to go to the museum.
Walking out of my apartment and across the street to my car, a stranger called out, "I like your dress! It looks great on you." Another $3 thrift store find validated.
I found the VMFA fairly crowded with visitors mostly buzzing around the "Forbidden City" outposts, but rather than join them, I headed upstairs to the photography gallery for "Artists as Art: Photographic Portraits."
I was especially impressed with how the show had been curated given that nine female-taken photographs shared the walls with fifteen taken by men. That's an unusually high average for a show, any kind of show.
The exhibit began with soft focus, romantic Pictorialist photographs and moved through to images such as Warhol's Polaroids.
But it was the subjects themselves that drew me in. Alvin Landon Coburn's 1908 photo of William Butler Yeats showed an intense and intelligent man in glasses. He looked like a poet.
Most of the Pictorialist works were so delicately focused in gradations of black, white and gray that they resembled drawings.
With Bernice Abbott's 1928 photograph of James Joyce, the first and last thing that captured my attention was the delicacy of his hands.
Arnold Neuman's image of Edward Hopper was taken on a bench in front of his studio on Cape Cod with his wife Jo a small figure in the background. Neuman had captured the same sort of isolation that Hopper was known for.
You had to smile looking at Robert Frank's photograph of Allen Ginsburg hugging a tree in 1959 or Annie Leibovitz's iconic image of David Byrne in the infamous leaf suit from 1986.
Moving through the gallery, practically every face was an important contributor to the 20th century art world, as were some of the names of the men and women who'd captured them.
Mind, heart and soul fed, I wandered around the corner into the nearly empty Amuse, joining its only three occupants at the bar.
Usually there's a boisterous contingent over in the lounge area's green chairs, but they were conspicuously absent today (Lady Di, where are you?) which meant that I could actually hear the music being played, a rarity at Amuse.
The bartender said brunch had been busy and then apparently everyone except me had left the building for the great outdoors on this magnificent day. Conformity was never my strong suit.
My glass of Montand sparkling brut Rose ("I love it, too! Drink it while you can. It'll be gone soon!" the bartender advises) arrived with a brilliant red flower in it, although when I inquired what it was, she had no idea. It had come from Manakintowne Growers and was sitting in a glass with brilliant fuzzy purple basil flowers, but it was a mystery. In any case, it made a colorful addition to my glass of pink.
Checking out the menu, a necessity since I hadn't been to Amuse in far too long, I spotted something with my name on it: biscuit du jour. Inquiring about today's iteration, I swooned a little.
Housemade biscuits with the last of the season heirloom tomatoes, herb aioli and white Cheddar cheese. The bartender, who'd tasted one this morning, rhapsodized about the combination, saying it even beat last week's five spice variety. Faster than you can say "I have a biscuit addiction," I ordered some.
I've no idea where the chef is getting heirloom tomatoes when it's almost November, but that's not my concern. Biting into these biscuits was transcendent.
Sweet, juicy tomato slices buried under the freshest tasting herb aioli and melted cheese between a biscuit worthy of my Richmond grandmother and washed down with sparkling Rose. If it could get any better on this Sunday afternoon without being illegal, I don't know how. I was just grateful I was alone so I could eat both.
Looking at my reaction, she gave me a well-deserved "I told you so" and shared that the combination for teh biscuit had come to the pastry chef in a dream.
Now here's my moral dilemma.Was my inner self jolting me to go to the museum to see a finely-executed photography show or had my inner biscuit hound sensed that its needs could be addressed there?
Don't know, don't care. Both were flat out wonderful.
When I went to leave, the bartender reminded me not to make it so long until I come back again.
Not a chance. "Forbidden City" plus dreamy biscuits, you're up next...and soon.
As I sat in my sunny front room working this afternoon, it was easy to ignore the sounds of people outside enjoying a gorgeous fall day, but it was impossible to ignore something pushing me to go to the VMFA.
Admittedly, it had been far too long since my last visit, so I did what my mind (heart? soul?) directed and changed clothes to go to the museum.
Walking out of my apartment and across the street to my car, a stranger called out, "I like your dress! It looks great on you." Another $3 thrift store find validated.
I found the VMFA fairly crowded with visitors mostly buzzing around the "Forbidden City" outposts, but rather than join them, I headed upstairs to the photography gallery for "Artists as Art: Photographic Portraits."
