There's something about Geminis.
I'm one (and a pretty classic one at that) and many of the people closest to me are as well. That means that for the next little while, I'll be celebrating with them while they celebrate with me.
Tonight's quartet was 3/4 Gemini with one non, meaning we had seven personalities at the table. It can be a lot when you put so many multiple personalities together.
Our dinner party got started at Amuse just after that hailstorm that surely caught everyone off guard, littering the streets with so many leaves that in places they looked solid green.
But things were calm and collected at the museum as we were led to a table overlooking the reflecting pool and sculpture garden.
Celebratory drinks were in order - mine was Montand sparkling brut Rose- as we toasted the birthday boys and girls in the now sunny dining room. To each his own, but nothing says "I'm special" to me like bubbles.
The storm was the topic of the moment with one in our group having already lost power due to a fallen tree in his backyard. I was teased because my lack of a cell phone meant I hadn't received the dire "Take shelter" text that the three of them had to warn them of impending doom.
No, I figured it out the old-school way, by closing the windows and staying inside once hail began pinging off my tin roof and the wind became louder than the music I was playing.
Call me old fashioned.
I started my meal with a salad of local greens, pickled radish, goat cheese, spicy candied pecans and fig vinaigrette as we watched the sun give way to clouds and another bout of torrential rain begin.
At first we thought the hail was back but it turned out to be nothing more than gigantic raindrops, almost causing waves in the reflecting pool.
There was lots to catch up on - a possible new love that had been keeping the writer from working on his book, the theater in one Gemini's background that her mate didn't know about, the non-Gemini who'd blown his mates' minds by introducing them to spring mix instead of iceberg lettuce- and before long, we were the loudest table at Amuse.
A dubious honor, at best. YOLO- you only live once- became the rallying cry of the night.
Things settled down a bit as I ate mussels for the second day in a row, these with Surry sausage and Pecorino, and noticed all the familiar faces in the dining room.
With the film director I'd met at Bistro Bobette, the curator I'd interviewed about pop art, the yoga master recently returned from Mexico, the multi-media artist whose new show I'd just seen last night, the dining room was quickly filling up.
Our server offered us dessert, but we had plans elsewhere for that (if there's one thing Geminis require on their birthday, it's sweets), so we decided instead on after dinner drinks and before long, the absinthe drip was brought to our table so I could have a birthday eve visit from the green fairy.
The gentleman at the next table looked on curiously, eventually compelled to ask what it was and I was only too happy to explain about the drip's arrival back when the museum was lousy with Picassos and we were celebrating all things bohemian.
Not sure I made a convert of him, but I at least got him thinking about absinthe for the first time in his life.
Once everyone else had their post-meal bevvies of choice, we toasted each other as the adaptable, enthusiastic and eloquent people Geminis are known to be, ignoring what a pain our dual natures can be.
Next stop: Shyndigz for birthday cake.
We only had to wait a few minutes before being led to a booth but the place was already crazy busy for a Thursday evening.
When our gregarious server (a Gemini maybe?) told us about one of the cakes of the day, a black raspberry chocolate cake with whipped cream filling and chocolate icing, I knew I'd found my slice of heaven.
Others chose the s'mores pie for its warm, ooey-gooey goodness recalling Girl Scout camping trips of our youth and pushing me right over the edge after one bite.
Stick a fork in me, I was done.
Well, finished eating and drinking, but certainly not done for the evening, so I bade farewell to the Gemini contingent after birthday cards were exchanged and left to meet a friend for a movie.
We'd been trying for the better part of a week and a half to see the new John Turturro/Woody Allen movie, "Fading Gigolo" at the Criterion.
Coincidentally, the last time I'd been at Shyndigz, I'd run into a friend who'd heard a segment on NPR about the fabulous soundtrack to the movie and been so impressed with what she'd heard that she rushed out to order the CD.
One more reason I didn't want this movie to leave town without me seeing it first.
