Yes, You May

Tra-la! It's May!
The lusty month of May!
That lovely month when ev'ryone goes
Blissfully astray!

Allergies aside, May is my favorite month of the year and today it begins. Besides my natal anniversary, I'm one of those oddballs who actually loves summer, yes, heat and humidity and all.

Add in long days, beach time and the ability to wear cuter clothes and I'm I'm all aflutter that May is here and the season of sun and wicked thoughts is just ahead.

I began my May Day celebration with my walk, haphazardly getting a peek at some of the collegiate  bikers in town for this weekend's race when I strolled by the Doubletree and saw a clutch of them in Spandex and bike shoes milling about a Les-McRae College van, looking eager to mount and start.

The street closures are already causing congestion in my neighborhood given how close to both Broad and Belvidere I live, but I refuse to get my panties in a wad because of vehicular inconvenience when we've got all these cyclists in town for the weekend not only to entertain us, but to further the cause of Richmond becoming more of a true cycling city.

After my walk, I was off to begin my birthday month with my annual gift to myself: a massage.

Although it's been a year since my last massage, the girl remembered me, saying she recognized my name at once when she saw it in her schedule book. Given my innocuous name, that's quite a memory.

There's nothing like taking off your clothes so a stranger can rub all the knots out of you and that hour passed in a wet noodle flash. I could have a massage every week of my life and never tire of being pummeled.

Now May could officially begin.

Back home, I walked over to Black Sheep for lunch, enjoying the fragrance of all the trees and bushes in bloom, looking for an appropriately light lunch on the menu, eventually choosing a wedge salad with Granny Smith apple slices, celery, grapes, croutons and goat cheese under honey mustard dressing.

But, inspired by the menu's humor - vegetarian's soup: because you care, omnivore's soup: because you don't - I also ordered a side of bacon with my salad. Because I don't care.

"Now you're just making me hungry," the server said when she brought my two plates. "That looks like a great combination!"

And it was. My only complaint was that the stellar housemade honey mustard dressing, full of flavorful mustard seeds, was ladled on with a heavy hand and all but drowned out the ingredients of the salad, which struck me as a cross between a wedge and a waldorf salad.

But I made do, wiping off the thickest parts, adding in all that bacon and feeling like I'd hit on a lovely May Day lunch.

Feeling lusty and looking for more ways to go blissfully astray before it's all over.

A Criminally Fun Food Fight for Girls

It always comes down to music.

Sure, I could talk about the dinner I had at Lunch (where it was standing room only busy), the Wolftrap white blend, the French onion soup, the witty banter with a favorite recluse.

For that matter, I could  ramble on about "Farewell, My Queen," the French movie we saw afterwards, the opulence of the Versailles setting and costumes contrasted with the harsh reality of Marie Antoinette's time (dead rats, bug bites).

Favorite line: "Words are all I have. I wield them well."

But instead, I'll focus on the show.

Foodfight RVA was a stroke of brilliance - have a show of bands comprised only of people who work together at local restaurants and make it a benefit.

Come on, we all know most servers are really working to support their art or music habit, so it made perfect sense.

And the worthy beneficiary was Girls Rock RVA, the non-profit that holds a week-long empowerment camp every summer to teach girls 8-14 how to play an instrument, write a song and perform it.

Presenting the show was Quickness, the local delivery service that will bring food from a number of restaurants directly to your door.

And they were the first band up.

Just the Tip was a straight-ahead punk band, thrashing hard as they played a song called "Ophelia" about "a lady in Church Hill who always orders barbecue from Alamo and wears a turban."

Just another customer immortalized.

Black Sheep's band was Angry Chef and the Lowboys, a trio in chef coats and aprons all on acoustic guitars (and harmonica).

They got points for clever songwriting, singing "We Got the Kitchen Blues," "86 Bacon" (a dire situation if ever there was one) and perhaps the funniest, "Fry, Baby, Fry."

As you might guess, it sounded a lot like the Beatles "Cry, Baby, Cry" except it had lyrics like, "Kevin's in the kitchen cooking food for the people" and the customer lament, "They want switches and everything on the side."