I was especially impressed with how the show had been curated given that nine female-taken photographs shared the walls with fifteen taken by men. That's an unusually high average for a show, any kind of show.
The exhibit began with soft focus, romantic Pictorialist photographs and moved through to images such as Warhol's Polaroids.
But it was the subjects themselves that drew me in. Alvin Landon Coburn's 1908 photo of William Butler Yeats showed an intense and intelligent man in glasses. He looked like a poet.
Most of the Pictorialist works were so delicately focused in gradations of black, white and gray that they resembled drawings.
With Bernice Abbott's 1928 photograph of James Joyce, the first and last thing that captured my attention was the delicacy of his hands.
Arnold Neuman's image of Edward Hopper was taken on a bench in front of his studio on Cape Cod with his wife Jo a small figure in the background. Neuman had captured the same sort of isolation that Hopper was known for.
You had to smile looking at Robert Frank's photograph of Allen Ginsburg hugging a tree in 1959 or Annie Leibovitz's iconic image of David Byrne in the infamous leaf suit from 1986.
Moving through the gallery, practically every face was an important contributor to the 20th century art world, as were some of the names of the men and women who'd captured them.
Mind, heart and soul fed, I wandered around the corner into the nearly empty Amuse, joining its only three occupants at the bar.
Usually there's a boisterous contingent over in the lounge area's green chairs, but they were conspicuously absent today (Lady Di, where are you?) which meant that I could actually hear the music being played, a rarity at Amuse.
The bartender said brunch had been busy and then apparently everyone except me had left the building for the great outdoors on this magnificent day. Conformity was never my strong suit.
My glass of Montand sparkling brut Rose ("I love it, too! Drink it while you can. It'll be gone soon!" the bartender advises) arrived with a brilliant red flower in it, although when I inquired what it was, she had no idea. It had come from Manakintowne Growers and was sitting in a glass with brilliant fuzzy purple basil flowers, but it was a mystery. In any case, it made a colorful addition to my glass of pink.
Checking out the menu, a necessity since I hadn't been to Amuse in far too long, I spotted something with my name on it: biscuit du jour. Inquiring about today's iteration, I swooned a little.
Housemade biscuits with the last of the season heirloom tomatoes, herb aioli and white Cheddar cheese. The bartender, who'd tasted one this morning, rhapsodized about the combination, saying it even beat last week's five spice variety. Faster than you can say "I have a biscuit addiction," I ordered some.
I've no idea where the chef is getting heirloom tomatoes when it's almost November, but that's not my concern. Biting into these biscuits was transcendent.
Sweet, juicy tomato slices buried under the freshest tasting herb aioli and melted cheese between a biscuit worthy of my Richmond grandmother and washed down with sparkling Rose. If it could get any better on this Sunday afternoon without being illegal, I don't know how. I was just grateful I was alone so I could eat both.
Looking at my reaction, she gave me a well-deserved "I told you so" and shared that the combination for teh biscuit had come to the pastry chef in a dream.
Now here's my moral dilemma.Was my inner self jolting me to go to the museum to see a finely-executed photography show or had my inner biscuit hound sensed that its needs could be addressed there?
Don't know, don't care. Both were flat out wonderful.
When I went to leave, the bartender reminded me not to make it so long until I come back again.
Not a chance. "Forbidden City" plus dreamy biscuits, you're up next...and soon.
Suck Out All the Marrow of Life
The morning was a roller coaster of emotions ending with tears. How had I forgotten how sad it would be?
Waking up to another gorgeous, warm day, I walked the two miles to Movieland to see "Dead Poets Society," the last in their month-long tribute to Robin Williams and the first one I'd made it to.
As is typical with me, the last time I'd seen the film was when it came out, so 1989.
Not a lot of people showed up at 11 a.m. on Sunday besides three couples and another woman who kept getting up during the movie and leaving.
Other than "carpe diem," I honestly remembered very little of the story beyond Robin Williams being the teacher and inspiring a love of poetry in high school boys.
So I admit I got carried right along with those boys as he expounded on the virtues of non-conformity, taking opportunities as they arise and making the most of every single day. While I like to think that I live my life that way already, it never hurts to be reminded.
And as a poetry lover, it was perfectly lovely to hear snippets of Keats, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Frost, Shelley and Thoreau. As a fan of Williams' lightening fast humor, it was hilarious to hear lines such as, "I was the intellectual equivalent of a 98-pound weakling. I would go to the beach and people would kick copies of Byron in my face!"