My friend was waiting for me in the lobby and with her popcorn in hand, we became the second and third people in the theater. Clearly not a big night for gigolos.
But my girlfriend and I are both Turturro fans and I've been a Woody Allen devotee since high school, so we already knew there was plenty for us in a script written by Turturro and finessed by Allen.
And the score! From the opening scenes set to jazz, the music was as fabulous (and often foreign) as my friend had told me.
But mostly it was the charm of seeing Woody Allen play pimp in his low-key comedic way to Turturro's middle-aged florist turned reluctant gigolo that captured me and made for such a charming story.
"A man needs to be funny," a woman tells her girlfriend, a fact any woman could affirm.
"A woman is meant to be looked at, else she'll just fade away," another tells the gigolo as she poses fetchingly for him.
Like an Allen film, the story is a postcard to NYC, in this case Brooklyn, and to jazz music, apparently also a favorite of Turturro's as well as Allen's.
There are probably women who can't imagine one as unconventional looking as Turturro as a for-hire gigolo, but I had no problem at all seeing why women wanted to sleep with him and pay for the privilege. Plus he brings them artistically arranged flowers, always a bonus.
What Gemini wouldn't savor a sweet, little movie about the nuances of love and intimacy to round out her evening?
YOLO, no matter how many personalities you have.
Showing posts with label shyndigz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shyndigz. Show all posts
Friday, May 23, 2014
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Late Morning Adoration/Lunch
When you don't get your act together until almost 4:00, you have to hit it hard.
Art and lunch made up the game plan.
I'd been eager to see the VMFA's "Domestic, Wild, Divine: Artists Look at Animals," so I grabbed a fellow art lover and made it to the museum exactly one hour before close.
Tucked away in a gallery back behind the marble hall, the show turned out to be a fascinating look at practically every collection in the museum.
Everything was from the museum's collections, but the sources were myriad: African, Asian, American, European, contemporary, ancient and everything in between.
I'll tell you what. If a visitor had only a short time to spend at the VMFA, this show would provide a splendid overview of the breadth of the collection.
And while every piece had some tie to the animal kingdom, some grabbed me for other reasons.
Like the page from an Indian text, "Todi Ragini," of a young woman with deer surrounding her.
The page represented a melody which expressed a delightful adoration meant to be performed in the late morning.
Maybe I was so taken with it because I like nothing better than to be delightfully adored in the late morning.
A ceramic tiger pillow, apparently a popular luxury item in 12th century China, caught my eye because I learned that tigers are a symbol of yin which is associated with darkness and rest.
Had I known this about yin? I had not.
I wish I'd seen Don Nice's huge "American Totem/Cornucopia" back in 1981 when it was first created because it must have seemed radical at the time with its Della Robbia like ring of pop art vegetables.
There was the mid-15th century Tibetan piece with the Lord of Death embracing Diamond Zombie.
It wouldn't have looked out of place on the cover of a metal album.
Fred Tomaselli's large-scale "Woodpecker" from 2005 was engagingly psychedelic (or is that just my past showing?) with its elaborate patterns and the pecker's bill made entirely of collaged beak images.
The show was hung wonderfully, with works of any given animal hung together for comparison's sake.
The only change I'd have made was with Joseph Raffael's fish painting, a view of fish in a pond from above (or even below).
The large painting belonged on the ceiling or the floor (perhaps under glass), the better to view it from the angle intended.
It's a stellar show and since it's up until next summer, I'll be the nag telling all my friends to check it out for an easy and insightful look at the VMFA's collections.
If they don't listen to me, the loss is theirs.
Afterwards, we made for the exit as guards warned us they'd be closing in five minutes.
Ignoring them, we stopped to check out the mini show of six Hogarth prints in the series "Marriage a la Mode," about the pitfalls of marrying for anything but love.
The detailed prints were Hogarth at his best with dozens of small details in each scene to further carry the story of the philandering husband, bored wife and flirtatious lawyer.