Some of the women who'd led Girls Rock RVA this year performed next, doing the camp's theme song, but only after informing the crowd what Girls Rock was about.

This year's attendance was 44 (double the first year's) and their final performance was at the Hippodrome.

Hearing about their success made me glad I'd made a donation at the door.

Lamplighter's six-piece Funky Crumpets were next and they introduced themselves as, "We're those dudes who take way too long to make your sandwich."

The crowd laughed. "But they taste real good, don't they?" Much cheering and applause followed because they do.

They got off to a slow start but the guitarist locked into a groove and the singer (who'd said beforehand that she had no idea what she was going to sing) let loose and before long the crowd shut up and took note.

Ipanema's band turned out to be only Jonathan who said his missing band mates were "either working or already playing."

With typical Ips ingenuity, he proceeded to play guitar, loop it, get up and go play drums, loop that and return to guitar.

In other words, he filled in for everybody else, getting an A for effort alone.

Sticky Rice's trio Bonsai were energetic and melodic and especially appropriate for the evening's theme, given they had a female guitarist and drummer.

Duo Fat Side Up came from Alamo Barbecue and they played covers, one from Sublime and another from Fiona Apple ("Criminal").

For their last song, the singer announced he had brought ribs to eat as he sang, and he also waved bones over his head as he finished each one.

Returning from the bathroom mid-show, I ran into a favorite guitarist/server who sweatily informed me, "I'm too old for this shit. I used to do these shows and I remember how they smell."

It was more than a tad warm in Strange Matter tonight, but then a good percentage of the restaurant world was in the house.

Favorite t-shirt: "It's a lifestyle, not a fad."

Selba's Pregenators had a front man who was dying to show off his moves.

Dressed in low-slung jeans, an open black vest and medallion, he showed off his best pelvic thrusts while singing to a bass and drums.

The show closed with the Roosevelt's quartet (who got my vote for best band name), A Consensual Evening with Winston Stablock.

With a smoke machine obliterating bartender and drummer T, they pulled off two well-crafted R & B songs (written by Josh, natch) with him and fellow server Brandon singing back up.

And while I'd heard Mark singing along in the kitchen of the Roosevelt before, I had no idea he had it in him to be a rock star.

Favorite lyric: "I couldn't have you, I had to get you."

After a whole lot of applause, Mark closed by saying, "One more time for the smoke machine" and don't you know the crowd gave it up for the machine.

The audience had thinned considerably by the time the judges got up to award prizes.

The rib-eating Fat Side Up took third place (accepting, the singer said, "I'll bring more ribs next year"), Angry Chef and the Lowboys took second (no doubt for their clever lyrics and only acoustic guitars) and Bonsai took first (maybe being two thirds female helped their odds).

Personally, I'd have also given awards to the two people who had never been on stage before and totally won over the audience.

The guitarist for Funky Crumpets and the singer for A Consensual Evening were both playing their first shows ever.

So, like the aspiring musicians of Girls Rock RVA, they'd practiced, screwed up their nerve and taken the stage only to impress strangers and friends alike.

Because, let's face it, if you want to get good at music (or cooking or anything), you gotta make it a lifestyle, not a fad.

That's the only way I got so good at eating and going to shows.

Immune to the Stuff

How appropriate that today's birthday lunch had an eighties soundtrack.

Yes, I'm older and yes, the eighties are still all too familiar.

While enjoying a breezy wait on the bench in front of Black Sheep, I saved a woman from falling into the abyss by pointing out the warning painted on the silver grate where she stood.

That would be the one saying not to stand on it. Keep off!

She was a first-timer, so it was understandable that she hadn't known to read the ground where she was standing.

Studying the menu, she sought my advice so I also filled her in on battleships as long as I was mentoring her.

Friend and I were given a table against the wall and pounced on our server when she appeared, having decided on eats while sunning ourselves outside.

Despite Friend having gotten up earlier than I had today, he wanted breakfast.

That meant coffee and the South Anna scramble (eggs scrambled with smoked trout, mushrooms, roasted tomato and bacon with chive and horseradish hollandaise over toast) while I went the lunch route.