And as far as essential truths go, none are closer to my heart than, "Language was developed for one endeavor and that is...to woo women!" Any man who doesn't know that is already a 98-pound intellectual weakling.
What my memory had blocked out of the 25-year old movie was the suicide of the student and the teacher's subsequent dismissal on trumped up charges.
That last scene where Williams comes back into the classroom to collect his "personals" and the students most feeling his loss stand on their desktops and call out, "O, captain, my captain" to acknowledge how he's changed their lives, how they think, act and feel had tears just rolling down my face.
Wiping them off and putting my sunglasses on for the walk home, I focused my thoughts on the movie's primary message.
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
Amen.
Waking up to another gorgeous, warm day, I walked the two miles to Movieland to see "Dead Poets Society," the last in their month-long tribute to Robin Williams and the first one I'd made it to.
As is typical with me, the last time I'd seen the film was when it came out, so 1989.
Not a lot of people showed up at 11 a.m. on Sunday besides three couples and another woman who kept getting up during the movie and leaving.
Other than "carpe diem," I honestly remembered very little of the story beyond Robin Williams being the teacher and inspiring a love of poetry in high school boys.
So I admit I got carried right along with those boys as he expounded on the virtues of non-conformity, taking opportunities as they arise and making the most of every single day. While I like to think that I live my life that way already, it never hurts to be reminded.
And as a poetry lover, it was perfectly lovely to hear snippets of Keats, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Frost, Shelley and Thoreau. As a fan of Williams' lightening fast humor, it was hilarious to hear lines such as, "I was the intellectual equivalent of a 98-pound weakling. I would go to the beach and people would kick copies of Byron in my face!"
And as far as essential truths go, none are closer to my heart than, "Language was developed for one endeavor and that is...to woo women!" Any man who doesn't know that is already a 98-pound intellectual weakling.
What my memory had blocked out of the 25-year old movie was the suicide of the student and the teacher's subsequent dismissal on trumped up charges.
That last scene where Williams comes back into the classroom to collect his "personals" and the students most feeling his loss stand on their desktops and call out, "O, captain, my captain" to acknowledge how he's changed their lives, how they think, act and feel had tears just rolling down my face.
Wiping them off and putting my sunglasses on for the walk home, I focused my thoughts on the movie's primary message.
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
Amen.
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Haven't a Clue
I'm not above soliciting strangers, especially when it comes to warmth.
Today was one of those days that got away from me and when I looked up at the clock when the writing portion of the afternoon was accomplished, it was already well past 6.
Just enough time to powder my nose, grab a chair and head on over to Quirk Gallery for a movie in the courtyard, joining a dozen people already lined up in front of the brick wall to see the 1985 screwball comedy/farce/whodunit "Clue."
Admittedly, I'd been a fan of the game, always opting for Miss Scarlet as my character, but had I even seen the movie when it came out? I have no idea.
But if I hadn't, I was clearly in the minority. I ran into the friend who had suggested they show "Clue" and he confided they he could say every word along with the actors. Two of the women in the row in front of me shared that they quote lines from it all the time. A friend I saw afterwards told me that she and her husband shared a love of this movie. One trio popped a bottle of champagne to begin the celebration of "Clue."
It was obviously far bigger than I knew, at least to a certain generation.
While the guy from Backstage got the audio/visual set up outdoors, we listened to a terrific playlist that began with Irma Thomas and moved on to Fontella Bass and Chad & Jeremy. When the A/V guy cut off "A Summer Song," a guy near me complained loudly, "Hey! I love that song!"
By the time the movie began, the crowd had tripled with some brave souls sitting on blankets on the parking lot, a place far too cold for me. As it was, I was the idiot (who gets cold if it's below 70 degrees) who hadn't brought a blanket, unlike almost every female there.
I caught a break when the woman in front of me went to go get food and I offered to "watch" her blanket, wrapping its residual warmth around my legs and praying her food took a long time to prepare. When she returned, I tried to give it back (really I did) but she insisted she had a spare so I should feel free to continue using it.
Don't mind if I do. Without it, my teeth would have been chattering.
The film wasn't long and clearly I don't have the youthful fond memories of it that most of tonight's attendees did, but all I kept thinking about was how it seemed to replace comedy with corny and intrigue with plot holes.
And that doesn't even begin to address that it was an '80s version of a story supposedly set in the '50s, making for murky waters when this audience member tried to sort through incongruous elements and costumes.