By the last one, the wife had taken poison, her child was kissing her goodbye and the venereal disease-ridden husband was acting like the offended party.
Have we learned our lesson here, people?
From bad marriages to the Boulevard, we walked up the street to Fat Dragon, hoping to slide in before the masses did.
And we did, but just barely.
Arriving just after 5:00, we scored two bar stools just before the crush of incoming humanity arrived.
The couple who slid in next to us, taking the last two seats, said it was their second time there.
Good indicator.
What did I like? The upside down woks as hanging lights. That happy hour went until 7 p.m. on a Saturday. The sexy bathroom with its wooden basin.
The music, which began as innocuous club-style music and eventually settled into something more indie.
What didn't I like? The massive screen killing the vibe at the bar (and set to the news on a Saturday evening? Please!).
The emphasis on beer (a much bigger beer list than wine, a bigger savings on beer during happy hour than wine, flights of beer but not wine) with an array of taps almost as long as I am tall.
So it's a beer place and I'm not a beer type. That's fine.
The menu did claim, "Sex is always on tap at the Fat Dragon" so I had to ask.
So I had to sample Sex Brut Rose from Michigan (!), which the barkeep said was wildly popular, but its soft fruitiness wasn't really my style.
On to the food.
Chili dumplings of shrimp and pork came in a pool of Szechuan pepper sauce that challenged my chopsticks but had nice heat.
When the Chinese BBQ baby back ribs arrived stacked atop one another, one of the bartenders spotted them and smiled broadly at us.
"Nice choice!" he said, giving us a verbal thumbs up for our selection.
The ribs came in the chef's housemade barbecue sauce, smoky and with a sweetness my companion read as almost chocolate-like.
Meanwhile, the crush of people arriving was mind-boggling. By 6:10 there was an hour wait.
Lots of beer lovers, I had to guess.
Next we tried shrimp and bacon lo mein, a concession to my fellow eater since I'm not really a pasta type.
Fresh tasting, the surprise here was twofold: way more shrimp than we'd expected and almost no bacon.
Correction: two bits of bacon in the entire dish.
Since the appeal of the dish had been the bacon (shrimp lo mein being fairly common), that was a bit disappointing.
Still, we inhaled it all, so clearly we got over the missing pig.
By that time, the throngs behind us were breathing down our necks anticipating us vacating our bar stools, so we gave the people what they wanted.
Walking back down Boulevard, we marveled at Fat Dragon's rabid Saturday evening (because it was barely even night yet) business (and busy-ness), trying to decide when we'd be back.
And I know exactly when it'll be: late.
I love that they're doing a late night menu until 12 during the week and 1 on the weekend.
Many's the time I have lamented the lack of late night kitchens still open, especially for after a play or early music show.
Thanks, Fat Dragon, for helping Richmond inch that much closer to a real city where you don't have to eat by 10 or even 11:00.
With our savory needs more than met, the last stop on our evening lunch tour was Shyndigz, which was surprisingly mobbed considering how early it was (7ish).
Spotted cow cake (chocolate with cream cheese frosting) got the nod and while it's not going to displace their signature chocolate caramel sea salt cake any time soon, it was a tasty (and enormous) hunk of sweetness to finish off our palates.
Now, properly cultured and fed, let's have a Saturday night, shall we?
Art and lunch made up the game plan.
I'd been eager to see the VMFA's "Domestic, Wild, Divine: Artists Look at Animals," so I grabbed a fellow art lover and made it to the museum exactly one hour before close.
Tucked away in a gallery back behind the marble hall, the show turned out to be a fascinating look at practically every collection in the museum.
Everything was from the museum's collections, but the sources were myriad: African, Asian, American, European, contemporary, ancient and everything in between.
I'll tell you what. If a visitor had only a short time to spend at the VMFA, this show would provide a splendid overview of the breadth of the collection.
And while every piece had some tie to the animal kingdom, some grabbed me for other reasons.
Like the page from an Indian text, "Todi Ragini," of a young woman with deer surrounding her.