At Black Sheep, that always means starting with an Abita root beer (I'll lie and say it's 'cause it's made with pure Louisiana sugar cane) and a salad of strawberries, yellow cherry tomatoes, arugula, fresh mozzarella, pine nuts and basil in a honey balsamic vinaigrette.

As we ate and bobbed our heads to the past, we noticed all the battleships coming out of the kitchen.

Interestingly, they were all going to women not men (not that there's anything wrong with that), including the woman I'd schooled a short time before (patting the wrapped leftover 'ship later, she told me, "It's for my husband." Yea, sure).

Friend's mega-meal arrived on an enormous glass fish-shaped platter, no doubt a nod to the smoked trout buried in the rich concoction.

My salad was pretty in a colorful way, complete with edible purple pea shoot flowers adorning it, with the creamy mozzarella so fresh it melted in my mouth.

Hearing Robert Palmer got us talking about the show we'd seen together last week, why Creed cover bands cause people to leave shows and about the innate human need for companionship.

"Might as well face it," I told him, causing him to laugh out loud. He's known me long enough to know exactly what I meant.

It's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough.

Of birthday celebrations, that is. Yea, right.

You Just Had to Be There

It was like a meeting of the Elvis fan club.

The group of people who gathered at the VMFA for the "Conversations: Elvis at 21" talk today included multiple people still plenty passionate about the King.

The speakers were photographer Jeffrey Allison and musician Terri Allard and they weren't so much lecturing as nurturing a conversation with the audience.

"Some of you are all about Elvis," Allison noted right off the bat. "I saw some blue suede shoes." And it was true.

Allison, also the Mellon Collection Educator, talked about what gave the photographs in the exhibit their definitive look.

Wertheimer was using a Leica SLR, the images were framed as he shot (so there was no cropping in the final prints) and he used only available light.

The quiet of the camera and the absence of flash meant that the photographer could be almost invisible to his subject, making for more naturalistic photos.

But it was during the audience's participation that the true fans showed themselves.

One spoke of her vivid memories of having seen Elvis at the Mosque.

"I tried to go onstage and tear his shirt off," admitted the middle-aged woman in the blue suede shoes.

"We were complete maniacs about him," another said without apology.

Yet another remembered her family being recently stationed in Japan and hearing Elvis on Armed Forces Radio and the effect it had on her.

One said that she recalled Elvis coming to her high school in a small town in Arkansas to play when he was barnstorming around the South developing his following.

In every one of their voices, you heard the passion of a true fan who had lost none of her enthusiasm for the long-dead singer.

Elvis has been recognized for having been an unusually focused man at 21, but his long-time followers are certainly no less so today and I guess I hadn't realized that.

Allison asked what other singer had achieved as lasting an effect and a response of "Michael Jackson" was all but shouted down.

To the devoted, Elvis is apparently the real thing and no one can be acknowledged in the same breath as the man.

Many of the people in the audience were following up the talk with seeing the show, but since I'd already seen it, I headed west for lunch.

I was meeting a friend in the restaurant business who's always eager to eat places he hasn't (and surprisingly, he hasn't eaten at a lot of places).

That's how I'd introduced him to Ettamae's and Stella's. Today it was Black Sheep, although I'd originally suggested Amuse.

It would have been terribly convenient for me, but he shot that down because he was coming in work clothes and wanted someplace he considered more casual.

Like everyone else, he was charmed by the place, ordering the Falldorf Salad, a creative take on a Waldorf salad with clementines in addition to the usual suspects, and a Diet Cheerwine.

Then there was me, the feminine one, whose delicate appetite demanded that I go to the opposite extreme with the Green Eggs and Lamb.

The eggs were baked with Derby Sage cheese and spinach and the two large links of lamb sausage gave me all the salty I could hope for to accompany the sweetness of my Abita Root Beer.

That would be sweet, as in sugary. Unlike several of my male friends, I disdain diet sodas.

Everyone decides which real things are important to them. Imagine hanging on to that devotion for fifty years.

I might not be in the Elvis fan club, but I'm hugely impressed by anyone who inspires long-lasting passion.