But I didn't go for fine filmmaking, I went for camp and got it, sometimes via dialog - "Husbands should be like Kleenex: soft, strong and disposable" - and other times with cliches such as when Miss Scarlet's car breaks down and she leans fetchingly over the hood, raising a shapely leg just as a car rounds the bend.
Voila, roadside assistance! And while I've never been so blatant as all that, I have been known to stand beside my disabled car on the roadside in hopes of availing myself of the kindness of strangers. Fact is, I've had many a tire changed using this method.
Considering the comedic talent in the film -Martin Mull, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean - the funniest bit in the whole movie was Madeleine Kahn's improvised reaction when her character Mrs. White is accused of killing the maid (because her husband had been schtupping her).
"Flames, flames on the side of my face!" was so odd, so unexpected that it could only have come out of her lips without the benefit of a script. Hilarious.
The movie had three endings, all of which began to wear thin, at least to me, as the cast raced around from room to room recreating all the murders. Even they looked a little bored with it all.
So while I didn't see a particularly noteworthy film, what's not to enjoy about watching a movie screened on a brick wall while cozily nestled under a blanket with the sounds of the city coming in and out of earshot?
Whether it's the voices of a nearby Saturday night party on Grace Street, an ambulance siren racing up Broad Street or an airplane in the night sky, it's all part of the experience.
Like the girls in front of me reciting the occasional line along with the characters. "Frankly, Scarlet, I don't give a damn."
Me, neither. Some evenings it's enough just to sit back and enjoy something different.
Today was one of those days that got away from me and when I looked up at the clock when the writing portion of the afternoon was accomplished, it was already well past 6.
Just enough time to powder my nose, grab a chair and head on over to Quirk Gallery for a movie in the courtyard, joining a dozen people already lined up in front of the brick wall to see the 1985 screwball comedy/farce/whodunit "Clue."
Admittedly, I'd been a fan of the game, always opting for Miss Scarlet as my character, but had I even seen the movie when it came out? I have no idea.
But if I hadn't, I was clearly in the minority. I ran into the friend who had suggested they show "Clue" and he confided they he could say every word along with the actors. Two of the women in the row in front of me shared that they quote lines from it all the time. A friend I saw afterwards told me that she and her husband shared a love of this movie. One trio popped a bottle of champagne to begin the celebration of "Clue."
It was obviously far bigger than I knew, at least to a certain generation.
While the guy from Backstage got the audio/visual set up outdoors, we listened to a terrific playlist that began with Irma Thomas and moved on to Fontella Bass and Chad & Jeremy. When the A/V guy cut off "A Summer Song," a guy near me complained loudly, "Hey! I love that song!"
By the time the movie began, the crowd had tripled with some brave souls sitting on blankets on the parking lot, a place far too cold for me. As it was, I was the idiot (who gets cold if it's below 70 degrees) who hadn't brought a blanket, unlike almost every female there.
I caught a break when the woman in front of me went to go get food and I offered to "watch" her blanket, wrapping its residual warmth around my legs and praying her food took a long time to prepare. When she returned, I tried to give it back (really I did) but she insisted she had a spare so I should feel free to continue using it.
Don't mind if I do. Without it, my teeth would have been chattering.
The film wasn't long and clearly I don't have the youthful fond memories of it that most of tonight's attendees did, but all I kept thinking about was how it seemed to replace comedy with corny and intrigue with plot holes.
And that doesn't even begin to address that it was an '80s version of a story supposedly set in the '50s, making for murky waters when this audience member tried to sort through incongruous elements and costumes.
But I didn't go for fine filmmaking, I went for camp and got it, sometimes via dialog - "Husbands should be like Kleenex: soft, strong and disposable" - and other times with cliches such as when Miss Scarlet's car breaks down and she leans fetchingly over the hood, raising a shapely leg just as a car rounds the bend.
Voila, roadside assistance! And while I've never been so blatant as all that, I have been known to stand beside my disabled car on the roadside in hopes of availing myself of the kindness of strangers. Fact is, I've had many a tire changed using this method.
Considering the comedic talent in the film -Martin Mull, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean - the funniest bit in the whole movie was Madeleine Kahn's improvised reaction when her character Mrs. White is accused of killing the maid (because her husband had been schtupping her).
"Flames, flames on the side of my face!" was so odd, so unexpected that it could only have come out of her lips without the benefit of a script. Hilarious.