The page represented a melody which expressed a delightful adoration meant to be performed in the late morning.
Maybe I was so taken with it because I like nothing better than to be delightfully adored in the late morning.
A ceramic tiger pillow, apparently a popular luxury item in 12th century China, caught my eye because I learned that tigers are a symbol of yin which is associated with darkness and rest.
Had I known this about yin? I had not.
I wish I'd seen Don Nice's huge "American Totem/Cornucopia" back in 1981 when it was first created because it must have seemed radical at the time with its Della Robbia like ring of pop art vegetables.
There was the mid-15th century Tibetan piece with the Lord of Death embracing Diamond Zombie.
It wouldn't have looked out of place on the cover of a metal album.
Fred Tomaselli's large-scale "Woodpecker" from 2005 was engagingly psychedelic (or is that just my past showing?) with its elaborate patterns and the pecker's bill made entirely of collaged beak images.
The show was hung wonderfully, with works of any given animal hung together for comparison's sake.
The only change I'd have made was with Joseph Raffael's fish painting, a view of fish in a pond from above (or even below).
The large painting belonged on the ceiling or the floor (perhaps under glass), the better to view it from the angle intended.
It's a stellar show and since it's up until next summer, I'll be the nag telling all my friends to check it out for an easy and insightful look at the VMFA's collections.
If they don't listen to me, the loss is theirs.
Afterwards, we made for the exit as guards warned us they'd be closing in five minutes.
Ignoring them, we stopped to check out the mini show of six Hogarth prints in the series "Marriage a la Mode," about the pitfalls of marrying for anything but love.
The detailed prints were Hogarth at his best with dozens of small details in each scene to further carry the story of the philandering husband, bored wife and flirtatious lawyer.
By the last one, the wife had taken poison, her child was kissing her goodbye and the venereal disease-ridden husband was acting like the offended party.
Have we learned our lesson here, people?
From bad marriages to the Boulevard, we walked up the street to Fat Dragon, hoping to slide in before the masses did.
And we did, but just barely.
Arriving just after 5:00, we scored two bar stools just before the crush of incoming humanity arrived.
The couple who slid in next to us, taking the last two seats, said it was their second time there.
Good indicator.
What did I like? The upside down woks as hanging lights. That happy hour went until 7 p.m. on a Saturday. The sexy bathroom with its wooden basin.
The music, which began as innocuous club-style music and eventually settled into something more indie.
What didn't I like? The massive screen killing the vibe at the bar (and set to the news on a Saturday evening? Please!).
The emphasis on beer (a much bigger beer list than wine, a bigger savings on beer during happy hour than wine, flights of beer but not wine) with an array of taps almost as long as I am tall.
So it's a beer place and I'm not a beer type. That's fine.
The menu did claim, "Sex is always on tap at the Fat Dragon" so I had to ask.
So I had to sample Sex Brut Rose from Michigan (!), which the barkeep said was wildly popular, but its soft fruitiness wasn't really my style.
On to the food.
Chili dumplings of shrimp and pork came in a pool of Szechuan pepper sauce that challenged my chopsticks but had nice heat.
When the Chinese BBQ baby back ribs arrived stacked atop one another, one of the bartenders spotted them and smiled broadly at us.
"Nice choice!" he said, giving us a verbal thumbs up for our selection.
The ribs came in the chef's housemade barbecue sauce, smoky and with a sweetness my companion read as almost chocolate-like.
Meanwhile, the crush of people arriving was mind-boggling. By 6:10 there was an hour wait.
Lots of beer lovers, I had to guess.
Next we tried shrimp and bacon lo mein, a concession to my fellow eater since I'm not really a pasta type.
Fresh tasting, the surprise here was twofold: way more shrimp than we'd expected and almost no bacon.
Correction: two bits of bacon in the entire dish.
Since the appeal of the dish had been the bacon (shrimp lo mein being fairly common), that was a bit disappointing.