Just to be clear, though, I have no intention of wearing blue suede shoes to prove it.

Amused Until Midnight

I don't know when the next time will be that Amuse lets me stay until midnight, so I had to take advantage of their hospitality tonight.

It was all part of my couple date, you see. We met at Black Sheep for a pre-theater dinner and managed to sneak in just before the Friday night crowds arrived and began the waiting game.

With a bottle of white Rioja and plates of the crawfish etouffe biscuits and the barbecued shrimp, we recounted recent meals (my rabbit and softshells and their brains and liver) while ogling the battleships being served around us.

Dinner ran the gamut from the smoked trout salad to the barbecued duck leg with Israeli cous cous to the Cardinal, a perfectly balanced salad of mixed greens, dried cherries, roasted beets, pickled onions and "bird seed," a mixture of various seeds.

The unsurpassed LaBrea tarpit (dark chocolate creme brulee) finished the meal, as usual.

Tonight's cultural offering at Firehouse was Israel Horovitz "Shorts,"  four very brief plays interspersed with short dance pieces and two violinists providing musical interludes.

"The Bridal Dance" underscored every negative stereotype about womanizers, body image and relationships, including marriages gone bad from the get-go (as in at the wedding).

"Stage Directions" was the knockout piece, a story told entirely through three characters' speaking their stage directions only. It sounds like such a simple construct and yet it was very powerful.

During intermission, I headed to the head only to hear my name called. It was Treesa Gold, one of the Richmond Symphony's violinists who'd been called just hours before to sub for the scheduled violinist.

"You are everywhere!" she said, hugging me. "And you're sight-reading music in the dark of the theater!" I told her. Mutual admiration all around.

"Inconsolable" was about a mother's suicide and a failed marriage and was heartbreaking. especially when told through the eyes of the daughter who discovers her moms' dead body.

"The Race Play" ended things on a lighter note with the tale of a charity race where the younger runners allow the iconic older runner to take the race. The play required the actors to run in place the entire time and all were glowing by play's end.

Playwright Horovitz was in the audience and it was hard to deny the power of the stories he told so succinctly. The capacity audience was clearly impressed.

My couple date and I left for Amuse with our intellects stimulated, some built-in conversational material and seeling some late-evening libations, not sure how much of a crowd to expect.

At 10:15, the ticket lines at VMFA were headed almost to the entrance. Most people in line appeared to be under thirty, no doubt having decided that Friday night would be a great time to finally check out Picasso.

Upstairs at Amuse, there was a decent crowd which only grew over the next hour as people streamed in after seeing the show.

The bar was full, so we snagged a table by the window. Later the manager came over and playfully asked me if I'd ever sat at a table at Amuse. Why, yes, a couple of times...and never by choice.

There was a couple making goo-goo eyes at each other at the bar; later the manager told us that they had gotten engaged at the bar tonight. It was very sweet, although it seemed an unlikely location at which to propose, at least to us.

The green fairy floated over to our table with glasses for us womenfolk while the masculine one had a cocktail of some sort. All around us, tables were abuzz with post-Picassoites enjoying an uncharacteristically late night at Amuse; I saw musicians, servers and former neighbors.

With the cool glow of the purple lights overhead, it definitely didn't feel like we were in Richmond anymore. Do it again, Amuse. We'll stay as late as you let us.

The Joy of Blathering About Nothing

Yeah, yeah, I know you plan well in advance and it's not likely that you're available this evening but it never hurts to ask, right?

Friends wanted me to join them for a pre-theater supper in my neighborhood. They were going to see "Madama Butterfly" and, coincidentally, I was going to see "Waiting for Godot," so it couldn't have worked out better. We all had somewhere to be by 8:00.

We ended up at Black Sheep, four blocks from home for me and a place at which they'd brunched but never dined. That meant they needed some time with the menu, so I got Loimer Lois Gruner Veltliner while they went the white rioja route.

Given our tight schedule, we skipped appetizers but two of us couldn't resist soup. I had the Soup DJ, a white bean, collard and sausage combo in a clear broth and was not disappointed with its satisfying chunkiness. Her spicy Indian tomato soup with red lentils was just as good.