The movie had three endings, all of which began to wear thin, at least to me, as the cast raced around from room to room recreating all the murders. Even they looked a little bored with it all.
So while I didn't see a particularly noteworthy film, what's not to enjoy about watching a movie screened on a brick wall while cozily nestled under a blanket with the sounds of the city coming in and out of earshot?
Whether it's the voices of a nearby Saturday night party on Grace Street, an ambulance siren racing up Broad Street or an airplane in the night sky, it's all part of the experience.
Like the girls in front of me reciting the occasional line along with the characters. "Frankly, Scarlet, I don't give a damn."
Me, neither. Some evenings it's enough just to sit back and enjoy something different.
Somebody's Baby
Oh, Friday, Friday, I try my best not to do Restaurant Week but sometimes it just turns out that way.
Because I moved into the city in 1993 - a block and a half from Zeus Gallery Cafe - I never knew a time when the quirky little restaurant wasn't in the neighborhood (like the library and the VMFA) that I wound up staying in for 13 years.
Ending up there tonight wasn't the plan but turned out to be the reality, set to local music on the sound system (big ups for that) and La Vieille Ferme Rose the color of pink diamonds.
Lemon vinaigrette kicked up a peppery arugula and Grana padano salad a notch. Red-wine braised veal short ribs got hearty with tomato jam, butternut squash puree and asparagus. I adjusted the flourless chocolate pate by salting it to perfection.
It's my chocolate and I'll salt if I want to.
Altogether a fine meal made even more impressive by the load on the kitchen as a steady stream of diners arrived all night long. "Each night this week gets crazier," the barkeep claimed. Good news for the Foodbank.
She wasn't too worried about it because the minute restaurant week ends, she and her main squeeze are headed to a cabin the mountains with a spectacular view and a hot tub. Oh, and lots of drinking material, she assured us. "I did used to work at Buddy's," she said by way of explanation.
Once back at my host's house, the musical portion of the evening went through Jackson Brown's best of, why David Crosby matters (with a story tangent about how Roger McGuinn still claims that Stephen Stills stole David Crosby from the Byrds), and bluesy Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac.
Seventies California music, in other words. Great guitar stuff. I even heard an Eagles song I'd never heard and didn't hate. That's how deep the cuts went.
A cache of comic books yielded conversation about the one who'd given up drawing years ago, spirited dancing to Jackson Brown, and from the one with scads of siblings, endless intricate family relation stories.
If I could have, I'd have shot the breeze all night as good as the jawing and soundrack were.
Can't be late for the (morning) sky tomorrow, though.
Because I moved into the city in 1993 - a block and a half from Zeus Gallery Cafe - I never knew a time when the quirky little restaurant wasn't in the neighborhood (like the library and the VMFA) that I wound up staying in for 13 years.
Ending up there tonight wasn't the plan but turned out to be the reality, set to local music on the sound system (big ups for that) and La Vieille Ferme Rose the color of pink diamonds.
Lemon vinaigrette kicked up a peppery arugula and Grana padano salad a notch. Red-wine braised veal short ribs got hearty with tomato jam, butternut squash puree and asparagus. I adjusted the flourless chocolate pate by salting it to perfection.
It's my chocolate and I'll salt if I want to.
Altogether a fine meal made even more impressive by the load on the kitchen as a steady stream of diners arrived all night long. "Each night this week gets crazier," the barkeep claimed. Good news for the Foodbank.
She wasn't too worried about it because the minute restaurant week ends, she and her main squeeze are headed to a cabin the mountains with a spectacular view and a hot tub. Oh, and lots of drinking material, she assured us. "I did used to work at Buddy's," she said by way of explanation.
Once back at my host's house, the musical portion of the evening went through Jackson Brown's best of, why David Crosby matters (with a story tangent about how Roger McGuinn still claims that Stephen Stills stole David Crosby from the Byrds), and bluesy Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac.
Seventies California music, in other words. Great guitar stuff. I even heard an Eagles song I'd never heard and didn't hate. That's how deep the cuts went.
A cache of comic books yielded conversation about the one who'd given up drawing years ago, spirited dancing to Jackson Brown, and from the one with scads of siblings, endless intricate family relation stories.
If I could have, I'd have shot the breeze all night as good as the jawing and soundrack were.
Can't be late for the (morning) sky tomorrow, though.
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