Still, we inhaled it all, so clearly we got over the missing pig.
By that time, the throngs behind us were breathing down our necks anticipating us vacating our bar stools, so we gave the people what they wanted.
Walking back down Boulevard, we marveled at Fat Dragon's rabid Saturday evening (because it was barely even night yet) business (and busy-ness), trying to decide when we'd be back.
And I know exactly when it'll be: late.
I love that they're doing a late night menu until 12 during the week and 1 on the weekend.
Many's the time I have lamented the lack of late night kitchens still open, especially for after a play or early music show.
Thanks, Fat Dragon, for helping Richmond inch that much closer to a real city where you don't have to eat by 10 or even 11:00.
With our savory needs more than met, the last stop on our evening lunch tour was Shyndigz, which was surprisingly mobbed considering how early it was (7ish).
Spotted cow cake (chocolate with cream cheese frosting) got the nod and while it's not going to displace their signature chocolate caramel sea salt cake any time soon, it was a tasty (and enormous) hunk of sweetness to finish off our palates.
Now, properly cultured and fed, let's have a Saturday night, shall we?
Sunday, November 4, 2012
On Languorous Lips and Lives Well Led
It was a night to indulge my inner girl.
After a day of being productive - re-potting outdoor begonias inside for the winter, re-framing a local artist's print when the glass on the first frame broke and making basil walnut pesto out of the gargantuan basil plant that's been growing in a dining room window box since June- I wanted a low-key Saturday night.
The dinner location was prescribed by my need to review.
Dessert followed at Shyndigz, that cake cafe in the near West End.
Sure, it was a tad out of my comfort zone, but I'd heard raves about the mondo pieces of cake and was curious.
I was as unprepared for how small a place it was as for the sheer number of people crowded into it at 9:00 on a Saturday night.
My partner in crime and I didn't get particularly creative with our selections once we found seats at the small community table.
The place's signature cake is the salted chocolate caramel cake so we got one to share along with a salted hot chocolate.
The hot chocolate was good (maybe not quite as good as Can Can's) but the two enormous homemade marshmallows on top were divine, airy and not too sweet.
The cake was of the Alice in Wonderland variety, somehow having grown bigger than any piece of cake needed to be.
For me, the best part of it was the buttery chocolate frosting with the complementary salt crystals.
Between the heavy meal we'd had first and the thick-as-cream hot chocolate, half the cake left with us in a box.
We were off to the Westhampton Theater to see "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel," a documentary about the doyenne of fashion during the 20th century, first at "Harper's Bazaar" and then at "Vogue."
The documentary had tons of talking heads of the most interesting kinds, like former models Lauren Hutton, Verushka and Ali McGraw (looking about as awful as imaginable) and designers (Blahnik, Oscar de la Renta, CalvinKlein).
From a childhood with her mother telling her she was ugly compared to her beautiful sister to becoming the arbiter of taste for women in this country (Jackie O. contacted her for First Lady wardrobe advice), I was fascinated by her imagination and her wide circle of (in many cases younger) friends.
And was she ever quotable!
I think so few people believe in pleasure.
Don't worry, Diana, I believe in it, too.
She spoke of the wisdom of being born in Paris and even that, "The best thing about London is Paris."
Having been to London but only through Paris, I take her word on that.
I say to evoke the imagination of the public is a wonderful thing if you can manage it.
Managing to do it is the challenge I've found, but such a satisfying one.
My intense reading was natural.
I always suspected that my intense reading was as natural as breathing, and here was my corroboration.
People described her in glowing terms, like, "She gave energy and pep to everything she did."
Oh, for people to say that about me when I'm dead.
But her standards were exacting and co-workers said she could look at a photo spread and pinpoint the smallest failing.
Once she dismissed a photo because, "There's no languor in the lips."
Only Vreeland could spot the absence of languor.
That said, she was also praised as, "Understanding the genius of vulgarity."
Why don't you paint a map of the world on all four walls of your boys' nursery so they won't grow up with a provincial point of view?