As a first-time diner, he went for the chicken and dumplings and she for the bacon-wrapped rainbow trout. The trout that pushed my buttons was the Spearfish: roasted asparagus spears under a salad of smoked trout, fennel and radish in a lemon-dill vinaigrette.

I know from experience that Black Sheep's chicken and dumplings are a comfort food staple and so popular they can't take them off the menu. I tasted the bacon-wrapped trout and it was excellent.

But the consensus was that I'd made the standout choice. As good as her fresh trout was, the smoked trout was to die for and the lemon dill vinaigrette made every green on that plate better. "I want to come back for that salad," she told her beloved.

Since it was their first dinner, we had to finish with the LaBrea tarpit, especially because these two are creme brulee experts and very discerning. They heartily approved of the Sheep's dark chocolate version, unlike any other in Richmond. That's two more tarpit converts I've made; I ought to get a commission.

Heading east to CenterStage, they dropped me on a street corner to collect my car so I could head to Pine Camp for Henley Street Theater's production of "Waiting for Godot," considered the most important English-language play of the 20th century.

For the uninitiated, "WFG" is the 1953 absurdist modern play about nothing. It was Seinfeld before there was Seinfeld. There are only four characters and mostly they talk. And talk some more. Which means the dialog is superb.

On another worthless day in the life: "What's the point of losing heart now?"

The better conversationalist to the less-skilled: "Come on, Gogo, return the ball, can't you, once in a  while?"

Trying to recall the night before: "We spent last night blathering about nothing. We've been doing that for half a century."

On making plans for the day: "We always find something to give the impression we exist."

The four-man cast was spot-on. Bob Jones conveyed the hapless, more easily discouraged of the pair and Bob Nelson the more hopeful mover and talker. Foster Solomon was his usual larger-than-life character, playing both lordly and helpless equally well; former dancer Jerome Weiss conveyed volumes through posture and movement.

For a nearly sixty-year old play, the evening felt surprisingly fresh and relevant. What must have seemed enigmatic about the play in the fifties is just post-modern life now.

As one who likes to lob, my Godot-inspired question would be, are there more or fewer people who can return the conversational ball these days?

I'd be happy to talk that through with anyone who's interested. And then talk some more.

Black Sheep and Lamb for Lunch

On a cold, rainy and occasionally icy day, lunch at Black Sheep is about as cozy as you can get in this town. Even better, it was a slow lunch day so the vibe was even more relaxed than usual when we got there around 1:30.

It was a long-overdue get-together with a friend whose life had been crazily busy for the past few months, so we were in it for the long haul lunch.

The soup DJ was weather-appropriate, a white bean, Chorizo and kale mix guaranteed to take the chill off, so Friend ordered a cup and finished it while I was telling her a story. She apologized for not offering me a bite, but I knew I had plenty of food coming.

Strangely enough, she'd gotten up at 7 a.m., so she ordered breakfast (barn and bay eggs) and I'd gotten up at 9, so I was all about lunch. I was sorely tempted by the fried bologna and cheese, but ended up ordering the salad of arugula, Belgian endive, dried figs, toasted pecans and shaved roasted leg of lamb with pomegranate/molasses vinaigrette.

If I'd expected a whole lot of green with a garnish of meat, I'd have been disappointed, but I know all too well that Black Sheep never skimps on protein (witness their battleships). And I was anything but disappointed

Lamb was everywhere on this salad, under, over and throughout; it was a lamb lover's delight, punctuated with so many figs that I wasn't sure I could finish them all and I love figs.

We had a far-ranging chat because we had so much to catch up on. Now that she's in a relationship, she had tales from the happy home front that contrasted with our former late nights of debauchery.

I got a chance to tell her about some recent successes and she was a supportive friend, reminding me of how well I've handled a couple of long-term difficult situations without taking a negative turn.

And then we had a cosmic reminder of just that when one of her exes came in and walked by sullenly, reminding us both that this is a small town and one's past never really goes away. You just never know where it'll turn up.