I'm with her on this one, too. Save me from a provincial point of view, please.
And while she may not have been a conventionally pretty woman, between her red lipstick, her ever-present smile and her pure verve, she was riveting to watch and listen to.
We could have been friends, I feel certain of it. Hell, she'd have made a great mentor, too.
There's only one life and it's the one that you want and you make happen.
There's one Vreeland-ism I didn't need to hear to instinctively know.
Hell, life? I'm not shy about saying that this is the one I wanted and this is the one I (painstakingly) made happen.
And I didn't even have the advantage of being born in Paris.
After a day of being productive - re-potting outdoor begonias inside for the winter, re-framing a local artist's print when the glass on the first frame broke and making basil walnut pesto out of the gargantuan basil plant that's been growing in a dining room window box since June- I wanted a low-key Saturday night.
The dinner location was prescribed by my need to review.
Dessert followed at Shyndigz, that cake cafe in the near West End.
Sure, it was a tad out of my comfort zone, but I'd heard raves about the mondo pieces of cake and was curious.
I was as unprepared for how small a place it was as for the sheer number of people crowded into it at 9:00 on a Saturday night.
My partner in crime and I didn't get particularly creative with our selections once we found seats at the small community table.
The place's signature cake is the salted chocolate caramel cake so we got one to share along with a salted hot chocolate.
The hot chocolate was good (maybe not quite as good as Can Can's) but the two enormous homemade marshmallows on top were divine, airy and not too sweet.
The cake was of the Alice in Wonderland variety, somehow having grown bigger than any piece of cake needed to be.
For me, the best part of it was the buttery chocolate frosting with the complementary salt crystals.
Between the heavy meal we'd had first and the thick-as-cream hot chocolate, half the cake left with us in a box.
We were off to the Westhampton Theater to see "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel," a documentary about the doyenne of fashion during the 20th century, first at "Harper's Bazaar" and then at "Vogue."
The documentary had tons of talking heads of the most interesting kinds, like former models Lauren Hutton, Verushka and Ali McGraw (looking about as awful as imaginable) and designers (Blahnik, Oscar de la Renta, CalvinKlein).
From a childhood with her mother telling her she was ugly compared to her beautiful sister to becoming the arbiter of taste for women in this country (Jackie O. contacted her for First Lady wardrobe advice), I was fascinated by her imagination and her wide circle of (in many cases younger) friends.
And was she ever quotable!
I think so few people believe in pleasure.
Don't worry, Diana, I believe in it, too.
She spoke of the wisdom of being born in Paris and even that, "The best thing about London is Paris."
Having been to London but only through Paris, I take her word on that.
I say to evoke the imagination of the public is a wonderful thing if you can manage it.
Managing to do it is the challenge I've found, but such a satisfying one.
My intense reading was natural.
I always suspected that my intense reading was as natural as breathing, and here was my corroboration.
People described her in glowing terms, like, "She gave energy and pep to everything she did."
Oh, for people to say that about me when I'm dead.
But her standards were exacting and co-workers said she could look at a photo spread and pinpoint the smallest failing.
Once she dismissed a photo because, "There's no languor in the lips."
Only Vreeland could spot the absence of languor.
That said, she was also praised as, "Understanding the genius of vulgarity."
Why don't you paint a map of the world on all four walls of your boys' nursery so they won't grow up with a provincial point of view?
I'm with her on this one, too. Save me from a provincial point of view, please.
And while she may not have been a conventionally pretty woman, between her red lipstick, her ever-present smile and her pure verve, she was riveting to watch and listen to.
We could have been friends, I feel certain of it. Hell, she'd have made a great mentor, too.
There's only one life and it's the one that you want and you make happen.
There's one Vreeland-ism I didn't need to hear to instinctively know.
Hell, life? I'm not shy about saying that this is the one I wanted and this is the one I (painstakingly) made happen.
And I didn't even have the advantage of being born in Paris.
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