Black Sheep's baker, whom we both know, came out to talk to us for a bit, which inevitably led to us deciding that it was dessert time and Black Sheep does dessert so well.

Friend got the La Brea tarpit (chocolate creme brulee) and I got one of today's specials, the coconut cake, thick with a not-too-sweet butter cream frosting and toasted coconut.

If there's one thing than can woo me away from chocolate, it's coconut cake. And to make it even more obscene, it came with a scoop of ice cream which I never even got to.

We'd gotten so cozy and comfy inside that we were surprised to walk outside and find ice falling from the sky. Not as surprised as looking up from a good time and seeing your ex, but just as unpleasant.

But the creative food and chatty company more than made up for those flies in the ointment.

As Long As I Don't Have to Actually Knit

If I want to be surrounded by men, all I have to do is go to a lecture at the Virginia Center for Architecture. Not that that's why I went tonight. Or not entirely anyway.

Actually the topic was what drew me to the Branch House tonight. "A Ruin Revealed: Rosewell" was about the 18th century Gloucester County mansion that I had never even heard of before the opening of the "American Ruins" photography exhibition currently at the VCA.

Oh, sure, I knew about the Barboursville ruins (always a pleasant side trip after some wine tasting), but Rosewell not so much. Clearly a lesson was in order.

Architectural historian Mark Wenger provided the history as well as future plans for this three-story brick mansion with the three and a half foot thick brick walls. This house that Thomas Jefferson frequently visited (even writing a rough draft of the Declaration of Independence there).

A house with 450,000 bricks in it. One that took three miles of forest to procure the lumber for the floorboards alone. Because it took a decade to be built, owner Mann Page was dead five years before its completion, drat the luck.

It was a fire in 1916 that destroyed all but the east wall, parts of the other walls, the four chimneys and the wine cellar. Wenger said efforts are underway to stabilize what's left for the sake of further research and for future generations.

As far as I'm concerned, I now have to see Rosewell. I want to stand on the banks of the York River and admire the surviving wine cellar and imagine the grand parties the house once hosted. Fortunately, the ruins are still open to the public...for now. Road trip?

At the reception afterwards (after being warned to keep the red wine in the social room for fear of spillage), I had the pleasure of being approached by several attendees, all of whom asked what my interest in the lecture was (was this a quiz?). Sheer nerdiness? Curiosity about history? I didn't have any easy answers, but I got lots of great conversation from strangers.

A stop at Black Sheep on the way home for dessert and wine, and to chat up a friend I hadn't seen in a while was in order. I timed it right so things were winding down.

I took a seat next to two girls trying to finish their battleships and somehow we ended up in conversation when they asked for a dessert menu and I shared mine before their server could return with one.

Not wanting to influence their dessert choice, I waited till they'd ordered and my LaBrea tarpit (chocolate creme brulee) arrived before offering them bites of mine, insisting they take an animal cracker and scoop out some chocolate for each of them to taste.

They loved it, just like I knew they would and from then on we were fast friends. They said my dessert acumen meant they should ask about my favorite restaurants.

That led to a discussion of all kinds of eating out, covering even Fredericksbug since they'd gone to school at Mary Washington (which also led to a wonderful discussion of the satisfaction of driving Route 301; they were kindred souls on that subject).

By the time they got up to leave, my friend had finished her shift so she sat down to eat and catch up. The radio was set to slacker.com, so the music was terrific (The XX, Smashing Pumpkins, Andrew Bird) and just the right volume now that all the customers were gone. We talked about customers with unrealistic expectations of small restaurants and how to address that.

She brought up RVA's love affair with brunch ("People will wait an hour and half and then order scrambled eggs and a biscuit. I don't get it."). We tried to understand why Richmonders are averse to community eating and California and Europe are not. And who decides to proclaim that a restaurant kid-friendly?

By the time my Guintrady Cote du Rhone Grenache blend was gone, we had talked and talked but hadn't solved all the issues on the table.

"We need to have a knitting circle with restaurant people and just talk about this stuff," she said. "You have to be there."

But I'm not a restaurant person, I told her. "Oh yes you are," she objected.

Will there be chocolate and wine?